Genus6
Page 8
Nick follows me through the back door. “I think maybe we should try damage control first.”
I nod. “Send emails to all the other farms. Warn them about an early visit by Vector.”
“Yeah, and maybe I should check with Curley to see if he’s heard anything.”
I start upstairs. “Or maybe we should go see Jacob after all. Ask him.” I’m trying to avoid Mum. I don’t want her to know I just got two old people killed.
Nick’s behind me. “No, not Jacob yet. I figure we’ll be lucky to survive telling him what’s happened.”
I can’t argue with that. Two days ago, all he thought I was good for was a babysitting job. He wanted me to keep an eye on his granddaughter Ela like that was all he thought I was capable of. It looks like I’ve just proved him right.
Mum must have heard us arrive because she appears at the bottom of the stairs. “Fitzgerald was here looking for you. He came in earlier.”
“Where’s he now?” Me and Nick are standing there, half up and half down, like neither of us can decide which way to go.
Mum studies me standing there on the staircase. That’s what my mum does, watches me, and usually has some opinion about my behaviour. “He said you’re to go to the station as soon as you get back.”
“What does he want?” Fitzgerald’s the local cop. Not Vector. Deals with stuff like drink driving, fights at parties and vandalism. I’ve had a lot more to do with Fitzgerald over the last few years than Mum’s happy with.
“Maybe it’s Fitzgerald we should talk to,” says Nick.
“Yeah.” I figure Fitzgerald had a job to do every time he arrested me, and he’s all right actually. He can be trusted.
“Are you in trouble again, Jack?” asks Mum.
“Don’t know.” Even I know this isn’t the way I usually act, sort of undecided and ambivalent, and Mum’s known me longer than anyone.
“What’s gone wrong?”
“Can’t tell you.” Don’t know how much she knows or if she’s in on it or not. I make the decision. “Got to see Fitzgerald.”
I come back down the stairs. Nick follows. Mum stands there watching us.
When we’re nearly at the bottom, she says quietly, “It’s happening again.” It hits me like an echo. She said it as if her heart’s going to break. I heard her sound like that before Dad left.
I go down the last step, walk over to Mum and put my arms around her the way she used to with me. “It’s okay. Mum. I’m just the messenger boy.”
But Mum doesn’t buy that. She’s holding on to me like she’ll never let go. “Jack, whatever Jacob and Fitzgerald have planned for you, tell them you won’t do it.” Her head is against my shoulder, and her voice is muffled. “I can’t lose you too.”
“They aren’t planning anything, Mum. I’m just the messenger boy.” I need to get moving.
“Be careful.”
“I’m just helping Jacob. I send out warnings, plant the seeds, and feed the dogs.”
Mum doesn’t believe me. “Yeah, right.” She is trying to sound tough. “Be careful.”
“Okay, got to go. Got to see what Fitzgerald wants.”
Mum stands back. “And when you talk to him, tell him there are a few things going on here he should know about. He should call in tomorrow.”
“Okay.” We go back out to the Land Rover, and me and Nick drive to the Police Station.
“Ready to face him?” I say to Nick.
“Yeah, I guess, it’s too late to send out a CatchingFire.” I look at him, not sure what he means.
Nick shrugs. “Do you think he knows about the Stevens yet?” he asks.
“Yeah, and if he doesn’t, we’re going to have to tell him.”
“Will he blame us?”
“I don’t know about you,” I breathe in and straighten up, “but it was me who was meant to warn them.” I figure I might be going to my own execution.
Fitzgerald’s sitting at his desk. His uniform’s crumpled like it’s had a long day. Nobody else is at the station, just him.
“You didn’t get caught up in what happened at the Stevens’ place?” he asks as soon as we come through the door. Fitzgerald’s looking tired and stressed. The desk’s sagging under the weight of the papers on it.
Nick slumps down into the chair near the desk. “Nah.” He’s got a streak of soot on his face.
“We heard the Hovers just as we got to the bush line. Stayed hidden.” Not my proudest moment. We both stink of smoke. The smell fills up the room.
“You saw what happened?”
“Yeah.” I push a chair over nearer the desk. “We watched it happening.”
“How did you know we were there?” Nick’s being staunch.
Fitzgerald just shrugs. “I was at your place talking to Joe and your dad.”
“How’s Joe?” Nick asks. Joe is his brother. Yesterday, Joe’s girlfriend got taken by Vector because she’s pregnant. That would have been why Fitzgerald was at Nick’s place.
Fitzgerald shakes his head. “Not good,” he says. Then goes back to telling us what happened with the Stevens. “Curley picked up new orders about the Stevens and tried to find me. By the time I got the message it was too late to do anything. Joe said that’s where you two were, and you were out after deer.” It doesn’t sound as if it’s worrying Fitzgerald we were hunting illegally. “I thought you might have got caught up in it.”
“We were lucky.” Nick rubs his forehead with the side of his hand. Back and forth. Like it’s getting too much even for him too. “Missed it by minutes.”
Then I can’t stand the waiting any longer. I’m worried about what Fitzgerald is going to say when he gets to the finger pointing part. I just want him to get on with it. “I should have warned old Stevens as soon as I found out DoE was targeting him.” DoE is the Department of Eugenics. Nick works for them, but he doesn’t believe in what they’re doing. It’s their job to stamp out rogue seeds. That’s what got Stevens killed. Growing bloody seeds that aren’t authorised.
Fitzgerald doesn’t respond to that. He stands up. The chair creaks as it returns to shape. He goes over to the window, pushes the curtain back, and stares out, then turns back to us.
“It’s not your fault. If you’d warned him earlier, Stevens might have got rid of the seedlings, but he wouldn’t have hidden the girls this early.”
Fitzgerald walks back to the desk and sits down again. He picks up a pen, studies it, then puts it down. He leans towards us a bit.
“Curley said this raid came from a completely different set of orders. If you’d gone this morning, instead of when you did, they would have got you two as well as the girls. When it happened, not going in with guns blazing was sensible. It sounds like they sent an army, so if you’d gone in and tried to help the Stevens, you’d be dead, or worse. Captured. What you did with the information you had was sensible.” Nick nods. Me too. “You did the right thing,” says Fitzgerald.
“Okay.” I don’t believe Fitzgerald any more than Mum believed me.
Fitzgerald pulls a piece of paper off a pile. Places it in front of him. “Right, now describe what you saw.”
Nick goes through what happened. When he gets to the two men and how they shot old man Stevens, Fitzgerald stops taking notes. “Did you recognise them?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It was Vincent, that guy that’s been sniffing around a bit lately.
Fitzgerald nods. “Okay. We need to find out who they are and why this happened.” Fitzgerald taps his pen on the page. “What did you do then?”
“Waited for the hovers to leave and buried the bodies.”
“That’s all you could have done.”
“Yeah, right.” I start to stand up. “Is there anything else?”
Fitzgerald thinks a bit more. “You should warn the others on your list that this has happened. Mike’s computer is still the safest way.”
Then I remember Mum’s message. “Mum says to come to the pub tomorrow. She says there’s stuff you should
know about.”
“Tell her I’ll come after lunch.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.” Fitzgerald stands too. He comes around the desk ready to walk us out. I stop to open the front door. “Jack,” Fitzgerald says seriously to me, “Stevens wasn’t your fault. Talk to Jacob about it. He’ll say the same.”
“Monday morning will do.” I figure that’s about as long as I can put it off without looking like I’m too wary of my boss.
“It will be all right.”
“Yeah.” Still don’t believe him.
Nick goes home and I go back to the pub. I guess I feel a bit better after talking to Fitzgerald, but I’m not too sure if Jacob’s going to see the whole saga the same way. He has no trouble laying the blame where he thinks it should be.
I start Dad’s computer to send out warnings like Fitzgerald suggested. I wish I’d had my Com with me. I could have used that phone to take pictures of what happened at the Stevens’. That would have made the rest of them really take notice of the warnings.
I see the flicker of the shields going up and can’t stand it. Fold my arms on the desk and rest my forehead on my wrists. Just sit there in the flicker. I don’t hear Mum come in, don’t know she’s there until she touches my shoulder. She pulls up the other chair and sits down at the desk beside me.
“What’s happened?” she asks the way she did earlier.
I lift my head and she’s sitting there watching me, looking worried. Jacob keeps telling me to keep my mouth shut about what I see, but I’m pretty sure Mum knows more than I do anyway. Why else would she be passing information on to Fitzgerald? I decide to be a bit more truthful, and this time I don’t pretend I’m just planting seeds and feeding dogs. I tell her about how the day went, Stevens and all.
“Don’t get involved,” she says when she’s heard the whole story.
“It’s a bit late. I’m already involved, and after this Steven’s thing I’m planning on fighting the Administration with everything I’ve got.”
She looks at me, shakes her head, and then sort of smiles. “I know. As soon as you went to work for Jacob, you were part of it. I should have made you go to the City. It would have been safer for you there.”
“I’m tough. I can handle it.”
“Not tough enough for this.” Mum stands up, looks at the flickering computer. “What are you doing now?”
“Sending out warnings to the others.” I touch the email icon.
She just nods and sighs. “See you in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
Trojan Gene
Book 1 of the Trojan Gene Series
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I live in Paeroa, a small town in New Zealand, with my husband and a black labrador.
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