He stepped into the kitchen and tried to contact Sunali again.
Blocked. What could she be doing? From what Rob could remember, she’d been pretty active with her system, especially for someone who’d stepped into a strange, unfamiliar future after being dead for ninety years.
When Lorelei had first explained that Sunali was both her stepmother and her great-grandmother, Rob thought she was bullshitting in order to draw more eyes. But no, she wasn’t.
Lorelei. If he wanted to get in touch with Sunali, it seemed to be Lorelei or nothing, didn’t it? Cursing silently, Rob opened a screen into a place he was sure he would never visit again.
He found himself swimming among fifty other screens, all of them watching Lorelei brush her hair. For most people, it was polite to ping for permission to open a screen, but not Lorelei; she was open to the public most any time of the day or night.
She must have been carrying on a dozen conversations at once, her speech was jumpy and mostly incoherent. Rob pinged her to get her attention.
Her eyes opened wide with surprise. “Rob?” She slid from her stool, turned and searched for him. “It’s so good to see you. How are you?”
“Hi.” It made him twitchy to speak to her. He’d almost stopped thinking of her as a real person; in his mind she was fixed in time, still dropping his life from her window. “Look, I’m here because I need your help. I have to speak to your mother, and she’s completely blocked.”
“Yeah, I know. She’s with my grandfather.” She gave grandfather the same inflection most people give to words like dysentery and pedophile. “He’s dying again.”
It took Rob a moment to digest this. “You can’t mean Kilo. Do you have another grandfather?”
Lorelei laughed. “No, just the one.”
“But—” Rob stammered, flabbergasted. But Kilo left your mother to rot on ice for ninety years, when the cost of reviving her would have been minuscule to him. The only reason she was alive was because Lorelei’s father made a grand parting fuck-you to the Van Kampen family by using money from his divorce settlement to revive her. Sunali was probably the only bridesicle ever revived out of spite.
“Yeah, I know. Stepmom says even the biggest asshole in the world shouldn’t die alone.” She threw back her head and shook her hair, an all-too-familiar gesture. “Although I don’t know, you might have a different opinion on who’s the world’s biggest asshole.”
Rob didn’t take the bait. He did want to understand why Lorelei had done what she’d done—he was desperate to understand—but right now he needed to talk to Sunali. At the same time, he had to be polite, because he needed this favor. “How many times has he died now? Five or six?”
“This will be number eight. He died six weeks ago.” She put her hands on her narrow hips and started pacing. “The old fucker is going to squeeze every possible second out of his life. In the end they’ll be reviving him so he can live five more minutes, then one, then ten more seconds.” She shook her head and laughed, though clearly she found none of this amusing. “He’s close to a hundred and twenty. Can you believe that? His telomeres are totally played out, but he won’t let go.”
Not that it mattered to Lorelei. Kilo was leaving everything to Lorelei’s biological mom, who had a new family and wanted nothing to do with what she saw as the spectacularly incestuous arrangement between her grandmother and ex-husband.
“So why do you want to see Sunali, if you don’t mind me asking?” She was being uncharacteristically polite. It was so difficult to reconcile this Lorelei with the psychopath dangling his things out a window (although to be fair, it was also difficult to reconcile the psychopath Lorelei with the one he’d known while they’d been together). Despite her new manners, he did mind her asking, but what choice did he have except to explain his very private story to her and a hundred others?
So he did.
When he finished, Lorelei stood without a word. Her lips were pursed in her best “Don’t fuck with me” expression as she dug into her closet and retrieved an umbrella. “Meet me outside the Damark Revival Clinic. I’ll take you in to see her. How soon can you get there?”
He got there as fast as the micro-T would take him, hopping off into a light rain before it had completely stopped. He hurried along the porous sidewalk, where puddles never formed, escorted by a few dozen screens—friends (or fans, or whatever you’d call them) of Lorelei. As the revival clinic came into view, he slowed so he wouldn’t be out of breath when he reached Lorelei. He could see her standing under a tear-shaped umbrella, half a foot taller than everyone who passed her. Hundreds of screens buzzed around her.
She met him with open arms and hugged him with all her might, evidently choosing not to notice how unenthusiastically he returned the hug.
“Come on.” She turned toward the entrance, held out her hand so naturally that he took it before realizing what he’d done. She led him through a sumptuous waiting room, past imposing security, both human and mechanical. Lorelei seemed different now that they were inside, less ebullient, older, and it took Rob a moment to identify what it was: her entourage was missing, blocked from entering the private facility.
Lorelei led him down a hall that reminded him of the lavish bridesicle hall sans the crèches, through an archway, into the room where Kilo Van Kampen was dying.
He hung suspended in a warm saline pool like a shriveled salamander. The cradle holding him was attached to the walls on a dozen strands that stretched like snot. A nurse and what looked like a couple of personal assistants hung back, while Sunali sat beside him in a chair that reminded Rob of a giant spider.
Kilo’s eyes rolled to follow him and Lorelei as they entered. His mouth hung open, his perfect white teeth glowing obscenely in the wrinkled mess of his face. Sunali turned, then leaped from her seat when she saw Lorelei. Rob had almost forgotten how curvy Sunali was, seemingly all hips and breasts, how sharp her cheekbones were.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered sharply.
“Well, I’m not here to visit Grandpa, that’s for sure,” Lorelei said at full volume.
“Mom.”
They turned in unison toward the cradle at the sound of Kilo’s weak, phlegmy whisper. It was bizarre, to hear this old man call Sunali “Mom.” Rob wondered how it made Sunali feel.
She went to the cradle, reached into the thick, tepid water, and took Kilo’s hand. He and Lorelei watched in silence as she brushed stray strands of blond hair out of his face.
The irony. Rob wondered if Kilo got the irony in this situation.
Kilo swallowed, winced. “Throat hurts.”
Before his lunging nurse could get there, Sunali retrieved his dangling water tube and slid it between his lips. He sucked impotently, groaned as it slipped out of his mouth.
“Try to rest. You’ll feel better.”
“When?” Kilo asked.
“In a few hours you’ll feel better, is what I’m saying.” It was clear she was straining not to sound impatient.
“Just what I need. Platitudes.” He grunted, the sound rich with anger, betrayal. “It’s not fair.”
Sunali sighed heavily. “You’re such an asshole.”
“You’re an asshole,” Kilo tried to say, but ran out of breath and only mouthed the last syllable.
Sunali turned back toward Rob and Lorelei. “What do you want?” From her sharp tone, Rob realized it had probably been a mistake to come, but it was too late now.