“Personal drive is full,” replied the control system in a voice that Stephie had personally trained.
Conner chuckled. “That sounds just like you,” Conner remarked as he plopped down on the bed and bounced her into the air.
She flashed him a growling expression. “System,” Stephie commanded, “store the video cache on Dad’s disk array, only please don’t tell him.”
“Acknowledged,” replied the pleasant voice.
Stephie smiled, and batted her eyelashes at Conner. She uttered a fluttering, Southern Belle laugh. “Oh-h-h! These new video servers are just so complicated! And I’m just a girl!”
Conner’s response was both unexpected and totally in keeping. He tried to kiss her.
She pushed him away. “Dream about it,” she said in a worldly tone.
He smirked and tapped a thumb on his control stick’s membrane, lighting a succession of glowing color buttons and crisp white text on the purple stick.
“Video source from Conner Reilly 5468?” questioned the perfect girl’s voice.
“Not just ‘Conner’?” he asked. “It calls me ‘Conner Reilly 5468’?”
“She doesn’t know you that well yet,” Stephie replied.
“System,” Stephie commanded, “accept and play Conner Reilly video source, and create shortcut: ‘Conner Reilly 5468’ equals ‘Conner.’ ”
“Done,” the computer replied.
Conner smiled. Stephie kissed him.
The video appeared on her off-white, wall-mounted plasma screen, which blended into the off-white walls. He pulled away even though she didn’t want him to. On the screen, a bunch of sweaty boys sat on a shiny basketball court in a semicircle in front of empty tables. “The final trophy,” shouted a man in long, baggy gym shorts, “will be presented by Coach Fortner.”
“The man!” shouted all the boys in unison on hearing Coach Fortner’s name.
Stephie rolled her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder, her lips upturned to his.
“Watch,” he said, eyes fixed on the screen.
She sighed, aggravated by his clumsiness. The gym-shorts guy held out his hand to another man in shorts, and said, “Coach Fortner?”
“The man!” shouted all once again on hearing the man’s name.
“Oh, God,” Stephie commented. “This is so diseased.”
The Man said, “Thank you, Coach Wilson.”
“The Almost Man!” chanted the budding young basketball players.
Stephie laughed. “What total Dorkdom yonder lies!”
“And now,” The Man announced, whistle dangling from his neck and touchpanel in hand, “the award we’ve all been waiting for. This camp’s highest honor: the Charlie Hustle Award.”
“The ‘Charlie Hustle Award’?” Stephie ridiculed, feigning a coughing fit that ended with heaves as if she were vomiting from the nausea of it all.
The Man glanced at his touchpanel. “I’d like you all to give a Warrior Basketball Camp round of applause to the one guy who busted his ass up and down the court all week long, every day! Conner Reilly, would you come up here!”
As Conner rose on the screen and began to step over seated boys, The Almost Man shouted, “One-two-three!” Fifty boys — as one — clapped thunderously. “One-two-three!” Clap! “One-two-three!” Clap! “One-two-three!” Clap!
Stephie looked at Conner out of the corners of her eyes but he was too busy watching himself. She returned her eyes to the screen and held her withering sarcasm. With schizoid humility, Conner looked everywhere but at The Man, whose hand was outstretched for a firm shake. Conner grabbed for the small trophy and belatedly saw the proffered hand, and tried to slap it just as The Man took it back.
Conner stabbed at his control stick and stopped the video.
Stephie couldn’t help dissolving into laughter. “Charlie Hustle?” she cried, flopping onto her back.
Conner appeared on top of her and kissed her openmouthed on the lips, but roughly. She regained control by kissing him back with even more abandon. Soon she could hear him breathing heavily through his nose, his mouth becaming more urgent, more demanding. She pushed his hands away from her and stood up. “Time to go home, Conner,” she said, but she continued to feel the excitement of his touch on her body.
Stephie lay wide-awake in her fighting hole, roused by the strangely vivid memory.
Stephie was awakened by John Burns. She emerged from the roofed shelter to find men in dark business suits and wingtips. Although she was armed and in full combat gear, the men surrounded her like bodyguards. She was so groggy, and the agents were so efficient, that she was over the hill and on a helicopter before she had cleared the cobwebs from her head. But once she was alert, she didn’t need to shout questions over the engine noise to ask what was going on. It was obvious. The men had earphones and American-flag lapel pins. She was being taken to meet her father.
She leaned her head against the small window. The pilots flew on night vision. The only indication Stephie had that they were only a hundred feet above the ground was the shimmering lake that flashed by in the moonlight.
Every time Stephie tried to ask her mother about her brief marriage to Bill Baker, Rachel Roberts had instantly angered. As he had rocketed to national prominence, Stephie’s mother had grown even more vindictive. Her hatred more naked. Some of her diatribes against her ex-husband had even sparked bitter fights with Hank Roberts — her new husband and Stephie’s stepfather — especially after Hank had lost his job. “You’re just pissed off,” Stephie had heard him say through their closed bedroom doors, “because you’re not the goddamn First Lady!” Hank had shouted.
“And you’re just pissed off because my first husband still has a job!” Stephie’s mother had screamed. Without ever acknowledging that she’d heard it, Stephie never forgave the awful remark.
Rachel Roberts had kept Bill and Stephie apart out of spite. Stephie had been four years old when Bill Baker first ran for the Senate. A Washington Post reporter had discovered that Bill had a child by his ex-wife. Stephie had been conceived a couple of months before their divorce and had been born just weeks after Rachel’s marriage to Hank Roberts. Something had broken up her parents’ marriage, and in Stephie’s confident days before high school she’d asked her mom, “Was it Hank?”
Her mother had laughed derisively. “Hank?” she had dismissed as ridiculous. Hank Roberts had been obsessed with Rachel since school days, her mother informed Stephie, to ensure that her daughter understood the way things were. But Rachel Roberts — who with her sister had cornered the beauty queen circuit in their early teens — had never given the poor bastard the time of day… until Rachel married him eight months pregnant with Stephie. On questioning, Stephie’s mother had firmly resisted discussing the subject further. Stephie had come to realize that something was hidden in the seven months between Rachel’s divorce and her eventual remarriage on the eve of Stephie’s birth. Some crucial piece of the story was missing.
Bill Baker had appeared at their door to visit the confused and excited little girl just days after the newspaper article had run and photographers had begun stalking the four-year-old. Stephie had gladly given them photos of her big grin. Apparently, Stephie’s mother hadn’t told her father that she was pregnant or that Stephie was his daughter. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she had dully warned Stephie. It had taken her new father an hour of heated fighting with her mother just to get to see Stephie, who had been ordered to remain in her room. There, she had tried to peer through the crack between the door and the carpet, and had listened to her shouting mother curse.