worked for Capital Lifekey, just like Jeanette. Preservation had been part of Jeanette’s benefits package, just like Mira’s.
“Lycan, would you do something for me?” It felt as if an eternity rode on the question she was about to ask.
“Sure. Anything.”
“Would you run a search on a friend of mine who died?”
“What’s her name?”
“Jeanette Zierk. Born twenty-two twenty-four.”
Mira was not as anxious as she thought she should be as Lycan checked, probably because her heart could not race, and her palms could not sweat. It was surprising how much emotion was housed in the body instead of the mind.
Lycan checked. “Yes. She’s here.”
“She’s
“Yes.” He consulted the readout, pulling his palm close to his nose, then he pointed across the massive atrium, lower down than they were. “Over there. I don’t know why you’re surprised, if she was stored she’d be here — it’s a felony to renege on a storage contract.”
Mira wished she could lift her head and look where he was pointing. She had spent the last few years of her life accepting that Jeanette was really gone, and would never come back. “Can you wake her, and give her a message from me? Please?”
Lycan was rendered momentarily speechless.
“Please?” Mira said. “It would mean so much to me.”
“Okay. I guess. Sure. Hold on.” Lycan stood tenuously, looked confused for a moment, and then headed off.
He returned a moment later. “What message should I give her?”
Mira wanted to ask Lycan to tell Jeanette she loved her, but that might be a bad idea. “Just tell her I’m here. Thank you so much.”
Maybe it was someone else, or Mira’s imagination, but she felt sure she heard a distant caw of surprise. Jeanette, reacting to the news.
Soon Lycan’s smiling face poked into view above her. “She was very excited by the news. I mean, out of her head excited. I thought she’d leap out of her creche and hug me.”
“What did she say?” Mira tried to sound calm. Jeanette was here. Suddenly, everything had changed. Mira had a reason to live. She had to figure out how to get out of there.
“She said to tell you she loved you.”
Mira sobbed. He had really talked to Jeanette. What a strange and wonderful and utterly incomprehensible thing.
“She also said she hoped you didn’t suffer much in the accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Mira said.
It just came out. She said it without having thought it first, which was a strange experience, as if someone had taken control of her dead mouth and formed the words, rode them out of her on the hiss of air coursing through her throat.
There was a long, awkward silence.
“What do you mean?” Lycan said, frowning.
Mira remembered now. Not the moment itself, but planning it, intending it. She had put on her best tan suit. Mother kept asking what the occasion was. She wanted to know why Mira was making such a fuss when they were only going to Pan Pietro for dinner. She said that Mira wasn’t as beautiful as she thought she was and should get off her high horse. Mira had barely heard her. For once, she had not been bothered by her mother’s words.
“I mean it wasn’t an accident,” she repeated. “You were honest with me, I want to be honest with you.” She did not want to be honest with him, actually, but it had come out, and now that it was out she didn’t have the strength to draw it back in.
“Oh. Well, thank you.” Lycan scratched his scalp with one finger, pondering. Mira wasn’t sure if he got what she was saying. After all their conversation, she still had little sense of whether Lycan was intelligent or not. “You know, if I figure out a way to revive you, you could come with me to my company’s annual picnic. Last year I announced to my whole table that I was going to win the door prize, and then I did!”
Lycan went on about his company picnic while Mira thought about Jeanette, who had just told Mira she loved her, even though they were both dead.
Far too soon, Lycan said goodbye. He told Mira he would see her on Tuesday, and killed her.
The man hovering over her was wearing a suit and tie, only the suit was sleeveless and the tie rounded, and the man’s skin was bright orange.
“What year is it, please?” Mira said.
“Twenty-four seventy-seven,” he said, not unkindly.
Mira couldn’t remember the date Lycan had last come. Twenty-four? It had been twenty-three something, hadn’t it? It was a hundred years later. Lycan had never come back. He was gone — dead, or hitching with some relative.
The orange man’s name was Neas. Mira didn’t think it would be polite to ask why he was orange, so instead she asked what he did for a living. He was an attorney. It suggested to Mira that the world had not changed all that much since she’d been alive, that there were still attorneys, even if they had orange skin.
“My grandfather Lycan says to tell you hello,” Neas said.
Mira grinned. It was hard to hold the grin with her stiff lips, but it felt good. Lycan had come back after all. “Tell him he’s late, but that’s okay.”
“He insisted we talk to you.”
Neas chatted amiably about Lycan. Lycan had met a woman at a Weight Watchers meeting, and his wife didn’t think it was appropriate that he visit Mira anymore. They had divorced twenty years later. He died of a heart attack at sixty-six, was revived, then hitched with his son when he reached his nineties. Lycan’s son had hitched with Neas a few years ago, taking Lycan with him.
“I’m glad Lycan’s all right,” Mira said when Neas had finished. “I’d grown very fond of him.”
“And he of you.” Neas crossed his legs, cleared his throat. “So tell me Mira, did you want to have children when you were alive?” His tone had shifted to that of a supervisor interviewing a potential employee.
The question caught Mira off guard. She’d assumed this was a social call, especially after Neas said that Lycan had insisted they visit her.
“Yes, actually. I had hoped to. Things don’t always work out the way you plan.” Mira pictured Jeanette, a stone’s throw away, dead in a box. Neas’s question raised a flicker of hope. “Is this a date, then?” she asked.
“No.” He nodded, perhaps to some suggestion from one of his hitchers. “Actually we’re looking for someone to bear a child and help raise her. You see, my wife was dying of Dietz Syndrome, which is an unrevivable illness, so she hitched with me. We want to have a child. We need a host, and a caregiver, for the child.”
“I see.” Mira’s head was spinning. Should she blurt out that she’d love the opportunity to raise their child, or would that signal that she was taking the issue too lightly? She settled on a thoughtful expression that hopefully conveyed her understanding of the seriousness of the situation.
“We would marry for legal reasons, of course, but the arrangement would be completely platonic.”
“Yes, of course.”
Neas sighed, looking suddenly annoyed. “I’m sorry Mira, my wife says you’re not right.” Neas was very upset. He stood, reached over Mira’s head. “We’ve interviewed forty or fifty women, but none are good enough,” he added testily.
“No, wait!” Mira said.
Neas paused.
Mira thought fast. What had she done to make the wife suddenly rule her out? The wife must feel terribly threatened at the idea of having a woman in the house, raising her child. Tempting her husband. If Mira could allay the wife’s fears…
“I’m gay,” she said.
