The little blue light was sailing ahead of them, through the aspen spinney and out the other side. The two of them headed after it, through the spinney, up a bare path through the grass to a gentle hillcrest, and down the far side. There was a single figure there, sitting under a tree, wearing worn jeans and a tank top; as they spotted him, and the blue light went sailing down toward him, the sun came out and flashed brilliantly on shining blond hair. He glanced up.
"Burt!"
Wilma ran down the slope to him as he got up, hurrying toward her as Wilma hurried. A few seconds later they rushed together, and Megan wasn't quite sure where to look, except not at them-for it can be painful to find that, despite all the good help you think you've been giving your friend, she has nonetheless just barely been holding it together. Now Wilma and Burt were clinging to each other, and Wilma was just barely stifling the sobs, but it was a close thing. Burt was hugging her hard, with his face scrunched down into her shoulder, and from the shapes into which his expression was twisting itself, Megan half thought he might cry, too. But he hung on to his composure, and after a few moments Wilma pulled herself together as well, and said, in a slightly strangled voice, "I was so worried about you!"
"You didn't have to be… you know I can take care of myself."
"Yeah," Wilma said, "but that's different from knowing that you don't have to be taking care of yourself, that you're all right!"
Burt winced a little, and then said, "If I'd known you were going to carry on like this, maybe I wouldn't have told you where I was… "
"Nice to see you, too, Burt," Megan said, rather dryly.
"Uh," Burt said, and straightened up and looked at Megan with a rather more repentant expression. "Uh, sorry, Megan. Thanks for coming. It really is good to see you… "
Megan restrained a sigh. Often enough in Wilma's relationship with Burt she seemed to find herself in the "advice-giving" position, having to issue reality checks to one or the other of them. It wasn't as if they didn't need them, occasionally, either, but sometimes Megan wondered how long her patience was going to last, since both Wilma and Burt seemed to need a fair amount of coaching in how to treat human beings they were supposed to be close to. Not that I'm necessarily any great expert, Megan thought. But even a talented amateur can do some good…
"Obviously I'm not going to ask you where you are,"
Megan said. "But I, for one, wouldn't mind knowing where you've been"
Burt sat down under a nearby silver larch, and Wilma sat down next to him. He put an arm around her. Megan made herself comfortable leaning against another tree not far away. "I went up to New York for a couple of days," Burt said. "I had enough money to afford one of those stacktels they have near Grand Central."
Megan raised her eyebrows. She'd heard of these, an import from the Japanese market. They were "hotels" where you didn't so much rent a room for the night as a locked personal cubbyhole ten feet long, four feet high and four feet across, just big enough to lie down in for eight hours at a time. The stacked-up cubicles had Net access, but as far as Megan could tell, that was their only difference from a coffin. And the thought of sleeping stacked up in the company of who-knew-how-many other human beings, like sardines in individual cans, gave her the creeps. "How was it?" she said.
"Not too bad." Burt stretched his legs out in front of him. "I was scouting around for some work there… but I didn't want to linger. There are people there who can just tell if you've got nowhere to stay… and I wanted to get myself settled. So I found the address of a Breathing Space facility"-He smiled. He was not going to tell even them which one-"and used some of the funds I had left to get there. They've been nice. They kit you out with all the essentials right away."
"Like Net access," Megan said, looking around her again in open admiration.
"Yeah, it's pretty slickIt's comfortable enough.
The rooms are small, and pretty basic, but they're bigger than a stacktel… and safe. And there are a lot of other kids around to talk to."
"You could have fooled me," Wilma said, looking around them at what seemed beautiful but completely desolate wilderness.
Burt chuckled. "It's not as empty as it looks. This place has selective 'invisibility' routines built in. You can't be seen by the others here unless you set your personal profile up that way. This whole area could be crawling with people, but you wouldn't know about it unless they felt like talking."
Megan nodded. "You've been thinking about this for a while, huh?"
"I knew eventually it was just going to be too much," Burt said. "It seemed better to have a plan for when that happened… "
"But when are you coming back?" Wilma said.
"Back home?" Burt snorted. "Why would I go home?"
Wilma blinked. "Well, your friends… and you have to try to patch it up with your folks sometime… "
"Do I?" Burt's voice acquired something of an edge. "Why?"
"Well, I mean, yofl can't just dump them"
"Why not? They've been talking about dumping me for almost as long as I can remember."
"Burt," Megan said, "that's kind of harsh"
"But it's true. Megan, you don't know them as well as Wilma does… " Burt shook his head, looking out at the distant mountains. "My folks… they'd really rather be rid of me. You know they would, Megan! Wil's heard a whole lot more of it than you have."
Megan briefly flushed hot with guilt. This was almost certainly true, since she avoided every contact with Burt's parents that she could. "You get tired of hearing it after a while," Burt said. " 'You haven't been worth your keep since you got old enough to start avoiding your chores.' " His mimicry of his father's slightly Southern accent was bitter and precise. " 'Instead of you, I should've got a dog, and shot the dog.' " And he shifted tone, so that it was his mother's voice that spoke next: " 4All the other mothers have kids they can be proud of, but when your name comes up all I can do is tell them I made a mistake and I'll try to do better next time.' "
Megan looked away, uncomfortable. "You see?" Burt said. "You can't even imagine it. Me, I can't even imagine going home and not having people telling me what a waste of time I am. What kind of life is that for somebody? Sometimes I think, forget it, it's too late for you, they've got you programmed. No matter what you do now, it's never gonna work, you're always going to mess up, because that's just what they expect you to do… "
He shook his head. "It's got to stop," Burt said. "If I'm ever going to make something of myself later, I have to get out of this, go find somewhere that I don't immediately look like I have FAILURE written all over my face in big letters. Somewhere where people won't tell me that I do… like they do at home, every minute of the day."
He fell silent for a few breaths.
Wilma looked at him, her expression turning more stricken by the moment. "You're not coming back, are you."
He shook his head.
"Burt-"
"Don't try to talk me into it," he said in a warning tone. "Even the people who run this place don't try to do that."
"What do they do?" Megan said.
"Oh, there's some counseling," Burt said, and twisted against the tree a little, like someone who finds he's leaning on a root, or an unpleasant memory. 'That's part of the basic agreement. But they don't force you, they don't make you trade off contact with your parents for a place to stay. I checked that out before I came here." He sighed, looked at his boots. "There's some career counseling, too, for 'when your situation is stable again.' It's just code for 'when you finally give up and go home.' But I'm not gonna be one of the ones who do that. There's too much at stake."