The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel (70 page)

“Let’s make snow angels,” she said.

Kate had never done this. They lay down side by side, their bodies enveloped in whiteness and the tips of their fingers just touching. Above them the sun and sky looked down in witness. They moved their limbs back and forth and rose to inspect the imprints. Sara explained what angels were: they’re us.

“That’s funny,” said Kate, smiling.

The serving girl, Jenny, would be bringing lunch; their time in the snow was at an end. Sara imagined the rest of the day: Lila lost in fantasy,
leaving the two of them alone; wet clothing drying on racks by the fire, Sara and her daughter snuggled on the sofa and the sweet exchange of heat where their bodies touched and the hours of stories she would read—
Peter Rabbit
and
Squirrel Nutkin
and
James and the Giant Peach—
before the two of them drifted together into a sleep of intertwining dreams. Never had she been so happy.

They were walking back to the entrance when Sara glanced up to the window and saw that the drapes were pulled aside. Lila was watching them, her eyes concealed behind dark glasses. How long had she stood there?

“What’s she doing?” Kate asked.

Sara summoned a smile to her face. “I think she was just enjoying watching us.” But inside she felt a spark of fear.

“Why do I have to call her Mummy?”

Sara stopped in her tracks. “What did you say?”

For a moment the girl was silent. Melted snow was dripping off the branches.

“I’m tired, Dani,” Kate said. “Can you pick me up?”

Unbearable joy. The girl’s weight was nothing in her arms. It was the missing part of her, come home. Lila was still watching from the window, but Sara didn’t care. Kate wrapped her arms and legs tightly around her, and in this manner, Sara carried her daughter out of the snow and back to the apartment.

Sara had received no messages; every day she looked for the inverted spoon, the note tucked under the plate, finding none. Jenny came and went, depositing her trays of bread and cornmeal and soup and wordlessly scurrying away. Having virtually never left the apartment except to take Kate to the courtyard, Sara had glimpsed Vale only once, when Lila had sent her to look for a maintenance worker to unplug the tub’s drain. He was walking down the corridor in the company of two other cols, including the jowly one who had met them at the elevator on Sara’s first day. Vale had passed right by her. As ever, his disguise—which was really just a way of carrying himself, the confident saunter of his rank—was absolutely seamless. No recognition occurred between them; if Vale knew who she was, he gave no sign.

She wasn’t supposed to send a message on her own except for an emergency, but the lack of contact left her anxious. Finally she decided to risk it. There was no loose paper in the apartment, but of course there were the books. One night after Lila had gone to bed, Sara tore a small
piece from the back of
Winnie-the-Pooh
. The larger problem was finding something to write with; there were no pens or pencils in the apartment. But in the bottom drawer of Lila’s dressing table she found a sewing kit with a cushion of needles. Sara selected the one that looked the sharpest, jabbed it into the tip of her index finger, and squeezed, summoning a bead of blood. Using the needle as a makeshift pen, she scrawled her message onto the paper.

Need meeting. D
.

The following day, when Jenny came to collect her lunch tray, Sara was waiting. Rather than allow the girl to simply whisk it away as usual, Sara lifted the tray from the table and held it out to her, making eye contact and then darting her glance downward, lest the point be missed.

“Thank you, Jenny.”

Two days later came the reply. Sara secreted the note into the folds of her robe, waiting for a private moment. This didn’t happen until later in the day, when Lila napped. She was close to the end of her cycle now, parched and infirm and out of sorts; soon Guilder would be coming with the blood. In the bathroom Sara unfolded the slip of paper, on which was written a time and place and a single sentence of instruction. Sara’s heart sank; she hadn’t realized she’d have to leave the Dome. She would need to secure Lila’s permission under some credible pretext; if she didn’t get it, she had no idea what she’d do. With Lila in her impaired state, Sara wondered if the woman would even comprehend the request.

She broached the subject the next day while she was washing Lila’s hair. A few hours off, was how she put it. An outing to the market. It would be good to see a few new faces, and while she was there she could look for some special oils or soaps. The request aroused in Lila a palpable anxiety; she’d become more clingy recently, barely letting Sara out of her sight. But in the end she yielded to the gentle force of Sara’s argument.
Just don’t be too long
, said Lila.
I never know what to do without you, Dani
.

Vale had paved the way; at the front desk, the col handed her the pass with a perfunctory warning that it was only for two hours. Sara stepped into the wind and headed toward the market. Only cols and redeyes were allowed to barter there; currency took the form of small plastic chips in three colors, red, blue, and white. In the pocket of Sara’s robe were five of each, part of the compensation that Lila doled out to her every seven days, furthering the fiction that Sara was a paid employee. The snow had been pushed from the sidewalks in what had once been the town’s small commercial area, three blocks of brick buildings adjacent to the college. Most of the city went unused and abandoned, fading into soft decay;
nearly all of the redeyes, except for senior staff, lived in a mid-rise apartment complex at the south end of downtown. The market was the heart of the city, with checkpoints at either end. Some of the buildings still bore signs indicating their original function: Iowa State Bank, Fort Powell Army-Navy, Wimpy’s Café, Prairie Books and Music. There was even a small movie theater with a marquee; Sara had heard that cols were sometimes permitted to go, to watch the handful of movies that were shown over and over again.

She displayed her pass at the checkpoint. The streets were vacant save for the patrols and a handful of redeyes, strolling in their luxuriously heavy coats and sunglasses. Shielded by her veil, Sara moved in a bubble of anonymity, though this sense of security was, she knew, a dangerous illusion. She walked at a pace that was neither fast nor slow, her head down against the cold gusts that whipped up from the streets and around the corners of the buildings.

She came to the apothecary. Bells tinkled as she stepped inside. The room was warm and fragrant with wood smoke and herbs. Behind the counter, a woman with a scrim of gray hair and a puckered, toothless mouth was bent over a scale, measuring out minute quantities of a pale yellow powder and funneling them into tiny glass vials. She lifted her eyes as Sara entered, then darted them to the col lingering by a display of scented oils.
Be careful. I know who you are. Don’t approach until I get rid of him
. Then, speaking in an elevated, helpful voice: “Sir, perhaps you were looking for something special.”

The col was sniffing a bar of soap. Mid-thirties, not unhandsome, broadcasting an air of vanity. He returned the soap to its place on the display. “Something for a headache.”

“Ah.” A smile of assurance; the solution was in hand. “Just a moment.”

The old woman selected a jar from the wall of herbals behind her, spooned the dry leaves into a paper package, and handed it to him over the counter. “Dissolve this in warm water. Just a pinch should do it.”

He surveyed the package uneasily. “What’s in it? You’re not trying to poison me, old woman?”

“Nothing more than common dillonweed. I use it myself. If you want me to sample it first, I’d be glad to.”

“Forget it.”

He paid her with a single blue chip; the woman followed him with her eyes as he departed to a chime of bells.

“Come with me,” she said to Sara.

She led her to a storage room in the back with a table and chairs and
a door to the alleyway. The woman told Sara to wait and returned to the front of the store. Several minutes passed; then the door opened: Nina, dressed in a flatlander’s tunic and dark jacket and a long scarf that wrapped the lower half of her face.

“This is incredibly dumb, Sara. Do you know how dangerous this is?”

Sara stared into the woman’s steely eyes. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how angry she was.

“You knew my daughter was alive, didn’t you?”

Nina was unwinding the scarf. “Of course we knew. That’s what we
do
, Sara: we know things, then we put the information to use. I’d think you’d be happy about it.”

“How long?”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes, damnit, it matters.”

Nina gave her a hard look. “All right, suppose we’ve known all along. Supposing we’d told you. What would you have done? Don’t bother to answer. You would have gone off half-cocked and done something stupid. You wouldn’t have made it ten steps into the Dome without blowing your cover. If it’s any consolation, there was a good deal of discussion about this. Jackie thought you should know. But the prevailing opinion was that the success of the operation came first.”

“Prevailing opinion. Meaning yours.”

“Mine and Eustace’s.” For a moment, Nina’s expression seemed to soften. But only for a moment. “Don’t take it so hard. You got what you wanted. Be happy.”

“What I want is to get her out of there.”

“Which is what we’re counting on, Sara. And we’ll get her out, in time.”

“When?”

“I think that should be obvious. When all of this is over.”

“Are you
blackmailing
me?”

Nina shrugged off the accusation. “Don’t misunderstand me—it’s not something I’m particularly averse to. But in this case, I don’t have to.” She looked at Sara carefully. “What do you think happens to those girls?”

“What do you mean, ‘girls’? My daughter’s the only one.”

“She is
now
. But she’s not the first. There’s always another Eva. Giving Lila a child is the only way Guilder can keep her calm. Once they reach a certain age, though, the woman loses interest, or else the child rejects her. Then they get her a new one.”

A wave of dizziness filled Sara’s head; she had to sit down. “How old?”

“Five or six. It varies. But it always happens, Sara. That’s what I’m
telling you. The clock is ticking. Maybe not today, or even tomorrow, but soon. Then off to the basement she goes.”

Sara forced herself to the next question: “What’s in the basement?”

“It’s where they make the blood for the redeyes. We don’t know all the details. The process starts with human blood, but then something happens to it. They change it somehow. There’s a man down there, a kind of viral, or so it’s said. They call him the Source. He drinks a distillate of human blood, it changes in his body, something different comes out. You’ve seen what happens to the woman?”

Sara nodded.

“It happens to all of them, but it’s slower in the men. The blood of the Source rejuvenates them. It’s what keeps them alive. But once your daughter goes down there, she’ll never come out.”

A storm of emotions roiled inside Sara. Anger, helplessness, a fierce desire to protect her daughter. It was so intense she thought she might be ill.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“When the time comes, we’ll tell you. We’ll get her out. You have my word.”

Sara understood what Nina was asking. Not asking: telling. They had maneuvered her perfectly. Kate was the hostage, and the ransom would be paid in blood.

“Hate her for it, Sara. Think about what she does. The moment will come for all of us, myself included, just like it came for Jackie. I’ll go willingly when I’m asked. And unless this thing comes off, your daughter is on her own. We’ll never be able to reach her.”

“Where is it?” Sara asked. She didn’t have to be clearer than that; her meaning was obvious.

“It’s better if you don’t know yet. You’ll receive a message the usual way. You’re the linchpin, and the timing matters.”

“What if I can’t do it?”

“Then you die anyway. And so does your daughter. It’s just a matter of when. I’ve told you about the how.” Her eyes were looking deep into Sara’s. There was no compassion anywhere inside them, only an icy clarity. “If this goes according to plan, it will be the end of the redeyes. Guilder, Lila, all of them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Sara’s mind had gone utterly numb. She felt herself nodding, then saying, in a faint voice, “Yes.”

“Then do your duty. Do it for your daughter. Kate, is that her name?”

Sara was dumbstruck. “How did you—?”

“Because you told me. Don’t you remember? You told me her name the day she was born.”

Of course, she thought. So much made sense now. Nina was the woman from the birthing ward who’d given her the lock of Kate’s hair.

“You may not believe me, Sara, but I’m trying to right a wrong here.”

Sara wanted to laugh. She would have, if such a thing were still possible. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Maybe so. But those are the times we live in.” Another searching pause. “You have this inside you. I know it when I see it.”

Did she? The question was meaningless. Somehow she would have to find the strength.

“Do it for your daughter, Sara. Do it for Kate. Otherwise she has no chance.”

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