I hoped Mrs. Croate’s presence would be enough to make Sera admit who she really was, but her shrug was not inspiring. The better hope was in her DNA, but none of us knew exactly how the change to Sera’s DNA would affect the tests—or Sera herself.
The car was moving fast. We had to hurry. The Rogs had “magnanimously” agreed to begin the trial as soon as we could arrive in Portland, which was likely meant to flush us out. They had assembled an army to delay us—or kill us, if it could be made to look accidental. The Téjicans had been required to apply for a travel visa and supply details about our planned journey to Portland.
To evade the trap the Rogs had planned for us, Arturo and his people had submitted a fake route that used the main roads, from dome to dome, all the way up to Portland. It was as obvious a path as we could have taken. A caravan of unmanned trucks would travel in our place as a decoy. Arturo fully expected they would meet with a terrible accident somewhere on the road.
He had different plans for us, but so far, he had refused to reveal them.
Norflo, Margot and Mira were trailing in a car behind us, but they wouldn’t be coming to Portland, no matter what route we took. They were only coming to see us off. Norflo had offered to join our team, even though he’d found two of his brothers and it was painfully obvious he was exactly where he’d always wanted to be. I couldn’t bear the thought of him suffering or dying because he wanted to help—and there was really nothing he could do. Margot hadn’t offered, but I didn’t blame her. Only Mrs. Croate, Saretha and I were heading back—and Beecher’s father, Randall Stokes.
Just before we’d left Glimmer, he’d dashed up to us and asked if he could come. Arturo had told him it wasn’t possible.
“Am I not a free man?” Mr. Stokes had asked.
“It isn’t that simple,” Arturo had replied.
“Maybe I have some skills to help?” he’d said, eyes flashing at me.
“You did say he was a genius,” I’d pointed out to Arturo. “What if he can help us in some way we haven’t thought of?”
I wanted to know where the backups were. If the system couldn’t be destroyed by taking out the last center in Delphi™, maybe there was some other way. I hadn’t explained this part to Arturo, but he saw the overall wisdom and relented.
Randall wouldn’t say anything about Central Data with others around. He recognized Arturo and the Téjican authorities were fearful of what would happen if the system was destroyed. I hadn’t revealed Kel’s plan to them, but they must have had an inkling. Kel may have been worried they suspected, too. I hadn’t heard from her since before we’d gone to see my parents.
The Rogs had set everything up so the destruction of Central Data would mean misery for America®’s neighbors. But I couldn’t shake the idea that whatever Téjico would suffer was nothing compared to the suffering of the millions of Indentured people in domes across America®. I couldn’t share this opinion with them, but fortunately, if there was one thing I knew I could do well, it was to keep silent.
“You want to tell us your secret plan?” Mrs. Croate asked, shaking me from my thoughts. My back prickled, fearing she’d somehow divined what I was thinking. But she wasn’t talking to me; she was talking to Arturo. “How you gonna get us there?”
Arturo leaned in close with a sparkle in his eyes. “It’s proprietary,” he said, grinning.
“Is it a plane?” Saretha asked.
“No, they’d blast a plane out of the sky,” Arturo answered. “It isn’t quite as fast as a plane, but we’ll arrive in a little more than two days. The Rogs are counting on six.”
He was gleeful about this.
“The Rogs are counting on us not making it at all,” I said.
“No. They are hoping to stop us, but preparing for everything.”
“Everything? Even the way we’re getting there?” Saretha asked.
“I don’t think so,” Arturo replied. “I don’t think anyone will have thought of this.”
Randall was shaking his head. “It’s a ship,” he said, like it should have been obvious to everyone.
“A what?” I asked.
“A ship,” he said more slowly. “A boat?” He cupped his hands together, palms up, and showed them to us, like that would help. Arturo gave him a look, like he’d spoiled some secret.
“I don’t know what those words mean,” I said.
“That shows you something.” Randall began nodding, half satisfied, half angry. “Don’t need a word to know its meaning. They can price it out so you can’t afford to see it, but the idea still exists. They can pretend the Word$ Market™ holds the meaning of words, but it isn’t so. You’d figure out what a boat is, given half a chance, even if you didn’t call it such.” He touched his temple with a long, rough finger. “It’s like a car, only it floats across the water.”
I was having trouble picturing this. There were only a few small ponds in the Dome of Portland. I’d seen them and their rippled surfaces. I’d felt the top of the water, though I wasn’t supposed to. Water did not seem strong enough to hold anything more substantial than a Wheatlock Puff™.
“How do you know what a boat is if no one else knows?” I asked Mr. Stokes.
“Well, I came about it the hard way,” he said. “Invented it. I mean, it already existed, but not knowing it did, I realized it could be made—got in trouble with Agropollination™ for that one.”
“And we’ll all fit?” I asked, doing my best to make the cupped-hand shape.
“Boats are small. Ships are big,” Arturo said. “The ship we are taking is very impressive.”
“Why would they hide the idea of a ship from us?” I asked.
“The idea is proprietary,” Arturo said, getting the sparkle back in his eye. “Our property. There’s a consortium of nations that bought the Patent to the idea of conveying people and goods over or through water. It was mostly done to keep the Americans® away, since most nations find the idea of such a Patent absurd. But the Americans® had already done away with planes in their space, so it wasn’t unprecedented. No one wanted them crossing the ocean to sue us. France led the effort and offered the use of their historical art and architecture, as well as the mouche.”
“The what?” I asked.
Mrs. Croate pointed to her cheek. “A fake little mole. Your mother wore one for a while. When that was popular in the Onzième.”
I stared at Sera’s mother, speechless. I’d never really thought about the fact that they’d grown up in the Onzième together.
“Would you like to see the route we will take?” Arturo offered. He showed us a long line that curved along the blue water and squiggled through the Archipelago of Disney™, up the coast past Delphi™ and directly to the Dome of Portland.
“Saretha,” I said, elbowing her as I realized what this meant. “We’re going to really see the ocean at last.”
Cerulean: $55.99
The ship was more massive than my brain could handle. This was no Wheatlock Puff™ floating on a puddle. It was bigger than the refugee dome, and it bowed out in intimidating but supple lines. It was so enormous that, from inside its massive hangar, the ocean was entirely blotted out. All we saw was metal, glass and sleek lines reaching up ten stories. A small army was waiting for us on board.
Margot, Mira and Norflo hurried over to say their goodbyes before we walked up a thing Arturo had ominously called a gangplank. Mrs. Croate made her way up and onto the ship without us. She had no one to see her off, which made me sad.
“Must feel weird going home,” Norflo said.
“Portland isn’t home,” I answered.
Saretha nodded from behind him.
“Must feel even weirder, then,” he chuckled, but we all knew it wasn’t funny.
“I wish no one had to go anywhere,” Mira said.
“We’ll be back soon,” Saretha said. She gave M
ira her warmest smile and Mira jumped into another hug. I smiled, too. No one else needed to know this was more than likely a one-way trip for me. I hoped I could at least protect the people we left behind.
Norflo gave Saretha a careful hug, and me a far less cautious one.
“You end them, Jiménez,” he said.
“Okay, Javier.” I knew Norflo was a terrible name, maybe as bad as mine. He deserved better than to be associated with a cheap nasal spray. Still, I imagined it would always be difficult for me to think of him as Javier instead of Norflo.
“Jiménez,” he repeated.
“Jua-rez!” I said back to him, glad he could take back his family name.
“You will be careful, Speth,” Margot said, half asking, half telling me, fretting in a way she normally reserved for her sister. Mira wrapped her thin arms around me and squeezed so hard she nearly took me down.
“I will.”
Margot glanced over at Norflo and Saretha with a look that said, Could we have a moment? They both retreated back a ways. Mira continued to hold on to me at the waist.
“I do not blame you,” Margot said, her eyes welling up. “I know you might blame yourself, but what happened to Henri was not your fault. What happened to your brother...” She took me by the shoulders. I wasn’t expecting this. Mira let go of me, sensing the seriousness in the air. “That was not your fault, either.”
I felt tears stinging my own eyes. “Thank you,” I choked out, overwhelmed not just by her compassion, but by her knowing so well what I needed.
“You do not always know this. I can see it,” she said.
I smiled, but with a pang of sadness. Margot and I had been battered by so many events that we couldn’t help forming a deep friendship, but we’d rarely had time to talk or reflect. We’d never really had a moment to enjoy it.
“I wish we had the time to know each other in a world without chaos and danger,” I said, speaking the sort of thing I normally kept to myself.
“Chaos and Danger sounds like a Carol Amanda Harving film,” she said, wiping her eyes. I had to laugh. Her comment told me she understood we would probably never have that time.
“When will you be back?” Mira asked, tugging at me, maybe sensing what was to come.
“Soon,” I lied. “I just need to stop some bad people.”
“The ones who hurt Henri?” she asked, her expression shading with a darkness a nine-year old shouldn’t feel.
“Yes,” I said, resolute.
Margot bit her lip. “I wish I could go. But you understand why I cannot.”
I looked at Mira. “Of course.”
She couldn’t put Mira in danger again, and I didn’t blame her. I could also sense that something was wrong in the way Mira had been treated back in Portland, and that Margot had been powerless to fix it.
“I could take a message to your parents,” I offered.
“You cannot.” Margot shook her head. She teased Mira’s hair and then playfully covered the girl’s ears as she whispered, “They fled the very first day.”
I was thunderstruck. I wanted to ask why she hadn’t told me, but I knew. Margot was too proud.
“I could have gone with them,” she said with a great, shaky breath, “but only me. That is the offer my father made.”
She removed her hands from Mira’s ears, reached out and hugged me.
“Oh, Margot,” I said.
“What?” Mira asked, putting her hands on her own ears. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Yes, my monkey,” Margot said and then looked at me. “Goodbyes are hard.”
* * *
Arturo led us up to the top deck, grinning at the ingenuity of what Téjico had achieved. Margot, Mira and Norflo waved at us from below.
“Here, I can show you the difference between a boat and a ship. This,” Arturo said, gesturing to the whole huge thing, “is a ship.” He then brought us to the side and showed us a much smaller craft attached to the ship’s side on armatures. They were shaped not unlike long cupped hands, but sleeker, with the word LifeCruiser® emblazoned on the side. “These are boats.”
“Why is there a restricted mark after the word LifeCruiser?” I asked, unsettled. “I thought you didn’t do things like that.”
“We still have Laws,” Arturo answered. “LifeCruiser® is a brand. We have brands. It is only fair and right that the company’s name be reasonably restricted to use only by that company. They make a good product. The LifeCruiser® boats are very durable and fast.”
“I didn’t even notice,” Saretha said to me.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I moved on. The military personnel saluted as we passed, which made Saretha duck her head to conceal her smile. I knew she liked the attention.
“I will not make you agree to a Terms of Service like you might in your country,” Arturo said. I think he was stinging a little at my implied criticism. “But you should note the location of these boats. In the event of a catastrophe, these lifeboats are designed to take everyone to safety.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.
“Don’t worry. They are merely a precaution.”
Behind us, the gangway lifted and retracted into the ship. My stomach lurched and spun a little as we began moving, slowly and backward, in a way that made it seem like the world was moving away. I took Saretha’s hand and pulled her over to the rail to see the water.
“We made it,” I said.
The ship made an unhurried turn, like it was slowly presenting the horizon to us. Margot, Mira and Norflo continued watching us from the shore, receding until I couldn’t see them anymore.
The waves of the ocean grew, the shapes changing from gentle cups that intersected each other to clearer, deeper ridges and valleys that shifted and undulated through the cerulean sea.
Saretha let go of my hand and grabbed onto the rail, giggling and nervous. “It feels so...”
I didn’t have a word for it, either, but the ground beneath our feet no longer felt entirely solid. The ship carried us out of the bay and farther into the ocean. The waves grew in height and breadth, and the unsolid feeling beneath us became more pronounced as the ship sluggishly tilted one way, slowed, then gradually tilted back the other.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” Arturo said, putting one hand on my back and one on Saretha’s. “It will help if you feel at all sick. The motion of the ship on the water can make some people feel ill.”
“Will it be like this for the whole two days?” I asked, taking a deep breath and steadying myself. A fresh, salty mist sprayed my face.
“On the water, the ocean decides,” Arturo said. He sounded like he’d been on a boat before. The ship cut through the water and stabilized some, churning up a great white bubbling foam behind us. “If we are lucky, this will be the worst of it.”
“Is this what you pictured?” I asked my sister.
She shook her head. “I thought the waves would be more like big ripples.” She undulated a hand.
“But on TV, they look more like this,” I pointed out.
“Why would you trust anything they show?” she asked. “You know it’s all digital and fake.”
“Good point,” I said, though she couldn’t possibly have thought about it this way growing up.
“I’m glad we’ve finally gotten to see it for ourselves,” she sighed.
We stayed there, side by side, staring at the water for a long time. It felt good being with Saretha and knowing my friends were safe, far behind us.
Secrets of Data: $56.97
Arturo continued to hope the trial itself could lead to change. “I have waited my whole life for this,” he said. “Many of us have.”
The legal team on the boat gathered and collected evidence, getting updated information somehow as we moved out to deep waters.
“How do you get WiFi out here?” I asked.
“We have satellites,” Arturo explained, pointing up at the night sky from a high deck on the ship. The stars shone in multitudes. I wasn’t quite prepared for it. There were so many more than we’d seen outside the domes on the road. They sparkled and swayed with the motion of the ship. “They stay above us, in orbit.”
Saretha crinkled her nose at this. She didn’t understand. Neither did I.
“Think of them as small WiFi centers, floating around the Earth,” Arturo explained.
“Like balloons?” I asked, still unable to picture what he meant.
“Sort of,” Arturo answered. “This way, a signal can exist anywhere.”
I shuddered at the thought. “Scary.”
“Why?” Arturo asked.
“We worked hard to destroy the WiFi in Portland,” I said. “The WiFi invaded every part of our lives.”
“The WiFi isn’t the problem,” Arturo explained. “It is like blaming the air for a storm.”
“If the shoe fits,” Saretha said.
“But air lets you breathe. It lets you communicate with sound,” Arturo said.
“Will Kel be able to contact me here?” I asked. I had not heard from her in a long time, and I was beginning to worry. I needed to let her know that her plan to destroy the Central Data node in Delphi™ wasn’t going to work.
“I don’t know what her methods are,” Arturo said, shifting uncomfortably. “But if she could reach you in Téjico, I think she should be able to reach you through our system at sea.”
It was growing cold out on the deck. I had my arms crossed tight. Saretha shivered beside me with a long, chattering sigh. One good thing about living in a dome was that the temperature was always steady.
Arturo pulled a blanket from a bin that seemed to serve no other purpose than to provide blankets. He spread it so that it covered Saretha and me over our shoulders. The last time someone had done something like this for us was the first week after our parents were taken away. I had asked Mrs. Harris to tuck us in.
Access Restricted Page 33
