Robogenesis Read Online Free PDF Page A

into my granddaddy’s pond on a hot summer afternoon.
    Son of a gun, as the farmers say.
    “I’m going to help you,” it says.
    “Yup,” I say.
    “You deserve it.”
    “Oh, yup. That’s for sure.”
    Funny thing is, I couldn’t tell you whether I’m talking out loud or not. Doesn’t seem to matter. Me and the light have got an understanding now. A certain trust.
    “Wipe off your mouth,” it says, and I do.
    Thoughts are just kind of percolating around in my head now. Coming together like water reaching a rolling boil. I’m thinking of the night that the New War began. How I dropped everything and ran straight to the top of Gray Horse—only to have Lonnie Wayne convince old John Tenkiller to let a white boy into our ancestral home. We lost a lot of people that day—real native folks and not those heavy-eyebrow newcomers. Now we’ve been out here losing more, and fighting for who?
    I stop shuffling ahead when I reach the camp perimeter. I’m just inside the tree line and out of sight. Lark Iron Cloud is still swaying out there in the moonlight with his dead buddies. That vile zombie is in
The Hero Archive
and I’m not. That unnatural freak who ought to be put down is considered a damned hero. The only mention of me is as a big dummy fighting with Lonnie.
    Heroes, huh?
    Bunch of damn heroes.
    The anger knots into my muscles, tightens my jaw and shoulders. My fist closes hard around the spooklight. The corners cut into my palm and it feels good.
    “Sssh,”
it says, and I let him loose a little. Beams of light splay out from between my clenched fingers. My own sun. I grin at the rays a little bit and feel their warmth on my chest.
    Somebody is coming
.
    Did I think that or hear it? The colors seep back into the cube, fading until the thing is darker than the backs of your eyelids. Just a cube now. A secret in a little box.
    With shaking fingers, I wrap the spooklight in a handkerchief. I’m making it into a bundle like the old ones used to carry. My mama would call this blasphemy. Them elders may have left this medicine behind a long time ago, but I’m starting it up again. I carefully stow the bundle in the satchel I wear around my waist. But before it goes in, I touch it a little bit with my other hand. Just to clean it off.
    “See you soon,” I say.
    That’s when the flashlights hit me from deeper inside the woods. Lonnie Wayne steps out, leading a search party. Now I’ve got a bunch of
heroes
strafing my broad back with their weak beams of light.
    “Hank,” Lonnie calls, and there’s a new panic under his voice. Been there since the war ended. When fear started creeping into where his anger had lived before. “Hey, Bubba, is that you?”
    I turn around slow and put on an embarrassed grin as the jouncing lights close in on me. Without thinking about it, I push my bundle around to my back with one hand. I wave the flashlights away with the other.
    “It’s me,” I say. “I’m fine. Not smart, but fine.”
    Lonnie catches up to me, followed by three young soldiers. He’s huffing and puffing. His straggling gray whiskers are coated in frost and his whole face seems to droop. The cowboy is getting old and tired and heartsick. Not like me.
    I’m a walking talking million-dollar bill.
    “Y’all are coming back in? Giving up the search already?” I say, and there’s more anger under my voice than I intended.
    “We’ve been out for hours,” Lonnie says, surprised. “Sun’s about to rise, Hank. What happened to you? Where’ve you been?”
    Went for a walk and I got lost
. Where do thoughts come from? Do they always come from inside? Funny I never asked myself that before.
    “I went out for a walk and I guess I got lost,” I say. “Took me a damn while to figure out my way back. To be fair, I got kind of embarrassed. Sorry to get you all out of bed. Everybody else all right?”
    “They’re fine. Everybody is fine. We were worried about you,” says Lonnie. Again I notice that slump in