Brave New Love (4 page)

Giorgio snorted. He was outside with the trash, and that was probably where he’d stay.

He glanced at his instacell once more. She was an hour late.
Don’t be a sucker, hodey.
He shrugged, stepped on to the sidewalk and began walking away from the dome, his heart
sinking. He didn’t mind not getting a place inside, probably wouldn’t fit in any way. But he’d probably never seen Felice again. That bothered him.

He hurried along, wondering if Limmy’s bangers ever came to this side of town. Maybe he should go to San Francisco to get clear of them, if he could get a travel permit.

He heard a rumble behind him, the roar of an engine, turned to see a big box truck looming up, a powerful freight carrier—coming right for him. It must be out of control. He looked around
for some place to run to, get out of its way . . .

The truck screeched to a stop, right in front of him. He looked up and saw Felice in the driver’s seat.

He gaped at her. “Felice! What—?”

“Hi!” she called, grinning, as the window rolled down. “Look—I got a truck! Get in quick, I stole it so we gotta get out of here!”

“You stole it?” But he didn’t argue, he ran around to the other side of the truck, climbed up into the cab beside her. She started off before he’d managed to close the
door and he almost fell out.

“Damn, Felice!”

“Sorry. You okay?”

He got the door closed. “You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?”

“Oh, well—I was trying to figure out what to do, how to get away—didn’t seem like they were just gonna let me leave. Then I started watching the autotrucks in the dome.
How they come and go and almost nobody’s paying much attention. I climbed up into one in the delivery line and I found the manual override! Switch off the computer and you can drive it.
I’m a pretty good driver, my dad had a—”

“Felice, whoa, hold on—what do you mean, figure out what to do? What happened in there?”

She sighed. “I don’t want to be used for a breeding program. That’s how my godmother got me in! I’d have to contract with some random jerk! Have his baby. And I
don’t want to live with those people anyway! They spend most of their time hooked up in VR playing weird games with each other. They’re all obsessed with their weird little lifestyles
and they treat the people who work there like robots and . . . no. Not me. But—I needed some way to get us out of town and I saw the truck and . . . I stole it. They hadn’t offloaded it
yet, they won’t get to it till tomorrow! It’s full of freeze-dried food, all the stuff they can’t raise in the dome! So we can eat some and sell the rest and—”

“But they’ll come after us!”

“It’s not like they have much security on an autotruck, no one actually wants to leave their plasglass ‘paradise.’ The unloaders were out to lunch so I got their delivery
lists and changed ’em, made it look like this stuff was already unloaded. It’ll take them a long time to figure it out. And you know what? If you get far enough away they don’t
bother to chase you—it’s just too expensive.”

“But—where are you
going?
”

Felice chuckled. “Long ways east and a long ways north! This is a hydrogen cell solar hybrid, hodey! It’ll go three thousand miles without more fuel! We’re going out
east—you don’t need a travel pass to go into Nevada. Then up north to Montana!”

“Montana?
You’re joking!”

“Naw! I told you about that one place—there’s beautiful clean land up there, you just got to know where to go . . .”

Giorgio sat back, stunned. But feeling better with each passing second.

He looked at the rear-view video screen—no one was following. “Wow. You’ve got some nerve, girl.”

“I got something else too. A truck full of food. And my gun, in the backpack behind your seat.” She veered the truck around the corner, and glanced at him. “And something
else—some
one
.”

It took him a moment to realize she meant him. And he suspected that, creepy people in the dome or not, if it wasn’t for him . . . Felice probably wouldn’t have taken the chance of
stealing the truck. It would have been hard, but she’d probably have accepted a comfortable life in the dome, pay her dues with a couple of babies.

Really, it was more than a suspicion. He could
feel
it, through the hidden ribbon that twined the two of them together.

She sniffed. “Of course—you don’t have to go with me.” She shrugged as if she didn’t care. “Whatever. You don’t
have
to.”

“Hell, no, I don’t
have
to.” He grinned and said, “You going to let me drive some of the way, Felice?”

“We’ll see. I’ll think about it . . .”

They got to the freeway, and headed east, and as she drove Felice started rapping out a thug-jug lyric, one he knew very well. After a moment, he joined in.

E
LIZABETH
B
EAR

It was a bright morning, cool and clear, when I realized I was going to break her heart. It was high summer, two weeks before the solstice, and I was up with the birds to watch
the dawn. I had skinned out the usual clutter and shut off texting and my new cheapest-model Omni, a seventeenth birthday present from my dad.

So it was just me and the sea and the quiet town and the sunrise. If I ignored the lack of cars, I could imagine I was back in the twentieth century. Of course, the sea would have been lower
then, the beach unprotected by the seawalls that now held the ocean back.

I was up because I hadn’t slept. I’d been out with Shaun to the cinema and after she went home I hadn’t been able to stand the thought of doing the same. The little terraced
house I shared with my father and half-sister and my half-sister’s son seemed too much like a cage.

It was a little after four in the morning, and the sky was already streaked with peach and silver, the stars washed away by light. It was bright enough that I scuffled down the bluff without
undue risk of killing myself. I turned to put the water on my right, the bluffs and the town on my left. Ahead, fingers of gray-and-black basalt, crusted with weeds and barnacles, broke up the
stretches of fine sand. Low, slow breakers hissed across the surface of the softly rolling sea.

The tide ebbed as I walked east and then north along Balbriggan Strand. I wasn’t dressed for the beach, and still wore last night’s skirt and slippery shoes and no sunblock. But the
skirt was loose enough that I could climb in it if I kept the hem up. And even a pale-skinned redhead like me wouldn’t get sunburn in a half-hour at sunrise.

So I pulled my shoes off and hung them through my belt by the laces. They swung there, bumping my thigh with every wet step through the streams that ran across the beach and down to the
ocean.

I’d have to be careful of rocks and shells, especially in the half-light of morning, especially in the rougher sections of rock and weed. The barnacles could slash your feet to
ribbons.

But it wouldn’t be so bad if I were careful. The sunlight was already starting to creep down the face of the bluff, casting a pall of crimson over its beige surface, shaggy with
vegetation. As long as I didn’t look directly at the sun and dazzle myself, it was more than enough light by which to pick my way.

Seals played alongside the rock reefs, just dots wriggling through the water as I climbed. A gray heron flew low across the water, its slowly beating wings casting a writhing shadow as the sun
peeked over the edge of the world. Out in the Irish Sea, a tall ship cruised under box sails—the ship still in shadow, the sails lit by the sun—and I changed my mind: I could imagine
this was the nineteenth century, the age of exploration and sail, and that I was on my way to Dublin to meet the ship that would take me to America, to Asia, to the world.

By the harbor, the fishing boats awaited the tide, their masts bare and the rigging sagging. They went out and came back. With a fair wind, you might make Wales overnight—but none of them
ever went that far.

They couldn’t call to me as the kite-rigged cargo vessel did.

I can’t stay here
, I thought.
I’ll die if I stay here.
Reflexively, I thought of calling Shaun—or at least of texting her. Just as reflexively, I stopped myself.
I thought I already knew what she’d say. “Don’t be ridiculous, Billie. We have each other here; isn’t that enough?”

Shouldn’t it be?

I turned my back on the ship and the sea and scrambled up the bluff for a better look—eventually. It wasn’t until I reached the top that I realized I was crying.

•  •  •

There are no rocks on the top of the bluff so I sat down in the grasses, careful to avoid any nettles, my back to the land and my face to the sea. The sun stung my eyes, though
I turned my head at an angle. Across the water lay England—London—and beyond that the continent. Freedom.

The ship I watched sailed south, toward Dublin, and I wondered what cargo it carried precious enough to be worth the long sea journey. I knew from history that, once upon a time, great cargo
vessels—even aircraft!—had burned fossil fuels bringing exotic fruit, liquor, toys, from all the world over. In those days it was actually
less expensive
to make a thing in a
foreign land and ship it than it was to live on what could be had locally. “Cheap foreign goods” was a concept I could only just begin to understand—anything that came from far
away was luxurious and precious, and not for the likes of me. Not now, likely never.

But it wasn’t luxury that drew me to the idea of travel. It was . . .

. . . freedom.

I had finished my mandated schooling the previous month. There was no chance of University with my background and aptitudes, not unless I’d managed much better marks, and no chance of
Employment without University. I already knew how I’d spend my life: here in Balbriggan, making do with whatever subsistence payments and goods allotted me. They’d be adequate to keep
me alive and housed—but not much more than that. And almost
nobody
could afford travel.

The world needed far fewer workers than it had people. And with economies of scarcity a thing of the past since the Green Sustainability Bills passed in the mid-twenty-first, there was nothing
much for those surplus people to do.

And I was one of them.

So was my dad, and so was my sister.

And so was Shaun Mellor. That, at least, had always been comforting. She was as trapped here as I was, even if it chafed her less. We had each other. Always had, always would.

We planned to live together when we turned eighteen and could find housing. If we applied for subsistence as a childless gay couple, we’d get a little bit of additional support—as
long as we stayed that way. Not reproducing. Not making more useless mouths to feed.

It was a natural thing, Shaun and me. We’d grown up together in the village—not best friends, but aware of each other—and started being girlfriends at fifteen. She had olive
skin and straight dark hair that blew in the wind, and her eyes were so brown you could only see the detail in them when the sun shone across them.

Nobody had ever understood me better. Nobody had ever loved me more. Our families both assumed that we’d settle in together and so did we.

I’d never thought I was going to be the girl who broke Shaun Mellor’s heart. But as I watched that ship sail into the sunrise, I knew that was what was going to happen.

Because I was leaving Balbriggan. Leaving her. Some way. Somehow. I’d go to Dublin. My ancestors might have gone to London to seek their fortune—but sailors had to come from
somewhere, didn’t they? I didn’t imagine they’d be University types. And surely, no matter how automated modern shipping was, you needed somebody on board to trim the sails and
helm the thing if something went wrong . . .

I reached with one hand to tap my Omni back on. The contact lens for the interface dried my eye, but everybody assured me it would get less annoying with time. I was still looking out through
clouds of protein buildup from crying, however.

Just as I thumbed it on, though, I heard Shaun’s voice behind me.

“Billie?”

I’d turned off my Omni and she’d tried to text from bed, of course. She’d gotten worried and come to find me, and she’d known exactly where to look. That was how well we
knew each other.

And it wasn’t as if Balbriggan were a big place, after all.

She said, “Are you okay?”

It was my moment of supreme cowardice. “Fine, love,” I said, holding up an arm so she could sit down inside its bend. “Just thinking of you.”

She snugged herself into my side and kissed me, long strands of dark hair curving her cheek.

I was the worst person alive.

•  •  •

My dad was up by the time I came home. He always made a virtue of punctuality and keeping to a schedule, just as if he were Employed. He said it helped lend purpose to the day,
and when I compared him to the rest of my friends’ moms and dads, spending all day down at the pub or sleeping until afternoon, I thought he had it right.

The clouds had rolled in, tall and tattered, and the wind smelled like coming rain. I watched it twist the leaves of the willow in the front garden as Dad came down the steps to meet me.

“Shaun was looking for you,” he said.

“She found me,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek. He’d been taking out the composting. I lifted the bag from his hand and carried it over to the bin in the garden
corner.

“She’s worried about you,” he said. “So’m I.”

It stopped me, one hand on the composter’s solar lid. The lazy whirr of windmills along the terrace filled my hearing. A white-waist-coated magpie hopped up, eyeing the multi-colored
kitchen waste inquisitively. I shut the bin in its face.

“There’s no call to be worried,” I said. “You should right-mind it out.”

He sighed. I knew perfectly well that he didn’t need re medial rightminding. Dad was one of the most stable people I’d ever met, and he was rigorous about keeping up with his
emotional controls. They really worked best after twenty or so—I’d been told often enough that the erratic shifts of adolescent hormones were hard to balance out, no matter what
surgery, cognitive measures, or chemical supports were used.