Living in Threes (25 page)

I stopped that thought before I ran off screaming.

“Even supposing this is where the plague came from,” Meru said, “it must have had to mutate, probably a lot more than once, after it got loose. That mutation couldn’t have happened in your time, or Consensus would know about it and be able to stop it. You should be safe.”

“You hope,” I said.

While I carried on the conversation with the voices in my head,

Sayyid and the two workmen took turns looking at the camera image. Their eyes were huge, and I could hear how fast they were breathing, but nobody said a word. It was like a pact—literal silence.

Finally Aunt Jessie reeled the camera back in. She put the brick back, too. She wasn’t hiding anything. Just keeping the air out—or in.

“You know we can’t talk about this.” She said it to me. She must figure no one else needed to be told.

I didn’t either, but I didn’t try to argue. I stood there and let her finish her speech. “We have to keep this a secret for now. We’ll call the Director of Antiquities and let him know what we’ve found. He gets to decide when and how the tomb is opened. It could be a media circus—or he might keep it quiet for a while. It’s up to him.”

I nodded. We were all holding ourselves in tight, including the Triple: Meritre because this was tomb robbery no matter what we called it, and Meru because the answers were here, and she was starting to understand what they were.

My time was important for archaeologists—transitional, Meru’s sources on the web said. We still opened tombs, but we’d stopped shoving mummies in boxes and hauling them off to foreign museums. Once a tomb was investigated and catalogued, the mummy went back in, along with most of the things it had been buried with. Which meant that in Meru’s time, it might be still there, and still all or mostly intact.

Meanwhile, in my time, we tried to act as if nothing had happened. Sayyid left the men down there on guard. Aunt Jessie went to supervise the other half of the dig, around the porch where Meritre had seen the sculptors working.

I had potsherds to label and a life to try not to think about. Mom’s life. Mine, because my relatives were arguing over what to do with me, and I didn’t seem to have a say in it.

I’d rather think about the tomb that we’d found. The incredible, amazing, wonderful discovery that when it finally got out, would make the world fall in love with Egypt all over again.

The discovery that, four thousand years from now, would be killing people—somehow. Meru was hunting down the cause now, then, whatever. In my head, she was doing it at the same time as I was pasting numbers on beads and amulets and pieces of pottery.

I hoped she found it. After all the drama I’d put us through, I wanted to know. This was our project, cause, fate, destiny—pick a word, it probably applied. We were all in it together.

Chapter 23

“I’ve got it,” Meru said. “I know where we’re going. Or,” she added, “mostly.”

“Let me see,” Yoshi said.

She sent him what she had, which was a map of Egypt as Meredith remembered it. While he pondered that, she skimmed along the newsfeed—and stopped.

Sixteen deaths in the past Earthday in SudAfrique. Forty-three in Eurasia. And in NorthAm—

“Seventy-nine,” Meru said, “that Consensus will admit to. But the real numbers—”

“People aren’t stupid,” Yoshi said. “They can count. They share links. Consensus can’t keep hiding this.”

The toll was rising. No one dared use the word yet, but it hung above them all.
Pandemic.

Meru shut off the feed before it shut down her courage. She closed her eyes, the better to see what Meredith had given her. With that to draw on, she could map the world. She traced the rise and fall of seas and the shifting of land masses until she found what she was looking for.

“That’s it?” Yoshi said, far out on the edge of the web. “That’s where it is?”

“That’s it,” Meru said.

It was still a fiercely hot place, and the river still ran through it, though its course had changed and changed again in all those thousands of years. The desert had turned to jungle and then back to desert, but the ancient monuments were still there, preserved for eternity. That pleased Meritre.

For the second time in her life, Meru packed what she needed for an escape. It was not so easy this time. The house was under lockdown, and she was under surveillance.

That would not matter so much if it had not been for Yoshi. “I don’t suppose I can possibly convince you to stay here after all?” she said.

He set his mouth in a line. “No.”

“Not even as a diversion? To cover for me? To—”

“No.”

“You can’t help,” she said. “You’ll only hinder.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “If you try to web-tie me and run away, I’ll hack myself out and go after you. You can’t do this alone. You need backup.”

“I
have—
” Meru broke off. If she had to explain the Triple, she would be there all night.

“All right,” she said, and she was not happy about it at all. “Stay close. Stay quiet. And no questions.”

He opened his mouth. She glared. He shut it. “Let’s go,” he said.

The house was on lockdown. As free as Meru was of the web, she was confined physically as everyone else was, until Consensus lifted the ban.

Consensus had not factored in the starwing. Meru was not entirely sure of it, either; she could only ask.

It had been basking in starlight, purring to itself. When she called, it ignored her.

She thrust down the stab of fear and the crippling disappointment, and willed herself to be calm. It was not her tool or her slave, after all. It was a living being.

“Please,” she said to it. “Will you help?”

It spread its wings and trilled. Its focus was not on her; it was on the field that surrounded the house, the beautiful, delicious, intoxicating energy that fed it until it was crackling all over.

She turned away. She would not let herself be hurt, or feel betrayed.

There was another thing she could do, which might fail terribly. Or it might succeed. Either way, it was better than giving up; than doing nothing.

Vekaa was in the common room with the family. They were all there, from the eldest to the youngest, and they were in the middle of an argument.

“We have no objection to confining ourselves to the house,” Grandmother Ramotswe said, “or to observing proper precautions during this, as you put it,
situation
. But we want our daughter’s body back.”

“You will get it back,” Vekaa said, “when the situation has calmed down.”

“We understand that,” said Grandmother Ramotswe. “We also understand that it will have to be thoroughly and conclusively decontaminated. But what you propose to do with it—”

“Those were her wishes,” Vekaa said. “She asked that once her genetic material was taken and recorded, her ashes be scattered among the stars.”

“I’m sure,” said Grandmother Ramotswe, “but she was a member of this family. And members of this family rest in the vault beneath the house. She belongs here. Not out there, drifting with the interstellar dust.”

“We are all made of interstellar dust,” Meru said. She had meant to be quiet, but she could not help herself. “The stars are in every one of us. Does it matter where she is? Her genetic code is here. Her memory lives in all of us. Why can’t what’s left of her go where she wanted it to go?”

“It’s not done,” Uncle Goro said. “It’s never been done.”

“Then maybe it’s time it was,” said Vekaa.

He walked out on them. Meru stood with the rest, staring at the door through which he had vanished.

Almost too late she remembered how to think, and then to move. Yoshi was already in motion. Meru stretched her stride to pass him.

Vekaa had not gone far. He was in the room he liked to sleep in; Yoshi caught and held the door before he could seal it.

He regarded them wearily. “Yes,” he said to Meru, “I should have called you down for that.”

“You should,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. Not for now.” She drew a breath and let it out, all at once. “I know where to find the key to the plague. Will you help me get there?”

Was that hope in his face? Or was he too tired to feel anything? “I don’t know if I have that power,” he said.

“The Deciders do.” Meru said. She was proud of herself for saying it so calmly.

“There are procedures,” he said. “Protocols. I don’t know if—”

“So more people will die because it takes too long to make a decision?”

“Consensus takes time,” he said.

“You don’t believe that yourself,” she said. “I can tell. You won’t look at me when you say it. You were supposed to have gone to your laboratory after you locked me up here. What happened? Did you leave?”

“No,” said Vekaa. “I…was put on leave. For refusing consensus. For arguing in favor of my sister’s thoroughly and conclusively discredited theories.”

“But they’re true,” Meru said. “She was right.”

“You can prove it?”

“I know where to find proof.”

He unfolded slowly, as if his bones hurt. She looked hard at him, holding back terror.

He did not look sick. Only exhausted.

Could she tell the difference?

“I still have some of my clearances,” he said. “They may be enough.”

“If you have them down to the third level,” said Yoshi, “I can take them the rest of the way.” He flushed as they both turned on him. “I haven’t done anything illegal! Often. Much. One of my uncles is a coordinator in Transport. I used to watch him when he worked.”

“And you paid attention,” Meru said.

“I’d get bored,” he said. “It was all there was to do.”

“Do it,” said Vekaa, “but let me monitor.”

“And me,” said Meru.

Yoshi spread his hands. “Why not? We’re all going down to together anyway.”

“I hope not,” Meru said.

Meru was very good at hacking the web, but Yoshi was an artist. Vekaa’s clearances made his avatar dance with glee. Still dancing, he drew in the threads of sites and connections so quickly that Meru could barely keep up.

He mapped a route and secured a bubble and a shuttle, with clearances that would pass them invisibly through Containment—and he left a ping for the Deciders, but set it to reach them after the three of them had arrived in what once was Egypt. It was better than hiding in plain sight: it was perfectly open and transparent, but by the time Consensus knew what they were doing, they would have finished doing it.