2312

Swan looked Kiran in the eye, and he grimaced and let go of her arm. “Those are my cousins,” he said. “They had a bad idea.”

“A stupid idea,” Swan said. “They could have just asked me for help. So what did you tell them?”

“That I would keep you here while they got their mother’s car. So now I think you should get out of here.”

“Come walk me back,” Swan said. “I want you along, in case they come back.”

His eyebrows shot up his forehead, and he regarded her closely. After a while he said, “All right.”

They walked quickly on the road. “Will you get in trouble for this?” Swan asked at one point.

“Yes,” he said gloomily.

“What will they do?”

“They’ll try to beat on me. And tell the old guys.”

Her arms were still burning where they had been gripped, and her cheeks were hot. She regarded the gloomy youth walking next to her. He looked good. And he had without a moment’s hesitation removed her from a bad situation. She recalled how sharp his voice had been when he’d spoken to his cousins. “Do you want to leave?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to go into space?”

After a pause he said, “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she said.

They stopped outside Zasha’s, and Swan looked him over. She liked the look of him. He looked at her with an expression curious, wondering-eager. She felt a shiver run down her.

“My friend who lives here is a diplomat for Mercury. So… come in if you want. We can get you up there if you want,” she said, looking skyward briefly.

He hesitated. “You won’t… get me in trouble?”

“I will get you in trouble. Trouble in space.”

She started toward Zasha’s, and after a moment, he followed her. She opened the door. “Zasha?” she said.

“Just a sec,” Zasha called out of the kitchen.

The boy was staring at her, clearly wondering if she was on the level.

Swan said, “They called you Kiran?”

“Yes, Kiran.”

“What language were you speaking?”

“Telugu. South India.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We live here now.”

So he was already an exile. And there were all kinds of immigrant residency requirements on Earth; possibly he was not in compliance.

Zasha appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, washcloth in hand. “Uh-oh. Who’s this?”

“This is Kiran. His friends were kidnapping me, and he helped me to escape. In return I told him I would get him off Earth.”

“But no!”

“But yes. So… here we are. And I need to keep my word.”

Zasha looked at Swan skeptically. “What is this, Stockholm syndrome already?” Z glanced at the youth, whose gaze was fixed on Swan. “Or Lima syndrome?”

“What are those?” Kiran said without shifting his gaze.

Zasha made a little grimace. “Stockholm syndrome is where hostages become sympathetic to their captors and advocate for them. Lima syndrome is where the kidnappers become fond of their victims and let them go.”

“Isn’t there a Ransom of Red Chief syndrome?” Swan said sharply. “Come on, Z. I told you, he rescued me. What syndrome is that? I want to repay a favor, and I need your help. Quit trying to take over the situation like you always do.”

Zasha turned away with an annoyed look; thought it over; shrugged. “We can get him off if you really want it. I’ll have to do it through a friend who helps me with this kind of thing. He’s at the Trinidad-Tobago elevator, it’s a hawala. We have a kind of pass-through agreement, although after this I’ll owe him. Meaning you’ll owe me.”

“I always owe you. How will we get to Trinidad?”

“Diplomatic pouch.”

“What?”

“Private jet. We’ll have to get a worm box too.”

“A what?”

“We have a system. It’s always supposed to be a box of soil or worms, and there’s an understanding that it doesn’t get inspected.”

“Worms?” Kiran said.

“That’s right,” Zasha told him with a grim little smile. “I’m going to get you off-planet, because of Ms. Stockholm here, but given the circumstances, we have to do it off the record. That takes using the systems we have. So you might have to go up in a big box of worms, all right? Are you going to be okay with that?”

“No problem,” said Kiran.

Extracts (4)

At the end of the period of planetary accretion, about 4.5 billion years ago, there were more planets than there are now, all slung around by close calls and orbital resonances and pulled together by gravity, so that they sometimes collided. They had been doing it for a billion years to get to this point, and this was the last stage of that process of accretion. During this period every one of the inner planets took at least one very big hit.