Thanks, Dick. I'll try, but he wouldn't be on the Montreal if they hadn't gone over his history with a flea comb.
There's something here I'm missing, and I'm still chewing on it while I shrug my jacket on and bounce down the stairs three at a time, spurning the elevator because I can. I wave to the boy behind the desk—
And almost trip over a ghost.
I actually stumble. Stumble, put my steel hand out for balance, and take two short steps back, catching my heel on red-brown patterned carpet. I probably could have walked right past her unnoticed if I hadn't pulled the triple take, but as soon as she picks her head up from reading whatever she's reading on her hip I see the braid, the finer line of the nose over the rim of her mug, and the arch of the brow, and the similarity of profile fades.
Fades, but doesn't vanish. I'm left with a cloying smell of chocolate in my nose and nagging nausea in my belly.
She looks like Bernard Xu. That pretty little social activist I loved and lost — okay, I never loved him, but I liked him better than most, for all he had a bad habit of blowing things up when he didn't approve of them — something like half a lifetime ago. But this girl couldn't have even been born then. Could she? She might be thirty, I guess, but she looks about twenty-two.
You live long enough in today's society, you collect so many faces that everybody starts to look like somebody. That's all it is. “I beg your pardon,” she says, standing up. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet away from me. “Do I know you?”
“No, you just — look like someone I used to know.”
I see the shock wrack her when she hears my voice. She blinks and glances down, eyes lighting on my prosthetic hand protruding under the black wool cuff of my coat. Her gaze slides back up slowly, eyes narrowing as she examines my face. “You're Genevieve Casey.”
Simple declarative statement. I nod.
“Holy shit!” she yells. And I duck as
she straight-arms the
full cup of cocoa at me,
dives over the love seat
(adrenaline dump into combat time,
heartbeat slowing as
reflexively
I take off after her)
clutching her HCD in her right
hand hits the crash bar
on the emergency door
(alarm starts low,
resonating under my skin, builds
sirenlike
to a piercing wail)
and sails out onto
the fresh-scraped
de-iced pavement
with me ten steps behind.
Ten steps too far, it turns out. I don't run any faster than anybody else and she's easily twenty years younger than me.
Damn it to hell.
Richard? Who the hell was that?
“I haven't got the resources I used to, Jenny. But I will see what I can find out. And be careful. In case. Okay?”
You don't have to tell me twice.
I'm late for work, too, because I have to go change to a sweater that's not covered in cocoa and wash the milk and sugar out of my hair.
6:30 AM
Tuesday 5 December, 2062
Bloor Street
Toronto, Ontario
For Leah, waking up in her own bed that morning was a luxury. She stretched under the covers and waved her musical alarm off. It took two tries; she jerked her hand past too fast for the sensor the first time. Then waved it back on and lay there listening to what another generation would have called bubblegum pop, bouncy synthviol and electronika coupled with mindless lyrics, until she heard her father tap on the door. “Leah?”
“I'm up,” she said, putting her feet on the floor. She didn't bother with slippers as she hurried to the shower. Genie had alighted on the edge of the sofa and was toweling her hair. “Morning.”
“Oink oink,” Leah replied. Genie threw the wet towel at her. She surprised herself. She stepped out of the way and caught the sopping terry cloth one-handed, neatly, without even getting her sleeve wet.
“That was quick,” Genie said.
“Yeah,” Leah answered. And then she crossed the carpet too fast and barked both shins on the coffee table. “I still don't have the hang of it, though.” She looked up in time to see her dad — peering through the eggshell-white-trimmed archway from the kitchen — turn away.
She stopped in the middle of dressing and wiped the mirror dry so she could look herself in the eyes, but didn't see any differences. The nugget of the control chip under the skin of her left hand whitened as she rubbed the outline.
No school today. She'd be tutored at the research lab from now on, and the emphasis would be science and math.
At least she was good at math. And she'd get to ride the subway in with Dad — but Genie would have to go to school alone. She reached for her blouse automatically and realized, in her sleepiness, she had left her clothes in her room. The drugs they had her take before the trials made her faster, but they also wore her out.
She shrugged her robe back on and hurried into her bedroom, pulling on the first clothes she found. She twisted her hair into a wet braid she could shove up under her hat and grabbed her boots as she headed back out to the living room. Genie was already finishing breakfast.
“Eat quick,” Dad said.
Leah shook her head, her hair leaving tracks like a sidewinder's across her shoulders as she trotted into the kitchen. She caught her hip on the edge of the doorway and rolled her eyes. “I'll grab a breakfast bar.”
The train ride was crowded but uneventful. If it hadn't been so icy, the distance was short enough to walk, but with frozen rain still spitting and half the sidewalks like glass, they decided it was a good day to take advantage of Toronto's white-tiled subterranean architecture. Leah's math class was only six people: herself, Patty, and the four boys: Bryan, Winston something — a dirty blond she thought she liked, in a geeky sort of way — and the two Davids, whom she could never keep sorted out.
Leah gave Patty a quick hug as they walked into the classroom, but Patty flinched away. “Did you go to see Carver yesterday?”
“There's no point,” Patty answered, and Leah understood that the topic was closed. She still picked the desk beside the one Patty chose, and worked steadily until Mr. Powell left the room. Kept working, until Patty hunched down so that her hair concealed her interface plate and tapped quick messages on her desktop.
Leah, I found out something from Papa Fred.
?
The ships are colony ships. They're taking people someplace else.
Now? We're not ready to fly them now.
No, not now, silly. Whenever they're done.
Are they coming back?
They must be. Patty looked up quickly as a shadow crossed the door, but nobody entered. I mean, you wouldn't spend that much money on something and use it just once, would you?
I—Leah's quick fingers were interrupted by Mr. Powell's return. With only six students in the room, she knew she'd get caught, so she wiped the chat with a pass of her hand and quickly foregrounded her math application again.
Her heart wasn't in it, and the timer beeped at her tinnily while she was still staring through the sixth problem of ten. I need to tell Elspeth, she thought, ignoring Mr. Powell's glare and restarting the problem set, pushing her thoughts aside. And Aunt Jenny, too.