pattern is.”
“Is there any way I can help?”
“Not yet,” he said, taking the thick looseleaf book I’d been working in from my hand and turning back to the computer screen.
“I could stay here,” Gem said that night. “What?”
“I could stay here,” she repeated, calmly. “Minh is searching for the same pattern I am. Only I did not know there could
“Random?”
“Yes. Random. But now I am not certain.”
“Are you going to?”
“What?”
“Stay here.”
“Oh no.”
“Why not, girl?”
“Because you are not,” she said. Then she pulled my thumb into her mouth.
Another few days went by. I’m not sure how many. Even though I’d turned in my list to Lune, I kept going over it in my head, thinking maybe there
I was lying back on the couch when someone knocked on the door. Gem walked over and opened it. The Latina was standing there.
“It’s time,” is all she said.
They were all there in the patterning room, waiting on me. The screen was empty except for one word:
Darcadia
I took a seat, Gem next to me. “What does it mean?” I asked Lune.
But it was Clint who answered: “It’s a corruption of ‘Arcadia,’ a mountainous region of the central Peloponnesus of ancient Greece, represented as a paradise in Greek and Roman bucolic poetry and in the literature of the Renaissance. It was a plateau, bounded by mountain ranges and itself divided by individual mountains. For a number of geographical reasons, it was cut off from the coast on all sides—like an island on land, if you can picture that. So it survived a number of invasions but, eventually, it accepted a forced alliance with Sparta, and fought with the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War. It finally fell into decline during Roman times.”
“I don’t see how—”
“The key is Sparta,” Minh said. “For a number of white-supremacist organizations, the Spartans represent the ultimate warriors.”
“I’d’ve thought it would be the Vikings,” I said. “The ones who call themselves ‘racialists’ are always hooking to some religion, and you hear ‘Odinism’ down there a lot.”
“Oh, but the Vikings in the
“Why is that?” Gem asked.
“Because they fought against the Nazis in World War II. Norway was invaded and occupied, but it always maintained an active resistance, even with Quisling in charge. And
“There’s another reason for Sparta to be their Promised Land,” Minh said quietly.
We all turned to look at him.
“The Spartans are also revered by so-called boy-lovers. And the concept that a warrior is entitled to whatever he is capable of
“I still don’t see the—” I stopped myself before I could say the word that flashed on
Lune flicked his pointer, and words popped up on the wall. He talked as he pointed and clicked, like the spoken bridge in doo-wop I’d tried to tell Gem about.
“Thematic with hate groups,” he said, as everything from Nation of Islam to Aryan Nations popped up on the wall, “is this concept of a ‘homeland.’ While the more floridly disturbed of them actually believe a portion of the United States will be set aside for them—”
“Like Casino Indians,” Levi put in, bitterness blood-deep in his voice.
“—the more serious and committed ones understand they would have to go outside American borders to have their ‘paradise,’ ” Lune continued, as if the Indian hadn’t spoken. “There is ample precedent for such belief. There was that aborted white-supremacist coup on the Caribbean island of Dominica about twenty years ago. And the tiny Pacific island country of Nauru has converted itself into a major offshore-banking operation.” He looked over at Heidi.
“That’s authenticated,” the farm girl said. “They are, in effect, selling foreigners the means to cloak transactions. Although there is probably no