CASTING AT PEGASUS

Mary Rosenblum

One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the nineties, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale to Asimov’ s Science Fiction in 1990, and has since become a mainstay of that magazine, with almost twenty sales there to her credit; her linked series of “Drylands” stories have proved to be one of the magazine’s most popular series. She has also sold to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pulphouse, New Legends, and elsewhere. Her first novel, The Drylands, appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Compton Crook Award for best first novel of the year; it was followed in short order by her second novel, Chimera. Her most recent book is a third novel, The Stone Garden; she has finished a fourth science fiction novel, and is currently at work on her first mystery novel. Coming up soon is her first short story collection, Synthesis and Other Stories. Her story “California Dreamer” appeared in our Twelfth Annual Collection. A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

In the bittersweet, elegant, and compassionate story that follows, she shows us the infinite possibilities—and the deadly dangers—that can open up for you if you dare to go beyond the limits that the world has imposed, and reach for the stars.

It was a good night for flying. Windy enough to make her car buck. Stars and no moon, the riverbed a gouge of deeper darkness on her right. Therese braked, the highway empty behind her, nosed the little city-car into a tangle of fall-yellowed blackberries. Thorns scraped paint as she killed her headlights, and she didn’t care.

It struck her suddenly how much she didn’t care. Because Selva had originally paid for half of the car? She had never changed the registration. It was still in both their names. Therese squinted at darkness and rutted mud, angry at herself. For not thinking about the registration.

The car had been as easily cast off as Therese herself. How could she have forgotten to change the registration? Lips tight, Therese pulled clear up to the rusty chain-link fence, and turned off the engine. Opening the door let in the cold, and she shivered as she dragged her carryall from the cargo space. The wind combed invisible fingers, rich with fall scents of rotting leaves and cold moist earth, through her short hair. Yeah. Good night for flying.

She had told Selva about the airport, about sneaking out of her room at night when she was a kid, dressed in her “airport clothes.” She used to cross the highway, cut through a field to the parking lot. Inside, she hung around in the waiting areas, drinking too-sweet hot chocolate from the snack bar, talking to other passengers, telling them how she was on her way to live with her father in Paris, or Amsterdam, or New York. “You did your single-parent angst more creatively than most,” Selva had said. And she had laughed and rumpled Therese’s hair. “That’s why you’re such a wonderful artist.”

She didn’t think so anymore. Therese hooked her fingers through the scabby fabric of the decrepit chain-link fence. The mesh shivered with a soft metallic clash as she climbed. Like a sigh, Therese thought. She threw one leg over the top, where she’d cut the barbed wire. A sigh of rust and aging and abandonment. Could a fence feel abandoned?

She swung her other leg over, leaped down to land with a splat in hummocky dew-wet grass. Another world, in here. She looked skyward, remembering airplanes taking off like constellations of colored stars rising from the tangled strings of blue lights that edged the runways. Hi. Where are you going? I’m on my way to Paris. My dad’s there and he wants me to come live with him. He’s a correspondent for the New York Times.… Therese hefted her carryall higher on her shoulder, began to jog toward the asphalt runway. The broken stems of old landing-lights stuck up like mileposts along the runway. Who had broken them off, and why? Now, people came and went at the big shuttle terminal, arcing up to the Platforms and down again. Or they did the Net. God bless the Net. Which brought her back to Selva, and Selva didn’t belong here.

Therese slowed to a walk, forcing herself to listen. The empty airport had its own population—the boarders who skimmed the runways, the taggers, and the night watchman, who took his break now, between midnight and one. No sound of board wheels. The taggers kept to the blank canvases of the buildings. On a whim, she decided to set up out beyond the old hangar, out past the gate area. It might take the watchman half the night to notice her lights if she were lucky.

That was part of it—how long the flight lasted before the night watchman cut it down.

With a roar of sound, a pod of boarders zoomed up out of the darkness; three of them, dressed in black, slaloming back and forth across the cracked asphalt. Their boards’ jet engines screamed, unmuffled and mocking. Therese dodged into the tall grass along the runway and dropped flat. Frost-killed stems brushed her cheeks, wet her face with dew like cold tears as they zoomed past. The night watchman would chase them. He always did. Thanks, guys, she mouthed silently, bounced to her feet, and broke into a run across the gate area. Big halides mounted on the terminal buildings splashed light across the asphalt, glinting on faded traffic markings. She avoided the light, cut across the grass again, shoes and socks soaked through now. Her feet slapped the concrete apron of the old hangar.

Quick. She unzipped her carryall, grabbed the tether-stakes she’d made from plastic pipe. Pounded the first one into the soggy ground beyond the apron. Wind from the east. She tested it with a hand, guessed twenty-five with gusts to thirty-five. Exactly the conditions she’d plugged into her virtual simulation, so the lights should go up slick and fast. She pounded in the second and third stakes and fumbled in her bag. Working in the dark because light brought the night watchman that much sooner, she snagged the first string. High-tensile line, black. The fiberlight beading felt like thin plastic twine beneath her fingers, flexible, cool, invisible in the darkness. She wound the end of the string around the first stake, laid it out. Laid out the second string and straightened the crossties by touch. So far, so good. If she tangled it now, she could kiss this night’s flight good-bye.

Sound in the darkness, over by the unlighted hangar. Therese straightened, adrenaline spiking through her. The night watchman carried a taser, and the boarders carried blades. She slipped a hand into her pocket, closed her fingers around her small cannister of mace, listening until her ears buzzed, turning the rush of wind into sneaking footsteps, the snap of an opening blade.

Nothing. Hands wanting to shake, she unfolded the kite, bent the slender wands into the pockets she’d bonded into the corners. The wind caught at the transparent plastic so that it billowed out and came alive in her hands, straining like a dog tugging at a leash, full of promise, full of potential.

Potential. She hated the word. Selva had used it a lot at the end—“Your stuff has so much potential.” Then came the “buts…” But the art market is such a closed place. But it’s so tough to make your living doing art. But, but, but …

But get real and get a job, honey.

With an angry shake of her head and a leap, Therese tossed the kite into the air. The wind caught it, snatched it skyward, burning the line through her fingers. She paid it out carefully, steadily, squinting as her light-lines rose, intertangled like an invisible net spread to catch the stars. It looked okay, just like her sim. She anchored the kite-line to the third stake, and pulled the remote from her other pocket, heart beating fast now, because she didn’t know, couldn’t know how it would really look, until … now. Her forefinger touched the button.

And her light-net came to life, spilling meshes of liquid fire across the night. The hair-fine fiberlight threads, bought from a tattoo artist wholesale, glowed in jewel-bright color against the sky. Ruby. Neon blue. Sun-gold. Tonight, she had captured the great square of Pegasus, twined him in shimmering helices of light as the invisible kite danced with the wind, and the tangled threads glowed. Winged steed, lifting to a world behind those stars. Tonight she had harnessed him. She felt him tugging, the energy of those huge shoulders thrumming down the lines. Therese closed her eyes, let the energy hum through her flesh. In a moment, he would lift her from the ground, that harnessed creature, and carry her …

“Hey.”

Soft voice, a breath almost, surely too low to be heard over the wind. Therese spun around, poised to run. Light by the hangar, a flash’s glow that illuminated a tawny, androgynous kid’s face. Spiky brown hair. Tilted, dark eyes.

“Beat it.” Same soft, urgent carrying tone. “The cop’s comin’.” The light winked out.

She heard him now—heavy footsteps thudding on the grass. She snatched up her carryall and ran. Behind her, a shout. Light. She glanced over her shoulder, caught a glimpse of a tall man-shape, bulky in a uniform coverall, flash beam swinging like a sword to chop her. The night watchman; Frankenstein of this dark abandoned place, the Boogeyman. What was the range of his taser-dart? The light stabbed at her and she ran faster. The fence loomed out of the night.

Therese leaped, fingers hooking in the mesh, climbing, hiking her crotch over the rusty barbs of the top strands, deft, graceful, made so by fight-flight chemistry. She splashed down in cold, puddled water. She ran a few steps. Stopped and turned. He stood on the far side of the fence, a shadow, saying nothing.

He never chased her beyond the fence. He never called the cops. Therese watched him turn and vanish back into the darkness. In the distance, her jewel-fire net danced against the sky, tethering Pegasus. Therese watched it, counting the minutes in her head, a clench of yearning in her chest. Because when those strings were cut, Pegasus would fly free. Without her. The distant strands of color sagged suddenly. Crumpled, twisted and crashed in glittering ruin to the ground. Therese touched the remote, warm in her pocket.

The lights vanished.

Behind her, a sigh.

The kid? “Thank you.” Therese peered into the darkness, couldn’t see a thing. “He might have caught me, tonight.” No answer, but she could feel a presence, like an eddy in the perfect, windy darkness, a spiral knot of energy. “Good night,” Therese said, and trudged up the embankment to the main road.

Her feet were cold now, the chill penetrating to the bone. The elation was gone, leaving her with a hangover of emptiness, and she wondered who the kid was as she trudged along the pavement. A boarder? She hadn’t seen a board. A tagger, scrawling his rude splash of identity across the hangar wall? And what are you doing, if not just that?

She’d felt Pegasus tugging at the strands of the lights. Like those planes had tugged at her as they lifted from the blue-lighted lanes of the runways. One day she would let go and … fly with him.

To where? A tiny voice whispered in her head. To somewhere, Therese told herself. She’d know when she got there. Her shoes squished the predawn quiet. Overhead, a shooting star streaked across the spangled sky, east to west, vanishing into the city glow. A message from the gods? She wished she could read it.

*   *   *

The apartment lights didn’t come on when she opened the door. Cheap hardware. She slapped the manual switch, blinked in the harsh fluorescent glare, and stumbled over the package that had been set just inside the door. With a stifled yelp, she caught herself on the back of the futon sofa, anger flushing through her, making her cheeks burn.

The landlord again, with his damned pass key. Being nice? She didn’t want him to be nice if it meant opening her door. He was probably snooping for drugs or illegal hardware. Therese scooped the package up and prowled the single big room, neck prickling like a dog with its hackles raised, looking for any signs he’d poked around. Inside the box, something shifted; mass packed not-quite-solidly. Therese turned it over and looked at the label. Vancouver, BC, return address.

Selva.

Why now, after all these months of silence?

She set it on the kitchen counter, stared at it. Presents were never really gifts. They were messages or obligations or both. Send it back, she told herself, but she was already reaching for a knife to saw through the packing tape. Inside, color peeked from foam packaging—a flash of rich crimson and gold that caught the ugly light, flung it back with gem-sparkle warmth. She dug into the white beads, a part of her mind noticing that it had been professionally packed, money thrown away to convenience—she’d never been that rich.

Her fingertips touched slick cool … glass.

She lifted it out. A fountain of crystal ice, turned static in a skyward splash, it glittered with streaks of ruby and embedded flakes of gold. The artist had filled that crystallized silicon with life, so that you saw more than this frozen instant, you saw the molten glass leap skyward, scattering into gem-bright droplets, falling back to earth all in an instant.

Beautiful, with no apology offered to function. Like her light-nets. Therese looked around her room. Futon sofa, low table in front of it, both Salvation Army crummy. The silent pile of electronic hardware that was the only thing that really mattered. She set the glass down on the table. It gave the room a feel of … failure. Loser turf. And she wondered suddenly if Selva had meant that piece of glass to have exactly this effect, if she was that subtle and vengeful.

You’re hungry, Therese told herself, and that was certainly so. She turned her back on the sculpture, grabbed a stale bagel from the bag on top of the microwave.

You have a call, her House system intoned. From Selva Portofino-Harris.

Selva? Therese laid the untouched bagel down, mouth open to refuse the call. The glass caught her eye, made her momentarily breathless with its beauty. “I … okay.” She fumbled for her gloves and goggles, clumsy suddenly, always clumsy around Selva’s deft competence. “House, take the call.”

Gloves on, she pulled the virtual goggles down over her forehead, plastic edges scraping softly across her skin. And found herself on a polished wood floor. Huge windows offered green lawns and distant white columns like Greek ruins. Sun, lovely sleek furniture. Selva Portofino-Harris leaned one bony hip against a polished slab of teak desktop that matched the color of her perfect shoulders.

She lifted weights in the flesh, wore her muscles proudly in virtual, her dark, Brazilian skin accented by a simple white tank-top and shorts.

Therese turned her face away, struggling suddenly with a hard lump in her throat. “Well.” Inane word. Say something, or say nothing and get the hell out. “I got your … present. Just now.”

“I … don’t know why I sent it to you. I guess … it made me think of you.”

The tone was wrong for vengeance, or even anger. Therese looked, in spite of herself. Yearning on that strong, almost harsh face? You could wear any mask you wanted in virtual. It didn’t have to be real.… “It makes my apartment look like shit.” She wasn’t wearing her skinthins, only gloves and goggles, so all Selva was seeing was a rather boring simulation. A two-dee icon with no emotional cues. She took a deep breath, feeling slightly more in control. “So thanks.” Which would cue a nice smile. “That was sweet of you to send it.”

“Which translates to ‘fuck off.’” Selva’s smile bared her teeth. “Not yet, girl. How’s your stuff doing?” She planted both palms on the desktop, swung her butt between them, like she did when she was upset. “Any new sales?”

“No.” To hell with cool. Therese crossed her arms, wishing she had put on skins, go ahead and see how pissed I am.… “Barrain tossed me out of the gallery. I wasn’t selling enough. Hey, like you said—” she flung the words like stones, “stationary holoture isn’t hot. Virtual interactives are all the thing, now.”

“I never said…” Selva closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry about the gallery slot. So what are you doing?”

“You mean to pay the rent? I’m doing virtual recordings.” She had to look away again, even though it didn’t matter because Selva wasn’t really seeing her expression. “Cityscapes, countryside—buy a park permit, splash around in a couple of waterfalls, and someone will buy it.” She’d recorded for herself, once. For her holoture work. “Hey, the VR artists can at least pay good money.” Laugh. “A midnight walk under the full moon is good for a week’s worth of rent.” Another wasted shrug. “I already had most of the hardware.”

“You could work for Xavier,” Selva said quietly. “He’s always got room for another talented designer.”

“Designing advertising riffs? Or fancy offices for bored Net execs?”

“Sorry.” Selva flushed. “I forgot, you’re an artist.”

“No, I’m a camera.” It came out too soft for effect. “Listen, it’s late and I’ve got to go to bed.”

“Where were you?” Selva stopped swinging, stood straight and still in front of her skin-toned wooden desk. “Out at the airport again? Flying your kites?”

Flying your kites? “Go to hell. House…”

“Don’t you exit on me!” Selva’s voice cracked like a whip. “You never would share that with me—your airport stuff. I think that’s part of why I could move up here without you. Because you wouldn’t let me in on it at all. I guess it sent me a message.”

And what message had she sent back in that piece of beautiful glass? “I asked you to come along. You were too busy.”

“I was.”

Therese’s anger lost its razor edge because Selva had looked away, and she never did that. It made her look vulnerable.

Selva was never vulnerable.

“Hey.” She filled in the silence with words, not wanting to see that unexpected curve of neck with its exposed groove of jugular vein and carotid. “Any time you want to see, just hop a shuttle. I’ll be glad to show you.” Would she? Therese wondered suddenly. Take Selva out to the airport? It would mean … what it might or might not mean didn’t matter, because Selva was shaking her head anyway.

“I can’t. Not right now, anyway. We’re using stationary equipment to do some high-end decorating for Boise-Quebec’s new offices. And we’ve got this deadline. So I can’t work remote through a set of skins.”

“I didn’t think so. Look, it’s late. I’m yawning, even if you can’t see it. Time for bed.”

“Yeah.” Selva wasn’t looking vulnerable any more. “I’ll see you,” she said. Coolly. Virtually. And was gone.

Banished from this electronic room, this reality, because she wasn’t real any more. The room squeezed her—stranger’s room, stranger’s futon and shitty little table. Stranger’s life. The glass sculpture announced it in shards of crystalline light. She grabbed it, raised it over her head, muscles hard with anticipation of the coming smash.

It was its own frozen instant of beauty, never mind Selva, never mind the message it carried. She set it down very gently, snagged her jacket from the sofa, and slammed the door on the way out.

*   *   *

The riverside highway looked different in the gray dawn light. Mist rose from the water, pooling white and thick in the sloughs. Tree branches thrust up through it, their twigs stiff and cold, trailing the last yellowed rags of summer leaves. She missed her hidden turnoff entirely, tricked by the daylight topography of the berry thickets. Didn’t matter. She hadn’t planned to park there anyway, it wasn’t safe during the day. Some satellite traffic-eye might spot her, bust her for trespass. The terminal buildings looked so drab, off in the distance. The main entrance was on the far side of the complex, barricaded and lighted. Protected. From here, the gate aprons looked stained and forlorn, drifted with rotting leaves and soggy trash.

Last night, she had trapped Pegasus in a net of jewels. In the bright light of sunrise, the place looked drab—a dead end, without magic or future. Beyond the fence, the old hangar slumped in the cold morning mist. No sign of her light-net, of course. Probably trashcanned by the boogeyman night watchman. She braked hard and suddenly, pulled off onto the shoulder.

She’d looked at it a hundred times: tagger art. Ego, hormones, desperation, and anger, sprayed bright and immediate across any vertical surface. But the tag on the hangar doors was … different. Faces stared upward, surreal and huge. Their neon eyes were terrible—bright with hope and yearning that seared her, made her hands tremble on the wheel. Their enormous mouths opened, whispering, not shouting, calling softly, like you’d call your lover to bed.

Calling who? Therese climbed out of the car, shivering in the dank morning chill. She wanted to know who …

A tiny sound made her turn her head—nothing more than a rustle in the dew-spangled thistles that edged that asphalt. He was sitting there, screened by the weeds; the kid from last night. Asian skin, African lips, hazel eyes. Face too broad, chin too long. He was ugly, as if his genes warred, like the races that had donated them. He was watching her, head tilted, shadow pooling beneath those stark cheekbones.

“Hey.” He grinned.

“Hey.” Fourteen, Therese guessed. “Your tag?” She nodded at the distant hangar.

“Uh huh. The geek hasn’t painted it out yet. He’s weird—waits till I finish ’em, at least. This one’s gonna be the last.” Triumph in those words, not defeat.

“Why the last?” She looked again, her eyes drawn to the sky by those yearning, calling faces.

“They’re gonna come for me.” He stood, lazy and laidback. “They hang around here, up high, where you can’t see ’em. Only once in a while, you know? Maybe they’re everywhere, or maybe there’s some kind of hole here, like the hole in the ozone that everybody figured was gonna wipe us out? I’m one of them.” His grin mocked her, challenging her, so that Therese wasn’t sure if he was shitting her or not. “I figured that out when I finally realized that everybody else on this fucking planet is an alien. I don’t belong here. I got left behind or lost or something.” He tilted his head, still grinning, still challenging. “I’m Jazz. You gonna do some more lights tonight?”

“Therese.” No, he wasn’t shitting her. Above that grin, his eyes were the eyes of the faces on the wall, full of that same terrible, loving, yearning cry. “I might fly tonight,” she said. “If the wind’s right.”

“It’ll be better with the two of us. Your lights say the same thing, so I figure you’re one, too. See you around.” And then he took off running through the weeds, leaping tangled clumps of thistle like a deer. A scraggly clump of hawthorn swallowed him, and the verge was empty again, silent except for the dead weed stems rattling in the breeze. Therese shaded her eyes to stare at the mural one more time.

Those faces drew her eyes skyward again, clenched her chest with that yearning. Like last night, when Pegasus had tugged at her light-net. I don’t belong here. Jazz’s voice came back to her. Yeah, she thought bitterly. Me neither. You’re right.

A tall figure, wide-shouldered and dressed in a dull green coverall, strolled across the concrete apron. The night watchman? A watchman, Therese told herself. This would be a different shift, surely. For an awful moment, she thought he was on his way to Jazz’s mural, to paint it out or deface it somehow, to choke that rending cry.

As a kid, this place had been a magic doorway to a bright future, a future as colorful and full of promise as the bustle and light of the airport concourse. It had been more real than the faded silent mother who lived in her own universe of work and fatigue and TV, and the dark warehouse of the public school system. In the grip of the grim days, she’d thought about the airport and had been … homesick.

That’s it, Jazz, she thought and laughed out loud. We’re homesick for a world that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it would take aliens to bring you there!

Therese turned away, climbed back up onto the asphalt, tired now, her feet wet again. She tapped her code into the door, opened it, and slid onto the cold plastic seat.

Therese Marie Oberti? Her cheap dashboard speaker squawked at her. Will you please insert your ID card in the ignition slot?

Uh-oh. Cold sweat prickled beneath her armpits as she fumbled her card into the ignition.

Your vehicle was reported as parked in a state no-trespass zone at one-fourteen-AM this morning. Your ID card was last used to access the ignition, and since you did not report the card stolen within six hours, the violation has been charged to you. Your file came up before state circuit court at eight-twenty-three this morning, and you were found guilty by the operating judicial program. Your fine, three thousand one hundred and thirty dollars, has been charged directly to your account. If you wish to contest the verdict, you must file an appeal and meet the accompanying fee by eight-twenty-three tomorrow morning. If you have any questions, please access legal assistance through your Net account.

The tinny voice ended.

A ticket. Therese stared numbly at the blue plastic dash. It was cracking in places, dried-out and damaged by sun and heat. She traced a long split, the curled-back edges of the cheap plastic sharp beneath her fingertip. A three thousand dollar state trespass ticket.… It was intended to discourage looters. Who had reported her car while it was parked here? The night watchman, of course. Therese closed her hand into a fist, nails biting into her palm. No wonder he didn’t waste his precious breath chasing her beyond the nice safe fence. It was so much easier to sneak around until he found her car and could turn her in.

Well, she had been trespassing.

He had violated something, though, sullied that perfect flight last night. “Bastard,” she said, very softly. Three thousand would clean out her savings. She wasn’t going to be able to make rent this month. Not after she paid for the Net time she used to create holoture nobody wanted. Numbly, she tapped the engine to life, pulled a tight U on the empty asphalt. Go home, she told herself. Take a hot shower. Eat some breakfast. And then get your recording gear out and go find some neat imagery to sell to the Xaviers of the world. Auction off a few bits of your reality for someone else to use.

The sun was up, spearing her with dazzling light, striking the last glints of gold and yellow from the fall leaves. Eyes watering from the sun—not from tears, definitely not tears—she drove home, obeying every damn traffic law in the books.

*   *   *

You have two messages, her House system murmured as she let herself in. It turned on the lights, too, never mind that it was broad daylight.

Therese sighed and hit the manual switch, clicking them off. “House, messages.” She pulled on her goggles and gloves.

“Ms. Oberti.” The landlord’s voice emerged from a shifting matrix of color, because he only paid for voice access. “Just a little reminder that yesterday was the first of the month. I need to have the rent by Wednesday.”

“Endit.” She glowered as the color winked out. Bilious yellow. How appropriate. Last time she’d been short, she’d been able to stall him for more than a week. It wasn’t like people were standing in line to rent this dump, but maybe … somebody was.

She smoothed a wrinkle from her glove, running down her list of clients. Most of them wanted fancy landscape takes; the beach in a storm, snow on the desert, that kind of thing. She didn’t even have the money for a park entry permit, never mind the time to wait for interesting weather. She could sell her skins. They were a custom job with all the high-end recording hardware you needed. Without them, she’d have to buy somebody else’s reality. Like Xavier did. And she’d never be able to afford another set this good.

That wasn’t it. She’d never be optimistic enough about her career to risk that kind of money again. “House, next message,” she snapped.

“’Rese?” Selva materialized, shimmering like airport fog. “Call me please? Realtime?”

She sounded worried, and Selva never worried because she had it all under control. “Message Selva Portofino-Harris.” The words popped out on their own, spurred by fear.

Fear for Selva—and she had no right to be afraid for her. Not any more. Therese opened her mouth to cancel, but Selva’s face was already shimmering into being, as if she’d been waiting for the call.

“’Rese?” That hint of worry still showed. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Big lie. “I’m just returning your call.”

“Look, I was talking to Xavier just a little bit ago. And I mentioned your light-net stuff. He got pretty excited. He thinks we can use it. He was interested enough to offer a pretty good option.”

She’d told Xavier about her flights.… “What’s he going to use it for?” Therese didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “An ad for booze? Virtual sex hardware? The latest genened oranges?”

“What does it matter?” Selva refused to get pissed. “Xavier’s just optioning the raw imagery anyway. You won’t even recognize the final cut. And he pays well. Once you’re on his string, you’re in. And we use a lot of material. Are you interested?”

She wasn’t angry, simply felt … numb. “You want to buy one of my flights.” The flights you wouldn’t share.

“Yeah.” Selva’s smile was wary. “If you don’t want me to look at it, I won’t. I’ll just turn it over to Xavier.”

“And what if he tells you to work with it?” Flat voice, still so calm.

“Well…” Wrinkled nose, grimace. “I’ll have to, yeah. But there’s no reason it’d show up in one of my projects.” She reached, laid a virtual hand on Therese’s arm. “Does it really bother you so much? I’d really like to come watch if you’d let me. I just can’t do it when you snap your fingers.”

“I didn’t snap my fingers. I asked.” Therese looked down at her arm. Her eyes gave her Selva’s long, slender fingers curving across her forearm. She felt nothing. Without skins, this was a ghost-touch, maybe would have been a ghost-touch if Selva was standing here in the flesh.

Which she wasn’t.

“Money.” She laughed softly, bitterly. “I sure need it.” So she got to choose, sell her soul or her skins.… “Hey, why not?” The words tasted bitter on her tongue. “I’ll sell Xavier his flight. You can watch it if you want. I don’t care.”

“I won’t look at it.” Selva’s face was dark and still, like a pool at twilight when you couldn’t see the bottom. “What do they mean to you?” she asked. “Your light-nets?”

For a moment words pressed at the back of her throat. I rode Pegasus home. Almost.

Almost wasn’t good enough. She’d learned that as an artist. She swallowed, and the words were gone. “You gotta be there,” she said softly.

“I would be. If you’d let me.” Selva’s eyes flashed, but she kept her temper under control. “Sometimes I think you do your lights because they aren’t real. You can hang out at that nice safe airport and you don’t have to care. Oh they’re flesh and not virtual, that’s not what I mean. Coming up to Vancouver is real. Working for Xavier and doing your art anyway is real. I think you’re afraid of real, Therese. Do you know how much it hurt me when you stayed behind? Do you know how much I love you? Or do you care?”

No! Therese struggled for the words she had swallowed, but they wouldn’t come back. I didn’t know. You never told me. “Yeah, I care.” She turned away, pulled her goggles off. “I care a lot.”

But her goggles were off and that signaled her system to shut off the connect. So probably Selva hadn’t heard that last.

Which was a good thing, maybe. Because it didn’t matter at all.

“You want to buy my next flight?” she whispered. “Fine.” She reached for the tumbled pile of her skinthins. “I’ll give it to you, and you can give it to Xavier, and he can pay me for it.” She laughed, a single note that hurt her throat like a sob.

Hey, why not?

*   *   *

Her skins itched. She scratched, one hand on the wheel because there wasn’t any traffic on the airport road this time of night. Full recording gear meant skins, gloves, hood, the works. Patch on the left eyelid to the synch micro-cameras on her headband to her eye-track. She’d get it all—every twitch of body language that put you into the scene, register the physical tensions of fight-flight surprise, ambivalence, joy. All for you, baby. All for your boss.

Selva would be there at the airport.

Whose reality? You’re afraid.… Selva’s voice whispered in her ear. Afraid …

Therese braked hard, almost missed the turn. The car lurched and bucked, going too fast for the rutted track, and she clung to the wheel as thorns put new scratches in the paint. Nobody here except her. The engine stalled and died, and she pushed the door open. Frosty night air. The east wind was blowing, flowing down the Gorge like an invisible river of ice-cold water. It tugged at the black stocking cap she wore, flicked tendrils of hair into her eyes, and pried chilly fingers down her neck.

Good night for flying, Selva. She touched her eyelid to make sure the tracking patch was in place, tapped the control at her waist. Recording. The tiny telltale winked green. Therese leaped, fingers hooking into the softly clashing chain link, scrambled over, and dropped. The grass wasn’t wet tonight. An east wind had dried out the ground with its cold breath. Rags of thin cloud briefly obscured the sliver of moon. Do you see it, Selva? You can’t feel the wind, but you’ll feel me shiver, feel the subtle shifts as I push against it.

This is reality. Not the Net. Not pleasant virtual conversations in an unreal living room made up of electrons and fantasy.

This.

So who was she trying to convince? Scanning the landscape, the broken stumps of lights, she walked slowly along the abandoned runway. Planes used to land in sweeps of light, touching down between chains of blue jewels. Coming to get her, coming to take her home, only she’d never gone. The wind teased her, kissing her neck with cold lips. She could fly from this spot, but she kept on going, blaming the boarders that might show any time.

A lie. She was going to fly from the hangar, in front of Jazz’s yearning faces. No other place would work, and she didn’t stop to examine the reason for that. The gate apron glimmered like a gray wasteland in the faint moonlight. She skirted it, an eye out for the night watchman’s flash. No sign of him. She never saw him between midnight and one. She’d long ago figured that for his break. For a while, she had wondered why he hadn’t realized that she always set up during that hour. If he really wanted to catch her, he could do it just by changing his routines. She’d thought he was dumb at first. Then she’d decided that maybe he didn’t really want to catch her.

Only he’d reported her car. So, maybe she’d been wrong. The hangar loomed ahead, concrete apron veined with grass-grown cracks. Too rough for the boarders. Therese dropped her carryall in the long grass beyond the apron, got out her stakes. One. Two. Hammerstrokes jarred the plastic spikes into the soil, every blow recorded in muscle action and reaction. Therese finished pounding the third stake in, and flung the hammer aside, not needing it anymore. She realized then—that this was the last time. The last flight.

Never again, because once something broke, you couldn’t put it back together again. When she downloaded this night’s recording into Selva’s filespace, the airport, whatever it meant, whatever it was, would be broken. Lips pressed against tears that didn’t come, she began to lay out the precise tangles of her light-net. Her skins recorded what she saw, stored it in hard-memory in her belt-pack, then beamed it home to her system, bouncing the digitized kaleidoscope of light and shadow and movement off the face of some battered satellite. From Earth to space to Earth again. The wind caught her kite as she unfurled it. Feel it, Selva? How it pulls at my arms? You can’t smell the scent of fall and eastern desert in the wind, you can’t feel the echoes of this place, of Pegasus spreading his invisible wings overhead.

She had never walked through the airport gates, gotten onto a plane, and gone into those beautiful futures. Last night, she had let Pegasus go. On the wall, Jazz’s faces yearned silently for a home that wasn’t here. The east wind snatched at the kite, rough and importunate, full of rude force. She tossed it into the sky, and a gust snatched meters of line through her fingers, lofting it high, higher. She reached the end of the line, let go. It snapped tight, thrumming with strain as the wind gusted again. Perhaps life was nothing but departures—from the darkness of the womb, from the dark and light of life—only departing, never arriving. Hand in her pocket, finger just caressing the remote button, she walked over to the hangar.

“So, turn it on.” Jazz’s voice from the darkness didn’t startle her tonight. “C’mon, tonight’s the night.” Excitement hummed in his words. “Turn it on.”

Tonight’s the night. His belief infected her. Sometimes—as a kid in the airport late at night, when exhaustion blurred the line between fantasy and reality—for a few brief minutes her plane was landing, and she waited for the stewardess to open her little desk beside the ramp, to announce the row numbers that were boarding first. Sometimes she had stood in line to board, her blood thrumming with the anticipation of takeoff, the lights below, the black starry sky a ceiling to forever.…

If she had walked up to that desk, would the stewardess have smiled, welcomed her? “Okay,” she whispered, and thumbed the control. Above them, light; twisting, shimmering beneath the stars, jewel-bright in strands and twists, tangled like DNA, or love, or the trailing hair of God, charged with the invisible pulse of the wind.

He was right—it was the same cry as the people on the hangar door, written in glyphs of light and wind and the perfect night. We are homesick. Please take us home.… Shoulder touching shoulder, Therese and Jazz searched the sky. They would come. How could they not come?

Boots scraped on concrete.

“Fuck,” Jazz breathed. “Not now. Not yet!”

Therese looked over her shoulder. The night watchman stood on the edge of the concrete apron, a shadowy form in a dark uniform coverall, bulky and ominous.

Jazz hesitated, agony in the twist of his shoulders. “It’s the camps for me, if I get busted again,” he hissed. “Oh, fuck!” And ran.

It had shattered into ruin, they wouldn’t hear, they wouldn’t come. Reality crashed in like a wave—fines, money. And Therese leapt after Jazz, her own heart hammering with boogeyman dread and real fear. Wrong way, a sane corner of her brain shrieked at her. Double back, cut past him, and you can get over the fence.

But Jazz raced on ahead of her, a moving shadow in the dark, drawing her after him. If he was caught, he’d go to an adult detention camp. His fear infected her, lashed her with adrenaline. Fear for him, for her. His aliens wouldn’t find him in a camp. They wouldn’t know to look for him there, and he’d know it. That he’d never go home. And he’d die. Concrete jarred her as she reached the gate-apron.

She risked a glance over her shoulder, saw the night watchman emerge from darkness onto the gray glimmer of the concrete, running slowly, heavily. What was the range of his stunner? An ancient set of wheeled stairs leaned against the face of the terminal, the kind that had been pushed up against small commuter planes for passengers to climb. Jazz was up it in a flash, balancing on the top, reaching for the sill of the huge dark windows just above him.

Therese followed him, afraid to look back and see if the night watchman was behind her, afraid she’d tear her skins on the rusty metal. Above, the glass had been broken out of the huge windows. Moonlight glinted on triangular fragments sticking up like razor teeth. Therese grabbed a bare stretch of sill, levered herself over. Tom skins would be worse than a sliced hide. She could heal. The skins wouldn’t. “Jazz?” No answer. “Where are you?”

Moonlight turned shadow into memory, picked out a patch of blue and red carpet, a flash of chrome from a chair. Therese halted, the watchman forgotten, fumbled for the flash in her pocket. Light speared out, touching naked girders and trailing cables like ripped-out guts or vines, fallen squares of tattered and smoke-stained acoustic tile. She shivered.

The blue and red carpet, the plastic and chrome furniture, had looked so new and beautiful, a promise made of a future connected by those landing planes to that long-ago today. People had looked at her and had smiled, knowing that she was one of them, with somewhere to go, someone to welcome her.

Such a silly game to play. The flash beam trembled in her hand, making the shadowy space stutter in light and shadow.

Glass tinkled behind her. The sound scattered memory, galvanized her into a run. Glass crunched beneath her feet, and she smelled the sour stink of old dead fire. She swung her flash, motes of dust twinkling in the beam, turning it into a hazy sword of light. Her light-sword kissed denim blue, black shirt. Jazz. She kept it on him as she ran, tethered to him by light. Random heaps took shape and vanished at the edges of vision; chairs, wrecked furniture, piles of fallen ceiling tile. Electric-cable guts. Cobwebs. Jazz ducked right, and she followed him down a wide corridor. A rumpled abandoned sleeping bag looked like a body, brought her heart briefly into her throat. Jazz veered again, through a huge archway this time, out into the cavernous center of the terminal. The vast space stretched away into darkness. Here and there, trash, dead leaves, and debris shoaled against ticket counters or in the corners of empty waiting areas.

The floor quivered beneath Therese’s feet. She froze, adrenaline washing through her like ice water. Cautiously, she bounced up and down.

The floor bounced with her.

Which meant what? That they could fall through? “Jazz?” She hissed his name, but he was already halfway across the space, heading for the old front doors.

Therese started after him, afraid to yell and bring the night watchman after them. On her left, carpeting hung in frayed tatters into a hole in the floor. The flashlight’s weakening beam reflected off glossy char, showed her fallen burned timbers. So. A fire had gutted the lower level. How much of the floor was ready to crumble? “Jazz!” This time she did yell. “Jazz, stop! The floor!”

As if her words had cued it, the floor sagged beneath his feet, rotted carpet stretching, tearing with a dry, ripping sound. Dust rose in a cloud, and, arms flung wide, Jazz sank into it, disappearing downward in terrible slow motion. Therese lunged, hands reaching, grabbed for him, and felt the floor sag beneath her. Carpet tore with a dry ripping sound, and she screamed, falling. Carpeting disintegrated between her clutching fingers, and she screamed again, vision full of darkness, lungs full of pungent, dank char-reek, imagining concrete below, nails and fallen beams, spears to pierce her. Hardness slammed her ribs, and a terrible weight crashed down across her back, slammed the breath from her lungs in a red blaze of hurt. She struggled to breathe, the flash tumbling downward, beam slashing the darkness.

A little air seeped into her aching lungs, easing the panic. Slowly, she began to sort out the hurting; beam beneath her, pressing hard into chest, thighs, shoulder, Jazz lying half across her, crushing her ribcage, his muscles iron hard as he panted in her ear. The flashlight was still on—small miracle. Dust hazed the slender beam. It was a long way down.

“Fuck,” Jazz whispered. And moved.

“Stop!” Therese clutched the beam as they tilted sideways, struggling for balance. “Stay still.”

“Okay.” Explosion of breath in her ear. “All right!”

How do you get out of this little situation, Therese Oberti? Easy enough. Let go. She giggled.

“What so funny?” Jazz snarled. Scared.

“Gravity.” She peered cautiously sideways. “You could maybe climb onto those beams.”

“Uh-uh. Too far. Down I can maybe handle.” Jazz sucked in a deep breath. “Hang on, okay?”

Light splashed them from above, searingly bright. “Nice going.” A male voice, disgusted. “You guys really blew it. Hang on, and I’ll see if I can find something you can grab.” The light beam shifted, and Therese glimpsed a fold of dull green coverall, a dark webbing belt. The night watchman.

Caught. She felt Jazz’s muscles clamp tighter.

“Here.” The light shifted back, drowning their flash’s petty beam, illuminating fallen timbers, ashes, and twisted metal below. “You on top, grab this.” A long piece of wood, maybe a piece of doorframe, appeared. “Hang on real tight, and I’ll try to haul you up.”

It was at least ten feet to the floor. Therese stared at the ashes and burned junk, holding on as hard as she could. She could feel Jazz hesitating, his indecision humming though her. And in a few more minutes, she was going to lose her grip.… “Do it,” she hissed. “Quick!”

With a grunt, he grabbed for the wood. His body twisted, his weight dragging Therese sideways, trying to torque her off her perch. Silent, focused on flesh, muscle-clench, finger-grip against greasy metal, she processed kaleidoscopic images of Jazz swinging from the bending strip of wood, legs flailing for a toehold, dust showering. Then the floor gave way. They fell together, Jazz and the night watchman, in a tangle of green and denim, dark skin and darker hair. For an eerie instant, the flash shone full on the night watchman’s face: wide cheekbones, brown Hispanic skin, black hair, eyes full of shocked surprise. A moment later, they hit with the ugly flesh sound of impact. The big flash went out.

“Fuck!” Jazz’s whisper seemed to carry throughout the entire airport.

“Is that all you can say?” Panic clawed at her and she needed to get down. Groping, her fingers touched wood, closed incredibly tight. She swung by her hands, feet scrabbling, finding solid footing. Fallen beams wove a web of shadow across the glow from her dim flash, guided her lower. Her feet crunched into ash, and a shadow moved. Resolved into Jazz, sooty faced.

“You okay?” Therese touched a shoulder, reassured by the warm flesh beneath T-shirt fabric.

“I guess.” The shoulder lifted and dropped; a shrug, rather than rejection. “Nothing’s broken, I don’t think.” He shifted from beneath her fingers, and a moment later the flashbeam wobbled as he picked it up. “I think our cop landed hard.” The light touched a green-clad shoulder, slid upward to spotlight a stubbled jaw.

He was younger than she’d thought; not much older than her, with curly dark hair and thick brows. Not exactly handsome. A trickle of blood down the side of his face glowed wet and crimson in the light. Jazz slid ashy gray fingers beneath his jaw.

“He’s alive. I hate cops.”

“I’m not … a cop.” His eyes opened wide, and he tried to grin. It turned into a grimace of pain. “I’m private.”

“Cop, private gun.” Jazz shrugged. “Same deal.”

“No, it isn’t.” He sat up slowly, leaned his bloody, ash-smeared forehead against a raised knee. “God, my head hurts.… I yelled when I saw you come this way. The fire two years back gutted the bottom level. They ought to tear the whole place down, but there’d go my job, so what the hell?”

“How do we get out of here?” Jazz sabered the light-sword through the darkness, revealing fallen beams and ashes, twisted wads of heat-warped metal and melted plastics. “I got this schedule.…”

“Beats me.” The night watchman shrugged, grimaced again. “I guess we climb out.”

Therese eyed the fire-eaten beams and sagging ceiling doubtfully, squeezed by the cavernous darkness. If they couldn’t get out … surely somebody would check on the night watchman eventually. But what about Jazz? And her?

The night watchman grabbed one of the fallen beams, leaned his weight on it cautiously. It held. He clambered onto it, reaching for a broken segment of pipe.

With a crackle of breaking wood, the tangle shifted. He fell, landing on his feet, raising a cloud of fine ash. “So much for that.” He coughed, holding his head, his shoulders hunched in pain.

“You’re too heavy, guy. I gotta get out of here.” Jazz’s voice rose. “They’re coming for me tonight. I know it.”

“They.” The night watchman’s voice was slow and oddly shy. “They’re always calling someone. In your pictures. Looking up and just … calling. It makes me look, too. I thought it was God at first, but it isn’t, is it?” His voice got brisker. “They’re coming, huh?”

“Yeah, they’re coming.” Jazz tilted his head back, staring up at the gap in the ceiling. “I never thought about God much. He didn’t do anything for me. If you boost me, I can make it.” His eyes flicked from one to the other of them. “I’ll find something to let down to you guys. I promise.”

He had no reason to come back here, or help them at all. He had a lot of reason not to. Like the camps, if he got busted, and maybe the night watchman would bust him, once they were back outside in the usual world. And he thought his aliens might come, and why shouldn’t they come while he was helping them? He’d just take off, and there they would be. Stuck.

And he had been right about her lights painting the poetry of loneliness across the night sky. And if there were any aliens up there, how could they not hear it—his call and hers. How could they not come? And … the night watchman believed. You could hear it in his voice. Why should he believe?

“We’ll boost you.” She held out her hands to the night watchman, like they’d already agreed. And he clasped them halfway, because they had.

“Try for that pipe.” He jerked his chin upward as he laced his fingers with hers. “One, two…”

Eyes glinting, Jazz rested a foot lightly on their hands.

“Three!”

Therese and the watchman heaved together, straightening their knees, flinging Jazz at the ceiling. He rose in a perfect leap, caught the pipe. Swung once, twice for momentum, then reached one-handed, grabbed a solid joist. Feet kicking, showering them with dust and ash, he scrambled over the lip of the fallen ceiling and vanished.

Silence.

The flashlight yellowed and shadows drew in around them. Therese looked at the watchman.

“A couple of more minutes.” The cut on his forehead was still oozing blood. “We can try the old escalator. The ceiling came down there, but we can probably get through. You know, your flying lights are … neat.” The flash’s glow reflected in his dark eyes, like distant campfires, or lost stars. “They’re never the same twice, you know? It makes them special. I can’t go back and call them up again, like with a video on the Net. I came here when I was a kid—I was flying down to live with my uncle in LA. All these people coming and going, happy and sad, excited. Everybody wanting to be somewhere, or wanting somebody to be here.” He looked past her, frowned. “Your lights are like that—kind of a tangle, you know? All bright, and never the same again.”

Therese swallowed a sudden thickness in her throat, because maybe he understood something better than she did. “But you cut them down. You paint out Jazz’s tags.”

“Well, yeah.” He looked at her sadly. “I’d lose my job if I didn’t. It matters, my job.” And his voice had that same shyness as when he talked about Jazz’s pictures.

“Yo.” Scuffle from above, and a patter of new debris raining down.

“You came back.” Therese looked up, grinning because she hadn’t really expected him to, had already forgiven him.

“Yeah, but hurry, okay? They’re here.” Urgency roughened his voice. “I’m not kidding. They’re looking for me, but they might not know where to look.”

The light was nothing more than a glimmer, barely illuminating the fall of tangled, snaky coils. Therese reached up, flinched as they tumbled down around her head and onto her shoulders. Some sort of electrical cable, black and pliable.

“It’s tied. Come on.” Jazz’s voice echoed through the darkness.

“Go ahead.” As the night watchman nodded, the flash beam died. Darkness rushed in to fill the space where the light had been, expanding the terminal into infinity. She fumbled blindly for footing, trying to hurry, afraid they’d leave without him. Pulled herself upward, banging knees and elbows on invisible obstacles, found a good foothold, slipped, gasped with terror, then relief as Jazz grabbed her arms.

“You okay?” From below. Worried.

“Yes.” And scrambled up onto the solid floor, face down on the crappy carpeting.

Behind her, in the dark, the timbers creaked as the night watchman climbed after her. She sat up, as he scrambled over the edge, so close that she felt the heat radiating from his body. Caught a whiff of sweat and musky man-smell. It came to her suddenly that she was still recording. She was so used to the rig she’d forgotten, and neither of the others had noticed her headband. She touched her eyelid, fingertips searching for, finding the tiny track-patch miraculously still in place. Laughed softly. Once.

“Now what’s funny?” Jazz asked.

“Smile,” she said, and stopped laughing, because in a second it would fall over into hysteria. “I wonder what dear Xavier will do with this bit?”

“Huh?” Jazz was dancing with urgency, footsteps shaking the fragile floor. “Let’s go. Which way out of here, huh?”

“Left.” The night watchman’s fingers closed around her hand. “Watch out. There’s stuff all over the floor.”

She reached, found Jazz’s hand in the dark, as if it had been waiting for her. They followed the watchman’s lead, playing a weird blindman’s-bluff through the blackness. Do you feel Jazz trembling, Selva? He’s afraid they won’t wait. And if they don’t, if they’re not there, will he have the courage to wait any longer? And the night watchman is pulling because … he believes.

And she didn’t know why, but in here, in the sooty dark, they all believed. Light ahead. It scattered her thoughts on a wave of relief. Main entrance—chipboard and sometimes panes of glass, amazingly unbroken. The night watchman tapped an urgent code into a dusty security box beside an intact door. A lock clicked and he shoved it open. Night air rushed in—no colder than the air in here, but fresh and full of earth-scent, diminishing the smoke-reek. With a cry, Jazz darted through the doorway.

“There.” He pointed, every fiber in his body taut and alive. Glow across the hummocky abandoned fields, opalescent in the thin fog that was rising. It could be a truck, Therese thought. Coming slow in the fog along the riverbed highway.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a flying saucer landing, touching down to collect a lost child, take him home. Overhead, Pegasus soared, his wings spread above the rising fog, offering a ride to anyone who dared.

Jazz leaped onto the curb, paused, head lifted like a spike buck, looked back. His face was like the moon, brilliant with reflected light. The light of home. “Take it easy.” He lifted his hand in a wave or a salute. Then he was gone, vaulting over the low concrete wall of the huge parking structure beyond the grass, running like a deer through the tall grass.

Across the wet, cold grass, the glow brightened. A truck, Therese thought. And when it took the curve where the riverbed bent, where she parked her car, she’d see the headlights. And would know it was a truck.

She closed her eyes.

Alien trapped among aliens—and aren’t we all? Homesick for a home we can’t remember, but we know it has to be there. Because if it isn’t there somewhere, lying back behind memory, like the darkness lies behind the stars … then what’s all this for? Her tears surprised her, scalding hot beneath her closed eyelids. You won’t feel them, Selva. Because my face isn’t covered by a skinthin mask, she thought bitterly. You won’t know that I’m crying. You can dub that in later, if you want. If it seems right.

Beside her, the night watchman shared her silence. The wind blew through the overgrown grass of the field, whispering in its own language as it probed the cracks and corners of the abandoned terminal. Therese sighed, and opened her eyes. The highway was dark. Truck or flying saucer, the light was gone. And so was Jazz.

Back to the city? Back to doorways and shelters, back to the ten-dollar blow jobs and the threat of the camps?

Or was he on his way home? Therese wiped her face on the back of her arm.

“Are you all right?” The night watchman’s voice was gentle.

“I guess.” Therese climbed over the low wall that Jazz had leaped so easily, shivering because she was freezing in her light skins.

“I’ll lend you a jacket.” He stopped beside a small gray door in the wall of the parking structure. “If you want.”

He had believed, too, down there. “Thanks,” she said, because he wanted her to take it. “I’d appreciate it.” And for the first time, she really looked at him, saw, not a boogeyman, not a shadowy presence, but a man, a person, in the flesh. The halogen security lamps cast shadow beneath his cheekbones, turned his face stark and craggy. His dark eyes were on hers, and light glowed in their depths.

“You can drop it off any time.” He unlocked the door, touched on the lights.

Therese blinked in the sudden glare. His office. Terminal screen on a desk, basic kitchen-wall with microwave and freezer above a cheap new counter top and tiny sink. A bookshelf full of old hardcopy books. A small futon lay on the floor by the wall, scattered with a few toys, a bright green blanket tucked around the curled and sleeping shape of a small child.

“My son.” His face softened for a minute. “He lives here with me. Sorry about the mess.” He sounded apologetic as he picked up a plastic trashbag from the floor.

This was home, she thought. For him and his son. She’d heard the echo in his voice when he’d said “the job matters.” Home. He’d still been able to understand what Jazz had painted on the hangar wall, what she had woven across the night sky.

“Here.” He held out a plastic trash bag.

She opened it, looked in. Tangled strands of light fiber. Neat rolls of transparent plastic. String. “My stuff.” She looked up, met his dark eyes, brilliant in his soot-streaked face. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ll walk you to the gate.” He ushered her out, closed the door gently and protectively on the sleeping child.

They didn’t speak as they followed the empty driveway out to the main gate. It was chainlink, but new, topped with shiny thorns of razor-wire. He touched a keypad set into a concrete pillar, and the gate groaned, began to rumble open. “I got to go chase the boarders.” He smiled crookedly. “They’ll be disappointed if I don’t.”

“This is your performance art.” She returned his smile.

“Hey, whatever.” He spread his hands, then hesitated. “I … didn’t look. When Jazz ran. You didn’t either, did you?”

“No,” she murmured. If she had, if he had, they would have turned that flying saucer back into a truck, have turned Home back into a Front Street meat rack, or a detention camp.

“I’m glad,” he said, and home hummed beneath his words.

Maybe that’s what let him understand. Because he’d made his home here, for himself and his son. But the gate was open now, no longer a barrier between Therese and the real world of money and deadlines. She sighed, resenting that open gate, feeling subtly betrayed. “Why did you call in my car for trespass?” She had to ask. “I can’t afford the fine.”

“I didn’t.” Genuine confusion—his turn to look betrayed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

And he wouldn’t. “You’re right,” she said, and sudden grief clutched her. She stretched up, and kissed him on the mouth. After a moment of surprise, he responded, lips pressing against hers, warm and firm with life.

Then she walked away, and he didn’t try to stop her, as she marched down the asphalt driveway and then out to her car, feet dry on the asphalt, heart heavy. And went … not home, but back to where she lived.

It only occured to her when she was halfway there that she didn’t know the night watchman’s name, and that he had never asked for hers.

*   *   *

Urgent messages from Selva greeted her. Call me. Call me right away. And the grief weighed on her shoulders, heavy as lead. When she put on her goggles, Selva’s image coalesced instantly, as if she’d been waiting for Therese to call. “My God, ’Rese, are you okay?”

Her face looked haggard, head and shoulders only against a pastel wall—which meant that this was realtime, a straight video transmission from her apartment, not translated through a virtual self. No tricks of programmed emotion, then. Except the ultimate, the one she’d already pulled. “You were looking over my shoulder tonight.” The first time she’d called, she’d known that Therese had been at the airport. Were you flying your kites? she had asked, but she had known. I missed it, Therese thought numbly. I wanted to miss it. “How long have you been in my filespace?”

Selva looked away, convicted by her own worry.

“Did you watch it all? My flight, our fall, everything? You turned in my car for trespass.” Therese’s voice cracked. “My God, Selva, why?”

“I didn’t watch. Not much.” Selva faced her, eyes bleak. “I was monitoring the transmission, watching the parameters in digital, and when the activity went to the end of the scale, I checked the visuals.” She paused for a heartbeat. “I saw you fall. For a minute, I thought…” Her shoulders jerked. “I stopped watching when you climbed out.”

“Nice.” Therese’s lips felt numb. She was beyond anger now, as stunned as if the sky had cracked and rained down on her head. “So, not only do you get my car busted, you can sell my recording direct to Xavier. Hey, always cut out the middleman whenever possible!”

“Stop it, ’Rese.” Selva didn’t look away this time, didn’t try to hide the pain in her face. “Yeah, I turned your car in. Xavier’s looking for new blood, and I figured if he saw your stuff—if you maybe found out that it isn’t so bad, working for somebody … If you’d turned it down, I would have paid the fine myself, but I wanted.…” She clenched her fists, her face pale and stark. “I wanted to make you hear me, okay? I love you. Don’t you get it? Do you have to tie our love to your definition of success? Can’t you just let us happen? Do you think I care if I’m paying the rent?”

The anguish in her voice gutted Therese’s anger. Do you care that much? she wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come. It was her turn to look away. She’d seen it after all—whether that light was a truck or not. She had it on file, and so did Selva—the conclusion of Jazz’s wild dash across the airport field. Stored in patterns of excited electrons.

“I dumped the file from tonight.” Selva had turned away again, her shoulders drooping, where they never drooped, always lifted proudly, strong and muscular. “If you had gotten hurt … if you had died…” She swallowed, her throat leaping. “I also downloaded money for the fine into your account. You’re the one who has to decide, and I guess you have. I’m sorry. I love you, and I’ll leave you alone. Will you please … be careful out there?”

And the screen went blank.

Therese stared at it for a long moment; angry at Selva for the fine, for the betrayal of that hack into her filespace. She snapped her fingers, called up her workspace. The file was there, bounced from Earth to sky to Earth again, an airplane icon glowing in the air. She could know. She stared at it. Your lights say the same thing, he’d told her.

“You’re wrong. I’m not like you,” she whispered. She had looked at the night watchman and seen a man, not a cop, or an alien, or a boogeyman. She had peeked at his cramped apartment and his sleeping son, and had felt its tug.

And Jazz knew. Poised on the curb, he hadn’t asked her to come along. Therese let her breath out slowly, touched the airplane. “System, delete,” she said.

Are you sure you want to delete this file? her system asked. You have no backup.

Maybe you had to define home for yourself, and then believe in it enough to make it real. “System, yes,” she said and let her breath out in a rush. “Delete the file.”

File deleted. The airplane winked out of existence.

“I hope you’re already home,” Therese murmured. And went into her bank account to find the three thousand dollars Selva had left there. And used it to pay her fine. On the table, the fountain of glass showered the room with fractured light. Maybe it wasn’t a message of failure. Maybe Selva had known her well enough to send her something that existed only for its own sake, for beauty. Maybe Selva was trying to define home for herself.

Outside, Pegasus spread his wings to fly beyond the stars. Therese hung the night watchman’s jacket on a chair. Neatly. She would return it in the daylight, ask his name, and his son’s name, visit with them for a few minutes. And then … she’d buy a ticket for the mag-lev. Going to Vancouver, B.C. For a visit, or for a long time, she didn’t know yet. They were going to be angry at each other for awhile. Maybe there were depths beyond the anger. Therese picked up the glass, turning it to scatter the rays from the cheap light overhead. “You were right, Selva,” she murmured. “I was afraid.” Of the real world, of Pegasus’s broad back. Still was. But she would bring along the light-net that the night watchman had returned with her. Selva would know a good place to fly it. They could cast it one more time at Pegasus.