Megan had another drink of her Coke to try to collect herself.
'Burt got lucky,' Bodo said. 'The first of the 'lookers' arrived just a few days ago. Must have been the night after he came in… something like that. I'd mentioned it to him in passing, but when he heard the word from someone else, he was hot to get involved, kept talking about what Wilma would think, how great he'd look when he turned up in his home neighborhood again, how happy it would make her that he didn't ever have to go home again. He went off to his meeting with-' Bodo waved his hand in the air, plainly not wanting to mention names. 'Whoever they are. He came back saying they liked him, they were going to get back to him. I guess they did.'
He had another drink of his Rivella. 'I last saw him last night,' Bodo said. 'We're in the same facility, physically. He was packing up his stuff, not that he'd brought an awful lot with him to start with. Said he was going to be meeting someone in Ch-meeting someone nearby. And then this morning he left.'
Megan swallowed, her mouth suddenly having gone dry despite the Coke. She was realizing that she had been phrasing her questions to herself about Breathing Space incorrectly. Not 'what kind of employer would hire these kids.' But instead, Tor what kind of employer would these kids be perfect?'
Someone who doesn't want people who have family ties.
Someone who wants people who are already missing… and wouldn 't surprise anyone if they never came back.
… I've got to find him!
She turned the Coke bottle around and around on the table. 'If I wanted to do work like this,' Megan said, very softly, 'who would I ask for?'
Bodo stared at her. 'Oh, come on, you're not-'
'Bodo,' Megan said, 'please.'
She looked him in the eye and would not look away.
Finally he glanced down at the red-and-white-checked tablecloth. 'There's a guy named Vaud,' Bodo said, hardly above a whisper. 'At least, it's a male persona he wears when he's in here, and that's the name he uses.'
'And what 'street corner' does he hang around?'
For a long time Bodo wouldn't say anything. Megan just sat there and looked at him.
After a while he looked up at her. 'Do you like Burt or something?' Bodo said.
Megan strangled the first answer that tried to get out of her throat, since it would have profoundly shocked both her father and mother, as well as embarrassing her by making it plain that she even knew such expressions. 'Not for myself,' Megan said. 'In fact, I'm a whole lot more inclined to kick him than kiss him at the moment. But I have to do this nonetheless. Probably I'll make an appointment for myself with the nearest shrink as soon as I've found him again.'
'Huh.' Bodo finished his Rivella, put the glass down, and then looked over his shoulder. After a moment he turned back to her. 'You can get there from here,' he said, 'but not at this time of day. The schedule's wrong.'
'When will it be right?'
Bodo shook his head.
'Come on,' Megan whispered.
He stopped shaking his head… then said, very softly, 'Give me a virtmail address for you.'
'Link to workspace,' Megan said.
'Active,' said her workspace's management program in a distant whisper, hardly audible above the chatter and laughter of the crowd.
'Pass my virtmail address to client 'BodoV account.'
'Done.'
He nodded, then, not meeting her eyes. 'I'll mail you,' Bodo said.
'Thanks.'
She started to get up… then sat down again. Bodo gave her a bemused look.
'Tell me one thing before I go,' Megan said.
'Ask,' he said, though again he wouldn't look at her.
'Why have you told me all this?' Megan said. 'It could get you thrown out.'
'I don't think so,' Bodo said. 'Well, maybe so, if they found out. I don't think they will. They're not nearly as all-seeing as they make themselves out to be. It's part of the place's protective coloration, the thing that keeps it from being exploited more than it is. But as for the rest of it…'
Bodo looked up at her, favoring her once more with that expression which had seemed so odd the first time. 'Since I got here,' Bodo said, 'I mean the first time I got here, not this one… you're the first person who's asked me why I'm here, other than the professionals who have to ask.'
Megan was startled. 'Uh-'
'A lot of people here are real self-absorbed,' Bodo said softly. 'Interesting to run into someone who wasn't, for a change. Very interesting indeed.'
Megan swallowed. 'Bodo,' she said, 'I want to thank you. Thank you very much.'
'Don't thank me until you've got reason,' Bodo said. 'I may not be able to help you.'
'You already have. And I thank you anyway.' She turned away. 'I'll be waiting to hear from you.'
Megan activated the egress doorway back to her own workspace, closed it behind her. Not until the bright sunlight of that plaza was gone, replaced by the blackness of near-Saturn space, did she feel entirely safe again… and she had no idea why.
And then Megan stood there looking at the images still littering her amphitheater floor, all frozen in the middle of talking about Breathing Space. All that information in one place… but the one thing she most wanted to know about it, none of these people knew.
'Save everything,' Megan said to her workspace management program, and turned her back on the images. / need to think. But not in here. I've had enough virtuality for one day.
'All saved, Megan.'
'Good. Close down.'
'This is a preprogrammed message. 'Megan, your mail is piling up enough that it's going to start perturbing Rhea's orbit if you don't do something about it!' '
She stopped where she was at the sound of her own voice, and her face twisted in annoyed response. Then Megan sighed. The curse of a tidy mind… 'Abort shutdown,' she said. 'Show me the mail.'
'Priority specifications?'
'None. Just open everything.'
Shortly the bottom level of the amphitheater was littered with a crowd of talking images that looked like some kind of animated direct mail convention. Megan walked among them and examined each one in passing. Some of them were images of schoolmates other than Wilma, fervent announcements about softball games, desperate requests for bring-and-buy nights for one or another of the charities her class was sponsoring, schedules for group study sessions… Most of these Megan messages grabbed out of the air as if they were flimsy pieces of paper or cellophane, folded up, and 'filed' in a cardboard box she'd conjured out of the empty air to follow her across the floor and receive them. Other messages-ads for restaurants, announcements about sales at stores in one of all too many nearby malls-she treated like the junk mail they were, plucking them out of the air, crunching them up into crinkly 'paper' balls, and pitching them with great force up away from the surface of Rhea. They soared through the tenuous atmosphere without difficulty, heading in a leisurely manner toward Saturn and out of sight. Finally with her space looking a whole lot less cluttered than it had some minutes before, Megan came to the last virtmail, the one nearest the edge of her workspace, where the floor of the amphitheater ended, and the scatter of bluish methane snow began. There, slight, redheaded, and freckled, leaning on the hood of a Cadillac carved out of ice, Leif Anderson looked out at her.
Leif
Abruptly, without warning, the idea began to grow in Megan's mind, and started turning into a plan, racing through her thought and swiftly strangling the objections she raised in the same way a vine strangles a sapling tree.
He would be perfect. Perfect.
But he'd never do it. And it wouldn't be fair to ask him. And besides-
Megan stood there for several long seconds, irresolute.
