Thunder (6 page)

“You've been to the Mountain with your—with Varro and the boys. So you know how to get that far. I've got maps and drawings hidden away that Glade saved. You can take everything.” Mother scrambled to her dressing table and pulled out one of the long, narrow drawers at the top. She pressed her palm on the bottom. A false panel slid away and folded papers fell out.

Selah stared. She had never known of her mother's secrets and now there seemed to be so many. “Where did that come from?”

Mother hurried back to the bed and shoved the papers in the leather bag. “Glade built that for me when we were married. It was the only thing I brought from Georgia in my small wagon. It made me feel close to him, being able to lay my hands where he laid his.”

Selah watched her mother. Did she really know this person of secret drawers and furniture, of memories?

“I will give you all the credits I've saved from my sewing and weaving,” Mother said.

Selah snapped out of her thoughts. “But those are
your
savings. What if you need them?”

Mother took both of Selah's hands in her own. “Nothing is more important than your safety. I just wish I could help you more, but I don't know what to do.”

“Well, I'm not taking your bio-coin. I can survive on my own. I think. Is it all right if I'm afraid?” She was having trouble breathing. She didn't know if it was fear squeezing her lungs or the rumble invading her chest.

Mother brushed the stray hair back behind her ears. “Yes, my sweet. It is fine to be afraid. It will help keep you safe.”

“I don't know if I can bear not seeing you.” The words caught in Selah's dry throat. Who would love her? Offer her advice? Hold her hand when things were tough?

Mother placed her hand on Selah's chest. “Follow your heart. I will always be with you.”

Selah smiled weakly. It was easy to say but so hard to put into practice. She patted her mother's hand. “When I woke this morning, I wished for a whole new life and a chance at independence. I just didn't know it was going to happen this way.”

“I always knew there was a possibility. I just hoped this day would never come. But I'm confident I've prepared you for a life in this world, with years of lessons on plants, weapons, maps, and survival. You're a strong woman, Selah. You've learned well. I know you can survive.” Mother nodded.

“I'm not feeling very strong.” Selah rubbed a finger across her scar, then fisted both hands on her hips as her legs trembled. The leather bag dangled by the rawhide strings. “I'm feeling scared.”

Selah swung the backpack from her shoulder and let it fall to the ground. Like any other day, the birds twittered and she heard an occasional screech from the pair of hawks that made their home in the huge tree next to the larger barn. She would never hear them again. She would miss watching the nest grow in size every year, but maybe someday . . .

She slid onto the boulder at the end of the dusty road leading to their storage barns, pulled her knees up to her chest, and leaned back on her hands to drink in the scenery, wanting to commit every detail to memory. She stared at the east field. It was only June, but in a few more months the field would be sown with the flax that supported Mother's linen business. The sun sat low in the morning sky, creating long shadows along the tree line in the field. It looked like a line of soldiers. Were they watching over the body from yesterday? Her shoulders tightened at the thought. Her hands pressed onto the irregular surface as her fingers rubbed the rock. This would be the last time she could ever be here.

Her teeth began to rattle so she shut her eyes and clenched her jaw. Today should have been a day of celebration about coming of age. No school, the possibilities of joining the family business, and a whole host of adult endeavors she'd always relished the idea of doing. Well, all except getting married. A smile creased her lips as she guessed that plan was now off the table. The one bright spot in this mess.

Now she owned her freedom. Actually, she probably fit the category of fugitive better. Her hand went to her chest, fingering the reason. Looking down, she could see the leading edge of a wing peeking out below the scooped-out neck of her sleeveless top. The spot still sparkled with feeling, sometimes pounding like thunder. How could one single act like touching a stranger have caused this?

Tears welled in her eyes. Selah squeezed her eyes shut again and swallowed the lump forming in her throat. It wouldn't help to cry.

Bodhi Locke sat on a bale of hay in the darkened stall, watching the morning sun filter through the weathered barn boards. It created vertical shafts of light on the hay-strewn dirt floor, reminding him of containment bars. Jail. Seemed like that was working out to be his lot in life lately. His hands and legs were shackled, but he knew he could be free if he chose. Other than a very sore spot on his head, which he healed by concentrating on it, he didn't feel an immediate threat.

Last night he'd feigned unconsciousness and listened as the two men talked. If he let them carry him north before he escaped, he would be closer to finding others. He didn't
understand all of what was going on. There were still fuzzy parts to his thinking process. The girl from yesterday had shown him how he got here, and he was almost certain he understood why, but now he needed to know how to get home.

Bodhi cleared his mind and watched the dust filtering through the sun streams. He could feel others, a few close, others far away, and some very strange. The vibrations weren't always friendly and were at times even sorrowful. Like a beacon, they pulled him, guiding him in their direction. But it was not the Presence
. What kind of place has
others but no Presence?
In all his years he had never heard of such a land.

A scraping on the door cut into his thoughts. Bodhi looked up. Bright light streamed into the barn as the door swung out. One of the men from last night entered, looked at Bodhi, and strode around him to the other side of the stalls. He eased onto a bale of hay and pulled himself up to sit cross-legged directly across from Bodhi.

“You normally treat strangers like this?” Bodhi scowled and held up his shackled hands.

The man looked down at his own hands. “Sorry 'bout that, but you're not to be trusted.”

“Not to be trusted! You don't even know me!” Bodhi yelled.

The man flinched. “We know your kind. They all act the same.”

Bodhi bolted to his feet but was jerked back to the bale. He hadn't noticed the end of the chain tethered to the wall. “What do you mean,
my kind
?”

“Landers.”

“I don't know what a Lander is, or where I am.”

“I do,” the man said in a low voice.

Bodhi glared at him and sat forward. “What do you know?”

The man pulled away from the front of the bale. “Everything.”

“Are you going to tell me or do I have to bodily harm you?” Bodhi asked, raising his voice.

The man scrambled from the bale and ran for the door.

Bodhi softened his tone. “Wait! Come back.” He ground his lips together. He didn't have a clue about being diplomatic. That wasn't his style.

The man slowed to a stop in the open doorway.

Bodhi tried to remember how to act contrite. “I'm sorry. That's rude of me. What's your name?”

The man looked back, seeming hesitant to return.

“Please. Come back.” Bodhi feigned a smile, lifted his shackled hands in a submissive palms-up gesture, and pointed at the bale across from him. “Maybe we can trade information.”

The man cracked a smile, pulled the door shut, and walked back to where he'd been sitting. “What more can you tell me about Landers?”

“First, introductions. I'm Bodhi Locke. Who're you?” He knew the civility of common people, and although he'd never found a reason to need to practice it, it would come in handy now.

The man lowered his eyes. “I'm Cleon Chavez. You saved my sister yesterday from those rowdies from Waterside. Thanks. They're known for kidnapping young women, and captives don't come back.”

Bodhi thought for a second. “I got knocked out and trussed like an animal as a thank-you.”

Cleon grimaced. “Sorry, that's our brother Raza.”

“Why?”

“For the bio-coin.” Cleon shrugged.

“Bio-coin?” Bodhi pulled back. “You talking about money?”

“Yes, there's a large bounty on your kind.”

Bodhi stared. “Why?”

Cleon shrugged. “Don't know. The Company up north pays good for Landers keeping that mark on their foreheads.” He gestured at Bodhi's head.

Bodhi rubbed his forehead. “There're people like me
without
the mark?”

Cleon nodded vigorously. “Sure are, they're not worth spit. We're supposed to wait twenty-four hours and see if the mark stays put before we take 'em in.”

Bodhi's chest clenched. It had never occurred to him anyone could lose the mark of the Presence. Suddenly he grabbed his forehead. His breathing became labored. “Is mine still there?”

Cleon nodded. “Yep. It's right there. You'll make Raza real happy when he gets back with Father and the wagon.”

“They're not here?” Bodhi put on his best face. Testing the waters for later when they were closer to his objective. “Could I bribe you to let me go?”

Cleon chuckled. “It would make Raza powerful mad. Couldn't risk it.”

Bodhi grinned, trying to befriend him. “You're afraid of your brother?”

“Yes. He hates me as it is.”

That wasn't the answer Bodhi expected, but he decided
to take it further. “Never heard of brother hating brother. Why is that?”

Cleon looked down at his hands. “Not something I want to talk about with a stranger.”

Bodhi sat forward. He needed to work the friendship angle. The loop on his chains jangled on the floor, reminding him this wasn't one of his games. “Fair enough. Tell me more about the people like me. Do you know where we came from?”

Cleon leaned forward and put his hand near his mouth as if to shield the words. “I heard one say he came from the Kingdom, and he was sorry for the transgressions that got him sent here. Said he was going to spend the rest of eternity trying to atone for them.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because the guy sounded nuts and my father hates you people. I'd get a whippin' if he heard me talking about Landers to a Lander.”

Bodhi felt like he'd been punched in the chest.
Transgressions.
What had the man done? Why was he willing to atone? Bodhi knew what he'd done but didn't feel the need to beg for forgiveness. He figured there'd be some other way to get home than bow and scrape. It was his life and he was going to live it on his own terms.

Bodhi tamped down his anger. There was time enough for that later. Right now he needed to figure out how to get away once they got closer to his target. His head was getting clear enough to think, but it distressed him feeling others who were scared. He'd never felt them in fear before. “Did the guy say where home was?”

“He said across the ocean.”

“Ocean! Pacific or Atlantic?” Bodhi's head jerked in the direction of the door.

Cleon looked around and then back at Bodhi with a questioning look. He hopped up from the bale. “Someone's coming.”

The Mountain

Everling tensed, arms still raised.

As though it sneezed, a puff of dust rose about eight inches high along the full length of the desiccated body, then collapsed back in on itself. The body turned to a pile of dust.

Everling turned toward the examination tray and relaxed. All was accounted for. He'd learned by trial and error that tissue and objects moved from close proximity could survive the reclamation process. He sighed. There probably wouldn't be any better data from this subject than from the last few in this batch. He needed to dispose of the leftovers and get a new set of subjects right away. The serum trials on himself were netting results. The cure for Bethany's cancer was close.

He looked down. Some of the dust filtered from the table and onto the front of his shoes.

Treva Gilani returned. “Should I take it now, sir?”

Everling nodded then knocked the dust from his shoes. His head throbbed. He couldn't figure out how to stop this process from claiming subjects. “Yes, dispose of the dust and get these samples catalogued and into my lab.”

“Do you think you can re-create the sampling?” Stemple tapped some numbers into the virtual keyboard of his halo-tablet, and a 3-D model of the body appeared above its surface. He aimed the tablet at the samples on the cart. They appeared above the original image with laser leads showing where they came from in the body.

Everling stripped off his gloves. “Why didn't they call me when the subject first died? I lost precious time.”

“The attending intern stepped out for ten minutes to help in another lab,” Stemple said.

The doctor averted his glance. “I'm sorry for being short with you. I had such high hopes for this group. I know there are a few left, but we're going to have to start over.” He shook his head. “Do we have any new arrivals to cull DNA?”

Stemple waved his hand across the halo-tablet. The 3-D model faded and charts took its place. “All we have left are originals. They're just not compatible for creating sample groups.”

“Increase the bounty. There have to be more Landers around. Those idiot peasants need monetary encouragement.” Everling started to pace.

“I've researched our claim payments. Most of the incoming subjects are being located in Boroughs to the south of us.” Stemple held out his tablet.

Everling walked back to look at the screen. “Can you overlay a map?”

Stemple clicked something, and the human captures showed up as yellow dots on a topical map. The livable area outside the Mountain was nothing more than a ragtag band of settlements dotting the extreme East Coast from north to south.

“Orient me,” Everling said, waving a hand. Science was his field, not geography. He had no interest in what was left of the outside world.

Stemple rotated the map. “We're here. All the subjects we've gathered in the last fifteen years have come from this area.” His finger highlighted the yellow dots going south from the Mountain's position, approximately forty miles west of Washington, DC.

Everling studied the map. “Why are there none to the left of the longitudinal line?”

“Those are mountains. There aren't any settlements on the western side. Or at least we don't think so. Too much ash from the volcano over there. Historically it looked like an alien landscape. No one's ever gone back.”

The Sorrows had happened 150 years ago. Everling rarely thought back to his youth forty years ago, let alone to the Sorrows. His ancestors had been government workers who remained safely locked in Weather Mountain as the country's population succumbed to the ravages of the environmental catastrophes. Left to their own devices and without national leadership, most of the people outside perished, but his family had prospered in this closed environment.

Thinking about the events and the hundreds of millions of lives lost in one week's time brought no emotion. He could do nothing about the past, but he would control the
future. His longstanding project of enhancing the DNA signature of Mountain people had been set aside to focus on securing a future for his wife, but the results of one could help the other.

Everling stared off into space. “Have we tried using any more of our own patrols to capture Landers?”

“No, sir,” Stemple said. “Very ineffective. Last year we spent several months with AirStream units stationed at the beach areas most frequented as landings. A week after we suspended the patrols, peasants caught a Lander and turned him in. Remember the one who changed?”

Everling nodded. “Yes, that was the first time we learned the tattoo wasn't permanent on all Landers. To find that out after all these years was quite shocking. How many others have we missed?”

“You have to admit it was quite brilliant of the peasants to figure out they could get paid and be gone before the Lander's mark disappeared.”

“I believe it was just dumb luck. Those peasants were new to the hunt and didn't know any better. Acquiring the Lander right away gave us a chance to observe his change overnight.”

“I must admit it was surprising to find their DNA reverted to the same as ours after they lost the mark,” Stemple said.

“Agreed, and having no mark makes them useless.” Everling walked to the data board and pulled the data Stemple had just inputted. “The premise is very disconcerting, though.”

“What premise, sir?”

“That they could be among us and we can't tell the difference.”

Stemple looked up from his map, a frown etching his eyebrows together. “That
is
very disconcerting. There might be Landers in the Mountain and we'd never know about it.”

“Don't worry. We've never been infiltrated. Our lineage is very pure.”

Stemple pushed his eyebrows up. “If you say so, sir.”

Everling tweaked some figures in the data. “Notify the AirStream units traveling the area to up the rewards by 25 percent.”

Stemple's eyes widened. “That much, sir? We've never offered anywhere near that kind of compensation for Landers. How should we divide the payments?”

“Give them 25 percent bio-coin and 75 percent energy credits,” Everling said.

Stemple ran his palm over the data board's controls to activate the panel next to Everling's work. A list of comparisons flashed on the screen. He waved his hand across the panel to change the view to new orders.

“Hold on there.” Everling moved over to the screen. “What was that?”

Stemple ran a hand across his brow. “Just some calculations I was making on genetics.”

“I'll be the judge of what's important.” Everling gestured to the screen. “Put the data back up, please.”

Stemple drew his lips tight. His hand hesitated. A split second passed before he recovered his composure and called the data to the interactive screen.

Everling walked the length of the calculations, tweaking data on the screen. He clapped his hands together and spun to face Stemple with a broad grin. “You're brilliant! It's right
here in your third section. You've defined the missing progression between their DNA and ours.”

“I could see it, but I didn't understand why. We've genetically engineered farm animals and food grains with no problems.” Stemple ran a hand across his hair. “You're saying we need something to bridge the gap.”

Everling smiled. “A union.”

Stemple looked confused. “I'm not sure I understand.”

Everling stared at the board. “We need a child from a Lander.”

“Well, since that is obviously not possible I suggest—”

“Oh, but it is possible.” Everling rubbed his chin. “Never had a clue they'd be this important to my work.”

“You know where there are Lander children?” The color drained from Stemple's face.

“Get me a security team. I'll key in the biometrics and location of the subject,” Everling said as he tapped out the details on the halo-keys.

“What kind of team—JetTrans or AirStream? How far are they going?” Stemple asked as he manipulated the security screen to order a team.

“AirStream. They're going to Dominion Borough.” Everling moved to the far side of his lab and stared at the screen as the scanning microscope read the samples and built a 3-D model on the work surface.

“Doctor, I've done this experiment two dozen times. The telomerase in the Lander sample degrade when I introduce our DNA,” Stemple said. He flipped the test results onto the counter with a hint of frustration.

Everling kept his eyes on the layering model. “I've told you our only recourse is—”

“I won't accept it as the only recourse. We need to have other options.” Stemple ran his hand through his hair and paced.

“Then solve the Hayflick Limit. In the meantime I'm offering a bigger bounty for Landers and sending a team to claim the child.”

“Hayflick can't be solved. Telomeres only divide maybe a hundred times,” a female voice said.

Everling and Stemple swung in her direction. Treva Gilani stood near the doorway leading to the confinement quarters with her hands shoved in her lab coat pockets. Her auburn hair was still tied in the tight bun at the back of her head.

Everling looked over the rim of the glasses slipping down his nose. He figured a first-year lab worker was only as good as their experience time. “What do you know about telomeres, young lady?”

Treva squared her shoulders and stepped forward. “What do I know? I know the Hayflick Limit is the number of times a human cell will divide. I know the end caps on those cells are called telomeres, and every time the cell divides, those end caps get shorter until they die—thus bringing about the Hayflick Limit, which by human standards is about a hundred replications per cell. That's why we age. And I know that in Lander DNA, telomeres replicate forever.”

Everling took off his glasses and laid them on the counter. “Aren't you the lab tech who brought in the body? And the one who ushered away Ganston?”

Treva cleared her throat. “Yes, sir, I'm Treva Gilani. I have a bachelor's degree in genetics and I'm about to complete the same degree in microbiology. I could be an asset to your project.” As she flipped her head, the ponytail started to slip. She quickly maneuvered it back into the bun.

Stemple moved closer, his expression blank. “I haven't cleared you for those experiments.”

“As my professor used to say, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what you're doing.” The young woman stepped closer. Her hand rested on the computer table as she fingered the holographic keys. Several files opened, and she flicked her finger to virtually push the pages up to the screen on the wall.

“You're studying laminin, which holds organisms together.” She tapped the keys, opened another folder, and moved it up to the wall screen. “This experiment is for the telomerase enzyme to add DNA sequence repeats and keep those pesky telomeres from shortening themselves into extinction. When you add the two of them together, well, you're trying to find the proverbial fountain of youth.” She appeared proud of herself.

Everling balked. She was exceptional. With a scornful expression, he looked to Stemple.

“She can be trusted. I vetted her well before bringing her on board,” Stemple said.

Everling scowled. “When were you going to tell me about a microbiologist on staff?”

Stemple shrugged. “You've been so busy lately I've hardly time to tell you about work, let alone staff.”

“Sir, I could be an asset.” Treva crossed her arms and stood confidently.

“How old are you, child?” Everling asked.

“I'm twenty, sir.” Treva pressed her lips together.

“And you've already got your bachelor's degree?”

“Yes, sir, I was a child prodigy. I've been in college since I was thirteen.”

Everling took off his glasses. “Really? What is your IQ?”

Treva shrugged. “Last time they checked it was 165.”

Everling's eyes widened as he turned to Stemple for verification.

Stemple nodded.

“Well, young lady, we're not exactly looking for the fountain of youth. My wife has a form of radiation-induced cancer, and it will prove fatal in a very short time. I'm trying to extend her life until I can develop a cure.”

Treva thought a second, nodded, and moved back to the computer table. “I guess you've missed the latest papers by Borsen and Manhurst.” Her fingers slid through rows of university files she'd called up on the surface.

“The geneticists?” Everling moved toward the computer.

“Yes, their research shows certain cancer cells can be realigned by telomerase.” Treva closed the original files on the screen and inserted a new one.

Everling put on his glasses to study the research paper.

“So you can literally solve both problems if you can overcome Hayflick.” Treva brushed her bangs back from her eyes, looking satisfied.

Everling turned to Stemple. “Remind me to give you a raise for finding this child.”