“I don’t need much sleep. Not like you, Marianne. I talk to the Biology Team, who talk more than anybody else to the aliens. Also I chat with Lisa Guiterrez, the genetics counselor.”
“And the Denebs told somebody they’re taking their haplogroup members with them before the spore cloud hits?”
“No, of course not. When do the Denebs tell Terrans anything directly? It’s all smiling evasion, heartfelt reassurances. They’re like Filipino houseboys.”
Startled, Marianne gazed at him. The vaguely racist reference was uncharacteristic of Evan, and had been said with some bitterness. She realized all over again how little Evan gave away about his past. When had he lived in the Philippines? What had happened between him and some apparently not forgiven houseboy? A former lover? Evan’s sexual orientation was also something they never discussed, although of course she was aware of it. From his grim face, he wasn’t going to discuss it now, either.
She said, “I’m going to ask Smith what the Denebs intend.”
Evan’s smooth grin had returned. “Good luck. The UN can’t get information from him, the project’s chief scientists can’t get information from him, and you and I never see him. Just minor roadblocks to your plan.”
“We really are lab rats,” she said. And then, abruptly, “Let’s go. We need to get back to work.”
Evan said slowly, “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“What?”
“The origin of viruses. How they didn’t evolve from a single entity and don’t have a common ancestor. About the theory that their individual origins were pieces of DNA or RNA that broke off from cells and learned to spread to other cells.”
Marianne frowned. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I don’t either, actually.”
“Then—”
“I don’t know,” Evan said. And again, “I just don’t know.”
Noah was somebody else.
He’d spent his blood-for-the-Denebs money on sugarcane, and it turned out to be one of the really good transformations. He was a nameless soldier from a nameless army: brave and commanding and sure of himself. Underneath he knew it was an illusion (but he never used to know that!). However, it didn’t matter. He stood on a big rock at the south end of Central Park, rain and discarded plastic bags blowing around him, and felt completely, if temporarily, happy. He was on top of the world, or at least seven feet above it, and nothing seemed impossible.
The alien token in his pocket began to chime, a strange syncopated rhythm, atonal as no iPhone ever sounded. Without a second’s hesitation—he could face anything!—Noah pulled it from his pocket and pressed its center.
A woman’s voice said, “Noah Richard Jenner?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“This is Dr. Lisa Guiterrez at the Deneb Embassy. We would like to see you, please. Can you come as soon as possible to the UN Special Mission Headquarters, on the Embassy pier?”
Noah drew a deep breath. Then full realization crashed around him, loud and blinding as last week’s flashbang. Oh my God—why hadn’t he seen it before? Maybe because he hadn’t been a warrior before. His mother had—son of a bitch…
“Noah?”
He said, “I’ll be there.”
The submarine surfaced in an undersea chamber. A middle-aged woman in jeans and blazer, presumably Dr. Guiterrez, awaited Noah in the featureless room. He didn’t much notice woman or room. Striding across the gangway, he said, “I want to see my mother. Now. She’s Dr. Marianne Jenner, working here someplace.”
Dr. Guiterrez didn’t react as if this were news, or strange. She said, “You seem agitated.” Hers was the human voice Noah had heard coming from the alien token.
“I am agitated! Where is my mother?”
“She’s here. But first, someone else wants to meet you.”
“I demand to see my mother!”
A door in the wall slid open, and a tall man with coppery skin and bare feet stepped through. Noah looked at him, and it happened again.
Shock, bewilderment, totally unjustified recognition—he knew this man, just as he had known the nurse who washed tear gas from his and a child’s eyes during the West Side demonstration. Yet he’d never seen him before, and he was an alien. But the sense of kinship was powerful, disorienting, ridiculous.
“Hello, Noah Jenner,” the ceiling said. “I am Ambassador Smith. Welcome to the Embassy.”
“I—”
“I wanted to welcome you personally, but I cannot visit now. I have a meeting. Lisa will help you get settled here, should you choose to stay with us for a while. She will explain everything. Let me just say—”
Impossible to deny this man’s sincerity, he means every incredible word—
“—that I’m very glad you are here.”
After the alien left, Noah stood staring at the door through which he’d vanished. “What is it?” Dr. Guiterrez said. “You look a bit shocked.”
Noah blurted out, “I know that man!” A second later he realized how dumb that sounded.
She said gently, “Let’s go somewhere to talk, Noah. Somewhere less… wet.”
Water dripped from the sides of the submarine, and some had sloshed onto the floor. Sailors and officers crossed the gangway, talking quietly. Noah followed Lisa from the sub bay, down a side corridor, and into an office cluttered with charts, printouts, coffee mugs, a laptop—such an ordinary looking place that it only heightened Noah’s sense of unreality. She sat in an upholstered chair and motioned him to another. He remained standing.
She said, “I’ve seen this before, Noah. What you’re experiencing, I mean, although usually it isn’t as strong as you seem to be feeling it.”
“Seen what? And who are you, anyway? I want to talk to my mother!”
She studied him, and Noah had the impression she saw more than he wanted her to. She said, “I’m Dr. Lisa Guiterrez, as Ambassador Smith said. Call me Lisa. I’m a genetics counselor serving as the liaison between the ambassador and those people identified as belonging to his haplotype, L7, the one identified by your mother’s research. Before this post, I worked with Dr. Barbara Formisano at Oxford, where I also introduced people who share the same haplotype. Over and over again I’ve seen a milder version of what you seem to be experiencing now—an unexpected sense of connection between those with an unbroken line of mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to their haplogroup clan mother. It—”
“That sounds like bullshit!”
“—is important to remember that the connection is purely symbolic. Similar cell metabolisms don’t cause shared emotions. But—an important ‘but’!—symbols have a powerful effect on the human mind. Which in turn causes emotion.”
Noah said, “I had this feeling once before. About a strange woman, and I had no way of knowing if she’s my ‘haplotype.’”
Lisa’s gaze sharpened. She stood. “What woman? Where?”
“I don’t know her name. Listen, I want to talk to my mother!”
“Talk to me first. Are you a sugarcane user, Noah?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Habitual use of sugarcane heightens certain imaginative and perceptual pathways in the brain. Ambassador Smith—Well, let’s set that aside for a moment. I think I know why you want to see your mother.”
Noah said, “Look, I don’t want to be ruder than I’ve already been, but this isn’t your business. Anything you want to say to me can wait until I see my mother.”
“All right. I can take you to her lab.”