Runaways

Chapter 3

Later, three days later to be precise, Megan was standing in the shade of the big stands at Potomac Valley, in the "prepping area," looking down at her photocopy of her team's points sheet. She was thinking black thoughts about graceful responses and senses of proportion, since her sense of humor had so completely deserted her that she suspected she'd have to take out an ad in the paper and post notices around the neighborhood to find it again. All around her, people dressed as Megan was in dressage jodhpurs and black jackets were making their way back and forth, leading dapper and well-groomed horses of every description to and from the parking lot full of cars fastened to horse trailers. Around the little brown prefab temporary buildings under the stands that hosted the administrative offices, the air was full of the smell of wood shavings and sweat, and also of occasional cries of delight from people who had gotten their aggregate scores and were not horribly disappointed. Megan was not one of these.

She leaned against the wall of one of the prefabs and scowled at the scoring paper as if a mean look could make the digits twist themselves into more acceptable shapes. Her team's overall score was passable.. Just. It was not because they had done all that badly as a group. Mick Posen had volunteered to fill in for Burt on the horse the two of them had been sharing, McDaid's White Knight, and had done extremely well for someone who had come to the qualifiers prepared for a completely different routine-but Whitey was one of those horses routinely referred to as "bomb-proof," a steady, untemperamental, and good-natured creature who would do just about anything you asked him, short of jumping over the Moon, as long as you gave him extravagant amounts of horse goodies afterwards. Their teammate Rick had ridden his mount, Wellington Donnerschlag Second Strike (also known as Old Ugly) as perfectly as could be expected. And after that, to her own astonishment, Megan had actually had a good ride on Buddy. He had come "off the rails," performing very passable circles and running through the rest of the routine in an acceptable, if not exactly inspired, manner. It was as if the big blockheaded monster had just been pretending to malfunction-as if all the trouble of the previous week had been a big act. But as soon as he got out in front of the crowd, he began behaving like a well-oiled machine. Maybe that was something I should have added to the simulation, Megan thought suddenly, as she glanced down the scoring paper one more time. The smell of the sawdust… the roar of the crowd. There was no arguing the fact that some horses were performance freaks, egotistic critters who lived to be cheered at. Something to think about for later…

If there was even going to be a later. For, though their fourth teammate Joanne Fisher had done very well on Old Ugly herself, then it had come Wilma's turn to ride

Megan resisted the urge to cover her face and moan. Buddy had actually done pretty well, under the circumstances, but Wilma had sat him with all the grace and elan of a sack of potatoes. She was clearly somewhere else entirely while she rode. In the loser's circle, Megan thought, and then grimaced in annoyance at her own cruelty… Worrying about Burt.

But she had had reason. No one had heard from Burt for three days now. His parents, according to Wilma, had called the police, but the police had told them what they usually told the parents of runaways. There were too few officers to chase too many kids who had gone missing, some of them for just a few days. Unless there were suspicious circumstances, they couldn't really helpand there was nothing particularly suspicious about it. Burt had simply taken off, leaving a note behind him that said he just couldn't stand it anymore. Additionally, he would be turning eighteen in a few months. If he didn't want to go home again, all Burt had to do was lie low until then, and after that claim emancipated-minor status under state law, if he wanted to.

Not that I don't understand why he'd want to, either, Megan thought. But… She sighed and let the thought go, for she'd spent too much time belaboring it over the past few days, and whatever her intentions had been, her practice schedule had suffered. She found herself wondering now whether she could have done a whole lot better on the suddenly-not-misbehaving Buddy if she had spent more of those seventy-two hours in the saddle and less of them consoling a crying friend.

But, dammit, Megan thought, getting angry at herself again, what're you supposed to do? What are friends for anyway if they can't depend on you to be there when they need someone to cry on? She folded her arms and hugged herself a little in annoyance. It's all so damn unfair…

"Megan!"

Oh, what now, Megan thought, and then once more angrily stomped on the thought as unworthy, and turned. Wilma was running toward her, and the difference between the droopy, sad, furious Wilma of a hour or so ago and this present one was astonishing. She was glowing, she was grinning all over her face, she was transformed. It was amazing, and a little annoying as well.

"What?" Megan said as Wilma ran up to her. "They change our marks or something?"

She immediately regretted having said it, but Wilma was bouncing up and down as if she hadn't even heard it. "He called! He called/"

"Who, Burtr She blinked. "Just now??"

"On my mobile. He said he didn't want to worry me while I was getting ready for the competition," Wilma said. She was still actually grinning as she said it.

Megan could do little but stare at Wilma in astonishment, for the complete backwardness of Burt's reasoning simply filled her with awe. It's true, she thought. It's true what they say. Males and females really are members of different species. I always thought my brothers were alien beings… now I know it's true. And as for Burt…! She took a long deep breath, reached out and grabbed Wilma's arms to stop her jumping up and down, and said, "So where is he?"

"He wouldn't say, but that's normal. He's at one of the Breathing Space facilities."

Megan had heard of these once or twice. They were a kind of combined online-offline refuge for kids who were having troubles at home and needed a "neutral" space to renegotiate the business of putting their family lives back together. Right now, though, all Megan felt able to do was sag against the side of the little prefab building and let out a long breath of complete relief that Burt wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere. Later, she thought, after I have a few words with him, he may wish he was… But that could wait.

She looked at Wilma, whose face also reflected that great relief. "So," she said, and shook Wilma a little. "You feeling a little better now?"

"A little better!!"

"Yeah." Megan sighed.

Wilma did, too. "I wish I'd known about this two hours ago," she said.

"Yeah, I wish you had, too… "

"Megan." Wilma's face fell. "Oh, Megan, I'm so sorry, I messed everything up so completely-"

Megan restrained herself from saying what she thought. "Look," she said. "It's not the end of the world. They'll let us ride it again in three months. By then the season will've quieted down, there won't be any rush about it, and not so much competition… "

"And this time," Wilma said, "we can ride it with Burt." The satisfaction, the relief on her face, were complete. Megan kept her face as completely still as she could, for her first thought was, Will he be in any position to ride it? His parents would be furious with Burt for doing what he had done… what he had been threatening to do, if quietly, for so long. If he did come home, would he find himself permanently grounded until he graduated? That would leave the team as badly off as it was already. Would they possibly even just throw him out to find his own place…? Dressage practice would be the least of his problems, if that happened-

She sighed and shook Wilma by the upper arms again, in a companionable way. "Wil," Megan said, "get a grip. Let's go have a talk with him and see how he is first. Will they let us do that?"

"Yeah," Wilma said, "I think so. He left me a 'non- designated' Net address to check in with-it's both a message drop and a meeting space."

"Great," Megan said. "So let's see to the animals, and then get ourselves out of here."

Wilma nodded. "We'll be back," she said, turning, "and this time we'll get it right."

As long as you're still going out with Burt, Megan thought, I wish I could be sureBut she sighed, and said nothing, and went after her friend.

Much later Megan got home to find her mother sitting in the kitchen. The kitchen table was covered with printouts, a few books, a couple of research pads presently showing pages from what looked like legal documents, and what was almost certainly about her tenth cup of tea. Megan's mother and tea, the blacker the better, were in a love-hate relationship that turned into "hate" about nine p. M., the time at which it was no longer safe for her mother to drink tea if she intended to sleep. Not that she stops drinking it then, Megan thought, with some amusement, as she glanced at the slender little blond woman hunched over the paperwork, dropped her dressage jacket over the back of one of the chairs, and dumped her helmet on the seat.

"Daddy's stuff all over the office again?" Megan said.

"Mmmh," her mother said, making a note on one of the pads, and then looked up. "Why can't people be tidy when they're working?"

Megan gave the surface of the table a meaningful look, which her mother caught and raised her eyebrows. 'There's method to my madness," she said. "Whereas in your father's case, I still have my doubts. How did you do?"

Megan pulled the scoring paper out of her jacket's inside pocket and handed it to her mother, then went to get herself some iced tea from the fridge. Her mom unfolded the scoring sheet and gazed at it thoughtfully for a moment.

"Daughter mine," she said, "this looks like Linear B to me. But I gather from the look on your face that things didn't go the way you planned."

"We came in twelfth of thirty teams," Megan said. "And you're right, this wasn't what I had in mind. On the other hand, it turns out that Burt is okay."

"Is he!" her mother said. "Where is he?"

"Physically? I don't know," Megan said. "One of the Breathing Space facilities, though."

Her mother sat back in the kitchen chair and twisted herself around a litile in an unsuccessful attempt to get comfortable. "That could mean any one of twelve different cities," she said. "You going to look in on him?"

"As soon as I have a shower."

"I smell a horse," said a voice from down the hall. "And guess what? It's my sister/"

"Let me kill him a little, Mom," Megan said, glaring down the hall. "Just a little. I promise I won't do anything permanent."

"I've heard that one before," her mother said. "No, honey, it would start out with the best of intentions, but it wouldn't stop there. Let him live for the moment. We can only hope to collect on his life insurance at a later date."

Megan smiled a small thin smile, for her mother's tone of voice suggested that the boys might have been getting on her nerves today as well. "Is the Net link in the den free?"

"I don't recall it having been free for the better part of this century," her mother said, smiling slightly and turning her attention back to her paperwork, "but if you find any of your brothers in there, go ahead and throw them out. I've heard nothing but sarcasm from them all day… and after your father and I fed them for so long, too. You'd think gratitude was dead."

"After eating Dad's cooking," said another voice from down the hall, "we're the ones who should be dead. He did that thing with the chilies again, last night. Bleaugh!"

Megan and her mother exchanged a sardonic look. "Is this the new article for TimeOnline?" she said.

"No/' her mother said, with some bemusement, "that one's finished. Would you believe Bon Appitit asked me to do a feature on copyright issues as they affect the great chefs of the world?"

Megan shook her head. "Weird."

"Not if you look at their price per word, it's not," her mother said, glancing at the fridge. "I may take up cooking in my old age."

Megan snorted and headed down the hallway to the bathroom. "Last warning, you guys," she said to the immediate neighborhood and anyone who might be listening. "I'm gonna be in here for a while"

The announcement was greeted with loud applause from down the hall. Megan grinned, locked herself into the bathroom, and spent the better part of half an hour showering herself clean of people sweat, horse sweat, and the emotional detritus of a mostly disagreeable day. When she came out again, dressed in jeans and a plain floppy white T-shirt, Megan felt positively human again, and this feeling was now not impaired by putting her head into the bookcase-lined den and seeing Sean sitting there hogging the big black body-contoured Net chair. He was staring into space and looking glazed, but this merely meant that he was immersed in some other reality, and for the moment Megan had no qualms about throwing him out of it. "Sean," she said, "I need the machine, pronto."

"Mmm-hmm," he said.

"Mom says cut it short," Megan said. "I have a real- people issue to deal with."

He blinked. "Like depriving your brother of his share of the household's recreation time isn't a real-people issue?" Sean said, turning his long self in the chair to look at her. "Give me another half hour to clean this up."

"Now," Megan said. "Clean it up on your own time, or when Dad lets someone else have a run at the office machine."

"Be well into the next decade, at this rate," Sean muttered, getting up out of the chair as slowly as possible and stretching himself. Megan heard joints creak as he did so, but she had no sympathy for him. If he was going to spend that long in the chair without tweaking the muscle- massage program to his requirements, it was his problem.

He then came lumbering across the room at her like some kind of slightly deranged Frankenstein's monster. "Sean, I don't need it right this minute," Megan said, but nonetheless Sean came at her with his arms out in front of him and an idiotically aggressive expression on his face that looked very silly on an architecture student. "Sean-!" Megan said.

"Arrrrrhh,99 Sean said, and Megan resigned herself to the inevitable as he came within reach. She stepped aside and took him by the right wrist, bending it back in a way that wouldn't hurt him unless he struggled. Sean yelped and tried to turn around in the way best designed to break the hold, but Megan glanced down and saw where his feet were-mostly very badly placed for any kind of balance. He tried to shift them, but too late. Megan simply knocked the side of her left riding boot against her brother's right shin. He fell past her, halfway out into the hallway, though at least he managed to roll as he did it.

"I keep telling you," Megan said with the slightest smile as she stepped over him and went into the den, sitting down in the implant chair, "leverage is everything. Keep working on it, bozo, you'll get it yet"

"I wasn't set!"

"As if the next mugger who comes along is going to wait for you to be set. You guys don't practice, that's your problem."

"Other guys have sisters who cut them some slack,"

Sean moaned, already well down the hallway. On his way to the fridge, Megan suspected.

"Other guys have sisters who don't throw them over the horizon often enough," Megan said under her breath, and smiled. She lined up her implant with the "eye" on the Net server box, closed her eyes, and did the particular muscular tic that brought the implant up.

She stood at the bottom of the white tiers of amphitheater seats, with a black sky full of hard white stars overhead, and the Sun, a brighter than usual star, now away off on the right, for Rhea had swung right around her primary, as she did once every six hours, and Saturn lay swollen and nearly full near the horizon-the planet's rings edge-on and nearly invisible, a glittering razor of light against the darkness. Megan smiled at the sight, but had no time to play her usual game with herself and try to work out what time it was by Saturn's phase and position in the sky.

She paused by her "desk," the white stone slab that hovered in the air at the bottom of her amphitheater, looking to see if any more urgent e-messages or virtmails had arrived since she was here last. Things looked more or less as she had left them, which was a relief, but then it was the weekend, and a lot of her friends were away, or busy with recreational stuff as important to them as her riding business had been for her today.

Though there was one virtmail, its iridescent sphere icon juggling itself up and down in the air, that hadn't been there earlier, and this one caught Megan's attention because the golden iridescence that tagged it was her signal to herself that it was from another Net Force Explorer. She walked over to that mail and poked it with one finger, and in the air off to one side, the message's address and routing information appeared. It was from Leif Anderson, who was the events liaison for a number of the East Coast-based Explorers who occasionally got together to do simming workshops or visit recreational Net venues as an informal group.

"Go," she said to the virtmail.

A moment later Leif was standing there in the virtual flesh, slight, red-haired and freckled, silhouetted against the background of his workspace, which this week looked like an ice cave. To her bemusement, behind him Megan thought she could see what appeared to be a Cadillac of the middle of the previous century, carved out of the ice. "Sorry for the group message," Leif said. "This is just a follow-up to find out if you saw the virt I sent out last week about the 'expedition' to the new dinosaur exhibition at the Smithsonian. Right now I mostly just need to know if you're going to be able to make it on the first date, the twelfth, since a lot of people seem to have schedule problems. We can reschedule to the nineteenth, but if we do we won't be able to have the paleontologies fellow from NatHist in New York along with us. So mail me, people, so I can figure out what to do about this-"

Megan sighed. I completely forgot about this in the runup to the Potomac Valley event… Til mail him when I get back. She didn't normally treat her contacts with other Explorers so casually. Megan was acutely aware that the networking they were all doing now might stand her in good stead at some later date… like when she finally had enough credentials under her belt to apply to actually work at Net Force herself. The day couldn't come too soon, as far as she was concerned. Net Force was policing the cutting edge of life, helping maintain the collective sanity and safety of an existence that was becoming increasingly virtual year by year. And if things went well, she would be working with some of the kids she was seeing recreationally now; they were all acutely aware that as far as Net Force was concerned, they were all prime intake material. All she and her group would have to do would be convince Net Force's Explorer liaison, James Winters, of that when the time came… and the best way to succeed was for everybody to sharpen their Net skills by working together in the virtual realm as much as they could, in what little time was left from school and the rest of real life.

But "unreal life" had taken a backseat these last few weeks. "Got to do something about that," Megan muttered. Right now, though, there were more important matters to attend to. She poked the mail-sphere again. It closed, and Leif vanished.

"Door," Megan said. Immediately a doorway appeared in the middle of the space at the "bottom" of the amphitheater-an incongruous sight, since it looked like one of the doors in her house, wood frame, a six-paneled wooden door with a regulation knob. "Destination?" her workspace management program said to her in its usual dulcet female voice.

"Wilma's space," Megan said.

Everything but the door's "frame" vanished. Through the frame, Megan could catch a glimpse of something she had always admired-Wilma's reconstruction of the interior of the Taj Mahal. It appeared to be dawn there, and only the faintest pale pearly light suffused the marble interiors.

Megan stuck her head in through the "doorway." "Wil?" she said.

"In here…"

Megan walked through, under the soaring expanse of the great central dome, while outside the dawn began to strengthen toward day. Wilma had told her that this vast polished expanse of carved marble was "only for practice." The virtual interior she was presently working on building was the one that even Shah Jehan had never managed to complete while living, the pure black twin to the pure-white Taj. Jehan had intended to build this shadow of the Taj's light directly across from the first building, at the end of another series of reflecting pools. Wilma had told Megan that she was going to build it again in her virtual space, but not as just a copy of the white Taj. She had been researching the original plans, of which copies had turned up some years ago in the "Buried Library" outside Tehran, and was going to resurrect the planned building, along with the planned sculptures, as a surprise for Burt.

Now Megan strolled in under the slowly brightening dome and shook her head, looking up at veils and screens and columns of delicately pierced marble, delicate Mo- ghul calligraphy and wall-carvings all painstakingly reproduced, and wondered whether Burt appreciated what Wilma was doing as a present for him. If he doesn 7, she thought, he needs his head felt…

But then maybe that's just the point. She wondered whether psychiatric screening was any part of what they did for you in Breathing Space. It wasn't anything she would have ever felt comfortable suggesting to Burt herself.. but the thought had occurred to Megan, often enough, that someone who'd been through what he'd been through with his folks might possibly benefit from a little counseling…

She strolled across the marble floor to where Wilma kept the "work" part of her workspace. This was a replica of her home's dining room table, a massive thick-legged artifact of polished teak, its top all inlaid with beautiful light-wood curlicue designs that were the work (Wilma had told her) of an eccentric uncle who had lived in New Zealand. The ornate surface was covered, as usual, with school notes, notebooks, virtual pads like the one Megan's mother had been working on, and as always, a set of rolled-up duplicates of the Black Taj codices, three flaking-edged folios of ancient parchment written all over in Hindi or Urdu… Megan could never remember which was which. Wilma, in an electric-blue T-shirt and leg-sliks surprisingly tight for her usually more conservative tastes, glanced up at Megan as she came. "What kept you?"

"A long shower," Megan said, "and the inevitable brother. Dad keeps saying he's going to have them come and install another Net server, but somehow he keeps getting distracted."

Wilma sighed. "Tell me about it," she said. "My little sister practically lives in our Net chair. I don't know why she doesn't develop bedsores."

She straightened up from the paperwork and looked around her. "Hey, Rube!"

"Yeah, what, boss?" said an annoyed, gruff male voice out of the air. This was Wilma's workspace management program, which for reasons Megan couldn't quite follow appeared to be some sort of eternally irascible reincarnation of Wilma's uncle who'd made the table. For her own part, Megan preferred management programs to have a little less personality, but there was no accounting for tastes. "Hey, Megan."

"Hi, Uncle Doug," Megan said.

"Stop socializing and get busy!" Wilma said.

"It'd help if you told me what you wanted me to be busy with. I don't read minds," said "Uncle Doug," "and I don't think you're about to buy me enough processing power to fake it."

"The address I gave you," Wilma said. "Open a door to it."

A black patch about the size and shape of a door appeared. "Please note," said "Uncle Doug" in a changed tone of voice, "that this access is controlled. All access to the space is by express permission of Breathing Space Inc., and unauthorized accesses or attempts to enter or exit the space by other than officially sanctioned means will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law under statutes defining criminal trespass and violation of privacy according to appropriate state, federal, and international authorities. Persons with restraining orders filed against them are warned that entry into this space is regarded as physical approach in all states except Hawaii, Colorado, and North Dakota. Entry into this space indicates that you understand and accept these conditions."

"Right," Wilma said, "we accept, let's go!"

She went through the door. Megan went after her.

A moment later they found themselves standing in a large, bright reception area, as unprepossessing and impersonal as an airport: high white walls, soft white lighting from high up in a forty-foot-high virtual ceiling. In the middle of it all was a plain white desk with a severe- looking dark-haired young man sitting behind it. They made their way toward him, and he looked them over as the two of them came up to his desk.

"Wilma Christensen," he said, "and Megan O'Malley?"

"Yeah," and 'That's right," they said.

"Here to see Burt Kamen" He glanced into the air to one side of the desk, probably at some data readout that the local space was set for them not to see. "Right. You ladies understand the rules? Don't ask him for information about where he is physically. That's his business. Other than that, there's no limit on visiting times- any time he chooses to have the system flag him as 'available,' you're welcome. The only exception to that is when he's meeting with family. The same entry combination he gave you will work for any further accesses, but if you attempt entry through any other Net address than this one, you'll be banned. Address control like this is the only way we can guarantee our clients' safety, and we take it very seriously."

They both nodded. "Okay," said the young man, "he's through there. Follow the blue tracer. It'll lead you to him."

A small spark of blue light appeared, and immediately thereafter, another door appeared in the air. The blue light drifted through it, and Megan and Wilma followed.

Megan, at least, had to pause for a moment to gaze around her in sheer appreciation as they came out the "other side." The landscape stretching away around them on all sides was absolutely breathtaking-some mountain range in the northern Rockies, she suspected. The hills running up to them, among which she and Wilma stood, lacked that manicured, managed look to be seen in the foothills of the Alps. Someone did a really great job building this, Megan thought, for she knew there was more to constructing a virtual domain than simply patching in a lot of 360-degree stereo stills. The wind blew, there was a faint fizz and hiss of rustling aspen leaves on the branches of the little patches of woodland surrounding them. The air smelled of snow and the pine trees that started farther up the slope of this particular line of hills. There was no one else to be seen for miles around… and Megan suspected this virtual "clear space" had been crafted as much for psychological reasons as for its sheer beauty and restfulness. It was a place made for people who had had entirely too much of the people closest to them, lately.

The little blue light was sailing ahead of them, through the aspen spinney and out the other side. The two of them headed after it, through the spinney, up a bare path through the grass to a gentle hillcrest, and down the far side. There was a single figure there, sitting under a tree, wearing worn jeans and a tank top; as they spotted him, and the blue light went sailing down toward him, the sun came out and flashed brilliantly on shining blond hair. He glanced up.

"Burt!"

Wilma ran down the slope to him as he got up, hurrying toward her as Wilma hurried. A few seconds later they rushed together, and Megan wasn't quite sure where to look, except not at them-for it can be painful to find that, despite all the good help you think you've been giving your friend, she has nonetheless just barely been holding it together. Now Wilma and Burt were clinging to each other, and Wilma was just barely stifling the sobs, but it was a close thing. Burt was hugging her hard, with his face scrunched down into her shoulder, and from the shapes into which his expression was twisting itself, Megan half thought he might cry, too. But he hung on to his composure, and after a few moments Wilma pulled herself together as well, and said, in a slightly strangled voice, "I was so worried about you!"

"You didn't have to be… you know I can take care of myself."

"Yeah," Wilma said, "but that's different from knowing that you don't have to be taking care of yourself, that you're all right!"

Burt winced a little, and then said, "If I'd known you were going to carry on like this, maybe I wouldn't have told you where I was… "

"Nice to see you, too, Burt," Megan said, rather dryly.

"Uh," Burt said, and straightened up and looked at Megan with a rather more repentant expression. "Uh, sorry, Megan. Thanks for coming. It really is good to see you… "

Megan restrained a sigh. Often enough in Wilma's relationship with Burt she seemed to find herself in the "advice-giving" position, having to issue reality checks to one or the other of them. It wasn't as if they didn't need them, occasionally, either, but sometimes Megan wondered how long her patience was going to last, since both Wilma and Burt seemed to need a fair amount of coaching in how to treat human beings they were supposed to be close to. Not that I'm necessarily any great expert, Megan thought. But even a talented amateur can do some good…

"Obviously I'm not going to ask you where you are,"

Megan said. "But I, for one, wouldn't mind knowing where you've been"

Burt sat down under a nearby silver larch, and Wilma sat down next to him. He put an arm around her. Megan made herself comfortable leaning against another tree not far away. "I went up to New York for a couple of days," Burt said. "I had enough money to afford one of those stacktels they have near Grand Central."

Megan raised her eyebrows. She'd heard of these, an import from the Japanese market. They were "hotels" where you didn't so much rent a room for the night as a locked personal cubbyhole ten feet long, four feet high and four feet across, just big enough to lie down in for eight hours at a time. The stacked-up cubicles had Net access, but as far as Megan could tell, that was their only difference from a coffin. And the thought of sleeping stacked up in the company of who-knew-how-many other human beings, like sardines in individual cans, gave her the creeps. "How was it?" she said.

"Not too bad." Burt stretched his legs out in front of him. "I was scouting around for some work there… but I didn't want to linger. There are people there who can just tell if you've got nowhere to stay… and I wanted to get myself settled. So I found the address of a Breathing Space facility"-He smiled. He was not going to tell even them which one-"and used some of the funds I had left to get there. They've been nice. They kit you out with all the essentials right away."

"Like Net access," Megan said, looking around her again in open admiration.

"Yeah, it's pretty slickIt's comfortable enough.

The rooms are small, and pretty basic, but they're bigger than a stacktel… and safe. And there are a lot of other kids around to talk to."

"You could have fooled me," Wilma said, looking around them at what seemed beautiful but completely desolate wilderness.

Burt chuckled. "It's not as empty as it looks. This place has selective 'invisibility' routines built in. You can't be seen by the others here unless you set your personal profile up that way. This whole area could be crawling with people, but you wouldn't know about it unless they felt like talking."

Megan nodded. "You've been thinking about this for a while, huh?"

"I knew eventually it was just going to be too much," Burt said. "It seemed better to have a plan for when that happened… "

"But when are you coming back?" Wilma said.

"Back home?" Burt snorted. "Why would I go home?"

Wilma blinked. "Well, your friends… and you have to try to patch it up with your folks sometime… "

"Do I?" Burt's voice acquired something of an edge. "Why?"

"Well, I mean, yofl can't just dump them"

"Why not? They've been talking about dumping me for almost as long as I can remember."

"Burt," Megan said, "that's kind of harsh"

"But it's true. Megan, you don't know them as well as Wilma does… " Burt shook his head, looking out at the distant mountains. "My folks… they'd really rather be rid of me. You know they would, Megan! Wil's heard a whole lot more of it than you have."

Megan briefly flushed hot with guilt. This was almost certainly true, since she avoided every contact with Burt's parents that she could. "You get tired of hearing it after a while," Burt said. " 'You haven't been worth your keep since you got old enough to start avoiding your chores.' " His mimicry of his father's slightly Southern accent was bitter and precise. " 'Instead of you, I should've got a dog, and shot the dog.' " And he shifted tone, so that it was his mother's voice that spoke next: " 4All the other mothers have kids they can be proud of, but when your name comes up all I can do is tell them I made a mistake and I'll try to do better next time.' "

Megan looked away, uncomfortable. "You see?" Burt said. "You can't even imagine it. Me, I can't even imagine going home and not having people telling me what a waste of time I am. What kind of life is that for somebody? Sometimes I think, forget it, it's too late for you, they've got you programmed. No matter what you do now, it's never gonna work, you're always going to mess up, because that's just what they expect you to do… "

He shook his head. "It's got to stop," Burt said. "If I'm ever going to make something of myself later, I have to get out of this, go find somewhere that I don't immediately look like I have FAILURE written all over my face in big letters. Somewhere where people won't tell me that I do… like they do at home, every minute of the day."

He fell silent for a few breaths.

Wilma looked at him, her expression turning more stricken by the moment. "You're not coming back, are you."

He shook his head.

"Burt-"

"Don't try to talk me into it," he said in a warning tone. "Even the people who run this place don't try to do that."

"What do they do?" Megan said.

"Oh, there's some counseling," Burt said, and twisted against the tree a little, like someone who finds he's leaning on a root, or an unpleasant memory. 'That's part of the basic agreement. But they don't force you, they don't make you trade off contact with your parents for a place to stay. I checked that out before I came here." He sighed, looked at his boots. "There's some career counseling, too, for 'when your situation is stable again.' It's just code for 'when you finally give up and go home.' But I'm not gonna be one of the ones who do that. There's too much at stake."

"How long can you stay?" Wilma said, in a small voice.

Burt made a face. "That's one of the things the counseling staff won't usually discuss," he said. "They say that it's always handled on a case by case basis, depending on what each 'client' needs. But I've been talking to a lot of the kids here, and I haven't met anyone who's been here longer than about three months." Burt's face then acquired a smile, but it was a dry one. "By then," he said, "if they let me stay that long, I'll be eighteen… and after that it doesn't matter so much. I can go where I like, work where I like. And even now I've been hearing about some pretty good possibilities, things that'll be a lot more interesting than school… or trying to 'patch things up' at home."

Wilma's face was very still. "What about us?" she said after a moment.

"I'll come back when I can," Burt said. "Look, Wil, I know it's hard, but it's going to be hard on me, too. When I get a job, I won't be able to take time off any time soon. I'm going to have to work pretty steady for a while. And I'm not going to be staying around the old neighborhood, either. Too many bad memories… and too many chances I might run into my mom or dad." He shook his head. "I've had about enough of them for a while, and they've been saying they've had enough of me. We'll see if it's true. There sure haven't been any attempts by them to get in touch with me here." The bitterness in Burt's voice was once again sharp enough to cut.

"They haven't tried at all?" Megan said.

Burt leaned back against the tree again and shook his head wearily. "Look," he said, "I shouldn't complain. I've been thinking that I should have done this a long time ago. I've met a whole lot of other kids since I got here who've had problems even worse than mine. You wouldn't believe some of the crud they've been through.

And the one thing we all seem to have in common is that none of us can believe how long we put up with something that, if one adult did it to another, they wouldn't put up with for a second. They'd be on the link to the cops, or out the door, in a matter of hours. But some of us here have stuck it out for years, because we had no choice. We were kids, we were trapped, the system is slanted against us from the start, and there was nowhere else we could go, no one who wouldn't send us straight back where we came from and wash their hands of us. Or maybe we really thought our parents would change their ways somehow. We thought that something we did right would eventually make a difference… " He shook his head. "No more of it," Burt said. "And I don't see why I should bother going back to school, either, at 'home' or elsewhere. One more year isn't going to make any difference at all."

Against such certainty, it was hard to know what to say. Wilma looked down at the grass, picked a small lawn daisy that she found there, and began pulling the petals off it, two or three at a time. "Look," Megan said, "until you at least finish high school, you aren't going to be able to get a job that's going to be worth much-"

"I've already found out here about some jobs that're worth a lot more than any job a high school diploma would get me," Burt said, turning those flashing blue eyes on her. "Come on, Megan! Think about it! As if a diploma means that much anymore! It'll get you a job washing dishes in someplace too small and rotten to have a machine to do it, that's about all. It gets you into college- if you have the money, and who has that much money?" Megan had to let out a breath at that. The only real tension she had noticed in her household over the past couple years had revolved around the fact that the savings plans established when she and her brothers had been born were not now yielding anything like enough money to completely cover their coHege costs. Her mother and father never actually fought about it… but the subject was often just there, hanging over other conversations, like a sword hung over the kitchen table by a hair.

"Forget it," Burt said. "If I want college, some day, F'll come back for it. Right now I'd sooner get out into the real world and find out what life is like, without people running me down all day. Make some decent money and stow it away. There are plenty of jobs out there" He trailed off.

"Come on, what kind of jobs?" Megan said. "Seriously, Burt, we're worried about you… we don't want you to wind up in some kind of trouble. And going job-seeking right now could cause just that. Sooner or later anyone who pays you anything worth earning is going to want your permanent address, and your Social Security number…"

"Not if you're going to be doing the kind of work where they don't ask those questions," Burt said, sounding stubborn.

Megan kept her reaction out of her face. He obviously meant some kind of black-market or gray-market work… not usually the kind of job you would enjoy for long. She'd had no idea he was that desperate. "Look," Megan said, "Burt, think about this before you go off on your own. It's a big step. And you don't have to do it any time soon. They'll give you a while to sort things out. Maybe your folks will even see the light… "

The look Burt turned on her was humorous, but at the same time made it plain that he thought Megan was out of her mind.

"I…" Wilma said. Then she held her head up, and looked Burt in the eye, and blinked a few times. "You deserve to have your own life for a while," she said. "I can wait for you to sort things out… if I know you'll come back."… For me, her eyes said.

The look Burt turned on her was heartbreaking. It was genuine uncertainty. "Wil, I don't know how this is going to turn out," Burt said. "All I know is… I won't be back to school this semester." He turned his head away, veering away from the heart of the matter. "And you're going to have to find someone else to ride the qualifiers with you. Later in the year, I guess…"

"We can find someone more 'permanent' to fill in," Megan said. "But, Burt… we're not going to be happy about it. It's you we're going to miss."

"Yeah," Burt said, and bowed his head. "I'm going to miss that, too. It was the happiest I got, usually. A good distance from home.."

None of them said anything for a few moments. Then Wilma looked up. "Can you come see something in my space?" she said, rather sadly. "It's not finished yet… but I'd like to see what you think."

"Yeah," Burt said. "Sure."

Wilma glanced over at Megan. "Go on," Megan said. "I'll catch you later."

Wilma and Burt stood up, took a few steps together, then vanished.

Megan sat there, looking around her at the superb landscape, and let out a long, pained breath. She had had the occasional boyfriend in her time, but she had never been as serious about any of them as Wilma was about Burt. Now she almost felt grateful for that. IVd be terrible to feel about somebody the way Wil does, and then have them going through this kind of pain…

She stood up, dusting her pants off, though the gesture was hardly necessary on virtual grass. And what kind of job is he talking about? Megan thought. Except for his riding, he doesn 't really have any skills… Certainly there were jobs in the "gray economy" that would employ a kid Burt's age for a little while… but nothing that would give the worker any security. Not that it sounded as if Burt particularly cared. But there was something about this that was making Megan twitch. Normally, if Burt was going to be doing something aboveboard, he would have told them all about it, right away. Keeping secrets was not his forte. I wonder…

Then Megan shrugged. At least he was all right, and his skin was in one piece. If his ego seemed a little raw and tattered around the edges, well, he had an excuse. After the prolonged hell of being constantly told he was good for nothing, this must seem like heaven to him- professionals who were genuinely interested in him and willing to listen, a place to stay far from the troubles of home, access to his friends. If Burt felt like bragging a little about the possibilities that now seemed open to him, who was Megan to ride him too hard about it?

She made her way back through the beautiful landscape to the preset egress "door" which was standing there, pale against the sunlit hills, waiting for her. Once through it, Megan waved at the guy behind the desk, told the Breathing Space management system the address of her own Net space, and a moment later was standing again in her white amphitheater, watching Saturn slip under Rhea's horizon, only a sliver of rings still showing above. A moment later the Sun set as well, and with that small change of temperature, the moon's thin unstable atmosphere cooled enough for it to begin to "snow" frozen methane out of the lowest layer, which had until now been mist.

Megan turned her back on it and broke out of her virtual space, for the moment very much wanting some contact with parents she knew loved her, despite occasional friction, and brothers of whom she was very fond, no matter how much she felt they needed to be slightly killed.

A couple of hours later the brothers had taken themselves out of the house on dates or other business, and her father had emerged from his office to eat and relax a little. Megan took the opportunity to use the office Net machine, which had an implant chair she liked better than the one in the den, and made her way back to Wilma's space. She should have had a little while to get herself back together by now, she thought, as she carefully moved aside the piled-up books which, as usual, were blocking the direct view of the chair and her implant to the Net machine's implant link. Her father never seemed to realize that not everybody in the house was as tall as he was. If she and Burt were saying goodbye for a while, she'll have needed it

But after she had lined up her implant, snapped into her own space, and used the door in it to Wilma's, Megan found her friend rather more pulled-together than she had expected. Wilma's mood was somber, but knowing he was all right had plainly made a very big difference for her. "Now that I know he's okay," she said to Megan, "I guess I can get on with things. Not that I really like the way they seem to be going… "

Megan could see her point. "You think he was serious?" she said, as they went out the front entrance of the Taj and looked down the length of the reflecting pools, still slightly vague in the advancing dawn, a light low mist lying over them in the moist, warming subtropical air. Down at that end of things was a great green space with nothing built on it, yet, and behind it only the low hills south of Delhi. Wilma had excised the modern city from this vista. "About not coming home, I mean."

Wilma stood there and sighed, and then shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "He sounds so torn up-not at all the way he usually does. I mean, he's always been really good at coping with his folks… but he doesn't seem to be coping real well at the moment." She turned around to look up at the massive dome of the Taj, now flushing pink with sunrise. "I keep getting the feeling that he's just repeating stuff he's said to his folks, to freak them out… or that he's been telling himself, over and over, to help him stand what's going on. If he really had a more concrete plan, I think he'd tell me. I think he's just uncertain… "

"You may be right," Megan said. "I hope so." She sighed. "What about this work thing? Were you able to find out anything more from him about what he intends to do?"

Wilma shook her head. "He didn't want to talk about it… said he was afraid of jinxing his chances somehow." She looked at Megan with slight bemusement. "I don't know why I think this, but sometimes it was as if Burt thought someone was listening to him. But he said that was impossible… "

"Yeah," Megan said. "Well…" She sat down on a marble bench nearby. Wilma sat down, too. "I guess he'll tell us when he's ready. Our job is to make sure he knows we're here to talk to him and help him sort things out, if he thinks he needs help. But I think it's going to be a mistake to assume that he's going to ride the retrial with us, Wil. We're going to have to find a replacement for him."

"I know," Wilma said. "I just… don't want to start thinking about it right now."

Megan put an arm around Wilma and hugged her briefly. "Look, it's going to work out," she said. "You should get back out into real life and check in with your folks."

"Yeah," Wilma said. She sagged briefly, but then she sat straighter. "Megan… listen. Thanks. Really, thanks. I know I've been hopeless, the last few days… but just knowing that he's alive and somewhere safe…"

"It makes a big difference," Megan said. "Yes."

"I should go… "

"Me, too." Megan patted Wilma on the shoulder, got up, and turned. "Door..

" 'Door' what?"

"Door, please, Uncle Doug," Megan said, with a wry look. She glanced back at Wilma. "Why is your space manager so snotty?"

"Minimum wage," said "Uncle Doug," before Wilma could even open her mouth.

Wilma chuckled. "He was like that," she said. "I like to keep 'him' with me."

It occurred to Megan that Wilma might have done too good a job with this. But then, she had also done something similar with Burt, who wasn't that easy to hang around with all the time either. Love is weird, Megan thought, resigned. Or is it love… or just habit, the tendency to want to prolong what you're used to…?

She waved and headed out her door.