“They want to steal our women?” Yamaguchi almost laughed, despite herself.
Brandon glanced at Jordan. “It’s the other way around. One of us has stolen one of their women.”
“Be serious,” Jordan growled.
“Okay,” Brandon replied. “I’ll be serious. What Adri’s told us is that his people have been created by a race that has a much higher technology than ours. Much higher.”
“Interstellar flight,” Verishkova murmured.
Brandon resumed, “And they’ve found other intelligent species among the stars. They’re rare, but they do exist.”
“If they don’t wipe themselves out,” said Thornberry.
“So why have they gone to all this trouble to make contact with us?” Yamaguchi asked.
“Yes,” said Meek. “What’s behind all this? Why are they here? What do they want of us?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Brandon. “We can’t plan our response to all this until we find out what Adri really wants of us.”
Jordan shook his head. “Bran, I don’t think you realize where we are. It doesn’t matter what our response is. With the superior technology they have, they can do whatever they want with us.”
Meek’s face went white. “That’s right! We’re at their mercy!”
Security
Jordan slept fitfully, his dreams filled with a kaleidoscope of shifting, blending visions: Miriam laughing with him as they rode a tandem bicycle through a winding trail along a sunny, sandy beach that suddenly turned into the tsunami they narrowly escaped in Singapore, smashing everything before it in a raging wall of water; Aditi looking over her shoulder at him as she walked away, sorrowful, pained; the president of Argentina putting the pistol in his mouth and blowing his brains out rather than agree to a cease-fire with his rivals; Meek, terrified, hiding behind his bed, turning into four-year-old Brandon, the day their father died; and then it was Miriam dying in agony while he stood watching helplessly; thousands of staring, bone-thin African children in the refugee camp slowly starving, too weak even to cry; millions of homeless, helpless families fleeing the implacable floods that were swallowing up their land; alien civilizations scattered among the stars destroying themselves in wars, population explosions, diseases created in laboratories; Miriam, Miriam, Miriam.
His eyes snapped open. It wasn’t dawn yet, the bubble tent was dark except for the tiny numerals glowing on the face of his wristwatch. Jordan got up from his cot and trudged barefoot to the common lavatory.
Sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care, does it? he said to himself. Not always. Not every night.
It was an hour before Sirius rose above the horizon, but already the sky was turning milky white. Jordan listened to the sounds of his companions’ sleep: a gentle snore, a troubled moan, something that might have been a throaty chuckle.
Sounds like Thornberry, he thought. At least Mitch is having a happy dream. Brandon’s with Elyse. He wanted to be with Aditi.
Returning to his cubicle to dress, Jordan thought briefly about tiptoeing out of the camp and walking to the city. But he shook his head. They’d wonder where I’ve gone, why I’ve left. Meek would think I’ve been kidnapped.
Instead he went to the dining area, floor lights turning on as he walked. A solitary robot stirred to life at the sight of him. The dining area filled with light.
“May I serve you?” the robot asked.
Sliding into the nearest chair, Jordan felt weary, deeply tired, down to his bones.
“Tea, please. With milk.”
The robot pivoted wordlessly and trundled into the kitchen.
Jordan sat there, thinking, trying to decide what his next step should be. By the time the robot returned with a steaming mug and deposited it on the table, he had made up his mind.
He drank the tea slowly, weighing the pros and cons of his decision. After all, he told himself, it’s not as if I have any responsibilities here. They’ve relieved me of my duty. I’m just an unemployed bureaucrat now.
And he realized that more than anything he wanted to be with Aditi. Needed her warmth, her understanding.
He drained the mug, then went to his cubicle and tapped out a message to Brandon on his phone: Gone to the city to learn more from Adri.
That ought to do it, he thought. Then he went quietly through the bubble tent, stepped out into the pearly-gray predawn glow, and headed for the city.
He hadn’t counted on the guards.
A pair of man-tall robots was standing at the edge of the glade, by the trail that led to the city.
“Good morning, Mr. Kell,” said one of them as he approached. Its voice somehow reminded Jordan of a policeman’s: calm, polite, inflexible.
“Good morning,” he answered.
“Where are you going, sir?”
“To the city.”
“I’m afraid that is prohibited, sir.”
“Prohibited? Why? By whom?”
“Dr. Kell’s orders. For your own safety, sir.”
“I’m perfectly safe,” Jordan said, taking a step forward.
The robot doing the speaking put a silicone-skinned hand gently on Jordan’s chest. “It is for your own safety, sir. Dr. Kell’s orders.”
The other robot slid to Jordan’s side. Jordan got a flash of a mental impression of the two robots carrying him, struggling and squawking, to his brother’s cot.
Jordan admitted defeat. “Very well. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kell. Have a pleasant day.”
As he walked back toward the tents, Jordan thought that it would be easy enough to duck into the trees somewhere else along the camp’s perimeter and head for the city farther along the trail. I doubt that the robots have been programmed to track down fugitives, he thought.
But instead he headed dutifully back to the barracks tent, straight to his brother’s cubicle. Elyse was not there, he saw. Almost smirking, Jordan thought, The cots aren’t wide enough for two people to sleep comfortably and the cubicles are too small to squeeze in a second cot. They might have sex together, but afterward they both want their rest.
“Wake up, Bran!” he called, clapping his hands together as loudly as he could. “You have some explaining to do.”
Brandon sprang to a sitting position on his cot, his eyes popping. “Jordy! For god’s sake, that’s a lousy way to wake a guy.”
“The guards you set up stopped me from going to the city,” Jordan accused, staring down at his brother.
“What time is it?” Brandon muttered sleepily.
“Time for you to get up and do some explaining.”
Grumbling, Brandon pulled his legs free of the bedsheet and got to his feet. He’s two and a half centimeters taller than I am, Jordan recalled, standing nose to chin with his brother.
“So?” he demanded. “What about those guards?”
“They’re supposed to stop anybody from the city from coming in here while we’re sleeping,” Brandon said, almost truculently.
“They stopped me from leaving.”
“We don’t want anybody wandering off by themselves, Jordy. Not until we’ve figured out what we have to do.”
Jordan glared at his brother. “Well then, you’d better figure out what you have to do. In the meantime, I want to go to the city.”
Brandon almost smiled at him. “Not yet, Jordy. Not yet. Have some breakfast with us. We have a lot of thinking to do.”
Guests … or Prisoners?
Once they were all seated in the dining area, with their meals before them and the three still aboard the ship on the big display screen at the far end of the table, Brandon got to his feet.