“To the impostor, I appeal to you to save your countrymen at least from the fate that awaits you. Come forward of your own accord, and we may be lenient. Hide, or attempt to fight us, and not only you, but all whom you love will share your fate.”
The picture blinked out.
“Long,” snapped Toby, “I’m replying.”
“What are you going to say?” There was tension in the minister’s voice.
“Don’t worry, I’ll send you a copy so you know what I said.”
With a barely perceptible sigh, Long agreed.
Toby stood for a long time staring down into the valley. Then, when he realized he was just putting things off, he shook himself and said, “Reply.
“Hey, kiddo, how’s it going? Haven’t seen you in ages, you look great! I haven’t talked to Peter yet, but I hear he’s doing good, too.
“Yeah, I got your message. Don’t make me prove that I am who I say I am. I mean, after all, I know more embarrassing stories about you than anybody alive. Well, except maybe Mom.
“Yes, it really is me. So you see, there’s no need to unload any more crap on these people, who’ve already had to put up with a lot from you. We’re gonna reset their frequency—either you or me, I don’t care which of us does it. Then you and I are going to sit down and have a conversation—long overdue, I think. Deal? Great. See you in six months.
“End.”
His smile slipped, and he tilted his head back to glare at the clouds. “Stupid, stupid.” Well, but how was he supposed to handle this? Like an adult? He was seventeen years old, and Evayne knew it—but she hadn’t seen him in forty years. If he’d acted any differently than he used to with her, she might not have recognized him.
She, on the other hand, had looked and sounded nothing whatever like the little girl he’d loved as his only sister. He closed his eyes and his face twisted into a grimace of pain.
After composing himself, he went back to where Shylif and Jaysir were standing together at the tunnel entrance. Well, it was more like they were huddling together, the way they looked. They were scared, and Toby didn’t like the idea that it was him they were scared of.
“You need to hide her,” he said. “From everybody, but most of all…” He didn’t say Halen’s name; he shouldn’t have to with these two.
His friends exchanged a glance, then Shylif smiled. “That’s a good idea.”
Corva’s brother had styled himself as the right-hand man to the new messiah. He was bursting with ideas—what Toby should wear, the uniforms his new staff should wear. He wanted to design a symbol for Toby’s new movement (really, Halen’s movement), something that could be printed on banners and hung off buildings. Toby had refused to let news of his return spill out of government circles, so naturally rumors were flying everywhere, and he was sure Halen was eagerly spreading many of them. Halen couldn’t wait for the moment when Toby would step onto the stage of some gargantuan amphitheater and command a crowd of tens of thousands to go down on their knees before him.
“And then,” Toby went on, “you need to do the same yourselves. Shy, you take care of Corva. Jay … remember what I asked you to look into? —That is, if you’re sure no one else is listening.”
Jay laughed. “If they are, their ears just pricked up.”
“Are they?”
“They’re trying.” He shook his head. “But this conversation is private. You knew I’d be jamming our personal space, didn’t you.”
“No. I hoped…” He had to smile, though; Jaysir was clever about these things.
Jay had perked up, positively enthusiastic for a change. He said to Shylif, “Toby wanted me and the makers to look at the code from that data block I told you about. He thought we might find something useful.”
“And did you?” asked Toby.
Jay made a noncommittal gesture. “Well, we found something, but I don’t know if it’s useful. It’s about your biocryptographics.”
“How easily that word rolls off your tongue,” observed Shylif.
“What did you find?”
“We know how it works for everybody else who uses Cicada Corp devices. We all have user accounts and we sign in biocryptographically. But that’s not how your commands seem to work. You don’t have an account—you don’t need one.”
Toby was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Back on Wallop, I just assumed you were a superuser—that you had an administrative account on the Cicada Corp system that let you change major settings and stuff in the system. But that’s not what you’ve got. There is no superuser, as far as we can tell. The Cicada Corp system is self-administering and can’t be accessed by anyone from outside. That’s what the code on the block seemed to say, anyway. If you’d given us access to the data itself…” But Toby was shaking his head. “Yeah, I thought not. Toby’s data is encrypted with the same biocrypto,” he told Shylif. “I copied it, but without the same combination of DNA, voice, iris, fingerprint, and brainwaves I can’t get at it. Anyway, you’ve got major power over the Cicada system, but not as an administrator.”
Toby shook his head. “If I’m not a superuser, then how am I able to command the system?”
“It turns out you’re not commanding it at all. You’re voting.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re voting because, Toby, you’re not an administrator of Cicada Corp’s systems.
“You’re a shareholder.”
TOBY NEVER GOT USED to how noisy it was at night. The crickets brr’d at one frequency, other bugs at others, and night birds called, this species a high note, that one a low. The wind in the trees roared intermittently but deafened everything when it did. Daytime was even worse: cicadas boomed, monkeys and birds exchanged insults in the treetops. The frequency spread of animal calls widened until every band that could take a signal was filled. Any given morning, sitting listening to this vast symphony was a lesson in just how impoverished the Earth had been when he’d been growing up. Only on a world with a fully recovered ecosystem, or a terraformed lockstep world wintering over, could you hear the world as it had sounded before the advent of Man.
Tonight the familiar constellations were out. Thisbe had no moon, and on cloudless nights like this it could get pretty cold. Toby was used to that now, just as he was used to walking in the dark while Orpheus prowled ahead. Sometimes they’d scare up tomorrow’s dinner. Sometimes they encountered the sleepy, slow-moving harvester and repair bots that were the only part of Thisbe’s industrial system awake right now. He did his best to avoid such encounters, because you never knew whether their industrial Internet had been hacked by Evayne’s people. Any of those boxy grain tenders or flood watch spiders could be spies for the enemy.
There was no sign that any had been in this area, though. He moved cautiously but confidently through tall grass and between young trees. As he went he counted the low blocky shapes of the houses lining what had been, and someday would again be, a street.
He hadn’t known that the bots shrink-wrapped the houses after everyone was asleep. All that neon-pink plastic was torn away and recycled by the time the humans inside awoke. Right now, any tears or punctures in the material would be instantly visible to the monitors that overflew the houses on a weekly basis. If anything were seen, investigation and repair bots would be sent out right away. That meant Toby had to be careful when he broke in.
“Seven … and eight.” He whistled for Orpheus, then moved around the abstracted house shape, searching for an overhang or tree-shadowed spot where he could cut through. “Over here!” Orpheus bounded into view as Toby was rummaging in his backpack for his shears. He’d found an indent beneath what was probably a dormer window, where a cut wouldn’t be visible from the air. Orpheus watched with his usual attentive curiosity as Toby stabbed at the hard plastic again and again, until finally the blade of the shears went through.