Brave New Love (3 page)

They both felt that way: that the world had been made for someone else, they couldn’t find a place to connect with it . . .

They talked on and on, feeling a kind of high from it—the isolation they’d both felt for a long time finally punctured, the wall cracking open.
There’s someone who feels
like I do . . .

Felice told him how her parents had died in the first wave of tropical diseases that had hit LA; how she’d gotten sick too, but survived. She was living on a little bit of money her
half-brother sent to her, sometimes, but it wasn’t enough to pay for a groundhog apartment. She had to pay Banker for the right to squat here, so cheap it was almost free. Every other day she
was going to the bus-school—the bus that came around to the base of the building with a classroom inside, protected by heavily armed security guards.

He told her he did odd jobs, tried to read books when he could till he could get back in school. Told her about how his aunt had died two months before, in her sleep, and how they’d given
her the “Burial at Sea”—which in Rooftown meant rolling her up in a rug and dropping her off the edge of a roof for the robocleaners to find in groundhog land down below.

She told him about a place she’d always dreamed of going, she’d seen it in a holomagazine. A place called Missoula, Montana. Global warming hadn’t affected it much. The land
was wide open. The air clean. Then she sighed and said, “But I’ll never get there.”

They talked a lot about how life made them feel. Somehow the darkness in the room made that possible, too. He had never unburdened himself this much. There was something magical about it . .
.

During a momentary silence Giorgio winced when his stomach growled audibly. “I heard that!” Felice said, laughing softly. “Under the red plastic in the cooler, there’s
some quick’n’hots.”

He found the quick’n’hot packets, broke the seal that made them heat up on their own, and they ate the spicy meat paste slowly, not talking.

Not talking—for about five minutes. Then they started up again. Talking, talking into the night . . .

•  •  •

It must’ve been near dawn when Giorgio woke up on the floor. He sat up stiffly, stretching, looking around in momentary disorientation.

Oh, yeah. The squat. Felice. In the blue-gray pre-dawn glow coming through the window he saw that she’d gone. How’d she leave without waking him? He’d been lying right in front
of the door.

He went to the window, looked carefully out. No sign of Limmy. Maybe he should leave now. His being there put Felice at risk.

Giorgio went to the hallway door, put his hand on the knob—then another door opened, at the back of the room—she had hidden it behind a curtain. Felice pushed through and looked at
him in surprise. “I go off to the bathroom and check out the halls, see if it’s safe—and you’re already buggin’ out . . .”

“I just . . . thought I ought to. They might, you know, come back. I mean, Limmy, anyway. He might let my uncle go but not me. He lost a man because of me. And if you’re with me when
he comes . . .”

“Yeah. I know. But . . . I just . . . I was hoping you’d help me decide about something. I mean—I don’t have anyone else to talk it over with. I can’t get hold of
my godmother directly . . .”

“What?” Giorgio was relieved to have an excuse to stay awhile longer. Anything just to be around Felice a bit more.

“I got a text from my godmother—she’s in Dome Bel Air.”

“Dome Bel Air! You’re kidding me!”

“I’m not kidding. She says I can go there and live with her, she’s got permission for me to come . . . But I don’t think I want to.”

“What? Why not! That’s, all, like,
luxury
in there! You don’t have to worry about getting caught in an acid rain or a black wind—no crime, air’s clean,
plenty of food from the hydro-farms. And you don’t want to go?”

She made a face like she’d tasted something bad. “She got me in for a visit once. It’s just . . . I can’t relate to those people. They’re—Oh, god.” She
stared past him, and pointed. “There’s someone at the window!”

He turned around, saw Limmy grinning at him from the window, which was only partly blocked by the dresser. Limmy’s grin was strained, his cheeks twitching. He was on synthameth, for sure,
Giorgio figured, had probably been up all night getting tweaky Limmy’s left hand gripped the window frame; he raised the automatic pistol in his other hand into view. Grinding his teeth, he
pointed it at Giorgio—

Dive for the floor, dumbass.
But Giorgio felt rooted to the spot.

But then something boomed behind him, and the window glass exploded outward, taking Limmy with it—he pitched backward off the walkway. He was gone. Giorgio could hear his receding
scream.

Felice was coughing—he turned to see her with the revolver in her shaking hand—coughing in a cloud of gray gun smoke. “God, I never knew these things were so smoky. Never fired
one inside before . . .”

“You
killed
him . . . !”

“Did I hit him?”

“I’m not even sure but that shot knocked him off the building. That’s one dead banger.”

He turned back to the window—again saw someone there. But it wasn’t Limmy—it was a face peering cautiously from the side. A banger he remembered from the east side, a round
face scribbled with blue tattoos. Guy they called Gremlin.

And Gremlin was staring past Giorgio at Felice.

When Gremlin saw Giorgio looking at him he pulled back, out of sight—knowing he could get knocked off the building as easily as Limmy.

Giorgio felt sick. “Oh, great. Limmy’s little scumbag buddy Gremlin saw you . . .” He walked over to Felice, casually took the gun from her hand. She didn’t seem to care.
He wanted it so he could protect her—he knew that, given what’d happened, that didn’t make much sense. She’d been protecting
him.
But that’s what he wanted.

She sat down, groaning, on the edge of the futon. “Me and my stupid . . .”

“I . . . Felice . . .” It was hard to express. He was stunned that she’d shot Limmy to save him. But in another way, it felt right. They had a bond now. Even though it felt as
if the bond had been there even before they’d met—meeting, and talking, just made
them feel
it. It was as if they’d had a hidden ribbon connecting them all their lives.
“Thanks, Felice. Another second and he’d have shot me.”

“But—what do we do
now?
”

“I know w
h
at
you
have to do, Felice. You have to go somewhere safe. Tell your godmother yes. You’ve gotta move to Dome Bel Air.”

•  •  •

Getting out of the BP building was fairly easy—Felice went out, checked the halls. Banker had gone inside his apartment and his only guard was sitting on the floor,
slumped snoring against the wall where the corridors intersected.

Carrying a backpack of some of Felice’s things, the gun in his waistband, Giorgio followed her, the two of them slipping silently past the snoring fat man in the greasy T-shirt. They went
down the fire-exit stairs, taking the back way to the street. It took a long time to get to ground level. On the way they passed through several squat communities where drunks argued, jug bands
chugged rough-edged music, and grubby children played. A squint-eyed guy in a flak jacket, one of Banker’s men, tried to stop Giorgio—but they dashed past him, rushed quickly down the
stairs. He didn’t bother to pursue.

At last they pushed through a graffiti-coated metal door and out onto the street. The dull morning air was thick and acrid and made it hard to breathe, but they’d both survived heavier
levels of pollution on other occasions. Giorgio took the lead this time, and checked outside for Limmy’s gangsters. They saw nobody and nothing around but a passing robosweeper and a pack of
wild dogs chewing at a dead homeless guy. Chances were the gang was probably still looking for them up in Rooftown.

They went carefully past the scruffy, bony dogs, Giorgio with the pistol at ready, but the animals were busy with their carrion.

Giorgio and Felice reached the corner where a self-driving truck was slowing for the corner. It seemed to be heading in the direction they needed to go, its open truckbed piled with a heap of
old porcelain toilets from some demolition. They jumped on to it before it accelerated, Giorgio helping Felice to scramble up, and they each sat on a covered toilet, laughing about it.

The truck went within a quarter-mile of the dome.

•  •  •

The dome was centered over Bel Air but extended past the old gated community, cupping much of Beverly Hills. Encompassing five square miles, the blurrily transparent thick
plasglass construction, almost a quarter-mile high in the center, enclosed several hills still covered with fine old houses occupied by the Dome’s ruling class. Apart from a couple of small
parks and maintenance facilities, the rest of the space under the dome—the part that wasn’t underground—had been turned into blocky condo housing.

The acid rains had pitted the plasglass, and black winds had streaked its lower edges—once a year the dome was re-glossed, but it didn’t last long. There were dozens of domes like
this in California, usually housing moneyed families with outsourced businesses in the Third World. The staff lived in sub-bubbles of concrete and steel, scabrous extensions on one side of the
domes.

Giorgio tucked the gun into Felice’s backpack, he then leaned the pack against the plasglass wall, next to the big metal gate that led to the airlock. “You text your
godmother?”

“Yeah. She’ll be here in a minute to let me in. They have to do some kind of ID check on me and then they assign me housing and . . . I don’t know. Giorgio?”

“Yeah?”

“What’re
you
gonna do?”

“There’s a youth shelter ’bout a half mile from here . . . There’s that job. If I get it.”

“What if you run into Limmy’s bangers?” She looked away. “You’d better take my gun.”

“Nah. If anything goes wrong and you don’t get to stay—you’ll need it.” He looked up, saw a security camera swiveling above them.

A voice spoke from an intercom grid. A man’s voice, smooth but no-nonsense, said,
“Identify yourselves! If you are not residents or authorized employees, step away from the
gate.”

Felice gave her name, and her sponsor’s name.

“You may remain. The other individual must step away from the gate.”

“Well . . . I’d better go,” Giorgio said.

“Look—come back tomorrow, around one—that’ll give me time to see if . . . I don’t know, if there’s work for you in the dome. Maybe you could get a better job
here. My godmother might be able to do something to get you in . . .”

“Really?” He shrugged. But inwardly his heart leapt at the chance to see Felice again. “One o’clock?”

“Yeah.” The gate was rolling open; she turned to go.

Then she turned back—and kissed him, very quickly, on the lips, before grabbing her pack and hurrying into the airlock.

•  •  •

Felice felt painfully self-conscious walking from the airlock corridor into the Welcome Garden. The solar reflectors made the flowering shrubs on either side seem to glow.
People in sunglasses and elegant clothing stared at her cut off jeans, her mismatched shoes.

“Marilyn, they’re all staring at me.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Marilyn said airily. Felice’s godmother was a tall, slender woman, who might’ve been sixty but looked thirty-five. She had artfully coifed
silver-blonde hair, a wide mouth with maroon lipstick, matching tinted sunglasses. She wore a white suit and cream-colored pumps; her sculpted fingernails were the same color as her lipstick and
tinted glasses. The glasses, Felice knew, were SmartLookers hooked into a comm-system.

“Now,” Marilyn said silkily, “all we have to do is stop in at Genetic ID and . . . ah, here comes our escort.”

Two tall, perfectly groomed white men with cold smiles and light gray-and-black uniforms were approaching down the crushed-quartz path. They wore tinted sunglasses—one pair tinted golden
yellow, the other powder blue. Streaks in their hair matched their sunglasses. On their hips were guns of a sort Felice didn’t recognize.

The air in the dome was almost achingly clean; the light a bit harsh. Beyond the Welcome Garden was a plasglass wall topped with security cameras and beyond that were stacks of shiny
multicolored condos, rising high into the air, nearly to the dome interior. Small trams moved along transparent rails between the buildings; robotic birds pretended to flit between imitation
trees.

“I feel kinda weird in here,” Felice said. She looked at Marilyn. “What’d you say about genetic something?”

Marilyn pursed her lips and spoke to her in a quiet aside as their escorts waited a few paces away. “Felice . . . when your mom was dying, I tried to get her into the dome—and I
couldn’t get permission. But they are always looking for young people with good genes and . . . well, she got a DNA sample from you, so you’d have a chance. It’s taken this long
for a spot to open up.”

“What’s the DNA sample
for?
”

“Breeding, hon, not to put too fine a point on it. You’ll be offered a selection of mates—three or four to choose from. We do need the fresh genes. You’ll only be
required to have a couple of children. Starting next year probably. Ah, here’s Officer Danforth and Officer Mercer. Gentlemen, lead on, my little darling is here!”

•  •  •

Giorgio felt stupid, leaning in the doorway of an old warehouse across the street from the dome, uncomfortable in the early afternoon mugginess. He was probably wasting his time
here—there was no way she’d find a spot for him inside.

But—she’d kissed him. He could still feel her lips on his.

It was humid outside, the air thick with impending acid rain, and he was sweating. He was glad he had the acid-repellent slicker they’d given him at the shelter.

He glanced at the clock on his instacell. She was late. Probably not coming at all. The sky was roiling with ugly clouds; an automated garbage truck drove out of an underground garage across the
street, around the curve of the dome. As soon as it reached the street it attracted a swarm of enormous bluebottles, a living cloud of flies buzzing after the truck as it trundled away.