She walked up to the kitchen, massaging her left bicep with her right hand and grimacing. She wasnt really any bigger than his father, but she was much stronger and it made her carry herself like she was. David tried to remember if shed killed anyone. He was pretty sure hed heard a story about her killing someone, but he hadnt been paying attention. She looked down, maybe at his hand terminal turned with its face to the table. Her smile looked almost wistful, which was weird. She leaned against the sink and began pulling her fingers backward, pushing out her palm, stretching out the tendons and muscles of her wrist.
You ever go free-climbing? she asked.
David glanced up at her and shrugged.
When I was about your age, I used to go all the time, she said. Get a breather and a couple of friends. Head up to the surface. Or down. I went to Big Mans Cave a couple times right before my placement. No safety equipment. Usually just enough bottled air to go, do the thing, and get back to the closest ingress. The whole point was to try and carry as little as we possibly could. The thinnest suits. No ropes or pitons. There was one time, I was on this cliff face about half a kilometer up from the ground with my fist wedged into a crack to keep me in place while a windstorm came through. All I could hear was the grit hitting my helmet and my climbing buddies screaming at me to get out of there.
Scary, David said flatly. She didnt notice the sarcasm, or she chose not to.
It was great. One of the best climbs ever. Your grandfather didnt like it, though. That was the only time hes ever called me stupid.
David filled another glass of water and drank it. He had a hard time imagining it. Pop-Pop was always praising everyone for everything. To the point sometimes that it seemed like none of it really meant anything. He couldnt imagine his grandfather getting that angry. His father sometimes called Pop-Pop the Sergeant Major when he was angry with him. It was almost like he was talking about another person, someone David had never met.
There was context, Aunt Bobbie said. A guy I knew died in a fall about a month before. Troy.
What happened?
Now it was her turn to shrug. He was way up on a cliff, and he lost his grip. The fall cracked his air bottle, and by the time anyone could get to him, hed choked out. I wasnt there. We werent friends. But to Dad, everyone who free-climbed was the same, and anything that had happened to Troy could happen to me. He was right about that. He just, yknow, thought I didnt know it.
Only you did.
Of course I did. That was the point, she said. She pointed to the hand terminal with her chin. If you flip it like that when he comes over, it makes him curious.
David tasted the copper of fear and pushed back from the table a few centimeters.
It wasnt anything. It was the lab schedule.
All right. But when you flip it over, it makes him curious.
Theres nothing to be curious about, David said, his voice getting louder.
All right, she said, and her voice was gentle and strong and David didnt want to talk about it or look at her. Aunt Bobbie walked back toward the guest room and bed. When he heard her shower go on, he picked up his hand terminal again and checked in case something had come through from Leelee. Nothing had. He put what was left of his dinner into the recycler and headed for his room. As soon as he hit the mattress, his mind started racing. All of the things Leelee might need money for started spinning through his minddrugs or an attorney or a passage off Mars. As soon as he thought that she might be leaving, he was sure that she was, and it left his chest feeling hollow and hopeless. And shed told him not to talk to Hutch. Maybe shed done something to piss him off, and now she had to get away before he caught her.
He drifted to sleep imagining himself standing between Hutch and Leelee, facing him down to protect her. Hed run the scenario from the start. He walked in on the two of them fighting, and he pushed Hutch away. Or was with Leelee and Hutch came after her. He tried out linesHurt her, and Ill make your life hell or You think youve got all the power, but Im David fucking Draper, cousinand imagined their effects. Leelees gratitude shifted into kissing and from there to her taking his hand and slipping it under her shirt. He could almost feel her body pressed against him. Could almost smell her. The dream shifted, and it was all about getting the datasets finished, only Leelee needed the money to change the results of her pregnancy test, and the bank was in a tiny crevasse in the back of his living room, and his hands were too thick to reach it.
When his alarm went off, he thought it had broken. His body still had the too heavy, weak feeling of the middle of the night. But no, it was morning time. He pulled himself to the edge of his bed, let his feet swing down to the floor, and pressed his palms against his eyes. Even through the air filters, he caught the usually welcome scents of breakfast sausage and coffee. Una Meing looked out from his wall, eyes promising him something deep and mysterious. A diffuse resentment flowed through him and he switched the image away from her to a generic preset of sunrise at Olympus Mons. Touristy.
He had to make a plan. Maybe he could talk to Hutch after all. Not say Leelee had talked to him, just that he was worried about her. That he wanted to find her. Because that was true. He had to find Leelee, wherever she was, and make sure she was all right. Then he had to finish his datasets. It was almost two hours to Innis Shallows and back, but if he just planned to work through lunchtime, or else eat in the labs, hed only be losing one hour for travel. He had to think about how to find her once he was there. He wished there was someone to talk to. Even Hutch. There wasnt, though, and so he was going to have to solve this on his own. Go out, ask, look. She was counting on him. For a moment, he could feel her head resting against him, smell the subtle musk of her hair. So yes. Hed go do this.
No problem.
Only one tube ran to Innis Shallows, back and forth along the same stretch. Since the sabotage of the tube system, there was more security present, men and women with pistols and gas grenades scowling and walking through the cars. The tube station at Innis Shallows didnt even have the usual perfunctory signs announcing that the end destination was Aterpol, like there were only two kinds of places in the universe: Innis Shallows and anywhere else. The official stats said that six thousand people lived and worked in the Shallows, but walking out of the tube station, David still felt overwhelmed. The main halls were old stone behind clear sealant. White scars marked the places where decades of minor accidents had dug into it. Men and women walked or rode electric carts, moving up ramps from level to level. Most ignored him but a few made a point of staring. He knew he didnt belong there. His clothes and the way he walked marked him. He stood for almost a minute in the center of the corridor, his hand in his pocket, fingers wrapped around his hand terminal. Behind him, the soft chimes of the tube preparing to leave again were like a friends voice: Get on. Get out of here. This is dumb.
He would have, too, turned back around and gotten on the tube and headed back without spending more than five minutes in the neighborhood. Except for Leelee.
David scowled, shook his head, and trudged down the corridor, heading off to his left for no reason. His throat felt tight and uncomfortable and he needed to pee. After about twenty meters of cart rental kiosks and monitors set to entertainment newsfeeds, he found a little restaurant and stepped in. The woman behind the counter could have been a Belter: thin body, too-large head. She lifted her chin at him and nodded back toward half a dozen chipped formed plastic tables.
Anywhere you want, she said in a thick accent David couldnt place.