By this point in my observations of the Seeker, I was surprised that she’d had the patience to wait for any delay, even my personal acclimatization. I sensed her disappointment in my lack of information, and it brought back some of the unfamiliar feelings of anger.
“Did it not occur to you that you could get the answers you seek by being inserted into this body yourself?” I asked.
She stiffened. “I’m no skipper.”
My eyebrows pulled up automatically.
“Another nickname,” the Healer explained. “For those who do not complete a life term in their host.”
I nodded in understanding. We’d had a name for it on my other worlds. On no world was it smiled upon. So I quit quizzing the Seeker and gave her what I could.
“Her name was Melanie Stryder. She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was in Los Angeles when the occupation became known to her, and she hid in the wilderness for a few years before finding… Hmmm. Sorry, I’ll try that one again later. The body has seen twenty years. She drove to Chicago from…” I shook my head. “There were several stages, not all of them alone. The vehicle was stolen. She was searching for a cousin named Sharon, whom she had reason to hope was still human. She neither found nor contacted anyone before she was spotted. But…” I struggled, fighting against another blank wall. “I think… I can’t be sure… I think she left a note… somewhere.”
“So she expected someone would look for her?” the Seeker asked eagerly.
“Yes. She will be… missed. If she does not rendezvous with…” I gritted my teeth, truly fighting now. The wall was black, and I could not tell how thick it was. I battered against it, sweat beading on my forehead. The Seeker and the Healer were very quiet, allowing me to concentrate.
I tried thinking of something else—the loud, unfamiliar noises the engine of the car had made, the jittery rush of adrenaline every time the lights of another vehicle drew near on the road. I already had this, and nothing fought me. I let the memory carry me along, let it skip over the cold hike through the city under the sheltering darkness of night, let it wind its way to the building where they’d found me.
Not me, her. My body shuddered.
“Don’t overextend —” the Healer began.
The Seeker shushed him.
I let my mind dwell on the horror of discovery, the burning hatred of the Seekers that overpowered almost everything else. The hatred was evil; it was pain. I could hardly bear to feel it. But I let it run its course, hoping it would distract the resistance, weaken the defenses.
I watched carefully as she tried to hide and then knew she could not. A note, scratched on a piece of debris with a broken pencil. Shoved hastily under a door. Not just any door.
“The pattern is the fifth door along the fifth hall on the fifth floor. Her communication is there.”
The Seeker had a small phone in her hand; she murmured rapidly into it.
“The building was supposed to be safe,” I continued. “They knew it was condemned. She doesn’t know how she was discovered. Did they find Sharon?”
A chill of horror raised goose bumps on my arms.
The question was not mine.
The question wasn’t mine, but it flowed naturally through my lips as if it were. The Seeker did not notice anything amiss.
“The cousin? No, they found no other human,” she answered, and my body relaxed in response. “This host was spotted entering the building. Since the building was known to be condemned, the citizen who observed her was concerned. He called us, and we watched the building to see if we could catch more than one, and then moved in when that seemed unlikely. Can you find the rendezvous point?”
I tried.
So many memories, all of them so colorful and sharp. I saw a hundred places I’d never been, heard their names for the first time. A house in Los Angeles, lined with tall fronded trees. A meadow in a forest, with a tent and a fire, outside Winslow, Arizona. A deserted rocky beach in Mexico. A cave, the entrance guarded by sheeting rain, somewhere in Oregon. Tents, huts, rude shelters. As time went on, the names grew less specific. She did not know where she was, nor did she care.
My name was now Wanderer, yet her memories fit it just as well as my own. Except that my wandering was by choice. These flashes of memory were always tinged with the fear of the hunted. Not wandering, but running.
I tried not to feel pity. Instead, I worked to focus the memories. I didn’t need to see where she’d been, only where she was going. I sorted through the pictures that tied to the word Chicago, but none seemed to be anything more than random images. I widened my net. What was outside Chicago? Cold, I thought. It was cold, and there was some worry about that.
Where? I pushed, and the wall came back.
I exhaled in a gust. “Outside the city—in the wilderness… a state park, away from any habitations. It’s not somewhere she’d been before, but she knew how to get there.”
“How soon?” the Seeker asked.
“Soon.” The answer came automatically. “How long have I been here?”
“We let the host heal for nine days, just to be absolutely sure she was recovered,” the Healer told me. “Insertion was today, the tenth day.”
Ten days. My body felt a staggering wave of relief.
“Too late,” I said. “For the rendezvous point… or even the note.” I could feel the host’s reaction to this—could feel it much too strongly. The host was almost… smug. I allowed the words she thought to be spoken, so that I could learn from them. “He won’t be there.”