003 — Meadowsweet

Once Interstate 70 took them to State Route 68, they chose, almost at the last minute, to head south. Once out of the Springfield vicinity, they fell into a greenish dell that, for a drifting two miles, followed the muddy Mad River. But it veered away to join the Little Miami, while Sixty-eight dribbled its way between lofty, majestic trees, a wee village of a firehouse and church, into the innovative artists' colony Yellow Springs. Ro stopped in the middle of Yellow Springs, at Tom's Old Fashioned Market, for another bottled beverage, and asked the woman at the register for a nice, somewhat new hotel in the area. While there was neither new or refurbished hotels in Yellow Springs, 'there is a newly remodelled place the closer you take the road south, not far outside of our town, but before you'll get to Xenia,' said the woman. 'And you can't miss it.'

Indeed, they can't have. The hotel was small, a spread of one wing on a deliciously landscaped hunk of land about two miles south of Yellow Springs. Ro waited in the car while Zee procured a room. She listened carefully, with the window down, to a variety of birds gleefully trilling evening songs of delight and love, to the crickets harvesting themselves in the underbrush and near oversized stones. Their air smelled sweet, of grass and sedge, fen and dew, and she felt peaceful enough to sleep inside the car.

Zee came back and reclaimed the driver's seat. Ro opened an eye to observe him, the calm demeanour of a man who pretended to have no mission, no defined purpose in life.

'Remind me, Zee, never to make fun of Ohio again.'

He smirked a little. 'You have always been hard on it.'

She snuggled into the seat and looked at the puffy clouds aslope in the western sky, dimming to hues of gold and rose and peach, touched by a breath of mint green. 'Well, I turn a new leaf. And, besides, I'll always hate Gotham more.'

Zee poked her in the upper arm with two keys. Ro took them, confused. She watched him pocket an additional two keys.

'What—?'

She didn't have to finish. He revved the car into the nearest parking space from beneath the porte-cochere and explained.

'The rooms are small. One for each of us this time, I thought.'

Ro's eyes shined in worry. 'But—'

'They're adjoining, with an access door between them.'

Her fingers still lightly holding the keys, she numbly moved from the vehicle. Outside, the humidity intensified the air, cloying it with the scents belonging only to a spring evening in Ohio. An unclear sense of oddity clung to her. Zee and she had almost always shared a room. It was beguiling not to, when someone could come for them in the night. To avoid a fiasco related to their plans, they had decided to take up a hotel room at least twenty miles from the Air Force base, Wright-Patterson, merely for the sake of keeping up a clean appearance. Should the NSA acquire knowledge that someone had broken into the base, and then found out Zee and Ro had been in the area, but twenty miles from it, would seem more like a very foul coincidence than proof of guilt. Ro had said, while they talked of it, that it mattered little what they did to cover their tracks anymore. Every day, come every new adventure, it seemed that they were becoming more and more like the criminals the NSA had them pegged.

Ro rubbed an eye and tried to forget about it. Zee opened the door for her. A musty wave of ventilation whammed her in the face. Her aide-de-camp turned on the light next to the bed, checked the security controls, the environmental controls, even turned the television off and on to be sure of its workability. Ro saw it was a lovely, rather feminine room, floral and bright, done in pinks, blues, whites, a touch of yellow in the carpet. She sat on the edge of the bed, catching the perfume that precedes night waft through the open door. Zee's impressive physique was a shadow against the setting sun.

'I'll get your belongings,' he said at departure.

Ro titled back on the bed and stared at the immaculate, flat-painted ceiling. Her thoughts wandered freely, and eventually her eyes closed. She wanted quietude for a moment, to think of nothing, be no one of importance, not to be Ro Rowen for an instant. In that one second, she was both everything and nothing. A child again in faraway Oregon, curled up in her attic room, half asleep, reading a book, listening to the wind slip through the pines. She turned over on her side before Zee returned, scrunched into a foetal position, her hands between her knees. He returned and found her like that, and stood in front of her, looking down. She felt him touch her shoulder with cool fingertips that slipped away, leaving a tingling trail of gooseflesh. The light of his hologram often made her realise how sufficiently solid she was, and how miraculous it was to have a friend that glowed like an unnamed constellation.

'Are you tired? It was a short drive.'

'No, not tired,' she shook her head. 'Melancholy, maybe; morose, maybe; not tired.'

He moved away and put her toiletries by the sink. He laid out the toothbrush, the hairbrush, the little tube of toothpaste, and her small clutch of cosmetics she had only to prove that, once in a while, she was more than an accomplice, and was, in point of fact, something of a young woman almost eighteen. She might have laughed at him if he declared that this was his favourite part of getting a hotel every night, laying out these things of hers. He loved the purple toothbrush with its roughed bristles. He loved the hairbrush with its golden strands between the combs. He loved the little tube of toothpaste with its middle squeezed and rankled. He loved to fold up her attire for the morning, her pyjamas for sleeping, and leave them on top of the dresser.

'I didn't know what you'd want to wear tomorrow,' he said, still before the sink, admiring the lay of the objects, the pattern of warmth they brought him. 'So I didn't bring anything in. I thought we might go to the air force base in the morning. They're having a soda delivery tomorrow. Might be easy for us to sneak in before the real soda guy gets there.'

'And I'll be the soda?'

'Cases of it, yes.'

'Can I be something lemon-lime?'

'Of course. So you'll have to dress comfortably. Also, their independent computer consultants are supposed to be there. They'll come in the morning, probably sign-in around ten. That'll give us an alibi. You might want to program your holographic emitter as a suit—something formal but not too formal. But we wouldn't be able to get through the gate as the techs. Once we're inside, we'll change.'

'I know.'

She knew. They'd been through it all three times on the drive over. Usually they went through their story-schemes at least five times. Sometimes they even acted them out, practiced dialogue, intonations, facial expressions. But this was scarier. Wright-Patterson was one of the most secretive bases in the country. Zee told her it was rumoured that pieces of UFO's that'd crashed throughout the states had been brought to Hangar B for inspection. Many of those pieces still rested there, hidden below ground in rows and rows of archival shelves.

Ro didn't necessarily believe him. She wasn't sure what monstrous things the government had shoved into his nanowafers. They could've told him mendacities by the heap and he would believe it. Worse than that: he'd have to believe it. Still, it would be fun to believe.

And, anyway, it didn't matter, as they were heading into the back of Hangar B, which, according to the blueprints, was a bunch of little hangars, perhaps rooms, out of one big one. The computers that were once inside Knossos were in that area. Hooked up. Repaired, in some cases. Ready for Zee's connection and the downloading of what they hoped was invaluable information.

His dark grey trousers appeared in front of her again. The violet-blue of his coat, like wild berries in moonlight, had a silvery, unctuous gloss, a touch of deposed reality. It delighted her, as a sign of his uniqueness. People sensed this about Zee, staring at him as though there was just a small, invisible something about him that was slightly off; he possessed a great power that he hadn't yet tapped into. Whatever that power was, whether it was the starlight in his being, the warm inner core of him, or a vibration of his metal gears and screws, he never would know how to use it to his best advantage. Power, wherever it comes from, easily corrupts the one who wields it. And Zee was incorruptible. Therefore, power would never wholly be his.

Zee tilted at the waist and angled his head so it paralleled Ro's. He searched her eyes while she searched his. The hotel lamp did little to illuminate the blue, but it touched her hair and brought her skin to life. As she lay, perhaps he was most fascinated by the left shoulder, exposed from a cap-sleeved t-shirt, that little hallow next to meeting bones and joints. He wanted to touch it, see what it was like to have tendons and skin and blood under it all. But he'd feel nothing, only solid form, nothing of texture or knowledge of flesh. Her skin did not tell a story, nor did her shape, her hands, her nose. What told stories, he decided, were the things on the inside that he would never see. He would never really know her—a disappointing thought.

'I have an idea,' he started, falling to his knees in front of her. 'We'll go back to town. Yellow Springs. It's two hours before the sun sets, and we can walk a ways, look at the shops. I know they have a cinema. When was the last time we went to the cinema?'

'Six weeks ago,' she lolled to her back, a loose hand under her breast. 'Southern Chicago. An old film festival. Remember?'

'Yes, the Cary Grant and George Cukor films. I remember.'

'Thought you would, after you spent the following week impersonating Cary Grant's style as often as possible. Usually when I wasn't looking.'

'Yes, that was fun. Women were very fond of me, did you notice?

'Some fun! And women are always fond of you. Fawn over you like you're Sebastian Glasse or Adam Heat.'

'That's a backwards compliment, nonetheless I accept it, knowing your fondness for Herr Glasse. And allow me to say that you are often Jessica Chester. Shall we go, then?' He set his chin to the edge of the bed, so that it held up his face, matched with hers. He was almost near enough to catch a snippet of her smell. He did, sometimes, if close enough to her, if she'd gone a day or two without showering. Normally it was her hair, or fused scents of hair and deodorant and clean clothes.

Ro let her hand fall over his face. At first, her fingers nearly slipped through the first layer of gathered carbon dioxide that held the shape of his light and colour. But she felt it change, turning sharper, more solid, as he allocated greater energy to his form. It was then that she mistakenly thought him truer than she.

He moved as she moved, setting back his shoulders so as not to be in the way of her slender legs.

'I've got a better idea,' she said, smiling in that mischievous manner that meant he'd be spending a whole lot of credits.

This was not one of the mischievous smiles of credit-spending. Ro drove back to town, where she grabbed some takeaway from a local eatery, but ushered a dumbfounded, lost Zee back to the vehicle. She continued to drive, south again on SR 68, back the way they'd driven, but soon pulled off to a side street. Five hundred feet later and the town was gone, with farmland and softly rolling hills dappled in oak, cottonwood, elm, locust, willow, sycamore trees as far and even farther than he could see. Off on another side street, heading south again, bypassing Yellow Springs entirely, she eventually found a vacant spot, beside a grove of burgeoning wildflowers and thickening underbrush, vibrant verdure grown to the side of the road. She tossed Zee the blanket from the back seat, the two of them exiting at the same time. Ro found a suitable 'table of nature' near a solitary black locust tree, about to blossom in bundles of white buds. Once the blanket was set out, she sat down, legs folded beneath her, and took to the food.

The evening deepened, and they talked very little. Once, a strange, loud squawk whipped Ro's face to a quizzical expression. Zee interpreted.

'A quail. They're coming back to this area, though one hardly ever sees them. Sometimes there are wild turkeys, too. Both used to be thick through here. But suburban sprawl and the shrinking of their habitat damaged their population. Now they go where they can. More of them live north of here, in the Amish counties. There isn't as much destruction of habitat on protected lands. How is your food?'

'It's good. Probably not as spicy as I would like, but I'll deal. Was really hoping for something spicer since we're not sharing a room. I can burp and fart all I want tonight.' She didn't know how Zee put up with her antics, her childish joking, her bodily functions. She supposed that somewhere inside of him a saint lurked and stood, foreboding, awake, in the presence of her.

'You can always burp and fart as much as you like.' He emoted indifference by a lift of a shoulder. 'Did I ever stop you from doing that before?'

'After seeing the size of the rooms, I don't blame you. Tiny! And only one bed. And the only chair a thin, wooden thing. You'd have to catch up on your hydrogen from the floor, tin man. You'll probably be up all night, anyway, watching John Wayne movies and making new holograms of your favourite action heroes.'

'Probably. Though I may break such smashing rules of convention by reading.'

'Are you still working on that Dumas book?'

'I am.'

'The one in French?'

'Oui, ma chère. C'est le livre.' Zee turned to his stomach, resting his head on hands beneath his jaw. He scanned the edge of the forest from the vantage point of the middle of a meadow. Birds were tucking themselves in for the night, making final calls to loved ones still catching bugs. Soon, the bats would come, dipping and diving and gorging themselves on what the birds had left behind. Ro had found a nice spot, peaceful, engaging, with much for the imagination to gain from this heavenly piece of reality. He'd rather stay there than force his way onto a military base in the morning. But it was for Selig. None of this would be happening if it hadn't been for Dr Eli Selig.

Except for Zee's fascination with Ro. That might have happened eventually. He was glad he hadn't discovered fine art until now, two years into wandering the country with Ro. It was already becoming a trying ordeal, wanting to watch her all the time, out the corner of his eye, just to see the way the sun touched her, how the wind shifted her clothes, moved her hair. Two years ago, he'd never been so jealous of the wind, but now he couldn't stand it. It got to touch her, reach her, know her. He could never be wind. He was only light. Elemental, essentially, but of an element untouched by wind, only manipulated by gravity and thousands of carbon-based atoms travelling rapidly through time and space. If he closed his eyes tightly enough, shut out the world around him, he could feel himself shaking, all the atoms that made him what he was shaking, as he felt the earth's rapid rotations whenever Ro was near, the engagement of a wild, unpredictable ride.

She'd changed into a pink linen skirt before leaving, her jeans having been worn so long that she joked of needing help prying them from her body. The skirt's hem rose just a bit above her knees. Being directly across said knees, he had sight of a scar at the bony part of the patella. His finger poked it for indication.

'What's this from?'

Ro looked to see what he was pointing to. 'Oh, that. I fell off the roof once when I lived with the Morgans.'

He shifted to watch her face. 'You fell off the roof?' He hoped to break up his monotone voice by emphasising the last word. Ro had been trying to teach him this trick of speech. While never owning her dramatic italics, he did the best he could with knowledge and a stubborn robotic voice box.

'It's not as awful as it sounds.'

'I doubt that. It sounds—unhealthy.'

'Well,' she readied herself for the telling of this story, for once wanting to sound less dramatic, passing it off as childish antics by a restless nine-year-old, 'the roof was only eight feet from the ground. The roof over the front porch of the house. I went up there because we were playing—I don't remember what now—baseball or something—and this neighbour kid of ours threw my glove on the roof. Said he betted I couldn't climb up there and get it.'

'And you did?'

'Of course I did! Nothing was worse to me than being called a girl! Climbed right up this pine tree, right next to the roof, hopped over, grabbed the glove and—broke the tree branch when I was halfway on it. Branch, glove, and I fell down, right into the hawthorn bush. Mrs Morgan came out and—never seen her so angry or frightened. I was grounded, naturally. I was always grounded. I don't think I played baseball again after that. And I know I tried to beat up that kid at least once at the bus stop. I'm sure I was grounded for that, too. I'd probably still be grounded if I hadn't run away. Anyhow, I've had the scar since. The gutter got me as I slipped. Could've been worse. I didn't break anything but that kid's perception of girls—hopefully. And that's not too bad.' Self-consciously, she rubbed the scar then tucked it away behind the skirt's hem. Her eyebrows wiggled Zee's direction. 'Didn't know I was such a trouble-maker, did you?'

'I didn't know you rescued abused gloves from roofs. Knowledge of that may come in handy someday. You weren't afraid of heights then?'

'I'm not really afraid of heights. I'm afraid of heights if I've never been there before, if that makes sense.'

He thought it did. The sun's warm rays turned more gold than harsh white, the night coming sooner than he wanted it to. It would've been nice to be there for hours yet, whiling away time as a carefree young person might, with few worries and a father and mother to go home to. But in another way he thought himself luckier than most, for he was taking this wonderful creature, this friend of his, with him when he left. Tomorrow he'd wake up and she would be there. In the next room, but there.

They drove back to the inn silently. Ro didn't want to talk, and Zee didn't want to spoil Ro's mood by driving her mad with questions. She caught him watching her once and glared at him for it.

'Is something wrong with you? Aside from being a fugitive wanted for crimes you didn't commit, and dragging an innocent young woman along with you, I mean.'

'No, I'm splendid, thanks.'

He'd developed some sense of humour, finally, by watching films and observing how Ro handled it. She liked it, this slight improvement of his personality. It wasn't something she'd taught him—it couldn't be taught, only absorbed. It meant he'd done it on his own. He'd evolved again.

'You're looking at me a lot tonight.'

'Well, you're there—to be looked at. I can't watch myself, Ro.'

'Let me rephrase: You're leering at me. Am I getting a pimple?' She nervously touched her nose but felt no pimply protrusion.

'There's nothing wrong with you. Please drive.'

She put the rear-view mirror back in place and watched the road. 'There must be something wrong with me. You don't look at me like that. Ever.'

He wondered if he should tell her. But it would have to be put into words. Words were useless, tawdry things, unforgivable flings that filtered emotions and were supposed to substitute hearts. 'Just thinking . . . that you're getting older.'

This cheered her slightly. 'Birthday next week! What'choo gonna get me?'

'Your freedom on a platter. And anything else you want. No diamonds. Holly Golightly is right, and a woman below forty is just too young for diamonds.'

'I agree with Holly.' They'd seen the movie Breakfast At Tiffany's so often that speaking of Holly was like talking about someone they'd known forever. Holly Golightly was how Ro imagined her mother, in the rare instances she bothered fabricating dreams of her mother. 'Freedom, yeah? That is a fair, reasonable gift that's not at all abstract. Note the heavy sarcasm. A girl does turn eighteen just once in her life, Zee. It should be special.'

'If we don't get arrested tomorrow,' he angled his head to her, 'then it will be. I don't know how, but it will be.' He nodded, affirming this with as much conviction as conjecture on the future permitted wanted fugitives.

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