“Meaning?”
“It was just clear to me that the messages I saw now, in the past year, were from the same geeky guy.
“And, maybe I just went on instinct. He was promising nothing, just offering an escape route. Even that never came up until I’d texted him that we’d been attacked and were hoping to get out of Yelahanka.
“And, well, he told me that one of the Kettering guys had made a ton of money—” He smiled and took her hand. “If it makes any difference, I hated not telling you.”
“Then we’ve got that in common.” Rachel knew her words were harsh, but her tone was conciliatory. Pav slapped his hand over his heart, as if he’d been shot. Then, wisely, he got up and moved down the cabin.
She was prepared to forgive him, though it might have to wait until they reached Darwin.
Or North America.
There was no room in their relationship for secrets. That was something they had both discussed and agreed on almost twenty years ago, when they first drifted together.
They had not liked each other originally, not during their first real meetings on Keanu, as Scoop refugees from Bangalore (him) and Houston (her). (Both thought they had a passing introduction in the past, on Earth, a logical assumption, since their fathers were both space travelers who had shared a space station mission. But they had been too young then to remember much.)
Then they had shared a wild, intense adventure exploring the innards of Keanu in the company of a dog—and later a Revenant, and still later an actual Architect.
Some relationships are forged in “foxhole” moments, as Harley Drake described them.
Not Rachel and Pav’s. After the Keanu core reboot, they had returned to the human habitat exhausted by each other’s company and were thrown into the chaos of the post-Reiver struggle for survival.
Of course, the fact that Rachel had seen her father, Zack, going to his death at the climax of that adventure may have contributed to a desire to distance herself from anything or anyone that reminded her of it.
But that hadn’t lasted. The blunt reality: There weren’t many suitable mates their age. Only eleven other teens had been scooped up in Bangalore and Houston. There were five infants.
The mean age of the rest of the HB population was just over thirty.
Which meant that if Rachel was going to have a boyfriend or a husband close to her age . . . it was going to be Pav or one of four other boys.
She avoided the question for some time. Between ages seventeen and nineteen she had engaged in an intense erotic relationship with Zhao, then in his thirties, the former technical spy from the People’s Republic of China—the man who had gunned down Brent Bynum on the first HB arrival day.
Zhao had later proven his stability and value to the entire community . . . and perhaps it was the fact that he was neither a Houston nor a Bangalore that eventually attracted Rachel.
That had ended eventually. She was just too young for Zhao. His concerns were never hers.
And she had drifted back into Pav’s orbit. Looking back, she wasn’t sure how it happened, or why, except that one day she realized that she rather liked him. And he was acting very nervous and uncertain around her—
They went off alone one night, and were rarely apart after that.
They had arguments, of course. Disagreements about political matters, practical issues, though not about the things Rachel remembered couples fighting about: money, rivals, whatever.
They had no secrets. Until now.
As far as Rachel knew.
“We’ll be at Darwin in an hour.”
Rachel looked up. The plane had flown into darkness; the cabin lights seemed brighter. She must have dozed off in her incredibly comfy chair. The lack of recent thumps and bumps allowed her to sleep.
Now Edgar Chang loomed above her.
“Then what?”
He sat next to her, looking even older than he had in their first meetings. Rachel judged him to be in his midsixties . . . she wondered what he had done wrong in his career to be the point man for an operation like this.
Or look at it another way, she thought; maybe Chang was the senior editor of some publication and took this assignment because he wanted it done properly . . . and because it was unique.
She wondered if he would tell her, if she asked. But first things first—
“You wanted to reach Free Nation U.S.”
“As soon as possible, yes.”
“That’s what I’m working on.”
“What does that mean, ‘working on’?”
Chang smiled and held up his notepad. “It means sending a lot of e-mails to a lot of people in very different locations, including some in Free Nation U.S.”
“I thought all that was firewalled.”
“As close to a hundred percent as you can get. But, you know, the U.S. is a big place with a lot of open space. Somewhere on some border or out on a prairie—or in the middle of Chicago, maybe—someone has a secret tower and is beaming a signal off some satellite the Aggregates think is dead.”
“And what are you learning?”
Chang rubbed his face. Rachel suspected that he had not slept in a day, likely longer. “There are three ways you sneak into Free Nation U.S.”
“Walk, fly, or swim?” Pav said, behind her. Rachel patted the chair next to her. She still felt the need to punish her husband a bit, but it was silly to isolate him from important information.
“That’s what they were doing when I was living in Houston,” Rachel said. Illegal immigration was one of the issues that rose and fell in importance, like the price of gasoline or summer temperatures.
“Some of that still happens,” Chang said. “And a good thing, because that’s what we’re going to be doing. Our choices are to fly across the Canadian border, hike from northern Mexico into Texas, or swim into California.”
“Which do you recommend?” Pav said.
“Which method is safest?” Rachel added.
Chang looked harried. “None of this is safe! If you’re thinking of this as some kind of tourist excursion, put that right out of your heads. You are, or will be, once word is out that you’re not in Delhi or China, the world’s most wanted fugitives. The Aggregates will do everything they can to track you and capture you.”
“We know that,” Rachel said. “Let’s go back to how, or where?”
“Or what you would do if you were in our situation?” Pav said, pointing at Chang.
“Word is that crossing from Mexico, either to California or Arizona, is still the easiest.
“But that raises the larger question: Where do you want to go in Free Nation U.S.? And what do you hope to do there?”
Rachel wasn’t sure how to answer Chang—or even if she should. When you stripped away the nonsense about trade or sightseeing, the core of Adventure’s mission was reconnaissance. They needed to know the extent of Reiver Aggregate domination of Earth, since clearly it didn’t extend to Southeast Asia.
Only then would they be able to consider doing something about it. Assuming they could do anything at all.
But before she could offer Chang some vague nonanswer, Pav spoke again: “Let’s just say this, Mr. Chang: We want to get into the western U.S., and as soon as possible. It would be helpful if we also had a nearby base of operations.”
Chang closed his notepad. “Then that is what we will try to do. I’ll know more when we reach Darwin.”
“When will that be?” Rachel said.
“Less than an hour.” He considered the situation. “We ought to be in cell phone range already. . . .” He reached for his jacket, which was slung across the next seat.
“Is that secure?” Rachel said. God, now she was sounding like Pav!
“As secure as any broadcast signal can be,” he said. “But if you’d rather I waited until we landed—”
At that instant a cell phone rang somewhere in the cabin. Rachel and Chang looked around.