were only a few of them; maybe only four deluded conspirators. But he seemed to be able to draw on an awful lot of resources—information, money, and ration credits, as well as gadgets like the AK 101. Marty was going to talk to his general this morning.
“It’s scary that their situation is the opposite of ours. We could locate and interrogate a thousand of them and never find anyone involved in the actual planning. But if they jack with any one of you, they know everything.”
I nodded. “So we have to move fast.”
“Move, period. Once they track him or Jefferson up here, we’re dead.” She stopped walking. “Let’s sit here. Just sit quietly for a few minutes. It might be our last chance.”
She crossed ankles and drifted into a kind of lotus position. I sat down less gracefully. We held hands and watched morning mist burn off the dead gray water.
* * *
marty passed on what Ingram had revealed about the Hammer of God to the general. He said it sounded fantastic, but he would make cautious inquiries.
He also found for them two decommissioned vehicles, delivered that afternoon: a heavy-duty panel truck and a school bus. They turned the conspicuous army green into a churchly powder blue, and lettered “St. Bartholomew’s Home” on both vehicles.
Moving the nanoforge was no picnic. The crew that had delivered it long ago had used two heavy dollies, a ramp, and a winch to get it into the basement. They used the machine to improvise duplicates, jacked it up onto the dollies and, after widening three doors, managed to get it into the garage in one backbreaking day. Then at night they snuck it out and winched it into the panel truck.
Meanwhile, they were modifying the school bus so that Ingram and Jefferson could stay jacked continuously, which meant taking out seats and putting in beds, along with equipment to keep them fed and watered and emptied. They would stay continually jacked to two of the Twenty, or Julian, working in staggered four-hour shifts.
Julian and Amelia were working as unskilled labor, tearing out the last four rows of seats in the bus and improvising a solid frame for the beds, sweating and swatting mosquitoes under the harsh light, when Mendez clomped into the bus, rolling up his sleeves: “Julian, I’ll take over here. The Twenty need you to jack with them.”
“Gladly.” Julian got up and stretched, both shoulders crackling. “What’s up? Ingram have a heart attack, I hope?”
“No, they need some practical input about Portobello. One-way jack, for safety’s sake.”
Amelia watched Julian go. “I’m afraid for him.”
“I’m afraid for us all.” He took a small bottle from his pants pocket, opened it, and shook out a capsule. He handed it to her, his hand quivering a little.
She looked at the silver oval. “The poison.”
“Marty says it’s almost instantaneous, and irreversible. An enzyme that goes straight to the brain.”
“It feels like glass.”
“Some kind of plastic. We’re supposed to bite down on it.”
“What if you swallow it?”
“It takes longer. The idea is—”
“I know what the idea is.” She put it in her blouse pocket and buttoned it. “So what did the Twenty want to know about Portobello?”
“Panama City, actually. The POW camp and the Portobello connection to it, if any.”
“What are they going to do with thousands of hostile prisoners?”
“Turn them into allies. Jack them all together for two weeks and humanize them.”
“And let them go?”
“Oh, no.” Mendez smiled and looked back toward the house. “Even behind bars, they won’t be prisoners anymore.”
* * *
i unjacked and stared down into the wildflowers for a minute, sort of wishing it had been two-way; sort of not. Then I stood up, stumbled, and went back to where Marty was sitting at one of the picnic tables. Incongruously, he was slicing lemons. He had a large plastic bag of them and three pitchers, and a manual juicer.
“So what do you think?”
“You’re making lemonade.”
“My specialty.” Each of the pitchers had a measured amount of sugar in the bottom. When he sliced a lemon, he would take a thin slice out of the middle and throw it on the sugar. Then squeeze the juice out of both halves. It looked like six lemons per pitcher.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s an audacious plan. I have a couple of misgivings.”
“Okay.”
“You want to jack?” I nodded toward the table with the one-way box.
“No. Give me the surface first. In your own words, so to speak.”
I sat down across from him and rolled a lemon