by Marcus Sakey
The man nodded. “We started on Goodnight Moon, but she prefers the phone book. She’ll get on my d-pad and read listings for hours. Not just Chicago, either. She knows New York, Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles. Anytime we go on a trip she reads the phone book first.”
Lee’s pride radiated in every word and every muscle of his face. Smitten with his daughter, and delighted at her abilities. It stood in such sharp contrast to the typical parental reaction, to Cooper’s own reaction. This wasn’t a man worried about what the world would think, afraid that she might end up tested or labeled or living in an academy. This was pure joy in the wonder that was his daughter.
“Now you, Zhi.” Shannon pointed to the boy who had tried to sneak up on her.
“Okay.” He stood ready, a pupil confident before a teacher.
“Use the addresses. Add them.”
“34,967.”
“Multiply them.”
“1.209 times 10 to the 36th.”
“Add them with north and west positive and east and south negative.”
“Minus 243.”
Alice joined in. “The Zoo times Tasty City minus Andrea’s house.”
“4,448,063.”
“Navy Pier divided by the school.”
“2.42914979757085…”
The kids were having a ball, and Zhi stood in the center of it, giving every answer without hesitation. Cooper stared, realization dawning. “They’re all brilliants?”
“Yes,” Lee said. “As I said, this is a play date.”
“But…” He looked at the children, at Shannon, back at Lee. “Aren’t you…I mean…”
“Worried about hiding the fact that they’re gifted?” Lee smiled. “No. Chinese culture sees things differently. These children are special. They bring honor and success to a family. Why wouldn’t we love that?”
Because someone who works for my old agency could call you at any moment. “The rest of the world doesn’t see it that way.”
“The world is changing,” Lee said softly. “It has to.”
“What about the academies?”
The man’s face darkened. “Someday, when this is all over, people are going to look back at those in shame. It will be like the internment camps in the Second World War.”
“I agree,” Cooper said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m an abnorm, too.”
“I assumed. Most of Shannon’s friends are.”
“And my daughter…” He hesitated. Didn’t want to say it even now, even here. Why? Are you ashamed of Kate?
That wasn’t it. It couldn’t be. It was fear, that was all. Fear of what would happen to her.
Right. But all that negative emotion, all that desire to have her hide her ability, isn’t there some part of you that wishes she were normal? If only so she wouldn’t face this risk?
It was an ugly thought. Cooper tilted his beer up again and found it empty. “Aren’t you afraid that someone will make them take the test?”
“That’s where being Chinatown Chinese has advantages. The government doesn’t know about these children.”
“How?”
“Some of us went abroad to have our babies. Others use local midwives who don’t record the births. It’s a risk, because they don’t have the resources of a hospital if things go wrong. A stupid, terrible way to do things. But right now it’s worth it.”
The DAR had long suspected that there was a significant population of unreported abnorms in immigrant communities. It was a loophole the agency meant to close, but like a squeaky staircase in a house on fire, other issues took precedence. These communities rarely made trouble and so had been left alone. But watching the children play—they’d moved to a new game, where a little girl spun once, then closed her eyes and answered detailed questions about everything in the room, down to the number of buttons on Alice’s dress—Cooper saw a whole generation of abnorms growing up right under the noses of the DAR, unreported, untested, untracked. The implications were enormous.
Want to call Director Peters, let him know?
“A lot to take in, huh?” Lee smiled. “I’m so used to it that I forget the rest of the world isn’t. Don’t you love watching them play together? Children who aren’t taught, from the earliest age, that they’re monsters. That they’re abnormal. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Cooper said. “Yes it is.”
Later, after the party had ended, after parents had collected their children and said their good-byes and left with Tupperware containers of leftovers, Lisa led him and Shannon to a small room off the hallway decorated in pastel shades and posters of Disney princesses. A lamp shaped like an elephant glowed on a night table beside a single bed.
“Alice’s,” Lisa said apologetically. “She can sleep with us tonight. I’m sorry there’s not separate rooms.”
Cooper looked over at Shannon, but whatever she might have felt about the arrangement, she didn’t telegraph beyond brushing a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “No problem,” he said.
“I’ll get some blankets.”
She returned with a sleeping bag, set it on the bed with a spare pillow, then said, “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”
“We’ll be fine. Thank you.” Cooper paused, said, “It means a lot to me that you let us into your home.”
“A friend of Shannon’s is a friend of ours. Come anytime.” Lisa looked around the room, hugged Shannon good night, and came to Cooper. He waited for her to calculate whether he was a hug or a handshake, but she didn’t hesitate, just gave him a quick hug. Then she stepped out of the room and closed the door.
Shannon tucked her hands in her pockets. The movement tightened the shirt across clavicles delicate as bird wings. “So.”
“I’ll take the floor.”
“Thanks.”
He made a point of facing the other direction as he kicked off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt. Decided to keep his pants and undershirt on. Behind him he heard the faint rustle of fabric, and his mind flashed an image of her pulling her shirt over her head, imagined a delicate cream bra over caramel skin.
Whoa there, Agent Cooper. Where did that come from?
He chalked it up to a long day of shared adrenaline, underscored by male chemistry, and left it at that. He slid into the sleeping bag, rubbed his eyes. A moment later, he heard the click of her turning off the elephant, and the room went dark. Pale green stars glowed on the walls and ceiling, swirling constellations of an idealized night sky, one where the stars had neat points and sharp edges and were only barely out of reach.
“G’night, Cooper.”
“Night.” He folded his hands behind his head. He was too old to be sleeping on the floor, but too tired to care. As he lay there, staring at the stars of that better sky, he found himself thinking back to the game, the looks on the faces of those kids as they played with toys barely imaginable to most of the world.
It had been six months since last he’d seen his children. Six months of pretending to be someone else, of burying the life he loved in order to fight for it.
When it came down to it, everything he had done was for his children. Even the things he had done before they were born, before he’d even met Natalie. It was a truth he never could have understood until he’d become a parent, and one he would never be able to forget.
The world is changing, Lee had said. It has to.
Cooper hoped he was right.
CHAPTER 24
The man was waiting for them.
He was as big as Cooper remembered, broad-shouldered and muscular beneath pudge; a man who didn’t lift weights because he lifted heavy things for a living. He looked right at home in the loading dock.
“What the hell?” He spat the words as Cooper and Shannon climbed the steps.
“Excuse me?”
“Paying for my ID. You trying to be the big man? You think you know me?” The abnorm shook his head. “You don’t know me.”
“Whatever.” Cooper started past, but the big man grabbed his a
rm. The grip was stone.
“I asked you a question. What do you want?”
Cooper glanced down at the man’s hand, thinking, Twist sideways, right elbow to the solar plexus, stomp the arch of the foot, spin back with a left uppercut. Thinking, So much for good deeds. “I want you to get out of my way.”
Something in his tone made the man hesitate, and the grip loosened. Cooper brushed his sleeve, walked past.
“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t owe you nothing.”
He stiffened, the irritation growing. Turned. “You do, asshole. You owe me six months of your life. The phrase you’re looking for is ‘thank you.’”
The man crossed his arms. Held the stare. “I’m not anybody’s slave. Not Schneider’s, and not yours.”
“Bravo,” Cooper said. “Congratulations. You’re an island, alone unto yourself.”
“Huh?”
“I’m so tired of people like you. Of twists like you. Schneider claimed six months of your life on nonsense, and you just lay down and took it. Okay, fine, your choice. But then an angel bought you that time back. And what’s your first thought? He must want something. He can’t just be trying to bear his neighbor’s burden. He can’t just be an abnorm who doesn’t like seeing another one treated that way.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Nobody does nothing for free. Abnorm or not.”
“Yeah, well, no wonder we’re losing.” Cooper turned away and walked for the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “I don’t want you to be my slave. I want you to not be one at all.”
Then he yanked open the door and stepped inside. Behind him, Shannon chuckled. “You’re a piece of work, Cooper.”
“Let’s go find Schneider.”
The forger saw them coming, gestured for them to follow without waiting to see if they would. Cooper felt his irritation growing. Just get what you came for and get out. Time to head for Wyoming, find John Smith, and finish this. Maybe it wouldn’t solve all the problems in the world. But it would solve one of them. And it might buy a little time for the world to grow the hell up.
For a man of his means, Schneider certainly hadn’t spent much on his office. Cinder-block walls painted white, a chipboard desk with a lamp and a phone. The only expensive item was a custom-looking newtech datapad, sleek and machined. The forger sat down, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope. “Passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards.” He tossed the packet on the desk.
Cooper opened it, pulled out a passport, and saw his picture above the name Tom Cappello. He flipped the pages, saw that he had traveled extensively, mostly in Europe. The document was faded and worn soft. “The microchip matches?”
“What do you think I am?”
“I’m getting tired of that question. The microchip matches?”
“Of course.” Schneider leaned back, crossed his ankle over a bony knee. “More important, your information has been hacked into all of the relevant databases. A complete profile—spending habits, mortgages, voting record, speeding tickets, all of it.”
Cooper opened the other passport, saw Shannon’s picture. It must have been from a security camera somewhere in the building, but the shot was clean, the background suitably bland. Then he saw the name. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?” Shannon moved beside him, took the document. “Allison Cappello. So what?”
“He made us married.”
Schneider smiled his dental horror show. “That a problem?”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“The profiles support each other. Minimizes the risk of the data insertion.”
“Yeah, for you. For us, it means we have to be able to play a married couple.”
Schneider shrugged. “Not my problem. Now listen. You both exist, but only at a superficial level. Your new identities have been implanted into the baseline systems. But it will take time for it to propagate. That’s the only way to do it. No way to modify every computer that would have a record. Instead, I plant your identities like a seed, and they grow.”
“How long?”
“You could probably clear a basic New Canaan security check now. But in a few days you’ll have recursive backup, with your identities spread throughout the whole system. Wait till then if you can.”
Cooper didn’t answer. He put the passport back in the envelope and turned to go.
“And, Poet?”
“Yeah?”
“Come back anytime. I can always use your money.” The forger laughed.
When they walked back through the loading dock, the big man was gone. Just as well. In his current mood, Cooper might have used him as a practice dummy.
“We could probably stay with Lee and Lisa for a few days.”
Cooper unlocked the car, shook his head. “Let’s get on the road.”
“You want to drive to Wyoming?”
“Might as well. We need the time, and it’s safer than an airport.”
“All right.” Shannon thumbed through her passport. “Tom and Allison Cappello.” She laughed. “If that’s your way of trying to get me into bed, you get points for originality.”
“Cute.” He started the car and pointed it east. “So how did we meet?”
“Hmm?”
“We’re married. If we get questioned, we need to be able to look married.”
“Right. Well, at work, I suppose. It’s true, after all.”
The layers of irony in that made him smile. “Maybe a different job, though. Something boring, so no one asks follow-up questions about it.”
“Accounting?”
“Anybody asks me about their tax return, we’re done. How about…logistics? For a shipping company. No one wants to know how things get from place to place.”
“Okay. I worked there first. We met when you were transferred to Chicago. No, Gary, Indiana. No one wants to know about Gary, Indiana, either,” she said. “You were smitten with me, of course.”
“Actually, I think you chased me. I played it cool.”
“It was totally obvious. You kept pulling puppy-dog faces. And making excuses to come by my desk.”
“You ever actually have a desk?”
“Sure, in my apartment. It does a great job of holding up my fake plant.” She leaned back and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “We went to the movies for our first date. You were a gentleman, didn’t try anything.”
“But you were hot to go. You kept touching my arm and tossing your hair. Fiddling with your bra strap.”
“You wish.”
“And panting. I remember a lot of panting.”
“Shut up.”
Cooper smiled and merged onto the highway. Their rhythm was easy, natural. He wasn’t flirting, exactly, but the banter was fun. They kept it up, kept it light, as he drove back to Chinatown. Lisa had made them promise to have lunch before they left, and it seemed as though they had the time to spare now. He pulled up a mental map of Wyoming. The Holdfast spanned a good chunk of the middle of the state, an ugly sprawl of desert and badlands cobbled together in a thousand real estate transactions, with a border like a gerrymandered congressional district. He figured it was about a twenty-five-hour drive. They could take it slow, get some rest along the way. Stop somewhere and buy a couple of wedding rings. And he could use the time to make a plan. Getting to Erik Epstein wouldn’t be easy, and that was only a stepping-stone on the way to John Smith.
“The Amalfi Coast of Italy,” she said. “That’s where we honeymooned. We rented a room on the side of a cliff, with a balcony where we drank wine. Every day we swam in the ocean.”
“I remember. You looked dynamite in that suit.”
“The red one?” She looked at him through dark lashes. “You always liked me in red.”
“It’s good with your body,” he said, the words spilling out before he could stop them. The memory of last night flashed back, the soft whisper of her shirt sliding off, and the image he’d invented. He felt a little heat in his forehead, glanced over at her.
Sh
e wore a half smile. “My body, huh?”
“Your skin, I mean. You said your dad is Lebanese—what’s your mom?”
“French. All burgundy lips and flowing hair. They were quite the couple. He was a businessman, a very sharp dresser with a pencil moustache. The two of them were like something out of an RKO flick.”
“Were?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” She set her shoulders, and he read the active change in topic there, marked it to the pattern that she was becoming in his mind.
He was just about to ask where they lived when he saw the Escalade. Traffic had been getting steadily worse as they’d drawn closer to Chinatown, which he’d chalked up to tourists and the lunch crowd. But the truck—
Late-model Escalade, black, tinted windows.
Parked half in, half out of the street. Like it stopped suddenly. Right at the intersection of Cermak and Archer, two of the arteries of Chinatown.
Engine running.
Government plates.
Shit.
—sent a warning tingle down his spine. Cooper sat bolt upright, fingers tightening on the wheel. Shannon picked up the move, followed his eyes, said, “No.”
He glanced in the rearview, half expecting to see black SUVs bearing down on them, but there was nothing but a long line of cars. If it was a trap, the other side hadn’t swung shut yet. A U-turn? Conspicuous, a last resort. It could just be a coincidence, a DAR crash vehicle down here for something else, with a different target.
“Lee and Lisa,” Shannon said, and jerked as if she’d been electrocuted. “No, no, no.”
“We don’t know—”
“The traffic,” she said. “Damn, I should have seen it. Stop the car.”
“Wait, Shannon, we can’t—”
“Stop the car!”
He saw it then—the traffic hadn’t just been slowing. It had been creeping to a stop. This wasn’t a matter of a crowded street or a backed-up stoplight. Something was blocking the flow of cars. It could be an accident. A collision, with police on the scene.
Yeah. And I suppose the DAR is here to write tickets.
Cooper bumped the car up over a curb into a small strip mall. Shannon was out the door before the wheels had finished rolling. He shut off the ignition and followed her, the two of them sprinting through the parking lot.
