City Without End by Kay Kenyon

Author:Kay Kenyon [Kenyon, Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction And Fantasy, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Space Opera
ISBN: 1591026989
Amazon: B00C4B23YY
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2010-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

IT WAS FULL DARK AS CAITLIN SPED DOWN THE HIGHWAY, keeping the Mercedes under manual control, passing meshed transport, passing at eighty, at ninety. To one side, the Columbia River. Instead of seeing its familiar placid waters, she imagined a cloud of vapor flashing into the air.

The river boiling off.

Jess had said, I dream about it, fire roaring like a hurricane. Our home, gone, just like that. I imagine the river boiling off.

Lamar had called it the transform. But it was a holocaust.

At least we’ll survive. But to survive, you have to leave.

A half moon brightened the water, drawing her eyes when she needed to drive fast, drive very fast. Be packed, Lamar had said. Be ready. And when did he plan to end the world? She was losing her mind. Wasn’t she?

Lamar had lied about Titus. Titus hadn’t asked for a few people to join him in that place—the Entire. He had nothing to do with this. Lamar was behind it—with whom else, Caitlin had no idea. But Lamar was high enough in the group that he could change Mateo’s test scores. So Mateo could go over to the Entire, with his sister and mother. So he could stand on—what had Jess called it?—the transition stage excavated under the old reactor.

Something terrible was going to happen, and only Lamar’s two thousand were shipping out in time to avoid it. An apocalypse of fire. Our home, gone. Jess has nightmares.

She kept remembering a small, niggling thing, something Jess said about Emily not having children. Lamar’s two thousand savvies were not coming back. The children would grow up and have children in the Entire.

But if they didn’t test well, they wouldn’t be having children. Because the average person was dragging us down, and the average was about to become better. It sounded like eugenics. She had no proof, but at the same time she was sure. Ugly as that was, there was more: they weren’t going to leave the Earth intact.

There’d be a good, savvy reason for that. They didn’t want more people coming over to dilute the gene pool. They were creating an uber-colony of smartasses, just like the fanatics who’d threatened for decades to start colonies in South America—or Idaho, for that matter.

She was driving too fast. Slowing, she drew in gulps of air. At a legal speed, she voiced to her dashCom, “Audio contact, Rob.”

She had no fucking idea what she would say.

He answered quickly. “Caitlin? Decided to come home tonight?”

“Yes.”

“How are the roads? Where are you?”

“About an hour out.” She passed a platoon of meshed cars, ambling along at sixty mph. “Rob.”

He waited. “You OK?”

“Of course, OK. I’ve had a thought about that bad software glitch and don’t want to lose it. I’m going to encrypt.”

A pause. “Right. Go ahead.”

She voiced, “Encrypt audio signal.” The light flashed. You didn’t survive in business without keeping your conversations to yourself, and Emergent’s virtual educational modules were constantly poked at by their competitors.

Now encrypted, she started over. “It’s not the software, Rob.

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