Nohar was shaking his head. “You don’t know how dangerous, son.” His voice was barely a whisper, and he didn’t know if Manuel had heard it.
Manuel turned to him again and asked, “And who the fuck are you?”
I’m your father. For some reason the words wouldn’t come. Instead, Nohar said, “My name’s Nohar Rajasthan. Your mother hired me to find you.”
“Oh, fuck—” Manuel didn’t get to finish his statement, because Henderson had gotten out of the van and had run up and hugged Manuel.
Nohar noticed that his son seemed uncomfortable with the affection. But Manuel raised a hand and patted Henderson’s shoulder. “You weren’t supposed to be involved.”
Henderson gave Manuel’s ear a nip and said, “Thank God you’re all right. I really thought that they got to you.” She pushed herself away and looked back at the van. “I need to get Maria.”
“Mom?” Manuel’s voice started out as a whisper, but a thread of steel started to emerge as he said, “You brought my mother here?” He looked at John, who had just slipped out of the back. Nohar saw his son’s claws extending and retracting, and he could sense a dangerous uncontrolled anger building in him. “Are you insane? Someone in her condition—”
Nohar stepped between the two of them. “I brought her.”
“Are you trying to kill her? She hasn’t been out of her apartment in—”
“It’s all right, Manny . . .” Maria spoke, and the words cut into Nohar’s heart. Manny.
Manny was a name Nohar hadn’t heard in ages. Manny had raised him, from the time when his mother died, until Nohar had left home. Manny, Mandvi Gujerat, had been the medical officer on Datia’s airlift, one of the few nontigers aboard. He had delivered Nohar, and had taken in the cub when his mother had died. Manny had been the only real father Nohar had ever had. Manny had been dead almost twenty years.
Manny had liked Maria, and Nohar wondered if his son’s name was a coincidence.
“I was trying to keep you all out of this,” Manny looked at Sara who was helping Maria into her chair.
“We didn’t,” John Samson said. “They got my father, damn it! I get back, my house is trashed, and tall, black, and hostile here is sniffing around the remains.”
Manuel turned to John, staring at him.
“They haven’t found you yet,” Nohar said. “That makes this the safest place we’ve got.”
Manuel whipped around and looked at Nohar. “We, who the fuck is ‘we.’ I didn’t invite you to this party, Mr. Rajasthan.”
Nohar looked at Maria. “You never told him my name.”
Manuel looked back and forth between Maria and Nohar. “What’re you talking about? Who are you?”
Nohar tried to say it, but the words just wouldn’t come. After a few minutes all he managed was, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you existed until a week ago.” He turned away, toward the dark cinder-block building that Manuel had come from. “I didn’t know who you were until yesterday.”
Nohar shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling his own isolation crushing down on him. He had lost everyone who had once been close to him, his mother, Manny, Maria, Stephie—even Bobby probably only thought of him as a diverting curiosity now, not a friend. It was stupid to think that he’d achieve any connection with his son, now, after seventeen years. What would be the point?
Nohar let the others talk to Manuel. He heard his son say, “Someone explain this shit to me before things—”
“It’s the card,” John said. “It’s hotter than we expected.”
Nohar pushed through into the building and stopped listening.
That’s not how it was supposed to happen.
The way it was supposed to happen—the son and father meet for the first time, their eyes meet, and there is supposed to be some paternal connect. They should know that the same blood runs through their veins. A bond like that shouldn’t be erased by time. . . .
It was the way his meeting with Datia should have gone. He remembered wheedling a meeting with the great morey leader, knowing that when their eyes met, Datia would know and love him as his own son. The way it went was wrenchingly familiar.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Why the fuck should anyone else care?”
It was stupid and silly. No one else cared. Why should any moreau give a shit about his paternity? It mattered as much as the specific tiger who donated the first strands of Nohar’s genetic code. It was an irrelevancy.
“That’s where you disappeared to.” Henderson’s voice came from behind Nohar. Nohar turned around and looked at her. There was concern in her voice. More concern than Nohar had a right to expect. She pushed the rest of the way through the plastic sheathing that half-blocked the doorway. “I thought you’d want to talk to Manuel?”
Fuck. Nohar opened his mouth, but he couldn’t form the words. Everything was tied up in knots inside him. “I do,” he said, “but . . .”
He couldn’t finish the sentence, because Henderson pulled Manuel in after her. Manuel seemed to have the same expression of combined unease, anger, and confusion that must have been on Nohar’s face. Henderson looked from Nohar to Manuel and back again.
“John’s going to show us where we can set up house,” Henderson said. “I’ll just leave you two to talk things over. . . .”
She slipped back outside before either of them could object.
After a while Manuel said, “Ain’t this a mess?”
Nohar nodded.
“So now what?” he asked. “Do I hug you, or do I try to punch that face in?”
“I don’t know,” Nohar said. He wanted to tell Manuel that he knew how he felt. But he knew too well how that would sound. He swallowed and forced out the words that Datia had never said, “You shouldn’t give a shit about me. I shouldn’t matter to you—”
“That’s easy for you to say—”
“—but if you do care, I’m here for you.”
Manuel seemed to be taken aback. “Fuck, you don’t know anything about me.”
Nohar shook his head. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know shit. I’m an outcast, an outlaw, you’re the last thing I need. What I need is a ticket away from ground zero.”
“Do you even know what you’ve stepped in?”
“Yeah. The Clinic’s giving people the Drips. Not like there haven’t been rumors—”
“We have pink commando squads running all over LA. They’ve blown up my house, tortured and killed Henderson’s boss, tried to kidnap her, and carried out an armed assault on your mother’s housing project—all because you disappeared with that card.”
Manuel seemed to deflate a bit and walked back toward the doorway. “You think I planned all this?” He shook his head again. “It was just supposed to be a little easy money—”
“No such thing.”
“We knew we had something nasty. We shut up here hoping to keep everyone out of it—”
“You didn’t think anyone’d look for you.”
“Hell, I thought people would look for us, but I didn’t think that’d get people killed.” Manuel leaned his head against the doorframe.
Nohar reached out and put a hand on Manuel’s shoulder.
“If anything,” Manuel said, “I’m the one no one should give a shit about. I caused all this.”
Nohar squeezed his son’s shoulder.
“Why should you care about some half-breed misfit?”
After a long time Nohar said, “Back when I was your age, there was a saying, ‘species before nationality.’ There’s another half of that saying that people tend to forget.”
Manuel turned to face him and Nohar lowered his hand. “What?” Manuel asked.
“‘Blood before all.’”
Manuel had in
herited his mother’s smile, and her tears. He grabbed Nohar’s forearm with both of his and said, “So you’re my father.”
Nohar nodded, his voice failing him again.
“Damn,” Manuel said. “I thought tigers had stripes.”
There was a little nervous laughter. “Long story,” Nohar said.
• • •
Nohar was impressed at their choice of places to hole up. The old federal buildings had been abandoned with piles of supplies and equipment. There was everything from cots to dried rations here. It had its own generators, still producing enough power to run the building and the security apparatus. In the room where John and Manuel made their home, there was a long desk with a set of inset comms linked to various parts of base operations and security, and behind it was a massive holo mapping out the whole complex. The map had several little digital readouts overlaid on what must have been a self-updating satellite image of the area.
The most distinctive feature was on the eastern side of the complex. There were acres of old government vehicles, parked between the inner and outer fences.
In a height of irony, the map told Nohar the official name of this place, “Camp Liberty.”
Nohar helped bring out cots for the extra people, but as the night advanced toward midnight he decided he had to leave. They couldn’t hole up here forever. The Bad Guys were still out there, and so was John’s father. Someone had to go back to LA and try to deal with things.
Nohar had John copy the ramcard, which he said would take some time because of the encryption on the data. He gave it a few hours. Meanwhile he went out with Manuel to the vehicle graveyard.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for. The electronics on all these things are toast.”
Nohar nodded as they walked past ranks of shadowed vehicles. Occasionally Nohar’s flashlight would pick out a shadowed fender, a deflated tire. “I know, John told me how you spent a lot of time getting that vehicle running.”
“Yeah—”
Nohar stopped at a small shack in the midst of the vehicles, playing his flashlight across the front of it. He hoped that it was what he had thought it was when he had seen it on the satellite map. Behind him, Manuel was still talking. “You know you can take the van. . . .”
Nohar shook his head. “It’s the only thing that’ll move all four of you.”
The beam of the light played across cinder block and old tar paper. The front of the shack was a rolling metal garage door. Nohar walked up to the side of the building, and found a cover that opened to reveal a pair of buttons, green and red. Nohar depressed the green one.
“There’s my car—”
There was a screech of old and ill-maintained machinery as the green button lit and the rolling steel door began to ease its way open. “No. People are looking for you, remember?”
The door opened all the way, and the lights came on in the small garage. There were dusty tools hanging on the walls, but what interested Nohar was in the back. He walked up to a set of pumps on the far wall and examined them. As he was checking to see if they worked, he found the question slipping out, “Did you ever wonder about me?”
“Fuck, what a question—what do you think? She barely talked about you, I didn’t know your name until a half hour ago. Do you know how many times I’ve cursed you for this genetic meltdown I got laid with, for whatever happened between you and Mom.”
“We broke up, she never told—”
“Yeah. I bet that was just because you were such a great guy.”
Nohar choked back a knot of rage, and felt his claws digging into the cinder-block wall next to the pumps. “If she had told me—” Nohar whispered. He couldn’t finish.
The ugly silence filled the room, broken only by the ticking metal of the overheated motor that had raised the door. For some reason, Nohar was becoming aware of the peculiarly individual scent of the motor, a smell of oil, dust, and old electricity that was somehow distinct from the smell he remembered from the locker at Saf-Stor.
“What are you here for, Rajasthan?” Manuel asked.
Why? Nohar thought. What does a blood tie mean to a creature such as him? As any morey? At least Manuel had one parent. Maria had been there for him. Nohar’s own blood had abandoned him. His mother had been taken from him, and his father had never acknowledged any ties to his son as an individual.
“I’m here,” Nohar said, “because I don’t have anything else.” He rapped his knuckles against the side of the pump making a hollow metallic ring, breaking the oppressive quiet. “There’s still fuel here.”
“What fuel?”
“Diesel,” Nohar said. “The military was still using internal combustion vehicles during this place’s heyday.”
“Huh? We just saw a lot of your standard induction engines.”
Nohar turned around and nodded. “Sure. Most of the vehicles here are civilian. But if this is here,” Nohar tapped the pump, “I bet there’re a few old National Guard vehicles here at least.”
“Why you want something like that?”
“It’ll be easier to get running. Sturdier machine.” Nohar walked toward the front and waved Manuel over. “Come on.”
Manuel followed him into the darkened auto graveyard.
• • •
It wasn’t long before they were pushing a forty-year-old Hummer into the garage. It was painted in brown-and-tan camouflage, and still had the markings of a National Guard unit on it. The tires needed to be inflated, the oil changed, and a few cables and belts needed to be replaced due to dry rot. Most of what needed fixing was self-evident. The most difficult thing was starting it. There were spare parts for the vehicles in the garage, but it took them ten tries before they found a battery that would hold a charge.
It took two hours, but eventually the Hummer was there idling.
“I guess I’d better get going,” Nohar said.
Manuel looked at the vehicle, full tank, actually running, and ran his hand over the hood. “I wish I had thought of this. Easier than trying to refurbish a fried inductor.”
Nohar shook his head, “I’m probably the last generation that would remember these things. When I was a kid, there was still the occasional gas station on the corner. One or two I remember actually running.”
Manuel turned to face Nohar, and the gulf of years between them was palpable. In a soft voice, Manuel asked, “Did you love Mom?”
Did I love her?
Nohar thought of that last message from Maria. The one where she had left him. He remembered how he had felt.
“Yes,” he said.
Before the conversation could go any further, Nohar slipped into the Hummer and started backing out of the garage. He considered just driving away, but he sat and waited as Manuel closed up the small garage and jumped into the seat next to him.
He landed with a cloud of yellow dust. The grit seemed to cover everything, inside and out. Manuel didn’t turn to face Nohar as he said, “Going to have to paint over those markings—thing stands out as it is.”
Nohar nodded as he drove the Hummer back to the compound.
• • •
Manuel grabbed some spray paint and went over the Hummer while Nohar retrieved the copied ramcard. John was working at the comm, and when Nohar walked in, a shimmering rectangle popped out of one of the comm’s data slots. John took it out and laid it in front of Nohar. Nohar stared at the rainbow-sheened ramcard as John said, “That’s it. A copy anyway.”
Nohar picked it up. Here was the thing that everyone was hunting for. It didn’t look like much.
He made a cursory check to see that Maria and Henderson were all right, then he went back to the Hummer, which was now a collage of black-and-red spray paint.
When he reached the car, Manuel straightened up and asked, “Where’re you going in this thing?”
“Back.”
Manuel nodded. “Want to save the world?”
“Maria always said I was doing that.” Nohar shook his head. “This is just self-preservation. The Bad Guys have your friend’s father. He was INS. Only a matter of time before they figure out to look here.”
Manuel had a fatalistic look on his face which told Nohar that he wasn’t really surprised about that. “Need help out there?” he asked.
Nohar shook his head again. “We’re better off if only one person’s ass is in the line of fire. Stay here.”
Manuel’s look said that he wasn’t too surprised by that either. “You coming back?”
“I don’t know.” Nohar looked down at the car, then across at the van. “If I’m not back in two days, get the hell out of here.”
“Where?”
“South. Mexico.”
“What about you? How’re you going to find us?”
“I’ll find you. It’s what I do.” He slipped into the driver’s seat of the Hummer.
Manuel looked at him across the passenger seat; a cool desert wind blew through the open windows. For a moment the rest of the world seemed very remote, as if he and Manuel were the only living things left on the planet.
It seemed that some of that sense of isolation had reached Manuel. There was something very quiet, almost pleading, in his voice when he asked, “Why did you and Mom break up?”
Nohar sat there, letting the Hummer grind through a rough aged idle. He didn’t have much of an answer for his son. Why did they break up?
“I wasn’t there enough,” Nohar said, the closest thing to an honest answer he could come up with.
Manuel looked at him as if he’d expected something more dramatic.
They stayed there looking at each other for a long time through the open window, the empty desert wind blowing past them.
After a while, Manuel exhaled. “This is all too sudden. I don’t really know you—”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to be your son.”
Nohar felt his heart sink. He turned away from his son and nodded. After all, what did he expect?
He heard Manuel walk around the front of the Hummer. At first he thought that Manuel was leaving, but after a moment he felt a hand on his shoulder.