Up Against It - M. J. Locke [126]
Now Dominica looked up. She was Upsider to the core: concise, methodical, controlled, and serious. Her careful breathing told Jane what the effort to stay calm was costing her. Jane hurt with the need to tell her daughter that it wasn’t her fault Huu-Thanh was lost to them. Don’t lose heart, she thought. Don’t lose hope.
“I haven’t been able to locate any of the children. I’ve spent the past month at Edmonton. Before that, Winnipeg.” Edmonton and Winnipeg housed two of the biggest refugee camps in southwest Canada. “No sign of them anywhere. I’m thinking Lanh must have been encrypted, too, but I can’t find confirmation. But the rest are still too young and have to be somewhere.” Prepubescents were too immature to encrypt. They might have been sold to the sex slavers, though. Or abandoned and left to die. Disposable humanity. Of less note than a used tissue. “It’s possible they are trying to enter Vietnam illegally, trying to reconnect with other branches of the family. A boat left Vancouver two months ago, heading for Manila. I’m headed there next. I have a few weeks before the semester starts to do more research.”
Another hesitation. “I’ve found someone who knows how to work the system. He has a good rep, but he’s pricey. And I’m almost out of money. I’m going to need more soon. Another fifty thousand, if possible.”
She finally looked up, with Xuan’s dark eyes and Jane’s own aquiline nose and wide, full mouth. Her face was shadowed by exhaustion and grief. “I’ll send another message next week. Love to you both.”
Jane closed the missive and sat, remembering Huu-Thanh’s messages from the Canadian refugee camps years ago. There had been a handful, over the ten years they had spent trying to work through the bureaucratic entanglements to get her and her children out. Each had been so calm, so confident that the family would be able to help. Jane and Xuan were unimaginably wealthy, by Huu-Thanh’s standards.
But in the background, in that last message inwave—what was it? two years ago, now? three?—Jane had seen despair in Huu-Thanh’s children’s faces, and sullen anger in the eyes of her eldest, Lanh. And now they had been scattered: human detritus caught up in the machineries of Earth’s socioeconomic engines, to be mulched and processed and molded into tools for the use of others.
Rage filled Jane. She hated Downside. She hated their intolerance, their rigid hatred, their self-deception, their greed. The inhumanity of the crypts, the battling enclaves of power Down there, the religious intolerance that masked the politics and dirty dealings that went on behind the scenes. They had long since abandoned any semblance of democracy in the nations of America. It was all about power: money, control, and social status. Oh, she hated Earth.
Sarah was watching her. “I have some work to wrap up, and then I’m free. If you don’t have plans for dinner later, I’ll take you out.”
“Sure you want to be seen in public with me?”
“‘Stroiders’ doesn’t go everywhere.”
“What, we’re going to eat in a restroom?”
Sarah merely smiled.
24
By the time Geoff and his companions disengaged from the treeways, the shiny blob Ouroboros hung in space, about two hundred kilometers distant. Beyond it, diamond-bright Saturn and two of its moons, as well as aquamarine Neptune, dominated the backdrop of stars. A third bright object elsewhere in the vast starry sky was probably the rocket tugs bringing the big new ice shipment.
Geoff had heard about it in the news. The sight of the ice shipment sent tingles of relief along his back and arms so strong he shuddered, despite the too-warm confines of his suit. You grow up in space; you learn to ignore certain kinds of fear. You ignore the Big Empty surrounding you. Otherwise you’d never do anything but hide in a cubby and wait to die. But now, on the brink of Phocaea’s rescue, he realized just how frightened he had been. He drew a slow breath and