Gretyl tilted her head at one soft shoulder and Iceweasel shinnied around until she could rest her head on it. Gretyl put an arm around her and she put an arm around Gretyl, and the three women were quiet.
They rendezvoused with the Better Nation at sunset the next day. Limpopo watched the crew descend on tether-lines and harnesses, toes grazing the ground. There was a brief moment of excited reunion as they related their adventures to one another. Etcetera was right in there, regaling his buds with tales of their near-death, oohing and aahing as the aviators recounted their own experiences with drones, chaff, weather, and infowar harassment.
The Better Nation had been tethered in deep Mohawk territory, and had been generously resupplied with venison, corn, chapatis, and ice-cream in amazing flavors from rose-water to marzipan. Some Mohawk kids came along for the flight, not quite walkaways, but certainly not default. They stuck together and looked on solemnly as food sizzled on the grills the aviators set out and more crew touched down. Then one of them – a girl, with long straight hair and a loose-fitting t-shirt with the word LASAGNE in huge letters across it – stepped out of their tight pack. She wandered over to the grill to kibitz, and Tam, who was cooking, cracked a joke Iceweasel couldn’t hear, but made the girl smile so radiantly it transformed her into something out of a painting (or maybe a stock-art catalog: “Smiling indigenous woman, suitable for brochures on diversity policy”) and the two groups merged.
The medical contingent oversaw lifting the wounded into the zeppelin. They discussed the deadheads who’d been cargo and scientific curiosities for so long it was hard to think of them as “wounded” (for the mercs, “wounded” was certainly not the word). Iceweasel saw Tam head to the caucus that was discussing the issue over huge ice-cream cones, and she ambled over.
“What happens to the injured is a lot less important than what happens to those two mercs. They must be kept safe.”
Limpopo rocked her chin from side to side. She’d gone for a swim in a creek nearby and was looking enviably fresh and rested, and, frankly, beautiful. Tam had also gone for a dip, and her hair was braided into a pair of thick Pippi Longstocking pigtails that hung to her breasts, like schematic arrows pointing out a salient feature.
“I get that the fact that those two are with us is bad publicity, but there are bigger priorities—”
Tam shut her up with a sharp hand wave. “You don’t get it – that’s totally backwards. The reason it’s bad publicity is what we did is monstrous. Now we fucking own them, so we owe them. Once you take a prisoner, they’re your responsibility. Not just legally, but morally. We started down a path we can’t escape. If it was up to me, we’d thaw them and set them loose—”
“I don’t think we can do that safely.” That was Tekla, a med-type who’d served with CC on the deadheading project. “Not after everything they’ve been through. We need a full lab and controlled experiments before we attempt it or they could end up vegetables. I think we’ll be able to bring up their sims before we’re ready for that, ask them what they think we should do with their bodies. That seems only fair—”
Tam made her two-handed, furious wave. “Are you kidding? Where’d you study before you went walkaway? Mengele U? Scanning those two without consent was terrible, bringing their sims up and making them decide whether to risk their lives—”
“Not their lives,” Limpopo said. “Their bodies.”
Tam’s mouth snapped shut and she visibly got herself under control. “They have never accepted that the part that matters is in that sim. They’ve never been given that choice. Maybe we can bring them up into a state like the one that Dis was in, so they don’t care about the difference, but without their consent, that’s brainwashing. Unforgivable, monstrous brainwashing.”
Limpopo looked up at the undercarriage of the zepp overhead, the multi-story gondola, bottom covered in cargo hooks, sensor packages, and gay illustrations of androgynous space-people dancing against a backdrop of cosmic pocket-litter: ringed saturnesques and glittering nebulae. She, too, was on the verge of snapping. Just like that, the carnival atmosphere vanished.
“Let’s get them on the blimp,” Limpopo said, ignoring the rule about never calling it a blimp, only a zeppelin. No one corrected her. She looked tired again. She turned and walked away.
The Better Nation lowered down a supply of hexayurts that they put up with practiced ease, glomming some together to make communal sleeping areas. More rains were coming and the aerialists would have to bumble to beat them. Their weather-conjurers predicted a drift toward the maritimes, possibly as far as Nova Scotia, and they solicited supplies, gifts and letters for anyone they met on the way. The scouring of their meager possessions to find gifts restored some of their cheer, a moment of delight in abundance, and the renewed idea that there was always more where that came from, an end to scarcity on the horizon.
Some of their crew went with the aviators, accompanying the deadheaders. Some of the Mohawk kids, including the girl (who called herself Pocahontas and dared anyone to give her shit) joined the B&B crew. When Iceweasel shyly asked her why she stayed, she shrugged: “Want to live forever. Isn’t that why we’re all here?”
Seth, who overheard, put his arms in the air and shouted amen! and they laughed.
They walked.
Iceweasel found herself with Etcetera and Seth. She looked at them and remembered that impossible time when they’d met at a Communist party, and thought about self-replicating beer and poor Billiam, about her father – it had been ages since he’d last sent an email; she never answered them – and her sister and mother, and default, all that had become of such a short time.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” She twirled to take it in, feeling young and beautiful in a way she’d lost track of. “Who the fuck are we to decide to walk away, to make a better society?”
“I know who I am,” Seth said. “You’re a rich girl I kidnapped with terminal Stockholm syndrome. This douchebag is Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza.”
“Needs more bananapants,” she said.
Etcetera smiled. “You can call me Bananapants if you want.” He hugged her and the hug wasn’t precisely brotherly, but it was more brotherly than not, and to the extent that it was not, there was sweet nostalgia for when they’d flirted like crazy, and she’d had that push-pull feeling of not being precisely interested, but being kind of reassured that he’d been interested in her. Funny how complicated it had been in default, when they only played walkabout, weekend bohemians. Once she’d stopped pretending she was normal, it got easier.
“Guys,” she said, her tone unexpectedly serious. It was a serious time. “I want you to know—” She looked from Seth to Etcetera, back again. They’d been aged by walkaway, but it gave them gravitas. A moment of lensing time let her see them as strangers, how rakishly handsome they were. She smiled. Her affection felt like molten chocolate. “I just love you both, okay? You’re good. The best.”