Only that wasn’t true.
The stead’s seed money came from a few big grants from a combination of American government think tanks, private industry, and wealthy parents who just wanted their kids to shut the fuck up at family dinners. All of those people had a vested interest in keeping Javier on the seastead, where he could answer questions about what had happened. But since the sovereignty of the stead was in question, it was tricky for any of them to show up on the stead itself. Tyler and the governing council had spent the past three days fending them off. Their drones hovered everywhere. When Javier went out to sun himself, he always waved.
Tyler had also set up some sort of legal defence fund. There was an attorney on the stead, a brassy British lady who left her firm after her boss’ attentions got to be a hassle. She collected a very big and very secret settlement. It now funded a tower farm. She was big into beekeeping, now. Her name was Phaedra.
“So you have to tell me what happened,” she said, during their first meeting. She was wearing the steader equivalent of business casual: a pair of scrubs whose colours actually matched, with black mesh swim shoes. “But first, I want to tell you that I’m here to protect you and what legal rights you do have. Which aren’t many. And also that I have no interest in having sex with you.”
“That’s big of you.”
“You lot just aren’t my thing, I’m afraid.”
Javier nodded. “Noted.”
“So. Understanding that I am bound by privilege, and you can tell me everything, please do. What happened, out there?”
Javier decided on the simplest possible explanation. “A pastor from New Eden Ministries by the name of Mitch Powell failsafed me into killing my…” His what? In Spanish, he’d say mi mujer, my woman. It sounded crude. Like she’d belonged to him. Like he’d bought her somewhere. His partner? What, did they fight crime together? English was so stupid. So finicky and so vague at the same time. “My wife,” he said, finally.
Phaedra blinked. “You mean Amy Peterson?”
“Yes.”
She examined some documents on her reader. “Does that mean you would like to be known legally as Javier Peterson?”
He had never considered it, before. “I guess.”
“Nomenclature is a real problem for vN,” she said. “Most countries still don’t have a filing system to deal with single names. Normally we just choose the human you’re living with, or the one you started out with.”
“Peterson’s fine.”
“So.” Phaedra rolled up her reader. She folded her hands. They were covered in old stings and new freckles. “Amy is dead.”
“Yes.”
“You know of nowhere that she might have ported herself?”
He considered that. In the final moments of her life, Amy was in pain. Confused. Probably horrified at his betrayal. Could she have gathered herself and gone elsewhere? Or was that process just automated, like a backup?
“Have you talked to her dad?” Javier asked.
“The FBI has,” Phaedra said. “His drivespace and cloudspace have all been seized and searched. She’s not there.”
He nodded. That made sense. It would be an obvious place to look, for one. And besides, he had no idea whether Powell was bullshitting him about the contents of that poison. Maybe it wasn’t a pain plug-in. Maybe it was just pure poison. Maybe it was designed to unmake Amy from the inside out.
“But Portia is alive,” he murmured. “Why is Portia alive, but Amy isn’t?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Phaedra said, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms.
“She was the model for the island’s self-defence mechanism. Amy told me, right before…” He frowned. “Wait. How long did it take the uniforms to take out the islands? Once they’d started disintegrating, I mean.”
“It was surprisingly difficult.”
Phaedra opened up something on a reader for him. Footage of men in amphibious uniforms being hustled onto a bright orange emergency retrieval vessel. Onboard, they were hosed down.
“The islands were radioactive,” Phaedra said. “They started leaking radiation almost immediately after…” She sighed. “It’s what started the fires in the fogbank. The heat. The men who first tried planting mines on the island have sustained their life’s total allotment of radiation. One more X-ray, one more airline flight, and it’s cancer for them.”
Javier said nothing. Powell was right. Amy had hidden her plans from him. He’d had no idea. Hadn’t wanted to believe it. Hadn’t wanted to even consider the possibility that she would take things so far.
“It was like five different nuclear reactors melting down on the same day, Javier. That’s what you missed, while you were in the belly of the whale. And the consequence – the fallout, if you’ll forgive me – is that the world is a profoundly different place for vN than it once was.”
“Christ.”