Again, Far was less than enthused. “My life’s flight will be a hash of a lot shorter if you keep the Rubaiyat stashed away.”
“O ye of little faith…” A smile twisted Eliot’s face as she stared out the vistaport. Not even dawn light could soften her features. In fact, it only brought out the shadows under her eyes, the tendons stringing her neck—things that made Gram weary by proxy. Though both of her feet stood firm on the Invictus’s floor panels, it seemed to him that she was standing on some sort of edge, close to tumbling.
None of this helped the anxiety piling in Gram’s chest. He tried his best to swallow it back as he shifted the Invictus into hover mode.
“We’re ready to attempt a jump,” he told Far. “Cross your fingers.”
Their captain, not one for lucky charms, nodded. Imogen made up for it by crossing both sets of fingers and her arms to boot, as if luck were something you could simply pluck out of thin air, cling to for dear life. Gram knew wishes weren’t quantifiable, but he found himself hoping she’d collected enough fortune for their journey.
“Three, two, one…”
14
THE GRID
BLAST OFF without noise
without anything.
Gone—the hills, the skies, the light
Darkness returns, even deeper than night
unfolding forever and ever, refolding into nothing, nothing.
Here is a place of contradictions.
Here is not here. It is there. And there. And there.
It is everywhere.
Or nowhere.
Time spins around. It stands perfectly still.
Moments within moments between moments
Each contains multitudes larger and smaller…
Find the numbers. Make them fit.
Shift and…
… click!
15
FOLLICLE FALLACIES
FROM DAWN GLOW, TO SEARING DARKNESS, to blistering midday light. Ow. Far should’ve known better than to stare out the vistaport during a jump—the shift in views paired with the Grid’s timelessness created a special kind of queasy—but it was better than being forced to face Eliot’s smirk. He’d thought, after some alone time with Priya and a nap, that the girl might be less infuriating. Not so. Her cockiness was salt in the wound, stinging for how easily she’d sent Far’s future spinning. A single wink, a shiny book. Years of work down the drain…
Phosphene stars marred Far’s vision, crept through the writing on the wall before him. He stared hard at what chalky fragments he could—Rembrandt, sapphire, fire, Hindenburg—and dug his fingers into the armrest. Priya was right: no sense in losing his head. This was far from over. He’d pin his life back into place piece by piece, starting with this chair. He’d never liked the captain’s seat—it was uncomfortable and such a violent shade of orange—but now it felt like his, because he’d had to fight for it.
“Time?” he asked Gram.
“We hit our target,” the Engineer said. He himself had the look of a man who’d dodged ten bullets. “April eighteenth, 2020. Noon.”
At least something was going Far’s way today. “Let the vacation commence.”
He really did want a vacation. Ideally, it’d involve him and Priya by a pool, a pale lager with two lime wedges, and a world without cares. Las Vegas had most of these things—true—but Far couldn’t rest until he knew what Eliot was up to.
The girl stood close to him, barefoot. Without her boots, she was quite short, small enough to blow away. Her hair was still coiffed in a first-class style, but its fanciness had frayed. Single strands quirked out from the pins, flew around her shoulders. All it would take was a quick pluck….
“I’ll gather our wardrobes!” Imogen headed toward the common area closet. “What are your measurements, Eliot? I can lend you one of my outfits, if it fits. Your waist is so tiny!”
“It’s this haze of a corset.” Eliot turned her back to Far.
There, just there! A lone hair ripe for the taking. He was certain he could snag it without Eliot noticing—working for Lux, he’d developed quite a set of thief fingers—but when he tugged the strand, it didn’t break the way it should have. To his horror, Far realized that he’d not only gathered a single hair from Eliot’s head but an entire wig. He dropped the hairpiece.
Eliot turned to face him. Where Far expected to see anger, there was only a hoity twist of lips. Where he expected to find her natural hair, there was none. Eliot’s scalp was as smooth as the rest of her. Those eyebrows, the ones that reminded him of penwork—they really were drawn on. Even her eyelashes were missing. Far’s brain must have autofilled them in before now.
“Well, shazm.” He glanced at the wig, now a glossy brown pile by his feet. “This is awkward.”
It became even more so when Saffron emerged to attack what he mistook for a fellow fur-thing. The red panda snatched the wig in his jaws and took off for the common area, striped tail waving.
“Saffron! No!” Imogen wasn’t fast enough to catch him. The animal leaped from couch to shelf to pipes, beyond their reach.
“Your hair…” Far trailed off, at a loss.
“Has been purloined by a ginger raccoon, from the looks of things.” Eliot squinted at the wardrobe: army uniforms, a pair of riding chaps, a prison jumpsuit. The original flowered waistcoat he’d worn in the Versailles Sim hung among them. Far wondered if she recognized the outfit. “Or were you referring to my lack of it?”
“Um…”
Imogen climbed on top of the couch, swatting clothing aside to find her furry ward. “Get back here, you scallywag! You can’t just steal people’s hair.”
One of Eliot’s inked eyebrows rose as she looked back at Far. Clearly she harbored the same sentiment. He needed to think of an excuse, anything other than the obvious—
“I thought I saw a feather,” he said lamely. “I was trying to pull it out.”
“How considerate,” Eliot grunted. Far doubted she believed him. He wouldn’t believe him, and so far this girl had outwitted him at every turn.
Imogen continued uttering swears as colorful as her hair, standing on tiptoes in an attempt to reach the red panda’s roost. Gram joined her. His reach was longer, but Saffron had scooted so far back into the pipes that they’d have to dismantle the Invictus to get to the creature.
“Best surrender.” It was all Far could do to keep from laughing, not because this was funny, but because the whole wig-napping scene had surpassed absurd. “It’s in the lair of the beast now.”
“Saffron isn’t a beast,” Imogen huffed. “He’s a beastie.”
Gram balanced on the couch’s highest point, swiping as far as he could. No use. He fell back onto Imogen’s cushion. His weight created a seesaw effect—and Imogen, having nowhere else to steady herself, grasped Gram’s biceps.