Clade by Mark Budz Page B

leader, daughter to mother . . .
    Isa touches Anthea’s arm. “Find out where he’s from,” Isa says, “and I’ll have a much better chance of figuring out what he needs.”
    Anthea nods, watches Isa exit the hospital room. The sketchpad is crushed painfully to her breasts. Anthea forces the muscles in her arms to unknot, easing some of the pressure. Still, her heart aches with the pain of a phantom thrombosis—fear and anger and helplessness clotting inside her chest.
    Did Ibrahim have help getting here? He must have. It’s highly unlikely he could have escaped a bioenslavement situation on his own. Did his benefactor know he would die once he’d been freed from wherever he was being held? If so, s/he may have a way to help him. All she has to do is track the person down. Figure out where Ibrahim was going. “Did you scope all that?” she asks Doug.
    “Of course,” Doug quips. “I’m all-seeing and all-hearing.”
    “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, can you put together a list of recent incidents of biodependent slavery, say the last six months? I want all illegal as well as legal cases, if that’s possible.”
    “Yessum.”
    “Have you come up with anything from the sketchpad?”
    “No, ma’am, not yet I hasn’t. I’s still waitin’ on da rasta’ization enhancement and pattern rekonition anal sis.”
    “I have to tell you Doug, you’re mining the depths of bad taste here.”
    “True.” The IA unfurls a bouffant, melodramatic sigh. “I be da first to admit the last thing I wanna be is politic’ly co’rect.”
    Anthea’s tempted to reply with an acerbic retort of her own, but bites her tongue in an effort not to encourage the behavior by dignifying it with a response. “Well then, perhaps you can find time to cross-correlate the location of each biodependent incident with images on the sketchpad.”
    “Yes, massa. No problem.”
    “Also, see what you can uncover on bioenslavement activity here in the States. Black-market adoption scams, pedophilia, child labor. You know.”
    “I sho does.”
    Doug will be able to mine the infosphere for that kind of data much more quickly and efficiently than she can. After all, that’s where Doug lives. His home. She wonders what the IA does in its spare time for relaxation, and decides not to open that Pandora’s box. Better not to know.
    “Will tha’ be all?” Doug asks.
    “For now. Thank you.”
    “Den I best be off to do my chores.”
    The IA drops offline. Anthea pictures it sulking in a far corner of the Web, a dog licking itself, nursing pet grievances while concocting elaborate double and triple entendres to annoy her. She really should apply for a new IA, but Doug seems to need an outlet for the repressed feelings it harbors. In a way she provides a perverse form of therapy. She feels obligated, duty-bound to endure its antics.
    Anthea shifts her attention to Ibrahim. She enters the room, walks to the side of the bed, and takes one of his hands. It’s hot, sweaty, and incredibly light; the bones of his fingers feel hollow as they curl in response to hers. She returns the squeeze and his eyes flutter open, wild with fear behind the dull patina of sedatives.
    She leans forward. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.”
    The anxiety fades. The troubled surface of his gaze returns to complacency, and the corners of his mouth relax. “Mom?”
    “Where is she, Ibrahim? Can you tell me where your mother’s at?”
    He continues to stare at the ceiling, looking past her. Through her. “Am I going to die?”
    Anthea inhales sharply, smells the sourness of her own apprehension. “You’re going to be fine.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “For what?”
    “I couldn’t stay. I had to leave.”
    “That’s all right, sweetie. Don’t worry about that. You did what you had to do. What you thought was best.”
    Anthea kisses him on the forehead. Tastes salt and the stringent tang of topical antiseptics. A