Greg Bear - Darwin's Children

“You’re not an authorized holding facility for children,” Dicken continued, warming to his subject. “You illegally transported this girl across state lines.”

“She’s a threat to public health,” Jurie said, suddenly recovering his calm. “And now you’ve joined her.” He waved his hand. “Get him out of here.”

The security men seemed unable to decide how to react. “Isn’t he safe where he is?” one guard asked, his voice muffled inside the hood.

The girl reached up to Dicken and tightly gripped his arm. “There is no threat,” Dicken told Jurie.

“You do not know that,” Jurie said, staring hard at Dicken, but the comment was more for the benefit of the guards.

“Dr. Jurie has stepped way over the line,” Dicken said. “Kidnapping is a tough rap, guys. This is a facility doing contract work under EMAC, which is under the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services. All of them have strict guidelines on human experimentation.” And nobody knows whether those guidelines still apply. But it’s the best bluff we have. “You have no jurisdiction over the girl. We’re leaving Sandia. I’m taking her with me.”

Jurie shook his head vigorously, making his hood waggle. “Very John Wayne. You got that out very nicely. I’m supposed to growl and play the villain?”

The situation was incredible and tense and fairly funny. “Yeah,” Dicken said, abruptly breaking out in a shit-kicking, full-out hayseed grin. He had a tendency to do that when confronted by authority figures. It was one reason why he had spent so much of his life doing fieldwork.

Jurie misinterpreted Dicken’s smile. “We have an incredible opportunity here. Why waste it?” Jurie said, wheedling now. “We can solve so many problems, learn so much. What we learn will benefit millions. It could save us all.”

“Not this girl. Not any of them.” Dicken held out his hand. The girl got to her feet and together, hand in hand, they walked cautiously toward the door.

Jurie blocked their way. “How far do you think you’ll get?” he asked, livid behind the cowl.

“Let’s find out,” Dicken said. Jurie reached out to hold him, but Dicken’s arm snaked up and he grabbed the edge of the faceplate, as if to remind Jurie of their unequal vulnerability. Jurie dropped his hands, Dicken let go, and the man backed off, catching up against a chair and almost falling over.

The security men seemed rooted to the trailer’s floor. “Good for you,” Dicken murmured. “Hire some lawyers, gentlemen. Time off for good behavior. Mitigating factors in sentencing.” Still murmuring legal inanities, he peered through the door of the trailer and saw a cluster of scientific and security staff, including Flynn, Powers, and now Presky, hanging back beyond the open gate in the reinforced acrylic fence. “Let’s go, honey,” Dicken said, and they stepped out onto the porch.

Behind, he heard a scuffle and swiveled his head to see Jurie, his face contorted, trying to grab a pistol and the security guards doing an awkward little dance keeping their weapons out of his reach.

Scientists with guns, Dicken thought. That really was the living end. Somehow, the absurdity cheered him. He squeezed the girl’s hand and marched toward the others standing by the gate.

They did not stop him. Maggie Flynn actually held the gate open. She looked relieved.

CALIFORNIA

Stella and Will had left the car after it ran out of gas near a town called Lone Pine. They were in the woods now, but she did not feel any closer to freedom, or to where she wanted to be.

They had left Mrs. Hayden asleep in the car, drained after driving all night and then cutting back and forth across the state routes and freeways and back roads all morning. Will trudged ahead of Stella, carrying two empty plastic bottles.

At noon, the air was cool and hazy. Summer was turning into fall. The pines and larches and oaks seemed to shimmer as breezes blew and clouds raced over the low mountains.

They had seen very few houses along the road, but there were some. Will talked about a place that was in the middle of nowhere, with no humans for tens, if not hundreds, of miles. Stella was too tired to feel discouraged. She knew now they did not belong anywhere or to anyone; they were just lost, inside and out. Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. The discomfort from her period was passing. That was a small blessing, but now she was beginning to wonder who and what Will really was.

He looked more than a little feral with his hair sweaty and sticking straight up at the back where he had leaned against the rear seat in Mrs. Hayden’s car. He smelled gamy, angry, and afraid, but Stella knew she did not smell any better.

She wondered what Celia and LaShawna and Felice were up to, what had happened to the drivers trussed up and left by the side of the road.

She had only a dim idea how the map in Will’s back pocket correlated with where they were. The road looked like a long black river rolling into the distance, vanishing around a tree-framed curve.

For a moment, she stopped and watched a ground squirrel. It stood on a low flat rock beside the shoulder, hunched and alert, with shiny black eyes, like the Shrooz in her room in Virginia.

She hoped they would end up on a farm and she could be with animals. She got along well with animals.

Will came back. The squirrel fled. “We should keep moving,” he said. They trotted clumsily into the trees as two cars rumbled by.

“Maybe we should hitchhike,” Stella suggested from behind a pine trunk. She smelled the cloying sweetness of the tree’s sap and it reminded her of school. She curled her lip and pushed away from the rough bark.

“If we hitchhike, they’ll catch us,” Will said. “We’re close. I know it.”

She followed Will. She could almost imagine a big blue Chevy or a big pickup barreling down the road with Mitch behind the wheel. Mitch and Kaye, together, looking for her.

The next time they heard a car coming, Will ran into the trees but she kept walking. After the car had passed, he caught up with her and gave her a squinch-faced look.

“We’re helpless out here,” Stella said, squinching back at him, as if that were a reasonable explanation.

“More reason to hide.”

“Maybe somebody knows where this place is. If they stop we can ask.”

“I’m not very lucky,” Will said, his mouth twisting into a line that was not a smile and not quite a smirk. Wry and uncertain. “Are you lucky?” he asked.

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?” she asked, deadpan.

Will laughed. He laughed until he started waving his arms and snorting and had to stop to wipe his nose on his sleeve.

“Eeyeew,” Stella said.

“Sorry,” he said.

Against her better judgment, Stella liked him again.

The next car, Will stuck out his hand, thumb up, and gave his biggest smile. The car flashed by doing at least seventy miles an hour, smoked windows full of blurred faces that did not even look their way.

Will hunched his shoulders as he resumed walking.

They heard the next vehicle twenty minutes later. Stella looked over her shoulder. It was an old Ford minivan, cresting a rise in the two-lane road and laying down a thin cloud of oily white smoke. Neither she nor Will moved back from the road. Their water bottles were empty. It wouldn’t be long before they had to turn around and retrace their journey.

The minivan slowed, moved into the opposite lane to avoid them, and passed with a low whoosh. An older man and woman in the front seats peered at them owlishly; the back windows were tinted blue and reflected their own faces.

The minivan pulled over and stopped about two hundred feet down the road.