Two more armed men staff the gate at the highway. All barriers fall, and Virginia lies ahead.
Escape will never be as easy again. If they are apprehended, the girl’s offer of a handshake will be greeted by gunfire.
The trick now is to get out of the area quickly, before project security realizes what has happened to five of its men. They will mount a pursuit, perhaps with the assistance of local, state, and federal authorities. Rose drives madly, recklessly, with a skill—born of desperation—that she has never known before.
Barely big enough to see out of the side window, 21-21 studies the passing countryside with fascination and, at last, says, Wow, it sure is big out here.
Rose laughs and says, Honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
She realizes that she must get the word out as quickly as possible: use the media to display 21-21’s healing powers and then to demonstrate the greater gift that the girl can bestow. Only the forces of ignorance and darkness benefit from secrecy. Rose believes that 21-21 will never be safe until the world knows of her, embraces her, and refuses to allow her to be taken into custody.
Her ex-bosses will expect her to go public quickly and in a big way. Their influence within the media is widespread—yet as subtle as a web of cloud shadows on the skin of a pond, which makes it all the more effective. They will try to find her as soon as possible after she surfaces and before she can bring 21-21 to the world.
She knows a reporter whom she would trust not to betray her:
Lisa Peccatone, an old college friend who works at the Post in Los Angeles.
Rose and the girl will have to fly to Southern California—and the sooner the better. Project 99 is a joint venture of private industry, elements of the defence establishment, and other powerful forces in the government. Easier to halt an avalanche with a feather than to resist their combined might, and they will shortly begin to use every asset in their arsenal to locate Rose and the girl.
Trying to fly out of Dulles or National Airport in Washington is too dangerous. She considers Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. She chooses New York.
She reasons that the more county and state lines she crosses, the safer she becomes, so she drives to Hagerstown, Maryland, and from there to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, without incident. Yet mile by mile, she is increasingly concerned that her pursuers will have put out an APB on her car and that she will be captured regardless of the distance she puts between herself and Manassas. In Harrisburg, she abandons the car, and she and the girl continue to New York City by bus.
By the time they are in the air aboard Nationwide Flight 353, Rose feels safe. Immediately on landing at LAX, she will be met by Lisa and the crew that Lisa has assembled—and the series of media eruptions will begin.
For the airline passenger manifest, Rose implied that she was married to a white man, and she identified 21-21 as her stepdaughter, choosing the name “Mary Tucker,” on the spur of the moment. With the media, she intends initially to use CCY-21-21’s project name because its similarity to concentration-camp inmates’ names will do more than anything else to characterize Project 99 in the public mind and generate instant sympathy for the child. She realizes that eventually she will have to consult with 21-21 to pick a permanent name—which, considering the singular historical importance of this child’s life, should be a name that resonates.
They are seated across the aisle from a mother and her two daughters, who are returning home to Los Angeles—Michelle, Chrissie, and Nina Carpenter.
Nina, who is approximately 21-21’s age and size, is playing with a hand-held electronic game called Pigs and Princes, designed for preschoolers. From across the aisle, 21-21 becomes fascinated by the sounds and the images on the small screen. Seeing this, Nina asks “Mary” to move with her to a nearby pair of empty seats where they can play the game together. Rose is hesitant to allow this—but she knows that 21-21 is intelligent far beyond her years and is aware of the need for discretion, so she relents. This is the first unstructured play time in 21-21’s life, the first genuine play she has ever known. Nina is a child of enormous charm, sweet and gregarious. Although 21-21 is a genius with the reading skills of a college freshman, a healer with miraculous powers, and literally the hope of the world, she is soon enraptured by Nina, wants to be Nina, as totally cool as Nina, and unconsciously she begins imitating Nina’s gestures and manner of speaking.