A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  I didn’t wait. I launched myself out the door and slammed it shut.

  But now that I was out of the room, I didn’t know where to go. Why hadn’t Patty or Barry come running? What if he had killed them? I flung open the door to their bedroom.

  Blackness. Their bed was empty. They must not have come home from the theater yet.

  Leaving their bedroom door swinging, I fled down the hall, wishing Zavier was beside me. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Why was that man after me? Where had he come from?

  I opened the door to the condo and ran down the corridors toward the lift, fighting my stass fatigue. I wouldn’t be able to run much farther, but when I got to the lift, I balked. What if the shiny man wasn’t alone?

  I backed away from the elevator and opened the door to the stairwell. Quietly.

  There was no one waiting for me in the harshly lit cement utility stairs. As softly as I could, I crept down them, hoping my bare feet would make no noise.

  In the end, I knew there was only one place I’d feel safe.

  I crept to the subbasement and picked my way through the debris, the stored remnants of old tenants’ lives. I stubbed my toe on a wooden crate and nearly screamed when a dusty coat-rack lunged at me from the blackness and left a coat now forty years out of fashion grappling at my throat. I escaped these perils, found the old storeroom, and curled into my abandoned stass tube, shaking.

  I had a brief thought of turning it on, letting the quiet waves of my colorful stass dreams take me from my nightmares, from the horror of my missing years, from whoever was hunting me. But fear of being captured while stassed kept me from pressing the activation switch. Instead, I curled quietly on the satin- of- silk cushions, wrapped in the dusty coat that I’d thought was attacking me.

  The pervasive chill of underground seeped into my bones. I rubbed my cheek against the softness of the cushions and breathed in the perfume of stale stass chemicals. I think they affected me a bit. After the first few moments of shuddering terror, I drifted into semiconsciousness: not stasis itself but the beginning stages of it. What dragged me from my huddled stupor was my cell, beeping shrilly in the darkness. I pulled it from around my neck and pressed the receive button.

  It was Patty. Her rigidly trimmed head appeared in a hologram before me, her mouth pursed in distaste. “Where are you?” she demanded. “Do you know what your wretched animal has done? You keep that creature in the pet garden when you go out, or so help me I’ll send it back to where it came from! I didn’t want the stupid thing!”

  “What’s wrong with Zavier?”

  “He’s a menace! He’s eaten half your green oil paint and completely trashed your studio. That’s my one comfort; at least it wasn’t my living room. You get over here and clean up before school, or contract or no I’ll find some punishment for you.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I said, pressing the end button. I disentangled myself from the coat and headed to the lift. My fear had passed. At least the residual stass chemicals were still affecting my fear receptors. If they hadn’t been, I suspect I’d still be gibbering with terror in the basement.

  When I got back, Patty was shouting at Zavier, who cowered under my drafting table. My studio was in ruins. Zavier actually must have been responsible for some of it. Dog prints and smudges circled the room, and the tube of paint I’d left on the ground had been chewed, leaving Zavier’s blond fur streaked with green. Water on the floor had mixed with the oily paint, making wavery green archipelagoes on my wood floor. Punctuating this were brightly dissolving sticks of chalk, which were going to be useless after this. Patty kept her fashionable shoes carefully out of the detritus. “There you are!” she said.

  “Clean this up before school. And when you go out, take that wretched dog with you. Why on earth did you leave it shut in here?”

  “Yes, Patty,” I said obediently. I opened my mouth to tell her about last night, but she was already gone. I wasn’t sure how I would have broached the subject, anyway.

  After she left, I tried to coax Zavier out from under the drafting table. At first he wouldn’t come. When he saw that no one else was coming into the room, he gingerly heaved himself to his feet and crept over to me, whining. He was clearly in pain.

  I pulled out my cell and pressed the button for the information drone. “I’m Hally, your information operator.” The hologram of the beautiful composite woman asked very politely what she could do for me today. I asked her for the names of local vet clinics.

  Of the names the drone rattled off, one had the same name as Zavier’s grooming facility. I asked her to contact them, and within a few moments, the image of an exquisite receptionist appeared before me. “My dog is . . . hurt,” I said.

  “Would you like to make an appointment?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, flustered. “I don’t have a lot of time before school. I think he has a regular appointment with your groomers? His name is Freefoot’s Desert Roads.”

  “Ah, yes.” The receptionist smiled, her eyes glancing at a screen I couldn’t see.

  “Desert Roads is down here as a prestige patient. If you will drop him off on your way to school, we’ll do the rest.”

  “What’s a prestige patient?” I asked.

  “All of Desert Roads’s care has been prepaid and preap-proved. You just drop him off, and we’ll cell you when we know what’s wrong with him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and disconnected.

  I didn’t have time to clean my studio and drop Zavier at the vet’s before school.

  After fishing the wall clock out of the fish tank (which miraculously had not electrocuted any of my fish), I locked the door to the studio so that Patty couldn’t see the mess, threw on a uniform, and led Zavier to my limoskiff. I ordered the skiff to the groomers and crept into the back with Zavier.

  He got green paint all over the skiff and my uniform, and I didn’t care. I hugged him around the neck. He groaned and whined, but he licked me tenderly.

  When I dropped Zavier off at the vet’s, I told them about the paint, but I omitted the story of the shiny man and his weird stick. They reassured me that they’d check his system for toxins as well as give him a thorough grooming. I headed for school feeling a little better about Zavier. I had buried the memory of the shiny man firmly beneath the stass residue, and I wasn’t going to think about it for as long as I could manage.

  Bren was waiting for me in the quad. “It’s all sky,” he said, grabbing my notescreen from my hand. I’d forgotten about my new schedule in the horror of last night and the troubles with Zavier. Bren touched my screen a few times and then handed it back to me, showing me my new schedule. “There you are: second period, history, Mr. Collier. We had to change your English class to the Romantics; hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, that’s great,” I said. It actually solved two problems at once, as I’d been hard- pressed not to point out to my teacher that these so-called famous turn-of-the-century authors had been literary unknowns. I didn’t want to offend her.

  School was only marginally better now that I didn’t have to dread my history class. But I was fortunate to be in class with Bren. He was a delight to watch, wildly animated in class, striking up debates with the other students, surprising the teacher with obscure facts he happened to have read someplace, drawing conclusions from seemingly disconnected details. He did everything I always wished I could do in school. Unfortunately I had never been intelligent enough to manage anything like it.

  I really loved watching him. How his hands moved so deftly over his notescreen. True, he’d been using it since kindergarten, while I was new to the personal notescreen touchpads, but still, his long brown fingers seemed to perform a delightful ballet. I found myself wondering what it would feel like to have those fingers on me, touching my skin, holding me close.

  I swallowed. No way. No way. That was not right. I didn’t feel that way about Bren. I couldn’t think that way about Br
en. I loved Xavier. This weird thing I was feeling wasn’t love, wasn’t anything like what I felt for Xavier. But . . .

  When Bren caught my eyes, I blushed and looked down at my screen. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I couldn’t think about him without strange fish swimming through my stomach. Oh, hell!

  I left history class in a daze and actually got lost on my way to Chinese. The teacher didn’t scold me when I ducked in five minutes late. I began to suspect that Mr. Guillory had given instructions on that as well.

  I couldn’t make heads or tails of the class. About twenty minutes in, my cell beeped, giving me an escape from the incomprehensible vocabulary review. I darted into the hall.

  “Your dog seems to be all right, but he’s exhausted himself,” said the vet. “We checked for toxins, but the paint seems to be relatively benign. Did you take him for a long walk yesterday?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Well, our scans tell us that all of his muscles are fatigued. He’s suffering from an overdose of lactic acid. Basically, your dog’s muscles are overly stiff. He’ll be all right in a day or two, but he should take it easy. Are you sure no one overworked him?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. I didn’t know exactly how to tell him that my dog had been hit with a weird baton by a shiny, mechanical- sounding man who told me he wanted to terminate me.

  I headed back to class. I didn’t want to think about the shiny man, I couldn’t understand anything in most of my classes, and now that I knew Zavier was going to be all right, he didn’t weigh on my mind. Which left me thinking of Bren.

  I didn’t know exactly what I was feeling. The only boy I’d ever loved had been Xavier, and that had come so gradually, over so many years, with so many changes, that I didn’t know how to handle this kind of rushing fondness. It hurt my heart. It hurt more so because I had no idea how he felt.

  I’d always known how Xavier felt. I’d known him for so long, through so many moods, that there was no way to misinterpret his actions. He would never hide anything from me, anyway. He was my best friend, my brother, my love. And now he was dead, and I grieved for him. I wondered if it was that grief that was reaching out for Bren now, or if it was something more than that.

  I considered how he had saved me, how Bren of all the people in the world had been the one to stumble over my stass tube, how he had been the one to wake me . . . wake me with a kiss, just like Sleeping Beauty. I hadn’t thought of it as a kiss at the time. I wondered if he ever did.

  I caught sight of Bren as I exited my last class, now Romantic poets. My heart quickened, and I found myself running up to him. “Thanks so much for everything,” I told him. “The Romantics are so much better than turn- of- the-century lit. I was . . . a little put off by that.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, my granddad said you’d probably like that better. He remembered reading turn- of- the- century lit when it was new, and he hadn’t been impressed by it then. What did you think of history? You prefer the Reconstruction?”

  “It’s fascinating. How did they manage to maintain the out- planet colonies?”

  “We haven’t gotten to all of that yet,” Bren said. “But I do know we abandoned the outposts on Ganymede and Ceres, and we had to abort a planned colony on Enceladus.” He looked over his shoulder. Nabiki and Otto were standing there, clearly waiting for him. “Ahm, I gotta go. I’ll miss the skimmer.”

  I sighed. The stass chemicals had faded entirely, leaving me scared and jumpy, and I was afraid to be alone. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about my encounter the night before, I was shaken. I also wanted to be with Bren. “I could take you home in the limoskiff,” I offered, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “I mean, we’re both going to Unicorn.”

  Bren hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay.” He jerked his head at Nabiki and Otto.

  Nabiki shrugged and headed off to the skimmerport. Otto stood and stared at me for a moment, his yellow eyes glinting in the sun.

  It made me uneasy.

  “Have I offended Otto somehow?” I asked.

  Bren turned to look at his alienesque friend and grinned. Otto gave his forced smile back, waved, and followed Nabiki. “Nah,” Bren said. “He finds you interesting. But, technically, you own his patent, which means . . . well, he’s human enough that he has human rights, but it’s complicated. He’s always afraid they’ll try another experiment. Once you come of age, that would be your decision.”

  I balked. “I wouldn’t do something like that! Didn’t you say most of them died?”

  “Horribly,” Bren said. “Don’t worry about it. I think he just wishes that he dared to talk to you, but you scare him.”

  I gulped. “Do I scare you?”

  Ben turned his regard on me, his brow furrowed. It was like having a strong light shone on me. I was suddenly aware of all my flaws. I hadn’t had my hair done professionally since the press conference. My clothes were rumpled and paint stained from bringing Zavier to the vet. I’d been chewing on my nails in my classes, either out of nervousness or boredom. Under Bren’s gaze I turned into a pimply, skeletal orphan, lost in time. “You do have to comm you’re odd,”

  he said finally, and the light turned off. “Half your turns of phrase are off — it’s like talking to my grandmother. But then you’ll do something or say something that seems . . . don’t take this the wrong way, but very childlike. No offense.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  “So, you’re different. Almost like someone from another country, but not. I don’t know.” He shrugged, and he looked nervous. I suddenly wanted to reach out and ruffle his hair. “That answer your question?”

  “I guess.” I swallowed. “The limoskiff meets me down here,” I said awkwardly.

  He followed me to the skiff and climbed in after me. “I have to make a stop on the way home. Do you mind dogs?”

  “Nope. Had one up until last year. Finally succumbed to old age. Poor Jack.”

  “What kind?” I asked.

  “Retriever,” he said. “He was a great fielder. He’d fetch any tennis balls that escaped the court.”

  When I brought Zavier into the skiff, he tilted his head at Bren and then sniffed his legs. “Hey there, boy,” Bren said. He ruffled Zavier’s ears.

  “Be gentle with him,” I said. “He had a rough night. He ate some paint.”

  “Did you eat paint?” Bren asked Zavier in a low, confiding voice. He looked up at me. “Where’d he get paint?”

  “My studio,” I said.

  Bren stared at me with new respect. “Your studio?”

  “Yeah, I . . . putter,” I said shyly.

  “The Piphers gave you a studio?”

  “Guillory did, I think,” I said. “It must have been in my records somewhere that I liked art.”

  Bren shrugged, turning his attention back to Zavier. “Not that I saw,” he said.

  “And I tried looking you up.”

  “You did?”

  Bren shrugged again. “Couldn’t find you anywhere. Actu-ally, I couldn’t find any records of your parents even having a child. I guess they guarded their privacy. I found a picture of you at about age ten or so with your parents, buried in one of the UniCorp archives, but you aren’t even labeled in it. You’re pretty much a ghost. No digital trail. Couldn’t even find your birthday.”

  “Like I never existed in the first place,” I said. “I feel like that sometimes.

  Everyone I ever knew is dead.”

  Bren let Zavier go and sat back awkwardly. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. “I’m getting used to the idea.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  The limoskiff moved too quickly. We were already at the condo, and I was still scared to be alone. “Would you like to see my studio?” I asked. “It’s a bit of a mess. Zavier kind of knocked stuff around, but . . . Well, I have to get it cleared up before Patty and Barry get home.”

  “You’r
e alone until then?” Bren asked.

  “Yeah. ’Cept for Zavy.”

  Bren seemed to hesitate and then said, “Yeah. Sure, I’ll come up.”

  When I opened the door to my studio, I expected to see it in the ruin I’d left it in this morning. However, the maid had a key and apparently hadn’t heard Patty’s admonitions. She had cleaned the room for me, leaving it considerably more tidy than I ever could have.

  “Wow!” said Bren as he stepped inside. He looked around at the paintings. I was a little glad now that my chalk drawing of him had been destroyed. I could see the crumpled, dampened remains of it peeking out of the incinerator tray. If he’d seen my drawing yesterday, it wouldn’t have bothered me. I’d have told him the truth, that I always drew the people around me. I even had a couple of sketches of Patty and Barry around, and one of Mr. Guillory in pencil. But as of today, with this awful fluttery feeling he gave me, begging for a name I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it . . . well, I would have felt awkward.

  I longed to paint him, though. I would place him on a stool in the corner, with the bookshelf as a background. Or maybe against the window, particularly if I could persuade him to open his shirt just a little. Maybe even more than a little. Maybe take it off entirely, let the sun glow on his skin, bring out the contours of his well- muscled chest. I’d bring the color of his eyes into the foliage in the background, and . . .

  I realized he had just asked me a question. I shook my head to clear it of visions of Bren half- naked in my studio. “What was that?”

  “Why aren’t you in any art classes in school?”

  “I don’t know. Guess Mr. Guillory didn’t think I needed one.” I gestured around the room. “I don’t mind. I’ve got all this.”

  Bren went up to the wall where my biggest painting to date was still drying. It was one of my stass landscapes, an oil painting of brightly colored undulating hills and lightning- flecked clouds, which came off cheerful rather than foreboding. I was calling it Blue Dunes.