Runaways

Chapter 6

When Megan was finished, all Leif seemed capable of doing was staring at her in astonishment. "Bozhe moi," he said finally.

Megan was shivering, and not because of the virtual ice all around. The reaction to some of the things that Bodo had said to her was finally catching up with her at the end of a long and stressful day. "They don't come back," she said to Leif, and slid off the hood of the Cadillac. "I can't get that out of my head. Leif, those kids aren't failing to come back because they've bought houses on the Riviera or retired to Florida. They're not coming back because they can't. They're in trouble, or locked up somewhere… or maybe even dead."

'That I could easily believe," Leif said.

"And my friend Burt is out there now, all excited, thinking he's on to a good thing," Megan said. "He'd probably kill me for saying this, since I'm hardly an expert, either, but he's not terribly experienced in 'the ways of the world.9 He's kind of short on social skills. He tends to do things without thinking them through, and after he's made a mess, he doesn't seem terribly good at cleaning it up. He's no suave secret agent type. He is a prime candidate for just getting himself killed if we don't find out something about who's sent him where, and get him back!"

Leif nodded and stood there with his head down, his hands thrust into his parka's pockets, studying the icy floor. After a moment he looked up again.

"So what are you going to do?" he said. "Blow the whistle, obviously."

"With what evidence?" Megan said. "Even if Bodo was willing to talk to the cops about this, which I doubt, it'd just be his word they'd have to go on. No one would take us seriously. And as soon as the people responsible for this kind of 'recruitment' got a single whiff of what was going on, they'd be over the hills and far away. Probably no one in Breathing Space would hear from them again for months, maybe years, until the 'recruiters' figure the heat's died down. But I don't think that'll be the only thing dead by then."

Leif paced back and forth across the frost-powdered blue ice of the floor. Megan swallowed. "What we need to draw them out," she said, "is for someone to show up that the recruiters would really want to hire… someone they'd be absolutely crazy not to hire."

There was a long pause at that. "Someone, for example, who knows two or three languages," Leif said then. "Or four. Or six…"

He looked at her with slightly narrowed eyes, but also with amusement. The expression looked a lot older than the sixteen-year-old who wore it.

"That's why you're here, isn't it," he said.

"I would never ask you," Megan said hurriedly.

"But you'd let me figure it out for myself."

"Leif, believe me," Megan said, "at first I thought I would do it myself. But there was a weak spot in that idea. I've been in the space already, as a guest, logged in and identified as such. If one of the people responsible for this secret recruitment spotted me there now, they'd be in a position to figure out exactly what I was up to."

Leif kept pacing, and didn't say anything.

"Are you home right now?" Megan said after a moment. It was never a sure thing, with Leif. His father was the head of a multinational banking and investment firm, and since Leif was very small his dad had thought nothing of taking him out of school for a couple of weeks at a time without warning, hiring a tutor for him, and carting him halfway across the planet. It was the kind of life Megan dreamed of, but Leif sometimes seemed almost bored with it.

He nodded now, looking abstracted. "Dad's taking care of some 'home office' business with the Anderson Investments board members… paperwork stuff. Mom's putting together a dance workshop for the New School. I finished my 'finals' work last week, so school's done for me until the fall. This is kind of a quiet time before the usual travel craziness starts in the summer."

Leif looked up. "And the quiet's been driving me nuts," he added. "I think you've hired yourself an off-duty linguist."

Megan swallowed hard. "Leif… we've been in a bad spot or two before, and walked away from it. But this is different. I don't think this is going to be very safe."

"It's not going to be simple, either," Leif said. "For one thing, if I'm going to be the 'inside man,' I have to get inside. And it would kind of cause talk if I suddenly turned up at a genuine Breathing Space center and logged myself in as in need of a place to stay." Leif grimaced. "My dad would think we'd had some kind of breakdown in communication… and my mom would rip my head right off my shoulders and give it a big talking to." He shook his head. "We're going to have to 'fake' me in there somehow, under a seeming. Falsify the virtual ID 'tags' that the Breathing Space system puts on its users… and find a way to get into their safe virtual space without going through one of the approved gateways." He looked thoughtful.

"All very illegal…" Megan said.

"Sure, I know that. But on one level, how hard can it be? The 'recruiters' are plainly doing it at will. What they can do, I bet someone we know can help us do. But we can't take all day about it, either, if as your buddy Bodo says the Recruiters are only there for a few days every few months."

Megan nodded. "What I'm not exactly clear about yet," she said, "is what we're going to do when we find out who these people are."

Leif's slight smile went grim. "I wouldn't bank big money on ever finding out who they really are. But what they want, and how they're operating… that's another story. If we can spoil that here and now, we'll have done something worthwhile. The important thing is to get the access fakery sorted out. I think I might be able to get help on that today."

"Okay. But, Leif, there's another problem. We can't just toss you at the Recruiters blind. We need a script."

"I'm not ready to make the movie of my life yet," Leif said.

"I don't mean that. Besides, you're not photogenic enough. I mean we need-"

"I beg your pardon. I'm told I'm handsomer than most."

Megan rolled her eyes. "Leif, just wrap it up tight and put it awayl Like you need to fish for compliments. I mean we need a backstory for you. Something to account for all these languages, and, dare I say it, a rather unstar- ved look."

Leif had the grace to blush. "I can starve if I have to."

"Yeah, well, better get started, because these people may be a little suspicious if you look absolutely in the pink of health. Why would someone with your good looks and talent be on the road all of a sudden? And why can't you produce any ID at all? Why isn't there any previous evidence of you in the Net?"

"There's plenty of evidence."

"All of it about Leif, not about this nameless kid who turns up all of a sudden looking good and speaking six or nine or thirteen languages! You've got to convince me that you're not a plant."

"I am a plant."

"You're so helpful. Don't make me start making unkind remarks about the vegetable kingdom. Start making up a story about yourself that'll hold water."

He grinned at her. "All right… I should be able to come up with something in time. Once I've got that handled, and we've seen what can be done about the 'fakery,' when do you want to meet?"

"The sooner the better, probably," Megan said. "I'm waiting for a virtmail from Bodo, but I have no idea when it'll come."

"You're not concerned about if it'll come…"

She thought of Bodo's odd look at her. "No," Megan said. "He'll mail, one way or another."

"Okay. Time for me to get busy, then. You go get some sleep… You look like you could use it. I'll call you in the morning. You have class tomorrow?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Megan said.

"When do you leave?"

"About quarter of eight."

"I'll be in touch with you around seven, then. That okay?"

She nodded, glanced back toward her doorway. "Leif," Megan said slowly, "it's a lot to ask of you, getting involved with this. I feel guilty already."

Leif leaned against the chilly Cadillac again, dusting at the right front "headlight" with one sleeve of his parka, and then looked up at her. "What do you want me to say," he said, "that I wouldn't do it just because you asked? Well, I wouldn't." He grinned at her shocked expression. "Sorry, I couldn't resist. But first of all, it's not like you're asking me something you wouldn't have been willing to do yourself. But also, this isn't just about your friend, is it? Looks like there could've been a lot of kids our age… younger, even… who these people have used. Putting a stop to that seems like a good thing to be involved with. And as I said, I don't have anything better to do for a couple of weeks, until my dad gets his head out of the corporate filing cabinet and my mom stops speaking in dance notation twenty hours a day. So don't bother feeling guilty about anything. Let's get on with business and make your plan happen."

Megan nodded and made her way toward the doorway back into her workspace… then paused, turned. "Leif?"

"You still here?"

She laughed at his gibe. He could be infuriating sometimes… but it was worth putting up with.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Now go away so I can start thinking about my new 'life.' "

Megan went.

In the old Union Station in Chicago, Burt stood near a magazine stand by the foot of one of several flights of stairs leading down into the white-marble main waiting room. As far as he was concerned, the place was earning its name: he was waiting, as he had been for several hours now. Burt was bored out of his mind, and he leaned there looking one more time at the statuary group over the big old door opposite him, surrounding the big station clock. The figures leaning on the clock were (he supposed) intended to represent Day and Night. He could understand why Day was holding, in his hand, a rooster. What was less clear was why Night appeared to be holding a penguin.

It was the kind of thing, Burt thought, that would have driven Wilma crazy. She tended to be very structured about everything, Everything had to make sense. She wanted everyone around her to know his or her role and stay in it. The trouble only started when you tried to slip out of one role into another.

Burt was getting ready to do that… though he had only recently started putting it to himself just that way. Since he had actually left home, it had become plain to him that he was going to have to make things work, now, was going to have to make a success of this new life. Otherwise his parents, if they found out he had somehow messed it up, would never cut him a moment's slack for the rest of his life. If everything went well, there would be a day when Burt would go back to them and magnanimously offer to take them back into his life, even after the way they had treated him. He was counting on his father to refuse, and after that he would be, for the first time in his life, completely free. But first Burt had to get on his feet and start making some kind of living. And if he was ever realistically going to ask Wilma to share that life with him-a request he had been trying to figure out how to make, sometime in the next few years-he was going to have to be able to support her. Burt knew that some people these days would consider that kind of thinking old-fashioned… but it was just the way he was.

That concept had been very much on Burt's mind when he had first met the man called Vaud, the man Bodo and some of the others had said was the one to talk to, on the "street corner"-which looked nothing like a street corner at all, but was just a blank blue-swirled little pocket of virtual space off a city plaza that Burt hadn't recognized. The pocket into which Burt had stepped from a nondescript doorway in the plaza contained a table, a couple of chairs, and Vaud, a salt-and-pepper-haired man sitting there in a dark suit with his hands folded, on one side of the table. There was no telling what he really looked like, of course; as in most virtual environments, anybody could look like anything they felt like, and this man probably had reasons to want to keep his identity private, considering the kind of work he was offering. He was a short man, but there was no sense of him being small. Everything about him suggested power and control. He had turned on Burt a sharp, narrow, cool-eyed regard, when they were introduced, and questioned him closely about what he thought he was going to get out of this job. 'The money," Burt said, and that cool face produced just a crack of a smile, the kind of crack you might get in a stone wall-somewhat intimidating with its suggestion that it might possibly split wider, with unfortunate results. Burt told Vaud the truth. His mother and father were not looking for him, he had no intention of going home any time soon, and that they knew this, that his friends weren't concerned enough about him to come looking for him- they knew he could take care of himself. All this the man called Vaud had listened to without much comment. Burt had shown him his driver's license when asked. It was clean, no points-but then there hadn't been time to get many, especially with his father unwilling to let him drive the car much farther than the local shopping center.

"What can you do?" Vaud said to him finally.

"Keep my mouth shut," Burt said firmly.

Vaud's smile widened, another crack in the wall, an alarming look. Burt didn't react, for what he had said was true enough. He had had endless education in that particular art from his father, who would tell him to shut his mouth about once every half-hour. But Burt also meant the phrase as he strongly suspected Vaud meant it. He would work and not ask questions, and not discuss it with anyone. Doubtless that suited Vaud's needs, but it also suited Burt's. He didn't really feel like discussing, with Wilma or anyone else, where he was going to be getting the money he was about to start making. He preferred to keep its source mysterious, if only because his life had always been short of mystery, and now that he had the chance to insert some, he intended to do just that.

"That'll do," Vaud had said at last, and told Burt to go on. If he was going to be considered for hiring, Vaud would message him the next day. Burt had gone out into that big busy plaza pretty sure that he had blown it. But the next day the message had come through, and then had come the meeting with the two other people, men-they might have been men-who were never identified to him. The one who wore the black sliktite, a tall young man whose face somehow always managed to be in shadow, even in that evenly lit place, never spoke the whole time. The other, a little round man who wore a suit like Vaud's and a face that could have been cheerful if anything like a smile ever got near it, let Vaud ask all the same questions again. Burt answered them doggedly, with no trace of annoyance at having to repeat himself. And finally, when the three looked at one another and then exchanged nods, Burt could have whooped for joy, but restrained himself.

"We'll try you out," said the little round man. "A little package needs to be picked up in Chicago and taken to Amsterdam. The people you meet there will have one for you to bring back. They'll give you instructions on where it has to be delivered."

"All right," Burt had said.

And now here he was, on time. He was mostly delighted with the way things were going. He had an overnight bag. He had in his wallet, for the first time in his life, the photo-embossed plastic card that was his passport-produced for him, by methods he hadn't inquired into, and forwarded to him, the day after he had agreed to take this job. His things, removed from Breathing Space this morning, were now in a left-luggage facility at O'Hare, and there they would stay for at least several days. Everything was going well, and Burt was in high spirits… but there was one thing very wrong. The man he had been sent here to meet, the one making the delivery of the package intended for Amsterdam, was very late. Was this some kind of test, to see if Burt had enough patience? Or was it just an accident? No telling. Burt waited. He had a magazine rolled up under his arm, but he had read it three times now. He let his eyes rest again on Day and Night, and once again wondered about the penguin…

Until he saw the hat. He had seen Shriner's headgear before, on occasion, when he was young. Now he saw one all bright with gaudy embroidery across the lines of polished wood benches in the waiting room, on the head of a man who had to be about six feet six, a man booming out jovial laughter at something a shorter man walking next to him had just said. They paused together in the aisle between the rows of benches, looking up at the clock and checking their watches.

And after that it all happened very fast. The man in the Shriner's fez-and very strange it looked, contrasted with the ordinary business suit-came wandering over to the magazine stand, and put down his own overnight bag next to Burt's. He browsed the magazines for a moment, bought a copy of Field and Stream, and bent down to pick up his bag again, looking at the cover. Then he strolled off to rejoin his friend, and the two of them vanished out one of the side doors, toward the corridor that led to the suburban trains.

Except that he was carrying Burt's bag, and had left his own.

After a little while, as the clock chimed the quarter- hour, Burt picked up the bag and slung it over his shoulder, unzipping the top of it to put his magazine away. As he did, he saw inside it the yellow jiffy-bag which he had been told to expect.

And that's all there is to it…

He let out a long breath. This was it at last, the real start of the change in his life-the change that in a few years would see him and Wilma settled down, safely past the discomfort and mutual misunderstandings that seemed to be getting into things at the moment. They would get married, and buy a house, and start a family… one that would be nothing, nothing at all, like the one Burt had grown up in.

But that would come later. Right now, time to leave. He had an hour before the check-in time for his flight.

But Burt did one last thing before he left the station. Casually he walked to that far door, over which the big clock was mounted, and had a good long look up at it. The door itself was impassable now, walled up with marble that matched the walls. This seemed to have been done in the last century, maybe during a renovation of the station. But Burt's attention was elsewhere. From right underneath the clock, he could see that the sleepy-faced statue of Night was holding, not a penguin, but an owl. It appeared, though, to be an owl carved by someone who had never seen one before, which explained its rather strange shape.

Burt sighed. Funny, he thought, I kind of liked it better as a penguin. I bet Wil would have liked it, too…

Smiling, Burt headed out of the station, making his way to the Metro line that went to the airport. It was going to be a long flight to Amsterdam, and he was planning to enjoy every minute of it.