by Karen Healey
But somebody knew. Somebody wanted to Save Tegan—and presumably, her thirdie sidekick. No one in Australia would ever pretend I was their first priority. I was along for the ride; the person pulled out to perform when Tegan wasn’t available.
I made sure to thank the tailor when the fitting was over. She told me her name was Natasha.
More food, more exercise, then rehearsal for the President’s Ball tomorrow. Diane didn’t bother to stick with me for every minute when I was inside the Melbourne facility, but she always turned up when I sang. It wasn’t because she enjoyed my voice; she just liked watching me squirm as I performed on command.
She didn’t seem to be getting her usual thrill today. As I sent my voice through the umpteenth rendition of “Blackbird,” she was actually frowning.
“Music, stop,” she said, and the house computer cut off the audio. My skin tightened. Interruptions were never good.
“Tell me about Joph Montgomery.”
Joph? “What about her?”
She sighed. “Don’t try to be clever, Abdi. It doesn’t look well on you.”
I was clever. Her condescension scraped at my nerves. “I’m sorry, Diane,” I said humbly. “I don’t understand the question.”
Diane held up her fingers, ticking off points. “She was your classmate at Elisa Murdoch Academy. She was the chemist making the drugs for you to smuggle back to your filthy little country. She had a starring role in Tegan’s political temper tantrum, helping you two and Bethari Miyahputri break into that cryostorage facility so you could get footage of frozen refugees and fill my life with many, many problems.”
Joph had been shot in that cryostorage facility, a bullet going through her thigh. The last I saw of her, she’d been telling Tegan and me to run. I had no idea what had happened to her since.
I’d asked, of course. But no one had given me answers.
“Is she all right?” I ventured.
“I ask the questions, Abdi. Are you two friends?”
Though it would have been a catastrophically bad move, I nearly laughed in her face.
Until Tegan woke from her death sleep, Joph had been the only person at school who had seemed to like me for me. I’d been there on a music scholarship, half celebrity, half curiosity, but I’d been secretly working on my own goal of getting vaccines out of Australia, and therefore trying to keep my profile as low as possible.
So, while Bethari and her political crowd had been elaborately respectful, I hadn’t wanted to risk getting close to them. And some of the other students had done their best to make me pay for the massive mistake of setting my thirdie foot inside their privileged firster walls. The rest had been busy with their own lives and ignored me.
But Joph was different. She was kind, and funny, and listened to me. In a quiet way, she cared about the world as much as I did. In her tiny, hot haven in the janitorial closet off the main hallway, Joph and I became something much more important than friends. We were allies.
Joph made thousands of little pink pills in her home chemistry lab, and she gave them all to me. I passed them to my Australian shipping contact, the man who called himself Digger Jones. And he got them to Northeast Africa, to the people who could not afford the patented, name brand, incredibly expensive cure for the deadly Travis Fuller Syndrome. Joph didn’t look much like a hero, but she was one of the smartest people I had ever met, and she was responsible for saving thousands of lives.
“We were friends,” I said cautiously.
Diane’s mouth creased. “Well, this friend has scored an invitation to the President’s Ball. Her mother’s a member of Parliament for Victoria, and she’s the plus one.”
Joph was alive and some form of free, or Diane wouldn’t be concerned about her presence at the ball. I started to have some thoughts about where the Save Tegan movement might have come from.
“I’m telling you this in advance, Abdi, because I want to be very clear about my expectations. You’ll be given a chance to chat with Joph Montgomery in private, and you will be very sorry you haven’t been in touch and absolutely sincere about the importance of the Ark Project.”
I kept my face schooled to attentive blankness. I had to be very careful. “Yes, Diane.”
“I know you, Abdi. I know every thought that goes through your devious brain. You’re right now thinking that you can take advantage of this, and I’m here to tell you that you can’t and won’t. If there is a whisper, a tiny gesture, anything I don’t like, Tegan will pay. You will pay. And Joph Montgomery will pay.” She stepped right up to me and pulled the microphone out of my hands. “Joph is a traitor, Abdi, and she massively violated medical patents. She got away with it because she’s rich and her mother’s powerful. But with a girl like that, no one would be surprised if we found more evidence of different crimes. We could find evidence that even a mother couldn’t deny.”
Or you could plant it, I thought. Neither of us had to say it. Diane’s threat was clear.
“I won’t,” I said, feeling ill at the thought.
“She’d be in an ordinary jail,” Diane went on, drifting one of her long fingers down my cheek. “Not your plushy setup. Terrible things can happen to people in jail, do you understand?”
“Yes!” I said. For a moment, the room wavered around me and I saw Joph instead. Joph stabbed. Joph beaten. Joph’s sweet smile and calm voice cut off forever. “I understand, Diane! I won’t do anything. I promise.”
“There’s my good boy.” She hooked her fingers into my collar. “Now, come to bed. You have a long day tomorrow. We have to make sure you’re ready for it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Cadenza
Even in the sound-insulated waiting room, I could hear the noise from the event hall. I’d thought the public’s greed for this kind of function might have been sated, but Tegan’s tour had apparently whetted their appetite, and they were ready to see her triumphant return.
But not as ready as I was. When Tegan came through the door, I was on my feet so fast Diane actually reached for one of her hidden weapons.
Normally, we wore similar clothing—sharp-cut shirts and pants, impeccably tailored. Tegan was nearly always in blues, me in greens and yellows. We had to look serious, after all, like responsible young people championing a bright future. But tonight was supposed to be a glittering event, with President Nathan Phillip Cox here to lend his blessing to the fund-raising efforts. Tonight I was wearing a sleeveless chrome vest over dark trousers, an elaborate gold cord tied around my upper arm like the black one Ruby Simons had worn.
And Tegan looked like a European princess. They’d dressed her in a long white gown, with a shimmer of iridescent dust over her bare collarbones. SADU didn’t want to remind people too much of the real, risk-taking girl who had thrown herself off a two-story building to escape a military hospital. At an event like this, it made sense that they’d try to make her look like a fairy-tale figure instead—Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. She was supposed to play the role of a naive ingenue wakened from a deathlike sleep, with the future itself cast as a handsome prince, giving Tegan a second chance at life.
It was a lovely tale.
And much, much safer than the real one.
“Abdi,” Tegan said, and walked toward me, swaying gracefully in her heels. Before the tour, she’d still been unsteady, but now she handled her shoes as easily as she did her guitar.
Her minder was right behind her. Lat was youngish, and short, and muscular, and he had a scar through the left cheek that my older sister, who liked swashbuckling stories, might have described as “rakish.” His eyes were a solid dark brown that seemed black, and they were as flat and merciless as the eyes of a tiger shark I’d seen in the Red Sea. I hated him almost as much as I hated Diane, and I feared for Tegan in his hands. Her old minder had vanished after Tegan’s third hunger strike, never to be seen again. After Lat’s arrival, Tegan had very quickly adapted.
I put out my hand, and she grasped it tight. This was the single kind
of touch we were allowed. Hugging was too close; we might whisper to each other then. “I’m so sorry,” I said, trying and failing to put out of my head an image of the way I’d seen her on Diane’s computer—crying helplessly on the ground and begging Lat to stop.
Tegan’s hand was thin, but the grip was strong, and her exposed collarbones didn’t have that sunken appearance I’d learned to fear. “I understand,” she said. “I know you won’t do it again. Tonight you’ll be perfect, won’t you?”
She said it without a hint of sarcasm. That was the worst thing about being constantly observed, constantly exposed; we never knew if the other was being sincere or saying what they thought would keep our handlers happy.
“Joph’s coming tonight,” I said, watching her face.
Her expression didn’t change. “Lat told me. It will be nice to tell her a little about the work we’ve been doing.”
My stomach roiled. Diane smirked. “How was the tour, Tegan?” she asked.
“It was interesting. We went to a lot of places. Canada wouldn’t let us in, of course.”
Canada maintained that Australia’s No Migrant policy was a contravention of human rights and wouldn’t allow an Australian citizen to cross its borders except as a refugee seeking asylum. Diane shifted; this conversation was too close to topics we weren’t allowed to mention.
“So I performed in a cruiser anchored in international borders,” Tegan said quickly. She’d noticed Diane move, too. “It was fun. Lots of sponsors came. How are you, Abdi?”
“I’m fine. I missed you,” I said, ignoring Lat’s disbelieving grunt.
“I missed you, too,” she said. “Planes are much fancier than in my time. Before it was cramped and noisy. And no food. On tour, it was like a restaurant in the air.”
My face stayed smooth, no matter that I wanted to curl my lip. “Some people can afford luxury.”
“Ahem,” Lat said.
“It was an observation, Lat. Abdi wasn’t being seditious.” Tegan said it with the tiniest hint of irritation in her voice, and I could have wept at this signal that she was still in there somewhere, that this smooth, shiny creature wasn’t entirely remade to SADU’s exacting specifications.
“Courtesy, Tegan,” Diane reproved. “Goodness me, have you lost your manners on tour?”
“Tegan was very good,” Lat said, and bestowed a smile upon his charge. She smiled back, her dark eyes lighting, and I hated him a little more.
“Well, no need for her to become lax now! And Abdi, do you really think such observations are helpful?”
“No, Diane. I’m sorry.”
“Good.” She touched her EarRing and nodded. “We’re up. Walk.”
Tegan and I shifted our grip so that we could hold hands side by side and walked the short distance from the waiting room to the stage entrance. President Cox was doing the standard spiel: new wonder, new borders, new phase for humanity. Tegan’s hand shifted, damp with sweat, and I could feel the slight tremor. She still had stage fright; she probably always would. Tegan’s true love was for the music itself, but they’d warped that into making her a showpiece. I’d always loved to perform; when I was too mired in my head to talk, I could always reach people with music. So they demanded performance of me on their terms, not mine, and had stopped me from reaching anyone at all.
The people in charge had imprisoned us and hurt us, and they’d done it so that we’d fix the public-relations problem they’d so richly deserved.
“Break a leg,” Diane whispered, and gently stroked the back of my neck. “And remember what I said about Joph.”
Yes. I would have to lie to her.
I would have to look into the face of my one Australian friend and tell her that everything she’d done to help me had been pointless. That her being shot had just been a little mistake, that the frozen children in the cryocontainers we’d filmed had chosen freely and happily to give up their lives here so they could work on a distant planet. If I went onto that stage, I would have to betray Joph, and myself, and Tegan, and I would have to keep doing it, over and over and over.
It would never stop.
It felt as if despair had grabbed my legs and pulled me under the surface of my turbulent emotions, stealing my breath and tightening my muscles. Tegan felt it through her grip on me, and her body language shifted in response. She caught the look on my face and whispered, “Not now.”
“… now, I am pleased to present to you the ambassadors for the Ark Project, Tegan Oglietti and Abdi Taalib!”
Tegan stepped forward and jerked to a halt, motionless on the end of my outstretched hand. I knew I had to plaster a smile on my face and walk onto the stage, but my feet were rooted to the floor.
“Abdi,” Diane said behind me. It was a command.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Tegan twisted to face me. “Don’t do this to me,” she said. “Abdi, please don’t! I can’t take it!”
Months ago, she’d shouted her defiance in their faces. I’m glad he tried to escape. I’m glad! Hurt me all you want, I hope he does it again! The Tegan I’d come to know, the girl I’d kissed and fought for, would have screamed it now.
Instead she looked over my shoulder and said, “Lat, I’m being good! It’s not me. He’s doing it. Don’t punish me. Not tonight!”
But there was nothing special about this night. It was just another performance, like a hundred we’d done before, like a thousand more we’d do until SADU decided the Living Dead Girl wasn’t useful anymore and found a convenient accident to get rid of her and her thirdie boyfriend. Or, even worse, until we truly became what we only appeared to be, the insides of our heads changing to match the veneer of their perfect puppets.
“It’s too much,” I said, shaking my head. “It hurts too much, and it’ll never stop. I can’t do it.”
“Please, Abdi,” Tegan said. “It’ll be fine. Please trust me.”
But I didn’t trust her. I couldn’t.
It was a horrible realization; for six months she’d been my only ally, the only person I could count on to understand how I felt and empathize with my pain—and vice versa. Now, I didn’t know how much of the strong Tegan I’d loved was still in there. And I couldn’t trust what might remain.
Lat bent down by my ear, while President Cox made jokes about stage fright and how shy and humble we were.
“You will move, or I will hurt her in new ways,” he whispered, his voice deep and pleasant. “And I’ll make you watch it all.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’ll even enjoy it.”
It felt as if he’d wrapped his hands around my throat and squeezed all the air out. They’d never threatened her with that before. I couldn’t let it happen.
But I also couldn’t continue as I had.
Stretched thin between the two impossible choices, I gave in to Tegan’s insistent tug on my hand and stepped forward, into the light of that enormous room and the hundreds of greedy eyes that waited to devour us until we were nothing but empty husks.
Nathan Phillip Cox, president of the Republic of Australia, was waiting to greet us. His face was broad and rugged, a handsome, sturdy kind of face. You could imagine it on the first European pioneers trying to cross the Australian desert or running sheep over the rounded hills. His wrinkles had been superbly tweaked to suggest seriousness, but not sternness, and his crow’s-feet proclaimed that this was a man who laughed as often as he frowned. He was laughing now, but the emotion didn’t reach his eyes. He’d want to know the reason for our hesitation.
Tegan strode forward to shake his hand, a gesture the president turned into a one-armed hug. He beamed down at her, a kind uncle, then solemnly shook my hand in a man-to-boy gesture that would look great on the ’casts. The noble firster president of superpower Australia, in common cause with the savage thirdie boy from tiny Djibouti.
Tegan was waving and smiling, happily ignorant of Lat’s threat. “Hello!” she yelled. “It’s so great to be back! Did you miss me?”
/> The crowd roared.
“I missed you,” I said again, only this time it was part of the script. I didn’t have to pay attention; the words spilled out easily, my every gesture rehearsed and fine-tuned.
“Well, I’ve been traveling the world talking about something really important,” Tegan said. “You all know about the Ark Project. You all know about the Resolution. You know that we’re sending humanity to the stars for the first time. And everyone can be a part of it! Everyone can donate something or spread the word.”
“The world is in a slow decline,” I said, looking grave. Among the solemn nods and sad faces, I saw pursed lips and heads shaking, and wanted to punch something. This was the one part of our spiel that was true, and it was the part a few people always wanted to deny.
“The first travelers are the brave pioneers of our future,” Tegan said. “They took on the challenge of finding a new home for humanity! And as soon as the revival process is perfected, we’ll all take on the challenge of getting them on their way.”
“They had faith that we’d help,” I said. “Will you keep faith with them?”
“Will you pledge what you can pledge?” Tegan asked. Her excitement looked so real. Was it real? Had she broken that hard? I felt a flash of curiosity before the intense gravity of my despair crushed it down to the soundtrack of the cheering crowd.
“That’s enough politics!” Tegan yelled over the noise.
I held up my hands, the golden cord swaying from my forearm. I was doing everything as perfectly as if Diane were tugging directly on that dangling string to manipulate my movements. Tegan couldn’t be punished for this. “How about a song?”
They clapped and laughed, while Tegan was handed her guitar—not the third-hand instrument she’d named Abbey and loved with fierce devotion but a custom-made guitar that had been covered in a white skin of memory fabric, glittering like her dress. She checked the tuning, nodded at me, and began the opening chords.
