Now it was Muraly’s turn to take a shot at Chang. “Even if these Zonas Grises exist, and I’m not convinced that they do, I don’t think the Keanu crew is going to be able to be ‘discreet.’ Your arrival was surely known to the Aggregates long before your actual landing . . . and with the announcement today, they’ll be able to track your every move.”
Rachel had to admit that Muraly was correct: She and Pav and the others would have a hard time sneaking into a gray area.
And they weren’t supposed to be talking about that, anyway. “Stipulating that a gray area might exist, and that we might have some kind of access to it,” Rachel said, “how is that helpful to our mission . . . to connecting the Keanu population with their families and vice versa?”
“The grayest of the gray areas is Mexico,” Chang said. “Where you will find numerous pirate transmitters. If you want to get information into or out of Free Nation U.S., that’s the place to do it.”
Rachel turned to Tea. “What do you think about this?”
Her father’s-former-girlfriend-turned-mother-in-law just shook her head. “Oh, honey, I got out of the U.S. fifteen years ago, just when things were getting really bad. I haven’t been back since.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
Tea glanced at Taj, as if concerned that her next words would offend him. “All the fucking time.” She sighed. “But it’s not the country I grew up in. . . .”
There was more back-and-forth, but Rachel had truly ceased to listen. Lim, Muraly, and Chang were sent off, leaving the three Adventure travelers, Taj, and Tea to confer, though to Rachel, the choice was clear and the outcome never in doubt.
It didn’t happen without argument, but everyone eventually agreed to let Rachel have Edgar Chang.
In the hallway afterward, she grabbed Pav, who had wanted Muraly. “I didn’t really,” he said. “I just said that to see the look on your face.”
“You bastard!”
“And to see you be what you’re supposed to be, which is the leader.” He kissed her. “Welcome back.”
She welcomed the kiss, and his touch . . . but was troubled by his joking comment. She knew she was the “leader” of the Adventure mission; she was the one who had been mayor of the Houston-Bangalores for years.
But in that job, she felt secure . . . she knew the issues, the players, the possibilities. Not here, where the issues were complex, the population vast, even the landscape great and unknowable. The circumstances were unpredictable.
Had she let those factors paralyze her? Had she been reluctant to act? Was she, to use another phrase Zack Stewart loved, punching above her weight?
The only way to answer that would be the results. And the problem with getting results was . . . she and the Adventure crew had only one goal, which was to somehow free Earth from Reiver domination.
At the rate they were going, it would be a thousand years from now, or never.
In spite of her doubts, Rachel expected to sleep more soundly the second night. The bed would be more familiar, as would the noises and smells of the Yelahanka infirmary. And she was tired.
She was also wrong. She and Pav closed the door around eleven P.M. local time—as good as any, given their “space lag,” as Xavier called it. Rachel snuggled against Pav, who went to sleep as fast as a human being could.
While Rachel lay there for a good long time
She carried no watch—none of the HBs did—but there was a clock on the nightstand, and it said 1:27. She had not slept at all so far, and it didn’t appear that she would.
It was frustrating. Having Edgar Chang on board meant that her team had taken its first public step toward accomplishing its mission . . . and having Xavier returning from Adventure with an armful of equipment, and a knowing smirk, meant that the less-public plan was now in motion, too.
All they truly needed was for Sanjay to get well. Or to recover enough to be movable. Having seen him, however, she had to be realistic: He wasn’t going anywhere soon.
The brief contacts with Harley Drake and Keanu had been sort of reassuring—Rachel hadn’t realized how truly disconnected she had been feeling.
So why the restlessness? And how the hell did Pav manage to lie there snoozing like an exhausted infant? Like Yahvi as a baby—
Yahvi, of course, was another contributor to Rachel’s lack of sleep, with her chorus of sneezes, sniffles, and moans heard from the next room. Taj had seen the afternoon signs of an oncoming cold and prescribed spicy food, but Yahvi had rejected it—not that Rachel blamed her. (The Keanu diet was bland by any standards, especially the Houston side of it. Yahvi was just as likely to eat a bowl of live insects as a dish of hot curry.)
Yahvi seemed to be quiet now, thank goodness. Rachel had never been a victim of insomnia—she had even been able to fall asleep easily on the hard-packed nanodirt of the Keanu habitat during her first months, before the Bangalore teams “created” hammocks and actual mattresses.
Of course, she had been fourteen then . . . and was thirty-four now.
Exhale. Close eyes. Empty the mind . . . these were all meditation exercises Pav and others had taught her, and they had proved useful, for meditation. As for sleep, she would see—
Then she heard—and felt—a whump!
It was significant enough that it forced her to open her eyes, and wait. What could it be? It reminded her of her childhood in Houston, a Dumpster being emptied early on trash day—
If so, that would be the end of it.
Then she heard a second whump, and a third, and a series of fast rattling vibrations.
Pav sat up. “Hear that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m surprised you did.”
“You know me—” He went to the door and paused before opening it, listening for activity in the hallway.
“I want to check on Yahvi,” Rachel said.
Pav opened the door and their daughter was there, red-eyed and miserable looking. “Mommy,” she said.
As Pav slipped past, Rachel drew Yahvi into the room and sat her on the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Look at me!”
Rachel had to stifle a smile and a laugh. She felt like a terrible mother, but Yahvi’s countenance was comical—red runny nose, her normally pretty blue eyes all bloodshot, her hair a tangled mess. She looked like a cartoon version of herself. “You’ve looked better,” she said, “but it’s just a cold.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you stay warm, drink fluids, rest for three days, and it will be gone.”
“For you, maybe. What if I don’t have immunity? What if this makes me really sick?”
That troublesome thought had been simmering in Rachel’s mind, likely another cause of her sleeplessness. She placed the back of her hand on Yahvi’s forehead, the way her mother had when she was a child. “You don’t have a fever.”
“Like that’s really scientific. God.”
“We’ll have one of the Indian doctors check you in the morning.”
“That fills me with confidence.”
Rachel had to work to keep from laughing again. It was so . . . typical of Yahvi, or any girl her age—indeed, of Rachel herself at that age—to inflate every minor discomfort into a case of the plague. Obviously the girl was ill, and, never having experienced anything like a common terrestrial cold, clearly struggling with it. But she was strong, healthy, and likely to be over it in forty-eight hours or less.
Falling into wise mother mode, as Pav called it, also had the benefit of distracting Rachel from her own situation . . . the lack of sleep, the uncertainty about their next step, and what the hell were those sounds that reminded her of explosions and machine guns?
She had just tucked Yahvi back into her bed when Pav returned, meeting her in the empty hallway. “It’s over, whatever it was. The guards seemed relaxed.”