“Has quarantine been necessary in the past?” Abel keeps staring at Ephraim with the same steely focus he gave the Queen mech when she last attacked. “There are so few habitations nearby. No roads. No town.”
“When Cobweb first went around—” Ephraim shakes his head as he turns up the collar of his jacket against the chilly wind. “It’s nasty stuff. Earth says we’ve got it contained, mostly, but they’re not fooling anybody. We’re never more than one outbreak away from another pandemic.”
Pandemic? How many more horrors of the past thirty years will she discover?
We left humanity with nowhere to turn, she thinks, guilt settling over her like a cloud. And no better world than this.
Their gravel pathway leads between the stone facades of two buildings in the hospital complex but offers a narrow glimpse of the world beyond. Noemi sees gritty gray soil, grass that’s more silver than green, and a few trees that must be native to this world. The trunks and branches bend in so many directions that it looks like it’s been tied in knots, and its round leaves are pure black.
“How does anything live here?” she murmurs.
Although she’d meant it as a rhetorical question, Ephraim answers. “Anything that survives on Stronghold gets strong fast. The native flora and fauna—they evolved out of bitter soil and a hostile sky. They’re mean as hell and twice as ugly, but they’re tough. Those trees over there, you can’t even cut them down for wood. You’ll pound your ax to metal shavings before it takes more than a few scrapes to its bark.”
“I can’t tell whether you hate them or admire them.”
“I can do both at the same time.” In his voice she hears both chagrin and a strange sort of pride.
She quickens her steps to keep pace; she’s still wobbly from the aftermath of Cobweb, and Ephraim’s a tall man with a long stride. Abel stays by her side, obviously ready to help if needed. Yet he remains unusually quiet, not saying a word. She asks Ephraim, “What about the people who live here? The colonists? Are they just as tough?”
“They get to be.” Ephraim realizes how hard she’s working to keep up and slows his steps. For all his anger, all his secretiveness, this guy is still a doctor at heart. “You have to be sturdy just to get through screening. Doesn’t matter if you’re a musical genius, or if you can tell good jokes. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got a face like Han Zhi. If you’re not strong, or can’t at least get strong fast, it’s back to Earth for you.”
Noemi thinks of the little boy at screening and wonders whether his family got through or not. What would it be like, taking your children to the one place in the galaxy where you thought they might have a chance to grow up, only to be turned away?
Ephraim continues, “I was born here. But I’ve never been… a man of Stronghold, I guess you’d say. Seems to me like there’s got to be a better way than this.”
There is a better way, on Genesis, she wants to say, but stops herself. How can she brag about the wonders of her world when there’s no chance Ephraim will ever get to share in them?
As they crest the hill, Noemi sees a metal framework serving as a dock. Nearly a dozen medtrams are suspended within, awaiting emergency calls. Those she recognizes from yesterday—long, almost cylindrical white capsules with pointed noses and inset rings of red lights. “So we steal one of these,” she says. “And no one would stop a medtram, right?”
“We’d better hope not,” Ephraim says, his voice tight. When Noemi and Abel look over at him, he holds up his wrist. The comm bracelet around it is blinking red. She knows the truth before Ephraim speaks the words: “They’re coming.”
30
ABEL DECIDES THAT EITHER EPHRAIM DUNAWAY HAS SET a very elaborate trap or underestimated the difficulty of their escape. In neither case is the outcome positive. “Who’s coming?”
“The authorities.” Noemi seems wholly convinced of Ephraim’s honesty. “They must’ve figured out we’re gone.”
Ephraim points. “Medtram. Now.”
Noemi dashes down the hill, with Ephraim just behind. Abel paces himself to follow Ephraim, the better to see whether there’s any sort of clandestine signaling going on. However, Ephraim shows every sign of running as fast and hard as he can; the threat from the Stronghold authorities must be real.
Abel quickens his pace, dashing past Ephraim and Noemi. He attunes his superior hearing and peripheral vision to scout for any potential sign of the authorities. Even the bravest humans can be affected by emotion at times of great stress, whereas he can remain focused on this moment alone, on any subtle changes in their situation and cues. As Abel reaches the launching pillar for the medtrams, he quickly scrambles up the side, angling himself to reach the closest medtram’s door. The security lock on the side is easily broken, and within four seconds, Abel is inside.
Yesterday his attention had been focused almost wholly on Noemi, but he calls upon his recorded memories of the journey here to retrieve necessary details. His hands copy those of the paramedic pilot from yesterday as the dashboard screen lights begin to glow; the whine of the engines slides to a higher pitch as he steers the ship from its wire hangar to the ground, where Noemi and Ephraim are waiting.
Noemi’s beaming. Ephraim’s staring. As Abel opens the door for them and they hurriedly climb in, Ephraim says, “How the hell did you manage that?”
“I’m good with vehicles,” Abel says, which technically is not a lie.
“How do we avoid detection?” Noemi asks Ephraim as she takes the seat next to Abel. “If they’re looking for us, and they realize a medtram’s gone missing—”
“I can conceal our computer signature,” Abel points out. “The railway lines nearby offer us a chance to disguise our flight pattern.”
Ephraim frowns. “What? The old coal trains? How are those going to help us?”
“Watch.” With that, Abel pushes the accelerator, and the medtram takes off, zooming low and fast across the rugged gray terrain. The sand and rocks race by beneath them, and the black hills in the distance seem to loom larger by the moment. “Now, Dr. Dunaway, I need you to explain.”
“To explain what?” Ephraim says, and Noemi glances over at Abel, puzzled.
“Your true agenda.”
Now both Noemi and Ephraim are staring at him in what Abel thinks is dismay, or perhaps even anger. He’ll analyze his peripheral vision data later, when he doesn’t need to focus so sharply on keeping the white bullet of the medtram as close to the ground as possible without crashing them into the rubble.
With a sound halfway between laughter and exasperation, Ephraim says, “Excuse me—agenda?”
“Precisely,” Abel says, never turning from his controls. “Why have you fixated on Noemi so strongly?”