Читаем Partials полностью

Tovar’s voice was thick and desperate. “As hard as it is to believe with ten-odd guns pointed at me, not everyone on the island has one. Not everyone on the island has a Defense Grid patrol ready to leap into action every time somebody looks suspicious. Out here, people know there’s a war coming, between East Meadow and the Voice, and people need to be able to help themselves. I just make sure they have the tools to do it.”

“He’s lying,” said a soldier.

“You don’t know that,” said Kira. “You can’t shoot someone on a hunch.”

“Did somebody try to blow you guys up?” asked Tovar.

“See?” cried the soldier, stepping forward. “He knows!”

“Stand down,” said Jayden. “Do not shoot without my order.”

Kira swallowed. “It doesn’t take a genius to look at the last few minutes of this conversation and guess that someone tried to blow us up. If he knew about the bomb, he wouldn’t have told us he was a demolitionist in the first place, would he?” She turned to Tovar. “Have you ever been to Asharoken?”

He shook his head. “That can’t possibly be the name of a real place.”

“You say you sell guns and ammunition,” said Jayden. “Do you sell explosives, too?”

“I’d be an idiot if I did,” said Tovar. “Anyone who’d buy them would either be after the same stuff I am, or planning something worse—like whatever happened to you guys. I keep all my explosives secret.”

“Where?” demanded Jayden.

“Some in the cart, some in little caches around the island.”

Gianna leaped away from the cart. “I’ve been leaning on a bomb?”

“It’s stable,” said Tovar, standing up. The soldiers retrained their guns on him, but he held up his hands in a show of innocence. “They’re perfectly stable, okay?” He shuffled to the cart, limping in one heavy boot and one bare foot. “It’s a water gel—it’s completely inert until you activate it, and even then it needs a detonator.”

“Where do you find explosives out here?” asked Jayden, still following him with his rifle. “I thought the military gathered up all that kind of stuff years ago.”

“They got the weaponized stuff, yeah,” said Tovar, “but this is used commercially all the time.” He pulled back the heavy canvas tarp on his wagon and pointed to a white plastic package, like a ration bag of water. “I got this at a construction site; the activation powder’s on the other side of the cart. And I swear I haven’t sold any of it to anyone.”

Kira looked back at Jayden. “If this is a lie,” she said, “it’s the most convoluted, well-acted lie in the history of the world. We’re all headed back to East Meadow anyway, so let’s just put down the guns and let them deal with it. If they decide he’s guilty, then they can put him in jail, but I won’t let you kill him here.”

“That is the second worst idea I’ve ever heard,” said Tovar, “but since the first worst is you shooting me in the face, I’m all for it.”

Jayden stared at Kira, his eyes burning into hers like smoking coals. After an eternity of waiting, he lowered his gun. “Fine. But if he tries anything between now and then, I don’t wait for your approval: He’s a Voice, and he dies.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kira slept fitfully, listening to Marcus and the others as they shifted and snored and muttered in the darkness. The camel made odd, semihuman moans all through the night, and the house creaked in the rain. Even the mice, ubiquitous in every home she could remember, seemed louder and more bothersome than usual as they skittered through the floor and walls. Rats, maybe, or something bigger.

Through it all, she couldn’t stop thinking about Tovar’s words. Was there really a war coming? Was the Voice really that desperate—or that organized? The Senate seemed to paint them as half-wild terrorists, raiding and running and killing indiscriminately, but then, she supposed, the Senate would want to paint them that way. If there were actually enough of them to mount a serious front, and start a real war, then they were a bigger threat than she had ever imagined.

RM would slowly strangle humanity, one death at a time, with no new generations to replace it. A war, on the other hand, could snuff it out in weeks.

Kira pressed herself deeper into the couch, willing herself to fall asleep.

In the morning she was tired and stiff.