XVI

by Julia Karr

  Ginnie said, “There’s no time for explanation. Listen to me. You must find him, and give him the book I keep in my bedside table. You know the one.”

  I did know. She only kept one book there—Dee’s baby book. “‘Hovan, Hovan Gorry og O, I’ve lost my darling baby, O!’”

  “It’s so important. It’s got all the answers.”

  She wasn’t making any sense. My father had died the night I was born. Maybe the Infinity machine was translating her thoughts wrong. Or, maybe she was hallucinating. I’d heard that people sometimes do that when they’re dying.

  “‘I found the wee brown otter’s track, otter’s track, otter’s track ...’”

  “The last time I saw him was a few months before Dee was born,” she said. “Nina. Pay attention. I’m not crazy. Please.”

  Attention. Yes. There wasn’t time for the emotions that were welling up inside of me. Later I could think about my father—my father who had been alive all my life, but hadn’t had anything to do with me. “‘I found the wee brown otter’s track, but ne’re a trace o’my baby, O!’”

  The vocalization machine made a weird noise. It sounded like crying. I glanced up and a nurse was standing in the doorway. I wondered how long she’d been there. When she saw me looking at her, she slipped out of the room. She’d been listening to us, of that I was sure.

  The weird sound happened again. I continued the lullaby. “‘Hovan, Hovan Gorry og O, Gorry og O, Gorry og O ...’”

  Ginnie said, “You must get the book to your father, to Alan. You must keep Ed away from Dee. Don’t let him near her. Promise me, Nina.” It was like her voice was a hand, grabbing me, demanding my assurance.

  The buzzer sounded. I stopped singing. Dee rushed back in, the nurse and doctor right behind her.

  “I promise,” I whispered.

  “Just know that I love you two more than anything in this universe or any other. You have always been the reason for everything I’ve ever done. You’ve been my whole life. Keep each other safe.”

  I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. If I let the tears loose, they would never stop.

  “I’m so sorry.” The doctor placed her hand on my shoulder.

  I pressed my cheek against Ginnie’s and whispered, “Mom, I love you.”

  “Peace, dear one,” she said, “at last.”

  The nurse motioned me away from the machine. I let my fingers linger on Ginnie’s face as long as I could. Wrapping Dee in my arms, I willed myself to be strong for her.

  The doctor pressed a button and my mother was dead.

  X

  When we walked outside the Infinity machine room, Officer Jelneck was down the hall with a man and woman. She said something to them and gestured toward me and Dee.

  The doctor leaned over to me and whispered, “B.O. S. S. agents. Be careful.”

  My back stiffened as I watched them come to us.

  “These are the daughters,” Officer Jelneck said. “She’s fifteen and the little one is eleven.”

  “I’m Agent Meadows,” the man said. “This is Agent Crupp. You’ll be coming with us.”

  This has to be some awful dream, I thought. My mother’s dead, my father’s alive, and here are two B.O.S.S. agents who are taking me and Dee who knows where. What little grip I still had on my emotions was slipping fast away.

  “Now.” The woman spun on her heel and walked away.

  “What about my mother?” I said. “I need to call my grandparents.”

  “Your grandparents have been notified,” Meadows said. “Due to regulations regarding the use of the Infinity machine, the body belongs to the government and will be disposed of in the usual manner.” He attempted to shoo Dee and me along after Crupp.

  I glanced at the doctor. “Don’t let them hurt her, please.” I knew it was just a body, but it was still my mother.

  “I’ll do what I can.” Her shoulders sagged. “You’d better go.”

  We left the same way we’d come in. Except this time we were escorted by two B.O.S.S. agents. Neither of whom said one word to us, not even a “sorry about your mother.” I kept myself busy comforting Dee. That way I didn’t have attention to give to the clawing terror at the base of my neck.

  They put us in the back of a multitrans with blackened windows. No one could see in, but we couldn’t see out either.

  “Where are we going?” Dee asked between sobs. “Are they taking us to Gran and Pops?”

  “I don’t know.” I hugged her close. Before I’d had time to imagine all the possible places we might end up, the trannie stopped. When the door opened, we were in front of our modular.

  Agent Meadows reached into his pocket. “Here’s the warrant.” He shoved an official-looking piece of paper at me.

  “Unlock the door,” Agent Crupp said.

  “Warrant?” I said. “My mother didn’t do anything. Someone killed her, not the other way around.”

  Agent Crupp tapped her stilettoed foot on the sidewalk.

  I did as I was told.

  Inside was exactly as we’d left it. Moon Academy was playing on the AV, the remains of dinner in front of it, and the pillows were scattered about where Dee and I had been playing.

  “I’ll get that stuff out--”

  “Don’t touch anything,” Meadows said.

  “You two. There.” Agent Crupp pointed to the sofa.

  We sat.

  First they went through every vid chip we had. The man easily broke open the locked box where Ed kept his private ones. Agent Crupp was scanning them when she snorted. “Here’s one called Make Those Sex-teens Scream. Real educational, that one.”

  I looked away, my cheeks burning.

  After the vids, they inspected the few real books we had.

  “Take these.” Agent Crupp pushed 1984 and Mars Rising in the man’s hand. “Not suitable reading for anyone.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Smut and sedition. Your mother was a real piece of work.” I clenched the edge of the couch. Not daring to speak. “Come on.” She motioned us to follow her.

  We watched while they searched our room, then Ginnie’s. Meadows dumped the contents of her bedside table drawer onto the bed. Dee’s baby book lay on top of the pile.

  My heart pounded and a chill ran through me. The book.

  Picking it up, Meadows said, “What’s this?”

  My breath caught in my throat as he passed it to Agent Crupp.

  She flipped through the pages. “A mother’s memory book of her kid. Nothing important.” Tossing it aside, she and Meadows continued their search.

  When they were done, they herded us back into the living room. Agent Crupp said, “If you girls are smart, you’ll forget whatever stupid ideas your mother fed you about the government. It’s radicals like her that end up bleeding to death in the gutter.” She shut the front door behind her, leaving us alone amid the mess.

  The two of us collapsed to the floor, crying. “I hate you!” Dee screamed at the shut door.

  I caught her up in my arms, covering her mouth. “Don’t. Just don’t.” I didn’t know what those agents were capable of, or what they could hear. I wasn’t going to risk getting them angry.

  After what seemed like hours, I managed to pull myself together enough to call Gran.

  “We’re on the express. Should be in Cementville in about fifteen minutes,” Gran said. “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “You and Dee make some tea for us. You need to be busy right now. Don’t think too much. We’ll be there as soon as we can. We love you, Nina.”

  I clicked off my PAV. “Gran says they need tea. Let’s get some brewing.” I stood. Holding out my hands to my little sister, I pulled her up and hugged her. “We’ll get through this, DeeDee. That’s what sisters do. They get through things together.”

  I put Dee to work, hoping Gran was right, that a focus on a specific task would help. “Use the kettle. Gran likes tea made the old-fashioned way. I’ll be right back. I need to get something.”

&nbs
p; Hurrying to Ginnie’s room, I snatched up the baby book and opened it. There was a paper tucked in the front pocket. It was a list in Ginnie’s handwriting: (1) Rita, with a check mark beside it. (2) FeLS contract—Gran, with a check mark beside it, too. I flipped through the rest of the pages. It looked normal. Ginnie had made notes about Dee by the sides of pictures and mementos. I wanted to study it more closely, but the teakettle whistled and Dee called me.

  I secured the book in the bottom of my dresser. It would have to wait until later.

  Low-tier murder victims didn’t warrant big investigations—after a few days, we still hadn’t heard if they’d found Ginnie’s killer, and I was sure they weren’t going to be looking very hard. I’d called Officer Jelneck a couple of times, wanting to tell her my suspicions about Ed, and how I was pretty sure he’d been at the hospital. I left messages, but she’d never called me back.

  The landlord gave us until the end of the month—six whole days—to get out of the modular. We only took three.

  The mod was so small that the four of us—Gran, Pops, Dee, and me—filled it to the bursting point, and there was so much to do, I didn’t have an opportunity to be alone with the baby book or think about my father. I had no idea what kind of reaction I would get from him if I did find him. I wasn’t even sure what kind of reaction I wanted to get, or what my response would be. I still couldn’t believe he was alive—after all this time ... I tried not to think too much about that, or why my mother felt the need to hide this from me, and just focus on getting through the next few days.

  Gran and I busied ourselves with sorting, tossing, and packing up my life as I’d known it. We started packing up the living room when there was a knock at the door. It was two men. One of them handed me a card that said Johnson’s Delivery.

  “I’m here to pick up the FAV. Man said you’d know it belonged to him.” The guy stuck his head in the door. “That’s it, there.” He pushed past me. “Said there was a box of vids, too.”

  A dry laugh escaped me. “Vids? Not here.” It was little satisfaction, but the morning after Ginnie died, I’d dumped Ed’s disgusting chips into the trash when I was cleaning up the mess the B.O.S.S. agents had left us.

  The guy shrugged. “Oh well, he shoulda come and got this stuff hisself.” It took the two of them about three minutes to get the FAV disconnected and leave.

  “Ed’s?” Gran said.

  I nodded, too angry to trust myself to speak.

  “Well, he must have heard the news if he’s picking up the FAV,” she said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t called or come by to see about Dee.”

  “I’m not.” I could hear Ginnie’s voice through the machine telling me to keep Dee away from Ed. My hands clenched. “Besides, Ginnie didn’t want Ed to have anything to do with Dee.”

  “He was a horrible man. Horrible. I never understood why Ginnie stayed with him.” Gran clucked her tongue. “Probably best if he doesn’t come around. Although he does have rights.”

  I knew why Ginnie wanted me to keep Dee away from Ed. Even though he’d always treated her well when he was around, there was no telling what would happen now. Men were known to use their illegitimate daughters as Cinderella girls, servants—and other things—for their legit families.

  I wanted to tell Gran what Ginnie’d said about Ed, about my father. But I didn’t want to involve Dee or Pops. Dee would get upset about Ed, and Pops would just get upset. I loved him to pieces, but he could go off the deep end about most anything. And with all of his health problems, telling him that his only son was still alive might be too much of a shock.

  I almost told Gran then, but Pops and Dee were in the kitchen. The walls of the mod were so thin they would’ve heard everything. I couldn’t risk scaring Dee with the thought of being a Cinderella girl.

  Sandy popped through the door. “Can I help?”

  “Why don’t you girls go finish up in Nina’s room,” Gran said. “We’re nearly ready to go.”

  Sandy plopped onto my bed. It, along with all the furniture, belonged with the modular. “I can’t believe you’re moving,” she said. “What am I going to do without you?”

  “I know.” I blinked back an unexpected tear. “I’ll only be an express ride away, though. And Gran and Pops’s is close to the station.”

  “I guess.” She leaned on the sheets and comforter stacked on the bed. “How are you all going to fit in their apartment? It’s tiny. And isn’t it just for retired people?”

  “The building owners agreed to let us live there and are moving us into a bigger place.” I took the bedding from under Sandy’s elbow and stuffed it in a box marked Nina. In the bottom, under all my clothes and my meager stash of treasured art supplies, was Dee’s baby book. I would search it as soon as things got unpacked at our new home.

  “So where will you go to school?” Sandy said. “I can’t imagine going to a Chicago school. They go all the way up to tier ten. Can you imagine? Top-tiers, right next to girls like us! We don’t even have anyone above five. If I could be around all those tier-ten guys ...” Her voice trailed off. I glanced over at her; she was lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling with a smile on her face.

  “Snap out of it,” I said. “The apartment building is in the same district where I lived before. So I’ll be at Daley along with Mike and Derek. And, yes, there will be all tiers—all the way up to ten. Like that’s going to make a difference.”

  “It will, too, make a difference,” she said. “Besides, you’ll have your friends and I won’t have anyone.”

  “Those guys aren’t you, Sandy.” I sat down next to her. “Promise you’ll come see me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  She’d just launched into all the things we could do when Gran interrupted. “Nina, Mr. Eskew’s here, ready to load up the trannie. It’s time.”

  Sandy’s stepfather had offered (at Mrs. Eskew’s prodding I was sure) to help us move our things. There wasn’t much to load. Fifteen minutes later, Sandy and I were standing at the curb with Gran and Dee, waiting for our ride to the express station. Pops had gone ahead with Mr. Eskew.

  When the hire trannie rounded the corner, I grabbed Sandy and held her tight. Sandy was crying, but I didn’t dare. Dee was watching us, and if I broke down, she would, too. I had to be strong. I shoved away the thought that maybe someone should be strong for me. That wasn’t going to happen.

  I hung my head out the window, waving until Sandy was a dot in the distance. On the trip in, I barely listened to Gran and Dee’s chatter. I wanted silence ... quiet ... and the luxury of being able to cry. But none of that was possible. There was too much to do.

  When we got to the apartment, Mr. Eskew and Pops were already there. Earlier the building maintenance guys had packed up all of Gran and Pops’s things and moved them into the larger place. Dumped them, was more like it. The apartment looked more like a storage unit than a home.

  I helped Sandy’s dad get the trannie unloaded. I never liked him much, especially not the way he looked at Sandy, but I still thanked him for the help. Watching him drive away, the full force of the situation hit me. Ginnie was gone. My life would never be the same again.

  After a dinner of nut butter sandwiches and soy milk—Gran hadn’t been shopping and the cook center hadn’t been programmed yet—Gran put us all to work setting the apartment in order. I was unpacking one of their boxes marked Living Room when I came across a handful of books.

  I turned one over and over in my hand. “B.O.S.S. took all our books,” I said. “I still don’t understand why they went through all of our stuff. Ginnie wasn’t the criminal, she was the victim. Do they always do stuff like that?”

  “They do whatever they want,” Gran said.

  “Couldn’t have stopped ’em if you’d tried,” Pops said. “Nothing to find, though, was there? As if poor Ginnie had anything to hide.”

  Gran didn’t respond, but I knew something was up from her expression, and I’d have given anything to know what she was thin
king. Sometimes, when we’d all visited in the past, she and Ginnie would go into the kitchen and talk alone. They didn’t think I’d noticed that whenever I walked in on them, they’d change the subject. I used to think they were talking about things that they didn’t want a little kid to hear, but now I wondered if it was something completely different. Maybe even something that could get someone killed.

  “Come on, Deedles.” Pops grabbed Dee’s hand. “Let’s get busy on your room.”

  “But I’m going to sleep with Nina.” The rims of Dee’s eyes reddened.

  Before she could start crying, I said, “Of course you are, but you might want to have a place to put some of the things you don’t need all the time.”

  Pops winked over her shoulder at me. “She’s right, Deedles. It’ll almost be like you’ve got two rooms. That’s better than me. I’m stuck with her”—he jerked his thumb at Gran—“for the rest of my life.”

  “Which won’t be very much longer if you keep that up, old man.” Gran wagged her finger at him. “Now the two of you git!”

  When they were out of earshot, I decided to risk it. “Gran, did Ginnie have a friend named Rita?”

  Gran peered over her glasses. “Hmm, I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”

  “When I was packing, I found a piece of paper with her name on it. I never met anyone she knew named Rita.”

  Gran pulled on her lower lip for a minute. Finally, she said, “The only Rita I recall was a high school friend of Ginnie’s. She was a couple of years older than your mom and dad were. I think she was related to ...” She stopped to pick a piece of lint from her sleeve. “Nope, can’t remember the name. Seems like she was another of Ginnie and Alan’s friends’ sister. As I recall, she was in one of the early groups of girls chosen when the FeLS program started some thirty-odd years ago. Strangest thing, if it’s the same girl I’m thinking of, she disappeared on the way out to O’Hare to catch the space station shuttle for FeLS training. Never seen or heard from again.” Gran shook her head. “Some thought it was her plan all along to get out of going, but I think she was kidnapped, plain and simple. She wasn’t the only one of your father’s acquaintances to drop out of sight over the next several years.”