I relaxed a bit. “So how come you’re in LA?”
He considered me, as if trying to decide whether or not I was a threat. It was funny, really. Five-foot-two me in a fluffy miniskirt threatening six-foot-four him. When he finally answered, I figured that same thought had occurred to him. I had no idea then of the true reason he chose to trust me, nor of the extensive calculations that went into his decision.
“I’m in the wrong place,” he said. “Actually, it looks like the wrong time. According to positions of the stars, the date is exactly as I expected. But everything is different.” He pointed to the streetlight. “For one thing, I never knew this, that Los Angeles had such lamps.”
I blinked. The street lamps were the same as everywhere else in LA: tall antique poles, each ending in a scalloped hook. The glass lamp hanging from the hook was shaped like the bell on an old Spanish mission. Books about California never failed to show them.
“They’re angel bells,” I said.
“Angel bells? I have never heard this before.”
“You really must be new. They’re as famous as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.”
Althor frowned. “I’ve studied American history. If these bells are as famous as you say, I would recognize them.”
“Maybe your teacher didn’t know LA that well.”
“My ‘teacher’ was a computer chip. It had no record of these bell-lamps.” He looked around at the debris-strewn street, the broken windows in the building closest to us, its crumbling steps. “You live here?”
I didn’t like him asking where I lived. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Why do you live like this?”
I gritted my teeth. “Because I do.”
He jerked, as if my anger had struck him. “My sorry. I meant no offense.”
After an awkward silence, I said, “So where are you from?”
“Originally, Parthonia.”
“Where?”'
“Parthonia. The seat of the Skolian government.”
“Never heard of it.”
“After everything else I’ve found here, or not found, I’m not surprised.” He sat on the steps of the building next to us and poked at his box. “Everything is wrong. The only transmissions I find are at radio frequencies.”
I stepped closer to see the box. As he moved his fingers over the panels on its faces, they glowed different colors. He turned over his wrist and pressed the box against his wrist guard. It wasn’t leather after all, at least not all of it. Parts were metal, and wires crisscrossed it, what I now know are ceramo-plex conduits, superconducting lines that power a miniature computer web.
“I haven’t seen wrist guards like that before,” I said.
“They have a new web architecture.” Althor spoke absently, pulling his box off the guard. “At least I can reach my Jag.”
“Is that your car?” He didn’t look like someone who could afford one.
“My fighter.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I wondered if he was an actor rehearsing for a movie. More likely his brain had lost a few bolts. But nothing about him tripped my mental alarms and my intuition about people was generally solid.
He held up the transcom. “I’ve checked radio wave, microwave, optical, UV, X-ray, and neutrino channels. Nothing.”
“Why did you come down here to check?”
He shrugged. “The Jag can do the orbital scans.”
“I mean, why this street in particular?”
He blinked at me for a full ten seconds before he answered. “I don’t know. It seemed—the right place.”
“What are you looking for?”
He made a frustrated noise. “Something to make sense. I seem to be in the wrong century. But the date and location, they are both correct. Except this isn’t like any Earth I know.”
I smiled. “You go to Caltech, right? My friend Josh is a freshman there. He told me about those role-playing games you play. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
“Caltech? This means California Institute of Technology, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so. Josh never calls it that.” Now that I thought about it, if Althor came from Caltech, what was he doing here, by himself, in the middle of the night? He looked more like Nug’s friends. Once in high school, Nug and his men had cornered Joshua behind the gym. They tied his hands behind his back and lined up in front of him with their rifles like a firing squad. They thought it was funny. Joshua was so shaken he didn’t come back to school for a week. He was afraid to tell anyone besides me, but I told Los Halcones and after that they looked out for him.
“I’ve heard of Caltech,” Althor said. “I never went there, though. I graduated from DMA years ago.”
“DMA?”
“A military academy.”
The thought of Nug’s creeps going to a military school made me want to laugh. Boot camp would be even better. I could just see a drill sergeant yelling in their faces.
But it was obvious Althor was serious. At the time, I saw his words through the filter of my own experiences, which included an intense desire for college and no money to pay for it. If someone had told me back then that someday I would have advanced degrees with honors in both sciences and the humanities, I would have laughed.
I spoke gently. “It don’t matter to me if you don’t have a fancy degree.”
“I do have degree,” he said. “It’s in inversion engineering.”
I smirked. “Perversion engineering?”
He reddened, as if unsure whether I made a joke or he made an embarrassing mistake in English, “inversion.”
I liked that, the way he cared what I thought he said. “So you’re supposed to go to a party tomorrow night?”
“It is a reception at the White House for my mother.”
“The White House, huh? She must be important.”
“She is a mathematician. She has an equation named for her. But that was long ago. For many years she had been ****”
“Been what?”
His face blanked again. Now that I was more tuned to him, I felt the change. He turned metallic. Then his warmth returned, eddying around us and softening the banks of my barricaded emotions.
“Key,” Althor said. “This is the closest translation I find.” She was Key? That didn’t sound like any of Joshua’s games. Nor had I ever heard of anyone having their mother, of all people, as a player. “What does she do?”
“Sits in Assembly. She is liaison between the data webs and the Assembly.”
“Oh.” I had expected something more flamboyant, like sorceress or queen. Then again, maybe “liaison” was code. “Does that mean she’s a warrior queen?” I grinned. “That make you a prince? If I kiss you, will you turn into a frog?”
A sleepy smile spread across his face. “Maybe you should find out.”
I flushed. I had only meant it as a joke—well, yes, maybe flirting a little. But I wasn’t coming on to him and I knew it sounded that way. Why did I keep dropping my guard with him? After only a few minutes he was affecting me more than people I had known for years.
Althor held out his transcom as if he were a vaquero, a cowboy offering sugar to a skittish horse, trying to lure it nearer so he could catch it. “Want to see how it works?”
I stared at the box. One reason Joshua and I had become friends, despite the differences in our backgrounds, was because we both liked gadgets. He enjoyed making them and I liked to figure out why they worked.
“Okay,” I said. But I kept my distance.
Althor brushed his finger over a square on the box, turning it silver. “This puts it in acoustic mode.” He showed me another side, one with a membrane instead of panels. “Say something.”
“¡Hola, box!” I said.
It answered with my voice. “¡Hola, box!”
I laughed. “How did it do that?”
“Your voice makes longitudinal waves in the atmosphere. It reproduces them.” He pressed the box onto his wrist guard and touched another panel. A note rang out.
“Frequency 552 hertz.” He played another note. “What frequency?”
“The same, isn’t it?” I said. “Maybe a little higher.”
“564 hertz. You have good ears. Most people can’t tell them apart.” He made a third note. “This one?”
“Same as the last.”
“No. It’s 558 hertz.” He pressed several panels and the tone came again, but this time it vibrated like a trilling bird with a whistle in its throat.
“Hey! That’s cool.” I laughed. “I know what you’re doing. Making beats. Me and Josh read about it at the library. Your box is singing those two notes at the same time.”
He smiled, seeming more intrigued by my. reaction than the beats. “You know what is the beat frequency?”
“Twelve hertz. I can figure out the pitch too.” I thought for a moment. “The last one you played. The 558 hertz.”
Althor nodded. Then he touched another panel. Flute music floated out into the night, as sweet as the down under an owl’s wings.
“It’s pretty,” I said.
He pulled the transcom off his wrist. “Want to try it?”
Did Los Angeles have smog? As I reached for the box, Althor shifted his weight so that his arm moved back in his lap, making me step closer to reach the transcom. I stumbled over his foot, and as I fell into his lap, he slid his arm around my waist. Mortified, I grabbed the transcom and backed away.
“If you come here,” he invited, “I show you how it works.”
I stayed put. He was sitting on the third step of the stairs, next to the railing, his booted feet planted far apart on the sidewalk and his elbows resting on his knees. Broken pieces of plaster lay scattered around his feet. I wanted to see how the transcom worked, but getting close to him was another story. After considering the options, I sat on the other side of the step so that about two feet of concrete separated us.
Althor leaned over and touched a silver square on the box. It turned gold.
I pulled back from him. “What are you doing?”
“I make it in electromagnetic mode.”
“What does that do?”
“Right now, an antenna it makes.” He swept out his arm, a gesture including the street, buildings, even sky. “Everywhere.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“It uses the buildings.” He dropped his arm onto the stairs between us, his fingers brushing my thigh. “Augmented by changes in local air density.”
I moved my leg away. “I don’t feel anything.”
“You can’t feel it.” Althor slid closer. “Besides,” he murmured. “There are better things to feel.”
His mood was a sensuous river giving off mist, a sensation so unsettling that I dropped the transcom. As it slid out of my hands, my fingers skittered over its surface, making its panels blink. It fell between my legs and landed by the spike heel of my shoe, its panels glowing like gemstones in a river.
A woman’s voice burst out of it. “—fourth caller wins two free dinners at Mona’s Kitchen. So get your phone ready, folks.”
“¡Oiga!” When I reached between my knees and picked up the transcom, my finger touched another square. The woman’s voice cut off in midsentence, replaced by a man speaking an unfamiliar language. I jerked my finger away. “What’s it doing?”
Althor was staring at where I held the transcom between my knees. It seemed to take an effort for him to pull away his gaze and look at my face. “What?”
I reddened and drew my knees together. “The box. What happened to it?”
“It picks up radio waves.” Althor leaned in until his chest rested against my shoulder. He touched a panel on the transcom and it went silent. Then he spoke near my ear. “You haven’t told me your name.” His river swirled around us, muddling my thoughts. I felt his moods more than with other people, even Joshua. With Althor it was so intense it almost hurt, or would have hurt if it had been harsh. But it wasn’t harsh. It was sensual.
“Tina. I’m Tina. Akushtina Santis Pulivok.” I had no idea why I gave him my full name. I could always tell when someone thought it was strange and that happened often enough that I had quit saying it.
“ ’Akushtina,” he said. “A beautiful name. For a beautiful woman.”
I stared at him. The surprise wasn’t so much that he thought it was beautiful, though that was unexpected too; the glottal stop at the beginning of Akushtina sounded ugly to most people who didn’t speak Tzotzil Mayan. But what really hit me was that he pronounced it right.
Althor picked up a lock of my hair. “So long and soft and black.” He had a musky scent, like catnip. “Why are you out here alone?”
I tried to ignore his smell, but it was impossible. Neither of us realized the truth then, that he was giving off pheromones specific to someone with my genetic makeup.
I pulled away from him. “I was coming home from work. My brothers are expecting me.” There was no way he could know I had no brothers. “They must be looking for me right now.” Althor tilted his head, like someone struggling to catch a sound he could barely hear. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Upload to me. Overwrite my thoughts. My web is supposed to be protected.”
“What?”
“I can’t think.” He put his arm around my waist. “You are doing something.”
My awareness of him intensified, the textures of his emotions mixing with his actual touch until I couldn’t separate them. It was too much. When he bent his head to kiss me, I slid my arms around his neck, acting before I had time to think.
When it came to men, Manuel had been as strict with me as a father. More like a priest. But I still had an idea what went on, enough to realize Althor kissed differently from most. He flicked his tongue over my ear, the closed lids of my eyes, the tip of my nose. When he reached my lips, he kept one arm around my waist and held my head with his other hand, stroking my cheek with his thumb while his tongue came inside.
When we separated, he pushed my hair out of my face. “Where are your brothers?”
I looked at him, feeling the echo of his lips on my mouth. His scent permeated the air.
“Tina?” He touched my cheek “Are you there?”
“¿Qué?”
“Your brothers. Why they leave you to walk like this?”
“They don’t.” Which was true, seeing as I had no brothers. “I don’t usually come out this late.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Rosa usually gives me a ride, but her car is in the shop.” That brought me to my senses, as I realized how strangely I was behaving. I stood up. “I should go.”
He stood up next to me. “Already?”
I was afraid to ask for his phone number, thinking he might take it wrong. Earth, in that day and age, was in a state of flux when it came to courting rituals. In some circles, it was accepted for a woman to make overtures to a man. But I had grown up in an environment where that wasn’t true.
“Tina?” Althor said.
“I thought maybe—” I paused, leaving him an opening.
“Yes?” He watched me as if I had turned to water and were running through his fingers.
“I—Nothing.” I waited a moment, then said, “I have to go.”
He started to speak, then stopped himself. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Again he had that odd look. But all he said was, .“Adios, ’Akushtina.”
“Adios.” I headed for home, struggling to ignore the feeling that I had just made the stupidest mistake in my life.
After I walked about half a block, I glanced back. Althor was still watching. When he saw me look, he took a step forward. I hurried away, crossing the street and then turning the corner. Once I thought I heard a footstep behind me, but when I turned to look, no one was there.
I lived at the intersection of Miner and San Juan streets. As I came down San Juan, it was a relief to see the sagging stairs of my apartment house. Only three more buildings and I would be home
.
A pair of headlights flashed on, coming from a car parked on Miner Street. A red car. For a moment, I froze. Then I took off, running for my building.
The driver’s side of the car opened and Nug climbed out. Actually, Matt Kugelmann was his name. Tall and lanky, with lean muscles, he moved with an almost feral grace. His head was shaved, except on top where yellow hair stuck up like a scrub brush. Although he was only twenty-four, he looked older. His face had a hardness to it, as if had been baked in a kiln too long. What made him ugly was the way he watched you, as if in his view of the universe your life meant nothing.
That was why I hated him, because people meant less to him than the garbage he sold. He had ordered his people to kill Manuel for stealing crack out of his car. Worse, Nug was the one who sold Manuel his first hit, to “help” him deal with his grief over my mother’s death. And of course Nug kept him supplied.
It fast became obvious I wouldn’t reach home in time. When I tried to turn and run in the other direction, I tripped in my spike heels and fell, landing in a heap of blue and white ruffles.
A hand slipped under my arm and I looked up into Nug’s face. “Hey, Tina,” he said.
I stood up. “Hi.”
“Just thought I’d make sure you got home okay.” He pulled me with him, toward the apartment building. “I’ll walk you the rest of the way.”
“I’m fine now.” As we climbed the steps, I balked, resisting his pull. At the top, I stopped. “Thanks. I’ll see you.”
“Why you in such a hurry?” He stepped closer and I backed up, into the wall.
“Nug.” I pressed into the building, wishing I could disappear. “Go home, okay?”
“I saw you hugging Joshua at the bus stop.” He touched the tip of his finger to my cheek. “How come you hang around with that wimp?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Why?” Nug sounded genuinely curious. “He doesn’t even try to do you. I can’t believe it. He must like.guys.”
I knew perfectly well Joshua liked women, especially tall ones with red hair. “I’m not his type. He likes brainy girls.”