The Enclave (49 page)
“
Chip
me?!”
“Insert a radio frequency ID chip. It looks like a grain of rice and goes in under your skin—on your arm, hand, back. You won’t even notice it’s there. That way we can keep track of you wherever he takes you.”
She stared at the table, choking on the sudden horror of being wholly in Swain’s hands to be taken wherever he wanted.
“It shouldn’t take long,” he went on, eyes still on his reading material. “Maybe tomorrow afternoon—”
“I’ll be at the resort salon most of tomorrow afternoon, getting my hair and nails done.”
“That could work.” He paused, as if he sensed her disquiet. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“I’m not sure I want a radio-whatever-you-said chip under my skin.”
And I’m really not sure I want to do any of this.
“It’s harmless. We’ll extract it when this is over.” Finally he looked up at her, his expression grim. “Well?”
She met his gaze. “I’m a geneticist, you know. Not a policewoman.”
“I know.” He didn’t press her.
She knew she could back out right now if she wished. He’ d offered to extract her from the situation last night, so surely he could do it tonight. And yet nothing had happened since then to make the situation any different than when she’d agreed to help. In fact, his news made Swain’s machinations seem even more diabolical.
Frogeater was indeed a clone, and human clones needed a surrogate to be born. The girls were still missing. If they were being held against their will, Lacey’s choice could buy them their freedom. Did she really want to live the rest of her life knowing she’ d refused to help them?
“Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll do it.”
Exhaling softly, he gave her a sober nod, then closed his file folder, picked up his coffee, and left her sitting there dazed and irrationally hurt by his cool, businesslike attitude.
Of course he
had
said Swain had ordered him to stay away from her, and she didn’t doubt that was true. Gen had essentially mirrored it in warning Lacey to stay away from Cam so as not to provoke the director’s jealousy.
“Now that he’s chosen you, he’ll do very well by you.”
Oh yes. Promise me everything I’ve ever wanted, and reel me right
in under his spell.
Anger swelled within her, eclipsing the fear, and her determination to stand up to him—however she might do that best—solidified.
New Eden
Zowan was right to fear that Enclave authorities had guessed his route to the surface lay in the physical plant. On Saturday night, when he, Terra, and Parthos arrived as planned in their respective disguises at the small court just below the plant’s entrance, they found two black-robed Enforcers guarding its doors.
It was Terra in her gray Elder’s robe who took the lead, turning from the plant and heading back down the narrow corridor she’ d just come up. Stopping at the third door they came to, she slapped its lock plate with practiced authority, and Zowan held his breath, half-expecting to hear the blare of a restricted access alarm. Instead, the locking mechanism clacked, the green admittance light blinked on, and they stepped into a dusty tunnel so narrow Zowan’s shoulders brushed its sides. The door swung shut behind them, and Terra’s hand lamp chased off the utter darkness as she switched it on.
“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Parthos whispered.
“I took some of the older children to the library today,” she said softly over her shoulder. “While we were there I studied a map of the physical plant.” Her smile was sly. “My thumbprint gave me unlimited access to the computer files. . . . Anyway, I figured the front door might be guarded, so I looked for alternate entries. I checked out this route on the way to meet you, just to be sure it works.”
She led them along the dark, dusty access tunnel, where thick bundles of wires garlanded the too-low ceiling, and heavy cables snaked along the floor. Soon the tunnel dead-ended, and the cables left the floor to join the bundled wires as they fed through a hole in the wall. Reaching over a small ledge in the back wall, she pushed away a panel beside the hole, an opening just large enough to wriggle through.
On the other side was a small rough-walled chamber filled with humming cabinets. Varicolored lights blinked on the front of them and bundles of colored wire snaked here and there. He had no idea what the cabinets did, nor what the great bulbous machines in the adjoining room did, but it didn’t matter—Terra was just passing through.
“I only explored this far,” she said, “but I think my recollection of the floor plan will get us the rest of the way.”
She led them up a narrow tube on a metal ladder, through an unlocked metal door, and into a larger chamber full of aluminum boxes some twenty feet high, whose metal sides rattled with the constant rush of moving air. Ducts snaked away across the ceiling and down into the floor. They seemed to be sucking air from somewhere above—the surface, maybe, as Neos had claimed?—and channeling it below.
More narrow passages led them to a chamber filled with tanks of swirling water, the stench so bad they ran across the suspended platform that traversed it. More tunnels greeted them on the other side, but eventually they came to a room full of pipes, the smaller branching from the larger and each running off into the darkness.
Though they’d obviously reached the pump room, the intersecting pipes all looked the same, and for a while Zowan led them aimlessly, hoping to stumble onto an arrangement that looked familiar.
Doubts battered him. It could take all night and half the day to find the crawl tube this way. Worse, what if there was no crawl tube to find? The longer they wandered, the worse it got, until he was on the verge of abandoning the plan altogether.
And then, after a seeming eternity, they followed yet another pipe to where it dove into the ground by a wall, and this time found the metal drum not far away, with the metal sheet behind it. Quickly Zowan and Parthos moved both; then they all stood staring at the revealed opening in shared amazement.“It really
is
here,” Terra breathed.
After a moment Parthos gestured at the drum and metal plate and asked Zowan, “Was all this pretty much how you left it?”
“I think so.”
“Shall we go on, then?” Parthos asked.
But now Zowan stepped in front of the hole and turned to face them, frowning. “I told you it doesn’t look very hospitable up there.”
“We’ve been through this, Zowan,” Terra said.
“Not quite. They found me in the physical plant, remember? The guards at the door prove they know the exit is here somewhere. Even if this isn’t a trap, once they find out we’re all three gone, they’ll come here immediately and search. And since no one will have stayed behind to push back the plate and the drum, they’ll see where we went and be on us before the day is over.”
He paused. “It’s still night. You can both go back without being missed. Let me go up alone now and see what’s there.”
“You’ve been up there and lived,” Terra said. “That’s all we need to know.”
“That doesn’t mean the surface isn’t dangerous. You’ve seen the histories. There could be wild beasts . . . even Enforcers.”
“I’m not going back,” Terra said firmly. “I told you Gaias has asked for me—”
“Yes, but he’ll be busy the next few days searching for me, and by that time you’ll be out.” He looked from one to the other. “All I’m asking for is a day or two. They’re sending me to New Babel. So if
I
disappear they’ll think I fled because of that. They can even tell everyone I left early in the morning with Father and no one would think anything of it. If we all go through now, with no one to cover our tracks, and three gone instead of one, we’ll stir them into a frenzy. We may find ourselves with our backs against a wall we don’t even know is there.”
His words fell into silence as his friends considered.
Finally, Parthos said gruffly, “I don’t like it.”
“No,” Zowan agreed. “But we need more than just an escape hatch. We need a place to go that’s safe once we’re out.”
“This is crazy!” Terra protested. “We already agreed all three of us would go! I’m
not
staying behind, Zowan! Stop trying to protect me! We’ll meet the new world together.”
“I’ll stay,” Parthos said, drawing Terra’s angry glare. “He’s right. Someone needs to cover the hole.”
She scowled at him. “Do you remember how to go back the way we came?”
Parthos looked stricken. His gaze turned from Zowan to Terra.
She exhaled in exasperation. “Then I guess you’ll just have to go with us.”
“Terra—” Zowan began.
“You two are acting like old crèche mothers! When we get to the top, let’s just keep walking!”
Seeing see she would not be swayed, Zowan gave in. They crawled through the tube and emerged in the small room where he’ d waited for Neos to return. But now a new worry assailed him: What if he couldn’t remember the way up? After all, the first time he’d followed I Am’s mysterious light, and that wasn’t here now.
His concern turned out to be baseless, for at first there was only one way to go. Then even when the other passages began to intersect the main one, many of them angled back and downward, away from the path to the surface, obviously not the right choice. And with the few that were not clear, there was always, stuck to the wall of the right path, one of the oblong glowstones he’ d unconsciously followed in his panicked trip back down. Glowstones like the ones he’ d seen in the spy passages outside the Star Garden, which Neos must have placed to mark the trail.
Confidence began to build in him, and when they found the gray-striped mattress on the metal bed frame, with its folded blanket and empty bucket, he had to stop and take a deep breath. Excitement warred with trepidation.
“Are we almost there?” Terra whispered.
With a nod, Zowan moved on. Soon he felt the draft of warm, dry air, fragrant with the tang he now firmly associated with the outside. He turned a corner and the passage leveled off before bending into the final series of doglegs. Then, just like that, they strode into the small chamber before the exit hole. Zowan switched off his hand lamp in triumph, then frowned in confusion, wondering why the room was so dim.
He approached the hole and the tree, dropped onto his knees and started through it, his friends following on his heels. He pushed out into the branches, pressed a couple of branches back, and realized it was nighttime. The only light they had was from the stars. . . .
Excitement flooded him, and he started to press on through the tree, then recalled something else and turned back to his friends. “It might feel strange when you get out there. There’s so much space. Standing in it makes you feel like you’re going to fly apart. But you’re not.”
“Come on, Zowan,” Parthos said. “Stop talking and let us see for ourselves.”
So they fought through the tree and stepped out onto the hillside beyond. It was much easier emerging without having to contend with the blast of the midday sun, first and foremost because he was able to see. The air was warm and moist, and a slight breeze occasionally rustled the sparse foliage about him. The sensation of the space pulling at him was still unnerving but no longer overwhelming.
He gazed upward, awed by the hugeness of it all, the starry heavens expanding above him, filled with uncountable points of light. Some were tiny, others large and bright. Some flickered as if they were alive. And there were so very many. The Star Garden hadn’t even come close to reproducing this.
After a while he sat down on a rock and the others joined him, the quickness of their actions indicating that, while they weren’t as traumatized as Zowan had been, they weren’t entirely comfortable either. Terra boldly pressed herself against him and slid her hand into his.
He reveled in the tang of the air, in the fresh, bracing power of it.The way it cleared his mind and energized his flesh. He couldn’t take enough of it in. They sat for some time, watching the stars overhead, frozen in mind and body by the magnitude with which their world had shifted. Gradually the stars began to fade, and a rosy glow seeped into the fabric of the night sky above the crest of the long hill that paralleled the one on which they sat.
With the growing light, Zowan saw that trees and small shrubs did indeed scatter the slope on which he sat, the growth thicker in the bottom drainage, all alive, even the tree that covered the opening. Now birds began to call, a sweet succession of coos. Under one of the nearer bushes he spied a rabbit nibbling leaves.
There was plant life. There was animal life. It was not a poisoned wasteland. But it was also devoid of any sign of water or people or real shelter. In a few hours they would be found missing and the search would begin. How long before the Enforcers arrived?
He was contemplating that question when Terra hissed, “Someone’s coming.” She pointed down the draw, to where a man had rounded a fold in the land on the opposite slope and was running up the drainage in their direction. He wore something on his head, and at his waist. An Enforcer’s protective suit?
“Both of you! Back into the hole, now!” Zowan commanded. “Quietly!”
“What are you going to do?” Terra asked.
“I’ll come when you’re in. I want a closer look at him, and we can’t all stand outside the opening, showing him exactly where it is.” He feared she’ d keep on arguing with him, but apparently she realized the need for stealth.
He crouched down by a nearby bush, watching the approaching figure, who no longer looked like an Enforcer in protective gear. In fact, he looked like no one Zowan had ever seen. He wore scandalously short trousers, a big sleeveless tunic, and a strange red cap with a stiff flap pointing off the front of it. A black belt bulging with mysterious implements hung at his waist, and long white wires flapped from his ears.
Hoping the man might know where to find food and water, Zowan stood his ground, fear battling curiosity, need, and something more: the sense that he was meant to meet this man, that in him he would find the answers to his most important questions.
It helped that the stranger did not appear to be pursuing anyone— his pace was easy and relaxed—and that he seemed to be following a path along the opposite slope. One which, not too far upstream, turned to cross the drainage and ascend the side of the very slope on which Zowan crouched. If the man continued to follow it, he would loop around to head back in the direction from which he’ d come— and in so doing, would pass below Zowan’s position by no more than twenty feet.
