Vortex (12 page)

Tom wouldn’t play into his hands. He gazed at the swaying trees far below them, the wind whipping at him through his suit. “Yeah, you’re asking me, but I’ve got this feeling you already know.”

“Yes.” Elliot nodded. “I already know that you taunted him. You had a chance to apologize or do just about anything to try defusing the situation with him, and you chose to make matters infinitely worse. You poured gasoline on the fire. It’s like the way you acted with Karl when we were all hooked into the decagons. You
deliberately
goaded him. There’s no reason for it. It’s stupid and it’s arrogant and it’s needless, but you keep doing it.”

Tom gave an exasperated growl. “So I should’ve
apologized
to Hank Bloombury, is that it? Maybe kissed his shoes, while I was at it?”

“When he’s in a position to murder your career? Yes. Yes, you should have. For a start.”

Tom clenched his teeth. “I will never apologize to him. Not to him, not to the Beringer Club people, not to any of them. They all deserved what they got. I won’t give them the satisfaction of even acting like I’m sorry when I’m not.” He remembered Dalton, smugly telling him he could beg for forgiveness on his knees, if he wanted. Bitterness flooded him. “They’d love that.”

Elliot pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Come on, man,” Tom erupted, “how does this sucking-up fest not drive you nuts? You didn’t come from these people. You didn’t scam your way to the top or get born to rich parents and pat yourself on the back for ‘earning’ it. You had a skill, you had a talent, you worked hard and got here for an
actual reason
. You legitimately achieved everything you have. So how can you stomach treating these people like they’re better than us?”

Elliot threw up his hands. “Because I recognize that this is the way the world works! You may not like these executives, but the fact is, people with honor and integrity, who don’t cheat, lose their wealth and their positions to people who
do
. That’s why the worst of us become the world’s decision makers. Nothing I can do or say will change that basic fact of life. They shape reality and the rest of us just live in it. So I accept it, and I try to work around it.”

“It’s not right!” For a moment, Tom struggled for the words to capture the burning feeling in his chest, and they came pouring out. “It’s not that these people are thieves. That’s not what bugs me. It’s the fact that they think we should respect
them, too. That’s what burns me. This place used to be everyone’s, they stole it for themselves, and they got away with doing it, but they don’t get my goodwill, too. They can’t pay me enough money to pretend I admire them.”

“Fine, then,” Elliot cut in, impatient. “Don’t play the game. Tear yourself apart raging against something
you can’t change.
Do that, Tom. Then I can tell you what happens next: nothing. Not for you. Those executives won’t care if you destroy yourself. They will never notice if you drop off their radar. Your fate won’t make a single difference to any one of those people. The only person you’re harming here is yourself.”

Tom’s chest tightened. “Then that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

Elliot sighed heavily. “I was going to ask you to do your fly-along with me. I’ve wanted to help, guide you. I see now it would be a waste of my time and energy.”

That stung a bit. Tom shrugged. “No one’s forcing you.” But Elliot seemed so genuinely disappointed in him, like he’d really been invested in Tom doing well, that Tom felt a pang of remorse. “You know, I am sorry. About all this.”

“I am, too.” And then Elliot’s footsteps scuffed away across the rocks.

Tom stayed alone in his somewhat voluntary exile at the edge of the cliff, the light stealing away from the sky. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach, and told himself over and over again that this was the only way it could’ve gone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HE BEST PART
of the visit to the Coalition companies was taking suborbital planes from Yosemite back to the Pentagon. Suborbital planes launched into the Earth’s outer atmosphere, and they could cross the United States in twenty minutes instead of the hours an airplane would require. They were faster, even, than the Interstice with its vactube. They were also as close as anyone got to space travel nowadays, since flying in a suborbital meant experiencing microgravity and seeing the curvature of the Earth. The only people who got to fly in them were the ridiculously wealthy.

And Intrasolar trainees, apparently.

Tom didn’t care about almost anything else that had happened that day as he, Vik, Wyatt, and Yuri strapped into a suborbital manned by a couple military officers, along with two dozen other trainees.

“You will remain in your seats for the entire flight, from liftoff to landing. Am I understood?” the officer said sternly.

Vik’s face fell. “But we only get a few minutes of zero-g. We don’t get to float?”

The officer glared. “No.”

“What if this is the only time we’ll ever be in space—” Tom began.

“You will remain seated, trainee.”

Tom felt his heart sink. Stay seated? He saw his disappointment mirrored on Vik’s face. An idea crawled into his brain. He whispered, “Too bad about your weak stomach, eh, Doctor?”

A wicked gleam stole into Vik’s eyes. “Oh, yes. My stomach is very weak, indeed.”

T
HE SUBORBITAL PLANE
launched straight up into the sky, pinning them all back against their seats. Tom turned his head toward the window, feeling like his brain was sloshing around in his skull, the landscape shrinking beneath them, whirling in his vision in a sluggish way as they jolted higher and higher, the blue of the sky draining to black.

And then, abruptly, they came to a halt, utter silence enveloping them as the engines cut off. Every molecule of his being seemed to be weightless, and Tom realized he truly
was
weightless. He opened his mouth and gasped in shock and amazement, feeling his stomach flipping fantastically. He caught Vik’s eye and grinned.

Vik moaned loudly. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Oh no, not here, buddy,” Tom urged him, just as loudly.

“I . . . I feel . . . I feel so . . .”

“Oh God, is there a bathroom on this thing?” Tom cried.

“Help me. Someone help me!” Vik pleaded.

“I’ll help you, buddy!” Tom pledged, ripping off his seat belt.

Tom bobbed up into the air, and the officer shouted, “Sit down!”

“But my friend is sick! So sick!” Tom proclaimed.

Vik began making a gagging noise. He was also tugging off his belt.

“He’ll puke,” Tom insisted, pulling Vik along with him. “He’ll vomit all over the place!”

Wyatt panicked. “No! It’ll float everywhere! Why doesn’t this suborbital have barf bags?”

The words rang up and down the aisle as trainees repeated it. “Barf bags, barf bags . . .” Tom could see frantic scrabbling of hands, as people searched for something to contain what Vik was about to do.

“We can’t get puke all over us,” Jennifer Nguyen pleaded. “It’ll get in my hair!”

“Fine,” the officer shouted. “Bathroom in the back. Go!”

Tom hauled Vik from his seat, and for a moment, they forgot to act as they bobbed up and impacted the ceiling. He and Vik exchanged a crazy grin, then Tom remembered to screw his face into a frightened look.

“Don’t spew on me, Vik.”

“Hurry, Tom. Hurry, or I’ll spew on everyone!”

The “ews” rippled down the aisle, and vanished from their ears only when Tom and Vik floated into the aft cabin and shut the door. They didn’t go into the small bathroom beyond, though. They floated there, their faces looking a bit strange without gravity to pull on their skin at all, their hair floating in all directions.

“Doctor,” Vik informed him, “we are in outer space.”

“We
are
in outer space.” They couldn’t stop laughing.

V
IK MADE LOUD
vomiting noises over the next minute, making them louder every time someone knocked on the door.

“Oh, oh, that’s hideous,” Tom shouted loudly, flipping around again and again. “In the toilet tube, buddy! Not on me!”

“I missed, Tom! I missed the toilet!” Vik shouted back from where he was bouncing from wall to wall. “Oh no, I forgot to close the bathroom door, too! It’s everywhere!”

“It’s hideous! It’s like someone gutted a pig in here!” Tom shouted.

“Human bumper cars,” Vik whispered.

Tom kicked against the wall as Vik pushed off, and they smashed against each other as hard as possible. They both rebounded and sailed violently in separate directions. Vik hit a wall first, which gave him a huge advantage to propel himself at Tom. Just as Tom reached his wall, Vik checked him, hard, hockey style. Then Vik reeled back, flipping over and over again, hands raised above his head in fists. “Gooooaaaall!”

But he wasn’t victorious for long. Tom shoved at the wall as hard as he could and zoomed straight at him. Vik saw him coming, but he was stuck flipping backward in lazy circles. He began waving his arms and legs frantically, like he could swim through the air, trying to change his course. It was no use. Tom slammed him in passing.

“Touchdowwwwwn!” Tom proclaimed.

Then there was a knock on the door. Tom and Vik remembered themselves, and Vik made loud puking sounds.

“Oh God, it’s everywhere!” Tom shouted. “All the puke is making me puke now!” Then he made a puking sound.

But then the door began to open anyway, and Tom and Vik realized their jig was up.

Luckily, it was Wyatt and Yuri. She was fake vomiting, too. “I knew it. I knew you guys were faking. What are you going to do when there isn’t puke everywhere?”

“Tubes of soup,” Vik answered. “I’ve flown in suborbitals with my folks, and they’ve always got some rations stored in the aft cabin. I’ll squeeze them out before we land. You were playing along, earlier, huh?” He sounded impressed.

“You think I don’t know you guys by now?” Wyatt said. She gave a satisfied nod. “The entire cabin hears the vomiting noises. I told everyone you drank the tap water at Epicenter.”

Vik was not pleased. “But I’m
from India.
I’d have to be an idiot to be
Indian
and drink tap water in Epicenter’s region of
India
. Everyone in my country knows better.”

She smiled. “That’s why I said I have food poisoning and made sure no one thought I drank tap water the way you did. I didn’t want people to think
I’m
stupid.”

“Evil Wench,” Vik breathed, impressed.

Wyatt made a loud vomiting noise.

“Aah, it is dreadful!” Yuri bellowed happily.

Vik launched himself over to Wyatt and tore her from Yuri’s arms.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt whispered fiercely, squirming in his grip.

“You smeared my reputation. Now we’re playing human keep away,” Vik declared, then hurled her toward Tom.

Fright blazed over Wyatt’s face, since she wasn’t used to free floating in the microgravity yet, and she began pinwheeling her arms urgently. Tom caught her, and the impact sent them spinning back toward the far wall.

“Okay?” he asked her as they bounced off.

She laughed. That was answer enough. He spun her around in good conscience as Yuri shoved toward him, trying to rescue her. Tom kicked the ceiling to knock them out of the way and tossed Wyatt back to Vik. Yuri smashed Tom against the wall, then propelled away again. Vik tried to throw Wyatt, but he was too late, because Yuri was determined now.

“Not this time,” he declared, and caught her leg. Then pulled her into his arms. They spun like that, Wyatt’s long hair whirling around like a cloud about them, both of them floating past the window overlooking the curvature of the Earth.

Then as they drifted away, Yuri caught the ceiling to halt them. He dipped his head and kissed her. Wyatt’s hair floated like a mermaid’s, blocking their faces from view. Tom felt his shoulder bump Vik’s as they observed it all.

“I don’t think Yuri’s tossing her back,” Vik observed. “What do we do now?”

“Not that,” Tom told him.

“I need a girlfriend,” Vik complained. “Hey, what do you think of Lyla Martin?”

“She’s frightening,” Tom answered.

“And blond.” Vik sounded pleased about both things. “I’m not going to lie to you, Tom: while we were getting eaten by a shark together, I think we had a moment.”

Yuri drew back from Wyatt, and they both looked over at Tom and Vik where they were floating there, watching them.

“Go on,” Tom blurted.

“Yeah, we don’t mind.” Vik waved for them to carry on. “You only get one crack at this in zero-g.”

Wyatt sighed.

Yuri pointed between them, something faintly menacing on his face. “Turn around and look out that window. Both of you.”

“Oh. Right. Privacy.” Tom and Vik wouldn’t get to watch. They dutifully turned toward the other window.

Vik headed back to the box of military rations, and set about pulling out a tube of gelatinized soup. “Fake vomit, coming up. What do you think, Tom—tomato or cream of chicken?”

“Whichever.” Tom shoved himself toward the window for his last view of the planet from space, figuring he might never get to see it from the outside again with his own eyes. He stared at the curvature of the Earth against the darkness, and deep in his brain, the realization clicked into place that he wasn’t seeing a photograph or a virtual reality image: he was looking at the real thing.

With that, Tom’s mind grew strangely quiet, taking in the planet that seemed to beat with life against the vast, star-studded universe beyond it. His eyes moved over the swirling white clouds of a storm, the shadow another pale curtain cast over the intense blue of the ocean. He ran his gaze down the jagged, stark green line of the East Coast of the United States where it cut into the Atlantic.

“Guys,” Tom said, “we’re actually in outer space.”

He saw the faint reflections in the window as his friends floated over to see. Vik’s gelatinized soup floated around them in globs as they all gazed at the Earth together.

“Look at the skyboards.” Wyatt pressed her finger to the window.

It took Tom a moment to see them. The skyboards below were like tiny fireflies sparking across the planet, sunlight dancing across their solar-paneled backs. It was strange how large and inescapable those images seemed from the Earth, but up here, the boards shrank to such insignificance, he imagined he could flick them away with a finger.

“Man, those are tiny from up here,” Vik said.

There was awe in Yuri’s voice. “Everything.”

And he was right. Everything was. Everything Tom had ever feared seemed to shrink for this instant as the universe expanded for him.

His heart seemed to swell, and he wished every single person on the planet could have this chance, just once, to see the horizon from above the skyboards rather than from below them. Maybe they’d all see that the universe didn’t end at the boundaries of the Coalition of Multinationals but rather that this incredible, infinite stretch of possibilities existed beyond them.

No wonder the sky had to be blotted out by advertisements. The stars drowned with lights. If everyone could see beyond Coalition horizons, perhaps they’d begin to see the titans of humanity for what they were: tiny creatures, smaller than insects, and in the scale of things, every bit as insignificant.

Maybe more people would be willing to look a thief like Reuben Lloyd in the eye and laugh right in his face.