Then the machine caught itself with a vicious huff of fabric and swooped through the pit of a parabola. Alex's head snapped back against the seat hard enough to see stars, and he felt his hands and feet fill with blood from g-forces. Great gummy bubbles rose in his chest.
The plane soared trembling toward the zenith.
Alex jammed his trembling blood-sausage fingers against the mask and gulped down fresh oxygen.
The plane was now flying upside down, piercing some timeless peak of weightless nothingness. Alex, his head swimming within his helmet, examined the enormous platonic sprawl of blue beneath his naked feet, through eyes that were two watery congested slits. Pulling loose and flinging himself into that limitless wonder would be worth not one, but a dozen lives.
JANE opened the door flap of the command yurt. Inside the big tent, pacing the carpet at the end of his thick fiber-optic leash, was Jerry Mulcahey. Jerry's head was encased in the Troupe's top-of-the-line virching helmet, and both his hands were in stripe-knuckled data gloves. Jerry was wearing paper, a refugee suit that had seen some road wear. His right paper sleeve, and both his paper legs, were covered in his pencil-scrawled mathematical notation.
As Jerry turned and paced back toward her, Jane glimpsed his bearded face through the helmet's dark display plate, his abstracted eyes stenciled with gently writhing white contour lines.
Jerry had ten-kilogram training weights strapped to each ankle, which gave him a leaden, swinging tread. Jane had often seen him pace with those weights, in marathon virching sessions, for hours on end. Every other hour or so, Jerry Would suddenly stop, deliberately pull the weights from his ankles, and then strap them onto both his hairy wrists.
Jane Velcroed~the yurt's doorway shut behind her, against the rising gusts of dusty west wind. Then she waited, her arms folded, for her presence to register on him, and for Jerry to surface from whatever strange sea of cyberspace had tangled his attention.
At length Jerry's pacing slowed, and the karate chops and Balinese hand gestures with the data gloves became a bit more perfunctory, and finally he glided to a stop in front of her. He pulled the blank-screened helmet off and set it on his hip and offered her a big bearded smile.
"We need to talk," Jane said.
Jerry nodded once, paused, then raised his shaggy blond brows in inquiry.
Jane turned her head toward one of the two attached subyurts. "Are Sam or Mickey in right now?"
"No. You can talk, Jane."
"Well, I went down to Mexico and I got Alex. He's here right now."
"That was quick," Jerry said. He seemed pleasantly surprised.
"Quick and dirty," Jane told him.
Jerry set his tethered helmet down on the carpet, crouched, and sat heavily beside it. "Okay then, tell me. How dirty was it?"
Jane sat down beside him and lowered her voice. "Well, I structure-hit the power to the clinic, then I broke into the place when it was blacked out, and I found him with a flashlight, and I carried him out on my back."
Jerry whistled. "Damn! You did all that? We've created a monster!"
"I know that was a really stupid thing to do, but at least it was over in a hurry, and I didn't get caught, Jerry. I didn't get caught, I got him Out, and I aced it!" She shivered, then looked into his eyes. "Are you proud of me?"
"I guess," Jerry said. "Sure I am. I can't help it. Were there witnesses?"
"No. Nobody knows, besides you and me. And Carol and Greg, they know, but they'll never tell. And Leo, of course."
Jerry frowned. "You didn't tell Leo about this little escapade, did you?"
"No, no," Jane assured him. "I haven't been in contact with Leo since he found Alex for me." She paused, watching his face carefully. "But Leo's smart. I know Leo must have figured out what I was up to. I could tell that much, just from the E-mail he wrote me."
"Well, don't figure out Leo anymore," Jerry said. "You don't know Leo. And I don't want you to know Leo. And if you ever do get to know Leo, you'll be very sorry that you did."
She knew it would annoy Jerry if she pushed, but she had to push anyway. "I know you don't trust Leo, and neither do I. But you know, he's been very helpful to us. It can't have been easy to track Alex. Leo didn't have to do that for me, just because he's your brother. But he did it anyway, and he never asked you or me for anything in return."
"My brother is a spook, and spooks are professionally affable," Jerry said. "You've got what you needed now. Let Leo alone from now on. Your brother's one thing, but my brother's another. It's bad enough that your no-good brother's shown up in camp, but if my brother ever arrives here, then all hell will break loose."
Jane smiled. "Y'know, Jerry, it does me a lot of good to hear you say that. In a very sick, paradoxical way, of course."
Jerry grimaced and ran his hand over his sandy hair. He was losing some of it in front, and the virching helmet had mashed the sides down over his ears, like a little boy's hair. ''Family is a nightmare.~~
"I'm with you," Jane said. She felt very close to him suddenly. Family troubles were one of their great commonalities. It had been good of him to agree to let her brother into the Troupe, when she'd been so frank about Alex's shortcomings. She was sure that Jerry would never have done such a thing for anyone else. She was being stupid and reckless and troublesome, and Jerry was letting her do it, as a kind of gift. Because he loved her.
"We gotta think this through, some," she told him. "The Troupe's not gonna like this much. Alex is no star recruit, that's for sure. He has no skills. And not much education. And he's an invalid."
"How sick is he? Is he badly off?"
"Well, I've always thought Alex was nine tenths malingerer, at heart. Dad's dropped thousands on him, but never pinned down what's wrong with him. But I can guarantee he's not contagious."
"That's something, at least."
"But he does get bored, and touchy, and then he gets these spells. They're pretty bad, sometimes. But he's always been like that."
"No one stays with the Troupe who can't pull weight," Jerry said.
"I know that, but I don't think he'll stay for long. If he doesn't run off by himself, then the Troupe'll throw him out after a while. They're not patient people. And if there's a way to make trouble here, Alex will probably find it." Jane paused. "He's not stupid."
Jerry silently drummed his fingers on his papered knee.
"I had to do this, because he's my little brother, and he was in really bad trouble, and I felt sure he was going to die." Jane was surprised at how much it hurt her to say that, at how much real pain and sense of failure she felt at the thought of Alex dead. She'd resented Alex for as long as she could remember, and in rescuing him, she'd thought she was doing something tiresome and familial and obligatory. But at the thought of Alex dead, she felt a slow burn of deep unsuspected emotion, a tidal surge of murky grief and panic. She wasn't being entirely frank with Jerry. Well, it wasn't exactly the first time.
She took a breath and composed herself. "I've just dragged Alex out of the mess he was in, but I wish I could be responsible for him. But I can't. I believe in the work here. You know I believe in the work, and I do what I can to help. But now I've done something that really doesn't help the Troupe. I just brought you a big load of trouble. I'm sorry, sweetheart."
Jerry was silent.
"You're not angry with me, Jerry?"
"No, I'm not angry. It is a complication, and it's not helpful. But it's simple, if you can let it be simple. As far as I'm concerned, your brother is just like any other wannabe. He pulls his weight here, or out he goes."