“Yes,” the man said, before Jarl could speak. “We must know what we’re up against, if they’re serious enough to test the genetic markers. Let’s start at the beginning: are you a mule?”
“No— Yes.” Jarl took a deep breath. “Maybe.”
He shouldn’t have been hurt by the woman’s musical giggle, but he was. And then surprised by the man’s less tense voice as he said, “Promising! Are you from Freiwerk?”
“What? No. Hoffnungshaus. I am . . . I am bio-engineered. And all my . . . all my . . . kind are too, but we are not mules. We’re not gestated in non-human animals, and we’re not subnormal. We’re rather . . . the other way.”
A sharp sucking in of breath from the man, and Jarl had the impression he’d said something terribly wrong, but he wasn’t sure what.
“I see,” the man said. “So, the rumors aren’t just rumors. What is your name?”
“Jarl Ingemar,” Jarl said. “We were named by the people who designed us, you know, the national team. I . . . was sent over from Scandinavia at three, when it was decided—”
“Yes, yes. So, if the rumors are true you’d be what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”
“Nineteen.”
A breath like a sigh from the man, and a noise Jarl couldn’t interpret from the woman, followed by, “Starved.” And something that sounded like “Poor boys.”
Then the silence went on so long that Jarl wondered what he had said that was so terrible. And then he had to know. “Please, sir,” he said. “What do you want to do with me?”
“Uh? Do? Nothing. But—”
“But once he’s known to be missing they’ll turn the countryside inside out looking for him,” the woman said.
“And won’t stop till he’s captured or there’s proof he’s dead and gone. They’ll want to keep their dirty little secret hidden. . . . Making supermen, indeed.”
“I don’t want to die,” Jarl said, reflexively, understanding nothing but that. His teeth had stopped chattering and the blanket made him feel warm. His fingers stung lightly, where he’d burned them. And he realized he was very hungry. And he didn’t want to die.
“No, of course not,” the man said. And then after another deep sigh, “What were you doing out there? I suspect they guard you precious few even better than the people from Freiwerk. Don’t tell me that there was a riot at your place, also?”
“Uh? No. We . . . There aren’t enough of us to riot. And I’m one of the oldest.”
“So, how did you get out? What are you doing here?”
Jarl squirmed. How to explain his private obsession, his driving need? How to do it without sounding completely insane, or worse, like a vandal? These people had given him shelter. His entire survival was staked on their continued good will. If they turned him out of the flyer, if they called the Peace Keeper over, Jarl would be done for.
“It’s the angel,” he said, and then realized he had started all wrong. “I mean, we can see the zipway from our window,” he said. “From my window. I can see the zipway and the glow of the holograms above,” he said. “Not what they say, of course. Not without calculating it. I mean, they’re designed to be seen—”
“Yes,” the man said. Curtly. A demand that Jarl go on, without saying it.
“Yeah, well. I used to dream about it. About the zipway. When I was really little. I dreamed about flying in it and reading the holograms.” He paused and sensed the puzzled impatience of his hosts. “Only then, when I was four or five, I saw a picture of an angel. You know, a being with wings?”
“We know what angels are,” the woman said, very softly.
“Well . . . and then I dreamed that I was flying with my own wings, down the zipway, and all the lights and I . . . and I was free.”
Another silence followed, and then the man said, “I still don’t understand what that has to do with your being out here.”
“The angel, darling,” Jane said. And then in the tone of someone who didn’t think she should have to explain further. “I read about it yesterday. Perhaps you missed it because you were concentrating . . . Well, because of this trip. But I told you. Some group has been vandalizing the holo ads in this stretch of zipway, climbing up and changing the circuits and reprogramming and making it into the image of an angel with a sword, and sometimes of an angel flying away.”
“What?” the man said. “That? But that’s a group with technologically advanced tools. Has to be. There’s no way a single person could calculate how to change the holograms so that going that fast and—”