Authors: Christopher McKitterick
“
You’re up early,” she says, stretching beneath almost transparent sheets, her body creating a moving landscape of hills and valleys of the coverings.
“
You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had,” Jonathan says. He laughs.
“
Yes, I would. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Heroes don’t lie.”
Sometimes they do
, he thinks; maybe heroes are nothing but lies. “No, I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“
Then tell me what’s happened.” Her lips, the lower thicker than the upper, drop from faint smile to tight concern. “Tell me nothing bad happened. Tell me!” She rises to her knees, holding the sheet against her collarbone.
Jonathan is about to emit one of his nasty laughs, but cuts it off just in time. She sees me as something better than I am, he tells himself.
Don’t blow it
.
“
I’m all right.” Images flash to mind of his homecoming, of his parents and sister, of his visit to the Malfits’ ’board, of surgery and waking to find himself beneath. . . .
“I rocketed into space with
. . .
an EConaut.”
“
Space! With an EConaut.” She tilts her head and grins mischievously. “That’s the truth?”
“
I swear, Charity,” Jonathan says, a little more emphatically than he intended. “I told you I’d never lie.”
“
So you’re just all right, huh? Would you like to tell me about your little ride?”
Jonathan again feels the strange warmth flow through his body and rise to his face as he tells her about meeting Captain Jackson—though he carefully omits the name—and how they stole a Stratofighter for a night.
“
Oh, my,” she says at the point when the craft set down, “you’re so brave. Let me get dressed and we can go for breakfast somewhere.”
She has him wait in the next room for a few minutes. He closes the wood door behind him and studies the tiny space’s clutter; Not clutter, he chides himself. This is who she is:
Two white wicker chairs, slightly worn at the seat and arms. A coffee table with a marble top and a tripod of ultraglas legs. A wooden rack hanging beside the tall window holds a variety of crystal glasses. Plants of all kinds line the baseboard and windowsill. The walls bristle with shelves holding vases and ceramic figures—ancient gentlemen and ladies bowing and curtsying to one another beneath the shade of the vases—
“
Shall we go, Jonathan?” she asks.
Jonathan spins around and blushes as he realizes he was about to assure her he didn’t steal anything. He nods and feels his blood continue to rush as he savors how she fills the robe-like folds of dress that reveal shape and offer hints of skin where the ivory layers are most sheer.
She raises her eyes toward the flower-painted ceiling. “My car is on the roof. We’ll go pick you up
. . .
I mean, I’ll fly to your flesh and blood body so we can be together.”
When she extends an elbow, he’s not sure what she intends. Then he remembers the ceramic figurines and takes the proffered arm. Jonathan feels the firm softness of her flesh against his and is pleased that she sent such a complete 3VRD.
They walk through a door on the other side of the room which leads to a spiraling stair, up as many steps as Jonathan climbed in the Stratofighter—he smiles again—and emerge in a single carport. Jonathan is a little stunned.
“
You own a whole house?” he asks.
“
Yes. I didn’t want you to know I was wealthy too soon. You know. . . .
Do you still like me?”
Jonathan’s not sure how to respond to someone so apologetic and seemingly weak. The only girls he’s known in his life have acted as tough as hicarb and as bristly as broken glass. But Charity is so
. . .
female
that he’s more attracted to her than he can remember being to anyone since. . . .
“
Of course I do,” he says, hating himself for thinking of others while he’s with Charity. “But where’s your family? You don’t look old enough to own a house.”
“
Oh, my family doesn’t live with me.” Her face falls a little, but by then they’ve reached the aircar. She slips a keycard from a fold of her outfit and slides it through the car-door slot. “Let’s go.”
They climb into the car, the top lowers, and Charity keys in a setting to Jonathan’s headcard signal. For the next half-hour, they watch scenery flow past from the outer-rim town of Anoka. Charity talks of her love for trees and all living things, and Jonathan tells her he, too, once dreamed of places other than the city.
“
I’m an artist,” she says, and Jonathan smiles and asks her to explain. “I paint landscapes.”
“
You mean with
. . .
what do you call it? Brushes and stuff?”
Charity laughs, looks down through the low side window at a passing pond, then casts her eyes at Jonathan. So big, so welcoming
. . .
he can’t look into them long. “No, my dear Jonathan, landscapes of the virtual kind. My apps and templates are very popular.”
“
Yeah, of course,” he says. They fly silently for a while, and when Jonathan can no longer see greenery below, he feels Charity’s hand rest on his, right next to him on the leather armrest. He takes a long breath to calm himself, then turns his hand over to hold hers. Charity hums a few notes, and when Jonathan looks up from their entwined hands to her face, she’s smiling. Her eyes blink slowly. Jonathan can’t help it; he, too, smiles. He’s sure it looks stupid on him, unpracticed, but right now he doesn’t give a shit. Charity, this sweet and beautiful woman, this society heute with a house of her own—she wants to be with him. And not just that; she wants him with her intheflesh.
The car slows as it falls into the city’s invisible interlace of maglev passages. Soon, they descend to the side of a shattered street, the dry bed between steel cliffs. Reflected sunlight casts bright strips across the boy’s dark hair as he stands looking up at himself.
“
Just a second,” he says before cutting off the 3VRD. She grins and nods. Flash, now he’s standing beside the cleanest, most curr aircar he’s ever seen, its canopy nearly a full globe around a pair of natural leather seats. It rises and Jonathan, intheflesh, sees Charity, also intheflesh—and he has to open his mouth a little to keep his breathing from revealing his excitement.
“
What’s on?” he says as he steps up to the car.
“
Don’t be so formal, silly,” she says. “We’ve been together all morning.”
Jonathan shrugs and casts a look around. The street is dirty now, cluttered with abandoned cars and hulks that used to be—what? appliances? When he was with Charity, things had been cleaner, neater. She was landscape painting, he realizes. He loads his 3VRD almost as an afterthought and hopes Charity wasn’t offended that he hadn’t done so sooner.
“
Jonathan, I don’t mean to rush you, but I can’t be seen in the city.”
He studies her out of the corner of his eyes, and a slow smile crosses his face. He feels a little relieved.
“
So, you’re in trouble,” he says as he steps over the car’s side into the cabin. “Now I understand you a little better. That’s why you wanted me to find you first thing—”
“
Oh, don’t get the wrong idea, my dear Jonathan!” The canopy hisses as it begins to close. “I really want to be with you. I’d never trick you into helping me out of difficulties.”
“
So who are you in trouble with? The law?”
She looks forward as the car begins to rise. “I’m not a criminal. I don’t want you to think I’m a bad person. I just got mixed up with a bad fellow. . . .
Oh, Jonathan, he’s threatened to kill me if I tell anyone!”
Jonathan feels his meat lurch against the plush seatback as the car finds a channel and takes off ahead. He draws a deep breath—momentarily noticing the faint perfume in the air—and faces Charity.
“
Whatever trouble you’re in, I can help you. You have no idea what I can do now.”
“
You’d help me?” she asks. Her face softens and Jonathan wonders at the catalog of expressions those features know.
“
I’d do anything.”
“
Anything?” Charity looks away, watching buildings rush past. “You’d even put yourself in danger?”
“
I haven’t been afraid of danger for a long time, and these days I kinda don’t know anything but.”
“
Oh, Jonathan, I knew you were the kind of man I always hoped to meet.” She leans across the padded console and lays a hand on each of his shoulders, studying his frame, then moves her fingers lightly along the old shirt to his bare arms, down, sliding like feathers on his skin to his hands. She interlaces her fingers with his, then looks into his face.
“
I could fall in love with you, Jonathan. Could you fall in love with me?”
He feels embarrassed and her gaze seems to burrow into him. “Well, ah, first let’s get you out of the trouble you’re in. What, exactly, can I do?”
Charity blinks slowly again, licks her lips, shakes her head once, and leans toward him. Jonathan bumps the back of his head against the headrest, but—
What am I afraid of?
He closes his eyes and meets her halfway. They kiss, a long, tender, closed-mouth kiss, intheflesh. When Charity sighs and pulls away, Jonathan feels as if he’s back aboard the Stratofighter, free of the weight of his meat, in a gravity-free world he shares only with this woman.
“
I met Fritz at a 3VRD gallery exposition where my work was showing, along with several others.” Jonathan opens his eyes and watches Charity speak as she stares straight ahead.
“
Fritz is a rich man, the owner of a regional card upgrading center. He seemed so nice, even bought the rights to a few of my landscapes to use at his center.” She looks at Jonathan and her face grows animated. “He even hired me to do regular work for him!”
She details the daily artwork she created for the firm, how she looked forward to each day, what a kind boss Fritz was—and how, one day, Charity stumbled into a part of the company’s server and found something she shouldn’t have.
“
He had been making blackcards,” she says in a hush. “Not the kind you have.” She sees Jonathan tense. “Oh, don’t worry. A lot of people have those! I wasn’t worried that he was in any old illegal business. But in Fritz’s files. . . .
Do you remember those blackcards that caused that epidemic of neuron deterioration? I guess he tried to save a few credits . . . his weren’t coated properly, and they let out a trickle of power.” She shakes her head and tears rise in the corners of her eyes.
“
He had kept files of the cardmaking, who were his distributors, who bought the cards. When the epidemic began, he realized they were
his
customers.” She leans close, but this time fear lines her face. “Fritz even kept records of who he had killed because they could link him to the epidemic.”
“
And he caught you,” Jonathan says.
“
Yes! That was yesterday. That’s why I got caught in that Mobile Hostile Zone, because I had gone to a private investigator who could get me a deal with the police so I could stop Fritz but not use my own name. That’s why I stayed at the family estate last night, because it’s still in my uncle’s name—he just died last month and left it to me, but I haven’t changed title yet, and I was waiting to hear from the investigator.
“
Oh, Jonathan, what am I going to do?”
“
I can help you,” he says, and feels strong and grown-up and real because he knows he can. He only wishes she’d told him all this yesterday. “I have a friend who can tell me if Fritz is getting close to you, and I suppose when Fritz gets headlocked for trial, too.”
“
Who’s your friend? The EConaut?”
Jonathan shakes his head and laughs quietly. “I really doubt that guy can do much of anything for us right now. He
. . .
left. But I know how to get ahold of another Stratofighter if you want to really hide.”
“
Oh, that’s not necessary,” Charity says. Her face blossoms into a smile. “I bet you can do that, huh. I just bet you can, my hero. But I just want you to stay with me; I’ll feel safer knowing I’m not alone, that a capable man is watching over me.
“
C’mon, let’s go have a picnic breakfast!”
And she directs the car to head back out toward the country, southeast this time to a wooded area near Hastings.
They continue to talk as the car lazily hums along at 100kph, the occasional tree whipping past beneath them as the Minneapolis skyline shrinks behind. Charity manages to find out a little about érase, but not how he lost her, only, “I’ll never be able to see her again.”