Mary Rosenblum (33 page)

Li Zhen jerked his chin at her and she left the room, dropping briefly into Pause to stabilize her biochemistry as she stepped into the courtyard garden. The CSF private on duty looked from her to Li Zhen behind her, then looked away. They had their orders. Ahni walked past them, scorched by the furnace heat of Li Zhen’s controlled fury behind her.

They passed the elevator, still locked down, and Ahni saw CSF escorting several people through the halls, their body language suggesting that these were arrests. She hoped Noah was getting the Con backup.

Li Zhen stopped her outside an unmarked door and palmed the lock plate. It was another of the small, private docks. The craft inside was small, but sleek and gleaming, an elegant cousin of the courier’s craft.

A port melted open in the hull as they approached and she climbed through at Li Zhen’s sharp nod.

Inside, he bound her hands again, and strapped her into one of the two seats, slid into the other and activated his control field. The small craft shivered as the lock evacuated and its hull faded to transparency. Smoothly, the ship drifted out into the darkness beyond the plattform hull.

Li Zhen looked at her silently.

Ahni closed her eyes briefly, dropping into Pause, replaying the trip in Kyros’s ship, running the memory image through her mind, fixing reference points, the platform, satellites, the planet, and moon … Opened her eyes and superimposed the map briefly on her view of Earth’s blue and white vastness, the star-glitter and black, and glare of sun. “That way.” She pointed with her bound hands.

She directed him, running a comparison with the view and angles she had called up from memory to the images that surrounded her. For a terrible instant she thought she had made a mistake or that somehow the lighthouse, as Kyros had called it, had moved, but it was there, just hard to see in Sol’s harsh light.

Li Zhen’s face didn’t alter as she pointed out their destination, but she caught his flicker of relief.

The small ship slid neatly into the dock and as it pressurized, the hull blanked to opacity.

As the engine shut down, Li Zhen pulled himself over to drift above Ahni. She stilled her reaction as his palm brushed her cheek. “This is not a trap?”

“It’s not a trap.” She held his dark stare. “I want you to see something. I don’t think you understand …

about your son.”

She braced herself at the white lash of his rage. But he did nothing, merely drifted lover-close above her until the white-knuckled clench of his fists on her seat had relaxed. Then he pushed away from her without releasing her, drifted toward the opening port, reaching for a racked piece of equipment as he did.

Some kind of scanning device, Ahni guessed, wondered if he would leave her there. Her heart sank as she ran the Administrator’s potential reactions through her mind. But in a few moments, he returned, racking the scanner, pushing over to her to release the webbing that held her into the seat, leaving her hands bound. He wore a stun gun. She let him tow her, offered no resistance. Light from within the ship cast a path in the utter darkness of the lock and faintly illuminated the lock plate beside the entry door. Li Zhen studied her for a moment, then released her hands. “Open it.”

She laid her hand on the plate, her palm tingling as her hardware overrode the lock ID.

“Light off,” Li Zhen murmured, and the glow from within the ship winked out.

The door irised open releasing a breath of warm air.

The emergency lamps at the far side of the spherical space cast a wan light streaked with moving shadows. Koi and Ren played with two of his family in the dim light, diving, looping, pushing off from one another or the netted goods with breathtaking precision, no momentum wasted, every change in direction perfect. Among them, Ren looked clumsy, but his moves had improved dramatically in the brief time since Ahni had seen him last, clinging to Koi’s back.

They were teaching him. Ahni watched Koi dive across the space. glance off one of his relatives, angle neatly off to somersault off a hammock full of bundles, spilling his momentum just enough so that he drifted perfectly back to where Ren waited with another member of his family. Ren kicked off from her thigh, gliding on a slightly wobbly version of Koi’s path, body twisting as he tried to keep to the trajectory. He somersaulted as Koi had, but had lost too much moomentum and began to drift before he made it back to Koi. One of the sisters zoomed past him, snagging him, flipping him into a driving flight toward the hammock again. This time, Ren’s somersault was nearly perfect and he arrowed back to Koi, slightly off target, but close enough that Koi could reach out and snag his outstretched wrist with one long-fingered hand. The pair spun counter-clockwise, momentum spilling, slowing to drift slowly toward Ahni and Li Zhen.

Ren laughed a single crystalline note of pure joy.

Beside Ahni, Li Zhen flinched.

As if someone had called his name, Ren’s head came up and he turned to look in their direction. With a wordless cry, he kicked off from Koi’s thigh, sending him drifting backward as Ren arrowed toward Ahni and his father. Li Zhen made a small sound in his throat, stretched out his arms, and caught his son, arms tightening around him, tumbling backward to bump into the lighthouse wall. Koi and his two sisters followed cautiously to hover a few meters from father and son.

“Koi, come here,” Ahni said softly. “It’s all right.”

Koi gave a complex shiver that sent him drifting slowly, gently nearer, until he was close enough to touch Li Zhen. Arms around his son, who was grinning and making small excited noises, Li Zhen fixed narrowed eyes on Koi. His glance shifted to one of the feemales, who had drifted close behind Koi, curious and wary.

“Make me understand this,” Li Zhen said hoarsely.

“They’re the new version,” Ahni said softly. “Same DNA, not mutations, not engineered. Not birth defects. You know that, because you sampled Koi.”

“Why?” He didn’t look down at his son, who had wrapped arms and legs around his father’s torso, the same way he had clung Koi before.

“Dane thinks because we need to … evolve. To live out here.” Li Zhen shook his head, darkness filtering into his thoughts.

“They can’t even talk.”

“Tell him, Koi,” Ahni said in English. “That you can talk”

“Yes.” Koi spoke up finally, his voice reedy with tension. “We can. You just don’t listen.”

“I don’t believe you.” Li Zhen switched to English, his eyes narrowed. Koi’s sister nodded suddenly, looked toward Ren. He shook his head, apprehensive suddenly, looked up at his father’s face.

If this was a test, they were about to fail it. Then Li Zhen’s eyes widened slightly and he stared at his son.

Ahni picked it up easily–the visual account of his meeting with Ahni and Kyros, told in image, sound, the smell of Ahni’s hair as he leaped into her arms, and only the occasional word …

The swell of Li Zhen’s reaction overwhelmed his son’s images. With a cry, Li Zhen clasped his arms tightly about his son.

Koi was right, she thought.
He hadn’t listened
. Drew a deep breath. Laif and the rest of Koi’s family were headed their way now. “The CSF found them,” she said. “They shot one. It never occurred to them that this thing was a human being. That’s how they would look at your son.” She spoke harshly, felt his reaction and realized suddenly who had told the Council where to look. “The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own.”

Li Zhen looked at her and didn’t speak. But Ahni’s heart leaped. They had their ally.

DANE SAT ON THE BENCH IN THE SMALL CELL IN THE desert of time that stretched between the arrival of his meals, weighed down by despair. The walls had been painted a dull dun color and other than the video eyes near the ceiling, contained nothing but the narrow, padded bench that served as a bed and a sink/toilet combination in one corner. The one piece coverall he wore was made of tough paper. And there was the collar. Dane leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, the air heavy, thick as soup in his lungs.

He had counted meals for awhile, then stopped, had no idea how long he had been here. Or where here was, for that matter. They had used some kind of drug on him. All that remained of the time between the murder of Aliya, Koi’s cousin, and his presence here were a few hazy images of hands and movement.

He wasn’t on Earth. The gravity here was about that of an upper residential level on NYUp, where the cheapest apartments were located. So he was still in orbit, but the sense of spin was greater than that of NYUp. Smaller platform he thought. One of the Council’s military bases? Probably.

The reasons for not taking him straight down to the World Council were probably not good ones, he thought. Which probably meant that the media on Earth didn’t know he existed. Or the dead child.

The media could rend you, but in public attention lay some measure of safety.

“Vhen he was sleepy Dane slept. The man who delivered his meals didn’t speak to him, felt nothing for him, neither hatred nor curiosity. The first guard had hated him, he wasn’t sure why. Some rumor, he supposed. That hatred had the old, familiar feel of religion. He had used the collar until Dane passed out.

Apparently someone had monitored the security videos because a different man brought the meals after that.

By now, they would have had plenty of time to analyze Aliya’s DNA and to know.

The molecules of air in the room seemed to have sensible mass, pressing against him like a thick blanket.

Aliya had been the joyous one, the one who played tag with Koi for hours, who zoomed silently up behind him to see if she could make him start and laugh. Her name for herself had had the feel of joy.
I
am sorry
, he thought.
I should have done better
. And what now? He wondered if the CSF had rounded up the others. Or had they received orders to simply kill them, euthanize them like animals? Her death had been an accident, he had overheard enough from the CSF who had arrested him to know that much.

They were easy to kill, highly sensitive to a stun charge.

He must have drowsed because when he opened his eyes again, a new meal tray lay on the floor. Not hungry, he picked it up, set it on the bench beside him. Lifted the plastic cover to stare at the cold food.

Forced himself to eat the cooked and too sweet chunks of fruit and some rice, then set the tray back by the door, and lay down on the bench, hoping to sleep again. Heard the door open as the guard retrieved the tray, didn’t open his eyes.

“Visitor.” The guard’s accented voice sounded like a shout after the long silence.

Dane jerked upright, blinking, found a tall, slender Asian man standing inside the door, his expression intent.

Li Zhen. Chairman of Dragon Home. Dane swung his feet to the floor and bowed slightly. “Hello,” he said. Inane, but what the hell else was there to say? He glanced up at the video eye in the wall above him.

“What brings you here?”

“They are not monitoring this. Or recording it.”

“Then you have a lot more power than I guessed, “Dane said.

“I wish to hear from your own mouth what is the nature of these … children.” Li Zhen’s expression was severe, but his emootions quivered between fear, rage, and a point of bright, sharp hope. Dane regarded him thoughtfully. Dangerous mix, that. And he had no idea what this man wanted to hear.

”What did the CSF tell you?” he asked finally.

Li Zhen shook his head. “I wish to hear what you say. I need to hear it
now
.”

Dane regarded him thoughtfully. Looked once more at the video eye. “They’re not children,” he said slowly. “Most of them are adult. They just look like children.”

Li Zhen’s eyes barely narrowed at that. “Tell me more,” he snapped. “Quickly.”

Dane drew a deep breath “Sit down.” He gestured at the end of the bench. “I’ll tell you.”

Li Zhen sat, stiffiy, angled toward him, his emotions simmering. “I think they are … our evolutionary next step.” He met the Chairman’s unreadable dark eyes. “I am guessing that some squatters moved into the Hub during the dislocation during the early years of the Platforms. They managed to survive there, and even … had children. These children were conceived and born in micro gravity and lived in micro gravity.” He felt Li Zhen’s doubt like a sharp fingernail, but pressed on. “I’m guessing the phenotype must have changed within a generation or two, to judge from the few mentions of them I’ve been able to find in the axle log. They have adapted. Their bone marrow is fully functional, their bone density is quite good, although infiltrated connective tissue allows for plassticity. Cilia sweep body cavities and mucosa clear–no need for gravity. Perhaps our DNA is designed to adapt.” Dane paused as the Chairman looked briefly away, his face taut.

“But it happens only in your center … your hub?” he asked, his voice low and intense.

“Oh no.” Dane sighed. “It’s happening all over the platform to the generation being born now. Here and there. Not to all and most of them are not as extreme as Koi’s family. But a few are.” Did Koi still live? “I

… suspect another generation will see more and more children like the hub family. If … they are allowed to be born.”

“Why would they be stopped?” Li Zhen’s eyes bored into him, the crimson leap of his anger reflected in his eye. “They are human! Their DNA is human. How can anyone intervene?”

“They are not
us
,” Dane said harshly. “You looked at Koi. What did Ahni Huang’s brother think of him?”

That question scored.

And what of Ahni? Where was she? ”Their DNA analysis won’t really matter. We have a history of destroying those who are not like us even when their humanity is unquestionable. The records will be buried, the public will look at videos and see monsters, and they will all die. Look at the records, at the history of genocides that go back as far as we have records. Go walk on the Palestine desert or Jerusalem,” he said softly. “I think you still need anti-radiation gear there.”

“That was the past,” Li Zhen rasped.