004 – Lessons From Morning

The quality of the morning made Zee wish the world would play Pierre Rameau compositions straight from the sky, so all might have a musical background to go with a beautiful day. He flung the curtains aside in Ro's room, and the sun gladly poured in. Ro stirred, flipped to her stomach, and shied her head from the light, whimpering.

Zee exercised caution lifting the pillow from her blonde head. Mornings had come that were not so peaceful, nor received so well, and this cat-like Taurean woman fought back, claws and hooves and teeth at the ready. But she only whimpered again, adding a groan of disinterest, and tried to grab the pillow from him. Realising it was out of her reach, she sighed out lachrymose resignation, and flipped over to face him. It was only then he let the pillow be recaptured. Ro pulled it over her chest of sheet and blanket, her round chin in its ruffle. She had sleep at the corners of her eyes, and colour had not yet come to her cheeks, but he knew she'd slept well.

He sat at the bend of her knees, his side touching her shins. 'Breakfast?'

She glared at him, not in the feisty manner wishing for a fight, but exasperation. 'No way. I never like to eat before . . . You know.'

That part he'd forgotten. Ro didn't like to eat before executing a potentially life-threatening activity, such as infiltrating a military base as secretive as Wright-Patterson. And after Knossos, it took her a whole day to eat something. Even then, it hadn't stayed inside her long enough to gain any nutritional value. At least he'd been there to hold back her hair while throwing up. Mrs Morgan would never be able to say she'd done that.

He gave in to fleeting desire and touched her knee. At first it was cool, but warmed evenly beneath his own heat. 'It'll be over soon. We'll know something.'

'Either way,' she squeezed her arms at her middle, 'yeah, we will know something. We'll get arrested—or we'll find out if Selig ever bothered having babies.' She picked up his hand and played with his docile fingers. 'I'm still betting he didn't. Don't you know men like that? Too obsessed with his work. He'd never find time to . . . Never mind.' She dropped his hand. It was like trying to imagine Mr and Mrs Morgan in the throes of passion. It couldn't be done. She didn't want it to be done. As far as Ro was concerned, Selig had lived a nice life, a monk's life, except that God wasn't in a church: God was in the work. It was easier for Zee; he didn't have to imagine anything. His mind was so black and white. Things either were or they weren't. Like a reptile, he dreamed not at all. She shifted out of bed and passed him, taking up her clothes off the bureau.

This was a routine. Ro showered. Zee watched the news. Then they would head out. But that morning, when Ro came out of the shower, Zee was nowhere in sight. She hurriedly tugged on her shoes and headed towards the car. On the way, unintentionally, she found him. He was sitting on a bench in the hotel's lavish side garden, reading his Dumas and fitting in with the atmosphere so much it almost made her ache. The times he looked as everyone else made her lose composure. Because he wasn't. He was better than them. To a certain extent, he was better than her—knowing well that Zee, had she stated aloud that opinion, would've argued in that calm, aloof form of quarrelling.

He heard her coming and set aside the thick book. She sat next to him, toes inward on the flagstone. Bees buzzed among the lavender. A bird chirped in a flowering crab apple. Ants silently marched the stems of irises.

'So.'

'So.'

'Are we going?'

'I think so.'

'What time is the IT team arriving to fix the base's computers?'

'Ten.'

'And the soda distributor guy so they don't go thirsty or caffeine-deprived?'

'Around ten-twenty.'

'Current time?'

'Eight-forty.'

She hadn't realised he'd let her sleep in. He rather liked it when they were up and on their way by seven-thirty. With a ten-minute shower, that meant she'd only been awake twenty-five minutes. He'd really let her sleep in. She brushed an itch from her neck and waited for him to suggest their next manoeuvre.

The length of two minutes zipped by. He'd said nothing. Finally, the door behind them opened, and out popped a man in his late forties, with greying brown hair and a smile on his ruddy face.

'Good morning. Rooms one-ten and one-twelve, right?' He didn't wait for them to nod. Instead, he let the garbage fall into the dumpster and shut the gate that encapsulated it. 'Continental breakfast, you know, in the lounge. Got coffee. Tea. My wife's scones, too, which we don't have every day.'

'Thanks,' Ro said, twisted in the bench to see him, 'but we're going to leave soon.'

'No rush,' he waved a hand, 'check-out's not till one.'

'We're not checking out,' Zee suddenly said. 'We'd hope you'd put up with us for another night, at least.'

Ro gaped at him. Was he crazy? Is this what a crazy synthoid looked like? Funny that Crazy Zee looked remarkably similar to Sane Zee.

'I think we can do that,' the hotel manager said. 'Have yourselves a good morn.'

Once he was gone, Ro clung to Zee's arm. He attempted no prise of her fingers from his outer hologram. By instinct, he'd strengthened its calibration. Ro felt it harden beneath her hands.

'I don't know what's going on with you,' she said solemnly, 'but I'm going to find out. And don't think I won't!' She pointed a commanding finger at his nose. 'You can't get reckless! Not now!'

'I'm not being reckless.' He squirmed, a knee bent across the bench seat, to better see her. 'Don't you like it here? Don't you think we should stay another night? Don't you think it might be a good idea if we have some sort of alibi? Don't you think we should see if everything goes okay today before we run out of here?'

Her shoulders slacked. 'I hate it when you're right.'

She pouted. Zee smashed her lips together and she crossed her eyes. She giggled, and he felt himself grow envious of the laughter coming from inside. He wished he could laugh with her, to share insoluble, magical joy. Mimicking a laugh was not the same as laughing for its own sake.

'And, yes,' she nodded, grinning at him, 'I do want to stay here. One more night at least. But I won't make any plans,' she looked away, 'in case something goes wrong.'

'Nothing will go wrong.' Zee returned the book, his security blanket, and tried pacifying Ro's worries. 'We have it planned meticulously.'

'No offence to your little chip of optimism, Zee, but we haven't exactly had the best luck the last nine months. Brother's Day is becoming more and more powerful. Sweete is not dead, despite our best wishes—but he seems to have become as invisible as Selig was. Bucky's in the Tech befriending crazy men who call themselves the Ballistic Fringe, which still sounds like a bad 20's big hair band to me. We're not even positive that the air force base is going to solve anything. We're so out of touch with our cause that we've resorted to checking Selig's background to see if anyone else knows whether or not he's alive, or if he left some record of why you're good.'

She'd worked herself up so that tears blossomed in eyes of cornflower blue. Zee slipped an arm over her shoulders and tightened ease into her. She huffed, frustrated and forlorn. Their last nine months had been sedentary, with little to occupy their time but the occasional chase from the NSA. Even they seemed to have backed off exponentially.

'What do we do? I mean, if we can't find Selig—if there's no trace of you that he left behind. Then what?'

'I don't know,' he shook his head against hers. His thoughts wandered to a bee busily bobbing between lavender blossoms. He reached down and plucked off a stem to hold beneath Ro's upturned nose. 'Smell this.'

She lifted her gaze to his, taking the sprig. 'Lavender. Mrs Morgan used to grow this. And another Mary down the street. It's nice. Brings back memories. The really old stuff I don't really remember.'

'It's supposed to calm you down.'

'It doesn't. Not me. It stimulates. Makes me homesick. Homesick for what—I don't know. Just does. An empty space inside of me. A spot where there's no laughter, no anything—just a dull ache.' She twirled the lavender between thumb and forefinger, regarding Zee's profile, flawless, imperial. 'What do we do if we can't find him? We've never really talked about it before.'

'I thought—' He broke the sentence apart, looking at her for the strength to begin anew. 'I thought we might find your mother.'

Ro leaned into the bench, limbs floppy, eyes lidded. She caught the scent of lavender again, and behind it the entrancing morning dew on meadowsweet and asphodel. In a world like that, with smells so tempting, she could believe anything, even that she'd open her eyes and find her mother standing in front of her, roses and wildflowers piled in her graceful arms. The image vanished behind a puff of smoke and Zee's sudden movement. She flung open her eyes and found, not her mother, but her friend, his hand outstretched.

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