Charlie Anders - All the Birds in the Sky

He found some dignity in the back pocket of his newly acquired pants and walked up into the main apartment, only tripping once. Or twice. And then he reached the door as it vibrated again. He pulled it open.

He had not been prepared for her to be so unfairly beautiful.

The only light source in the whole place was a small flashlight, probably LED based, in her tiny hand. It cast a glow that was pale but not ghostly, up onto her small breasts, visible in her lacey tank top, and her rounded chin and perfect resolute mouth. She wasn’t smiling but she was making something like eye contact. She looked calm. Her eyes were dazzling. She was holding a Caddy in one hand and had a satchel over her shoulder. Looking at her dark serious eyes and her pale, brave face, Laurence felt a rush of emotion that caught him off guard. For a picosecond he did not care that she had destroyed the machine, he just wanted to embrace her and laugh for joy. Then he remembered and felt everything lock up again, instant tetanus.

“Hi, Laurence,” Patricia said, her posture straight and her body poised, as if she could fight an army of ninjas at any moment. She seemed way more grown-up and self-assured than the last time he had seen her. “It’s good to see you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to give you your grandmother’s ring back.” She reached into her hoodie pocket and came out with a tiny black cube.

Laurence didn’t take it from her palm.

“I thought you had to keep that,” Laurence said. “Or else Priya would be pulled back into the nightmarish dimension where gravity is a strong force.”

“Yeah. That. Well, I decided I don’t like Priya that much,” Patricia said. At Laurence’s stony look, she added: “That was a joke. Joking here. Nobody is going to be pulled into any kind of void if I give you this ring back.” She held it up to him.

He looked at the nugget of felt. “Why not?”

“I realized that enough time has passed and it’s probably safe.” That sounded like total garbage, and Laurence just stared. She added: “Okay, not really. I guess I’ve gotten much better at Trickster magic since then. And…” She paused because whatever came next was difficult to say, especially when fidgeting on someone’s doorstep in total darkness.

Laurence waited it out. Patricia searched for the right words. He didn’t let her off the hook by filling the silence.

“I mean…” Patricia looked unbearably sad for a second, then she pushed ahead. “I guess I wound up playing a much bigger trick on you than just tricking you into giving up your ring, didn’t I? Even if I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I became your lover and part of your life, and then I … well, you know what I did. And the antigravity machine that sent Priya away, the one that this ring was offered to save her from, became part of the doomsday machine that I wrecked. So I don’t need it anymore, because I wound up building a much bigger wheel around the smaller wheel. And I guess, in a way, this ring is tainted for me.”

She offered the ring again. Laurence still didn’t take it. “It wasn’t a doomsday machine,” he said.

“It wasn’t? Then what was it?”

“It’s a long story. Listen, I can’t be around people right now. It’s nothing personal.” He made a move to close the door, but her outstretched hand and his family heirloom were in the way.

“Why not? Are you having a weird feeling? Like that you’re coated with garbage that makes your skin crawl and you can’t recognize other people as belonging to the same species?”

“No. No! Why would you ask something like that?”

“Oh, uh. Nothing. It’s just, lately, whenever I hear someone say they can’t be around people, I start to worry that … it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s just that all my friends are on Seadonia, and I’m here on my own. And I’m still pretty broken up about what you did in Denver.”

“What are they all doing in Seadonia?”

“Mostly? Figuring out ways to kill you and your friends. Probably using ultrasonics, or some kind of antigravity beam, similar to what happened to Priya only more directional and portable. That’s my guess, anyway.”

“Oh. Thanks. That was easy.”

“What was easy?”

“They asked me to come here and see if I could find out what was going on at Seadonia. They figured you would know.”

“And you got it out of me.”

“Yep.”

“Because you’re so good at being a ‘Trickster.’”

Patricia looked down. She seemed less tough than she had a few minutes earlier. Then she looked up and it was Laurence who had a hard time looking at her. He remembered all of a sudden how she had described the Pathway to Infinity as a “doomsday machine.”

Neither of them could face the other without shame. Laurence had a feeling most adults he knew had gotten used to this feeling of mutual abashment. But it was new to him.

“But actually,” Patricia said, “I’m glad we got that stuff out of the way. About Seadonia. Because that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. It was what they wanted me to talk to you about. But it wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I don’t know.” She just stood there and he could hear both their breathing and someone running, a few streets away. “I don’t know. Nothing. Nothing, I guess.” She pushed the black box at him. “So do you want your ring back or not?”

“I can’t, I just can’t. I can’t take anything from you, even if it used to belong to me.”

She put the ring back in her pocket. She looked more beautiful than ever. His heart was in tatters. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? What do you think you have to be sorry for?”

“Ernesto says I betrayed my lover — meaning you — and I have to come to terms with that. Even if you were building a doomsday machine, it doesn’t change that fact.”

“It wasn’t a doomsday machine,” Laurence said again.

He looked at the Caddy nestled in her hand and forearm, providing meager illumination to the dark world as it woke up. The Caddy was purring, probably syncing with the one in Laurence’s bedroom, and checking for real-time updates from the nearest server. How much of Peregrine was in the Caddies and how much was in some secure facilities hidden around the world where the Caddies drew their updates from? Why had Peregrine warned him obliquely that Patricia was on her way? With not enough time to make a break for it, but enough time to freak out?

They just stood there, neither of them talking at all, until the streetlights came back on. The sudden lurch from pitch darkness to yellow brightness felt like the sun had popped up all at once — except the light was weaker and there was no warmth. They were both jolted out of their mutual reverie.

“Okay,” Patricia said. “Take care of yourself. Hard times are coming. Harder times, I mean. I’ll see you around.”

“No,” Laurence said. “You won’t.”

THE SUN STILL hadn’t risen. Maybe it never would. Maybe the sky was sick of these endless costume changes: Casting off cloak after cloak, but never revealing what it wore under all those cloaks. Patricia climbed the tall staircase to the top of the hill, stumbling on the cement steps. Nearby, a hawk swung past, making its last hunt of the night, and it glanced at Patricia and said, “Too late, too late!” Which was what birds kept saying to her these days. She clomped to the top of the staircase and staggered across Portola to reach the brink of Market, looking out over the whole city and the bay, all the way to Oakland. She dug in her satchel for a tiny bag of Corn Nuts, crushed to greasy powder, and the dregs of a 5-hour ENERGY drink. She hoped the sun wouldn’t come up. When it did, she was going to report in to Carmen and tell her that they had pissed off some people with nearly limitless wealth, arcane superscience, and nothing to lose. That conversation would lead to Carmen making some decisions, some of which Patricia would have to implement personally. Those, in turn, would lead to more consequences, and more decisions.