And the crowd had spread, north of the highway and south across the grounds of the abandoned, truncated half of Clifftop. Surfers rode beside the barrier, and in deeper water boats pressed close.
A no-fly zone had been established, but it didn’t apply to news helicopters, or to the drones on loan from the army. Google had repurposed one of its satellites to watch. It was getting crowded in orbit as foreign powers also looked in to see whether this was all some American conspiracy.
Connie walked north at the edge of the crowd, looking for an opening. Over the heads of the lookers she saw the kids, maybe a hundred of them, peering out like suffocating fish from a badly maintained fishbowl.
She had to climb halfway up a dusty hill before she could achieve a little piece of privacy. There were no kids up there, but she thought if she waited, one might come. She wrote a sign:
I am Sam Temple and Caine Soren’s mother.
Then she waited. What felt like ages passed before a girl who might have been fourteen or so noticed her and climbed the hill. She did not have paper or pen, but she had a stick, and the ground at that spot was bare dirt.
The girl used the stick to write:
Team Sam
Connie wrote:
What’s your name?
Dahra.
Dahra Baidoo? I’m friends with your mom!
She told me.
Each time Dahra wrote she had to first wipe the ground clear with her hand.
I need to speak to Sam, Connie wrote.
Sam & Caine looking 4 Gaia.
Connie nodded. So her boys were working together. That certainly didn’t sound like the stories of a deadly rivalry between them. She looked hard at Dahra.
Can I trust you?
Dahra smiled wryly. People do.
It didn’t seem like a brag to Connie. Dahra, like all the kids Connie had seen, looked haggard and worn, with eyes that were way too old for the rest of her.
So this was the girl who had taken on the job of nurse, dispensing what medication she had, caring for the sick. Nurse Connie Temple had immediate sympathy for her. Good Lord, what must her life have been like? What terrible strains had this girl been under?
Things getting nasty out here.
Yeah. Dahra jerked her head toward the forest of signs down at the bottom of the hill.
You need to plan. Who can I talk to about that?
Dahra considered. Edilio or Astrid.
How can I get in touch with them?
Edilio very busy. Then, when she saw that Connie had read that much, she added, Astrid. They call her Astrid the Genius.
Connie nodded. She knew the name. She knew most of the names of the kids in the FAYZ. This would be Astrid Ellison. Her parents were pains in the butt, the mother semihysterical and the father a tense, repressed engineer type, and they had contributed just about nothing to the group known as the families.
And judging by those early impressions when the barrier went transparent, Astrid was Sam’s girlfriend.
I need to talk to Astrid. It is URGENT. How?
Dahra considered this for a moment, sighed noiselessly, then drew a circle. At the top of the circle she drew what Connie knew was a lake. Then she stabbed the stick into the lake. Then she drew a wavy line from where they were now to the lake and pointed at Connie. And a second line inside the circle and pointed to herself.
Dahra was telling her to get to the lake and she would meet her there and deliver Astrid.
Connie nodded.
Dahra dropped her hand to the two-foot-long lead pipe that hung from a leather strap and looked worried. Scared.
And Connie wavered. Was she sending this girl in harm’s way? Was she meddling where she shouldn’t? She was about to tell Dahra to forget it, but Dahra had already turned away.
“What’s it all meant, Sammy boy? What’s it all meant?”
Sam didn’t bother to answer. Caine was just bored and looking to provoke him.
They each carried two water bottles and some dried fish in a backpack. They each carried a knife—a sheathed hunting knife for Caine and a big Swiss Army knife for Sam. They each wore a baseball cap. Caine slung a twelve-gauge shotgun over his shoulder, muzzle pointed up. Sam carried one of Edilio’s automatic rifles over his shoulder, muzzle down.
The fact was that both of them had more powerful weapons in their empty hands. And with guns came ammunition, and both ammunition and guns were heavy. After about two miles on the road Sam was regretting the weight.
“Have you thought at all about what people out there are going to think about this bloody mess?” Caine asked.
Sam had thought of little else. But the day had not yet come when he would bare his soul to Caine. “We’ve got bigger problems on our hands.”
Caine laughed, not believing it. “Nah, a dutiful son like you, surfer dude? You’ve thought about it.”
Caine was walking a little ahead of Sam. Was that because Caine trusted Sam at his back more than Sam trusted the reverse? Maybe. Or maybe, Sam thought, Caine had longer legs. One of those things was probably true.
“No, you definitely thought about it,” Caine went on, apparently not discouraged by Sam’s refusal to engage. “You barbecued Penny in front of your mommy.”
Sam felt a bit provoked. “Don’t you mean our mommy?”
Caine shook his head. “No, I do not. She may have provided the egg and womb space, but she was not my mother. Yours. Not mine.”
Sam winced a little. “You didn’t miss all that much.”
“Nurse Connie Temple,” Caine said. “I knew she was spying on me back at Coates, you know. I never did know why until, well, until I knew.”
A no-fly zone had been established, but it didn’t apply to news helicopters, or to the drones on loan from the army. Google had repurposed one of its satellites to watch. It was getting crowded in orbit as foreign powers also looked in to see whether this was all some American conspiracy.
Connie walked north at the edge of the crowd, looking for an opening. Over the heads of the lookers she saw the kids, maybe a hundred of them, peering out like suffocating fish from a badly maintained fishbowl.
She had to climb halfway up a dusty hill before she could achieve a little piece of privacy. There were no kids up there, but she thought if she waited, one might come. She wrote a sign:
I am Sam Temple and Caine Soren’s mother.
Then she waited. What felt like ages passed before a girl who might have been fourteen or so noticed her and climbed the hill. She did not have paper or pen, but she had a stick, and the ground at that spot was bare dirt.
The girl used the stick to write:
Team Sam
Connie wrote:
What’s your name?
Dahra.
Dahra Baidoo? I’m friends with your mom!
She told me.
Each time Dahra wrote she had to first wipe the ground clear with her hand.
I need to speak to Sam, Connie wrote.
Sam & Caine looking 4 Gaia.
Connie nodded. So her boys were working together. That certainly didn’t sound like the stories of a deadly rivalry between them. She looked hard at Dahra.
Can I trust you?
Dahra smiled wryly. People do.
It didn’t seem like a brag to Connie. Dahra, like all the kids Connie had seen, looked haggard and worn, with eyes that were way too old for the rest of her.
So this was the girl who had taken on the job of nurse, dispensing what medication she had, caring for the sick. Nurse Connie Temple had immediate sympathy for her. Good Lord, what must her life have been like? What terrible strains had this girl been under?
Things getting nasty out here.
Yeah. Dahra jerked her head toward the forest of signs down at the bottom of the hill.
You need to plan. Who can I talk to about that?
Dahra considered. Edilio or Astrid.
How can I get in touch with them?
Edilio very busy. Then, when she saw that Connie had read that much, she added, Astrid. They call her Astrid the Genius.
Connie nodded. She knew the name. She knew most of the names of the kids in the FAYZ. This would be Astrid Ellison. Her parents were pains in the butt, the mother semihysterical and the father a tense, repressed engineer type, and they had contributed just about nothing to the group known as the families.
And judging by those early impressions when the barrier went transparent, Astrid was Sam’s girlfriend.
I need to talk to Astrid. It is URGENT. How?
Dahra considered this for a moment, sighed noiselessly, then drew a circle. At the top of the circle she drew what Connie knew was a lake. Then she stabbed the stick into the lake. Then she drew a wavy line from where they were now to the lake and pointed at Connie. And a second line inside the circle and pointed to herself.
Dahra was telling her to get to the lake and she would meet her there and deliver Astrid.
Connie nodded.
Dahra dropped her hand to the two-foot-long lead pipe that hung from a leather strap and looked worried. Scared.
And Connie wavered. Was she sending this girl in harm’s way? Was she meddling where she shouldn’t? She was about to tell Dahra to forget it, but Dahra had already turned away.
“What’s it all meant, Sammy boy? What’s it all meant?”
Sam didn’t bother to answer. Caine was just bored and looking to provoke him.
They each carried two water bottles and some dried fish in a backpack. They each carried a knife—a sheathed hunting knife for Caine and a big Swiss Army knife for Sam. They each wore a baseball cap. Caine slung a twelve-gauge shotgun over his shoulder, muzzle pointed up. Sam carried one of Edilio’s automatic rifles over his shoulder, muzzle down.
The fact was that both of them had more powerful weapons in their empty hands. And with guns came ammunition, and both ammunition and guns were heavy. After about two miles on the road Sam was regretting the weight.
“Have you thought at all about what people out there are going to think about this bloody mess?” Caine asked.
Sam had thought of little else. But the day had not yet come when he would bare his soul to Caine. “We’ve got bigger problems on our hands.”
Caine laughed, not believing it. “Nah, a dutiful son like you, surfer dude? You’ve thought about it.”
Caine was walking a little ahead of Sam. Was that because Caine trusted Sam at his back more than Sam trusted the reverse? Maybe. Or maybe, Sam thought, Caine had longer legs. One of those things was probably true.
“No, you definitely thought about it,” Caine went on, apparently not discouraged by Sam’s refusal to engage. “You barbecued Penny in front of your mommy.”
Sam felt a bit provoked. “Don’t you mean our mommy?”
Caine shook his head. “No, I do not. She may have provided the egg and womb space, but she was not my mother. Yours. Not mine.”
Sam winced a little. “You didn’t miss all that much.”
“Nurse Connie Temple,” Caine said. “I knew she was spying on me back at Coates, you know. I never did know why until, well, until I knew.”
