The Tourist by Robert Dickinson

Author:Robert Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Science Fiction / Time Travel, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Action & Adventure
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2016-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Edge of the territory

You’re suddenly awake. “How long was I asleep?”

Riemann turns away. He was watching you. “Three hours.”

“And you never sleep?”

He shakes his head, looks pleased with himself. He’s young, of course. You remember how it felt: it felt like nothing. You wonder how he occupies himself on this journey. Perhaps he listens to music or one of those interminable dramas they seem to like. When you broke out of the room the local had been listening to music; that’s why you were able to hurt him. Riemann seems too careful for those distractions.

“We’ll be at the perimeter soon,” he says.

“Already?”

“Yesterday you complained about how long it was taking.” He looks at you with something like concern. “Are you sure you’ll still know your way around?”

“I’m sure.”

He looks doubtful.

When you reach the perimeter you’re allowed to walk in the open. It’s because there’s nothing to see except low clouds moving slowly in the direction you came. The land ahead is flat.

Riemann leaves you to wait outside the vehicle while he makes arrangements for the last stretch of the journey. Or has the arrangements explained to him. He looks anxious, as if expecting a reprimand. When he walks away there’s an exaggerated swing to his step you recognise as bravado.

You feel sorry for him.

You’re at the edge of Number City territory. As a child you’d imagined there would be fortifications, a wall of some kind. When they talked about the Number Cities spreading you pictured a wall moving outwards, crushing everything in its path. Instead there are only the remains of a road and a few concrete blocks with weeds sprouting between them. The rest is scrubland, wild grass, dust and dirt. A few people walk from one building to another. They’re wearing uniforms rather than protective suits. They ignore you.

Before he left Riemann said, “This is your chance to run.” He knows you won’t. You’re still half a day’s drive from home. No food, no tools, no shelter if it rains. You walked home once but that was a long time ago and you carried a week’s provisions and a tent. Lately your only exercise has been to walk twice a day from your cell to Room Two. It isn’t enough preparation. Even looking at the flat road to the horizon makes you feel weak.

And you begin to feel apprehensive about what you might find. Every time he asks you assure him you haven’t forgotten. How could you? But each time you try to remember, say, the route from the home to the school you have the sense you’ve missed something—a stretch of road, a building. You tell yourself you’ll recognise everything when you see it but what if you don’t? Home will have changed when the bombs fell, if they’d used bombs—you were already in captivity when it happened and were never given details. They used euphemisms, like all cowards. The action has been taken; the area has been cleared. You knew what they meant by clearance. As

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