Rudy handed Turner the key to the hovercraft. I had my old Cray cook me a precis of recent corporate news this morning One thing you should probably know is that Maas Biolabs has announced the accidental death of Dr. Christopher Mitchell.
Impressive, how vague those people can be.
And you Just keep the harness on real tight, Sally was saying, or your assll be black and blue before you hit that Statesboro bypass.
Rudy glanced at the girl, then back at Turner. Turner could see the broken veins at the base of his brothers nose. His eyes were bloodshot and there was a pronounced tic in his left eyelid. Well, I guess thats it. Funny, but Id come to figure I wouldnt see you again. Kind of funny to see you back here.
Well, Turner said, youve both done more than Id any right to expect
Sally glanced away.
So thanks. I guess we better go He climbed up into the cab of the hover, wanting to be gone Sally squeezed the girls wrist, gave her the carryall, and stood beside her while she climbed up the two hinged footrests. Turner settled into the drivers seat.
She kept asking for you, Rudy said. After a while it got so bad, the endorphin analogs couldnt really cut the pain, and every two hours or so, shed ask where you were, when you were coming.
I sent you money, Turner said Enough to take her to Chiba. The clinics there could have tried something new.
Rudy snorted. Chiba? Jesus. She was an old woman. What the hell good would it have done, keeping her alive in Chiba for a few more months? What she mainly wanted was to see you.
Didnt work out that way. Turner said as the girl got into the seat beside his and placed the bag on the floor, between her feet. Be seeing you, Rudy. He nodded.
Sally.
So long, Sally said, her arm around Rudy.
Who were you talking about? Angie asked, as the hatch came down. Turner put the key in the ignition and fired up the turbine, simultaneously inflating the apron bag. Through the narrow window at his side, he saw Rudy and Sally back quickly away from the hover, the hound cowering and snapping at the noise of the turbine. The pedals and hand controls were oversized, designed to permit ease of operation for a driver wearing a radiation suit. Turner eased them out through the gates and swung around on a wide patch of gravel drive. Angie was buckling her harness.
My mother, he said.
He revved the turbine and they jolted forward
I never knew my mother, she said, and Turner remembered that her father was dead, and that she didnt know it yet. He hit the throttle and they shot off down the gravel drive, barely missing one of Rudys hounds.
Sally had been right about the things ride; there was constant vibration from the turbine. At ninety kilometers per hour, on the skewed asphalt of the old state highway, it shook their teeth. The armored apron bag rode the broken surfaces heavily; the skim effect of a civilian sport model would only be possible on a perfectly smooth, flat surface.
Turner found himself liking it, though You pointed, eased back the throttle, and you went. Someone had hung a pair of pink sun-faded foam dice above the forward vision-slit, and the whine of the turbine was a solid thing behind him. The girl seemed to relax, taking in the roadside scenery with an absent, almost contented expression, and Turner was grateful that he wasnt required to make conversation. Youre hot, he thought, glancing sidelong at her, youre probably the single most hotly pursued little item on the face of the planet today, and here I am hauling you off to the Sprawl in Rudys kidstuff war wagon, no fucking idea what Im going to do with you now... Or who it was zapped the mall...
Run it through, he told himself, as they swung down into the valley, run it through again, eventually somethingll click. Mitchell had contacted Hosaka, said he was coming over Hosaka hired Conroy and assembled a medical crew to check Mitchell for kinks. Conroy had put the teams together, working with Turners agent. Turners agent was a voice in Geneva. A telephone number. Hosaka had sent Allison in to vet him in Mexico, then Conroy had pulled him out Webber, just before the shit hit the fan, had said that she was Conroys plant at the site... Someone had jumped them, as the girl was coming in, flares and automatic weapons. That felt like Maas, to him, it was the sort of move hed expect, the sort of thing his hired muscle was there to deal with Then the white sky... He thought about what Rudy had said about a railgun... Who? And the mess in the girls head, the things Rudy had turned up on his tomograph and his NMR imager. She said her father had never planned on coming out himself.
No company, she said, to the window.
Hows that?
You dont have a company, do you? I mean, you work for whoever hires you.
Thats right.
Dont you get scared?
Sure, but not because of that.
Weve always had the company. My father said Id be all right, that I was just going to another company...
Youll be fine. He was right. I just have to find out whats going on. Then Ill get you where you need to go To Japan?
Wherever.
Have you been there?
Sure.
Would I like it?
Why not?
Then she lapsed into silence again, and Turner concentrated on the road.
It makes me dream, she said as he leaned forward to turn on the headlights, her voice barely audible above the turbine.
What does? He pretended to be lost in his driving, careful not to glance her way.
The thing in my head. Usually its only when Im asleep.
Yeah? Remembering the whites of her eyes in Rudys bedroom, the shuddering, the rush of words in a language he didnt know.
Sometimes when Im awake. Its like Im jacked into a deck, only Im free of the grid, flying, and Im not alone there. The other night I dreamed about a boy, and hed reached out, picked up something, and it was hurting him, and he couldnt see that he was free, that he only needed to let go. So I told him. And for just a second, I could see where he was, and that wasnt like a dream at all, just this ugly little room with a stained carpet, and I could tell he needed a shower, and feel how the insides of his shoes were sticky, because he wasnt wearing socks... Thats not like the dreams...
No?
No. The dreams are all big, big things, and Im big too, moving, with the others.
Turner let his breath out as the hover whined up the concrete ramp to the Interstate, suddenly aware that hed been holding it. What others?
The bright ones. Another silence. Not people...
You spend much time in cyberspace, Angie? I mean jacked in, with a deck?
No. Just school stuff. My father said it wasnt good for me.
He say anything about those dreams?
Only that they were getting realer. But I never told him about the others.
You want to tell me? Maybe itll help me understand, figure out what we need to do...
Some of them tell me things Stories. Once, there was nothing there, nothing moving on its own, just data and people shuffling it around Then something happened, and it it knew itself. Theres a whole other story, about that, a girl with mirrors over her eyes and a man who was scared to care about anything. Something the man did helped the whole thing know itself... And after that, it sort of split off into different parts of itself, and I think the parts are the others, the bright ones. But its hard to tell, because they dont tell it with words, exactly...
Turner felt the skin on his neck prickle. Something coming back to him, up out of the drowned undertow of Mitchells dossier Hot burning shame in a hallway, dirty cream paint peeling, Cambridge, the graduate dorms... Where were you born, Angie?
England. Then my father got into Maas, we moved. To Geneva.
Somewhere in Virginia he eased the hovercraft over onto the gravel shoulder and out into an overgrown pasture, dust from the dry summer swirling out behind them as he swung them left and into a stand of pine. The turbine died as they settled into the apron bag.