Alicia wondered too.
She turned off the radio as she pulled onto the thru way. She set the cruise control, then picked up the cell phone. Tension knotted in her chest as she punched in a number. Her thumb hesitated over the send button, but she took a deep breath and forced it down.
When she heard a familiar voice say hello, she almost hung up, but pushed the words past her dry throat.
"Will? This is Alicia. Can we talk?"
2.
"This isn't exactly the Christmas Eve I'd planned," Jack said.
Gia and Vicky had dragged him down to the Center for Children with AIDS and into the infant care area. Gia kept telling him the babies didn't have AIDS—they were simply HIV-positive. As if that was a big consolation.
"And what exactly did you have planned?" Gia asked from a rocking chair where she was feeding a blanket-wrapped three-month-old. She was wearing green-and-red plaid slacks and a red turtleneck sweater. Christmas colors.
"Well… me by the fire with a hot toddy, you in the kitchen preparing the Christmas goose…"
She grinned. "And Tiny Vicks saying, 'God bless us, everyone,' I suppose."
"Something like that."
"Dream on, Scrooge."
Vicky laughed from a neighboring rocking chair where she cuddled another baby. She wore a red velvet dress and white tights. "He's not Uncle Scrooge. He's Jack Crachit!"
Ebenezer Scrooge had been Disneyfied into Uncle Scrooge in Vicky's mind, but Jack didn't correct her. Uncle Scrooge was an old friend.
"Hearty-har-har-har, Vicks," Jack said. He had his own rocking chair, but no baby, which was just fine with him.
Gia stood and lifted the baby against her shoulder.
"He is Mr. Scrooge," she said, patting the baby's back. "Look at him sitting there listening to his radio, the epitome of the Christmas spirit."
He'd brought along a portable radio and had set it on a window ledge, playing low.
"It's Christmas music," he said.
The tiny speaker wasn't doing any justice to Shawn Colvin's very cool version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but she sounded great anyway.
"Yeah, but it's that same upstate station you've been listening to for the past two days. What's so interesting in the Catskills?"
"I've been following a story up there."
Gia stared at him. "The one about…?"
She didn't finish the sentence but he knew what story she meant. The six corpses found at a rest stop along the thruway—"Shocking Mass Murder!"—had made all the media.
She obviously didn't want to mention the specifics in front of Vicky.
He nodded. "That's the one."
Jack had parked the truck in a corner of the rest stop lot and called Julio. He'd eaten a couple of cheeseburgers and hung out, watching the snow until Julio arrived, then the two of them had headed back to the city. Along the way, Jack stopped at a gas station and phoned in a tip about the abandoned panel truck.
Gia's mouth tightened and she turned away. The baby, a little black girl, peered at Jack over Gia's shoulder and burped.
"There's a good girl," Gia said. She turned and approached Jack, stopping directly in front of him. "Hold out your arms," she said.
"No, Gia, really—"
"Do it, Jack. Trust me, you need this. You really do. But she needs it more."
"Come on, Gia—"
"No, I mean it."
She turned the baby so Jack could see her face. The dark eyes stared at him for a few seconds, then she smiled.
Gas, Jack thought.
"Her name's Felicity. One of the nurses started calling her that because her mother took off without bothering to name her. Felicity had to go through crack withdrawal during her first week of life; she's HIV positive, and she's been abandoned. She's got no one to hold her, Jack. Babies need to be held. So go ahead. Give her a break. It won't kill you."
"It's not that…"
"Jack." She held Felicity out to him.
"Oh, okay."
Gingerly, skittishly, Jack let Gia place the baby into his arms.
"Careful, now," he said. Why was she making him do this? "Careful. Jeez, don't let me drop her."
Gia laughed softly, and the sound made him relax. "She's fragile, but not that fragile."
Finally he had her, with her head nestled in the crook of his right arm. She skooched and squirmed, and so Jack held her tighter, snuggling his arms around her so she'd know she was secure, with no place to fall. Gia put a pacifier into her mouth and Felicity began to suck. That seemed to work. She closed her eyes and lay quiet.
"How's it feel?" Gia said.
Jack looked up at her. "It feels… okay."
Gia smiled. "Coming from you, that's the equivalent of 'fabulous,' I guess."
Jack stared back down at Felicity's innocent little face, thinking about what this kid had been through already in her life. And the worst was most likely yet to come. He felt taken by a furious urge to protect her… from everything.
"It is fabulous, Gia."
And he meant it. That something as simple as being held by another human could be so important to an infant was almost… overwhelming.
"Nice little gifts your folks passed on to you, Felicity: an addiction and a killer virus. Where do you go from here?"
"A foster home eventually," Gia said.
He looked up again and saw tears in her eyes. "They need so much, Jack. I wish I could take in every one of them."
"I know you do," he said softly.
Darlene Love's "Christmas" segued into the news, and the new big local story in the Catskills was the fire raging on a mountaintop west of New Paltz.
Jack repressed a groan. "Gia, can you get that little truck from my jacket?"
"You brought that here?"
"I'll get it, Mom," Vicky said, jumping up and handing her baby to Gia.
She'd been playing with the truck all afternoon, laughing at the way it always ran into the same wall. She pulled it from Jack's jacket pocket and clicked the power button.
"Hey, Jack," she said, frowning. "It doesn't work." She clicked the button back and forth a few times. "The batteries must be dead."
"Make sure the aerial is tight," he said.
He watched her jiggle it in its socket, then try the button again.
"Nope," she said. "Dead."
"We have some batteries at home," Gia said. "What kind does it take?"
"They don't make them anymore."
As Gia returned Vicky's baby to her, and went to get another for herself, Jack sat with Felicity, rocking and thinking.
Alicia had come to her decision. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe the world wasn't ready for broadcast power. But he doubted that consideration played any part in Alicia's decision. He wondered where she was tonight, and hoped she wouldn't have to be alone.
He leaned back and let the peace and warm feelings from Felicity fill him.
"Something wrong, Jack?" Gia said as she began rocking a new baby. "You look sad."
"No, I'm fine," he said. "Actually, I'm kind of glad."
Because he realized that what Ronald Clayton had discovered, others could discover as well. One way or another, broadcast power would be part of the not-too-distant future… but public parks with statues of Ronald Clayton, would not.
"And you know," he said, "this isn't a bad way at all for the three of us to spend Christmas Eve. In fact, I think it's pretty damn good."
Gia's wonderful smile made it even better.
Join Repairman Jack on an all-new adventure in Conspiracies, coming from Forge Books in January 2000!