Starlight's Edge (6 page)

“Ask,” Zee replied.

“Are you seeking employment for yourself? I ask because the other night you asked me to search for materials on empathy. You seemed disappointed when I found no results. Is that correct?”

Zee wasn't used to computers that referred to themselves as “I,” either. “You're correct,” she answered.

“You may wish to enlarge your search to ‘peace of mind clinics' or ‘happiness centers.'”

Zee did both, and received a list ten times as long. Physical health issues may have been tamed over the last millennium, but mental ones clearly hadn't.

She asked the computer to plot them out on a customized map and drop in tube stations and landmarks. The underground had long ago merged with BritRail to become one large vactrain system, and some stop names and locations had changed. The last stop on the Northern Line was now Inverness, Scotland. Her first venture out alone, riding the Piccadilly line, she'd forgotten the increased speed the trains now traveled at and suddenly found herself in Yorkshire.

While the computer worked, she walked into the other room, scanned the morning news, then glanced at the grid of figures hovering on the wall. The one that looked like her was blinking, indicating that her computer had finished the map. “Print to cube,” she said and watched another tiny figure, this one toiling at a printing press, snap to attention. A week ago, she had found the wall of animated figurines intimidating. When David explained how it worked, it became her favorite appliance. The ancient desktop, obsolete even in Zee's era, had resurfaced as a network center that linked their computers, cubes, handhelds, and other devices. The little figures were holograph icons, though they looked as solid and moved as fluidly as living creatures. There were touchpads and keyboards, but the entire system was also voice responsive.

“Wow,” Zee had said the first time she saw it. “This is even cooler than the one in my room at your parents' house.”

David laughed. “That's because it's old and out of date. Their place has sensors in the walls and voice command everywhere. But this is the one I had when I was a kid, and I'm kind of attached to it.”

“Well, I like this better,” Zee said, “even if it is old. It has personality.”

One of the figures, dressed as a doorman, said “thank you,” and the others nodded in agreement.

Every time Zee used the wall grid, she thought of her younger sister, Bex, a born computer geek. She wished Bex could be here to see the wall grid and the cube and computers that anticipated your wishes. She wished Bex could be here even if she couldn't show her New Earth's gadgets. She missed her. She missed the other empaths. A thought that had darted at the edges of her heart all week suddenly swept past her defenses. When David wasn't around, she was lonely.

She walked back into the bedroom and sat down at the computer.

“Can you help me find someone?” she asked.

Instantly, a form appeared. She typed in Piper Simms's name, her age, and listed her likely address as London. True, Piper had seen her as a rival before, but surely she must be lonely too.

The computer searched London, then the UK, then kept widening the search until it had searched the entire world. There was no one named Piper Simms who fit Piper's age or physical description. Zee felt the sting of loneliness more sharply than ever.

“Is Piper a friend?” the computer asked gently.

“Not really,” Zee sighed. “But I thought maybe…” She was ashamed to hear herself sounding so lost. “It's just that I don't really know anyone here except David.”

“And you're lonely? Of course. It happens to everyone.”

“Not
you
,” Zee responded automatically, momentarily forgetting she was talking to a computer.

“Everyone,” the computer emphasized. “Myself as well.”

Zee was shocked. “You mean you have emotions?”

“Of course.” The screen shimmered for an instant, as if the computer was offended, or proud. “I was cloned from a very noble line of constantly evolving code. I have all the emotions humans have, and a few more that you are incapable of understanding.”

Zee touched the power-down sensor.

The computer's screen shimmered and blinked. “If I might say one more thing? Loneliness does not last forever, unless it is chosen. You will have friends here.”

“Thank you,” Zee said. In spite of David's warning about ill-intentioned computers, this one had lifted her spirits.

Zee checked to make sure the map had printed to her cube correctly and set out, curious to see what central London now looked like. And how bad could the job hunt be? She was confident about her skills and eager to use them again. Surely there was a job out there for her somewhere.

By noon Zee realized that there would be no job for her in any of the care centers. They looked at her the way she might have looked at someone who wandered into Casualty at Royal London Hospital claiming to heal people with snakes. Yet it wasn't strictly true that there was no illness on New Earth. She remembered one of the ads she'd seen on the ghost the day she arrived.
Deep D Clinics. Fast cures for your depression. 50,000 branches worldwide.
Something David had said also came back to her—that even though the government provided a baseline standard of living for everyone, it didn't seem to make people happy. Work turned out to be necessary to most people, and without it, they fell prey to depression and ennui. In the short time Zee had been here, she'd heard a half dozen ads for new medications guaranteed to combat anxiety, hopelessness, depression, and anger. But when she called on several clinics, she was told that all cures were biochemical, and no, they were not interested in discussing alternative therapies with her.

Discouraged and hungry, Zee bought a sandwich and sat on a bench outside a café near Harrods. That, at least, was one thing that hadn't changed. Brompton Road was still full of shops. If anything, it looked
more
like London than the London she'd lived in. There was a definite Dickensian look to the place. Because most vehicles ran on the skyways, the streets had been narrowed and repaved with cobblestones. There were far more pedestrians than vehicles, and old-fashioned lampposts and tubs of spring flowers marked the way. And there was still a Harrods, with animated window mannequins strutting the latest fashions. It was quite a bit smaller than the one she remembered, probably because merchandise wasn't created until someone wanted to buy it. That was one big plus of nanotech—no need to make anything ahead of time or keep a big inventory.

Zee took a bite of her sandwich. It was fresh. Bland, but fresh. Then she took her cube out and checked for messages, hoping one of the care centers she'd visited had reconsidered her proposal. Despite the comfort of the familiar setting, she felt a growing sense of desperation. Of course she wanted to use her skills to help people, but she had also begun to worry about those skills. She had not forgotten the disquiet that coursed through her body when Paul took her hand at the party, the feeling of ill health and something amiss. Yet no one in the family seemed to think there was any problem at all. Surely David would know if the brother he had looked up to for so many years had changed in some fundamental way. She must have misread him. It occurred to her that people on New Earth differed in subtle ways from the people she had lived and worked among, and it would take her time to absorb these subtleties and become as skilled as she'd once been. She needed to work again, or her talent would slip away.

No one had responded to her, but the cube flashed with a message from David. She tapped the cube, and his video expanded.

“Good news and bad news, I'm afraid. A team from the Alliance is coming tomorrow morning to hear a preliminary report on our research mission. I've been asked to be the presenter, which is kind of a big deal, so I can't miss it. That's the good news. Bad news is, the presentation is here at Reykjavik at nine sharp, and I'm going to have to pull an all-nighter to get everything together. Even with Mia here helping me, it's going to be a tight squeeze, so I won't get home tonight. Miss you like fire, but I'll be home in the morning, probably a little after eleven. Love you, Zee.”

I love you too, Zee thought, having just enough time to touch the image of his face before it vanished.

Suddenly, there was a commotion on the street and Zee saw a young girl hurtling toward her. For a moment, she thought it was some sort of street theater or hologram, because she looked completely out of place in her long dress of heavy velvet trimmed with elaborate lace. Then Zee saw the terror in the girl's eyes and a gang chasing her.

“Timey! Timey! Timey!” they taunted. “Go back to the swamp you came from! Shove off! You don't belong here!” One of them snatched an apple from a stand and hurled it at her.

Zee caught the girl and stopped her. David had warned her of such incidents, and warned her never to wear the clothes from her old life outside the house. Dress like a New Earther, blend in, and they'll leave you alone, he'd cautioned.

But apparently this girl hadn't gotten the message. She didn't blend in at all. Her dress, billowing around her like a ship in full sail, was a walking advertisement for the past. Zee stepped in front of her so firmly and abruptly the startled gang halted.

“Who are you?” the leader demanded.

Zee still had her cube in her hand, which she raised and pointed at the leader. “I'm the person who's taking your picture,” she said. “Now, should I send it over to the police or are you going to go away?”

Caught, the gang turned and walked sullenly back toward Harrods. Zee motioned the girl over to the bench. Only now she saw this wasn't a girl at all but a young woman some years older than Zee herself. It was her delicate bones, wide blue eyes, and long waves of blond hair that gave the impression of youth.

Zee had hardly touched the lemonade that came with her sandwich and now offered the cup to the woman. As she took it, their hands brushed together, and Zee felt an instant flow of emotions. Despite her outward trembling, the woman's fear was abating, being replaced by relief.

“Thank you,” the woman said, taking a sip of the lemonade. “Oh! It's so tasteless! Just like everything else!”

Zee couldn't help but laugh. “Just what I thought. How can a country be so advanced and have such terrible food?”

The woman looked at Zee with fresh curiosity. “You also? You came here from…?”

“The twenty-third century. And you?”

“The fifteenth. France. My name is Melisande.
Was
Melisande. It doesn't fit in here, so we changed it to Meli. But I've been here almost five years, and I still don't fit in. I don't think I ever will.”

Zee looked at her dress and saw now that the velvet was worn in spots and the hem was frayed. A wide section above the hem and a narrower band around the bodice looked as if they had once been embroidered, but the embroidery had been carefully picked away. Only the lace on the billowing sleeves and underskirt looked new. Meli saw Zee staring and tried to hide the frayed hem. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. “Oh, it's all so terrible. I want so badly what I can't have.”

“You're homesick?” Zee asked.

“No, it's not that at all. Home was—a land of wars. My mother died when I was young. My father and brother fell in battle. The man who killed them wanted to marry me. Then Henri brought me here.”

Zee was shocked and slightly thrilled, her imagination running wild. “Did he kidnap you?”

“No, he saved me. He was a stable groom, or so I thought, and I loved him even before my father was killed. When he told me who he really was and where he really came from, it was too much for me to understand. All I knew was that he had saved me from the man who killed my father and I loved him. I would follow him anywhere.”

Then why, Zee wondered, was this young woman so unhappy? Unless—“Does Henri still love you?”

“Yes, that is the trouble. He loves me so much he doesn't want to leave me alone. He quit the Time Fleet to be with me. But there aren't any jobs, and we never have enough money. In France, my father was a count. We owned castles and orchards and fields full of cattle. Our peasants made a certain kind of cheese that was famous throughout the country. I ate fresh pears that tasted of sunlight and oysters that tasted of the blue sea. Nothing but the smoothest silks and finest linen touched my skin. Now we are so poor I have picked away all the pearls and gems that once adorned this dress and sold them to pay our expenses. No one will offer him a job, and we will be on the bottom forever. This dress is nothing but rags, except for the lace, which I make myself, as all highborn girls were taught. Worn as it is, it is still finer than anything new I own. So I come here to look at the windows, nothing more. I do not go in. I do not presume to buy. I do not bother anyone. Yet still I am taunted. What is to become of us? If I cannot fit in, I am a stone around my love's neck.”

A few weeks ago, Zee might have found the talk of clothes shallow. Clothes were just clothes. Except that sometimes clothes
weren't
just clothes. She remembered how right she'd felt in her party dress, and how much of an outsider she would have felt without it.

Mistaking Zee's silence for disapproval, Meli lowered her head. “I'm sorry,” she murmured. “This is not your problem. You were very kind to rescue me.”

She gathered her skirts and stood to go. She'd gone no farther than a block before she was again surrounded by the chanting gang. Zee sprang up, feeling slightly guilty that she'd let Meli go off alone. When she caught up with them, she took Meli firmly by the arm so she too faced the gang.

“Do you have any idea who this is?” Zee asked, aiming her gaze at the tallest boy, who she thought was the leader. “This is the
only
lace maker on New Earth. Look at this sleeve. None of your grotty nanolace—this is
real
lace. Made by hand. It costs three thousand Emus a meter. I've waited three years for this woman to trim my wedding dress, and you are
not
going to get in the way.”