‘Happy birthday, Joss. My God, you’re so tall.’
She paused, then kissed my cheek. Her skin smelled of powder with just a hint of baby puke. I kissed her, awkwardly sliding my arm around her for a quick hug. It was hard to act naturally, as though the six years hadn’t gone by.
The waiter hovered over us, probably afraid Louise would knock cups off the tables with the pack.
‘I don’t think all of this stuff will fit under a stool,’ Louise said to him. ‘Is there a table free?’
Surprise, surprise, he found us a table down the back, away from anything breakable.
‘Moving a baby is such a major production,’ she said as we sat down. She arranged the kid on the bench seat against the wall. The hat box went under the table.
‘I’ll have a strong long black,’ she told the waiter. ‘You too?’ she asked me. I nodded.
‘You must be so proud of yourself, getting into the Centre,’ she said as he walked away.
I shrugged. For once I didn’t want to talk about time-jumping. There were more important things to talk about, but all of them led straight to the big question: why hadn’t I seen her in six years? So, I said nothing.
‘You’re upset with me, aren’t you?’ she said.
All I had to do was ask and Louise would tell me the truth. I picked up the chipped antique sugar dispenser, running my finger across the flip top. The waiter brought our coffees. Louise sipped hers slowly. She kept her eyes carefully on her cup. She’d always been able to outwait me. I curled my fingers around the edge of the table. Now or never.
‘Why didn’t you want to see me for so long? Did I do something wrong to make you leave?’ I’d wanted to sound cool as if the answer didn’t really mean much. Instead, I sounded like a whimpering three-year-old.
Louise clacked her cup down on the saucer.
‘Of course you didn’t do anything wrong,’ she said.
‘You’re positive I didn’t make you mad or something?’ The three-year-old in me had to make sure. As sure as you can be when you can’t read someone’s mind.
‘Absolutely. I left because your mum and I had a lot of problems. Not because of you.’ She touched my arm reassuringly. ‘I did try and see you after I left, but your mum asked me not to. But now you’re officially an adult. You can see who you want to.’
‘I knew it!’ I said, unclenching my fingers. ‘I knew you would have come if you could have.’
Louise hesitated.
‘We agreed it was best that I didn’t. We didn’t want you caught up in the middle of our fight. It was getting pretty messy. In the end I just had to get out.’
I couldn’t help smiling. Louise didn’t hate me! Ingrid was the bad guy. Not me.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It was all Ingrid’s fault. She wrecks everything.’
‘Come on, you know that’s not true. I did some stupid things too.’
‘But she was going to dump you for a man just to get her ratings. That’s so low. I heard you fighting about it.’
I was on a roll, President of the Down with Ingrid Club. The couple at the next table stopped mid chat and stared at me. Louise glared at them until they looked away. She leaned closer, holding my hand so tightly that I winced.
‘She wasn’t really going to do that. That was just the flare up point for a lot of other problems.’
‘Ingrid’s the problem,’ I said, pulling my hand free to airjab my point home. ‘She’s so selfish, there’s no room for anyone else.’
‘Isn’t it time you saw your mother as a real person instead of a monster?’ Louise said. ‘Even I don’t think she’s as bad as you do.’
‘Of course I see her as a person,’ I said.
Louise crossed her arms. ‘No, you don’t. You’re acting just like the spoiled kid you were six years ago. I’d have thought you’d have grown up by now.’
Sometimes Louise told too much truth, too fast. There’s something to be said for softening the blow. I looked at my reflection in the mirrored wall opposite. Lipstick, eyeliner and six years had done nothing. I wiped the back of my hand across my red lips. In a way it was funny. I’d always thought I had grown up the day she left.
Louise was sitting very still, waiting for me to say something. Did strangled howls count? I gulped a mouthful of coffee. All right, I could be as grown up as the next person.
‘If you know so much, you tell me why she stopped you from seeing me,’ I said. ‘But don’t try and cop out. If you say it was all for my own good, I’ll spray.’
‘You haven’t been listening, have you?’ she said. She placed her hands flat on the table. ‘Ingrid didn’t want you dragged into the middle of our fight. You were so upset as it was. So I suppose you’re going to have to spray because Ingrid did want what was best for you.’
I pretended to vomit into my hand, but I was really ducking away from a hot-knife memory of a twelve-year-old huddled against a heater, rocking herself too fast.
‘Sticking me in all of those stupid schools wasn’t the best thing for me. She just wanted to get me out of the way. I don’t even know why she had me.’
‘She just wanted someone to love her, not her money or the way she looked,’ Louise said. ‘You know how she hates to be alone. It scares the hell out of her.’
I used my trump.
‘If she hates to be alone, then why didn’t she ever want me around?’
Louise dragged her lower teeth across her top lip. Whatever she was going to say, wasn’t going to be good. I pressed myself back in the chair.
‘She’s afraid of you,’ she said.
I couldn’t move. A rabbit in the headlights. Did Ingrid think I was a genetic monster, too?
‘Maybe afraid is the wrong way of putting it,’ Louise said, studying my face. ‘I think Ingrid hates herself and she’s afraid you hate her too. After all, the last time I saw you two together, you were treating her like dirt.’
The cold wash of truths prickled up my spine and across my scalp. I scrubbed my hand through my hair, trying to push Louise’s words away.
The baby started to whimper. Louise pulled him out of the pack, holding him close to her chest. I was glad of the interruption.
‘I met Barbara when I called,’ I said into the silence. ‘She seems nice.’
Louise watched me for a moment, slowly rocking the kid.
‘Maybe I should learn to shut up,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Of course,’ I said, curling my fingers around my cup.
‘I could be wrong about Ingrid,’ she said, but I could tell she didn’t believe it.
‘Barbara seems nice,’ I said again.
Louise nodded.
‘She is. She’s wonderful with Perri too. Somehow she can get him to sleep when all he wants to do is cry.’
The kid was wide awake now, trying to focus on me. His eyes were almond shaped and big, like mine.
‘Is he a comp?’ I asked.
‘No. We thought about it, but we wanted the baby to know who he’d come from. So James, a friend of ours, volunteered to give us some sperm. He’s absolutely gaga over Perri. Isn’t he, sweetie,’ she said to the baby, kissing the little curve of his nose.
‘The father’s around?’
‘Of course. He’s not living with us, but he comes and visits. It’s part of our parenting agreement.’
The kid didn’t know how lucky he was. Two loving mums and a donor who wanted to be in his life.
‘He’s got it all, hasn’t he?’ I said.
Louise stopped smoothing down Perri’s wispy hair.
‘Well, you know Ingrid did everything in her power to find your father for you. Personally, I didn’t think she’d get as far as she did. It was too bad that code she bribed out of the nurse was no good.’
I stared at Louise’s mouth. A smeared red smile.
‘What’s wrong, Joss?’
‘She never told me she looked for him.’
Louise rubbed her forehead.
‘She never t
old you?’
I thought about all the times I’d sat in class, dreaming up plans to find him. A private investigator. Lenny’s underground network. A story by Sixty Minutes. Or my favourite one: my father finding me.
‘Why didn’t she tell me she looked?’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her. Maybe it’s time you cleared the air.’
Louise waited for me to agree with her. Finally she sighed, reached under the table and pushed the hat box towards me.
‘Here’s your birthday present. Guess what it is.’
It was the game we used to play. Louise would give me the hat box and I was supposed to guess my present was a VR game or a book or something. Anything but a hat. This time I didn’t want to play.
I pulled the top off the box.
Inside was a small red hat. I picked it up, unravelled the cotton stuffing out of its crown, then balanced the hat on my fist. The rich velvet rippled in the light as the brim curved over my hand like an arched eyebrow.
‘Try it on,’ Louise urged. She scrabbled around in her bag, holding the kid against her shoulder. ‘Here, I brought a mirror.’ She held it up in front of me.
‘I’ll look ridiculous,’ I said.
But I carefully placed the hat on my head, tilting it forwards the way Louise had taught me. The brim slanted over one eye, framing my cheekbone in red that sometimes flared with gold. I definitely didn’t look like a twelve-year-old kid in this hat. In fact, I didn’t look like me at all. I moved my head to the side, smiling at the woman in the mirror.
‘What do you know,’ Louise said softly. ‘A dark-haired Ingrid.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, pulling the hat off.
Louise caught my hand.
‘Here, you know better than that,’ she said, pulling the hat out of my fingers. ‘Gently does it. And remember to stuff the crown so that it keeps its shape.’
She pushed the wadding into the hat, her strong hands working it around the brim.
‘It’s a beautiful hat,’ I said.
‘But you don’t like it.’ Louise kept her eyes down.
‘I do like it. I just can’t see me wearing it. It’s not really me, is it.’
‘It will be,’ Louise said, lifting her head. ‘That’s why I made it for you.’
She gently laid the hat in the box, pushing the top on with a tap of her fingernails.
‘Have a good birthday, Joss,’ she said.
I nodded, not realising that the day was about to go downhill in a big way.
Against the Wall
After I said goodbye to Louise, I walked for a while along the upper level. Sometimes window-shopping is better than a tranq. I remembered a saying that says you can never return home. I’d add a rider to that — if you do return home, give back your key and get the hell out of there.
At the mall junction, I decided to head back to the uni. That was when I noticed the creep following me. A big steroid guy in a red denim suit. I lost him on the split walkway. Probably a drugger who thought I was looking for some action.
When I scanned the visitor’s band at the P3 security doors, it must have activated something in the security office. Donaldson-Hono and two of his private army shot out like scags on Guarana.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Donaldson-Hono yelled.
‘What’s it to you?’ I said.
The guards moved in beside me. I blocked one with the hat box, but the other one slid in behind me. Donaldson-Hono was twitching. What had I done now?
‘I’ve got half of my people out looking for you. Why can’t you wear a screen like a normal person?’
‘Who needs one when I’ve got a bugged wrist-band,’ I said.
‘What?’ He looked genuinely puzzled. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t been lying after all.
‘Look, I’ve got a situation here,’ he said, rubbing his fist into his hand, ‘and I don’t need a smart mouth. Your partner has gone off his head. Now the professor and all of those flapheads have gone to Sunawa-Harrod’s funeral, so you’re in the hot seat. I can’t get the little sod out.’
‘What’s wrong with him? What have you done to Mav?’ I moved forward, but the two guards grabbed me by the arms.
‘We haven’t touched him,’ he said. He waved the guards back. ‘He’s gone down into the fusion reactor and won’t budge. He’s making a hell of a noise too. He says he won’t talk to anyone but you or that Refmol. The tech guys are afraid if he goes any deeper he’ll fry himself.’
Screte! Had Mav completely flipped out? He’d seemed okay when I’d left. Well, sort of okay. He’d been upset about the cube, but he’d got over it.
‘You’d better let me see him,’ I said. Not that I knew what to do.
Donaldson-Hono gave a quick nod.
‘You’re going to need a heat-protection suit. He’s gone past the first level of insulation.’
I crawled down the emergency ladder. The insulated overall and helmet I was wearing already smelled of sweat, but I couldn’t work out if it was mine or the previous owners. The gear made progress slow too. According to Donaldson-Hono, Mav was somewhere near this ladder on sub-level three. As I passed the level two sign, I heard singing.
‘Mav? Can you hear me?’ I yelled.
Donaldson-Hono crackled through the helmet’s communit frequency.
‘Aaronson, don’t shout. You’re distorting the sound. And move a bit faster. We can’t hang around here all day.’
What a drack. Too bad the suit wasn’t linked to visuals. Then I could really show him what I thought of his precious sound link.
I stepped onto level three. The lighting was dim like Mav’s room, the walls metal-grey with colour coded pipes curling across the roof. It reminded me of those 3D anatomy diagrams. The low deep hum from the reactor was hitting me right in the skull bone.
‘Mav?’
The singing was louder. He was using the fusion hum as a counter harmony.
‘Can you see him yet?’ Donaldson-Hono asked.
‘No, but I can hear him,’ I said.
I walked along the corridor. Gauges, emergency equipment lockers, more pipes. It all looked the same. Maybe I should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.
Then I found him.
He was flat against the wall. Not human flat, but flat like a bear rug. He was humming at the same pitch as the fusion reactor.
‘Mav? It’s Joss. You okay?’
Dumb question. I touched him on the place that looked like his shoulder. He jumped, then curled off the wall.
‘Joss-partner,’ he said wearily. His body began to morph back to its normal size, filling out in the proper places.
‘Mav, what’s going on? What’s wrong?’
‘I tried to record the Sulon,’ he said. ‘But I failed. I am sorry. It could not be found.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘It’s not important.’
‘It is, it is,’ he wailed. ‘I could not record the Sulon and I could not reach you with the cube.’
Time to get his mind off this Sulon stuff.
‘Why did you come down here?’ I asked. Limp, Aaronson, very limp.
He pressed up against the wall. Was he going to go flat again? I grabbed his arm.
‘It’s so warm, like home. And the hum. It fills my head. I don’t feel the emptiness,’ he sang.
He squashed himself closer to the hot metal, humming loudly. His hand flattened. I closed my fingers around it. Something told me this flat business was not good.
‘Tell me about your home, Mav.’
‘I should not be here. Kelmav is gone. Mavkel should be gone too. Why did Refmol and Molref save my life threads? It is too alone.’
He sneezed then choked. His secondary eyelids flicked back off his eyes, taking me straight into Chorian hell. Half of Mav was missing. Kelmav. Now Mav was stranded in his own mind, just like all of us humans. He was right. Sometimes it was too alone. Maybe that’s why some people want to believe in a god.
I didn’t kno
w how to help Mav. He really needed his pair and I could never be Kelmav. So although I’ve never been very big on religion, I sent up a general SOS to any god out there, even the Net gods. Please, show me what to do. Then I shut my eyes and did the first thing that came into my head. I pulled Mav away from the wall, stroked his ears, and hummed a song that Ingrid used to sing to me: Jingle Bell Rock.
‘Aaronson, we’ve contacted Refmol and Professor Camden-Stone. They’re on their way,’ Donaldson-Hono said, his voice low.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered.
Mav shifted closer to me. I leaned against the metal wall, its heat seeping through my insulation suit. Mav’s head was under my chin, his ears stretched back tight against his skull. Jingle Bell Rock turned into Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Mav seemed to like it. I stroked the ear that wasn’t pressed hard against my chest, hoping I wouldn’t run out of cheerful upbeat songs.
An hour later, Donaldson-Hono tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Come on, Joss, it’s time to go,’ he said, his voice scratchy through the helmet comm system. He held out his hand.
Refmol squatted down, taking Mav’s weight as I stood up.
‘Did Mavkel …’ Refmol searched for a word, then held out his hand, pressing it flat against the wall.
I nodded.
‘He went flat all over.’
Refmol blinked back both sets of eyelids and looked me straight in the eye.
‘Then, as you humans say, we are running out of time.’
Sellouts and Sulons
Camden-Stone wanted me out of the way. He stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Mav.
‘Go and wait in your suite. I’ll speak to you later,’ he said.
‘But I should be with Mav. I’m his partner.’
I tried to push past him. No go, the man was solid muscle. He held me by the shoulder. Hard.
‘Right now Mavkel needs his own kind to look after him. You’ll just get in the way. I want you in your rooms. Now.’