“Gretyl.”
“Come on, girl, no one’s got time for this. There’s enough casualties out there. We don’t need another.” She looked around, didn’t see Gretyl, uttered a heartfelt “Shit.” She straightened up, waved at someone. “Hey! Come here, okay? Yes! Come here, will you?”
“You okay?” said a familiar voice. She looked at men’s legs in purplish tights, split-toed boots like martial-arts shoes. The toes were armored with beaded, overlapping layers of something moisture-shedding, like dragon scales.
“I’m okay, but she’s in shock. She won’t evac because she’s worried about her friend. I could probably drag her, but I should find her friend and let her know what’s happened, or she’ll go crazy.”
“Well, she always was loyal to her friends.” The person belonging to the legs squatted down and peered into her face.
“Hey there, Natty,” Etcetera said.
“Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza,” she said. She’d made a game out of memorizing it, their first weeks as walkaways, reveling in its extravagance. It came out in a singsong.
“That’s not your name,” Tam said.
“Call me Etcetera,” he said.
“And call me Iceweasel,” Iceweasel said. “Natty’s long gone.”
“And good riddance.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Let’s go, Icy,” he said, and helped her to her feet. Her leg had gone to sleep, her injuries had stiffened. She leaned on him.
“Gretyl,” she said, over her shoulder, to Tam.
“I’ll tell her,” Tam said.
“Thank you.”
“Want to ride in my zeppelin?” Etcetera said.
“That thing is fucking insane,” she said.
“Saved your ass,” he said. He guided her to a stretcher and she let him wrap her in a blanket and strap her in. He buckled into a harness and grabbed one of the stretcher’s guy-lines and gave it a sharp tug and they rose into the air.
*
The cold wind on her face as they ascended snapped her into lucidity, but the ascent was slow and rocking, and it lulled her back into a doze that she barely broke when they brought her into the zepp’s belly and Etcetera transferred her to a spot on the floor of the gondola. She rocked her head lazily and saw that there were many others, including CC, lying motionless. He had an IV drip in his arm and sensors dotted over his burned body. She felt bile rise in her throat and turned her face to the other side in time to retch the sparse contents of her stomach.
Her feet were elevated, so the puke rolled over her face and into her hair. She’d squeezed her eyes shut when she vomited, and the lower one was now slicked with bile. Someone daubed at her with a towel, and she felt ashamed. The hands were sure, and she cracked her upper eye and confirmed it was Etcetera.
“We’ve missed you,” he said. “Seth’s been moping like crazy.”
She smiled, but it came out as a grimace. “I missed you, too,” she said, but in truth she hadn’t. The realization startled her through her shocky daze. Why hadn’t she missed them? It was getting clear of who she’d been and the last threads tying her to default and her father and her zotta-ness. Though she hadn’t made any secret of her background on campus, they hadn’t seen the nest she’d inhabited with her father, ridden in his armored car, experienced his mighty influence.
“Where did you get this insane gasbag?”
He looked around. “Dream come true, isn’t it? After the zepp bubble popped, there were a couple hundred bumblers that were more-or-less sky-worthy, rotting in hangars. Someone got the idea of throwing Communist parties in the hangars, and then there was a whole airworthy fleet. Aviation authorities are going crazy, a bunch have been grounded, but the ones that made it to walkaway seem safe for now. This one showed up at the B&B a couple weeks ago, craziest crew you ever met, walkaway freaks who lived through the bubble, same as me, and can’t believe that they’ve finally got a zepp. They call this one The First Days of a Better Nation.”
She groaned. Such a walkaway cliché—she could imagine the crew, studied air of walkaway purity. She found that hard to be around because it reminded her so much of herself, back in the days when she’d been the token foofie of her Communist party crew.
He had a damp cloth, and he wiped the puke best as he could. Gentle ministrations from a familiar hand were overwhelming in so many ways, a sad-happy-lonely-homecoming feeling like the touch of the mother she’d hardly known. “What if they send more drones?” she said.
He shrugged. “We’re just about out of countermeasures. Certain death?” He looked at her searchingly. “But not for long, right?” He looked away. “Is it real?”
“Uploading?” She coughed. Her mouth tasted sour, her throat burned. “Depends on what you mean by real. I have a friend who’s done it, you’ll meet her if we survive. She can explain better than me.”
“First days of a better nation,” he said, with oversaturated irony.
“Or a weirder one,” she said. She felt for his hand and he squeezed hers.
“We’ll be okay,” he said. “Weird or not, we’re clearly scaring the shit out of your dad and his people, so we’re doing something right.”
“Fuck my dad. And his people.”
“Well, yeah.” There was a jolt and he nearly lost his footing. The whine of the impellers, felt through the decking, changed. “We’re going home.” He squeezed her hand. “Jiggity jig.”
[viii]
Gretyl found her in the onsen, sitting in the hottest pool with Limpopo, who had diagnosed her need for a lot of water. Gretyl was with Tam, who radiated body-shame and discomfort with nudity. Iceweasel realized how little thought she’d given to the special problems of being a woman with a penis, and how smugly she’d assumed that walkaways were so bohemian that it would all be simple.
She teetered on the precipice of self-doubt and her certainty that she was slumming and no one should take her seriously. The hot water felt claustrophobic and painful as her concentration slipped away and her stupid body wanted her to pay attention to it. Her face sheened with sweat.
She got out of the water and went to Gretyl. Her hair was scorched and one of her arms was covered in gauze dressing. As Iceweasel stood, her bad hip and shoulder came free of the water and the cool air made them throb with a suddenness that made her stumble. Gretyl caught one of her arms and Tam caught the other.