concerned and fearful. “Tamara, what have you got yourself into now, girl?” he asked, reaching out with his hairy knuckled hands and guiding her gently into the shelter of the hut. He was a short brown man with a wide soft belly and a balding scalp. His dimensions reminded Tamara of a life-sized toy bear.
“We’ve got to run,” Tamara whispered hoarsely, her breath burning in her lungs. “Another assassin has found me, and it’s a giant this time,” here she shook her head, her long dark hair falling into her face and sticking to her sweaty skin. “We’ve got to run.”
“A giant?” he said in disbelief. Tamara sensed Sato’s heart quickening in his chest, but could not see his eyes widen with fear nor the way his mouth sagged with dismay. She felt the fear in his mind though, and she felt vaguely sick at having brought all this back to him, at having burdened him with her plight, but she had nowhere else to turn.
“Let’s go then,” he said, his grip closing around her wrist. He led her through the room, slamming the mahogany door shut behind them and throwing the bolt. He paused only to snatch up some data-capsules and turn off the bio-processor, a reflex. He fumbled with the latch on the backdoor for a moment and the stupid little hook that held the screen door shut stopped them for precious seconds. For some reason, he didn’t think immediately of forcing it. He was sixty-two, and running for his life was something new.
Behind them, something huge and ponderous pushed through the overgrown walk way and up to the mahogany door. The latch rattled, then there was a heavy thud. The hinges groaned and splinters sprayed away from the doorjamb. Together, Tamara and Sato hit the backdoor with their bodies and it popped open easily, swinging wide and smacking into the wall.
Tamara saw a startled iguana scuttle away into the jungle. Her mind automatically tracked the reptile’s movement even though it was hidden in the underbrush.
Visible on the driveway was the cool metallic form of Sato’s ATV. Hope blossomed in Tamara’s heart at its image appeared in her mind. They scrambled to the car and released the hatches, climbing inside. For a few tense seconds Sato fumbled through his clothes pockets for the keys while back in the hut the giant wreaked great destruction, smashing everything in reach of his huge hands.
“Come on!” cried Tamara, feeling hot tears welling from her empty eye sockets. She could feel the raw burning terror in Sato’s mind as well as experiencing her own.
Finally, he tugged the clattering bundle of codekeys from his breast pocket where they had been all along and slammed one of the coded cylinders into the ignition. The engine flared into life, Sato threw it into gear and slammed down the power rod. With a tortured growl, the ATV leapt forward on the unpaved road, big balloon tires churning up wet dirt. Tamara sensed the giant had made his way out the backdoor of the hut, following them. His arms swung like a catapult heaving a boulder. An object zoomed out of the dark at them and she screamed. She sensed it as it overtook them from behind.
“What-” began Sato, then the object struck the back window and caromed off, crashing into the jungle. The object had been Sato’s bio-processor.
The back window shattered. A spray of glass shards hit them both and Sato almost drove into a mangrove tree. Tamara was so relieved she almost laughed aloud.
“I thought maybe it was a grenade,” she said.
Sato nodded while he fought the wheel and got them back on the road. They bounced along at a demonic pace, both of them laughing with relieved tension. There was no way the giant would catch them now.
The jungle plants slashed at the ATV as they passed, lashing inward and depositing shreds of cool leaves through the hole in the back window.
After a moment Sato laughed too. Behind them, if she reached out with her mind, she could sense the giant, running after them down the jungle lane. His arms and legs pumped in rhythm with his huge galloping heart. They were rapidly outdistancing him, but he didn’t slow, he wasn’t giving up. She watched the pistons churn and flare with heat under the ATV’s hood. The two of them didn’t talk much on the way back to the city.
The next day they sat together in Sato’s office at the university. Around them were the usual accouterments of the college science professor, including an antique desk, lost beneath a blizzard of flimsy plastic scrolls. Resting atop the scrolls was a dusty Mars-rock, gathered on a summer school expedition fifteen years back. The ubiquitous bio-processor sat in the midst of it all, hooked to a venerable old Steinbach CPU that sat in its chest under the desk with a tangle of optical-gel tubing poking out of the top.
“You’ll have to leave the island, Tamara,” Sato told her, raising a hand to her expected denials. “Please don’t argue. You don’t have any choice now, you can’t handle things like this monster they have trailing you. I pulled a few strings and Tyro Labs has chipped in some cash and a ticket to Berlin. From there you can easily start a new life.”
Tamara shook her head, wearily. “It would not be enough to just leave Cuba. I’ve gained the vengeful attention of international lords. I’ve thwarted people who are accustomed to bribing or crushing all opposition. There can’t be any stopping now.”
“A person can always hide, Tamara. You will have to be careful, lay low, take precautions. You must act like a normal blind person for awhile.”
“No,” she smiled, shaking her head sadly. “They know you helped me. They will come after you now as well.”
This last struck through to Sato. Tamara felt the fear blossom in him anew, a black flower planted over a shallow grave. She felt a bit sick, he was acting so brave, pretending not to be afraid. He must have known that she could read him, that he could never hide a strong emotion from her. Still though, he went on pretending, playing the brave fatherly role. She pretended too, she pretended that he could give her useful advice, that he could really help her, but he couldn’t. She was in a game beyond his experience now.
“You don’t know these people, but I do.”
“You aren’t one of them.”
“I’ve touched their minds, poppa,” she said, slipping a bit.
“You haven’t called me poppa since you were a little girl,” said Sato. For a moment he smiled.
“Listen, poppa. They don’t think like we do, they don’t feel the pain of others. They kill men the off-handed way that farmboys kill gophers.”
For once, Sato had nothing to say. Tamara reached out and closed her soft fingers over the rough skin of his hand. “They will try to kill you now, too. I know it.”
Sato was silent for a long time. Tamara, sharing his feelings intensely now that they were in physical contact, felt like weeping for him. She felt his sense of loss, of failure to her. She followed his thoughts for a time while he remembered her as his daughter. Had he not programmed much of her genetic structure? Had he not raised her, taught her his values? To not be able to help and protect her, much less himself, was difficult for him to accept. He felt old and useless.
“So, what do we do?” he asked her.
“I’m through running,” she said. Anger had begun to burn in her again, the way it had when she had felt the children in pain. Their bodies had burned on drugs, hearts beating unnaturally fast, breath hitching from their lungs. Nervous uncontrollable energy, flushed cheeks, small bright eyes surrounded by gray skin. She remembered the children.
“I will protect you, father. I can use my mind in the horrible ways that I did before. I will reach inside them and twist,” Tamara said, thinking of the things she had done to the first pushers, the ones that gladly sold blur crystals and other synthetic drugs to her second-graders. Used just the right way, her thoughts had snapped their minds like dry twigs, the way an arm or finger could be snapped by a professional.
“Before the assassins come again, I must go after them.”
Like Saint Bernard dogs that are over-bred and turn mean, the giants were genetic extremes. They had been developed for size, strength and speed only, with no regard to their mental tendencies. Quick reflexes and stamina had been lifted to their maximums, while reasoning and emotional elements had been left up to the idle whim of chance. As a result, most of them were mentally unbalanced to some degree, and nearly all of them had the capacity for a killer rage buried down deep in their genes somewhere.
When Tamara finally found the giant that had stalked her relentlessly the night before, evening had fallen once again. She found him in a nightclub downtown, a club where men and women with carefully trimmed pubic hair pranced in G-strings on a dirty stage. The glaring words LIVE SEX SHOW blinked and spun in holographic splendor over the street outside the place, switching from English to Spanish, then back again. A bum in a torn sweater and
