I got the feeling Oscar didn’t like me saying any of this. Probably he had hoped to introduce Isaac to Vox in his own way and in his own words. But the doctors seemed pleased with Isaac’s physical reaction, and Oscar wasn’t willing to provoke another outburst.

It was Isaac himself who ultimately shut the session down. His eyes wandered and he began to look sleepy. I took that as a cue. “I don’t want to tire you out,” I said. “I’ll be away for a little while, but I’ll come and see you again soon, promise.”

I stood up. That was when Isaac began to shake—not a gentle tremor but a full-blown convulsion. His head whipped from side to side and his eyes bulged against their paper-thin lids. The team of doctors hurried toward him as I backed away. “Turk!” he shouted, spittle frothing on his lips.

Then he stiffened. His eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. But his lips and tongue and jaw began to move, forming precise English words: “Majestic!” he whispered. “Billions of diverse components distributed over an entire galaxy! They know we’re here! They’re coming to meet us!”

The same words Oscar had used.

I glanced at Oscar. His face was nearly as pale as Isaac’s.

“Turk!” Isaac shouted again.

One of the physicians pressed a silvery tube against Isaac’s neck. His body slumped back into the chair, his eyes closed, and the chief medic gave me a look that needed no interpretation: Leave. Now.

3.

Allison came with me to the aircraft docks the day the survey expedition was due to leave. The docks were situated on a high platform above the city, protected from the toxic air by a transparent osmotic filter. A crowd of soldiers milled around us, their gear stacked on the deck waiting to be loaded. Ocher-colored clouds swept past, somber in the raking light of the sun.

Allison hugged me and said good-bye. “Come back,” she said, and then, recklessly, she whispered into my ear: “Soon.”

Uttering even that single word was a risk. She must have hoped the Network wouldn’t hear her; or, if it did, that the word would sound like a lover’s appeal to a man who was beginning to edge out of her grasp.

But that wasn’t what she meant. What she meant was, We have to act soon or we’ll lose our best shot at escape.

She meant, We could be exposed at any time.

“I will,” I whispered back.

Meaning: I know.

Chapter Fourteen. Turk’s Story

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SANDRA AND BOSE