Cindy had lost interest. “No fucking customers except those two sorry asses in the corner, and they never tip. I shoulda stood in bed.”
“Miguel,” Noah said, “can I have the afternoon off?”
Noah stood patiently in line at the blood-collection site. If any of the would-be volunteers had hoped to see aliens, they had been disappointed. Noah was not disappointed; after all, the ad on Cindy’s phone had said HUMAN NURSES TO COLLECT SMALL BLOOD SAMPLES.
He was, however, disappointed that the collection site was not on the large dock jutting out from the Embassy under its glittering energy shield. Instead, he waited to enter what had once been a warehouse at the land end of a pier on the Manhattan waterfront. The line, huddled against November drizzle, snaked in loops and ox-bows for several blocks, and he was fascinated by the sheer diversity of people. A woman in a fur-lined Burberry raincoat and high, polished boots. A bum in jeans with an indecent tear on the ass. Several giggling teenage girls under flowered umbrellas. An old man in a winter parka. A nerdy-looking boy with an iPad protected by flexible plastic. Two tired-looking middle-aged women. One of those said to the other, “I could pay all that back rent if I get this alien money, and—”
Noah tapped her arm. “Excuse me, ma’am—what ‘alien money’?” The $100 fee for blood donation didn’t seem enough to pay all that back rent.
She turned. “If they find out you’re part of their blood group, you get a share of their fortune. You know, like the Indians with their casino money. If you can prove you’re descended from their tribe.”
“No, that’s not it,” the old man in the parka said impatiently. “You get a free energy shield like theirs to protect you when the spore cloud hits. They take care of family.”
The bum muttered, “Ain’t no spore cloud.”
The boy said with earnest contempt, “You’re all wrong. This is just—the Denebs are the most significant thing to happen to Earth, ever! Don’t you get it? We’re not alone in the universe!”
The bum laughed.
Eventually Noah reached Building A. Made of concrete and steel, the building’s walls were discolored, its high-set windows grimy. Only the security machines looked new, and they made high-tech examinations of Noah’s person inside and out. His wallet, cell, jacket, and even shoes were left in a locker before he shuffled in paper slippers along the enclosed corridor to Building B, farther out on the pier. Someone was very worried about terrorism.
“Please fill out this form,” said a pretty, grim-faced young woman. Not a nurse: security. She looked like a faded version of his sister, bleached of Elizabeth’s angry command. Noah filled out the form, gave his small vial of blood, and filed back to Building B. He felt flooded with anti-climactic let-down. When he had reclaimed his belongings, a guard handed him a hundred dollars and a small round object the size and feel of a quarter.
“Keep this with you,” a guard said. “It’s a one-use, one-way communication device. In the unlikely event that it rings, press the center. That means that we’d like to see you again.”
“If you do, does that mean I’m in the alien’s haplogroup?”
He didn’t seem to know the word. “If it rings, press the center.”
“How many people have had their devices ring?”
The guard’s face changed, and Noah glimpsed the person behind the job. He shrugged. “I never heard of even one.”
“Is it—”
“Move along, please.” The job mask was back.
Noah put on his shoes, balancing first on one foot and then on the other to avoid touching the grimy floor. It was like being in an airport. He started for the door.
“Noah!” Elizabeth sailed toward him across a sea of stained concrete. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hi, Lizzie. Is this part of the New York State border?”
“I’m on special assignment.”
God, she must hate that. Her scowl threatened to create permanent furrows in her tanned skin. But Elizabeth always obeyed the chain of command.
“Noah, how can you—”
A bomb went off.
A white light blinded Noah. His hearing went dead, killed by the sheer onslaught of sound. His legs wobbled as his stomach lurched. Then Elizabeth knocked him to the ground and hurled herself on top of him. A few seconds later she was up and running and Noah could hear her again: “Fucking flashbang!”
He stumbled to his feet, his eyes still painful from the light. People screamed and a few writhed on the floor near a pile of clothes that had ignited. Black smoke billowed from the clothing, setting the closest people to coughing, but no one seemed dead. Guards leaped at a young man shouting something lost in the din.
Noah picked up his shoes and slipped outside, where sirens screamed, honing in from nearby streets. The salt-tanged breeze touched him like a benediction.
A flashbang. You could buy a twelve-pack of them on the Internet for fifty bucks, although those weren’t supposed to ignite fires. Whatever that protestor had hoped to accomplish, it was ineffective. Just like this whole dumb blood-donation expedition.
But he had a hundred dollars he hadn’t had this morning, which would buy a few good hits of sugarcane. And in his pocket, his fingers closed involuntarily on the circular alien coin.
Marianne was surprised at how few areas of the Embassy were restricted.
The BSL4 areas, of course. The aliens’ personal quarters, not very far from the BSL4 labs. But her and Evan’s badges let them roam pretty much everywhere else. Humans rushed passed them on their own errands, some nodding in greeting but others too preoccupied to even notice they were there.
“Of course there are doors we don’t even see,” Evan said. “Weird alien cameras we don’t see. Denebs we don’t see. They know where we are, where everyone is, every minute. Dead easy.”
The interior of the Embassy was a strange mixture of materials and styles. Many corridors were exactly what you’d expect in a scientific research facility: unadorned, clean, lined with doors. The walls seemed to be made of something that was a cross between metal and plastic, and did not dent. Walls in the personal quarters and lounges, on the other hand, were often made of something that reminded her of Japanese rice paper, but soundproof. She had the feeling that she could have put her fist through them, but when she actually tried this, the wall only gave slightly, like a very tough piece of plastic. Some of these walls could be slid open, to change the size or shapes of rooms. Still other walls were actually giant screens that played constantly shifting patterns of subtle color. Finally, there were odd small lounges that seemed to have been furnished from upscale mail-order catalogues by someone who thought anything Terran must go with anything else: earth-tone sisal carpeting with a Victorian camelback sofa, Picasso prints with low Moroccan tables inlaid with silver and copper, a Navaho blanket hung on the wall above Japanese zabutons.
Marianne was tired. They’d come to one such sitting area outside the main dining hall, and she sank into an English club chair beside a small table of swooping purple glass. “Evan—do you really believe we are all going to die a year from now?”
“No.” He sat in an adjoining chair, appreciatively patting its wide and upholstered arms. “But only because my mind refuses to entertain the thought of my own death in any meaningful way. Intellectually, though, yes. Or rather, nearly all of us will die.”
“A vaccine to save the rest?”
“No, there is simply not enough time to get all the necessary bits and pieces sorted out. But the Denebs will save some Terrans.”
“How?”
“Take a selected few back with them to that big ship in the sky.”