David didnt move, looking for the courage to speak for so long the woman raised her eyebrows. He yanked his hand terminal out of his pocket and held it out to her. Hed gotten a still from the message Leelee had left him. It wasnt great, but the shape of her face was clear and she wasnt in the middle of a word or anything.
Im looking for her, David said. He sounded terse in his own ears. Almost resentful. You know her?
Her eyes flickered down and she shrugged.
Dont know her. You want to stay, you got to eat. Anywhere you want.
Her names Leelee.
She hoisted her eyebrows. David felt a blush rising in his cheeks.
Do you know where I could look for her?
Not here? the woman suggested. David shoved the terminal back into his pocket and walked out. It was a stupid plan. Walk around the tube station, asking people at random? It was dumb and it was humiliating, but it was Leelee so he did it. The hour was blank stares and shrugs and the growing sense that everyone he talked to was embarrassed for him. When the tube car returned, hed found nothing. He sat alone on a formed plastic bench. The monitor shifted to a video review by a pretty girl whose voice made it sound like she was shouting every word. Dika Adalais best story ever! David looked up and down the sparsely populated car and came to the conclusion that he was the one whod triggered the review. It said something about who the ad systems thought he was. What he cared about. Like they knew.
He pulled up his hand terminal. Made another connection request, and Leelee didnt answer. He pulled up her message, playing it low. I need help, okay? and Dont talk to Hutch. Only there wasnt anyone else to talk to.
He spent the afternoon catching up on his datasets, horrified to realize how far behind hed let himself fall. He ran through number and correlations, checking the data against expected norms with the practice and contempt of long experience. He needed to put in extra time. Get everything taken care of. If he fell too far behind, Mr. Oke would start noticing, and if there was a full audit, the extra lab work hed done for Hutch would come out, and then hed be screwed. He weighed calling in a favor from Steppan, but his mind kept shifting back to Leelee and the closed faces of Innis Shallows. Someone had to know where she was. Who she was.
He had to work.
For the first hour, reviewing and processing the data felt like hard labor, but then slowly, his mind fell into the rhythm. He managed the statistical input and brought out the correlations, fitting each one into the larger spreadsheet waiting for meta-analysis, and he could feel himself relax a little. The different catalytic mixes felt more like home than home did, and here like nowhere else in his life, he was in control. Between the comfort and concentration of the work and his exhaustion, he fell into something like a trance. Time passed without any sense of duration. When he came to the end of the run, he could have been going for minutes or hours. Either one seemed plausible. He didnt think to check his hand terminal until he was almost home.
There were four new messages waiting, none of them from Leelee. The first was a correction to the lab schedule, then two posts from a gaming forum he subscribed to even though he barely played any of the games. The last one was from the central educational authority in Salton, the upper university. He flicked it open and his head went as light as a balloon.
He walked into the common room. His mother and father sat before the living room monitor, just far enough away from each other that their legs didnt touch. On the screen, an older man was leaning forward earnestly. The Martian project is the single most ambitious endeavor in human history. It is all of our duties to see that the threat of Earth
Whats the matter? his father said.
David lifted his hand terminal as if that was explanation enough. And then, when they didnt understand, he spoke. His voice had a distance to it.
My placement came, he said. Im going to development.
His father whooped, stood so violently that the couch almost tipped over. As his dads arms wrapped around him, lifting him up toward the ceiling, and his mother wept joyful tears into her hands, all David could think was Im supposed to be happy about this.
After that, everything changed and nothing did. Hed been working toward his placement for the last five sections, or looked at another way, his whole life. Hed known it was comingeveryone hadand still it felt like it had snuck up on him. Surprised him. All of the things that had to happen afterthe things he hadnt bothered thinking about because they were for laterhad to be done now. There was the application for living space in the dormitories of the upper university, the coordination of his long-run experiments with Mr. Oke so that some new second-year could step in and see them to completion, and the preparations and purchases that would, in the coming months, lead to David moving out of his room, out of his home, away from his family for the first time in his life. The times when the idea wouldnt scare him, it couldnt come fast enough.
He could see it in his parents too. The way his mother kept quietly weeping and grinning at the same time, the way his father made a point of sitting with him while he filled out his paperwork and put in for time off so he could go with David to the orientation in Salton next month and brought him sandwiches and coffee for lunch. David had done everything he was supposed to do, had gotten the grades and the attention and the status for the highest placement hed qualified for, and the reward was even less freedom. It was like his parents had suddenly realized he wouldnt be there forever, and now their love was like a police state; he couldnt escape it. He couldnt go look for Leelee or even send out connection requests. The only one who didnt seem to react one way or the other was Aunt Bobbie who just kept her weird, vaguely intrusive habits of watching the newsfeeds and lifting weights.
Three days after the letter came, David was set to go to the lower university for his first transition meeting with Mr. Oke. His father went with him. Dad held his head high, chin up, beaming like hed been the one to do something. They walked up the stairs to the lower university commons together, David shrinking into his own chest with the discomfort. This was his worldhis friends and enemies, the people who knew him for himselfand Dad didnt belong there. Steppan nodded to him but didnt approach. The girl whod borrowed his stats array last year frowned at his dad, strutting at Davids side. They knew that his being there was wrong, and they drew back, keeping the separation. They all had two lives too, and they werent supposed to mix like this. Everybody knew that.
Mr. Oke! his father said as they rounded one of the seating areas. The research advisor smiled politely, walking toward them.
Mr. Draper, Mr. Oke said. Its good of you to come.
Just want to make sure everythings smooth, Dad said, caressing the air as he said it. Developments a good placement, but its a hard one. David doesnt need any distractions.
Of course not, Mr. Oke agreed.
Over the old mans shoulder, David caught sight of Hutch. He was standing with a couple of the second-years, smiling and listening to a girl whose hands were fluttering and tapping at the air as she explained something. Leelee wasnt with him. David felt his heart rate spike. It was an epinephrine dump. His mind jumped back a section to his physiology labs. Epinephrine was binding to alpha-adrenergic sites, dropping insulin production, upping glycogenolysis and lipolysis. Standard fight-or-flight. Hutch glanced over, nodded politely. David pointed toward the mens room with his chin. Hutchs expression slipped a notch darker and he shook his head, not more than a few millimeters and unmistakable. David scowled and nodded toward the mens room again.
Are you all right? his dad asked.
I have to pee, David said. Ill be right back.
He left his father and Mr. Oke bantering. The white tile and video mirrors of the mens room were like a retreat to his world. And escape. He stood at the urinal, pretending to piss until the one other student washed his hands and left. Hutch walked in.