His voice rose. “Odile, no. Give me a week. I’ll speak with Ivette. We’ll get you out.”
Her lips thinned, hard. “I’m not going to argue.”
Myrta said, “But they shouldn’t want you in their program at all. You were at Caravan when Melville attacked me. He knows we’re related and that you care about me. This doesn’t make sense.”
Another moth fumbled into the fence, brown powder.
“Myrta. Melville’s the person who most wants me trained. He thinks it’ll bring Ephraim back into the program, to keep me safe or something. But you need to leave.”
Her rage built. How dare they. How dare combustion destroy her family? “No.”
“Myrta, yes. Look where I’m standing and think about this for one minute.”
“No. You think about it. The stead is parched. You’re throwing your life away. Papa’s hurt. And why? Because I exist?”
No one said anything. Of course they didn’t—there was nothing to say. Her rage pushed any last bit of anxiety away.
“Odile,” Alphonse said at last. “We need you out. How do we do that?”
“You don’t.”
“Why? What are they doing to you? Autore, look at you.”
“Well, Al. I’m medicated.”
“That’s how they train you?”
She looked away, grimly. “The training’s mostly dissections, but yes. And if we’re lucky,” she added sarcastically, “they find someone like Myrta, so we can learn this particular trait on a living specimen.”
Jack moved his arm around Myrta, but she pushed it off. He was glowering next to her, like Nathan did sometimes, like Terrence. Jack looked like he might erupt. “You can’t do this.”
Unfazed, Odile went on. “We’re learning facial measurements. Those change when the muscles develop. We learn how to recognize someone using it.”
“You could already do that.” Myrta forced her voice back down. “You could.”
“Ephraim taught me. Then there’s field work. You know.”
They stood in silence, the anger prowling between them. Beyond the plant, extractors kept thumping.
Alphonse’s next words came soft. Dew drops, a mist on the fields. “Odile. Sweet Odile. I don’t want you to do any of this. Odile, I want you back.” Silent tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Her face broke. “Oh . . . Al. I know. But I’m not going anywhere.”
She seemed to soak him in, every bit of him, from his scabbed hands to his tear-streaked face. Her gaze landed on his eyes, stayed there, and he returned it, unspeaking. For all the world, it was like watching Celeste and Terrence.
But it was impossible, that after everything they’d been through, especially since Caravan, that everything had led here—to Odile joining this abominable program.
Myrta clenched her fists and said angrily, “We can’t have come here for nothing.”
Odile nodded. “Right. Take some information back.”
That wasn’t what she meant.
“Those are the barracks. That’s the cafeteria. We work in a trailer on the other side—you can see the corner of it. Melville and Floyd are with us in the afternoons.”
The trailer was about fifty feet inside the fence. Odile waved her hand toward the middle of the complex. “Management and finance are in a building over there. It’s white. Records are underground. Myrta, there’s another thing I should’ve told you.” She lifted her shirt. There was an incision and a tube, a port like the one Ephraim had gotten the night Myrta left Collimais. Odile said, “If Melville comes after you, or Floyd, go for the stomach. This is for the drugs. Grab and yank.”
Repulsed, Myrta closed her eyes. “Odile . . .”
She lowered her shirt. “So don’t count on me. They’ve got me on some pretty strong stuff.”
* * *
Myrta paced from one end of Ralen’s guest room to the other, with all the deadly hells of Odile taking on Melville’s role torturing her thoughts.
Alphonse stared out of the window. “I want her out.”
He’d been saying it all night.
There wasn’t enough air. Myrta needed the belt, somewhere big. She went to the washroom and splashed her face.
Odile, being drugged through that tube. Odile jabbing at people like her. Using knives and needles to torture. Her papa doing those things.
Shaking, she pushed away from the sink and sat on the floor. After a few minutes she got up and went back out.
Jack was talking. “. . . funds. The indenture.”
Alphonse scoffed. “I doubt that program has an indenture period.”
“Maybe Ralen’s connections,” Jack said. “Get to Odile through them.”
Alphonse smacked his forehead. “Ivette.”
“Who?” Myrta said.
“Ivette. My—my mother. She introduced me to people inside—I know people inside Renico.”
Myrta stared at this man, who was suddenly strange again. He might as well have claimed to head the whole industry. “You know them? You said you didn’t. You said you’d never work for them.”
Alphonse shook his head. “Odile said records are below finance. I’ll set up a meeting.”
“A meeting?”
His eyes were lit.
“Yes. With Zelia Naida. Her name doesn’t matter. I can get in. I’ll tell her . . . tell her we can put the belt under provincial governance immediately. It’s what Ivette wants. Probably Zelia wants it too. I’ll tell her we can buy your support—steaders’ support—with irrigation. That the belt will ask for provincial status if it gets them water. She’ll take the bait. That’s how we get on site. It’s how we get to Odile.”
It was hardly a plan, and Jack didn’t seem impressed either. He said, “Alphonse. There’s no way we go in and walk around that place. How about this. You go in, meet your friend. Get whatever you can, get out. I stay here with Myrta. We’re done. Odile becomes a discerner.”
No—Odile would never become a discerner, not if Myrta had anything to say about it. “If you get in, Alphonse, you might find the files I need. The files my family—Odile’s family—needs. On discerning. No one would let it continue.” Myrta’s stomach lurched again, and she heard hysteria creeping into her voice. “Not if there was proof. They’d have to stop it, including the training, and then Odile wouldn’t be trained. We have to break this into pieces. We can’t do it all at once.”
“We can if we all go in together. There are three of us. Do the math!”
“What math?”
In the distance, the complex glowed. Alphonse stared at it, then crumpled and sank onto the couch with his head in his hands. “Never mind.”
Myrta ran through the pieces again. Alphonse knew someone in the plant—he could get in, but he wasn’t really himself. Odile had told them where the records were kept. And they all wanted her out.
“Jack, he’s right. He can’t do any of this alone. I’m going with him.”
* * *
The next morning, Ralen showed them a room, her papa’s, she’d said, filled with his things. Pieces of coral, strange tools, stones, artwork.
A painting of a blue and green world with a single sun hung on the wall. “Is that conjunction?” Myrta asked.
“It is one of my father’s visions, during sensato.” She opened a wardrobe.
Alphonse seemed uncomfortable at her words and fumbled through the suits, settling on a tan one. He went to clean and shave. When he returned, Myrta’s breath caught.
His trousers fell straight, the seams were sharp, and every physical attribute a person earned in the belt—strong shoulders, richer skin tones—all of it was accented by the fine city suit. Alphonse was a businessman, and he was intimidating.
* * *
The entrance to Renico was a small double gate. Metal, with wire around the edges a
nd a guard house with windows at the side. Myrta had expected something bigger, people coming and going, mechanated devices doing mechanated things. But this, which Odile said was the main entrance, was no more than a metal gate.
Inside the guard house, a man dug around in his mouth with a toothpick. Another rocked on his feet, hands in his pockets, looking out. His eyes tracked her.
Alphonse strode straight up. “I’m here to see Zelia Naida.”
She startled at his tone. He sounded arrogant.
The guard was still glowering. “Ms. Naida doesn’t take meetings.”
“I’m Alphonse Najiwe. I trust you recognize the name.”
The guard studied him more closely. The second one stood and said something, but Myrta couldn’t make it out.
Alphonse insisted, “Call Zelia. We have a time-sensitive opportunity in the belt.”
He sounded powerful. Commanding. She felt smaller.
The second guard shook his head slowly back and forth.
Myrta crossed her arms and forced herself to look straight ahead.
Alphonse put a hand on the window frame and leaned in, inches from the glass. “Call Zelia. Tell her things are moving in the belt and I need a meeting. Now.”
The guards bent their heads together. They spoke quietly and glanced out from time to time. After a few moments, one picked up a distavoc and made the call. The guard grew attentive and hung the receiver back. “Ms. Naida will see you.”
“Thank you.” Alphonse went to the gate, and Myrta followed with Jack. This place had worked itself inside every inch of her family, and a case of nerves sprouted at the thought. This . . . place, all gravel and fencing, defined her life, wrapped around her family, around the generations, around people she’d loved, and people she’d never even known.
The doors opened. Inside, one of the guards climbed into an aut. Alphonse joined him in front, and she and Jack sat in back.
The man drove, and Alphonse spoke in a constant stream in that same compelling voice, implying that he, or his mama, had helped Renico. The guard seemed more and more submissive.
Around them an occasional person passed by. A vehicle stacked with crates pulled away from one of the larger buildings.
They stopped somewhere in the middle of the place, in front of a whitish building. Alphonse got out, waved for Jack and Myrta to follow, and told the guard to go back to the gate. After a moment the aut drove away, and Alphonse was himself again—an awkward man with a limp.
She said under her breath, “That was very truly weird, what you did with your voice and all.”
He shook his head. “Cheap tricks.”
The steps and walls in front of them were made of a faintly-streaked stone. The upper floors were mostly window. Alphonse said, “So, I’ll meet Zelia. You two, go find the trailer Odile showed us. Knock her out, whatever it takes. I want her out.”
“Whoa, hold on there, city boy,” said Jack. “That is not the plan. We’re with you.”
“Jack’s right. It doesn’t make sense for us to be here on our own.”
“Look, Myrta. Today is simple. We get what we need and leave. We need one, records, and two, Odile.”
“We stay together,” she insisted.
“Myrta. This isn’t some big heist. No one is paying any attention to us. They all have jobs. The gate secures the place. We’re past the gate.”
Myrta looked around. He was right about one thing, no one was paying them any mind.
Alphonse repeated, “Getting in was the problem. Now we’re in. See? We’ve done the hard part.”
He seemed to think so. It felt odd, but everything in the cities struck her that way.
“Look, the records are what Odile wants, and she wants you safe. So, you find her. If she sees you’re here, she’ll want you out. If she learns I’m taking care of the files, which I am as soon as you let me, she will agree to leave.”
He seemed certain, and clear-headed, but he’d been going so funny lately. “Odile said she wouldn’t leave last night.”
“Because she wants the files. When you explain I’m getting them, she’ll agree to go.”
Jack looked doubtful. “Something has to be better than two steaders wandering around Renico.”
Good point.
“Look, do you have a better idea?”
On the other hand, she thought, Alphonse knew city people, people here, even. He’d been right about getting in, and he was right about what Odile wanted. And Odile said the discerners weren’t with them in the mornings anyway, so they should go now if they were going to go at all. Myrta turned to Jack. “We’ll be done quicker if we split up. Come on.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Stavo looked around wistfully. “What these people could teach us.”
A woman in glistening fabric passed them and walked through a lipped doorway into a room with rows of metallic cabinets. Each cabinet had keypads, gauges, and illuminated readouts.
“I don’t understand.”
Stavo smiled. “We orbit Turaset. It is the founding.”
Alphonse placed his hands upon a cabinet, confused by the indicators, so foreign to anything he’d ever seen. The woman stood in front of a screen. “She seems to know what’s going on.”
Alphonse became the woman, using the computer interface to check the fecundity of innumerable plant seeds and animal embryos stored within the freezer cabinets. Entire ecosystems waited because the people who built this spaceship knew that systems were necessary for survival; that one part relies on every other part. And so, banks of plants and animals—the producers and consumers, the predators and prey, the foods and pharmaceuticals—waited.
One freezer was entirely dedicated to genetically altered human embryos, intended to help the colony live wisely. Another was filled with plant seeds and fungal spores engineered to produce remarkable medical compounds. Colonizing a new world would bring new challenges.
This vessel, from Earth, was part of a diaspora in search of new homes. It orbited a binary star that periodically emitted unusual radiation. Surviving that radiation would be the colonists’ first challenge.
The woman prepared the seeds and embryos for revival.
* * *
Alphonse asked the building attendant for Zelia’s office and was directed to a corner room on the second floor. He stopped halfway up the stairwell, leaned back, and exhaled. He’d fallen so easily, back at the gate, into the old habits learned at Ivette’s side. He’d thought he was done with all of that, but here he was, wearing a suit for the first time since—Autore, since the gala. Manipulating those guards wasn’t how his grandfather would have done things. But his grandfather never tried to get records from Renico’s vault.
He continued up. Her door was open. He knocked.
“Alphonse!” Zelia, all energy and color, stood from her desk.
“Zelia.”
The walls of her office were a shade of yellow so intense it verged on orange, and suns-light streamed through a bank of windows. Her desk was tidy, with a few worksheets out, financial from the look of them. Outside, the surrounding buildings spread out blocky and gray. Past them, the ocean.
Nice view, actually.
She indicated a small leather sofa and sat next to him, her knees inches from his own. “How’s Ivette?”
“Excellent, thank you. She’s good.”
He felt he stood on a mountain ridge. To one side lay the ethics of the belt—a goal, a product, honest effort. He’d found Odile there and the possibility of a different future. On the other side lay his past, peppering the ridge like flinty outcrops. Tools of flattery, innuendo, weaving the barest suggestion of threat into language—the parts of his upbringing he’d so consciously moved away from. But the tricks Ivette had taught him—those were still within. He wondered if he’d ever be free of them. “The line expansion is movin
g forward.” His words came unbidden, like an old habit.
“Everything’s falling into place.” Zelia’s manner was easy, comfortable, and so was her smile.
With a jolt he realized he’d duped her into sharing something she knew. He teetered on the edge of the ridge.
“Alphonse, can I ask you something?”
He nodded. A debate tossed within him. Exploiting a person’s weakness—it wasn’t illegal. Today was an opportunity and something he’d aimed for. He’d already done the hard part, getting into the facility. And the belt was at risk. Surely the ends justified the means. But it meant deceiving Zelia.
“About that gala, last spring. I’ve been curious, and Ivette’s kept quiet. Everyone thinks you simply lost your temper with di Les.”
He unbuttoned his suit jacket. The ends were important. The belt was important. There were thousands of people living there, and, in fact, in that moment he saw how to spin that gala. Pushing absentmindedly against his thigh, he said, “Confidentially, Mother and I staged that. We wanted to get the attention of the minority caucus.”
She cocked her head, frowning. “Why?”
He committed to the lie. Doing so was distressingly easy. “To establish a narrative. That I’m willing to join that caucus and work against her. Against you. I’ll announce my candidacy and find support in the working class. I’ll win, Zelia, and when I do, I’ll claim to carry on Grandfather’s fight.”
Her expression shifted from uncertainty to interest. “Working with the minority caucus. But why?”
Yes, it was a lie, but one with a large dose of truth, and the ends mattered. Outside the windows, activity grabbed his attention. Guards were dragging Myrta and Jack away.
His stomach turned to lead. He’d been so certain there’d be no guards on the grounds. At the gate, yes, inside some of the operational facilities sure, and in sensitive areas like records—but not strolling the grounds.
Focus. The first goal was records, now with more urgency. “We think we’ll swing a few of their votes if they believe I’m on their side.”
She seemed to consider it. “You’re talking about ancient councilors who won’t serve much longer anyway.”
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