by Ryan Graudin
Anonymous or not, they walked with swagger. Imogen congratulated herself on a crew well dressed. The boys she’d fitted into button-ups and charcoal jeans. Gram had consented to sporting a leather vest and a fedora, though Farway would only accept aviator sunglasses as an accessory. It wasn’t often Priya traded in her scrubs, but the emerald-green wrap dress was stunning on her. Eliot wore a long jumpsuit, so white it almost disappeared against her skin. Anyone else so pale would’ve been swallowed, but Eliot looked regal. Little wonder she’d convinced Farway she was the queen of France.
For herself Imogen had selected silver palazzo pants—the ones that made her feel as if she were riding a sleigh through fresh snow—and a white top. She’d started off the day with cat-eye sunglasses but had removed them in favor of a better view. And what a view it was! There was a Ferris wheel! Over there, the Eiffel Tower! To her left, the Bellagio fountains had started their infamous show. Oh, this city was delightful…. Never mind the drunk emptying his guts at the base of a palm tree, despite the fact that it was 3:00 PM. Historical accounts were right—this city never really stopped partying.
“What should we do first?” Farway paused to wipe fountain mist from his sunglasses.
“The Bellagio is a logical start,” Eliot pointed out. “We could work our way down the Strip.”
Farway didn’t flinch. It was as if the suggestion had bounced off. “Imogen, Vegas was your idea. What do you think?”
“I think Eliot’s right.” Here her cousin scowled, but Imogen paid no heed. The casino’s proximity made it an easy choice. Easier still, given the hotel held the shop she wanted to visit most. “To the Bellagio! Let’s go gape!”
The place certainly was gape-worthy. Air-conditioning sucked the group in through the revolving doors, into a lobby with one of the most stunning works of art Imogen had ever seen—the Fiori di Como, two thousand pieces of glass blown into floral shapes and suspended from the ceiling. They were every color imaginable, lit from behind to create a sight both alien and spellbinding. All five crew members paused beneath the installation, necks craned.
Gram halted close to Imogen. Very close. Ever since that accidental touch on the Invictus, she’d been hyperaware of the Engineer’s presence. He seemed to carry his own current, one that leaped from his skin to hers. Any second now the charge would reach Imogen’s cheeks, light up her true feelings for all to see. She really should look into finding some blush-neutralizing concealer….
She looked to her other side instead, where Eliot stood. The girl’s skin was even more translucent indoors; the colors above seemed to permeate it. Blue, purple, green landing at the top of her head and dripping down, down, beautiful, fragile glass, otherworldly. No one else from the crew noticed—they’d adopted Farway’s cold-shoulder approach. Imogen didn’t see how this strategy would help their information excavation. How would they discover anything about the newcomer if they ignored her?
“This is a Chihuly sculpture,” Imogen told the group. “Every single one of those flowers is handspun glass.”
“Imagine how much time that took,” Priya said, awed.
“Imagine how many credits it’s worth.” Of course Farway would put a price tag on the pretty-pretty-pretty. “Whatever happened to it?”
“We wouldn’t be able to steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Imogen told her cousin. “The Bellagio sold the Fiori di Como to a private collector once the drought got really bad. Ten years later, the buyer sold it off in pieces to avoid bankruptcy.”
“A hashing shame,” Gram said. “Something so flawless falling to pieces.”
“Everything does in the end.” Eliot’s whisper was quiet. Only Imogen stood close enough to hear. Only she felt a shiver creep through her vertebrae.
The Fiori di Como looked just as stunning as it had when they’d walked through the door, but now all Imogen could see when she stared at the clash and swirl of colors was how they would break. Blurgh. Farway’s pessimism was manageable. She’d been balancing that out her whole life. Now that there was double the dose, Imogen found herself in need of reinforcements.
VACATION. ENJOYMENT. ONWARD.
“Should we see what else the Bellagio has to offer?” She led the way into a corridor flashing with the promises of slot machines—WIN $$$$$ WIN $$$$$ WIN $$$$$ WIN. The casino felt timeless in a way that wasn’t like the Grid at all. The establishment pumped extra oxygen through the vents to keep gamblers alert. Night could fall, the outside world could catch fire, and the occupants of the windowless casino floor would be none the wiser. They’d roll their craps dice and place their bets for as long as their wallets would allow. Poker chips clattered and the roulette ball rolled, landing on chance, creating fortunes, breaking them.
When they passed some blackjack tables, Gram gave the dealers and their six-deck arsenal a wistful glance. Did he ever look at her like that? Imogen wondered. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. She was so bad at guessing these things. It had been confusing enough when he called her hair shiny. Had he meant I like you shiny? We’re only friends shiny? Or was it just an adjective that made her synonymous with the Great Omar’s cover and Vegas’s lights? Imogen’s mind would go through a hundred different iterations and then land on one, rethinking it another hundred times, before deciding she had absolutely no idea what Gram had meant.
Priya would know. She was so very good at peeling back the surface of things. Skin, feelings, souls. Imogen often sought Priya’s opinion on her lack of love life. Her friend’s diagnosis was always the same: Just talk to him.
About what? Shiny hair? She’d tried that already….
Priya’s solution: Tell him how you feel.
There were times when Imogen wanted to, when I’m madly in crush with you lingered at the back of her tongue. It never quite tasted right, though. What if Gram didn’t say it back? What if he just stared at Imogen while her heart shriveled to the size of a pinto bean? What if their friendship was spoiled and things turned awkward between them forever after?
Imogen would rather take her chances with the slot machines. She might have, if gambling in a time not theirs wasn’t such a bad idea. Trying their luck would alter the odds of someone else’s: shuffled decks and spun slots. It wouldn’t do to go redistributing future jackpots. Who knew how many lives that could change?
There really wasn’t much to do in the casino section except walk, dodging cocktail waitresses and grandmothers sporting matching sets of visors and fanny packs—a fashion trend that would never make it to Before & Beyond’s racks. Imogen’s real destination—the one that had kept her mouth watering since Gram first set course for Vegas—was in the next hall. Her treadless Greek leather sandals, purchased in a BC year, slipped and slid along the floor’s marble edge. Undaunted, she pushed forward to the promised sign: CAFÉ GELATO ICE CREAM & SWEETS.
Aka reinforcements. Thank the Lady Luck their “look but don’t partake” policy stopped short of food.
“We should’ve known.” Priya smiled at the destination. “The sugar, it calls to her. Are we sure she’s not part honeybee?”
“There are worse vices!” Imogen said over her shoulder and shuffle-skated into the shop. The place was inherently cute, splashed with color: yellow walls, bright pink chandeliers. Its display case overflowed with gelato. So much gelato. Mint. Mango. Tiramisu. Pistachio. Blackberry cheesecake. Hazelnut. How was she supposed to choose?
Priya opted for a banana split. Gram got a scoop of pistachio with chocolate shavings. Farway and Eliot each ordered a scoop of blood orange. All of them were settled around one of the marble-topped café tables by the time Imogen made up her mind. Why choose one flavor when you could get five? Rose, mint, amarena, stracciatella, salted caramel. It was almost a whole carton’s worth of cream—she had to use two hands to balance it as she made her way toward the table.
“Wait! Wait!” Imogen set her dessert down and began rummaging through her clutch. “Before I forget!”
It was clear, from the look on Farway’s face when
she pulled out the sparkler, that he was the one who’d forgotten. Serves him right for not keeping a ship’s log. Not only had they landed on April 18, but by Imogen’s count, it had been 365 days since Farway’s seventeenth-year celebration.
She lit the sparkler and stuck it into her cousin’s gelato. “Happy eighteenth unbirthday, Farway!”
“Wait.” Light hissed around Farway’s curls like rabid fairy dust. “Already?”
“Time flies when you’re plundering history,” Imogen told him. “And in case you were wondering, the gelato is just the beginning of the festivities. We have lots to celebrate! Eighteen is a big year!”
“Or 2,277,” Gram added. “We know you’re not picky about the age.”
“You don’t know how old you are?” Eliot stared at Farway through the flare, looking for answers even though she was the question. “How’s that?”
“He was born in the Grid.” It wasn’t until the information slipped out that Imogen second-guessed volunteering the fact. Not that Farway’s unbirthday was a secret. He was something of a celebrity in Central time for it, which made Eliot’s not-knowing that much stranger.
An odd duck, this girl.
“A boy without a birthday?” The sparkler was nearing the end of its run, but the newcomer’s expression lit and fizzed. “What a strange wonder.”
It was testament to how much Eliot disgruntled Farway that these words didn’t serve as instant ego fuel: Why, yes, I am a strange wonder. The most special of snowflakes! Born out of time, forever running to catch up to it! He resorted to mumbling instead, “All it’s ever done is fritz out med-droids. The bragging rights wear off real quick.”
“We should sing,” Priya broke in. “Before the sparkler dies!”
“Agreed.” Imogen’s five-flavor spread was melting, and she preferred to start eating before it turned into a gloppy rose- mint-sour-cherry-salted-caramel-chocolate-eggy soup.
The tune to “Happy Birthday” hadn’t changed much in four centuries. Imogen belted it with great gusto—off-key probably; she’d never had the ear for music that Priya did. Priya, who embellished and harmonized and, along with Gram’s steady bass, salvaged the song from becoming plastered-karaoke bad. Even Eliot joined for a line or two: “Happy birthday, dear [Farway/Far]! Happy birthday to you!” By the song’s end, the sparkler only had a centimeter of flash left. Already it was starting to fade.
Imogen turned to her cousin and recited the phrase Aunt Empra once used every year. A McCarthy family tradition. Words spoken just before the fire died. “Make a wish. Make it count.”
17
STILL POINT
SO MUCH DEPENDED ON a plastic spoon.
All throughout the celebratory dessert-before-dinner, Priya kept tabs on Eliot’s utensil, noting how the girl ran her thumb over the stem when she wasn’t using it. Between that and the dozen or so bites of blood orange gelato she took, there’d be plenty of DNA to analyze. It was just a matter of snatching the spoon and getting it back to the Invictus without Eliot noticing.
The task wasn’t that risky, or even very thrilling, but Priya’s heart thrummed inside her chest—a wild thing—as she watched Eliot toss her waste into the rubbish bin. Priya lingered in the back of the line, waiting until Eliot’s stare drifted elsewhere to retrieve the evidence and wrap it inside a clean napkin before stowing it in her purse. Far sometimes teased her for lugging such a large tote everywhere, and even Priya had to admit it could get cumbersome, but she needed its pockets for gauze, Heal-All spray, med-patches, and everything Imogen wanted to bring off ship but didn’t have room for in her clutch. Priya slipped the used spoon under Far’s swim trunks, pulse thumping all the while.
The group gathered in the hall, looking more tight-knit for the Bellagio’s grandeur: sweeping marble and columns. Priya joined them with a smile—one she hoped conveyed there’s nothing at all in my purse, certainly not Eliot’s DNA. It wasn’t easy to hold. She didn’t have Far’s poker face or Gram’s ability to drift out of a chaotic room even when he sat in the middle of it. Best to do the analysis as soon as possible.
Imogen’s eyes were glazed over in a way that meant she was reading her interface screen. “There’s not too much more here in the Bellagio…. We could go down the Strip and try the pool at Caesars Palace, or eat at one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants. Most of the shows and dance parties don’t kick off until later.”
“I’m going to have to steal Far away for an hour or two.” Priya slipped her elbow neatly through Far’s, bag wedged between them. Her smile was starting to feel too tight. “Girlfriend’s prerogative.”
“You do?” Far asked. Her arm tensed in his—not Morse code, but signal enough. “Oh. Yes. She does. We’re off to do, er, couple-y things.”
Eliot’s eyes narrowed, shifting from Far to Priya. Was that jealousy she sensed, playing tug-of-war between them? Or something else? Priya couldn’t get a good read on the girl. She also had trouble gauging Far’s reaction—yes, there was anger, yes, there was fear, but a different charge crackled amidst the pair. An absolute sort of energy, felt even on the periphery. Its pang crept into Priya’s chest, tendriled around her heart, pried open cracks she hadn’t even known were there.
Jealousy… maybe.
“How long will you be?” Gram asked.
“Three hours.” This was Priya’s best guess, between the journey back to the ship and running the tests. “Or so.”
“Hand over the swimsuits and we’ll find something to distract ourselves.” Imogen’s voice had a wink-wink, nudge-nudge quality. Not subtle at all, if one knew her well. “You two go have some fun.”
Fun wasn’t the word Priya would’ve used for the hike back to the Invictus. The heels Imogen advised her to wear had a six- kilometer-walk span. Maximum. She shucked them off before her toes became totally raw, but walking barefoot on the roadside wasn’t much better. Far offered to carry her the rest of the way, but Priya refused. The Invictus was within hobbling distance. She could see the parking spot but not the ship—its holo-shield was doing its job too well, mimicking the surrounding landscape. Blue sky, bland dirt. Out here, away from the Strip’s fountains and well-groomed palms, you could actually remember that Las Vegas sat in the middle of a desert. The air was so thin it felt lonely. There was no humidity, no sweat to smother the skin, just a solitude that stretched for kilometers—up to the hawk wheeling overhead, out to the highway’s cracked edge. There were no cars passing and no one to see them, though Priya was sure she and Far looked odd. Two teenagers clad in party-wear wandering through an empty field, vanishing from sight.
The ship’s internal air system blasted Priya’s bangs across her face as she tossed her purse onto the couch, narrowly missing Saffron. The red panda was curled among the pillows, clutching his newfound treasure. Eliot’s wig was markedly more frayed after hours of gnawing.
“Alone. At last.” Far latched the door shut and removed his aviators. The sun remained behind his eyes—desert bright and glaring. “I need a vacation from this vacation. It’s bad enough that she’s holding the Rubaiyat over our heads, but does she have to be so, so…”
“Smug? Smirky?” She tossed out adjectives to fill his pause. “Sinister?”
“Unsettling. You know she hasn’t said one word about this detour to Vegas? Nil. All that fuss to get on our TM and Eliot doesn’t even care where we take her, which raises the question, what does she care about?”
“You.” The word felt thorny, the way it sprouted. Green, too. Wraparound tendrils climbed all the way up Priya’s throat. “Or was that not obvious after two intersecting missions? Her eyes are on you, Far.”
“She does stare an awful lot, doesn’t she?”
“You stare back.”
Far chewed his lip. His cheeks were flushed from their walk, but Priya suspected some of the color had stayed for emotion’s sake. She felt hot, too: near a sweat, a shout, a kiss. It was as if someone had come along and twisted off every safety mechanism to her emotions. Someone had, s
he reminded herself. Eliot. Unsettling everything.
“P…”
“I know it’s not romantic. But—it’s almost as if she’s draining you, as if you’re letting her. I don’t want to be dating a shadow-person.”
“This is new ground for us,” he said softly. “Like you said, Eliot’s running a long game, and I’m still figuring out how to play. Staring, swearing, wig-snatching… The only thing it takes from me is pride, which, according to Imogen, I can spare.”
Far stepped closer so the warmth of his sunbaked skin rolled onto hers, fingertips to arms, nose to cheek. Such a different static from before; instead of finding cracks, it filled them, until Priya felt that her skin was no longer an apt container for everything inside. She was breathless and breathed: a song before the first note, after the last.
“Have no doubt, P,” he whispered. “I’m yours, at the end of everything.”
Their kiss was all tension at first—tight lips, teeth on edge—but it didn’t take long to soften. It never did. Far was this at his core: feathery breath, heat of a wandering heart. Priya roamed with him, letting their kiss fall deeper out of their now. Out of time and space, out of the Invictus’s common area and the Nevada desert, into a perfect suspension of them. Just them, just them, floating and falling all at once, hands in hair tumbling toward the couch, just them—
And Saffron. The red panda’s YOU’RE IN MY SPACE!!! squawk yanked their surroundings into focus, and Priya realized she was in danger of crushing her purse, along with its cargo. “Wait, wait! The spoon! I need to take a sample before something ruins it.”
Far fell gently to the side, curls amok. “Work first, play later, huh?”
“Isn’t that always the case?” Her insides blazed still, would for a while. But, “The answers in this DNA are our next move. The sooner we have them, the better. It’ll just take a few minutes to run the test. Why don’t you search the ship? There are only so many places Eliot could’ve stashed the Rubaiyat.”