After that, everything changed and nothing did. He’d been working toward his placement for the last five sections, or looked at another way, his whole life. He’d known it was coming—everyone had—and still it felt like it had snuck up on him. Surprised him. All of the things that had to happen after—the things he hadn’t bothered thinking about because they were for later—had to be done now. There was the application for living space in the dormitories of the upper university, the coordination of his long-run experiments with Mr. Oke so that some new second-year could step in and see them to completion, and the preparations and purchases that would, in the coming months, lead to David moving out of his room, out of his home, away from his family for the first time in his life. The times when the idea wouldn’t scare him, it couldn’t come fast enough.
He could see it in his parents too. The way his mother kept quietly weeping and grinning at the same time, the way his father made a point of sitting with him while he filled out his paperwork and put in for time off so he could go with David to the orientation in Salton next month and brought him sandwiches and coffee for lunch. David had done everything he was supposed to do, had gotten the grades and the attention and the status for the highest placement he’d qualified for, and the reward was even less freedom. It was like his parents had suddenly realized he wouldn’t be there forever, and now their love was like a police state; he couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t go look for Leelee or even send out connection requests. The only one who didn’t seem to react one way or the other was Aunt Bobbie who just kept her weird, vaguely intrusive habits of watching the newsfeeds and lifting weights.
Three days after the letter came, David was set to go to the lower university for his first transition meeting with Mr. Oke. His father went with him. Dad held his head high, chin up, beaming like he’d been the one to do something. They walked up the stairs to the lower university commons together, David shrinking into his own chest with the discomfort. This was his world—his friends and enemies, the people who knew him for himself—and Dad didn’t belong there. Steppan nodded to him but didn’t approach. The girl who’d borrowed his stats array last year frowned at his dad, strutting at David’s side. They knew that his being there was wrong, and they drew back, keeping the separation. They all had two lives too, and they weren’t supposed to mix like this. Everybody knew that.
“Mr. Oke!” his father said as they rounded one of the seating areas. The research advisor smiled politely, walking toward them.
“Mr. Draper,” Mr. Oke said. “It’s good of you to come.”
“Just want to make sure everything’s smooth,” Dad said, caressing the air as he said it. “Development’s a good placement, but it’s a hard one. David doesn’t need any distractions.”
“Of course not,” Mr. Oke agreed.
Over the old man’s shoulder, David caught sight of Hutch. He was standing with a couple of the second-years, smiling and listening to a girl whose hands were fluttering and tapping at the air as she explained something. Leelee wasn’t with him. David felt his heart rate spike. It was an epinephrine dump. His mind jumped back a section to his physiology labs. Epinephrine was binding to alpha-adrenergic sites, dropping insulin production, upping glycogenolysis and lipolysis. Standard fight-or-flight. Hutch glanced over, nodded politely. David pointed toward the men’s room with his chin. Hutch’s expression slipped a notch darker and he shook his head, not more than a few millimeters and unmistakable. David scowled and nodded toward the men’s room again.
“Are you all right?” his dad asked.
“I have to pee,” David said. “I’ll be right back.”
He left his father and Mr. Oke bantering. The white tile and video mirrors of the men’s room were like a retreat to his world. And escape. He stood at the urinal, pretending to piss until the one other student washed his hands and left. Hutch walked in.
“What’s the word, friend?” Hutch said, but David could hear annoyance in the syllables. “Saw you got family with today. Good to see a father so concerned with his son’s business.”
David zipped his fly and trundled over to Hutch. He kept his voice low.
“He’s just being an a**hole. It’s nothing. We’ve got to meet,” David said. “We have to talk. Not now, but we’ve got to.”
“Slow, slow, slow,” Hutch said. “Now’s not a good time.”
“Tomorrow night,” David said. “The usual place.”
“Can’t do that. Other plans.”
“Tonight, then,” David hissed.
David’s hand terminal chimed, and a moment later, Hutch’s did too. The local newsfeed pushing a breaking story. David didn’t look away. Hutch’s expression shifted from annoyance into anger and then a wary kind of amusement. He shrugged.
“See you tonight then, little man,” Hutch said. His lopsided smile looked dangerous. David nodded and trotted back out to the commons. He wouldn’t tell Hutch about the message or about Leelee being in trouble. He’d just say he wanted to find her. He’d say it was about his placement because that made it seem like there was something else. Distracting. He got back to Mr. Oke and his father, gathering himself back together, willing himself to act normal, before he noticed that the commons was silent. Everyone was hunched over their hand terminals, their faces gray or flushed. Even his father and Mr. Oke. The newsfeed push had a picture of a public corridor, the air hazed by smoke. A policeman hunched over something, one hand on his hip. The header read EXPLOSION IN SALTON.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Protestors,” his father said, and the anger in his voice was startling. “Anti-Earth protestors.”
David’s hand terminal chimed again. The header shifted.
EXPLOSION IN SALTON; THREE CONFIRMED DEAD
Aunt Bobbie was tight-lipped when they got home, sitting in the common room with a massive black weight in her hand that she held without lifting, like a child clutching a favorite toy. The monitor was set to a newsfeed with the sound turned low. Live feeds of the damage in Salton played out in the four corners of the monitor, but she didn’t seem to be looking at them. David’s mother sat at the table scrolling through her hand terminal. When David and his father walked in, there was a moment of eye contact between his parents that had the weight of significance. He didn’t know what it meant. His father tapped David’s shoulder in a kind of farewell, then stepped over to the railing.
“Hey, sis.”
“Hey,” Aunt Bobbie said.
“Did security talk to you?”
“Not yet,” Aunt Bobbie said. “They know how to find me if they want to.”
David scowled toward his mother. He couldn’t think of a reason that security would want to talk with Aunt Bobbie. He tried to make it into a threat against him, that they’d be looking to her for information about the batches he’d cooked for Hutch, but that felt too wrong. It had to be about the bombing, but he couldn’t make sense of that either. His mother only lifted her eyebrows and asked how the meeting with Mr. Oke had gone. His father answered for him, and the uncomfortable tension around Aunt Bobbie shifted into the background.
There was going to be a party for the whole family tomorrow night, his mother told him. Pop-Pop and the cousins were coming from Aterpol, and Uncle Istvan and his new wife were making the trip from Dhanbad Nova. They’d rented a room at the best restaurant in Breach Candy. David gave a quiet, generalized thanks to the universe that he’d arranged to see Hutch tonight instead. Slipping away from his own celebration would have been impossible.
After dinner, David said some vague things about friends from school and celebrating, promised not to go to Salton, and ducked out the door before anyone could get too inquisitive. Once he was out walking to the tube station, he felt a moment of relaxation. Almost peace. The whole ride out to Martineztown, David felt almost like he was floating. His datasets were done or else not his anymore, and even with all the rest of it—Leelee and Hutch, the protestors and the bombings, the family party and the prospect of leaving home—just not having the lab work hanging over him was like taking a vise off his ribs. Once he was in Salton, working development would be a thousand times worse than anything in the lower university. But that was later. For now, he could set his hand terminal to play bebapapu tunes and relax. Even if it was only for the length of the tube ride to Martineztown, it was still the most peace he’d had for himself in as long as he could remember.
Hutch was waiting for him when he got there. The construction lamp threw off harsh white light, the battery hissing almost silently. The shadows seemed to have eaten Hutch’s eyes.
“Little man,” he said as David stepped into the room. “Wasn’t thinking to hear from you. Was risky, talking to me with family and authority right there beside us. You were looking jumpy. People notice that kind of thing.”
“Sorry,” David said. He sat down on a crate, rough plastic clinging to the fabric of his pants and pulling his cuffs up around his ankles. “I just needed to talk to you.”
“I’m always here for you, my friend,” Hutch said. “You know that. You’re my number one guy. Any problem you’ve got, I’ve got.”
David nodded, picking absently at his fingernail beds. Now that he was here, he found the subject of Leelee was harder to bring up than he’d expected.
“I got into development.”
“Knew it. Development’s always the place for the smart ones. Play your cards, and you’ll be riding this planet like a private cart,” Hutch said. “That’s not why we’re here, though. Is it?”
“No, I was…I wanted to get in touch with Leelee. See if maybe she wanted to come celebrate it with me. Only my hand terminal went corrupt and I didn’t have her information on backup and I was thinking that since you…” David swallowed, trying to work the knot out of his throat. “Since you know her better than anyone.”