Part 27 (1/2)
”The disaster was sabotage. We don't have hard proof yet, but we know who is behind it.”
”Ogilvie & Sons.”
”Has to be. Benavidez thinks he can handle them. He's in for an ugly shock. And it's the people of Phocaea who will suffer. There was just no way I could have predicted all the variables that led to the sapient's emergence.” It sounded like a whine, even to her own ears. But she needed to say it once. ”No way anyone could. Not even Tania.”
”Of course not. Jane, you mustn't take the bad-sammies personally. This is not about you. Not really.”
”I know. People are scared. They need somewhere to put the blame. They need a scapegoat. But it is personal, for me.” With a sigh, she straightened. ”So, let's talk strategy. What are my options?”
”Since you're leaving shortly, it sounds like our main priority is protecting you from the media and your political enemies while you make preparations to go.”
They spent some time devising a legal strategy to give Jane some breathing room, and she had a lot of good ideas for countering the bad press. It was going to cost, though. She thought about their savings. Hugh was out of school and supporting himself, but Dominica still had five semesters to go. As an Upsider Downside, her tuition was breathtakingly expensive.
Yes, Jane had been bought off with a lot of money. But none of that felt real. She half expected them to find a way to screw her out of it. And part of her did not even want it. She wanted to throw it back in Benavidez's face. Much as she needed that money for her kids. And for Xuan's family members still trapped Downside.
Thinking about Xuan's Downsider family reminded her of Dominica, which reminded her of the data lozenge Xuan had given her. Jane touched the pocket in which the lozenge rested. She should view her daughter's bad news. There wasn't much point in putting it off any longer.
Sarah gave Jane a quiet corner of her office and busied herself with some legal research while Jane viewed the lozenge.
Dominica's face appeared. ”Ma, Da. Sorry for the long delay.” She was looking down at her notes. Her face was stiff. ”I've found Phan Huu-Thanh. As we feared, she's been encrypted. She was processed in Edmonton and staged for a while there, but she's been s.h.i.+pped to the new people heap they're building on the moon. She was interred just two months ago.” Dominica knew, as did Jane, that there was no real chance to get at her now. Once people went in, they did not come out.
Now Dominica looked up. She was Upsider to the core: concise, methodical, controlled, and serious. Her careful breathing told Jane what the effort to stay calm was costing her. Jane hurt with the need to tell her daughter that it wasn't her fault Huu-Thanh was lost to them. Don't lose heart, Don't lose heart, she thought. she thought. Don't lose hope. Don't lose hope.
”I haven't been able to locate any of the children. I've spent the past month at Edmonton. Before that, Winnipeg.” Edmonton and Winnipeg housed two of the biggest refugee camps in southwest Canada. ”No sign of them anywhere. I'm thinking Lanh must have been encrypted, too, but I can't find confirmation. But the rest are still too young and have to be somewhere.” Prep.u.b.escents were too immature to encrypt. They might have been sold to the s.e.x slavers, though. Or abandoned and left to die. Disposable humanity. Of less note than a used tissue. ”It's possible they are trying to enter Vietnam illegally, trying to reconnect with other branches of the family. A boat left Vancouver two months ago, heading for Manila. I'm headed there next. I have a few weeks before the semester starts to do more research.”
Another hesitation. ”I've found someone who knows how to work the system. He has a good rep, but he's pricey. And I'm almost out of money. I'm going to need more soon. Another fifty thousand, if possible.”
She finally looked up, with Xuan's dark eyes and Jane's own aquiline nose and wide, full mouth. Her face was shadowed by exhaustion and grief. ”I'll send another message next week. Love to you both.”
Jane closed the missive and sat, remembering Huu-Thanh's messages from the Canadian refugee camps years ago. There had been a handful, over the ten years they had spent trying to work through the bureaucratic entanglements to get her and her children out. Each had been so calm, so confident that the family would be able to help. Jane and Xuan were unimaginably wealthy, by Huu-Thanh's standards.
But in the background, in that last message inwave-what was it? two years ago, now? three?-Jane had seen despair in Huu-Thanh's children's faces, and sullen anger in the eyes of her eldest, Lanh. And now they had been scattered: human detritus caught up in the machineries of Earth's socioeconomic engines, to be mulched and processed and molded into tools for the use of others.
Rage filled Jane. She hated Downside. She hated their intolerance, their rigid hatred, their self-deception, their greed. The inhumanity of the crypts, the battling enclaves of power Down there, the religious intolerance that masked the politics and dirty dealings that went on behind the scenes. They had long since abandoned any semblance of democracy in the nations of America. It was all about power: money, control, and social status. Oh, she hated Earth.
Sarah was watching her. ”I have some work to wrap up, and then I'm free. If you don't have plans for dinner later, I'll take you out.”
”Sure you want to be seen in public with me?”
”'Stroiders' doesn't go everywhere.”
”What, we're going to eat in a restroom?”
Sarah merely smiled.
24.
By the time Geoff and his companions disengaged from the treeways, the s.h.i.+ny blob Ouroboros hung in s.p.a.ce, about two hundred kilometers distant. Beyond it, diamond-bright Saturn and two of its moons, as well as aquamarine Neptune, dominated the backdrop of stars. A third bright object elsewhere in the vast starry sky was probably the rocket tugs bringing the big new ice s.h.i.+pment.
Geoff had heard about it in the news. The sight of the ice s.h.i.+pment sent tingles of relief along his back and arms so strong he shuddered, despite the too-warm confines of his suit. You grow up in s.p.a.ce; you learn to ignore certain kinds of fear. You ignore the Big Empty surrounding you. Otherwise you'd never do anything but hide in a cubby and wait to die. But now, on the brink of Phocaea's rescue, he realized just how frightened he had been. He drew a slow breath and thought again, sadly, of Carl.
Ouroboros spun around its narrow axis, a barbell shape that slowly brightened and dimmed, like a giant beating heart, as it tumbled. He smiled at the familiar sight-and then frowned. Something was off. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something about the pattern of rotation seemed different.
It might have just been hit by another big rock. A big enough stroid would change its contours or rotation, and it had certainly been clobbered many times before. Geoff shut off his rockets, to make it easier to zoom in, and Amaya and Kam pa.s.sed him. He brought up his optical scope and focused on the big rock.
There! Rising on the horizon, along the narrowest section of the stroid, he saw a shape that had not been there before. A bright shape. A geometric one. A s.h.i.+p had landed on Ouroboros.
”What the h.e.l.l?” He signaled Amaya and Kam, who were continuing to accelerate. ”Shut off your rockets!”
Their flames died instantly. ”What is it?” Amaya asked.
”Zoom on the rock. There's a s.h.i.+p.”
”Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,” Kam said, after a pause. A brief silence followed as they all studied the shape that had not been there before. ”Black marketers?”
n.o.body replied.
”What are those numbers there, on the side?” Geoff asked. Kam had the best optics. ”Can you read them?”
”Hang on. Yeah. Think I've got it.” He fed the numbers to Geoff, who put in a call to Sean Moriarty. The Stores chief took several minutes to answer; meanwhile, they drifted toward Ouroboros on their bikes.
”Moriarty here.”
”Sir, it's Geoff. Geoff Agre.”
”I'm glad you called. The police are still waiting for you to go down to the precinct. They need you to give a statement about what happened last night with those black-market thugs.”
Geoff had forgotten about that. ”We will, sir, as soon as we get back into town. But that's not why I called. My friends and I”-he cleared his throat-”we seem to have a problem.”
”You seem to collect them.”
”That's what people tell me, sir.”
Moriarty chuckled. Geoff hesitated. He did not want to remind anyone about his ice claim just now, but not doing so would be incredibly stupid.
”Well, spit it out!” Moriarty said. ”If you need my help, I'll do what I can. If not, I have other things that need doing.”
”Kam told you about my stroid. The one with the ice.”
”I remember. What about it?”
”Well, there are some people out here. A s.h.i.+p. I was afraid maybe it was the black marketers again.”
”You're out there right now?”
”That's right.”