While We Run

by Karen Healey

  “But this is new information,” I said. “I have to think….”

  “Your girl is cured,” Hanad said. “The rain has stopped, and the water levels in the tunnels are dropping. In the morning, we take advantage of commuter crush to hide ourselves. We collect Eduardo and our money, and then I am taking you back to Djibouti. There will always be a reason to stay, if you let it be so. You cannot fix this country.” He shook his head, disapproving. “I don’t think anyone can. But whether they can or not, your place is at home.”

  Home, I thought. The amber earth and the black rock, the bright clothes and the busy streets. The city and the sea and the light and heat. Home was where I could never be cold again.

  Hanad must have seen the yearning in my face, because his expression shifted, and Thulani relaxed. “Good, then,” he said, and took his plate to the counter as if the matter were settled.

  I felt, to my shame, an immense rush of relief. This could be someone else’s problem. I could return home to my family and leave Australia’s issues to Australia.

  But I knew I wouldn’t, not without a fight. I could read it in Bethari’s strained features, in Tegan’s huge eyes, in the urgent whispering of my own straining heart.

  “I have to think about this,” I repeated. To Hanad, it must have sounded like a futile protest he could safely ignore. But Tegan squeezed my hand, and Bethari met my eyes across the kitchen table. They knew me; they knew that I wasn’t done with Australia yet.

  Not quite yet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dolce

  After the conference broke up, Marie spirited Tegan away to get more rest, scolding her the whole time for straining herself, in words that were almost—but not quite—more loving than exasperated.

  Zaneisha raised one eyebrow at the dishes that the men had left piled on the bench, at Bethari still picking at her meal, and then looked at me.

  “All right,” I grumbled. Reese Chang had at least shown me how to clean up; apparently the Talented Alien foster-placement program had been very firm on chores making a Talented Alien minor feel like part of the family.

  If Hanad got his way, I’d go back to my family and never have to do these chores again.

  Or maybe I would. My parents had sold their house. They must have laid off the staff, too, or at least reduced their number. Who would have gone? Miriam, who held spirited discussions with my mother on Christianity versus Islam? (They tended to both gang up on my father, since in their view any faith was better than none.) Benjamin, who’d been our driver and honorary uncle since before I was born? And if my mother had lost her position, what did that mean for our family? Clearly, she still had friends, or she wouldn’t have found Hanad, but fewer government contracts would be available to my father. There would be fewer perks in general.

  I loaded the dishes into the cleaner and wiped down the grilling machine while my mind picked at these questions. I’d thought of going home as returning to a sanctuary, but what if the sanctuary was gone?

  Then my family would still be there. That was the most important thing.

  It was all too easy to believe that the comforts of my home life were a right, not a privilege I’d been lucky to have. Maybe this was how it began, I thought uncomfortably. You started hiring people to serve you, and then it felt very natural to assume that of course they’d want to do it on another planet.

  I’d never assume that people wanted to serve without pay, without freedom or dignity. But I could understand every step in the thought process that took people there.

  It was an uneasy realization. I found the controls for the house vacuum and started cleaning the floor.

  It was late, but my brain was going too fast to sleep. I knew this state of tension; I needed something to occupy the front of my mind while the back worked on the problem of what to say, to whom, when.

  Looking for entertainment, I went to the house library, because naturally, this privacy-loving billionaire had a third floor underneath the bedrooms that included a library. The little room was full of books actually printed on paper, instead of normal electronic copies.

  I poked around the histories, but they were all Australian. There was a small biography section, and I hesitated over a book about the musician Fairuz, who was one of my idols, but in the end I went for the collection of old action thrillers. They were in a glass cabinet, carefully presented in a way that was incongruous with their battered pages and silly covers. Everyone else I knew thought these stories were trash, too ridiculous and sensationalistic to occupy a moment’s thinking. But I liked them, the heedless pace, the way the heroes always knew exactly what to do, their physical courage and their rough codes of honor.

  I felt a sympathy with the house owner, who had kept these classics safe. Immediately afterward, the guilt struck. That was the problem with empathy—once you felt an understanding with someone, it was harder to do things that might hurt or upset them.

  I took the book anyway.

  Lying on my bed a few hours later, carefully turning the pages, I contemplated the wisdom of the engineers who had made electronic books possible. There was a tactile pleasure to the flimsy book, though. It smelled good, a pleasant mix of paper and what I thought might have been tobacco. The dry whisper of pages was almost soothing, and just before the hero was about to make a move on the computer scientist he had rescued from an indeterminately evil international crime syndicate, I fell asleep.

  “Hey,” someone whispered into my dreams, and I started up.

  It was Tegan, wrapped in another sheet. Most of her hair had been tamed into two neat braids, but there were a few loose strands she’d missed. The house computer had dimmed the lights while I slept, but there was still enough to make her out, a white ghost in the night. I wriggled over on the bed, giving her space to sit down. “Sorry to wake you,” she said.

  There was something moving at the back of my head, some bright idea or partial solution that had tried to wriggle its way loose while I slept. I couldn’t resent Tegan for waking me up, but I did wish she’d waited a few minutes more.

  “You are the worst patient,” I pointed out. “What would Dr. Carmen say about this?”

  “That I’m the worst patient,” she said, and picked up the book. “Is this good?”

  “I like it. It’s very old-fashioned, though.”

  Tegan grinned. “Like me.”

  “For someone who just turned 117, you’re remarkably forward-looking.”

  “Not always,” she said, and tugged viciously on one of her braids. “I was thinking more about what’s going to happen if we put the word out. You’re right. It’s going to be a nightmare. Do you really think they’ll let the refugee kids rot?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I think they might. The big problem is that the refugees are going to get swallowed up in all the other issues. As long as people thought their relatives could come back at some point when there was a cure for bone cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, then they were all for pursuing cryonics. But now, from their point of view, government research policy for the last fifteen years has been a massive waste of money and time—not to mention the trillions of dollars spent on a starship that won’t be going anywhere. They won’t forgive their hopes being betrayed.”

  “So they won’t worry about the refugee kids?”

  “Oh, they probably will. But for most people, their own families and their own concerns are going to be the first priority. That’s how it works.”

  That’s how it works for me, I almost said. But that wasn’t true, not anymore. I loved my family. I didn’t want to cause them more pain. But I’d do it, if I could help those children in the process.

  Tegan nodded gloomily, and picked at the hem of her blanket. “I just really want something to punch,” she said. “But this one’s a political problem. It’s up to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. I’m Action Girl. You’re Thought Boy.”

  “Huh,” I said, and let my head fall back on the pi
llow. “I think my powers are rusty.”

  There were no easy answers in politics. I knew there had to be a solution that would keep the most people safe at the least cost—and that was a dangerous path to choose, because then you really were valuing one life over another and making assessments of acceptable collateral damage. It was the logic that had led the Australian government to instituting the No Migrant policy, because they wanted to put their people first, at the cost of thousands of refugees. It was the logic that had led Hurfest and Lat to employ the EMP. They’d indirectly killed a few innocent people, so that Tegan and I could be spokespeople and symbols, and hopefully save many more.

  Nathan Philip Cox was protecting his own interests, though, and those of his cronies. And I was ready to make personal sacrifices in order to help others.

  Those motivations made some difference, I thought. Maybe even enough of one to count.

  But no part of this was simple.

  Tegan lay down beside me, close enough that a thick lock of her hair lay across my collarbone. We weren’t otherwise touching, but I could feel the heat of her body, a glow that warmed my side. “Zaneisha told me Diane took you hostage after she shot Lat.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I really hate her.”

  “Yeah.” I picked up the strand of hair and wound it round my finger. I thought it was her hair, at least—the extensions had been seamlessly added, but it wouldn’t be the same to be touching that, somehow.

  “You said Lat came to help me,” she said.

  I hesitated. Truth or lie—the truth that would hurt her or the lie that might bring her some comfort?

  Truth. Always truth, for Tegan, who could bear pain, but couldn’t stand deception. “He came to rescue you from us. He thought he was helping, I suppose.”

  “But?”

  “But he was going to take you to the hospital, knowing it would mean giving you back to SADU. He thought you could be put in cryosuspension if you couldn’t be saved.”

  Tegan’s exhale of breath was more than a sigh, but less than a sob. “I would have hated him for that,” she said.

  I had to be fair. “I think he knew that. I think your life was more important to him.” Lat, at least, had tried to do things for the right reasons.

  “Did you think about it? Taking me back, if Marie couldn’t save me?”

  “Sure,” I admitted. “But you said you’d rather die.”

  She touched my hand, lightly. “Thank you.”

  “Diane,” I began, then stopped. This was very difficult. But I could make a start. “She… she did some stuff to me that was… not sanctioned, I think. Because she thought it would be fun. Because she likes to control people, and she thought this was a way she could control me. When I saw her last night, I felt like she’d made me feel then.”

  That was as much as I wanted to say right then, and I think Tegan knew it. She brushed my hand again, and I wrapped my fingers around hers. I was here, and she was with me, and that was enough for now.

  We lay there in the dim light, resting together.

  Eventually, Tegan broke the silence. “I was thinking. You and I could tell the world about the flaw in the revival process from Djibouti.”

  I sat up. “Are you serious?”

  “I think it’s the best option. If you can persuade Hanad to take me and Marie along.”

  “I can do that,” I promised. “Joph wants to come, too. But… really? You’re sure?”

  “I talked to Marie,” she said firmly. “I’m sure.” She gave me a sidelong look, almost shy. “I gave her all the sensible arguments: Djibouti is out of Australian reach; we’d be safe there; she’d have lots of interesting work to do. But my real reasons aren’t sensible. I’m trying to be honest about this. I don’t know if we can work everything out. I don’t know if we’ll stay together. But I want a chance to try and make a new life, and I want you in it.”

  For once, I was lost for words. They tangled in my mouth, and the only way I could get my feelings out was by kissing her.

  She laughed against my lips and kissed me back, bright and fierce. This wasn’t tinged with the fear of our first kisses in the dark, or the way I’d poured myself into her in that underground complex, desperate to forget everything about Diane’s touch. This was joy we were sharing and a promise of more to come.

  My shirt came off, and I wasn’t sure whether it was she or me who’d first started tugging at it. My skin buzzed at every point of contact, my body responding in ways I was sure she’d noticed. I should probably suggest that she leave, I thought. If she stayed, I had the feeling we might do some things that probably weren’t healthy for someone recovering from a life-threatening illness, especially when she had a cracked rib.

  And some things that weren’t healthy for me to do with a girl when her mother and scary bodyguard were sleeping in the same house.

  “Ow,” she mumbled against my mouth, and I took my hands away from her sides.

  “Rib?”

  “Rib,” she agreed, and watched, eyes gleaming, as I carefully settled myself down on her undamaged side. “Are we taking a break?”

  “I wanted to show you something,” I said, fighting to get my breath back. I signaled the house and watched Tegan’s eyes grow even larger as she took in the same alarm-clock sequence that had thrilled and mystified me. She gasped as the asteroid belt engulfed us, then again as Jupiter’s giant red spot swelled and shifted. When the Oort cloud spun dizzily around the room and the display began to dim, she shivered and curled up against me once more.

  “That’s amazing,” she breathed. “It’s incredible, that we can make pictures of the galaxy, but we’ll never see it. I mean, it’s just like… there’s this whole universe out there, and humanity was going to go visit it, but now because cryonics doesn’t work we can’t.”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. It was sad, all that unused potential.

  “What do you think will happen to the Resolution?” she asked.

  My eyes opened into the darkness where the solar system had spun. “That’s it,” I said quietly. The thought that had been trying to wriggle free had finally shaken itself loose.

  The Resolution’s skeleton was built, hanging in orbit, with a year of full-scale construction to go. The cryonic revival process had been refined. Why were we all assuming the Ark Project had to die?

  Because adults couldn’t be revived.

  But young people could.

  My thoughts expanded, pinwheeled, exploded into new possibilities and the framework of a plan so audacious I was almost afraid to say anything. I considered side effects, looked at probable consequences, considered the many risks, the definite costs, and all the lives at stake.

  It wasn’t simple. But it was possible that I could make it happen.

  “Tegan,” I said quietly.

  “You’ve had an idea,” she said. “You have that face.”

  “Yes. Tell me: What do we want, most urgently?”

  “The refugee kids to be safe,” she said promptly.

  “And what does the government want, most urgently?”

  “Power, I suppose. To stay in power. And to govern well, which they probably think they’re doing right now.”

  “What if we could get what we want?” I asked. “By giving them—or at least appearing to give them—what they want.”

  “House, lights,” Tegan said, and sat up, looking closely at my face in the sudden illumination. “What kind of idea is this, Abdi? Can we save everyone?”

  “Not everyone,” I said. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “But we can save those refugee kids?”

  “If it works. Maybe. Yes.”

  “All right,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Finale

  “Wow,” Tegan said, when my mouth finally ran down.

  “It’s risky,” I said. “And the ethics…”

  “Oh, it’s totally skeezy,” she said,
and saw my confusion. “Ah, past-timer slang, I guess. Dodgy. Dishonest?”

  “Dishonest,” I agreed. “And on top of that… if we, if I do this, people will die.”

  She looked grave. “Yes.”

  I was glad that she didn’t try to soften it, that she acknowledged the strongest objection to my plan head on. But at the same time, I felt her agreement strike hard. I had to get up and pace around the room, swinging my arms as my mind roiled.

  “How is that different from what we condemned Lat and Hurfest for?” I asked. “When they used the EMP generator, people died. They thought the ends justified the means, too.”

  Tegan grimaced. “The people we’re talking about are probably going to die anyway. And we know that the ones who have already been frozen can’t be brought back.”

  “But more and more people are choosing to be frozen. They’re going into death with a hope that I’ll betray.”

  “They made the choice,” Tegan said simply. “It was never guaranteed that they’d be revived. They took the chance, knowing that there was only one successful test case.” She touched her breastbone.

  “And now there are three successful cases,” I said, still striding. “People who were waiting for confirmation will get frozen now. Not even the colonizers and slavers going on the Resolution. Just ordinary people who want a chance at a better life in the future. Can we do anything to help them?”

  “I was thinking about that,” Tegan said. “We could start some sort of campaign, encourage people to choose life now. Carpe diem, all that.” She visibly steeled herself. “I could be a symbol again.”

  “No,” I said, pausing in my steps. “I can do that. You’ve done enough.”

  “But…”

  “You wanted a new life,” I said firmly. “A new life, where you’re not being used. That’s what we’re going to get you. But this plan, Tegan… are you sure it’s the best thing to do?”

  “I’m completely sure,” Tegan said. “Trust me, Abdi. This is the right action, at the right moment. And it’s action only you can take. I’d lose my temper, and start yelling or cursing or quoting Bethari at them.” She gave me a half-smile. “I’m no diplomat, and I can’t lie very well. This has to be you.”