by Mark Teppo
I spot one guy shoving his way through the crowd, his attention fixed on Mere and Pedro. “One following,” I tell Phoebe. I think I see a shadow behind this guy and realize I'm probably telling her something she already knows.
“Two returning to one,” Phoebe tells me. The other two of this trio have already split off and are hustling back to the car.
I'm tempted to let Phoebe take the remaining, but when I see him start talking into a cell phone, I realize what he's doing. He's going to identify the car that Mere is driving, and the first car is going to follow her. He'll be picked up by the second car, and then they'll double-team the tail.
That makes it easy.
* * *
I call Mere when the second Mercedes has picked up the spotter. “They're coming,” I tell her. “Follow the route.”
“Okay,” she replies. She says something to Pedro about her laptop, and I assume she's asking him to show her the route. Hopefully, those two can sort out a system for calling out directions, though I suspect Mere can remember the route. We planned it to be simple and straight: leave La Serena and get on the Pan-American Highway.
Phoebe's arms are wrapped around my waist and her chin is pressed against my back. The tiny engine of the scooter whines beneath me. It's not happy about the weight, but it's keeping up. We won't be able to keep up once the cars reach the highway, but we shouldn't need to.
The planned route takes us out of the heavily residential area and into a stretch of light industrial before we reach the highway. The road widens, developing four lanes, and Mere takes her time. She drives just under the speed limit enough to frustrate the guys in the Mercedes following her. One of the two cars gets into the left hand lane.
Half a kilometer up ahead, there's a light and a cross street that runs into a stretch of long warehousing.
“Miss this light,” I tell Mere. “Pretend you're going to turn right.”
Mere plays it well. She starts to slow down earlier and even though the light is green, she comes to a complete stop at the intersection. The second Mercedes can't figure out what she's doing, and squirts on through the intersection as the light turns yellow. I can imagine the commentary coming from the men in the car. The second Mercedes is three cars back from Mere, and he's pulled close to the center line so that the driver can try to figure out what the hell Mere is doing.
Both lanes fill up as traffic queues for the light.
I open the throttle on the scooter and swerve out to straddle the center line. Phoebe lets go of my waist, and I feel her weight shift as she leans back. I let go of the throttle as we come up on the line of cars, and the high pitched whine of the scooter's engine drops with an exhausted sigh. I squeeze the brakes lightly with one hand as I reach my other hand into my poncho.
As we line up with the Mercedes, I squeeze the brake all the way. The pistol in Phoebe's hand starts popping. The driver's side window shatters, and I reach into my poncho for a grenade. Letting go of the handlebars of the scooter for a second, I yank the pin and lob the live grenade through the shattered window. I return my hands to the handlebar, twist the throttle, and the scooter shoots forward.
We nearly get clipped by a blue van as we streak through the intersection. Behind us, the grenade goes off, blowing out the remaining windows of the Mercedes. A second later, there is another explosion as the gas tank goes up. I eke out as much speed as I can get from the scooter. Phoebe lays her left forearm across my shoulder and I hunch forward, clearing her light of sight. She presses up against me, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the gun in her right hand.
Up ahead, the brake lights on the first Mercedes flare. Someone has spotted the explosion behind us.
We're farther away than I would take the shot, but Phoebe opens up. Her first two shots go through the back window of the Mercedes. The third one leaves a hole in the back; the fourth shot hits the left rear tire. The car jerks to the left, turning toward us, and Phoebe empties the rest of the magazine into the driver's side.
The car wobbles and then veers quickly to the right, shooting off into the narrow ditch that runs along the side of the road. As I come up on the wrecked car, slowing the scooter to a stop, Phoebe hops off. She's got another gun in her left hand, and she stands at the edge of the road, precision shooting into the Mercedes. When the slide on her pistol locks back, she steps away from the edge of the ditch. She nods, letting me know that she's finished.
I hold the scooter steady between my legs as I reach into my poncho for more grenades. I throw one under the Mercedes, and after I kick the scooter down into the ditch, I lob the second one after it. Both grenades go off noisily as Mere pulls up with a screech of tires. Pedro's frightened face is transfixed in the passenger side window.
Phoebe opens the back passenger door and enters first. I follow, and Mere stomps on the accelerator pedal as soon as I'm in the car.
I put on my seat belt as Mere drives north, heading for the Pan-American Highway.
Phoebe's hair is wild about her head, still moving even though there is no wind in the car. “Secutores,” she says.
I nod in agreement. The strike teams were human mercenaries.
“I like biting back,” she says with a grin.
Her hate has become something else.
THIRTY-FIVE
We drive north, heading toward the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on the planet. It's not on Mere's list as Arcadian-friendly, which is precisely why we head for it. The altercation with Secutores outside of La Serena will focus attention on the rustic city—both from the mercenaries and from Hyacinth. With any luck, they'll stumble over each other for a day or two.
Mere wants to know what our plan is with Pedro, who sits very quietly in the front passenger seat, trying his best to not be conspicuous. He didn't see what happened to his scooter, but I suspect he knows. And he's street-smart enough to know that even if I hadn't wrecked it, he was going to have to ditch it anyway. It was an anomaly that witnesses to our assault are going to remember.
They won't remember much else, but they'll remember the scooter. Our pursuers will be excited to have a clue, but it's worthless knowledge.
“He's useful,” I tell Mere. “We should keep him.”
“He could get killed,” she replies.
“We'll get two bulletproof vests,” I offer.
“It's different,” she argues. “I made my choice. He didn't.”
“Does it really matter now? If we drop him off somewhere, he's on his own in a strange town with no money. What's the first thing he's going to do? Call someone back in La Serena. He's just going to return there, where people know about him and his scooter—especially when he doesn't have it anymore. Someone will tell Secutores or Hyacinth. They'll find him. They'll make him talk. But what does he know? Nothing very useful. At which point, he'll have no value and they'll discard him.”
“What if we give him some money?” Mere asks. “Tell him not to go back to La Serena?”
“Where is he going to go? Does he look like a kid who could just pick up and go to another city and start over? What sort of life do you think he's going to fall into?”
“This isn't fair.”
Phoebe laughs quietly.
I lean forward. “No, it's not, but he's useful. He's a local kid. He can go many places without attracting attention. We lessen our risk of being spotted by having him be our errand boy. He's smart and he's cautious. He has a better chance with us.”
Mere's hands tighten on the steering wheel. She glances at Pedro, who has become aware that we've been talking about him. The boy twists around in his seat and stares at me. “Are you going to kill me too?” he asks in Spanish.
He's wiry, but he still has a round face, full of young innocence that probably serves him well. His brown eyes are inquisitive and intelligent, and up close, I can tell that he's as concerned about his haircut as he is his scooter.
“You're in no danger from us,” Phoebe replies in the same language.
&nb
sp; I nod. “We're going to need your help, Pedro. You understand the risk, don't you?”
“Yes,” the boy says. “Señor, are you going to kill me later?” His voice is flat and calm, but he swallows a couple of times and his eyelids flutter. He's putting on a brave face. Helping the nice American lady who had been staying in the villa hadn't turned out the way he had hoped.
“I'm Silas,” I say, and then I nod to my left. “That's Phoebe, and like she says, you're in no danger from us. Other people, though, are going to want to talk to you. They won't be very nice. We can protect you from them. You help us, and we'll take care of you. Okay?”
He looks at Phoebe and me, and then at Mere, who has a more honest expression on her face than either Phoebe or I. “Okay,” Pedro says. “New scooter,” he adds in English, speaking for Mere's benefit. “Italian. Aprilia.”
Phoebe laughs again. “Done,” she says.
I nod to Pedro and sit back in my seat. The boy nods too, and turns back around. Mere is looking at me in the rearview mirror, her eyebrows raised.
“The boy knows how to negotiate,” I tell her. “Why wouldn't we want him along?”
* * *
The presence of Secutores in La Serena suggests two things: one, that they're working through the same suppositions as Mere and looking for Arcadian-friendly areas where we might have gone to ground; and two, our theory that they're still working on grabbing an Arcadian is sound. On a purely business level, keeping after Phoebe and me if they have access to Hyacinth, doesn't make sense. They're losing too many men trying to track us down. It's possible that Hyacinth and Secutores are working together and Secutores is cleaning up loose ends, but the fact that we haven't called Arcadia should also tell Hyacinth that they're in no immediate danger from us calling the cavalry. We're still on our own, but like I told Belfast, the enemy of my enemy might be a friend. The trick is figuring out which enemy is the right one to befriend. Or not. I know Phoebe wants to play them off each other, and I'm not convinced that isn't Escobar's plan with us and Secutores.
If I was under the gun to figure out a counteragent to the weed killer, I'd be buying time by getting my enemies to fight among themselves too. Us biting back against Secutores may give us a bit of breathing room from Hyacinth as well.
None of this solves the bigger problem of Arcadia and the poison within the Grove. And the question of how much Callis knows. I can't help but think he is the one who put me on to the idea of going to Rapa Nui.
After a few hours of driving, we stop and let Pedro and Mere eat. Phoebe and I stay in the car, talking about what we're doing next. Well, mostly I talk and Phoebe listens. There's a lot of brain dumping to do from the overnight session I did with Mere's computer.
Mere has the highly structured mind of a good reporter, and all of her research over the last week had been gathered into a tidy stack of well-labeled folders. I read journal abstracts, stockholder notices, corporate SEC filings, news articles, forum discussions, and more than a few conspiracy theory blog posts. There was no dearth of data to sift through, and it was a long night of reading and thinking. But when I finally read Mere's assessment, a short list of bullet points, I thought she was on the right track.
“She's methodical and tenacious,” Phoebe says after I've given my assessment of Mere's thinking. “Every night, she'd talk the whole time she was making dinner. She wasn't telling me what she had learned so much as summarizing it all. Out loud. It wasn't necessary for me to be in the room, but I stayed and listened. She's a good asset. A good strategist. I see why you saved her.”
I stare out the window. “The Grove thinks I had an ulterior reason.”
“Because you had fallen for a mortal?” Phoebe snorts. “It happens more often than you know, Silas. But that has little to do with anything. You're trying too hard to see a conspiracy when the basic issue is that they're idiots. They've been idiots for a long time. We could have done something. We should have. But they were too frightened.”
“It's changed too fast,” I say. “We had no idea how quickly they were going to devour the world.”
“You had no idea because you weren't paying attention. Because you were letting them gut your memories. And they did it so poorly. What could be gained by letting you remember that you've been purged?”
“So that we would think it was our choice,” I say. “It was our own decisions to let go of the past, to relieve ourselves of the burden of who we were.”
“Why?”
“I don't know, Phoebe,” I tell her. “I've been doing it for a long time.”
She laughs. “And does it make you feel any better to know how long you've been lied to? How long you've been lying to yourself?”
“No,” I say. “Of course it doesn't.” I grimace. “How much of what I feel and what I remember has been selectively placed in my head?”
“All of it,” Phoebe says matter-of-factly.
“Who is Silas then?” I wonder. “I can't be the same man I was when I became an Arcadian.”
Phoebe shakes her head. “Who Silas was doesn't matter,” she says. “You are Silas. Who Silas will be tomorrow or the next day or the day after that is up to you.”
“Is that why you never went back?” I ask.
“Partly,” Phoebe says after a moment of silence. She doesn't add anything more, and I figure that's all I'm going to get.
“Was it difficult?” I ask. “Fighting the urge to return to Mother?”
“I was an orphan once before,” Phoebe says, “I knew how to survive.”
Maybe that was the difference. I had been part of a family. Part of a military unit. I had craved the company of others. Needed it, in fact. Becoming an Arcadian had been an easy choice for me, in the end. I hadn't given much thought to the ramifications of my decision. I was a soldier; I was supposed to follow orders. I was supposed to be part of a group.
Had Mother taken advantage of my weaknesses?
Of course she had. If I looked back on my history from Escobar's point of view, I was a dumb grunt. Manipulated over and over again by my superiors. Told what I needed to know for any given mission. Patted on the head when I returned, bloody and triumphant. Good dog. Here's a cookie. Now go rest for a few decades. I wagged my tail, overjoyed to be part of a family, happy to please Mother.
“It's just another survival mechanism,” I murmur.
“What is?”
“Following orders. Being happy to please,” I say.
Phoebe shrugs, a twitch of her shoulders in which I'm starting to see a variety of nuances. Isn't that the reason we do anything? is what I read in her reaction.
“Change happens over time. Changes happen because a system reacts to stimuli. Those species that can react quickly survive. The rest die. That's the order of the world—has been for thousands of years—and we've been at the top of that pyramid for a long time. But we're afraid now. We're looking over our shoulders, wondering what it is that is coming up behind us. The fundamental problem we face is change—how are we supposed to change when we were at the top of the food chain?”
“We get knocked off,” Phoebe says. “We relearn what it is to fear.”
“Is that what Escobar wants? To make Arcadia remember fear?”
“Why would he bother? He's done with Arcadia; he's working on his own evolutionary path. He doesn't want us crowding him.”
“Right. He's growing his own flesh, his own tissue. Evolution takes a long time, especially when your body is already nearly perfect. So, he's taking a shortcut. He's crafting his own.”
Phoebe makes a face. “Genetic modification,” she says. “Splicing. Grafting.”
“Frankenstein,” I reply.
“Chimera,” she fires back.
An involuntary shiver runs up my spine. Chimera. She's right. Body of a lion, head of a goat, tail of snake. The commingling of disparate species into one monstrous creation that could not exist without interference from the Gods.
A chimera would not be something that Mother
would birth; it was a monster that man would build.
I recall the tree farm on Rapa Nui. There had been citrons in the grove, and I hadn't looked at them closely. Were they simply citrons or had they been Bizzaria—the chimera of the Florentine citron and the sour orange? Had I walked past them without realizing what they were?
* * *
Mere and Pedro return to the car, and Phoebe switches to the front seat to drive. We're going to drive through the afternoon and night, trying to put as much of the Atacama behind us. There's no reason to stay overlong in the desert. Pedro, his belly full of lunch, settles down in the front passenger seat and falls asleep.
I tell Mere about chimerae and the Bizzaria, the plant chimera that mixes the citron and the sour orange. By this time, I'm nearly certain the citrus trees I had seen on Rapa Nui were Bizzaria.
This strikes a chord in Mere, and she digs out her laptop and searches through her research files. Getting a hit in her data, she shows me a picture. It's a publicity still of Escobar Montoya. “Forty years ago,” Mere says, “taken during a junket at a farming initiative sponsored by Montoya Industries, the construction firm of his that made their mark in the '30s.” She points at the banner in the background. It's got the name of the farm and a logo. Laid over a stylized sunburst is a green sprig with a single fruit that has been rendered as a circle within a circle. “What's that look like?” she says, indicating the fruit.
“They're not concentric,” I note.
“If you were to consider that image as a symbolic representation, how would you classify it?”
“A circle within another circle?”
“Or a whole that contains the whole of another thing. In other words, something made from distinct objects.”
