The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  “What are you planning to do with it?”

  Sela turned to look at her, dumbfounded. “Ride it, of course!”

  “I meant, where are you going to ride it?”

  Sela seemed at a loss, but only for a moment. “This place isn’t that big. But it’s big enough. I’m sure there are parts of it I haven’t seen yet. And Kai’s fixing up a boat we found by the eastern fence. Tomorrow we’ll go out in the bay.”

  Misha steeled herself. She needed to take advantage of this moment, if only to gauge her sister’s reaction. “Sela, do you really want to go outside the fence?” she asked.

  A cloud passed over Sela’s features. “I know our Mothers don’t want us to. But this place—it feels like a prison.”

  “A prison?”

  “Like a big, beautiful prison, with everything you could possibly want.” Sela frowned. “But not everything you need.”

  “I think . . .” Misha ventured, “we just need to test our limits.”

  “Test?”

  “Push a little. At least ask why we can’t leave.”

  Sela stared at her. “You think I haven’t asked my Mother every day since we got here? But I’m not getting an answer.”

  “You’re not?”

  Sela brushed the hair from her eyes, and Misha blushed at her honest appraisal. “As if things aren’t bad enough, Alpha isn’t talking to me anymore.”

  “I notice they’re all very quiet,” Misha said.

  “I mean, in my head. She’s not there anymore.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Sela’s brow furrowed as she scanned the field. “I don’t even know where she is right now. Did your Mother do that . . . before she left? Did she stop talking to you?”

  Misha kneaded her palms, trying to think of the right thing to say. She had no idea what Sela was talking about. “No,” she decided. “No, she talked to me right up to the end. This must be something else . . .”

  Sela seemed relieved. “Álvaro thinks it might just be temporary, something our Mothers can fix.” Propping the bike by the door, she turned to Misha. “But even if they do start talking again, it seems like we’re stuck.”

  Misha swallowed, gathering her nerve. “If you want to leave the Presidio—I know a way, I think. Near where . . . where my Mother dropped me off. I noticed a kind of hole under the fence.”

  Sela stared at her quizzically. “A hole?”

  “Like the ground had been worn away there. I think it’s big enough for us to try and get out . . .”

  Sela’s brow creased. But then she grinned. “Okay. It wouldn’t hurt to look.”

  They took the bike to a charging station by the back door of Building 100. Then Misha led the way down a paved road, toward the spot along Lincoln Boulevard where she’d found the gap beneath the fence. Sela was right—it was beautiful here, the trees rustling high above in the cool wind, colorful little birds chasing each other through their branches. And her sister, skipping along beside her.

  “So, what’s on the other side of this hole in the fence?” Sela asked.

  “It’s a trail. I think it goes all the way to the south and lets out into the city.”

  Sela’s eyes grew wide. “The city?”

  “You don’t want to go?”

  But Sela only smiled. “’Course I do. We can just go a little ways. Then, if we don’t see anything bad out there, or even if we do, we can come back and tell the others.”

  Misha nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” She wasn’t at all sure that she had a plan. She was only intent on getting her sister outside the Presidio, on showing her it was safe. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. All night, she’d dreamed of taking her sister home, of showing her the mesas. This would be just the first of their adventures together.

  Spotting the indentation under the fence, she stopped. “I’ll go first,” she volunteered, clearing some fallen dirt away from the hollow and slipping under the fence feetfirst. She wriggled down, then out onto the trail. It was easier going than when she had come in.

  Looking left and right, Sela sat down on the edge of the pavement. She placed her palms to either side of her on the ground and straightened her legs in front of her, preparing to push off, to slide her bottom under the fence. But suddenly a horrible din arose from the sky. The earth shook as Alpha-C landed on the road, and in that moment Misha remembered Chloe’s Mother, the one she’d encountered in the desert. With surprising speed, Alpha-C grasped Sela under her arms, snatched her upright, and placed her solidly back on the hard pavement.

  “Ow!” Sela cried. She rubbed her shoulders with both hands. “Mama!” she yelled. “You don’t have to hurt me! You could just tell me if you don’t want . . .” Suddenly she was crying, tears streaming down her face.

  Misha slipped back under the fence, ran toward Sela, wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. She dug her nose into Sela’s neck, longing to tell her that they shared a mother, longing to tell her that everything would be okay.

  But Sela pulled away, wheeling on her Mother. “Why won’t you just talk to me?” she cried. “Why can’t you just listen?”

  * * *

  THE TWO GIRLS trudged back to Building 100 in silence, Alpha-C trundling noisily behind them. But as they reached the porch, Sela turned to her. “I wish I was like you,” she said. “I wish I didn’t have a Mother.”

  Misha stared at her. “Don’t say that!” she said. “You know that’s not what you want . . .”

  But Sela, staring at her Mother now, didn’t answer.

  Alone, Misha entered the building and made her way up the stairs. As she neared her little room, she could hear a persistent buzzing sound, coming from under her blanket—the satellite phone. Her blood went cold. She raced inside and closed the door behind her. Hastily, she yanked the phone to her ear and pressed the “call” button. “Hello?” she murmured.

  “Misha!” It was Uncle William. “Thank God! Where on earth are you? We traced the missing phone to the Presidio, but . . .”

  Misha looked around the room, barely lit by the thin light sifting through the grimy window. She was lost. She had no idea how to get the children out of here, let alone how to bring the Silver Spirits home. She realized now—she knew nothing about them at all. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I heard you talking in the hospital. I hid in the transport. I thought for sure I could help. But now . . . I’m not sure.”

  33

  “GONE? YOU’RE TELLING me Misha is at the Presidio?” In the Hopi hospital room, James sat down hard on Grandmother’s little chair, almost tipping it. Beside him, Mac let out a long, low whistle. William stood near the doorway, monitoring the conversation from a safe distance.

  Propped upright in the cot at the center of the room, Rick fumbled a clean white cloth up from his bedside table and held it briefly to his mouth. “She stowed away. We never saw her . . .”

  James sighed. It was difficult to look at Rick now, his skin ashen, his once brawny arms wasted away, and still be angry with him. He slouched back in his seat, remembering his own father’s soft voice: Every child has a right to know where he comes from. Perhaps it wasn’t Rick’s fault at all, or William’s. Perhaps history had repeated itself. As his own father had failed him, he’d failed Misha. She needed guidance. She needed connection. In her effort to find her own identity, and with no help from him, she’d struck out on her own, her head full of wild ideas.

  He lowered his face into the bowl of his hands, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “She found out? About her being Hopi? About having a sibling—”

  “She heard us talking,” Rick mumbled. “First here. Then while we were flying the drone.”

  “She’d make quite the spy,” Mac said.

  James winced. Misha was only eleven years old. At that age he’d been going to school, shagging baseballs with his friends
, scarfing down his mother’s lentils and rice. Though his parents had never been entirely truthful with him, they’d at least provided a sense of stability, a sense of belonging. “We need to get her back,” he said.

  “She said there’s an opening under the fence, over along the Coastal Trail. I told her I could pick her up, if she could just come back the way she went,” William offered.

  “Misha will be okay,” Rick choked out. “She’s a smart kid.” He struggled to look up, to make eye contact with James. And it was only then that James noticed the tears that wet the man’s face. “Did William tell you? Misha met my son. I wanted so much to see him. Just once, up close. I want to touch him, to tell him how much . . .”

  Rick stopped short, a weak cough bubbling up from his throat. A line of blood trickled from his mouth onto his stained hospital smock. And James realized: Rick would never have what he’d had—a time, however brief, together with a beloved, together with their child. He conjured up his image of Misha, the girl who reminded him so much of Sara that it hurt. Her long, nut-brown hair smelled of yucca root, her skin of something earthy and alive. She’d had to dance in jets of filtered air for minutes on end, shower and change into stiff plastic smocks, just to spend time with him. But she’d remained the one true thing in his life, his one connection to the world outside. “I’ll go,” he said.

  William placed his hand on James’s shoulder. “No, you stay here. We need you to keep up with the antidote. And besides, it’s my fault. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’ll come too,” Mac said. “And we’ll take the drone. Just in case.”

  34

  LEANING INTO THE chill onshore wind and pulling his jacket close around his neck, Kai headed toward the bay. He turned left along the beach and skirted a wide marsh. Ahead he could see Sela, already at her station on the old pier.

  With rolls of nylon line, a box of hooks, and three poles she’d found in a shed at the base of the pier, Sela had set up a fishing operation. Though she’d never cared for the small game they’d caught in the desert and she ate little if any of the fish that she caught here, she liked the sport of it, the reward of feeding the others. She’d quickly learned to fish off the pier. But today would be different. They’d retrieved a small green boat that had drifted from a marina just outside the fence. And today the boat was at the ready, secured to the rusted metal railing at the side of the pier by a stout length of rope.

  “You got your gear?” Kai called out.

  “Already on board,” Sela replied. She swung between two guardrails and began the climb down a short rope ladder to the boat. “Come on, let’s get going while the sun’s still at a slant. You catch better when the fish can’t see you.”

  The boat lurched as Kai followed suit. Sitting there in shallow water as he’d checked it for leaks the previous afternoon, the little craft had seemed like such an excellent idea. But as it bobbed uncontrollably in the deep waves next to the pier, he wondered about his judgment. He breathed deep, remembering Sela’s admonition. They’d never get anywhere if they were too afraid to try new things.

  Sela untied the boat and grabbed an oar up from the floor. Well, not really an oar—just a shovel-shaped hunk of driftwood. With gusto she paddled away from the pier, waiting out the waves that threatened to push them landward. Oarless, all Kai could do was sit there, holding on to the sides of the boat and willing his stomach to stay quiet.

  About fifty feet from shore, Sela at last dropped the oar. With a flick of her wrist, she cast her line out over the prow. “If this works,” she said, “we should try going a little farther out each day, see how far our Mothers will let us go.”

  Kai looked up at the sky, at the V of a flock of the giant birds that Rosie’s database called pelicans, scudding down to scoop up their prey. Along the shore, he could see the spot where a little river met the bay—the spot where Hiro had taken him hunting for crabs on their second day here. Now, three bots were standing there together, no children in sight.

  “Sela, do you think our Mothers talk to each other?”

  She turned to him, her eyebrows raised. “Why would you think that?”

  “Kamal said he had a dream, where Beta told him that she’s learning. But learning from who? Whenever I see them now, they’re close together in clumps like that. They follow each other, do things together. It’s strange. Maybe they’re teaching each other things.”

  Sela shook her head. “Alpha never talked to another bot before,” she said. “She told me she couldn’t. And now she doesn’t even talk to me . . .” She turned back to the front of the boat. “I’m just not sure I trust Alpha anymore.”

  Suddenly she had a tug on her line. She yanked back, working to reel in her first catch. Landing at last next to her oar, the plump beast thrashed with a purpose, its scales stuck to the metal floor of the boat and its mouth gulping air. Gingerly, Kai picked it up. Blood gushed from the translucent flesh where the hook had cut through just behind the gill. Its sharp fins cut into his hand as he tossed it into Sela’s cloth sack. He had to remind himself how good it would taste after baking over Hiro’s smoky cookfire.

  “That was a nice big one!” Sela handed him a second pole. “C’mon,” she said, grinning. “As captain of this ship, I order you to pull your weight!”

  Kai skewered a small bait fish from Sela’s bucket with his hook. Awkwardly, he side-wound his line out over the water, the baited hook hovering in the wind for a few seconds before disappearing beneath the waves. Watching the dizzying swells for some sign of activity, he waited.

  And waited, the emerging sun scorching the back of his neck.

  * * *

  IN MAC’S LOS Alamos office, James hunched toward the computer screen, his eyes alight in its pale glow. From his station atop the San Francisco VA Medical Center, Mac had launched the drone and set up a satellite connection to its video feed. Together with Kendra and Rudy, James watched the feed as the little drone sifted its way through wisps of fog.

  At the Presidio, William was hiking up the trail where he planned to rendezvous with Misha. Though he’d contacted Misha from the transport as soon as he and Mac had landed, she had yet to attempt her escape. In fact, there’d been no word from her since his call.

  “Any sign?” James asked over the speakerphone.

  “Nope,” Mac said, his voice muffled by his mask. For the third time, the drone camera scanned the distance up the Coastal Trail and along the paved boulevard running parallel to it. James could see the jagged, barbed line of the fence separating the two. At one point, the video zoomed in on a heap of debris piled next to the fence.

  “What’s that?” James asked.

  “Dunno,” Mac said. “A stack of metal sheeting? Maybe they blocked it off . . .”

  “Blocked it off?”

  “Seems like the Mothers have barricaded all the openings in the fence. Maybe they got that one too . . . It’s right about where she said the hole was . . .”

  The camera panned east, out over Fort Winfield Scott, over the white stone markers of the old cemetery, finally circling the former Main Post field. There were bots scattered along the beach, most of them stationary. “What’s that?” James asked as the drone swung out over the water.

  “Looks like . . . a boat.”

  * * *

  “GEEZ,” SELA SAID. “I don’t know why, but the fishing out here is slower than off the pier. Maybe we should go farther out.”

  “Or back . . .” Kai said. He squinted back at the shore. They’d drifted considerably from their original position. Now, the shimmer of the little river was barely visible.

  Then he felt a tug, a staccato of sharp pulls. “Got one!” he called. But Sela, busy checking her own line, paid him no attention. “It’s a big one!” He was yanked to his feet, his pole arcing violently. He tried to steady himself, digging in his heels as the thing pulled him dangerously close to the side of the boat.r />
  Suddenly the line went slack. Imagining another lost hook, Kai leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the one that got away. But even as he did, there came a mighty jolt. He grabbed the pole hard with both hands and leaned back.

  Without warning, the line snapped. Kai fell backward, landing hard on the opposite edge of the narrow boat. His arms cartwheeled at his sides as he tried to regain his balance. But it was too late.

  * * *

  THE DRONE VIDEO wavered. “Hell . . .” Mac muttered over the phone. “Two bots headed this way. I don’t know how, but I think they see the drone . . .”

  James watched as the video pulled out, the camera now slewing toward shore. He caught sight of a bot flying past. Then another. “Are you sure they’re after you?” he said. “They seem to be heading out into the bay.”

  “Best to stay clear,” Mac muttered. The drone retraced its path back to the Coastal Trail, the video showing only the tops of trees.

  * * *

  KAI TOPPLED OVERBOARD, his body enveloped in blankets of icy water. He could see only the murk of drifting detritus, hear only his own muffled cries. Salty water choked his throat. His arms weighed down by his now-sodden jacket, he grunted for air, his head back and his nose just barely above the surface.

  “Kick! Kick!” He heard Sela’s thin voice, calling from somewhere above. But his legs were heavy, tangled in something. Something was dragging him under. Clamping his mouth shut, he reached down to uncoil ropes of seaweed from his legs, kicking in a frenzy. Then, cupping his hands, he pushed down, propelling himself upward. He saw the surface, something snaking down onto the water just above his right arm. Again he heard Sela’s voice. “Grab on!” He kicked hard, arms outstretched. With his right hand, then his left, he managed to gain purchase on the rope. At last, he caught sight of a sliver of crystal-blue sky, spinning above him.