“No,” Lee said, “but I think you’re stupid if you buy this load of horse crap. Miracle tick cure, out here in the boonies? Gangsters commanding the Atlantic Zone military to mow down innocent women and children in their beds? Use your brain. What sense does any of that make?”
“Sounds plausible to me,” Anastasia said. “ConspireWire has been reporting for years on the outer-zone insurgency problem. Just last month they posted—”
“Don’t even start with that conspiracy nonsense. I won’t hear it. I tell you, it’s horse crap.”
“So why do all of this?” Edie asked him.
“Money! You heard the man. She’s going to send him home with some magic beans and he’s supposed to send her back a pile of cash.” Lee’s face was bright pink, and a thatch of iron-colored hairs sprouted from the open neck of his microsuit. It’s a wonder they didn’t make him shave all that along with his head, Edie had thought the morning they embarked—was that not even two days ago?—picturing him in a pastel golf shirt and plaid trousers, driver tipped over a shoulder. He carried himself like a man used to bossing around underlings, underlings who called him Mr. Flannigan, sir, and picked up his dry cleaning during their twenty-minute lunch break.
Wes shook his head, exasperated. “It wouldn’t be as simple as that. What good does money do out here? They don’t have a Pocketz account. I don’t even know if they have a computer. I can’t just make a transfer. They’re taking a huge risk, trusting that I’d follow through on my end of the deal once I’m back in-zone. You can call me stupid, but I believe June when she says that her object is to get the drug out in some public form before Perrone can act.”
“And anyway,” Berto said, “so what if they’re just magic beans? Let Wes give her what she wants. I’ll chip in. We should play their game and go home.”
“Like they’re going to just let us pay our own ransom and leave,” Wendy said. “She made her deal with Wes. Not us.”
“I wouldn’t make any deal with her that didn’t guarantee the safety of everyone here,” Wes said.
“Do you think she’ll just let all nine of us go back in-zone, knowing everything we know about this place?” Anastasia asked. “Genuine question.”
“I think,” Wes said, “it’s a risk she’s willing to take, given what’s at stake for them.”
Jesse, who had been strangely quiet through all of this, finally spoke. “So it’s your fault this all happened, Feingold. You’re the reason the rest of us are here.”
Silence fell again. Wes’s jaw tensed and his eyes watered. Edie still felt the sting of his proposal, but the pain on his face was real. And she had her own dose of guilt to bear, didn’t she? If she’d gone along with Tia, would those two teenagers have been killed?
“Don’t start that nonsense,” Marta snapped. “He couldn’t have known.”
“But he makes a good point,” said Wendy. “The rest of us are just dragged into this, for nothing.” She hid her face in her hands, muffling her words. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Ken and I paid four hundred thousand for this.”
“Did you say four hundred?” Berto asked. “Ani and I only paid two.”
Jesse leaned in eagerly. “Me, too. For me and Edie, I mean.”
Ken cast Wendy such a thunderous look that Edie felt real concern for her, real alarm about what he might do. She was reminded again of her initial impression that the two were spouses rather than siblings. There was a strangeness between them, though maybe that was just Ken’s strangeness, because he was brooding, distant. Unfriendly. Though Wendy’s English was thoroughly American, even accented with the slight twang that Edie associated with the southern reaches of the Atlantic Zone, Ken, unless forced by Outer Limits procedures or the barest demands of politeness to speak, only talked to Wendy, and then only in Japanese. The reason Edie had thought them married, she had to admit to herself now, was that there seemed between them a power imbalance particular to a certain kind of couple. Though Wendy was the one who did all of the asking and engaging for both of the Tanakas, and Ken stood silently, even meekly, to the side, he gave off the unmistakable air of being in charge.
“That’s interesting,” Marta said. “Because Andy told June that the two of you were the only ones in the group other than Wes getting the inoculation. She didn’t know why.”
Wes’s eyes darted Marta’s way. Marta, staring at Wendy and Ken, missed this, but Edie did not.
“Wendy misspoke,” Ken said softly. “We also paid two hundred thousand.”
“Was there a premium package?” Lee asked. “Because I would have sprung for it.”
“You just said you didn’t even think the drug existed,” Wes said. “You just said I’m stupid and this whole story of June’s is a fairy tale.”
“I said it was a load of horse crap,” Lee said. He seemed unbothered by the contradiction.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” Anastasia put her head in her hands.
“If there was a premium package,” Marta said carefully, almost soothingly, as though she were speaking to a skittish animal, “that’s important information for us to have right now. That’s information we’d need as we decide if we can trust June’s story.”
Wendy seemed as interested in Ken’s response as everyone else in the group was, but he only shook his head. “We also paid two hundred,” he repeated.
Berto huffed and rubbed his face. “OK. Say it’s all a lie. What can we do about it? They have our Stamps, our shoes, all our gear. I don’t even know what we’re arguing about. There’s one way forward.” He made a jabbing motion with his hand. “Go along with whatever they want. Hope for the best.”
“There’s still Tia,” Anastasia said. “If she gets back, gets help—”
“That’s a big ‘if,’” Wes said. “What’s our plan if she doesn’t?”
A long, empty stretch. Time to listen to the rain on the roof. Edie closed her eyes against the lantern light, watching its afterglow lick at the inside of her eyelids.
“It’s on you, Feingold.” Jesse again. Edie opened her eyes in time to see what she’d missed before in Jesse’s eyes: his cellular-level terror. “You have what they say they want. You have the power. You believe what they’re selling. Get them to let the rest of us go.”
“You should at least try,” Wendy said.
Wes took a deep breath. Then nodded. “Yeah, OK. I’ll try.”
“Or maybe Tia will get back home,” said Anastasia. “Maybe help will be here soon.”
Twelve