“You know, she could have chosen any city other than DC,” Pierce said to Wilson’s image on the screen. “Isn’t it strange she’s here? In the lion’s den? NI headquarters?”
DC, like New York, had copied the other city-states, ringing the inner city with walls. Clearing the postwar rubble around it with armies of bulldozers. And giving up on fighting the shantytowns and soovie parks that kept returning. Influentials needed cheap help, supplied by desperate Industrials who made no demands for any kind of government infrastructure.
“Stranger that the same night we find her,” Wilson answered, “we have to stealth chopper her friends out of a soovie camp right outside DC.”
“I’ve given that a lot of thought,” Pierce said. “Can’t think of anything else except coincidence. It happens. Not coincidence that they are nearby. That’s why we had them tracked from the Carolinas, and we were in alert mode here in DC. But coincidence that the near-riot happens the same night we finally find her.”
“Still don’t like it,” Wilson growled. “Got the situation with the kid with the glasses under control?”
Theo. But Pierce knew Wilson wasn’t a details person.
“Avery’s going to try a song and dance on them at the hospital. We’ll be able to track them once they leave. If it’s not coincidence, we’ll find out soon enough.”
“In the meantime?” Wilson asked.
“Holly and Jeremy are putting heat on some of the locals. Holly will be here any minute to discuss it. I’ll let you know if there’s anything new, but I’m confident we’ll get her. Soon.” Pierce paused, then spoke in a softer tone. “This one seems different, doesn’t it?”
Wilson was more cynical. “She can fly. It’s not our job to ask anything about that. Find her. Move on to the next job. Keep the wheels turning.”
“Got that message loud and clear. Just like every time you’ve delivered it about this operation.”
“We both need to keep our heads down on this one,” Wilson said. “This is way bigger than anything you and I want to deal with except on a need-to-know basis. You got that loud and clear too. Right?”
Pierce leaned forward to the computer screen, sensing Wilson was finished and about to go. “Got it. You and Elizabeth doing okay?”
Pierce didn’t have to explain. He was good enough friends with Wilson. Trouble was, it seemed they didn’t get together much these days.
“It’s not getting worse,” Wilson said. “I suppose that’s the best we could ask for at this point.”
“Can’t imagine what it’s like.” Pierce danced around the word leukemia. “Luke’s only eight.”
Wilson gave Pierce a grim smile. “What it’s like is that you’d take it on yourself if you could take it from your kid. And that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to stop his pain, even if it meant putting a noose around your neck and jumping off a building.” Wilson stopped himself. “Sorry.”
“Let me know what I can do,” Pierce said. “Really.”
“Get this done; then get yourself over to our place and help me grill some Freddy Flintstone steaks, and make sure you don’t leave until there’s a couple empty bottles of red.”
The screen went black as Wilson clicked off before Pierce could answer.
Pierce could guess why. Wilson didn’t want Pierce noticing how hard Wilson had to fight to blink back his tears.
FOURTEEN
Hungry?” the man asked. He pointed to a tray with green gelatin and stale toast. “I can make sure to get you something a little better than the hospital food.”
Theo was hungry.
“You’re from the government,” Theo answered, ignoring his hunger. He sat in a chair beside Billy, who was unconscious, his massive body filling the hospital bed completely, drip tubes in arms, breathing steadily. His right bicep was heavily bandaged. “Then tell me what’s going on. One second, me and Billy are going to fight Vore. The next, I wake up here.”
Theo had his arms crossed, staring at the blur of some big guy across the room who had just introduced himself as Avery from some agency. National Intelligence. Theo was having a hard time concentrating. His nose hurt. Not that he needed the pain as a reminder. Along with the usual blur, white fuzz filled the foreground of his vision. He’d already gingerly run his fingers across it, so he knew it was a wide swath of bandage across the bridge of his nose, pulling tight on the skin of his face. Cotton filled his nostrils. He had to breathe through his mouth, and his upper palate was dry.
“How about thanks?” Avery said. “You notice your nose is fixed.”
“But not my glasses.” Theo wasn’t giving this guy anything. The hospital felt like a prison. Theo knew a lot about prison.
“To your left. On the bed tray.”
Theo squinted. He had to resort to feeling around. His fingers bumped glasses frames. He snatched them off the tray. He ran his fingers over the frames and felt some bubbles where glue had dried unevenly. He put them on and winced at the pressure on the bridge of his nose but decided the pain was well worth the cleared vision.
Theo saw that the big man across the room was old enough to have wrinkles around the corners of his eyes. Short, cropped dark hair but bald across the top of a wide head. Sitting relaxed, legs crossed, in a black suit. Brown tie. Same kind of outfit as the men who had come to their apartment in Lynchburg and asked questions about Caitlyn, promising them money if they turned her in. Theo and Billy had done just the opposite—given Caitlyn warning, then run away, abandoning the apartment, the work permits, and becoming Illegals in a soovie park. Even here, this close to DC, they thought they were safe from government. He and Billy had believed that soovie camps were too unstructured and chaotic and had too many other Illegals for the government to track them down.
But somehow the government had.
Theo knew this conversation was about Caitlyn but wasn’t going to show it. He studied the government man and pressed his lips together in a subconscious gesture of intended continued silence.
Avery looked amused, as if he understood that Theo was seeing him with fresh eyes. “It was the best we could do during the night to put them back together. By the thickness of those lenses, you must be blind without them.”
“Hyperopia. Got it real bad. Means I’m farsighted. Can’t count my own fingers without my glasses.”
“Yeah. You check out fine otherwise. Doctors examined you same time as they did your friend. That thick scar on your right forearm. How’d you get that?”
“Not your business.” In Appalachia, Theo had escaped from a Factory. Only way he could stay free was if he lost the tracking device that was put in every prisoner. He’d been forced to dig it out with a knife. Himself. The subsequent infection and fever had almost killed him.
“The report’s got you at five feet four inches,” Avery said. “Eighty-two pounds. You better hope you grow some, talking like that. Not always going to have your friend around to protect you.”
“He’s going to be okay. Right? And what about Phoenix? You didn’t leave her there in the soovie park.”
“Suddenly we’re friends, when you need something.”
“He’s going to be okay, isn’t he? And if you left Phoenix there by herself, you and me got nothing left to talk about, because as soon as Billy can walk, we’re going straight back to the soovie park.”
“The girl’s getting medical attention. Here. And your friend is all right, only because he’s bigger than an ox. The death doctor put a chemical soup into him that would have killed anyone else in twenty minutes. As it was, he nearly went anyway. Took a total blood transfusion to clean him out. You have any idea how much that costs?”
Theo had a good idea it meant that Avery and the government wanted something. Theo also had a good idea what that something was. Just like before.
“What do you want?” Theo said. He knew it was about Caitlyn. Like before. He was also wondering how the government had found him and Billy. “People who live in soovie parks don’t have much mo
ney.”
“Tell me about yourself,” Avery said. “Not much chance you were born in a soovie park. What’re you running from?”
“How about explaining what happened last night?” Theo had no doubt the government man was going to get around to a lot more questions. Once he found out that Theo wasn’t going to answer a single one of them, he’d leave. Theo figured he’d better get his own questions in first.
“Sure,” Avery said, very relaxed. “We heard things were about to get real ugly in the soovie park. We got there in a chopper. Dispersed the crowd. Took you out of harm’s way.”
“I could figure that for myself. How? I was so scared that I thought I was going to die.”
“Not your business.” Avery grinned. “That’s a phrase I just learned from someone.”
“How’d you know what was happening?” Theo asked. “With the crowd. To come in and fly us away?”
“You’re funny,” Avery said. “What makes you think you’re valuable enough to be rescued?”
“We’re here. You spent money cleaning out Billy’s blood. You must have thought we were worth it.”
Avery grunted.
“How’d you know what was happening?” Theo asked. “Then I want to know what makes us valuable.”
“There’s always someone in a soovie camp paid to pass on information to the government. Cell phone on a private frequency. Think we ever want some kind of organized uprising surprising the people in the city?”
This didn’t sound like a lie to Theo. Influentials worked hard to make sure there weren’t any riots. Too many Industrials and Illegals. Not many Influentials.
“And what makes us so valuable to fly us out?”
“Wasn’t you we were protecting,” Avery said. “It was Phoenix’s mother. She, um, knew a lot of men. Heard lots of stuff from all sorts of places. She was someone paid to pass on information.”
“Maybe you could have got there before the death doctor.”
“Maybe. We didn’t know how sick she was until it was too late.”
“You went in to rescue a dead woman?” Theo asked. He began to think he shouldn’t show too much suspicion in case the government really didn’t want something from him or Billy.
“Went in to rescue a memory stick,” the government man answered. “Had a bunch of information on it that lets us know who runs things. What they might have planned. You know as well as I do how the scavengers take everything in the first half hour after someone dies.”
“Then I guess you’re done with us,” Theo said.
“How about answering one question then?” Avery said. Pleasant smile.
“Probably not,” Theo said. It was going to be about Caitlyn.
“There’s a second reason you had value to us.” Avery leaned forward. “What you two showed was real moral courage. The government needs people like that. So here’s my question. You and your friend want to go back into another soovie park and start passing information to us? Money’s good, and we’ll make sure you’re always protected. Just like last night.”
“Nope.”
“Too bad. Guess we’ll have to turn Phoenix loose. By herself. Outside the city walls. Unless you want to change your mind. Then we’ll make sure she gets adopted by a nice family inside the city.”
FIFTEEN
The way I remember it, they didn’t teach us much history in Appalachia,” Abe said. “Doubt that’s changed.”
In Lynchburg, blinking against sunshine that he just couldn’t force himself to accept as real after all his time in the depths of the mountain, Mason had just followed Abe out of a set of steps from an electric train that looped around the city, just inside the walls. Boarding the train, he’d watched Abe swipe his right fingers once, then twice, past a post with sensors to pay for both their fares, explaining that for some items, a password wasn’t necessary because the purchase was too small and it was more expedient to let people move through as quickly as possible.
Mason wasn’t asking many questions, although he had plenty. Appalachia was a state where the size of towns had been limited to ensure crime rates stayed low. Here, he was in a city with people and streets and buildings crowded into a density that he would not have believed without walking through it.
Not that it frightened him. Or made him wish for Appalachia. He’d dreamed of this. A larger playground for a person of his appetites. No need to bow to religious leaders at every turn. Excitement and anonymity among throngs of people instead of standing out to be stared at in small cloistered communities where every movement was regulated for conformity.
But he needed to become as familiar with the territory as possible. So he tried to soak in what he could, occasionally craning his head awkwardly because his vision was limited to one eye. One thing that distracted him was all the advertisements with writing. Appalachia didn’t have advertising. And reading was outlawed.
Not that he cared much. Here, on large posters, scantily clad female bodies advertised products. He didn’t need to read to enjoy that. No wonder Appalachia didn’t allow this stuff.
As for learning more, on the train, Abe had been a nonstop tour guide anyway, pointing out items of interest to Mason. In this way, it was good that Abe had escaped Appalachia too. Anyone else would not have had the perspective on what Mason knew and didn’t know about the Outside world.
“School shoved too much history down my throat,” Mason grumbled in answer to Abe’s question. “Hated it.”
“That was history from Appalachia’s point of view,” Abe said, walking at a moderate pace, obviously relishing his role as a tutor. “There’s a lot you’re going to have to unlearn.”
“Not that interested,” Mason said. “Is that the apartment ahead?”
They were going to visit another Appalachian refugee. Mason knew he was in danger. Abe had been out of Appalachia too long to know Mason’s real identity. No guarantee that would be the same at the apartment.
“Lot of stuff happened in America during and after Water Wars,” Abe continued happily. “New national security measures that overrode any civil liberties. Reconstitutions.”
“Life is what it is,” Mason answered. After listening to nonstop babble on the high-speed from Lynchburg to DC, Mason just wanted the old man to shut up. Mason was irritated anyway. The sensors at the cash-free entrance to the train gates had not required a password. How could Mason get it off the old man until he watched him punch it in? “Knowing how things got the way they did doesn’t change the way it is now.”
“Doesn’t it matter to you how Canada became the new Saudi Arabia when water became worth almost as much as oil? Then lost all power because they didn’t have the national will to build an army to protect themselves and their lakes?”
“Nope. Don’t even care to know what Saudi Arabia is.”
“Destruction of the American economy when the automotive industry crashed because the refineries had been bombed by the Muslim extremists who took control of Great Britain?”
Mason thought if he didn’t answer, the old man would get the hint. It didn’t work.
“Automobile graveyards when gas got too expensive? Tent cities replaced by soovie parks during the massive depression that followed the Water Wars? The soovie uprisings? The building of the walls around the cities? When I got out of Appalachia, I discovered decades of missing history.”
“Just miss my friends,” Mason said, determined to shut up the old man. “Be great to find them.”
It was a short walk past rows and rows of medium-sized square apartment blocks. Enough to make Mason miss the neat streets and welcoming porches of the houses in the small towns of Appalachia. But only if he were sentimental. Which he wasn’t.
“Medium strata,” Abe explained as they neared the end of the rows. “Nobody wealthy lives in this area. Just Invisibles like you and me. But the Illegals can’t hide here either. Most everyone from Appalachia gets to this area first.”
“Who pays?” Mason asked. If Mason ever went back inside Ap
palachia, all this information would be worth plenty to Bar Elohim, the nation’s great religious leader.
“We’re like the early church,” Abe said. “Each of us gives as much back to the body as possible, easing the transition for whoever else makes it here. Once you’re settled in, you’ll get your chance to contribute and help other refugees. The important thing is not to dream about becoming an Influential. That’s impossible. It’s a closed system. Instead, remain grateful that you’re part of the invisible middle class.”
“Yeah,” Mason said. “Everything looks the same here. Which apartment are we visiting?”
Abe pointed at a mark on one of the doors. “Right there, of course. The fish symbol. Just like the early church.”
Mason saw a sideways double loop, with one end cut off. He guessed, with enough imagination, it could be a symbol for a fish.
“See,” Abe said, “the age of Pisces—that means fish—began around 210 BC, and Jesus took the sign of the fish as his main symbol, and Virgo the Virgin for—”
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