“I looked for you to see if you’d like to come with me,” he says, “but I couldn’t find you.”
“I went to get this.” I hold up the Bible and realize he can’t see it. I approach the table where Halla lies, arms crossed over her chest, eyes closed. There’s a click and then a yellow glow; Alexander has brought a flashlight. I can see Halla better now, and I think she looks peaceful, although maybe that’s wishful thinking. But it seems to me her full lips are curved in a small smile. Her dark hair makes a halo around her head.
“She’s at rest,” Alexander says, echoing my thoughts. The light casts deep shadows under his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks, and the folds of his nose. He smiles when he identifies the Bible.
“Halla would want that,” he says.
I nod silently, choked by tears clogging my throat. Halla’s Bible was important to her. She brought it with her from her home in the Delta Canton after her last living relative, her grandmother, disappeared. Her grandmother had read her large chunks of the Bible from when she was tiny, and Halla shared the stories with me when we shared a room, telling them from memory, at first, and then reading them aloud once we mastered our ABCs. The stories were about a man being swallowed by a big fish, the Garden of Eden, a woman named Jezebel being eaten by dogs (like the ones who chased the three of us our first day away from the Kube), and Noah and his animal pairs repopulating the earth after a great flood. That one sounded too much like real life, although Amerada is trying to repopulate because of the flu, not a flood. I don’t know if the events in Halla’s Bible actually happened, but she found truth and comfort in it anyway. When I reach out to tuck the Bible under Halla’s clasped hands, something flutters down.
Alexander’s long-fingered hand, the hand of a surgeon, drawn down to bones covered with almost translucent skin by his sickness, plucks it from the top of her breast where it adheres to the cold skin. He studies it for a moment and then holds it out so I can see it.
It’s a photograph of a baby, and I know immediately it’s Little Loudon. Of course Halla had a picture of him and kept it in her Bible. I’m no baby expert, but he looks to be six to eight months old in the photo, his skin a warm cocoa color and inch-long fuzz covering his scalp. He’s wearing a cheery yellow jumpsuit and laughing in the photo, looking not at the imager, but at the person holding it. Halla, I suspect. Little white teeth gleam and his face is scrunched with merriment. I run a finger across his face and tuck the image back into the Bible. I’ll find you, I promise silently. I become conscious of a slow drip on my left. Plip. Pause. Plip. Pause.
“Shall we say a prayer?” Alexander asks.
I nod, unable to say anything around the lump in my throat. He stretches his hand out to me, and I put mine in it. His fingers, cool and strong, close around mine. I don’t know any prayers, and after a moment I look at Alexander from beneath damp lashes.
He clears his throat. “Heavenly Father, receive the soul of your servant Halla. Welcome her to Heaven with the music of thousands of thousands of angels and great rejoicing. She was a special light for you here on earth, and we were blessed to have known and loved her. Comfort us and all those who mourn for her, especially her baby, your special gift to her. Keep him safe, like his mother did.” He pauses. When he resumes, his voice is ragged. “We have lost our way, Lord. Amerada has lost its way. Shine a light on your path so we can walk in your ways once again, loving you and one another, and doing your work in this world. Amen.”
“Amen,” I echo, startled and moved by his words. I hadn’t known that Alexander prayed, but it sounds like he does. His hand tightens around mine, and then releases it.
He starts toward the cooler door with a slight hitch in his gait. The chemicals he was exposed to are breaking down his muscle fibers now, I fear. His movement stirs the air and releases a faint odor of fish. Putting a hand on Halla’s cheek, recoiling at the damp coldness of her flesh, I whisper, “Rest in peace, Halla,” and follow him.
I don’t realize how cold I am until I’m standing outside the cooler, shivering. Alexander is shaking, too, and we chuckle through our chattering teeth, both of us chafing our upper arms with our hands. I jump up and down several times, hair flopping.
“I’ll walk you back to the barracks,” Alexander says.
We leave the kitchen together, dimming the biolume as we go. The halls are hushed and quiet, all the ACs asleep. I know a squad of Defiers patrols inside, protecting the Kube from a counterattack, but I don’t hear them now. Our footsteps echo as we make our way back to the IPF barracks. We walk side by side, our shoulders brushing. I could tell him now. I open my mouth, my lips forming the word “You,” when he breaks the silence first.
“What is your vision for Amerada, Everly? What are you fighting for?”
I’m taken aback by the question. Clearly, “I don’t know” is a lame answer. “Freedom” is the first word that comes to mind and I say it aloud. “And equality,” I add. “Freedom for everyone to bear and raise their own babies. Halla taught me why that’s important, more important than the Prags’ plan to control reproduction to ensure the highest caliber population. Freedom for everyone to serve in a way that gives them satisfaction. The government shouldn’t be able to force someone to be a soldier if he wants to be a . . . a baker.” Memories of Griselda, a baker turned Defiance operative, pop into my head.
“Although Wyck is a damn fine soldier.”
He’s referring to the fact that Wyck ran away from the Kube to escape military service and now he’s an effective Defiance commander, a military leader by any other name. Irony, again.
“And equality means we need equal access to education. The good schools can’t be reserved for the geneborns, just because they’ve got a better genetic chance of being brilliant at something in particular. And the leadership positions, the good service billets, can’t be only for the geneborns, either. Look at Wyck, you, me—we’ve all made important contributions to this country, even without being geneborn. Women have to be more than wombs.”
“Soon you’ll be burning bras and singing Helen Reddy songs,” Alexander murmurs. Seeing my confused look, he chuckles. “Ancient history, my dear, from the late-1900s, a movement called ‘feminism.’“
“What about you?” I ask, studying his profile. His bearded chin is sunk toward his chest. “What are you fighting for?”
“Ah, Everly.” He sighs. “I’m not sure that what any of us thinks we’re fighting for is what we’re really fighting for.”
Before I can ask him to explain, we come to the end of the connector that attaches the Kube to the IPF barracks, and a sentry challenges us. We give the password in unison, and she admits us. We head down the well-lit hallway to our quarters. In the light, I see Alexander clearly for the first time tonight. His skin is gray with exhaustion and a muscle flickers beneath his left eye. His beard, I notice with surprise, is ninety percent gray. when I first met him a year ago, there were only thin streaks of gray in the sable brown.
We stop in front of my door. “Goodnight, my dear,” he says, leaning to plant a kiss on my forehead. “Sleep well.”
The moment for the “you’re my father” conversation has passed. We’re too tired. Tomorrow. “You, too.”
I enter my room, not even bothering to turn on the light, scuff off my boots, and fall face down toward the hard mattress. I’m asleep almost before I land.
The next morning I seek out Wyck who wasn’t at breakfast. I find him in the armory, where Idris has him divvying up the weapons cache for delivery to three other Defiance cells. Idris doesn’t think I have a “need to know,” so he won’t tell me exactly where the weapons are going. I can’t help thinking that a Defier may aim one of these beamers, or the old-fashioned guns, at Saben someday. The intelligence he provides the Defiance is critical, but I wish he could leave the IPF and fight openly with us. I know his role as informer, as spy, grates on him.
The armory is a half-underground bunker, an echoing cavern of a place lit by harsh fluore
scent bulbs rather than the gentler biolume fixtures. Despite the glaring light, the place feels dark. The Florida Canton geology doesn’t lend itself to underground facilities—too much water too close to the surface—and I don’t like the sense of dirt pressing down on us. Irrational, I know. Racks and shelves of weapons, explosives, and combat gear line the walls and march in orderly aisles down the middle of the large room. Voices call to each other as Wyck’s troops move crates from the armory to a transport ACV parked outside the open door. When I call Wyck’s name, it echoes metallically. His response comes from the far end of the room.
I find him inspecting long tubular weapons in a special case. I don’t even know what they are.
“They’re ancient,” he says with the enthusiasm of a confirmed gadgeteer with a new toy. “From when there were planes. They’re man-portable surface-to-air missiles. I think they were called Stingers. Not much use these days—they don’t have the maneuverability to take down a micro-drone. When things settle down, though, I might fire one just for the hell of it.” He swings the metal case’s lid down and it clangs shut. A faded “Redstone Arsenal” is stenciled on the top.
He looks better than last night, his hazel eyes alight again, his brown hair crisp and clean. I hug him and he hugs me back for a long minute, his chest squishing my breasts, his back muscular under my hands. I’m glad we’re past the “will we/won’t we” be lovers thing and can hug without awkwardness. It’s comforting. “Did you ever think we’d come back?” I ask.
He shakes his head as he releases me. “Not in a million years. Do you know how Halla got here?”
I tell him what I learned from Proctor Theo. “I can’t help thinking it was because of me,” I conclude. “She overheard Loudon and his commander talking about me, planning to arrest me. She came to the MSFP to warn me. I’m afraid the surveillance cameras caught her, and either Loudon was arrested—maybe executed—because he was the source of the leak, or she found out they were coming for her and ran. Either way, it must have killed her to leave Little Loudon.”
“She saved both our lives,” Wyck says. We’re silent for a moment, each of us remembering Halla. Wyck clears his throat. “It’s strange to think that everything that’s happened to us in the last year has been because of a baby,” he says. “I mean, if Halla hadn’t gotten pregnant, and hadn’t wanted to raise the baby instead of turning it over to the Prags, we might still be living here. Well, you might. I’d’ve been inducted into the border guard and would probably be patrolling a beach somewhere, making sure immigrants with the flu don’t land and re-infect us all. Look at me now,” he said with a rueful smile. “I ran away to avoid joining the military, and here I am, drowning in weapons, commanding a squad.”
I smile. “Who knew, right? A screw-up like you.” Secretly, I’m proud of him. He’s commanding men twice his age and they respect him. He has a knack for military operations, for sussing out what the enemy’s going to do, that’s instinctual and almost uncanny. Even Idris admits no one else has Wyck’s edge, although he calls it “luck.”
“I lost five good men yesterday,” he says somberly, with one of his quicksilver mood changes. “The IPF fought hard. They’re well-trained, I’ll give them that. Disciplined. But we took them by surprise and we wanted it more. And now I’ve got to sort through all this hardware and figure out how to get it to—well, never mind where. And I’m short-handed this morning because half of my squad is on incinerator duty.”
I know that means they are cremating the remains of the Defiers and IPFers who died in yesterday’s battle. A clang from a couple of aisles over indicates one of his men has dropped something heavy. We don’t explode, so I assume it wasn’t volatile. Wyck mutters a curse and strides toward the commotion. I hear him chewing out the men who were careless. I walk toward the voices and bump into him as he comes around the corner. He steadies me with his hands on my upper arms.
“Sorry, Ev. Look, I’m going to be gone a few days, three at the most, making sure these shipments end up in the right hands. You’ll be okay?”
I nod, knowing he’s referring to the way Idris and I butt heads, and coping with Halla’s death.
Kissing my cheek, he says, “Don’t do anything stupid without me,” and sprints toward two of his troops who are about to dislodge a heavy crate from a high shelf. “Hey!”
Chapter Four
Within a few days, we’ve settled into a routine. We all eat in the IPF barracks, our meals cooked and served by the kitchen crew which quickly makes it plain they have no particular allegiance to the IPF or the government. They are men and women from Jacksonville, desperate to hold onto service that lets them take home fresh food to their families. The food is a welcome change from the dried fish we mostly consumed on the Belle. I could happily feast on fresh fruit and vegetables forever. Idris is trying to work out a way we can share more of the dome’s produce with Jacksonville’s citizens without compromising security—winning hearts and minds, he says. Wyck is gone, distributing the arsenal’s inventory to other Defiance cells, Rhedyn is making sure that production in the dome continues, Fiere is riding herd on the ACs and staff, and I’m making progress in the lab.
As he promised, Idris has assigned a Defier to record my every movement, it feels like, and it’s driving me crazy. Dr. Ronan, too. He’s threatened to drop the imager into a vat of hydrochloric acid. He doesn’t explicitly say so, but the implied threat is that Jereth will go into the vat, too, if he bugs him. Jereth is the kid’s name and he’s totally inoffensive: my height, with cowlicky hair the taupey-brown of mouse fur that sticks out at the crown and brow, a long skinny neck with a prominent Adam’s apple, and asthma that makes him wheeze. He tells me that Idris has instructed him to be my shadow, and holds up the slim imager as proof of his mission. At first glance, I thought he was younger than me, but as he hangs around, I begin to think he’s older, more like Idris’s age. He interviews me for two hours about the locust eradication project, dredging up every technical detail, even when I protest that no one else will be interested in that level of scientific minutiae. I explain about the virus that only infects the locusts, zeroing in on a specific genetic marker unique to dissosteira carolina, the plague locusts that sprang up when the birds died off. We don’t want to risk killing off other insects and disrupting the food chain further, I say, so it’s important to be precise with our targeting. Trying to keep it simple, I tell him (and the imager) about the plan to insert new genetic material that alters the female locusts’ reproductive equipment, making it impossible for them to deposit eggs.
“The virus is a ‘carrier,’ if you will,” I tell him, my enthusiasm making me talk faster, “that ‘infects’ the locusts with the mutated gene sequence that will make it impossible for them to reproduce. It will take many generations to eliminate them all, but once we introduce the virus and mutation into the population, it will happen. They’ll all die off.”
“Why not just infect them with some locust disease?” Jereth asks.
“Because even though we might kill off large numbers that way, there could be pockets of locusts that don’t get infected, or who become resistant to whatever disease we introduce. They would multiply and we’d be right back where we started. If we change their very DNA, that can’t happen.”
He asks intelligent questions about culturing the virus vector, and seems to know a lot about lab processes, but his being there still makes me itchy. The lab used to be the place where I found peace, a sense of purpose, but Jereth’s presence has disrupted that.
Consequently, by a week into our occupation, I’m ready to escape. The beach beckons me as it always has. It’s less than a mile away, and I’ve been dying to spend an hour—a half hour, even—on the shore since we arrived. We’re not supposed to leave the Kube compound, of course, but I have to to plant the corn we’re using to attract the locusts. We could do it on the compound, but we don’t want to risk it; a growing portion of the locust population is now carnivorous, and we don’t want to entic
e them to the Kube. Idris expects me to go armed, I’m sure, and take four or five Defiers to stand guard while I work, but I have other ideas. Early one morning, not long past sunrise, I ask Alexander if he will accompany me. After giving me a searching look, like he senses I’m up to something, he assents.
We take an ACV to carry the collapsible traps Wyck built, and the dozen corn plants we’re going to plant. Alexander carries a beamer, and I’ve got a pistol like the one Idris made me shoot at the brothel. We’re both helmetless. Alexander, because he complains his beard is too scratchy within the helmet’s confines, and me because I want to feel the sun on my hair and scalp. I feel almost like I’m escaping as I set the ACV in motion and we glide through the gate which the sentries close as soon as we’re clear. We’ve got a map that enables us to navigate the minefield Chrysto and his team have created around the compound. During the morning briefing Idris cautioned all of us to be extra alert, saying he’d received intelligence that IPF troops were on the move, heading south toward Jacksonville from Atlanta-area bases. “Stay alert,” he said as he dismissed us all.
I’m watchful as I pilot the ACV, scanning the cracked and potholed road ahead of us, and the mounds of kudzu obscuring old dwellings, vehicles, and other immobile objects. I catch glints of metal and glass behind the chartreuse vines, and wonder what an archeologist might find if she could excavate beneath the tangle. Alexander is similarly alert, and he stands guard when we pull into a clearing and I dig holes for the cornstalks and plant them, tamping the earth tightly around them. As always, it feels good to plant something, but I feel a hint of guilt that I’m setting these plants up for destruction. Silly, I reprimand myself, giving the earth at the base of the last plant a final pat. Returning to the ACV, I get out the wire mesh locust cages and assemble them the way Wyck showed me. It’s an easy process, and twenty minutes later two cages surround the corn plants. They’re about six feet high, three feet deep and three feet wide. Wyck’s constructed them on wheels so we can tow them back to the Kube when we succeed in trapping the bugs. Locusts flying across an infrared beam will trigger the trap and the cage will close five minutes later. Wyck figured the lag time would allow the greatest number of locusts to enter the cage before the corn was completely consumed. I take a turn standing watch with the beamer, while Alexander erects a tripod and screws an imager to the top. It’s solar-powered and will transmit the video images the short distance to the Kube so we’ll know when the trap’s been sprung.
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 5
