could make it to NJNY.”
Levona tensed. “When’s the takeoff date of the ship — ships?”
Another shrug. “Nobody’s saying. The leaders told the govs a lift-off date, but I doubt anybody believes it. Sooner rather than later, though, for sure, within two weeks, perhaps a week.”
She worried her bottom lip. “You know of a cheap way to get to NJNY?”
“Not a solid one. Sex with Geek Class pilots sometimes works, sometimes not. And, sweetness, what would you say when they ask why you want to go there and right now? You don’t lie worth shit and would be outed as a mutant-freak.”
Just the thought of it made her stomach clench, would set up trembles if she didn’t squash her imagination. She sucked in air and nearly choked on burnt coffee, sex, and sweat. “Can you get to NJNY?”
“No, too damn important here, like I said, what they told me.” Raising his cup to his mouth, he sipped, then said, “One of our local scientists gathered genetic material from every willing person in the ghetto. Our folk have my DNA in special storage for the new world.” His lips twisted. “So I might have far-far-descendants someday. Our scientist even procured physical samples from … other neighborhoods.” He stared at her. From where she’d grown up, he meant. “If you left any DNA with anyone, or your parents did, both the gov and our folk have yours.”
Her heart jumped in her chest. She didn’t recall, but maybe when she’d been a baby her parents had trusted a doctor to do tests. She’d liked her childhood doctor, before the gov came for him. She wouldn’t be surprised if her genetic sample was stored on the ship.
“We gathered DNA not only from this region, either. One of the more important rebels came from the East, with all of NJNY’s sample. And, I think, with duplicate genetic material of the third starship’s people, from EurAstates, Arianrhod’s Wheel.”
“My God,” she breathed. Good for the colonists if they’d collected a lot of genetic code to take with take with them, saving all the different kinds of psi power, at least. Maybe a whole host of other kinds of talents and skills now suppressed by the govs, too.
If they’d done that with humans, they might have gotten DNA from animals, too, maybe all the extinct species, too, that couldn’t survive on Earth as it was.
Distracting thought. Levona didn’t want her genes to head to the new world, she wanted to go on this trip, this adventure that would save her life. Live without persecution, and take her cat with her. No one would have gotten Pizi’s genetic sample, and that cat needed to be saved.
“It’s not ‘my God,’” Bartek chided. “We’re not the True Religionists who follow one stern god and their beloved dictator. It’s Lady and Lord, or Lord and Lady. Divine Couple.”
“Huh?”
“Gotta build a community, our leaders have got that right, and from the minute they all step onto the ship, they’ll have a new society. Maybe it’ll stick down here, too, among the rest of us. Celtic-pagan culture.”
“Oh.” Levona didn’t know what “Celtic” meant, and not much of “pagan” either, except that the True Religionists mob flung that insult-swear at mutants and freaks. Now the psi folk leaders had adopted it? Weird.
“Thanks for all the data.” She stood and put her last big bill down on the table. Too much for his information, but she’d be able to survive one way or another without money and he … couldn’t.
“Good-bye, sweetness. Good luck.” His hand swiped over the table and her seventy-five spot disappeared and he stared off into the room’s dimness. “It’s a wonder,” he murmured. “The starship. Like I said, the buyers are calling our ship Lugh’s Spear.”
“Why?”
“All the names of our ships tie in with the new Celtic mythology.” He shrugged off the explanation and focused on an inner vision. “It’s a full kilometer and a half long. Beautiful, like a white plane, cylindrical body and angled wings.”
Levona had seen that for herself when it had flown overhead, but she lingered, ears pricked for all the information she could get, and Pizi hadn’t finished her rounds of sniffing the floor and everyone in the coffee shop. Levona hadn’t grasped the size of the starship, except “huge.”
“A wonder,” he muttered, then, finally. “Someday one of my genetic descendants might walk on a new planet.”
She bent and kissed him on the cheek, and he jerked, then patted her hand, but didn’t meet her gaze again.
And she