She could ask Thomas to find out.
But right now, she had to decide where to go, if she didn’t go home. Only she wanted to go home. She didn’t know how long this weird borrowed brain chemistry would last, and she wanted her own things around her, her pink bedroom and her crocheted blanket and Thomas. But if Cazie was there…
If Cazie was there, Theresa would just become somebody who could tell Cazie this wasn’t a good time to talk. Somebody who could say, “I’m sorry, but I’m tired and I need to sleep now.” Even if Theresa could only pretend to be that person for a minute. A minute might be enough, surely she could be somebody else for another minute… Leisha Camden. Leisha had always been calm and firm. Theresa would be Leisha Camden, calmly arguing the case for Sleepless rights with other lawyers, and Cazie would…
Cazie would override Theresa and chew her into tiny bits.
Theresa couldn’t be Leisha Camden in front of Cazie. It would be like propping yourself up with drinking straws in front of a hurricane. But maybe she could be Leisha Camden in front of herself. Pretend to have Leisha’s brain for just a minute, while she thought where to go and what to do. Leisha, who met problems head-on, trying to use reason to solve them…
If Leisha wanted to find out what was known about the fake holo of Miranda, she would go to the place most likely to know. Wherever it happened to be. Even Selene. But Selene wasn’t answering messages, and even if Theresa could nerve herself to space travel… but she couldn’t. She knew that. But maybe she wouldn’t have to go quite as far as Selene.
Theresa’s grip tightened on the holo cartridge. Could she really do this, even if she was pretending to be Leisha? Fly to an airport, hire a plane all by herself… no, it was too hard. Her breathing got ragged just thinking about it.
Then she thought about going home—and trying to avoid telling Cazie where Jackson was.
Theresa put her hands over her face, then straightened. She wasn’t Theresa Aranow, she was Leisha Camden. And thinking that would make her feel different, so her brain chemistry would shift just a little… She was Leisha Camden. She was.
“Manhattan East Airfield. Automatic coordinates,” she said to the car, and her voice did sound subtly different to her own terrified ears.
As the car lifted, Theresa had another thought. Take a neuropharm, Jackson always said. And Theresa never would, because she had been afraid of losing her special gift of pain, and the place it was supposed to lead her. She had always been afraid of using neuropharms to become somebody else.
Despite herself, Theresa laughed. It came out as a whimper.
She wondered who she would actually find, being whom else, in New Mexico.
The hardest part, it turned out, was hiring the pilot.
Theresa walked into Manhattan East’s airfield building on Lexington Avenue. It was a sleek old-fashioned building with wall programming entirely in shifting metals. People hurried past her toward various terminals or various doors. A group of men and women dressed in formal sarongs, laughing and joking. A man in a black holosuit, carrying a remote and a sheaf of printouts. A pleasant-faced elderly woman traveling alone. Theresa had just worked up enough nerve to speak to the woman when a round featureless robocam the size of a human head floated up to her.
“You’ve been standing still for two minutes, ma’am. May I help you with anything?”
“Oh, yes,” Theresa blurted to the floater. “I need… I want to hire a private plane. With a pilot. To fly the plane to… to New Mexico.”
“Our charter-plane booking service can be contacted from any customer terminal, ma’am. If there’s anything else I can—”
“But I don’t know how!”
“Excuse me, ma’am, while I run self-diagnostics.” The robocam whirred softly. “My programming shows no error in sensory functioning. You are a genemod adult?”
“Yes. I’m… I’m an adult. But I still don’t know how to use a customer terminal.” She could feel color flame in her face.
“Would you like me to demonstrate the system?”
“Oh, yes. Please.”
The robocam led her to a row of terminals. Theresa could at least recognize a credit-retina scan. She stood docilely against the screen until a pleasant low voice said, “Welcome to Manhattan East Airfield. Ms. Aranow. Desired flight number?”
The robocam said, “Charter plane service, please.”
“Certainly,” the system said.
Rows of writing appeared on the terminal. Theresa felt her color return; she was such a slow reader. But the robocam said, “Where do you wish to go, Ms. Aranow? And when do you wish to leave?”
“To New Mexico. Near Taos. And I want to leave right now. With… with a…” How did one ask for a pilot who wasn’t too scary? Theresa took a despairing step backward.
“Third flight requirement not understood. Please repeat,” the customer terminal said.
“Flying with somebody safe!”
“Three pilots with triple-A safety ratings are available within the next thirty minutes for domestic charter. Rush charges apply. Flying records displayed. Do you wish comlink with any of these three?”
The flying records were more small printing. But there were also pictures: three genemod-attractive faces. But not, somehow, donkey. No, of course not—these were techs. “That one. The woman. A comlink, yes.”
The pilot came on-line immediately. She looked in her late thirties, a strong face without makeup, all the beauty in the firm austere planes. Her voice, too, was firm and austere. “Ms. Aranow? You wish a pilot for an immediate flight to New Mexico?”
“Yes. No, I… don’t know.”
The pilot’s image leaned forward, studying the image of Theresa. “You don’t know?”
“No. Yes, I mean, I do know. I’m not going, I don’t need a pilot. It was a mistake.” She stumbled away from the terminal. The calm, strong voice stopped her.
“Ms. Aranow, the floater beside you will lead you directly to my plane. We can take off immediately. If you are ill, I can sent a go-’bot for you.”
“No, I… all right. I’m coming.”
She fixed her eyes on the floater, willing herself to see that and nothing else. Just a round gray ball, it wasn’t scary, just follow it without thinking… like Cazie would.
No, Cazie wouldn’t. Cazie would be flying her own plane to New Mexico.
All right, forget Cazie, she couldn’t be Cazie, but she needed to be somebody else because she, Theresa, couldn’t do this by herself, she could feel herself slipping into panic, who could she be, she hardly knew anyone but Leisha and Cazie…
And Jackson. Take a neuropharm, Tessie. All right, she was Theresa on a neuropharm. She was somebody who was chemically calm, someone who believed the world made sense—
“Hello, Ms. Aranow. I’m Pilot First Class Jane Martha Olivetti.”
Theresa was there already. The plane loomed beside them, even though Theresa didn’t remember riding the air field maglev from Manhattan East, or crossing the tarmac. Only now did she realize that the field was unshielded, or only peripherally shielded; this was real weather. Cold April wind. She shivered as she climbed into Pilot Olivetti’s plane.
“There are tranquilizer patches in the green box on that rack,” the pilot said in her calm voice. “EndorKiss in the red, HalluFun in the yellow. Sleep-Ease in the brown.”