“Keep up, everybody. It’s at the far end.” Dale wondered why Zhao had to remind the others where the Beehive was located, but realized that two of the vesicle makers were in their twenties and had likely been brought to Keanu as small children with no experience of the place.
Or it might just have been a sign that Zhao liked to tell people what to do.
They reached the Temple within fifteen minutes, where Jaidev was waiting on the steps. “Harley and Sasha are already on their way,” he told Zhao. Only then did he spot Dale. “Why the hell are you back?”
“You welcomed me earlier, remember?” Dale said. “You wanted to keep me, too.”
Jaidev turned away, as if he could no longer bear to think about this.
As they continued their journey, Zhao asked what had happened. “You know little less than we do,” Jaidev said. “Jordana Swale was near the mouth of the Beehive and noticed a strange light.”
“I don’t know her.”
“She’s one of the senior farmers,” Makali said. “I know her. Very well grounded. I bet she didn’t investigate by herself.”
“She came to the Temple first,” Jaidev said. “I wasn’t here and Harley was busy . . .” Here Jaidev glanced at Dale. Then he decided the information wasn’t worth hiding. “. . . talking with Rachel. So Sasha went off with Jordana.
“Fifteen minutes later Jordana was back again, saying one of the cells was active.”
“That’s a lot of back and forth for one woman,” Dale said, unable to resist. “Haven’t you guys reverse-engineered the Segway yet?”
Everyone ignored him, which diminished Dale’s glee not one bit.
The distance from the Temple to the Beehive end of the habitat was seven kilometers, a distance that, when added to his other movements for the day, made for a challenging walk. He began to feel tired. His feet hurt.
Nevertheless, he appreciated a phenomenon he had never experienced on Keanu. Every few hundred meters, more HBs joined them, slipping out of the fields one by one, or emerging from buildings in larger groups. The moving throng grew to more than a hundred, a significant percentage of the population of the habitat. Zhao, Makali, and Dale had to push their way through a crowd. It reminded Dale of a scene from some old movie about Moses.
There were so many people jammed into the narrow entrance that Dale found himself being jostled. “Sorry,” the person next to him said. It was a young man, blond, long-haired, clearly nervous. “I don’t know you,” Dale said, extending his hand. “Dale Scott.”
“Hey, the hermit!” the young man said. “Nick. So this must be auspicious, if you’re here.”
“We’ll see,” Dale said. He was growing more uncomfortable. Too many people . . . too many chances for conversations he didn’t want to have.
But Nick hadn’t finished with him. “Were you around the last time the Beehive worked?”
“Yes. It was sort of operating for almost a year after arrival.” Or so he remembered. But that had been for terrestrial animals . . . no human Revenants had emerged after Yvonne Hall, and she had not come from this place. (There were other Beehive-like structures within Keanu, even a long-unused one adjacent to the Factory. Dale had never seen evidence that they still functioned.)
The idea of humans returning from the dead, originally repellent, had consumed many hours of thought over the years. He was more tolerant of the idea now. He had often wondered if Zack Stewart, going to his death in Keanu’s core, had assumed or hoped he would be reborn . . . even for a handful of days.
Now Harley Drake emerged from the Beehive, not only offering the hope of information, but giving Dale a reason to excuse himself from the conversation with Nick.
He got close enough to the front of the crowd to hear Jaidev say, “Harls, what’s going on?”
“Sasha’s in there with Jordana,” Drake said. “One of those cells is definitely active.”
“What size is it?” That was Zhao, always practical.
“Human.”
“Okay, then,” Makali said. “Who’s died?”
“What kind of question is that?” Harley said.
“She’s probably wondering if that might give you some idea of who is going to become the next Revenant,” Dale said. There was no reaction from Jaidev, Zhao, and the others in front of him. True, there was a lot of noise and he might not have been heard. But it was just as likely that he was being ignored.
Oh well. That might be changing—
Makali Pillay was upset by Harley’s response. “Don’t bite my head off.”
“Sorry,” Harley said.
“This is a strange situation,” Jaidev said. “I frankly don’t know what to do.”
“This is fucked up,” Harley said. “But it’s really what I just heard from Rachel.” If Harley was worried about Dale’s presence, he didn’t show it. “Things are just as bad as we thought down there. The team is in the same shape they were yesterday, but they’re on a long haul to try to reach this Reiver weapons site, and even when they get there . . . it’s five against a few hundred thousand.”
“We knew that,” Jaidev said.
“We knew we were sending a handful of people on a scouting mission. Now we have the intel, and it’s terrifying.” Dale was about to try to inch his way closer when Harley said, “Get over here, Dale. You might surprise us and be useful.”
Harley quickly hit the high points of his Rachel tag-up, concentrating on the new Reiver facility with what was surely a beam weapon capable of striking Keanu.
Dale suddenly understood Harley Drake’s agitation. “We need the vesicle to be launched as soon as possible.”
“It’s within a day,” Zhao said.
“Make it happen,” Jaidev said.
“Then I shouldn’t be here.” Zhao turned to Makali. He was serious about returning to the vesicle habitat.
“We might as well wait a few more minutes,” Makali said. “Let’s see what the big deal is.”
As Harley’s debrief continued, Dale stepped back . . . most of the other HBs had formed their own clusters. One, largely younger, had formed around this Nick: They seemed eager, even happy.
Another group was older, largely Bangalores. They looked like mourners at a funeral. . . . Dale suspected that they had lost a friend during the past year or two and were hoping that they might be witnessing a miracle.
They’d obviously forgotten how short-lived these miracles had been—
“There’s Sasha!”
Dale didn’t recognize the voice, which came from somewhere behind him.
It was Sasha Blaine, in all her statuesque red-haired glory.
And, leaning on her—he was having trouble walking—was a man Dale didn’t recognize. He was naked, or nearly so, wearing some skinlike covering.
“Oh my God,” Makali Pillay said. “Is that—?”
“Yes,” Jaidev said.
“That’s Sanjay Bhat.”
QUESTION: What have you missed most about life on Earth?
PAV RADHAKRISHNAN: My family, of course. I only recently learned that my mother passed away several years ago. I have been fortunate to reconnect with my father.
QUESTION: Anything else?
PAV: New faces, I guess. There are fewer than a thousand of us. I attended secondary schools that were larger. (laughs) Sometimes life on Keanu feels like high school . . . in a submarine.
INTERVIEW AT YELAHANKA,
APRIL 14, 2040
RACHEL
“We’ll be passing the Channel Islands in the next ten minutes,” Colin Edgely told Rachel.