Although it was fairly late, it was not yet midnight, and there was still activity in the base. Neteyam and Lo'ak followed Prisha into the hallway, and she showed them which way to go, relying on the map stored in Bohan's smartwatch. She and Neteyam took up positions on either side of Lo'ak as if escorting him, and they started walking.
It was a strange experience. Neteyam had probably been in this hallway before, or one very much like it, on his way to the hangar for the trip to Kilvanoro. At that time he hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the humans around him. They were there, they seemed to know who he was, and some of them did stare at him but he ignored them because he didn't want to think about why they were staring. Now he watched carefully as they passed on each side. They glanced over, noting what appeared to be a recom accompanied by two civilian employees, but nobody found the sight odd enough to say or do anything about it.
They arrived at the elevator and stepped inside. Lo'ak had to duck under the doorway. Two more people, both men, got in with them and chose a floor. Prisha pressed another button, a level above theirs – Neteyam recognized the number on it. That was where the recoms lived and exercised. He assumed they must be going to Bohan's quarters.
The two humans, both wearing shirts and ties, glanced nervously up at Lo'ak as the cabin began to move, but said nothing. The silence in the little room seemed to thicken the air. Fortunately, it didn't last very long. The recom quarters were only a couple of floors down. The bell chimed, and the door opened again.
"Excuse us, please," said Prisha, and they made their way out.
As the doors shut behind them, Neteyam heard one of the men snicker, and a soft voice said something that included the words baby-face.
Prisha turned left, and led the way down another featureless hall. This brought them to another airlock. She scanned her watch to get them inside, where masks were put on and taken off again. The other side opened onto another hallway in similar white and grey, but with much higher ceilings, and closely-spaced doors down each other. Prisha took them to one marked A-113, and scanned the watch to let them inside.
The room contained a bed, a desk, a small refrigerator, and an armchair, all sized for a Na'vi or recom. The floor had the same short, hard carpet on it that Neteya remembered from the room he'd been assigned to. Two doors in the far wall led to a closet and a washroom. Above the bed was a large display that acted as a false window, showing a single bright moon rising into a starry sky over a landscape of odd, triangular trees. This sky was exceptionally dark, with no aurora and no blue glow from the hovering planet, and it took Neteyam a few moments to realize what it represented. This must be the night sky as seen from Earth. How black and lonely it was! No wonder humans had left their homeworld, searching for friendlier places.
Lo'ak sat down in the chair, shifting his weight several times as he figured out how to do so, and reached up to scratch under the collar of his jacket. "Now what?" he asked.
"Nothing else tonight. We don't want to attract too much attention," Prisha whispered. "We just have to wait for Captain Bohan."
They settled down to do so. Lo'ak leaned back in the armchair, while Prisha and Neteyam sat on the bed, their legs dangling over the side like small children. All of them were tired, but they didn't want Bohan to come back here and find them sleeping. Talking seemed unwise, with the risk that somebody would hear them, so they remained silent.
Lo'ak was the first to nod off. His head drooped to one side and his eyes drifted closed, and soon he was breathing softly. Neteyam smiled a bit at the sight. When they were little, Lo'ak had once fallen asleep while Neteyam and Kiri were supposed to be keeping an eye on him. There'd been pots of body paint in the family's hut, in preparation for an upcoming festival, so Kiri had taken some and drawn rude pictures all over and Lo'ak's face and chest. She'd expected him to wake up and wash it off before Mom and Dad returned, but he hadn't, and she and Neteyam had both gotten a lecture for it – Kiri for the prank, and Neteyam for not intervening. Now he found himself wondering if there were anything in here he could use to draw on his brother. Mother and Dad weren't around to be disappointed in him.
A twinge of pain made Neteyam shift in his seat. His tail was hurting again... that hadn't happened since he'd left High Camp, had it? Maybe he'd just been too busy to be bothered by it.
As they waited, Prisha began to get sleepy, too. She leaned her head on Neteyam's shoulder, and her weight sagged against him. It reminded him of Tuk falling asleep in his lap while Mother told them stories. He put an arm around her and ran it up and down her back, the way he'd seen Dad do for Mother when she leaned on him. Neteyam was going to have to stay awake now, or they'd both fall off the bed.
That didn't seem like it was going to be a problem, though. The longer they all waited, the worse the phantom pain in his tail got. Neteyam didn't want to move too much because he didn't want to disturb his brother or Prisha, but he had to start bouncing a little, just to try to ease the discomfort.
"I think the bathroom's on the right," Prisha said sleepily.
"No, no, I'm okay," said Neteyam. He tried to sit still, but ended up jiggling a knee instead. Why was the pain coming back now? Why had it disappeared in the first place?
He had to keep a handle on it. If he freaked out the way he had that first night, people would come to see what was happening and they would all get caught. This was when he needed to be the in-control older brother. He couldn't let on that anything was wrong.
It was too late, though. Prisha sat up, yawning, and tried to rub her face before remembering she was wearing an exopack mask. She held her breath to scrub at her eyes, then put the mask back in place and looked up at Neteyam.
"Are you sure you're all right?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he repeated. He couldn't complain about something hurting when it didn't exist. Nguyen had known what was wrong and had been able to do something about it. Prisha and Lo'ak would just think he was crazy.
He continued to rock back and forth a little, gritting his teeth and trying to think about something else – anything would do. Songs Dad had sung to them as children... how did those go? Are you going to Scarborough fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Remember me to one who lives there, for she once was a true love of mine...
"You're not fine," said Prisha.
"Yes, I am," Neteyam insisted.
"Lo'ak." Prisha reached out and tapped his knee to wake him up. "Something's wrong with Neteyam."
"No! It's okay," Neteyam told her. "I talked to somebody about it when I was here before. I'm just imagining it." If only he could just stop imagining it!
Lo'ak sat up, blinking sleepily. "What is it?"
"Nothing," Neteyam insisted through clenched teeth. Thinking about it was making it worse.
"That's not nothing." Lo'ak knelt down in front of him, frowning. "That's the face you were making when I dragged you to shore after... that's the face you were making while Grandma patched you up after the train."
"Are you hurt?" Prisha asked.
"No. I just..." Neteyam began – but cut himself off as the lights came on in the room.
That was enough of a surprise to make him momentarily forget the pain. Somebody must be coming in – that meant they only had a few moments to get out of sight. Neteyam and Prisha got off the bed and crawled underneath it, in between pairs of shoes and plastic tubs of other belongings. Lo'ak wouldn't fit there, so he slipped into the closet and shut the door behind him.
They only barely made it. The door to the hallway opened just as the closet one clicked into place. From his hiding place, Neteyam could see two pairs legs. The larger one staggered in, and the bed creaked as something fell face-first into it, leaving bare feet hanging over the edge. Prisha breathed in sharply, but did not cry out.
"You sure you're all right?" asked the human standing in the doorway.
"Yeah. Just tired," mumbled Bohan.
"Sleep well," the human said. "See you tomorrow, bright and early." The door closed again, and the lights went out, leaving only the artificial moonlight.
For a while everybody just lay there silently in the dark, as Neteyam's heart beat in his ears and his nonexistent tail throbbed. It was hard to stay how much time passed, but it was enough that he began to wonder whether Bohan really had just fallen asleep. He had no idea what she and Prisha had actually been doing all day, and it was now very late. She was probably exhausted.
Then, finally, the bed creaked as she sat up a little. "Kids?" she asked in a whisper.
The closet door opened a crack and Lo'ak's eyes appeared, reflecting the light from the false window. Prisha and Neteyam wriggled out from under the bed, and Bohan sat up and swung her legs over the side. There were bandages on her ankles.
"Don't turn the lights on," she warned them.
She sat on the bed. Lo'ak crouched on the floor in front of her, and Neteyam and Prisha found that they could both fit in the chair, which put them on an eye level with the others. The simulated moonlight was enough to make out that Bohan was wearing a hospital gown, but she now untied the laces behind her neck and pulled it off to sit there topless. This didn't bother Neteyam or Lo'ak – what little Omatikaya women wore on their chests was purely decorative – but Prisha kept her eyes politely down. The light from the false window shone across Bohan's back, showing a layer of dressings and stitches.
"Were you in medical all day?" asked Prisha in a whisper.
"Pretty much," said Bohan. "They offered me morphine, but I wouldn't take it. I told them I was afraid it would interact with some of the stuff the Na'vi gave me. I knew I needed to stay clear-headed enough not to tell them anything. And they did ask." She paused to yawn, then apologized. "Sorry. Then just as we were finally done, the Colonel came and asked me why 'my' banshee was trying to break in. Those were his exact words."
Neteyam remembered that the people on the radio had known that Bohan liked the black one – they'd been talking about it. His heart sank. Of all the things that might give them away, who'd have thought it would be Ukyom?
"He followed us in," said Neteyam. "I think he was looking for you."
"I just kept saying I didn't know. I'm not sure he believes me, but the medics made him back off. Nguyen told him I'd just been through enough trauma and he was doing the opposite of helping." She snickered. "Never thought I'd want to thank that woman. Maybe I'll send her some flowers. What's good and poisonous?"
Nobody answered. Neteyam was pretty sure that was a joke, but not entirely.
"Anyway," Bohan went on, "they let me go to bed, but they promised we'll talk more tomorrow. They think I know where the Omatikaya are. I kept saying I was blindfolded but they're convinced I know more than I'm telling. That means we have to get a move on," she said seriously. "I was originally thinking I'd catch some proper sleep tonight and we'd go to the labs tomorrow, but I don't think we're gonna get the chance. We gotta get started."
"Are you going to be all right if we do that?" asked Neteyam.
"I'll have to be," she replied. "I already told you, remember? I don't care what happens to me anymore. We gotta go as soon as the moonshiners make their move. What time is it, Miss Patel?"
Prisha checked the watch Bohan had given her. "It's about a quarter to one."
"Any time, then." Bohan stood and went to the closet to get a shirt.
Prisha watched the security system, while Bohan briefed the boys on their next moves.
"The labs are big, and there aren't usually a lot of people in there," she explained. "They've got the technology to the point where it can mostly be run by the computers. There are security guards, but they don't assign anyone to work here unless you've already proved you're trustworthy, so it's not as much as it would be somewhere like Bridgehead, where they're worried about activists from Earth conning their way in. Still, you guys need to stick with me, because it's easy to get lost. Understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am," said Lo'ak. Neteyam nodded.
"Great. How we doing?" Bohan looked at Prisha.
"Nothing yet," she replied, but then the watch beeped softly. "Oh, no, wait... it says tipple time."
Bohan nodded. "Let's go."
She opened the door, looked right and left to be sure nobody was out there, and then crept back into the hallway. They retraced their steps to the entrance airlock, and from there to the elevator. It was now around one-thirty in the morning, and there were not many people still awake, but when the elevator door opened, there was another recom inside it.
"Emily?" the man asked, startled. "I heard they'd found you. Are you okay?"
"I thought I was," she replied with a yawn, "but the doctors want more blood. I'm not gonna have any left at this point." She looked down at Neteyam and Prisha as if they were to blame.
Prisha decided to offer something. "Captain Bohan has been exposed to whatever diseases are endemic among her captors. We want to be sure she hasn't brought a potential epidemic back with her."
The other man nodded absently, but he was looking at Lo'ak. "Who are you?" he asked.
Bohan glanced at Lo'ak, and then burst out laughing. This startled everybody, perhaps including herself, because she winced at the pain it caused in her shoulders. "Oh, you two haven't met, have you? This is Major Phillip Goodman – Phil, this is... Luke Sullivan." She clapped Lo'ak on the back. "He's actually in his forties, but his new mortal coil didn't mature properly before he shuffled off the old one. How old did they say you were, Sullivan?" She grinned at Lo'ak.
"Fifteen," he said with a scowl.
Bohan pinched his cheek. "Isn't he adorable?"
Goodman laughed. "Oh, it's gonna be fun having you around," he told Lo'ak. "I want to apologize in advance."
"I don't forgive you," said Lo'ak. "In advance."
"See you two around. Good luck with the vampires," said Goodman. "I gotta hit the hay."
"Sweet dreams," Bohan replied. Goodman passed them by, and they climbed into the elevator, with Bohan still giggling. "Sorry, kiddo. That was fun," she said.
"You're very good at lying," Lo'ak observed suspiciously.
"You gotta be if you're in the army and want to keep your sense of humour," Bohan replied.
The elevator began to descend – and descend, and descend, and descend. Neteyam had never wondered how many floors there were at Site Nine. He'd been kept near the top, where the humans and recoms lived. Now they were headed far down into the bowels of the complex. Thinking of that depth was suddenly a little daunting... how many layers were above them? What was holding it all up? At High Camp the inhabitants knew they were surrounded by metres of solid rock that had been there for centuries and wasn't likely to move. Site Nine was a honeycomb of rooms and equipment and the alien air the Sky People breathed.
Neteyam was still mulling this over as the doors rumbled open again – the ones on this level made a horrible squeaking sound as they did, metal scraping on unlubricated metal – and they stepped into the laboratory. Then he took a look around, and promptly forgot all about it.
'Lab' was not nearly a sufficient description of this place. Neteyam had been picturing something like the old labs at Hell's Gate. They'd had a few tubes for growing avatars, which Dr. Spellman had explained was done two or three at a time – each new ship would bring a couple of scientists and a couple of DNA samples for the people who'd be on the next one, four years from now. This was on a whole different scale.
The room stretched away in front of them as far as Neteyam could see. Long half-walls ran down it, about ten metres apart, covered with readouts, bundles of wire, and assorted equipment, and protruding from them were rows of tanks, each with a recom growing inside it. Every few tanks there was a metal staircase that led up to a second level with more tanks. When Neteyam had seen the recoms working and exercising through the observation window, he'd assumed there were perhaps a couple of dozen of them. Here, in progress, were literally hundreds more.
"It goes on for a while," said Bohan. "I'll show you."
She started walking. The three young people followed her as she made her way, past row upon row upon row of tanks. As they got further from the door, the bodies growing there became more and more mature, and on the third row they reached an area where the future recoms had recognizable adult facial features. Bohan crouched down next to one and put a hand on the glass.
"This one is Randy – my husband," she explained. "Both of us signed the paperwork originally. I think he's been trying to back out of it, but I haven't talked to him myself, so I don't know for sure. I doubt they'll let him, though, not when this guy's almost ready to go. Too much money already spent."
Neteyam was used to the sight of Dr. Augustine's old avatar in storage at High Camp. Nobody had felt right about just getting rid of it after Kiri had been born – not when they weren't sure Eywa didn't have more plans for it. Seeing so many of them, however, made him feel ill. This was...
"This is an army," Lo'ak said.
"That's exactly what it is." Bohan straightened up again. "An army that are a physical match for the Na'vi, can survive on the surface unaided, and which the planet doesn't recognize as invaders. The first twelve were just a test run."
"They failed, though," pointed out Lo'ak. "They couldn't bring Dad back."
"That was only one of their objectives," Bohan said. "Mostly they were a proof-of-concept, that they could build these things and make them work. They did, so now they're making more." She looked around at the hundreds of silently dormant bodies, waiting for their human donors to die so they could be awakened. "That's why I wonder... you know, what they're gonna do with all of us once they've won and they don't need us anymore."
Neteyam remembered Viraj Patel's favourite video game: Revenant Rumble. An army of the dead to consume the living.
"What if we break the tanks open?" he asked Bohan. "Will that kill them?" He could imagine himself just smashing them one by one, the occupants sliding out to die on the floor...
"Probably, but it'll sound an alarm, and we'll all get shot," she said "Hey! Stay together!" Lo'ak and Prisha were both starting to wander off down side aisles, trying to comprehend the sheer size of the room. "Now you've seen what you're up against," she said to Neteyam. "I'm sorry, Neteyam. You're not gonna be able to hijack this. If you do get your body back, it won't be here."
Now that he saw the place, Neteyam had to agree with her... but what else was there? Surely Eywa wouldn't have let them make it this far just to see that they were doomed to fail. There must be something else, something he hadn't thought of yet...
"Guys?" asked Lo'ak, from the other side of the half-wall behind Randy Bohan.
"I told you, we need to stay together," Bohan repeated.
"There's humans down here," Lo'ak said. "And other... things."
His tone wasn't urgent. He wasn't warning them they were about to be caught, so by 'humans' he must mean... humans they were growing in tanks like recoms? Like they had Neteyam? What were other things?
Neteyam felt Prisha take his hand and squeeze it. When he looked at her, her eyes were wide and frightened.
Lo'ak had gone two more rows down, to an actual dividing wall of the room. Embedded in this was a row of smaller tanks, half the size of the ones for the recoms, filled with what must have been a different artificial amniotic fluid, since it was more yellowish than blue. And inside here...
... those weren't humans. Those were... other things.
It was possible to see that they were intended to be humans. They were the right sorts of colours, assorted shades of pink and brown. There were hands with five fingers and feet with five toes – but there were also ones with six or seven. None of the specimens were more than half the size of an adult human, and many of them were horribly misshapen. Some parts of the body were too big or too small. Others were covered with warty tumors, or had organs protruding from their abdomens.
Prisha covered her mouth with her free hand and made a gagging sound. She had to let go of Neteyam and turn away.
Neteyam would have liked to do the same, but he couldn't. He was frozen, staring. "What are these?" he asked, figuring Bohan had to know.
But she shook her head. "This is new. It wasn't here last time I saw this... last time there was only..." she went further down the wall, counting tanks as she looked for something familiar.
That left Neteyam still staring, mesmerized, at the... other things. He wandered closer to a particular one – it was the most normal out of all of them, although the right half of the body was slightly larger than the left, and a growth covered the right eye so it could not be opened. It was a girl, around Tuk's age, with dark skin and no hair. Her limbs were twitching like Dr. Augustine's avatar did, as if she were dreaming. Neteyam told himself it was just a reflex. The idea that there was any kind of mind in any of these did not bear thinking about.
Somebody had put pieces of white tap on the glass of each tube, with a number and a word. Neteyam sounded out the four letters, and his sick feeling got worse. It said Noro.
These must be... these must be the people they'd killed at the waterfall when the Sky People arrived to dig out the minerals in the caves. They were going to 'grow and question' them, like they'd tried to do with Neteyam? How was that possible, though... that had only been a week ago. Bohan had said they'd improved their technology a lot, but it still took eight months to grow a recom. Was that why they looked like this, because the scientists were trying to grow them too fast?
Further up the wall, he heard Lo'ak swear.
Neteyam tore himself away from the deformed children, and went to see what his brother had found now. He told himself it couldn't possibly be worse than what he'd just seen. Sure enough, it was not... at least, not physically.
Bohan was standing back, watching with a grim expression as Lo'ak and Prisha examined the contents of six tanks set partially apart from the others. These had clearly been here the longest – the equipment looked a little more worn, a little dirtier, some of it of slightly different design. It was a relief to see that the creatures floating inside them were finished. They were the rights shapes and sizes for humans, rather than looking like they'd been put together wrong. The relief didn't last long, though, once Neteyam looked closely.
The first one in particular was very familiar. Neteyam had seen that face a hundred times in old photos and video logs. That was Dad.
In the tank next to him was a woman with dark skin and straight black hair. That had to be Mom. It kind of looked like her, in the same twisted way that Neteyam still looked like himself.
The third one was empty, and Neteyam had to swallow hard as he looked up at it. He didn't need to be told why it was empty: that was his. That was the tank they'd taken this body out of and awakened it. Since then Neteyam had wondered several times if he really were the person he thought he was, and here was his answer. Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan was dead. The young man standing here calling himself by that name was just something the Sky People had made.
In the fourth tank was a girl, paler than any of the others except Dad. She had short red hair, faint spots across her face and shoulders, and a narrow nose that reminded Neteyam of old photos of Dr. Augustine. Of course, that was Kiri. And the fifth one...
"Shit," Lo'ak said softly, crouching down to look the sleeping figure in the face. His eyes moved in his face as he took in the nose, the cheekbones, the build. "This one is me, isn't it?"
"Yeah," said Neteyam, and turned away before he could look at the last tank. He didn't think he could handle seeing what they would have made out of Tuk.
"So why did they only do you?" Lo'ak asked.
Was he imagining what it would have been like to find himself, rather than Neteyam, on that mountain? "Because I'm dead," Neteyam said. "Dr Nguyen said they can't do this with anybody who's still alive, because they don't want two of the same person around. Quaritch wanted to wake all of us up, but they wouldn't let him."
Prisha stepped forward and put her arms around him. Neteyam pulled her close, glad to have somebody to hang on to. She shut her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. I wish I wasn't one of those."
A moment later Lo'ak joined them, holding them both against his chest, and Bohan came to hug all three from the other side.
"I know it's awful," she said, "but I thought... I just thought you really needed to see what you were trying to do. Now you know what's coming for you, and we all need to get out of here so you can warn your people, okay?"
She was right, wasn't she? The only people who were getting new bodies here were the recoms, and apparently any Na'vi they managed to capture. Neteyam himself was also a proof-of-concept – the People could be trapped in human bodies and forced to help the invaders. He raised his head to look again at the horrible half-grown things down the other end, and swallowed. If he were really the first, had they been through several of those before they'd gotten a version that looked normal?
"We have to destroy this place," he decided.
Lo'ak stepped back from the group hug. "What?"
Bohan and Prisha also let go of Neteyam, and he turned to face the unconscious figure that might, if awakened, become another Lo'ak. "Like Bohan said: they're building an army. We can't let them finish it. We can't let them do this," he pointed into the tank, "to any more of the People. How do we..." he looked at Bohan. "We can't shut them off one by one. How can we do the whole place at once?"
"Well..." Bohan thought about it for a moment. "I think you'd need to blow the fusion reactor. It's the next level down from here. The plasma inside is as hot as the core of the sun. If that escapes containment it'll take the whole structure with it." She started to smile, but then it faded. "The tokamak is made of titanium. We'd need a pretty powerful..." her voice trailed off.
Neteyam grinned in spite of himself. The world had suddenly crystallized. He'd thought Eywa was looking out for him because she wanted him to get his body back, but now he knew this was all part of a different plan. He had an important task to do, he was in the right place to do it, and when it was done... well, like Bohan said, then it didn't matter anymore, did it?
"A pretty powerful explosive," he said. "Like the stuff that was hidden at Kilvanoro?"
"Yeah," Bohan nodded. "That would probably do it."
"All right," said Neteyam. "Let's go get it. How do we get out again?"
Bohan frowned. She clearly hadn't thought this far ahead. "Okay, I think we'll..."
Then they heard a sound.
It was one they knew. They'd heard it a few minutes earlier, close by and loud – the squeal of some improperly maintained part scraping as the elevator doors opened. Now they heard it echoing down the room, echoing off the high ceilings and bare concrete floors.
"Quick!" Bohan whispered. She herded the young people behind the wall, where they ducked down below the tubes of human and semi-human bodies mounted in it. Neteyam tried to sit up so he could see a distorted view through one of the tanks, but Bohan pushed his head down. She hissed through her teeth as she sat with her bandaged back against a bank of cables, craning her own neck to see. Multiple sets of feet in shoes were approaching, and with them came voices.
"There is no excuse for this!" said one, and Neteyam's heart quickened as he recognized it. That was Nguyen.
"Can they physically survive without the umbilicals?" asked another. That was Bush.
"Yes, Sir," said a third, unfamiliar one, "but probably only for a couple of days. Even in the best specimens, the excess growth accellerants have produced cardiomyopathy and all kinds of hormonal problems. Any we bring around are going to be in pain and probably..."
"They don't have to live more than a couple of days, Dr. Velázquez," Bush said firmly. "Once they tell us where those damned explosives are, we can put them out of their misery. Pick one!"
Neteyam realized his head was next to a hole for cables to pass through. He turned to put an eye up to it, and through there could catch a glimpse of the speakers. There was Bush, in his uniform, and Nguyen, in her pajamas. The third was a tall, overweight Latino man, his hair askew, wearing a lab coat over rumpled clothing.
"I guess number four," said Velázquez reluctantly. He consulted a holopad. "According to our records, her name should be... Paya?"
"Pa'ay," Nguyen corrected.
Neteyam felt cold. He reached to grab the nearest hand. It belonged to Lo'ak.
"All right, decant her," Bush ordered.
"You cannot possibly do that!" Nguyen told him. "With the Sully kid, we were going to give him some kind of life, but you cannot create a human being just to question it and then let it die. Especially one who's going to be suffering the whole time." Neteyam saw Velázquez nod. "This is a war crime!" Nguyen concluded.
"We are at war, Dr. Nguyen!" Bush barked at her. "If that means committing war crimes, then so be it! You weren't brought here for your opinions, you were brought here to do a job. Are you gonna do it, or should we ship you back to Mars on the next flotilla?"
Nguyen did not reply.
Bush was evidently satisfied with that. "Good," he said. "Let's stop wasting time."