Axis

But he had loved her, i

By morning a lane had been opened and they drove north for another four hours, passing buses, jitneys painted like circus caravans, logging trucks, freight trucks, tank trucks loaded with refined oil or gasoline, until Turk turned west on one of the poorly-maintained side roads that diced through this part of the country like the lines on an old mans palm.

And suddenly they were in the wilderness. The Equatorian forest closed on them like a mouth. It was only here, away from the city and the farms and refineries and busy harbors, that Lise felt the alie

Maybe they couldn't even directly experience events as brief, in their eyes—if they had eyes—as a human life. Lise found that idea oddly comforting. She could see and feel things that for the Hypotheticals must be vanishingly evanescent: things as commonplace as the swaying of these strange trees above the road and the sunlight that speckled their shadows on the forest floor. That was a gift, she thought. Our mortal genius.

The sun tracked through finely-feathered or fernlike leaves. The underbrush was populated with wildlife, much of which had not (even yet) learned to fear human beings. She caught glimpses of jack dogs, a striped ghoti, a flock of spidermice, the names usually referring to some Earthly animal although the resemblance was often fanciful. There were insects, too, humming or whining in the emerald shadows. Worst were the carrion wasps, not dangerous but big and foul-smelling. Gnats, which looked exactly like the gnats that used to hover in shady places back home, swarmed among the mossy tree trunks.

Turk drove with close attention to the unpaved road. Fortunately the dustfall here had been light and the canopy of the forest had absorbed most of it. When the driving was critical Turk was silent. On the straightaways, he asked about her father. She had discussed this with him before, but that had been before the dustfall and the strange events of the last few days.

"How old were you exactly when your father disappeared?"

"Fifteen." A young fifteen. Naive, and clinging to American fashions as a rebuke to the world into which she had been unwillingly imported. Braces on her teeth, for God's sake.

"The authorities take it seriously?"

"How do you mean?"

"Just, you know, he wouldn't be the first guy to walk out on his family. No offense."

"He wasn't the type to walk out on us. I know everybody says that in cases like this. 'It was so unexpected.' And I was the loyal, naive daughter—I couldn't imagine him doing anything bad or thoughtless. But it's not just me. He was fully engaged in his work at the university. If he was leading a double life I don't know where he found the time for it."

"Supporting his family on a teacher's salary?"

"We had money from my mother's side."

"So I guess it wasn't hard to get the attention of the Provisional Government when he disappeared."

"We had ex-Interpol men interviewing everybody, an open police file, but nothing ever came of it."

"So your family contacted Genomic Security."

"No. They contacted us."

Turk nodded and looked thoughtful while he maneuvered the vehicle through a shallow washout. A three-wheeled motorcycle passed in the opposite direction—balloon tires, high carriage, a basket of vegetables strapped to the rear rack. The driver, some ski

"Anybody find that odd," Turk asked, "that Genomic Security came calling?"

"My father was researching Fourth activity in the New World, among other things, so they were aware of him. He'd had talks with them before."

"Researching Fourths for what purpose?"

"'Personal interest," she said, cringing at how incriminating that sounded. "Really, it was part of his whole fascination with the post-Spin world—how people were adapting to it. And I think he was convinced the Martians knew more about the Hypotheticals than they included in their Archives, and maybe some of that knowledge had been passed around by Fourths along with the chemical and biological stuff."

"But the Genomic Security people didn't turn up anything either."

"No. They kept the file open for a while longer, or so they claimed, but in the end they didn't have any more luck than the PG had. The conclusion they obviously reached was that his research had gotten the better of him—that at some point he was offered the longevity treatment and took it."

"Okay, but that doesn't mean he had to disappear."

"People do, though. They take the treatment and assume a new identity. It means not so many awT kward questions when your peers start to die off and you still look like the picture in your grad book. The idea of starting a new life is attractive for a lot of people, especially if they're in some kind of personal or financial bind. But my father wasn't like that."

"People can carry around a fear of death and never let on, Lise. They just live with it. But if you show them a way out, who knows how they might behave?"

Or who they might leave behind. Lise was silent for a moment. Over the hum of the car's engine she heard a minor-key melody trilling from the high canopy of the forest, some bird she couldn't identify.

She said, "When I came back here I was prepared for that possibility. I'm far from convinced that he just walked out on us, but I'm not omniscient, I can't know for sure what was going on in his mind. If that's what happened, okay. I'll deal with it. I don't want revenge, and if he did take the treatment—if he's living somewhere under a new name—I can deal with that, too. I don't need to see him. I just need to know. Or find somebody who does."

"Like the woman in the photograph. Sulean Moi."

"The woman you flew to Kubelick's Grave. Or like this Diane, who sent her to you."

"I don't know how much Diane can tell you. More than I can, anyhow. I made it a point not to ask questions. The Fourths I've met… they're easy to like, they don't strike me as sinister, and as far as I can tell they're not doing anything to put the rest of us in danger. Contrary to all that Genomic Security bullshit you hear on the news, they're just people."

"People who know how to keep secrets."

"I'll grant you that," Turk said.

Moments later they passed a crude wooden sign on which the name of the village had been written in several languages: desa new sarandib town, in approximate English. Half a mile farther on a ski

"Going to Sarandib?" The kid's shrill voice made him seem even younger than he looked. His breath smelled like rancid ci

"Headed that way," Turk said.

"You got business there?"