She closed her eyes. It shut out the spinning world, but it couldn’t shut out the thing scarier than that. The most terrifying thing she’d seen, in an afternoon of terror, inner and outer… Josh’s face, whispering a final sentence. Kind, regretful, horrifying. His words.
“You ain’t ready, you. Least, not yet.”
Theresa shuddered. She never would be ready, for that. Bound forever ten feet from two Livers, death if she left them… No. It was wrong. A dead end.
But what was Miranda Sharifi doing?
And what was Theresa going to do?
She was again alone with her empty life.
Interlude
TRANSMISSION DATE: December 1, 2120
TO: Selene Base, Moon
VIA: San Diego Ground Station, GEO Satellite C-988 (U.S.), Holsat IV (Egypt)
MESSAGE TYPE: Unencrypted
MESSAGE CLASS: Class B, Private Paid Transmission
ORIGINATING GROUP: San Diego Parents’ Coalition
MESSAGE:
Dr. Miranda Sharifi and Associates—
Knowing, as we do, that you firmly embody the principle that people are never more themselves than when they make choices for others, we approach you with a request. Your gift of Change syringes has transformed our lives. Thanks to your efforts, our children are healthier and stronger. But the supply of Change syringes in our enclave—as in the others—is dwindling. Soon it will be nonexistent. Children born after that must be vulnerable to disease, to accidental poisoning, to danger.
Dr. Sharifi, please don’t permit this to happen. Our children are so precious to us. They are all of our futures. You have been so compassionate and benevolent to your fellow beings that we, the parents of San Diego Enclave, ask you to be so again. We ask for more Change syringes for the children as yet unborn to us. Let this be, from your deep knowledge of humanity, your first scientific goal. We ask not for ourselves, but for the children.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: None received
Five
They had been flying over Africa for less than half an hour when the plane began to descend. Jennifer Sharifi gazed out the window. In the pink dawn the outlines of a city blurred, as if the buildings might or might not actually be there. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, she thought, and didn’t smile.
“Atar,” Will Sandaleros said, and stretched as much as he could in the cramped confines of the four-seater Mitsu-Boeing. Two days ago Jennifer and he had come down from Sanctuary, their first time down in the four months since they’d returned from Earth to the Sleepless orbital. All signs of Miranda and the other Supers had been obliterated from Sanctuary. The friends convicted with Jennifer had also returned to Sanctuary, their shorter sentences long since finished: Caroline Renleigh and Paul Aleone and Cassie Blumenthal and the rest. Back to finish the fight for freedom.
But only Jennifer and Will had made this trip down to the international shuttleport in Madeira. They had gone directly to the Machado Hotel, built and owned by Sanctuary through a complex series of blind holding companies, a luxury business hotel guaranteeing unbreakable security for orbital and Terran executives. For two days they had stayed in their Y-shielded room while hotel staff—half Sleepless, half well-paid Norms—had determined the identity of all the agents, reporters, terrorists, and nuts inevitably trailing Jennifer Sharifi. Last night Jennifer and Will had left the Machado by an underground tunnel built along with the hotel, and so well shielded that only ten people in the world knew it existed. A car had taken them to the coast and the Mitsu-Boeing. Will, used to exercise, was restless after three days in vehicles and shielded rooms.
Jennifer was never restless. She had learned to sit completely still and retreat into her thoughts for hours, for days. For months. Will would have to learn, too. It was a necessary discipline to gather everything inside and bring it to a single point, like sunlight focused by a motionless magnifying glass. A burning point.
“They’ll be waiting?” she said over the back of the seat to the pilot. He nodded. His brown hair, gray eyes, stolid features, could have come from five different continents. He never spoke. Beside him the Sleepless bodyguard, Gunnar Gralnick, checked his weapons.
The plane landed on a dusty, unmarked landing field in the desert, Atar barely visible on the dawn horizon. The only building, a windowless foamcast rectangle curiously pristine and dustless under a Y-shield, might have existed anywhere in the world. The air was colder than Jennifer remembered, this close to the equator. But the sun wasn’t up yet. Later, the air would be hot.
Three men awaited them, dressed in light Arab robes. Nonconsumable synthetics, Jennifer saw. They were all Changed. In Africa, you never knew. The men had swarthy, sunburned skins, but light eyes: two green, one blue. The one with blue eyes had red hair, neither genemod nor fashion augment. Berbers.
“Welcome to Mauritania,” the oldest of the men said to Will, in nearly unaccented English. He did not glance at Jennifer. She had expected this. She said nothing. “I am Karim. This is Ali, and Beshir. Did you enjoy a good flight?”
“Yes, thank you,” Will said.
“No complications?”
“We were not followed.”
“We detected nothing at this end,” Karim said. “But it is best not to linger. Please follow me.”
The pilot remained with the plane. The other six climbed into a large aircar. Will and Jennifer in the back seat with Gunnar between them. They flew low, traveling deeper into the Sahara, which grew more sunlit every minute. Rocks, scrub vegetation, an occasional oasis, its green stopping with the irrigation system as abruptly as if sheared with scissors. Then no vegetation: just rock and sand. They landed beside a small foamcast building whose domed shield was half-buried in drifting sand.
The Arabs landed the car inside the dome, on hard-packed ground free of blowing sand. The building opened through retina scan. Jennifer noted. An underground German company had recently developed software to duplicate retina coding. The Berbers would need to update their security.
The elevator spoke briefly in Arabic. Will gave no sign he did not understand the language. Jennifer understood Arabic although she, too, gave no sign. But of course the Berbers knew what languages she spoke or understood. They knew everything about all three of their Sleepless visitors, everything in any data bank anywhere. Which was never the information most crucial to have. Sleepers never understood that.
Jennifer stood close to them, for the discipline, and made her hatred focus calmly, a controlled bum. For the discipline. The elevator—“The peace of Allah go with you”—might or might not be a piece of satirical programming. If satire, it was a weakness; satire indicated the ability to stand outside your own endeavors and mock them. If not satire, it indicated the strength of tradition.
Mauritania had a lot of traditions. Proud Berber nomads. Islam. Colonial oppression. Collapse and drought and plague and warfare and brutality, like all of Africa but more so. Mauritania had been the last country in Africa to outlaw slavery, less than two hundred years ago. The slavery had persisted, joined by newer outlaws and newer genetic and technological slaves. Mauritania had no government left to speak of; what did exist was easily bought.
The elevator stopped far underground. It opened directly into a conference room, all gleaming nanobuilt white walls and the fragrant smell of strong coffee. Doors led, presumably, to the labs and living quarters. On the gleaming teak table surrounded by comfortable chairs stood a silver coffee service. More chairs ringed the walls. A low side table held a holostage.