“They wouldn’t shoot if I sent them a message to tell them who I was.”
I stared at him. “How are you planning to do that? Whistle some Morse code at them, or use smoke signals?”
“I can use my link to the Earth data net to message people,” said Tad. “Once Donnell and Machico found out I was webbed, I thought they’d realize that. They haven’t said a word about it though. Perhaps they thought I could only message other people who were webbed, and of course there aren’t any others now.”
I stared at him, too stunned and angry to speak.
“Phoenix said I mustn’t mention it,” Tad continued, “because we’d no idea how you’d react, but I need to explain how I’ve been messaging the …”
My anger finally broke through into words. “You’ve been secretly messaging people? Who have you been contacting? What have you said? Have you been talking to the citizens behind Fence about us?”
Tad gave an urgent shake of his head. “No. I’ve only sent messages to the people running the interstellar portals at Earth America Off-world. Remember that Phoenix, Braden, and I had flown off in the aircraft and not come back. I had to tell people we were alive and well, or they’d have assumed we’d crashed and sent word to Adonis that we were dead.”
He paused for a second. “Think how our families would have felt. My relationship with my grandfather is problematic at best, but the man’s nearing his hundredth. When my father died, it wasn’t just a devastating personal blow, but it wrecked all the plans to recreate portal technology as well. My grandfather rebuilt everything centring it on me. If he heard I was dead too, then the shock would kill him.”
I tried to force my voice back under control. “What have you told the people at America Off-world?”
“That we were being cared for by a group of people still living in New York. That you were struggling to survive yourselves, but you were sharing what you had with us. That we should be able to reach a nearby settlement in the spring.”
“You didn’t mention the Earth Resistance, or the divisions, or …?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Tad. “I knew anything I said would be passed on to Adonis. I didn’t want to frighten my grandfather or cause trouble for you. I tried to give the impression we were staying with a group of especially stubborn citizens who’d never left New York.”
He waved both hands. “Earth America Off-world is entirely run by teams of off-worlders. They accepted what I said without asking any questions. I’m sure they don’t even know the Earth Resistance are still in New York.”
I abandoned any attempt to stay calm. Thaddeus Wallam-Crane the Eighth was an utter fool. “They do know we’re in New York, Tad! My brother told them all about us, and they bombed the New York portal relay centre to stop us using portals!”
“Yes, but that was six years ago.”
I groaned. “You think six years is long enough for people to forget about us?”
“No. I told you before that there was no mention of the bombing, or the deal with your brother, on the Earth data net. That means it was done without official approval, by a few individuals who hated the Earth Resistance. Everyone involved must have gone back to their own worlds years ago.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Yes, I can,” said Tad. “Off-worlders hate coming to work on Earth, because their only contact with friends and family is by recorded messages sent through portals on data chips. Assignments are only for one year.”
“Oh.” I thought that over for a minute.
“Nobody has mentioned the Earth Resistance to me,” added Tad. “They just keep talking about the angry messages they’re getting from Adonis about the aircraft I stole.”
I blinked. “You came to New York in a stolen aircraft?”
Tad sighed. “Yes. I hoped that no one would ever find out it was missing. I’d faked some documentation about it going off for six weeks for essential maintenance work. I thought that would be long enough for us to do what we needed and return the aircraft before anyone started asking questions, but our quarantine period was extended because of …”
I lifted my right hand to stop him. “I’m not interested in how people on Adonis found out you’d stolen their aircraft. You haven’t sent messages to anyone other than the people at America Off-world?”
“No.”
“But you could do?”
He nodded. “I could send a message to the citizens at Bear Mountain. Tell them that I’m coming so they wouldn’t shoot at the boat.”
I had a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. Hannah had been my best friend for the whole of my life. It had been a huge blow to realize that she’d betrayed me to Cage. I’d only known Tad for a few days, and he wasn’t my friend but my enemy, but for some reason his betrayal hurt me even more than Hannah’s had done.
“Yes, you can take the boat upriver, Tad,” I said, in a cold voice. “You can send the citizens a message. You can go to Bear Mountain, use their portal to travel to America Off-world, and then go back to Adonis. I’m injured and helpless, so I can’t do anything to stop you.”
I gave him a bitter look. “When you steal the boat, are you planning to kill me, or just abandon me here? Don’t pretend to yourself that abandoning me wouldn’t be murder too. Even if I was uninjured, the odds are that I’d starve, freeze to death, or get eaten by a falling star long before I made it back to the Americas Parliament House.”
“Do you really believe I’d do anything to hurt you?” Tad demanded. “Do you think I’d leave Phoenix and Braden behind in New York while I go back to Adonis alone? Do you consider me so inhumanly selfish?”
I looked at his wounded expression, and realized I’d been a fool. Tad had just fought off Cage to help me. Of course I could trust him.
“No. Sorry. It was stupid of me to accuse you like that, but I’m in shock after what happened with Hannah. I told her all my secrets, I believed everything she told me, and now I find she’s been working for Cage for the last six years.”
Tad seemed to calm down. “I can see that would hit you hard.”
“Yes. My head is still reeling from it. I keep thinking about our last day fishing together, remembering how I told her about Cage wanting to marry me and become an officer. Hannah pretended to be shocked at the news, but I’m sure Cage had warned her about it in advance. Everything I said to her that day must have been reported back to him.”
I paused. “I don’t trust my own judgement any longer. When Hannah said painful things that hurt me, I thought it was because she was my friend and she felt she had to warn me about unpleasant truths. Looking back now though, it’s obvious that Cage had ordered her to undermine my confidence, and isolate me from my father and the rest of the Resistance.”
I pulled a face. “Hannah did a great job of both those things. She’s still doing a great job at undermining my confidence even now. She’s got me so shaken that I accused you of planning to murder me only hours after you’d rescued me from Cage. I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly for that yet.”
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly for rescuing me from being thrown off the roof either,” said Tad. “That doesn’t matter. Nobody does that sort of thing because they want to be thanked. They do it because it’s not possible to do anything else. I didn’t think I could win a fight against Cage, but I couldn’t stand there watching him torture you when …”
His voice suddenly changed and he started talking in weirdly rushed sentences. “Blaze, I’ve been telling myself I have to be sensible. Phoenix has been telling me I have to be sensible. Chaos, even Braden has been telling me I have to be sensible! I’ve been trying to do that because I thought I was the only one feeling this way, but the way you screamed at me when I tried fighting Cage …”
He broke off and looked at me expectantly. I’d been feeling tense ever since I walked into the boathouse and saw Cage waiting for me. I felt even more tense now, but it was a very different sort of tension.
&nbs
p; “Admit it, Blaze,” said Tad. “It isn’t just me caring about you, is it? There’s some emotion on your side as well.”
I’d been trying to ignore what was happening between myself and Tad, but there are times when you can’t hide from your own feelings. The moment in the boathouse, when I thought Cage was going to beat Tad to death, had been one of them. Tad could be incredibly annoying, with his unconscious arrogance and unending questions, but beneath that was a core of deeply sensitive humanity.
“I may not be totally indifferent to you,” I said, “but nothing can happen between us. We literally belong to different worlds. In the spring, we’ll go to Fence and say goodbye. You’ll be on one side of its barricades and I’ll be on the other. After that, you’ll go back to Adonis and I’ll stay on Earth.”
“Something has already happened between us,” said Tad. “We’ve stopped pretending our feelings aren’t real, and we’re talking about them. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
“What?” I asked, utterly bewildered.
“Sorry, that’s a centuries old phrase that my grandfather uses. I meant that now we’ve started this conversation, we really have to finish it. My idea wasn’t to go to Bear Mountain alone, but to take you, Phoenix and Braden with me. All four of us would go to America Off-world together. The doctors there could give you proper advanced medical treatment for your injured arm, so it would only take a couple of days for it to heal, and then we could all go off world together.”
“We’ve had this conversation before, Tad. No colony world would accept Sean Donnelly’s daughter.”
“Last time we had this conversation, I couldn’t say some things. Now I can. I’m Thaddeus Wallam-Crane the Eighth. I’m rather unpopular on Adonis right now, but I still have a lot of influence on other worlds.”
I frowned. “Why are you unpopular on Adonis? Because you stole the aircraft?”
Tad shrugged. “It’s more because of the funding issue. My grandfather promised the Adonis Government unrealistically fast results if they funded my research and gave me all the resources I needed.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Forget about that. My point is that I’ll be going to Zeus, capital planet of Beta sector, to continue my work with their Fidelis Project. I can take you there with me. They may argue about you being Sean Donnelly’s daughter, but I can talk them into accepting you. Once we’re safely on Zeus, you can take all the time you need to decide whether you want us to try having a relationship or not. My goal is to give you the chance of a new life on a new world. Whether you choose to spend that new life with me, someone else, or on your own, is entirely your choice.”
I sighed. “Tad, that’s an incredibly generous offer, but I can’t go with you. It’s not just that we belong to different worlds. We have nothing in common. You’re fabulously important and wealthy, while I’m a scavenger from the New York ruins.”
“I think I have more in common with you than anyone I’ve ever met,” said Tad. “My future was decided for me before I was born. So was yours. I’m the heir of the inventor of the portal. You’re the daughter of the leader of the Earth Resistance. We’re both living our lives in the shadow of legends.”
“We’re enemies,” I said.
“We’re enemies with feelings for each other. We aren’t the first to be in that situation. It happened to your parents. When Donnell arrived in London, he was on the opposite side to your mother, but they made it work. We can make this work too.”
I shook my head. “My parents made it work while they were together, but their relationship fell apart when Donnell left for New York.”
“Which is exactly why we mustn’t split up,” said Tad. “I can’t stay on Earth, because I have to re-invent portal technology to save civilization. That isn’t possible here, because Earth doesn’t have enough people, experts, or manufacturing capability any longer.”
“You can’t stay,” I said, “and I can’t go. Earth is my world.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” said Tad. “I can’t break free from my duty, I’ve got five hundred worlds to save, but you could come to Zeus with me. There’s no point in you sacrificing your life for a cause that was lost before you were born. Donnell would tell you that himself.”
Tad leaned eagerly towards me. “If we go back to the Parliament House now, we’ll arrive when everyone’s out hunting. We could sneak back up to the top floor of the Resistance wing, wait until Donnell’s back, tell him how I can send messages and explain my plan. I’m sure he’d agree to let the four of us go to Bear Mountain. He loves you and wants you to have the best possible life.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said. “Donnell would agree to your plan whatever the consequences for him and the alliance, but I can’t let him do that. It’s not just that Earth is my world and I don’t want to leave it. It’s that if you, Phoenix and Braden go off world now, then a lot of people will die.”
Tad frowned. “But Cage is planning to attack you as a way of harming Donnell. Surely taking you off world with us would help the situation.”
“It would help the situation now,” I said, “but remember there’s a firestorm coming. Everyone has to leave New York in the spring or burn to death. They’ll need to go alongside Fence to reach Philadelphia, and Donnell’s counting on using you three off-worlders to negotiate safe passage. Without you, he’d either have to try fighting a way through, or take a huge detour to avoid Fence entirely.”
I paused. “Either way, a lot of people would die, Tad. Fighting laser weapons with bows would mean quick deaths. Detouring round Fence would mean the deaths came slower but just as inevitably. The longer the journey, the more food needed, the more danger of hitting impassable terrain, places where radioactive or chemical waste have been dumped, or just stumbling across another armed settlement. Once the alliance had sick or injured people to carry, travelling would become even slower.”
“You’re right,” muttered Tad. “The longer the journey, the more danger and deaths on the way, and the less time they’d have in their new home to prepare to survive the next winter.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish we could let you, Phoenix and Braden take a boat and go home, but we can’t. I know that must seem harsh.”
Tad shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. I don’t want anyone dying because of me, and obviously the small children would be the most vulnerable.”
He paused for a second. “Phoenix, Braden and I would be dead by now if your people hadn’t helped us, and the least we can do in return is stay and help them get past Fence. You won’t have to make a final decision about whether you go off world with us until then.”
“I’ve already made my decision, Tad. Accept it. We’ll go to Fence, we’ll say goodbye, and you’ll go to Zeus while I stay on Earth.”
He sighed. “So we aren’t doing the relationship thing?”
“We aren’t doing the relationship thing.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Once the boat battery was fully charged again, we continued upriver. Now my arm was in the sling, I could manage to sit up next to Tad rather than lie down on the mattresses, but it was an awkwardly silent journey until we were past Yonkers, when Tad started talking again.
“The storage facility is supposed to be on our right, very close to the riverbank. It should be impossible to miss.”
We carried on up the river for about fifteen minutes.
“On the other hand, it’s clearly possible to miss it,” said Tad. “The big building on our left has to be the sports centre, and that’s further upriver than the storage facility. I’ll turn the boat round and we’ll go back.”
He turned the boat round and we went back. Fifteen minutes later he was turning the boat round again. “I don’t understand why we can’t find it. I expected there to be huge signs.”
“A lot of the signs have fallen off buildings,” I said. “You need to look for distinctive landmarks.”
“Perhaps I can find a picture of it. Ah yes, it’s a h
uge single-storey warehouse complex like … like that one!” Tad pointed triumphantly at the riverbank.
I stared at the sprawling building. “The roof looks intact, and the doors on this side are closed. That’s a good sign.”
Tad brought the boat into the bank, and tied it to a post conveniently near a door. “Let’s go and explore,” he said eagerly. “See if the medicine is still here.”
“The first priority on supply trips is staying alive,” I said, “especially in midwinter. If you look at the sky, you’ll see there’s either rain or snow coming soon, and there’s no point in us collecting medicine if we freeze to death before we can take it back downriver. We need to check this building is in a good enough state to give us shelter tonight, and get our bedding and food inside. After that, we can search for medicines.”
Tad helped me out of the boat and we went to the door. That was locked, so Tad had to use a metal lever to force it open. An alarm shrilled, Tad jumped nervously, and I laughed at the look on his face.
“What are you panicking about? Do you think the police will hear the alarm and come and arrest you?”
“Sorry. This is my first burglary. Well, we did break into the Wallam-Crane Science Museum, but that didn’t really count since my grandfather owns it.” Tad paused. “That alarm’s painfully loud. If we go inside, we’ll be deafened.”
“It will stop in a minute. The alarm systems all had power cells to keep them functioning if the power supply was cut, but they’ve gone flat over the years.”
A few seconds later, the shrilling faltered, hiccupped a few times, and then finally stopped. I led the way into a vast room. There were windows running the whole length of the outside wall, their dirt-encrusted glass still letting in enough light to show regimented rows of stasis cabinets. Most of them were surrounded by the fuzzy black of stasis fields, but I could see a scattering of grey cabinets, where either the battery powering the stasis field had failed or the stasis field had never been turned on.
Tad hurried to the nearest cabinet, deactivated the field, and peered inside. “The storage records on the Earth data net are right,” he said in triumph. “This cabinet is half full of medicine.”