Beneath the Gated Sky Read online

  There was a distinct physical resemblance between the families, but they pretended not to notice.

  With the ease of people on vacation, everyone became fast friends. For a long week, they had each other over for meals, went on daylong hikes together, played croquet with a newcomer’s passion, and fished the nearby river for its few remaining cutthroat trout.

  Porsche played her role perfectly.

  She wouldn’t betray her family twice, even by accident.

  Trinidad was less self-conscious. In public, he called her, “Po-lee-een,” as if joking; by contrast, he hated to hear his own jarrtee name. So much so that no one dared tease him with it.

  He loved making fun of their family’s precautions and the infectious paranoia.

  It seemed to be an old, much-practiced game between father and son.

  There was a daily argument about security issues and things less definite. Trinidad claimed that no one else in their little club lived so carefully. Not on the earth, at least. He was sick of never being given real freedom or trust. And Uncle Jack responded by quoting the Few’s protocols, in scrupulous detail, then when the protocols didn’t help, he would make the usual allusions to other’s past mistakes, never quite looking at his niece.

  Around the nightly campfire, adults blamed typical teenage rebellion. But Porsche found easy reasons to blame her uncle, too. He had always been a stiff, suspicious man, but he was worse than ever. If anything, the relative freedom of the earth gave him even more excuses to be paranoid. He was always whispering to the hidden eavesdroppers, making them examine every stranger who happened past their campsite. But that wasn’t enough. If Jack Vortune was sitting outside, he glared at the passersby with his own eyes, causing more than a few strangers to turn and hurry off in the opposite direction.

  “You never know when someone’s watching,” he reminded both families. “And even if you see the spying eyes,” he would add, “you’ll never know what’s behind them.”

  No one blamed Porsche for the past. And Aunt Me-meel—now called Kay Vortune—endeared herself to the young woman, going out of her way to make small talk, and occasionally promising that everyone in her family was happier here than they ever were on Jarrtee.

  “Including you?” Porsche asked.

  “Particularly me,” her aunt replied. “Oh, I know I was born jarrtee. But that’s an accident of biology. My spirit loves this sweet little world.”

  Even at his worst, Uncle Jack never seemed angry toward Porsche or said anything unkind. But there was a palpable distance between them, glacial and persistent, and it helped Porsche tolerate—and sometimes applaud—her cousin’s tiny rebellions.

  On their last day together, Porsche and Trinidad slipped away to a private mountainside, sunning themselves on a slab of dark volcanic rock. Passing hikers would have guessed they were fraternal twins, blessed with the same good looks and a closeness begun in the womb. Three years apart, yet they were utterly at ease with each other, trusting and happy. Porsche certainly felt happy. She was so relaxed that when Trinidad asked a taboo question—a question absolutely forbidden outside a secured enclosure—she simply closed her eyes, then opened them, answering as if everything were perfectly normal.

  “What do you know about the other worlds?” he asked. “The Few’s worlds, I mean. And be honest.”

  Very little, in truth. She could name dozens of nearby worlds, give schoolgirl descriptions of most, and if suddenly transported to any of them, she would know the basics of finding her way home again. But even a hundred worlds were nothing compared to millions. “I’m not old enough to travel far,” she explained. Then she proved that she could ask dangerous questions. “You know something, cousin. What is it?”

  He waited for a moment, grinning.

  “Deep inside the Few universe,” he said, “are the most ancient worlds. Worlds where we’ve lived for ages. At least since the earth was a sloppy wet newborn, very nearly.”

  She knew that already. Who didn’t?

  “We’ve been there for so long, we aren’t the Few anymore.” He shook his head, his voice growing louder. “We’ve become everyone, and we live openly, in total freedom.”

  Porsche glanced warily at the rocky slope below them, then above.

  “Every intrusion leading to a living world is left open permanently. You and I could walk and fly and swim and crawl our way from world to world. Pick an efficient route, and we could become two hundred species in an earth’s day.”

  She said nothing.

  Both of them looked up at the sun-washed whiteness of Greenland. After a long moment, Trinidad asked, “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  One kind of wonderful, yes.

  “I’d do anything to go there.” He spoke as if making a confession, as if there was something wrong in the soul that would want such things.

  Teasing him, Porsche said, “Anything?”

  But she didn’t mention the obvious: One life was too small to make that enormous journey.

  Then Trinidad said something even more astonishing, and strange. “Did you ever realize…you and I are part of an invading army.”

  “No!” she responded, in reflex. “That’s ridiculous…stupid!”

  He gave her a wink. “The Few are slow, patient conquerors.” The winking eye was bright against his tanned face and the gray-black rock. “We come here and prosper, and we make nice big families, and over a few million years, we’ll gradually, relentlessly make this planet our own. As human beings, maybe. As porpoises, but probably not. Most likely, as whatever follows these modified apes.”

  Trinidad was baiting her. He wanted to argue, she assumed. But that would increase the odds that someone would overhear them. “You’re entitled to your stupid opinions,” she announced, “but not to my stupid opinions.” She rose and began to goat-step her way down the slope, then ran casually back to the campground.

  Uncle Jack was waiting.

  He sat on a folding chair with a beer in one hand, eyes slicing through Porsche but not a word said. He finished the beer and started a second can before his son wandered into view. Uncle Jack set the beer down in the grass, then stood. As soon as Trinidad was in earshot, his father started talking, apparently to himself. In a low, bitter voice, he said, “I heard you. I can’t believe it. Talking that way, and the whole fucking world watching you—”

  For an instant, Trinidad’s cockiness faltered.

  Then with a teenager’s easy outrage, he straightened his back and let his eyes catch fire, crying out, “You were spying on me!”

  “Always,” his father rumbled. “I’m always watching you.”

  “Bastard! You had no right!”

  But he had every right, and people knew it. Not even Porsche came leaping to the boy’s defense. Standing at a safe distance, she watched them trade insults. The worst insult was when Uncle Jack used Trinidad’s jarrtee name. Trinidad took a swing at the large, powerfully built man, doubling him over with the first solid blow. Then Trinidad lost his fire, dropping his hands, standing motionless as his father found his breath, then his balance, shoving the boy down on his back and squatting on his chest, weeping great long tears, weeping as he slapped Trinidad’s face, and still weeping after Porsche and her father took him by the arms, dragging him away.

  The boy scrambled to his feet, his face reddened by the blows and the unbearable shame. Then his mother appeared at his side—a petite blonde with the perfect button nose of a doll—and she took Trinidad’s head and pulled it down to where she could press her mouth to his ear, whispering, then pausing for a moment, then whispering something else that seemed to calm him enough that finally, finally he was crying, too.

  The Vortunes made all the appropriate apologies, and the Neals pretended to be forgiving. Then the families promised to meet again next year, vacationing at the Grand Canyon, perhaps, or somewhere in Canada. Perhaps. With a year to plan, who knew where they would go?

  But the promise was never kept.

  Porsch
e’s father grew ill. Cancer was found during a routine examination. In total innocence, the purely human doctor remarked, “Except for the tumor, Mr. Neal, you’re in remarkable condition for a man of your age.”

  One testicle was removed, and tailored leukocytes were injected, hunting down any surviving traitors. The prognosis was excellent but not perfect. Father proved to be a durable, uncomplaining patient, except for the bad days, and he tried to remain philosophical, informing his family with a dry, over-practiced calmness that his fate was sealed one way or another, and if the worst happened, it would just help prove that they were humans, that they belonged here, genetic weaknesses and all, his bones in the ground and in the ground to stay.

  Father recovered during the summer, thankfully. And since the Vortunes were distant friends, it was decided to delay their next adventure for a year.

  But that never happened, either.

  “Why not?” asked Cornell.

  They were lying in bed, in the dark. It was a few hours after the basketball game. A front had come out of the northwest, bringing light snow and strong cold winds. Wind moaned against the window, rattling the old glass, making them speak louder than Porsche liked to speak, and slower, and with as much precision as the late hour allowed.

  “Why not?” Cornell repeated. Then he said, “No,” and placed a hand over her full mouth, saying, “I have better questions.”

  The wind lifted to a roar, then fell away.

  Then with a puzzled tone, he asked, “Why tell me this touching little story? And why tell it to me now?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  Instead, she pushed back the covers and rose, stepping toward the window. With the pressure of her palm, she kept the lower pane from shaking in its frame, and with a series of commands delivered in a whisper, in a mutated form of the City’s jarrtee, she engaged tiny machines that were scattered about the house and its snowy white yard.

  “What are you doing?”

  Porsche turned, her free hand moving to her mouth, one finger laid across it.

  Cornell didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  A surge of electricity traveled along Porsche’s body, telling her that the channel was open. Then she quietly and firmly said, “I need to meet with you.”

  Her lover nearly spoke, then hesitated.

  “Face to face,” she said. “Now.”

  There was a long pause, then her auditory nerves channeled a message straight into her mind.

  “I can’t meet this minute,” said the familiar, welcomed voice. “Is tomorrow soon enough, cousin?”

  9

  Early that next morning, Porsche announced that she was going shopping.

  “We need a table and chairs out here,” she said, pacing in the narrow, very empty room beside the kitchen. “Nothing fancy,” she promised. “Just a place to eat. Like Christmas dinner, for instance.”

  “Do you need help?” asked Nathan, stepping eagerly into the future dining room. “Because I’d be willing. If Mr. Kleck will let me out of today’s work—”

  “Take him!” Timothy shouted from the kitchen, over the hum of the microwave.

  “Thanks, no,” she replied. “Cornell’s already agreed to go.”

  Cornell was standing against the faded wallpaper, smiling thinly, not quite looking at anyone’s face.

  “A second helper, maybe?” his father persisted.

  “Sorry.”

  Timothy joined them, stirring a bowl of reheated chili. “I need somebody’s help,” he grumbled. “Two billion dollars in discretionary funds are missing from the agency’s ledgers. To me, that’s more fun than any furniture.”

  “You’ve got me,” Nathan pledged.

  Timothy’s eyes grew large and round, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “Back soon,” Porsche promised everyone.

  “Find something nice,” was Nathan’s parting advice.

  For an instant, she imagined a long and ornate marble table filling the narrow room, its heavy fluted legs carved with the symbols of a vanished family. She halfway laughed at herself, then felt a hand pressing against the small of her back.

  “Let’s go,” said Cornell. “Before the best deals are gone.”

  Porsche drove. The country lay brown and dead beneath a thin coat of dry snow, and above, a serene blue sky freshly arrived from the Arctic. Rutted roads gave way to a two-lane highway. Cornell happened to ask if anyone was following them. The onboard eavesdroppers couldn’t find anyone, but of course there were many ways to follow. He nodded and dipped his head, looking toward the western sky. Then with a hand over his mouth, he asked, “Who exactly am I going to meet?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “So mysterious,” he observed. “For security?”

  “No,” she replied. “For the sake of drama.”

  Eighty miles later, they reached the interstate, and continued south for twenty miles of tired pavement. A truck stop’s towering windmill promised biofuels and twenty-four-hour service. Porsche pulled off and past the truck stop. A terrifically bland metal building, long as an aircraft carrier, wore a proud banner declaring:

  ANTIQUES CRAFTS TREASURES

  Porsche parked between out-of-state cars.

  “This really is a shopping trip,” Cornell muttered. “Isn’t it?”

  The outdoor cold was replaced with overheated, desert-dry air and the stink of assorted potpourris. The store’s front was packed with Christmas wreaths and Santas made from cornstalks, porcelain candleholders, and smiling robotic bears that disobeyed hundreds of commands. Stocky Midwestern women marched up and down the narrow aisles, hunting mythical bargains. Old high-backed chairs were tucked into the corners, bored husbands filling most of them, their sleepy eyes popping open when they saw Porsche striding past.

  The bulk of the furniture was in the back, tables and break-fronts, rolltop desks, and mismatched chairs all wearing chip-coded tags, the prices falling strategically short of exorbitant. What could have been another bored husband sat behind an enormous table, elbows on the glossy wood, folded hands obscuring his mouth, his clothes utterly in keeping with the scene. But he was younger than most of the men, and his eyes were already wide open when Porsche appeared. He glanced at her, for an instant, then his eyes settled on Cornell, no trace of surprise or anger showing. But his eavesdroppers would have already warned him: Without permission, she’d brought her lover on this sudden jaunt.

  The hands dropped, revealing a face younger than its years. Combed and cleaned but still unruly masses of honey-brown hair framed the boyish face. His features were Porsche’s features, but sharpened by testosterone. The resemblances were obvious enough that Cornell stopped short, then said, “Trinidad,” under his breath.

  Porsche dropped into the hard chair beside him, trying to smile, jarrtee-fashion. Then she tugged on Cornell’s arm until he sat, saying, “My famous cousin.”

  “And this is your Cornell,” said Trinidad. He offered a long hand, then clasped his other hand around Cornell’s, pumping it several times as he said, “I was wondering when we’d meet, Mr. Novak. How are you?”

  “Surprised,” Cornell confessed.

  “I know the feeling.” A big laugh was negated with a hard glance at his cousin. “What’s the word I want, Porsche? Caution? Protocol? What?”

  She didn’t care if he was angry. And besides, he could have slipped away the moment he saw Cornell coming.

  “Oh, well,” said Trinidad, offering an understanding smile.

  Then Cornell asked, “So…do you two meet often?”

  “A few other times,” Porsche told him. “As needed.”

  Cornell was sitting on her right, and for the first time today, he held her hand. “As needed?”

  “Didn’t she mention it? I’ve followed my father into the business.” Trinidad laughed quietly, earnestly.

  “The business,” said Cornell.

  “Knowing odd facts, doing odd favors.” He paused, watching an elderly woman shuffle past. Then, “I usu
ally give my help across secure lines of communication. But sometimes it’s nice to see my favorite cousin face-to-face.”

  “What kind of help?”

  No one hurried to answer.

  “Sorry,” said Cornell. “Is that impolite?”

  “Horribly, and I forgive you.” Trinidad offered a gracious smile and wink, then said, “Help is a vague term, I know. What it means, in essence, is that if you’re looking in the wrong places for information, perhaps I can suggest better places. But only occasionally, in special circumstances. Of course.”

  Cornell exhaled, then said, “You’ve got some enormous tools, I bet.”

  Again, silence.

  “We were discussing those tools just yesterday, in fact. At least Timothy was.” Cornell waited for a half-moment, then asked, “What makes a special circumstance?”

  “Whatever happens,” Trinidad replied, “no one should be able to point a finger at us.” He couldn’t have sounded more patient. Offering a wise smile, he reminded everyone, “We have limits. Not strict limits. Not drawn in exact lines. But they’re general guidelines that have been proven in countless situations.”

  “You want to remain hidden,” Cornell mentioned. “I know. And you don’t want to interfere in human affairs.”

  “Oh, we want to interfere. Just so long as we can avoid the perception of being busybodies.”

  “Either way,” Cornell allowed, “you know your needs better than I do.”

  “I love Porsche.” Trinidad leaned forward, his expression earnest. Determined. “You know, of course, that she was helping us when she met you. When she chose you. And she’s chosen her current life. As long as her goals don’t conflict with ours, and as long as we avoid everyone’s ire, we can keep helping you.”

  “That sounds pretty vague,” Cornell observed.

  “We’re exceptionally good with things vague,” Trinidad countered.

  Cornell was watching Trinidad’s hands, watching the strong fingers tap the polished old wood. Then with a voice that Porsche could barely hear, he whispered, “I’m sorry. I think you’re lying to me.”