Unnatural

  * * * *

  “Governess, how did you –?”

  “Please do not say another word until I say so, Miss Lockhart.” Oh hey, join the party of people trying to suppress me. “Listen carefully. We have reason to believe your child is a danger to you.”

  “What? Michael? You know about him?” Sabrina glanced down at the boy, who by now could be mistaken for an eighteen-month-old. She’d grossly underestimated his metabolic speed. “That’s … ridiculous.” She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from the drop of the curb.

  “Must I repeat myself? Distance yourself from the boy immediately, Sabrina. Now.”

  “I can’t leave a kid alone out here! My kid.”

  A fuzzy sigh sounded in her earpiece. “I am aware of his unorthodox growth. Indeed, I can scarcely find a pattern to it, which makes me and my colleagues suspect that this anomaly goes beyond an accidental birth defect. Nature works in a mathematical manner. This is the working of a human mind, namely Marshall Patterson’s.”

  This didn’t come as too much a surprise to her, but it hardly made it easier to believe what was happening. Could nanobots really do this? “You don’t think he would –?”

  “Yes, he would. Miss Lockhart, I wouldn’t find it any less unthinkable to desert a child, but it has to be done. For now, at least.”

  Michael was babbling out of interest in the network of traffic control devices. He turned to Sabrina and stared, presumably wondering why his mother was talking to no one in the vicinity.

  “I promise you I will not let any harm befall the boy,” Zolnerowich continued. “I will explain how later, but suffice it to say Marshall’s monopoly on Earth robotics has lost its edge.”

  “Okay.” She knelt to be level with him, astounded that she didn’t have to go too low for this purpose. “Michael, mama has to go for a little while. You stay here and keep out of trouble, understand?”

  He nodded, but she doubted how reliable his silent word was. She exerted her scarce reserves of energy from yesterday to reach a small grocery market.

  Casting her own semi-Amish principles into a vat of acid for survival’s sake, Sabrina feasted on the nearest mechanically preserved orange. She took off to the farthest corner of the shop, checked to see if Michael had broken in despite the lock she’d used, and sat. “Talk to me.”

  “You realize that Michael’s father is biologically Mr. Uriah, but that Mr. Patterson was the one who initiated the conception, correct?”

  “Sure, but …” Sabrina rubbed her upper arm, looking down. “Governess, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Marshall’s a rat, but he didn’t force me or anything. I’m as responsible for this as he is.” Why was she saying this nonsense?

  “Was,” said Zolnerowich after a few moments’ pause as if she didn’t believe her at all.

  “No, he’s still alive. Sort of.”

  “Miss Lockhart, the body that housed Mr. Patterson’s mind died in the time since you left the village. Mr. Uriah killed him.”

  Her eyebrows creased as she looked back at the entrance. “Why would he need to? I put Dennis’s brain in the Libertas after Michael was conceived. There was no one to kill, unless Marshall can make zombies.”

  Another pause. “Are you saying Mr. Patterson took possession of Mr. Uriah’s body without his own brain?”

  “It’s certainly possible. You’re familiar with avatars, right?”

  Zolnerowich gasped. “I had never –”

  To the southwest, the whoosh of opening doors prompted Sabrina to hoist herself up. How in God’s name …?

  She flew to the emergency exit. Outside, a wooden crate of heaven-knew-what food caught her eye. This would kill her, but it would kill a kid worse, even one smart enough to beat a modern lock. Of course, it occurred to her while she scooted the box in front of the door, he could have just grown freakish muscles as well.

  “Keep running, Miss Lockhart.” She exhaled and seemed to be trying to steady her voice. “Now, are you telling me that Mr. Patterson is still at large?”

  Sabrina kept silent until she reached Aberdeen Park. She turned around, craned her neck, and, satisfied, cursed Zolnerowich. “Are you expecting what I think you’re expecting?”

  “Which is?”

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s the only conclusion that makes sense. Marshall hasn’t just bugged Michael to supersede his genes. He’s in my son’s brain, just like he was in Dennis’s. Like a parasite who leaves a host when it becomes inconvenient for him.”

  Zolnerowich made no objection.

  “And you’re gonna ask me to oust the host along with the parasite, because it’s the last thing Marshall would expect me to do to my child. You sick excuse for a leader, after all I went through –!”

  “There are other options.”

  She scanned for a discreet place that could also offer the higher ground. Regardless of how unwilling she was to kill the boy, he was a threat, and there was no sense letting him catch up to overhear their conversation – evidently this was a secret communication line that Marshall had yet to hack.

  A cliff. It was low enough for Sabrina to scale, but high enough that by the time Michael reached its top, she could be anywhere, from his view. She respired as she responded, “Like what?”

  “It is a high-risk operation, but after consulting with the people of Luna in a democratic manner, we have come to decide the reward is worth it.”

  “Get to the point!” Sabrina levered her weight onto the ledge, leaving herself totally exhausted.

  “Promise you will suspend judgment on my ethics until I have finished my explanation, is that clear?”

  “No one can keep from judging. She can only choose whether to voice it. But sure, whatever.”

  Another pause and a sigh. “Eighteen hundred kilometers above sea level is a satellite whose name, in Russian, means ‘spirit.’ The Lunar branch of RFSA put it in orbit just two days ago, meaning even if Mr. Patterson has a grasp on Earth’s other man-made satellites, he could not touch this one.”

  Sabrina put a hand to her chin as her lips slid to the right.

  “This is not an ordinary satellite, Miss Lockhart. Its engineers have armed it with a cannon capable of firing an electromagnetic pulse at a distant target, with astounding range as well as power.”

  “That couldn’t possibly be in accordance with international law. It’s a military satellite, isn’t it?”

  “You must be understanding. We never wanted another arms race, which is why we started off the so-called Cold War Two by investing more money and resources in Project Luna instead. The U.S. was the one slowing itself down in the Space Race with its heavy military budget, as we soon discovered.”

  She wouldn’t dispute that, much as she considered herself equally an American and a Russian. But this was an outrage. “You’ve been using our taxes to make a martial base out of what was supposed to be a hub of pure scientific research and human progression? And in secret, at that!”

  “Miss Lockhart, surely you are aware that America has secured its weapons of mass destruction by electronic means? The locks are designed so that only the people collectively can authorize the bombs’ use, in theory. But the WMD are also proofed against unlocking by electromagnetism. Even the most precise of pulses would render the weapon extremely difficult to set off.”

  “So our military planned to fire this thing in hopes that at least a sliver of it would turn each of America’s nukes into a dud.” To do so manually, as antiwar activists had doubtless tried, would simply take too long with that many weapons in store.

  “That is correct.”

  Sabrina was seething. “Governess, you are one lucky woman.” Because I can’t give you an earful right now.

  A boy who looked about six years old gripped a stone on the wall below her.