priority number.'
'Are you in danger?'
'No. No. Kind of. Nobody's going to kill me. But I'm lost- I'm sorry. I know this isn't what you're here for. I know this isn't important. You must get thousands of life-and-death calls every hour.'
The woman made a sound, like a swallowed chuckle. 'This system was defunct twenty years ago, but we keep a few personnel on-line because of people who have no other access. It's all right. It's all right. What's your name?'
'Rose.'
'Please stay on the line, Rose. I'll get a channel to your brother. If you want to talk, just say something. I'm here listening.'
She had nothing to say. She fidgeted anxiously, swallowing compulsively, each time hoping to consume the lump that constricted her throat.
Dull, officious Anton, who worked as an advocate for disabled or troubled children or some other equally worthy and boring vocation. He had left the family fourteen years before, when she was only a baby. He had been raised by someone else, by traitors, thieves, defectives. He had rarely visited his parents and then only on supervised visitations, because the ones who had stolen him had poisoned his mind. Yet he always wrote to her four times a year on the quarter, chatty notes detailing the obscenely tedious details of his life. Each note repeated at the end the same tired cliche: Call me any time, Rosie. Any time.
She didn't really know him. He could as well have been a stranger. Why should he do anything for her if her father didn't even care enough to come when she asked? Wasn't this the only time she had ever asked anything of her father?
All these years she had never asked.
'Patching you through,' said helpful M. Maldonado. 'M. Mikhailov, I'll remain on stepped-back link if you need me.'
'Thank you. Rose?' Anton had a reedy tenor, rising querulously. She didn't know him well enough to know if he was surprised, annoyed, or pleased.
'Anton, it's Rose.'
I'm Rose, she thought, half astonished, hearing her own voice speak her own name: a small, isolated voice, lost in the dim room, in the old church, in the forgotten village, in the green jungle, on the common earth beneath clouds that covered the all-seeing eye of the sun. It was amazing anyone could hear her at all. She sobbed, choking on it, so it came out sounding halfway between a cough and a sneeze. She could barely squeeze out words.
'Please, come get me.'
'Of course, Rose. Right away. Where are you?'
'I'm all alone.'
The buzz of the fluorescent lamp accompanied her other companion: the solitude, not even a mouse or a roach. The world had emptied out around her. For an instant, she thought the connection had failed until Doctor Baby Jesus whirred and Anton spoke again, an odd tone in his suddenly very even, level all-on-the-same-note voice.
'Did you call Dad?'
She sobbed. She could get no word past her throat, no comprehensible sound, only this wrenching, gasping, ugly sound.
The baby doctor sighed with Anton's voice. 'He'll never love you, Rosie. Never. He can't love anyone but himself.'
Fury made her articulate. 'He does love me. He says so.'
'Love is just another commodity to him. Maybe you get something, but there's always a price to be paid. I'm so sorry. Evdi and Yana and I love you-'
'He does love me.'
'I'll come get you. Stay where you are, Rosie. I'll come. Will you stay? Will you be there? Don't go running off anywhere? You're not going to change your mind and follow those damn Sunseekers?'
'But he doesn't want me.' She began to sob again, torn in two. She heard Anton reply, faintly, only maybe his voice wasn't any fainter and it was just her own weeping that drowned him.
'I'm coming, Rosie. Just tell me where you are.'
She couldn't speak. She could only cry as their voices filtered through the creaky stutter of the baby doll's speaker.
'M. Mikhailov, I'm attempting to triangulate, but the intercessor has been partially disabled so I can't get a lock on your sister's position.'
'Do you have a position on the Sunseekers?'
'The Sunseekers?'
'That ship with the new solar array technology. That grotesque advertising ploy-'you need never set foot in darkness again,' something like that. I can't remember their idiot slogan.
Maybe in your line of work you don't have to keep up on the gossip rags-'
'Oh!' said the voice of M. Maldonado. 'Isn't that the ship that the actor Vasil Veselov's daughter ran away to-
'That one,' interrupted Anton. 'Do you have any way to get a fix on it? Here, let me see, they've got a public relations site that tracks- Yes. Here it is. I've got it touched down in a muni-cipio called San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan.'
'I'll get all transport information for that region, but if you're in-ah-London, it will take you at least eighteen hours with the most efficient connections, including ground transport or hov-ercab.'
'I have access to a private 'car. Rose. Rose?'
'I'm here.' Amazing how tiny and mouselike her voice sounded, barely audible, the merest squeak.
'Rose, now listen. It says here there's a little museum in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. Do you know where that is? Can you get there and wait there?'
Of course, maybe it wasn't more than open welts sown with salt, discovering the truth: her father had wanted her with the Sunseekers all along. Had manipulated her to get her there. Sur-brent-Xia had paid him to get his daughter onto the ship in the most publicly scandalous way possible. He had set it all up, used her to get the money and the publicity.
'Daddy doesn't want me,' she said, voice all liquid as the horrible truth flooded over her, soaking her to the bones.
'I know, Rosie. But I love you. I'm coming. Just tell me where you are. Tell me if you can get to the museum.'
'Okay,' she said, to say something, because she had forgotten what words meant. A chasm gaped; she knelt on the edge, scrabbling not to tumble into the awful yawning void. What would she do now, if no one wanted her? Why would anyone want her anyway? Blemished, disfigured, stained. Ugly.
'Okay,' he repeated, sounding a little annoyed, but maybe he was just worried.
Maybe he was actually worried about her. The notion shocked her into paying attention.
'Okay,' he repeated. 'I will be there in no less than six hours. You must wait by the museum. Don't go off with the Sunseekers, Rosie. I will meet you there, no matter what. Okay?'
'Okay.'
Doctor Baby Jesus fell silent, having done his work. The fluorescent light flickered. A roach scuttled across the shelf, and froze, sensing her shadow. Her tears stained the concrete floor, speckles of moisture evaporating around her feet. She just stood there, stunned, unable to think or act. She couldn't even remember what she had agreed to. The light hummed. The roach vanished under the safety of the baby doll's lacy robe.
'Hola! Hey!'
The young voice, male and bossy, spoke perfectly indigenous Standard.
'Hey! You in here, girl?' The young shirtless tough who had hit Akvir upside the head and cursed at him in Spanish pushed aside the curtain and ducked in. 'There you are. I'm taking you back to the village.'
'The village?' she echoed stupidly, staring at the rifle he held. Staring at him. He had pulled the bandanna down and the ski mask off, revealing a pleasant face marred only by the half-cocked smirk on his lips. He sounded just like one of her friends from home, except for the Western Hemisphere flatness of his accent.
