Directive 51 (27 page)

Though you so are. I just don’t want to send you that message. Yet
. She was just hoping that a plain old
I like you
kiss was what he was in the mood for.

After the kiss, he said, “Well, that took care of most of my worries about misreading each other’s intentions. Um, is this the place where I tell you that although we have to be careful about my left arm and my right foot is hypersensitive, most of me moves, and the parts that—”

“We can skip all that till the issue comes up, Lenny.”

“We can?”

She grinned. “Well, if I put you through the full explanation of the mechanics before we got going, I’d have to admit that I did that to you to my dad, and then he’d beat me. And I’d
deserve
it. He gets so tired of having to do all that talking just to explain to whoever his latest is that he’s capable of having sex and it feels good. Look, I know that no sane man who was incapable would humiliate himself by starting a fire he couldn’t put out.”

“What if I’m not sane?”

“I’ve run into that a few times. Married it once, too. I recognize it when I see it, and you’re
not
crazy that way. So . . .” she kissed him again slowly, “as I said, we can discuss any special issues when they come up. Or when anything else comes up. Now relax, forget whatever happened with other women, and give me a chance to misunderstand you for myself.”

This time he kissed back, and she thought the question was settled until he said, “I’m hoping to break whole new territory in miscommunication before you decide you never want to see me again.”

“Are you this smooth with all the girls?”

“Only with the ones who are way too hot and interesting to be in my league.”

“Flattery may not get you everywhere, but it’ll probably get you more than far enough.”

He finally gave her the kiss she’d been trying for, definitely as the guy in charge this time. “And how would you know what my idea of ‘enough’ is?”

“Research,” she said, “starting now.”

“How are we doing for collision avoidance? We’re outside the shipping lanes now, right?” Tracy asked.

She always worried like this, quite unnecessarily, when they were both below and trusting to automated systems, but Grady knew it was no use arguing. “Roll off me, fire us up some more herb, and I’ll see what the satellite says. Have to admit I’m going to miss this.” Grady gave one of Tracy’s fine, firm breasts an extra squeeze—he liked being crass with her because, despite her protests, it turned her on.

She got up—he liked how sticky her thighs were as they brushed over his—and padded over to the table to reload the bong.

Grady sat up, pulled the laptop over, and dialed up his GoogleNavReal-Time, setting it for CENTERHERE, 150 KM, and ALLBANDS so that anything registering infrared, visible light, or radar from any public satellite overhead, anywhere within 150 kilometers, would show up in the composite picture it generated; projected current position was shown in bright green, with the actual positions back along the track shown in progressively paler green as they came from longer ago.

“No danger of collision, no weather to worry about, still good,” he said, “and autowarning is active and working fine. We can sleep whenever you want to.”

“In that case,” she said, “how about I have the oven make us a fresh pizza, with lots of extra cheese, and we switch to a nice mellow red wine and some Gatorade so we don’t get dehydrated, and we start drifting off to sleep? I’m excited about Daybreak too, but it’s been a long day.”

Grady had been thinking about one more good blow job from his pretty wife, but sleeping without having to set a watch was a pleasure that would be gone soon; might as well enjoy it while they could. He stretched and yawned. “We’ll go with your plan. It was still warm last time I checked; want to go up on the deck and look at the stars?”

In sweaters and caps, they held hands, sipped warm green Gatorade from nice heavy china mugs, and savored the taste of the sweet/salty fluid and the cool, moist sea air. They admired the bright lights in the sky, picked out constellations, and even allowed the satellites to be sort of pretty too, before the automatic gizmo down in the galley summoned them to go back below for pizza.

“I won’t miss a lot of things,” Grady said, holding out his glass for her to refill, and pulling over another piece of pizza, “but sailing like this, with the machines to keep us safe and take care of us . . . well, even that. Yeah. Even that.”

“Even that what?” Tracy got all weird and puzzled sometimes like he wasn’t speaking English.

He let that go. “Even that will be better after Daybreak, ’cause we’ll be able to afford a crew, and they’ll be
family
—like your nanny or the maid was family when you were a kid. And, and, you know, like, it won’t be like the machines, because they’ll actually
care
about us. Besides, right now any schmuck with money can have the machines, and too many schmucks have too much money, so it’s like, it’s not special. Like it will be special when we’ve got crew that’s like family.”

“So pro fucking
found
, baby.”

“Daybreak is like Christmas, you know? You know you can’t really but wouldn’t it be great to have it every day?”

“Not if Daybreak was on Christmas. We’d miss the big dinner with my family.”

“Silly girl.”

At last they curled up like little animals in a burrow. The automated system was silent all night; the few ships in the area had people on watch and collision-avoidance systems of their own.

Ysabel’s coverall, plainly worn by many people before her, felt dirty, but not as soiled as she felt knowing that she was guilty as shit of helping to assassinate the vice president. She’d even
liked
Samuelson.

She’d been more a part of Aaron’s infiltration than of Daybreak itself; she’d been totally duped and she was totally bogus, and she hadn’t really been acting for the planet and for the peasants and for her real values; she’d just been a tool for goddam Aaron. If his name
was
Aaron. Probably that was as phony as his commune and the sympathy she thought she’d seen in his big soft Latin-poet eyes.

She’d fired that missile and risked all this so that Aaron and the other phony Daybreakers could kill one of the most sympathetic, decent politicians the pathetic old US had managed to produce.
And
it would be blamed on Daybreak.

She felt dirty, but she felt more like a fool. For the first time in her life, her fluent Spanish was a drawback; the
federales
had already interrogated her. One of them had big kind eyes, and nodded like he understood her, and gently explained about the diversion and Vice President Samuelson being killed in a cloud of dirty chemicals that were smearing all over beautiful desert right now; she could feel how sad that made him.

She’d wanted the kind-smiling, warm-eyed guy to understand that she wasn’t like this, that she’d made an awful mistake, contaminated herself with evil power-people armed-struggle hater macho games. And trying to help him to understand, she’d told the kind-eyed
federale
more than she meant to.

She couldn’t back out of the things she’d already admitted. Furthermore, she knew she’d be asked a lot more, soon, because they were just waiting for a truck convoy to take her to Tijuana, where she’d be handed over to the US authorities at the border.

She could see through the cell door to where her pack was sitting; if she just had that, and was on the outside for just a few minutes, she’d so get away.

Unfortunately, not even a body length away from her so-close pack, she could also see the local cop and his gun. Her efforts to engage him in a conversation in Spanish had been met with a curt
Callate, fleje
. Not a lot of negotiating you could do with that.

She didn’t know where she’d find it in herself to say,
Dad, it just seemed like I ought to fire this Stinger missile at that blimp—I mean aerostat.
Or maybe Aaron lied about that too and it really was a plain old blimp.

At four o’clock in the morning, not much moved in Raton, New Mexico; a few lighted signs had been on through the night, and the first few of the morning were just coming on as sleepy workers flipped the switches inside on their way to warm up grills, lay out sales charts, work through the night’s e-mail, or set up chairs.

Jason, sitting in the cold dark in Zach’s passenger seat, lonely, scared, and determined not to show it, watched the first guy at the Greyhound station enter by the orange glow of the all-night lights. The man immediately flipped on the old fluorescents, lighting up the plate-glass window with cold glare; a moment later, the little neon-tube lights that said BREAKFAST SPECIAL, HOT FRESH DONUTS THIS MORNING SO GOOD!, and FRESH COFFEE all flickered to life. The man began loading a coffee urn.

“I guess that’s my cue,” Jason said.

“Wait till he turns on the OPEN sign,” Zach said. “He looks like the mean type that’d leave you to freeze your butt off on the sidewalk till he was good and ready. And besides, the coffee’s not ready, and you’re going to need that. Might as well sit in here till they’re ready to serve your breakfast.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, it’s been one long crazy twenty-four hours, you know? We’re somewhere between bonded and crazy-glued.” Zach sighed. “This was not how I pictured Daybreak.”

“Me either. You think they’ll catch us? All of the Daybreak people, I mean, or most of us?”

Zach leaned back and considered. Jason liked that gesture, as if something he’d said was valuable. “I think they’ll try. More than we planned on. We figured by the time anyone knew about Daybreak, the Big System would be dead, and they’d have no way to find us or put out the word.

“Now people are going to find a lot more of us than they would have if whoever it was hadn’t murdered the vice president. How did that slip through our filters? Why didn’t the peers stop
that
? I mean, I personally quashed at least ten stupid, cruel ideas.”

Jason nodded. “I saw a bunch of notes from one guy who thought modern medicine was the biggest, evil-est part of the Big System, and he was trying to find people to help him wreck hospitals. Everyone I knew hug-mobbed the guy to chill him, focus him on acting for living things—but then he drifted away. What if he just found another AG to join, where they were even crazier? Are we gonna hear tomorrow that someone poison-gassed a whole hospital?”

“Peer guidance was supposed to prevent that.”

“Yeah, but every AG got to
pick
their own peers.” Jason slugged his fist into his palm. “We had the same problem my stupid-ass brother and father did, putting all our faith in procedures and organizations and our own good intentions, which is how Dad and Clayt end up supporting every stupid war and seeing the positive side of every ecocide. Yuck. I thought we were supposed to be
different
, you know?”

“Yeah. ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’ ”

“I’m guessing that’s your guy Jesus.”

“No, Psalm 146. Big one for Stewardship Christians. But what I meant it to say was, hey, haven’t we all said, all along, we’re animals like the other animals? I wouldn’t expect the dog to do everything perfect, either.”

“Yeah.” Jason thought. “But the real question is still, are they going to catch us?”

Zach said, “Yeah. I know. I was avoiding the question too.”

A bakery truck pulled up, and the man carried two racks into the bus station.

“Just now I bet the doughnuts are warm,” Jason pointed out, “and the guy in there is pouring himself coffee.”

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s time, and I should be getting home to Trish anyway, she’ll be worried silly. Got my number in case of trouble?”

“Yeah, but I’ll be fine. Thanks for the ride, and the company.” He reached for the door handle.

Zach said, “Just one thought, Jason. Don’t stop at home, grab your girlfriend and just take off—
don’t
stick around to see what your gun-crazy survivalist neighbors do. I have a
bad
feeling.”

“Yeah. You take care too. Happy Daybreak.”

“Happy Daybreak yourself,” Zach said, not sure why he felt so afraid to drive the three miles to his house.

To Jason, the fluorescent lights on the linoleum and Formica looked cold, but it was a lot colder out here in the dark. To the far, cold stars, he thought,
soon, soon.
After all, what was more natural than things getting dark and cold, just before Daybreak?

Many of the far-bedroom commuters, who lived twenty or even thirty miles from downtown Cincinnati, in towns like West Chester, Jericho, Bethany, Gano, and Tylersville, liked to leave work early, to return to the big house with a view of a golf course or a jogging trail, in time to go to the kids’ after-school stuff. For most office workers, leaving work at three thirty required starting at seven thirty, so by seven in the morning, southbound traffic on I-75, even here, well north of the city, ran heavy: a mix of sturdy family-friendly minivans, first-good-job new subcompacts, and I’ve-settled beaters. A few bright stars remained, and low in the sky, a crescent moon bowed to the east, pointing to the sun that was still an hour away. The horizon was a line of blue-black, and the trees along the highway, mostly stripped of leaves in late fall, broke the dim twilit sky to the east into myriad panels, slices, and wedges.