DAY 7
Vlad put his hand out for the tablet. She gave it to him.
“Which app.”
“The notes app. The one that came on it.”
“Did you name the note.”
“No.”
“Was the antenna up.”
“The antenna was down here in Marcus’s pack. I was four hundred feet up a hill.”
He turned it over and looked at the back of it for a while.
“Then it did not leave this rock,” he said, and put the tablet inside his jacket. “I will keep this one.”
“I expected that.”
Marcus had his boots off and was pressing on the side of one foot with his thumb.
“Sam, should I be worried about the tablet?” he said.
“No.”
“It sounded like I should be.”
“Vlad worries. That’s his job.”
Marcus got the stove going without being asked and put the pot on. Then he tore a tortilla in half and held it out to her until she took it.
“Before you start,” he said. “We talked.”
“I know. I heard some of it.”
Vlad looked up.
“I came down for water at two,” she said. “I stood in the trees for a while and then I went back up.”
“Then you know where we got to,” Marcus said.
“Tell me anyway.”
“You don’t tell either of us. Not him, not me.”
She sat down on the ground across from them, crossed her arms, and slid her hands up inside her sleeves.
“That is not what I asked you to talk about.”
“No,” Vlad said.
“I asked which one of you I should tell.”
“We know what you asked.”
“You asked the wrong question,” Marcus said. “Vlad said you shouldn’t tell either of us and challenged me to convince him otherwise. I couldn’t. Every version where one of us learns it, you get cheaper.”
“Cheaper.”
“Um. Yeah. More disposable.”
She munched on the tortilla.
“There’s a version where nobody gets cheaper,” she said.
“Go.”
“The answer is in two pieces. First, the idea, which is four lines, three of which are in the paper I wrote that anyone can download.”
“Uh huh.”
“Then there’s the configuration. Trap spacing, detunings, the pulse shapes, the decoder. Every setting that makes a machine actually run the thing. That’s the two years.”
“And the two years is the part nobody else has,” Vlad said.
“It’s also the part that’s worth nothing on its own.”
Vlad sat up straight.
“You can have it,” she said.
“No.”
“You didn’t hear the whole thing.”
“I heard you say you can have it. I don’t want it.”
“The numbers don’t do anything without the four lines. You could post them on the Internet. You could stand on the road and read them to a Fed. When I came up with it, I thought you could even write them on your arm. Anybody who has them still needs me, or they need a long time and a machine.”
Vlad sat quietly, staring intently at Samantha. Marcus fidgeted around, looking back and forth between them.
“Say the failure,” Vlad finally said.
“Which one.”
“The one where I have your numbers and it goes badly for me.”
“Somebody takes you and finds out you have half of it. Now they know there are two halves, and they know I have the other one.”
“So it does not make you cheaper.”
“No.”
“It makes you more important to find.”
“Yes.”
The birds were fully awake now. Juncos, a white-crowned sparrow down in the willows by the creek, and one Wilson’s warbler that had not shut up since it got light.
“That’s the trade,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend it isn’t worse for me. All the scenarios suck for me right now.”
“You are asking me,” Vlad said.
“No. I’m asking both of you. I don’t want to be the one who decides this by myself.”
Marcus poured the water into the cups and got some on the ground. He shut the stove off.
“What about me,” he said.
“You get the hardest one on the list.”
“Which is what.”
“If they get me, you have to find the person who can build it again. And, you have to be right about them. Not almost right. There’s no second try and you won’t know for a year whether you picked the wrong person.”
Marcus was quiet.
“That’s a people problem,” he said.
“It is.”
“Okay.” He handed her the first cup. “I can do that.”
Vlad had not said yes. He was sitting with his forearms on his knees, looking at the stove. Samantha sipped her coffee and let him sit.
“If I hold half,” he said, “then the two of us have to stay in the same place. That is better for you and worse for me.”
“Yes.”
“And you are asking anyway.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
He said something short in Ukrainian.
“If we do this, all three of us stay together, all the time,” Marcus said.
“Nobody moves alone,” Vlad said.
“Okay,” Samantha said.
Vlad went into the bottom of his pack and came out with a pen. He looked at it, then pushed his left sleeve up past the elbow and twisted his elbow so his hand was facing up.
“Slowly,” he said.
“Trap spacing,” Samantha said. “Four point two microns.”