Kelley Eskridge (36 page)

He stood at his work table, head bent over
a large process flow drawing, making pencil notes around the edges. He
looked up, his face expressionless, pencil poised.

“May I speak to you?” she said. “My name
is Snow Laussen, I'm—”

“I know who you are,” he said. He would,
Jackal thought.

Neill looked at Snow silently, long enough
that she thought he would refuse, but he said, “Come in.”

He stepped around the desk and waved her
to the sofa; then he closed the door behind her. “What can I do for
you?” he asked, when they were both seated.

“Jackal is out of prison,” Snow said
without preamble. Neill leaned back in his chair.

If he was current on his e-mail he had
already known, Jackal thought, working out the timing. But she knew he
would have reacted the same either way, leaving all his options open
until he knew why Snow was there.

Snow continued, “She's been involuntarily
reassigned to the custody of the NNA. I don't know if she has any money
or a place to live, and I think something bad might be happening to
her.”

“You've heard from her directly?”

She explained about the message and the
lack of backtrail.

“And what can I help you with?”

“I want to find her and make sure she's
all right.”

He regarded her evenly. “Her message said
that she wanted no further contact.”

“She's trying to protect me from
something.”

“What makes you think that?”

How much should she reveal? She'd debated
with herself all the way up to his office and still had no answer. Now
she tried to read his face, looking at him in a way that could have
been rude if he hadn't seemed so unruffled by it. She could see
integrated in him all the things that Jackal had been practicing so
assiduously and so unevenly: the ease with waiting and silence, the
total invitation to speak and be heard, the open-ended questions that
gave her no sense of his own thinking. When she opened her mouth, she
had no idea what would come out; she had decided to let her heart
speak, and she waited to hear what it would tell him.

“Jackal admires you more than anyone on
Ko,” she said, and watched the muscles around his eyes change subtly.
“When she understood what she'd be doing as a Hope, she was so
determined to be the best. Partly because that's what she's like, but
it was also for you, because you gave her this work that she loves. And
something happened to her a while ago, I don't know what it was, but it
hurt her and she had a hard time, and work was so important to her
then. It kept her going.”

She paused; he nodded, and she took a
breath and went on. “She wanted to be special to you. I don't know if
she is or not, but I hope so because it's the only reason I have to ask
for your help. She's the most important person in the world to me and I
think she's in trouble and scared and all alone. And I think she
believes that she can't see me because the company doesn't want her to.
If that's true, then I guess you'd know about it. So you would have to
decide if you wanted to punish me for bringing it up, or if you wanted
to help.”

“I see,” he said quietly. He rested his
elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his hands. “And you think
I might be inclined to help Jackal after her crime against humanity and
her betrayal of her company.”

“Someone did,” Snow said simply. “Someone
got her into the VC program. I thought maybe it was you. If I'm wrong,
then I'm guessing I'll be terminated from Ko within twenty-four hours
and I will have to get to the NNA and find her by myself. I can do
that, but it will take a long time and I'm afraid of what might happen
to her by then. Even if you won't tell me where she is, at least let me
give you some money to send her so that she can take care of herself.
Or let me arrange to have part of my salary credited to her. Something.
Everyone keeps telling me to forget her as if she were, I don't know, a
bad meal we all had at a restaurant, as if we should be finished with
her. But I love her and I'm not finished.”

Jackal watched her as she told it; Snow's
face was so pure, so brave, and Jackal was filled with shame and
self-loathing.

She fought and I didn't. She
held on and I let go
.

“What's the matter? What is it?”

“No, it's okay. I'm okay. What did he do?”

He had studied her for a long stretch of
moments: she counted the time by her heartbeats, slower now, more
steady. Her heart had done its best to be heard; now she waited.

He said, “You appear to be very clear
about your priorities. You'll have to give me a little while to
consider mine. Until later today.”

She hadn't realized how tense she was
until she stood and found so many tight muscles. “Thank you for your
time,” she said. But when she reached the door, she found she had one
more thing to say.

“Jackal loves you,” she said. “That's
really why I came here, I guess. Even if you could just make sure that
she's safe, I would be very grateful.”

He smiled, just as politely as he had when
she arrived, but with no more depth, no indication of what he might be
thinking. “It's been very interesting meeting you, Ms. Laussen,” he
said, and she left unsure that any of it had mattered.

Snow paused in her story and drank some
beer, and pointed across the table: “Give me some of that before you
wad it all into cheese balls.” Jackal pushed over the entire package,
thinking about Neill. Snow had painted him so clearly that she felt she
could see him, or that he had just left the room and something of his
presence still lingered like a scent.

“Anyway,” Snow said, “I got a call that
afternoon from my manager that I was being sent out to do a complete
systems and efficiency evaluation of a subsidiary facility. Apparently
the plant engineer met me at the Quanzhou conference and thought I
might be able to help her with a couple of issues. It's a two-week
assignment. I got my itinerary and had just about enough time to pack
and check my e-mail, and there was this address.” She waved her arm
around the apartment. “Anonymous sender, a non-Ko account.”

“And where's this plant?”

“If I've read the maps right, it's about
three kilometers on the other side of that canal that I saw from your
window.”

“And you never heard back from Neill.”

“No.”

“Wow.” Jackal slumped in her chair. Maybe
this really was Neill's way of helping. Maybe she didn't need to panic,
although she shuddered at the risk that Snow had taken. But what to do
now? She needed time to think. She looked at the table: four empty beer
bottles lined up in front of each of them, the table littered with
scraps of cheese. And Snow, across from her. Snow.

“You're amazing,” Jackal said.

Snow shrugged, but looked pleased.

“When is the plant expecting you?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Do you have a hotel?”

Snow hesitated. “Well, sure, they got me a
reservation. And I registered before I came here, in case anyone
checked. But I thought…I hoped that I could stay with you.”

Jackal sighed and sucked a cheese crumb
off the tip of one finger. “I think you should stay at the hotel,” she
said finally. When she looked up, Snow's eyes had filled with tears.
“I'm sorry,” Jackal said miserably. “It's just…there's a lot you don't
know about what's happened to me. I…VC changed me. Being alone for so
long…. One of the things that happens to solos is that we have a hard
time being around people after we come out. I know for you it's what,
eight months since you saw me, maybe nine—” she didn't stop to count
the weeks since Mirabile “—and I know it's been hard. But for me it's
been six years since I've seen you. I've been alone for six years. You
have to try to understand what that's like.”

“I spent most of my time alone.”

“No, you didn't.” She saw the hurt and
confusion on Snow's face but she kept going; she had to. “Refusing to
interact with people is not the same as being alone. Alone is when
there are no human noises except yours for six years. Alone is a box no
bigger than this room with no windows and no doors, that never changes
year after year. Alone is having no context except yourself. And the
thing I found out is, that's not enough. I couldn't keep the context
when it was just me.”

“I don't understand.”

“I don't know if I do either. And I want
to try to explain it. But at least for now it's better…I need to be by
myself. It's not about you.”

Snow wiped her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “I
don't understand, but I don't have to. I know you're not trying to hurt
me. If you need me to stay in the stupid hotel, then I will. Shit,” she
said, and sniffled. “I don't know why I'm complaining. I wanted to see
you and I have. I wanted you not to send me away and you haven't, at
least not yet. You have a place to live, you have food. Do you need
money? You're going to have to explain that part of it too.”

Jackal nodded. “But not tonight. Tonight
I'm going to get you to your hotel, and tomorrow evening I'll take you
someplace that will help explain. I hope.”

The transport was nearly empty this late,
and Snow's hotel was just far enough away to be in a better
neighborhood. Jackal walked her to the entrance.

“Call me when you get back from the plant
tomorrow and I'll come pick you up.”

“Okay.”

“Be brilliant. Impress the engineer.”

Snow grinned. “Okay.”

Jackal took her hand. “I just want to tell
you—” She couldn't find the words; she looked up as though they might
be hovering overhead, but there were only the few stars bright enough
to shine fuzzily through the night-light of the city. “You came for
me,” she said, and her voice quavered. “It means so much that you came
for me.” She felt as if her heart turned over with a jerk, like a
long-silent machine struggling into motion. Its new, tentative rhythm
stayed with her all the way back to Shangri-La.

19

THE PHONE WOKE HER LATE THE NEXT
MORNING FROM
the first decent sleep she'd had in days. No one
had ever called her here: she didn't recognize the noise, and it took
her a full fifteen seconds of insistent beep-beep-beep to work it out,
get untangled from the blanket and find it in her coat pocket where
she'd left it last night. She was grateful for the lack of video.

“Hello?”

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

“Crichton?”

“If you think I won't have you arrested,
you'd better think again. I hate it when people don't take me
seriously.”

“What?” She sat down hard in the desk
chair. “What'd I do?”

She knew she still sounded half-asleep as
well as confused: it seemed to make Crichton pause.

“You were due in my office an hour ago.
Get here. And get an alarm clock.”

“I was?” But Crichton had already
disconnected. Jackal blinked at the phone and then found the ringer
control and turned it to low, wondering why factory settings always
trended toward the most obnoxious delivery of any function. Workers'
revenge.

She realized she hadn't checked e-mail
since before her last aftershock. Oh sharks, that was it—the aftershock
readings had come through and Crichton was probably sharpening up the
drill right now. To be sure, she opened her e-mail box, and there it
was, right on top:

Failure to report
,
etc. She had a bad moment imagining the official knock at the door; or
maybe the police would have gone straight to the landlord for the
override code to her lock, and she would have woken to the sound of
boots and loud voices in the living room. And that might still come.
Crichton's patience would eventually run out.

She hit the delete key, and then stilled.
There was another message waiting:

Ms. Segura
:

I've been trying
to write this e-mail in standard business English and have come to the
conclusion that there are no adequate euphemisms for this situation
.

Your skills match
our needs extremely well. However, we have learned of your conviction
on charges of international terrorism and murder. Our policy in this
regard is non-negotiable: I'm unable to offer you the contract, and
would be unwilling to even in the absence of the policy
.

I am puzzled and
concerned by your application for the position, and have instructed my
legal department to forward details of your interview to NNA Security
Services. We may choose to seek a restraining order barring you from
our premises or any further contact with our staff. We will also notify
our affiliates in the business community
.

I apologize if
your application was in good faith. I won't expect you to appreciate my
concern, although I am sure you can understand it
.

Jennifer Oronodo

Vice President,
Corporate Accounts

She couldn't even feel surprised, only
deflated and stupid—how had she believed this would work?—and ashamed.
She had liked the people at the gallery: it made her queasy to think of
them gossiping, recoiling at the news, picking her apart.

She did what? Oh my god, I've heard
of
her, I
thought she looked familiar. What kind of person do you have to be to
do something like that
?

She dressed carelessly, decided it was
worth an extra five minutes to clean her teeth, and then left a voice
mail message at Snow's hotel:

My parole
officer wants to see me. I'm going over there now. If you can't reach
me tonight, call this number and make her tell you where I am
.

After some thought, she re-recorded the
message and revised the last sentence to

she
can tell you where I am
. It seemed less melodramatic. Then
she went.

Crichton had a surprise for her. Jackal
walked in braced for more probing, prepared to resist, and Crichton
looked up from the desk with eyes the flat no-color of a blank
viewscreen, absolute black. They were the most unsettling lenses Jackal
had seen; Crichton looked as if someone had eaten her soul. That wasn't
the surprise: Jackal was completely prepared to believe that Crichton
might be missing a few key spiritual components. What caught her off
guard was Crichton's apparent good cheer. For a moment there seemed to
be sparkles in the alien eyes, like little stars.