When Lillie had finished retching, she swiped her hand across her mouth. “Sorry, Tess.”
“Don’t apologize. You can’t help it.”
“No. Will I recognize him?”
“No. He’s eighty-seven years old. But he’ll recognize you,” Theresa said. Lillie was only seven and a half months older than when Keith had seen her last.
“Tess, did you go on to college?”
Theresa remembered, now, how direct Lillie had always been, how intense about finding out all she could about everything she could. “Yes, I went to college.”
“Where?”
“Saint Lucia’s. A small Catholic college for girls.” Her mother’s choice.
“What did you study?”
“Elementary education. I didn’t finish.”
“Why not?” Lillie said.
“A lot of reasons. I wasn’t very academic, you probably remember that. And then my father lost a lot of money. And I met my husband and got married.”
“What was his name? What was he like?”
“Lillie, I’d rather not talk about that.”
“Okay. I… pull over again, Tess!”
This bout of retching lasted longer. Probably the jouncing cart wasn’t helping. Theresa waited, watching the light grow on the eastern horizon. It would be best to reach Wenton before dawn.
“Just one more question,” Lillie said when they’d started forward again. “When you went back home after Quantico, and then to high school and college and everything, was it hard? Did people still stalk you and threaten you and point you out as a pribir kid?”
Theresa thought about how to answer. “At first, yes. My parents had me home-schooled for the rest of high school. I entered college under a different name, nobody but the admissions committee knew who I was. And later… well, the world had more important things to think about. We were pretty much forgotten.” Not even Cole knew, when I married him. And when I told him, it helped destroy our marriage.
“But,” Lillie said, “didn’t doctors and geneticists and everybody want to keep examining your genome?”
“Lillie, you don’t understand. I keep telling you, but you’re not listening. Everything changed. Climate, government, economics. And then the war. Nobody funded scientific research. Nobody cared.”
Lillie was silent for a long time. Then she said, “I don’t believe that. Somewhere there are scientists still investigating genetics. In one of those rich enclaves, maybe. Scientists don’t give up.”
She was probably right. “Then you better hope they don’t discover you kids are back. Or about your babies.”
Wenton grew on the horizon, its one-story buildings lower than the oldest cottonwoods and level with the newer oak and juniper.
“Tess,” Lillie said in a different voice, “will it hurt? The birth?”
Tess glanced at the girl. God, so young. She said gently, “Yes, it will hurt. I won’t lie to you. But when you hold your baby in your arms, it’s all worth it. The day Jody was born was the happiest day of my life.”
“I don’t feel that way.”
“Not yet,” Tess said. “Wait.”
Lillie didn’t answer. The wind was definitely picking up, but they’d reached Wenton. Theresa saw it suddenly through Lillie’s eyes, a weird mixture of time periods. Buildings with traditionally thick walls to keep out the murderous heat, but made of foamcast and topped with microwave rods like tall slender poles. No street paving, almost no vehicles, but a VR bar with garish holo-ads projecting onto the boards that acted as a sidewalk. No school (kids learned off the Net, if at all), no supermarket, no drugstore, no dry-cleaners—what else had existed in the past which Lillie remembered? No books or music stores or movie theaters, all that came on the Net if it came at all. And the train tracks winding away across the mixed mesquite and new green. No, she couldn’t imagine what Lillie thought of Wenton.
They stabled the horse in the foamcast building run by old Tom Carter to protect anything from dust and storms, for a reasonable fee. The windowless building smelled of animals, and Theresa saw Lillie gulp hard and leave quickly. Theresa remembered. With Carlo, nearly anything made her throw up.
She put her arm around Lillie against the wind. Bent almost double, they reached the train station and gratefully ducked inside. Open at both ends for the train to pull through, the building was hot but at least sheltered.
“Does the train run on diesel?” Lillie asked. “I thought all that was illegal now because of emissions.”
“Yes, but an exception was made for trains, in order to get food to cities. Also, there’s some form of superconductivity involved, I don’t understand what but it was one of the last things built before the war. Partly built. We’re lucky to have it.”
Or maybe not. Theresa watched as people—too many people, too badly dressed, carrying too many bundles —got off the train. Refugees. Had to be. Well, if they were willing to work, there was work digging more irrigation systems and wells, bringing more land under cultivation, channeling the newfound water. However, not all refugees could or would do manual labor. Those were the dangerous ones.
So far, the farm had been lucky. This southeast corner of New Mexico was still very remote and the world population as a whole was much less than it had once been. Wenton, despite its growing prosperity, had received few visitors. Neither had the farm, miles out on the once-desert.
But nothing stayed hidden forever.
CHAPTER 14
Lillie fell asleep on the train. At Amarillo, Theresa woke her and they set out on foot through the city. It was quite a walk but bicycle cabs were exorbitant and anyway Lillie, except for morning sickness, seemed to be in superb physical shape. What had the pribir done to her?
Better not to know.
At the nursing home, Lillie pressed her lips tight together. Theresa’s heart went out to her. Such an adult gesture for a child.
Keith Anderson had dealt shrewdly with his money. Unlike most very old people, who were cared for by often grudging families or not at all, he had been able to buy life-long care in this decent, if shabby, for-profit home. Theresa had been here once before. She led Lillie to the tiny third-floor room where Keith lay in bed. At the threshold she paused, wanting to say something to prepare Lillie… stupid. Nothing would prepare her.
“Lillie!” The thin voice cracked and the easy tears of the old slid down Keith’s wrinkled cheeks. Lillie stopped dead, collected herself, moved forward. Theresa thought, She was always brave.
“Hello, Uncle Keith. I’m back.”
“Lillie…”
She sat on the edge of his bed. Theresa saw him wince slightly, his bones disturbed. Lillie, unused to the old, didn’t notice. She took his hand. “Are you all right, Uncle Keith? Is this a good place for you to live?”
“Yes. Oh, Lillie, it’s so good to see you. I thought…”
“You thought I was dead. But I’ve just been aboard the pribir ship for seven and a half months. I mean, forty years. Do you know about time dilation?”
“Yes. Oh, Lillie… you look so much like your mother.”
Once, at Andrews Air Force Base, Theresa had seen a picture of Lillie’s dead mother. Lillie looked nothing like her.
“Once,” Keith quavered, “when we were young… Barbara was only four or five…”
Theresa slipped out. Keith wanted to live in the past. A past where he was young and fresh, maybe a later past where Lillie was a little girl. Theresa went down the steps to the living room. Several old people in deep chairs sat expressionlessly watching something on the Net. A stale smell hung in the air. Outside, the wind howled around the edges of Amarillo’s shabby buildings.