Seth and Tam walked alongside the cargo train, headed for Thetford, passing blighted zones and small default towns with stores and people living like civilization would endure forever. Seth had high-school French, but the people who called out in slangy joual might have been speaking Klingon. Despite the language barrier, every time they passed through a town, people joined their column. They’d come at night, wherever they were camped. Inevitably, they were shleppers with mountains of junk that Seth didn’t let himself get irritated by. He’d been the King of the Shleppers.
Gretyl rode on the train, face furrowed with sorrow, eyes distant, fingers moving over interface surfaces. At night, Seth brought steaming trays from the mess wagon, collected them when she’d finished, but she hardly noticed.
Finally, Tam rolled over one night and put her arm across his chest and her face in the hollow of his neck and said, “What the fuck is she doing?” He didn’t know, and Tam mentioned the obvious fact (which he’d been oblivious to), that she was worried sick about Gretyl.
“Intervention. First thing in the morning.”
“Now,” Tam said. “I’ll bet you a two-hour foot-rub she’s wide awake.”
“I’m not wide awake. OW! Now I’m awake.” He rubbed his nipple and glared at Tam in the dark. She had sharp fingernails.
They pulled on clothes and lit themselves. Fall had slipped toward winter and there was frost on the road where camp had been struck for the night.
Gretyl was awake and hammering away, a hunkered, moonlit silhouette propped against the side of the train. Her hands danced and her whispers and grunts floated on the breeze. She wore a mask, which Seth hadn’t seen her do before. More than anyone, she seemed able to visualize virtual spaces and prod them without visual feedback. So she was doing something intense.
The acceptable protocol for masks was to call first, so they knew you were there, rather than tapping them on the shoulder and destroying their creative fog. But Gretyl had her do-not-disturb flags set, even the no-exceptions-this-means-you flags. They stood for a moment, a few steps away from her, wondering what to do.
“I feel like such an idiot,” Seth said. “I mean, fuck.”
“Don’t stand there with your dick in your hand. Tap her on the shoulder.”
A variety of responses about dicks, and hands, occurred to the part of Seth who was still seventeen years old and horny about having a girlfriend with a dick, which was the whole package as far as Seth-Seventeen was concerned. Seth told Seth-Seventeen to shut the fuck up.
“Why don’t you?”
“She likes you.” Tam shoved him. Gretyl showed exasperated maternal affection and bemused humor at Seth’s various schticks, but with an edge that left him wondering if she thought he was a colossal asshole.
“She likes you, too.”
“You’re closer.” Tam took a quick step backwards.
He sighed and Tam blew a kiss that turned into a shooing motion. He edged to Gretyl, whose head bobbed, presumably in tune with her earplugs, implants that filled her ear-holes with soft blue light to let others know she was not sharing their acoustic consensus reality.
Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and even said, “Gretyl” into her ear twice – hoping she’d done the sensible thing and programmed her plugs to pass through – before he tentatively touched her shoulder. As he’d feared, she jerked like he’d stabbed her and whipped off the face mask and glared.
“Are we being attacked?” she said.
“No, but—”
“Fuck off.” She pulled her mask down. Tam shook her head and shooed him again. Before he could tap, she whipped the mask down. “Seth, I have not been subtle. I’m doing something that needs concentration. Why have you not fucked off, per my instruction?”
He looked to Tam. Gretyl looked at her, too, and softened one billionth of a percentage.
“What do you two want?”
Tam took Gretyl’s hands, heavy with interface rings. “Gretyl, we want to talk about Iceweasel.”
Gretyl cocked her head. “Yeah?”
“She’s been gone for more than a week. We’re all hoping she turns up. We’ve put out the word in walkaway and default, but fretting’s useless. She’s smart and resourceful and so long as we’re reachable, she’ll get in touch once she can.”
Gretyl smiled, which alarmed Seth. He took a half-step backwards in the guise of settling down on his butt in the dirt opposite Gretyl. It was a weird smile.
“Was that all?”
“No.” Tam sat next to Seth. “No, it’s not, Gretyl. You need to understand we’re your friends, we love you, we’re on your side, we’re in this together. We all miss her. We need to support each other, not withdraw into our own corners and—”
She stopped, because Gretyl’s smile was broader now. Tam said, “Gretyl?”
Gretyl heaved a sigh and stood so she towered over them. She reached onto the cargo train’s running-board and found a flexible flask with a nipple from which she took a long pull, then passed it to Tam, who sniffed, then drank and passed it to Seth, who found it to be full of something like Scotch, so peaty it was like drinking a cigar. He liked drinking cigars. He took in a larger-than-intended mouthful, then made the best of a not unpleasant situation.
Gretyl held her hand out and he reluctantly passed the booze back. “To Iceweasel.” She took another drink.
They both nodded. Looking up at Gretyl was giving Seth a crick in his neck. He got up, just as Gretyl sat and gave him a yes-I’m-fucking-with-you look he knew he gave other people.
“It’s very nice of you two. You mean well. But I haven’t been heaving dramatic sighs. I’ve been doing something.”
“What?” Tam’s eyes shone in the soft light of her glowing clothing, underlighting her strong jaw and making her skin a pool of buttery tones in a gray-and-black night. Seth felt a tremor of excitement, partly sexual and partly just excitement. Something was happening.
“I brought up Dis. There’s so many clusters in Akron. Tons of compute-time, people are happy to share. I ran her and told her Iceweasel had been snatched by her family, and she talked to ninja-types who are good at that kind of thing.”
“Yeah?” Tam said, calmer than Seth, who got the willies talking to Dis – it wasn’t that she didn’t seem human. It’s that she did. Freaked him to his balls.
“Yeah.”
Gretyl looked expectant.
“I’ll bite,” Seth said. “What happened?”
“We found her. We pwned the house she’s in. Dis is running on their hardware. She’s in communication with Iceweasel.”
Seth and Tam looked at each other.
“I’m not crazy,” Gretyl said. “It’s real, and it’s happening.”
“When?”
“Last week. Nothing’s happening now, not until she regains consciousness.”
“Regains consciousness?” Seth said.
Tam said, “Really?”
“Regains consciousness.” Gretyl’s expression made him flinch. “Really.” Her smile was so big her eyes all but disappeared between her cheeks and forehead. “Really!” Tam, who knew what to do in a way Seth never had, gave Gretyl a hug that he joined.
“Now what?” Seth said.
“Now we break her out,” Gretyl said.