The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 25 —CUC— “…the footprints of lost souls.”

Dr. Meyfarth’s counseling room had been a comfortable space, an almost cluttered space. But since Christopher’s last visit, the clutter had vanished, and everything that remained was now pure eggshell white—the cradle couch, the low table with the recorder ball, Meyfarth’s molded chair, the padded corner pit, the carpet, the ceiling, the walls.

It was now a confrontational environment, offering no distractions and allowing only one focus—the interaction between technologist and client. Christopher wondered briefly if Meyfarth had made the change with him in mind. But this time, he needed no encouragement to talk.

“She wants me to believe that my father bullied my mother to the point that she killed herself, and then went ahead and did what he had to, to get what he wanted. I’ve been thinking about this since Saturday night, and I just can’t accept that picture.”

“Then don’t,” Meyfarth said. “The facts aren’t clear, and you’re not obliged to share her beliefs.”

“I think the facts are clear. My father loved Sharron—my mother.” The amendment was a conscious jab at his sister, whose cutting words were still playing in his thoughts. “I know he did, no matter what Annie says.”

“The point is, that’s your sister’s particular family grief. Accurate or not, it doesn’t have much to do with you.”

“Lynn-Anne thinks it does.”

“None of us is responsible for the circumstances of our birth. That doesn’t heal your relationship with Annie, I know,” said Meyfarth. “But you don’t have to make peace with her to come out ahead.”

“How’s that?”

“You can take away from this the understanding that she’s bracketed you and your father together and that the hostility she shows you is only partly your fault. In fact, it’s safer for her to vent that hostility on you than on him, so you can probably expect more of the same if you try to press contact.”

Christopher nodded slowly. “If she could learn to separate the two of us, then maybe we could work out whatever real grievances she has with me.”

“It would be a good starting point, at least.”

“And I’m sure there are some,” Christopher added.

“There almost always are, between siblings,” said Meyfarth. “In any case, I think we can let this go for now—unless you’d rather not.”

Christopher crossed an ankle over his knee as he answered. “No. This doesn’t feel like it touches my problems with Jessie and Loi.”

“On the whole, I agree,” said Meyfarth. “What is the climate in the house now? When we talked Saturday, you led me to think that it wasn’t very pleasant for you.”

A wry smile formed on Christopher’s lips. “Not very pleasant for any of us, I guess. Loi surprised me this weekend—kind of took pity on me. But Jessie—I can’t get near her. I can’t even get her attention. Almost as though she has her back to me, if that makes any sense.” He gazed intently at the carpet beyond his feet. “And it hurts,” he added quietly.

“Is she still seeing John?”

Christopher’s head bobbed slowly in affirmation. “I expect her to tell us any day now that she’s moving out,” he said. “I’m not quite sure why I didn’t see it before, but she’s never been as serious about the trine as Loi and I were.”

“Are you sure you’re being fair? She wanted to have a baby with you.”

“But only as long as it looked like it’d be easy,” Christopher said, raising his head and looking plaintively at Meyfarth. “She wants a lot, you know? But what is she giving back?”

“What does she want? ‘Listen to me. Tell me your feelings. Be affectionate.’ That’s too much?”

“This was the first bump we ran into, and she’s already given up on me.”

Meyfarth cocked his head and said nothing, inviting Christopher to follow the thought.

“It’s almost like we were a comfortable place to light, and she was paying her keep by running the house and being cuddly. But it’s not comfortable anymore, so she’s ready to move on. A butterfly. Pretty, but—”

“No commitment?”

“No commitment.”

A skeptical smile flickered across Meyfarth’s face. “You opted out of your marriage at the three-year option. So what do you know about eternal love?”

The dig was neither unexpected nor unfair. “I’ve been thinking about my marriage, too,” said Christopher. “Trying to learn from experience, you know? Maybe there’s no mystery here. Maybe it’s just like the first time—right idea, wrong people.”

“I think that lets you off the hook too easily, Chris.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and smiling dolefully. “I was counting myself as the chief wrong person.”

“Are you ready to give up?” asked Meyfarth. “Is that what we’re talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Christopher said tiredly. “Why don’t you ask me a different question?”

“All right,” Meyfarth said, settling back in his chair. “There is something you said earlier that I’d like to go back to. You said your father loved Sharron. How do you know? You weren’t a witness to it. And Lynn-Anne was.”

The question stopped Christopher for a moment. “I didn’t mean a hard question,” he said, and sighed.

“Did he tell you he did?” the arty suggested.

“No. I don’t think so. He wasn’t comfortable talking about her. This is strange, because I’m sure I’m right, I’m just not sure why. I think that part of it—a big part—is that he never married again. As though it wouldn’t have been right to replace her. Never even came close, as far as I’m aware.”

“He had a child—you—with another woman, and lived with her for fifteen years. That isn’t close?”

“I don’t think they were even lovers,” said Christopher. “They never acted like they were.” A pause. “Did I tell you Deryn wouldn’t let me call her ‘Mother’? She always kept the lines drawn. ‘I’m not your mother, I’m your incubator,’ she’d say. And laugh. But somehow it never felt like a rejection.” He smiled bitterly. “At least, not until she left.”

“Did your father love her?”

“What? Deryn? No.” Christopher frowned. “Yes. But not the same way.”

“What way?”

“He—” Christopher stopped and studied his hands. “I don’t suppose I really know how it was different. It just seems like it would have to be.”

“That he would have been closer to Sharron? More affectionate? Happier?”

“Yes.” An afterthought. “It’s hard to tell when my father is happy.”

“Funny,” said Meyfarth. “Loi once said that about you.”

Christopher looked up sharply. “Are you going to start that, too?”

“What?”

“Telling me I’m like my father. I’m not. I’ve told you that— we can hardly survive a weekend together.”

Meyfarth nodded in a way that somehow was an acknowledgment rather than agreement, pursed his lips, and considered. “Christopher, I see something here, but I’m not sure you do. Maybe it comes from sitting on this side of the room for so long—the patterns come to be familiar.”

“Patterns?”

Meyfarth nodded. “Families have a way of reinventing the same mistakes.”

“Spell it out, will you?”

“Lynn-Anne lost her mother, early. You lost your mother—”

“No. I told you, she—”

“You lost your mother early,” Meyfarth repeated. “I don’t care what semantic games you played in the family.” He paused. “Lynn-Anne blames your father for her mother going away. Do you blame him because yours did?”

“No.” The answer came quickly, emphatically. “She left us. ”

“Broke her contract. Flew to Sanctuary and never came back.”

“Yes.”

“Do you hate her?”

Christopher shook his head slowly. “No.”

“Why not?”

Shakily, he drew a deep breath. “Her job was done, really. It was like saying good-bye to a good teacher. You don’t want to, but when it’s time—”

“A good teacher?”

“A very good one.”

“Did you love her?”

His eyes moistened. “Yes.”

Meyfarth waited, but Christopher did not fill the silence.

“This isn’t a good sign,” Meyfarth said finally, offering a compassionate smile. “We’re down to monosyllables.”

“Then ask better questions.”

There was a crackle in Christopher’s voice, something potent, something uncontained.

Meyfarth studied him levelly. “You said your father didn’t like to talk about Sharron. Does he talk about Deryn?”

“No.”

“What’s the last thing he said about her?”

A shake of the head. “I don’t remember.”

“The last thing you can remember, then.”

Christopher was squirming as though pinned to a dissection table. “He just doesn’t talk about her.”

“Anything.”

“He won’t talk about her when I do.” The words came out in a rush, a little ampoule of poison bursting.

“When did he talk about her?”

“I don’t know.”

“When she left? What did your father say when Deryn left?”

He shook his head again, frowning. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t want to remember.” The words were a needle.

“I don’t want you to try to make me hate him.”

“You touched it a moment ago, didn’t you? When you said you loved your mother. Tell me what he said.”

Pleading. “I can’t remember.”

“Ask your fifteen-year-old self. He remembers.”

Suddenly, he was up out of his seat and shouting. “I don’t want to remember!”

“Then you don’t want to be well,” Meyfarth said calmly. “What did you say to him? When you knew she was going.”

Christopher’s eyes were seeing somewhere else. “I asked him to make her stay,” he whispered. “He said—”

“Yes?”

“Oh, God—”

Meyfarth’s voice turned hard. “You have to speak the truth about your own life, Christopher. If you don’t, the lies are going to own you forever.”

A shivery breath escaped Christopher’s lips. His face was knotted with pain.

“He said—” He swallowed and started again. “He said we were better off without her. She wants too much,” Christopher said, his voice rising. “He said, why should I try to stop her? I’ll be glad to say good-bye.” He blinked hard, squeezing out the tears that were welling in his eyes. “God damn him.”

Fists clenched, shivering, Christopher stood in the middle of the room, staring at the blank white wall on which he seemed to see his life. But it was not until Meyfarth rose from his chair and wrapped him in a quieting hug that Christopher began to cry in earnest, and let himself feel at last the pain of a crippling cut which had never healed.

Christopher drove back to the center dazed and benumbed, the flyer’s radio merely noise in his ears.

“Top news of the hour: from Diaspora Project headquarters in Prainha, Brazil, word that the certification flight of the star-ship Memphis will be delayed at least a month. The shakedown mission, a round-trip sprint to the orbit of Pluto, had been scheduled to begin February 5. Although Project officials would not comment, simple math indicates that the ship’s announced sailing date of April 1 is also in peril.

“The announcement came from Takara construction crew chief Benjamin Burns, who had this to say: ‘You have to remember that Memphis is a different ship than Ur was—a third bigger, more complex, with hundreds of modifications to every major ship system. So even the old hands up here are really doing this for the first time. And it has to be right the first time, so we’re not going to let ourselves be rushed by an artificial schedule.’

“Burns announced no firm date for the test flight and refused to give specific details about the reason for the delay. But Anne-Lee Adams, a space system analyst with Grodin Associates, pointed to claims made last week by Homeworld spokesperson Jeremiah:

“ ‘In my view, this confirms the rumors and reports of a major sabotage incident at Allied Transcon’s Munich center. For them to acknowledge it at all means that the damage must have been quite serious. I expect we’ll see this one-month postponement turn into a much longer delay before the story has run its course.’ ”

The news barely penetrated Christopher’s consciousness and distracted him not at all from his thoughts. Though Meyfarth had mercifully found an extra forty minutes to spend with him, that time had bought him only a measure of composure, carried him only a tiny step toward peace. The walls of denial were still toppling, and his eyes hurt from the light that was shining in.

He could see all the way back, all the way in. He could no more close his eyes to it than he could stop breathing, though both had their temptations. There was nothing soft beneath him to catch him when he fell. There was nothing firm enough to carry the weight of his life.

Tear apart the memories and assemble them anew, all the sharp edges restored, the polish removed. Too many pieces to hold at once. Too many connections to make between them.

I thought I was a happy kid. I thought I’d come through pretty clean—

Truth was a solvent for illusion, but there was nothing tidy about the process, nothing cheap about the price. He had bought a dose of truth that morning and paid for it with the rawness of his throat and the battered ache in his body.

And the hardest truth was that it was not over.

It was not just the work ahead—sorting untouched feelings, touching disowned thoughts, assembling all the pieces into the picture he had so long rejected. It was the knowledge that all of that work would only solve half of the equation. For the other half, he would have to look to William McCutcheon.

“It’s a hard choice, confronting a parent,” Meyfarth had told him. “You have to risk losing the relationship that you have in order to get a better one. And that’s difficult for some people to do. Unsatisfactory as that relationship might be, your definitions of love and self and family are all tied up with it. You’re going to need some support from outside and some strength from inside. Don’t force a showdown now. Give yourself time.”

Time to heal. But how much healing can I do when the blood is still running? How long can I live with this much pain?

Waiting in his skimmer in the security check line at the south entrance to the compound, Christopher wondered if it wasn’t time to go back to riding the tram.

Ever since the Homeworld assault on the NASA Boulevard checkpoint, it had been more trouble than it was worth to try to bring a private vehicle through the relocated gate. Sentinel now took control of approaching vehicles the moment they crossed the security threshold, and the open-gate on-the-fly check had been replaced with a stop-and-go double-gate inspection. It was like putting a navigation lock on a busy river, with the predictable result—traffic was always backed up, no matter what the time of day.

But after last week’s concert, he had turned to the skimmer as a way of hiding from the media who followed him onto the tram. The nosy suspicion of the sentries was less of a nuisance than the nosy intrusion of the reporters. But the cul-de-sac had been empty that morning, miracle of miracles. If the miracle repeated itself tomorrow, he would leave the skimmer in the carport.

Presently, he was first in line, the outer gate opening for him. Sentinel eased the skimmer forward, then closed the outer gate behind it. At that point, Christopher was sealed in a square cell formed by the double gates and the flanking gatehouses.

Ordinarily, it took only a few seconds for the red-eyed laser to strobe the code plate on the skimmer, the bomb sniffers and telltales to pronounce it clean, the telescopic camera in the leftside gatehouse to scan Christopher’s face and check it against the hyper.

But this time, the kill-Q alarm came on, a sirenlike sound that startled Christopher. The skimmer settled to the ground, its lifters shut down. While he gaped in surprise, doors on both gatehouses yawned, and brown-uniformed guards hurried out through the openings. In seconds, Christopher found himself looking out at four hard expressions, four unslung assault rifles.

“Christopher McCutcheon”—he heard the words over the skimmer radio—“this is Captain Jackson of base security.” In truth, it was Sentinel; “Captain Jackson” was merely a stern-voiced AIP.

“Yes.”

“Please get out of your vehicle.”

Numbly, his face proclaiming his bewilderment, Christopher obeyed. As he did, a blue-striped Security flyer coasted to a stop beyond the inner gate, and one of the corpsecs stepped forward.

“Would you come with me to Building 100, sir?”

The inner gate opened a walk-through to the flyer, but stubbornness rooted Christopher’s feet. “What’s going on?”

“If you please, sir,” the corpsec said, nodding toward the flyer.

Reluctantly, and still without any conception of why he had failed the check, Christopher allowed himself to be bundled into the flyer and whisked off to Building 100—the security office. He only braved the obvious question once, not knowing if they could hear him, not knowing how to penetrate their professional distance. “What did I do?”

No one answered.

At Building 100, they left him waiting in the flyer, watched by more of the hard-eyed Corporate Security officers. Presently, a broad-shouldered man wearing a steel-gray jumpsuit emerged from the building and joined him in the flyer.

“Christopher McCutcheon?” the man said as the flyer lurched forward.

“Yes?”

“I’m Donald Lange, site security,” the man said. “You’re wanted at another location. I’m going to escort you.”

“Wanted where? For what?”

“I’ll tell you once we’re in the air.”

“In the air?” Christopher tried to shake his fog. “I don’t have any clothes.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said Lange.

They took him to a six-seat screamer already warming up on a taxiway. Christopher, Lange, and two corpsecs boarded. In less than five minutes, Houston was falling away behind them.

“Now can I know where we’re going?” asked Christopher, turning away from the small window.

In lieu of an answer, Lange turned his seat and locked it so that it faced Christopher. From the small case beside him, he retrieved a flip-flop slate and plugged it into the SkyLAN port on the right armrest. Finally, he placed a black-banded eyecup headset on his head, tugging the display down into place.

“Recorder on. Analyzer on. This is a contract compliance interview, clauses 29 and 33. Donald Lange, examiner. Christopher Alan McCutcheon, subject.”

Christopher’s mouth suddenly went dry, for he understood the references, if not the reason. Clause 29 was the Non-Disclosure section of his employment contract—a comprehensive collection of thou-shalt-nots Keith called the Twenty-nine Commandments. Clause 33 was the Corporate Property and Enterprise section—or, more simply, the theft and sabotage clause.

“This is about Malena Graham, isn’t it? It wasn’t my fault, I thought you knew that. I thought the company was on my side.”

“The purpose of this interview is to help determine whether grounds exist for termination, civil prosecution, or both,” Lange went on, ignoring the question. He was looking at the slate, and his words had a scripted ring. “Lying to an examiner, or refusing to answer, is itself sufficient for termination-for-cause, with forfeiture of the full probationary bond and all pension and insurance rights. Answer the questions as completely and truthfully as you can.”

“I want to know where we’re going,” said Christopher stubbornly.

Lange looked up. “You’re in a company aircraft, on company time, involved in company business. That should be enough for now.”

“To hell with your compliance interview. I resign,” Christopher said. “I want out of here.”

“You have a ten-day notice provision in your contract,” Lange said. “Sorry.”

“The hell—you kidnapped me, you son of a bitch.”

“Was force used against you? Were you threatened?”

“No—”

“Suspend,” said Lange. He flipped up the eyecup and leaned forward in his seat. “Look, if you want to cut your own throat, that’s fine with me. But if we’d already decided you were dirty, we’d just toss you. Answer the questions, and if you’re clean, you’ll be okay. As for where we’re going, Mr. Dryke, the head of security, wants to talk to you. But I can’t tell you where he is, or they’ll have me in that chair on the way back. So what’s it going to be?”

Christopher didn’t know how much of what Lange was saying he believed. Not many people came back from compliance interviews—a CCI notice looked a lot like a termination notice dressed up in due process.

But it would be hard enough finding a civilized position fresh from being fired by Allied Transcon. If he blew away the bond in the process, he’d be locked out of virtually all of the frontline openings. No one with a multimillion-dollar data investment to protect was going to let an unbonded librarian near a password.

And besides, he knew he was clean.

“I’m sorry,” Christopher said, his face pickling as he said the words. “Ask your questions.”

Lange nodded. “Resume.”

But Lange did not want to know about Malena.

That fact wasn’t immediately clear, because Lange started there. Had he ever met Malena Graham? Whom did he know in Nassau Bay? In Training? In Selection? Had he taught any tutorials to the Block 1 pioneers? How many times had he been to Wonders? What had he told Bill Wonders about his job? About Allied Transcon? About Malena Graham? What had he told Evan Silverman?

After every question, Lange would pause, as though reading the voice analyzer’s judgment in the eyecup display. Try as he might, Christopher could not read Lange’s face. His expression never changed, never betrayed what he was seeing.

But it was not hard to read the changing focus of the questions. What do you know about communications processing? Data storage structures? System security? Have you ever hacked a net to which you did not have legitimate access? Created a private gateway to a net on which you were working? Broken a transmission cipher? Designed a virus?

It was hard to answer some of the questions, and more than once Christopher’s hesitation showed. No systems jockey with any curiosity escaped technical adolescence without taking a look under the hood now and then, and he had enjoyed a perfectly healthy curiosity.

Before settling on data structures and information archaeology as his specialty, he had tried or mastered most of the hacker’s rites of passage—cracking private family files, remotely switching on a friend’s or neighbor’s or interesting girl’s videophone, sending “ghost” messages on the net. And he had used that knowledge more than once in his professional life to make an end run on an intractable systems administrator or a witless structures engineer.

Everyone did it. Everyone. But he hesitated, because he knew how the truth would sound to ears tuned to suspicion. And then he told the truth, because he knew that a lie would sound still worse.

Whether coincidence or not, from that point onward Lange started fishing for a confession. What do you think of Jeremiah? Are you a member of Homeworld? Do you know anyone who is a member? Do you know anyone who you think might be sympathetic to their cause? What about Bill Wonders? Loi Lindholm? Deryn Falconer? Daniel Keith? William McCutcheon?

Those questions Christopher fielded more easily. His opinions of Jeremiah were less than passionate, and a series of increasingly amused repetitions of “No” did for the rest. He did not try to tell Lange he was fishing in sterile waters.

Then, just as Christopher was beginning to feel comfortable, things took a nasty and surprising turn.

“How often did you discuss your work with your father?”

“Almost never,” Christopher said.

“What did your father want to know about your work?”

“As I just said—”

“You said you talked about your work sometimes. What did you talk about?”

“All he wanted to know is if I was happy with what I was doing, and if the work was going well.”

“On May 7, you traveled to Oregon and stayed two days at your father’s house. What was the purpose of your trip?”

Christopher allowed his incredulity to show. “A family visit.”

“Why?”

“Because he invited me. Don’t you ever go home?”

“What did he want to talk about that weekend?”

Christopher frowned. “The Twenty-ninth Amendment. Serai stages. The mean annual rainfall of northwest Oregon. We went hiking,” he added by way of explanation.

“Did you talk about Homeworld activities?”

“No.”

“In August, your housemate Loi Lindholm went to Europe for five days, visiting Brussels, Paris, and Geneva. Why did she make that trip?”

“August? Ah—she had a commission debut and went to some business-card kiss-and-snack parties,” said Christopher.

“What did she take there for you and whom did she deliver it to?”

“What?” His face wrinkled in puzzlement. “Nothing. Her trip didn’t have anything to do with me.”

Lange rolled on, undeterred. “Five times in November, your father left messages for you on your personal account. What instructions did he give you?”

“Wait a minute,” Christopher said warningly. “Wait just a minute. All that means is I didn’t want to talk to him.”

“But then you took a call from him at your workstation in Building 9. Was that because you needed to warn him about the Munich gateway?”

The picture suddenly snapped into focus, and Christopher stared at it with a collision of horror and helplessness, astonishment and rage. “What are you saying? Those are all just things that happened.” He clawed at the safety restraint, but it would not release him. “This is crazy! What are you saying?”

Lange sat back in his seat and watched Christopher’s futile struggle, listened, but was unmoved.

“I’m not saying anything,” he said lightly, pulling off the headset and closing the slate with one finger. “I’m just asking questions.”

Christopher should not have been surprised when he saw where their journey had taken them, but he was, all the same. He knew with the first glimpse of the little Forest Grove hub-port, knew with the first breath of air as they crossed from hot-winged screamer to waiting flyer.

But until the thin ribbon of U.S. 26 and the scattered houses of Manning flashed by below, until Tillamook State Forest spread out beneath them and a mist-wrapped Hoffman Hill loomed out the right-side windows, Christopher refused to accept the knowledge.

At that point, though, he had no choice but to embrace it. They were taking him home.

There were four vehicles already crowded into the clearings flanking the house, and easily a dozen people in sight—ferrying cases from inside to the square-backed silver van, standing talking in knots of two or three, or just watching as the flyer bearing Christopher floated in to settle on the much-trampled grass between the muddy track of the old road and the garage.

Christopher had long since given up demanding—or even pleading for—explanations. He docilely followed Lange inside, sat in the living room chair Lange pointed him to, watched mutely as white-gloved men and women meticulously erased any signs of the intrusion with vacuum and buffer and an endless supply of square yellow cloths. How long had they been there? Where was his father?

Presently, Lange returned, trailing behind a black-haired dart-eyed man with a wrestler’s build and a soldier’s walk. Christopher stood up to meet him.

“Are you Dryke?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Getting ready to leave,” said Dryke. “I’ll take the rest of your questions when you’ve answered mine. Come with me, please.”

He led Christopher to the office and, asking Lange to wait outside, closed the door behind them.

“Sit at the desk.”

Moving tentatively, Christopher complied.

“Ask the AIP if it knows you.”

Christopher swallowed. “Hello, Lila.”

“Hello, Christopher,” Lila said. “I wasn’t told you would be visiting. How long will you be staying?”

“I don’t know,” said Christopher, looking to Dryke.

“Ask for your messages.”

“Lila, are there any messages for me?”

“No messages, Christopher. Should I update your address to this location?”

“No.”

“Ask it to replay the last message sent to you by Jeremiah.”

“I never—”

“Ask it.”

He did, and the center panel of the comsole darkened into an image of William McCutcheon. “Hello, Christopher. This is your father. You’re not being paid enough if you’re still working at this hour—”

“Lila, you made a mistake,” said Christopher. “That’s my father.”

The display went white. “I’m sorry, Christopher,” said Lila. “Which Jeremiah did you mean?”

Suddenly fragile, Christopher looked up into Dryke’s intent gaze. “It made a mistake.”

“No,” said Dryke.

“You think my father is Jeremiah?”

“There isn’t any question about it. Do you expect me to believe you didn’t know?”

“I don’t believe you.”

Dryke nodded. “Lila, show Christopher Jeremiah’s last transmission.”

It was his father again, sitting in a room Christopher did not know. “This is William McCutcheon, speaking for Jeremiah and the Homeworld. As you can see, I have visitors this morning. As you might guess from the weapons they carry, I did not invite them. Mikhail Dryke, chief of the security forces for Allied Transcon, has invaded my home to arrest me—”

“Lila, where is my father?” Christopher asked suddenly.

“He was shot by Mikhail Dryke on Sunday morning,” Lila said. “I infer that he is dead.”

With a cry of anguish, Christopher vaulted out of the chair and lunged at Dryke. The older man turned the charge aside easily, spinning away and giving Christopher a shove that carried him hard into the wall. By the time Christopher picked himself up and turned, he was facing five men and three weapons.

“Fagging bastard. Where is he? What did you do with him?”

“Buried him in the earth,” said Dryke. “I would tell you where, but that could prove awkward. I’m sorry.” He turned to one of the newcomers. “Tell Ramond I want the rest of the house files wormed out and this AIP reset. Now.”

The man nodded and left, and Dryke turned back to Christopher. “I don’t know that I believe what you told Donald. Even if I did, I don’t know how much sympathy I’d have left for you. You’ll understand that if you have any idea of the grief that Jeremiah caused.

“I do know I don’t trust you. I can’t. If it was my choice, you’d be going with us, and disappearing, at least until Memphis sails. But it isn’t my choice this time, and my orders are to move you out and cut you loose,” he said. “Lucky you.”

He stepped closer. “But I’ll warn you right now, don’t come near Allied property, or anyone in the Project. I don’t think I even want to hear that you’re back in Houston. That would put thoughts in my head that you don’t want me to think.

“Your resignation will be final in ten days—thank you for that, it’s tidier. You’ll even get one more check, I suspect. But your passes, codes, and credits are dead as of now. You can send someone to pick up your car.”

They kept him waiting in the bedroom while they finished their work. When the only noises Christopher could hear were outside the house—voices, the banging of equipment being loaded, the whistle of lifters—he opened the door and found himself alone.

He walked through the silent house slowly and reached the front window in time to watch the last vehicle, the silver van, clear the scorch pad and disappear over the treetops. He stood at the window for a long time, though there was nothing more to see. His body jangled with an impotent fury. They were gone, and he could not touch them.

And his father was dead, and he did not know how to feel.