notthere now. Have you seen it? Does he still have it?
"He never liked having a little brother, not me or the others, but heliked having that little thing around to torture."
Billy hissed. "She'll be dead in minutes," he said. "In seconds. Anotherone dead. His doing!
"Killed her, cut her up, buried her," Benny chanted. "Sliced her openand cut her up," he shrilled.
Alan let the knife fall from his hands. Benny leapt for Danny, handsoutstretched. Danny braced for the impact, rolled with him, and came upon top of him, small hands in Benny's eyes, grinding.
There were sirens out front now, lots of sirens.
A distant crash, and a rain of glass fell about his shoulders. He turnedand looked up, looked up into the dormer window of his attic, fourstories up. Mimi's head poked out from the window, wreathed in smoke,her face smudged and eyes screwed up.
"Mimi!" he cried.
She climbed unsteadily onto the windowsill, perched there for amoment. Then she leaned forward, ducked her head, and slipped into thesky.
Her magnificent wings unfolded in the smoke, in the hot ash, in thesmoldering remains of all of Alan's life in human society. Hermagnificent wings unfolded and caught the air with a sound he heard andwith a downdraft of warm air that blew his hair off his forehead like alover's hand, smoky smell and spicy smell.
She flew.
The sirens grew louder and she swooped over the yard. She gave twopowerful beats of her wings and rose higher than the roof, then shecircled the yard in great loops, coming lower and lower with eachpass. Davey and Benny watched her. Kurt watched her.
Alan watched her. She was coming straight for him. He held out his armsand she fell into them, enfolding them both in her wings, her great andglorious wings.
"Come on," she said. Kurt was already limping for the alley. Benny andDavid had already melted away. They were alone in the yard, and thesirens were so loud now, and there were the reflections of emergencylights bouncing off the smoke around them. "Come on," she said, and sheput her arms around his waist, locking her wrists.
It took five beats of her wings to get them aloft, and they barelycleared the fence, but they banked low over the alley and she beat herwings again and then they were gaining altitude, catching an updraftfrom the burning house on Wales Avenue, rising so high into the sky thathe felt like they would fly to the moon.
#
The day that Lyman and Kurt were on the cover of NOW magazine, theydropped by Martian Signal to meet with Natalie's boss. Lyman carried thepitch package, color-matched, polyethnic, edgy and cool, with greatcopy.
Natalie met them. She'd grown out her hair and wore it with bangshanging over the scar on her forehead, just over her left eye, twopunctures with little dents. Three surgeries had cleared all the bonefragments from the orbit of that eye, and she'd kept her sight. Once shewas out of the hospital, she quickly became the best employee MartianSignal had ever had. She quickly became manager. She quickly undertookto make several improvements in the daily operations of the store thatincreased turnover by 30 percent. She slowly and reluctantly hired herbrother, but his gimpy knee made it hard for him to bend down toreshelve, and he quickly quit.
Kurt and Natalie hugged, and Lyman formally shook her hand, and thenshook her boss's hand.
It took less than an hour to convince her boss to let them put up theiraccess point. On the way back, three different people stopped them andtold them how much they liked the article, and swore that the firstthing they'd do when they got home would be to open up their networksand rename them ParasiteNet.
Lyman handled the thank-you's for this, and Kurt smiled and fiddled withhis PDA and watched the sky, looking for a girl with wings as wide as ahouse.
#
I went to the house,
(she said, as he tended the fire, turning the yams in the coals andstirring the pot in which his fish stew bubbled)
I went to the house,
(she said, resting up from the long flight she'd flown from Toronto toCraig's distant, warm shores, far away from Kensington Market andKrishna and Billy and Danny)
I went to the house,
(she said, and Andy worked hard to keep the grin off his face, for he'dbeen miserable during her long absence and now he could scarcely containhis delight)
I went to the house, and there was no one home. I had the address you'dgiven me, and it was just like you'd described it to me, down to thebasketball hoop in the driveway.
It was empty. But it was as I'd remembered it. They'd lived there. I'dlived there. You were right, that was the house.
That was the house I'd lived in. I rang the doorbell, then I peeked inthrough a crack in the blinds. The rooms were empty. No furniture. Justblinds. It was night, and no one was looking, so I flew up to the thirdfloor, to the window I'd stared out all those times.
The window was unlatched, and I slid aside the screen and let myselfin. The room was empty. No carpet. No frilly bed and stuffed animals. Nodesk. No clothes in the closet, no hangers.
The only thing in the room was a small box, plugged into the wall, witha network cable snaking away into the phone jack. It had small lights onit, blinking. It was like the one you'd had in your attic. A wirelessaccess point.
I remembered their names, then. Oliver and Patricia. They'd been mymother and father for a few years. Set me up with my firstapartment. This had been their house.
I slept there that day, then, come nightfall, I set out again to comehome to you.
#
Something woke Andy from his sound sleep, nestled in her wings, in herarms. A tread on Craig's inviolable soil, someone afoot on his brother.
Slowly, he got himself loose of Mimi and sat up and looked around.
The golem standing before him was small, and its eyes glowed red. Itbent over and set something down on the earth, a fur-wrapped bundle ofsmoked meat.
It nodded at him. He nodded back.
"Thank you," he said.
Mimi put her hand on his calf. "Is it okay?"
"It's right," he said. "Just as it was meant to be."
He returned to her arms and they kissed. "No falling in love," she said.
"Perish the thought," he said.
She bit his lip and he bit hers and they kissed again, and then he wasasleep, and at peace.
=== Bio ===
Canadian-born Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is the European Affairscoordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org). He is thecoeditor of the popular weblog Boing Boing -- boingboing.net -- withmillions of visitors every month. He won the John W. Campbell Award forBest New Writer at the 2000 Hugo awards and his novel Down and Out inthe Magic Kingdom (https://craphound.com/down/) won the Locus Award forBest First Novel the same year that his short story collection A PlaceSo Foreign and Eight More (https://craphound.com/place/) won the SunburstAward for best Canadian science fiction book. His other books includeEastern Standard Tribe (https://craphound.com/est/) and Rapture of theNerds (with Charles Stross).
Join my mailing list for infrequent notices of books, articles, storiesand appearances.
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