"People are going to start looking for Lisa Traeger in a little while, and I don't figure you want to be found."
"No." She leaned forward again, propped her chin on her knee. "I can pay you back your twenty grand. I've got enough with me."
"You don't have to. It wasn't my money anyway."
"You steal it or something?"
"Yes." Looking at her. "That's exactly what I did."
"Anyone get hurt?"
"Lots of anyones."
She frowned at him. "You're not making me feel safe anymore."
He shook his head. "I've never been what you'd call safe, Shelley."
She signed. Carefully her eyes queried his. "I know how to be safe if I have to."
"Yes?"
"I take the jumpers up on their offer. And I do the jump again and again, until I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams of avarice. And then I get jumped into a body more my own age-you know this Traeger body is all of thirty-eight?-and I live happily ever after in the Bahamas or wherever it is that retired jumpers go."
He looked at her. "I think you should quit while you're ahead. You don't want anything more to do with those people."
"I've lost twenty years. This body is going to be wanted by the police. And you say I'm ahead?"
"You're ahead of where you were a week ago. I'd settle for that."
"Twenty years." He saw tears in her eyes. "I've lost damn near twenty years. I don't want to be thirty-eight."
"Shelley." He reached out, took her hand. "Bad things are going to start happening to those people."
"Bad things. Meaning you."
"Me and about two hundred million other people. They can't keep this up. Not all those impersonations. Not people like Tachyon or Nelson Dixon or Constance Loeffler."
"Connie Loeffler?" Shelley sniffled, then shook her head. "She isn't being ridden."
"Then what does she have to do with all this?"
"They did jump her, yes. Put her in a joker body, one of the really disgusting ones, for a few hours. That was all it took." She shrugged. "She was a pretty young woman, okay? A pretty young woman with money, like I used to be. She jumped-heh, sorry-she jumped at the deal they offered. She pays fifty grand a month protection and allows them use of some of her cars and facilities. And she's living in L.A. now, to keep away from them, but that won't keep them away if they want her. The only way to keep safe from these people is to do what they want."
"That's not safe," Shad said. "It's as safe as I'm going to get."
"Listen," Shad said. "I can make you disappear. I can get you new ID, a place to live, whatever it takes…"
"And I put my new money in a trust fund, right? And then someone in the trust department gets jumped, and-"
"It doesn't have to be New York."
"There are more jumpers all the time, right? It's a mutant wild card-like what that carrier spread a few years ago, only slower. In another few years there won't be anyplace safe. The only way to keep safe is to keep on their good side."
A melancholy warning bell tolled slowly in Shad's heart. "I told you once," Shad said. "I told you bad things would start to happen. You didn't listen then."
"What about my missing years? How do I get them back?" Her voice was a wail.
"Think of the years you've got left. Make those the important ones."
"Shit! Shit!" She turned away and beat a pillow with her fist.
He reached for her, tried to stroke her shoulders and back. "You're ahead of the game. You've got lots of options."
"I was young!"
She clutched a pillow to her. Tears spilled from her eyes, and Shad's nerves twisted. "You were a joker," he said. "You're not anymore."
"I want to be safe."
"There isn't anyplace safe. The Rox least of all."
A vision of cool green fields passed before his mind. Shad held her till she stopped trembling. Then she jumped up and went to the bathroom to find some tissues. A few minutes later, she was back, red-faced and red-eyed, and began to pick up her clothing.
"I should think about getting out of here," she said. "I can hide you."
She frowned, considered, shook her head. Stepped into her underpants. "I want to be free," she said. "Free to make up my mind without any pressure."
"Don't hurt people, Shelley."
A little muscle in her cheek jumped. She gave him a resentful look. "The worst that'll happen to them is to end up in Lisa Traeger's body. You seem to think that's a good place to be."
"'That's not exactly what I said."
Shad watched her dress and felt hope trickling out of him. He reached for his own clothes.
Leave her alone. Let her make up her own mind. He couldn't tell her what to do-he'd made too many wrong decisions himself to tell anyone else how to behave-but he knew that decisions had consequences, that karma worked on that level if no other, that nothing good could come out of any of this.
But he couldn't really think of any way to make it better any other way, either. What had happened to Shelley was like what happened to people in prison. You got fucked up. It didn't matter if you were in for an unpaid traffic fine and were the best prisoner in the world, because prison fucked you over anyway. What you learned there was only good for survival in prison, and what you learned was only how to manipulate people and keep everyone at a certain distance and play the game to get what you want and not care about anyone else. And you couldn't help it, because that was what you had to do to survive the slams. And when those reflexes carried over to the outside, bad things would happen.
He buttoned his shirt, looked up at her. "Don't tell them about me."
Her look was scornful. "What, kind of person do you think I am?"
"I'm here to tell you I'm not going to hurt you, okay? I know you're not the enemy."
"Violet wasn't the enemy. She went off the roof anyway."
"I didn't push her."
"That doesn't mean it wasn't your fault."
Shad didn't have an answer for that one. "741-PINE," he said. "Leave messages. I'll get them eventually, and I want to know you're okay. But I don't live by the phone. You can't trust it in an emergency." He looked at her hopelessly. "If someone pushes you off a roof, I can't help."
Her look was slitted, hidden. Like someone gazing out from behind a hundred years of hard time. She sighed, reached out, touched him. Became Shelley for a little while. "I won't shop you," she said. "You helped. I'd still be a joker if it wasn't for you."
He put his arms around her and held her close. Her life had turned nightmare, and she wanted it all back, the youth and beauty and trust fund. Maybe she'd get it.
What she would never get back was that miraculous innocence, the racing exuberant joy.
And they both knew it.
Two days later, Shad was ready. He had the jumpers scoped out, knew their movements, knew that things were as ready as they'd ever be. Shelley hadn't called him, but every day that went by was another day in which she could decide to rejoin the jumpers, and he wanted to make his move in the interim.
The only delay had been caused by the building's alarm systems. The warehouse had new state-of-the-art alarms, but the building had first got electricity a century ago, and the junction box in the alley out back was a spaghetti maze of hundreds of different-colored dusty old wires. It had taken Shad nineteen hours of work, crouched twelve feet off the ground as he worked with his meter and alligator clips, before he had the proper wires isolated. He was lucky it hadn't taken weeks. All he had to do, come the proper moment, was bypass the alarms with current from a six-volt battery, and then it would be time to rock and roll.