Catherine Asaro - Sunrise Alley

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Sunrise Alley
Table of Contents
To my mother-in-law,
Jeanine Cannizzo, with love.
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
Epilogue
Sunrise Alley
Catherine Asaro
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any
resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004by Catherine Asaro
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-7434-8840-7
Cover art by Jeff Easley
First printing, August 2004
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Asaro, Catherine.
Sunrise alley / Catherine Asaro.
p. cm.
"A Baen Books Original"
ISBN 0-7434-8840-7 (hc)
1. Women scientists--Fiction. 2. Androids--Fiction. 3. Robots--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.S29S86 2004
813'.54--dc22
2004007012
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
To my mother-in-law,
Jeanine Cannizzo, with love.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following readers for their much-appreciated input. Their comments have made
this a better book. Any mistakes that remain were introduced by small, pernicious gremlins bent on
mischief.
To Andrew Burt, Jeri Smith-Ready, and Tricia Schwaab for their excellent reading and comments on the
manuscript. To Aly's Writing Group, for their insightful critiques of scenes: Aly Parsons, Simcha Kuritzky,
Connie Warner, Al Carroll, and J. G. Huckenpöler. And to Susan Grant, my cousin Joe Scudder, and
my brother-in-law Jimmy Cannizzo for their kindness in answering questions and reading scenes.
Special thanks to my editor, Toni Weisskopf, to my publisher, Jim Baen, and to Marla Ainspan, Nancy
Hanger, Andrew Phillips, and the many other fine people at Baen who made this book possible; to Binnie
Braunstein, for all her work on my behalf; and to Eleanor Wood, my much-appreciated agent.
A heartfelt thanks to the shining lights in my life, my husband, John Cannizzo, and my daughter, Cathy,
for their love and support.
I
Flotsam
The storm wrecked Sam's carefully planned solitude.
The next morning, Sam hiked to the small beach below her house to see the damage. She followed a
trail through the redwoods, those ancient trees that stood like sentinels around her property. They had
been growing on this remote stretch of California coast for centuries, even millennia. Mist softened her
view of the trunks as if a gauzy shroud hung over the green-needled branches with their dark cones. The
world had become muted after the fury of last night's thunder, rain, and winds.
Sam came out onto the beach under an overcast sky the color of pewter. Seagulls cried as they wheeled
beneath the clouds. Through the shreds of fog that hung over the beach, she saw the sea, a froth of green
and ivory cream, thick and restless.
Flotsam from last night's storm had scattered across the beach in soggy clumps. Sam walked past
driftwood and kelp, her hands scrunched in the pockets of her jacket. Chips embedded in the coat's
lining controlled its heating system and warmed her body, but the chill air on her face bit like ice.
So Samantha Abigail Harriet Bryton wandered across her private stretch of sand, hidden from the rest
of the coast by cliffs that cupped the beach and extended promontories into the water. She felt at home
here. Her name made her think of the cocktail parties, society pages, and chic clothes of her parents'
world, or else a pair of spectacles hanging off the end of her nose. None of those qualities described her,
except perhaps the last, before surgery had corrected her vision. To escape all that, she just went by
Sam.
Contrary to its reputation as a sunshine state, California had weather that turned cold and foggy up here
near the Oregon border. Sam missed the warmer climates down south, but she had no wish to return to
the hard-edged, fast-paced world she had fled. She had begun to heal these past six months since she
had left the biotech corridors of the San Francisco Bay Area. Better to hide here than face a life that
compromised her sense of right and wrong.
Wind blew her mane of shaggy yellow curls across her eyes. She passed rocky tidal pools with orange
starfish draped across them, half in the water. Tiny octopuses hid under the rocks. Oystercatchers
strutted among the pools, foraging for limpets and mussels, their red beaks fluorescent against the dull
gray morning. Waves rolled into the beach, mottled in blue, green, and foamy white, swirling across the
sand and rounded stones. Most petered out a few feet short of where she walked, but some came far
enough to eddy around her hiking boots and soak the ankles of her jeans. The icy water gave her a jolt.
Sam felt one of her moods coming on, the desire to rebel against the technology she had forsworn when
she resigned her job last year. This morning she had deliberately left her mesh glove on her desk at home,
and she had ripped the chips out of her clothes. Well, all except the heating system in her jacket; one
couldn't be completely uncivilized. She supposed she wasn't rebelling all that much, given that her ability
to communicate with the world was only half a mile away, in her house among the redwoods. But she
valued her isolation here, on the wild beauty of her beach.
Last night's storm had left a mess, though: tree branches rounded into smooth shapes, shards of wood, a
broken ring made from metal, tatters of cloth, bits of machinery—
Cloth? Machinery?
Sam went over to a pile of metal fragments. They definitely came from a human-built object, possibly a
ship. Uneasy, she peered out at the ocean. The mist obscured her view, but she thought more debris was
bobbing beyond the breakers, in the swells rolling toward shore. The water had never had this much
junk, not even after other storms.
Curious now, she stripped to her underwear and blouse, goose bumps rising on her skin in the cold air.
Drawing in a deep breath, she steeled herself and waded into the icy water.
"Ah!" Sam gasped as waves crashed around her knees and sprayed water into her face. Exhilarated, she
spread her feet wide, bracing herself against the force of the waves and the slight undertow that tried to
pull her under. She loved the ocean, loved its power and surging beauty, even its chill temperature, surely
no more than fifty degrees now. Usually she jogged in the morning, but today she would swim instead.
She couldn't stay in too long; a few minutes would invigorate her, but any longer without a wetsuit and
she risked hypothermia.
Her muscles tightened as she forged onward. Water swelled around her thighs, her waist, and higher,
and she had to jump with the waves to keep from being knocked over. When it reached her breasts, she
began to swim, riding up a swell and down the other side as it rolled past. After the first shock of the
water, her body was adapting, which made the chill recede.
Sam ducked under the next wave, holding her breath as she submerged, her body tingling from cold.
She jumped through the next waves. In the valley between the swells, she swam with powerful strokes,
until she made it past the point where the waves no longer broke.
Now that she could see the debris more clearly, she caught her lower lip with her teeth. This was the
wreckage of a vessel, possibly a small yacht given the quality of wood floating around her. She found a
section of metal with a date stamp: July 2032. That made it less than a year old.
She stroked past broken planking, baffled. This had been a bad storm, yes, but it shouldn't have
wrecked a vessel. If the yacht had smashed against the rocks north of here, the pieces would have been
more dispersed now, unless it had happened on a promontory right here, this morning. She peered at the
cliff jutting into the water a few hundred meters to the north. Although she saw no indication a ship had
run into trouble there, the restive waves could have carried the debris this way.
The overcast was beginning to clear, and a V-shape of birds flying south made dark lines against the
sky. From behind her, watery sunlight slanted through the mist. The cold had begun to bother Sam;
perhaps it was time to head back in to shore.
Then an anomaly caught her attention. A glint came from farther out, different from the many ways sun
reflected off seawater. With a powerful kick, she headed for it, stroking through the chill water. She soon
saw what caused the reflection. A large section of hull floated out here. The remains of a metal rail hung
off one side and some cloth had caught on the wood.
With dismay, Sam realized the "cloth" was a man sprawled facedown. Water lapped over the makeshift
raft, soaking him, bathing his face and then ebbing away.
Kicking hard now, afraid the man would drown if he hadn't already, Sam came alongside the hull. She
grabbed the rail, reached across the wood, and laid her hand on his neck. With relief, she felt his pulse,
steady but slow under her palm.
Sam hoisted herself up and got her elbows onto the raft so she could see better. He was probably in his
mid-twenties, with skin and hair so pale, they seemed almost translucent. He looked like a corpse. She
might have been wrong about his pulse—but no, he was breathing, low and shallow, unconscious but
alive.
Sam pushed a straggle of hair out of her face. She had to get him to shore fast; he could die of exposure
out here. Towing him on the raft would probably be safest; although she had taken a lifesaving course in
college, that had been twenty years ago and she wasn't certain she could keep his head above the water
without help.
Sliding into the ocean, she hooked her arm over the metal rail and pulled the rough underside of the hull
onto her hip. Then she headed for the shore, using a side kick she practiced often, one of her most
powerful strokes. Or so she had thought.
Towing in the makeshift raft was harder than she expected. She struggled through the water, making so
little headway that she questioned if she could reach the shore. For every few feet she gained, the waves
grew larger, which moved her forward but made it harder to control the raft. Her arms tired, and her legs
ached with the strain of kicking hard enough to propel the hull. She might soon be too cold to pull even
herself through the water, let alone the raft. She could drown.
Sam thought of releasing the raft and swimming in to the beach. She would run for help. But it was no
good; if this man died because she couldn't get him to the shore in time, she couldn't live with herself.
Keep going.
The swells continued to grow. She rode up the back of one, higher and higher, four or five feet into the
air. Wind blew across her soaked blouse and she shivered. In the instant she realized the wave was going
to break, she threw her arms over the raft, grabbing the man, holding him tight on the water-soaked hull.
Then the wave crashed down in a whirl of froth and seaweed, throwing the raft with it, battering them
with bits of debris. Sam clung to the precariously tilting hull, covering the man as best she could. She
prayed he didn't breathe in too much water.
The wave rolled on, leaving them in the valley between swells. Mercifully, the raft hadn't flipped. The
next wave loomed above her, but this time she was better positioned to catch it. She scrambled onto the
hull, lying across it and the man, ready to ride into shore as she had often done as a child on mini
surfboards.
She had lost her touch, though. The wave curled over in a pipe and crashed on top of her, wrenching
away the raft. The backlash caught Sam and she floundered under the water, buffeted on all sides.
Holding her breath, she dove deeper to escape the turbulence. When she hit the bottom, she pushed off
with a great shove and shot up until she flew out of the water up to her hips. On another day, it would
have been fun, but right now she could think only about the injured man.
She caught the next breaker and body surfed into shore. As the wave dwindled into a tame wash, she
jumped up and ran through the foam and tangles of kelp. The raft had swept up a few yards away, its
passenger lying across it, his hair plastered against his head. Sam's clothes lay crumpled in a heap a few
hundred yards farther up the beach.
Sam sped to the raft and dropped down next to it, shaking with the cold. When she felt the man's pulse
under her hand, she gulped with relief. At least she hadn't drowned him. With barely a pause, she
scrambled to her feet, ran to her clothes, scooped up her jacket, and raced back. Sand flew as she
skidded to a stop by the raft and knelt down. She spread her jacket over the man, covering as much of
him as possible with the heat-controlled garment. Right now he needed the warmth far more than she did.
Her check showed no obvious sign of injury. His slender, athletic build made her think of a runner, and
his white pants and shirt could have come from a sports rack in any department store. He carried no
wallet or mesh glove. The bluish tinge of his lips frightened her; he could die of the cold as easily as by
drowning.
Sam sat back on her heels. Her house was half a mile away, up a rocky trail. She lived miles from her
nearest neighbor, and she had purposely left her glove at home. Rejecting technology was all well and
fine as long as she didn't need it. She could have linked her glove into the local mesh and called in help.
She didn't want to leave the man here while she ran to the house. Although she had paid an exorbitant
price for the seclusion offered by this lonely stretch of land, right now she would have given anything for a
trespasser to show up.
Well, she had to do something or she would freeze herself, which wouldn't help him any. She could
sprint home for her glove and make the contact while she ran back here.
Sam leaned over the man and brushed his dripping hair back from his face. "I don't know if you can hear
me, but I will be back as soon as I can. I promise."
The man groaned.
Startled, Sam sat back. He opened his eyes, his gaze unfocused, his wet lashes making star patterns
around his blue eyes. It seemed odd he would awake now, when he had been drifting in the water for
who knew how long. Then again, if anything could jolt him awake, her onerous method of hauling him in
to shore probably fit the bill. Or maybe her voice stirred his response. Whatever the reason, he was
conscious.
"Can you hear me?" she asked.
He stared past her, his face blank.
Sam set her hand on his shoulder. His wet shirt felt thin under her palm. "Are you hurt?"
No answer.
She was even more uncertain now whether to leave or stay. A wave swirled around them, reminding her
the tide was coming in. Standing up, she tried to drag the raft farther up the beach, but without the
buoyancy of the water, she had a lot more trouble. After pulling it only a few inches, she had to stop, her
arms aching. Her rescued prince didn't stir, and her concern was edging into alarm.
Sam knelt next to him. "Can you move at all?"
She expected him to continue staring at nothing, but this time he did move, pushing up on his elbows and
lifting his head. With erratic motions, he leaned his weight on one hand and nudged a dripping lock of hair
out of his eyes. He jerked eerily, as if he were a marionette. His soaked white shirt clung to him, as did
his white trousers. The cloth had turned translucent in the water, delineating the planes of his chest. He
was obviously in good shape.
"Hello," Sam said.
His eyes scanned the beach, his head turning until he was looking at her. "Hello?" he said.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"All right."
Sam couldn't tell if he was answering or repeating her question. His face was hard to read. The regular
features and smooth skin had an unnatural perfection, like a statue without the character lines or quirks
created by life.
"Can you tell me what happened?" she asked.
He tilted his head.
Sam tried again. "Is anyone else out there?"
No answer.
Maybe he had hurt his head during the wreck. "I can go back to my house and call a doctor." More to
herself than him, she added, "I think I should." She rose to her feet. "I'll hurry back. You keep the jacket
on. I'll be back with help."
"No." That one word seemed to cause him great effort. With labored movements, he rose to his feet. He
wasn't too tall, only about five foot eight, half a foot taller than Sam.
She watched him with concern. "You should sit."
"Please don't call a doctor." His eyes never blinked.
That made her wary. "Why not?"
"I feel fine."
He didn't look fine. "Are you sure, Mister . . . ?" She paused, hoping he would supply his name.
"I am sure." He had a rich voice with no accent. He took a step—and stumbled, his bare foot catching
on the edge of the raft. With a grunt, he sprawled forward, barely catching himself on his hands as he hit
the beach.
"Wait!" Sam knelt next to him, the sand in her soaked clothes scratching her skin. "Don't try to walk.
Please stay here. I'll get help." She looked out at the restless ocean. "Should I check for anyone else out
there?"
"There's no one but me." He pushed up on his hands with methodical determination and doggedly
climbed to his feet. When Sam tried to help, he shook her off.
"I'm fine," he said.
She smiled slightly. "You sound like me."
"I do?"
"Grouchy."
"Oh." He peered at her. "You are . . . ?" His glance went over her body, his gaze lingering. Then he
looked quickly back at her face, his cheeks turning red.
Sam's face heated as well. She was practically naked, in only her underpants and a wet top with no bra.
Well, nothing to do about it now. She stuck out her hand. "Sam Bryton, at your service."
He stared at her hand, until Sam flushed and lowered her arm. "Did the storm smash your yacht?" It
seemed unlikely, but she couldn't be certain.
"Yes." He spoke slowly. "Smashed."
It surprised her an emergency team hadn't arrived. Surely the wreck had been detected by now. By law,
it had to transmit signals to the global tracking system.
She motioned toward the nearby cliffs. "My house is up there. I can get you a blanket or a change of
clothes."
He peered at the redwoods rising on the cliff, tall against the gray sky. "It would be good to go to a
house."
Sam had been thinking she would go up and bring supplies back to him. "Can you walk? It's a ways."
His voice cooled. "I walk fine." He took a jerky step.
Puzzled, Sam went with him as he headed toward the cliff. His uneven gait reminded her of . . . yes, now
she remembered. "You have robotics in your legs. That's why you don't walk right."
His shoulders hunched. "I am perfectly capable of managing them."
Sam could have kicked herself. One of these days she would learn to temper her bluntness. "I'm sorry. I
didn't mean you couldn't."
His tense posture eased. "Sometimes it takes a while to reintegrate the components."
Sam thought of the way his gaze hadn't focused when he first awoke. Possibly he had artificial eyes as
well. If he had enough hardware in his body, prolonged contact with the water might damage the system.
"Can you monitor your condition? It may need internal repairs."
He hesitated. "It doesn't bother you?"
"Bother me?" She squinted at him. "What?"
"Me." He motioned at his legs. "That they are biomech constructs."
"Well, no." A good chance existed that she had patented some of his internal components.
For the first time, his voice relaxed. "Good." His gait was already beginning to smooth out.
They continued up the beach. When they reached her clothes, she pulled on her jeans, self-conscious
now, aware of him watching, though she didn't look at him. She had never believed teeth could "chatter,"
but hers were doing it now, rattling as she shook from the cold. She knew she should take off her wet
underwear before she put on her jeans, but she couldn't do it in front of him.
When Sam finished, she did finally look at him. He smiled, his cheeks pink, his gaze warm. Feeling
awkward, she grabbed her boots. She didn't stop to put them on; months of trudging around barefoot
had toughened her feet, and she hardly noticed the shells and pebbles. Her guest seemed even less fazed
by the rocky beach. Either he had spent a great deal of time barefoot or else he had little or no feeling in
his feet. Possibly they came from a lab, too, like his legs.
When they reached the cliff and started up, he slowed down, trudging at her side up the steep trail. It
worried Sam. She ought to take him to the doctor. She couldn't force him to go against his will, though,
and if he did feel well enough, he probably wanted to get busy dealing with the destruction of his ship.
She certainly would.
He intrigued her. What had left him needing such prosthetics? His damp trousers revealed the structure
of his biomech legs. Seen through the cloth, the limbs appeared normal—long, lean, and well toned.
What showed of his feet below the hem of his trousers appeared human.
"Why are you staring at my feet?" he asked.
Embarrassed, Sam looked up. "I wondered if they hurt. Does it bother you to step on broken shells?"
"Not really."
She tried for a light, friendly tone. "Hey, you know, you haven't told me your name."
"No. I haven't."
She waited. "And?"
"And what?"
"Are you going to?"
"Should I?"
Sam scowled at him. "I just hauled your wet ass out of the ocean. So tell me who you are."
Unexpectedly, he laughed, his teeth flashing. "Fair enough. I'm Turner."
Oh, my. That smile was a killer. It lit up his face. She had thought him attractive before, but when he
smiled, he became devastating, with those sparkling blue eyes, his handsome boy-next-door face, and his
tousled hair dripping with water.
"Pleased to meet you, Turner," she said. "Is that your last name?"
His smile faded. He turned his attention to the rocky path they were climbing.
"What," Sam grumbled to herself. "Am I that off-putting?" He wouldn't be the first person to tell her so.
His mouth quirked up. "You're charming."
She slanted him a look. "If you think I'm charming, you were in that water too long."
"I've no idea how long I was in it. What is today?"
"Tuesday. November eighth, 2033."
He stumbled on a jutting rock. "Thatcan't be."
"Why not?"
He looked at the trees up ahead, his face drawn with strain, marring his unnatural perfection. Sam let it
go. Better to wait until they weren't hiking through the woods and he had a chance to recuperate some.
They reached the top of the cliff and headed through the redwoods. Mist no longer shrouded the
majestic trees. They grew over two hundred feet tall, as high as skyscrapers. They had such a large girth
at the bottom, it could take ten people holding hands to encircle one. Red bark covered their trunks in
great, corrugated strips. The trees grew far apart, leaving a great deal of open space in the forest, with
sparse but verdant underbrush. Sunlight filtered through the canopy where a redwood had fallen and lay
on its side. Although she owned the beach and the clearing with her house, this patch of forest was
federal land. It never ceased to awe Sam that some of these trees had lived for thousands of years, over
a millennium before her English forebears had set foot on this continent.
" 'Farewell my brethren,' " Sam murmured. " 'Farewell O earth and sky, farewell you neighboring waters,
my time is ended, my time has come.' "
A smile warmed Turner's face. "What is that?"
" 'Song of the Redwood Tree.' One of Walt Whitman's works." She knew the poem by heart. " 'Riven
deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood forest dense, I heard the mighty tree its
death-chant chanting.' "
摘要：

SunriseAlleyTableofContentsTomymother-in-law,JeanineCannizzo,withlove.IIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIXIXXXXXIXXIIXXIIIEpilogueSunriseAlleyCatherineAsaroThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoinci...

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