Megan made her tea, then went to sit down with her mother. "Yeah," she said.
"So what was the matter?"
"Oh… Well, just Burt, to start with," Megan said. "Mom, you ever have a personality conflict with someone? The kind you couldn't explain rationally?"
Her mother rolled her eyes. "Lately it seems to be the story of my life."
"Well, I've got something like that with Burt. Just… a clash of styles, I guess."
Her mother shrugged. "It happens, honey. Never mind that. He's well? He's safe?"
"Yeah."
"That's the important thing. When's he coming home?"
"I think maybe he's not."
Her mother looked concerned. "Mom, it might be better if he didn't," Megan said, "if he's being truthful about the way they treat him… and I think he is."
"But what will he do? It's not like he's going to find a job that's going to be worth anything… "
"I know," Megan said, and went off down the hall with her mug, thinking hard. She went into the bathroom, shut the door, started to fill the tub, and tried to think. An hour later, as she came out again, barefoot and once more in jeans and T-shirt, she was no further along toward working out what was troubling her.
She met her dad in the hallway, coming out of his office, also in his bathrobe and looking a little weary around the edges. "Were you up late?" Megan said, for he hadn't shaved.
"Yeah…"
"Done with the machine for a while?"
"Sure, honey, go ahead… "
She slipped into the office and once again carefully removed the stack of books that her father had left in front of the implant, pausing as she set aside the stack to look at the title on the spine of the book on top. The Gentleman's Art: 'Fiore de LiherV and Other Swordsmasters' Instruction Manuals of Fifteenth-Century Italy. And right underneath it, something called War in 2000. Megan wondered once again what her father was working on, and which war he was thinking about… But her father tended to be secretive about these things until he was finished outlining a project. There was probably no point in asking him.
She flopped into the chair, lined up her implant, and blinked the world away. A moment later Megan was standing in the amphitheater again, and she made her way down to her desk. The same virtmails were hanging there in the air around it, but she had no interest in them for the moment, except to notice that there wasn't anything new from Wilma. If she's smart, Megan thought, she's catching up on her sleep. She's had a pretty awful couple of days…
"Space manager," Megan said.
"Here, Megan."
She took a long thoughtful breath. "Link to the Breathing Space address accessed via Wilma's Net server yesterday."
"Done."
"Is the party referenced in the link available?"
"Checking."
There was a brief silence, and Megan looked at Saturn, rising now for the fourth time that day, and watched the rings slide up through the warming methane mist. 'The party is flagged available," said her workspace manager.
"Open an access door," Megan said, and walked out into the middle of the space.
Her doorframe appeared, and the door in it winked out, showing her that Rocky Mountain view again. Megan stepped through and glanced around her. The "place" wasn't exactly in phase with the Rockies, apparently. It seemed to be late in some long afternoon, and the shadow of every tree lay out long across the little hills in front of her.
Megan looked around her, but didn't see Burt anywhere; so for the moment she just strolled down across the short golden grass of the small hill on which she had arrived, confident that the system would guide him to her. She was interested to see that the landscape was not as empty as it had been before. On nearby hillsides, and in the shade of the little forests and glades that dotted them, she could see people walking at a distance: tiny figures, some in pairs or groups, but the greatest number of them alone.
After a few minutes, when she still didn't see Burt, Megan sat down underneath the shade of a huge conifer of some kind and made herself comfortable on the pine needles. She knew that the system would have alerted him to her presence; if he wasn't hurrying about showing up, well, that was Burt for you. There was always the landscape to look at, and more to the point, the landscape architecture. She was running her fingers through the pine needles and wondering what modus the programmer had used to create them all, fractal or unary, when above her someone said, "You been waiting long?"
Burt was standing there, and there was someone else behind him that Megan didn't recognize. She got to her feet, dusting the pine needles off her, and was impressed by the way they stuck to her, as real ones would have. "Burt…" she said.
"One of the counselors snagged me just as I was on my way here," Burt said. "Sorry."
"It's no problem. Who's your friend?"
"This is Bodo. Met him a little while after I got in. He's been here on and off for a while."
"Hi, there," Megan said, and she held out a hand to Bodo. He shook it. He was an unusual-looking guy, maybe seventeen, shorter than Burt, swarthy, a little heavy- set, and wearing one of the new contoured whole-body slicks that were so popular at the moment. Megan thought the shoulderpads and thighpads were a little silly, but she'd been keeping this opinion to herself, since so many of the kids at school thought the fashion too wonderful for words. Bodo, though, somehow managed to make the slick look good instead of just lumpy in new and interesting places. Maybe it was his hairstyle, which, though it looked strange with the ultra-new slick, suited him very well. It was a retropunk style with a long "tail" down the back and a close-cropped, crew-cuttish front, and the tail was dyed bright blue. "My blue streak," Bodo said, grinning, as he saw Megan noticing it.
"Bodo," Burt said, "is one of the semiresident geeks."
She smiled at that. "What do they need geeks for, here?"
"Geeks make the world go around," Bodo said. "As if you don't know. You look a bit geekish yourself, Megan."
"Me?" She grinned.
"I saw you studying the landscape. You do sims, don't you?"
"I've been doing one lately," Megan said, "but I'm probably not good enough to be counted a geek. Not for a while yet."
"There speaks the wise woman," Bodo said. "Someone who knows that geekdom is worth aspiring to."
"Wanna walk?" Burt said.
"Sure."
They strolled out from under the trees and downslope, to where a little creek meandered among the smaller hills. "Didn't think I'd see you back here again so soon," Burt said.
"Well…"
"Megan," Burt said. "You don't have to play nice-nice with me. I know you don't think that much of me."
Is it so obvious? Megan thought, in slight panic. Oh, well… "Burt," she said, "look, we may have our differences… but it's not like I don't worry about you anyway."
He shrugged, sighed. "Okay," he said. "I thought you would have brought Wil with you, though."
"She's a big girl. She can decide when she wants to visit by herself," Megan said. "And I had some concerns that I wanted to explore without worrying about how she was going to react."
"Uh-huh," Burt said. He shot a glance at Bodo. "I told you," he said.
"Told him what?"
"You were always quick to pick up on the unspoken stuff," Burt said. "You know. 'Work.' "
'That was exactly what I wanted to talk to you about."
They paused by a bend in the stream, looked into the water. Under the overhang of the bank, in a still brown shady spot in the water, Megan could see a gigantic brown trout that would have made her brother Mike run for his fishing rod. 'Thought so," Burt said. "Look, Megan… you should tell Wilma not to worry."
"Why should I tell her that? You can tell her yourself."
"Because I may not be here to do it."
Megan blinked. "After all that, yesterday… you're not even going to stay here long enough to relax and get yourself sorted out a little?"