She made her way back through the beautiful landscape to the preset egress "door" which was standing there, pale against the sunlit hills, waiting for her. Once through it, Megan waved at the guy behind the desk, told the Breathing Space management system the address of her own Net space, and a moment later was standing again in her white amphitheater, watching Saturn slip under Rhea's horizon, only a sliver of rings still showing above. A moment later the Sun set as well, and with that small change of temperature, the moon's thin unstable atmosphere cooled enough for it to begin to "snow" frozen methane out of the lowest layer, which had until now been mist.
Megan turned her back on it and broke out of her virtual space, for the moment very much wanting some contact with parents she knew loved her, despite occasional friction, and brothers of whom she was very fond, no matter how much she felt they needed to be slightly killed.
A couple of hours later the brothers had taken themselves out of the house on dates or other business, and her father had emerged from his office to eat and relax a little. Megan took the opportunity to use the office Net machine, which had an implant chair she liked better than the one in the den, and made her way back to Wilma's space. She should have had a little while to get herself back together by now, she thought, as she carefully moved aside the piled-up books which, as usual, were blocking the direct view of the chair and her implant to the Net machine's implant link. Her father never seemed to realize that not everybody in the house was as tall as he was. If she and Burt were saying goodbye for a while, she'll have needed it
But after she had lined up her implant, snapped into her own space, and used the door in it to Wilma's, Megan found her friend rather more pulled-together than she had expected. Wilma's mood was somber, but knowing he was all right had plainly made a very big difference for her. "Now that I know he's okay," she said to Megan, "I guess I can get on with things. Not that I really like the way they seem to be going… "
Megan could see her point. "You think he was serious?" she said, as they went out the front entrance of the Taj and looked down the length of the reflecting pools, still slightly vague in the advancing dawn, a light low mist lying over them in the moist, warming subtropical air. Down at that end of things was a great green space with nothing built on it, yet, and behind it only the low hills south of Delhi. Wilma had excised the modern city from this vista. "About not coming home, I mean."
Wilma stood there and sighed, and then shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "He sounds so torn up-not at all the way he usually does. I mean, he's always been really good at coping with his folks… but he doesn't seem to be coping real well at the moment." She turned around to look up at the massive dome of the Taj, now flushing pink with sunrise. "I keep getting the feeling that he's just repeating stuff he's said to his folks, to freak them out… or that he's been telling himself, over and over, to help him stand what's going on. If he really had a more concrete plan, I think he'd tell me. I think he's just uncertain… "
"You may be right," Megan said. "I hope so." She sighed. "What about this work thing? Were you able to find out anything more from him about what he intends to do?"
Wilma shook her head. "He didn't want to talk about it… said he was afraid of jinxing his chances somehow." She looked at Megan with slight bemusement. "I don't know why I think this, but sometimes it was as if Burt thought someone was listening to him. But he said that was impossible… "
"Yeah," Megan said. "Well…" She sat down on a marble bench nearby. Wilma sat down, too. "I guess he'll tell us when he's ready. Our job is to make sure he knows we're here to talk to him and help him sort things out, if he thinks he needs help. But I think it's going to be a mistake to assume that he's going to ride the retrial with us, Wil. We're going to have to find a replacement for him."
"I know," Wilma said. "I just… don't want to start thinking about it right now."
Megan put an arm around Wilma and hugged her briefly. "Look, it's going to work out," she said. "You should get back out into real life and check in with your folks."
"Yeah," Wilma said. She sagged briefly, but then she sat straighter. "Megan… listen. Thanks. Really, thanks. I know I've been hopeless, the last few days… but just knowing that he's alive and somewhere safe…"
"It makes a big difference," Megan said. "Yes."
"I should go… "
"Me, too." Megan patted Wilma on the shoulder, got up, and turned. "Door..
" 'Door' what?"
"Door, please, Uncle Doug," Megan said, with a wry look. She glanced back at Wilma. "Why is your space manager so snotty?"
"Minimum wage," said "Uncle Doug," before Wilma could even open her mouth.
Wilma chuckled. "He was like that," she said. "I like to keep 'him' with me."
It occurred to Megan that Wilma might have done too good a job with this. But then, she had also done something similar with Burt, who wasn't that easy to hang around with all the time either. Love is weird, Megan thought, resigned. Or is it love… or just habit, the tendency to want to prolong what you're used to…?
She waved and headed out her door.
Chapter 4
On Sunday morning Megan woke up late with a strong feeling of having forgotten something, or missed something, something important. She lay there staring at the sun coming in her window slantwise and glinting off the Miro print on the wall by the window, setting the framed design afire in brilliant crimsons and blues, and tried to think what she might have forgotten. She couldn't come up with anything, except that she should really move the print before it started to fade.
From outside she could hear a confused mutter of voices coming from the kitchen. The usual discussions about the logistics of breakfast, Megan suspected. She got up, went on down to the bathroom and spent a short time making herself feel human, and then went to see about some breakfast for herself.
The kitchen was mercifully free of brothers. Mike's whereabouts were unknown, and Sean had decamped into the den to use the Net chair there. Megan went to the cupboard above and left of the sink and started rooting around for her favorite brand of muesli, and discovered, not at all to her surprise, that it was (as usual) gone before she had ever had a chance to get at it. She was unable to find any cereal at all except something called Choco- Hoots, and even that box had barely a bowlful left in it. Megan shook it disbelievingly, popped the package top open, sniffed it, shook it. There seemed to be nothing inside but sugar, something masquerading as chocolate, and some anonymous sort of crunch. "How do they get so big eating food like this?" she muttered.
"Has to be good genes," her mother said from the table, where she was sitting back in front of a spread-out NewSheet readout, over which the Sunday editorial "pages" were streaming. She pushed up the sleeves of her bathrobe, tapped at the readout to pause it, looked at it with an expression that suggested some editorial writer's work needed a critique, and began folding the readout up. "So, listen, honey, did you see Burt?"
"Uh, yeah." Meg turned away and opened one of the upper cupboards over the counter by the sink, in search, of a mug for her tea.
"So how was he?"
"He seemed okay." She found the mug, and then a tea- bag full of the green tea with toasted rice that she favored.
"That tone of voice has 'disclaimer' written all over it," Megan's mother said as Megan went to get the kettle off the stove.