by Karen Healey
Blondie was looking grim. “Are you in favor of forced sterilization, then?” he asked sternly.
By his face, Long Beard hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’m just saying something should be done, that’s all.”
Blondie opened his hands. “The Resolution is something. Opening up off-world colonies will free up Earth’s resources and reduce population strain—”
“For billions of dollars! We could be fixing the planet for that. Doing something about these bloody fires.”
“Anything that could make a substantive difference should have started decades ago,” Pink Dress said. “You know that, Sanab; you’ve read my thesis.”
“You want to go to this new planet, then?” Long Beard demanded. “Good luck; they won’t let you on the boat. It’s refugees and rich drongles only, and good riddance to both of them. Leave Australia to the real Australians, that’s what I say.”
“Sanab!”
“Scrap this,” Blondie said, and stalked off.
“What’s his problem?”
“His mother was a refugee, from the American fundamentalist wars. I know I’ve told you that before!”
“Oh, crap, I forgot. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t owe me the apology. It’s his face you broke.”
“He just gets so self-righteous! Why couldn’t the money go to developing crops or trying to get some of the water out of Europa? That would be a good use of off-world technology. Then we might actually have room for these refugees. Some of them, anyway. The ones that’ll actually put in an honest day’s work for an honest dollar—”
“Go and find him,” Pink Dress interrupted. “And for goodness’ sake, don’t mention that.”
“All right. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They kissed, and Long Beard left. Pink Dress lifted an eyebrow at me, and I realized that in my absorption in the argument, I’d abandoned all pretense of not listening. I turned away, feeling heat flare in my cheeks. Go away, I chanted silently. I’m just a rude kid; don’t bother with me; go away go away go away.
There was a rustle, and then Pink Dress sat beside me. “That looks sore,” she said.
My hand flew to the back of my neck. I’d almost forgotten the wound there, though the implant had been cut out barely twenty-four hours before. “It’s all right. I got cut, that’s all. In the fire.”
Her other eyebrow rose. “Not a local, are you?”
“I’m on vacation,” I said. “From New Zealand.”
“Ah. Don’t pay any attention to Sanab. He’s got a good heart.”
A good heart didn’t count for much when your bad mouth was spewing lies about thirdies, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself. I nodded.
“I hope this isn’t rude, but you look familiar,” Pink Dress said.
“People say that all the time,” I said, hand creeping up to adjust my towel mask. “They think I look like Dominic from Talented Australia.”
“Oh! He’s the juggler, right?”
“Yes. I don’t see it myself.”
“No,” Pink Dress said, scrutinizing my face. “You don’t look much like him, when you look close.”
Long Beard and Blondie were coming back, amicable again. “Oh, there are your friends,” I said.
“Nice to meet you…” Pink Dress said, and left a space for my name.
“Soren,” I said, and shook her hand.
“I’m Eliza, Soren. Nice to meet you. Stay safe.” She greeted her friends, then, and I left as soon after that as I could, feeling an itch between my shoulder blades.
Without turning around, I knew Eliza was watching me go.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Divisi
Tegan looked happy to see me return. Lat, his face set in hard lines, did not.
“I gave you a specific order,” he hissed, hauling me into the car by my arm. “I said, ‘stay here.’ ”
“Did you forget you don’t give me orders anymore?” I focused on his shark eyes and was a little surprised to see him flinch. “We’re allies now. Allies don’t issue orders, Lat.”
“Abdi’s right,” Tegan said, and the rush of victory was sweet. She gave me a water bottle and wiped her sweaty hand on her loose pants. “So it went okay?”
That was the perfect opportunity to tell them that Pink Dress had paid more attention to me than might have been ideal, but I didn’t want to give in to Lat that easily. I tugged down my mask and took a long drink instead. I’d only meant to buy myself time before I talked, but as soon as the water hit my parched throat I couldn’t stop drinking. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted. By the time I emptied the bottle and redamped my mask with another, Lat was looking awkward.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” he said. “I’m not really used to a less… top-down command hierarchy.”
After that, I couldn’t confess. Besides, Pink Dress had only been curious, not suspicious. What was she going to do, tell someone she’d seen a kid that looked vaguely like a boy in one of the interminable talent shows every moderately peaceful country pumped out like sewage?
I told the others what I’d heard and left out Pink Dress’s conversation with me afterward. It was probably fine.
Hurfest looked gloomy at my report. “We do have popular support,” he told Tegan. “A lot of it.”
Bethari folded her arms. “But there are still plenty of people who think the No Migrant policy is the best approach to a refugee crisis. And that the Resolution is the best they can hope for—that they’re lucky to be cryofrozen and shipped as slave labor and toil for who knows how long far away from the homelands to which they can never return and—”
“We know,” I said.
“I’m just saying. Maybe if the Save Tegan political wing had concentrated more on raising awareness and less on cozying up with power-crazy military dissidents—”
“Hey,” Washington said mildly.
“—then we’d have overwhelming popular support, and we wouldn’t need to resort to using a weapon that killed innocent people!”
Bethari collapsed back against her seat, lip trembling, and shrugged off Joph’s comforting hand on her shoulder. Marie and Tegan looked as if they wanted to comfort her, too, but weren’t sure how.
This wasn’t the Bethari I was used to—journalist and activist, self-righteously demonstrating that she was more politically pure than you. She was genuinely upset, about the EMP, and about the choices Save Tegan had made. And about the prospect of leaving Australia, a homeland to which she could maybe never return.
I should be nicer to her, I thought, and immediately tried to unthink it. I didn’t want to have sympathy for Bethari, who was annoying in her best moments and infuriating in her worst. At school, I’d been able to hide my irritation, leverage her political inclinations to get some protection from her against people like Soren Morgensen. Now that my emotions were so raw, though, it was harder to treat her with the proper distance, as someone who was useful to me and pointless beside that.
My mother’s third rule for political success was empathy—not to be mistaken for sympathy. You had to watch the other party, work out what they wanted and why they wanted it—what motivations drove them. And then formulate your strategy, so that you could give them—or seem to give them—what they wanted by accomplishing your own goals.
For the first time, I wondered if applying those rules to my personal relationships was really ethical.
Questioning my mother’s methods felt wrong, like I’d bitten into something tasty only to find rotten meat inside. But trying to see from someone else’s perspective surely couldn’t be wrong. Empathy was good.
So, how would I feel if I’d made a weapon that I’d never intended to be used, that was only supposed to function only as a threat. How would I feel if it had been used? How would I feel if that weapon had saved my friend but killed fellow citizens of the country I loved? Wouldn’t I want to stay and make amends? Wouldn’t I think that leaving was a b
etrayal, of my country and of the deaths that I’d inadvertently caused?
I did feel sympathy for Bethari, and I had to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get what she wanted. But I could try to be nicer to her.
It was a few hours before dawn until any of us got back to sleep. Joph took one of her pills and passed out face down on the pretend grass, curled up beside Bethari, who had apparently recovered from her bout of grief to happily poke at her purloined computer. I wasn’t sure I believed her seeming good humor—her hands shook as she stabbed at the screen, and Joph had watched her carefully until the pain became too much.
Washington catnapped sitting against a tire, opening her dark eyes every time there was a louder-than-usual noise. Marie lay down in the backseat and appeared to rest. The rest of us stayed awake, silent. Lat sat between Tegan and me. I couldn’t tell if he’d done it on purpose.
A moan shivered through the campsite, a sort of collective shudder. Lat was on his feet at once, Washington on hers straight after.
I sat up. “What—”
“Shhh.” Washington licked a grimy finger and held it up. “Wind change.”
All over the rugby grounds, lights were going on as people woke up and shook their families and computers to life. Hurfest was hurrying back to us, water bottle in hand.
Bethari was pulling up satellite images on her computer, sneaking into the footage of news crews. “They say it’s at the outskirts of the town,” she reported. In the pale light of the predawn, I could make out part of the sky that was darker than the rest. That sullen red glow suddenly fired underneath it.
Fear gripped my belly. “Should we run?”
Washington shook her head. “This is the safest place to be.”
Firefighters were spraying the grounds. A fine mist landed on my bare shoulders, and I took comfort in that, though it did little more than dampen the soot smeared all over me.
A massive detonation rolled through the uneasy atmosphere, so loud that it shook the ground under us. The black smoke flashed orange and yellow and white, a giant column of flame flaring through it before dying away. The air was suddenly heavy with the stink of burning petrol, an oily, acrid stench that easily penetrated my mask. I gagged.
“What was that?” Joph asked.
“Diesel storage,” Lat guessed.
It made sense—those farmers who were still trying to get crops out of this land would rely on diesel for their heavy machinery, not the rechargeable batteries that powered light, everyday vehicles. But it wasn’t a good sign.
We waited. We didn’t have any choice. While the fire brigade fought the flames, we could do nothing but huddle together and hope.
When dawn came, we were still alive.
But half of Bendigo was a smoldering ruin.
In the morning, word came that the roads to the south were cleared. A few people, against the advice of the police, were already starting to leave—either to stay with family and friends somewhere else, or to find out what damage the fires had done to their homes. Apparently, the new base of operations of Save Tegan was in the North, so Hurfest and Lat were waiting for the way to be declared safe before they took us there.
I, of course, had other plans. We had the car, we had the supplies, we had the EMP, and we had a couple of computers that Bethari had managed to smuggle out of the underground complex. We just needed to be left alone with them for long enough to make our escape. I racked my brain for an excuse to get Washington, Lat and Hurfest all gone at the same time—preferably far enough away that they wouldn’t see our direction as we went.
But they seemed content to stay at the car throughout that long day. Once, Washington went to get more water, and Dr. Carmen suggested that Lat and Hurfest check in with the disparate groups again. Hurfest patronizingly explained that excess communication increased the chance of being traced and didn’t move an inch. Once, Lat strolled off to see if he could increase our weapons cache, and I was sure that Tegan and Bethari and I could have overwhelmed the unarmed Hurfest between us. But not without drawing attention to ourselves. And we certainly couldn’t defeat Washington, who was armed and would have been a match for us even if she weren’t.
As the day drifted on, in smoke and sweat, the strain between Hurfest’s intentions and our secret plans began to grow.
I was practiced at concealing my true feelings, and Joph wore her serenity like a mask. Even Tegan had gotten better at lying. Not as good at it as I was, but she could keep quiet and nod along every time Hurfest talked about her exciting new role as speaker for the Save Tegan movement. But Bethari was jittery, constantly tweaking her clothes or twitching her fingers. I hoped that could be accounted for by her anger over the EMP, a subject both Lat and Hurfest walked very carefully around.
There was no credible reason for Marie’s behavior when Hurfest asked about her research.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Hurfest looked patient, an expression that was becoming more and more strained as the day wore on. “We don’t need the medical details; anything you can tell us about the progress of the revival project would be very helpful. So far, Tegan’s the only survivor. If she’s likely to remain so for some time, we retain a lot of leverage. Just an indication of how long it will be until more people can be safely revived—”
“You have all my records of my work until I was imprisoned,” Marie said. “Anything I did after that was done under duress and is thus unethical medical research. I won’t be telling you—or anyone—anything about it.”
“But how do we make it clear to people how terrible this research was unless—”
“This conversation is over,” Marie snapped.
Her voice was too loud. I saw people in other groups looking over. Hurfest noticed, too, and shrugged theatrically before turning away, acting as if he no longer cared. The spectators went back to their own concerns—just another couple having a brief argument after a stressful event. But only an idiot would believe Marie didn’t have something to hide, and Hurfest wasn’t stupid. He’d keep pushing her to reveal what she knew.
I had a certain amount of curiosity myself.
I was annoyed, though; Marie’s outright defiance wasn’t in our wait-and-see escape plan. I could see Hurfest’s suspicions rise, and Lat, who was, after all, paranoid by profession, had clearly worked out something was wrong. He didn’t say anything, but he sent Washington on all the necessary errands after that. He and Hurfest stuck near the car.
Which, as it turned out was fortunate. Because if they hadn’t, I would never have heard what I did next.
That afternoon, the girls sacked out in and around the car, catching up on the sleep they’d lost during the night. I’d planned to follow suit, but after Marie’s outburst, I thought that one of us should stay awake and alert for any changes. I was lying near the edge of “our” territory, pretending to nap while Hurfest and Lat conferred, when a brief exclamation from Lat made me listen up.
He sounded excited. Given the circumstances, it was an out of place emotion, especially on Lat, who tended to go from dour to stern, with the occasional detour into grim. I kept my eyes shut but listened harder.
“… best opportunity we might have,” he was saying. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve got it from three different sources,” Hurfest said. “President Cox should be here tomorrow.”
“And your sources can let us know his exact arrival time?”
Hurfest laughed. “They won’t need to. His office will let the media know well in advance, and that’s public information. There’s no point in touring a disaster zone to offer consolation to the devastated if the world doesn’t see you do it.”
“That’s it, then. I’ll have my people carry out the operation. Yours can move in the government the minute we do.”
“Can we keep the children hidden around here for so long? Or should we move them?”
Children, I thought scornfully. But what did they mean by “the oper
ation”?
“It’s a risk,” Lat conceded. “But there are risks in moving, too, and there’s a lot of confusion here—four more weens without ID or possessions aren’t going to stand out that much. There are measures we can take to make them less recognizable. And it means Tegan will be in place when we strike.”
My blood chilled at the word. Strike.
If Hurfest and Lat were planning a presidential assassination for tomorrow, and Tegan was an essential part of it, then we either had to talk them out of it or get out of the grounds tonight. Otherwise they’d throw her in front of the camera as soon as it was done.
I’d promised Tegan she’d never have to perform again. If I wanted to keep that promise, I had to let her know what I’d heard.
In my shock, I must have made some sound or movement, because Lat’s head shifted. “Abdi?”
I’d closed my eyes again the minute I saw the movement, but I could hear him walking toward me.
“Abdi, I know you’re awake.”
Fine. I abandoned the pretense and sat up. “How will you strike?” I asked, sitting up on the plastic grass.
Lat blinked at me. “How much did you hear?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You said, ‘ready to strike.’ At the president, presumably. How exactly will you strike?”
Hurfest looked politely blank, but Lat’s face flickered with guilt.
“You’re going to use the EMP,” I said flatly, my voice concealing the racing of my heart. “So you’re planning an assassination?”
“An overthrow,” Hurfest said. “And one as peaceful as possible. Abdi, President Cox is the man ultimately responsible for what was done to you. SADU reports directly to him—”
“I don’t care about him,” I snapped, and glanced around at the crowded grounds. “It’s everyone else! Haven’t the people here suffered enough? Can’t you do this without the EMP?”
Lat shook his head. “No. We need it to control communications in and out of the dead zone. The media will gather to hear the president. We’ll take down the guards and use the EMP to blow the tech in the area. We’ll be ready to bring new equipment in for the journalists, and then Tegan can talk to them and explain why this is necessary.”
