I wake in a dark corner of a private jet, and not Holmes's jet either. This one is lushly appointed, but there's something worn about the edges of the beige leather recliner — almost a couch — that I'm strapped into. Low-angled sunlight streams around the blind to my left; if we're headed for Brazil, it must be morning.
My right arm's swathed with bandages. Tug of an IV in my right ankle when I release the belt and start to swing my legs around: I slide the IV out, keeping pressure on the puncture until it seals. Richard? The arm itches fiendishly.
“Welcome back.”
Good morning. I shiver a little, remembering the cold of the night before, but there's more to it than that. You get used to following orders. Somebody snaps one, and you find yourself doing something you otherwise might not. It takes awhile to get out of the habit. Valens told you to fix that, didn't he?
“I know. It can't be fixed.”
But can you block it from the outside, like I said?
“A boy can try.”
Light edges a curtain a couple of meters forward, too, and once I sit up I hear muffled voices trickling through. The corridor is narrow enough that I can lean over and pop the windowshade up. Sunrise — I presume it's sunrise — spills through scarred Plexiglas. I look down at my knobby bare toes scrunching carpet and laugh.
Still not dead.
Well, until Gabe gets his hands on me, at least.
The sun slips up a centimeter or three while I peel tape off my arm and lift the gauze to look under. “Damn,” as the compartment brightens and I look up to Gabe's broad shape silhouetted under the pushed-back curtain.
“You fucked yourself up.”
“All better,” I say, and — wincing — peel the gauze back so he can see the ragged black line of scab flaking from pink scar and a very tidy set of, oh, ten or twenty stitches. I hold it up next to my face, tilting my head, trying for wide-eyed innocence.
I've never mastered that one. His scowl informs me that I haven't gotten any better at it. He lets the curtain fall closed behind him. He doesn't say another word, and I worry my knuckle between my teeth as he sits down across the aisle.
Leah's voice, and Patty's, filter through the curtain. I lower mine. “You are so going to kick my ass.”
“No,” he says, and sprawls against the wall, closing his eyes. “Do you ever think about what you're doing, Jenny? Or do you just kind of — do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Leah and Richard explained your plan. If I can dignify it with the term.” The sunrise turns his curls from ash-and-straw to spun red gold. I get up and cross the aisle, curl myself into the angle of his arm, lean back. He doesn't move away, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “But this noble self-sacrifice shit has got to end, Jenny. You have to think about the rest of us.”
Mon ange, if only you knew. I cover my mouth with my hand, try to turn it into a cough, but the laugh starts deep and spills up out until I fall back against Gabriel's shoulder, shaking my head against his sleeve. “I was,” I croak between giggles. “Oh. Fucking hell. I didn't mean to scare you, Gabe.”
“You did,” he says. “You made sure somebody would clue. Otherwise what was that little drama for?”
“Ow.” I nibble the knuckle a little harder than I intended. “I—” Pinch my nose against the burning and close my eyes. “There was absolutely no chance that I was going to die from a little cut like that.”
“Good,” he says, and squeezes me as the girls laugh riotously on the other side of the curtain, resuming a conversation that must have been interrupted by my little fit. “Someday you'll have to fill me in on your logic.”
“Yeah.” I wonder how I can explain. I owe a terrorist a favor. I have to save the world.
Hmmm.
Maybe not.
I kiss him on the cheek and climb to my feet, not bothering to look for my boots. “I have to give something to Patty,” I say as he pats me on the ass.
“Come back afterward,” he says. “They're having fun. Don't spoil it with grown-ups.”
Patty studied the paper in her hand, avoiding the look that passed between Leah and Casey before the latter took the former by the wrist and led her forward, into the jet's cramped sideways galley.
The envelope's thick creamy paper was soft as felt, and Patty knew the handwriting well from birthday cards. She ran her thumb across it again, reluctant to risk what it might say inside. Frightened, because she couldn't imagine anything that Papa Fred wouldn't say to her face. Frightened, because Casey hadn't been able to meet Patty's eyes when handing her the note.
She slid her thumbnail under the flap and lifted it, the gum stretching at first and then the paper tearing at the edge. Patty glanced up and checked to make sure Leah, Casey, and Leah's dad were all out of sight. She slipped the note out of the envelope and unfolded a thick sheet of cotton laid that smelled faintly of Papa Fred's cologne — crisp and a little musky. The ink was black, formal. A glossy blue-green plastic chit — a data slip — fluttered to her lap, and she picked it up by the edges, unthinking.
It was a moment before her eyes would focus on the page.
Dear Patty, the note began, under yesterday's date:
I've asked Jen Casey to bring this to you because I wanted you to have something real to take with you, and because I couldn't be there. I love you, and when you get to be my age, you will realize something. It's not how the future remembers you that is important. It's what you leave behind.
You're probably going to hear some nasty rumors about me soon. They're not quite true.
I'm leaving you, and the Montreal, and a few other things. Protect those for me, and make the most of your life that you can. Live a long time and be whatever you want to be, and don't ever let anybody tell you that you have to do anything if you know that it's wrong.
The only thing you must do is the thing your conscience demands.
You're a good girl, and smarter than your dad. Don't tell him I said so, but he takes after his mother. (Grin)
I like to think you're more like me.
Be good, but don't be too nice if you can help it.
Love,
Papa Fred
P.S. I've included a data slip with some code numbers that will give you access to my private files. Don't share them with anybody. I trust you to use them as I would have wanted.
“Oh,” Patty said. She read the note over, folded it back around the data slip, and put it all back into the envelope, which she zipped into her breast pocket. She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
That was good-bye.
I'm not going to see him again.
It was a peculiar feeling, light. As though the juice had been wrung from her and she were a husk, a squeezed-out rind with features painted on the surface.
Leah had told her about the AIs, although she hadn't spoken with them. They hadn't spoken with her. Why? she wondered. Do they not trust me because they don't trust Papa?
They wouldn't let Leah or Casey hurt themselves. They're worried about the nanotech. They're worried about Papa Fred. They're worried about all sorts of things they're not telling us, too, I bet.
Patty glanced along the aisle and saw Casey's and Leah's shadows still cast out on the floor beside the galley. Shadows leaning close: whispering or embracing.