Elliot turned to her, still holding tight to Kai’s hands. “What are your promises good for if my friend has disappeared?” She looked back at Kai. “I’ll take the other glider.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I like the idea of you flying at night. It’s different with Andromeda and me. And all these cliffs? You don’t have enough experience . . .”
“Experience?” Elliot laughed. “I’ve been flying your gliders since you first knew how to make them, Malakai Wentforth.” Her voice was haughty, but the expression on her face was wry, and Kai was grinning at the way she pronounced his name. “Besides, everything you design looks like our old tractor, remember? I’ll figure it out.”
Quick as that, it was decided, and Elliot, Kai, and Persis all left Justen alone. Not one of them offered to take him along for the ride, or suggested a place he might look for the visitors himself. And since Torin and Heloise had used the arrival of the visitors as an excuse to go on a private retreat to their north shore cottage, Justen found himself, again, alone in the house. Most of the servants had already gone home for the evening.
Since he still hadn’t received any response from Noemi about the new location of the refugees, he couldn’t go to them. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t help. He still had his grandmother’s research. Maybe, when cross-referenced with the recent tests he’d done, he could glean some new information. If only Noemi would write him back. He was sure she must be busy, but he needed to help his countrymen and undo some of the damage he’d caused.
Then again, she might let him come back to work and he’d just make a bigger mess of things than he had last time. The pinks had been just such an accident, and seeing Kai and his rudimentary gengineering today reminded him of how much trouble humanity could get into while trying to help, let alone trying to harm. Even the great Persistence Helo had created DAR alongside the cure, and Justen bore no pretensions he was smarter than she.
He’d read Persistence’s diaries a hundred times, and he couldn’t find her mistake any more than she could. She’d followed every trail that might hold a hint of a solution, from genetic flaws that might have worked themselves into the cure to ways to stop the deterioration before it had started. Indeed, it had been one of Persistence Helo’s hypotheses that had led him to create the Reduction drug.
Or whatever it really should be called, as Justen now knew what real Reduction looked like. That girl, Tomorrow—or Ro as her friend Elliot called her—embodied the past of most of the population of Earth. He’d never seen it in person before. But, of course, his grandmother had. She’d been surrounded by Reduced people. And yet, none of the research or history he’d studied could teach Justen what being Reduced really meant. Only Ro had had the power to show him.
In his grandmother’s diaries, there had been points where she’d written, late in life, about her attempts to trace the genetic ancestry of those regs who seemed most affected by DAR. Since the side effect was still relatively new by the time of her death, she hadn’t had a large enough sample size to test her hypothesis, but she had postulated that there was a genetic basis to natural regularity and that those whose family lines had achieved it by the time of the cure—even if individuals hadn’t themselves—were less likely to develop DAR.
Justen, coming into the research a few generations later, was able to follow family backgrounds further and determine not only that his grandmother was correct but also how much more likely a reg was to develop DAR if, at the time of the cure, his or her ancestors had no siblings or cousins who were natural regs.
But if DAR susceptibility had some basis in the genetic predisposition of its victims toward naturally remaining Reduced, what would it mean for someone like Tomorrow? Someone his age, who was probably three or four or more generations younger than any Reduced that New Pacifica had ever seen?
Wasn’t it far more likely that this Reduced girl had siblings or cousins who were natural regs than it had been at the time of the cure? Regularity grew, generation by generation. Even at the beginning of Persistence Helo’s research, she’d mapped out a timeline, based on population and reproduction patterns, for a natural end of the Reduction. She just hadn’t wanted to wait that long. But here was Tomorrow, much farther down the line. What possibilities lay in her genetic code? What would happen if Persistence Helo were doing the same research now, using Tomorrow as a model of a Reduced of her generation? Might Ro’s descendants be immune to DAR completely?
And if so, might Justen be able to figure out how, and apply it to his own people?
As always, time blurred into a series of brain models, numbers, notes, and chemical equations. For a while, everything else was forgotten. He didn’t even hear the voices on the lanai outside the sitting room where he was working. And he certainly didn’t see when a figure entered the room at his back.
“It’s nice to see you working so hard. I was afraid when you’d come to Albion you’d given up the use of your brain entirely.”
The sound of Vania’s voice snapped him out of his focus. He looked up to see her standing right behind him, her long hair drawn back in a dark tail over her shoulder, her black military jacket and trousers looking out of place against the Blakes’ bright furnishings.
“What are you doing here, Vania? I thought we’d said all we needed to last time.”
“If we hadn’t, your striking me from the Scintillans approved guest list certainly got the message across.”
“All evidence to the contrary.” He tapped his fingers against the oblets to hide the displays. How long had she been standing there? How much had she seen? “As you’re here.”
“Yes, but not as your guest.” She nodded to the terrace. “I made some new friends this afternoon. Nice people, if a bit . . . strange.”
Justen craned his neck. Andromeda and Tomorrow were on the lanai, looking disheveled and confused. Justen understood the feeling. All this time everyone had been worried about the two missing visitors, they’d been off with Vania? What was his old friend up to?
“Where is everyone?” Andromeda called in to him.
“They’re out looking for you. They even took the gliders.”
“What?” Andromeda exclaimed angrily. “Malakai let Elliot use my glider?” She took off, Ro hot on her heels. Justen sighed, crossed to the nearest wallport, and sent out a barrage of messages to Persis, Isla, and Tero that the missing visitors were home. With any luck, Persis would find a way to flag down the other two.
He turned back to find Vania sneaking a peek at one of the oblets.
“Get away from that.”
With a flourish of her hand, she made the files spin above the oblet’s base. The smile on her face was keen and cunning. “What secrets you’ve been keeping, Justen! People from elsewhere. Natural Reduced. Flying machines . . .” She passed her fingers through the oblet’s display. “Anything else I should know?”
He pushed past her and shut the machine’s display down again. “I don’t think you should know as much as you already do.”
“So arrogant. I suppose you think like an aristo, now that you’re such good friends with them. You think you and your pretty, stupid aristo and your pretty, stupid princess all deserve knowledge about the world that no one else is allowed to have. Is that why these visitors are being hidden away up here? Do you honestly believe that’s why they came to New Pacifica in the first place? To be imprisoned in your girlfriend’s gilded cage?”