Blake and Dana exchanged another look—this time, incredulous.
“An assertion you can’t prove and that Carlos will deny,” Dana said. “How about you cut out the middleman? If you can do it, hack directly into Marvin.”
41
“Fool!” The word erupted before Carlos could stop himself.
Antonio or Blake? Either knew enough to try hacking into the settlement’s network. Neither was half the programmer Carlos was.
And so: giant crimson letters— Intrusion Alert—pulsed over his open datasheet, even as an audible alarm echoed and reechoed in his lab.
After Li’s meltdown the day before with Todd, Carlos hated to imagine how she would react. “Alert acknowledged,” he called out, and the electronic wail faded. “Marvin, I’ll review the security logs. Don’t interrupt Li until we know if that was a false alarm.”
“She has already been informed,” Marvin said.
Then she would be here any minute. Carlos had scarcely fortified himself with Scotch from the flask in his desk when Li arrived, letting in a blast of cold night air. Her fists were clenched and her face livid. It was hard to remember that he had once found her attractive. Beautiful enough, in fact, to have ruined his life—to have ruined many lives—over.
Some lives more even than Todd’s. If he adjusted, Todd would be better off outside. He had made it past the fence in one piece. Unlike little Zoltán, the summer before, guilty only of being a rambunctious five-year-old. Minefields were unforgiving.
Li’s opinion be damned, Carlos downed another long swig. He had allowed himself to be conditioned like some kind of lab rat. Why not lose himself in booze?
Because at the margins, on occasion, he could sometimes alleviate bits of the mess he had made possible. He set down his flask.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Li said. “I imagine you know why I’m here.”
Never, in the years since Li’s coup, had the four outside attempted to penetrate the net—till now. Scarcely a day after he had surreptitiously passed along his own analysis. Antonio’s floods must be real.
Carlos said, “Let me check it out.” Give me a few minutes to erase the evidence, and get word to Antonio and Blake not ever to try that again. “If this is anything more than a glitch, I’ll let you know.”
“Marvin, was there an intrusion?”
“Yes, Li,” the AI said.
“What do you know about it?”
“The probing originates from a datasheet beyond the perimeter. I have triangulated the origin to the residence occupied by Antonio and Dana.”
“Damn them!” Li shouted. “They won’t get away with this. I’ll teach them.”
“They feed us,” Carlos reminded her.
“Indeed.” Li smiled wickedly. “Then let them huddle for warmth with the cows in the barn, like the peasants that they are.”
*
As Rikki brushed Beth’s hair for the night, the child’s bedroom went dark. No, the house went dark. Only glimmers of moonlight penetrated the heavy curtain.
In the bathroom, Todd screamed.
“Todd! Stay where you are!” Rikki shouted back.
She pulled aside the curtain, then made her way by memory and moonlight across Beth’s room and down the hallway to the closed bathroom door. “It’s all right. Something went wrong with the lights. Blake will look into it.”
Only the problem wasn’t limited to the lights. She wouldn’t have heard the house fan over the boy’s screaming, but the fan, too, must have stopped working. Not even the slightest breeze came from the wall register.
“Todd!” she shouted again. “Stay in the tub. I’ll be right back with a flashlight.”
Blake showed up first with his own flashlight. He had been at Antonio’s. How had he known?
“Coming in,” Blake called. He lifted the hysterical child from the tub and wrapped him in a towel. He rocked the boy until the screaming stopped.
By then, Beth had found a flashlight.
Rikki asked, “How did you know our lights were out?”
Blake grimaced. “It’s not just this house. Li cut off all the power for the night.”
*
“I’m bad,” Todd moaned. “We’re all bad.”
Though the boy shied away from Rikki as they fled together up Main Street, he clutched Beth’s hand as though for dear life. Rikki didn’t mind having one hand free to hold a flashlight, but Todd’s rejection cut her like a knife.
“None of us is bad,” she told the boy. It didn’t interrupt his litany.
The latest forecast showed the overnight temperature dropping below freezing. They could not stay in their home. Nor in Antonio and Dana’s home, also without power. This side of the fence, lights shone only from the cow barn, the chicken coop, and the greenhouses. Lights indicated power, and power meant heat.
Within the fence, as though to mock them, bright light streamed from every building.
From behind Rikki, Antonio said, “It’s just one night. We’ll be fine.”
One night if Li doesn’t change her mind, Rikki thought. The woman has gone insane. More insane.
“I vote for a greenhouse,” Blake said. “Any building that still has heat will reek of manure, but at least a greenhouse should be quiet.”
“What about the caves?” Rikki asked.
“My opinion?” Blake said. “That’s too far to hike in the dark with kids.” They had come to an end of Main Street and stopped. “Maybe in the morning, if the power still hasn’t come back.”
“Endeavour is closer than the caves,” Dana said, “offering all the power you could want. With all the comforts of home.”
Because, for so long, it had been home. Rikki felt a rush of nostalgia—and an inconsolable sense of loss. They had built so much on this world. What if they had just lost it?
She said, “Lead on.”
Todd kept moaning as, by moonlight and flashlight, the six of them crept up the shadowy, rubble-strewn slope to the landing field. Picking up on the boy’s fear, Beth began whimpering, too. As they approached the landing field, Dana signaled the ship from her datasheet and its running lights came on.
“The ark!” Todd sobbed. “The
