Until the Beginning
Page 30

“Do what you want,” I say, keeping my fingers on the trigger as he lowers his hands and walks carefully to sit across the fire from me. Wincing, he eases himself into a sitting position.
He is wearing new clothes: a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved collared shirt. There are bandages on his arms, and now that he’s closer, I see a long cut across his forehead, sewn up with at least a dozen stitches.
“Juneau, I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.
“You already have,” I say, and there’s so much hatred in my voice I can practically see my words take form in a violent red cloud.
Whit nods, like he agrees with me, then glances over at Miles. “I’d rather we talk alone,” he says.
“Miles isn’t going anywhere,” I respond. “Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of him.”
“Why? Because you’ve already told him about us? It seems I’m not the only one who has shared our secrets with the outside world,” Whit says, looking wry.
“Our secrets aren’t the only thing I’ve shared,” I say. “Your friend almost killed Miles—would have killed him, if I hadn’t given him the Rite.”
“You gave . . . ?” The color drains from Whit’s face, and for a second he loses his carefully guarded control and gapes at Miles. “That makes Miles the first person outside of our clan to take . . . the Rite.”
“You mean Amrit,” I say.
“Yes,” Whit concedes, still gaping at Miles in shock. “But that was just three days ago. He’s already recovered enough to walk around? Have you seen any other unfamiliar results or side effects?”
“You’ve had a whole clan to use as guinea pigs,” I say. “Now get to the point.”
Whit frowns and crosses his arms. “I’m only interested in him for his own sake.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “Hands by your sides.” Whit puts his hands back on the ground.
“Take this,” I say, passing the crossbow to Miles, “and shoot him if he moves.”
“Is that really necessary?” Whit looks amused, like he thinks this whole thing is a joke.
“Completely,” I respond, as Miles faces Whit and props the loaded crossbow on his knee. “Now talk.”
Whit looks up toward the moon as if looking for inspiration, and then begins. “I know what this looks like. That you think I’m responsible for the attack upon our clan. And in a way, I am.”
I watch him, using the same techniques of perception that he taught me to judge the truthfulness of his words. He is careful and keeps his face a blank page.
“It is true that I left Alaska to contact potential buyers of our Amrit, as I’m sure this boy’s father told you.” Whit watches me as carefully as I watch him back. He is trying to figure out how much I already know. I stare, unflinching.
“I went with the elders’ approval,” he says, and seeing my eyes narrow, he holds a hand up and backtracks. “Not their approval to spread word of the drug. That was my own doing. But I left our territory on occasion in order to get a reading on the outside world . . . on what events had occurred, so that we could stay informed of anything we needed to know.”
“I figured that out when I saw the modern books you brought back,” I say.
“It was important for us to keep abreast of developments in society,” Whit explains.
“Why?” I ask.
“We needed to remain hidden, so it was important to know that we were staying off the radar of the outside world.”
“You could have done that by going to Anchorage and reading a newspaper,” I say. “Why the science books?”
Whit sighs. “Some of us never stopped pursuing our areas of research. It was essential that we stayed abreast of environmental and scientific breakthroughs.”
“As essential as it was for you to betray us and sell our secrets to the highest bidder?”
Whit exhales and looks disappointed. Like he had been hoping I would see things from his point of view. He glances at Miles again. “Really, I would prefer that this boy not be pointing a dangerous weapon in my direction when he obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing with it.”
Miles says, “Hey!”
“You can put it down,” I say to him, and turn back to Whit. “You’ve been watching us.”
“Of course I have. I wanted you to arrive here in one piece. Safely,” Whit says. “And, as an aside, I didn’t mean for Jake to shoot the boy.”
“Well, that makes everything better,” Miles says with a scowl, and places the crossbow on the ground beside him.
Whit ignores him. “Juneau, none of this has turned out as I wanted. I love the clan as much as you do—”
“I sincerely doubt that,” I interject.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he says. “But everything I’ve done has been for the good of the clan.” I can’t help the look of disgust on my face, but stay silent. I want to hear what he has to say. “Just how much did Blackwell tell you?” he asks.
“Start from the beginning,” I command.
“It was your mother, father, and I who came up with the formula for Amrit,” Whit says. “We had a sort of think tank within the Gaia Movement, composed of the people you know as the elders. We were discussing solutions to restoring ecosystems, and one of the emphases was preserving endangered species—specifically those native to the United States. The zoologists in the group posited the theory that if the life expectancy of animals was extended, it would allow more breeding cycles, and thus more offspring—a giant step toward species preservation.