“I want to go home,” he said again.
“I know, sweetheart,” she said. “I know.”
He said nothing for the rest of her visit. Marianne sat for an hour just holding her son’s hand in the soft autumn sunlight.
CHAPTER 20
S plus 6.2 years
Jonah Stubbins was building his starship, the Venture, in northwestern Pennsylvania. The site made sense.
Part of the Allegheny Plateau, the area was free of hurricanes and tornadoes. Its geography shielded it from superstorms. Earthquakes were rare and mild. Before global warming had reached its present state, deep snow and ice storms had been frequent here, but no more. Creeping desertification, not yet far advanced, nonetheless had proven drying enough to cause many farmers to sell their gentle hills. Once coal had been mined here, but never in the quantities found farther east, and most lodes were played out. Stubbins had gotten huge swaths of land reasonably cheap.
Glaciers had left the entire area dotted with caves. However, unlike the clear, large caves to the east and south—once tourist attractions, now mostly closed due to lack of state funds—the majority of caves in this part of Pennsylvania had been formed by stream water forced underground during wetter times. The caves were small, twisty, and filled with mud. Clearing them out would involve large and conspicuous equipment. Stubbins was not worried about stealth attacks from underground.
Marianne’s first sight of the vast compound was a strip of dirt, backed by an electrified fence topped with barbed wire reinforced by periodic guard towers. Beyond the fence lay another, wider strip of bare ground, followed by another fence, and then low cinder-block buildings. The whole thing looked like a gigantic maximum-security prison.
“Wow,” Jason said from the backseat. Colin said nothing. He had, since Tim’s departure, taken to sucking his thumb. Marianne, riding beside the driver of the car that Stubbins had sent for them, turned around to see how the boys were taking this.
“This is so cool!” Jason bounced in his seatbelt. “Look, Col, it’s great!”
Colin took his thumb out of his mouth.
Thank heavens for Jason’s upbeat nature.
They passed through the gate and drove for longer than she’d expected, past bulldozers and trucks, cinder-block outbuildings and groves of trees, trailers and barracks of raw weathered lumber. The closer they drove to the ship itself, the messier the site became. Thick cables, transformer stations, a thirty-five-ton crane. Equipment shrieked; people milled about, shouting to be heard. Marianne remembered the smooth, noiseless descent of the Embassy into New York Harbor and wondered if anything that clean and sleek could really emerge from this chaos.
The car stopped in front of a barracks, a long low building with no adornment, windows and doors set in straight lines regular as soldiers at drill. The doors opened directly onto the weedy dirt outside. Two women stood in front of the farthest door, one young and pretty, the other Marianne’s age but much shorter and wider. “Here we are,” the driver said.
The young woman held out her hand. “Dr. Jenner, I’m Allison Blake, the boys’ teacher. And you two must be Jason and Colin.”
“Hi,” Colin said, but Jason made a little noise of disgust.
“You can’t be both of our teacher ’cause I’m in second grade and Colin’s in first!”
“But I am,” Allison Blake said solemnly, “because I’m a super-teacher.” She reached up behind her neck and released a red cape, which billowed around her. Her expression remained completely serious. After a bewildered moment, Jason laughed.
Colin did not. “Then what’s your superpower?” he demanded.
“That’s for you to find out. But I know yours. You can hear the ground.”
Marianne blinked. What? How the hell did she know that Colin—
“You’re wondering how I know that,” the teacher said. “It’s because I have another student who can do it, too. Would you like to meet him sometime soon?”
“Yeah!” Colin’s eyes shone with wonder. Jason also looked interested. Marianne thought, not for the first time, that if Jason’s temperament had included any jealousy at all, life would be even more difficult than it was now. Ever since Paul Tyson’s assault, Colin had been moody and unpredictable.
Allison Blake said, “Then put your suitcases in your room here and ask your grandmother if you can come with me.”
“Yes, go on,” Marianne said. She was here for their safety, and she had to trust this place or she would go mad. “I’ll get the cases.”
Allison led the boys away. The short woman said to Marianne, “Quite a show. She’s great with kids. Has to be or Jonah wouldn’t have hired her. I’m Judy Taunton, deputy physicist in this medicine show. Jonah sent me to greet you.”
“Where is he? And how did he know—”
“About the kids? Jonah knows everything. And the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde so presciently said. Excuse me, I know this is a filthy and archaic habit, but I’m in desperate need.” She lit a cigarette.
Marianne studied her. Judy Taunton was no more than five feet tall, solid as a cinder block, with gray hair in a buzz cut. Up close, her face looked younger than her body, and Marianne revised her estimate downward to midforties. She wore baggy jeans and a loose blue work shirt that made her look even wider than she was. The shirt was embroidered on the collar and placket with exquisite silk flowers, hand done. Judy exhaled a perfect smoke ring.
“Okay, let’s get you oriented. Jonah wanted to meet you himself but spaceships are demanding bitches, so you get me. This is your suite. Not exactly the Ritz but we’re practicing Taoist simplicity here, or possibly scientific socialism. Nobody else has anything better, not even His Nibs.”
Judy picked up the boys’ duffel bags and Marianne wheeled in her suitcase, laptop bag on her shoulder. The rest of their luggage, minimal anyway, would arrive later. The “suite” consisted of two rooms, each with a door to the outside and a connecting door of lumber so raw that fresh wood shavings lay on the floor beside it. The boys’ room had two beds, a cheap chest of crude pine, a table and four chairs. Hers was exactly the same except for a double bed. There were no closets, just pegs on the wall. There were bathrooms, one per bedroom, with showers but no tub. Blinds on the windows, no curtains, plain white blankets and pillows.
Judy said, “A hospital room has more charm. At least there you get flowers in plastic vases and nurses in scrubs with little duckies on them. Most of us only use our rooms to sleep—not, however, that the work buildings have any more pizzazz. Mess is the big building with ‘EATS’ spray-painted all over it, courtesy of a drunken night for some construction guys. Food is served pretty much all the time, and it’s not bad. Jonah doesn’t want the masses to rise up in culinary revolution.”
“Thanks,” Marianne said. “What else should I know?”
“Oh, tons and tons. But the first thing, since I see you unpacking your laptop, is that the site is Faraday shielded.”
Marianne stopped and looked at her. “What?”
“Jonah doesn’t want hackers getting any information whatsoever about our progress. There’s a big invisible shield, proprietary tech, over everything inside the inner fence. Nothing electronic gets in and nothing out.”
Marianne put her laptop back in its case. “We’re leaving.”
Judy laughed. “That’s everybody’s first reaction. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. The LAN is shielded, although I suppose eventually somebody will hack in somehow, because they always do. But there are computers in the mess with secure and encrypted underground cables and you can use those to communicate with the outside world. They’re monitored, though, so any communication you send outside will be read and your web surfing will be tracked. Come on outside so I can finish this cigarette without stinking up your rooms.”