week, usually on Thursdays unless something more important got in the way. Dinner was spectacular, and the family breathed garlic happily at one another all evening — no one moved from around the table for a long time, everyone seeming content to just sit around talking about life, the news, the various levels of school the family had to deal with, and so on. Laurent was plainly enjoying himself, but to Maj’s surprise, he was the first one to excuse himself and get up. “I think the jet lag is coming to get me, finally,” he said.
Maj’s father looked at him with some concern. “Do you feel all right? You look a little pale, actually.”
“Just a headache,” Laurent said.
“Poor dear. Maj, show him where the asprothingies are,” her mother said.
“Sure, come on….” She took him down to the bathroom, thumbprinted the medicine cabinet open, and rummaged around for the dissolvable aspirin that one of her father’s colleagues in England sent them once every few months. “This stuff is great…it has no taste at all. Two in water every four hours.” She reached up for a glass and half filled it with water, dropped the tablets in.
“Thanks,” Laurent said.
She looked at him thoughtfully. It wasn’t just the bathroom light — he really did look pale. “I wonder if you might have picked up a flu bug or something on the way in,” she said. “All those people in the airport, after all…a new country, lots of new strains of germs…”
“I don’t know,” Laurent said. “But I’m tired, all of a sudden. I wasn’t tired before, not like this.”
“Huh. Well, look, why not turn in early?”
“‘Turn in—’”
“Sorry…idiom. ‘Go to bed.’”
“I might,” he said, and sagged against the doorsill a little, watching the tablets fizz themselves away.
“Did this just hit you?” Maj said.
“Yes. Or maybe not. I felt — shivery — while I was…when I was inside
“I don’t know,” Maj said. “I’ve been online often enough when I was sick, and that’s just where you
He laughed at that, looking wry. “Yes.”
“I learned real early to lay off the fluids before simming,” Maj said. “Still, it’s a little weird…. Well, look, get some rest.”
The liquid in the glass finished its fizzing. Laurent picked it up, drank it down. “There is no taste,” he said.
“Believe me,” Maj said, “I prefer that to my brother’s method. He chews up aspirin tablets whole. Says the taste doesn’t bother him.” She shuddered.
So did Laurent. “
“We’ve got some stuff in here that’s good for that,” Maj said. “One of the new multiplex antivirals. Wait a few hours to see if it really is the flu…then take one of these.” She reached into the cabinet again, showed him the box. “Same deal — two in a glass of water, then go lie down…because it’ll knock you on your butt.”
Laurent smiled a little wanly. “Idiom,” he said. “But I understood that one.”
“Go on,” Maj said, “go crash out. You’ve been through enough lately that you shouldn’t be surprised if it catches up with you.”
He headed off for the guest room. Maj made her way back into the kitchen, where her mother was talking the Muffin into getting ready to go to bed, and her father was leaning back in his chair talking curling with her brother. “Is he okay?” her dad said to her as Maj sat back down.
“He thinks he might be flu-ish,” Maj said. “He’s had a couple of chills.”
“Could be,” her mother said, and sighed. “That airport is always full of germs from exotic parts of the world, looking for new people to bite. Did you show him where the virus stuff was?”
“Yeah,” Maj said. “He’ll know better than any of us if he needs it.”
“All right,” her mother said. “I just don’t like to think of him being sick here alone. It’s busy the next couple of nights. You have that alumni thing again—”
“I can cancel if I have to,” Maj’s father said. “Any excuse.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” her mother said. “You said it was important. And I have that consultant’s meeting with the Net-dorks at PsiCor — heaven only knows how late
“Mom, don’t sweat it, I’ll be here,” Maj said. “I’m flying with some of the Group tomorrow night. We were going to take Niko with us, but one way or another, I’ll be on site. It’s just the flu, anyway.”
“Yes, but he’s in a strange place…”
“Mom,” Maj said, “he doesn’t need his diaper changed, either. No need to do the Great Earth Mother thing.” She grinned a little. “You just go play kick-the-client as scheduled. Everything will be fine.”
“Yes, of course,” her mother said, and got up. “Come on, Miss Muffin, let’s get you in the restraints for the night.” She picked up the giggling, wriggling Muffin and carried her down the hall, shushing her as they went.
“He’s a nice kid.” Rick said. “Has he shown any interest in sports?”
“You mean in sliding rocks around on ice?” Maj said with good-natured scorn. “He’s shown much better sense than that. I think we’re going to make a simmer out of him.”
“A complete waste,” her brother said, getting up and stretching. “Oh, well.” He got up and started picking up dishes.
Maj looked at her dad. “You could always use the excuse,” she said.
“No, your mom’s right,” he said. “Duty before pleasure. Unfortunately.” He got up and started collecting silverware, and Maj rose to help him clear things away, it being the rule in the Green household that the Cook Didn’t Clean But Everyone Else Did.
Her brother chuckled. “Smart kid,” he said, “absenting himself before the cleaning frenzy was due to begin. He’ll go far.”
“He didn’t know,” Maj said. “And I don’t think he would have avoided it, frankly…” All the same, she found herself fretting in a mode similar to the one in which she had spent much of the day at school.
It’s just the flu. He’ll be fine.
In the small dark room, six thousand miles away, a man sat in the predawn darkness listening to his little radio through his earphone. At the end of each day’s first news broadcast, and after the day’s last one at six, there was always a reading of personal announcements which people had phoned or linked in to the national broadcaster — sometimes notices for people traveling in the country, sometimes mundane announcements like details about sales or a change in the time of a local country market, news about police roadblocks (at least, the ones they wanted you to know about), or information about where the roads were being worked on. Armin listened to each of these broadcasts every day, waiting for the one that would tell him that his unknown friends were ready to help him leave the cellar, and the country, for the last time. Now he sat waiting, tense as always, getting more impatient all the time as announcement after announcement was read, and none of them was for him.
“—the A41 national road at Soara, we regret to inform travelers that this road will be closed for the next two weeks due to bridge repairs on the route. Travelers are advised to use the A16 road through Elmila instead…Leoru Town Market will start at eight-fifteen next Saturday morning rather than at nine-fifteen as previously scheduled…. To Bela Urnim, presently traveling to Timisoara on business—”
The breath went into him in a gasp, got stuck there.
“—we have received your message of the eighteenth and understand it.”
Armin sat up convulsively against the wall, feeling his hands go cold with fear all in an instant. That was one of the code phrases in the book given him by the organization that had been helping him, the book which he had memorized. This one phrase had stuck particularly in his mind even before everything was committed to memory, because he had often wondered in what circumstances it might be used. And now he knew.
It meant,
