He’d known the garage was closed, of course, but thanked her anyway. Then he called his insurance agent and left a message informing him of the accident, giving considerably more detail about the situation than he’ d given the operator, including his need for a tow truck. He tucked the phone into the front pocket of his jeans, knowing Rudy would have gotten both messages, since his station monitored every call that went in and out of Cam’s BlackBerry. Hopefully he’ d not only send a team out to inspect the vehicle ASAP, but would also set up a face-to-face meeting without Cam’s having to ask directly.
It wasn’t long afterward that Lacey stepped nearer to him and slid her hand into his again. “Do you mind if we walk around the expo booths for a while?” she asked in an almost sheepish tone. “I know it’s late, but . . . Jade’s probably not going to be in till the wee hours, and I just don’t want to go back to that room yet.”
So they walked past the resort to the bowl, where the crowd was still moderate and the steel band was still playing. Wandering among the different booths set up along the park’s pathways, they checked out the various offerings, sampled some of the food, and picked up free pens, snack bag clips, brochures, and other advertising oddities. Fortunately, most of their co-workers were at the resort bar by that time, so they didn’t run into anyone they knew.
At 10:30 the steel drum band stopped playing and the first explosion of fireworks began. Since there weren’t supposed to be fireworks until Sunday, Cam suspected these were being shot off to cover the significance of the earlier explosion when the chopper went down. This view was confirmed shortly by an overheard snatch of conversation between two booth vendors.
When the fireworks show ended fifteen minutes later—and the steel drum band was packed up to leave—he took her back to the zig. There in the elevator lobby off the dark and deserted Madrona Lounge, she pushed the Down button and the elevator doors opened immediately. But instead of boarding she turned to face him, as if still reluctant to leave. Having no idea what to say, he said nothing, which made for a spell of awkward silence.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Don’t want to forget to give you back your hat. . . .” She took off the cap and handed it to him as the elevator doors rumbled closed again.
When he took the cap from her, she rested her hand on his forearm, her dark eyes meeting his with sober intent. “What you asked me to do earlier?” she said softly as she drew closer to him. “When we were on the outcropping?” She paused, drew a steadying breath, then said, “I’ll do whatever you want. Or . . . umm . . .” Her face flamed as she apparently considered more carefully whom she was going to be involving herself with. “Within reason, anyway. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it’s not good. And if he really is kidnapping young women for . . . whatever reason, well . . . I can’t just walk away and let it keep happening.”
He wanted to tell her to do just that. But he didn’t. Instead he brushed a smudge of dirt off her cheekbone, smoothed the tendril of hair behind her ear. “It could be more dangerous than . . . what we spoke of.”
Her eyes never left his. “For you, as well. And
you’re
not leaving.”
He frowned down at her, then pulled one of the freebie expo pens and a brochure from his shirt pocket. “Here’s my cell number,” he said, scribbling it onto the back of the brochure and handing it to her. “Call me anytime. Even if it goes to voice mail, someone will get the message real time and take action if need be.” He paused, then added, “It might be that we’ll figure all this out before he makes his move to take you. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. But let me know what’s going on.”
She nodded, stood there a moment more staring up at him, then stepped back to push the Down button again, reopening the waiting elevator’s doors.
“You sure you don’t want me to go down with you?” he asked.
He saw her force the smile. “You can’t go with me everywhere. If he was waiting down there, surely security would know by now. I’m hoping, though, that with all those men and cars and dogs up there they finally caught him. I mean, how could they not?”
“They probably did,” he agreed. Though both of them knew very well how easily Frogeater could have evaded them.
The doors closed between them, and he left the small lobby, returning to the deserted atrium to board one of the glass-walled elevators. But instead of going straight to his room—he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon—he took a detour by way of the ninth floor, wanting a look at the crash site from the viewing gallery there to get a sense of how things were progressing with the search.
Located on the floor’s west side, just north of Swain’s complex of offices and suites, the Golden Saguaro viewing gallery hosted many of Kendall-Jakes’s high-level receptions and cocktail parties. No matter which way one went from the elevators, it was a long walk around the atrium to reach it, and seemed especially so now, the corridor dark and deserted. With no sign of even a security guard around, he was surprised when he reached the short hall leading to the darkened gallery and heard voices coming from within.
Cautiously he continued forward and soon realized there was only one voice—Gen Viascola’s—engaged in a one-sided conversation, probably on a cell phone.
“Thank God!” she said. A pause. Then, “Sedated?! Are you mad?”
Cam stole to the gallery’s open doorway and peered into the spacious room beyond. The window wall directly across from him provided views of the western landscape at higher elevation than he and Lacey had enjoyed at the overlook outcropping. In the darkness beyond he saw the klieg lights still arrayed beyond the service road.
His interest now, however, centered on the two people standing in silhouette before the window about thirty feet to his right. One was Gen; the other—tall, gawky, with a hook nose and dark, disheveled hair—looked like Nelson Poe.
“Yes, but at the rate he’s developing, he could come out of it and—” She broke off, having obviously been interrupted.
“I understand that,” said Gen, irritation sharpening her voice, “but if you’re wrong, he—”
Again she was cut off, her responses limited to “uh-huh” and “yes, of course.” Cam eased through the door and leftward around one of the potted faux saguaro that dotted the gallery. He settled on a loveseat in the shadows against the wall.
“Well,” said Gen, “you’ll do as you think best, of course, but I hope you’re right. He’s caused us more than enough trouble already.”
After another silence she said good-bye and flipped the phone shut with a sigh. “They’ve got him,” she said to Poe. “Tased him and wrapped him in Spiderline.”
“And the chopper?”
“No one knows why it crashed. The copilot survived, though. He might be able to tell us.”
“He’ll only tell us what we already know,” Poe grumbled, sinking onto the chair beside him. “And then Parker will find some way to make it mean what it doesn’t.”
Gen put a hand on one hip and looked down at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“They’ve got him back in the lab. Lee’s prepping him now for the tests. Parker said his phenotypical transformation has been phenomenal. The crest is almost fully realized, bone and muscle mass have nearly doubled since his escape, his hands and features have coarsened, and get this”—she sat in the chair beside him—“he’s formed an
oculus
. One that actually seems to function in some way. Parker says it has a glow to it, seems to track targets, and was very hot when they brought him down.”
“Oh, Lord, help us,” Poe muttered.
Gen flounced back in the chair. “Well, of course
I
think we should terminate him, and just do a full autopsy. The results so far have gone beyond our wildest dreams—”
“More like nightmares,” Poe grumbled.
She huffed and shook her head. “Why must you always be the voice of doom?”
“I don’t know. Why do
you
always go along with him, even when you don’t agree? Even when you know he’s pushing far beyond anything that’s reasonable?”
“If he didn’t push beyond what’s reasonable, we wouldn’t be here.”
She leaned toward him again. “Look around us, Nels. Look how far we’ve come since that rickety houseboat with the cockroaches in Costa Rica.”
“Maybe it would be better had we not come so far.”
She stared at him silently for a moment. “You’re still upset about D-210, aren’t you?”
“His name was Andros.”
“D-210 didn’t have a
name
. You’ve got to let that go. We did nothing wrong, and the project must move forward.”
“We killed him.”
“And we made him in the first place, which gave us every right to terminate him when we deemed the time was right. He was obviously degrading and would’ve only gotten worse. Look at this debacle with A-118. And it looks to me like A-432 is going off, as well. Those earlier lines just aren’t stable, as I’ve said from the start.”
At first Cam had thought she was referring to Frogeater as the one they’d terminated, even though she’ d said earlier that he wasn’t. The more she talked, though, the more he realized he had no idea what she was talking about. But the mention of subject numbers, termination, and “earlier lines” made his blood grow cold.
“Listen to yourself, Gen,” Poe said, speaking with more passion than Cam had ever heard from him. “We
made
him? We terminated him at the
proper
time? I just—” He fell silent, shaking his head. “This playing God stuff is not right.”
“We’re not ‘playing God,’ ” she rebuked him. “There is no god.
We’re just doing what’s best for everyone.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong. How can you argue that this all won’t lead to better things for everyone—ourselves and the whole world?”
“I meant about God.”
In the electric silence that followed, Cam could almost feel Gen’s shock. She was probably about to pop.
“Reinhardt made some good points in that meeting today,” Poe said. “Much of what we believe
is
based on faith. Including what we believe about where all this”—he gestured vaguely around them—“is going. . . .”
Another protracted silence followed, and finally Poe said, “You’re not even going to respond to what I said?”
Gen sighed wearily. “You’re obviously depressed. I’m going to see about getting you some vacation time. Come on. We’ve seen enough here.”
She stood, and Poe did likewise. As they threaded their way around the couches, loveseats, and faux saguaros, Cam held utterly still, his eyes focused downward lest an errant gleam from them betray his position.
Thankfully they left without noticing him, and he continued to sit there afterward, mulling over what he’ d heard, trying to put the pieces together, and knowing there were still some crucial parts missing. “
We made him . . . and then we terminated him. D-210 was not a
person. . . .”
But there
was
a special lab somewhere. And, apparently, additional frog eaters, as well . . .
New Eden
Zowan expected to meet up with Parthos in the lozenge-shaped mall in the commons Friday night, but it was Terra who sought him out. Freed of her charges for the evening, she came up beside him toward the end of the group walk-around—a nightly mall ritual. Not everyone walked every night, but everyone walked at least once a week. The Enclave’s community organizers piped in music or Enclave news, changed the lighting, staged art shows, and held occasional contests to keep things interesting for the walkers.
Tonight, though, they just walked, strolling along the mall’s long central island of trees and plantings, past its pools of fat, glowing orange fish under their lily pads and luscious white flowers, past its stream and waterfall and the big cage of brightly colored birds, then around and through the Tangle Grid that stood at its far end, the maze of lighted blue and purple bars. And all the while, Gaias watched them from the post he had taken up near Father’s statue at the base of the Sanctuary’s ramped entrance.
“Did you hear Father toured the crèche after lunch today?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“And that there was a Winnowing?”
He frowned down at her. When one of the children sickened or displayed some anomaly or weakness, they were winnowed from the crèche—for treatment, the other children were told. It was only last year that Zowan learned they were being killed. “Terminated” was the official word. Or perhaps they were being sent to that experimental lab Neos had mentioned.
“It was Fyver,” she said softly. Fyver was a five-year-old boy with whom Terra had bonded the first day she’ d worked in the crèche.
He found her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.” Mindful of Gaias’s gaze, he released her immediately.
“We’re not supposed to care, I know,” she said, brushing away her tears. “But it’s hard. There was nothing wrong with him,” she said as they approached the lighted Tangle Grid at the far end of the island.
“He was just an active little boy who had trouble settling down. He reminded me a lot of you at that age.”
“How could you remember me at that age?”
“You used to pull my pigtails. And you always made me laugh when I was supposed to be listening to the story. That’s how Fyver was. Smart, active, always getting into mischief, yes. But his heart was good. He wasn’t mean. Just curious and fun loving.”
None of which were qualities Enclave Elders valued, Zowan observed. “Smart,” “curious,” and “active” were not traits that inclined one to the docile, unquestioning submission they clearly preferred.
“Father was so sweet to him today,” Terra went on. “Called him over, invited him up onto his lap, gave him a honey drop, told him what a good boy he’d been . . . then sent him off to be put down.” Her voice cracked, and she shuddered. “How could he be that cold? How could he lie so easily? And then that charade with you this morning! All that talk of your promotion to New Babel, when we all know it’s no promotion. Babel is the poorest of all the enclaves. The place where everything always goes wrong and people die. Oh, but
you’re
going to turn it all around.” Her voice took on a tone of bitter sarcasm and choked off. She drew a deep, almost groaning, breath. “I hate it that we have to live like this!”