“We asked for indirect effects,” Jennifer said. She spoke to her screen. “Newsgrid mode. Channel 164.” It was the most reliable of the donkey stations, broadcasting from New York.
“I just don’t trust him,” Will repeated.
“Fifty minutes,” said the terminal in the corner.
“—outbreak of fighting among Livers in Iowa,” said the newsgrid. “Security officers have assured all channels that there is no danger to the Peoria Enclave, or to the shielded agri-areas of southern Illinois. Robocam monitoring of the fighting shows several Liver camps to be involved, possibly banded together. The cause, as elsewhere in the country, seems to be the shortage of Change syringes among those unfortunate Liver camps that—”
Jennifer concentrated on the images, transmitted unedited except for rapid-rotation selection among a number of cams. A daylight attack—yesterday?—by thirty or forty Livers on one of their squalid little “camps.” The resident Livers sat naked under the clear tarp from which they constructed their feeding grounds. Why hadn’t they gone south for the winter, like so many others? It didn’t matter. The second group of Livers, dressed in old government-issued synthetic clothing and a bizarre assortment of homespun consumables, rushed into sight and opened fire. People screamed, blood spurted in red jets against the low tarp. A baby shrieked before it was shot.
Jennifer froze the image and studied it. The attackers were armed with AL-72s, a military assault weapon. That meant either they had donkey allies or they’d been able to datadip a federal or state armory somewhere, probably the latter. Their dippers were getting bolder. And as they acquired more knowledge and more weapons, they became more potentially dangerous to not only donkeys but to Sanctuary’s financial holdings in the United States, and conceivably, to Sanctuary itself.
“—another group of Doctors for Human Aid have already left for the tri-county area from—”
“Forty minutes,” said the terminal in the corner.
Jennifer changed newsgrid channels with metronomic regularity, two minutes for each. Of course, flag programs compiled hourly summaries for her. But it was important to keep personally informed as well, for those nuances of tone that the compilations could not pick up.
A Liver raid on the Miami Enclave; thirty Change syringes stolen, fifty-two people dead. More pictures of unChanged babies in Texas, dying of some unnamed virus or toxin. President Garrison, declaring a state of emergency, which the all-but-self-governing enclaves would ignore. More broadcasts to Selene, pleading with Miranda for additional Change syringes. Another bizarre religious cult in Virginia, this one notable for being made up of donkeys rather than Livers. They believed that Jesus Christ was preparing the Earth for the return of angels from the Orion Nebula.
Jennifer watched composedly, not allowing her emotions to show. What was Miranda doing? Miranda had given the Change to the enemy… why was she now withdrawing it?
Inconsistent people were dangerous. You could not anticipate how to block their actions.
“Thirty minutes,” said the terminal in the corner.
“Jennifer, it’s time for the second penetration,” Will said. His voice was high and tight. Jennifer turned off the newsgrid.
This time the target was a less rich enclave, outside the main dome of St. Paul, Minnesota. The enclave housed mostly techs, who kept the machines of the city running and programmed. Techs, skilled and genemod, were part of the donkey economy, although never decision-makers. The drone camera showed rows of small neat houses under an energy dome, genemod lawns and flowers, a playground and a church and community center. The Y-shield did not admit birds. Techs were not much interested in birds.
Nonetheless, the second drone flew through the shield as easily as the first had flown into the opulent retirement enclave by the Pacific. Soundlessly the drone dissolved, and soundlessly the viral mist floated down over houses and playground.
Techs worked for a living. They couldn’t be rendered as fearful as Livers or they would refuse to leave their small enclave and would not report to work. But Strukov, learning from the sixteen Liver beta-tests, had refined his product. This version was subtler.
But just as difficult to pin down with biochemical analysis. Not even Sharifi Labs had succeeded. The virus initiated the manufacture and release of a biogenic amine natural to the brain, which in turn caused the manufacture and release of another, which affected multiple receptor sites and caused further electrochemical reactions… it was a long and twisted skein of cerebral events. The end result would be that the techs, without realizing it directly, would simply come to prefer the familiar. Routines they already knew, faces they saw every day, tasks they were used to. The old friend, the known line of thought, the conventional attitude, the incumbent politician. It would just feel too unsettling to initiate, or learn, or change.
And then Jennifer Sharifi and the rest of her people would be safe. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t know.
Safe. Was that actually possible? There had been times, in Allendale Federal Prison, when she’d despaired of ever feeling safe again, or of ever making her people safe. Her previous efforts to safeguard Sleepless had been both crude and naive. Sanctuary, removed from Earth but vulnerable, as all orbitals were vulnerable. Financial power, necessary but not sufficient for protection. Finally, secession from a corrupt government, through terrorism that had only called such blatant attention to itself that it had been bound to fail.
This time would be different. No threats of biological warfare. No demands for freedom. No worldwide broadcasts to try to make the enemy see what they were incapable of seeing. No. This time, stealth and stasis. Freeze the world into biological inhibition, but so subtly that they would never even recognize it. Will was right—they’d never know what hit them.
Except for twenty-seven people.
Those twenty-seven, if they so chose, probably could stop her. As they had once before. That they hadn’t interfered yet perhaps meant that their own complex and devious goals dovetailed with hers to a certain point… could that be true? What was Miranda doing?
Whatever it was, Jennifer would not let it wreck her own plans. Could not let it.
That was the most painful part: Jennifer’s lack of real choice. Miranda was her granddaughter; Nikos and Christina the grandchildren of her oldest friend; Toshio Ohmura her great-nephew by marriage. She could not, without pain, simply turn her back on them. That was what Sleepers did: destroyed kinship ties, destroyed community itself, with no sense of loss. That deadened self was what Jennifer fought against.
Still—there was no choice. Not if she was going to make her people safe.
She felt Will’s hands on her shoulders. “Jenny—it’s time,” he said, and she thought he’d spoken the words earlier, but suddenly she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t heard the terminal in the corner. For a moment the room blurred. She closed her eyes.
“Thirty seconds,” said the terminal in the corner. Jennifer forced herself to open her eyes. Her screen had brightened. No drone-mounted camera, this time. The hidden monitor was a mile away, showing only empty desolate landscape, and, on zoom, the faint shimmer of a Y-shield. No, not a Y-shield but something else entirely, designed by genius, unduplicated by anyone else anywhere. Something no drone could penetrate, ever.
“Twenty seconds.”
Will’s hands tightened on her shoulders. She thought of shrugging the hands off, but somehow she couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Her mind, that precision tool, felt clogged with confusion, vaporizing out of the new data Caroline Renleigh had brought her about Selene. Selene, where the traitor Miranda Sharifi hid from the world.