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Rain sprayed down on scraggily willow trees with a misting hhsshhhh. The crooked Sagawaugh Creek chortled along in the pasture down below Pompey.
I breathed the watery smell of home and stepped out of my taxi, flipping on its security field. Pressure from my air slippers made the soggy grass squish as I glided across the field, which was smaller than I remembered. Corroded rain was withering away the bushes and trees.
It was weird to see how damaged everything looked, now that the dreamisodes were out of my system. I'd been so happy before, living in Pompey, despite all my hopes for a better life. I'd been so damned innocent.
If anyone in Pompey saw my taxi rental, hidden in a grove of trees, it would set off some gossip. It was so high falutin' and all. The last thing I wanted was to attract attention. Hopefully, no one would see me; it was still early on Sunday morning. I was such a miserable mess. I hadn't had any chems in 18 hours and was sapped of energy. Plus, all the wet in the air was streaking the dirt on my face and clothes. If only I'd been able to clean up before I got to Gram. I didn't want to give her a fucking heart attack.
Memories of my old friends sprang up. This field was where we'd flown kites. This bend in the creek was our swimming hole. Floating on my back, way back then, I watched far-off cars in high-altitude mode, up in the gray sky. I liked to pretend I was one of the super-slick people inside, partying hard on my way to one Treasure Zone or another.
It'd been so long since I'd seen Kirsten, Sparks, and everyone else. When I first left Pompey, Gram told everyone I was going to live with distant kin, ’cause she couldn’t afford to raise a grandchile no more. That was just after the first few bumps of chems, before the biggest changes in me took place.
I climbed over an old metal gate and made my way to Main Street. An antique Harley with old-timey wheels rattled by with a hellcat gramps at the handlebars. He stared at me as he jolted stiffly over the potholes like an antique mechanical toy.
Kirsten Louise’s family home was looking a lot less ramshackley these days. About three months before, a carpenter fixed their leaky roof and wouldn’t take no Americos from them. Nobody guessed that I’d paid him.
Dove and Rico had been true to their word about getting me some money, even when I was a student down in Atlanta. And now that I was with Nuhope, the Americos were rolling in pretty steady. Figuratively speaking. I loved that word "figuratively.” It kind of did a little dance on my tongue.
Gram was working along beside me on a whole secret plan. We had this dream that one day the whole town would morph. All the bad-off houses would look good as new; everyone would eat as much as they wanted, and all the healthy adults would have a job.
In a few weeks, I was going to make an anonymous donation to the school. There'd be enough money to buy a whole mess of new maglev school buses. And they'd be able to hire some real professional teachers and get better equipment. No more cast-off science kits. No one would die like Papa and all those school children had, not ever again if I could help it.
One day ole Pompey would become a snug little gem. Then Gram and I would move on to the next town, and the next, and the next, fixing everything up. So we dreamed.
Now, all that might never happen. Crap!
I wouldn’t think about that right now. ’cause there was Gram’s house coming into view, looking so fancy these days thanks to a crew of mostly honest carpenters and painters. The grandfatherly catalpa tree was shading the front stoop just like always, a little worse-for-wear, but hanging on. And there was the shed that still had some of Monkey and Mama’s stuff inside. I touched a shiny brass plate beside Gram’s front door. It read my fingerprint, and the electric lock shot open.
The new velvet curtains in the living room were drawn. In the semi-darkness, a hologram of horses racing around a track hung in the air. Gram had become a gambler and poker player after I made her close down the grocery store. She didn’t cheat much.
I waved on a lamp. The old lady was dreaming in her favorite chair—a real dream, not a dreamisode, ’cause she didn’t do that. She still looked like a white chicken, but a withered one. Tender, crêpey lids covered her eyes. Her rattling breath made her whole body move up and down.
Whenever I came home, it was only in the first minutes of seeing Gram that I really saw how she looked. After that, it was as if our hearts took over, talking back and forth.
I crept upstairs and took a shower, which was pure heaven. Then I combed out my hair and put on an old plaid flannel dress still in my bureau.
Everything was the same when I walked back downstairs 30 minutes later—until my damned mobile chimed. Dove again. He’d tried to reach me about a zillion times since the party. Gram jolted awake with a loud snort. Her faded blue eyes looked so fearful at first, as if she was secretly wondering what she might be forgetting. Then she spotted me.
“What are you doing in that old rag?” she demanded, eyes on my dress.
“Can’t stand the one I was in.”
“You gotta tell me when you’re coming so I can have that fool Love woman gussy me up.” Charlane Love was the woman I’d hired to help Gram out in the daytime.
“You’re sassy enough already,” I said.
“You lie like a flea-bitten dog.”
“My fleas wouldn’t bite a sourpuss like you.”
Gram chortled a laugh, but a hacking cough took her over.
“Wassup with that?” I asked.
“Just a little walking pneumony.”
“Gram! Why didn’t you say something?”
“It’s mostly over.”
“Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
“I’m not gonna waste time sleeping when you’re here.”
“It’s okay. I’m gonna sleep too. Like the fuckin’ dead. I was at this party last night that wouldn’t end.” If only I hadn’t had to seduce that creepy soldier. That was the worst.
Gram turned to speak with an imaginary friend or two. “Somebody oughta wash that girl’s mouth out with soap.”
"Yeah, well, I guess we all know where I got the mouth from."
"She's had all that schoolin' and a fancy job, and she still can't speak right."
“I do when I have to.”
The old lady left it at that. We went to her bedroom on the ground floor, and I settled her into the old maple bed, just below her old brass Jesus. During a lover’s spat some 30 years ago, Grampa Wally had ripped one post clean off the frame, so it was a three-poster bed instead of four. The old woman wouldn’t let me get it fixed. She called it a monument to passion.
I settled her amongst the pillows and patchwork quilt. Then I pulled an easy chair close to the bed to get a little shut-eye.
“Oh, go on upstairs to your own bed. My bugs might be the catching kind.”
“I got so many chems running around my system I’d kill any bug that came near me. I’m like walking fly spray.”
Gram grunted, then let some soft silence go by. I could feel her taking me in. “You got a problem?”
“Yeah. Miss you something fierce.” Which happened to be true.
“Hmm. That’s all?”
“Yeah.” I could tell she didn’t believe me. But what more could I say? The bit about how I was becoming a traitor to Nuhope? Or the fact that I was way too attracted to a rebel ex-massage man named Jarat who could go invisible and was trying to bring down the Elite class? I didn’t want the old lady to have a coronary.
Jarat would probably never believe I was crazy for him. Christ, he didn’t believe that I wanted to help. Not completely. I just had to tamp down my beating heart. God knew I was an expert at that, after so many years in Pompey pining after one poor boy or another.
It was time to change the subject. "Who's the worst off in town? Who should we be helping?"
Gram started a rambling story about two homeless kids that had turned up on the Methodist Church’s front step. There were a lot of arguments in town about where they came from, ’cause they weren’t saying.
My mind drifted back to my problems. Maybe I couldn’t stop no wars, like that scientist Thom Tseng tried to do. But I wanted to do something really good—like not twisting up people's brains, so they lost control of their will power. If that meant quitting the Elite life and going back to being a Chav, I just had to do it. That's all there was to it.
Thing is, it hurt like hell to think I’d never get to space tumble. I’d really, really wanted to do that. Course, if I quit Nuhope, Rico would want to blast me to hell. But I didn’t have to make this ugly. I wouldn’t bring up Jarat Ellington or Thom Tseng. And I sure as hell wouldn’t accuse him of nothin’.
No, it was better to just ask for a vacation, and after I hightailed it out of New York, I could send Rico an “I quit” message. Sure, it was chickenshit, but so what? Look who I was dealing with. A chickenshit note was better than killing a genius scientist like Rico did. Better than stealing somebody’s Charismite formula. Fucking hell.
There was another problem. If I left Nuhope, there would be no more chems. That had always been Rico's rule. He had warned Gram and me both, right at the start, about what would happen if I stopped taking them. After three days, my legs and arms would cripple up. After five, my throat would become so raw and tight I wouldn’t be able to swallow. And unless somebody fed me through a tube and helped me ease off the chems slowly, I’d be dead in 10 days.
“Don’t try to fake that you’ve heard one word I said,” the old lady said.
“Oh, Gram. I’m just so weary.”
“Come here, girly girl.”
I put my body down on the tender sheets. Gram wrapped a big, jiggling arm around me, so child-like, somehow, a surrender. This was the only person that really knew me. The faint fragrance of soap didn't cover over the medicine smell on her breath as she said, "So stubborn."
“That’s why you love me.”
Gram held me a little tighter. How could I ever crush Gram’s heart by dying before she did? Maybe that’s what would happen.
Rain blew through the scraggly trees outside all that morning as we slept. When we woke up around 2, there was a sharp, electric quality to the air.
“He’s here,” Gram said.
“Yup.”
Dove was watching the races in the living room. He’d blown up Gram’s hologram so it filled the room, and he was rooting like crazy for a silver-gray thoroughbred named Turtledove.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in—Blackhead!” Gram kicked at his cowboy boots until they dropped off the coffee table. It tickled Dove to no end, that awful name she’d given him, even though his head of hair wasn’t entirely black anymore. “Blackhead” was Gram’s way of protecting herself against his charms—even though she was so old that he didn’t screw with her head much.
“Tell me again why you let your security system okay his fingerprint?” I asked Gram with a teasing glance at Dove.
“’cause we both know that if anybody gonna keep you outta trouble, it’s that one.”
Dove grinned at Gram. “And I only do that ’cause you make the best fried catfish in the worl’.”
It felt like family, the three of us together like that. Gram crowed when Turtledove lost by a hair. But Dove didn’t care. He had so much moolah. If only I could confide in him, tell him how I was gonna leave. But he’d never understand.
Gram took the hint about catfish and headed toward the kitchen, bitching and complaining so he wouldn’t think she was a complete pushover.
Somebody was pounding at the front door. I stole a peek outside. “Criminy.”
“That Righteous Sparks boy again?” Gram called out.
"Uh-huh." Sparks had seen a glimpse me about four months ago, and he was like a rabid dog now, asking me out, trying to do anything just to get my attention. Besotted. Just like the others.
“C’mon Luscious!” he was yelling on the other side of the door. “Don’t be all stuck up.” There was a murmur of other people out there too.
If he’d even considered the idea of kissing me way-back-when, then maybe I’d give him more than the time of day now. He didn’t see me then, and he sure as hell wouldn’t see who I was now. Still, I hated to hurt his feelings, not opening the door.
I turned back around. Dove directed a big fire hose of anger at me. "Why did you disappear like that? You scared the hell out of me," he said.
“I’m sorry. I just needed time to do my own thing.” Which was sort of true.
He paced the floor. “Your own thing? Christ. For all we know, you were mauled to death. You know what our chems can make people do." He gave my old flannel dress a look. "And what's with that?”
“Trying to remember who I am.”
“You can’t fool me, lil lambkin. Something’s been up with you ever since that Nuhope bash-gone-bust.”
“Of course,” I said. “It was upsetting to hear that Theseus guy say all that terrible stuff about Nuhope. But I’m dealing.” That seemed to calm him down a bit. “Where’s your car?”
"Down by the river, right by your rental." So he'd figured out that part. He flashed me another critical look. "When's the last time you had a bump?" He patted down a pocket, trying to find an extra injector, no doubt.
"Not now. I'll wait 'til after I leave. No sense drawing a bigger crowd." I felt pretty weak, but I could manage.
Gram pulled some apple crisp out of the quick freeze and blasted it with heat. Its cinnamon fruit aroma filled the house as we bit into the crunchy cornmeal crust on the catfish. Real fish, not the cheap fake kind like Gram had always fried before.
When we got to dessert, it was heaven to taste the fruity butter crunch and half-melted whipped cream. Gram had put out a hunk of sharp white cheddar cheese to cut the sweetness.
The Love woman wasn’t coming back until tomorrow, so Dove and I put the dirty dishes in the quick wash. There still was a frown knitting up his forehead.
“You’re not still mad, are you?” I asked.
“Rico’s riding my back.”
“About what?”
Dove stayed silent.
“C’mon. If you’re mad at somebody, I want to be mad too.”
That earned me a troubled smile. “He’s just got this stupid notion about me going into politics.”
The idea of Dove running for public office was pretty funny. “What’s Rico thinking, dogcatcher?” I teased.
“More like Veep.”
Oh crap. “The Veep?”
“Yep. Zinder’s running mate when he campaigns for Prez.”
Dove looked so lost, like we were in some play, and he'd forgot his lines. Only the lines he forgot were for his whole damned future life, far as I could tell. He needed me to throw him some loyalty. “That’s frickin’ ridic! Why would he make you do a fool thing like that? Nuhope’s making a ton of money off your show.”
"He'd talked about it before, but I thought I could make him see sense. Now those Theseus people are eating away at Zinder's popularity. And there's no telling where this is headed unless somebody steps in and turns things around for him. It's got to be me because you aren't ready."
"And never will be." If I could help it, that is. I dropped into a chair, staring at him. Of course, it wasn't unheard of for a celebrity to suddenly run for high office. But Dove? All he ever really wanted to do was tickle the piano keys, shoot the breeze with interesting peeps on his talkshow and go to bed with beauty queens.
“Too bad Rico’s so old and down at the heels. He could just take the chems and run for office himself instead of living through you,” I said.
“He’s got other things in mind for himself.”
“Like what?”
“Behind-the-scenes puppet master kinda shit. Rico and Zinder are thick as thieves. And he’s always in my green room whenever there’s a politician to glad-hand.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
Dove didn’t answer right away. He looked torn six ways to Sunday, but he tried to shake it off. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s my problem to solve. And I got to beat it back home. You coming?”
“In a bit.”
Dove fended off the Pompey crowd as he made his exit. There were a bunch of his ex-bedmates out there now. He did me a solid and convinced Sparks to take off. Most everyone else disappeared in the darkness as well.
After Gram and I caught up some more, I got ready to leave. "Sure you don't want to come live with me in the city?" I asked like I always did.
“We got too much work to do here.”
A pang surged through me. Gram did love figuring out how to spend all my money helping people. It was going to hurt when that ended. She traced my worried smile with an index finger.
“You’re playing a strange deck o’ cards, there’s no denying,” she said. “Just remember to love everybody, honey. You love who you can and pray for the rest.”
# # #
THE NEXT DAY, I FOUND myself following Turken, Rico’s muscle-bound assistant, down his aqua corridor. The surfaces rippled like water. It felt like we were wading in some tropical ocean without the need to dry off.
“Love that piña colada smell,” I said in a way that made Turken know I meant the exact opposite.
Turken laughed. “He’s such a showoff.”
We passed one watery looking door after another. There were so many experiments Rico had going on behind them. Only a few people knew what they were—people way above me on the corporate ladder. Maybe nobody knew about every last one, except Rico. But now I was on a mission. I was determined to find out as much as I could for Jarat, especially the mind-twisting parts.
Rico gave me the once-over as I walked into his examination room. There was a helluva black mood goin’ on in his head. I knew Dove had told him as much as he could about my little disappearing act. It hadn’t gone over well. No amount of chems in my system was going to tamp down his pissed-off state without me workin’ at it. And given how angry I was at him on the inside, it was going to take some doing.
"I see you've got your lucky coat on," I said like I didn't have a care in the worl'.
His white lab jacket was frayed around the cuffs. I knew damned well he believed that good things happened when he had it on, but he just growled, "Luck's for schmucks." A while back, he'd told me that he'd worn that coat years ago when he created the Kogeny ad system with a combination of neuroscience and technology. But now I had to wonder about that. Had he attacked somebody to steal that experiment too?
"So, wazzup? Are you making some kind of fashion statement? Shabby nerd? Comfort grunge?" I asked.
"It's an 'I'll wear anything I damned please in my own office' statement." He turned to Turken, who was preparing the dejector device that would extract my blood samples. "I'll take it from here, darlin'."
Turken shot me a silent look of “I know you two have a secret, and I know better than to ask” before slipping away. Rico had made it clear that she wasn’t supposed to pry into certain things. Like why I would need a medical checkup every three weeks, and why the boss man was doing it himself, in private.
Rico aimed the long silver dejector tube at my right arm, hovering it about a foot in the air. I felt a tiny tickle as a fine stream of blood burst through a pinpoint spot on the inside of my elbow. The thin red line flew into the air and disappeared inside the tube.
“I’m sorry I pissed you off by disappearing. I just needed a little time to myself,” I said.
“So I hear.”
“Forgive me?”
“Sure. I just don’ love you as much.” I screwed up my face in mock exasperation, and he quirked me a little smile. “Everything okay in Hungry Hollow?”
“That’s Pompey Hollow to you, bub." I chattered a bit about Gram as if everything was the same as ever. The more I looked at him, the more he seemed a little cruel around the edges. I'd been so naïve and selfish—all the time he'd fussed over me, cared for me, with such amaz attention to every one of my needs. I'd let him use me to sway people's minds, blind to what was really going on. Until now.
As the examination ended, Rico threw off his old coat and replaced it with a suit jacket. It would have looked dignified if the backside wasn't so rumpled. How could a conniving man look like such a doofus? He was on his way to some meeting, so we stepped inside an empty elevator together. I tossed him my first big question, keeping my voice light like I didn't really care. "So how long has Nuhope been tweaking people's brains with secret dreamisode messages?"
Rico didn’t like that. “So you drunk the Kook-Aid. I wondered if those Theseus attacks would twist you up.”
I widened my eyes into chocolate pools of warmth and innocence. “It just made me curious about what’s going on.”
“You’re good; you’re really good at looking guileless, kid. And when you disappear for a while, I’m willing to look away, unless it means that little brain of yours is starting to have doubts about this place, or me. Then we got a problem.”
“I certainly have doubts about people who think my brain’s little.”
"Sorry. Didn't mean to insult. But the fact of the matter is that speech that Jarat Ellington gave on the wallscape contained information that was wrong in so many ways. I can't even begin to list it all. You really think Nuhope sends out propaganda in dreamisodes and causes all kinds of high anxiety if they don't order up more of them?”
Abso-fucking-lutely. “I - I don’t know.”
“We’re not the evil empire, believe me.” Rico grinned at the whole idea of that.
“Okay. But ... can you tell me how he was wrong?”
Rico fought back some sour impatience. “There’s no time for that right now. Think you can just stop worrying?”
I searched for some sincerity. “I can try.”
“You’ve got to let other people drive the Nuhope ship without knowing every last thing that’s going on, or not going on.”
“You got it, boss.”
“That’s my girl. Things are going to start getting really interesting for ole Dove and me. And if you play your cards right, they will for you too."
“Really? What’s going on?” I tried for an innocent look.
“Stick around, kid. You’ll find out.”
I couldn't love him, but I could pray for him, just like Gram said. And I would find all sorts of secrets if it was the last thing I ever did at Nuhope.