Genesis Read Free Page A

planet.
    Emily sidled over to Rhiannon and placed an arm around her shoulder and squeezed.
    “What’s that for?”
    “Just because.”
    “We’ve got a council meeting to go to. You okay looking after His Royal Highness for a little while longer?” Mac asked, nodding at his boy, who was now happily playing with his new toy car again.
    “Sure thing,” said Rhiannon.
    “We’ll only be a couple of hours,” Emily said. She leaned in and gave Rhiannon a kiss on the head and the same to Adam. “You’re a life saver.”
    “I know,” said Rhiannon with an assured smile.

    For some unknown reason Dr. Sylvia Valentine flat out did not like Emily.
    From the second the woman stepped off the USS Michigan and stood on the dock squinting in the California afternoon sunshine, Emily had sensed a tension emanating from her—a disturbance in the Force, Mac would have described it—a sense of aloofness that Emily realized later, after everything that had happened, she had never expected to experience again. She had expected some humbleness. Every other survivor Emily had greeted in her capacity as Camp Loma’s official welcoming party had looked tired from weeks or even months of travelling, but inevitably they had a smile on their faces when they felt the welcoming California sun on their skin and saw the crowd of smiling faces waiting to greet them.
    But when Sylvia—“That’s Doctor Valentine,” the woman would insist later when Emily made the mistake of using her given name—stepped off the deck of the Michigan , refusing the outstretched hand of a sailor placed there to assist the debarkation, her face was cloaked in a scowl.
    And right then Emily knew she was going to have a problem with this one.
    The doctor was tall, easily five nine, maybe even five eleven. The woman’s brunette hair was tied in a tight, neat knot behind her head. She was smartly dressed in a light-yellow blouse and dark-gray business pantsuit that showed off her trim figure. She carried a large suitcase in one hand. With her free hand Valentine had pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her breast pocket and placed them on her face, then slowly turned her head to survey the dock, as if she were looking over a piece of property she was going to buy. She did not look particularly happy with what she saw.
    Fine, Emily thought, you can catch the next boat back to McMurdo for all I care . But she had to admit, the stranger looked damned good for a woman she guessed must be in her midfifties and had spent months locked away in a submarine.
    Emily had met plenty of women like this during her time at the New York Tribune , back in Manhattan: professional, smart, capable, used to getting her own way. This was a woman who was only ever at ease when she was in control. And that was just fine as far as Emily was concerned. Camp Loma was a big enough place for them both, and God knows women were in short enough supply around here. Emily was willing to overlook any potential character quirks if only for the sake of having an additional feminine mind in the same vicinity amid all the testosterone flooding the camp. They would warm to each other, given enough time, she was sure of it. The woman had been cooped up on a frozen island for the last year and a half or so. Emily could afford to cut her some slack.
    But as Emily had stood on the quay watching the newcomers disembark, she remembered a warning from the McMurdo radio operator: “Don’t trust Valentine.”
    The truth was, everything had been fine right up until the bitch had to go and confirm every Goddamn thing Emily had been worried about.
    Thor, always riding shotgun with Emily and always happy to make a new friend, had immediately launched into his own welcome routine. Running from newcomer to newcomer as the Michigan disgorged them one by one, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, he happily accepted pats on the head and the inevitable “Oohs!” and “Ahhs!” that followed.
    But Valentine