While Blake distracted Carlos, Dana surveilled. The concrete stockade pickets looked as untouched by weather on the inside as from without. The gravel bed remained pocked with countless dimples and bumps, masking unknown numbers of buried mines. Cameras atop tall poles continuously scanned the perimeter. All as always.
Nonetheless, she looked.
Even in darkest night, with the children asleep indoors, she couldn’t bring Endeavour within the fence. It didn’t matter that the DED made the ship silent; it was too big. In one or two spots a shuttle might fit—if she were insane enough to land on fusion drive within meters of the children. If the fusion drive’s roar wouldn’t be a dead giveaway from klicks away. If by magic she somehow swept away all those impediments, Marvin through his many cameras could hardly fail to see a spaceship on approach.
In short: there could be no swooping in for a rescue.
The answer never changed, because the compound never changed. Blake called her mindset the pilot’s version of when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails.
Despite Blake’s interruptions, Carlos finished his inspection. “All right, Marvin.”
The AI’s voice rang out from speakers across the compound, and children scattered.
“Pantry three,” Carlos said.
“Thanks,” Dana said. She put the tractor in gear. Once again, it crawled forward.
Blake was no less obstinate than she, in his case trying to engineer a solution. Since the day of Li’s coup, he had tried to build autonomous robots. One model was to be small enough to squeeze between the pickets, light-weight enough not to set off any mines, and deft enough to disarm them. Another type was to be hidden in a grain bag, to sneak out of a pantry, somehow make its way into the locked bunker, and there defuse the bombs that gave Li her power.
Five years later, he still tinkered.
To be fair, it was not as though feeding the colony left any of them spare time. Or they had been left with synth vats in which to fabricate tiny, delicate parts. Or any of them had experience in robotics. Or access to Marvin’s technical archives.
After five exhausting, futile years, Dana struggled to find the energy to be fair.
At the slowest creep the tractor could manage, lest any child dart out in front of her, she pulled the trailer into the compound. She did a three-point turn and backed up the trailer to the pantry. Then, panting with effort, shirt drenched with sweat despite the crisp autumn temperature, she helped Blake unload and stack twenty-kilo bags of wheat.
Leaning against a wall, sipping from a flask, wearing a coat, Carlos observed.
“Why don’t you sit?” Blake suggested to Dana after they had offloaded about half a tonne. He brushed dust and grain off his work gloves. “Carlos and I have some business to transact.”
Dana perched on the tailgate of the trailer, more than ready to catch her breath.
“You brought it?” Carlos said.
“I said I would,” Blake said. “And you?”
“You first.”
Blake took a folded datasheet from his pocket and tossed it to Carlos. “Load us up.”
“How dumb do you think I am? Or how drunk?” Carlos drawled, then tossed back the datasheet.
So much, yet again, for an engineered solution. Because if Carlos had accepted the datasheet, and not spotted its hidden Trojan, and been so careless as to net the comp, Blake would have obtained remote access to Marvin.
With a shrug, Blake repocketed the comp. He lobbed over the bulging bag that had been stowed in the trailer’s toolbox.
Opening the bag, at his first whiff of fresh tobacco, Carlos smiled beatifically. “Smells delightful.” He handed Blake a different folded datasheet. “A hundred vids. And because I’m a good guy, bunches of old books, too.”
And then it was back to work.
“I need another break,” Dana wheezed after a while. Maybe they had offloaded half the grain sacks. Even this task was getting to be too much for her. She’d been chosen to save humanity? If the stakes hadn’t been so high, it would have been laughable.
“Take your time,” Blake said. He went to sit on the tailgate of the trailer and she joined him.
She told herself not to give up. She told herself, this is what Li did: made them all feel helpless. Li was very good at what she did.
And mad as a hatter.
About the first thing Li had ever said to Dana aboard Endeavour—not even Endeavour yet—was, “Psychiatrists are nuttier than most people you’ll meet.”
“I should have listened,” Dana muttered.
Blake leaned closer. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“It’s getting late,” Carlos prompted.
With a groan, Dana stood to resume the unloading. Champion of mankind, pilot extraordinaire, and third-rate pack mule.
*
“Bad p-people,” George stuttered.
“It’s all right,” Eve told the little boy cowering behind her, clutching her leg.
“Why?”
Why were they here? Why were they bad? Why was their presence all right? An answer to any of those questions was complex. She tousled his hair. “They’ll go away soon.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He scampered off to line up for the slide.
Unlike most of the children, she remembered a time when the bad people had moved at will throughout the settlement. Before they became “the bad people,” but were only Mr. Blake and Ms. Rikki, Mr. Antonio and Ms. Dana.
They were bad, though. Even then. Eve knew that. They frightened her, although she had never understood why.
And, blaspheming in her thoughts, she knew that not everyone bad lived outside.
“Eve?” Reese called, legs pumping as she worked a swing.
“I’m fine,” Eve said. Except she wasn’t: she had allowed her attention to wander. If Ms. Li or Mr. Carlos had noticed—
Eve shivered.
She separated Rhonda and Denise, who had begun squabbling. She helped Samir off the ground, shushed his sniffling, and inspected the scrape on his palm. It was nothing. She commanded Allan to stand in a corner and think about shoving.
“Why do the bad people come here?” Tanya whispered. And she was not one to accept, “Don’t worry,” or “They’ll be gone soon,” as an answer.
“To bring us food,” Eve said.
“But they’re
