Safe House

had slowly let him know that they would help him were now busy out there — he would hear from them soon. Most of his time he now spent listening to the little radio on its earphone, amusing himself by judging the tenor of the search for him by the increasing or decreasing shrillness of the announcements about him during the “crime bulletins.” The rest of the time, he spent thinking about new microps designs, taking refuge in the sweet orderliness of the molecular-level world, where structure and symmetry reigned….

…And about his son. Safe, thank God, he thought; safe….

In the darkness he closed his eyes.

The darkness sang to him, and Laurent streaked out through it, laughing. Maj had been right about the Arbalest. It needed very little expertise in handling, in this mode — a normal joystick was enough. “Right now you’re going to be flying it for pleasure, not mastery,” she had said, having handed him the icon. “So there’s no harm in letting the game module ‘read your mind’ a little. But don’t overdo it. And I wouldn’t go in the main game, if I were you. The Archon’s people are still drifting around there trying to make trouble, some of them…and if you get my fighter shot up, we’re going to have words.”

But she had also shown him how to return instantly from the Cluster Rangers game to her own simming space…and Laurent had not been able to resist. Maj’s re-created space, though full of stars and matching the Cluster Rangers space closely in terms of astrography and physical laws — this being important for the high-G work — still did not have that subtle, sublime look-and-feel that the original had. He craved the sound of the stars singing, and he was going to have just a little of it, on his own, before coming back to mundane life again.

Listen to me, he thought as he flew up and over the curve of Dolorosa, into that spectacular view. “Mundane,” I am calling her life, after only, what? A day and a half of it? Two days. And a life that any of the other kids at school would kill for — I don’t care how high up in the government their parents are. Look at me! I’m becoming jaded. Decadent.

He laughed for sheer pleasure as the great arm of the Galaxy spread itself out before him, the sound of it shimmering silvery against the ship’s skin, tingling all through him. This is what virtually should be like, Laurent thought, tumbling the Arbalest in its yaw axis so that it turned to face the view of the great heart of the Seraphim Cluster, all those burning jewels spilled out across the night, flaring and fading, flaring and fading again. You would never have thought the stars could have so many colors, he thought. He knew the stellar types, but the prosaic letters and numbers did not even hint at this wild treasury of shades and brilliances, set dazzling in the darkness.

It is enough to turn me into an astronomer, Laurent thought. And a big shiver went through him, hot and cold at once, and then another one, so that he was surprised for a moment, and checked the ship’s controls to see if something was wrong with the suit conditioning system, or the cockpit’s own environmental controls. But all the lights were green, so that Laurent laughed again, at himself this time. He tumbled the ship once more to get one last look at that huge arm of the Galaxy, lying draped over a third of the sky, like a blazing banner spread out on some impossible wind—

“Niko?”

Uh-oh, he thought, and tumbled the ship one more time, getting a fix on Maj’s hangar and heading for it. “Coming—”

It was Maj’s mother, outside the virtual space. It amused Laurent that her family all seemed to leave the option open to talk to each other from inside or outside their various virtualities, no matter what they were doing. “Do you eat lamb, honey?”

“Lamb? Yes!”

“Oh, good,” she said, invisible but amused. “An enthusiast. Garlic?”

“We all have to eat garlic,” Laurent said. “It is required. It keeps the Transylvanians away.”

“Mmm, no comment,” Maj’s mother said. “If I didn’t know better, I would have believed you about the cows, too. Are you going to be in there much longer?”

“I am coming out now,” Laurent said. He was landing the Arbalest in Maj’s hangar even as he spoke — which was just as well, since the light over one of the hangar’s pedestrian doors started flashing, indicating that someone wanted to come in.

“Good,” Maj’s mother said. “Because the Muffin is giving me grief at the moment that you are not available to be played with.”

“Oh. I will be right out.”

The hangar ceiling was almost finished shutting, and the huge space began to repressurize.

“‘Niko,” said Maj’s voice in the middle of the air, suggesting that the Muffin was indeed within range, “what are you doing in there?”

“Just letting the air back in.”

The process finished as he got down onto the floor again. The flashing light over the door turned green, and the door opened. Maj came strolling across the syncrete as Laurent went through the walk-around, which Maj told him was traditional among pilots, to make sure that nothing had fallen off their craft — or if it had, to find what it was so that someone else could be charged for it.

“And where have you been?” she said, trying to sound severe.

“Flying,” he said. “I finished with my work space for today….” He sighed a little. “It will take a while to get it the way I want it.”

“You didn’t take it out in the real game, did you?” She looked at him narrowly.

“Well,” he said. “Yes.”

“Oh, come on, Laurent,” she said. “I promised I would make sure you didn’t overdo it. And what if the Archon had come along with one of his fleets?”

“But the Archon was blown up. In the Big Bang.”

Maj blew out an annoyed breath. “You know they’ll just clone him from the bits and pieces.” she said. “In fact, there are probably clones sitting around on Darkworld right now waiting to be uncanned and reprogrammed. He could have turned up the next day!”

“But he did not. And besides, you said it would have been tactically unwise.” He grinned at her.

“Space lawyer,” Maj said. “Come on, lose the suit. I hear that Mom is going to make her famous impaled lamb chops with garlic stuck all through them.”

Laurent concentrated and vanished the suit. “What does it mean,” he said as they walked back to the door to Maj’s space, “when you try to make something in the work space, and it fails?”

“It’s just incomplete visualization,” Maj said. “All kinds of reasons for that. In your case, you’re still getting used to the hardware-software interface…failures are common.” She looked around her at the soft evening light coming through the high windows in her own work space as they stepped through the door. “You should have seen how long it took me to get this right. The lighting, the synchronization to local time. The sounds, the smells…” She looked at the floor with amusement. “And the carpet kept changing color. It drove me crazy until I found out why it did that. I’d stolen the ‘template’ from a carpet company ad online…and every time they changed the ad, the rug changed, too….”

“But there is no rug here.”

“No, I got rid of it.” She smiled a rather embarrassed smile. “See, I didn’t find out what I was doing wrong until much later. I vanished the carpet and put in hardwood flooring…and then found out. But look, Laurent, really, your dad said that he didn’t want you to spend too much time Netside, and I—”

The door on the other side of the work space opened, and a tall, gangly young man wearing fluorescent floppy clothes and a marked resemblance to Maj’s father looked in. “Maj, is your friend — Oh, here he is. Hi there.”

“Laurent, this is the famous Rick you keep hearing about,” Maj said. “The phantom stranger.”

“When I’m home all the time, she complains,” Rick said, coming over to shake Laurent’s hand. “When I’m not home all the time, she complains. Let me give you advice — don’t have any sisters.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Laurent said, a little shyly, as they made their way back to the door. “Yours seem all right.”

“Huh,” said Rick, an all-purpose sound of skepticism, and embarked on a list of Maj’s weak points, all