Keeping It Real

by Justina Robson

  “Don’t tell me you time-slipped!” Lila whispered from their partially hidden position behind the bulk of a Chrysler Majesty.

  “Of course not,” Zal said. “These people are all here to see the Rollright Rolling Stones. Look at their hair. But over there,” he pointed across the street to the Victorian magnificence of the Cherry Hill Hotel, “is a suite with my name on it. Let’s go.”

  “Why didn’t you materialise us in a room, or the lobby?”

  “Steel box girders—bad idea to intersect them, bad geology under the hotel, also media circus as elf appears with robot from thin air.” His hand closed more tightly on hers. He tugged and moved forward but Lila found her feet rooted to the floor.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She didn’t want to go back. “Nothing.” She made her feet move again and they walked past the staring lines waiting for hot dogs and the ends of the crowd filing in through the turnstiles. They crossed the street, and came under the brilliance and finery of the Cherry Hill plaza where the doormen and car jockeys waited, sitting on the low riding flats of gold plated luggage trolleys. Zal ran them through it, around the edge of the building and in through the kitchen exit.

  “You again,” said the chef, adjusting her white headscarf as she caught sight of them. Her sous-chefs barely looked up, although they let themselves gawp when they realised she couldn’t see them doing it. “Go round by the vegetable deck and not near my pastry with your filthy selves,” the chef added, brandishing the filleting knife she had in her hand.

  “Cook something for me,” Zal called with the sweetness of an angel.

  “Filthy bastard,” the chef admonished him. “Out, quickly, before I lose my licence! You look like you’ve been rolling in the mudflats.”

  Zal took the room service lift to the penthouse.

  “Don’t you think there might be somebody in here?” Lila asked him as he starting punching numbers into the keypad beside the overly ornate mahogany doors.

  “If there is, I’ll buy them out,” he said. The doors opened silently inwards.

  There was no one there, although the door was signalling the hotel which was signalling the manager that Zal was there. “He’ll just put it on Jelly’s tab,” Zal said. “They won’t even acknowledge I’m here. Jelly will never know unless his Mastercard starts bouncing.”

  His words reminded Lila that she hadn’t so far made a single attempt to reconnect to the Incon network or the Otopia Tree. The peace in her head had become normal to her, her brief life as a wired girl more like a dream than any lasting reality.

  She looked around the huge room with its highly decorated period antiques, beaded lights, velvet comforters, mountains of cushions, specially printed fabrics and enormous, marble Jacuzzi. She looked at her lover, his long, singe-fringed hair, his ruined clothing, his elegant eartips in a questioning forward gesture, a flicker of yellow fire in his dark eyes. “When are you going to call Jolene and let her off the hook?”

  “What time is it?”

  Lila read off her internal clock, which was picking up an update signal, “Eight p.m. Pacific”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Zal said, stretching, arms above his head. He let go with a shiver. The glass-shaded lamp beside him flickered in the classic electrical telltale of nearby wild aether. “And are you,” he waved the fingers of one hand beside his head, “talking to the secret masters?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.” Lila moved forward and put her hands up to his face, feeling the tingle of his andalune wind across her wrists. She kissed him gently on the mouth, exploring all the angles until they both found one that gave the perfect fit.