Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (25 page)

“Not now, not tomorrow,” Raul protested in disbelief. “We're not ready.”

“Yes. Tomorrow. At noon, when the sun's the highest in the sky.”

“But that's impossible,” Axel said. “We need more practice.”

“I'm sorry,” said Natasha. “But if you wait any longer, I won't be able to turn off the alarms. They'll see you on the green and start a manual sweep before you've had a chance to talk to them. They could miss noticing the nova and start shooting and detonate it by accident.”

“So let them,” growled Raul. “Let them try to kill us all.”

Axel shook his head and turned away from Natasha, toward the ocean, as if he were considering the fate of the people sleeping there on the sand. Something like anger stirred in Natasha. Didn't they realize how much she had risked for them? How far they had come with her help?

“I have to go back,” said Natasha, “before they realize I'm gone. Will you do it, tomorrow at noon?”

“Yes,” Axel said. He signaled Raul with a wave of his hand that they should go, but he pointedly did not look at Natasha or give any word of farewell. They began stepping away, disappearing into the dark.

“Wait!” said Natasha.

They stopped and turned.

“I'm still leaving with you, right?” she said. “After we destroy the novas—the Birds. You still want me, don't you?”

“Of course, little Nassia,” Axel said. He returned to where she stood and touched his open hand to her cheek. “You are our sister.”

When she nodded, they started away, but she called them again.

“And no one dies tomorrow,” she said.

Axel turned, squinting at her in the dark. In a slow, measured voice, he answered, “No, no one dies.”

•   •   •

The sun had yet to rise fully over the trees, and the Dome shimmered in the diffuse glow of the weak and early light. Why did it feel like the settlement was empty? The clock on the maincomputer read 0641 and a few early-rising citizens were spilling out from the elephant. But why did it feel so deserted, as if Natasha were alone?

No one had seen Natasha emerge from the New Wing. She took the elephant to level six and walked quickly down the hall with its familiar smell of dust and shower room water. The blue emergency lamps glowed overhead, and as Natasha entered her sleeproom, the open door threw a triangle of light across Min-he's bed.

“Where have you been?” she groaned. “Close the door, we still have ten minutes till wake-up.”

“Sorry,” Natasha whispered.

Natasha's hair was caked with sand and her hands were filthy. She grabbed a clean outfit from under her bed and went back down the hall to the shower room. She stripped off her clothes in the changing stall and dropped them down the damaged-clothing chute (let the Biotextile workers wonder all morning whose filthy clothes those were). She spent a long time in the shower, letting the hot water pound her face, washing the brown grime from around her nails and the flesh of her heels. She washed her hair twice through with soap. Did the Tribes have soap? It didn't seem so, considering how strong they smelled up close. They didn't have showers, certainly. Probably this would be the last shower of her life.

A few minutes later, as Natasha was leaving the shower room, there was a rumble and then a sudden illumination as all the lights turned on. She entered the hallway to the sound of people clapping and cheering and darting out of their sleeprooms to check that everything was, indeed, back up and running.

By the time Natasha returned to her own sleeproom, Min-he was gone and her bed was already made for the day. Panic came over Natasha in waves. It was happening too fast. She was letting things slip. Without even realizing it, she had missed her chance to say goodbye to Min-he.

Natasha had no appetite for breakfast, so she hid in her sleeproom until the 0800 alarm. She joined the line in the hallway with the other latecomers.

“Morning, Natasha.” It was Sylvia Greene, a Delta, whose sleeproom was across the hall from her own.

“Morning.”

Waiting for the elephant, the citizens chitchatted about the Electricity and Piping crews, wondering how the teams could have messed up badly enough to lose
both
the main power and backup generator for several hours. No one had told them. In front of her, Lee Davis and Lu Tang began discussing a game they had going in the Pretends: “. . . but I've been easy on you. Meet me after dinner tonight and I'll dissolve you to the marrow, I will. . . .” Natasha was sweating; her neck felt hot. Was it true they sensed nothing? It seemed impossible that no one else would know what was coming, that they could expect to be playing some frivolous game in the Pretends tonight. Elliot Beckman smiled at her and she looked away, though immediately regretted doing so. He was only saying good morning; she needed to get a grip.

As they rode up in the elephant, Natasha tried to force herself to assume the tired, bored expression of the other citizens. But by the time they had reached the ground level, she was sweating worse than before.

She tried to drink in everything: the grind of the elephant doors closing behind her, the sun glinting off the honeycomb windows, the clean air, a perfect 74 degrees Fahrenheit, the pleasant breeze blowing in from the vents. Her legs moved fast, too fast. But this was the speed that everyone moved; this was the quickness with which she walked every morning.

Jeffrey watched her as she entered the Office of Mercy. He waited at his desk until she had settled down at her computer. Then he walked over and knelt by her chair.

“I wasn't sure if you'd come,” he said.

“Of course I would. I said I wanted one more day.”

“I've been talking to Arthur about your transfer. Don't worry, though,” he added quickly, “I told him it was your idea, for now. He doesn't suspect you of anything. He doesn't even know about the breach yet. I think the Alphas are planning to call him into their department this evening. Anyway, we were both thinking you'd do well in the Office of Neuroreplacement in the Department of Health. You've always excelled at three-dimensional conceptualization, and you have a nice blend of scientific skills and a capacity for human interest.”

“Yeah,” said Natasha. “That sounds fine.”

“I've mentioned the transfer to a few others too. I hope you don't mind. I think it will make it easier for you, in the long run. You're perfectly at liberty to pretend the transfer was your idea.” He dropped his voice lower. “The Alphas have decided to keep Raj's situation private. I'm sure they will extend the same kindness to you, and to the others.”

“That's good. That will make our lives easier.”

She tried to muster an appearance of relief. But it made no difference what the Alphas did. In a few hours, none of this would matter.

“Look, we can't talk much here, but have dinner with me tonight, after your shift. We can put off going to the Department of Government until after we eat. There're still things I want to tell you about—about your childhood. I've been agonizing over how to tell you these things for years. Twenty-two years, to be exact. Last night wasn't exactly what I'd imagined.”

“Fine,” she said. “Dinner tonight.”

He gave her an unsure smile, confused, no doubt, by her conciliatory mood. Claudia glared at them, her hands hovering an inch over her keyboard. Natasha shivered, recognizing for the first time the true hatred in the other woman's eyes. Well, Natasha thought, at least that was one person who wouldn't be sorry to see her go. She tried to think of the Pines, and how exciting and different her life would be with them. And yet. Jeffrey's presence distracted her. Something was unsettling Natasha, a feeling dangerously close to regret. Would she ever speak to Jeffrey again? Would she even see him before she fled, amid the chaos of the Pines' arrival?

“I'm sorry,” she burst out, in a whisper, as he rose to return to his desk. “I'm really, really sorry. For everything.”

“There's no need to apologize,” he told her, kneeling down again. “No one's mad at you. You don't have to be afraid of the Alphas—they only want what's best for you.”

But he had no idea that the thing she was sorry for hadn't happened yet. She nodded; it hurt not being able to tell him.

“Maybe you should go back to your sleeproom. There's no reason for you to be on shift today. I shouldn't have let you come.”

“No!” said Natasha. She returned her fingers to the feeler-cube and turned very suddenly back to the screen. “I've been at this desk for six years. I want to go out on a good note. I'll think about it forever if I don't.”

“Okay,” Jeffrey said, backing off. “I can understand that.”

Natasha brought three different visuals up on the screen, all views of the far north deadzone perimeter; it was a place the Pines hadn't been in months. But no one in the Office knew that but her.

Jeffrey waited a moment, then he said softly, “Dinner later?”

“Eighteen hundred hours,” Natasha said. “I'm there.”

So that would be their last conversation, a lie.

The morning hours dragged on: the coffee dripped, the fans whirled and quieted, the computers hummed their electric hum, images flashed searchingly across the overhead screen, and the room became warm, as it always did, from the heat of bodies and machines. A woman named Bindi came to Natasha's desk to drop off some data reports from last week.

“There's a rumor you're leaving the Office,” she said.

“Yes,” said Natasha, “I think so.”

“Was it just too much?” she asked in a hushed voice. “After the mission?”

“No,” Natasha snapped. “To be honest, I'm bored with looking for Tribes all the time. I'd rather do something with more day-to-day stimulation.”

Bindi made some small remark and went away, clearly miffed by Natasha's answer.

The clock changed from 0958 to 0959 to 1000. Arthur sat hunched over his desk, visible through the glass window of his private office. He looked exhausted, overworked. His head drooped over his keyboard. How fast would he be able to respond to what was coming in only two hours? How unprepared would he be when the first alarms came not from the green, but from the Inside—when he found himself in the impossible role of protecting the settlement?

At 1039, William Donatello, a Beta, beckoned Natasha to the coffee machine, where he was pouring himself a cup. She had to comply, anything else would seem suspicious; apparently, the rumor about Natasha's transfer had made her suddenly popular.

“Heard you might be leaving us for Health,” he said.

Natasha nodded.

“Did you know I worked in Bioreplacement for over thirty years?”

“I think you once told me.”

“It was my first assignment, I kind of fell into it, I guess. I wasn't as mature at seventeen as you were. Well, I can't say I took to the job immediately. My stomach got all twisted watching them pump a person full of those fiber needles. My advisers thought I should take a year to watch them go through the procedure again and again, until my stomach got inured to it. But wouldn't you know? Seven months later, I had mastered the needles and was on to full organ replacements. You couldn't get the microknife away from me. I didn't trust anyone else to make the incisions as well as I could. Huh, those were some interesting years. Best job in the settlement, if you want my opinion.” He wiggled his fingers. “It's all in the touch.”

“What made you come here?” Natasha asked distractedly while Claudia passed in front of Natasha's computer, on the way to Arthur's office. Had she glanced at the screen?

“Oh, I was anxious for a change, I guess. They say it's healthy to keep the mind active—give yourself fresh challenges. We've got the time, might as well learn something new.”

Eric arrived early for the afternoonshift. He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head, his eyes roaming the room.

“And you know, Natasha,” William continued, “you can always cycle back to the Department of the Exterior, if that's what you want. You young ones like to rush around, but you've got a near eternity before you. The way things are going in Research, potentially a true eternity.”

“Yeah, definitely. I'm sorry, I think an error just came up on one of the sensors.”

The minutes began to pass more quickly. It was all up to Axel now. People began to filter out of the Office for the lunchhour. Natasha pulled up the eight visuals of the green—sensors A1 through A8—and selected the north-facing sensor, the one positioned over the Department of the Exterior. She moved the control to rotate the camera up. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the sun burned high overhead. How precise would Axel be? The clock blinked from 1150 to 1151. All was still. Were they really coming? If the plans had changed, if Axel had rejected her instructions and decided he would break in when he wanted, without her help, she would have no way of knowing. Her eyes scanned the visuals, her heart thudding.

The figures flooded onto the screen so fast that Natasha started. Ten of them—no, nine. They raced across the top middle window. Sensor A1. Her hand silenced the alarm before it had hardly begun.

“What was that?” asked Jeffrey.

“Deer crossing the green,” she answered dully. “I've got it.”

A new window flashed up.

Do you want to override the alarm?

Yes.

Password.

Waverider4.

The Pines had found the unbolted panel of the New Wing—the one Natasha had marked some hours ago with a large, scratched
X.
They had the nova. Axel carried it alone. The others were stacking two stout logs against the wing's outer wall to use as steps.

Bindi got up to make a fresh pot of coffee, asking for a show of hands, who wanted more? Right now, two hundred meters away, the Tribe stood poised to enter the settlement, and no one knew. The rest of the group must be close, Natasha thought. And they were.