Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(45)

But she also had a cheat when it came to Kellen, because he remembered all those things, too. So as the weather turned cool and late autumn blew in over the mountains and the two of them maintained their let’s-play-chicken staring contest from different ends of any given room, Angela started work on a project. It didn’t take much begging to get what she needed. She had no doubt Kellen would understand the meaning when she was done. She would make him understand, damn it. She only hoped he’d see it as an apology as well. Because that’s what it was.

? ? ?

“Oh, hey. I am flattered to be found more important than a whiny camelid,” Heron said when Kellen ducked into the Vault, the Pentarc’s subterranean control room. His voice was dryer than a popcorn fart, and it chafed. “But it is strange to see you someplace other than the barn.”

“And a good fucking morning to you, too,” Kellen said. True, he’d spent the better part of the last several weeks tending his critters. He’d installed trackers and heavy-duty immunizations in Azul. He’d…been busy. Too busy to spend alone-time with Angela.

Who was, at this moment in Northy with Yoink on her lap. Not that he was paying attention to these things. Much. Just figured physical space might help the both of them right now. He wasn’t sure how spending a lot of time apart was going to advance their getting-to-know-you-again progress bar, but, you know, baby steps.

Heron smiled at his friend’s casual obscenity, but it wasn’t an easy smile. Looked like it took some effort to stretch that mouth. “You have just interrupted my very scintillating review of administrative minutiae. Food purchases to supplement the biodomes. Price comparisons for having EMP shielding installed on Fanaida’s dragon. Market fluctuations in Asia that might or might not indicate a political tremor.”

“Well, that’s what you get for signing on to this crazy, adventurous life of crime.” Kellen slung his long body onto a bench near the armory door. “Where’s Mari?”

“Hmm.” His lack of answer almost explained the pained not-smile.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Maybe.” Heron turned his chair so he could face Kellen. He pushed fingertips into his eye sockets in a way that must have hurt. Or would hurt a human with normal pain tolerances. “You warned me she might not appreciate a less hair-raising lifestyle. She’s used to spontaneity and mobility and, let’s face it, danger. Pentarc is…not that.”

Unsaid was that he personally was no longer capable of following Mari all over from one highly illegal adventure to the next. His ultimate solution both to that nanovirus back in October and to taking care of his partner over vast distances had been to plug into the cloud, lose himself in it. Now he couldn’t back out gracefully. In physical terms, he couldn’t back out at all. His mind was dispersed in the information network and couldn’t be crammed back into something as limited as one human brain. He had to stay put someplace with a node, else his consciousness could fracture.

“Maybe you just have to let her light off on her own sometimes, man. She’s a boomerang. She’ll come back.”

“I know.”

“But it’s not the separation bothering you. It’s not even the slight possibility she’ll disappear.”

“You know my reach is vast,” Heron said, a snip of haughty investing his voice. “She cannot run so far that I couldn’t find her.”

“Missing my point,” Kellen said, keeping his voice gentle, as if he were luring a timorous rabbit to his hand. “You want to go with. Not because you don’t trust her and not because you don’t think she’s capable on her own. You wanna orbit that gal because gravity.”

“Orbit is an odd word choice here, probably because this has nothing to do with gravity.”

“No, it does. Hear me out. Stars are hot, right, steaming up the universe, radiating like all get-out, just trying to get somebody to look at them. And then another star drifts by, and our first eager little gas ball catches it, starts up this vast cosmic dance, and boom, they form a binary. Every major force in the universe is keeping them together at this point. It’s the inverse of Romeo and Juliet. Those two stars, they belong together, probably are even spiraling into each other, doomed to a catastrophic, immolative end.” He caromed his hands together until they smacked into each other. Bam. “But what happens when they realize this horrible destiny in store for them, when one star tries to give the other space, for her own good?”

“It’s impossible,” said Heron.

“Impossible,” Kellen echoed.

“Is that what she did to you?”

“Who, Mari? Fuck no, man. That girl…”

“I mean Senator Neko.”

Aw, shit on a shingle. How’d he do that? Turn a conversation that Kellen was directing, twist it until it flayed his own soul instead? Kellen resolved right then to stop giving advice to insightful folk. Only idiots would benefit from his brilliance from here on out.

“Well, anyhow, back to the original thread. You could find Mari a puppy. I’m sure I could get you one. She’d have to crate-train it, which you gotta imagine would be more fun than skidding bare-kneed into a hot conflict zone and blowing shit up.”

“You don’t know her very well.”

“Ha! Point taken. Hey, you got—”