?No,” Naomi snapped. “I got an offer of amnesty if I turned myself in. This just after that? Are they coming for other ships, or do they already know I’m here?”
The woman’s face went gray. “Don’t know. I can find out.”
“Do it fast. And get me a loader. I’ll try to find a way to cover this over.”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “And crew manifest. I got to put you in somehow—”
“Not the priority,” Naomi said.
“But …,” the woman said. Then, “Right. All right.”
Naomi looked around her container. It seemed sadder now that she had to leave it. She’d have to wipe the system, just in case she was taken. All her belongings would have to go too. She’d be starting over from nothing again.
Or she could go to the security office, announce herself, and spend the rest of her life waking up next to Jim. Eating real food. Maybe even talking Duarte into a better, kinder, less authoritarian future for all of humanity. If it was a trap, it was a good one. Offer her an out, make the threat, and then tighten the screws. If she’d been younger, it might have been enough to panic her. Convince her to announce herself. Sign the deal. It would be easy, and she could even tell herself that she was protecting the underground and the people like the woman before her. She’d only tell Duarte things that wouldn’t compromise Saba and their network. That wouldn’t threaten Bobbie and Alex and the Storm.
She could imagine the version of herself that would have been able to do it. Not so different from who she was now. Younger. That was all.
“Emma,” the other woman said. “We’re going to pass you for crew, you’ll need to know names. I’m Emma Zomorodi.”
“You can call me Naomi.”
“I know who you are,” Emma said. “Find me someone who doesn’t.”
The woman—Emma—looked at her again, more closely, then turned away, shaking her head. The fear in her expression was thick enough to see. It’s okay, Naomi wanted to say. I know what to do. It’ll be all right. It would have been a lie.
“Come on,” Naomi said. “We don’t have time.”
Chapter Fourteen: Teresa
Yes,” Teresa said. “I know. Okay. Let me get ready.”
Muskrat barked once as if she’d understood the words. Probably she had. Dogs could have broad functional vocabularies. It was a point Dr. Cortázar often made. The fact that humans were not the only conscious animals seemed very important to him. It had always seemed obvious to her.
Teresa set her room to high privacy and sleep, dimming the lights and locking her doors. No one would disturb her now unless they were evacuating the State Building. Muskrat wagged hard enough that her back legs looked unsteady as Teresa changed into the same simple tunic and pants she normally used for gardening. They had no technology, so they weren’t connected to the palace network. She started up an entertainment feed on her system on low volume as if she were dozing and watching an old Caz Pratihari adventure.
Her window had a sensor in the frame that alerted a security officer when it was opened. So Teresa had opened it every now and then over the course of weeks, trying different ways to get around it. Was it electronic? She tried keeping the window and frame touching with a copper wire. Security still got their alert. Optical? She searched everywhere for anything resembling a pinhole camera or light sensor, but never found one. Motion activated? She tried opening the window very slowly over the course of days, but on the fifth day security got their alert. Not motion sensing, and it only went off when there was an eleven-millimeter gap between window and frame. Interesting.
It had turned out to be magnetic. A low-strength magnet in the window, when moved too far from a sensor in the frame, set off the alert. She’d solved this by using a plastic letter with a tiny magnet in it from her preschool alphabet set. Moving it a little bit every time she tried to open the window, until one time she opened it and no one showed up outside to make sure she was okay.
Now she slid her magnet to the correct spot, manually undid the window, and lifted Muskrat carefully out. She climbed out after, pulling the frame closed behind her. Muskrat chuffed and started off along the path to the edge of the palace, and Teresa followed behind.
It had been too long. It was time to go see Timothy.
She’d found the secret tunnel almost a year before. It was hidden by a rock in a group of ornamental trees. She’d initially thought it might have been dug out by some local animal. There was a kind of underground wasp that left holes that looked similar to it when they died and their hives collapsed. It had turned out to be part of a flood relief system to make sure the gardens never drowned in heavy rain. It led under the walls of the State Building compound and into a small field beyond. Intellectually, she knew that a normal girl might not have gone down the tunnel with the spearmint smell of broken ground and the thin coat of slime. She had pushed through easily, joyfully even, and a few dark moments later had found herself on the far side of the perimeter and free for literally the first time in her life.
She’d gone walking. Exploring. Discovering. Engaging in developmentally appropriate rebellion. And, most importantly, she’d made her first real friend.
Animals had made the path she and Muskrat followed through the forest. Bone-elk and ground pigs and pale, shovel-faced horses, none of which had any relationship to Sol system elk or pigs or horses. She walked down the path, her hands in her pockets. Muskrat bounded through the dappled shade, barking at sunbirds and smiling a wide tongue-lolling grin when they hissed back. It had been too long since she’d been to see Timothy, and she had too much she wanted to talk with him about. It wouldn’t all fit in her head at the same time.
The forest at the edge of the State Building thickened at first, the gloom growing around her, and then the land began to rise. She started feeling her breath get deeper, and it felt good. Before long, the path led out of the trees entirely and into a clearing at the skirt of the mountain. She knew from her studies that the mountain wasn’t natural but a kind of artifact of some long-forgotten alien project. Like a sandcastle, but tall enough that the top seemed to touch the clouds. Not that she’d ever been to the summit. Timothy’s cave was much closer than that.
The entrance was in a little canyon not far from the clearing where she’d first come upon him. Muskrat knew the way better than she did. She walked down the pale sand along the path carved by water that had long since dried. Wide, fresh Labrador paw prints marked her way. By the time Teresa left the last scraggly trees behind, the dog was already at the bend that led there, barking and wagging her tail.
“I’m coming,” Teresa said. “You’re such a pain.”
Muskrat shrugged off the insult, turned, and bounded ahead like a puppy. Teresa didn’t see her again until she stepped under what looked like an overhanging shelf of sandstone and into the deeps of the cave. The natural stone gave way almost immediately to the soft glow of the cavern. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like bright icicles, and the walls were built with swirls and shapes in them like a seashell and a Euclidian proof had joined together and become an architect. Teresa always had the feeling that the walls changed to greet her, but of course she was only there when she was there, so she couldn’t be certain.
A flock of tiny, glowing gnats flowed past her like a wave. Like she was underwater. The air smelled thick and astringent, and a coolness radiated from the walls.