Up Against It - M. J. Locke [78]
“Don’t know what I’d do without you, my dear,” she said.
Xuan smiled fondly. “No doubt they’d find you at your desk, gibbering and psychotic from overwork,” he said.
She tensed as though he had struck her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He took her hand, disturbed. “What is it?” he asked again, seriously.
In answer, she sprang over the table toward him, and gripped his hand with one of her feet. He pulled her in and wrapped his arms around her as she settled. The blossoms she had disturbed swirled around them, faint and fragrant. “Just hold me for a minute, OK?”
“OK.” He sensed her surreptitiously looking around. She was scanning for Stroider-cams or motes. No cams registered; no motes seemed present.
“We’re extracting the sapient tonight,” she said in a low voice. “In just a few hours. When things happen, they’ll happen fast.”
He exhaled sharply. “All right.”
“When we’re ready to extract, people will be ordered to the life shelters.” They linked wavefaces. She called up a map of the gardens, and gestured at an emergency exit tube sign. “I’d like you to escort the family here,” she said. “It’s the closest.”
“Of course.” He paused. “How big a deal is this?”
She inhaled. “Until we get it out, it’s got access to everything. Air, power, food distribution, transport, assembly and disassembly. Everything.”
The tension in her did not ease. He laid his chin on her head. “All right, then.”
“You said you had something to discuss, also?”
He reached into his pocket, and passed a data lozenge to her over her shoulder. “From Dominica,” he said. She glanced around at him.
“It came in today. Nothing urgent. Just … when you get a chance. We’ll talk about it later.” Offline, he meant. He did not want to add to her worries with the bad news about Huu-Thanh, just now.
They spent a moment longer, snuggling, trying together to hold out the world. But it was late. “I’d better go,” she said.
“All right. Be careful.”
“You be careful, too. Stay near the life shelters until you get an all-clear from me.”
“All right.”
Xuan’s brother and sister and their spouses had gathered outside Pham and Huynh’s tent to talk. Jane went over to make her good-byes to them. The toddlers started fussing in the tent, refusing to settle down.
Kieu started to go in, but Xuan motioned her to settle again. “Let me.” He picked up seven smooth stones that had been displaced from a nearby rock garden, and went inside. The twins were struggling in the mesh hammock. Abraham was already out of his pajamas. Tears and snot streaked Hannah’s miserable little face. They both quieted, though, when they saw him come in.
“Shush!” he said softly. —little buck rabbit, little doe—“what are you doing? Quiet now, and don’t disturb your mother.”
He wiped Hannah’s face, handed her her bottle, which had slipped out of the hammock, and put Abraham back into his pajamas. They snuggled back into their sleeping bags and looked at him with expectant expressions. They knew Uncle Xuan’s bedtime M.O. He held up six stones between his fingers. The seventh he kept hidden.
“Watch this,” he said. On the floor of the tent he carefully stacked the six stones. Then he framed it with his hands.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Rocks!” Hannah said.
“Yes. On Earth, monks make stone mounds to honor the Buddha. Let us say thanks to Buddha for teaching us to love and have compassion for all beings.” Kieu and Emil were bringing their children up in the Jewish faith, but Xuan knew they would not mind; his sister had told him so. He closed his eyes, bowed, and chanted a bodhisattva three times. The little ones watched with solemn faces. Then he leaned forward with a grin. “But it turns out these are not just ordinary rocks. Watch.”
He knocked them neatly—just so—and they tumbled up in all directions at once. This was a trick he had taught himself during his many long research sojourns among faraway