The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 28 —GCC— “Sweet promises were made.”

After months of working on and with the Memphis hyper, it was hard to go back to DIANNA. The sluggish query engine, the restricted cross-citations, the lack of original source texts were all painfully obvious to Christopher. But he was reluctant to use his father’s specialty accounts, and besides, Keith had pointed him specifically in that direction.

The name of Johann von Neumann was one with which Christopher had at least a passing acquaintance. In fact, it was hard to pass through any sort of technical education and not brush up against the Hungarian savant at one or more points.

In quantum theory, there was Neumann algebra with its critical analytical tools—rings of operators and continuous geometry. In economics, political science, and military strategy, von Neumann’s game theory and minimax theorem still held center stage. In theoretical mathematics, there was the von Neumann who solved Hilbert’s fifth problem and offered a persuasive proof of the ergodic hypothesis.

In computer science, von Neumann was there at the stone knives and bearskins beginning, introducing stored programs and advancing logical design in the ENIAC era. In meteorology, he anticipated the greenhouse effect in his studies of planetary heat balance. And in the history of technology, there was “Johnny” of the Manhattan Project, designing implosion lenses and solving hydrodynamic problems for Fat Man, the first plutonium bomb.

But the lead which Keith had given Christopher pointed in a different direction, to a comparatively unheralded collection of papers published a decade after von Neumann’s death. Theory of Self-reproducing Automata was a speculation on a daunting engineering challenge—the design and construction of a “universal constructor.”

Von Neumann envisioned the universal constructor as an advanced cybernetic device capable of making any sort of artifact, including a copy of itself, from the specifications programmed within it and the raw materials found without. The pattern of cross-citations showed his influence on his contemporaries.

But the citations which interested Christopher were not from von Neumann’s century, but from Christopher’s own. Fifty years ago, as the elements which would lead to the construction of Tigris were starting to reach critical mass, a weak countermovement arose.

The amorphous opposition had no coordinating focus, no political center, no activist arm. All it had was a unifying argument—presented philosophically by some advocates, pragmatically by others. The first starships should be von Neumann machines, they argued. A crewed starship was too expensive, too complex, too premature, too risky. Send machines first— ship-sized robot probes which would pave the way for starships to follow, or even take their place entirely.

Some called for a few complex “prospector” probes, which could collect and relay information which could shape later decisions. Others wanted many expendable “pathfinder” probes, which could gauge the dangers of such a journey. The most ambitious proposed “caretaker” probes, which could oversee the terraforming of one planet while dispatching their clones to do the same for other worlds.

The proposals varied, but the message was the same: Let machines be our eyes, our hands. Let them go in our stead.

Christopher saw that there had never been any real chance that the machines-first movement would carry the day. Human ambitions must be satisfied in human time frames, and none of those on the point were willing to step aside in favor of a machine or an heir. But, just as clearly, contained within this largely forgotten debate was the intellectual genesis of the Homeworld movement. It was their Federalist, their Das Kapital. The seeds of revolution.

There was a time Christopher would have welcomed the discovery. But now it was the answer to the wrong question. I need to know why we’re doing what we’re doing. Daniel must have misunderstood or been deliberately obtuse. It was not the answer he needed. In fact, it didn’t seem to be about the same thing at all.

At dusk Friday, they met on the Burnham Park levee, near the children’s playground at Thirty-third Street. Between the restless waves of Lake Michigan, the howling Chicago wind, and the screamers climbing out of Meigs Island just to the north, they had all the privacy they could ask for.

“Are you here to talk me out of something, or are you ready to help me?” Christopher asked as they started off at a slow walk along the top of the concrete barrier, known locally as the Great Wall. With global warming, Lake Michigan had risen almost a meter in the last century, swallowing the city’s beaches and forcing construction of dikes all along the waterfront.

“Did you take my suggestion?”

“It wasn’t enough.”

Keith sighed, pushing his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “What do you want to know?”

“What are you really selecting for?” It came out in a half-shout as a commuter screamer passed overhead with a roar.

Shaking his head, Keith said, “We’re not doing the selecting. Not really.”

“Who is?”

They covered another thirty meters before Keith spoke. “There are a hundred thousand genes in a mammalian cell,” he said. “A hundred thousand genes, and enough unexpressed DNA between them for a hundred thousand more. Full of fragments, copies, oncogenes, nonsense sequences that code for no known proteins, programs for traits which haven’t been needed in ten million years. It’s where tails on babies and hind legs on whales come from. A chemical library that rivals the hyper. Not a bad analogy. The hyper is everything we know. The DNA is everything we are.”

“Not everything.”

“Everything. Why is one man addicted to alcohol and another never tempted by it? Look in his cells. It’s all there. All our weaknesses. All our predispositions. Biology is destiny, Christopher. Clinical depression? Homosexuality? Look in the cells. Genius? Madness? They’re there, too. An athlete’s muscles, a musician’s ears, the poet’s heart—just different little bits of clockwork chemistry. Love? A neurochemical cycle—runs about six and a half years. Ever hear of the seven-year itch?”

“I can’t argue physiology with you,” Christopher said. “But we’re learning from the first day we’re alive. That’s part of what we are, too.”

“Sure. But mostly we’re learning how to get what we want. You asked why we do what we do. I would have thought that was obvious. The meaning of life is to make new life. Nothing more. We just never understood the scale on which the drama was being played.”

“What do you mean?” Christopher asked, grabbing at Keith’s elbow.

Keith stopped and turned to face him. “You look at recent history and ask how we could do so many things that are anti-survival. Ocean pollution. Resource depletion. Ozone destruction. It isn’t just that we didn’t know. We kept right on after we did know. Because none of that matters. None of it. In the last hundred meters you give it everything. Because in this race, if you hold back, you die.”

“Are you answering the question I asked?”

“You still don’t see it?”

“No.”

Keith turned away and resumed walking, and Christopher hurried to keep up with him. “The Creator has a master plan, Christopher. And we’ve been following it for four billion years. It carried Eusthenopteron onto the land and Deinonychus into the air. It’s why whales beach themselves and cats climb trees. Do you want to know who God is, Christopher? God is two hundred and seventy-one codons on the twenty-first chromosome of the Chosen.”

“In the Church of Sociobiology, maybe. I’m not a believer.”

Nodding, Keith said, “That’s fine. But it’s a funny thing about Nature. She doesn’t give a high hoot what we believe. Everything goes on just the same.”

“Biology is destiny.”

“And purpose.”

“What happened to free will? What about our choice? Doesn’t it count? Doesn’t it exist?”

Keith stopped and gazed at Christopher, his head cocked at an angle. “Choice is noise on a picture with this scale,” he said. “I’ll gladly trade choice for destiny and purpose. Don’t you understand, Christopher? We are the von Neumann machines.”

Later, as they shared a bench and a bottle of Canadian wine outside the shuttered Field Museum of Natural History—the irony of that was not lost on Christopher—Keith explained himself in less metaphysical terms.

“Whatever it was in the beginning, we’re now talking about a three-gene complex. Pieces or variants of it have been found in thirty-one species, all but three of them chordates. There’s every reason to think that it’s found its highest, purest expression in us. I think of H. sap. as the trustee of the Chi Sequence.

“The name doesn’t mean anything, really. That’s what it was called when it was a very minor mystery in comparative biochemistry. But you won’t find anything about it in Medbase or the NIH Index. They’ve been sanitized—papers withdrawn, copyrights and biopatents bought.

“Three genes, A-B-C. Three messages. Direction—the where. Motivation—the why. And the activator, the little thirty-three codon sequence that says, ‘Go-go-go.’ ”

His initial objections having been beaten down into silence, if not surrender, Christopher had listened with the kind of stunned amazement seen on the faces of young children after their first magic show. It was not his credulity which was being tested, but the agility of his mind. He was being shown marvels, and they had power and poetry even if he did not believe they were real.

“It’s funny what happens when you only get one Chi gene expressed,” Keith was saying. “All the people through history who felt the call of the night sky. All the fanciful invention of heavens and wheels within wheels. They were pointed in the right direction, but never understood why.

“And the way life here has spread into every possible nook and crevice, obeying the second part of the code. B for babies. B for be fecund. Go forth and multiply. Fill the world with your progeny.

“And the activator, the trickiest of all, the one that flips the ambition switch to high. A-positives have to find their own directions, their own reasons. But the restlessness that sends them looking comes from inside. Hillary had it. Thor Heyerdahl. Earhart. You don’t need a microscope to make a list. But if we had a sample of their DNA, we’d find it, right there on the twenty-first chromosome. I don’t doubt it for a minute.”

“So the Chosen really do exist,” Christopher said.

“Not the way you mean it. Three genes gives eight permutations, not even considering mutations and unexpressed recessives. Nothing is ever as simple as a geneticist says it is,” Keith said, showing a smile. “But the triple actives—the pure Chi-positives—they’re the core of the Diaspora.”

“And the Chi-negatives? Are they the core of Homeworld?”

“Who knows?” Keith said, interrupting his answer for a swig from the bottle. “Homeworlders don’t tend to present themselves at the lab for testing. But if I were going to guess, I’d say that they’re mostly B-positives—they’re the most hidebound, the most sessile.”

“That makes it sound like the different combinations have recognizable personalities.”

“Not officially,” Keith said. “But of course they do. A gene that’s not expressed in structure or behavior wouldn’t be important. I’ve processed more than two thousand applicants. I can call them eight times out of ten. These aren’t just genotypes. They’re human archetypes. It’s affected how I deal with people, actually. When I meet someone for the first time, all I see is their Chi attribute.”

“What is it you see?”

“I told you part of it already,” Keith said. “Think of the A gene as ambition, the B as the breeding instinct, and C as the Call, and you can just about figure them out yourself.”

“A-positives are adventurers,” Christopher said slowly. “B-positives are nestmakers. C-positives—what, hear voices?”

“More or less. I call them the dreamers. Pure faith, pure reason, pure art. Priests, physicists, and philosophers.”

“Do the traits combine?”

“Of course. And there’s more variation in the combinations. BCs are the good citizens—workers and soldiers. The Call expresses itself as duty, allegiance. But put ambition and the Call together and you get a Creator—an artist or an inventor.”

“Loi. She’d be an AC-positive, then?”

“Probably.”

“And Jessie a nestmaker. What else is there?”

“Everyone’s favorite—the AB-positives. Ambition and nest-making builds kings and tycoons.”

“And the pure Chi-positives? ”

Another swallow. “Statesmen, saints, and avatars. And there are precious few of them.”

Christopher counted. “Seven. One more. You didn’t answer before. Who are the Chi-negatives?”

“Can’t you figure it out?” Keith asked, coughing. “Why do you think there are so many meaningless lives? They’re the people whose bodies give them no direction, no purpose. They don’t burn. They don’t want. They just are—instant to instant, day to day, like some cruel joke of nature. The hollow-chested Tin Men. The empty people. The damned.”

The bottle was empty, and the sky overhead winter-black. They walked back in silence toward where the Avanti was parked, Christopher withdrawn, trying to absorb—or was it resist?—what he had heard. Keith’s steps and spirit seemed lighter, the difficult obligation discharged without disaster.

“I don’t know what to think,” Christopher said when they finally reached the car.

“Believe what you want,” Keith said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it? How many Chi-positives are going on Memphis!”

“I have no idea.”

“Ten thousand?”

“Oh, no,” Keith said, shaking his head vigorously. “Even if we could find that many. Chi-positives are difficult. It’s just the way they are. They’re the glue—but did you ever try building something from glue alone? Memphis has no use for kings and adventurers. Ur is in trouble because we sent her off with too many kings aboard—we didn’t understand yet what the rules were. And the nestmakers and dreamers have no use for us.”

“So who are you taking?”

Keith settled back against the fender. “Memphis needs a core of stable, loyal, dedicated people who know their place in the plan. It needs a leavening of creative types to keep the vision alive and deal with the unexpected. And it needs wise, unselfish leadership.”

“BCs, ACs, and Chi-positives.”

“I told you you’d catch on.”

“But when Memphis gets where it’s going, then you’ll need the others—the kings and adventurers and the rest—to build nests and empires on the new world.”

“Right. So they’re making the trip in steerage, where they won’t be any trouble.”

It took Christopher a moment to understand his meaning. “The gamete banks—that’s what the gamete banks are for.”

Keith made an imaginary mark in the air with his finger. “One point for the contestant from Oregon.”

“So how many Chi-positives? Five thousand? Five hundred? Fifty? How rare are they?”

“I told you, I don’t know,” Keith said. “They’re about four percent of the applicant pool. But that’s a self-selected sample. Why does it matter?”

“Because of what Jeremiah said. What happens when they’re gone, Daniel? Are you stealing the spark?”

A surprised laugh was Keith’s first response. “And John Gait said that he would stop the motor of the world,” he said. “Our poor little ten thousand, Christopher? We won’t even notice they’re gone.”

“You just finished telling me how special they are. The pinnacle of evolution.”

Impatience flashed across Keith’s face. “How about a little perspective? There’ve been at least fifty natural disasters and a hundred wars in the Christian era alone that killed a hundred thousand or more. There was a flood in China in 1931 that wiped out almost four million. The Second World War killed forty million.”

“But who were they, Daniel?” he demanded, stepping closer. “Drones and breeders? The faithful and patriotic? How many of them had a chance to shape the world? How many of them even had a chance to shape their own lives? And even so, do you really think it doesn’t cost us anything when a whole race, a whole generation, is exterminated?”

Keith held his hands palm-out in supplication. “It’s only ten thousand. Not a race. Not a generation. Do you know how long it takes the world population to replace ten thousand people? An hour. Forty-nine minutes, if you want to split hairs.”

“You said it yourself. They’re self-selected. The manifest for Memphis is made up of ten thousand of the best educated, most talented, most highly motivated people we’ve produced. If this is where it’s all been pointing, how can it not make a difference? You can’t have it both ways. The birds are still here, but the rest of the dinosaurs are gone. Sometimes the torch passes.”

“That’s fear-talk,” Keith said, straightening from his casual pose. “I expected better from you.”

“Really? Is that why you brought the gun?” Christopher’s hand closed around the neck of the bottle in a fighting grip. “And please, don’t insult my intelligence. I saw it when you paid for the wine. How close did I come to being dumped into the lake?”

With a slow, deliberate motion, Keith reached into an inner pocket and retrieved the contoured shape of a shockbox, which he laid on the roof of the car. “I wouldn’t come down here at night without something. It had nothing to do with you.”

“I’d like to believe that, Daniel, except I don’t know what you’re up to. I can’t figure out why you told me what you did tonight.”

“I told you the truth. Everything you asked.”

“I know. You told me things I’d have been months finding out.”

Keith shook his head. “You’d never have found them. There isn’t even anything in the hyper.”

“You’re not helping your case. Nobody tells this kind of secret as a favor. We’ve been friends, but not that good of friends. What do you gain? Or are you supposed to kill me now?”

“No.” Keith took a sideways step away from the car and the gun.

“Then tell me what’s going on, goddammit,” Christopher said, looking around nervously. “I’m getting very jumpy out here. Why did you tell me?”

“Because you’re Jeremiah’s son. But you’re also Chris. I took a chance because I thought you would listen.”

“What?”

“I wanted you to know you don’t have to be afraid of us. I want you to let us be. Don’t try to stop Memphis, Chris. Please.”

Christopher stared. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath. “Son of a bitch. My father was afraid I wasn’t enough like him. And now you’re afraid I’m too much like him.”

“I don’t know what to think, Chris. I really don’t.”

Shaking his head, Christopher dropped the bottle where he stood and made for the door of the Avanti. “I’m leaving,” he muttered. When he reached the car, he knocked the gun to the ground with a careless, angry swipe of his hand, then pulled the door upward.

“Chris—”

He settled in the seat before looking back. “What?”

“I can’t be sorry about Jeremiah. But I’m sorry about your father.”

Christopher looked at Keith with blazing eyes. “My father was a king.” He said it pridefully, with a hint of a challenge.

“Yes. I think he was.”

Nodding as though satisfied with the concession, Christopher brought the car to life, the door still open. Then he seemed to take a deep breath, taking the control wheel in both hands as though he needed it for support. He looked over his shoulder out at Keith. “What am I, Daniel?”

Keith came a step closer. “I was expecting you to ask that a long time ago—and you’re not going to like my answer. The truth is I know you too well to see you that simply. I can see all eight attributes in you—including Chi-negative.”

“Then how do I find out?”

“You can’t,” he said, shaking his head.

“Doesn’t the company know?”

“No,” Keith said. “That’s one of the questions that got me in trouble. You were an employee. You were never sampled. And there isn’t a lab anywhere outside Allied that knows what to look for.”

“You knew I’d have to know.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t need to be told.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you feel it? Didn’t you say, ‘Yeah, that’s me,’ at some point in the list?”

“Sure. Three times.”

Keith frowned. “Then the key is your mother. Maybe you can figure it out from there.”

“Maybe,” Christopher said, little hope in his voice or his eyes. He sighed and jerked his head toward the empty seat beside him. “Can I drop you somewhere?”

The invitation was an apology and a peace offering, and Keith’s acceptance the signing of a truce. But they had little more to say to each other. From the time they lifted off to the time Keith climbed out in the driveway of his parents’ Stone Park home, only once was the silence broken.

“One more question?” Christopher asked as they bore across the Loop.

Looking out the side glass at the Daley Tower, Keith gave a slight nod.

“Were you ever sampled?”

“BC-positive,” Keith said. “Hardworking and loyal to a fault.” He turned back and showed a wan smile. “Most of the time, anyway.”

“But they didn’t take you.”

“My choice.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m putting in my turn at the wheel,” Keith said. “There are a lot of us doing it. I’ve been promised a place on Knossos.”

It was midmorning when Christopher reached the house on the ridge. After stowing the Avanti in the garage, he stopped in the bathroom to splash his face and in the kitchen to start coffee. While the coffee was brewing, he collected the Portables from his father’s bedroom and carried them into the den. He stacked them in three columns on the end of the comsole before settling, cup in hand, in the chair.

“You there, Lila?”

“Ready, Christopher.”

“Any mail? Any messages?”

“No. There are no new messages.”

“What about for my father?”

“I am handling Mr. McCutcheon’s correspondence.”

“Still pretending he’s not dead?”

“I am doing what he asked me to.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to let me see what it is.”

“I’m sorry, Christopher. I can’t do that.”

“Have you heard from my father?”

“No. Your father is dead.”

“Does anyone besides us know that?”

“No.”

“You haven’t told anyone while playing secretary for him?”

“I am conducting your father’s business according to his instructions.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll bet the only people you told knew him as Jeremiah. And Jeremiah’s not allowed to die, is he? Who’s the new Jeremiah, Lila?”

“I can’t answer that, Christopher.”

“Right.” He sipped at his caramel-colored coffee, still steaming. “Do you know anything about a will?”

“A will is registered with the Oregon State Probate Court. Since no death certificate has been filed, the will has not been presented.”

“Who’s the executor?”

“You are, Christopher.”

It was only technically a surprise. “I guess I know better than to think he’d ask me. Was he planning to ever tell me?”

“It’s not required by Oregon law, since an executor may refuse the appointment.”

“Know anything about what the will says?”

“No. The only knowledge I have of it comes from checking the court registry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Christopher. “That’s how he was going to get me back here, wasn’t it? That’s why he left the archives.”

“They were for you to read after his death.”

“So you said. Well”—he patted the top of the nearest stack— “I’m ready to see the rest of them.”

“I’m sorry, Christopher. I don’t understand.”

“I want you to show me anything and everything about my mother that you have in your files or can find anywhere, including these archives.”

“Checking. Your mother is Deryn Glenys Falconer?”

“Sharron,” he said impatiently. “I’m talking about Sharron. My father’s wife.”

“Checking. Full name is Sharron Ria McCutcheon, nee Aldritch?”

He stared at the display in surprise. “You had to check that? He didn’t think it was important enough to restore?”

“I do not know what information was not restored, Christopher, nor why it was not included.”

“Are you saying you don’t have anything about Sharron?”

“I’m compiling biographical information from several sources. I’ll have a report for you in the next thirty seconds.”

“I don’t want anything from outside. I want to know how he saw her. I want to see her myself. Where are the family albums? Didn’t he keep anything of hers?”

“Not in my records, Christopher.”

Seizing the nearest Portable, Christopher pulled open the drawer and pushed the book into the empty data port. “What about there?”

“This volume is Wild Animals of North America, published by the National Geographic Society. It contains no archives.”

“What?” Quickly, Christopher swapped another book into its place. “What about that one?”

“This volume is Ptolemy’s Daughter: The Art of Sabra Adams, by—”

“I can read the goddamned titles.”

“It contains no archives.”

“What’s going on here, Lila? These are the same books I read from on Tuesday, aren’t they?”

“Yes, Christopher. Those files were erased as you read them, on Mr. McCutcheon’s instructions. I find no other files.”

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed. “Why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known I was only going to have one chance to read them—” He stopped, seeing the answer to his own question.

—I’d have photographed the screen, or transcribed the entries, or read them into a recorder. And then I could have shared them with anyone. For your eyes only. This tape will self-destruct in ten seconds.

“You did tell me.”

“Yes, Christopher.”

“No other files marked for access by me, or no files at all?”

“I find no files at all.”

I can see Sharron in his eyes and hear Deryn in his words. They are both inside him, pulling at him to follow. Follow where? They had both found a way to leave him, but by very different ways to very different destinations.

They are both inside him—

You never wanted me to know who I am. You closed all doors but one, barred all paths but the one that would lead me back here. You tried to draw my eyes from her by shining more brightly. What is it you didn’t want me to see? You knew, you bastard, you knew all the time. Did you want me to like you, or just to be like you?

“What’s the magic word?” he asked suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“What is it I have to say to earn the prize? He wanted me to take his place. The will gives me the castle. I know it does. You have to give me the crown. I’m the one he picked, right? He’d rather have given it to me than anyone, if only I could pass the test.”

“I can’t answer that, Christopher.”

“But you know, don’t you? You know.”

“I can’t answer that, Christopher.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Silly question,” Christopher said. “Of course you would, if he told you to. I should take you down and clean you out so you’re working for me. Except someday a call’d come in and we’d be right back where we are now. Son of a bitch.”

“Mr. McCutcheon is the primary user.”

“Mr. McCutcheon is dead, you crystal moron.”

“I know that, Christopher.”

“Miracle! She knows something. How about something useful? Tell me about the Chi Sequence.”

“Checking. No information.”

“Did my father love me?”

“No information.”

“Where’s my father’s body?”

“No information.”

“Who is Jeremiah?”

“I can’t answer that, Christopher.”

“How did my mother die?”

“No information.”

With a wild swipe of his arm, Christopher sent the neatly stacked books cascading onto the carpeted floor. “Then you’re not much goddamn use to me, are you, Lila?” he said, coming to his feet. “Between what you can’t tell me and what you won’t tell me, not much goddamned use at all.”

The decision was made in that moment, but the arrangements took more than a week to complete, with another week’s waiting tacked on after that. The delay gave Christopher a chance to measure his motives and consider his choice. No better options presented themselves, even if some doubts did.

He used the time well. Not knowing when he might be back, he revisited his favorite spots in the Northwest—postcard-beautiful Boiler Bay, where basalt cliffs and chaotic Pacific waves created a dramatic tapestry; Bridal Veil Falls, one of the hidden treasures of the Gorge, which he had discovered in the company of an adolescent love; the winding climb up to the high lodge on fog-wrapped, snow-cloaked Mount Rainier.

While he was in the house, there were issues to research, logistical and technical problems to resolve, and still a few doors to knock on. He allowed Lila to present what she could gather about Sharron from public sources; he called his mother’s brother and father and tried to break through the wall of resentment; he took several of the Portables to a hack shop in Seattle to be cracked and copied.

None of his efforts yielded more than a few drams of insight, but, oddly, every failure only made what he was about to do seem more right and reasonable.

There were also financial matters to settle. A final Allied paycheck appeared in his account, as Dryke had said it would. Christopher transferred the full amount to the Kenning House account, as much an attempt to preserve his place there as a reaction against the source of the funds. And paying for his ticket and poundage on the Horizon shuttle from Los Angeles proved a challenge. His credit lines had shrunk when his resignation was posted, forcing him to juggle advances and accounts to cover the fare.

Paying for his seat was only slightly harder than booking it; the shuttles were inexplicably full in what should have been the post-holiday lull. The alternate route, through Technica, was no better. He even checked flights from Hawaii and Florida. Except for premium fares, which Christopher could not afford, every North American commercial shuttle was sold out through the end of January. He ended up booking for February 6, almost a month away, though he also bought a place on the six-hour standby list.

The extra expense proved worthwhile. In midmonth, just as the waiting was starting to wear on him, the notification call came through. There had been a cancellation for the 10 p.m. flight to Horizon—could he be there?

“I’ll be there.”

He had rehearsed the ritual often enough in his head that he was able to move quickly. In but a few minutes, his bag was packed with his clothes and the very few objects he wanted from the house. He loaded the bag in the Avanti, which he then moved safely away from the house. Disabling the alarms and extinguishers took a little longer, but he had already scouted the systems and acquired the necessary tools.

By that time, Lila’s curiosity had been aroused. But the next step was to shut off all power to the house, which squelched her questions. Only then did he bring out the two ten-liter tins of accelerant. Changing into some of his father’s clothes, he splashed every room, with special attention to the spaces he had occupied. He wanted it to burn hot and fast, leaving only ashes and enough mystery to prompt an investigation.

There were risks, but the only risk-free course was surrender. If his father’s body wasn’t found, if the investigation focused on arson rather than William McCutcheon’s disappearance, if Allied and Mikhail Dryke chose to silence Christopher rather than intervene—if, if, if. There were a hundred things that could go wrong. But he could not leave his life or his father’s death in limbo. There was something he had to prove—to the homunculus of William McCutcheon that lived inside his head, to Mikhail Dryke, and to himself.

Only when it was time to strike the spark did he hesitate. Standing on the front step before the open door, back in his own clothes and holding the lighter and the bundle of chemical-spattered clothing in his hands, he found his heart racing, his lungs aching as though he had just run up the ridge road from the gate. Do I have the right to do this? jostled with Can I see this through? for first place in his insecurities.

The revelation of two weeks ago was slipping away. He had to make himself say it out loud to break the paralysis that had seized him.

“I don’t ever want to come back here.”

Flame touched cloth, which flared happily into life. Christopher quickly tossed the bundle through the doorway, turning his back and retreating across the lawn. As he climbed into the Avanti, he stole a peek back, and was rewarded by a flickering orange glow playing behind the first-story windows of the far dome.

Christopher circled the house at treetop level until the second-story windows exploded outward in billows of gray smoke and gouts of yellow-red fire. Then he turned away, banking toward Portland, refusing to look back. He kept the Avanti on the deck to keep its movements off the air traffic monitors, settling into the I-26 surface traffic as he approached Banks. It was hard to hold his speed down when what he wanted to do was run.

The last detail was the Avanti, which he knew he could not keep. He left it at the curb on Killingsworth Street, four klicks from the city’s transplex, with the passenger door unlocked and the travel log’s memory wiped. The flyer was baggage at this point, and he did not care if it was stolen, stripped or impounded.

Keeping his pace brisk and his thoughts disciplined, Christopher hiked to the transplex and the tube station. He was invigorated by the freedom that came with action, by the peace that came with purpose. The police might soon be searching for him, Dryke could soon be hunting him, but he did not care. In a few short hours he would be beyond their reach, for Horizon was not his final destination. This journey would not end until he reached Deryn’s arms and Sanctuary.