“I’m just being—”
“You open doors for me,” she said. “Hold chairs for me, like I’m injured or something. You stand up when I walk into a room. I’ve seen you glare at your men for using language you think I shouldn’t hear. Like I need protecting.”
“That’s the way I was brought up. My mom would take me apart with a can opener if I was rude to a lady. But if it bugs you, I guess I can—”
“I like it.” She turned to face him and put her hands on her hips. “I like it. If anyone told me about some man doing those things, I’d say What, does he think you’re sick? Did someone tell him you’re dying, or something? But you do it and it makes me feel like a woman. You sit across a table from me and everybody’s talking about tactics, and you’re looking at me. Not at a soldier, or an expert, or any of that. You’re looking at me.”
“It’s not as if it’s hard to look at you, Wennda.”
“Shut up.” She was surprised at her welling tears and she forced them back. “I’m a good soldier,” she said. “I’m a great data tech. People say they appreciate things I do. They train with me, they work with me, they game with me. They gossip and argue and complain with me. What they don’t do is try to be alone with me in the forest in the dark. They don’t ask me out. Because I’m the commander’s daughter. Because everyone knows who he is and what he’s like, and they’re terrified of him. Because they feel sorry for me but they think I’m privileged, too.”
Farley didn’t say anything. She loved that he knew not to say anything.
“And then you show up,” she continued. “And you don’t know whose daughter I am, or what my history is, or any of that. But somehow you understand me. I try to tell you why I like coming up here, and you say it’s because there’s something ancient in me that remembers it. You know what I mean, not just what I say. You treat me some way I’ve never been treated. You make me feel pretty. No one ever made me feel pretty before. Even if they thought I was, they couldn’t tell me. I’m the commander’s daughter.” She laughed bitterly.
“Well,” he said. “I think you deserve better.”
“I think so, too.” She wiped her eyes and looked at him, and the naked ache in her face was heartbreaking. “I think I deserve better. And I think that’s you.”
“I’m not better than anybody,” he said.
“And I’m not pretty. But you think I am.” She looked up at the lying sky. “Why is this so hard?” she pleaded. “Why are we so afraid of what we really want?”
“Maybe because it came from another world with a lifesize picture of you plastered on its nose like a billboard. Anyone who wouldn’t be afraid of that is crazy.”
“Or lying,” she said.
He smiled. “Or dead,” he agreed.
She laughed. She found his hand and pulled him nearer. His face all there was to see. “It certainly got my attention,” she said. “Maybe that was the point.”
“How could it be? I didn’t even know you existed.”
“I didn’t say you were the one trying to get my attention,” she said.
Farley raised an eyebrow. “Who, then? God?”
Wennda shrugged. “The universe. Quantum entanglement. God. I don’t know. But something went out of its way to bring you here from another world. Maybe we’ll find out why.”
“Last night,” Farley said carefully, “I found out I didn’t come from a different world at all. I come from this one.” He held a hand up as she started a reply. “From the past,” he said. “Hundreds of years ago. Before your war. Before all this.” His gesture encompassed the Dome, the ruined world beyond.
She smiled. “Maybe that’s why I’m on your aircraft,” she said. “I’m a memory of the future. An echo across time.”
“An echo.”
She leaned away and looked at him. Traced his jawline with a hand. His expression serious. City light glittering in his eyes. “Another world, another time,” she said. “You still were brought. It’s not any crazier than your being here in the first place.”
Now he smiled. “I’ve seen an awful lot of crazy in the last couple of years,” he said. “And every bit of it was real.”
She smiled back. “Farley,” she said.
“I think you can call me Joe by now, don’t you?”
“Joe,” she said. “All right. So what now, Joe?”
“You know what now.”
“Yes.” She put a hand on his back and the other behind his neck. Muscle flexed against one palm. Stubble rough against the other. “Yes, I do.” She leaned toward him.
The sun turned on.
Stark in sudden light they gaped at each other. Farley’s hands fell.
“Damn it!” said Wennda. “It can’t be noon yet!” She stepped back and looked up at the lighted sky. “I want more time!” she demanded.
Farley looked puzzled. He cocked his head. “Listen,” he said.
Wennda looked away from the dome and stood listening as sound carried from the city below. Shouting voices. She frowned and glanced at her chronometer. “Eleven twenty-eight?” she said in disbelief. “This can’t be broken.”
“It isn’t,” Farley said. “They fixed the sun.”
Wennda slumped. Now came the tears she had been fighting.
“What’s wrong?” asked Farley. “You’ve been wanting this for years.”
She looked up at him. “Oh, Joe,” she said, “I didn’t want it now.”
TWENTY-TWO
“Pitcher Proud Horse goes into his motion and sets. Here comes the throw to Garrett…. Swung on and missed, strike three. Impressive heat up and in from the big chief. And that ends the inning.
“So here at the bottom of the second it’s still Typhons one, Daybreakers nothing. This is your old broadcaster Shorty Dubuque coming to you live from Big Dome Field here in the future, which is brought to you by the six delicious flavors of Jell-O. J-E-L-L-O—ask for it by name at a food printer near you.”
Farley smiled at the unmistakable pop of a ball hitting a glove. At the players, at the day. At a thousand jumpsuited men, women, and children gathered beneath a six-cornered sun that had not shone at this time of day in eight years. Loud hubbub, raucous laughter, cheers and jeers. Everything but Cracker Jacks. The aluminum bats took some getting used to, though. Farley understood that there was no wood to be found in the Dome—maybe even in the entire world—but hearing a bink instead of a crack! when someone got off a good hit was just plain wrong.
Instead of bleachers there were rows of lightweight metal folding chairs. Farley and Wennda sat near the first-base line and watched the ragtag Typhons take the field. Even after two full innings, the Dome dwellers on both teams seemed unsure about where their positions were, here in the fresh-cut diamond of grassland near the Dome wall. Garrett, now at catcher for the Typhons, waved furiously for third baseman Arshall to get closer to the dense foam square that was third base. Arshall frowned but complied, his new black ball glove hanging from his wrist like a canned ham.
Shorty announced from a folding table made of the same superlightweight stuff as the chairs. He spoke into something that looked like a notecard but apparently was a microphone. Farley couldn’t figure out where Shorty’s voice was coming from. He couldn’t see any loudspeakers. Or wires.
Shorty had designed the Typhons’ uniforms, a silhouette of a diving Typhon on paper jumpsuits printed special for the occasion. The Daybreakers sported a stylized, faintly hexagonal sun with a huge smile, thick-lined wavy rays, and a bandage on one cheek. Hard-edged tribal patterns ran up the sleeves and legs—all courtesy of Wennda.