Slavemakers (3 page)

MALCOLM HAD INTENDED
to stay awake all through the last night in Refugia. He'd made his speech, and afterward he'd commandeered a comfortable seat with his back against a wall and made sure he had a ready supply of single malt at hand. He'd attracted a small group of friends and admirers, some of whom would be traveling with him the next day and others who would be staying back. He'd had no intention of going anywhere until it was time to head down to the
Trey Gilliard
and set off.

Then Shapiro had shown up, much later than he'd expected. No: In truth, he hadn't expected to see her at all. He'd never imagined she could tear herself away from her precious bugs and worms and pickled specimens. He'd thought someone might have to pry her fingers off the doorjamb and drag her away when the time came to depart.

But in that deadest moment of the forest night, when
even the hyraxes and bushbabies had given up and gone to bed, and the first birds hadn't started testing out their dawn chorus, there she was, leaning against the wall beside him. He hadn't seen her approach, which was surprising. She wasn't exactly quick on her feet.

Sitting on the ground, some looking up from where they were sprawled, Malcolm's friends all seemed a little wide-eyed at seeing her. As if they were seeing an apparition.

And not a friendly ghost, either. More like a poltergeist.

Malcolm looked up at her. “Shapiro,” he said.

“Granger.”

“Done saying good-bye to your near and dear?”

But she didn't reply. She just put her hand out, and after a moment, he took it and let her pull him to his feet.

No one said a word as they walked away.

*   *   *

AFTER A WHILE,
in the rumpled bed of the cabin they shared, Shapiro turned to look at him. The sheen of her sweat, reflecting the banked light of the oil lamp hanging on the wall, was like a pale bioluminescence outlining the sharp planes of her face.

“I saw Kait before,” she said.

He shrugged. “Night like this, you trip over everybody.”

“I don't care about everybody,” she said.

Or anybody,
Malcolm thought.
Excepting me, possibly.

“I'm talking about Kait. Did you tell her?”

Now Malcolm was silent.

She grimaced. “What, are you hoping we sink before we get there?”

Still he didn't speak.

“Malcolm, just don't wait too long.”

After a moment he nodded. And, though she was still frowning, she didn't push any further, just rolled over onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. With her scowl, her spiky gray hair, sharp jaw, and beaky nose, she resembled nothing so much as some powerful soothsayer out of a storybook.

Malcolm knew she was most likely right. He needed to be honest with Kait.

Just . . . not yet.

*   *   *

THEY HADN'T SPOKEN
again that night. As he'd watched her, she'd gazed up at the ceiling, her eyes following a small pale gecko that pursued the moths drawn to the lantern light. Then, almost imperceptibly, she'd fallen asleep.

A few minutes later, Malcolm had followed. And that was a big mistake, because the dreams came.

As they always did.

*   *   *

THE DREAMS OF
what he'd seen those early days, those early months, as he headed out in his Piper—the little plane he'd flown all over Africa, and brought to Refugia just days before the Fall—to retrieve all those supplies that the planners had neglected to stock. Or had run out of
time to gather. Food, seeds, medicines, clothing. Replacement solar panels to keep the power on a little longer.

Doing essential work, and at the same time—alone among the colonists—seeing the last convulsions of a dying race. The sole witness.

The sole witness and participant.

Malcolm never told anyone, not even Trey, or Mariama, or Shapiro, about everything he'd seen. Everything he'd killed.

Every
one
he'd killed.

On his forays, he always tried to lie low. But that didn't always work, and sometimes he was noticed.

And being noticed meant killing. Killing whoever got in his way as he sought the supplies that would keep Refugia alive.

Sometimes this was inevitable: Last-stage hosts in that violent paroxysm that preceded the birth of the thieves within them gave him no choice, and he killed them without a second thought.

But on his first flights, he'd sometimes encounter desperate survivors, possibly even uninfected. People, humans, who'd seen or heard his airplane approach and hoped it represented salvation.

If there were too many clustered below, he wouldn't land, and often enough he returned to Refugia empty-handed. But if he was already on the ground, and someone saw him, made to come up to him, it didn't matter what they looked like or what they said, or how they begged, or even how old they were.

He was good with a gun, and no one ever got close enough to harm him.

But there hadn't been that many left even at the start, and each time he ventured out there were fewer. On the last flights he took on the Piper before it was grounded forever, he saw no one.

But that didn't stop him from dreaming about what he'd done, what he'd had to do. And what might still be out there.

And it was still one of the reasons he'd built that fucking boat. To find out for sure, either way.

*   *   *

AND . . . CHLOE.

The other reason that Malcolm had built that fucking boat. The most important reason.

Chloe, who'd shared a villa with him a stone's throw from Shela Beach on Lamu Island just off the coast of Kenya. Chloe, whom he'd invited, pleaded with,
ordered
to come to Refugia, in those final unstable days and weeks when the Last World dangled for one final time over the precipice.

But Chloe had refused. She'd laughed at him, at his intensity, the look in his eyes. “Since when,” she'd said, in that tone so much like his, “have a bunch of fucking bugs been able to get your pants in such a knot?”

Then, because she loved him, she softened. “This is my home,” she'd said. “Whatever happens to the world, I'm not leaving.”

He kept trying, but he knew from that moment it was useless. And up until the very end, she—like so many others—hadn't truly believed. Like so many others who'd known of its existence, she'd considered Refugia's
residents little more than a doomsday cult, and the colony itself another Georgetown or Waco.

So eventually he gave up, and instead he brought her the vaccine, and insisted she start taking it and keep doing so after he left. As there were few thieves on Lamu—in the weeks leading up to the assault that overthrew the Last World, there seemed to be few thieves anywhere—she didn't take this seriously either, but it was a promise she could easily keep. Or promise to keep, at least.

He also brought cuttings of the vine that produced the vaccine and planted them in the shaded garden behind the villa. Neither the soil nor the weather was a close match for the plant's rain-forest home, but the vine was hardy, and it did seem to be growing well, and even producing flowers before it was time for him to leave.

Again Malcolm insisted, pleaded, this time that she tend to the plants. Make the vaccine. Keep herself safe, and others as well.

Chloe had laughed.

“Fuck it all,” he said finally. “Tell me you will, or I'm never going to shut up.”

She'd thrown her hands in the air in mock horror. “Heaven forbid,” she'd said. “I will!”

*   *   *

CHLOE. TALL AND
angular, with dark-blond hair and a strong jaw and fierce blue eyes, and freckles and an abrupt way of speaking that brooked no disagreement.

Chloe. Twenty-three years old the last time Malcolm had seen her. Twenty-three still, in his dreams.

Chloe. His daughter.

KAIT STOOD ON
the deck of the
Trey Gilliard
, looking back toward shore. The ship was ready to go—
she
was ready to go—but about half of the crew still lingered on the beach, unwilling to tear themselves away.

Half of the crew of twenty-eight. That meant almost exactly one in every ten residents of Refugia would soon be sailing over the horizon and out of reach. Kait didn't share the reluctance of those exchanging last words, last hugs, but she understood it.

Malcolm had told her that back during what they called the Age of Sail in the Last World, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such partings were routine. Hundreds of ships like this one crisscrossed the oceans, some carrying goods, other seeking to explore—and exploit—unknown lands, still others seeking scientific knowledge.

And always some were left behind. It was hardest for
them, Kait thought. You stood onshore, waving good-bye, and you knew it would likely be years before you saw your friends, your family, again.

Years or never . . . and you had to live each day without ever being certain which it was. For all you knew, and it must have happened often enough in reality, the ship whose return you were awaiting had sunk a week out of port, with the loss of all hands.

Only when a certain amount of time had passed—how long was that? Two years? Five?—would the likely truth begin to sink in. But even then, you would have always wondered, and there must have been a few times at least when people returned years and years after they'd been given up for dead.

During the ten years that Kait had lived in the Last World, the idea of anyone's being out of touch for more than about an hour was the sheerest fantasy. (Her school friends with cell phones had hated to let ten minutes pass without saying, “I'm here!” to
somebody
.)

But now they were back in the past again, everyone, with the old rules in force. Back in force for good, Kait guessed, and soon enough there would be no one left who remembered that it had ever been any different.

It was a beautiful morning, the high blue sky above, a fresh breeze snapping at the canvas. A beautiful day to sail, and Kait felt like she'd been waiting forever. But if others wanted to delay a little longer, she guessed she could, too.

Still, she didn't have to watch. So she turned away, walked past Dylan Connell—the first mate—and a few other crew members, and headed belowdecks to her cabin.

*   *   *

KAIT THOUGHT THERE
had been plenty of time for farewells the night before.

Ceremonies and speeches and a party that had gone on almost all night. Scheduled events and casual interactions spreading everywhere but centered around the main plaza, where someone had built a little wooden stage for the proceedings.

Lots of speeches. Kait, at the periphery of the large milling crowd, listened as the head of Refugia's elected council, Steve Francis—an architect who had helped design the colony—gave the official bon voyage. It was dull enough to make Kait realize that not every old habit had been left in the Last World.

She listened more carefully to Nick Albright, who on the night the world fell had helped Malcolm fly the plane carrying Trey, Kait, and others here. Nick's speech was interesting, a detailed description reminding everyone staying in Refugia how safe and secure they would be, even with Malcolm and so many others gone.

Malcolm spoke next, commanding as always in his shaggy-haired, hawklike way. Standing on the stage, a glass of something in his hand, he made jokes, cursed without caring who was listening, and in general acted like a fierce-eyed prophet, as he always did.

He described their plans aboard the
Trey Gilliard
, the time frames he envisioned, and where they hoped to drop anchor to undertake their explorations on land. No one in Refugia had a greater knowledge of the African
continent than he did, or had traveled across it more widely when such travel was possible.

Listening, Kait was beginning to understand that every speech had an agenda beyond the actual words being spoken. Malcolm's agenda, his true meaning, was simple: I'm smart. I'm strong. I know what I'm doing.

It may be years, but I will bring these people back home, safe.

The last to speak—and the only one Kait made sure to hear—was Mariama.

Mariama Honso, perhaps the single most important figure in Refugia's brief history. One of the colony's founders, before even Trey and Sheila knew it existed. The one who'd taught them that human survival depended on the vaccine—and also on gathering experts, from physicians and biochemists to architects and glassblowers, and bringing them to live close to the vaccine's source.

Mariama had voyaged across the world, risking her life and suffering months of imprisonment, in order to reach Trey and tell him of her plans. Thus she became the one person most responsible for Kait's own survival as well.

Nor had her role diminished after the Fall. Although never allowing herself to be elected to any official post, Mariama's strength and determination had helped carry Refugia through its early, hungry, disease-ridden years. She always had a purpose, even if it was just finding the next meal, and she always inspired others to persevere as well.

Most people had thought that Mariama would leap at the chance to head off on the
Trey Gilliard
, but she'd
chosen to stay behind. To stay onshore and wave good-bye to the departing ship and many of the people she loved the most.

Her speech was short and characteristically blunt. No hidden agendas for her. Watching her, Kait marveled once again that this short, gray-haired woman could be so strong, wield so much power.

“It's going to be hard for us,” she told the others who were going to be staying behind. “Harder than you all think.”

She paused for a moment. “But we'll get through,” she said. “We always have, and we will again.”

Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Do you promise, Mom?”

Everyone laughed, but Mariama didn't smile.

“I promise,” she said.

*   *   *

THE INSIDE OF
the ship smelled like fresh-cut wood and shellac and oiled iron and human sweat, overlaid by whatever Esteban and Fiona, the ship's cooks, were preparing for the first meal on their voyage.

If they ever began voyaging.

Most of the crew would be sleeping in shifts in hammocks strung in one of two dormitories in the center of the ship, but a few had been given private cabins: Kait, Clare Shapiro, Fatou Konte, and Malcolm, the captain. Kait's place in the hierarchy had been determined, she thought, by her place in Refugia's history, not by anything she'd done.

Still, she was happy for the solitude provided by her
cabin near the bow. It measured seven-by-nine feet, with a single small porthole that right now looked west, onto the open sea. Escape.

Her bed was a mattress on a wooden platform that unfolded from the wall. The only other furniture was a single chair and a small dresser.

But all she needed now was privacy. Glancing over her shoulder, which was unnecessary, she reached into the deep pocket of her cotton jacket and pulled out the small bottle. Holding it up, she checked to make sure that the thief inside was still alive.

Of course it was. Still alive, patient, waiting. Waiting for its best chance to escape, once again to serve the hive mind, or—if things turned out differently—to jam its stinger into her.

Its stinger and ovipositor.

Kait replaced the bottle in her pocket, where the thief would remain safe until she needed it.

*   *   *

THERE'D BEEN ONLY
two people she needed to say good-bye to. The first—and this was more a responsibility than a desire—was her brother, Jack. Her half brother, born here after the Fall.

She'd found him with his teenage friends late in the night, when alcohol and emotions had begun to rule the party. Jack was holding a cup whose contents smelled like palm wine. His face was flushed, his eyes red at the edges, his expression blurred.

He raised the cup, perhaps in a kind of salute, or perhaps to offer her some of the wine. Whatever the intention,
when she shook her head, he rolled his eyes. His friends laughed.

Kait ignored that. It was late. They were all drunk, and she wasn't.

But that was the least of the disconnect between her and Jack. The greatest rift, on the other hand, had proven impossible to overcome: the fact that she'd seen and lived in the Last World, and he hadn't.

It was a wall that couldn't be scaled, the unalterable fact that some Fugians had known what it was like to live back then, while others—the natives—never would. Never see cars and airplanes and computers and, above all,
people
. A world with millions, billions of people in it, not merely a few hundred you knew too well.

A world full of possibilities instead of the same old certainties.

Kait would have traded her past for Jack's in an instant—the killing of her birth parents by thieves, the terrors she'd lived through as the Fall approached—but there was no point in telling him this. For Jack, and all those born here, the Last World represented a kind of heaven. Dreams of heaven always trumped reality.

Jack gave her a hug good-bye, which surprised her. But then he turned away and, without a word, went back to his friends and his drink, which did not.

Some gulfs really were unbridgeable.

*   *   *

ONE LAST GOOD-BYE.
With Sheila, Trey's widow, Kait's adoptive mother. Another of Refugia's founders who'd chosen to stay behind.

The only good-bye that meant much to Kait but, in the end, it was only a little more meaningful than the one she'd exchanged with Jack. In the end, what could either of you say when one was sailing off the end of the world and the other was not?

You could mouth heartfelt platitudes, which was what Sheila murmured into Kait's ear as they embraced. “Your father would be so proud of you,” she said. “Both your fathers.”

Kait was quiet.

“I want you to come home,” Sheila said next. Then she stiffened a little, as if the words had surprised her, and she was wondering if she'd said too much.

Kait tightened her grip but still did not speak.

She felt as much as heard Sheila's sigh, which unexpectedly turned into a laugh.

“But as long as you're out there,” she said, sounding a little like Trey would have, “for God's sake, would you finally find whatever the hell it is you're looking for?”

Kait nodded. And then, surprising herself, she found that she was crying.

*   *   *

THE ANCHOR LIFTED.
The wind filled the sails, and the ship began to move, slowly and creakily at first, as if stretching stiff muscles, then faster over the smooth swells. A single noddy tern dipped and wheeled above the wake.

Kait, back on deck, watched the crowd on the beach as the ship left them behind. Though Jack and his friends hadn't come, most other Fugians had.

Mariama, Sheila waving, Nick. At first she could
recognize their faces. Even when distance began to blur the details, she knew them by shape and posture.

As they receded into the distance, becoming patches of color against the white sand, all Kait could think was: There are so few of them.

About ten minutes later, the ship reached the forested headland that lay to Refugia's south and went around it, and the people left behind were lost to view. Several members of the
Trey Gilliard
's crew watched until the last instant, and most of them were crying.

But Kait had long since turned away, and though her eyes were wet as well, her tears were of relief.

Finally, she would learn who else was out there.

Finally, she would be able to
see
.