Elissa stopped in the act of lifting her glass for a second gulp of tea. The memory of that half minute in the changing room was a sore place in her mind, something she wasn’t ready to look at again.
She shrugged. “I saw her.”
“Did she talk to you?”
“A bit.”
Mrs. Ivory’s lips tightened. “Lissa, please. Don’t make me keep asking. What did she say?”
Elissa put the glass down on the countertop and crossed her arms over her abdomen, her shoulders hunching. “She asked me if I was okay.”
“And?”
“I didn’t want to talk to her. Mother, we’re not friends anymore.”
Mrs. Ivory tore open the box with a sharp movement. “The way that girl’s treated you is a disgrace. I said to her mother, as if this hasn’t been hard enough for you—”
“Oh God, Mother.”
“She should know, Lissa! When I think of how long you were friends, all the times we had her at the house, took her out with us . . .”
“Mother, it’s no good. We’re just not friends anymore. We haven’t been friends for ages.”
“And is that your fault? All this time her mother hasn’t paid any attention to the whole situation—it’s just simply not good enough. Now you’re going to be better again—”
Elissa stared at her mother, feeling sick. “Mother, we’re not going to be friends when I’m better. We’re not going to be friends. Ever. Ever.”
“Look, Lissa . . .” Mrs. Ivory’s brief flash of irritation seemed to have died. She poured the pie mix into the multimixer, added three cups of water, and shut the lid. “Yes, she’s treated you badly. I’m never going to like the girl. But you’ve got another year at school—you’re going to need to pick up a social life again. Once you’re better, things can go back to normal.”
It was exactly what Elissa had been thinking earlier. Normal. Ordinary. But she hadn’t even begun to get as far as thinking about picking up the threads of her old life again. And now, visualizing trying to do that, letting down any of the barriers she’d built over the last three years . . .
She crossed her arms more tightly over her body. “No. I’m never being friends with her. Not with any of them. Even if the surgery works—”
“When. When the surgery works.”
“When it works. I’m still not being friends with them.”
The salad maker beeped and its lid flipped open. Mrs. Ivory took a quick look at the crisp, frilly edges of the lettuce, the cucumber and onion that had been turned into green-edged ribbons and purple-edged rings, paper thin and translucent, then pushed the lid shut and touched the chill button. “Lissa, there are some things you have to be proactive about. You don’t have to love the girl. Her or Carline. But you need a route back into a social life. You can’t afford to be stubborn about it. If they already feel bad about the way they behaved . . .” She lifted a shoulder before going across to the oven and hitting the switch to unseal its door.
The hot, greasy smell of the roast chicken swept out into the room. When Elissa had come in, she’d been hungry. She wasn’t anymore.
“Is that why you talked to her mother? Told her”—she stumbled on the words, could only make herself say them by making them a quote—“ ‘as if this hasn’t been hard enough’ on me? To get her to feel guilty?”
Her mother gave her a tight smile. “Just paving the way a little.” She set the chicken on the countertop. Its skin was crisp and shiny with oil. “People will do what you want, Lissa. You just have to find the right way to get them to.”
“But I don’t want . . .” But I don’t want them to know I care. Don’t want to let them in. Not now. Not anymore.
It was no good saying so. Her mother had never had to go from being the girl who was picked, if not first, at least second, to being the one who—every time, every single time— knew she was going to be picked last. She didn’t know what it was like to sit alone at lunchtime, holding a book, not looking at anyone, pretending she didn’t care, when once she’d been on the inside of a whole group of friends. She didn’t know what it was like to avoid going to the washroom in case she ended up trapped in a stall listening to the people outside talk about her, not wanting to come out till they’d gone, not wanting them to see her face and know she’d heard what they’d said. Not wanting them to know she cared.
Mrs. Ivory dropped the empty pie-mix box into the recycler next to the sink. “Lissa, are you listening to me? You need to remember that, all right?”
Elissa let out a quick breath. “Yes. Okay.”
The look her mother gave her was intent. “I’m right, you know. You’ll find out.”
Elissa picked her glass back up, raising it to her lips to avoid meeting her mother’s eyes. “Yes.” The bubbles fizzed against the roof of her mouth, and the prickles rose into the back of her nose. Sharp and ice cold, a feeling like needles. Or like tears.
Bruce arrived just after six.
From her bedroom Elissa heard the door chime as it let him in, then her mother’s voice coming through the wall speaker. “Lissa, come on down. Bruce is here.”
And of course Bruce mustn’t be made to wait.
“Coming.” Elissa stood and told her computer to go to sleep. Her homework faded out and her own face appeared, staring at her from the suddenly mirrored screen above where she’d been sitting. The keyboard folded itself away into the cream surface of her desk, leaving it marked by no more than the faintest hairline crack.
Sometimes she wondered if her parents wished they’d stopped with one child, wished they’d never applied for the license to have another. Or maybe—the thought came, stinging—that they hadn’t used up that precious second license on her. If they’d had another Bruce—all-star, high-flying Bruce . . .
As she came down the central staircase, set to stationary to encourage healthy exercise, he was still standing in the entrance hall, tall and clean in his dark blue SFI uniform, dark hair clipped close to his head, talking to their father. Who had obviously managed to get home early too, although normally he worked late.
“Hey, Lis, how you doing there?” Bruce’s voice was cheerful, his smile wide, lingering a little longer than usual.
So, he knew about the operation. Her mother must have spoken to him earlier. Was that why he’d come?
She shouldn’t resent it. It wasn’t Bruce’s fault that his last four years had been a glittering trajectory of high-scoring exams and flawless test flights, that he’d jumped from standard SFI training to the fast-track pilot program and would be flying his own ship before the end of the year. Nor was it his fault that for her the last few years had been such a very different story.
She shouldn’t resent it. But . . .
“I’m fine,” she said, and slid past him to ask her mother if she needed help in the kitchen.
They ate in the dining room, amber afternoon sun falling in blobs of light and shade across the table, leaf-dappled both from the potted vines near the windows inside and from the cliff plants outside.
Elissa’s mother served the chicken shredded into salad and mixed with garlic dressing and wafers of shaved parmesan. There was a basket of rolls, fresh from the breadmaker, and butter that melted into golden oil on the warm bread.
Neither Elissa’s father nor Bruce asked how her early morning appointment had gone. Her mother must have spoken to both of them—and Elissa supposed there wasn’t any point talking about it now, any more than there’d been any point talking about the attacks of pain that had sent her rushing from other dinnertimes. There’d never been anything any of them could do; there wasn’t anything they could do now. She just had to go through with the operation like she’d gone through the pain. Either it would work or it wouldn’t.
Please, God, let it work . . .
“So Cadan and I are in the simulator . . .”
Elissa’s attention came back to what Bruce was saying. His face was alight with interest, a mouthful of chicken and salad waiting, forgot
ten, on his fork. “And it went perfectly, the whole thing. Evade, escape—we’ve done it hundreds of times, we ought to be able to do it in our sleep by now. So they sent us out to do it for real, told us we’d be graded on this one.”
He gestured with the fork. “They’ve been using the robo-wings with us now—tiny, unmanned ships, just built to fly attack patterns. They’re armed with blanks, obviously, and so are we. If we get in one good hit, it’s supposed to flip them into retreat mode. We win, job done.”
“Eat your salad,” said Mrs. Ivory, smiling at him.
Bruce grinned, then popped the forkful into his mouth. “So we’re out there in empty airspace,” he said around the chicken. “I’m riding shotgun, Cadan’s flying. And they send six of the things after us. Six. We thought they must have decided they’d been babying us so far, or someone in Control was having some fun with us.” He finished his mouthful and took a long swallow of water. “We took five of them out—no problem, just like the sim, and it’s not like we haven’t done it in the air before. But the sixth—I hit it, and it kept coming. Cadan started laughing, he said even the robo-wing knew I was shooting like a girl. But then he took a shot square on its flank; if we’d had real firepower, it would have split it in two. And it still kept coming. We were blasting it, and it wasn’t registering any of the hits—it just kept on in its attack pattern. We were pretty sure it must just be malfunctioning, and it wasn’t like it could do any real damage, but every time it blasted us, it would rock us, you know? And we were getting pretty pissed—” He checked himself, glancing at his mother. “Sorry, Ma. Pretty annoyed.” He took another mouthful of salad, chewed, and swallowed. “Cadan said he was damned if we were going to lose grades because of some piece of faulty AI. He told me to hang tight. Hey”—he shrugged—“I’m in a five-point harness, you know? No one’s hanging tighter than me.”
“And then what did he do?” asked Mrs. Ivory.
Bruce laughed. “He just drove the ship toward the ground. Full speed. The robo-wing comes after us, still blasting. Cadan takes us right down to the ground. I swear, I could smell the dust. He judges it to a hairsbreadth, then yanks the nose right up and takes us into a climb. We’re going up, almost vertical. Our bodies are used to most of what we put them through now, God knows, but my nose started bleeding, and Cadan’s face went green—I thought he’d throw up, which is no pretty sight when you’re flying that pattern! Then there’s this god-awful crash from behind us, and a fireball—I could see the flash reflected in all the mirrors. He’d led the robo-wing straight into the ground.”
His mother put a hand to her mouth. “He destroyed it?”
“Oh, yeah. Wiped it out. It’s scrap.”
“But, my goodness, aren’t they terribly valuable?”
Bruce laughed again, nodding, tearing a piece off a roll to mop up the last of his salad dressing.
“Is he in trouble?” asked Elissa, interested in spite of herself. Cadan Greythorn was an arrogant pain—she didn’t care about his high-flying career, but she wouldn’t mind hearing how someone had finally cut him down to size, maybe told him that, after all, he wasn’t God’s gift.
“I thought we’d both be, for sure. We were had up before the chief, and I thought—well, I didn’t know what they were going to do. I was pretty damn nervous, and Cadan was nearly as green as he’d been in the air. He said later, once he’d crashed out of the adrenaline rush, all he could think about was how much it was going to add to his debt if they made him pay for it—and whether they were going to dock his grades, too.”
He grinned at Elissa. “They made us sweat for a good five minutes before they put us out of our misery. Turns out the robo-wing wasn’t faulty. It was part of the test, and we’d aced it.”
“By destroying the robo-wing?” Elissa’s voice went high with indignation.
“Exactly that. That’s what they were testing us on, thinking outside the box. In a real combat situation it could have saved our lives.” He leaned forward. “Imagine it was a pirate ship, Lissa, huh? They’re not going to give up till they’ve torn your ship to pieces. If you can outmaneuver them like Cay did—”
Elissa managed not to roll her eyes. Bruce and Cadan had been friends since their early adolescence, when they’d met at the SFI-sponsored pre–flight training academy. Cadan, the only one on an all-inclusive scholarship, had thought he was all that back then, and unfortunately, Bruce had always taken him at his own evaluation. And when they’d both started expecting her to do the same, as if she had nothing better to do than be cheerleader to a pair of boys with toys . . .
“If he had to drive the other ship into the ground, I guess it was just as well you weren’t practicing in space.” She tried to keep her voice neutral so no one would accuse her of being pettily critical. Which she wasn’t; it was just freaking Cadan who, even more than Bruce, never put a foot wrong. He destroyed SFI property, and it turned out even that was the right thing to do. Of all the people on the whole planet, he was the only one who could annoy her when he wasn’t even there.
She hadn’t kept her voice neutral enough. Bruce leaned back, raising his eyebrows at her. “Trust me, Cadan would have worked out a way in space, too. And if you think pirates don’t pursue ships into planets’ airspace, then you haven’t been paying attention to the news. There’s a whole lot of planets that don’t have orbital police, you know, let alone flying patrols within the atmosphere.”
“Yes, I know. Jeez, I’m not stupid—”
“All right,” said Edward Ivory, cutting across the conversation that was not quite—yet—an argument. “So, your grades?”
“Still all-but-perfect. In fact”—Bruce grinned, his face alight all over again—“we’re looking at our first sole-charge flight in the next couple of days. There’s an opening in one of the trade routes—a pilot and copilot both out of commission. It’s not a complicated job—just as far as Mandolin. Two days there, two days back—but no one in the regular corps can be spared, so we’ve been told that they’re likely to jump a couple of cadets up to full service, just for the duration.”
“Really?” Mr. Ivory’s eyebrows went up a little. He often seemed somewhat removed from everyday life, detached, as if half his awareness were moving in a place elsewhere. But right now he was fully present and interested.
Elissa reached for the water, not saying anything, not being petty. The movement made the bruise at the base of her neck twinge, a tiny stab of pain that sent a needle of nausea up into her head. “Why do you think you and Cadan will get it?”
Bruce gave her a look again. “Oh, only because we’re the highest-scoring flight pair in the whole of the training school? Take it from me, little sister, we’re going places you can’t even imagine.”
Elissa flushed.
“Bruce.” Mrs. Ivory’s voice was sharp.
“Jeez, Ma, I didn’t mean because she was sick. I meant because she’s not SFI.”
Which, to be fair, was probably the truth. He was sometimes completely irritating—mostly because of the whole let’s-worship-Cadan thing—but Bruce had never been spiteful. Elissa bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said anything.
“Okay.” Mrs. Ivory stood up. “Has everyone had enough? Bruce, would you bring in the leftover salad, please? Lissa, you take the bread. I made lemon-meringue pie, Bruce.”
“Amazing.” He followed her into the kitchen, holding the salad bowl. “You know, Ma, I kind of think the food at school is improving, but it’s still got nothing on home cooking.”
“Oh, Bruce.” She laughed. “Well, you know I like to cook . . .”
The lemon-meringue pie had come out perfectly, the meringue even and crunchy all the way through, melting to sweetness on Elissa’s tongue, the lemon layer silky, sweet, and sharp on its crisp base. Bruce left—at last—the subject of Cadan and told a couple of other funny stories about life at the training school. Mrs. Ivory talked about a woman she’d seen at the Skyline Club who’d had six different procedures on her face and who no
w looked so completely different that the first time she came back, the club ID system didn’t recognize her and wouldn’t let her in.
After dessert, as they slid the plates and dishes into the center of the table and Elissa’s mother touched the clean switch, Bruce turned to Mr. Ivory. “Any souvenirs today, Dad? Or have I missed out on this month’s collection?”
Edward Ivory gave his faint smile. “You haven’t missed out. I do have some in my bag.”
The center of the table sank, whirring softly out of sight, and a fresh surface slid across to fill the gap before the whole table lowered its position and the hidden cleaning program came on. Their chair seats softened, armrests hummed up from the sides to settle into position, and the chair backs reclined slightly. Behind where Mrs. Ivory sat, the coffee machine switched itself on.
“Once we have our drinks,” she said, her voice firm. “I refuse to look at illegal gadgets without coffee.”
Edward Ivory was a police officer, high up in the tech-crime unit. When Bruce and Elissa were younger, they’d been endlessly fascinated by his stories of the criminal ingenuity some of the tech-criminals used, and with the impossibly clever confiscated gadgets he occasionally brought home for a more leisurely analysis than he could manage at work.
This time, he had a window-melter that would soundlessly rearrange the molecules in a sheet of glass, dissolving a window. He produced another gadget that would send a signal to jam slidewalks or elevators, forcing them to a halt, and one that would deactivate safety fields.
When he took that out—a harmless-looking thing like a slim black pen—Mrs. Ivory gave an exclamation of concern. “Edward, you shouldn’t have that, surely? It’s terribly dangerous—”
He smiled a little across the table at her. “It’s neutralized—this and the window-melter. We wouldn’t let them out of custody while they’re still active, trust me. And I’ll be locking them in my study tonight.”
He put the pen thing on the table, where it rolled slightly back and forth before coming to a halt. He reached for another object.
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