Renie stared at her brother across the kitchen table. She had been worried for him, even frightened, but now anger was pushing the other emotions aside. Not only had he put her to a great deal of trouble, but then it had taken him an hour longer to get home from Eddie's flatblock than it had taken her to return from the Poly, forcing her to wait.
"I don't care if everybody does it, Stephen, and I seriously doubt that's true anyway. I'm really scorched! It's illegal for you to enter the District, and we truly couldn't afford the fines if you got caught. Plus, if my boss finds out what I did to get you out, I could get fired." She leaned forward and grabbed his hand, squeezing until he winced. "I could lose my job, Stephen!"
"Shut up, there, you fool children!" their father called out from the back bedroom. "You making my head hurt."
If there had not been a door between them, Renie's look might have set Long Joseph's sheets on fire.
"I'm sorry, Renie. I'm really sorry. Really. Could I try Soki again?" Without waiting for permission, he turned to the wall-screen and told it to call. No one answered at Soki's end.
Renie tried to rein in her temper. "What was this about Soki falling down a hole?"
Stephen drummed his fingers nervously on the table. "Eddie dared him."
"Dared him to do what? Damn it, Stephen, don't make me drag this out of you word by word."
"There's this room in Mister J's. Some guys from school told us about it. They have . . . well, there's things in there that are real chizz."
"Things? What things?"
"Just . . . things. Stuff to see." Stephen wouldn't meet her eyes. "But we didn't see it, Renie. We couldn't find it. The club is major big on the inside—you wouldn't believe it! It goes on forever!" For a moment his eyes sparkled as, remembering the glory that was Mister J's, he forgot that he was in serious trouble. A look at his sister's face reminded him. "Anyway, we were looking and looking, and we asked people—I think they were mostly Citizens, but some acted really weird—but no one could tell us. Then someone, this far major fat guy, said you could get in through this room down in the basement."
Renie suppressed a shiver of distaste. "Before you tell me any more, young man, I want one thing clear. You are never going back to this place again. Understand? Look me in the eye. Never,"
Reluctantly, Stephen nodded. "Okay, okay. I won't. So we went down all these windy stairs—it was like a dungeon game!—and after a while found this door. Soki opened it and . . . fell through."
"Fell through what?"
"I don't know! It was just like a big hole on the other side. There was smoke and some blue lights down deep inside it."
Renie sat back in her chair. "Someone's nasty, sadistic little trick. You all deserved to be scared, but I hope it didn't scare him too much. Was he using bootleg SchoolNet equipment like you two?"
"No, Just his home setup. A cheap Nigerian station."
Which was what their own family owned. How could kids be poor and still be so damn snobbish?
"Well, then there won't have been much vertigo or gravity simulation. He'll be fine." She stared narrowly at Stephen. "You did hear me, didn't you? You're never going there again, or you will have no station time and no visits to Eddie or Soki forever—instead of just for the rest of the month."
"What?" Stephen leaped up in outrage. "No net?"
"End of the month. You're lucky I haven't told Dad—you'd be getting a belt across your troublesome black behind."
"I'd rather have that than no net," he said sullenly.
"You'd be getting both."
After she sent Stephen grumbling and complaining to his room, Renie accessed her work library—making sure that her inbox contained no memos from Ms. Bundazi about defrauding the Poly—and called up some files on Inner District businesses. She found Mister J's, registered as a "gaming and entertainment club" and licensed strictly for adult visitors. It was owned by something called the "Happy Juggler Novelty Corporation," and had first been opened under the name "Mister Jingo's Smile."
As she waited for sleep that night, she was visited by images of the club's ramshackle facade, of turrets like pointed idiot heads and windows like staring eyes. Hardest of all to escape was the memory of the huge mobile mouth and rows of gleaming teeth that squirmed above the door—a gateway that only led inward.
CHAPTER 2
The Airman
NETFEED/MUSIC: Drone "Bigger Than Ever."
(visual: one eye)
VO: Ganga Drone music will be "bigger than ever" this year, according to one of its leading practitioners.
(visual: half of face, glinting teeth)
Ayatollah Jones, who sings and plays neuro-cithara for the drone group Your First Heart Attack, told us:
JONES: "We . . . it's . . . gonna be . . . big. Mordo big. Bigger than. . . ."
(visual: fingers twining—many rings, cosmetic webbing)
JONES: ". . . Than ever. No dupping. Real big."
Christabel Sorensen was not a good liar, but with a little practice she was getting better.
She wasn't a bad girl, really, although once her fish died because she forgot to feed him for a bunch of days. She didn't think of herself as a liar either, but sometimes it was just . . . easier not to tell. So when her mother asked her where she was going, she smiled and said, "Portia has Otterland. It's new and it's just like you're really swimming except you can breathe and there's an Otter King and an Otter Queen. . . ."
Her mother waved a hand to halt the explanation. "That sounds sweet, darling. Don't stay at Portia's too long—Daddy's going to be home for dinner. For once."
Christabel grinned. Daddy worked too much—Mommy always said so. He had an important job as Base Security Supervisor. Christabel didn't know exactly what it meant. He was sort of a policeman, except with the army. But he didn't wear a uniform like the army men in the movies.
"Can we have ice cream?"
"If you come home in time to help me shell the peas, then we'll have ice cream."
" 'Kay." Christabel trotted out. As the door resealed behind her with its familiar sucking sound, she laughed. Some noises were just funny.
She knew that the Base was different from the kind of towns that people lived in on net shows, or even in other parts of North Carolina, but she didn't know why. It had streets and trees and a park and a school—two schools, really, since there was a school for grown-up army men and army women as well as one for kids like Christabel whose parents lived on the Base. Daddies and mommies went off to work in normal clothes, drove cars, mowed their lawns, had each other over for dinners and parties and barbecues. The Base did have a few things that most towns didn't have—a double row of electric fences all the way around it to keep out the crowdy hammock city beyond the trees, and three different little houses called checkpoints that all the cars coming in had to drive past—but that didn't seem like enough to make it a Base instead of just a normal place to live. The other kids at school had lived on Bases all their lives, just like her, so they didn't get it either.
She turned left on Windicott Lane. If she had really been going to Portia's, she would have turned right, so she was glad the street corner was out of sight of her house, just in case her mother was watching. It was strange telling Mom she was going one place and then going somewhere else. It was bad, she knew, but not really bad, and it was very exciting. She felt all trembly and new every time she did it, like a shiver-legged baby colt she had seen on the net.
From Windicott she turned onto Stillwell. She skipped for a while, being careful not to step on any of the sidewalk cracks, then turned onto Redland. The houses here were definitely smaller than hers. Some of them looked a little sad. The grass was short on the lawns like everywhere else on the Base, but it looked like it was that way because it didn't have the strength to grow any higher. Some of the lawns had bare spots, and lots of the houses were dusty and a bit faded. She wondered why the people living in them didn't just wash them off or paint them so they'd look like new. When she ha
d her own house someday, she would paint it a different color every week.
She thought about different colors of houses all the way down Redland, then skipped again as she crossed the footbridge over the creek—she like the ka-thump, ka-thump sound it made—and hurried down Beekman Court where the trees were very thick. Even though Mister Sellars' house was very close to the fence that marked the outskirts of the Base, you could hardly tell, because the trees and hedges blocked the view.
That had been the first thing that attracted her to the house, of course—the trees. There were sycamores in the backyard of her parents' house, and a papery-barked birch tree by the front window, but Mister Sellars' house was absolutely surrounded by trees, so many of them that you could hardly see that there was a house there at all. The first time she had seen it—helping Ophelia Weiner look for her runaway cat Dickens—she had thought it was just like something in a fairy tale. When she came back later and walked up the twisty gravel driveway, she had almost expected it to be made out of gingerbread. It wasn't, of course—it was just a little house like all the others—but it was still a very interesting place.
And Mister Sellars was a very interesting man. She didn't know why her parents didn't want her to go to his house anymore, and they wouldn't tell her. He was a little scary-looking, but that wasn't his fault.
Christabel stopped skipping so she could better appreciate the crunchy feeling of walking down Mister Sellars' long driveway. It was pretty silly having a driveway at all, since the big car in his garage hadn't been moved in years. Mister Sellars didn't even go out of the house. She'd asked him once why he had a car and he had laughed kind of sad and said it came with the house. "If I'm very, very good," he had told her, "someday they may let me get into that Cadillac, little Christabel. I'll close the garage door real tight, and drive home."
She thought it had been a joke, but she didn't really get it. Grown-up jokes were like that sometimes, but then grownups seldom laughed at the jokes that Uncle Jingle did on his net show, and those were so funny (and kind of naughty, although she didn't know why exactly) that Christabel sometimes almost wet her pants from laughing.
To find the doorbell she had to push aside one of the ferns, which had practically covered the front porch. Then she had to wait a long time. At last Mister Sellars' strange voice came from behind the door, all booty and soft.
"Who is it?"
"Christabel."
The door opened and wet air came out, along with the thick green smell of the plants. She stepped inside quickly so Mister Sellars could shut it again. He had told her the first time she came that it was bad for him if he let too much of the moisture out.
"Well, little Christabel!" He seemed very pleased to see her. "And to what do I owe this enchanting surprise?"
"I told Mommy I was going to Portia's to play Otterland."
He nodded. He was so tall and bent over that sometimes when he nodded like that, up and down so hard, she was worried he might hurt his skinny neck. "Ah, then we can't take too long having our visit, can we? Still, might as well do it up right and proper. You know where to change. I think there's something there to fit you."
He rolled his wheelchair back out of her way and she hurried down the hall. He was right. They didn't have very long, unless she wanted to risk having her mother phone Portia's to hurry her back to the peas. Then she'd have to think of a story about why she didn't go play Otterland. That was the problem about lying—if people started checking up, things got very complicated.
The changing room was, like every room in the house, full of plants. She had never seen so many in one place, not even at Missus Gullison's house, and Missus Gullison was always bragging about her plants and how much work they were, even though a little dark-skinned man came two times a week to do all the clipping and watering and digging. But Mister Sellars' plants, although they got plenty of water, never got clipped at all. They just grew. Sometimes she wondered if they would fill the whole house someday, and the funny old man would have to move out.
There was a bathrobe in just her size hanging on the hook behind the door. She quickly took off her shorts and shirt, socks and shoes, and put them all in the plastic bag, just as Mister Sellars had shown her. As she bent over to put the last shoe in, one of the ferns tickled her back. She squealed.
"Are you all right, little Christabel?" called Mister Sellars.
"Yes. Your plant tickled me."
"I'm sure it did no such thing." He pretended to be angry, but she knew he was joking. "My plants are the best-behaved on the Base."
She belted the terrycloth bathrobe and stepped into the shower thongs.
Mister Sellars was sitting in his chair next to the machine that put all the water in the air. He looked up as she came in and his twisted face moved in a smile. "Ah, it's good to see you."
The first time she had seen that face she had been frightened. The skin was not just wrinkled like on Grandma's face, but looked almost melted, like the wax on the side of a burned-down candle. He had no hair either, and his ears were just nubs that stood out from the side of his head. But he had told her, that first time, that it was all right to be scared—he knew what he looked like. It was from a bad burn, he said—an accident with jet fuel. It was even okay to stare, he had told her. And she had stared, and for weeks after their first meeting his melted-doll face had been in her dreams. But he had been very nice, and Christabel knew he was lonely. How sad to be an old man and to have a face that people would point at and make fun of, and to need to be in a house where the air was always cool and wet so that his skin didn't hurt! He deserved a friend. She didn't like telling lies about it, but what else could she do? Her parents had told her not to visit him anymore, but for no good reason. Christabel was almost grown-up now. She wanted to know reasons for things.
"So, little Christabel, tell me about the world." Mister Sellars sat back in the streaming mist of the moisture machine. Christabel told him about her school, about Ophelia Weiner who thought she was really special because she had a Nanoo Dress that she could change into a different shape or color by pulling on it, and about playing Otterland with Portia.
". . . And you know how the Otter King can always tell if you have a fish with you? By smelling you?" She looked at Mister Sellars. With his eyes closed, his bumpy, hairless face seemed like a clay mask. As she wondered if he had fallen asleep, his eyes popped open again. They were the most interesting color, yellow like Dickens the cat's.
"I'm afraid I don't know the ins and outs of the Otter Kingdom very well, my young friend. A failing, I realize."
"Didn't they have it when you were a boy?"
He laughed, a soft pigeon-coo. "Not really. No, nothing quite like Otterland."
She looked at his rippled face and felt something like the love she felt for her mother and father. "Was it scary when you were a pilot? Back in the old days?"
His smile went away. "It was scary sometimes, yes. And sometimes it was very lonely. But it was what I was raised to do, Christabel. I knew it from the time I was . . . I was a little boy. It was my duty, and I was proud to perform it" His face went a little strange, and he bent over to fiddle with his water machine. "No, there was more to it than that There is a poem:
". . . Nor law, nor duty made me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death."
He coughed. "That's Yeats. It's always hard to say just what makes us choose to do something. Especially something we're afraid to do."
Christabel didn't know what yates were, and didn't understand what the poem meant, but she didn't like it when Mister Sellars looked so sad. "I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," she said. Earlier in the year she'd thought she might be a dancer or a singer on the net, but now she knew better. "Do you want me to tell you where I'm going to have my office?"
&
nbsp; The old man was smiling again. "I'd love to hear about it—but aren't you running a little late?"
Christabel looked down. Her wristband was blinking. She jumped up. "I have to go change. But I wanted you to tell me more of the story!"
"Next time, my dear. We don't want you to get into trouble with your mother. I'd hate to be denied your company in the future."
"I wanted you to finish telling me about Jack!" She hurried into the changing room and put her clothes back on. The plastic bag had kept them dry, just like it was supposed to.
"Ah, yes," Mister Sellars said when she returned. "And what was Jack doing when we stopped?"
"He climbed up the Beanstalk and he was in the Giant's Castle." Christabel was faintly offended that he didn't remember. "And the Giant was coming back soon!"
"Ah, so he was, so he was. Poor Jack. Well, that's where we shall begin when you come back to visit me next time. Now, on your way." He carefully patted her head. The way his face looked, she thought it might hurt his hand to touch her, but he always did it.
She was most of the way out the door when she remembered something she wanted to ask him about his plants. She turned and came back, but Mister Sellars had closed his eyes again and sunk back into his chair. His long, spidery fingers were moving slowly, as though he were finger-painting on the air. She stared for a moment—she had never seen that before and thought maybe it was some special exercise he had to do—then realized that clouds of steam were drifting past her into the hot afternoon air. She quickly went out again and pulled the door closed behind her. The exercises, if that was what they were, had seemed private and a little creepy.
He had been moving his hands in the air like someone who was on the net, she suddenly realized. But Mister Sellars hadn't been wearing a helmet or one of those wires in his neck like some of the people who worked for her daddy. He had just had his eyes closed.
Her wristband was blinking even faster. Christabel knew it would only be a few more minutes before her mother called Portia's house. She didn't waste time skipping as she went back over the footbridge.