Infinity Base

by Diana Peterfreund

  “That’s just it,” Mom replied, her tone toxic, “I don’t trust you.”

  I blew out a sigh of frustration. This was getting us nowhere. We needed to go find Dad. Now. Before it was too late.

  “Please,” I begged. “We have to try to get my father back.”

  “How?” Savannah asked.

  “The same way Dani got us out,” I said. “She can drive to the launch facility and bring back their pods. But she has to do it before they get put on a spaceship and launched into orbit.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Mom said suddenly. “Dani should do that right now. I’ll stay with the children.”

  Dani glared at my mother. “Not on your life. You aren’t sneaking out of here without my help. You’d be caught in a second, and then I’d be done for, too.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Mom replied lightly.

  Dani and my mother continued their staring contest for another few seconds, then Dani turned to me. “Gillian, I’ll need your help to get your father.”

  I knew what Mom wanted, but I couldn’t pass on a chance to save Dad. “Okay.”

  “No!” my mother snapped. I wasn’t sure if it was at me or at Dani.

  “This is the only option.”

  “I will not allow you to manipulate my children or put them in danger.”

  “Come on, Dr. Seagret. You and I both know they’re already in danger.”

  Mom’s shoulders slumped, defeated, and as I turned toward Eric, Howard, and Savannah, I saw that Dani’s words had landed. Hard. They all looked scared to death.

  And I was pretty sure I was right there with them.

  “NOW, WHAT’S THE rule?” Dani said for what had to be the hundredth time. She sounded like my mother.

  “Stay hidden,” I replied. I lay on the floor in the backseat of Dani’s car, covered by a beige blanket.

  “And?”

  “And don’t get involved.” I sighed. The whole ride out to the launch facility, she’d made me repeat the promises I’d made to her and Mom before we’d left. Dani said she needed someone to serve as lookout, and help drive the getaway car.

  Except it was a self-driving car, so it was really more like instruct the getaway car when it was time to get away.

  “And pay attention to my texts,” she added.

  I nodded, clutching Dani’s phone in my hand. She’d installed her own voice model on the device, since her car would be keyed to her identity and voice, and would only work on her command. I could type in commands and the phone would speak in Dani’s own voice. “Yes. To the cargo door or the truck depot, depending on where you find Dad and Nate.”

  “And if I tell you to run?”

  “Back home to your place to get the others, don’t wait for you,” I recited dutifully. That was the part of the plan I didn’t like. Mom and Dani expected me to just abandon all hope of rescuing Dad and Nate at the first sign of trouble. “But if they catch you, aren’t they going to think it’s odd that your car is driving around? Won’t they wonder who it is in your house?”

  “If they catch me,” Dani said, “we’ve got bigger problems.”

  I was quiet for a moment, considering that. Dani was our only hope right now, the only person on the entire Guidant campus who we could trust.

  Or at least sort of trust.

  “Thank you for doing this,” I blurted. “You know . . . giving up your life and your home and stuff. For us.”

  “It’s not for you.” There was something odd in her voice, some little catch I’d never heard before, and I wished I could lift up the blanket and look her in the face. She cleared her throat and went on. “I told you. I think they’re making a mistake. This whole thing with your father, with Underberg . . . it’s just wrong.”

  “It’s not too late to make it right,” I suggested. “My dad will know how to do it, how to get the truth about the Shepherds out there.”

  She snorted. “Right. The truth. Sometimes I forget I’m talking to a child.”

  I picked up the corner of the blanket and peered up at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She turned in her seat and met my eyes. “It means there’s no such thing as ‘the truth,’ Gillian. Just what people decide they want to believe is right and wrong. What they are willing to fight for and what they aren’t.”

  “That’s not . . .” I trailed off before I said something she’d laugh at, like that’s not true.

  “Think about it. We’re using up the Earth’s resources at an alarming rate. We kill off entire species, burn fossil fuels, make the planet warmer. Look at all the problems we’re seeing due to climate change—droughts and floods and crazy weather and ice caps melting. It’ll be a disaster and the human race will suffer. That’s the ‘truth,’ isn’t it?”

  “Um . . . I mean, yes?”

  “But other people say that story causes enormous trouble for people by taking away their fossil fuel jobs or forcing them to use different farming or manufacturing methods that are more expensive or more difficult or won’t feed or employ or support as many people. It would be a disaster. The human race would suffer. And that’s the truth, too, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Maybe I should hide back under my blanket.

  She leaned in toward me and dropped her voice. “They are both the truth. The climate is changing, and it’s our fault, and we’re hurting the planet and ourselves. But if we stop the practices that are hurting the planet, then we’ll hurt people who rely on those practices. All these stories can be true at once. And if they are all equally true, then they are all equally false as well.”

  A lump rose in my throat, and it took a minute before I could trust myself enough to speak. “There’s still right and wrong.”

  “Sure there is,” Dani said. “We all learn right from wrong, don’t we? Except we don’t all learn the same right and the same wrong. Your father taught you secrets were wrong. The Shepherds taught me they were right, because they served a higher purpose. That’s our story, our truth. The Earth will not be able to support humanity forever, whether it’s something we do to it, or something that happens all by itself, like an astronomical event. And you can’t have it both ways. People are either going to hurt now, or hurt later, and you have to make that decision. The Shepherds make the decision to hurt the people now and protect the people later. That’s what being a Shepherd means.” She sat back in her seat and stared out the windshield. “Except now I’m throwing that all away.”

  “Because you decided to fight for something else?”

  Dani said nothing for a long moment, and then spoke. “You promised to stay hidden, remember?”

  We sat in silence for a few more minutes, then the car pulled to a stop.

  “You know the drill,” she warned me one last time, then departed.

  I lay there, hidden, and thought about what Dani had said. I didn’t like it. The truth was real, a real thing, that could be touched and held and seen like Omega City or the Underberg battery. It could be researched and revealed, like one of Howard’s codes or my father’s histories. It was more—had to be more—than just whatever story you decided to believe.

  In my hands, the phone buzzed. I checked the screen, expecting to see a text from Dani telling me where to go. But instead I found the display showed a call coming in.

  From Elana Mero.

  The phone buzzed and buzzed. I didn’t know what Elana was used to. Did Dani always answer her calls? Was Dani even now answering her other phone, wherever she happened to be?

  The phone stopped vibrating for a moment. Then it gave one long, slightly different buzz.

  A text from Elana.

  Why are you at the launch facility?

  I swallowed thickly. That’s right; the Shepherds could track everyone, all the time. I thought I knew the drill, but we hadn’t planned for me to actually speak to Elana Mero.

  Dani?

  Hands shaking, I typed back.

  Just checking that everything is ready
with the cargo.

  Was that something Dani would say? Was it something she would do? Maybe I should just ignore these messages.

  Too late for that, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be getting the voice models ready. Anton has the launch covered. It’s out of your hands now.

  I had no idea what that meant. Maybe I should text Dani and tell her to get back here and talk to her boss before I ruined everything. I didn’t dare respond.

  The phone began to vibrate with a call again. Elana! I wasn’t sure what to do this time. I could hardly pretend Dani didn’t have her phone on her. We’d just been texting! The vibrations went on and on.

  One missed call. Two. Elana was not taking no for answer. What if she sent someone over to Dani’s house? I was putting everyone in danger.

  The phone buzzed again. My hand started to shake as I thought about Eric and Mom and my friends. They were sitting ducks at Dani’s house.

  Wait! I could use the voice model program. Except that was probably way against Mom and Dani’s rules. I whimpered. Any second the phone would go to voice mail. Again.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I held my breath, switched to the right program, and pressed the answer button.

  “Hello,” I typed, and Dani’s voice spilled from the speaker.

  “I know you’re upset,” Elana said without preamble. “But you have to understand this is for the best.”

  My lips closed over a squeak of protest and my fingers moved furiously over the keys. “No, I don’t understand.” Dani’s voice spoke all my words. “The Seagrets are innocent. You should let them go.”

  “Right,” said Elana. “With all the information they have and nothing to hold over them? Do you know how much damage they can do to this organization? Alone was bad enough, but with Underberg threatening all our work? We have to protect Guidant, even if that means sacrificing Infinity Base.”

  My eyes narrowed. She was doing this to protect Guidant? Her stupid tech company? I thought Shepherds sacrificed everything for the good of humanity.

  “What about the Shepherds?” I typed and Dani asked.

  Elana gave a world-weary sigh. “You and Anton, I swear. I feel like I spend half my life cleaning up his messes. Stop being such purists. Those old ideals are nonsense. No one in the last generation had the slightest ability to imagine what we could become. They thought we had to work with governments to achieve our goals. Aloysius Underberg, your mother, playing nice all those years with NASA . . . it was a waste of time. We have more power, more resources. Protect Guidant and we can make a hundred Infinity Bases. Destroy Guidant, and the entire Shepherd mission will go down in flames.”

  I remained quiet.

  “Come on, Dani, I know you agree. The Shepherds are what matters. We protect our own, but you know that means making compromises. You’re used to that.”

  Except Dani had turned on the Shepherds . . . hadn’t she?

  I felt a low rumbling all around me. “What is that?” I typed furiously, though Dani’s voice sounded oddly calm.

  “The launch, of course. I’m not wasting any more time. It should rendezvous with Infinity Base in about twenty-four hours.”

  I opened my mouth to scream and the door of the car flung open. Dani plucked the phone out of my hands and hung up.

  I lay on the floor of the car, gasping for breath.

  They’d shot my father into space.

  They’d shot my father into space.

  “Breathe,” Dani said, hopping into the front seat and closing the door behind her. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  5

  SIX SIDES TO EVERY STORY

  “THE GOOD NEWS,” DANI ANNOUNCED, IN HER AGGRAVATINGLY MATTER-OF-FACT way, “is that I did hack into the digital output and life-support system of your transport pods to make it seem like you were all safely stowed away in stasis. They think you’re part of the payload on the transport shuttle. No one will be looking for you for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh, goody,” said Eric.

  Meanwhile, my father was shooting into space, a prisoner of the Shepherds, who wanted him and Dr. Underberg dead.

  By this time, we’d all convened in Dani’s living room. I was still feeling a little weak and was curled up on the couch, idly flipping through photo albums of Dani and other Shepherds posing in front of early rocket launch tests. It was all I was capable of. I’d hyperventilated the whole way back to Dani’s house, then thrown up again, for good measure.

  If it was so hard for us to get to Dad when he was merely in hypothermic torpor in the back of a Shepherd truck, how would we ever save him . . . up there?

  Mom was presiding over us from the big armchair, and Eric sat at her feet, knees drawn up to his chest. Nearby, Howard knelt in front of Savannah, the top half of his utility suit bunched around his waist, while she tried to reattach the zipper pull he’d broken off yesterday.

  No one seemed to know what came next.

  “So what now?” I asked. “What do we do now?”

  Dani looked at Mom. Mom looked at Dani. Neither said anything, but they didn’t need to. They thought Dad and Nate were toast.

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Dani said. “Not right at this moment, anyway. Luckily, we have some time to figure it out. The shuttle is going to take a day to reach Infinity Base. It’s not a lot of time, but it’s something.”

  Barely.

  “We need to plan our own escape,” said Mom.

  “But—” I began.

  She held up her index finger. “Gillian, we can’t stay here. There’s nothing in Eureka Cove for us, and every second we’re here makes it more likely they’ll find us.” She turned to Dani. “When was the last time you slept?”

  Dani rolled her eyes. “I gave up sleep when I was twenty. But maybe I’ll take a shower. Don’t know when I’ll have another chance.”

  “Don’t you want to chain us to the radiator or something before you go?” Eric asked drily.

  Dani paused.

  “My son is joking,” Mom clarified. “We’re not going to leave.”

  Dani still hesitated, watching us warily.

  Mom threw her hands up in the air. “Please. I can’t walk out of here with four kids in tow, and your stupid car won’t work for me. We’re not going anywhere without you. Take a shower!”

  Wordlessly, Dani turned on her heel and departed.

  Mom blew out a breath. “And here I thought your father was paranoid.”

  “You can’t be paranoid if people are really after you,” I quoted. Dad used to say that all the time. And he’d been right. People were after him—after all of us.

  I gripped the photo album tightly. Dani’s house was full of them. And Eric thought Dad’s hobbies were weird. Growing up a Shepherd must have been beyond bizarre. All Dani’s pictures were with the same two or three people, and usually at least one of them was in a lab coat. Didn’t she ever have any fun? I squinted at a shot of two kids running around in front of what looked like a rocket launch pad. The little brown girl with the beaded braids must have been Dani. The other kid was a white boy a few years older with dark hair styled in a bowl cut.

  Savannah groaned in frustration and dropped the top of Howard’s suit. “I don’t think this is going to attach again. The loopy thing is warped from you chewing on it all summer,” Savannah said. She held up the little pull. It was about the size of a dollar coin, but shaped like a hexagon. “Look, it’s all twisted and broken.” She squeezed it with her fingers, and it crumpled up like a paper fortune-teller into a little star-shaped pyramid.

  “Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Will you trade suits with me?”

  “Ew, no,” said Savannah. “Yours is disgusting.”

  Mom jumped up and started pacing back and forth, nervous energy pouring off her like a wake behind a boat.

  Somehow, this scared me more than anything else that had happened today. We’d been in tough spaces before. I’d been trapped in a flood
ed underground city, holding my breath and swimming through tunnels until I thought my lungs would burst. I’d outrun a rocket ship.

  But I didn’t know what to do this time, and it didn’t look like the grown-ups did, either.

  Eric looked at me, worried, and I knew he was thinking the same thing as I was. We were in hiding from the Shepherds—again—and Mom was freaking out, just like when Dad made us hide off grid. I wished we could go back to just a few days ago, when all we had to worry about was whether we were going to move to Idaho and live with Mom.

  Howard’s forehead wrinkled. “But I want a complete suit.”

  Savannah sighed, taking pity on him, and reached for her own zipper pull. “Here, go get me a pair of scissors or something. You can have mine.”

  “Where am I supposed to find scissors?”

  Abruptly, Eric stood up. “Come on. Dani’s a computer engineer. She probably has wire cutters in her desk or something.” They went off in search of tools.

  Mom watched them go. “Well, that’s one way to keep busy. The quest for the zipper pull.” She turned to me. “How are you?”

  “Scared,” I answered honestly.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something more—something stupid and untrue like it’s okay—then thought better of it. “Yeah.”

  I toyed with the corner of the photo album I was holding. “Nothing we’ve tried to do has worked. I let Dani knock us all out—I let her hurt Howard—and we’re still stuck here.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said, joining me on the couch. “You didn’t let her hurt Howard. That was all on her.”

  But I was on a roll now. “And I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here. If we even raise our voices too loud her neighbors will hear us. We didn’t get to Dad and Nate in time. And now we can’t get to them at all.”

  “Gillian—”

  “No, Mom,” I said, my voice shaky. “I’m not stupid. They’re in outer space. And Elana told me herself—she’ll destroy Infinity Base before she lets Dr. Underberg escape again. We’re not getting them back.”