“Frank who?” Jason asked, because he had to ask something.
“Frank Shuh… Sug… yama. Frankie. The little one.”
Shock jolted Jason, electricity that flashed from his head through his entire body, a lightning stroke that left him momentarily paralyzed. When he could speak again, he said, “Frank Sugiyama? Dr. Frank Philip Sugiyama?”
“They chopped him up. Little Frankie. The doctor screamed but… I couldn’t look and Blackie said I’m a coward….” The boy started to cry.
“Tell me,” Jason ordered, but Tommy kept on crying.
Lindy took his free hand and stroked it. She said gently, “Tell me, Tommy.” He grabbed her arm as if he were drowning. “Blackie said… Blackie said… Grandma…”
“It’s all right, Tommy. You can tell me. Grandma wants you to tell me… damn. Asleep again. Just a minute…”
She gave him another injection with her free hand. A soon as his eyes opened, she said, “Tell me about Frank Sugiyama. Was he at Sierra Depot?”
“Yeah. Only they chopped up little Frankie and the screaming… the screaming… why wouldn’t she dance with me in the room with gold and jewels and Blackie said—”
“What is the password to the room with gold and jewels?”
“Through the back door, Blackie said. But Grandma… they chopped her up?”
Jason said, “Who was at Sierra Depot with Frank and little Frankie? Was his family there?”
“Three kids, only she wouldn’t dance with me. They won’t let her dance with me unless he tells. Tits and ass and cunt and… Grandma said!”
“What is her name, Tommy? Tell me!”
“Sewn shut, but Blackie said…”
“Her name! The girl who won’t dance with you!”
“Flower. Don’t hurt me, they always hurt me…”
“Which flower? Which?”
“Grandma said…”
“Iris? Pansy? Lily? Tell me!”
“Tell me her name,” Lindy said softly into Tommy’s ear. “The name of the girl who won’t dance with you.”
Tommy said, “Rose,” and burst into loud sobbing, snot running onto his uniform, his body with its drugged loss of coordination twitching on the floor.
Lindy looked at Jason. “Do I…”
“Let him sleep.”
A few moments later, he did. They were the longest moments of Jason’s life. Whole continents of thought rose, lived, and fell in those moments.
Lindy waited. Finally she said, “What does it mean?” And when he didn’t answer, “Come on, Jason. Does he mean Frank Sugiyama the famous physicist? What does he have to do with New America?”
“He’s the genius behind a working quantum computer. He’s supposed to be dead.”
“I thought nobody succeeded in making a reliable quantum computer before the Collapse. You’re saying the military did?”
“Yes.”
Lindy was the most intelligent woman he’d ever known. She put it together. “There’s a quantum computer at Sierra Depot. And New America took the depot. Sugiyama is there—”
“We thought he was dead. They must have found him and brought him there.”
“And little Frankie… oh, God, they have his family. They chopped up his son to gain his cooperation, and Rose is—his daughter? ‘Three kids,’ Tommy said. What do they want from Sugiyama? Tommy mentioned a password… what’s in that computer?”
“It will self-destruct,” Jason said. His lips felt numb. On the floor, Tommy snored. “It will self-destruct if anyone but Army command accesses it. Sugiyama doesn’t know the password.”
“So they’ll torture his family in front of him and kill him for nothing?”
“Yes.”
“Tommy said ‘back door’—is there a back door into the computer code?”
“No.”
Unless Jason had not been told everything he needed to know by a US Army command that barely existed anymore. Or unless Sugiyama, under terror about his family, used the fine mind that made him the twenty-first century’s equivalent of Albert Einstein to find a way around the self-destruct feature.
“Jason,” Lindy said, “what information is in that computer? Why do you look like that? What can New America do if they get into the quantum computer?”
Jason didn’t, couldn’t, tell her. Classified. He looked at Tommy, snoring on the alien material of the floor. When he woke, he wouldn’t remember what he’d said. That was how truth drugs worked. For a brief moment, Jason envied him.
Lindy said, more insistently, “What’s in that computer?”
“Classified.”
The launch codes for the only three viable nuclear missiles that the United States had left.
CHAPTER 9
Zack sat with Caitlin in the Enclave dining room, called a “mess hall” even though the Army had its own mess in Lab Dome, as the little girl fished the last of her vegetables out of the broth in her bowl. A bit of broccoli dropped onto her pants. She picked it up and ate it.
“Good girl. Now drink the broth.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Drink it, pumpkin. You know we don’t waste food.” There was not as much of it to waste now.
Caitlin made a face and drank her broth. A pair of children from the Settlement entered the mess, surprising Zack; he thought that all the Settlers had been crammed into Lab Dome. Maybe Susan, as quartermaster, had moved some of them over here. Well, that would make sense—the school, such as it was, occupied a single room in Enclave Dome.
Caitlin’s eyes went wide. “Daddy, who’s that!”
The six children of Enclave Dome—that was all Caity had ever seen. Maybe that was all she thought existed in the world. He said, “The new people who came to live at the base. Do you want to say hello?”
She turned shy, pressing herself against his knee. “No. Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s at work. You know that.”
“Okay. Can I eat my peach now?”
“Go ahead.” A woman in a homespun tunic rounded up the two kids and led them away. Compared to the few people in the mess in midafternoon—two uniformed soldiers on duty in Enclave and four pale civilian staffers in old, 3-D–printed jeans—the three sandaled and suntanned Settlers looked as exotic as Fiji Islanders.
Caitlin put down her half-eaten peach. “I don’t feel good.”
“Is it the headache again?”
“No. My tummy.” She turned and vomited onto the wooden bench, then started to cry.
“Oh, sweetie. It’s all right. Here, let’s get that icky shirt off you.”
Zack took off the child’s shirt and wrapped her in his own. Her head lolled against his bare chest. A janitor, sister to one of the lab techs, rushed over. “I’ll take care of that, Dr. McKay. Do you need a doctor?”
“No, she saw Dr. Patel yesterday. It’s just a stomach bug, but I thought she was over it.”
“I’m over it,” Caitlin mumbled against his chest.
“You take her home. I’ll get this.”
“Thank you so much.”
He carried his daughter “home,” which meant an eight-by-ten cubicle that Zack had been moved to after the influx of Settlers. Susan had been careful to not show any favoritism to her own family. Her and Zack’s bed occupied four-by-six of the space; when Caitlin’s trundle was pulled from underneath, there was barely room to stand beside it. He extricated the trundle and laid her on it, gazing down worriedly. “Does anything hurt now? Tummy? Head?”
“Nothing hurts. I’m sleepy.”
“I see that.” She was, it seemed to him, sleeping too much lately. But in the last few days, both Claire Patel and Lindy Ross had examined her. Neither had found anything unusual. Zack was supposed to turn Caity over to the two teachers who babysat children as well as taught them, but he wasn’t going to leave his daughter until he was sure she was all right. Anyway, neither Karen nor Marissa would appreciate being saddled with a vomiting child. He intercommed Susan.