“Coke? Sprite? What? There are some sitting ready to go.”
“Coke, if I get a choice,” Londo said. Her new power amused and delighted him. It was so very handy, even in this uncertain stage. The cup sat steadily next to him when it arrived, no lid but a paper-covered straw next to it. He took a sip. “It’s flat,” he said automatically, then realized she’d take it as a complaint.
She frowned at the drink. “Well, I definitely won’t be porting people around anytime soon if I mess up a simple Coke. Lord only knows how I got the two of us here.”
“Maybe it’s been sitting out for a while. Don’t worry about it, kitten,” he said as he took a big bite. “The ol’ powers will be back soon enough. I’ll get us out of here on my own.”
“Did I mention my fear of flying?” Lina asked, and he snorted through the hamburger. “Let’s try it again.”
Her eyebrows knit in concentration and a second drink appeared after a moment. He took a sip. “It’s good.”
She looked relieved and popped in a second drink, artificial lemonade for her. “Coke’s not good for psychic work. The caffeine can knock you off-kilter.”
Londo nodded as if he understood. Strange girl. Strange, wonderful girl. “How do you—?” He made a circling motion with his finger next to his forehead. Lina shrugged.
“I just see whatever it is and picture it here—and apparently now it comes in, poof.”
“Poof.” He considered as he munched on his burger. “Just see it?”
“Well... I have to have some idea of what it is I’m looking for. I need a picture, a memory, to start me out. I build up a mental image from that.”
“Ah.” He considered that. “Have you always been able to see things?”
She peeled the lid off her salad. “You mean, have I always been clairvoyant?” A small bag of croutons appeared in her hand and she ripped it open to sprinkle on her salad. “Let’s just say it’s a skill I learned out of boredom.”
Lon maneuvered an errant pickle back onto his bun. “Boredom, eh? I remember being bored to tears in the back of my class at university.”
“So what’d you do?”
He sucked some sandwich sauce from the tip of his thumb and resumed eating between words. “Usually I’d pretend that some world-shaking emergency had come up and duck out, until the professors started to complain and Papa Mike heard about it.”
“Papa Mike?”
“My grandfather. Mike Rand. You may have heard of him?”
“Oh. Of course I’ve heard of the Rands.”
“Papa Mike called up the ParaNet and within twenty-four hours each of my classes was equipped with a special PA system that only went off when they needed me.”
“Poor thing!” She chuckled.
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I had to buckle down and study then. So that’s what happened to you? Bored, so you let your mind wander? You can really become clairvoyant that way?”
“I did. I have friends who’ve really improved by practicing, too.”
“You know other psychics?”
She made an affirmative sound.
“Are they as good as you?”
“Oh, you should meet Sue, Sue Taylor. She can talk to disincarnates like they were regular people. She’s amazing. Not too great in precognition though she says she is, and she’s getting too preoccupied with other things these days to pay the kind of attention she should to her healing, but she’s real good. And Dave and Dinah...” Lina sorted through her acquaintances. “And Rendi and Clarise and Tom. They’re all very good, and they all live in my area.”
“What, you have Psychic Bowling Tuesdays and get together?”
“We all went to Sue’s psychic healing school. She started out with three different classes, jam-packed with people standing so close in her basement that you couldn’t breathe—and each and every one of them were huggers! I thought I was going to die.”
Londo chuckled around his second sandwich.
“By the end of two years she combined us all because there were just ten of us left. Sue teaches solid stuff. You just have to wait for her to finish her tangents, but eventually she says what she needs to say.”
“And she taught you how to be a clairvoyant?”
Lina squirted out some more dressing for the dry salad. “No; I was already one. She had me teach the others how to really focus and get it down. They didn’t have to— How’re your Macs?”
There was a flash of something in Lon’s mind then, a feeling more than an image: darkness and cold and an endless, mind-numbing emptiness in a night that went on forever. He knew that feeling, almost, but his emptiness had been filled with a light that was never extinguished except behind his closed eyes. He’d told stories to himself to fight the boredom, but she’d sent her mind out searching for the real-life stories...
“Best Big Macs I ever had. You’re an excellent cook. Tell me, when were you locked up?” he asked her nonchalantly.
She froze. Interesting; he’d expected her to drop the fork or send some of the salad flying by reflex action. This was a frightened rabbit reaction, subtly done.
“What makes you think I was locked up?”
“I saw you somewhere dark. You were imprisoned.”
“I was arrested once when I was in college...”
“C’mon. You can’t lie to me.”
She picked at her salad, moving it around but not eating it.
Lon kept his tone light. “Why is it that I get the distinct impression that your father had something to do with it?”
“Can we change subjects?”
“You were locked up for some reason and it was dark,” Londo began to put it together, “and your father was the one with the key. This wasn’t just the one time with the bully and the stitches. It was— How often did this happen, Lie?”
She kept poking at her salad until the silence demanded that she say something. “Often enough for me to become quite good at clairvoyance, okay? Is that enough information for you?”
“Why didn’t you ever bring him up on charges?”
“Charges? He’s my father. You don’t have your father arrested. It would embarrass everyone.”
“People’s fathers are arrested every day.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t shock you. You’re used to arrests and police and publicity. Next to Montreal or New York, the city Mom and Dad live in is small. Very... unsophisticated.”
“You were going to say ‘redneck.’” Lon smiled at his growing ability to read her, and she grimaced at him.
“Okay, redneck, although they aren’t, so you stop thinking of my family that way. My sister’s family—they’re redneck through and through. She’s converted to redneckism, a born-again redneck.”
“Oh, is that where you get it.” He brushed his fingertips across her shoulders, flagging the shirt open so she could look down and see the patches of red, too. “Any sunscreen in that magic head of yours?” he asked. “I’d be happy to rub it on.”
Lina adjusted the shirt back. “I see you don’t have that problem.” He was a bronze tan all over and had gotten a little darker as the day was progressing. “Is all that natural, or do you augment it at the ParaNet tanning emporium?”
A small bottle of tanning lotion with a deteriorated drug store price tag appeared on the sand, half-used. It had dust on it as if it had been stored over the winter. It was probably from her home, Lon thought. A new tube of Chapstik appeared, too, and Londo laughed outright as he saw it even though he thought it was a good idea. Now he knew what chapped lips felt like.
He crumpled his Mac wrappers. “It’s all natural. Like it?”
“It fits you very well. It makes you look mysterious. Exotic.” She gave a little laugh. “And yet it’s ambiguous enough that certain people—if you know who I mean—don’t know exactly what they can insult you for.”
He rolled his eyes at that. “Oh I’ve heard more than a few comments along those lines. I’ve been called everything from a wetback to a nig
ger to dago to raghead to... well, no one’s ever called me ‘that damned mick.’ Everything else, though. I believe that Senator Stern made a cloaked remark about my ancestry just last week.”
“Senator Stern!” Lina sniffed.
“He’s from your state, isn’t he?”
She waved her fork for emphasis. “I have always gone out of my way to vote against him and anyone he’s sided with,” she declared hotly. “This world has no room in it for bigots, especially bigots with as much influence as Senator Mushmouth Stern has. Why is it that so many politicians are in it for power and not to help people? How does Stern get away with what he does?”
“You don’t like him, huh?”
“How observant you are.”
He grinned sideways at her as he swigged his Coke, satisfied that he’d pegged her correctly. She really lit up when she got angry. The redhead in her came out. “Another, please?”
“Another?”
“The polite hostess doesn’t count. I’m a growing boy.” Another Big Mac and a new pack of fries appeared in the sand. Londo started on his fries and sucked in a breath. The heat was a nasty surprise. Did norms really eat their food this hot? Once he got used to it, it was an interesting effect if a little painful. Pain was thrilling, as long as it came in short bursts and then went away.
“And then this other guy discovers that someone’s sent the papers false documents...” Lina griped at length about election abnormalities centered around Stern.
Londo tried to comment around the thirteen fries he’d stuffed in his mouth.
“Hm?”
“I said, struck a real chord, eh?”
She set her jaw. “I don’t like that people look at North Carolina and say, ‘Oh that’s the place Senator Stern’s from. It must be real Dark Ages down there.’ Stern’s a blot on the entire state. A blot on American democracy. A blot on racial equal—”
“Save it for your election speeches.” Londo smiled. “So when you run against Senator Stern—”
She made a face at him. “Oh yeah, like anyone would ever vote for Muttbutt.”
“Who calls you that? Your father.”
She shrugged. “It’s all these weird genes I have. My ancestors were from all over. And despite it all I can’t even get a good tan.” Lina frowned at her skin. “Total whitebread; I was hoping for more whole wheat.”
“Toasted whitebread today,” Londo told her. “What kind of ancestors?”
He did seem interested, so she told him of the family’s genetic brew, which seemed to come from every inhabited continent. “Dad calls Mom the Original Muttbutt. I’m just Phase II,” Lina finished.
She was still famished. Fast food places didn’t really cater well to vegetarians. Instead she stole a fruit salad and bagel from her favorite grocery store and crossed herself for her sins even though she wasn’t Catholic.
“So what do you consider yourself?” Lina asked him. “Are you drawn to one culture or another?”
He shook his head noncommittally. “I was raised by Hal, and he was raised by Papa Mike and Mama Ruth.”
Hal—Lina realized again that he was talking so casually about people she’d heard about for years only on the news, and then only in reverent tones. Hal Rand, Londo’s adoptive father, was Maximus, the biggest megapara there ever was—next to Lon. And the Rands were the people who had raised Maximus from infancy. Of course they’d be Lon’s adoptive grandparents—but she knew of them as “the Rands,” not “Papa Mike” and “Mama Ruth.” These were real people of whom Londo spoke, not just pictures on the news.
Londo continued, “They’re from a middle-class black or African-American background—Mama Ruth says she wishes people would forget the ‘n’ word so everyone could go back to being ‘negroes.’ She thinks that that word is more romantic than all the other terms. Of course Papa Mike started his stores—” Mike Rand had been CEO of the now-international Rand Drugs chain before he retired— “but they’re still have those middle-class roots that they’re never going to give up.”
Pictures of the Rands showed kind-looking people who avoided the spotlight.
Londo upended the fry carton to get the crumbs. “Hal—he’s a product of his parents and his legend. He’s always surprised when people call him the spearheading influence of racial equality these days, just because of his skin color. People think he’s part or pure African, and he’s not Terran at all. Well, maybe a few genes in the mix that made him. He does what he can for the Cause, but I think he feels a little guilty about it, as if he’s doing it under false pretenses. Lord knows what he’d do if he ever got over that.”
“Probably change the world more than he has,” Lina said.
Londo shrugged. “Eh. Probably. I hate to be a pig, but can you get another? I really am starved.”
“Sure,” Lina said, and teleported him in another Big Mac. “What about you?” she asked him. “If Maximus raised you, but he didn’t have a strong cultural background, what do you consider yourself?”
“I put down ‘other’ on forms when they ask for race,” Londo told her. “Most of the media call me a ‘man of color.’ I’ve considered having a DNA check to see what ancestors I might have, but I’ve never gotten around to it. It’s not that big a deal to me. I’m a citizen of Earzh.”
“That’s a nice phrase.”
“That’s why I use it.” He waved at the sky. “Out There, that’s the only way they think of me. They don’t know from countries. I do a lot of work off-planet, so I just tell people that I’m Terran, not half-African, half-Canadian, half-god-knows-what.”
“Certainly not half-mathematician.”
He gave a little snort and then told her of the more interesting cultures of Earth that he’d wondered if he’d come from. “You’re a psychic,” he said. “You tell me where my people came from, eh?”
“Hm. Well.” Lina tried to get the vibe. She’d always pegged Valiant as Caribbean or Mediterranean, but thought that someone had told her that when she was a child. It was difficult to figure out things psychically when you had a preconceived notion. “Let me think about it. You really want to know, don’t you?”
“Eh, who cares about all that? When it all boils down, what good is any of it?” He threw a wrapper hard on the ground, but it merely bounced an inch and came to a rest. “I don’t have anyone of my own,” he muttered and grabbed some more fries.
“It’s a part of your background,” Lina insisted. “You don’t feel anchored in the world without knowing. It’s like living without roots, Malcolm X and all that.”
He fooled with his food. “Yeah. I guess.”
“So make up your own roots. Go with what you’ve got and work from there. Don’t turn your back on it.”
“Easy for you to say. How far back do you know your family tree?” He knew that would hurt before he said it, but still he wished he hadn’t. “Sorry.”
“My family tree could use a trimming,” Lina said. “Maybe a little gasoline and a match on a few limbs would do it good.”
“You really hate your father, don’t you?”
“Of course I don’t,” she said so quickly she almost dropped her fork. “I don’t know why I said that. I love my father.”
“Sure, baby. Well, whatever you are with all that crazy family of yours, I’m glad you got what you got. Toasted whitebread looks good on you, even with those patches of strawberry jam.” He pointed to sunburned places on her.
She made a face at him. “My fondest wish is to tan evenly, not in splotches. Perhaps it’s time to get some real clothes and cover up some more.”
Her eyes started to unfocus. They’d put on some clothing for some reason, she in his shirt open almost to the waist, allowing him a teasing view; him in those tight faux-leather pants with nothing on underneath. They seemed to keep taking everything off all morning; maybe that’s why they kept putting it back on.
“Must you?” Lon asked, almost shyly.
“What?” Her eyes focused again.
He
ran his fingers up her leg, under the shirt. “I like what you’re wearing now.”
She paused and their eyes met. “I guess we’re not going anywhere formal for a while,” she admitted.
He shook his head. “No. Not for a while.” That slow, crooked smile came back. He reached to take a grape from her fruit salad and pop it into his mouth.
Lina slapped him lightly. “Who taught you table manners?”
He stuck his tongue out at her, the grape balanced on its tip, and she returned the salute, sans grape. When she turned her attention to her salad, something flashed on her shirt: the silver holograph medallion.
“I’ve been meaning to ask wherever you got this,” she said as she unpinned it to see it better. “It’s a beautiful job. How—” she stopped, staring at it.
“What?” Something in her voice made Londo think something was wrong.
She handed it to him. “It’s changed.”
He looked at it. Now instead of the 3-D burst with the V in it, there was the burst, but inside it was no V, but rather a transparent sphere with a pyramid in its interior. They were all rotating and fluctuating as if part of one unit. It was perfect and striking.
“I can see my dress reverting in color; I must have missed the dye job,” Lina said. “But changing a hologram? Maybe if something were missing from it, but this?”
Londo frowned hard at the symbol. “This is my Mega-Legion ID,” he said. “Nothing could have—” Lon shook his head. “Nothing to do about it. You’re a designer, right?” She nodded. “Well, this is a nice logo. Maybe your subconscious came up with it.”
“And did a snazzy little hologram movie with it. That’s one helluva subconscious. Somehow I don’t picture myself unconsciously designing this and then arranging to split a beam of light and bend half of it around and do whatever it is that they do to come up with holograms. Much less a moving one like that.” She paused. “Starburst, circle, triangle,” she realized.
“That’s what you saw when you asked when my powers would return.”
Touch of Danger (Three Worlds) Page 21