Lila looked to her left and right. The other ambassadors looked as stunned and incredulous as she felt.
“How many of them have you… kept?” Bolibar asked.
The defender wobbled its free leg. “Several million.”
“Several million?” the ambassador from China said. He sounded very far away. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, tried to clear her spinning head. Several million of them were here, all around her. Suddenly the lack of contact with the outside world seemed enormous. Through all of those strategy sessions, no one had ever brought up this possibility. Several million?
They choked down a few anxious bites of the feast, then Vladimir whisked them off in three limos the size of buses. Lifts took them to seats retrofitted to human size.
“Please relax and enjoy the sights,” Vladimir said. “I’ll show you our city, then I have a surprise for you that is very thoughtful of us.”
“I’m sure it is,” Oliver said, ever the diplomat. He was such a doofus. Lila loved her father-in-law, and he’d turned out to be a surprisingly effective administrator, adept at playing the Washington game, but he was such a doofus. As usual, he’d missed a big old spot shaving; there was a finger-sized line of dark stubble along the side of his otherwise freshly shaven face.
The city was bustling—it was downright packed with defenders. They were wearing clothes: massive three-legged jeans, business suits with ties like tarpaulins. Luyten were also plentiful, following deferentially behind defenders, repairing vehicles, cleaning the streets with steaming, high-pressured water.
There was no surprisingly advanced technology as far as she could see, but the vehicle they were riding in looked to have self-navigating capability, and the city was far from primitive. The more Lila saw, the more astonished she was that the defenders had constructed all of this in fifteen years. Of course they didn’t sleep, and had millions of Luyten slaves to assist them.
“I keep expecting to see Five,” Oliver whispered in her ear, “or hear his voice in my head. Assuming he wasn’t executed fifteen years ago. I know chances are he’s not in this vicinity, but if he is…” Oliver let the implications go unspoken. If he was, Oliver might be able to learn more than the defenders would be willing to share about what was going on with the Luyten.
“Does anyone know Sydney?” Azumi asked, his voice low. “Is the city exactly the same?”
It was a good question. Lila examined passing stores and high-rises.
“Does anyone see any churches?” a young, nattily dressed man Lila couldn’t place said in a British accent. “The turrets of St. Mary’s should be visible now and again.”
Everyone looked toward the rooftops. No turrets. So it wasn’t an exact replica. The defenders hadn’t included churches, and she guessed they’d also left out some of the more frivolous things, like Luna Park, Sydney’s famous amusement park. That was a pity—riding a gigantic roller coaster would have been vascular.
They passed several dozen defenders seated at tables outside a café, Luyten waiters scrambling around them. Lila wondered if the defenders had executed any Luyten at all. The defenders had been engineered to despise the Luyten, but you don’t always kill what you despise, especially if you control them, and they are of benefit to you.
She inhaled sharply. Down a crossing street, a Luyten was strung up between two lampposts, partially torn in two, its blood puddled on the sidewalk below. “Look at that,” Lila said, pointing. Her companions studied the scene until it disappeared from view.
Bolibar leaned toward the front of the vehicle. “Vladimir, what was that?”
“What was what?” Vladimir asked.
“It looked like a Luyten that had been lynched. It was dead, strung up by four of its limbs.”
Vladimir shrugged. “It must have made someone angry.”
Bolibar sank back into his seat, looking uneasy. Lila wasn’t completely sure what to feel. On the one hand, she liked dead Luyten far more than she liked live ones. On the other, the means of its demise seemed a little excessive.
Their limo pulled to a stop in front of an especially imposing sandstone building, the doors set at the top of massive steps. The sign on the façade indicated it was the MUSEUM OF THE LUYTEN WAR.
“I think you’ll be impressed by an exhibit developed especially for your visit,” Vladimir said as the doors slid open. Lila wasn’t in the mood to relive the war after their encounter with the Luyten on the tarmac, but she sucked it up, smiling brightly as they marched up the human-sized wooden steps that had obviously been installed just for them.
31
Oliver Bowen
May 19, 2045. Sydney, Australia.
His hotel room was enormous. It made Oliver feel like a little boy, which was exactly what CIA interrogators attempted to do to their prisoners to gain advantage over them. It also reminded him of what Five had said, years ago, about his comic collection. It’s so easy a child could do it.
At least the furniture was human-sized. Evidently their hosts had salvaged furnishings from human houses still standing outside Sydney. It was one thing—the only thing, really, besides his colleagues—that shattered the illusion that Oliver had shrunk to toddler size.
This trip was proving harder on him than he ever could have imagined. Mostly it was because of the Luyten, rising from the dead like boogeymen. How careless of the defenders, to allow them to roam free. Surely the Luyten were waiting for the right moment to strike. However, it had been fifteen years; if they were going to revolt, wouldn’t they have done so by now? Then again, maybe they had, and failed.
Oliver eyed the TV on the wall. He’d noticed it last night but had been too tired to see what defenders TV was like.
“Television on.”
CNN anchors Conchita Perez and Arthur Figgins materialized on the wall, reporting on the year’s sea level rise figures.
“Entertainment. Comedy.”
Oliver didn’t recognize the television program, but he didn’t watch much television, so that wasn’t surprising. Maybe the link had been installed in their rooms so they’d feel at home, but Oliver didn’t think so. The defenders watched human television.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come on in.”
Smiling tightly, Lila said, “Ready?” It was obvious she wanted to talk, compare notes, but who knew if their rooms were being monitored? It would surprise Oliver to learn they weren’t. They may not have an opportunity to speak privately all day; their hosts had scheduled a full slate, all of it chaperoned.
First up was a tour of the countryside, to Adelaide and back. Oliver was hardly in the mood for a quiet ride through the country, and for the life of him he couldn’t imagine why the defenders had scheduled it. Had they genetically engineered giant trees to match their giant buildings? Would they encounter wallabies the size of dinosaurs?
Everyone seemed tense as they boarded the high-speed train. Their host was waiting for them.
“Hello, Vlad—” Oliver began, but Lila squeezed his elbow.
“I’m Lila Easterlin, US ambassador. This is Oliver Bowen, science and technology emissary attached to the US contingent.”
It wasn’t Vladimir. They all looked the same to Oliver. Evidently Lila was able to distinguish one defender from another. Maybe that wasn’t surprising; sometimes Oliver had trouble recognizing people after he’d met them a half dozen times. He wasn’t good with faces.