It was definitely time to visit Lena.
Miri waited till the weekend and took a car down to Pyramid Hill. The place was really busy on Saturdays. Bob said it reminded him of the arcades of his childhood. You had to travel physically to the park, but once you got there you could do touchy-feely with all the best games. It was run by Baja Casinos, but for kids not old enough to legally gamble. The important thing for Miri was that the park had pretty good security. Even if Robert got curious about where she was going, it was unlikely he could follow her through to Lena.
She unhooked her bicycle from the rack on the back of the car, and imaged it as a small jackass. Her own persona was classic anime: big eyes, spiky hair, and tiny mouth. That should turn off anyone who might otherwise try to play with her.
Miri walked her jackass along a path that circled the hill. She overruled the anime imagery to view what was most popular today. Ugh. It was mostly Scooch-a-mouti nonsense. Salsipueds and baba llagas were everywhere. A year ago, no one had heard of the Scoochis, and now they were bigger than some of the corporate names. They had even dented the mega release of the latest Cretaceous Returns . There were hundreds of different types of Scoochi characters. Some were slyly stolen intellectual property. The rest were from folklores at the edge of the world. The imagery was very, very cheap, without any creative center. Maybe that's why little kids were the biggest fans.
Near the top of the hill, a Lesser Scooch-a-mout roared into the sky. That sound was not watts from some synthesizer. The departing Scooch-a-mout was how her view imaged the park's high ride. The ride capsule blasted from deep in the hill, hit four gees before it coasted into the sky, giving its passengers almost a minute of zero-gee before touching down in the park annex. It was the most spectacular ride in Southern California. Nowadays Miri's friends sniffed at it: "Might as well be a UP/Ex package." But when Miri was little, she had spent more than one afternoon bouncing back and forth across the sky.
Today, she got halfway to the east exit without choosing a particular game. She was careful not to touch, much less ride, the mechs. She especially avoided the furry cuddly critters. Except at the exits, "You touch, you pay" was the rule at Pyramid Hill. Maybe she should buy into a game just to shed some of the marketing pressure.
She paused, looked across the hillside. There was lots of noise and action, but if you listened carefully, you could tell that the kids in the bushes were actually playing in other universes, all choreographed so neither players nor equipment would get in each other's way. She had picked the right cover; classical anime was just too highbrow for these dorks.
"How about Twin Spirits? You only need two physicals for that."
"Eep !" Miri almost tripped over her jackass. She twisted around, putting the bike between her and the voice. There was a real person, also tricked out in anime costume. Miri dropped down into the true view: Juan Orozco . Talk about bad luck. She had never imagined he would be into classic anime.
She found her voice, a trilly high-pitched English thing that Annette Russell had given her. "Not today, I'm afraid. I'm looking for something grander."
Orozco — and the spiky-haired critter he presented — cocked his head questioningly. "You're Miri Gu, aren't you?"
This was majorly bad etiquette, but what do you expect from an fourteen-year-old loser? "So? I still don't want to play." She turned away and pushed her bike along the path. Orozco followed right along. He had a fold-up bike that didn't get in his way at all.
"You know I've teamed with your grandpa in Ms. Chumlig's composition class?"
"I knew that." Boogers ! If Juan learned what Miri was up to, then Robert might too. "Have you been tracking me?"
"That's not against the law!"
"It's not polite." She didn't look at him, just stomped along very quickly.
"I haven't been watching second-by-second. I just was hoping to run into you, and then I saw you coming in the west gate…" So maybe he had just set up proximity alerts. "You know, your grandpa is trying to help me. Like with my writing. I think I'm getting better at it. And I'm teaching him to wear. But… I feel sorry for him. He seems to be angry all the time."
Miri kept walking.
"Anyway, I was thinking… if he could get some of his old friends… maybe he would feel better."
Miri whirled on him. "Are you recruiting?"
"No! I mean, I have an affiliance that could benefit seniors, but that's not what this is about. Your grandpa is helping me at school, and I want to help him."
They were coming down the Hill, approaching the east gate. This was the last chance for Pyramid Hill to make money. The closer you got to the gate, the harder the sell, across all park-supported realities. Furries danced playfully around them, begging to be picked up. The critters were real mechanicals; if you reached out to touch them, you'd find plush, deep fur under your hands, and real heft to their bodies. Near the gate, management wanted to sell these little robots, and a free feel goodbye had swayed thousands of otherwise resistant children. When Miri was younger, she'd bought about one doll a month. Her favorites still played in her bedroom.
She rolled her poor jackass through the crowd, avoiding the talking bears and the miniature Scooch-a-mouts, and the real children. Then they were out the gate. For a moment, Miri fumbled and lost her imagery. Now she was a plain fat girl, and her bike was a dumb machine. Orozco just looked skinny and nervous. He had a shiny new bike, but he couldn't seem to get it unfolded.
I don't want him to find out about Lena .
She jabbed a finger at the boy's chest. "My grandfather is fine. He doesn't need to be recruited into some payoff scheme. Outside of school, you stay away from him." She flashed imagery that Annette had created for their Avengers clique. The boy flinched.
"But I just want to help!"
"And furthermore, if I catch you tracking me…" She switched to a deniable mode, a delayed delivery he wouldn't see for several hours. Anonymous — > Juan Orozco: <sm>If you really anger me, your school transcripts will look like you tried to scam them.</sm>
Juan's eyes widened slightly at the sudden silence. He would have some time to stew over what was coming.
It was all empty threat of course; Miri believed in obeying the law, even if she might pretend otherwise.
She ran her bike a couple of steps and hopped on, and almost fell off. Then she recovered and coasted down the hill, away from Orozco.
The Rainbows End retirement community was in a valley northeast of Pyramid Hill. The place was very old and famous. It had been founded sixty years ago, ages before the suburbs ever got out this far. It hit its peak in the early twenty-first century, when a wave of newly rich old people had arrived here.
Miri pedaled along the bike path, doing her best to stay out of everybody's way. Her guest pass was still valid, but kids were mostly second-class citizens at Rainbows End. When she was young, visiting Lena here, she had thought the village was magical. The real lawns were as beautiful as the fake ones in West Fallbrook. There were real bronze statues. The colonnades and brickwork were real too, finer than all but the most expensive of the shopping malls.
Since then, she had studied senior issues in school — and there was no way to avoid certain cynical conclusions: There was still some real money in Rainbows End, but it was money spent by people who couldn't do any better. Most of those who remained were living on vapor and biotech promises, unlucky in investment and/or medicine.
Orozco had not tried to follow or cover his tracks; she had traced him eastward. He'd finally gotten his bike unfolded and was pedaling toward the Mesitas subdivision. She watched with narrowed eyes. Could Juan Orozco be the punk who'd briefly hijacked Sharif at UCSD? No way. That had been a loud smart-aleck who insisted on bragging. More important, Mr. Smart-Aleck really was competent, maybe as sharp as Miri herself.