Axis

'Presumably to interrogate him. If he resisted—' Diane shrugged unhappily.

'Why would he resist?'

'I don't know. I never met your father. I can't answer that.'

'They interrogated him and then, what, killed him?'

'I don't know.'

Turk said, 'They have what they call Executive Action Committees in DGS, Lise. They write their own legal ticket and they do what they want. I'm pretty sure that's who took Tomas Ginn. Tomas is a Fourth, and Fourths are notoriously hard to interrogate—they're not especially afraid of death and they have a high tolerance to pain. Getting any information out of a stubborn Fourth means putting him through a process that's usually, in the end, fatal.'

'They killed Tomas?'

'I expect so. Or transported him to some secret prison to kill him a little more slowly.'

Could Brian have known about this, learned about it at work? Lise had a brief but horrifying vision of the DGS staff at the consulate laughing at her, at her naive quest to uncover the truth about her father. She had been walking over an abyss on a skin of thin ice, nothing to protect her but her own ignorance.

But—no. As an institution, Genomic Security might be capable of that; Brian was not. Unhappy as she had been in her marriage, she knew Brian intimately. Brian was many things. But he was not a murderer.

* * * * *

Clever as Ibu Diane had been about discarding cars and clothing, Turk seemed to lose some of his confidence as they left the wooded lands and entered the industrialized outskirts of Port Magellan. Coming past the oil refineries at dusk, the ocean on the left and the refineries emitting a kind of fungal glow, he said, 'There's a couple of vehicles I keep seeing ever since we got on the main road. Like they're pacing us. But it could be my imagination.'

'Then we shouldn't go directly to Arundji's,' Diane said. 'In fact we should get off the highway as soon as possible.'

'I'm not saying we're being followed. It's just something I noticed.'

'Assume the worst. Take the next exit. Find a gas station or somewhere we can stop without arousing suspicion.'

'I know people around here,' Turk said. 'People I can trust, if we need a place to stay overnight.'

'Thank you, Turk, but I don't think we should endanger anyone else. And I doubt Lise is anxious to make the acquaintance of one of your old girlfriends.'

'Didn't say anything about a girlfriend,' Turk said, but he blushed.

He pulled into a filling station attached to a retail store. This was the part of Port Magellan where the refinery workers lived, lots of prefabricated bungalows assembled in haste during the boom years and gone shabby since. He parked away from the pumps, under an umbrella tree. The last daylight had gone and there was only the yellow-orange glare of the street lamps.

'If you want to dump the car,' Turk said, 'there's a bus station a couple of blocks down. We can catch the bus to Rice Bay and walk to Arundji's. Won't get there till midnight, though.'

'Maybe that's best,' Diane said.

'Hate to abandon another vehicle, though. Who's paying for all this transportation?'

'Friends and friends of friends,' Diane said. 'Don't worry about it. Don't take anything out of the car.'

Lise begged permission to go into the small store and buy something to eat—they hadn't stopped for a meal since breakfast—while Turk and Diane unscrewed and discarded the vehicle's license plates.

She bought cheese, crackers, and bottled water for the bus trip. At the counter she noticed a stack of disposable utility phones, the kind you pick up when you've lost your personal unit, also favored, or so she had read, by drug dealers seeking anonymity She grabbed one and added it to the groceries. Then she walked around the back of the store, bag in one hand and phone in the other.

She tapped out Brian's home number.

He picked up almost immediately. 'Yes?'

Lise was briefly paralyzed by the sound of his voice. She thought about clicking off. Then she said, 'Brian? I can't talk right now, but I want you to know I'm okay.'

'Lise… please, tell me where you are.'

'I can't. But one thing. This is important. There's a man named Tomas Ginn—that's T-O-M-A-S, G-I-N-N— who was taken into custody a couple of days ago. Presumably without a warrant or any legal record. It's possible he's being held by Genomic Security or somebody claiming to be DGS. Can you check on this? I mean, is it okay with you that people are being kidnapped? If not, is there anything you can do to get this man set free?'

'Listen to me, Lise. Listen. You don't know what you're involved in. You're with Turk Findley, right? Did he tell you he's a criminal? That's why he fled the States, Lise. He—'

She turned and saw Turk come around the corner of the store. Too late to hide. She closed the phone, but that was a useless gesture. She could see the anger on his face in the stark artificial light. Wordlessly, he took the phone from her hand and threw it into the air.

The phone sailed past a lamp standard and fluttered like a huge moth before disappearing down the embankment of a ravine.

Too shocked to speak, Lise turned to face him. Turk's face was livid. She had never seen him like this. He said, 'You have no fucking clue, do you? No idea what's at stake here.'

'Turk—'

He didn't listen. He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her toward the street. She managed to break his grip, though she dropped the bag of cheese and crackers.

'Goddamnit, I'm not a child!'

'Fucking prove it,' he said.

* * * * *

The bus ride wasn't exactly pleasant.

Lise sat sullenly apart from Turk, watching the night roll by in the frame of the window. She was determined not to think about what Turk had done, or what she might have done wrong, or what Brian had said, at least until she calmed down. But as the anger abated she simply felt desolate. The last bus south was half- empty, the only other passengers a few grim-faced men in khaki pants and blue shirts, probably shift workers who lived downcoast to save the cost of city rent. The man in the seat behind her was muttering in Farsi, possibly to himself.

The bus stopped periodically at concrete-block terminals and storefront depots off the highway, a world populated by forlorn men and flickering lights. Then the city was behind them and there was only the highway and the horizonless dark of the sea.

Diane Dupree came across the aisle and took the seat next to Lise.

'Turk thinks you need to take the risk more seriously,' the old woman said.

'Did he tell you that?'

'I surmised.'

'I do take it seriously.'

'The phone was a bad idea. In all likelihood the call can't be traced, but who knows what technology the police or Genomic Security might bring to bear? It's better not to make assumptions.'

'I do take it seriously,' Lise insisted again, 'it's just…'

But she couldn't finish, couldn't find the words for the sudden awareness of exactly how much of life as she had known it was slipping away under the wheels of the bus.

By the time the bus reached a depot near Arundji's airport Turk had stopped gnashing his teeth and had begun to look a little sheepish. He gave Lise an apologetic sidelong glance, which she ignored.

'It's a good half mile to Arundji's,' he said. 'You two up for the walk?'

'Yes,' Diane said. Lise just nodded.

The road from the depot was rural and sparsely lit. As they walked Lise listened to the crackle of her footsteps on the barely-paved verge of the road, the rush of wind raking scrubby, treeless lots. Off in the high grass some insect buzzed—she could have mistaken it for a cricket except for the mournful tone of its creaking, like a disconsolate man running his thumbnail over the teeth of a comb.