Axis

wherever it was they meant to go.

Someplace where they could take care of the boy, Lise hoped. He was a strange-looking child. His hair was rusty red, cut short by whoever passed for the compounds barber, probably Mrs. Rebka with a pair of kitchen scissors. His eyes were widely spaced, giving him a birdlike aspect, and the pupils were flecked with gold. He hadn't said much all day, and most of that had been in the morning, but he was uncomfortable in some way Lise couldn't quite understand: whenever the road curved he would either frown and moan or sigh with relief. By late afternoon he was feverish—'again,' she heard Mrs. Rebka say.

Now Isaac was sleeping'in one of the rear seats of the car, windows open to let the alpine air flow through. Hot day, but the sunlight had grown horizontal, and she had been told the air might turn uncomfortably cold during the night. There were only six sleeping bags in the vehicle but they were the expensive kind, thermally efficient, and someone could sleep in the car if necessary. It didn't seem likely to rain but Turk had already strung a tarp among the trees for what meager protection or concealment it could offer.

She stirred the pot of stew while Turk made coffee. 'It's too bad about the plane.'

'I would have lost it anyway.'

'What are you going to do when you get back to the coast?'

'Depends,' he said.

'On what?'

'A lot of things.' He looked at her as if from a distance, squinting. 'Probably go back to sea… if nothing else turns up.'

'Or we could go back to the States,' she said, wondering how he'd read that we. 'The legal trouble you were in, that's essentially over, right?'

'It could heat up again.'

'So we'll do something else.' The pronoun hanging in the air like an unbroken pinata.

'Guess we have to.'

We.

* * * * *

They served out dinner while the sun met the horizon in a reddening haze. Turk ate quickly and said little. Diane Dupree sat on a distant log with the Martian woman Sulean Moi, conversing intently but inaudibly while Mrs. Rebka hovered over Isaac, who had to be coaxed to eat.

Which left Dr. Dvali, and Lise's first real opportunity to speak to him with any degree of privacy. She abandoned Turk to the camp stove and the pots and went to sit next to him. Dvali looked at her querulously, like a large brown bird, but made no objection when she joined him. 'You want to talk about your father,' he said.

She could only nod.

'We were friends.' It was as if Dvali had rehearsed this speech. 'What I admired most about your father was that he loved his work, but not in a narrow way. He was in love with it because he saw it in the broader context. Do you know what I mean?'

'No.' Yes. But she wanted to hear it from him. 'Not exactly'

Dvali reached down and scooped a handful of dirt. 'What do I have in my hand?'

'Topsoil. Old leaves. Probably a few bugs.'

'Topsoil, mineral residue, silts, decaying biomass broken down to elemental nutrients, feeding itself back to itself. Bacteria, fungal spores—and no doubt some insects.' He brushed it away. 'Much like Earth, but subtly different in the details. On the geological level the resemblance between the two planets is even more obvious. Granite is granite, schist is schist, but they exist here in different proportions. There's less vulcanism here than on Earth. The continental plates drift and erode at a different speed, the thermocline between the equator and the poles is less steep. But what's really distinctive about this world is how fundamentally similar it is to Earth.'

'Because the Hypotheticals built this planet for us.'

'Maybe not for us, exactly, but yes, they built it, or at least modified it, and that turns our study of this world into a whole new discipline—not just biology or geology but a kind of planetary archaeology. This world was profoundly influenced by the Hypotheticals long before modern human beings evolved, millions of years before the Spin, millions of years before the Arch was put in place. That tells us something about their methods and their extraordinary capacity for very long-term planning. It may also tell us something about their ultimate goals, if we ask the right question. That was the context in which your father worked. He never lost sight of that larger truth, never ceased to marvel at it.'

'Planet as artifact,' Lise said.

'The book he was writing.' Dvali nodded. 'Have you read it?'

'All I've seen of it is the introduction.' And a few notes, salvaged from one of her mother's convulsive fits of radical housecleaning.

'I wish there had been more. It would have been an important work.'

'Is that what you talked about with him?'

'Often enough, yes.'

'But not always.'

'Obviously, we talked about the Martians and what they might know about the Hypotheticals. He knew I was a Fourth—'

'You told him?'

'I took him into my confidence.'

'May I ask why?'

'Because of his obvious interest. Because he was trustworthy. Because he understood the nature of the world.' Dvali smiled. 'Basically, because I liked him.'

'He was okay with that, with your—Fourthness?'

'He was curious about it.'

'Did he talk about taking the treatment himself?'

'I won't say he didn't consider it. But he never made the request to me or, so far as I know, anyone else. He loved his family, Miss Adams—I don't need to tell you that. I was as shocked as anyone else when I heard about his disappearance.'

'Did you confide in him about this project of yours, too? About Isaac?'

'When it was in the planning stage, yes, I talked to him about it.' Dvali sipped his coffee. 'He hated the idea.'

'But he didn't inform on you. He didn't do anything to stop it.'

'No, he didn't inform on us, but we argued bitterly over it—the friendship was strained at that point.'

'Strained, but not broken.'

'Because despite our disagreement, he understood why the work seemed necessary. Urgently necessary.' Dvali leaned closer to her and for a moment Lise was afraid he would reach out and take her hands. She wasn't sure she could stand that. 'The idea of any tangible contact with the Hypotheticals—with the motivating spirit behind their vast network of machines—fascinated him as much as it fascinated me. He knew how important it was, not just for our generation but for generations to come, for humanity as a species.'

'You must have been disappointed when he wouldn't cooperate.'

'I didn't need his cooperation. I would have liked his approval. I was disappointed when he withheld it. After a time we simply stopped talking about it—we talked about other things. And when the project began in earnest I left Port Magellan. I never saw your father again.'

'That was six months before he disappeared.'

'Yes.'

'Do you know anything about that?'

'About his disappearance? No. Genomic Security was in the Port at the time—looking for me, among others, since rumors of the project had reached them—and when I heard Robert Adams had gone missing I assumed he'd been picked up and interrogated by Genomic Security. But I don't know that for certain. I wasn't there.'

'Most of the people who are interrogated by Genomic Security walk away from it, Dr. Dvali.' Although she knew better.