Safe House

“Not nearly as wide-bandwidth as ours,” her dad said, “and there’s not nearly as much for anyone to do. Their country’s Net is more or less quarantined from the rest of the worldwide Net…and the quarantine has run both ways. They can’t get their hands on the equipment they’d like to have. They’ve been embargoed for years. And from their side of things, they don’t want their own people getting their hands on the kind of ‘decadent’ liberal entertainment — not to mention news — that’s available everywhere else in the world. So our Net is going to look pretty interesting to Laurent. His father sounded concerned about it, asked me very pointedly not to let his son overdo it, or even spend that much time on it, until he got here himself to help guide him through all the content.”

Maj nodded. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t spend all day and all night on it,” she said. “I can imagine it would be easy to get sucked into overdoing it.”

Her father nodded, ran his hand over his thin spot again. “But at the same time,” he said, “if you want to take him ‘places’ where you can keep an eye on him, and let him have some harmless entertainment…”

“No problem with that,” Maj said, and grinned. “I had some plans for one of those places tonight.”

“Simming again?”

“Yes, but somebody else’s sim,” Maj said. “The Group have gotten into it in a big way. We have a battle scheduled this evening.”

“Well, if you want to take Laurent along, he’d probably thank you.” Her father sighed, rubbed his head again where his hair used to be.

“Daddy,” Maj said suddenly, “I have to ask you. Please don’t be mad. But why don’t you go have that grown back?”

He looked at her, and then smiled. “Honey,” he said, “a lot of my ‘bosses’ were born, oh, no later than the middle of the last century. They still have that century’s values…though reminding them openly of that can be dangerous. Think about it. From their point of view, without being thin on top and looking elderly and respectable, how am I supposed to look as if I deserve my tenure?”

He smiled a most ironic smile, then got up, squeezing her shoulder as he went by, and headed off among the shelves before Maj could think of anything to say.

She looked after him with a ghost of that smile, and then turned and made her way back to the door into her work space.

4

About half an hour later she ran into her mother in the kitchen. Her mother was looking frazzled. Plainly she had had a difficult morning on the machine. “Any improvement?” Maj said.

“In their system? Some,” her mom said, leaning against the window, more or less as Laurent had, and looking out at the tomatoes. “I’ve got to get out there and pinch those things back,” she said, “or there are going to be eight hundred thousand tomatoes again this August. And I’ve made all the green tomato chutney I can stand.” She glanced down the hallway. “Don’t knock on his door, Muffin mine,” she said quickly. “He’s still sleeping.”

“I was just going to look,” said the plaintive little voice from down the hall.

“I know, sweetieMuf. Don’t. Just go down and read to your dinosaurs now.”

“They’re tired of reading.”

“Then tell them all about Niko’s cows, the ones with the buckets.”

“Oh,” said the Muffin, delighted, and ran off down the hall. Her room door shut.

Maj’s mother smiled. “She’s fascinated with him,” she said. “For which he’ll probably start being sorry when he wakes up. How is he, do you think?”

“Tired. And there’s other stuff going on.”

“Yes, his father…Daddy told you?”

“We had a word.”

“Yes.” Her mother looked suddenly more weary than she had. “I feel for him, poor kid, being thrown out into the world all alone like this all of a sudden…. I don’t think there’s any luggage coming, either. It seems that was just a ‘phantom record’ generated by whoever sent him, to keep him from looking abnormal. Nobody but a government courier gets on a spaceplane without any bags, and I think poor Laurent must just have been hustled straight out of the country without any, on the grounds that anyone with luggage would attract suspicion….”

“Yeah,” Maj said. “Well, his stuff came in from the warehouse…it’s there on the counter. But, Mom, should I send for some more stuff for him? He’s going to need more than just one pair of pants and a shirt. GearOnline has his template.”

Her mother nodded. “Sure, honey, that’s a good idea. You take care of it.” She gave Maj a cautionary look. “Try not to break the bank.”

“I won’t.”

Her mother looked out the window again. “I should get back to hammering on that system. But I’ve got to take a moment to do something about the aphids out there. Otherwise those nasty little suckers are going to pull those roses up by the roots and fly off with them, there are so many of them all over the bushes…Where’s the bug gun?”

“Under the sink,” said Maj. Her mother went over and opened the under-sink cupboard, hunting out the spray bottle which held the organic soap insecticide which was the only form of chemical warfare she allowed in her garden.

“Mom, you should really get something more effective,” Maj said as her mother went out. “Something systemic, so the bugs’ll bite the bushes and die of it.”

“Technofreak,” her mother said with good-natured scorn as the screen door banged closed behind her.

“Oh, yeah,” Maj said, amused.

She glanced up at the kitchen clock. Three o’clock already? It was only three hours to the battle. The thought brought chills. The hair stood up all over her. Food, she thought, and a fast review of our last maneuvers….

She was too jumpy, already, for a big meal. Maj rummaged around in the fridge for a bowl of microwave noodles, made herself some more tea, and settled at the table to slip back into her work space.

About a second later, it seemed, her bowl was empty, her tea was cold, and Laurent was looking at her from across the table, standing there in the middle of the kitchen and looking slightly bemused. “Maj?” he said. “I am sorry, you are virtual?”

“Huh? Not so it matters,” she said, surprised, for it had genuinely taken several moments for her to register him standing there. I’m as preoccupied as he was this morning, she thought. She glanced up at the clock. It was five-thirty. “Hey, your stuff’s there on the counter.” Maj looked at him carefully. “Are you okay?”

“I feel fine,” Laurent said. And indeed he looked fine, better than anyone had a right to who had just been through the day and a half he’d had. “This is it?”

“That package, yeah. Let me know if something doesn’t fit. The invoice says they have a pickup van in the area if we need to return anything…all we need to do is call. Meantime, what do you want to eat? We should have something before we go to the battle…you’ll be surprised how this kind of ‘fighting’ takes it out of you.”

“Oh.” He stood there in his “schoolboy” clothes and looked bemused. “Maybe a sandwich?”

“Every kind of cold cut on earth is in the fridge,” Maj said, getting up to put her tea in the microwave. “My brother is kind of a carnivore.” She grinned. “We really have to introduce you to him, if you’re ever awake at the same time. His hours have been a little weird lately…he has some kind of curling championship coming up.”

“‘Curling’?”

“It’s too weird to explain with mere words. It involves shoving a hunk of rock around on a sheet of ice with brooms and a handle. I’ll show you later,” she said. “Go on, get changed.”

He disappeared down the hall. When he came back, Maj had decided that a sandwich wasn’t a bad idea and was rooting around in the “cool” cupboard where the bread was kept for a loaf of rye. She glanced up. “Hey,” she