“Good morning, Ms. Aranow,” the elevator said.
She let it swallow her.
“Why you doing this, you?”
“I wanted to… I saw you on the newsgrid. About your… the attempts you’re making to…” Theresa took a deep breath. The man wasn’t tall, but he was thick and bearded and sunburned and scowling. He stood too close to her. Three of them, two men and a woman, had run toward the car as soon as it landed, a respectful distance away from their building. What she hoped was a respectful distance. Her heart raced, and her breath snagged in her throat and wouldn’t come out. Oh, not now, not now… She breathed deeply. The air outside was colder than she’d expected, and grayer. Everything out here—air, trees, ground, faces—looked cold and gray and hard.
Theresa turned to the woman. Maybe a woman would be easier. “I know you’re trying to find… to do… the newsgrid said this was a ‘spiritual experiment.’ ” What the newsgrid had actually said was a “quasi-spiritual attempt at a completely irrelevant human delusion.”
The second man’s face softened. He was younger, maybe Theresa’s age, skinnier, unbearded. “You’re interested, you, in our ways?”
“Don’t be taken in, Josh,” the woman said sharply. “She’s donkey, her!”
“Let’s see, us, who she is,” said the first man. From his pocket he pulled a mobile—were Livers supposed to have those? “On. ID check. Aircar number 475-9886,” followed by code authorizations. How did he know those?
The terminal said, “Car registered to Jackson William Aranow, Manhattan East Enclave.” It added a citizen number and address. Theresa hadn’t known those were public.
“I’m Theresa Aranow… Jackson’s… sister.” She tried to breathe normally.
“And you brought us supplies, you,” the woman said. “Out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Yes,” Theresa whispered. “I mean, no, I don’t think… I’m that… good…”
“You all right, you?” the younger man said. Josh. Theresa slumped against the car and he touched her arm. She flinched.
“I’m… yes. Fine.”
“Josh, unload the supplies, you,” said the other man. “Might as well have them, us.”
Theresa made herself breathe normally. She had come this far. “Could I… please see what you’re doing here? Not in exchange for the supplies, but just because I’m… interested?”
The woman said, “We don’t need no spies, us,” at the same moment that Josh said, “You really interested? In bonding?”
“Shut up about that!” the woman snapped.
The two glared at each other. Theresa didn’t remember anything about “bonding” in the newsgrid. She shivered in a sudden gust of wind. It was so cold.
The older man made a sudden decision. “She can know, her. It’s time people knew. We’re doing what’s right, us, and it’s working, and we know that. We should spread the word, us.”
“Mike—” the woman began angrily.
“No, it’s time. And if a donkey’s really interested, her…” He eyed Theresa speculatively.
“I say no, me,” the woman said.
“I say yes, me,” Josh said. “Patty, grab some of those cones, you.”
Patty grabbed, with bad grace. Theresa pulled some of Jackson’s clothes from the car and walked with Josh toward the building, staying as far away from Patty and Mike as she could.
The building was a huge, flat, windowless rectangle. Maybe once a warehouse of some kind. They didn’t take her inside. Instead, they ducked in one by one to drop off their loads of cones and clothing. Then they led her around to the back of the building. Several more people followed, until there was a small crowd.
Behind the building a tent of clear plastic stretched over churned-up ground. The tent, held up at its center by spindly poles four feet high, sagged rapidly to edges held to the ground with temporary-looking stakes. Inside was a Y-cone, a feeding ground, and six naked people, in two groups of three each.
“See, you?” Josh said, not ungently. “Bonded groups, them. Feeding in harmony. That six months ago were enemies, them.”
“Not enemies,” Patty said sharply.
“Not friends,” Josh countered. “We had a lot of fighting, us. Like most tribes. It almost made us blow apart, us, go off alone… be isolated.”
“Which would mean, it, that we was denying our humanity,” Mike said. “Humans are meant to be together, us. Isolated, we ain’t whole.”
“Oh,” Theresa said. Was he right, this ragged healthy-looking Liver? Was that why her life had felt so empty—because she’d isolated herself? Disappointment seeped through her. It seemed too simple, too… easy. All those isolated ecstatic mystics she’d read about in her library, who saw visions and suffered for truth—they’d needed more than just more company! She searched for something to say that wouldn’t offend her hosts.
“How did you stop the fighting and… get to be so unified?”
“Bonding!” Josh said triumphantly. “It was given to us by Mother Miranda, her, and we took it, and now look!”
“Mother Miranda?” Theresa said. “Are you the same as those people who insist Miranda Sharifi develop an immortality drug?”
“No,” Mike said. “We don’t insist, us, on nothing. We don’t ask for nothing. But we took the gift, us, when we found it.”
The gift. “What gift?”
Josh answered, fervor in his voice. “At first we thought, us, it was more Change syringes. But the new syringes were red, them, not black, and there was a holo to play on our terminal. Miranda Sharifi telling us, her, that this was a gift to start with us, then later go to everyone. The gift of bonding. To make up for the isolation of the Change!”
“A holo of Miranda Sharifi,” Theresa repeated. Jackson had said that Miranda and her fellow Supers had nanobuilt themselves a lunar base, Selene, after Jennifer Sharifi got out of prison and threw Miranda out of Sanctuary. That had been over a year ago. How was Miranda sending new syringes from the moon?
“With a new Change,” Mike said. “Bonding. So we can’t ever be alone, us, again. So we have to develop the spiritual aspect of ourselves and get along together. In threes, like the Father and Son and Holy Ghost, them.”
Theresa looked again at the tented feeding ground. Three people at one end, two women and a man. Three at the other, a man and a woman and a young boy. Around her in the crowd people stood grouped in threes, some groups holding hands. Patty and Mike and Josh had imperceptibly moved from opposite sides of Theresa to form a small huddle facing her.
“A syringe,” she said. “It held a new drug, and you took it, and—”
Patty spoke directly to Theresa, looking her full in the face, smiling brutally. “And the drug made us one, it. We can’t move, us, too far away from each other. We are each other’s life!”
The crowd suddenly intoned, “We are the life and the way. We are the life and the blood. We are the life and the chosen.”
Josh said eagerly, “You see now, you? We’re a real community, us. The Change syringe divided people, everybody able to go off by hisself, them, to eat and be healthy and live, nobody needing anybody else. But the bonding syringe unites. If Mike or Patty or me get too far away from each other, us, we die.”
“Die?” Theresa faltered. “Really die?”
Patty said triumphantly, “Really die. And a bonded group did, them. In another tribe. I saw it, me. The fools didn’t believe Mother Miranda, and the Holy Ghost moved away, her, and in one night the other two died.”
“But… but what if you have a baby? Does the baby—”
“We got lots more red syringes, us,” Josh said. “A baby ain’t no problem. It just stay with its mother, him, until it’s old enough to bond with his own group.”