Clade (15 page)

FIFTEEN

Anthea can’t sleep. While Rigo’s mother snores, beached on the couch, Anthea spends the night pacing in front of the wallscreen, toggling her attention between the flitcam image of Rigo and Ibrahim in the bedroom and the information on her eyescreens regarding the Tiresias project.

Other than usual media fluff, there isn’t much on Xengineering or the warm-blooded plants. The biochemical fine points of the ecotecture are proprietary, a carefully guarded secret. No surprise. What is surprising is the lack of gossip. Usually, the infosphere is an electronic landfill of hearsay, supposition, useless factoids, and wild speculation. Despite that, the best Doug can turn up are a few unsubstantiated rumors, ranging from slave pherions and mRNA locators to a softwired meta-consciousness. Based on their earlier inquiries, it seems reasonable that Xengineering is engaged in a behind-the-scenes tryst with RiboGen. Meaning Noogenics is, as well. Exactly how her knowledge of this troika is going to help Ibrahim remains unclear.

“ ‘Tha-tha-that’s all, folks,’ ” Doug stutters, sounding like Porky Pig on methamphetamines. “Th-th-the problem is th-th-these could be nothing more th-th-than information decoys p-p-posted by th-th-the politicorp to muddy th-th-the water.”

Or they could be true. There’s no way to tell.

“Y-y-you want me t-t-to keep l-l-looking?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“No pruh-pruh-problem.”

Anthea returns her attention to the wallscreen. Rigo is sitting against the headboard, pillow propped behind his head, Ibrahim curled on his lap. How much information has Rigo been given about Tiresias? Not a lot, she guesses. Most likely he’s on a need-to-know basis. Enough to do his job, and not much more. He doesn’t ask a lot of questions, swallows what he’s been told like it came from Mount Ararat. Which is why, she suspects, he was chosen for the job. It’s one of his strengths and weaknesses, one of the things she loves and hates about him. She likes it that he doesn’t question why she’s with him, or why he’s with her. It means he doesn’t have second thoughts about their relationship, like a lot of the men her friends and co-workers are involved with. At the same time, his blind acceptance of the status quo drives her nuts. He doesn’t want to make the world a better place—just wants to make his place in it better. He’s content to jump through the hoops. Never makes waves. Can’t understand that if he lives by the rules, he’ll die by them. He’s like a kid that way. Always trying to please people. Feels guilty when he lets someone down, makes a mistake. Thinks he can alter fate. Is convinced that if he believes in something enough or works hard enough it will eventually come true. Fairy tale shit.

Maybe that’s why she fell for him. Blind optimism is not her forte. She’s not entirely sure what he sees in her. If it was just sex, he wouldn’t have stuck around as long as he has. Not that sex between them is bad. It’s just that there are plenty of
mujeres
out there who are a lot prettier than she is. Until recently, he didn’t seem interested in other women, the same way she isn’t interested in other guys. She never caught a whiff of infidelity, never saw him window shop. The first time he touched her—on the wrist, of all places, at a concert—she was mad horny. The feeling was mutual. He was all over her during the show. Not groping, like some
cabrones
, but attentive, thoughtful. Bought her drinks and snacks. Picked up her blue leather jacket and dusted it off when it slid from the back of her chair to the floor. Little things. Not that he didn’t want to get into her pants, but he was patient. Didn’t pressure her. Waited till her period was over.

Gingerly, Anthea touches her jaw. The swelling has gone down, the itching faded. She glances in the mirror above the altar table next to the wallscreen. After three hours, the blemish is still visible, dry and scaly as eczema. Hard not to spec it as a sign that things between them have changed.

When she cuts her attention back to the wallscreen, Rigo’s watching her. A smile widens his lips. “Hey, beautiful.”

She grimaces, lowers her hand.

“I mean it,” he says. “Serious.”

Anthea doesn’t feel beautiful. More like a failure. “How’s he doing?” she asks, changing the subject.

Rigo glances down at Ibrahim. “Pretty good. Better according to Varda. Stable.”

“Your IA has access to his biomed readout?”

Rigo shrugs. “I guess.” He shifts, careful not to wake Ibrahim. Looks for all the world like a loving father.

Her heart aches, dull as a wrenched joint. Not with the loss of what they’ve had, but of what they might never have after all this. “How are
you
holding up?” she says.

“Fine. I was afraid he’d be a problem, you know, the way things started out. But he’s calmed down a lot.”

“Good.” She nods. Chews on a frayed strand of hair. Bites her thumbnail. “So”—she lets out a taut breath—“what happens next?”

“What do you mean?”

Anthea brushes the strand of hair from the corner of her mouth. “I don’t know how much longer Ibrahim and I can stay here. Where we’ll go if we have to leave.” She’s getting nervous about BEAN. She needs a backup plan, one that’s been thought out ahead of time.

“We’ll figure something out,” he says.

His optimism is not contagious. “That’s what I want to do now. Before it’s too late.” She hugs herself.

“Do you have any friends at the nonprofit?” he says. “Co-workers who can help out?”

She shakes her head. “Not in a situation like this.”

“What about street connections?” he says. “Someone who owes you a favor, or who you can ask for a favor?”

“No.” She’s not going to go that route again.

“You want me to stay?” Rigo says suddenly. “Make up some last-minute excuse why I can’t go?”

His about-face takes her by surprise. Makes her wonder who’s affecting who in there. “Really? You’d do that?”

“Sure. If you think it’ll help.”

“No,” she says, resolute. “I’m not even sure what’s going to happen to us at this point.”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

She points to her chin.

“That’s a temporary side effect,” he says. “No big deal. Believe me. When I get back, everything will be the way it was.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“I love you,” he says. “You’re the light of my life.

Constant as the sun and the moon.”

When he talks like that, anything seems possible. She smiles—wishes life really was that simple. “What about the stars?” she asks, playing along.

Rigo returns her smile, amplifies it into a grin. “The stars are too far away,
mami
.”

Like him right now, even though he’s just down the hallway. Her smile fades, and with it the game.

“What?” He feigns offense, as though his ego’s a soft mango that has just been bruised.

“Nothing,
papi
.” Anthea hollows her cheeks. “I just wish I was as confident as you. That’s all.”

“Trust me,” he says. “Everything will be fine.”

She gnaws her lower lip. “I hope you’re right.”

Ibrahim stirs on his lap. A moment passes while they wait for him to wake up or crash or who knows what, their breaths held in suspension like a bridge spanning from one moment to the next. Then Ibrahim sighs, settles back into trusting, contented sleep, and the tension eases.

“What did you find out about Ibrahim’s link to the warm-blooded ecotecture and me?” Rigo asks. “Anything?”

She nods, gives him a quick rundown of RiboGen, the outsourcing of ecotectural code to several independent pharms, and the possibility that Ibrahim was being used to test the code.

“Why outsource the pherion production?” Rigo asks. “Why not manufacture it in-house? It’s not like RiboGen doesn’t have the facilities.”

“It could simply be a security measure,” Anthea says, “to make it harder for black-market pharms to pirate the code. Another possibility is that something about the code is illegal and they don’t want it to be discovered. Traced back to them.”

Rigo blinks. “Like possibly pherions that aren’t part of the official Tiresias design specifications?”

“It could explain why they’re after Ibrahim. He escaped and they need to get him back before the information he’s carrying leaks into the infosphere—or maybe even the biosphere.”

“So it’s not enough that he might die.”

“It’s possible the fact that he
is
dying is what they want to hide.”

“Because it makes them look bad,” he says. “Evidence they fucked up. Made a mistake.”

“Either that,” Anthea says, “or it was done on purpose and they don’t want that known.”

Rigo mulls this over, his jaw bunching. “Who’s they? RiboGen? Xengineering? Noogenics?”

“Good question. Maybe all of them. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need to keep Ibrahim alive. And the only way to do that is to keep him hidden so BEAN can’t deport him.”

Rigo doesn’t say anything for a moment. He appears lost in thought. Finally he looks up, and says, “Remember that time we went for a hike during the full moon?”

Anthea nods. Wonders what this has to do with anything they’re talking about.

“Do you ever think about that?” he asks.

She nods. “Sometimes. Why?”

“It felt like we were walking in another world,” he says.

It had been midnight, a month after they first met. The first blush of love was still in full bloom. They’d been out for bento boxes and a movie, followed by a hot tub. Too amped to crash, they’d podded down to Nisene Marks—a former state park that had been converted into a circuitree plantation. The moon was stage-light bright, pale as ice on her bare skin. It galvanized everything. Hiking trails. Limbs. Leaves. Sky. Her resolve. They’d held hands, stumbled on exposed roots and rocks, waded through puddles of shadow. The air felt cool and hazy in the depressions, crisp and clear on the rises. It had just been the two of them—giddy in the reflected light and each other.

“Everything felt different,” Rigo says. “You know? New.”

Anthea nods, remembering, worried that thinking back to the beginning means it’s the end. That’s the way it is with her girlfriends. They start thinking about the past, and it’s a sure sign the present is not going well, that the future has crashed and burned and all they have left is nostalgia.

“This feels the same way,” Rigo says. “Like my life is about to change. Except this time I’m just scared. Not excited.”

“You were scared before?” she asks.

“Weren’t you?”

“No. I knew it was right from the beginning. What would’ve scared me was if it
hadn’t
felt right.”

“How did you know it would work?” he asks.

“I just did.”

“I guess I did, too. I think I was afraid of making a mistake. That it was just wishful thinking on my part. I mean, people do that a lot—fool themselves into thinking shit will work, when it won’t.”

So being afraid is not necessarily a bad thing. Is that what he’s trying to tell her? To not give up?

“But it did work,” she says.

“No reason it can’t keep working,” he says, “as long as we want it to. That’s the important thing.”

Well, she’s not going to be the one to toss in the towel. “Remember the time we got caught in that dust storm? . . .”

They spend the rest of the night reminiscing. Re-burning the tracks on worn-out memories and shared hopes. All the things that exist because of them. At sunrise, Rigo eases Ibrahim off his lap, tucks him in.

“I gotta go,” he says, slipping off the wallscreen and into the hall.

The good-bye is a quick one. Chaste.

“Good luck,” she says, awkward. Uncertain what to say, what do with her hands.

“You, too,” he says, just as clumsy.

She nods. “Call me as soon as you can. Okay?”

He starts toward her, stops—“I will”—then turns and heads for the front door as fast as possible.

“I love you,” she calls.

He stops in the doorway, looks over his shoulder. “Me, too.”

At the last second, just before he shuts the door behind him, she rushes forward, kisses the fingers of her left hand and presses them to his lips.

After all, she thinks as the door closes and the first itchy tingle sets in, What’s a bed of roses without a few thorns?

Rigo swings by his ap, takes a cold shower to clear his head, then maglevs down to Edwards Air Force Base for the flight to Tiresias.

“What’s wrong?” Luis says. “You look like me after an evening of disappointments.”

“Leave him alone,” Rana says, coming to Rigo’s defense. “Can’t you spec he’s not in the mood?”

“Yeah,” Antoine says. “Cut the brother a little slack. Tell us about the one who got away last night. I’ll bet she wasn’t in the mood, either.”

“Now,
that
was painful,” Luis says, lapsing into lament mode.

“What?” Naguib chimes in. “She slap you?”

“He wishes,” Hsi-Tang quips. “At least then he’d know that he made an impression.”

“Hey,” TomE says. “No pain, no gain.”

Luis sighs, launches into a blow-by-blow description of the latest battle in his unsuccessful campaign to become the next Marquis de Sade.

Rigo keeps flashing on Anthea. He can still feel the soft touch of her fingertips on his lips. Taste the quinine bitterness they left behind. The look on her face as he bolted out the door was heartbreaking, something out of a Greek tragedy. No matter what happens, he’ll carry it around with him forever, like a bleeding stigmata behind his eyes.

His flight departs at eleven. The SSTO, single-stage-to-orbit plane, resembles a bumblebee with butterfly wings grafted onto the body. A vivisectionist’s wet dream. All aerospace engineers, it seems, are kids who grew up tweezing the wings off flies and sewing them onto tadpoles grown in one of those science kits that uses nonviable DNA from extinct species.

In addition to the Xengineering ecotectural team and colonists, there are a couple of security guards in the terminal building. Twitchy, hair-trigger types who, when they move, remind him of praying mantises. Dorit and the other colonists undergo a separate preflight procedure, apart from the technicians and gengineers. No way Rigo can talk to Dorit before they board. He wants to tell her about Ibrahim, the slave pherion, but doesn’t get a chance.