Текст книги "UnSouled"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

63 • Grace

While playing with Dierdre is a treat, it’s only to settle Grace’s mind. Powerful forces are at work in this house, and those forces are a hairbreadth away from tearing each other apart. Cam and Connor had been so united in purpose until now, in spite of their rivalry. And although Grace considers herself just along for the ride, she knows she sees the things that the others don’t.

For instance—she sees Connor: She knows he loves Risa and is intentionally pushing her away to save her. He will not save her. Risa will push back, acting out against his cold shoulder by throwing herself into the war against unwinding even more recklessly than before. By trying to save her, he may just get her killed.

And Risa: She would have stayed here had Connor not shown up, but now it’s out of the question. Connor will never see that. He’s convinced he knows her better than he truly does.

And Cam: He’s the real loose cannon. He’ll foolishly lap up any attention Risa gives him, whether that attention is real or calculated. In the end, whatever she gives will not be enough for him. He will feel betrayed and used—and even if Risa chooses him over Connor, he won’t believe it. He won’t trust it. His confused fury will fester. Grace knows that someday soon Cam will blow, and God help anyone near enough to get caught by the shrapnel.

So Grace plays with harmless Dierdre but hears every word, sees every move the others make, knowing nothing she can say will affect this doomed board of play.

•   •   •

Late that night Grace lies awake, staring at the ceiling. Shadow tree limbs crawl ominously across the ceiling with each passing headlight.

Risa gets up and quietly goes to the door.

“Don’t,” Grace says. “Please don’t.”

“I’m just going to the bathroom.”

“No, you’re not.”

Risa hesitates, then stiffens a bit. “I have to.” Then adds, “It’s not your business anyway.” But Grace knows she’s wrong about that.

Risa leaves, and Grace closes her eyes, hearing the door to the boys’ room creak open. She knows what will happen in there.

Risa will sit on Connor’s bed, gently waking him up, if he’s not already awake. Cam, who sleeps on the floor will not be asleep, but will pretend that he is. He’ll hear everything.

Risa will whisper something to Connor along the lines of “We need to talk,” and Connor will try to delay it. “In the morning,” he’ll say. But she’ll touch his face, and that will make him look at her. They won’t see each other’s eyes but for a pinprick on their pupils of the reflected streetlight outside. It will be enough. Even in the darkness, Connor’s facade will fall away, and Risa will know. They won’t speak, because, after all, it was never about words, but about connection without words. A connection that can’t be denied. They’ll step just outside the door. Close it, but only partway, so that it doesn’t make a sound.

Connor will initiate the kiss, but Risa will return the passion twofold. Any questions about their feelings for each other will be gone in a moment that they think only the two of them share. Just one kiss, and Risa will leave and sleep like a baby for the rest of the night, satisfied.

But Cam will know. And he will begin to make plans.

Grace has no idea what those plans will be, but she knows they won’t help anybody. Not even himself.

She sees no hope for a winning outcome—until something drastic comes into play. It begins with a lack of shadow. A dark ceiling without the squirmy tree shadow . . . and yet there is the deep rumble of a car. No—two cars—but no headlights. Why would they be driving this time of night without headlights?

She looks out of the window to see a dark van and a dark sedan idling by the curb. The back doors of the van open, a team of armed men pile out, and without a sound they steal across the lawn toward the house.

Grace feels her heart kick into high gear. Her ears and cheeks grow hot from an adrenaline flush. They’ve been found!

She hears voices—whispers—and she locks onto them, hoping something they say can give her an advantage.

“You three around back,” the team leader whispers. “Wait for the signal.”

Then someone else whispers, “He’s here. I can almost smell him.”

Suddenly Grace knows all she needs to know.

She bursts out of the room to see Risa and Connor in the midst of that kiss she knew they’d take.

“Grace!” says Risa “What are you—”

But before she can finish, they all hear the double crash of both the back and front doors being kicked in. She pushes them into Cam and Connor’s room, closing the door behind her. Cam leaps to his feet fully awake, as Grace knew he would be. She takes control, knowing they don’t have much time. She knows this particular brand of salvation is only a fifty-fifty chance at best.

“Risa!” she whispers. “Get under the bed. Connor—facedown in your pillow. Now!” Then she turns to Cam. “And you—stay exactly where you are!”

Cam stares at her in disbelief “Are you nuts? They know we’re here!”

Pounding footsteps on the stairs. Only seconds now.

“No,” Grace tells him, just before she squeezes beneath the bed with Risa. “They know you’re here.”

64 • Cam

Two men in black armed with silenced tranq Magnums burst into the room. One aims his weapon at Cam, and Cam reflexively puts his hands up, furious to be caught so easily, but he knows that resisting will only get him tranq’d.

The second attacker doesn’t hesitate, however, in tranq’ing the kid on the bed. Connor flinches from the shot and goes limp.

“You’re a hard man to find, Mr. Comprix,” says the guard with the weapon aimed squarely at Cam’s chest. It almost makes him laugh.

“Me? Do you have any idea who you just tranq’d?”

“We don’t care about the SlotMongers you’ve been slumming with,” he says. “We’re here for you.”

Cam stares at him in amazement—and suddenly he realizes the awful and awesome power he’s been handed. The power to save and to destroy. He instantly knows now that even in capture he will be a hero no matter what he does. The question is what kind of hero does he want to be? And to whom?

65 • Roberta

She does not enter the house until she’s been given the all clear by the team leader. Inside, the men continue in high alert, even though their quarry has been caught. The shrill cries of a small child blare like a car alarm.

“We tranq’d the mother,” the team leader tells her, “but we’re worried about tranq’ing the kid. The dosage might kill it.”

“Good call,” says Roberta. “We lost neither our element of surprise, nor our humanity tonight.” Still, the crying child is a nuisance. “Close its door. I’m sure it will cry itself back to sleep.”

She follows the team leader upstairs, where two more of Proactive Citizenry’s takedown force have Cam pushed up against a wall in a dark bedroom and are in the process of handcuffing him behind his back. She reaches over and flicks on the light.

“Must these things always be done in the dark?”

Once the handcuffs are snapped shut, she approaches him slowly. “Turn him to face me.”

He’s turned toward her, and she looks him over. He says nothing. “You don’t look much worse for the wear,” she says.

He glares at her. “The fugitive life suits me.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“So how did you find me?”

She runs her fingers through his hair, knowing he hates when she does that but also knowing he can’t stop her while handcuffed. “You had already disappeared off the standard grid by the time I realized you were gone. I had thought you left the country, but you were far more clever than that. It never occurred to me that you’d take refuge on a ChanceFolk reservation—or that they’d even give you refuge. But People of Chance are an unpredictable lot, aren’t they? In the end your thumbprint—or should I say Wil Tashi’ne’s thumbprint—came up when the ID of someone named Bees-Neb Hebííte was scanned at an iMotel.”

He grimaces, probably remembering the exact time and place he touched that ID, thereby leaving the incriminating print.

Roberta clicks her tongue at him. “Really, Cam, an iMotel? You were made for Fairmonts and Ritz-Carltons.”

“Now what am I made for?”

“Undecided.” She looks at the unconscious young man lying on the bed. “Can I assume I have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hebííte?”

A pause, and then Cam says, “Yep. That’s him.”

She sits down on the bed, not even bothering to inspect the unconscious kid. “He must have been the star of the reservation parading you around there,” Roberta says, mostly just to get a rise out of Cam. “If you stayed there, you might have evaded us for a good long time. Why didn’t you?”

Cam shrugs and finally gives her his famous grin. “Phileas Fogg,” he says. “I wanted to see the world.”

“Well, you didn’t quite make eighty days, but I hope it was sufficient.” She turns to the team leader. “Time to wrap this up.”

“Do we take the others?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Roberta chides. “We’ve gotten what we came for. I have no desire to complicate things with kidnapping.”

“But taking me—that’s not kidnapping?” Cam asks.

“No,” Roberta says, happy to take the bait. “According to the law, it would be considered the retrieval of stolen property. In fact, I could press charges against everyone in this house, but I won’t. I’ve no need to be vindictive.”

They haul him out to the car, but gently so, by Roberta’s orders. Upstairs the child continues to cry, but the sound is greatly muffled when they pull the fractured front door closed. The mother, whoever she is, and the rest of this unseemly crew will eventually regain consciousness to take care of the irascible toddler. If not by morning, then a few hours later.

They drive off with Cam seated in the back of the sedan next to Roberta, handcuffs still on, although he’s not struggling against them. Now that Cam has freed his grin, he won’t stop. She has to admit it’s a bit unnerving.

“I assume the senator and the general were fuming when I left.”

“On the contrary,” Roberta tells him happily. “They never knew that you left. I told them that you and I were going back to Hawaii for a few weeks before you reported to them. That you wished to spend some time at the clinic for a motivational makeover. And, of course, that’s where we’re now going. So that you can have some mild cortical retuning.”

“Cortical retuning . . . ,” he echoes.

“Only to be expected,” Roberta tells him. “You’ve been prone to quite a lot of wrongful thinking ever since you were first rewound. But I’m happy to tell you that I have an effective way of taking what’s wrong within that wonderful mind of yours . . . and making it right.”

Roberta can’t help but take pleasure in her victory as she watches the grin finally leave his face.

66 • Connor

Connor opens his eyes to the same room and the same bed he had been traq’d in. He knows this can’t be right. They came for them, didn’t they? No, he thinks. Grace knew better. They came for Cam.

“Welcome back from Tranqistan.”

He turns his head to see Sonia sitting in a chair beside him. He tries to push himself up, but feels dizzy, so he lets his elbows slide out from under him, and his head hits the pillow, his brain clanging inside him like the clapper of a bell.

“Easy now. I’d think with all the times you’ve been tranq’d, you know to take it slow.”

He’s about to ask where Risa is, but then she appears at the door. “Is he awake?”

“Barely.” Sonia grabs her cane and rises with a grunt, vacating the seat for Risa. “It’s almost noon. Time to open up shop, or the crowds may bust the door down.” But before she leaves the room, she pats Connor comfortingly on the leg. “We’ll talk later. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about my husband. Or at least what this fool brain of mine still remembers.”

Connor smiles at that. “I’m sure you remember things back to the Stone Age.”

“Don’t be a wiseass.”

Then she waddles out, and Risa takes the seat. She also takes Connor’s hand. He squeezes back, and unlike the day before, he does it wholeheartedly.

“I’m glad we let you sleep it off without waking you. You needed it.”

“You don’t get rest during tranq sleep. You just go away.” He clears his throat, to remove a persistent frog. “So what happened?”

Risa explains how she and Grace were never even found under the bed and how Cam was collared, then taken away. Connor is amazed with their luck—but maybe he shouldn’t be. If the mission of that task force was to simply capture Cam, they couldn’t care less about his travel companions. Get in, get out. Their mission was accomplished, and they had no idea the forest they had missed for the tree.

“Cam could have turned us all in, but he didn’t,” Risa says. “He sacrificed himself for us.”

“He was going down anyway,” Connor points out. “It wasn’t exactly a sacrifice.”

“Give him some credit—by turning us in he would have bought himself some serious bargaining power.” She thinks for a moment, her grip on Connor’s hand loosening slightly. “He’s not the monster you think he is.”

She waits for Connor to respond to that, but he’s still too tired and cranky from the tranquilizer to agree with her. And he might agree—after all, Cam had given them the information on Proactive Citizenry. Still, his motives seem to have too many layers to be anything but cloudy.

“Cam saved us, Connor—at least give him that.”

He gives her something that could, from a certain angle, be considered a reluctant nod. “What do you think they’ll do with him?”

“He’s their golden child,” Risa says. “They’ll clean up the tarnish and make him shine again.” Then she smiles, her thoughts drifting off to him. “Of course, Cam would point out that gold doesn’t tarnish.”

That smile is a little too warm, and although Connor knows he’s playing with fire, he dares to say, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in love with him.”

She holds his gaze, a little coolly. “Do you really want to go there?”

“No,” Connor admits.

But Risa takes him there anyway. “I love what he did for us. I love that his heart is purer than anyone else believes. I love that he’s far more innocent than he is jaded, but doesn’t even know it.”

“And you love that he’s completely infatuated with you.”

Risa smiles and tosses her hair like a shampoo model. “Well, that goes without saying.” The move is so unlike her, it makes them both laugh.

Connor sits up, his head no longer spinning when he does. “I’m glad you chose me before they came for him.”

“I didn’t chose anything,” Risa says, just the slightest bit annoyed.

“Well, I’m just glad,” says Connor gently. “That’s all.” He touches her face with Roland’s hand, the shark only inches away, but finally realizes that it will never be close enough to bite.

•   •   •

Sonia, still downstairs, decides that taking a tranq for the team is more than enough to ask of Hannah. She can’t ask Hannah to keep fugitives in her home after last night’s attack.

“I’m sorry—but I’ve got Dierdre to think about now,” Hannah tells them with tears in her eyes. Holding the toddler in her arms, she wishes them all Godspeed. Connor finds he has a lump in his throat for the storked baby he saved and will never see again.

Sonia drives him, Risa, and Grace back to her shop in her dark-windowed Suburban. She decides to keep the shop closed today, and there in the back room, the five of them talk of issues weighty enough, it seems, to collapse the floor beneath them. Connor insists that Grace be included because, although she bounces her knees impatiently and appears to have little interest in the conversation, all of Grace’s appearances are deceiving.

“A reliable source working with Proactive Citizenry told me a very interesting story,” Connor begins. He has no idea if Trace Neuhauser even survived the crash in the Salton Sea. He thinks not, because Trace would never have allowed the massacres that Starkey is now orchestrating in the name of freedom. But at least Trace was able to pass what he knew on to Connor before he was forced to pilot that plane for Starkey. “My source talked about how the name of Janson Rheinschild still strikes fear into the hearts of Proactive Citizenry’s inner circle.”

Sonia gives a satisfied and somewhat sinister laugh. “Glad to hear it. I hope he’s always the ghost in their lousy machine.”

“So it’s true that they”—Connor tries to choose his words carefully, but realizes there’s no delicate way to say it—“that they took him out?”

“They didn’t have to,” Sonia says. “When you tear a man down to his roots, it doesn’t leave much behind. Janson died a broken man. He willed himself to die along with his dreams, and I couldn’t stop him.”

Risa, who’s hearing all this for the first time, asks, “Who was he?”

“My husband, dear.” And then Sonia heaves a sorrowful sigh. “And my partner in crime.”

That gets Grace’s attention, although she doesn’t say anything just yet.

“Proactive Citizenry wiped him from their history,” Connor says.

“Their history? They wiped him from world history! Did you know we won the Nobel Prize?”

Risa just stares at her dumbfounded, and her expression makes Sonia laugh.

“Bioscience, dear. Back then antiquing was just my hobby.”

“This was before the Heartland War?” she asks.

Sonia nods. “Wars have a way of reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.”

Connor’s chair scrapes on the wooden floor as he pulls it forward. “Lev and I looked for his name everywhere online. Totally gone. But there was one article that misspelled it—that was the only way we found him.” Then Connor adds, “Your picture was in the photo. That’s how we knew you were somehow involved.”

Sonia turns to spit on the ground. “Deleting us from history was the ultimate insult. But it made it easier for me to disappear from them. From everyone.”

“We know you started Proactive Citizenry,” Connor says, noting Risa’s jaw drop again.

“That was Janson. I was out of it by then. I saw the writing on the wall and knew it was in blood—but he was an idealist. His finest trait and his deepest flaw.” Her eyes get moist and she points to a tissue box on the cluttered desk. Grace hands it to her. She blots her eyes once, then doesn’t tear up again.

“We know Proactive Citizenry was supposed to be a watchdog organization,” Connor says, “protecting the world against the abuse of biotech. What went wrong?”

“We let the genie out of the bottle,” Sonia says sadly. “And a genie is loyal to no master.”

From down below they can hear the grumbles of her hidden AWOLs arguing. Sonia bangs her cane on the trapdoor three times and they fall silent. Secrets below. Secrets above. Connor finds himself leaning closer as she begins to tell her tale.

“Janson and I pioneered the neurografting techniques that allowed every part of a donor body to be used in transplant. Every organ, every limb, every brain cell. The idea was to save lives. To better the world. But there’s a road to hell for every good intention.”

“The Unwind Accord?” says Connor.

Sonia nods. “It hadn’t even been thought of when we perfected our techniques—but the Heartland War was raging, and with school systems failing all over the country, feral teens were filling the streets in massive numbers. People were scared, and people were desperate.” Sonia’s eyes seem to go far away as she drags back the memory. “The Unwind Accord took our lifesaving technology and weaponized it to use against all those kids that no one wanted to deal with. The board of Proactive Citizenry went along with it—pushing Janson out—because they saw more than just dollar signs: They saw an entire industry waiting to be born.”

Connor finds himself taking a deep, shuddering breath at the suggestion of unwinding being “born.”

“It happened so quickly,” Sonia continues. “When no one was looking. The Juvenile Authority was established without public outcries and without much resistance. Everyone was so glad just to end the Heartland War and get the feral teens out of sight and out of mind. No one wanted to consider where they were going. Now there was a supply of anonymous parts for anyone who wanted them. And even if you didn’t want younger hands or brighter eyes, there were advertisements everywhere to convince you that you did. ‘A new you from the inside out!’ the billboards said. ‘Add fifty years to your life.’ ” Sonia shakes her head bitterly. “They created want . . . and want turned to need . . . and unwinding became woven into the fabric of everything.”

No one says a word. It’s like a moment of silence for the many kids lost to that great unwinding machine. The industry, as Sonia had called it. A mill of commerce trafficking in flesh, working outside the realm of ethics yet within the law and with the complete consent of society.

But then Connor realizes something. “There’s more to the story, isn’t there, Sonia? There has to be—or else why would Proactive Citizenry still be afraid of the man they defeated? Why would Janson Rheinschild’s name still make them shake in their boots?”

Now Sonia smiles. “What word strikes fear into the heart of any industry?” And when no one answers, she whispers it like a dark mantra.

“Obsolescence . . .”

•   •   •

Out in the antique shop, in a dingy corner that generally doesn’t see much traffic, is a stack of dusty old computers stacked one on top of another, daring gravity to topple it, which it never does. This is where Sonia leads them. “I keep these because every now and then a collector comes in looking for older machines—but not too often—and when they do, they never pay very much.”

“So why are we here?” Connor asks.

She taps him more lightly than usual with her cane. “To illustrate a point. Technology doesn’t age well—not like a fine piece of furniture.” And she sits herself down on one of those fine pieces of furniture—a curvy wooden chair with a red velvet seat. The chair probably goes for more than all the computers combined.

“When they passed the Unwind Accord, I gave up. I was disgusted by my own unintentional role in making it happen. But Janson, he fought it down to the day he died. Now that people were hooked on parts, Janson knew the only way to end unwinding was to give them cheaper parts that you didn’t have to harvest. Take away the need for harvesting, and suddenly people would rediscover their consciences. Unwinding would end.”

“ChanceFolk use their spirit animals for transplant,” Connor points out. “That’s how they got around it.”

“I’ll do you one better,” says Sonia. “What if you could grow an endless supply of cultured cells, put them into a machine, like—oh, say, a computer printer—and print yourself out an organ?”

Everyone looks to one another. Connor’s not quite sure if she’s being rhetorical, making a joke, or if she’s just plain nuts.

“Like . . . an electronic nail builder?” Risa suggests.

“A variation on a theme,” says Sonia. “Similar technology taken a huge leap forward.”

“Uh . . . ,” says Connor, “a picture of a liver isn’t gonna help anyone much.”

Then Sonia gets a funny look in her eye. A hint of the scientist she once was. “What if it’s not just a picture?” she asks. “What if you could keep printing layer after layer of cells on top of one another, making it thicker and thicker? What if you were able to solve the blood flow problem by programming gaps in the printing sequence and lining those gaps with a semipermeable membrane that would mature into blood vessels?”

Now she moves her gaze, locking on each of them as she speaks. The passion behind her eyes is hypnotic. Suddenly she’s no longer an old woman, but an impassioned scientist filled with a fire she’s been holding within her for years.

“What if you invented a printer that could build living human organs?” Sonia rises from her chair. She’s a short woman, but right now Connor could swear she’s towering over them. “And what if you sold the patent to the nation’s largest medical manufacturer . . . and what if they took all of that work . . . and buried it? And took the plans and burned them? And took every printer and smashed it, and prevented anyone from ever knowing that the technology existed?”

Sonia’s whole body shakes, not out of weakness, but out of fury. “What if they made the solution to unwinding disappear because too many people have too much invested in keeping things exactly . . . the way . . . they are.”

Then in the shivering silence that follows, comes a single unpretentious, unassuming voice.

“And what if there’s still one organ printer left,” says Grace, “hiding in the corner of an antique shop?”

Sonia’s rage resolves into the most perfect grandmotherly smile.

“And what if there is?”