Ten minutes later I was safe in the floater with the dikdik bolted on behind, a cup of coffee in one hand and a smoked turkey sandwich in the other. The floater gently carried us back over the rough country I’d strayed into, then swerved to the west. No, I thought, I would never have found the way. ‘You said you were looking for me?’
A grin. ‘Grandma said she’d give you a week to work it out. She said you’d come by dikdik so they couldn’t trace you, and she said odds on the girl will get lost …’
‘Did she say what “it” was that I’d figure out?’
A shake of the head. He looked too young to be a doctor, but then who knew what tinkering Dr Meredith had added to his genes. Maybe he was 104 … No, I thought, the bounciness was definitely youth.
‘Would you like more coffee? Or fruit juice?’
‘Juice. Please. And coffee too. Everything.’
He looked a bit surprised, but filled my cup again anyway, and then a glass of some red juice.
The farmlands were green and neat below us now. The Clinic’s giant oaks loomed on the horizon. We landed under the largest, cut off from probing satellites by the thick canopy of leaves.
The boy helped me out; my legs were shaky. I stepped across the fallen leaves and climbed the stairs to the house.