Silver Eyes

by Nicole Luiken

  Maroon started the interrogation. “What’s your name?”

  “Orange.” Seth’s brow remained clear of sweat.

  “What are your other names?” Maroon asked.

  “Esteban Domingo.” Seth tried to stop there, but more names spilled from his lips. “Seth Lopez, Silas Thorn, Sam Patterson.” No sweat so far.

  Maroon abandoned that line of questioning. “Are you a traitor?” he asked bluntly.

  “No.” Still no sweat. Seth began to look cocky again.

  “You need to be more specific,” I said quietly. “If his loyalty is to Eddy or himself, then acting against the Sons and Daughters of the Stars doesn’t make him a traitor.”

  Maroon shot me a hard look but took my suggestion. “Do you work for SilverDollar?”

  “No.” Still no sweat, but Seth looked nervous again.

  The next question did it. “Are you loyal to the Sons and Daughters of the Stars?”

  “Yes,” Seth said, but this time he perspired.

  The mood in the aircar took on an ugly tone.

  Seth was panicked into speech. “I’m not opposed to your aims!”

  No new beads of sweat.

  “Wipe his forehead,” Maroon said.

  Blue swiped off the perspiration from Seth’s earlier lie.

  “Repeat what you just said,” Maroon commanded.

  Seth calmed slightly. “My aims and yours are the same.”

  Again, the TrueFalse serum confirmed that he was telling the truth.

  “He’s hedging his definitions again,” I said softly. “Ask him what your mutual aim is.”

  “That’s stupid,” Blue said. “Everyone knows our aim is to take the human race to the stars to fulfill our Great Destiny.”

  I risked speaking again. “I don’t think Seth believes in a Great Destiny.”

  The look Maroon gave me made me think I was pushing my luck, but he asked Seth my question. “What is your aim?”

  “To hand Timothy Castellan over to the Spacers.”

  “Why do you want this?”

  “So the Martian mines won’t be closed down,” Seth said nervously. Plump beads of sweat burst out of his pores, running down his face. He was lying.

  Maroon’s face turned to stone as Blue scrubbed the damning evidence from Seth’s face. She wasn’t gentle about it either. “If you lie to me again, I will gut you.Why do you want the Spacers to have possession of Timothy Castellan?”

  Seth trembled. “So that SilverDollar has a legitimate reason to attack the Spacers.”

  Except for the aircar’s engine, the silence was deafening.

  Maroon rocked back on his heels, absorbing the knowledge that his organization had been used as a dupe to hurt the very group he had been trying to protect. His troops looked angry and devastated by turns. Blue was openly fingering her gun.

  “Vermilion, radio the other aircar and tell them to abort the mission,” Maroon ordered. “Tell them not to hand the hostage Timothy Castellan over to our Spacer brothers, and warn the Spacers of possible treachery.”

  A young man with wavy red lines on his face moved to the front of the aircar to make the call. He returned four minutes later with bad news. “The switch has already been made. We don’t know how to contact the Spacers.”

  My heart dropped to my knees. Poor Timothy.

  “You’ve got to let me go,” I said. “I have to save him.”

  “Not yet,” Maroon said. “Not until I know where your loyalties lie.”

  I went very still but didn’t fight when Blue administered the dose of TrueFalse. I could feel the drug moving through my veins and didn’t like the sensation. I had ten minutes to decide what to say and to think about what would happen if I gave the wrong answer.

  “What’s your name?” Maroon asked.

  “Angel Eastland.” I told the truth, hoping he wouldn’t ask if my code name were Lemon.

  He didn’t. “Are you loyal to the Sons and Daughters of the Stars?”

  “I am loyal neither to the Sons and Daughters of the Stars, nor to Eddy Castellan,” I said calmly.

  A ripple went through the watchers, but they didn’t regard me with the same hostility they did Seth. So far, so good.

  “Then what is your part in this?” Maroon asked, curious. “You are not just a student.”

  Quicksand opened up in front of me. If I toldthem I worked for SilverDollar, they would regard me as their enemy.

  I had been silent too long. Blue was looking at me with suspicion. And so, in desperation, I lied. “I’m older than I look. I’ve been investigating Eddy Castellan. I work for the UN.”

  I lied under TrueFalse—and did not sweat.

  “VIOLET EYES LIE.”The meaning of the first message I’d found suddenly became clear.

  When NorAm created the violet-eyed superchildren, one of the “improvements” they must have made was the ability to lie under TrueFalse. They had intended to use us as spies, and the ability to lie was a useful skill for a spy to have.

  “If she’s UN, she’s a danger to us,” Blue said, recalling me to the interrogation. “She can identify us.” Blue avoided looking at me, a bad sign.

  Time to speak up before Blue decided how to dispose of my dead body. “You’re not the ones I’m after. My mission is to bring down Eddy Castellan; you’re incidental. Let me go and I won’t tell my employer any details about your operation.”

  “They can get a description out of her under TrueFalse.” Blue continued to speak to Maroon and ignore me.

  “That’s not true,” I said forcefully. “You forget: the UN has to abide by its own laws, and the lawsays the subject must give permission before TrueFalse testimony is allowed. I’ll simply refuse.”

  My lack of sweat convinced Maroon. “Okay, we’ll let you go.”

  “Thank you.”

  On Maroon’s instructions, the pilot set the aircar down in a deserted area. “I’ll radio your location to the UN,” Maroon promised as he administered the TrueFalse antidote. “You will tell them we had no knowledge of SilverDollar’s plan?”

  “I will.” I looked straight into his brown eyes and lied. I wished I could tell the UN the truth and hand the whole mess over to them, but my Loyalty chip stood in the way. Loyalty dictated that Eddy be quietly removed from his position of power in the company, not arrested. An arrest spelled embarrassment for SilverDollar. Embarrassment meant that public opinion of SilverDollar would sour and its stock would drop. Arresting Eddy could cost SilverDollar millions.

  “Can I give you a piece of advice?” I asked. “This whole thing stinks. If you want to come out of it smelling better than SilverDollar, you should release the other hostages.” The Cartwright trustees would pay for Zinnia, but I wasn’t sure if Eddy would pay a ransom for Mike. I reminded myself that if Mike could escape Dr. Frankenstein he could escape from terrorists, too.

  From the glances Maroon and Blue exchanged, I gathered that release wasn’t likely. The Sons and Daughters of the Stars probably needed the money.

  I lifted a hand in farewell and stepped out into the desert heat. The wind from the lifting aircar blew a tumbleweed into some cactus.

  For the next fifteen minutes, I tried very hard not to think about my ability to lie under TrueFalse. I paced and tried to worry about other things, like what I would do stuck in the desert without water if Maroon didn’t keep his word to radio the UN or the UN didn’t send someone to pick up their “agent.”

  I tried and failed.

  Next, I tried to convince myself (and therefore the chip) that, for some reason, Blue hadn’t dosed me with truth serum. That there had been a factory error in the batch of TrueFalse that my medi-patch came from. But I knew better.

  The note I’d written to myself during my Loyalty Induction said it all: “Violet eyes lie.” I must have been interrogated under TrueFalse and discovered my ability to lie sometime in that memorysmudged period between kissing Mike good-bye and waking up a loyal employee of SilverDollar.

  Which mea
nt that all the violet-eyed could lie, which meant that Mike could have lied when he swore loyalty to SilverDollar.

  It didn’t mean he had, just that he could have. Likely, he hadn’t known he could lie so hadn’t chanced it. Only. . . . Only I had told him about the message I’d found in my sock. In my mind’s eye, I could see his violet eyes widening with understanding.

  I could hear the passion in his voice as he spoke about getting revenge on SilverDollar: “I’m going to smash them until there’s nothing left but shards.”

  Mike, I feared, was not going to settle for the pallid revenge of having President Castellan fire Eddy. Mike hadn’t believed me when I’d suggestedearlier that Eddy was solely to blame for our illegal chips.

  Mike was a hostage. He should be safely out of commission until this was over, but I didn’t trust him not to escape and muck things up. And if he tried to take down SilverDollar in order to save me, I was afraid of what my Loyalty chip might make me do.

  I thought there was a very good chance President Castellan would free me from my Loyalty chip once I spoke to her. But in the meantime I was its slave.

  I was still frantically trying to think my way out of the trap when an aircar with UN insignia landed near me and Dr. Hatcher got out.

  I should have been surprised that Dr. Hatcher, the symposium presenter who’d talked to me about choosing a career, was a UN operative, but my mind was too occupied with doomsday scenarios for it to register as more than a blink. “Hello, Dr. Hatcher.”

  “Angel Eastland. Why am I not surprised?”

  My eyes narrowed. What did he mean by that?

  “The message said that the Sons and Daughters of the Stars were returning our operative to us. Can I assume they meant you?” Dr. Hatcher looked around, but I was patently alone in the desert scrub.

  “A small fib,” I said glibly.

  “Ah,” Dr. Hatcher said. I had the uneasy impression that he actually understood, but he didn’t press it. “Dahlia Cartwright testified that you belonged to the terrorist group. Was that also incorrect?”

  “That was a ploy to be taken along,” I said. “I work for SilverDollar. You can question me under TrueFalse if you like.”

  “I could,” Dr. Hatcher agreed. “But it wouldn’t do any good, would it? It doesn’t matter. I happen to believe you.

  He knew who I was. What I was.“Just who are you anyway?” I asked.

  “I’m a UN specialist in human genetic experiments. Whenever there’s a violation, I’m called in.”

  I felt cold. “What were you doing at the symposium?”

  “My presence at the symposium was purely coincidental—I’m interested in the idea of adapting humans for life on Mars.”

  “Then you haven’t been hunting me?”

  “No.” Dr. Hatcher looked sad. “Though perhaps I should have been,” he said cryptically. “A colleague mentioned your name in connection with the essay contest, and I recognized it and sought you out.”

  “And why are you here in the desert?”

  Dr. Hatcher shrugged. “I was on the spot. A UN operative is on his way; when he arrives, he’ll take over. Genetics are my field, not terrorists.”

  I tried to decide if I believed him or not.

  “There’s something I’d like to say,” Dr. Hatcher said. “I’ve wanted to say it for a long time.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to apologize for your treatment at the hands of Dr. Frank.”

  Dr. Frank, whom Mike and I had nicknamed Dr. Frankenstein, who had tried to sell Mike and me to the highest bidder.

  “Oh, is that anofficialapology?” I asked bitterly.

  “No. A personal one.” Dr. Hatcher’s steady gaze made me feel ashamed of the dig. “I was a rookie when the Needham administration was busted, but I still remember how horrified everyone was by the plight of the violet-eyed children. Genetic manipulation is illegal, but you yourselves were innocent. You posed quite a dilemma for us.”

  Meaning, I surmised, that some of them had wanted to sterilize or even kill all the violet-eyed children as nonhumans.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t do better by you,” Dr. Hatcher said. “We made a mistake in letting NorAm retain guardianship of you.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” My face was stiff and unforgiving. An apology didn’t erase the crime that had been committed against Mike and me.

  Dr. Hatcher cleared his throat. “In your note you said that you would rather be friends than enemies.”

  He was referring to the note I had left with Dr. Frankenstein’s body, a veiled warning that we would fight back if people continued to persecute us for belonging to a different subspecies. “We would rather be your friends than your enemies. Don’t start a war you can’t win.”

  “I would like to be your friend, Angel.”

  I looked away, unable to bear the kindness in his eyes. I found myself unaccountably close to tears.

  And then he wrecked it all by adding, “Though I disapprove of the path you’ve chosen, working for SilverDollar as hired guns.”

  I’m not working for them by choice,I screamedsilently, but, of course, the chip prevented me from saying so out loud. “Why?” I said flippantly instead. “Spying is what we were bred for.”

  Dr. Hatcher looked sad. “Leona said you wouldn’t follow anyone’s drum but your own. I guess she was wrong.”

  I took the bait. “You know Leona?”

  “Yes. I was able to assist her and her brother in locating someone. She’s a remarkable young woman. She’s planning to become a marine biologist, you know. She’s not the only Renaissance child living a normal life, either. I also know an actress, a geneticist, a firefighter, and an accountant.”

  “Are you offering to help us? Put us in some kind of protection program?”

  “Yes. And pay for whatever education you may desire.”

  He was offering exactly what Mike and I had gotten into this mess trying to obtain. It was too good to be true. “And what do you want in return?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I looked into his eyes and believed him. Then I had to look away because the chip wouldn’t let me accept. “I’ll consider it,” I said. Even that made my tongue feel thick with disloyalty. “If you truly want to be my friend, give me the fastest aircar you have.”

  I was hoping he’d offer me a ride, but Dr. Hatcher humbled me. He gestured to the sleek craft he’d arrived in. “Will this one do?”

  I accepted, and after radioing for another aircar to come and pick him up, he stepped back and let me climb into the pilot’s seat. He didn’t ask mewhere I was going or what I needed it for, an enormous act of trust that would probably cost him his job.

  “Good-bye, Angel. I hope we meet again someday.”

  I started to shut the door, then hesitated, fighting with the chip. “My parents. Can you tell them that I’m alive and that I love them?”

  “I’d be happy to. But wouldn’t you rather call them yourself? If you give me a moment, I can get you their number.”

  The chip was screaming with urgency already. “I don’t have time.” My hands slammed the door, and I blocked off all thoughts of my parents and Dr. Hatcher’s amazing offer. I donned the headset and started the engines, overriding the preflight checks.

  “Please set course,” the computer said.

  “Quito, New Inca Republic,” I told it. “Maximum speed.”

  The Spacers’ power base was in space. They would want to get Timothy off-planet as soon as possible, which meant the beanstalk, which meant Quito.

  The beanstalk was an incredibly tall, thin tower stretching 35,890 kilometers from Earth to space. Elevators in the beanstalk used pulleys and counterweights to transfer goods into space without having to burn up the huge amounts of fuel needed to boost rockets out of Earth’s gravity.

  The beanstalk had to be built along the equator so as to be in geostationary orbit with Earth, just like a satellite. The UN had chosen to build the beanstalk in Quito because the ci
ty was closeto the equator and several miles above sea level.

  While the aircar lifted off and flew under AutoPilot, I tried to place a call to President Castellan. All her calls, though, were being shunted to security—meaning Anaximander and Eddy. I hung up quickly.

  The clock read 11:20A.M.

  It was a four-hour flight from Tucson, Arizona, to Quito, and the Spacers holding Timothy had at least half an hour’s head start. I took the aircar off AutoPilot and used the override to break the speed limit. The aircar’s UN identification kept Air Traffic Control from doing anything more than complain. When I got tired or hungry, I let AutoPilot spell me for fifteen-minute breaks while I drank bottled water and ate some doughnuts I found in a paper bag.

  I wanted to call beanstalk security to tell them to watch for Timothy and his kidnappers, but I lacked the authority. Beanstalk security would want confirmation from Anaximander or Eddy, and my Loyalty chip insisted on handling things quietly, on not telling people about Eddy’s guilt.

  At 4:41P.M.Central Standard Time, the clouds parted suddenly to reveal the city of Quito, formerly in Ecuador, now part of the New Inca Republic. Quito lay in a narrow valley on the lower slopes of the Pichincha volcanoes. On my left, I could see the beanstalk bisecting the blue sky. Like Jack’s beanstalk it was very tall and thin, only it ended in a space station at the top instead of the Giant’s garden.

  The beanstalk rapidly grew into a solid pillar onthe horizon. Its great shadow stretched out for miles. The uneven ground and varied heights of the buildings made it appear to ripple, the world’s largest sundial.

  Because my aircar was marked UN, Traffic assigned me a primo parking spot close to a motorized walkway. At its base, the beanstalk was close to a kilometer in diameter in order to anchor the weight of the tower.

  Before I disembarked, I searched the aircar. I scrounged up a uniform with UN insignia, handcuffs, and three Knockout medi-patches.

  Once I passed through the security checkpoint, I began to scan the crowd around me for someone carrying a gun. I didn’t want to shoot anyone, but the Spacers holding Timothy hostage weren’t likely to hand him over to me if I just said please.