Earth Thirst (30 page)

I nod. I wasn't privy to the Grove's decision to send the team—team members typically aren't informed of all the various intricacies of their missions—and, given what has happened since, it's easy to say that I was an idiot for going along without asking more questions. But there's never been a reason to ask questions before. We're good soldiers. Mother takes care of us.

“But it's a trap. It's a way for someone to get their hands on an Arcadian.”

“How is Hyacinth involved?” I ask. “If it is owned by the Montoyas, they already have access to Arcadians.”

“Would you volunteer one of your own for what they did to Nigel?”

I concede that point.

“But that's what has been bugging me these last few days. Aren't there less invasive ways to get tissue samples? If that was the point, then you should be able to find a volunteer. Companies turn to their employees all the time for this sort of thing. Some of them even offer a pretty good honorarium for volunteering. So why the medical drama? Was that all just for us?”

“No,” I say. “That went well beyond acceptable limits.”

Mere nods. “So they were harvesting Nigel, which leads me to the burning question:
Who are they?”

I cock my head to the side. “Not why?”

She shakes her head as she runs her fingers over her chart. “The more I dig into Hyacinth Holdings, the more it seems like it has to be a front for Arcadian research, but it doesn't make sense that it would be completely covert from the rest of Arcadia, or that it would be involved in some scheme to trap one of their own.”

“But they're not Arcadian any more, are they?” I realize.

She nods. “You killed Jacinta. You wrecked the garden they were building. The garden that was going to create a place that wasn't beholden to Arcadian rules. You were supposed to bring them home again, but they didn't come home, did they? They went underground and kept working on how to be free of Arcadia.”

How to be free of Mother,
I think,
trying to process what she is telling me
.

“Escobar was trying to convince you that Arcadia is poisoning you,” she continues. “When you go back home and… do whatever it is that happens there… you get injected with some sort of time-release virus—a mimetic agent, I guess—that makes you crave returning to Arcadia. Right? Your brain gets infected with this idea that you're going to die if you stay away. You self-sabotage, don't you? The longer you stay away, the harder it gets for you to stay healthy.”

I don't disagree with her, but agreeing with her puts a lot of what Escobar was saying in a different light. And I'm not ready to make that jump yet.

“But, here's the problem with this theory,” Mere says. “There's no money trail from Hyacinth to Mnemosysia.”

“I thought you said someone was footing the bill?”

“Someone is, but as near as I can tell, it isn't Hyacinth.” She taps the chart. “And here's the thing, why would Hyacinth get involved with Kyodo Kujira and all this mess with Arcadia if they already had access to Mnemosysia's data.”

“They made a deal,” I say, following her line of thinking.

She nods. “This is where Secutores comes in. They're the front for someone else. Their job is to get an Arcadian. They built the framework of the trap—one that would hold up to scrutiny and would tantalize Arcadia to send a team.”

“Hyacinth's job was to make sure a team got sent,” I say.

“Yep,” Mere says. “They may have walked away from the family, but they still have some influence back home.”

“So in return for an Arcadian, they'd get the Mnemosysia data?”

“But that's not what happened, is it?” she continues. “Your team didn't play ball the way they were supposed to, and Secutores's trap failed to catch anyone.”

I shake my head. “No, it failed to capture me.”

Mere snorts. “I thought we covered this. It's not about you.”

“But it is,” I tell her. “Phoebe and I have worked together in the past, and we have a working relationship. I'm point. She's support. That's the way we've always done it. I should have been lead on the processing boat, but I got distracted by the whaling equipment. Phoebe would have waited for me if it had been the two of us, but we had Nigel. We weren't used to working as a trio, and when I fell back, he naturally stepped up. He got the chemical dose that was meant for me.”

And then I understand Talus's role in all of it. “Talus was the plant,” I say. “How did he survive all of this if it wasn't simply by turning the boat over to Secutores? He talked Nigel into attacking the harpoon boat, specifically to force Phoebe and me to do what we did. To separate us.” I cast my mind back and dredge up details about the fight on the harpoon boat. Little things that had been odd, but not so much that I had stopped and looked more closely. But now, a different picture emerged. “They were supposed to catch me, but they hadn't counted on Phoebe and her rifle. That threw things off enough that I was able to engage them. And then…”

I recall the errant grenade and the explosion that had holed the boat. The sound of water, rushing into the breach. The ocean, eager to claim the tender. When the storm rolled in, any chance of reuniting with the Prime Earth boat vanished.

“Escobar wanted to hand you over,” Mere says.

I nod. “Do you see how that fits? Talus came back to shore. Secutores built a new trap—knowing that I'd come find you—and we managed to get away from them again.”

“But Hyacinth had Nigel. Why'd they cut up Nigel?”

“It's like you said: to get us angry. To keep us from looking at the big picture.” I lean against the desk. “What if Talus and Escobar didn't know about the chemical agent? What if all they were told was that Secutores was going to capture an Arcadian. Escobar gave them enough data to create an effective trap. That's why it was out on the water. It makes it easier to keep one of us in one place if we can't flee. But they didn't know about the chemical agent. When Talus saw what Secutores had, he realized what was really going on. Whoever had come to Escobar was playing off his alienation from Arcadia. They hoped he wouldn't think too hard about why they wanted an Arcadian, and maybe he didn't care, but when Talus saw the weed killer, that changed things.

“That compound comes out of defoliation research, and there's no way any Arcadian would have anything to do with that research. And why would Hyacinth create something that is just as deadly to them as it is to Arcadians? It's not strategically useful. However, to an organization like Secutores?”

“They were delivering the means of their own deaths.”

“Right. That's what Nigel's death is all about. It's a big
fuck you
to Secutores.
You get nothing
.”

Mere nods, following my line of thinking “Nigel was harvested for another reason, wasn't he?” she says. “It wasn't just cutting him up to give Secutores the middle finger. He was tainted, wasn't he? He had had a big dose of that chemical agent. Hyacinth was taking tissue samples, because if they can develop something that is resistant to it, they go back to having the advantage. It's an arms race.”

“And Arcadia has no idea that the war has started.”

“Unless you tell them,” she says.

“Unless either of us tell them,” I amend, understanding why Belfast wanted to snatch Mere. Mere nods, eyes downcast, as she accepts the idea of her value.

“So, who was in the Mercedes?” Phoebe asks suddenly.

She's leaning against the doorframe. “The Mercedes,” she repeats. “They're still looking for you two. There's nothing stopping either of you reaching out to Arcadia or any news outlet. But you haven't yet. You don't know who you can trust, which means you're unclaimed assets. Both sides want you.”

“That's why you killed Talus,” I say. “He was the only one who knew both parties.”

“I killed Talus because he betrayed us,” Phoebe says.

“You're right, though,” Mere says. “We're the only connection between Escobar and Secutores. Secutores is still trying to finish their job and deliver an Arcadian; Escobar—”

“Escobar just wants me dead,” I interrupt. “Let's not make it grander than it is.”

“He wants revenge on Arcadia,” Phoebe says. “It really isn't about you.”

Mere coughs, putting her hand to her mouth to hide her smile. “It doesn't seem like Escobar's style,” she says.

“You want to go find out who is in those cars, don't you?” I ask Phoebe.

She nods, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

THIRTY-FOUR

P
hoebe's all for going into La Serena and finding out immediately, but I talk her into waiting until the morning. During the night, if the squad is Arcadian, they'll outnumber us—even if we manage to surprise them; if they're Secutores, they're going to be extra vigilant against an Arcadian assault. We don't have enough intel to perform an effective raid.

Plus, Mere points out that we're going to have to leave immediately after the raid, and she wouldn't mind a decent night's sleep before we start running again.

After Mere turns in, Phoebe and I assess our arsenal. The villa is set back from the main road that winds through the Valle de Elqui, and so we don't worry about being conspicuous as Phoebe opens the trunk of the car to reveal three aluminum cases.

“When did you start following us?” I ask as I open the first case on the right. Foam padding with slots for four pistols and extra magazines. Only three of the four slots are filled. I can guess where the missing pistol is.

“Pudahuel,” Phoebe says. “I didn't bother with Rapa Nui.”

“Why?” I ask as I tug one of the pistols out of its foam slot. A CZ 75. The gun is in pristine condition, and it seems small in my hand.

“P-01,” Phoebe says, reading my confusion. “The Czech Republic has been making guns again. Has been for more than a decade.”

I remember the arms markets near the end of the twentieth century. The CZ was a Czech gun, created by a pair of brothers, but its design was a state secret. They couldn't sell it in Czechoslovakia, and so all of their production was focused on the international arms market. At some point, the Czech government started to have second thoughts about being labeled as arms dealers in the historical record, and gun exports stopped.

I couldn't help but think of Kirkov as I held the gun. He had carried a 75 as well, though his had been one of the older models. Forged barrel with steel slide and frame. Ring loop on the hammer. Much heavier in the hand. The weapon of an old soldier.

I put the pistol back in its slot. It's not the right weapon for me.

“You didn't get off the plane in Rapa Nui,” I say as I open the next case, getting back to the question I had been asking. “Why?”

“It's an island,” Phoebe says, “in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

Her explanation brings a smile to my lips. “Had enough of islands?”

“You weren't going to stay long,” Phoebe says, ignoring my jibe. “Santiago was the obvious next stop.”

The second case contains the parts for a sniper rifle. Another Sako, judging from the skeletal frame of the stock. “There's a garden on Rapa Nui. Mere says you swam all the way back to Australia. Wouldn't the garden have been restorative?”

“There is no garden on Rapa Nui,” Phoebe says. “There hasn't been for two hundred years since you killed the steward.”

“You knew?”

“Of course,” she says. She sighs, seeing my expression. “How could you have forgotten? It wasn't that long ago.”

“It…” I stop. How could she know? Had she been there? If so, why had Mother let her keep the memory and take it from me? “Phoebe, do you know what happens when we go into Mother's embrace? She takes some of our memories away.”

A strange expression crosses Phoebe's face, something almost like fear or revulsion. “Why would you let her do that?”

“I… I don't have a choice. At least, I didn't,” I say. “Wait. Are you saying that you remember everything? How is that possible?”

“I've never let Mother embrace me, Silas,” Phoebe says.

I sit down heavily on the edge of the trunk. “Never?”

She looks at me, and the revulsion flashes across her features again, though in its wake what is left on her face is a growing anger. “You were there when I died, Silas,” she says. “You let them put me in the ground and let Mother embrace me.”

“I was,” I say, saddened that I can't recall all the details of how Phoebe had become an Arcadian.

“I never wanted to forget what happened,” she says. She flips the car keys at me, and I catch them awkwardly. She turns and walks off without a word. Not toward the house, but toward the trees that line the road. She moves gracefully and efficiently. Not in a rush, but moving away from me in the most expedient manner possible.

I sit there and watch her go, trying to figure out what centuries of hate would do to a person.
How old was her body?
I wondered, doing the math.
How fractured was her mind?
But it wasn't.
Of all of us
, I realized with a start,
she might be the least damaged
.

* * *

The third case contained grenades. A mixed dozen of flashbangs, concussive, and incendiary. More than enough to cause trouble. While I wander around the villa, waiting for dawn, I have more than a few hours to ponder how Phoebe managed to procure this arsenal. I stare at Mere's chart until I have it memorized, and I surf through the news cycles, filling my head with the banality of the human world. I make my own timeline, examining what we think has happened over the past few weeks and how that might look from both Secutores's perspective and from Hyacinth. I think about Arcadia and my various conversations with Callis, as well as the possible reasons why he hadn't answered the phone in Santiago. I examine Mere's map with her tiny marginalia about various sites, and I think about this data the way that a good commander would. The way that Secutores would.

Shortly after the sun rises, I start rummaging around the kitchen. There isn't much, but the smell of freshly brewed coffee is enough to rouse Mere from the bedroom. She wanders into the kitchen, still yawning, and she perks up noticeably at the sight of the full coffee pot. She's wearing a gray t-shirt, no bra, and a pair of loose cotton pants decorated with green and red and yellow triangles. Her hair is both matted and frenzied, a sure sign that her sleep wasn't all that restful.