She stood where she was, first looking after him, then looking up at the clear black sky with its vast spray of stars. The desert sky at night was fascinating and calming to her. She knew she should follow Eli, but she stayed, wondering which of the countless stars was Proxima Centauri-or rather, which was Alpha Centauri. She knew that Proxima could
not be seen separately by the unaided eye. A red star whose light a little girl born on Earth longed for.
"Hi," a child's voice said from somewhere nearby.
Keira jumped, then looked around. At her feet stood a sphinxlike boy somewhat larger than Zera. "Daddy said you have to come in," the boy said.
"Is Eli your daddy?" "Yes. I'm Jacob."
"Does anyone call you Jake?" "No."
"Lucky boy. I'm Keira-no matter what you hear anyone else say. Okay?"
"Okay. You have to come in." "I'm coming."
The boy walked beside her companionably. "You're nicer than the other one," he said. "Other one?"
"Like you, but not as brown."
"Rane? My sister?" "Is she your sister?"
"Where is she? Where did you see her?" "She didn't like me."
"Jacob, where did you see her?" "Do you like me?"
"At the moment, no." She stopped and stooped to bring herself closer to eye level with him. Her joints did not care much for the gesture. "Jacob, tell me where my sister is."
"You do like me," he said. "But I think Daddy will get mad at me if I tell you."
"Damn right, he will," Eli's voice said.
Keira looked up, saw him, and stood up, wondering how anyone could move so silently in sand that crunched underfoot. The boy moved that way, too.
"Eli, why can't I know where my sister is?" she asked. "What's happening to her?" Eli seemed to ignore her, spoke to his son. "Hey, little boy, come on up here."
He did not bend at all, but Jacob leaped into his arms. Then the boy turned to look down at Keira.
"You tell Kerry what her sister was doing last time you saw her," Eli said. The boy frowned. "Keira?"
"Yes. Tell her."
"You should call her Keira. That's what she likes." "Do you?" Eli asked her.
"Yes! Now will you please tell me about Rane?"
"She was with Stephen," Jacob said. "They looked at the cows and fed the chickens and Stephen ate some stuff in the garden. Stephen jumped with her and she didn't like it."
"Jumped?" Keira said.
"From some rocks. She liked him." Keira looked at Eli, questioning.
"Stephen Kaneshiro is our bachelor," Eli said, heading for the house again. Keira followed automatically. "He saw the two of you and asked about you. I aimed him at Rane."
"And she likes him."
"I'd say so. This little kid reads people pretty clearly." "Is she with him?"
"She could have been. Stephen said it was too soon for her, so she's alone. Kerry, she's all right, I promise you. Beyond infecting her, no one wants to hurt her."
"Keira," Jacob said into Eli's ear.
Eli laughed. "Yeah," he said. He looked at the boy. "You know it's time for you to go to bed. Past time."
"Mom already put me to bed."
"I figured she had. What'll it take to get you to stay there?" Jacob grinned and said nothing.
"The kids are more nocturnal than we are," Eli said. "We try to adjust them more to our hours for their own protection. They don't realize the danger they're in when they roam around at night."
He held the door open for her and she went in. "There are bobcats in these mountains, aren't there?" she asked. "And coyotes?"
"Jacob's in no danger from animals," Eli said. "His senses are keener than those of the big animals and he's fast. He's literally poison to most of the smaller ones-especially those that are supposed to be poison to him. No, it's the stray
humans out there that I worry about." He stopped, looked at his son who was listening somberly. "Keira, you take your
medicine, then go back to your room. There are some books in there if you want to read. I'm going to put this one to bed."
She obeyed, never thinking there might be anything else she could do. She caught herself feeling grateful to him for not hurting her, not even forcing the disease on her, though she didn't know how long that could last. Then she realized she was feeling gratitude to a man who had kidnapped her family. Her problem was she liked him. She wondered who
Jacob's mother was. Meda? If so, why was Meda trying so hard, so obviously to get Blake Maslin into her bed. Perhaps
he was there now. No, Jacob's mother must be someone else. She sat staring at the cover of a battered old book- something from the 1960s-written even before the birth of her father: Ishi, Last of his Tribe. She had intended to read, but she had no concentration. Finally, Eli appeared again to take her to her father.
That meeting was terrible. It forced her to remember that her liking for Eli could not matter. The fact that she was not afraid for herself could not matter. She had a duty to help her father and Rane to escape-and that terrified her. She did not underestimate the capacity of Eli's people to do harm. Her escape, her family's escape would endanger their families. They would kill to prevent that. Or perhaps they would only injure her badly and keep her with them in agony. She had had enough of pain.
But she had a duty.
"I shouldn't have let you see him," Eli said.
She jumped. She had been walking slowly back to her room, forgetting he was behind her. "I wish you hadn't," she whispered. Then she realized what she had said, and she was too ashamed to do anything but go into her room and try to shut the door.
He would not let the door shut.
"I thought it would be a kindness," he said, "to both of you." And as though to explain: "I liked the way you got along with Jacob and Zera. They're good kids, but the reactions they get sometimes from new people ..."
She knew about ugly reactions. Probably Jacob knew more, or would learn more, but walking down a city street between her mother and her father had taught her quite a bit.
She reached out and took Eli's hands. She had been wanting to do that for so long. The hands first pulled back from her, but did not pull away. They were callused, hard, very warm. How insane to expose herself to the disease now that she
knew she must at least try to escape. Yet she almost certainly already had it. Eli and her father had deluded themselves into believing otherwise, but she knew her own particular therapy-induced sensitivity to infection. Her father knew it
too, whether or not he chose to admit it.
The hands closed on her hands, giving in finally, and in spite of everything, she smiled.
PAST 17
Ironically, Eli, Meda, and Lorene interrupted someone else's attempted abduction. Off Interstate 40, they found a car family or a fragment of a car family raiding a roadside station. There were few stations in the open desert these days. They offered water, food, fuels from hydrogen to fast-charge for electric cars, vehicle repairs, and even a few rooms for tourists.
"Stations help everyone," Meda said as they watched the fighting. "Even the rat packs usually leave them alone." "Not this time," Eli said. "Hell, this isn't our fight. Let's see if I can get us out of here."
He could not. The Ford had apparently been spotted. Now, as Eli swung it around, the car people began to shoot at it. The Ford's light armor and bulletproof windows were hit several times, harmlessly. The bullet that hit the left front tire
should have been equally harmless. Instead, the tire exploded. At the same moment, a high-suspension, tough Tien
Shan pickup came across the sand from the station to cut the Ford off. They could not get back to the highway.
Eli stopped the Ford, and grabbed Gabriel Boyd's old AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. It wasn't the newest of old Boyd's collection of antiques, but Eli liked it. He slipped off the safety, and looked the Tien Shan over. Its too-large, crudely
cut gunports presented the best targets. He aimed through one of the Ford's own custo
m crafted gunports. The Tien
Shan's big openings were bull's-eyes. The barrel that emerged from one of them seemed to move in slow motion.
Eli fired. The rifle barrel in the Tien Shan jerked. Eli fired twice more, rapidly. The barrel in the Tien Shan slid backward, stopped, then remained still, pointed upward. Eli held back his last two rounds, waiting to see what would happen.
The Tien Shan sat silent. An instant later, Meda fired her rifle. Eli looked around, saw a man fall only a few feet from the Ford. On the opposite side of the car, Lorene fired her husband's rifle at a nearby rise. At first, it seemed she had done nothing more than kick up a puff of dust. Then a woman staggered from concealment, arms raised, one hand clutching her rifle by its barrel. As they watched, she fell face down into the sand.
Meda, who had probably been the best shot of the three of them before the disease, took aim at one of the other cars. She fired.
Again, nothing seemed to happen, but Eli swung the Ford around and charged the two cars. He had literally seen the bullet go through a window that was slightly open. And he could see through the tinted glass of that window well
enough to know that Meda had made another kill. Others in the car had apparently had enough. The car turned and fled into the desert, followed by the third, unscathed vehicle.
"Amateurs!" Meda muttered, watching them go. "Why'd they have to come to us to get themself killed?"
Eli glanced at her, saw that she was actually angry at the car family for forcing her to kill. She was almost crying. "Idiots!" she said. "Big holes cut for shooting! Open windows! Kids!"
"Probably," Eli said, reaching for her hand. She avoided him, would not look at him. "What they were doesn't matter," he said. "They meant to kill us. We stopped them."
"You should be glad they were amateurs," Lorene told her. "If they were more experienced and better equipped, they
would have killed us."
Eli shook his head. "I doubt it. We don't die that easily. And did you notice not one of them got off a shot at us after they blew our tire?"
"Yeah," Meda said. "Amateurs!"
"More than that," Eli told her. "We scared the hell out of them. We moved so fast we seemed to be anticipating them. If they're amateurs, they must have thought we were pros." He sighed. "Whoever's in the station might think that, too, so I don't think we'd better hang around here to change that tire."
"A stationmaster, Eli," Lorene said hungrily. "A station man."
He glanced at her. "Maybe it's a station woman or a family like Gwyn's." "We could see."
"No, Meda's right about these places. They help everyone. We might need them more than most people eventually. No sense closing this one down."
To their surprise, the stationmaster ended their argument for them by poking his head out the station door, then stepping out and making a perfect target of himself.
"I don't believe this," Meda said.
"He's crazy," Eli said. "He doesn't know what we might be -and he doesn't know whether there's anyone left alive in the
Tien Shan."
Meda shook her head. "Well, he'll find out for us."
The man drew no fire. He went to the Tien Shan and looked into the cab. He smiled at what he saw there-which must have taken a strong stomach and strong hatred.
"I don't think he's the stationmaster," Eli said. "Stationmasters can be tough and solitary, but they're usually not suicidal."
"And not stupid," Meda said. "He could have held out in that station and yelled for help that would have wiped us and
the car people out. This area is still patrolled."
Lorene got out of the car, Meda realized too late what she meant to do, reached out to stop her, but Lorene was too quick. She had shut the door and was exposed to the stranger. Eli and Meda moved in unspoken agreement to cover her. Later, if she survived, they could tell her what an ass she had been.
The man and anyone still inside the station could see both Lorene and her protectors. For the moment, this was another kind of stand-off.
"Can you believe she would risk her life for an ordinary little guy like that?" Meda asked.
Eli took a good look at the man. He was shorter than average, young-mid twenties, perhaps-overweight, though not grossly fat. His hair was a dull black with no hint of any other color even in the bright sunlight.
"She could have done worse," Eli said. "He hasn't got anything wrong with him. And that extra fat is a good thing, believe me." Her leaner brothers could have used it. "And for her, he's doubly attractive-uninfected and male. Hell, I
hope she likes him once she has him."
Meda glanced at Eli. "She will. She won't be able to help herself." "Is that so bad?" he asked.
She shrugged, said with bitter amusement, "How would I know? I'm as crazy as she is." She rested her hand on his shoulder, finally.
He kept the hand comfortably captive as he watched the man and Lorene. The man was clearly afraid-not of Lorene, but of the two rifle barrels he could see protruding from the Ford. But he was also determined. Either he would live or
he would die, but he would not do any more hiding.
"She's got him," Meda said.
Eli had seen. Lorene, clearly unarmed, had offered to shake the man's hand. With a look of uncertainty and dawning relief, the man had given his hand, then jumped as she scratched him. He jerked his hand away, but let her catch it again as she apologized. To Meda's visible disgust, Lorene kissed the hand. Thin as she was now, Lorene was still pretty. The black-haired man was obviously impressed with her-and confused and still suspicious.
"I think it's okay," Eli said. "I'm going over there." "She doesn't need your help," Meda protested.
He ignored her, got out of the car, opened her door, and waited for her to get out. "Come on," he said. "Seeing an old pregnant woman like you will help keep him calm. Maybe we won't have to hurt him."
For a moment, she looked as though she might punch him, but he grinned at her. She sighed and shook her head, then walked with him to Lorene and her stranger.
"It's okay," Lorene said. "His name is Andrew Zeriam. He was a prisoner. That Tien's his truck."
"Is it?" Eli wanted to see the man's face when he answered. He did not trust Lorene's quick acceptance. The organism and her glands were doing too much of her thinking for her just now. "The car family kept you alive?" he asked Zeriam.
The man stared at him hostilely. "They did," he said. "And the truck's mine." He looked ready to fight if he had to. Not eager, but ready. "They would have killed me soon," he said. "They were planning to."
He was soft and plump and young. One of the car people had probably taken a liking to him. They might not have killed him at all if he had cooperated. His voice, his face, his posture said he had not. He was not a homosexual, then-
fortunately for Lorene. And if no one dug too deeply into what had been done to him during his captivity, Lorene might
be able to convince him to come with her willingly.
"I'm going to get that sewage out of my truck and get out of here," he said suddenly. "No!" Lorene said quickly.
Zeriam looked at her. There was no softness in his eyes. He looked from her to Eli, questioning. Eli shrugged. "She likes you."
"Who are you people?"
"Not another car family, man, don't worry. Shit, we just pulled in here to pick up some auto supplies. Tried to get out when we saw what was going on, but those fools wouldn't let us."
"I saw. I hate to say it, but I'm glad they wouldn't. You probably saved my life." He hesitated. "Listen . . . can I help you fix that tire?"
"Thanks," Eli said. "What happened to the stationmaster?"
Zeriam turned away. "God, I managed to forget about her for a couple of minutes. One of the women from the car family decoyed her out. The car rat limped in all alone, pretended to be having car trouble. She had to go through a half hour of pretending to try to fix the car and crying and giving a performance that should have been on TV before the
push the button. But the stationmaster took pity, came out, and the gang came in and grabbed her. While they were busy with her, I made it into the station."
"Did they kill her?" Eli asked.
"No. They get more fun out of killing people slowly."
"You don't look like they've done much to you," Lorene said.
Zeriam turned without looking at her and walked away toward his truck.
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