Twenty-eight.
Jane didn’t need to count how many people had jammed into the conference room. She felt the shape and color of the crowd, and she knew. She felt, too, the colors and shapes of their bafflement, fear, and rage, as well as her own sorrow over leaving Colin.
Twenty-eight people: twenty-five of the thirty who had already awakened. Three parents of v-coma children: Zack McKay, and Fiona and Karl James, whose little boy lay comatose in the infirmary, under guard. The twenty-eight sat on chairs or leaned against the walls, scientists and soldiers and Settlers and a kitchen worker. Facing them, looking determined and exhausted, stood Marianne Jenner. Her determination was jagged-edged and dark blue, and in it Jane felt clearly her resemblance to Jason.
“I am here on behalf of Colonel Jenner, who is in surgery,” Marianne said. “I’m here to listen to all your ideas about leaving Earth. but I need to tell you up front: This is not an undecided debate. We are all going to World. We—no, wait, please, give me a moment to finish—represent too great a threat to Earth. As Colonel Jenner said, if we transmit the virophage to New America, whoever contracts it will gain the same enhanced intelligence that all of you have. They will devise new weapons and new ways to cause destruction, because their intelligence—like yours—will grow along whatever pathways are already prominent in their brains. Those are pathways of aggression and hatred. If you think that Terra is hell now, it is nothing compared to what three or four generations of vicious and narcissistic conquerors can make it. Sadists equipped with the physics of Dr. Farouk, the biology of Dr. Yu’s team. They will—”
“I don’t care!” Karl James shouted. “We’re not leaving Earth! We’ll take our chances here!”
“I’m not going, either,” Toni Steffens said, more quetly but with even more determination. Jane wanted to shrink from the deadly shapes that Dr. Steffens made.
“Marianne, consider,” Toni Steffens continued. “If Earth is going to recover, it needs the intelligence that the Awakened can bring. We can use it to counter New America’s wars, to aid in Earth’s ecological recovery, to return humanity to a viable civilization much more quickly. If intelligence is a weapon, it can also be a force for good. Surely even Colonel Jenner can see that!”
“Yes,” Marianne said, “he can. But it’s a question of risk versus benefit. The risks here outweigh the benefits. And, Karl James, your child was born in Monterey Base and isn’t immune to RSA. How could you stay here with him anyway?”
“Use your so-called super IQ to figure that out instead of kidnapping us!” Karl yelled, and Jane saw that he was past rational argument, beside himself with fear and anger.
For the first time, she saw the use of that strange Terran phrase. Karl James was two shapes in her mind, superimposed on each other: one spiky and the color of blood, the other muddy and puddled as dirty water.
A woman near the back of the room cried, “I’m not going, either!”
Then everyone was talking, voices rising higher and higher with objections, with reasoning, with emotion, with such overwhelming noise that Jane slipped from the room, slightly surprised that the soldiers guarding the door let her go. And then not surprised at all….
It didn’t really matter what was said here. Jane knew what would happen. She’d known it the moment she’d seen the shapes of Marian Jenner. Of Zack McKay, of the two members of J squad who were Awakened. All of them felt like Jason.
The decision had been made.
CHAPTER 25
“No pain pills,” Jason said.
Lindy frowned. “You were shot. You are not going to feel good for a while. If pain interferes with your thinking and—”
“It won’t. Is the bullet out?”
“Of course the bullet is out! You just had fucking surgery! Oh… no, Jason, you can’t… stay still!”
Jason stayed still. Lindy stood beside his bed in the infirmary. She was the first, but Jason knew that beyond the door would be a whole horde of people who would want to see him: his father and grandmother, Hillson, Colin, Duncan, Li, Ka^graa. But Lindy first, Lindy always first, and he took a minute he didn’t have to meet her eyes steadily and ask.
“Lindy… are you going with me? On the Return?”
Her eyes opened wide. “You’re going? I mean, you’re really going to do this insane thing?”
“It’s not insane and yes, I’m going.”
She said slowly, “There is a rumor that the convoy from Fort Hood is coming to arrest you and take over Monterey Base. That there isn’t any other reason they would send so many troops. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the—”
“No, it’s not the reason I’m going on the ship. I’m going because I started this and I need to finish it. I’m going because I have to be sure that everyone who could spread the virophage isn’t in a position to do so. World is already infected, the entire damn planet. I’m going because Major Farouk thinks he’s cracked the spaceship physics and we can, in time, build more ships and colonize the stars. I’m going because—”
“All right, I get it. For somebody just out of anesthetic, you’re very articulate. You’re going to direct the whole operation from this bed, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to get up.”
“No, you’re not. Not yet. Speaking of Farouk, she and Marianne are desperate to see you. Something about equations.”
“Equations can wait. Send the guard for Major Duncan, please. And send in Sergeant Hillson, if he’s out there.”
“Of course he’s out there—when is Hillson not ready to do whatever you need him for?”
But I wasn’t sure this time. He didn’t say it aloud. Instead he said, knowing that he was begging, “Lindy?”
She shuddered, a long visible jerk the entire length of her body. She still scowled: his prickly, independent, maddening wife. If she refused, if the past lay too heavily between them for her to overcome it, he didn’t know if he had the heart to colonize World. The will, yes, but maybe not the heart.
“Lindy, I need you. Desperately. And I love you. I always have, despite… everything. Your choice is your own, but…” He couldn’t finish. All he could do was hope.
“Yes,” she said, her voice thick. “I’ll go with you. You seem to keep needing a doctor.”
He fumbled for her hand, but she snatched it away. “Not now—neither of us has time. I love you, you idiot. Now I’ll get Hillson. Do not try to get up!”
He stayed flat in bed, although he hated it. Pain mounted steadily in his side; he tried to ignore it. Hillson, who seemed to have aged ten years since yesterday, said, “Sir, Major Duncan asked me to make a report to you, she’s directing the evacuation. Lieutenant Li went back to the signal station, and the Return reports that the convoy from Fort Hood is maybe six days out.”
“Moving too fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go ahead, Sergeant.” It hurt even to lie still, to focus on what Hillson was saying. How much blood had Jason lost? Tubes ran into him in various places, but none of them were red. So maybe he had all the blood he needed. It would be nice to have all of something he needed.
“The Awakened, military and civilian, were all talked to by Dr. Jenner and Ms. Ka^graa, and given the chance to ask questions about World. We have nine Awakened troops, including Corporal Porter, who attacked Dr. Jenner.”
“Porter is still drugged?”
“Yes, sir. As per your orders.”
“Who shot me?”
“Private Perry.”
A perpetual troublemaker, Hillson had said weeks ago. Jason didn’t have to ask what had happened to Perry; he knew. You did not get to shoot your commanding officer in front of J Squad and live.