"What?" Ruby had turned back, impatiently. "What is it?"
He was eyeing a particular roof's balustrade carefully. "I don't know." He was uncertain now, thinking that perhaps he was just being overly paranoid.
"Nobody's following us." Supremely confident, little Ruby was already scampering onward, calling back to him, "C'mon!"
Nathan still glanced back at the rooftops as he followed. His instincts were usually right on the money, yet there was nothing to be seen. It puzzled him as he and Ruby moved on, passing the back door of a small Chinese grocery. A moment later it opened. An occidental fourteen-year-old girl emerged.
Charlotte Elgin was pretty but thin and underdeveloped. She wore a simple thrift-shop dress, purchased two years earlier and washed so often that the colors in the delicate print had faded. She carried an old bushel basket to a Dumpster and was about to throw away some bruised, overripe apples when she paused to look at the fruit more carefully. Then she began to pick out a few.
A Chinese woman waddled out of the grocery's back door carrying a bag of trash. Charlotte smiled. Her employer's shape had always reminded the girl of a classic snowman: a small round head, a medium-sized round torso, with the bottom third of her roundest of all. The woman was not even five feet tall. She saw what the teenager was doing and shook her head. Her voice was heavily accented with her native language. "No, Charlotte. They all bad. No can sell. You throw way."
Charlotte tilted her head sweetly down toward the older woman who was a good foot shorter. "Oh, Mrs. Soon, if you don't mind, since they were just going to be thrown out, I was going to take some of them home."
Mrs. Soon looked carefully at the apples, scrutinizing each of them microscopically. Charlotte could almost hear the abacus clicking inside the woman's head as she calculated their worth.
"They not very good. Lotta bruise. Soft spots."
"Not good to sell, maybe. They'd be good enough for me," Charlotte said confidently. "I'll bet I can get lots of nice pieces off of them."
"Mmmm"—Mrs. Soon pursed her lips as she made a final careful assessment, then finally nodded—"okay, Charlotte. You take."
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Soon." The teenager smiled and took a used plastic bag that the lady held out to her for the damaged fruit. Mrs. Soon liked Charlotte's smile and her ability to be friendly toward customers with whom Mrs. Soon often had little patience. Charlotte's mild temperament could charm the most aggravating of them. Mrs. Soon had also noted how her store's business had actually increased since Charlotte had begun working there several months ago, though she had never considered increasing the girl's pay.
Charlotte came after school every day plus she was there from opening until closing all day on Saturdays and Sundays. Mrs. Soon purposely never asked about Charlotte's family situation, but at their first meeting she had immediately deduced they must be struggling to survive. Probably Scis. Mrs. Soon carefully avoided any record of the girl's employment and paid Charlotte "under table" as she put it, which she had decided would be better—and safer—for them both.
Mrs. Soon had once been very poor herself, which accounted for her becoming the most infamous miser in the neighborhood. She knew all the earmarks of poverty. In all the many days Charlotte had come to the grocery, Mrs. Soon had never seen her wear more than three different dresses. They were all threadbare, but always neatly ironed and cared for. They were too thin for the San Francisco winter now that the climate had become more severe since the drying up of the bay and the Pacific Basin almost halfway to Hawaii. There had even been some snow during the last few years. On those colder days, Charlotte augmented her dresses with a thin, pale blue cardigan sweater. It was always the same sweater. Charlotte herself was as thin as her sweater. Once in a great while the tight-fisted Mrs. Soon would allow the girl to take something like the nearly spoiled apples. Charlotte was always very grateful. Indeed, the girl had an unwavering graciousness about her that inspired most of those who came in contact with her. Her influence on people was subtle but definite. Many would begin to emulate her gentle charm. People left Mrs. Soon's store feeling better than they had upon arriving. One man had even told Mrs. Soon that seeing Charlotte always gave his immune system a boost. For her part, Charlotte was very happy just to have a job that allowed her to help support her family.
She was basically a pretty girl with nice features and gray-blue eyes, though to Mrs. Soon her face sometimes looked a bit drawn, as though Charlotte perhaps had some recurrent or chronic ailment. Charlotte had never mentioned that she had diabetes.
Charlotte did have wonderful hair, though. It was thick, long, and almost raven black. As Mrs. Soon watched Charlotte put the bruised apples in the bag, the older woman eyed Charlotte's shiny tresses appreciatively. "You hair beautiful, Charlotte."
Charlotte smiled. "You always say that, Mrs. Soon. Thank you."
"It look Chinese."
"So you tell me."
"My daughter, hair terrible." Mrs. Soon shook her round head in frustration. "You see her? Hair all ratty. Look like crap."
"But your May is a very nice young woman."
"But could be beautiful. If hair good. I tell her: you get wig. You hair terrible. Not like Charlotte."
Charlotte blushed slightly as she smiled and tied the top of the plastic bag. She then held it up in a thankful gesture and bowed to Mrs. Soon in proper Chinese fashion. The older lady received the acknowledgment with a tiny hesitation, wondering if she should keep the apples and try to sell them after all, but then she likewise bowed.
IN THE BEDROOM OF EMMA'S PLUSH, TRENDY CONDO AT THE PEAK OF Nob Hill on Clay Street, a flat-screen TV lay on its back on the thickly carpeted floor. Emma herself was lying facedown on a massage table, her tawny, well-toned dancer's body completely nude. She was looking through the table's padded circular head support at the screen on the floor. It was displaying the flashy images and staccato editing of Emma's most recent, unreleased music vid. The rhythms were kicky, infectious, and so toe-tapping they were irresistible. The striking young diva had thorough command of her latest song and the vocal strength to do it justice. The vid showed her backed up by human singer-dancers and even a couple of Visitors as she sang in various locations. At one point she was dancing atop a Visitor fighter craft. Anyone viewing it would instantly understand why Emma had become such a popular star. Quite simply, she was very talented and she used her talents extremely well.
But she wasn't happy with the particular performance she was watching. "I've got to change those lyrics, find a better way to say it. I need to reshoot it. Don't you think, Mary?"
Mary Elgin's mind had been wandering while she administered the massage. "Hmm? No, it sounds fine to me." Mary, a pale-complected woman of forty-six, looked considerably older than her years to Emma and always seemed emotionally frail. Like other scientists or their families whom Emma had encountered, Mary had a beleaguered quality. But she was a wonderful masseuse. She kneaded Emma's long, lovely neck and barely glanced at the music vid on the screen. "Relax your neck."
Emma closed her eyes and gave herself over to Mary's magical fingertips. "Mmmm," Emma murmured, "you are so good, Mary. All those years studying anatomy, huh?"
"I suppose," Mary sighed.
"Do you still do any sculpting?"
"No. Can't make a living at that." For a moment as she worked her fingers carefully on the muscles in Emma's neck Mary remembered working clay with her fingers. She had loved the feel of it as she shaped and reshaped it. She remembered how she'd felt back in high school and later in the gracious neoclassical Fine Arts Building at Carnegie-Mellon. She'd felt that she wasn't merely shaping the clay, but actually shaping her own future, shaping the art that would speak for her, that would be her contribution to the world; that would be her and live on long after she was gone. That was the dream that first dawned within her as a child. She still had a visceral memory of the first piece of clay she held between her fingers when she was four or five: the clean, earthy smell of it. The i
nfinite joy and possibilities it offered, until the Visitors arrived over twenty years ago. And suddenly all her hopes and dreams, like those of so many others, were quashed overnight. Her musing was interrupted as Emma raised up slightly to look at her.
"Oh, listen, Mary." Emma paused, seeming frustrated and sorry about what she had to say. "I tried my pharmacy, like I said I would."
Mary heard Emma's tone and grew disheartened, anticipating what Emma was about to say. "But they wouldn't do it?"
"No, I'm so sorry." There was genuine regret in her voice. "They wouldn't let me buy medicine for your family even under my name."
"I was pretty sure they wouldn't." Mary sighed. "Thanks for suggesting it—and for trying."
"It's so damned unfair"—Emma lay her face back down on the circular support with a frustrated puff—"I wish I could just give you the extra money again, Mary, but now they're watching every penny I might pay to Scis or their families. The curse of being sort of high profile, I guess."
Mary nodded with stoic resignation. "They monitor us very closely, too. Thanks, anyway."
"Is their diabetes very advanced?"
"My daughter Charlotte seems to be holding on, but my father-in-law is not doing so well."
The peculiarly resonant voice of a male Visitor interrupted, "Knock knock?"
The two women looked over to see Paul, the natty Visitor press secretary, peeking in around the thick, beautifully crafted wooden door that accessed Emma's peach-colored master bedroom suite.
Emma smiled at him, thoroughly unembarrassed by her lack of clothing. "Hey, you. Caught me with my pants down." Mary eased a sheet over Emma's exposed bronze curves.
"Sorry." Paul smiled, but Mary noted that he didn't back out of the room. "Your assistant was on the phone and pointed me this way."
"It's okay, we were just finishing up." Emma slid gracefully off the table while wrapping the sheet around herself. She did it a bit too gracefully for Paul's taste, because he was foiled from seeing as much of the singer's café au lait body as he would've liked. In the twenty years since his arrival on Earth he'd developed quite an eye and a sexual fascination for beautiful human women, not unlike many other male Visitors. Emma particularly inspired a savor of sensuality in him.
As Mary helped Emma with the sheet, the singer looked at her sincerely, speaking privately. "I'll try to think of some other way to help, Mary."
"Thanks, Emma, that means a lot." Then Mary stepped subserviently back as she nodded hello to Paul.
Emma, scarcely concealed in her sheet, went to him and gave him a friendly kiss on his cheek. "What brings you into my boudoir?"
"The Leader's Emissary arrives tomorrow," Paul said with some gravity, "I'd love to have you there."
Emma smiled cheerfully as she shook her long black hair from the clip that had been holding it. "Wherever you want me."
"Really?" He studied her. "Don't tease me, now."
But that was something Emma did very well and often without even realizing it. She winked at him. "I'll be out in a sec and you can tell me all about it." She padded barefoot across the thick carpet and into her cream-colored bathroom while Paul stood in the bedroom and imagined her naked.
THE FUNKY YOUNG MAN IN HIS SLOUCHY HIP-HOP CLOTHES KEPT A weathered eye on the street. He had learned from childhood to be very careful. He was constantly shifting his weight from one foot to the other on the top step of the old brownstone at Cordelia and Broadway in San Francisco's seamy Tenderloin District. Named Jerome Xavier Hernandez by his black mother and Mexican father, as a teenager he had created for himself what he thought was the way-cool nickname of Street-C. A few of his friends guffawed and said it was pretty stupid, which only aroused Jerome's pride of authorship, so he made sure that it had stuck. Jerome fostered his image as a funky, street-smart wise guy, but underneath he was extremely literate. There was always some dog-eared paperback stuffed into the back pocket of his slouchy jeans. It was generally a book banned by the Visitors, like his current choice, Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy.
Jerome had his father's Central American skin color, but his mother's dark eyes and tightly curled hair, which he'd done up in tiny cornrows. His passion for the Resistance was unsurpassed. As a boy he had lost his family members one at a time to the Visitors and by the age of ten Jerome had become an orphaned street urchin scraping by for survival. Then he'd made the wonderful mistake of trying to rob a Peruvian woman who proved to be much tougher than he was. She had boxed his ears severely and then proceeded to turn his life around. Ysabel Encalada had seen her own teenage son be corrupted by the Visitors and become an ardent Teammate some years earlier, so she too was without family. The spicy, no-bullshit Latina became Jerome's surrogate mother and raised him within San Francisco's prime Resistance cadre. Ysabel was the only one he allowed to call him Jerome.
He was chewing on a matchstick and casually searching the street over Nathan's shoulder for any slight indication that this new guy might not be what Ruby said he claimed to be: a deserter from the Teammates. "So why you want to join the Resistance?"
Nathan stood near the half-breed girl who was watching him carefully from just inside the alcove at the top of the stoop. She saw from his surly expression that he wasn't in the mood for a lot of questions. "I've got my reasons."
Street-C pressed darkly, "Gotta show me some proof, mofo."
"Proof?" Nathan had a short fuse and he was getting annoyed. "Why don't you haul your lazy ass over to Market and look at the fighter I stole and got shot down in?"
"Yeah, I heard about that," Street-C said with a nod. Nathan watched as the youth continued to survey the street. "But I'm afraid you gotta do better than that, my man."
"Better than—?!" Nathan flared, then stopped himself. His wounded cheek was throbbing and he wanted to blow off this street punk in the worst way, but knew he needed the contact. He pushed down his annoyance and spoke quietly but with thinly veiled sarcasm, "Just what did you have in mind, friend?"
Street-C twiddled the matchstick between his teeth, then looked into Nathan's eyes for the first time. "Gotta off a lizard. Kill a Patrol captain."
Nathan knew that Street-C was looking for any flicker of hesitation. There was none. "Fine. You got a specific one in mind?"
"Oh, yeah"—Street-C's eyes drifted back out toward the passing traffic—"he gets tips from a snitch over at Fremont and Mission."
Nathan nodded. "I'll need a weapon."
"You be there tomorrow. Noon. My old lady'll point him out and give you a piece."
A disturbance up the block distracted them. Nathan glanced off and saw a skinny, elderly man who looked like he might be homeless being roughed up by four Teammates. One of them was Debra Stein, a tough, short-haired, chunky seventeen-year-old. She was shouting derisively at the cowering old man, "Forgot your ID?" She shoved him abusively. "Forgot it! You some kind of antisocial! Huh? Or maybe a Sci?" She pushed him harder and he fell to the pavement between the four young fascists.
Nathan instinctively wanted to go to the man's defense, but he held himself in check and glanced back to see Ruby and Street-C's reactions. He was surprised to discover that he was alone on the stoop. They had disappeared inside the locked brownstone. Nathan waited until the rowdy Teammates were looking the other way, then he walked quickly across Cordelia into a narrow alley between two decrepit buildings.
On a rooftop above, a woman with short blond hair and a slight sheen to her skin had been observing Nathan intently. Kayta's violet eyes twinkled with pride as she spoke into a small pin on her suede vest. "I have him, Bryke. And I think our instincts are correct. I think he'll lead us to them. Where are you?"
Bryke's voice came back, "Investigating the Sci Section." The dark-skinned woman had just turned east off of Guerrero Street onto Twenty-second, heading toward the Mission District. She was cruising along slowly on a sleek, narrow, aerodynamic motorbike, scanning the scene with her strange pink eyes. "What of Ayden?"
"He's inbound." Kayta
was moving along the rooftop keeping sharply focused on Nathan below. He had temporarily settled into a secluded nook in the alley behind a pile of trash. He sat beneath a rusty fire escape with his back against the weathered bricks and his knees drawn up close to his chest. Even from her distant vantage point, Kayta could see the dark, troubled frown on his face. Having witnessed much of the turmoil he had been through that day, she was desirous of learning more about the true nature and intent of this apparent Teammate deserter.
5
THE FINAL BELL HAD JUST RUNG AT PATRICK HENRY MIDDLE SCHOOL. Thomas Murakami was among the myriad young students pouring out the school's front door. He paused at the top of the broad concrete steps to open his backpack. He was checking to make certain he had the sheet music for his piano lesson. He wasn't fond of the lessons, but his strict, traditional parents insisted upon him taking them and practicing diligently. He located the music and was just closing his pack as he felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder. He looked back and his heart immediately dropped into his stomach.
It was the ever-friendly vice principal, Mr. Gabriel. He was staring down at Thomas with a knowing glint in his soft, cherubic eyes that unsettled the thirteen-year-old in the extreme. "Thomas, my boy," Gabriel said with a curious smile that made the boy's heart ice over and drop even farther, "I need to talk to you for a moment. In my office."
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