8)
Morning came early, just a bit after sunrise. If it hadn't been for the vociferous birds crackling far above that awakened Ro, it would've been Jas instead. He was loud enough to disgruntle any teenage girl who'd rather sleep than be up at the crack of dawn. She rose and wasn't surprised to find herself back at the camp, when the last thing she remembered was Zeta telling her that story about the Pleiades, lying on a rock not far from her warm, nature-made bed. Ro brushed down her hair with her hands and looked about the camp. Jas was so prepared to speak with her that as soon as he knew her eyes were open, he came near from the shore of the river, to her soft moss, fern and pine needle bed.
"Good morning, Ro!" Jas exclaimed. He was positively dancing on his toes, so excited he was to launch the journey home. "How'd you sleep?"
"Just fine. You?"
"I'm doing great this morning. Just great."
Ro recognized her responsibility toward Jas, and felt this need to be both sister and mother to him. Although she still did not like children, and treated them like everyone else, every other adult, using her snide civility, she found herself appreciating Jas. He wasn't a 'child' really, no more than she had been at thirteen. He did have a sagacity beyond his youth. She feared it would get him into further trouble along the line, if he did not curtail what could lead him out of control. As long as he chose to have a pleasant life, to use his brains to the best of his ability, he would turn out all right.
It wasn't long before traces of their night's camp were destroyed. Ro frowned deeply when her comfortable bed was ruined. "I slept so well there," she said to Zeta, who was busy taking it apart, flinging branches and particles here and there. "I felt like--like that character from that Shakespeare play." She didn't know Shakespeare well, but had the chance once to see a film based on the play, and is from that which she gathered her Shakespearean knowledge. Zeta said she meant Tatiana, the fairy queen. "Yes," Ro agreed, "I guess that would be her." She watched her fairy bed disappear, and hoped someday, in some other forest on the other side of the country, she would have a chance to build another. When the last branch had been thrown, and the last rock from the fire pit tossed into the river, Zeta began to lead Jas and Ro from the forest in an westerly direction, the opposite direction of Glenview. They needed to head to the nearest town for transportation, he informed, and it was several miles off. Jas could hardly contain his excitement. He would run far ahead with great animation, only to stop and wait for Zeta and Ro to catch up, which goaded both synthoid and girl into walking as fast as they dared. Zeta would not walk more than five paces ahead of Ro or five behind, so he had to plan his steps in accordance to hers, and her feet were far heavier than last night. With things weighing upon her mind, it was no wonder her heart was not in the thrill of the adventure and her character that morning was severely reticent.
Once they got to the road, leaving the woods behind, the trip picked up considerable pace. Three stragglers lingering along a wide shoulder of a road, before a field of golden soybeans, caught the notice of the first sympathetic driver. A burly man with sandy double-chin stubble and a bulbous frame let the wandering trio into the back of his truck, covered in a spray of chicken feathers and empty chicken grates. Ro groaned when she saw it, but was thankful to be off her feet. The driver was only going into Markham, a dinky and dusty town, and regretted he couldn't take them all the way to Glenview, Jas's home. Zeta inquired after a train or a bus, but the mister at the wheel said that no train had run through Markham or Glenview in twenty years, on account of the turbulent global economy or some such. And if there was no train there was no bus, since both were "controlled by the same money-seeking, mafia-run monopoly," to use the driver's exact words. Zeta was not dismayed, and optimistically told a sulking Jas that he was still sure they'd reach Glenview at least by late evening. Jas took comfort in the synthoid's promising speculation. They enjoyed the rest of the ride to Markham in silence. Ro had fun tossing out the feathers from the back of the moving vehicle, with the wind rushing wildly through the truck's bed. Those feathers that were not swept up in a whirlwind as soon as speed was gained, Ro picked up, pinched the stem and held it to the air, it quivered, like in fear, then in empathy she let the thing go. It would fly away, sometimes high up, and she would watch it compulsively until it disappeared entirely from her eyesight. By the time they stopped in front of the square brick Markham post office, the truck bed was void of every chicken feather. The driver was thanked graciously for his kindness by Zeta and by Ro. Their strange benefactor modestly said it was nothing, only a decent duty, then said again he wished he could've taken them as far as Glenview.
"Ro," Zeta began, after he'd had a fair study of the town, "take this." He gave her some cash.
She didn't bother to glance at it, but shoved it in her jeans pocket. "What are you going to do?"
"Find us a way to Glenview. Take Jas and get him something to eat, there," he commanded, nodding his head in the direction of a diner a half-block north. "And get something for yourself. I will meet you there as soon as I've found us a way to Glenview."
"Don't do anything illegal, tin man," Ro said, in a jocose manner Zeta was used to. He gave her a nod, a half-smile for a farewell, then stepped away.
Ro and Jas walked in Zeta's opposite direction. She looked over her shoulder at him, while she waited by Jas at one of the town's few traffic lights. Zeta always had an intimidation factor increase when he was on a minor quest. A determination would form to do what needed to be done and nothing else. His single-mindedness reminded her of his synthoid brain, and that he often lacked the complexity of a human. If she were to do such a task, she'd surely get side-tracked and head into a clothing shop or bookstore. But not Zeta.
"Come on, Ro, we got a walking signal!" Jas tugged at her hand. She awoke from the trance and they waddled across the street. The whole town was built from ancient brick buildings, early- to mid-twentieth century, and the diner had been renovated from one of these buildings, in the heart of the village. To the east of the diner was the local hardware store. To the west was a salon. Typical small-town village, Ro thought, and nothing but.
The diner was much to Ro's liking. Hardly crowded, and the few people who were there minded their own business, didn't stare at her or Jasper as they took a booth along the front windows. The server came over to tend them, asking first for their beverages. Jas was hesitant to order, and looked at Ro pleadingly. She understood.
"I got you covered, Jasper. This one's on me. Order whatever flesh of a dead animal you feel like."
This tickled Jas, and he thanked her shyly. To the big-haired, big-lipped waitress, he spouted off an order for a hamburger and fries, with a large vanilla milkshake. The server turned to Ro.
Ro stuck her cheek into her palm, looking as sardonic as she felt, and sounding it too. "Give me the biggest piece of chocolate cake you've got. Better bring a big glass of ice water with it. I'll give you a surplus tip if you put a few cherries in that water and bring me your phone book as soon as you can."
"Phone book?" the waitress asked.
"That's right. I know it's not edible, but I do like a little bit of an appetizer."
With a nod and grin, the server went off behind the counter. Ro watched her a moment, as she prepared the drinks, but grew disinterested.
"So," she started, curling her arms over the formica tabletop, "this is Markham. I can't believe I'm in a town that actually doesn't have a Ground Wire." She analyzed Jas. "Did you ever come here?"
"No," Jas answered. "I don't leave Glenview much. I've visited relatives in other parts of the country, but not for very long. I bet you've seen a lot of places, Ro. You've probably been all over the world with Zee."
Ro didn't answer the question. She'd seen enough of the world, but there was always a surprise in every new place she and Zee stepped foot in, except maybe Markham. The ho-hum drab town kinda gave her the creeps. "I hope, for your sake, Glenview isn't like this place."
Jas found her ridicule of Markham amusing, but came to the defense of his hometown. "Glenview's not this small. It's small, but nothing like this. This is like something out of an old movie, isn't it?"
"Sure is."
"I live out in the country, anyway. We've got a great ranch out west of town."
"Your people are ranchers?" By the sound of her question, Jas probably thought she found this unexpected. But she didn't. If people out in West Country were anything, they were farmers.
Jas examined her, trying to size up from what part of the world she must've grown up in, since she said nothing about it when she explained her life as a runaway. "I bet you're a city girl. You only feel alive if you've got miles of concrete and car horns honking at you."
Ro gave him a grin, then tried to laugh, but she couldn't. Laughing was too exhausting. "No, I'm not really a city girl. I'm another casualty of the suburban family-growth system."
"Well, which do you prefer, city or country--maybe suburbia instead?"
"I don't know what I like. The city is nice, but it has a lot of danger. It's both easy to disappear and easy for someone to find you, if they know enough of the right kind of people. I guess in the country it's the same way. You're sorta pegged with labels and subjected to outsiders' gossip no matter where you are. And you're always liable to danger."
Their drinks were brought to them, and the phone book was plopped in front of Ro. She was disappointed that the book was only for the little dusty town of Markham, and did not offer listings for the entire county. Ro fetched a cherry from her water and popped it in her mouth as she opened the book. The town was so poor they couldn't even afford to have updated, computer-cataloged version of the phone book. It'd been Ro's youth since she'd seen anyone still using the old paper, glue and bound form.
"What are you looking for?" Jas asked, curiously watching her.
She glanced up at him, just lifting her eyes but not her head. "Myself." She set her cherry to the bucket she made with her tongue, and stuck it out to Jas. Her unanticipated juvenility caused him to pleat over in laughter. She smiled and went on leafing through the pages.
The tinkling bell over the front entrance of the diner announced a new customer. Ro looked up from the black and white list of names. Zeta breezed in, glanced around, met Ro's eyes and squeezed in beside her at the booth. Immediately he examined the phone book.
"What are you doing?"
"Searching," she replied. "Hey, Zee, did you realize this place doesn't have a Ground Wire? All these years, I never once believed in false advertising."
"Ground Wire? Oh," Zee nodded, "the drink place. That is funny."
Ro smiled to cover the foolishness of attempting a joke at a time like that. "How'd it go? Any luck?"
"Yes. I found a man at the town hall who would take us to Glenview, for a small fee."
"How small is small?"
"The rest of our cash," he said.
Ro wasn't sure it was worth it. They could walk the whole way, it was feasible, instead of using the last of their cash. She didn't say as much. Zeta knew what was for the best. But she knew as well as he did that if he used his credcard, the NSA would find them again in a heart beat. If they'd used it to buy a vehicle in Markham, the town would turn ghostly and dead in a matter of a few hours, run over as it would be with NSA agents and maybe even military. Ro shuddered, and tried to focus again on the phone book. Presently, her three-tiered chocolate cake arrived and Jas's hamburger meal. The server asked Zeta what he would like, and he ordered iced tea with extra ice. Though he would never drink it, he just liked to pretend to drink it.
Jas, between chews of his cowburger, asked Zeta when they would get to leave. When Zeta told him at three that afternoon, it didn't take Jas long to figure out that was less than ninety minutes away. It seemed to make Jas eat faster, without relish, and Zeta reminded him to chew his food, the way he'd done last night with the fish.
Ro tossed the tiny phone book on the table. "Dang!" she interjected in frustration. "Nothing. Not a thing!" She pushed at Zee's arm, and he took the hint to stand up from the booth so she could get out, carrying the phone book with her. It flopped down on the counter of the bar, in front of the kitchen, with an angelic 'whoosh'. The server took it from her to put it away.
"Didn't find what you were looking for, honey?" she asked harmlessly.
"No, but I didn't really think I would." Ro sat herself down momentarily on the empty swivel stool in front of her. The waitress disappeared for a second, and Ro just wanted a moment alone to think. She knew she needed to find her family, and was always looking for hints to their whereabouts, but never so deeply as to actually look up 'Rowen' in the phone book. The waitress reappeared, with a big bowl of cheery halves. Ro glanced at the fruit's red flesh then looked at the waitress.
She winked at the blonde-haired girl. "On the house, honey. Strangers in these parts don't often ask for cherries in their water. Who're you looking for? Maybe I can help."
"I doubt it." Ro feasted on the cherries, one at a time, appreciating their sweetness and consistency. They were better, nearly, than chocolate cake.
"Try me. I've been here since I was married--five years. I'm from the coast originally."
Ro sighed, and lounged a long arm out in front of her. "Last name Rowen. Rowen with an 'e' and not an 'a'. Anyone's first name."
"Rowen, you say? H'mm." She itched her head, between her teased brown locks. "Nope, no Rowens in Markham."
Ro took out cash from her pocket and laid it on the counter. It was pushed back to her by well manicured nails, heavily lacquered in magenta.
"You keep it, honey," she said, one pink nail lingering on the corner of the card, as though she might change her mind abruptly. "You look like you need it more than I do. And don't you three worry about paying that bill, either. I've taken care of it." She leaned in to the girl, in womanly confidence. "My husband runs this place. He takes care of me, and I take care of him. Nice things, husbands, when you find the right one. Of course, you can't settle. You remember that. Don't settle."
Ro absentmindedly nodded comprehension. "Right, I got it." She pocketed the cash and stumbled her gratitude. People who were nice without a real reason threw her head into a mighty spin. What was she to think? She couldn't think without getting a touch woozy with vertigo. Nice people were unfair, and Ro felt guilty for not deserving such friendliness. Perhaps she did deserve what she got. She'd gone through a bit of tragedy herself. Maybe nice waitresses who wouldn't accept bribes or who let obviously poor stragglers eat for free was redemption to the horrors already witnessed. Maybe not.
After a stop in the bathroom, Ro returned to Zeta in the booth, this time squeezed in beside him. Jas was nearly done with his burger, and she realized she'd hardly touched her precious and moist chocolate cake. Somehow even real chocolate food couldn't appease her unhappiness. She picked at the cake with her fork, leaning tiredly into Zee, and he knew she was feeling a bit more anguish than she let on.
The male patron who would take them to Glenview waited by the town hall, just as they met promptly at three. The clock in the tower chimed off the hour in stentorian booms like thunder over the desert plateaus. Some brief introductions took place, and Ro gathered their new driver would be given his payment after they were safely in Glenview and not a moment before. Zeta handled everything like a keen businessman. In a minute or two, they were shuffled into the luxury car and hovered away toward Glenview.
Jas quietly peered out the window the whole way. The corn and soybean fields that flashed by appealed to him, but soon the genetically engineered vegetables were replaced by empty fields of the High Desert, and the sight of cattle and horses pleased him more than anything. He would be home soon. The very thought sent his young heart pounding, his brow feverish and his eyes dilated. He'd been from home only a few days, but the days felt like years. When he returned he knew it would be great, just as Ro had said. He fully expected some sort of lashing and punishment by his parents eventually, but he knew they'd be as overjoyed to see him as he was sure to be seeing them. They were not strict parents, not overly cruel or domineering. But all families have their quarrels. And his had been about school, which would start again for the fall in a few days. It had been a stupid fight. Jas realized that now. And he could not wait to tell his mother and father how sorry he was. Jas glanced at Ro, sitting beside him. She was curled up to the window, trying to catch some sleep. Perhaps he had been meant to run away, so he could meet Ro, his personal guardian angel. He was smitten with her, the way any mortal would be smitten with someone like Ro, who seemed so very immortal and goddess-like. He secretly wished she and her synthoid friend Zeta would be able to stay with his family for the rest of the day, maybe even for a couple days. They'd been so important to him, saving his life and taking care of him, that he knew his parents would feel appreciation, when they found out who'd been responsible for bringing him home. He was only sorry Ro had no home to return to. But she did have a government-built infiltration unit with her, and he--he couldn't think of Zeta as an it--was like a wandering home for Ro, and she'd nearly said as much. Whatever they were running from, whatever they would encounter in the future, and wherever they went, Jas knew they'd survive to find their own destination. He had found his; he was returning home, and never wanted to leave it again.
The driver let them off at the outskirts of town, right before the gold dirt road that led the mile or so to Jasper's family farmhouse. Zeta paid off the man, and Ro watched as the last great chunk of their precious cash was handed over to greedy human mitts, and all they had left was junk change. Even Zeta was hesitant to let it go. The car sped ahead, its electric motor purring softly as it continued its southerly direction. From the active hoverjets, some dust was kicked up, but by then the three travelers had turned their backs to the main road, stepping toward Jas's.
The afternoon had turned cloudy, the air was heavy with the scent of coming rain. By the plateau horizon, a thick storm-blue cloud feathered to the earth, sure sign that rain was falling not far off. It was monsoon season, Jas reminded them, and rain came intermittently throughout the day.
Again, Jas dashed ahead, full of his energy, full of his irrepressible hope. He ran so far out in front of his guardians that he became a hazy mirage.
"Do you think we should try to catch him?" Zeta inquired. He was concerned about Jas's behavior.
"No," Ro replied, and she tried to reassure Zeta. "He's just excited. If you had a family to run home to, you'd be doing the same exact thing. Let him go. This is his moment. You and I have no idea what that kid's feeling."
"Don't you?"
"No, Zee, I don't. But it's nice," she gave him a little smile, "to pretend."
"It is nice to pretend."
"You'll have to finish that story for me sometime, Zee. The one you were telling me last night. I fell asleep right when you began."
"Why does it interest you so much?"
Ro shrugged. "I don't know. Makes me think of--" she decided not to say. "You'll laugh and think I'm wicked if I say what I was about to."
"I won't think you're wicked." He decided to verbalize his own guess. "Does it make you think of having sisters, or--a family?"
"Yes," she said in meekness. "I like the idea of it, of being turned into a star because some lecherous god was after me. I kinda wish someone would turn us into stars, Zee, so Bennett would leave us alone."
"Well," Zeta started, folding his arms around his back, grabbing one wrist in the other hand, "if I had the power I'd turn you into a star. And then myself. It's better than being rewired, having your memories stolen from you, and everything you've ever known erased as though it didn't matter."
"What were their names?" Ro suddenly asked, no longer liking the idea of becoming a star, or thinking of Zeta being shredded for scrap metal.
"Atlas's daughters?" He watched Ro nod. "I'll see if I can name all of them. Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Taygeta and, lastly, Merope."
"Which star is the brightest?"
"Asterope, but only because it is actually two stars close together. Alcyone is the brightest single star. They are placed so that Orion's shooting his arrow at them, in his own constellation. The chase that took place in their Grecian countryside now takes place in the heavens." Zeta patted Ro around her shoulders, for she looked so confused at the involved names of the sisters.
"Couldn't they just have simple names?" Her sarcasm was at work. "What kind of father names his kid--Merope? Ridiculous!"
"I will tell it to you another night. Look, Jas is waving to us. We must be close."
They discerned a plume of trees in a green field, where nearby beef cows grazed and some horses lazed, twitching tails and ears as it pleased them. Amid the arbor grove stood Jasper's family home, a stark ancestral palace at least a hundred years old. While the farm was running with the latest in technology, the house gave a hint to the antiquity of their heritable profession.
Jasper waited for Ro and Zeta not far from the house, lingering in the dirt and pebble roadway. There were fresh buds of tears in his eyes as he observed them. "I'm going to go in now. Wait here and I'll come out as soon as I can. I know they'll want to meet you. Promise you'll wait?"
Ro leaned into one leg and crossed her arms. "Jas, we haven't got anywhere else to go. And it's a long walk back to town, you know. We'll wait here. You run in and say hi."
Jas lurched forward and kissed Ro on her cheek, then dashed across the lush green grass to the front door. He shouted "Mom! Dad!" as he went. Ro felt the bitterness and the sweetness of a moment so precious and strong she could hardly stand it. Then, from the walls of the old home came a joyous shout and an eruption of screams. "Jas! Jasper? Is that you?"
Ro found a spot on the verdant carpet, under a shading oak tree. It was here she fell, laid back, closed her eyes. "Why can't it be that easy for me?" she said aloud, specifically for Zeta's ears.
"Someday," Zee said, "it will be."
--
Note
Markham
Named after a Toronto suburb. It'd probably be like one of the dinky towns north of Bend, Oregon.