“If it looks like we’re done,” I said.
“You won’t leave me here,” she said again. When would I gain her complete trust?
“Never,” I said.
She stood then and walked out the door without looking back. She seemed so much like the little girl I’d first met that my heart went out to her. All that bravado the first day had been just that, a cover for sheer terror.
She went to the play area and sat on a cushioned block. She folded her hands in her lap, and stared at me. Ronald’s assistant tried to interest her in a doll, but she shook him off.
“What is it?” I asked.
Ronald sighed, and scooted his stool closer to me. He stopped near the edge of the lounge, not close enough to touch, but close enough that I could smell the scent of him mingled with his specially blended soap.
“The children being sent down from the Moon were rescued,” he said softly. “I know.” I had read all the literature they sent when we first applied for Echea.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “They weren’t just rescued from a miserable life like you and the other adoptive parents believe. They were rescued from a program that was started in Colony Europe about fifteen years ago. Most of the children involved died.”
“Are you saying she has some horrible disease?”
“No,” he said. “Hear me out. She has an implant—”
“A link?”
“No,” he said. “Sarah, please.”
Sarah. The name startled me. No one called me that any more. Ronald had not used it in all the years of our reacquaintance.
The name no longer felt like mine.
“Remember how devastating the Moon Wars were? They were using projectile weapons and shattering the colonies themselves, opening them to space. A single bomb would destroy generations of work. Then some of the colonists went underground—”
“And started attacking from there, yes, I know. But that was decades ago. What has that to do with Echea?”
“Colony London, Colony Europe, Colony Russia, and Colony New Delhi signed the peace treaty—”
“—vowing not to use any more destructive weapons. I remember this, Ronald—”
“Because if they did, no more supply ships would be sent.”
I nodded. “Colony New York and Colony Armstrong refused to participate.” “And were eventually obliterated.” Ronald leaned toward me, like he had done with Echea. I glanced at her. She was watching, as still as could be. “But the fighting didn’t stop. Colonies used knives and secret assassins to kill government officials—”
“And they found a way to divert supply ships,” I said.
He smiled sadly. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s Echea.”
He had come around to the topic of my child so quickly it made me dizzy. “How could she divert supply ships?”
He rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Then he sighed again. “A scientist on Colony Europe developed a technology that broadcast thoughts through the subconscious. It was subtle, and it worked very well. A broadcast about hunger at Colony Europe would get a supply captain to divert his ship from Colony Russia and drop the supplies in Colony Europe. It’s more sophisticated than I make it sound. The technology actually made the captain believe that the rerouting was his idea.”
Dreams. Dreams came from the subconscious. I shivered.
“The problem was that the technology was inserted into the brain of the user, like a link, but if the user had an existing link, it superseded the new technology. So they installed it in children born on the Moon, born in Colony Europe. Apparently Echea was.”
“And they rerouted supply ships?”
“By imagining themselves hungry—or actually being starved. They would broadcast messages to the supply ships. Sometimes they were about food. Sometimes they were about clothing. Sometimes they were about weapons.” He shook his head. “Are. I should say are. They’re still doing this.”
“Can’t it be stopped?”
He shook his head. “We’re gathering data on it now. Echea is the third child I’ve seen with this condition. It’s not enough to go to the World Congress yet. Everyone knows though. The Red Crescent and the Red Cross are alerted to this, and they remove children from the colonies, sometimes on penalty of death, to send them here where they will no longer be harmed. The technology is deactivated, and people like you adopt them and give them full lives.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Perhaps your House reactivated her device.”
I shook my head. “The first dream happened before she listened to House.” “Then some other technology did. Perhaps the government didn’t shut her off properly. It happens. The recommended procedure is to say nothing, and to simply remove the device.”
I frowned at him. “Then why are you telling me this? Why didn’t you just remove it?”
“Because you want her to be linked.”
“Of course I do,” I said. “You know that. You told her yourself the benefits of linking. You know what would happen to her if she isn’t. You know.”
“I know that she would be fine if you and your husband provided for her in your wills. If you gave her one of the houses and enough money to have servants for the rest of her life. She would be fine.”
“But not productive.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need to be,” he said.
It sounded so unlike the Ronald who had been treating my children that I frowned. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Her technology and the link are incompatible.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But you can remove her technology.”
“Her brain formed around it. If I installed the link, it would wipe her mind clean.”
“So?”
He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I’m not being clear,” he said more to himself than to me. “It would make her a blank slate. Like a baby. She’d have to learn everything all over again. How to walk. How to eat. It would go quicker this time, but she wouldn’t be a normal seven-year-old girl for half a year.”
“I think that’s worth the price of the link,” I said.
“But that’s not all,” he said. “She’d lose all her memories. Every last one of them. Life on the Moon, arrival here, what she ate for breakfast the morning she received the link.” He started to scoot forward and then stopped. “We are our memories, Sarah. She wouldn’t be Echea any more.”
“Are you so sure?” I asked. “After all, the basic template would be the same. Her genetic makeup wouldn’t alter.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “Trust me. I’ve seen it.”
“Can’t you do a memory store? Back things up so that when she gets her link she’ll have access to her life before?”
“Of course,” he said. “But it’s not the same. It’s like being told about a boat ride as opposed to taking one yourself. You have the same basic knowledge, but the experience is no longer part of you.”
His eyes were bright. Too bright.
“Surely it’s not that bad,” I said.
“This is my specialty,” he said, and his voice was shaking. He was obviously very passionate about this work. “I study how wiped minds and memory stores interact. I got into this profession hoping I could reverse the effects.”
I hadn’t known that. Or maybe I had and forgotten it.
“How different would she be?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Considering the extent of her experience on the Moon, and the traumatic nature of much of it, I’d bet she’ll be very different.” He glanced into the play area. “She’d probably play with that doll beside her and not give a second thought to where you are.”
“But that’s good.”
“That is, yes, but think how good it feels to earn her trust. She doesn’t give it easily, and when she does, it’s heartfelt.”