'Turn us away, then, or let us in. I'm tired. And I doubt we'll have much time to talk before we're disturbed again.'
Isaac wanted to stay and see the visitors—unexpected visitors being as rare a phenomenon in Isaac's life as the ashfall had been—but his fever had returned and he was escorted back to bed, where he lay sleepless and sweating for several hours more.
He knew that the tendril that had reached up from the garden and touched his hand was a Hypothetical device. A biological machine. It was incomplete and unsuited to this environment, but Isaac had experienced a deep and thrilling sense of rightness as it circled his wrist. Some fraction of the unfulfilled need inside him had been briefly satisfied.
But that contact was over, and the need was worse for its absence. He wanted the western desert, and he wanted it badly. He was, of course, also afraid—afraid of the vast dry land and of what he might find there, afraid of the need that had overtaken him with such compulsive force. But it was a need that could be sated. He knew that now.
He watched the dawn as it drove the stars away, the planet turning like a flower to the sun.
Two of the Fourths escorted Lise and Turk to a dormitory room in which several bunks had been set up. The bedclothes were clean enough but had the smell of long-undisturbed linen.
The Fourths who accompanied them were aloof but seemed reasonably friendly, given the circumstances. Both were women. The younger of them said, 'The bathroom is down the hall when you want it.'
Lise said, 'I need to talk to Dr. Dvali—will you tell him I want to see him?'
The Fourths exchanged glances. 'In the morning,' the younger one said.
Lise lay down on the nearest bunk. Turk stretched out on another, and almost immediately his breathing settled into long snores.
She tried to suppress her resentment.
Her head was full of thoughts, all raucous, all screaming for attention. She was a little shocked that she had come this far, that she had been party to what amounted to a theft and was accepting the hospitality of a community of rogue Fourths. Avram Dvali was only a few rooms away, and she might be exactly that close to understanding the mystery that had haunted her family for a dozen years.
Understanding it, she thought, or being trapped in it. She wondered how close her father had actually gotten to these dangerous truths.
She left her bunk, tiptoed across the room, and slipped under Turk's blanket. She curled against him, one hand on his shoulder and the other snaked under his pillow, hoping his audacity or his anger would seep into her and make her less afraid.
Diane sat with Mrs. Rebka—Anna Rebka, whose husband Joshua had died before she became a Fourth—in a room full of tables and chairs recently abandoned by the community's residents. Water glasses had been left on the rough wooden tabletops to marinate in their own condensation. It was late, and the night air of the desert moved through the room and chilled her feet.
So this is their compound, Diane thought. Comfortable enough, if austere. But there was an atmosphere of monasticism about it. A sacral hush. It was uneasily familiar—she had spent much of her youth among the intemperately religious.
She knew or could imagine much of what went on here. The compound no doubt functioned like other such communities, apart from their experiment with the child. Hidden somewhere, probably underground, were the ultra-low-temperature bioreactors in which Martian 'pharmaceuticals' were propogated and stored. She had already seen the pottery kilns that functioned as camouflage: an uninvited visitor would be offered crude crockery and Utopian tracts and sent away none the wiser.
Diane had known or met most of the founding members. Only one of the original founders had not been a Fourth, and that was Mrs. Rebka herself. Presumably she had taken the treatment since.
'What I have to tell you,' Diane said, 'is that Genomic Security is in Port Magellan, apparently in force. And they'll find you before long. They've been following the Martian woman.'
Mrs. Rebka maintained a steely calm. 'Haven't they always been following the Martian woman?'
'Apparently they're getting better at it.'
'Do they know she's here?'
'If they don't, they soon will.'
'And your coming here might have led them to us. Did you think about that, Diane?'
'They've already connected Sulean Moi with Kubelick's Grave. They have Dvali's name. From there, how hard would it be for them to locate this place?'
'Not hard,' Mrs. Rebka admitted, staring at the tabletop. 'We're modest about our presence here, but still…'
'Still,' Diane said, dryly. 'Have you planned for this contingency?'
'Of course we have. We can be gone within hours. If we must.'
'What about the boy?'
'We'll keep him safe.'
'And how's the experiment going, Anna? Are you in touch with the Hypotheticals? Do they talk to you?'
'The boy is sick.' Mrs. Rebka raised her head and frowned. 'Spare me your disapproval.'
'Did you ever consider what you were creating here?'
'With due respect, if what you say is true, we don't have time to debate.'
Diane said—more gently—'Has it been what you hoped?'
Anna Rebka stood, and Diane thought she wasn't going to answer. But she paused at the door and looked back.
'No,' she said flatly. 'It hasn't.'
Lise woke when sunlight from the window touched her cheek like a feverish hand.
She was alone in the room. Turk had gone off somewhere, probably taking a pee or inquiring about breakfast.
She dressed in the generic shirt and jeans the Fourths had provided for her, thinking about Avram Dvali, framing the questions she wanted to ask him. She needed to talk to him as soon as possible, as soon as she washed up and had something to eat. But there were hurried footsteps from the corridor beyond her door, and when she looked out the window she saw a dozen vehicles being loaded with supplies. She drew the obvious conclusion: these people were getting ready to abandon the compound. Lise could think of dozens of good reasons why they might want to. But she was suddenly afraid Dvali would be gone before she could talk to him; she hurried into the corridor and asked the first person who passed where she could find him.
Probably the common room, the passing Fourth advised her, down the corridor and left off the courtyard— but he might also be supervising the loading. She finally located him by the garden gate, where he was consulting some kind of written list.
Avram Dvali. She must have glimpsed him at the faculty parties her parents used to hold in Port Magellan, but she had seen so many unin-troduced adults at those events that their faces had been blenderized by memory. Did he look familiar? No. Or only vaguely, from photographs. Because he had taken the Fourth treatment he probably looked much as he had twelve years ago: a bearded man, big eyes in a rounded face. His eyes were shaded by a broad-brimmed desert hat. Easy to imagine him circulating through the Adams living room, one more middle-aged professor of something-or-other, a drink in one hand and the other prospecting in the pretzel bowl.
She suppressed her anxiety and walked straight toward him. He looked up as she approached.
'Miss Adams,' he said.
He had been warned. She nodded. 'Call me Lise,' she said—to quell his suspicions, not because she wanted to be on a first-name basis with a man who had created and confined a human child for purposes of scientific research.
'Diane Dupree said you wanted to speak to me. Unfortunately, at the moment—'
