3)

Zeta looked at Ro, she looked back. Without using words, having known each other for so long that sometimes words just became unnecessary, Zeta wanted to know what she should have him do. Ro clutched his arm tighter for a brief moment, then loosened her grip entirely.
"Go," she said, and added a nod. "Find out what he's doing here. I'll join you two in a minute, probably with tea."
"Lovely," Zeta commented. Ro shielded her eyes as Zeta transformed into a more appropriate figure, the little nine-year-old boy, the spitting image of his legal age hologram. The little boy Zeta would fit in nicely with their unexpected company: a fresh teenager.
The farm was deserted, and had been for at least thirty years, Ro thought. So who was this kid? What'd he want? Ro didn't trust children. They were always so snoopy, never minding their own business. And she knew, as she had once been one of those snoopy children. She could never keep her hands calmly at her sides, never refrain from asking a rude question, never "hold her tongue" or wait to be spoken to before blurting out information that would only be pertinent to a child's life. She huffed, tired of fighting with the memories of her past, and watched as Zeta, friendly as any human child, greeted the frightened newcomer.
"Hello," Zeta said, putting on the innocent airs of any little boy. The sick thing was, Ro contemplated, so little of Zeta's innocence was an act. "Who are you? Wutcha doing here?"
The youngster had no reply. He cowered into the corner. Ro thought she saw his freckles jump from the bridge of his nose to the back of his neck. She hated to see scared children. It was true she didn't like them, but she had also once been a very frightened little girl, and the memory of that could create a powerful empathy if she let it. Right now she wouldn't and couldn't let it. She frowned to herself. Perhaps she had done the wrong thing sending Zeta down for greetings. Zeta was friendly, to be sure, but there was something earnest in his manner that humans didn't know how to deal with, even though they didn't know that what they were looking at was only a hologram, that a robot lay under the image. Ro jerked to begin rising, but stopped herself, as she was watching Zee, just out the corner of her eye.
A sudden movement he had made reminded her of something long ago, something her brother used to do. But what was it? She hadn't even known her brother, or had she? Why was it so familiar?
She gasped when the apparition of her brother appeared on the barn floor below. There he ran in a misty translucence, looking over his shoulder behind him, as though pursued, but he giggled and laughed. He was as faded and colorless as any of her memories, but this wasn't a memory. This was real. She wanted to call out to him, and she reached out her arm as if to grab him, though he was so far away. His appearance began to fade, growing fainter and fainter as it reached the eastern end of the barn, where the sunlight swallowed him.
Had it really been him? Ro was so very unsure. She'd never really seen him before, not as the child the same age as the one ghost just before her. Could it have been him? Somehow she was convinced it was, and no other explanation would account for it. She didn't believe in ghosts, she didn't believe that spirits haunted the earth. Maybe spirits, she thought in great dismay, just haunted people. Ro put her face into her elbow, sighing.
Her old and tattered thoughts, as decayed as she could make them, had been creeping into her again from some directionless locale. It was wearing her down, perhaps in ways she didn't anticipate. What was wrong with her?
Zeta's glare up at her when he had detected a disturbance, and gave away her presence to the newcomer.
The boy was startled. "Who are you? Are you after me? Did they send you?" He felt the inclination to run, to run for his life like he thought he'd done before, a few days past. But something kept him there. A waiting, a longing, perhaps to be identified and rescued.
Zeta glanced at the child. "No, we're not after you." He tried to console. "Wait here. I'll be right back."
The boy was too scared to protest, too afraid they really were going to do something to him that he could not even consider fleeing. He watched as the young boy masterfully wound his way up the ladder like a snake vine, and flop over to the loft. Who were these people? He had only entered the barn for shelter, for a quiet rest out of nature. And he stumbled upon this! It already was a sanctuary for someone else! Good luck would never be his, and he always settled for negative chances. It seemed as though the rest of the world was shunning him. Would he never find a place to belong?
Zeta left him and returned to the loft, only to find Ro lying face down upon the dirty floor. He knelt beside her, changed his hologram into Ro's more familiar older friend, and waited for her to acknowledge him. But when she did, it was only to ask about the obtrusive child below.
"Who is he? Did you find out?" she questioned, rolling to her side, preparing to be mentally sound, lest Zee should see right through her cool exterior to the volcanic turbulence within. A hotness inside her was no mystery to Zeta; he knew very well what lurked beneath her, and she despised him for such uncanny, very anti-robotic insight. "What's he want?"
"Nothing. He's lost. He's a runaway. I'm sure he thought no one was in here."
It was too coincidental, Ro believed, that they should come across a runaway at that time, when she was having such difficulty dealing with the poignant memories of her own tumultuous childhood. Coincidences were so frequently unfair!
"He asked me the same sort of questions. Ro," Zeta said, in that sweet and certain way when he wanted something, "maybe you should talk to him."
Ro was unwilling. She was on the verge of losing her mind, and she knew it. So how could she help the poor kid but not herself?
Zeta noted her heavy reluctance. "He's scared and unsure of himself. At least you know what it's like out there. You could tell him."
"Well," Ro lifted her upper half off the floor, leaning back into her hands, "the great thing about kids, Zee, is that sometimes they don't listen." Ro bit her lip, glancing away precipitously, only to meet Zee's eyes again. "Why reserve that to just children, though, right? You can tell anyone anything, offer the best advice in the world, even the stuff they actually want to hear, and what good will it do you? People are bound to do exactly what they want to do, anyway. That's what I did."
"He's not like you," Zeta insisted. "You're smart, and you knew your options." He ignored her protesting scoff and snort. "He thinks he has no other options. What he needs is someone wise who is willing to point them out and take the time to do it. He's been neglected."
"I'd been neglected, too."
"I didn't neglect you," Zee murmured. He was starting to pretend that his patience was wearing thin. Something was disturbing Ro. The distraction was there if only she would accept it.
"Time, Zeta, is not something we've ever had a whole lot of." Ro waited in anticipation of more words from her counterpart, but she received none. All she had to do, however, was look into his nearly navy blue eyes and feel this intense obligation to do as he had requested. After all, as a robot he never asked for much, did he? Ro looked over her shoulder, stare downcast to the little boy cowering in the corner. He did seem lost, afraid of some unforeseen danger, but Ro felt little or no kinship with his plight. She sighed and gave in, for Zeta's sake, and for the sake of runaways everywhere.
"All right, Zee, you win. I'll go have a word with the freckle-faced monkey." She began to dust herself off, but her untidy, dirty jeans were hopeless, and her shirt wasn't much better. Her appearance was haggard and an unholy mess, and she was grateful that Zee didn't care how she looked. Zeta attempted to brush and pick a few strings of hay off her pant leg as she stood over him, but she kicked like a mule, wishing he wouldn't fuss. Whatever she was trying to do that she couldn't accomplish by herself, Zee was there, ready to help in any way he could.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I was--"
"I know, you were only trying to help. Listen, Zee, if you want me to help this kid you're going to have to keep out of it. Got it?"
"You must do whatever you think is right."
Had she just imagined it, or did the synthoid actually look a little hurt as he said that? She really was losing her mind. "I bet you do." She began to toss one leg over the ladder, and realized that this barn was becoming as familiar to her as any other home she'd ever known. The loft was like the top of a bunk bed. It reminded her of day camp she'd attended with or without the popular and irritating Tiffany Morgan. It reminded her of a lot of things she should not be reminded of. One last word to Zee before she disappeared over the edge. "You've learned by now when to stay out of my way." Now if you, Ro continued to think about Zeta, could just stay out of trouble!
Ro casted a wayward glance at the eastern portion of the barn, opposite the corner where the runaway kid was locked stiff as a board. She kept her stare lingering for just a moment, and saw through the beams of morning sun the dust they had kicked up in their presence, because they had forcibly disturbed something so ancient and peaceful. But her brother, had he been there? No, she told herself. It had not been him. She was imagining things. It happened sometimes, she heard, when a person didn't get enough sleep, they could hallucinate, see things, hear voices. With a sigh, she presented her precious attention to the kid. He drew up close to her, but not too close. Perhaps she looked more inviting than innocent little Zeta, and she found that terribly difficult to believe.
He was maybe thirteen, judging by his height, the shape of his face gaining an adolescent bone structure: a chin about to go square, a brow about to expand. But his ears still stuck out and were nearly above his eyes, so he looked out of proportion. Most teens do look awkward, Ro thought quizzically. She must've looked a fright at thirteen, all gangly, short, walking gracelessly, with ape-like arms and broad shoulders. But this kid had nothing on her.
"What's your name?" she asked casually.
"Mike," he said. So he didn't know who these people were, but at least he felt something with this girl in front of him. She looked angelic, with a corona of bright blonde hair, all crowned and glowing with the sunlight hitting her from behind. Did she have wings, did she have a wand? He didn't care, he didn't want to believe so. She was old enough to be relied upon, he knew that, but he didn't know if he should trust her.
"All right, Mike," Ro gave him a winning grin, "what's your name?"
The kid huffed, let lax his arms and hands, as though defeated. "Jas. My name is Jas."
"That wasn't so hard, was it, Jas?"
Jas did not like to be teased, not matter how harmlessly. He flushed hotly. "Maybe not for you. What's your name?"
"I'm Ro. The freak in the loft is Zee."
Jas shifted his nervous, bloodshot eyes to the loft. Zeta, no longer exposed in the little boy appearance, waved at him like they were neighbors passing on a small-town sidewalk. If Jas wondered what had happened to the little boy who'd talked to him before, he wasn't asking. And he wasn't wondering. As far as he knew, that little boy was still up there, and was an entirely different entity.
"What you two doing here? Is this where you live?"
"No, are you kidding? We're actually from the Caribbean. Zee's an island prince, and very well respected among his clan." If Ro could do nothing else in life, she could really tell a convincing lie, but the fatness of the lie depended solely on the gullibility of the attentive party. It wasn't so much lying, Ro weighed, as it was telling a story. Sometimes stories and make believe were the only things she had.
"What would a prince be doing in a hay loft in the West Country? I mean, this is Oregon, isn't it? We don't even have palm trees." Jas was clearly not buying a bit of the lie, but he was having fun at playing along..
Perhaps her eyes had given her away, something unconvincing in her expression. She would have to work on that. Children were not as credulous as she suspected. Had she been when she was thirteen? It was too difficult to remember. It was four years ago. Too far back. Anything before the age of fifteen she considered a separate life. "Where you heading, Jas?"
"Nowhere." He stopped, scanning her face for signs of the kindred. "I don't know." The burlap sack he had slung over his shoulder fell to rest beside his leg, where he had stooped to drop it. The sound of glass clanged. What in the world did he have in there, bottles of Yoohoo and rolled up comic books?
Ro had an idea. Was it a good one? No, probably not. But it would do, like most of her ideas would do. She wasn't an idea maker. That was always Zeta. But she had told him bluntly to butt out. And she'd meant it. "Well, Jas, do you like to fish?"
"Fish?" Poor, tired and hungry, Jas was swooped into confusion. The last thing on his mind was fish, and it was not at all what he expected Ro to say.
"Yeah, fish. Zee knows where there's some good trout fishing nearby. You up for it? I hear trout for breakfast is quite the thing among mountain ruffians." Ro almost laughed as she said it. The very idea of her fishing! And not only that, but the image of Zeta fishing! It was enough to burst her belly. But she refrained, though it took all her strength to seep the image of country Zeta from her mind.

--

Note

West Country
A title I never bothered to explain until . . . well, I don't remember. It's everything in the US that's west of the Mississippi.