Cottonwood (41 page)

She could only stare at him. She didn’t know what to say. Her eyes could not possibly be honest enough to keep protesting. She…She was going to sit here and let them take Baccus away and she wasn’t going to argue.

She wasn’t sure when she started crying. It was subtle. The tears themselves didn’t come until van Meyer offered his handkerchief with grandfatherly concern. She cried messy, like a child, a stupid child.

“See how I have upset you,” van Meyer murmured. He was patting her back. It was all she could do to keep from shuddering away. “Someone will take you home now, Miss Fowler. You will have the week off now,
ja
?”

“No!” she wept.

“Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow, to rest.”

“I’m okay!” And she was. She was fine. Baccus was gone.

How was she going to tell Sanford? How could she look him in the eye and admit that she was right there when they took Baccus away and she did nothing to stop it?

And as bad as that thought was, the one that followed was infinitely worse: What if it had been Sanford in the cage? She knew they hadn’t found Baccus running around in her backyard. Most likely, they’d stumbled on her during a random scan and decided being a rogue egg-farmer made her seditious enough to serve as a villain for this scene, but if they hadn’t, if they’d just gone in and grabbed someone from her case-files, it could have been Sanford. He certainly would have been the most ironic choice—why not make the bug who’d visited her in the hospital responsible for putting her there? She could imagine it all too easily: one white security van to take Sanford, one black population enforcement van to take T’aki. Then they’d ransack the house, not searching as much as just trashing it, before they burned it down. The code-bank would be lost—confiscated, destroyed, or just buried in the wreckage—along with the last man who knew how to work it.

It could still happen. It would be easy enough for van Meyer to decree that the attack had been part of a greater conspiracy. She might see Sanford in this room yet.

Sarah cleaned her face one last time and gave van Meyer his handkerchief back. “I won’t forget this, sir,” she said. “I know you think I’m pretty silly, but I do learn from my mistakes.”

He did not correct her presumption. Instead, without taking his eyes from hers or softening them with even the lie of a smile, he said, “To what mistake do you refer?”

Sarah looked at the empty cage, at Baccus’s blood staining the floor, and said what she had to say. “I can’t be their friend. They don’t love me back.”

He patted her head, much as he would a dog who had clumsily performed its first trick, and said, “I have arranged a press conference in the afternoon, to ease public fear now that violent bug is once more contained. They will surely wish some statement from the one most affected by this unpleasant business.”

“You want me to talk to them? At a press conference?” She did not have to feign her dismay. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Van Meyer waved that off. “Something will be prepared for you. You read this, they take pictures and IBI publicist take all questions. Your part is really quite small, Miss Fowler, but I am afraid no one else will do.”

“They want to see a victim,” Sarah said bitterly, thinking she could show them a victim all right, she could show them thousands of victims right on the other side of that clean, white wall.

“Perhaps. But you will not give them one.” Van Meyer squeezed her shoulder with a warm smile that never touched his eyes. “You will stand before them in your scars and you will be IBI in all this enterprise’s strength and compassion. This is why it must be Miss Fowler,
ja
? Because you are…?”

‘Gullible,’ thought Sarah. Aloud, she guessed, “Nice?”

He tsked, disappointed. “Sincere. Why did you come to work today?”

She blinked. “I…wanted to work.”

“Why?”

“I like my job. This is the most important work I’ll ever do.”

“So you say once before. You still believe?”

Her job at IBI was and would always be a poisonous stain over her heart, but she didn’t work for them. She worked for her clients. “More than ever,” she said.

At the door, Piotr snorted and shook his head.

Van Meyer studied her, unsmiling. “I hope you never lose your conviction, my dear. As I hope you forgive the old man who profit from it.” He took his hand from her at last and waved her toward the door. “I will send a driver at two, if that is convenient?”

“I’ll be ready.”

“Of course you will. You have given your word. And you will find I reward loyalty. Is it not so, Piotr?”

Piotr did not immediately answer. His nod, when it finally came, had more weight without words. It unsettled her.

“So. Tonight, good sleep. Tomorrow, a short statement for cameras. And then it is back to work,
ja
?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Piotr, come. It has been a difficult day for our Miss Fowler and it is time to let her go home.”

Piotr pushed himself off the wall where he had been leaning and opened the door. They went back to the lobby—van Meyer just ahead of her, Piotr prowling behind, and Sarah between them like a condemned prisoner being marched to the gallows. There was no more talk, only a polite goodbye and a grunt from Piotr. Sarah’s driver was waiting for her. He opened her door. The world was simply filled with gentlemen tonight.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After so many years of waiting, it seemed unfair that it should take so little time to actually assemble the code-bank. In a matter of hours, it was done and all the rest of his time was free to be filled with the other elements of escape, mundane, but no less essential. With so much still untested, so much that could still go wrong, Sanford was grateful for the familiarity of work.

Here in late autumn, the Heaps gave up few real treasures, so until the post-holiday reaping (which he dared to hope he would not be here to see), Sanford was reduced to picking over what had already been salvaged in the shops surrounding the Heaps. This provided him a predictable assortment of useless technical debris, but eventually, he ran across a human with a large number of heating units in need of some repair who was willing to part with them for a mere two hundred dollars. Sanford paid, knowing the man thought he was cheating him. Yang’ti were largely indifferent to winter cold and heaters were more of a human luxury. Doubtless, this man had been trying to peddle his wares for days with no luck. However, Sanford also knew that eggs needed to be kept warm over the winter. Once repaired, each heater would sell as quickly as he could make the offer. And since the repairs in question amounted to little more than changing the electrical cord and dusting the innards, this was easy profit.

Easy, but time-consuming. For the rest of the day and long into the night, Sanford worked on heaters. After a short sleep, he worked on them some more. When T’aki grew restless, Sanford took him to Obek’we’s school and came back to work on heaters. He was determined not to stop again until he’d finished the last of them, but when Sarah knocked on his door, he welcomed her in.

She looked off, to his eye. Not injured, not in any obvious manner, but worn down and pulled thin. He saw this, but did not remark or give it deeper thought. Something bad had happened, but something bad was always happening and he had heaters to fix.

“I don’t see T’aki,” she remarked, sitting in her usual place in the green chair. “Is he at school?”

“Yes.”

“How does he like it?”

“He doesn’t. He considers it a punishment and a great unfairness for the small reward of reading.”

Her soft brows arched. “Is he actually reading already?”

“He is. I’ve found him with several magazines.” Sanford finished one heater, set it aside, took another, and began unscrewing the outer case. “Unfortunately, they were all pornographic.”

“Oh.”

“He insists he was only reading the…” He tipped his antennae forward, clicking as he tried to think of words the translator could manage. “…the humor pages. The little drawings with jokes.”

“Oh! Well, that’s not so—”

“Those were also pornographic.” Sanford bent over the exposed coils, cleaning them with puffs of compressed air. “And he hides them, which is suggestive in itself. I suppose it is only natural that he should be curious, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Sounds like it might be time for the talk.”

There was a curious emphasis in her last words, a hint of embarrassed color in her cheeks, but neither was enough to tell him her meaning. “What talk?” he asked.

“You know.” Her color deepened, which only emphasized the dark smudges under her eyes. He wondered again what was wrong. “The big sex talk.”

He clicked, feeling out his immediate discomfort. “I suppose that could be part of the problem.”

“I know he’s young, but like you said, it’s everywhere in here. Better he get answers from you than from
Ass Freaks Weekly
.”

He clicked, acknowledging this, then shook it off and bent over the heater determinedly. “I’m not sure I’m ready to have that discussion even if he is. And yet, if he does not come to me with his questions, where will he go? Sam is altogether too willing to educate him on the subject of human sexuality.” He blew distractedly through his palps, concentrating on his work.

“Maybe he’ll forget about it once you get him away from all the dirty pictures. Have you fixed your machine yet?”

“Rebuilt, Sarah, please. Fixed implies it may have been broken all this time and I simply could not deal with that very well.”

“You don’t know?”

“Certain components have to be charged.”

“Oh God, now you have to build a charger?”

“I have one, pray Ko’vi,” he added under his breath, and tapped his brow with the curled back of his hand—a genuflection he sincerely thought he’d forgotten until he did it. He looked at his hand in some bemusement, clicked, and removed the heater’s old power cord. “I know a man, a real engineer, as opposed to this…hobby of mine. I told him I needed a charging dock and he claimed he could build one from two deconstructed incinerators.”

“Can he?”

“It seems to be working, although, having deconstructed my share of incinerators, I can say with confidence that he only used the parts from one of them.” He clicked with absent-minded disdain. “I’ve known this man eleven years across three camps and he cheated me without hesitation.”

“When will it be ready?”

“Patience,” he murmured, moving on to the matter of the wiring. It was more than just the cord on this unit; everything would have to be changed. “Patience is more than a word, as my father would often say.”

“Did he?” A reluctant smile twitched at one corner of her mouth. “How irritating was that growing up?”

“Profoundly. But no less true. Consider it this way: the more time it takes, the more time I have to plan the escape.”

“Right. The plan.” She shifted in the chair, rubbing restlessly at her arms and then her knees. “Have you got the broad strokes worked out yet?”

“Have you ever seen a movie called…” He stopped working to focus on finding the right words, then carefully said, “…
Three Bricks
?”

She frowned at the ceiling for some time, but ultimately shook her head. “Must not be bad enough for my taste. A prison movie, I take it?”

“More or less. I suppose it’s best that you not see it, actually. It did not end well.”

Her frown deepened.

“The plan itself was sound,” he assured her. “And easily adapted to my purposes. So. Friday next, before you leave, I’ll give you a series of explosives—”

She sat up sharply to give him a look of horror. “Oh, please be kidding!”

“—for you to place at certain locations. I’ll set them to detonate Sunday, during the morning shift change at seven. You’ll have to acquire one of their vans and enough of a uniform that no one will question you driving it. T’aki and I will be waiting at the wall between Checkpoints Eleven and Twelve. When I hear the explosions, I’ll wait three minutes and blow the wall from our side. You’ll pick us up and get us out. Have a second vehicle waiting outside Cottonwood for the remainder of the journey. It would be best if it were not your van.”

“Sanford, who do you think I am? Where am I supposed to get a car?”

“I’ll give you money with the explosives. With luck, and contraband,” he added, waving at the heaters without taking his eyes off the one lying open under his careful hands, “I hope to have at least twenty thousand dollars.”

“Holy shit, Sanford! Before
Friday
?”

“Next Friday. The real money will only come from the guns and I have to be careful how I sell them.”

“Next…oh.” She sighed and settled into the chair, looking over the mess of heaters with a discouraged eye. “That long.”

“Haste is not our friend. I need time to work out the last details. Besides, even if we left tomorrow, we would still have to eat tonight.” Sanford picked through a plastic tub filled with loose wires, shook it, and picked through it some more, adding dryly, “And my son will want to buy more pornography to read on the way home. It will be a long trip.”

“I’ll see if I can find some books for him in town. And some board games.”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“Yeah, but I’ve to go anyway. I’ve got a…thing.” She turned her head toward the window, not really looking through it, but just avoiding the sight of him. “I was really hoping we’d escape before then so I wouldn’t have to go through with it. Now I not only have to go, I have to price getaway cars.”

Sanford changed wires. Sarah fidgeted and would not look at him. At length, he indicated a well-used rag. “Wipe down the heaters for me, please. They sell for more if they’re clean.”

Sarah obeyed at once, but one sure sign of her distraction remained and the more she busied herself, the more obvious it became.

“My radio seems to be broken,” he said finally.

“Is that was these are?” She peered at the heater she was cleaning, then checked herself and laughed. “Oh, you mean me. Sorry. I’m just thinking.”