Genesis (24 page)

“Tests?”

“Yes, tests,” Yuang said. “But what you need to understand right now is that your immunity means you can stop Rosie’s aunt dying when I infect her, and Rosie herself when she is captured. Because she will be – you know that, don’t you?” He stirred his tea again. “There is no way she or Riley will be able to get in here and do whatever it is they think they can do.”

Pip stared at him, horror growing like a tumour in his chest. Yuang was going to infect Essie and then Rosie. He was going to …

His thoughts froze as one of the things Yuang had said really sank in:
We knew your parents didn’t have immunity
. Yuang had always told him he’d never been sure whether his parents were immune to the MalX or not – that he’d only found out when they caught it on a visit to Earth. Realisation struck and his stomach turned. Yuang had done the same to his parents as he was doing to Rosie’s dad. He had killed his parents as part of some kind of test.

Yuang was still sitting there, smiling.

“You bastard,” he said.

Yuang’s smile dropped. “Yes, you would think that, after the years I put in to mentoring you.”

Pip wanted to strike out, to put his hands around Yuang’s neck and squeeze.

“You are the cure, Pip,” Yuang said. “You are what we’ve been looking for.”

Everything was a lie. All that fear he’d had and he couldn’t even catch the disease. “And my parents?” he said.

“Unfortunate.”

Pip was shaking with fury.

“And what if you don’t get what you want?” he said. “What about the Enclave, the people here? Rosie’s aunt said you were going to destroy it.”

Yuang’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve put too much into this to risk losing it all now, Pip. But don’t worry, you’ll be safely away – and I think you will cooperate with me and not try any more of your tricks. If Rosie and her family die, it will be because of your stupidity.”

Rosie was woken by the sound of whispered arguing. They were still in the rover, bumping along the uneven Martian ground. Next to her, Riley was asleep, and in front, the two who’d rescued them, Chris and Jo, were arguing in low voices.

“We can’t,” Jo was saying. “You know what they’re like, it’s too dangerous.”

“But we can’t just leave them,” Chris hissed. “I’ve known him since–”

“I know,” Jo interrupted. “Don’t you think I know? I care about him too, but we have a child. If the Enclave–” She stopped, suddenly aware Rosie was awake.

“I heard everything, in case you were wondering,” Rosie said.

Jo’s mouth compressed. “It’s complicated, Rosie, we were surprised to get Riley’s call. We haven’t seen him for three years. Things have changed. There’s not much we can do.” She gave Chris a sidelong glance. “We have a child. If Helios found out–”

“I get it.” Rosie stopped her. They were on their own. She couldn’t blame Jo – not after what she’d seen Helios do to her own family.

“What’s his plan anyway?” Jo said. “He’s going to the Enclave, isn’t he?”

“We both are.”

Jo stared at her. “He’s taking you with him?”

“He can’t do it alone.”

Jo exchanged a glance with Chris. Rosie sighed. She was too tired to convince her. Jo saw her as a teenager who had to be protected.

“How far is it to the Enclave?” she asked Chris.

He cast a nervous glance to Jo. “It’s forty kilometres from the colony.”

Jo’s tone was reluctant as she said, “We’ll get you into Genesis – not in the rover, but somehow – and we’ll get you some clothes and food, but–”

“It’s okay,” Rosie interrupted her. “We’ll find a way.”

Jo was looking at her as if Rosie didn’t really understand what she was doing. “Wake Riley up,” she said.

Rosie shook his shoulder and he blinked awake, bleary-eyed.

“Hey,” Jo said, “we’re almost there. You all right?”

“Yeah.” But his voice was raspy and he moved awkwardly as he sat upright. “How are you, Jo?”

“Better than you. We’re going to drop you at the south entrance. We can’t take you inside with us. Helios must have someone in the Senate, because there’re bulletins about you all over the comwaves. They’re linking you to the death of a family on Earth, Shen or something.”

Juli’s family. Rosie felt the pain of losing her friend clutch at her again.

“That didn’t take them long.” He sounded resigned. “Do you have a gun?” he asked Jo. “I lost the one I had in the crash.”

“A gun?” Jo’s expression was tense with worry. “Riley, what are you planning?”

“There’s information in the Enclave I need, Jo. I have to get in before Helios blows up all evidence the Enclave existed.”

“Blows it up?” Jo looked alarmed.

Riley sighed and said softly, “Where have you been? You used to know how they operate.”

“That was years ago. I have a family now.”

“I know and I’m not asking you to get involved,” Riley said. “But I’m hoping I can stop them, or at least warn them and get some people out.”

“Are you sure you should be involving the kid?” Chris said.

Riley looked at Rosie. “No, but she’s older than my sister was when she went on the run. And I made a promise.”

“She’s a child, Riley,” Jo said. “She doesn’t know how–”

“How dangerous Helios is?” Rosie interrupted. “Yeah, I do actually.”

“You
think
you do.” Jo sounded annoyed.

“Jo.” Riley put a hand on her arm but she moved it away.

“Sacrificing children now, Riley?”

“I can’t do it alone. Are you willing to take her place?”

A red flush appeared on Jo’s cheeks. “Riley, you–”

“Jo,” Chris said. “Leave it. You won’t change his mind.”

“We’ll be out of your way as soon as possible,” Riley said, his gaze troubled, and Rosie had a sudden suspicion that he might be revising his promise. He had another thing coming if he thought he was going to leave her behind. She’d come too far now to go back, and there was no way she was leaving her aunt and dad at the mercy of Helios – no matter how much it scared her.

The Genesis colony was constructed as a collection of interconnected domes and covered ten square kilometres of Martian soil between the edge of the Marineris River and the soaring, craggy peaks of the Tharsis Mountains. As they approached it, Rosie glimpsed the tops of the four enormous transparent domes that edged the river, housing the public buildings and administration centres of the colony. She’d studied all the interactive pamphlets and maps Aunt Essie had on the place and felt like she knew it almost as well as anyone living there. She knew the domes were linked by a series of wide, arched thoroughfares planted with trees and shrubs imported from Earth. The scientists and top administrators had their own palatial domes east and west of the public area, all facing the river, while everyone else was housed in ordinary domes that faced out to the Tharsis Mountains and were connected to the colony by long covered walkways and cycleways.

There were four airlocked entries into Genesis: one provided access to an openair platform that overlooked the river; two others, east and west, were in large hangar-sized domes that stored rover and maintenance vehicles; and the last was at the southern end allowing access to the gardens in the valley.

It was there, behind a band of eucalypts, that Jo and Chris dropped them.

Rosie watched them drive away with some apprehension. Since Riley was wanted by the Senate, Jo had reluctantly given Rosie directions on how to get to their home in the colony. Rosie would meet her in a few hours and Jo would give her some food and painkillers, while Riley borrowed a rover and drove it around the perimeter. Rosie would then meet him in one of the farm hangars and they’d take the rover to the Enclave. Jo had used a sling from the medikit in the rover to stablilise his arm and given him some pain relief shots, but that was all, and Rosie worried about leaving him alone. What if he collapsed again?

She adjusted her breather and rubbed her hands up and down her arms and tried to convince herself she wasn’t freezing. Jo had given her a sweater and Riley one of Chris’s jackets. The sweater was dark green and slightly too long for her, and the jacket a bit tight for Riley, but they were better than nothing. By night the temperature would probably drop to zero.

They crouched behind a line of trees and scrub at the side of a dirt road and surveyed the airlock fifty metres away. The area around the entrance was clear, but between them and the airlock were patches of thigh-high greyish-green shrubs and uneven rocky ground. A dozen or so people were heading along a road that curved up from the valley farms. The road fell away sharply and it appeared as if the people were coming up out of the earth as they climbed up the steep incline.

“We still don’t have a plan,” Rosie said.

Riley was silent and she turned to him and saw something in his eyes she didn’t like. The look of a decision already made.

“What?” She spoke with caution.

“Rosie, I don’t think you should come with me.”

“Riley, you–”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he interrupted her. “Jo’s right, I am sacrificing you.”

“She’s not right,” Rosie insisted, but he only shook his head.

“She is. I shouldn’t have got you mixed up in this. This is my fight, not yours.”

“It’s not just your fight,” she said. “And you haven’t lost. We’ve still got the codes in the diary.”

“But they’re not much use without the code key. Without that I can’t get any of the proof about what Helios has done.”

“But you can stop Yuang from blowing up the Enclave,” Rosie said.

“Not if I’m locked up, and I won’t let you try to do it for me. It’s too dangerous.”

“So you’re just going to give up? What about my dad and Aunt Essie and all the other people in there?”

“I will go to Yuang and exchange myself for them. I’ll tell him he has no need to destroy anything, that I have nothing. I can convince him of that, I know I can. He’ll release your family, then you will leave Mars and forget about Helios.”

“Just like that?” She glared at him. “Dad and Aunt Essie might not even be alive any more.”

“Yuang won’t have killed them yet – he needs to make sure I don’t have anything. Besides, he has to follow some rules as well; he has bosses to answer to.”

“But I memorised the codes,” Rosie said desperately. “I can do what Aunt Essie was going to do – I can get in and stop the selfdestruct, turn on the evacuation alarm, help people get out.”

“No.” His lips thinned to nothing more than a line. “If they catch you – and Rosie, they will–”

“They’ll kill me?” She was too angry to be scared.

His voice was firm but quiet. “They’ll torture you to punish me.”

“Right, like what happened to you?” she said bitterly. “Do you want to tell me about that?”

He paused, saying nothing.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Rosie, I’ve changed my mind.”

“Changed your mind! Riley, you’re hurt. How are you going to do this alone? You promised. I–”

“Rosie, stop.” His expression was fierce, pained. “When Helios caught me three years ago they shut me in a cage. They broke my ankles, stripped skin from my body and injected me with surgical nanoblasts programmed to target my vital organs …” He paused. “By the time friends managed to get me out, I was sure I was going to die. I wanted to die. It took nine months and five surgeries for me to recover. I don’t have my own liver any more – I have one that was grown in a lab – and I still have to take injections to kill any nanoblasts that may have replicated themselves and be hiding in my system. So, no, I can’t – I won’t – expose you to that. I should never have let you come this far.”

Rosie’s heart thudded against her ribs. She could barely imagine what it had been like for him but she couldn’t just give up. “What if Yuang’s already done that to my dad, or Aunt Essie?” she said.

His expression softened. “What if that happens to you? Rosie, I think your family would rather you lived.”

She looked away. He was probably right but that didn’t stop the way she felt.

“You can do one thing,” he said. “This will go better if I tell Yuang I’m coming. When you go into the colony I want you to find a public comnet and contact him. I’ll tell you what I want you to say – and you need to stick to that and say nothing else. Don’t get drawn into conversation with him.”

“That’s it,” she said, “that’s all I’m allowed to do? Then I just wait?” She couldn’t keep the resentment out of her voice.

“It’s the safest way. You stay with Jo and Chris. I’ll take a rover from the farms in the valley out to the Enclave and your aunt can bring your dad and herself back in it.”

“If Yuang agrees.”

“He will.”

Rosie wasn’t sure of that but it was pointless to say that to Riley. He’d made up his mind but that didn’t mean she had to do what he said. She couldn’t believe he was going to give up so easily and let Helios get away with it. There had to be another way – she just had to think of it.

“So how do I contact Yuang – in the directory, is he?”

Riley ignored her sarcasm and handed her a scrap of paper. Scribbled on it was a series of numbers. “Enter these into the comnet, and it’ll connect you.”

“Where’d you get this?”