Markus DeBlays leaned closer and spoke confidentially.
"It's known that Daltia will shortly be raised to planet status," he said. "As soon as President Karsten's final illness ends. The next administration is already lining it up." He leaned back, watching my reaction.
A flutter of excitement did go through my stomach. All the new things that would bring flashed through my mind's eye -- so many fresh faces, a restructuring of the laws, the feeling of connection and progress the idea always engendered. For a moment I believed him, and his enthusiasm caught me.
But we were still right here in this building in downtown Damor, and that's where I'd be staying no matter what happened. I thought of the unkind glances in the elevator. Would I have to see them every day? My spirits flagged. "With respect, I've been hearing that since I was old enough to leave for primary school."
"Of course. We've all been hearing it for years. But I've finally been seeing some plans made around it. Closer in to Central quadrant," he amended, with a slight smirk. "News travels more slowly out this way."
I couldn't argue. Though it annoyed me to be reminded.
"Besides, how expensive of a mistake do you think I'd be willing to make?" He laughed. "No, Jessyn. It's time to plan for the possibilities. Anyone fitting in to this apprenticeship will be in a much better-than-average position to take advantage of the opportunities if this comes to pass."
And that was it right there, wasn't it? My mother had been involved in preparing the conversion of some of Roxi's old evacuation quarters into tourist residences. That entire project had been controversial -- old fears lingered -- but it had helped kick off much of the current popularity of this sector. Markus DeBlays knew that. I thought of my mother, and Arind and Dio, and the chances I'd been given because of who they loved.
"I know things are changing. I can feel it," I began, realising it was true as I spoke. "I'm lucky in who my family has been. All the different ways they're involved. I just want to make sure I can keep walking down a path for myself, and I'm just starting to find it."
DeBlays beamed. "I'm so glad you're starting to see it. Follow where it leads. Mine led me here."
I bit my lip. He wasn't understanding. "Each person has a path and a contribution to make. With the right guides, everyone finds it for themselves." This came out much more fluently, because it wasn't my thought. It was what we were taught from childhood. I caught myself saying it, almost in anger, almost as a correction. Why? The man in front of me listened attentively, looking troubled -- but for my sake, not his own. He agreed.
"You've given it a lot of thought, Jessyn. I hope you continue to do so," DeBlays said finally.
Our talk was clearly coming to a close, and I was surprised to see how much time had actually passed. Maybe I was just hungry. Still not an excuse for my manners. I had to respect, as DeBlays shook hands with me once more, how professionally he concealed what must be his supreme aggravation.
The lobby was mercifully empty when I left. Except for the host, who gave me a friendly nod. Outside, the air was humid. Low rainclouds eased in off the ocean, and the pedestrians on the sidewalks looked to be winding up their lunch breaks and heading inside.
I could still feel the pressure that had built up inside my chest, like a storm looking for a way to break. It had been there for a long time. Years, maybe. I took a deep breath against it, unsure of what to do, but relishing this strange moment of clarity. Once, the force of it may have come from outside. But I'd been bracing in the wrong direction, for a while.
Still considering this, I unmoored myself from the entryway of DeBlays's building, and cast myself adrift on the streets.
I wandered for hours, aimlessly, meandering through the business district and then the student quarters. I bought lunch at a stall and ate it while I walked, finishing right as the first rains came down. The wind blew through the grid of groundcar avenues in a path as random as my own. Even as the last of the city's workers escaped back inside from the sultry air, the streets had life in them, albeit often shadowy, surreptitious life. People sat in the alcoves of doorways and watched the rain fall. A couple kissed, their back against one of the thick trees, the ground around them dry.
It seemed as good a time as any to walk past the building where I'd lived and worked during that final year of school. Maybe I expected to see a younger version of me hanging out there, waiting with a red-haired boy for the rain to thin, so we could dash across the green lawn to the cheap cafe we liked.
Finally the rain shower did stop, and I found myself sitting in front of that same cafe, sipping coffee and watching Roxi ease its ghostly daytime crescent past the edge of the building. I felt washed off, perversely free. The late afternoon sun reemerged and began to dry my thin shirt. I sent a few messages. In my heart there was only a pale rumble of that previous discontent. It would return. I could prepare.
I had meant what I said in that office, about a path that I was trying to glimpse. I’m not going to erase anything from this record, no matter how asinine. Even blowing an interview.
And I’ve noticed that many of the things that brought me joy as I was growing up, and into uni, don’t work quite the same. They’re dropping away. And there’s this sweet vacuum where they were, and where I’ve already said the pressure of school used to lay.
Maybe it had its uses.
Jasha's aircar swung by some time later, and touched delicately down on the stone pad. The look I gave him, as I strapped into his passenger seat, must have been eloquent enough. He lifted off, and we both understood where we were going.
Traffic through the southwestern part of the city was rough, and so we didn't talk much. Only the tranquil music Jas was playing filled the quiet car. The great stone statue of Damordra Li, the woman who'd argued for Daltia's existence and been the first to step foot on its land, rose in the distance on the cliffside. Jasha banked left before we reached it.
Down here, a few hundred yards above the street, the huge rectangular bulks of the skyscrapers loomed around us, steel grey and ominous. We glittered by, the aircar tracing distorted, fleeting reflections across the plate glass and glossed steel.
I had my face pressed against the glass of the passenger window. My breath made small clouds of condensation, which grew larger as the aircar shot up into the higher sky and the air cooled the outside of the vehicle. The purple and blue lights marking the top of the tallest buildings fell away in lines below us, and I saw the deep greens of the enormous city Park below. It would be twilight already in the canyons of its winding paths. There would be a cool salty breeze off the sea, fluttering the wild headwear and trailing skirts of the people walking arm in arm to cafes and clubs.
Jasha angled down towards the rooftop lot in which our family leased space. The gold solar paint of the most modern buildings gleamed in the lowering light. Then we settled.
We walked around a few busy street corners, lit with every colour imaginable, and the Park edged slowly into our sight. Bordered in slender, soaring palms and gold lampposts, it was an enormous common space that opened on its east side onto the coastal boulevard, and then the beach. By day it was a marketplace and a favoured lunchtime spot, with exercisers coursing around the trail at the perimeter.
At twilight, it was filled with tiny people strolling through the innermost garden or disappearing into its outer pavilions and woods. The streets surrounding it overflowed with the central nightlife district of Damor. Planners had long ago learned to block off the crowded side streets at sundown, and restrict airspace to one-way.
The early night was beautiful, one of those perfect Daltia evenings where what this place means seems to emerge from the ground itself and rise into the violet sky with its twinkling stars.
The moon had lifted a good size portion of itself out from behind the skyline. I could see the vague dark blur that represented the transit spaceport, and the community that resided there. Cool dark leaves rustled overhead. The sound of every possible accent floated around us, rising and falling. Everyone around me, every song that played, was writing a calligraphy that I could almost read. The pressure in my heart resolved into a question -- what could I add?
I. My name. Who birthed me, who fostered me. My sister. My friends. A favourite professor, a broken love affair. Is this who I am?
I suppose that’s why they give us a year off, once we finish that final exam. To ask all these profound and predictable questions, and to come up with some sort of party-ready answer, for when our real life of tinkering and schmoozing begins.
I stood regarding the city, the violet light slanting through the glass and grey streets. Tasting the air on my lips. Behind me I heard Jasha laughing quietly. "You've got that look again," he said.
(I can't imagine what you mean), I said, distracted.
(What do we want?)
(Everything.) I reached my hand back to him.
He laughed again and took me by the wrist, pulling me in the opposite direction from where I'd been looking.
(Danae first.)
(She's up by the Fountain,) I said.
(I know.)