“Sent him back to his tent,” the man said. “I’m Gabriel.”
“Are you in charge there?”
Gabriel’s smile broadened, revealing two rows of perfect white teeth. “I suppose so, yeah. Time we talked, I think.”
Tania steadied herself. “I’m listening.”
“Karl tells me you’ve got a lot of people up there. People who are in need of supplies?”
Gabriel had an easy manner about him. His voice and body language all said “Trust me” in a way that made her skin crawl. She hadn’t felt that since last speaking with Russell Blackfield, though for different reasons. Russell’s eyes undressed, but Gabriel’s disarmed. She held his gaze and nodded.
“Let me tell you,” Gabriel said, “how this is going to play out. I’m what you people call an immune, as are the rest of my family. Though we just think of ourselves as human beings.”
Tania couldn’t mask her surprise. “Your whole family is immune?”
It seemed impossible, and in answer his smile broadened. “They’re not blood, just people I’ve met over the last five years. Survivors who have joined me, who follow me.”
“I see.”
“You call us immune, Tania, but our perspective is different. We call you incerto, untested. I understand that no one but Karl has taken a breath of air down here, air that hasn’t been … what’s the word you use? Scrubbed? Scrubbed by these alien towers.”
He practically spat the word alien.
Tania’s mind raced. What have they done with Skyler? Do they not know of his immunity? Maybe no one had given up that detail. “What are you asking, Gabriel? You are asking me something, correct?”
Gabriel spread his hands before the camera. Long fingers bearing gold rings, a flashy watch on his wrist. “Not asking, Tania. I’m telling you how this’ll play. Two things are going to happen. First, you and all your friends up there are going to come down here, in groups, and take our test.”
“Test?” she asked. “You mean to force us outside the aura.”
“Karl did that, and he seems okay other than a bad headache. But there’s another option if people fear to breathe the air.”
“Oh?”
Gabriel clasped his hands together. “We have kits, found them in a government laboratory outside Rio. They can test for the immunity from a simple blood sample.”
Nonsense, Tania thought, but she held her tongue. Anchor Station scientists as well as doctors on the ground sought just such a solution for years after the disease spread, hoping to discover a way to inoculate people, but no such test was ever devised. The engineered disease was simply too alien.
“For those who don’t want to step outside the ‘aura,’ the blood test is their alternative. We’ll take them in groups to a ranch near here, with one of your remarkable towers in tow for their safety, test them, and return them.”
“Return them?” Tania asked. “What happens if someone is found to be immune?” Skyler.
“The ‘immunes’ will join my family and help find others like us until we’re all together as one people.”
“You realize there’s a million so-called incerto in Darwin? Do you plan to go there next?”
Gabriel’s eyes glimmered at the prospect. “Someday, maybe. It is our goal to bring everyone immune to the disease together. Earth is ours now, and we must work together to begin again.”
He sounded as if he believed it. Tania wondered if what he really craved was the role of hero in such a scenario. Attention, glory, and all the other perks.
Tania said, “What happens when the tests are done?” What happens to those of us who don’t fit into your plan?
“When everyone has been tested,” he said, “you can continue as you have been. However, you will confine yourself to the city of Belém. If we find any of your alien towers beyond the city’s edge, we will shoot on sight and keep the towers for ourselves.”
“And anyone found to be immune goes with you, whether they wish to or not?”
“Yes. Exactly right.”
Tania knew that the odds of immunity were fantastically low. She’d be surprised if anyone was found to have the trait. Anyone except Skyler, of course.
Assuming Gabriel could enforce a blockade on the entire city of Belém, which she highly doubted, the city represented years of supplies and plenty of land to expand to. It would be a long, long time before the fledgling colony would have to test the threat.
But time was not a luxury humanity had. If her calculations were correct, and the Builders stuck to the predicted timeline, they would be back in less than two years. What they sent this time was anyone’s guess. “Let’s be ready,” Neil would have said.
We don’t have time for this kind of infighting, Tania thought. Why did no one else seem to realize that?
Perhaps they could test Gabriel’s threat much sooner. Get it over with, and then move on.
Unless, she realized, he had a lot of immunes with him. She tried to picture this man, wandering the South American continent for five years, fighting off subhumans and wooing every immune he came across. How many could there have been? Darwin had fewer than a dozen. Of course, the city was full of people who had never set foot beyond the aura. It stood to reason there might be a few dozen more hidden within the population, unaware of their special trait. If Gabriel really did have a way to test …
The situation might never get that far, she realized. Gabriel offered a chance to bring people to the ground. She had no idea how big his group was, but it seemed unlikely there were enough immunes on his side to stop a full-blown uprising by her colonists. The prospect of violence chilled her, but not as much as it once had. Submission was worse.
“You said there were two things,” she said, while her mind worked through all the ramifications.
“Yes,” he said, lingering on the s. “I know of one immune among you already. Skyler, I believe he’s called.”
A knot twisted in Tania’s stomach.
“He’s been harassing my people, even murdered a few in cold blood, people who sought only to make contact with him. He must be delivered into my custody and face his crimes. Once he’s paid his dues, he will join us.”
The way he spoke reminded Tania of the stereotypical tough-cop characters in old films. Perhaps this man had been an actor himself, before the fall. “Skyler’s not in the camp?”
She regretted her response as soon she’d voiced the words. From the look on Gabriel’s face, she’d just confirmed something he’d only suspected.
“No,” Gabriel said. “But I’m told you have a strong relationship with him. You will convince him to come back, unarmed. Promise him all is forgiven if he just returns.”
“Except that all is not forgiven, right?”
“He doesn’t need to know that.”
“Skyler will know I’m lying,” she said, unsure if the words themselves were true.
“He’d better not, for your sake. From now on, for every one of my people he so much as wounds, I will take ten of yours and tie them up outside the aura until they go mad or the afflicted come for them. Starting with Karl.”
“I don’t have a way to contact Skyler,” Tania said. “How am I supposed to convince him to come in?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t care if you stand at the edge of your aura and shout his name all day and night: Just make him listen.”
Tania glanced down at the table in front of her and hugged herself below it. “I need some time to think about this,” she said.
“No, no,” Gabriel replied. “Sorry. I said before, these are not requests. I’ve set some of your people down here to work clearing the cable so that you can begin shuttling people down here. Start immediately, and you’d better be among the first arrivals. I want this Skyler fellow in my custody before he can do any more damage to our important work.”
“I understand. It’s just … There’s logistics to—”
“See you in fifteen hours, Tania.”
The screen went blank.
Tania slumped back in her chair and exhaled. An intense pain began to form behind her eyes, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Guys,” she called out, “come in here.”
“This guy sounds mental,” Tim said. “Completely mental.”
Zane shook his head. “Be that as it may, we’re stuck between him or a return to Darwin. Abandon our people on the ground, or bring everyone down there to face this test.”
“The test,” Tania said, “and to hand over Skyler. Don’t forget that.”
“A world of immunes,” Tim muttered, not listening to either of them. “Nice vision, I guess, if you ignore the million or so other people living in the aura’s shadow.”
“Tim,” Tania said.
“I mean it,” he said. “What a bloody prick! He means to turn Belém into a concentration camp and control the rest of the planet with a superior breed of human. Sound familiar to anyone?”
The comment brought silence to the small room, save for the whir of a fan somewhere behind the wall panels.
“Do we all agree,” Tania asked after a moment, “that returning to Darwin is not an option?”
“It’s an option,” Zane said. “Just not the preferable one.”
He and Tania both looked at Tim.
“This Gabriel fellow sounds worse than Blackfield,” the young man said.
“So you’d rather go back?” Tania asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They both need to be stopped.”
“Suppose we just give him what he wants?” Zane said, his voice not much more than a whisper.
Tania glared at him. “Skyler, you mean. Say his name, Zane.”
Zane spread his hands. “One man, for the safety of the colony.”
“None of us would even be here if not for him.”
“Granted. Don’t get me wrong, I like the man. He’s resourceful, smart. A fighter, and clever as anyone. This Gabriel means to mete out some kind of justice and then have Skyler join his group. If anyone could escape, Skyler could.”
“I can’t just … hand him over. I won’t. What if that justice is something like losing a limb?” she asked. Zane’s mouth clapped shut and he looked away, contemplating her question. She couldn’t believe that he would advocate in favor of going along with Gabriel’s demands. Yet the very fact that he was somehow sobered her. She’d come to trust Zane’s matter-of-fact opinion on things, his ability to divorce emotion from facts. As a scientist she’d prided herself on being able to do just that, too, all her life.
“Tania,” Zane said, an echo of his brother’s tone in his voice. “For all we know, Skyler is in the wrong here. Maybe it was a mistake, or an overreaction. We may never know. But what if he really did kill some of these immunes without cause?”
She started to protest but Zane held up his hand. “Just … listen. Regardless of how things ultimately end up, Gabriel stated plainly that he will punish innocent colonists if Skyler continues to assault these immunes, correct?”
Tania nodded.
“Then realistically we have no choice,” Zane said. “We have to at least go down there and try to defuse this situation. Talk to Skyler, if we can. Come to some kind of agreement. Perhaps if we give Gabriel surplus food or supplies he will let us handle Skyler’s punishment. Confine him to orbit, for example, until things return to normal.”
“You don’t actually believe that.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Zane said quietly. “All I know is, if we just turn around and go back to Darwin, we’ve given up this chap Skyler and everyone else down there. But if we go, and talk, and cooperate if it makes sense, we may find a solution that benefits everyone. Including, dare I say it, a solution that includes these immunes working with us. Certainly a large group of them would be extraordinarily useful in the coming months.”
Tim, Tania realized, had been shaking his head the entire time Zane spoke. She looked at him, beckoned for him to speak.
“This guy is mental,” he said again, as if that negated everything Zane had said. It well might, Tania thought.
Zane sighed. “That guy has been scrounging out a living for the last five years in this hellish world with no knowledge of the aura in Darwin, no idea that a city full of people still survived. Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. At first he probably thought he was the last man alive. Everyone he knew died or went primal, insane, and psychotic all at once. Five years, surviving, and ultimately finding others like him. Of course they would band together, thinking they’re special. They are special, for God’s sake. I can’t begrudge the man the loss of a few marbles. Not after all that.”
No one spoke, and Zane went on.
“And then to look up in the sky one day, and see a string of dark shapes moving down from space. He probably thought we were aliens. Still might, quite frankly. The idea of other survivors, large numbers of us, shattered his worldview. It needs time to register. If we talk to him, he’ll come around. I’m sure of it.”
Put that way, Tania found it hard to argue. But Zane’s eagerness to give up Skyler made her see the younger Platz brother in a new light. Neil would never have done that, she thought.
No? Are you sure about that? Neil, at his core, was a businessman. Granted, he protected those he loved, but Skyler? Skyler was a smuggler he’d hired. An asset. Perhaps Neil would have found the terms Gabriel offered acceptable. After all, with the aura towers, Skyler’s immunity was not so valuable—