Kelley Eskridge (39 page)

And Jane plucked the knife away from Estar
with one hand and slapped a syrette gun against her shoulder with the
other. Estar said, “No, Jane—” and then she melted into a puddle, her
eyes showing almost completely white.

Jane paused briefly to check Estar's pulse
and to straighten her neck: Jackal was both touched and repelled by the
gesture. Then Jane crossed to Snow, who was on her knees holding her
left elbow in her right hand. Jane raised her to her feet and walked
her carefully over to a straight-backed chair.

“Jackal, come help me.”

Jackal levered herself off the sofa,
swaying slightly.

Jane scanned her. “What happened here?”

“She gave me something. Tranquilizer,
maybe. Made me want to talk a lot.”

“Then you shouldn't try to help with the
first aid. I want you to stand over here and talk to her while I fix
her arm. Your name is Snow, right? Snow, we're going to put this arm
back. Okay?”

Snow nodded, her eyes closed against the
pain: Jackal could see the sweat on her forehead and temples.

“As soon as it's back in the socket, it
will stop hurting. I promise. All right?”

Another nod.

“The bad news is that it will hurt worse
while I put it in. Can you handle that?”

Snow clenched her jaw. Then she opened her
eyes and nodded again, looking straight at Jane.

“Good,” Jane said. “We're going to
straighten the arm out, then pull it across your chest, and when it
finds the socket we will fold it back up toward the shoulder to show it
the way in. And that will be all.”

Snow whispered, “Okay, let's do it.” She
grabbed Jackal's left hand with her right and squeezed hard.

Jane began. Snow's eyelids fluttered.
“Breathe, honey,” Jackal said, kneeling beside her, fighting to keep
her balance. “It's going to be okay. You're going to be all right.”

“Told you…she was a loon.” Snow was
panting now. Jackal looked up at Jane, whose face was set in utter
concentration as she hefted the weight of Snow's arm and started the
bone back on its journey home.

“Honey, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry she hurt
you. When this is all over, I'm going to take you back to Solitaire and
buy a bottle of that lovely wine, and we'll sit upstairs where it's
quiet and dark and private, we'll eat grilled cheese sandwiches and
drink wine until we can't drink anymore.”

“I don't know,” Snow said raggedly, “we
can drink quite a lot.” She was trying to smile: it was more of a
terrible rictus than anything, but Jackal admired her courage
profoundly. Snow clamped down hard on Jackal's hand as Jane worked.

“Who's the smartest?” Jackal said.

Snow huffed in mingled surprise and pain.
“It certainly isn't you. Must be me.”

Jackal nodded. “And the bravest.”

“Well, that still leaves you—” and then
her body jerked with the jolt of the arm finding the socket, and there
was a series of terrifying crunching noises as Jane folded Snow's wrist
up and over and the arm slid snug into the shoulder.

Jane gently placed Snow's hand in her lap.
“How is it?”

Snow blinked. “It's fine. It really
doesn't hurt anymore.” Already, the color was returning to her face.
She flexed her fingers experimentally, and then took a deep breath.
“That's amazing. Thank you.”

Jane nodded, her face drawn into planes it
might achieve permanently when she was fifty years older. Jackal
realized that she'd shown no sign of stress until this moment, now that
everything was over. “Jane, you should sit down.”

“Not yet. I need to get her to bed.” Jane
pointed her chin at Estar, snoring gently on the floor.

“Let me help.” Jackal pushed herself to
her feet too fast; the room shifted and she had to sit down again.

“You'll drop her and it will be more work
for me. Help me get her up on her feet and I can take it from there.
You look after Snow. I'll be back with some hot tea in a few minutes.”

Together they hauled Estar to her feet;
Jackal steadied her while Jane put her shoulder under Estar's ribs and
lifted her up into a rescue carry.

“You're strong,” Jackal said, impressed.

“Not really. She is mostly bones and
sadness, and those don't weigh so much.”

Jackal and Snow were both silent as Jane
left the room with Estar over her shoulder.

“Well,” Jackal said finally, “Another
conversation stopper.”

“Would you put your arm around me,
please?” Snow said.

Jackal did. Snow was trembling slightly,
clammy and cool, fragile in the crook of Jackal's elbow. Estar's music
groaned around them.

“I love you,” Jackal said.

“I love you too.”

Jackal smoothed Snow's hair with her free
hand.

After a few moments, Snow said, “Who is
that girl?”

“That's Jane. I…I have no idea who she
is.” Jackal wasn't sure she knew anyone, anymore. She still felt
off-balance from the drug and the fear of seeing Snow with Estar's
knife against her skin. She squeezed Snow's hand tighter.

“I'm okay,” Snow said. “I'm right here.”

“I'm so glad,” Jackal answered shakily.
“And I'm so sorry. It's my fault she did this to you.”

“What, this was your idea? I don't think
so,” Snow said sharply. “It's not your fault. Don't you dare
apologize.” She sighed. “Sorry. I'm pretty tense. I can't believe any
of this happened. But at least—” She stopped, bit her lip.

“What?”

“At least I got to hear some of those
things you've been keeping locked up.”

“That stuff I said about us—”

“Was true,” Snow said quietly. “Of course
we can live without each other if we have to. I didn't kill myself when
I thought you would be in prison forever and I won't die if you send me
home in two weeks and tell me never to come back. I'll just want to
die. But they aren't the same.” She sighed. “It's hard to know that.
It's hard to even think about it. It would be better if we could figure
things out.”

They sat like that until Jane returned
with a tray of tea and honey and shortbread. Jackal sniffed at the mug
Jane handed her.

“It's only tea,” Jane said, with most of
her usual aplomb recovered.

“Right. Sorry.” It was hot and bracing,
and she began to feel less like falling down or throwing up.

“I found this in the kitchen.” Jane held
up a prescription bottle. “Her amobarbital. She is supposed to take it
every day, but sometimes she doesn't. She probably gave you her regular
dose, you should be fine once it wears off.”

“She functions on that? She must have the
metabolism of a hummingbird.”

“Will you press charges against her?”

Jackal blinked, then looked to Snow. “She
hurt you. Whatever you want to do, I'll go along with it.”

Snow very carefully rotated her arm
through a small circle. Her voice shook a little when she spoke. “She's
a fucking menace. She can't be allowed to just go around doing this to
people.”

Jackal bit her lip. It broke her heart to
think of Estar in prison. She wished that Snow was the kind of person
who could march into Estar's bedroom and break her nose while she
slept, as a way of evening the score.

Snow continued, “I don't know. I have a
pretty good idea that if we call the police tonight, she'll spend the
rest of her life in a box somewhere. I'm not sure…”She shrugged with
her good shoulder.

“The responsibility is partly mine,” Jane
said. “It's my job to prevent this.”

“I wish I'd listened to Scully,” Jackal
said. “He was trying to tell me this might happen. And I told him I
could handle it. I am ten different kinds of idiot.”

“This wasn't even about me. It's you she
was trying to hurt,” Snow said to Jackal. “She was just using me to do
it, like I was your favorite toy that she was going to break. That
almost makes it worse, you know? I'm not even real to her.” She put a
hand to Jackal's face. “And she's your friend. You say you'll back me
up if I press charges, but how will you feel when they lock her up for
the next sixty years?”

Jackal rubbed her eyes and told the truth.
“I'll feel bad. And I feel bad that she hurt you.” Then, to Jane,
“Assuming we don't do anything, what happens now?”

Jane handed her a piece of shortbread.
“She'll wake. She'll remember that she's wronged you. She'll play loud
music and refuse to eat. Then she will lock herself in her studio and
paint something beautiful and bring it to you for a present. And then
it's over for her.”

“She did that with Scully, didn't she?”
Jackal guessed, remembering the cathedral of trees.

Jane raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”

“Great,” said Snow. “I get my arm yanked
off and you get a present.” She began to cry.

“You should put some honey in your tea,”
Jane said. “It's good for shock.”

“I don't want any damned honey. And I sure
don't want an art collection from Estar Borja. Is she going to try
something like this again?”

No one answered. They all drank more tea.
Snow said, “Could someone please turn that damned music off?”

20

JACKAL PAID FOR PRIVATE TRANSPORT
TO SNOW'S HOTEL
; a cold, slow walk would have helped clear her
head, but Snow was still shocky and needed a quiet, safe place to lie
down. And a quiet, safe person: Jackal came upstairs without any
discussion, and the only thing they said was “good night.” They slept
tumbled together like socks in drawer. Jackal woke in the small hours
and watched Snow sleep, her body still and loose under the blanket, her
smell a mix of freesia and old warm leather. I love her, Jackal
thought. I'm scared.

The next morning, they both treated Snow's
arm as if it were likely to disintegrate at any second, until Jackal
lobbed a bottle of shampoo at her and Snow stretched to catch it.

“There,” Jackal said, “it didn't fall off,
or anything.”

Snow humphed, but she smiled as she
dressed.

“Are you okay, really?” Jackal asked.

Snow shrugged. “No. Yes. I don't know.”
She sat down on the bed, one sock in her hand. “I didn't know that my
body could come apart that easy. That probably sounds weird.… Some
moments, I had no idea what was happening. And other moments I was
right there, focused and thinking. I was trying to figure out how to
get my fingernail out.” She held up her left little finger. “I was
visualizing sticking it into her eye, all the way up to the knuckle.”

Jackal sat down next to her. “Would you
have?”

“I don't know. Would you?”

“I don't know if I could do it for myself.
I hope I would always stop somebody from hurting you.”

“Sometimes you can't,” Snow said.
“Sometimes you can't even stop yourself.” She studied Jackal for a
moment. “I'll be okay,” she said, and kissed Jackal's cheek and then
went back to putting her sock on.

Jackal walked back to Shangri-La and
decided that it was a beautiful day even though it was cold; the
weather was on the spiral toward full winter, and today was perhaps one
of the last of the blue-and-orange days before the corner turned toward
gray and brown and white.

There was an e-mail from Scully:

I heard about it from Jane. Are you
and
Snow okay
?

She replied:

We're
fine. Thank you. We'll come in tonight and tell you all about it
.

Then she poured an enormous glass of
orange juice and made herself two slices of buttered toast, and curled
up in her chair to mourn for Estar, and to think things through.

They decided that Scully should hear the
whole story, including the truth about Jackal's last year in VC. “He's
your friend,” Snow said.

“Not to mention that he's Estar's friend
too,” Jackal said. “I'd rather he heard about this from me.”

It was not quite four o'clock. Snow had
“worked like a demon,” she told Jackal, to get through her meetings and
leave the plant with a palmtop full of data to analyze. “They won't
expect to see me again for a few days,” she said. “Let's go get drunk.”
So they had turned up early at Solitaire to give themselves some
conversational privacy with Scully.

“Jesus Christ,” was his first comment. He
leaned on the counter and peered at Snow. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine. As Jackal has already pointed
out, my arm didn't fall off.”

“You should still go to the clinic.”

“I'll have it looked at when I get back to
Ko.”

Scully made a face. “You're going back?”
It was obvious he was making an effort not to glare at Jackal.

“We're working on it,” Snow said.

“What are you going to do about Estar?”

“Nothing right now,” Jackal said, checking
Snow's face to make sure she had read the signals right. “I'm still
thinking about dragging her out into the street the next time I see her
and throwing her under a truck, but other than that…”

“I may come back from Ko with a gun,” Snow
said. “A gun beats a knife every time.”

He nodded. “Wouldn't blame you.”

“It's weird,” Snow said. “There's one part
of me that is so outraged, I want to hit her and hit her until she
screams. And the other part of me knows she's already screaming. And
she's Jackal's friend, and yours. It's hard to know what to do.”

“Isn't that the truth,” Scully said.

“Scully,” Jackal ventured. He looked at
her. “I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about VC.”

He looked down. “I don't blame you. There
wasn't much point. If you can't tell anyone how to do it, why should
you put up with everyone being jealous?”

“It's not just that. I don't…I can't let
them draft me into the research program and suck my brains out through
my nose.”

“They might not. Anyway, it's only a
two-year commitment.”

“Oh, come on. The whole goal of the
project is to be able to customize the environment. I should know. They
won't care how long the contract term is, they'll keep me as long as it
takes. They'll threaten me with finishing my sentence in prison. Or now
that it's an EarthGov program, they'll find some legal loophole about
the greater good or some other happy bullshit, and I won't have any
choice. I'll be eighty-five years old and still living in that building
under Crichton's nose. No thank you, very much. The only reason I'm
telling you is because we're friends and I thought you should know why
Estar came after me. But you can't tell anyone.”