by Tom Clancy
"The address I gave you," Wilma said. "Open a door to it."
A black patch about the size and shape of a door appeared. "Please note," said "Uncle Doug" in a changed tone of voice, "that this access is controlled. All access to the space is by express permission of Breathing Space Inc., and unauthorized accesses or attempts to enter or exit the space by other than officially sanctioned means will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law under statutes defining criminal trespass and violation of privacy according to appropriate state, federal, and international authorities. Persons with restraining orders filed against them are warned that entry into this space is regarded as physical approach in all states except Hawaii, Colorado, and North Dakota. Entry into this space indicates that you understand and accept these conditions."
"Right," Wilma said, "we accept, let's go!"
She went through the door. Megan went after her.
A moment later they found themselves standing in a large, bright reception area, as unprepossessing and impersonal as an airport: high white walls, soft white lighting from high up in a forty-foot-high virtual ceiling. In the middle of it all was a plain white desk with a severe- looking dark-haired young man sitting behind it. They made their way toward him, and he looked them over as the two of them came up to his desk.
"Wilma Christensen," he said, "and Megan O'Malley?"
"Yeah," and 'That's right," they said.
"Here to see Burt Kamen" He glanced into the air to one side of the desk, probably at some data readout that the local space was set for them not to see. "Right. You ladies understand the rules? Don't ask him for information about where he is physically. That's his business. Other than that, there's no limit on visiting times- any time he chooses to have the system flag him as 'available,' you're welcome. The only exception to that is when he's meeting with family. The same entry combination he gave you will work for any further accesses, but if you attempt entry through any other Net address than this one, you'll be banned. Address control like this is the only way we can guarantee our clients' safety, and we take it very seriously."
They both nodded. "Okay," said the young man, "he's through there. Follow the blue tracer. It'll lead you to him."
A small spark of blue light appeared, and immediately thereafter, another door appeared in the air. The blue light drifted through it, and Megan and Wilma followed.
Megan, at least, had to pause for a moment to gaze around her in sheer appreciation as they came out the "other side." The landscape stretching away around them on all sides was absolutely breathtaking-some mountain range in the northern Rockies, she suspected. The hills running up to them, among which she and Wilma stood, lacked that manicured, managed look to be seen in the foothills of the Alps. Someone did a really great job building this, Megan thought, for she knew there was more to constructing a virtual domain than simply patching in a lot of 360-degree stereo stills. The wind blew, there was a faint fizz and hiss of rustling aspen leaves on the branches of the little patches of woodland surrounding them. The air smelled of snow and the pine trees that started farther up the slope of this particular line of hills. There was no one else to be seen for miles around… and Megan suspected this virtual "clear space" had been crafted as much for psychological reasons as for its sheer beauty and restfulness. It was a place made for people who had had entirely too much of the people closest to them, lately.
The little blue light was sailing ahead of them, through the aspen spinney and out the other side. The two of them headed after it, through the spinney, up a bare path through the grass to a gentle hillcrest, and down the far side. There was a single figure there, sitting under a tree, wearing worn jeans and a tank top; as they spotted him, and the blue light went sailing down toward him, the sun came out and flashed brilliantly on shining blond hair. He glanced up.
"Burt!"
Wilma ran down the slope to him as he got up, hurrying toward her as Wilma hurried. A few seconds later they rushed together, and Megan wasn't quite sure where to look, except not at them-for it can be painful to find that, despite all the good help you think you've been giving your friend, she has nonetheless just barely been holding it together. Now Wilma and Burt were clinging to each other, and Wilma was just barely stifling the sobs, but it was a close thing. Burt was hugging her hard, with his face scrunched down into her shoulder, and from the shapes into which his expression was twisting itself, Megan half thought he might cry, too. But he hung on to his composure, and after a few moments Wilma pulled herself together as well, and said, in a slightly strangled voice, "I was so worried about you!"
"You didn't have to be… you know I can take care of myself."
"Yeah," Wilma said, "but that's different from knowing that you don't have to be taking care of yourself, that you're all right!"
Burt winced a little, and then said, "If I'd known you were going to carry on like this, maybe I wouldn't have told you where I was… "
"Nice to see you, too, Burt," Megan said, rather dryly.
"Uh," Burt said, and straightened up and looked at Megan with a rather more repentant expression. "Uh, sorry, Megan. Thanks for coming. It really is good to see you… "
Megan restrained a sigh. Often enough in Wilma's relationship with Burt she seemed to find herself in the "advice-giving" position, having to issue reality checks to one or the other of them. It wasn't as if they didn't need them, occasionally, either, but sometimes Megan wondered how long her patience was going to last, since both Wilma and Burt seemed to need a fair amount of coaching in how to treat human beings they were supposed to be close to. Not that I'm necessarily any great expert, Megan thought. But even a talented amateur can do some good…
"Obviously I'm not going to ask you where you are,"
Megan said. "But I, for one, wouldn't mind knowing where you've been"
Burt sat down under a nearby silver larch, and Wilma sat down next to him. He put an arm around her. Megan made herself comfortable leaning against another tree not far away. "I went up to New York for a couple of days," Burt said. "I had enough money to afford one of those stacktels they have near Grand Central."
Megan raised her eyebrows. She'd heard of these, an import from the Japanese market. They were "hotels" where you didn't so much rent a room for the night as a locked personal cubbyhole ten feet long, four feet high and four feet across, just big enough to lie down in for eight hours at a time. The stacked-up cubicles had Net access, but as far as Megan could tell, that was their only difference from a coffin. And the thought of sleeping stacked up in the company of who-knew-how-many other human beings, like sardines in individual cans, gave her the creeps. "How was it?" she said.
"Not too bad." Burt stretched his legs out in front of him. "I was scouting around for some work there… but I didn't want to linger. There are people there who can just tell if you've got nowhere to stay… and I wanted to get myself settled. So I found the address of a Breathing Space facility"-He smiled. He was not going to tell even them which one-"and used some of the funds I had left to get there. They've been nice. They kit you out with all the essentials right away."
"Like Net access," Megan said, looking around her again in open admiration.
"Yeah, it's pretty slickIt's comfortable enough.
The rooms are small, and pretty basic, but they're bigger than a stacktel… and safe. And there are a lot of other kids around to talk to."
"You could have fooled me," Wilma said, looking around them at what seemed beautiful but completely desolate wilderness.
Burt chuckled. "It's not as empty as it looks. This place has selective 'invisibility' routines built in. You can't be seen by the others here unless you set your personal profile up that way. This whole area could be crawling with people, but you wouldn't know about it unless they felt like talking."
Megan nodded. "You've been thinking about this for a while, huh?"
"I knew eventually it was just going to be too much," Burt said. "It seemed better to have a plan for when that ha
ppened… "
"But when are you coming back?" Wilma said.
"Back home?" Burt snorted. "Why would I go home?"
Wilma blinked. "Well, your friends… and you have to try to patch it up with your folks sometime… "
"Do I?" Burt's voice acquired something of an edge. "Why?"
"Well, I mean, yofl can't just dump them"
"Why not? They've been talking about dumping me for almost as long as I can remember."
"Burt," Megan said, "that's kind of harsh"
"But it's true. Megan, you don't know them as well as Wilma does… " Burt shook his head, looking out at the distant mountains. "My folks… they'd really rather be rid of me. You know they would, Megan! Wil's heard a whole lot more of it than you have."
Megan briefly flushed hot with guilt. This was almost certainly true, since she avoided every contact with Burt's parents that she could. "You get tired of hearing it after a while," Burt said. " 'You haven't been worth your keep since you got old enough to start avoiding your chores.' " His mimicry of his father's slightly Southern accent was bitter and precise. " 'Instead of you, I should've got a dog, and shot the dog.' " And he shifted tone, so that it was his mother's voice that spoke next: " 4All the other mothers have kids they can be proud of, but when your name comes up all I can do is tell them I made a mistake and I'll try to do better next time.' "
Megan looked away, uncomfortable. "You see?" Burt said. "You can't even imagine it. Me, I can't even imagine going home and not having people telling me what a waste of time I am. What kind of life is that for somebody? Sometimes I think, forget it, it's too late for you, they've got you programmed. No matter what you do now, it's never gonna work, you're always going to mess up, because that's just what they expect you to do… "
He shook his head. "It's got to stop," Burt said. "If I'm ever going to make something of myself later, I have to get out of this, go find somewhere that I don't immediately look like I have FAILURE written all over my face in big letters. Somewhere where people won't tell me that I do… like they do at home, every minute of the day."
He fell silent for a few breaths.
Wilma looked at him, her expression turning more stricken by the moment. "You're not coming back, are you."
He shook his head.
"Burt-"
"Don't try to talk me into it," he said in a warning tone. "Even the people who run this place don't try to do that."
"What do they do?" Megan said.
"Oh, there's some counseling," Burt said, and twisted against the tree a little, like someone who finds he's leaning on a root, or an unpleasant memory. 'That's part of the basic agreement. But they don't force you, they don't make you trade off contact with your parents for a place to stay. I checked that out before I came here." He sighed, looked at his boots. "There's some career counseling, too, for 'when your situation is stable again.' It's just code for 'when you finally give up and go home.' But I'm not gonna be one of the ones who do that. There's too much at stake."
"How long can you stay?" Wilma said, in a small voice.
Burt made a face. "That's one of the things the counseling staff won't usually discuss," he said. "They say that it's always handled on a case by case basis, depending on what each 'client' needs. But I've been talking to a lot of the kids here, and I haven't met anyone who's been here longer than about three months." Burt's face then acquired a smile, but it was a dry one. "By then," he said, "if they let me stay that long, I'll be eighteen… and after that it doesn't matter so much. I can go where I like, work where I like. And even now I've been hearing about some pretty good possibilities, things that'll be a lot more interesting than school… or trying to 'patch things up' at home."
Wilma's face was very still. "What about us?" she said after a moment.
"I'll come back when I can," Burt said. "Look, Wil, I know it's hard, but it's going to be hard on me, too. When I get a job, I won't be able to take time off any time soon. I'm going to have to work pretty steady for a while. And I'm not going to be staying around the old neighborhood, either. Too many bad memories… and too many chances I might run into my mom or dad." He shook his head. "I've had about enough of them for a while, and they've been saying they've had enough of me. We'll see if it's true. There sure haven't been any attempts by them to get in touch with me here." The bitterness in Burt's voice was once again sharp enough to cut.
"They haven't tried at all?" Megan said.
Burt leaned back against the tree again and shook his head wearily. "Look," he said, "I shouldn't complain. I've been thinking that I should have done this a long time ago. I've met a whole lot of other kids since I got here who've had problems even worse than mine. You wouldn't believe some of the crud they've been through.
And the one thing we all seem to have in common is that none of us can believe how long we put up with something that, if one adult did it to another, they wouldn't put up with for a second. They'd be on the link to the cops, or out the door, in a matter of hours. But some of us here have stuck it out for years, because we had no choice. We were kids, we were trapped, the system is slanted against us from the start, and there was nowhere else we could go, no one who wouldn't send us straight back where we came from and wash their hands of us. Or maybe we really thought our parents would change their ways somehow. We thought that something we did right would eventually make a difference… " He shook his head. "No more of it," Burt said. "And I don't see why I should bother going back to school, either, at 'home' or elsewhere. One more year isn't going to make any difference at all."
Against such certainty, it was hard to know what to say. Wilma looked down at the grass, picked a small lawn daisy that she found there, and began pulling the petals off it, two or three at a time. "Look," Megan said, "until you at least finish high school, you aren't going to be able to get a job that's going to be worth much-"
"I've already found out here about some jobs that're worth a lot more than any job a high school diploma would get me," Burt said, turning those flashing blue eyes on her. "Come on, Megan! Think about it! As if a diploma means that much anymore! It'll get you a job washing dishes in someplace too small and rotten to have a machine to do it, that's about all. It gets you into college- if you have the money, and who has that much money?" Megan had to let out a breath at that. The only real tension she had noticed in her household over the past couple years had revolved around the fact that the savings plans established when she and her brothers had been born were not now yielding anything like enough money to completely cover their coHege costs. Her mother and father never actually fought about it… but the subject was often just there, hanging over other conversations, like a sword hung over the kitchen table by a hair.
"Forget it," Burt said. "If I want college, some day, F'll come back for it. Right now I'd sooner get out into the real world and find out what life is like, without people running me down all day. Make some decent money and stow it away. There are plenty of jobs out there" He trailed off.
"Come on, what kind of jobs?" Megan said. "Seriously, Burt, we're worried about you… we don't want you to wind up in some kind of trouble. And going job-seeking right now could cause just that. Sooner or later anyone who pays you anything worth earning is going to want your permanent address, and your Social Security number…"
"Not if you're going to be doing the kind of work where they don't ask those questions," Burt said, sounding stubborn.
Megan kept her reaction out of her face. He obviously meant some kind of black-market or gray-market work… not usually the kind of job you would enjoy for long. She'd had no idea he was that desperate. "Look," Megan said, "Burt, think about this before you go off on your own. It's a big step. And you don't have to do it any time soon. They'll give you a while to sort things out. Maybe your folks will even see the light… "
The look Burt turned on her was humorous, but at the same time made it plain that he thought Megan was out of her mind.
"I…" Wilma said. Then she held
her head up, and looked Burt in the eye, and blinked a few times. "You deserve to have your own life for a while," she said. "I can wait for you to sort things out… if I know you'll come back."… For me, her eyes said.
The look Burt turned on her was heartbreaking. It was genuine uncertainty. "Wil, I don't know how this is going to turn out," Burt said. "All I know is… I won't be back to school this semester." He turned his head away, veering away from the heart of the matter. "And you're going to have to find someone else to ride the qualifiers with you. Later in the year, I guess…"
"We can find someone more 'permanent' to fill in," Megan said. "But, Burt… we're not going to be happy about it. It's you we're going to miss."
"Yeah," Burt said, and bowed his head. "I'm going to miss that, too. It was the happiest I got, usually. A good distance from home.."
None of them said anything for a few moments. Then Wilma looked up. "Can you come see something in my space?" she said, rather sadly. "It's not finished yet… but I'd like to see what you think."
"Yeah," Burt said. "Sure."
Wilma glanced over at Megan. "Go on," Megan said. "I'll catch you later."
Wilma and Burt stood up, took a few steps together, then vanished.
Megan sat there, looking around her at the superb landscape, and let out a long, pained breath. She had had the occasional boyfriend in her time, but she had never been as serious about any of them as Wilma was about Burt. Now she almost felt grateful for that. IVd be terrible to feel about somebody the way Wil does, and then have them going through this kind of pain…
She stood up, dusting her pants off, though the gesture was hardly necessary on virtual grass. And what kind of job is he talking about? Megan thought. Except for his riding, he doesn 't really have any skills… Certainly there were jobs in the "gray economy" that would employ a kid Burt's age for a little while… but nothing that would give the worker any security. Not that it sounded as if Burt particularly cared. But there was something about this that was making Megan twitch. Normally, if Burt was going to be doing something aboveboard, he would have told them all about it, right away. Keeping secrets was not his forte. I wonder…