*
The Better Nation lowered down a supply of hexayurts that they put up with practiced ease, glomming some together to make communal sleeping areas. More rains were coming and the aerialists would have to bumble to beat them. Their weather-conjurers predicted a drift toward the maritimes, possibly as far as Nova Scotia, and they solicited supplies, gifts, and letters for anyone they met on the way. The scouring of their meager possessions to find gifts restored some of their cheer, a moment of delight in abundance, and the renewed idea that there was always more where that came from, an end to scarcity on the horizon.
Some of their crew went with the aviators, accompanying the deadheaders. Some of the Mohawk kids, including the girl (who called herself Pocahontas and dared anyone to give her shit) joined the B&B crew. When Iceweasel shyly asked her why she stayed, she shrugged: “Want to live forever. Isn’t that why we’re all here?”
Seth, who overheard, put his arms in the air and shouted amen! and they laughed.
They walked.
Iceweasel found herself with Etcetera and Seth. She looked at them and remembered that impossible time when they’d met at a Communist party, and thought about self-replicating beer and poor Billiam, about her father—it had been ages since he’d last sent an email; she never answered them—and her sister and mother, and default, all that had become of such a short time.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” She twirled to take it in, feeling young and beautiful in a way she’d lost track of. “Who the fuck are we to decide to walk away, to make a better society?”
“I know who I am,” Seth said. “You’re a rich girl I kidnapped with terminal Stockholm syndrome. This douche bag is Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza.”
“Needs more bananapants,” she said.
Etcetera smiled. “You can call me Bananapants if you want.” He hugged her and the hug wasn’t precisely brotherly, but it was more brotherly than not, and to the extent that it was not, there was sweet nostalgia for when they’d flirted like crazy, and she’d had that push-pull feeling of not being precisely interested, but being kind of reassured that he’d been interested in her. Funny how complicated it had been in default, when they only played walkabout, weekend bohemians. Once she’d stopped pretending she was normal, it got easier.
“Guys,” she said, her tone unexpectedly serious. It was a serious time. “I want you to know—” She looked from Seth to Etcetera, back again. They’d been aged by walkaway, but it gave them gravitas. A moment of lensing time let her see them as strangers, how rakishly handsome they were. She smiled. Her affection felt like molten chocolate. “I just love you both, okay? You’re good. The best.”
Neither knew what to say. Seth was trying for something smart-assed. Etcetera tried to figure out what this meant in the great scheme. She could almost hear their thoughts. Before either could say something stupid, she gathered them into a hug, reveling in their familiar smells. Their arms tangled, then found their way. The hug went on and on.
When they undocked, Gretyl and Limpopo were standing by, grinning like proud parents. She and Gretyl had scored a private hexayurt for the night, and she’d felt low-grade, anticipatory horniness ever since she learned they’d be alone. Now, with the boys in her arms and Gretyl looking on with Limpopo—so fucking hardcore and so hot, she’d had a low-grade crush on her for years—her horniness spiked with toe-curling intensity. She laughed at the sheer physicality. The boys laughed along, though who knew why. She was no longer inside their heads. That was okay. They were walkaways, and god help them, they’d figured out how to live as though it were the first days of a better nation, and she was going to get her brains fucked out that night. The world was good.
*
The sex was everything she’d hoped for and then some. There’d been a moment beside each other, legs tangled, hands working furiously, eyes locked, when she’d experienced time-dilation that would have been scary under other circumstances, a moment that literally felt like an eternity, and when it crescendoed with an orgasm that made her legs kick like a galvanized frog, she’d been disappointed to see it go.
Then they talked in the way of lovers. In the way of lovers, what began as murmurs about one another’s beauty and prowess, with strategic kisses and snuffling each other’s scents, a walkaway from everything suddenly veered into the default of life among the walkaways.
“It’s a nice idea, but it’s ultimately childish,” Gretyl said. “The idea that there’s no objective merit. You can believe that if you do something qualitative. But in math, it’s easy to see who’s got merit. There’s no sense in pretending every dolt is Einstein in waiting.”
“Einstein failed math,” Iceweasel said quickly. Einstein came up a lot in discussions like this.
“That wasn’t math, that was arithmetic. People who can do sums in their head aren’t doing math, they’re just calculating. No person will ever calculate as well as the dumbest computers. It’s a party trick. Arithmetic isn’t math. Knowing which arithmetic to do is math.”
Iceweasel sighed. The science crew treated the B&Bers with patronizing amusement when the subject came up, but she’d assumed her Gretyl was on-side.
“No one can do science on her own, right? Look at what Dis and CC did; it was such a team effort, everyone had to contribute, and even with all that, we don’t know if we’ll get CC back.”
Gretyl rolled on her side, let one of her small, clever hands trail down Iceweasel’s body from chin to pubis, resting on her thigh. No lover had touched her that way. It made her shiver. Gretyl had such a powerful hold on her. It scared her, in a good, sexually charged way. When Gretyl worked on her, face fixed in an expression of extreme concentration, she experienced absolute surrender.
Now Iceweasel moved her hand off her leg. The discussion was serious and she wanted to have her wits about her. Limpopo had explained it so clearly. She didn’t want to let her down.