Solstice

Lieberman listened, eyes closed, feeling dog-tired, only half taking in the words. He was thinking about the day and this tangled jumble of images in his head: fire on the mountain, the sky ablaze. And Mo, naked, her limbs entwined with his, the hot, fevered focus between them, the way that kind of ecstasy could steal your very thoughts. He wanted to stop up his ears, he wanted to sleep. All the time he couldn't stop thinking about what was happening elsewhere. Sara leaving the hospital, going out into a world that was on the brink of chaos. This strange silence out of Vegas. Bill Ruffin and his crew floating in the emptiness of space, praying some jerry-built concoction of fabric and foam would save the day.

And somewhere, behind everything, Charley, no longer naive Charley, the genius with the appearance of some airhead bimbo. Charley with the crew cut, some cancer eating away inside her head, and this tragic, gnawing conviction that her own personal dissolution was somehow coupled, irrevocably, irretrievably, with that of the world.

'You spent two years with these people,' he said. 'Two years in which they went from being just a bunch of ecofreaks out onto the fringe to this… black place they are now. Why didn't you leave earlier?'

'Dumb question, Michael. I didn't leave Daniel. And he gave me nothing. No love. No affection. No respect. If I didn't leave him, why would I leave the Children, who gave me all those things? And more.'

'But you must have known…'

'Known what? I left there a year ago. They knew I was restless. They didn't like having Annie around after a while. She was the only kid in the place. And they told me to come here. Get a job in the project. Just stay below the parapet, talk to them when I wanted to. It was our chance to escape.'

Schulz nodded. 'And that's what you did. You did it, Mo.'

'I came here. Yes. But I didn't know they had this in mind.'

Lieberman looked at her and hoped for an honest answer. 'And if you had known?'

She laughed. 'I would have come anyway. Of course I would. Don't you understand what the power is in these things? Where the strength lies? It's in the closeness you have. That's all, and that's everything.'

'Like a family,' Lieberman said.

'Yes.' She smiled, and she did look serene, she was beautiful that night. 'Exactly like a family. But a real family. One that doesn't abandon you because it's too busy or finds something else to do. One that doesn't judge you because of who you are. One that gives you love and support and understanding whatever the circumstances. How could you betray that? How could you even think of it?'

'Yeah,' Bevan grunted. 'And so, when you found out we had someone inside, you called them, E-mailed, or something, and look what happened. That nice, kind family killed the one person we had inside who could have led us to them.'

'No!'

Bevan raised his eyebrows. 'You expect me to believe that?'

'Believe what you like. All I can do is tell you what happened. I left San Diego a year ago. We travelled through Europe first — they gave me some money and said there was no hurry — and I got here in January. It didn't take long to persuade Irwin to give me a job.'

'No,' Schulz confirmed. 'Good Unix people aren't easy to find here. I guess I should have latched on to the coincidence.'

'And when you got here,' Bevan continued, 'you contacted them when? How?'

'Once. Just after I arrived.'

'You're kidding me.'

'Once. By phone. To the house in San Diego, reverse charge. Check it with the phone company. They wanted to know who was working here. And if the project got into problems, that was when I was supposed to get in touch on a regular basis. I was meant to E-mail them, then they'd get back to me with a phone number. Charley said she wanted me to be their eyes and ears. She never said why. I never asked. I called once and then forgot about them. Until this began.'

'And we're supposed to believe that?' Bevan asked sourly.

She shook her head. 'You still don't get it. Like I said, proximity was everything. When I was there, I was a part of the Children. When Annie and I were here, all that started to fade. It seemed less important. There were other things in my life. Annie. This idea of building something for us both, leaving all that dreadful time behind. I thought…'

Lieberman wanted to be somewhere else, not watching this performance. We all reach crossroads, he told himself. We all take the wrong turning sometimes.

'I thought I'd never hear of Gaia again. I didn't want to. Just one call and they had no way of contacting me. They didn't want one; they said it would be unsafe. I forgot about them. I started to think about us. About how we moved on from all this.'

Schulz's eyes lit up. 'Hey! We got company.' The lights were winking on the terminal. Out of nowhere the screen came alive. Helen Wagner gazed back at them. Lieberman thought she looked exhausted, a little battle-weary and crabby too.

'You had a rough time over there?' he asked. 'We couldn't pick up anything through the network. You heard about the Shuttle?'

'It's bad here,' she replied. 'I'll tell you about that later, but I think we now know what Charley can throw at us. And yeah… I spoke to Bill Ruffin. That's the best news I've heard all day. It doesn't mean we let up anywhere else, though. The important thing right now is to close the net on these people. You're Mrs Sinclair?'

Mo nodded.

'I'm Helen Wagner from the CIA. I know you think we're the enemy or something but you have to forget that right now. These people have just blitzed Las Vegas. We have a lot of casualties here and I want to make sure the Children don't have the chance to do this all over again. We need your help. We need your cooperation. Frankly, I'm beyond threats. I don't care what's happened in the past. If you throw your lot in with us now, I'll see if I can help you out. You just have to take my word on that.'

'I'll do what I can.'

'That's excellent. We require names.'

'I can give you names. Joe Katayama. Anthony Tatton. Billy Jo Surtees — '

'Good. Bevan can get a list of those later. Most of all we need some clue of where they are now. Can you help us there?'

Mo shook her head. 'I wish I could. They were in San Diego when I left.'

'How were you supposed to get in touch with them?'

'Just on the standard E-mail address for their public Web site. Nothing secret. You must know what that is.'

'We do,' Helen sighed.

Mo Sinclair shook her head. 'I'm sorry. Like I said, I thought I'd left all this behind, and once they stopped hearing from me I guessed — I hoped — they wouldn't contact me again.'

'Mo,' Lieberman said, reaching out, touching her hand. 'Try. Didn't they even talk about moving somewhere else?'

She paused. 'Sometimes. I don't really recall.'

'Work on it. Did they talk about Nevada?'

She tried to remember. It was like opening the doors on a cabinet she'd forgotten: Everything inside was dusty and distant. 'Perhaps.'

One memory. 'They said something about a farm. I remember that. Joe and Charley were talking about a farm that interested them and they thought about giving it a new name. They really wanted a farm. Isolation, I guess. And it was an odd name.'

He held her hand. 'Like what?'

Mo shook her head. 'It was strange. Something like — I know this sounds stupid — Yogurt Farm.'

'In America, Mo, that is yogurt.'

'I know. That's why it sounded odd.'

'Yeah.' Lieberman grinned. 'Charley hated yogurt. But she had good taste in music. How about Yasgur's Farm?'

She smiled. 'That sounds about right. But what is it?'

'Stop making me feel old. Woodstock, 1969.'