Across a Star-Swept Sea

That might have been the wrong thing to say. Heloise put her head in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking, though Justen couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. His medic instincts warned him that the fragile woman should probably not be involved in this, but at the same time, he wasn’t about to be the one to point it out. And he had other things on his mind, anyway—like what Persis had taken from his conversation with her as the Poppy.

“Did she request doses of the Helo Cure?” he asked Tero.

Tero’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, she did, but I didn’t have any on hand. Given the gengineering requirements, it would take a while to code. She did order some, though. Why?”

Justen shook his head. “Nothing.” If she asked Tero for the cure, that meant she trusted his information. She did want to protect herself and Andrine should they be captured, and anyone else. But she hadn’t told Tero why. Had she simply been in too much of a rush?

“You mean for Ro?” Elliot asked anxiously. “The cure. It’s supposed to be for Reduced like Ro, right?” She looked at the others. “Does anyone here but Persis know what that Vania girl is planning to do to her?”

“She won’t hurt her,” Justen stated firmly. “All she needs from Ro is a genetic sample, but having her in Galatea is insurance.”

“Insurance for what?” Elliot asked.

“That I won’t bomb Halahou into oblivion, for a start,” Isla muttered.

“Insurance for me,” Justen clarified, as the visitors’ eyes went wide. “Vania wants me back and she thinks if she has Ro, she’ll get me, too.”

“Why?” Elliot asked again.

Justen sighed. “Because I’m the one who wants to experiment on her.”

Kai’s face turned severe. Elliot’s turned into that of an avenging goddess.

“Wait just a minute—” Kai said. “You can’t simply kidnap people and run experiments on them without permission—”

“I wasn’t going to,” he said quickly. “I simply wanted a sample of her genetic material for my work. At most, a brain scan. Nothing invasive or painful, and naturally I was planning on asking for permission first, and explaining to all of you—”

Kai held up a hand. “I don’t need the details right now. The important point here is that whatever it is that Vania is planning to do to my friends, clearly Persis—who is apparently quite learned in these matters, what with being such a good spy neither her parents nor her lover had the slightest inkling that’s what she was doing—”

“I’m not her lover,” Justen grumbled defensively. He especially didn’t need Kai throwing around terms like that in front of the Blakes.

But Kai had also set Justen’s thoughts on another track. Vania knew all he needed from Ro was some genetic material. Material he might already easily have had. A strand of hair, a scrape of cheek cells. It was all a Galatean scientist would need as well. Something Vania could have gotten from Ro just by asking nicely. Something she might have gotten from Ro without anyone ever being the wiser.

“Apparently Persis thought it was so important that this not happen that she ran off to Galatea at a moment’s notice,” Kai finished. “Am I right?”

Justen’s mind whirled. There was no pressing need to take Andromeda and Ro in the middle of the luau, to separate them from their friends.

“And now she’s off,” Kai went on, “alone but for Andrine, trying to rescue our friends. I don’t know much about Galatea, but if someone is risking her life to rescue Andromeda and Ro, I feel duty bound to help.”

But Vania had done it like that anyway, and she’d told Justen about her plans, too.

“Persis and my sister had to go quickly,” Tero was explaining. “Persis believes it will be easier to intercept the visitors before they reach the Halahou city prison than try to get them out later. If that’s where they’re going.”

And when Justen had refused to join Vania, she’d injured him, but she hadn’t captured him. She hadn’t silenced him. In fact, she’d left him alone, so he had time to . . .

Warn the Wild Poppy.

The truth hit him like the smack of a wave. Vania wasn’t after Andromeda and Ro at all. They were merely perks of the process. She’d been laying a trap for the Wild Poppy. And Justen and Persis had fallen right into her hands.

Thirty-one

IN THE SHELTER OF the cliffs below Fisherman’s Rest, Persis and Andrine moored their boat and came ashore. The moon was high in the sky tonight, providing little cover as they hiked up to the road and turning the sea behind them into a single silver sheet that stretched all the way back to Albion. They huffed their way to the bluff, hampered by the long robes of the isolated Peccant order they were impersonating and Tero’s last-minute genetemps, which had bloated them both into puffy, swollen versions of themselves. With their hair tamed and covered with dark hoods, and the excess bloat obscuring most of their facial features, they were decently concealed for a nighttime mission, though Persis wondered how much more extreme Tero’s genetemping would have to get if Vania kept inviting herself to Albian social functions. If she gave them more than a passing glance, she’d probably recognize them.

“There might have been a more convenient disguise than this,” Andrine gasped, her face soaked with sweat.

“Don’t exert yourself too much,” Persis replied. “You need as many fluids as you can retain for the disguise to work.”

At last they reached the skimmer, which was charged and waiting for them, thanks to the help of the Ford resistance.

“Is the oblet working yet?” Persis asked as they put their supplies in the back and took off toward Halahou. She was never completely comfortable until they’d regained contact. Their palmports couldn’t receive messages in Galatea, and their oblet had been inoperable since arriving on the island’s shore.

“Not yet.” Andrine slipped it back in her pocket. “But I hear Aldred’s instituted dampening hours. It gives his operatives time to search for seditious messages and purge anything that might have gotten through from dissidents like the Fords. We’ll have to work out a hack for it when we get a chance.”

“Sure,” said Persis drily. “We’ve got all the time in the world for that. I do wish Citizen Aldred would be a bit more respectful of our schedule.”

Andrine chuckled, her eyes turning to slits in her swollen face as they sped through the clear, cool night.

Without warning, the car collided with some sort of unseen barrier, springing both girls out of their seats. Persis crashed hard against the dashboard. The controls slammed into her bloated body, knocking the wind out of her. Fighting for breath, she looked over at Andrine, who lay slumped in her seat, unconscious, blood dripping from a gash near her temple.

“Andrine, wake up!” She shook her friend.

“My, that looks nasty,” said a familiar voice.

Persis turned to see Vania standing there in the dark, her fall of black hair hardly differentiated from the night itself. Several officers in military uniform stood at her back.

“Nanothread.” The captain gestured vaguely into the darkness as she approached. “So strong for such a tiny thing, don’t you think? I’m especially fond of it. So, Wild Poppy is it? Who is hiding underneath all that blubber?”

Persis reached for the wristlock covering her palmport and felt a sudden slash of pain traveling up her arm.

“No palmports, Albian,” Vania scolded, wagging her finger and the empty pricker launch. “Don’t you know they’re bad for you?” She approached, and Persis could see she’d changed from her gown into her military uniform. The sparkly black makeup webbing out from her eyes remained, however, as did her dark lipstick. “It’s