But somebody, somewhere, sometime, had to judge, or we’d end up with pure Darwinian jungle, red in byte and assembler.
Huevos Verdes had judged. And I, by not summoning the GSEA a second time, along with them. And there was no clear way to know whether either of us was right.
All this I realized, with that peculiar clarity that comes in bodily crisis, as I watched Drew Arlen and Miranda Sharifi tear each other apart in the cold woods.
He said, “You don’t have the right to carry out this project. You never did. No more than Jimmy Hubbley—”
She said, “It was supposed to be ‘we,’ not ‘you.’ You were part of this.”
“Not any more.”
“Because you fell into the hands of some scientific crazies. God, Drew, to equate Jimmy Hubbley with us—”
“So you did know about him. And left me there all these months.”
“No! We knew about the counterrevolution, but not specifically where you were—”
“I don’t believe you. You could have found me. You Supers can do anything, can’t you?”
“You think I’m lying to you—”
“Yes,” Drew said. “I think you’re lying.”
“But I’m not. Drew—” It was a cry of pure anguish. I couldn’t look at her face.
“You could have stopped the duragem dissembler, too, couldn’t you? You knew it came from the underground. But you let it encourage social breakdown because that prepared the way better for the project. For your plans. Isn’t that true, Miranda?”
“Yes. We could have stopped the dissembler.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“We were afraid—” She stopped.
“Afraid of what? That I’d tell Leisha? The newsgrids? The GSEA?”
She said, more quietly, “Which is just what you did. The first chance you got. We did look for you, Drew, but we’re not omnipotent. There was no way of knowing which bunker, where… And meanwhile you did exactly what Jon and Nick and Christy said you would — betray the project to the GSEA.”
“Because I started to think for myself. Again. Finally. And that’s not what Supers want, is it? You want to think for all of us, and us to obey you, without question. Because you always know best, don’t you? God, Miranda, aren’t you ever wrong?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was wrong about you.”
“That won’t be a problem for you any longer.”
She cried, “You said you loved me!”
“Not any more.”
They went on looking at each other. Drew’s face I couldn’t read. Miranda’s had turned stony, her tears gone. Her eyes were lasers.
She said, “I loved you. And you couldn’t stand being inferior. That’s what your betrayal to the GSEA is really about. Jon was right. You can’t ever really understand. Anything.”
Drew didn’t answer. The wind picked up, smelling of cold water. More leaves blew off the oak. The birch tree shuddered. There was more noise behind me. I didn’t turn around.
A GSEA agent said, “I arrest you, Miranda Sharifi, for violations of the—”
She cried out, just as if the agent hadn’t spoken, “I can’t help it that I know more and think better than you, Drew! I can’t help what I am!”
He said, his voice unsteady but angry, the way men are when they know they look weak, “Who should control the technology—”
“Shit!” someone called. I turned. Billy sat dazed on the ground, holding his chest. The noise had been him and Annie, pulling the unconscious Lizzie up from the underground bunker, which they didn’t understand and must have feared. Or maybe Annie had pulled Lizzie up the steps, and the agent with the burned hand had helped Billy. The agent stood there beside the old man, looking dazed. But there was nothing dazed about Billy. He sat in the frozen mud, an old man with a body about to be the most biologically efficient machine on the planet, and I saw that he, too, knew what he was looking at. Billy Washington, the Liver. His wrinkled old-man’s gaze moved from Drew to Miranda — the latter, I saw, with adoration — then back to Drew again, then to Miranda. “Shit,” he said again, and there were layers and layers in his tone, unsortable.
“You’re fighting, you, about who should control this technology — but don’t you see, it don’t matter who should control it, them? It only matters who can?” And he put his gnarled, grateful, hand on the crumpled sleeping form of Lizzie, lying in the mud, her small face peaceful and cool and damp as her lethal fever broke.
Sixteen
There was nothing to confiscate for evidence. More planes came, and Drew used the codes that made the door appear in the far wall of the bunker. I contrived to be present for this. Security was chaotic, except for Miranda Sharifi, electro-cuffed to the birch tree, whom agents watched as if they expected an anti-grav heavenly ascension, tree and all. Maybe they did. But Miranda allowed herself to be captured. And everybody understood that’s what happened: she allowed it.
But nobody, including me, understood why.
Behind the bunker door lay nothing. Even the sterile, fortifying walls that had probably been there were self-consuming by the same nanotechnology that had built them. There were only a series of earth-packed tunnels and caves extending back into the mountain, dangerous to explore without proper equipment because the dirt walls crumbled and threatened to cave in. It was impossible to tell how extensive the caves/tunnels were. It was impossible to tell what had been nano-destroyed in them, or removed from them before their collapse. Miri, they’re on the way — Miri, you can’t—
I looked for the slim black syringes that had injected the four of us, but all I saw was smudges of melted black, like metallic candle wax, on the floor at the bottom of the steps where Lizzie and Billy had lain.
There was more. And it happened, incredibly, almost as an afterthought.
But first one of the agents arrested me. “Diana Arlene Cov-ington, you are under arrest for violations of the United States Code, Title 18, Sections 1510, 2381, and 2383.”
Obstruction of criminal investigations. Assisting rebellion or insurrection. Treason. I was, after all, supposed to be a GSEA agent.
Miranda watched me intently from her birch tree. Too intently. Drew had gone into the plane. We awaited a second plane, either for more space or more security. With a sudden feint that surprised the agent, I ducked around him and sprinted toward Miranda.
“Hey!”
She had time to say to me only, “More in the syringe—” before the outraged agent had me again and dragged me grimly into the plane. His grip bruised my arms.
I barely noticed. More in the syringe—
The whole extent of the project, she had said to Drew Arlen.
So not just the Cell Cleaner, which was staggering enough. Not just that. Something else.
Some other biological technology: radical, unexpected. Unimaginable.
Something more.
Huevos Verdes had not needed to set up this elaborate underground lab to perfect or test the Cell Cleaner. They had already done that, openly, before the Science Court hearing last fall.
Huevos Verdes had expected to lose their case in front of the Science Court. That had been clear at the time, to nearly everybody. What had not been clear was why they were presenting the case at all, given the foregone conclusion. It was because Miranda wanted the moral reassurance that all legitimate paths for this larger project were closed, before she completed her stroll down illegitimate paths at East Oleanta.