The Twelve

48


Amy’s mind was full of him. Full of Carter and the woman, whose name was Rachel. Rachel Wood.

Amy felt it, felt it all. She felt and saw and knew. The woman’s arms around him, pulling him down and down. The taste of pool water, like demon’s breath. The soft thunk as they reached the bottom, their bodies entwined like lovers’.

How Carter had loved her. That was what Amy felt most keenly: his love. The man’s life had stopped right there, at the bottom of the pool, his mind forever trapped in a loop of sorrow. Oh please, let me, thought Anthony Carter. I’ll die if you want me to, I would die for you if you asked, let me be the one to die instead. And then the bubbles rising as the woman took the first breath, her lungs filling with the awful water, the deep spasm of death moving through her; and then the letting go.

His was the sadness at the center of the world. The Chevron Mariner: that’s what this place was. It was the very beating heart of grief.

Blood was dripping from her as she made her way aft across the tilted deck. Amy could feel the change coming, a rumbling in the hills above. It would sweep down upon her like an avalanche. It would obliterate her, fashion her anew. She descended into the bowels of the ship, its maze of halls, its listing passages of pipe. Her feet sloshed through standing water the color of rust. Rainbow shimmers danced upon its surface. She moved by instinct. She homed in. She was the receiver to Carter’s beacon, which inexorably drew her down and down and down.

The pump room.

They were hanging everywhere, filling the space with their glow. They clung to every surface. They lay curled upon the floor like children. Here was the reservoir, the lair. The nest of Anthony Carter, his doleful legions suspended in abeyance. Where are you? she thought, and as she did her body shook, and in the wake of this convulsive jolt came a massive tightening in her abdomen, as if she’d been clenched by a giant fist. She staggered, fighting to remain upright. Blots of blackness swelled across her vision. It was happening. It was happening now.

I am here.

—Where? Where are you? Please, I think that I am … dying.

Come to me, Amy. Come to me come to me come to me …

A door stood before her. Had she opened it? She stumbled forward, down the narrow passageway beyond. The floor was slick with oil, the blood of the earth, time’s distillate, compressed by a planet. She came to a second portal. T1, it was marked: Tank No. 1. She knew what lay beyond. It had ever been thus. With all her strength she gripped the rusted ring and turned. Space flew open wide around her, as if she’d entered an immense cathedral.

And there he was. Anthony Carter, Twelfth of Twelve. Wizened and small, a wisp of a thing, no larger than the man he’d been and, in his heart, still was. A being of refusal made flesh. He lay on the floor, in the waste of the world; slowly he unfurled himself, rising to meet her. Carter the Sorrowful, the One Who Could Not, locked in the prison that he himself had made.

“Help me,” said Amy, a last great shudder moving through her, taking her over, and she fell into his arms.

* * *

And then she was somewhere else.

She was under a highway overpass. Amy knew this place, or so it felt. Its sights and sounds and smells were laden with a weight of memory. The echoing roar of cars passing overhead; the click-click-click of the roadway’s joints; the drifting trash and grime and heavy, smoke-choked air. Amy was standing at the edge of the road, holding a cardboard sign: HUNGRY, ANYTHING WILL HELP, GOD BLESS you. Traffic streamed by, cars, trucks, no one even looking her way. She was dressed in rags; her hands were black with grime. Her stomach was a stone of cold emptiness. The heedless vehicles flew past. Why would no one stop?

Then, the car. A large SUV, dark and gleaming: it slowed, then stopped, not so much drawing to the curb as alighting, like a great black bird. Its tinted windows fashioned squares of perfect reflection, doubling the world. With a soft mechanical whir, the passenger window drew down.

“Amy, hello.”

Wolgast was sitting at the wheel, dressed in a navy suit and dark tie. He was smoothly shaved, his hair swept back from his forehead, shining faintly, as if it were still damp from the shower. “You’re right on time.” Smiling, he leaned across to open the door. “Why don’t you get in?”

Amy placed her sign on the ground and climbed onto the passenger seat. The air inside the car was cool, with a leathery smell.

“It’s wonderful to see you,” Wolgast said. “Don’t forget to buckle up, sweetheart.”

Her amazement was such that she could barely form words. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

They drove clear of the underpass, into summer sunshine. Around them the shops and houses and cars flowed past, a world of busy humanity. The car bounced agreeably under them on its cushioning springs.

“How far is it?”

Wolgast shrugged vaguely. “Not very. Just up the road a bit.” He glanced sidelong. “I have to say, you’re looking very well, Amy. So grown up.”

“What … is this place?”

“Well, Texas.” He made a face of distaste. “All of this is Houston, Texas.” A memory took hold of his face. “Lila got so sick of hearing about it. ‘Brad, it’s just a state like any other,’ she always said.”

“But how are we here?”

“The how, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s an answer to that. As for the why …” He glanced at her again. “I’m one of his, you understand.”

“Carter’s.”

Wolgast nodded.

“Are you in the ship, too?”

“The ship? No.”

“Where, then?”

He didn’t respond right away. “I think it’s best if he explains it to you.” His eyes shifted quickly to Amy’s face again. “You really do look wonderful, Amy. The way I always imagined. I know he’ll be happy to see you.”

They had moved into a neighborhood of large houses, lush trees, and wide, well-kept lawns. Wolgast pulled into the driveway of a white-brick colonial and stopped the car.

“Here we are. I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“Oh, I’m afraid I’m just the messenger this time. Not even. More like the deliveryman. Just go around back.”

“But I don’t want to go without you.”

“It’s all right, sweetheart, he won’t bite you.” He took her hand and gently squeezed. “Go on now, he’s waiting. I’ll see you again soon. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

Amy exited the car. Locusts were buzzing in the trees, a sound that somehow deepened the stillness. The air was heavy with moisture and smelled of freshly mown grass. Amy turned to glance at Wolgast, but the car had disappeared. This place, she understood, was different in that way; things could simply disappear.

She made her way up the driveway, through a trellised gate wreathed with flowering vines, into the backyard. Carter was sitting at a table on the patio, wearing jeans and a dirty T-shirt and heavy, unlaced boots. He was rubbing his neck and hair with a towel; his mower was parked nearby, exuding a faint aroma of gasoline. At Amy’s approach he looked up, smiling.

“Well, there you are.” He gestured toward the two glasses of liquid on the table. “I just got done here—come and sit a spell. I thought you might like some tea.” The smile broadened to a wide, white grin. “Ain’t nothing as good as a glass of tea on a hot June day.”

Amy took the chair across from him. He had a small, smooth face and gentle eyes and close-cropped hair, like a cap of dark wool. His cocoa-colored skin was speckled with black spots; flecks of grass were on his shirt and arms. Adjacent to the patio, the pool was a presence of cool, inviting blueness, the water gently lapping at its tiled edges. It was only then that Amy realized it was the same house where she and Greer had spent the night.

“This place,” said Amy. She angled her face toward the buzzing trees. Rich sunlight warmed her skin. “It’s so beautiful.”

“It rightly is, Miss Amy.”

“But we’re still inside the ship, aren’t we?”

“In a manner,” Carter replied evenly. “In a manner.”

They sat in silence, sipping the cold tea. Beads of moisture dribbled down the sides of the glasses. Things were coming clearer now.

“I think I know why I’m here,” said Amy.

“I’m expecting you do.”

The air had suddenly chilled; Amy shivered, drawing her arms around herself. Dry leaves, like bits of brown paper, were blowing across the patio; the light had lost its color.

“I been thinking on you, Miss Amy. All the while. Me and Wolgast, we had us a talk. A good talk, like you and me is having now.”

Whatever Carter was going to tell her, she suddenly didn’t want it. It was the leaves that made her think it: she was afraid.

“He said he’s yours. That he belongs to you.”

Carter nodded in his mild way. “Man says he owes me, and I reckon that’s right, but I set store by him, too. He’s the one give me the time to figure it. An ocean of time, Anthony, that’s what he said. I took me some there at the start, never said I didn’t. Was the hunger made me. But I never could set with it. Wolgast was the one give me the chance to make things right.”

“He’s the one who sealed you in the ship, isn’t he?”

“Yes’m. Asked him to do it when the hunger got too bad. He would have sealed his own self up too, except for you. Go look after your girl, I said. That man, he loves you with his whole heart.”

Amy became aware that something was in the pool. A dark shape slowly rising, parsing the surface of the water to take its place among the floating autumn leaves.

“She always there.” Carter gave his head a slow, sorrowful shake. “That’s the pity of it. Every day I cut the lawn. Every day she rise.”

He fell quiet for a moment, his kind face adrift in grief. Then he gathered himself and faced her squarely again. “I know it ain’t fair to you, the things you got to face. Wolgast know it, too. But this here’s our chance. Never come another.”

Her doubt became certainty then, like a seed breaking open inside her. She had felt it for days, weeks, months. The voice of Zero, summoning her. Amy, go to them. Go to them, our sister in blood. I have known you, felt you. You are the omega to my alpha, the one to watch and keep them.

“Please,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t ask me to do this.”

“The asking ain’t mine to do. Telling, neither. This here’s just about what is.” Carter hitched up in his chair, removed a handkerchief from his back pocket, and held it out to her. “You go on and cry if you want to, Miss Amy. You owed that at least, I reckon. Cried me a river myself.”

She did; she wept. In the orphanage she had tasted life. With Caleb, and the sisters, and Peter, and all the others. She had become a part of something, a family. She had made a home in the world. Now it would be gone.

“They’ll kill us both.”

“I reckon they’ll try. I known it from the start.” He leaned over the table and took her hand. “Ain’t right, I know it, but this here is ours to carry. Our one chance. Ain’t never come another.”

There was no way to refuse; fate had found her. The light was fading, the leaves were blowing down. In the pool, the woman’s body continued on its slow passage, floating and turning in the eternal current.

“Tell me what to do.”





49


The first real snow of winter arrived, as it always seemed to, in the middle of the night. Sara was sleeping on the sofa when she was roused by a tapping sound. For some stretch of time this sound mingled in her mind with a dream she was having, in which she was pregnant and trying to tell Hollis about it. The scene of this dream was a perplexing jumble of overlapping locations (the porch of the house in First Colony where she had grown up; the biodiesel plant, among the roar of the grinders; a ruined theater, wholly imagined, with tattered purple curtains suspended over a stage), and though other characters drifted at the periphery (Jackie, Michael, Karen Molyneau and her daughters), its sense was one of isolation: she and Hollis were alone, and the baby, tapping away inside her—Sara understood this to be a form of code—was asking to be born. Each time she tried to explain this to Hollis, the words came out as different words entirely—not “I’m pregnant” but “It’s raining,” not “I’m having a baby” but “Today is Tuesday”—causing Hollis to look at her first with confusion, then amusement, and finally outright laughter. “It’s not funny,” Sara said. Tears of frustration filled her eyes as Hollis laughed in his warm, big-throated way. “It’s not funny, it’s not funny, it’s not funny …” and on and on, and in this state the dream dissolved, and then she was awake.

She lay still a moment. The tapping was coming from the window. She pushed the blanket aside and crossed the room, and drew the drapes aside. The grounds of the Dome were kept lit at night, an island of luminescence in a sea of darkness, and through the beams of these lights an icy snow was pouring down, tossed on gusting winds. It seemed more ice than snow, but as she lingered, something changed. The particles slowed and fattened, becoming snowflakes. They descended upon every surface, building a mantle of white. In the other two rooms of the apartment Lila slept, and Sara’s daughter, snug in her little bed. How Sara longed to go to her, to lift her child into her arms and carry her back to the couch and hold her as she slept. To touch her hair, her skin, to feel the warm brush of her breath. But this thought was an empty dream, nothing she dared allow herself to imagine was actually possible. Aching with longing, Sara watched the falling snow, welcoming its slow erasure of the world, though down in the flatland, she knew, it meant something else. Frozen fingers, frozen toes, bodies racked with cold. The months of dark and misery. Well, Sara thought with a shiver. The winter. So it begins. At least I’ll be inside.

But when she awoke in the morning, something changed again.

“Dani, look! Snow!”

A glittering light blasted into the room. The little girl, dressed in her nightshirt, had perched on a chair to draw back the drapes and was pressing her nose to the frosted window. Sara rose quickly from the couch and yanked them shut.

“But I want to see!”

From the inner room: “Dani! Where are you? I need you!”

“Just a minute!” Sara looked into the girl’s pleading eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know the rule.”

“But she can stay in bed!”

“Dani!”

Sara heaved a sigh. Lila’s mornings were difficult, beset by focusless anxiety and nameless dread. The effect was magnified with each day that passed since her last feeding. Under the blood’s restorative spell, she became cheerful and affectionate to both of them, even a little giddy, though her interest in Kate felt more abstract than personal; she seemed not to comprehend fully the child’s age, often speaking to her as if she were an infant. On these good days, Lila appeared fully persuaded that she was living in some place called Cherry Creek, married to a man named David—though she also spoke of someone named Brad, the two seeming interchangeable—and that Sara was a housekeeper sent by “the service,” whatever that was. But as the effect of the blood waned, over a period of four or five days, she became abrupt and panicky, as if this elaborate fantasy was increasingly difficult to maintain.

“Let me get her in the bath. Then I’ll see if I can take you outside to play. Do we have a deal?”

The little girl nodded vigorously.

“Now get dressed.”

Sara found Lila sitting up in bed, clutching the folds of her thin nightgown over her chest. If Sara had to guess her age, she would have said the woman looked about fifty; tomorrow it would be more, the lines of her face deepening, her muscles sagging, her hair graying and growing thin. Sometimes the change was so precipitous Sara could actually watch it happening. Then Guilder would bring the blood, Sara would be banished from the room with Kate, and by the time they returned, Lila would be a lush-haired, smooth-skinned twenty-five-year-old once more, the cycle starting over.

“Why didn’t you answer me? I was worried.”

“I’m sorry, I overslept.”

“Where’s Eva?”

Sara explained that the girl was getting dressed and excused herself to prepare Lila’s bath. Like the woman’s dressing table, the bath was a place of totemic importance. In its deep, lion-clawed cocoon, the woman could soak for hours. Sara opened the tap and laid out Lila’s soaps and oils and little jars of cream with two fat, freshly laundered towels. Lila liked to bathe by candlelight; Sara took a box of wooden matches from the vanity and lit the candelabra. By the time Lila appeared in the doorway, the air was opaque with steam. Sara, in her heavy attendant’s robe, had begun to sweat. Lila closed the door and turned away to remove her dressing gown. Her upper body was thin, though not as thin as it would become, its mass redistributing downward over the days, into her hips and thighs. She turned to face Sara again and regarded the tub with a look of caution.

“Dani, I’m not really feeling myself today. Could you help me in?”

Sara took Lila by the hand as she stepped gingerly over the railing and lowered herself into the steaming water. Once she was immersed, the woman’s expression softened, tension departing her face. Sinking down to her chin, she took a long, happy breath, moving her hands like paddles to shift the water to and fro across her body. She leaned back to wet her hair, then shimmied up, bracing her back against the side of the tub. Freed of gravity, the woman’s breasts floated over her chest in a pantomime of restored youth.

“I do love the bath,” she murmured.

Sara took her place on the stool beside the tub. “Hair first?”

“Mmmmmm.” Lila’s eyes were closed. “Please.”

Sara began. As with everything, there was a certain way Lila liked it done. First the crown of her head, Sara’s hands vigorously massaging, then moving downward to smooth the long strands of hair between her fingers. The soap, then a rinse, then the same order of events repeated with the scented oil. Sometimes she had Sara do this more than once.

“It snowed last night,” Sara ventured.

“Hmmmm.” Lila’s face was relaxed, her eyes still closed. “Well, that’s Denver for you. If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute, it will change. That’s something my father always said.”

Lila’s father’s sayings, duly noted as such, were a prominent feature of their conversations. Sara used a pitcher dipped in bathwater to pour the soap away from Lila’s forehead and began to work in the oil.

“So I suppose everything will be closed,” Lila continued. “I really wanted to get to the market. We’re practically out of everything.” Never mind that, as far as Sara was aware, Lila never set foot from the apartment. “You know what I’d like, Dani? A long, lovely lunch. Someplace special. With good linens and china and flowers on the table.”

Sara had learned to go along. “That sounds nice.”

Lila gave a protracted sigh of memory, sinking deeper into the bath. “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I had a long, lovely lunch.”

A few minutes passed, Sara working the oil into the woman’s scalp. “I think Eva would enjoy some time outside.” It felt like a monstrous lie to say this name, but sometimes it was unavoidable.

“Yes, I suppose she would,” Lila said noncommittally.

“I was wondering, are there any other children she can play with?”

“Other children?”

“Yes, someone her own age. I thought it would be good for her to have some friends.”

Lila frowned uncomfortably. Sara wondered if she’d pressed too far. “Well,” she said, with a tone of concession, “there’s that neighbor girl, little what’s-her-name. With the dark hair. But I hardly ever see her. Most of the families around here keep to themselves. Bunch of sticks-in-the-mud, if you ask me.” Then: “But you’re a good friend to her, aren’t you, Dani?”

A friend. What stinging irony. “I try to be.”

“No, it’s more than that.” Lila smiled drowsily. “There’s something different about you, I can tell. I think it’s wonderful for Eva, having a friend like you.”

“So I can take her outside,” Sara said.

“In a minute.” Lila closed her eyes again. “I was hoping you could read to me. I do so love to be read to in the bath.”


By the time they escaped, it was nearly noon. Sara bundled Eva in a coat and mittens and rubber galoshes and a woolen cap, pulling it down over the little girl’s ears. For herself she had only the robe, and nothing for her feet but her ratty sneakers and wool socks, but she hardly cared. Cold feet, so what? They took the stairs to the courtyard and emerged into a world so remade it felt like an entirely new place. The air had a sharp, fresh smell, and the sun was rebounding off the snow with eye-searing intensity. After so many days in the enforced gloom of the apartment, Sara had to pause at the threshold to give her vision a moment to adjust. But Kate had no such difficulty. With a snap of energy she released Sara’s hand and bolted from the doorway, propelling herself across the courtyard. By the time Sara had slogged toward her—she might have erred about the sneakers; they were going to be a problem—the child was scooping handfuls of downy snow into her mouth.

“It tastes … cold.” Her face beamed with happiness. “Try some.”

Sara did as instructed. “Yum,” she said.

She showed the girl how to build a snowman. Her mind was full of sweet nostalgia; it was as if she were a Little again, playing in the courtyard of the Sanctuary. But this was different; Sara was the mother now. Time had turned its inexorable circle. How wonderful to feel her daughter’s infectious happiness, to experience the sense of wonder that passed between them. For the time being, all pain was banished from Sara’s mind. They could have been anywhere. The two of them.

Sara thought of Amy, too, the first time in years she had done this. Amy, who had never been a little girl, or so it seemed, but somehow always was; Amy, the Girl from Nowhere, in whose person time was not a circle but a thing stopped and held, a century cupped in the hand. Sara felt a sudden, unexpected sadness for her. She had always wondered why Amy had destroyed the vials of virus that night at the Farmstead, casting them into the flames. Sara had hated them, not just what they represented but the very fact of their existence, but she had also known what they were: a hope of salvation, the one weapon powerful enough to use against the Twelve. (The Twelve, she thought; how long had it been since that name had crossed her mind as well?) Sara had never known quite what to think of Amy’s decision; now she had her answer. Amy had known that the life those vials had denied her was the only true human reality. In Sara’s daughter, this triumphantly alive little person that Sara’s body had made, lay the answer to the greatest mystery of all—the mystery of death, and what came after. How obvious it was. Death was nothing, because there was no death. By the simple fact of Kate’s existence, Sara was joined to something eternal. To have a child was to receive the gift of true immortality—not time stopped, as it had stopped in Amy, but time continuing and everlasting.

“Let’s make snow angels,” she said.

Kate had never done this. They lay down side by side, their bodies enveloped in whiteness and the tips of their fingers just touching. Above them the sun and sky looked down in witness. They moved their limbs back and forth and rose to inspect the imprints. Sara explained what angels were: they’re us.

“That’s funny,” said Kate, smiling.

The serving girl, Jenny, would be bringing lunch; their time in the snow was at an end. Sara imagined the rest of the day: Lila lost in fantasy, leaving the two of them alone; wet clothing drying on racks by the fire, Sara and her daughter snuggled on the sofa and the sweet exchange of heat where their bodies touched and the hours of stories she would read—Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin and James and the Giant Peach—before the two of them drifted together into a sleep of intertwining dreams. Never had she been so happy.

They were walking back to the entrance when Sara glanced up to the window and saw that the drapes were pulled aside. Lila was watching them, her eyes concealed behind dark glasses. How long had she stood there?

“What’s she doing?” Kate asked.

Sara summoned a smile to her face. “I think she was just enjoying watching us.” But inside she felt a spark of fear.

“Why do I have to call her Mummy?”

Sara stopped in her tracks. “What did you say?”

For a moment the girl was silent. Melted snow was dripping off the branches.

“I’m tired, Dani,” Kate said. “Can you pick me up?”

Unbearable joy. The girl’s weight was nothing in her arms. It was the missing part of her, come home. Lila was still watching from the window, but Sara didn’t care. Kate wrapped her arms and legs tightly around her, and in this manner, Sara carried her daughter out of the snow and back to the apartment.


Sara had received no messages; every day she looked for the inverted spoon, the note tucked under the plate, finding none. Jenny came and went, depositing her trays of bread and cornmeal and soup and wordlessly scurrying away. Having virtually never left the apartment except to take Kate to the courtyard, Sara had glimpsed Vale only once, when Lila had sent her to look for a maintenance worker to unplug the tub’s drain. He was walking down the corridor in the company of two other cols, including the jowly one who had met them at the elevator on Sara’s first day. Vale had passed right by her. As ever, his disguise—which was really just a way of carrying himself, the confident saunter of his rank—was absolutely seamless. No recognition occurred between them; if Vale knew who she was, he gave no sign.

She wasn’t supposed to send a message on her own except for an emergency, but the lack of contact left her anxious. Finally she decided to risk it. There was no loose paper in the apartment, but of course there were the books. One night after Lila had gone to bed, Sara tore a small piece from the back of Winnie-the-Pooh. The larger problem was finding something to write with; there were no pens or pencils in the apartment. But in the bottom drawer of Lila’s dressing table she found a sewing kit with a cushion of needles. Sara selected the one that looked the sharpest, jabbed it into the tip of her index finger, and squeezed, summoning a bead of blood. Using the needle as a makeshift pen, she scrawled her message onto the paper.

Need meeting. D.

The following day, when Jenny came to collect her lunch tray, Sara was waiting. Rather than allow the girl to simply whisk it away as usual, Sara lifted the tray from the table and held it out to her, making eye contact and then darting her glance downward, lest the point be missed.

“Thank you, Jenny.”

Two days later came the reply. Sara secreted the note into the folds of her robe, waiting for a private moment. This didn’t happen until later in the day, when Lila napped. She was close to the end of her cycle now, parched and infirm and out of sorts; soon Guilder would be coming with the blood. In the bathroom Sara unfolded the slip of paper, on which was written a time and place and a single sentence of instruction. Sara’s heart sank; she hadn’t realized she’d have to leave the Dome. She would need to secure Lila’s permission under some credible pretext; if she didn’t get it, she had no idea what she’d do. With Lila in her impaired state, Sara wondered if the woman would even comprehend the request.

She broached the subject the next day while she was washing Lila’s hair. A few hours off, was how she put it. An outing to the market. It would be good to see a few new faces, and while she was there she could look for some special oils or soaps. The request aroused in Lila a palpable anxiety; she’d become more clingy recently, barely letting Sara out of her sight. But in the end she yielded to the gentle force of Sara’s argument. Just don’t be too long, said Lila. I never know what to do without you, Dani.

Vale had paved the way; at the front desk, the col handed her the pass with a perfunctory warning that it was only for two hours. Sara stepped into the wind and headed toward the market. Only cols and redeyes were allowed to barter there; currency took the form of small plastic chips in three colors, red, blue, and white. In the pocket of Sara’s robe were five of each, part of the compensation that Lila doled out to her every seven days, furthering the fiction that Sara was a paid employee. The snow had been pushed from the sidewalks in what had once been the town’s small commercial area, three blocks of brick buildings adjacent to the college. Most of the city went unused and abandoned, fading into soft decay; nearly all of the redeyes, except for senior staff, lived in a mid-rise apartment complex at the south end of downtown. The market was the heart of the city, with checkpoints at either end. Some of the buildings still bore signs indicating their original function: Iowa State Bank, Fort Powell Army-Navy, Wimpy’s Café, Prairie Books and Music. There was even a small movie theater with a marquee; Sara had heard that cols were sometimes permitted to go, to watch the handful of movies that were shown over and over again.

She displayed her pass at the checkpoint. The streets were vacant save for the patrols and a handful of redeyes, strolling in their luxuriously heavy coats and sunglasses. Shielded by her veil, Sara moved in a bubble of anonymity, though this sense of security was, she knew, a dangerous illusion. She walked at a pace that was neither fast nor slow, her head down against the cold gusts that whipped up from the streets and around the corners of the buildings.

She came to the apothecary. Bells tinkled as she stepped inside. The room was warm and fragrant with wood smoke and herbs. Behind the counter, a woman with a scrim of gray hair and a puckered, toothless mouth was bent over a scale, measuring out minute quantities of a pale yellow powder and funneling them into tiny glass vials. She lifted her eyes as Sara entered, then darted them to the col lingering by a display of scented oils. Be careful. I know who you are. Don’t approach until I get rid of him. Then, speaking in an elevated, helpful voice: “Sir, perhaps you were looking for something special.”

The col was sniffing a bar of soap. Mid-thirties, not unhandsome, broadcasting an air of vanity. He returned the soap to its place on the display. “Something for a headache.”

“Ah.” A smile of assurance; the solution was in hand. “Just a moment.”

The old woman selected a jar from the wall of herbals behind her, spooned the dry leaves into a paper package, and handed it to him over the counter. “Dissolve this in warm water. Just a pinch should do it.”

He surveyed the package uneasily. “What’s in it? You’re not trying to poison me, old woman?”

“Nothing more than common dillonweed. I use it myself. If you want me to sample it first, I’d be glad to.”

“Forget it.”

He paid her with a single blue chip; the woman followed him with her eyes as he departed to a chime of bells.

“Come with me,” she said to Sara.

She led her to a storage room in the back with a table and chairs and a door to the alleyway. The woman told Sara to wait and returned to the front of the store. Several minutes passed; then the door opened: Nina, dressed in a flatlander’s tunic and dark jacket and a long scarf that wrapped the lower half of her face.

“This is incredibly dumb, Sara. Do you know how dangerous this is?”

Sara stared into the woman’s steely eyes. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how angry she was.

“You knew my daughter was alive, didn’t you?”

Nina was unwinding the scarf. “Of course we knew. That’s what we do, Sara: we know things, then we put the information to use. I’d think you’d be happy about it.”

“How long?”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes, damnit, it matters.”

Nina gave her a hard look. “All right, suppose we’ve known all along. Supposing we’d told you. What would you have done? Don’t bother to answer. You would have gone off half-cocked and done something stupid. You wouldn’t have made it ten steps into the Dome without blowing your cover. If it’s any consolation, there was a good deal of discussion about this. Jackie thought you should know. But the prevailing opinion was that the success of the operation came first.”

“Prevailing opinion. Meaning yours.”

“Mine and Eustace’s.” For a moment, Nina’s expression seemed to soften. But only for a moment. “Don’t take it so hard. You got what you wanted. Be happy.”

“What I want is to get her out of there.”

“Which is what we’re counting on, Sara. And we’ll get her out, in time.”

“When?”

“I think that should be obvious. When all of this is over.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

Nina shrugged off the accusation. “Don’t misunderstand me—it’s not something I’m particularly averse to. But in this case, I don’t have to.” She looked at Sara carefully. “What do you think happens to those girls?”

“What do you mean, ‘girls’? My daughter’s the only one.”

“She is now. But she’s not the first. There’s always another Eva. Giving Lila a child is the only way Guilder can keep her calm. Once they reach a certain age, though, the woman loses interest, or else the child rejects her. Then they get her a new one.”

A wave of dizziness filled Sara’s head; she had to sit down. “How old?”

“Five or six. It varies. But it always happens, Sara. That’s what I’m telling you. The clock is ticking. Maybe not today, or even tomorrow, but soon. Then off to the basement she goes.”

Sara forced herself to the next question: “What’s in the basement?”

“It’s where they make the blood for the redeyes. We don’t know all the details. The process starts with human blood, but then something happens to it. They change it somehow. There’s a man down there, a kind of viral, or so it’s said. They call him the Source. He drinks a distillate of human blood, it changes in his body, something different comes out. You’ve seen what happens to the woman?”

Sara nodded.

“It happens to all of them, but it’s slower in the men. The blood of the Source rejuvenates them. It’s what keeps them alive. But once your daughter goes down there, she’ll never come out.”

A storm of emotions roiled inside Sara. Anger, helplessness, a fierce desire to protect her daughter. It was so intense she thought she might be ill.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“When the time comes, we’ll tell you. We’ll get her out. You have my word.”

Sara understood what Nina was asking. Not asking: telling. They had maneuvered her perfectly. Kate was the hostage, and the ransom would be paid in blood.

“Hate her for it, Sara. Think about what she does. The moment will come for all of us, myself included, just like it came for Jackie. I’ll go willingly when I’m asked. And unless this thing comes off, your daughter is on her own. We’ll never be able to reach her.”

“Where is it?” Sara asked. She didn’t have to be clearer than that; her meaning was obvious.

“It’s better if you don’t know yet. You’ll receive a message the usual way. You’re the linchpin, and the timing matters.”

“What if I can’t do it?”

“Then you die anyway. And so does your daughter. It’s just a matter of when. I’ve told you about the how.” Her eyes were looking deep into Sara’s. There was no compassion anywhere inside them, only an icy clarity. “If this goes according to plan, it will be the end of the redeyes. Guilder, Lila, all of them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Sara’s mind had gone utterly numb. She felt herself nodding, then saying, in a faint voice, “Yes.”

“Then do your duty. Do it for your daughter. Kate, is that her name?”

Sara was dumbstruck. “How did you—?”

“Because you told me. Don’t you remember? You told me her name the day she was born.”

Of course, she thought. So much made sense now. Nina was the woman from the birthing ward who’d given her the lock of Kate’s hair.

“You may not believe me, Sara, but I’m trying to right a wrong here.”

Sara wanted to laugh. She would have, if such a thing were still possible. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Maybe so. But those are the times we live in.” Another searching pause. “You have this inside you. I know it when I see it.”

Did she? The question was meaningless. Somehow she would have to find the strength.

“Do it for your daughter, Sara. Do it for Kate. Otherwise she has no chance.”