Free Icon by Genevieve Valentine Page A

pipeline?” Ethan asked, peering out. He winked at Suyana when their guides glanced at each other.
    â€œThe pipeline was fifty years ago,” said the man, and the woman said, “It wouldn’t be safe to build near the pipeline, actually. Since it was installed, we’ve been playing a losing game with the soil.”
    Magnus: I’m sorry. I can’t.
    Suyana’s throat was thick. “Oh?”
    â€œThe erosion caused the loss of so much trees and brush cover that the birds had to move on, so the seedsaren’t traveling the way they used to,” the woman explained, as the politician got silently redder. “This year the Yanesha Reserve has reported markedly low levels of deer. The monkeys are leaving.”
    Suyana already knew. The scraped-bare land had been a line of rotting flesh you could see from the plane.
    Ethan frowned. “And so you’re researching how to fix the erosion?”
    â€œUnfortunately, the damage is just too far gone to reverse quickly, even if the budget for such a large-scale fix was ­possible. At this point we’re researching how to encourage corpo­rate activism to raise the money to grow and replant ground cover, until we can reintroduce seed growth more naturally.”
    It was rehearsed, a return to the prescribed track from that moment of accidental information, and Suyana tried not to curl her lip at the idea of corporate activism. It might work—growing seeds in a greenhouse that would take up acres, trying to replant in stages what had been lost. Of course, it would be sponsored by an American company—the UARC couldn’t afford to sustain a several-year project on that scale. They’d be asking the Americans to take point. They’d be handing it over.
    That was the whole point of the venture, then: make the UARC grateful for a solution they couldn’t afford to a problem caused by someone else.
    She wasn’t a fool—whatever was happening in the labs they couldn’t see meant that pharmaceutical companies and nutrition conglomerates would descend on whatever this group found, looking for patents the government would have to fight across international lines and exerting pressure to own it all, in exchange for keeping it alive.
    But that might not happen until after the plants had taken hold. It might be the reason there were enough plants in the first place; cultivation and domestication on something that might be wasteland otherwise. The UARC was getting better trade deals now that she was dating Ethan; they might be able to buy back some of the land rights before the corporations could close their fists around it all. And until then, what was to be done that was better than trying to hold on to the dirt? Should she give the word to let the place burn, and let the ground eat its fill of the trees?
    (Once she thought, Did Margot know there would be mitigating factors? Did she let me see this just to find out what I would do?)
    â€œMiss Sapaki, would you like to see some of our seed practices?” the woman was asking, and Suyana watched the politician draw Ethan aside to meet with some people in one of the forbidden meeting rooms, full of the people she needed to know and never would.
    â€œSure,” said Suyana finally. She felt heavy everywhere. “I’d love to see the seeds.”
    I’m just the girlfriend, Suyana reminded herself as she nodded over little envelopes and tiny seedlings being grown under hot lamps. I’m the local celebrity, and the girlfriend of the powerful man. I’m not a threat. No one will remember me except as a pair of earrings and high heels covered in mud. I’m a host, and I’m a shell in order to be safe, and anything I need to know I’m going to have to take.
    She took it in the small talk she made with the biologists, joking about the chaos of her office back home amid their tidy rows in different bins, noting which species went into which bin