They set down on a gritty landing strip hacked out of the same straggling scrub oak and juniper that Arkady could have found on almost any of the terraformed planets he’d worked on in the last decade. The pilot flew in low and fast and lifted off again before they’d even cleared the rotor wash.
Osnat hustled Arkady across the tarmac to a small half-track whose paint had been scoured so clean by wind and sand that Arkady couldn’t read its markings.
“I’ll have to ask you to get in the back,” she said. “Sorry.”
The back of the half-track was unlit and smelled strongly of biodiesel and some unclean animal that he gradually identified as human. He climbed in and found a blanket to sit on.
“Just keep your mask on,” Osnat told him, “and remember this is for your own safety too. There are a lot of people around here who’d kill you on sight if they knew what you were. And they don’t all work for the UN.” Then she rolled the steel door down with a clatter, leaving Arkady in darkness.
The truck stopped so many times that Arkady lost count. The first few stops were at traffic intersections, he thought. Another two were at checkpoints. But though he heard the border police checking the truck over, they never opened up the back or asked him for his papers.
Other stops had no obvious purpose. The truck would simply pull over to the side of the road, gravel crackling under the wheels, and wait. Sometimes Osnat and the drivers got out, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they waited for a minute, and sometimes they waited for what felt like hours. Once, very late into the night, he heard Osnat’s voice:
“Look at that! Back a day and I already have a mosquito bite. How can you get a mosquito bite in the middle of a fucking desert in the middle of a fucking ice age?”
One of the men said something in Hebrew too riddled with slang for Arkady to make sense of.
“Not unless you pay better than the army does,” Osnat said succinctly, and everybody laughed again.
Eventually Arkady dropped off to sleep, only jolting awake when the engine shuddered to a halt again. He heard voices, footsteps. Then the steel door rattled up to reveal Osnat flanked by two powerfully built young men, both gripping snub-nosed carbines in their broad farmer’s hands.
“Out,” Osnat said.
They hurried him across a dark parking lot toward a low shed that was the only building Arkady could see anywhere this side of the undulating desert horizon. Despite the visible weapons, Arkady had the feeling that discipline had relaxed here. What was the point of theatrics, after all, when he didn’t stand a chance of crossing the waterless waste that surrounded them?
The shed turned out to be the top end of a flight of stairs that plunged down three stories without a single door opening off it in any direction. The stairs bottomed out in front of a steel fire door. The fire door opened on a cramped room with nothing in it but a ratty couch and a dilapidated workstation. Sitting on the couch, sipping Turkish coffee with his sandaled feet up on a crate of RPG rounds, sat Moshe.
He raised his glass to Arkady. “Good news. The first round of the auction kicks off the day after tomorrow at the King David Hotel.”
“Auction?” Arkady asked, confused. “What auction?”
“Oh right. You slept through all that. Turns out—excuse me.” Moshe rummaged in his pockets, pulled out a frayed and crumpled handkerchief, and blew his nose with loud abandon. “Turns out Israel’s not interested in your genetic weapon after all. My betters have decided to put you back on the market and see if they can make back the money we blew getting you here.”
“But I defected to Israel.I never agreed to—”
“You’re right. It’s not very nice of us.” Moshe had been wearing his usual shorts and T-shirt when they’d arrived, but now the guards were rattling up and down the stairs bringing in supplies from the half-track, and a cold wind whistled down the stairwell. Moshe fished a sweater out from between the frayed cushions of the couch and pulled it over his head so that his next words were muffled. “You want to call the whole thing off and go home?”
“I can’t go home.” Arkady let all the fear and uncertainty and isolation of the past weeks well up in his voice. “It’s too late for that. They’ll kill me.”
Moshe straightened his glasses and hunched forward to stare at Arkady. “I wish I knew whether it was your skin or your career prospects you were really worried about. The thing is, Arkady, we might be willing to help…but you haven’t given us any reason to take much of a chance on you.”
“But Arkasha’s work—”
“Wake up and smell the coffee. Your so-called genetic weapon is for the public in front of the curtain. If someone’s willing to pay for it, we’re happy to take their money. But if you want us to commit to you, you’re going to have to bring something better than cloned bugs to show-and-tell.”
“Like what?”
Moshe gave him a level stare. “Like Absalom.”
“And if I give you Absalom?”
“Political asylum. Guaranteed. For you and Arkasha. In Israel, not some corporate black hole where they’ll pull your fingernails out just to make extra sure you’re telling them everything.”
“I don’t know if—”
“It’s a take-it-or-leave-it deal, Arkady. And it’s all I got. So do yourself a favor and take the time to think about it.”
“How long do I have?”
“Until the auction. Oh, and did I mention Korchow was going to be there? What’s the matter, Arkady? You look a little nervous. Not so eager to see your old friends again?”
NOVALIS
Ground Truth
While the human species, as a mechanical going concern, has become organized into a social whole, the motivation that keeps it going has not undergone the same thoroughgoing reorganization, but continues to be in a great measure individualistic in type. Social ends are achieved through appeal to individual selfish instincts. Our present industrial system operates by way of a mutually selfish bargain,in which each party to the transaction seeks his own advantage, regardless of the gain or loss to the species as a whole. The system works tolerably well… at least so it seems to those accustomed to the system.
But…the future evolution of our race may proceed in a direction that shall ultimately ease the conflict between man and man, and between man and the world at large.
The first sign of trouble on Novalis was the detailed volatiles inventory. Theoretically, the nonsensical DVI numbers were a purely scientific issue. In practice, however, the DVI crisis turned out to be less about science than about culture and social skills. And the ensuing flurry of questions, arguments, and recriminations made Arkady begin to worry that the Novalis survey might turn into the kind of spectacular disaster that provided fodder for mission-planning manuals.
The DVI was Aurelia’s baby—Aurelia the rock doctor, not Aurelia the people doctor. Both Aurelias had become Arkady’s fast friends before he’d even scrubbed away the last remnants of freezerburn. He’d worked with other Aurelias before, and the Aurelias on the Novalis mission had their geneline’s typical character and attitudes. They worked hard, even by Syndicate standards. They gave short shrift to fools and hypocrites. They expected perfection from themselves and others. They were tactless, abrasive, aggressive, impatient, and generally impossible if you got in their way. They were also loyal, affectionate, and profoundly kind if you were lucky enough to have earned their friendship.
As often happened on new assignments, Arkady and the current pair of Aurelias benefited from past goodwill. Arkady had been close friends with other Aurelias and was hoping to be equally close to the new A-12 workpair. The Aurelias had fond memories of past Arkadys and were primed to make friends with their new A-11 colleagues. Arkady slipped into the ready-made friendship as comfortably as a duck hopping into a familiar pond…which was a good thing considering the distinctly uncomfortable nature of what should have been a much closer friendship: the one with Arkasha.