The Dazzling Heights

As she stepped up to the retinal scanner to check out, Rylin grabbed a shining red bottle of water from one of the dispensers. The scripted logo read MARSAQUA, in letters that looked like icicles against a bright red planet. The cartoon letters repeatedly melted, dripped to the bottom of the bottle, then floated back up to re-form ice crystals.

“Martian water,” she heard from behind her.

Rylin whirled around, only to see her worst nightmare standing there. Leda Cole.

“They chip away chunks of the Martian ice caps, then bring it back to Earth and bottle it. It’s fantastic for your metabolism,” Leda went on. Her voice was frighteningly sweet.

“That sounds harmful to Mars,” Rylin replied, proud of how unconcerned she sounded. Leda was like the vicious stray dog that used to lurk near their apartment—you couldn’t afford to reveal any weakness before her, or she would never lay off the attack.

“Come sit with me,” Leda commanded, and started off without waiting to see whether Rylin would follow.

Rylin didn’t bother hiding her sigh of irritation. Well, she might as well get all her shitty conversations over with on the first day. It could only go upward from here, right?

Leda had planted herself at a two-person table near a flexiglass window that overlooked an interior courtyard. Rylin saw kids out there playing with flying video-cams and chatting around an enormous fountain. There was so much real sunlight flooding in from the ceiling, filtered by mirrors from the roof, that it felt like they were outdoors—if outdoors was ever this clean and symmetrical and perfect.

She sank into the seat across from Leda and dunked one of her sweet potato fries in aioli. Leda obviously wanted her to feel intimidated, but Rylin wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“What the hell are you doing here, Rylin?” Leda demanded, without preamble.

“I go to this school now.” Rylin gestured down at her pleated skirt and lifted an eyebrow. “We’re wearing the same uniform, in case you didn’t notice.”

Leda didn’t seem to have heard. “Did the cops send you?”

“The cops? Do you realize how paranoid you sound?” The idea was ludicrous, that Rylin Myers would become some kind of undercover police spy.

“All I know is that you’re a walking reminder of a night I’d rather not think about.” That makes two of us, Rylin thought. “And now, for some inexplicable reason, you’re here at my school, instead of down on the twentieth floor where you belong!” Leda’s voice quavered, and Rylin realized with pleasure that she sounded just a little bit … afraid.

“Last I checked, Leda, it didn’t say your name on the arch out front. So no, this isn’t your school. And I live on the thirty-second floor,” she corrected, “but I’m here on scholarship.”

Understanding flashed in Leda’s eyes. “The Eris scholarship,” she breathed.

“That’s the one,” Rylin said cheerfully, and took a bite of her enormous cheeseburger, relishing the look of disgust that flitted over Leda’s face. “Now, unless you have more threats for me, I’d suggest you back off and let me enjoy my lunch in peace. I’m not here to mess with your perfect life.” She put just a little emphasis on perfect, as if to indicate that she didn’t quite buy into the notion that Leda’s life was so perfect after all.

Leda stood up abruptly, scraping her chair across the dark walnut floor. She grabbed her uneaten spinach salad and tossed her hair over one shoulder. “Let me give you some free advice,” she said, a fake smile pasted on her face, and glanced again at Rylin’s burger. “Girls don’t ever eat the grill special.”

Rylin smiled back, just as wide. “That’s funny. Because I’m a girl, and I just did. Guess you don’t know everything after all.”

“Be careful, Myers. I’m watching you.”

What a great first day it was shaping up to be. Rylin leaned back in her chair and took an enormous sip of the overpriced Martian water, because why the hell not.

LEDA

“WHERE’S MOM?” LEDA hesitated in the doorway of her family’s dining room, keeping the toes of her boots lined up with the ivory carpet of the hall. Her dad was sitting at the table alone, tapping his fingers absentmindedly on its ultramodern glass surface as he read something on his contacts.

He glanced up. “Hey, Leda. I think she’s running a little late.”

“Dad, what dates do we have the Barbados house in January?” Jamie asked without preamble as he sat down. Leda cautiously ventured inside and pulled out the chair across from him. The table had no legs: it floated unsupported in the air, the ultimate centerpiece of their home’s spare, minimalist décor. Leda thought it was tacky and impersonal, but then, it was fitting that their apartment should feel more like a hotel than a home. A home would imply that the people who lived there actually cared about one another.

Matt Cole cleared his throat. “Actually, we released the Barbados time-share.”

“What?” Leda was stunned. They’d had the time-share in Barbados for ages: a sprawling, serene house atop a hill, with a tiny cobblestone path directly to the beach. Leda had always loved how relaxed her parents were there, as though they became the best, purest versions of themselves, freed of the grime of New York.

“We thought we’d take a year off, maybe do something new,” her dad explained, but Leda wasn’t buying it. She wondered if he’d lost a lot of money recently. Maybe he’d spent too much on Calvadour scarves for his teenage mistress, she thought resentfully, thinking of the exorbitant present he’d given Eris before she died.

“That sucks. I wanted to see if I could bring friends,” Jamie said, and shrugged. “I’m starving. Can we eat?” Typical Jamie; he was never really bothered by anything for very long.

“Let’s wait for Mom,” Leda said quickly, but her dad was already pushing a discreet touch-screen pad at the center of the table. Their chef, Tiffany, appeared, pushing a wide cart laden with dishes.

“Mom said to start without her. She’s held up in a meeting,” their dad explained. Leda pursed her lips and reached for the bowl of pasta without comment. She saw that it was her favorite, a kale-noodle penne with crumbled soy protein and phenerols. Her mom had totally picked this menu to cheer Leda up. A stubborn, contrary part of her was determined not to like it.

“How was school, Leda?” her dad asked. That was his version of parenting: asking scripted questions that he’d gotten from some How to Talk to Your Teenage Daughter book. Leda wondered if they shelved that one next to How to Hide Your Teenage Mistress.

“Fine,” she said curtly, and started to take a bite of the penne, only to put down her fork with a clatter. “Although, there was a new girl at school today. Isn’t that weird, that she was able to start mid-semester like that?”

“I think I saw her,” Jamie chimed in, for once. “The scholarship student?”

Leda glanced at him in surprise. Jamie usually never noticed anything, unless you could smoke it or drink it or had given it to him as a present. Then again, Rylin was pretty, if you could look past her disrespectful attitude.

“Exactly. She moved here from the twentieth floor,” Leda said dramatically, wrinkling her nose at the thought. “Can you imagine?”

“Sort of like how you felt, when we moved here from midTower,” her father said, which shocked Leda into silence.

“No, not at all like me,” she countered after a moment. She didn’t appreciate being compared to an arrogant lowlier. “This girl is rude and insulting. She thinks the rules don’t apply to her.”

Jamie burst out laughing. “Look who’s talking. Leda, you’ve never thought rules apply to you!”

Matt Cole tried to stay impartial, but amusement danced across his features. “Leda, I think you should give this girl the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure she had a tough first day, starting at a new school in the middle of the year. Especially as a scholarship student.”

This was her opening. “You’re right,” Leda said, her voice dripping with false sympathy. “And I imagine it’s been extra hard on her, because she won Eris’s scholarship, and of course we all miss Eris so much.”

Silence settled over the room. Leda’s family knew she’d been on the roof, of course; they’d picked her up from the police station that morning after everyone provided their witness statements, and had reviewed it with their lawyer in excruciating detail. Eris’s death was one of those things they seemed to have collectively decided not to talk about. As if all their family’s dirty little secrets could be wrapped up and buried, just the way Eris herself had been, and then they would disappear.

Leda watched her dad’s face closely. Looking for what, she wasn’t quite sure. An acknowledgment of his relationship with Eris, she supposed.

She saw it right away. He flinched at Leda’s words, just barely, but it was enough. She quickly looked down.

Leda had expected to feel pleased at seeing the proof, right there on her dad’s face—yet all she wanted, suddenly, was to cry.

For the rest of the meal she pushed her food around, letting her dad and Jamie talk about lacrosse and some great save Jamie had made and whether or not the school would hire a new coach next year. As soon as she could, she mumbled an excuse and escaped down the hall to her bedroom.

A knock sounded at her door. “Leda?”

“What?” she snapped, wiping at her eyes. Didn’t her dad understand that she had no desire to see him?

He tentatively pushed the door open. “Can we talk?”

She swiveled her desk chair around but stayed where she was, her legs crisscrossed beneath her.

“I just wanted to check on you,” he said, fumbling. “You haven’t spoken about Eris much, since she died. And then what you said, at dinner …” He trailed off awkwardly. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Of course I’m not okay, Leda thought. She almost pitied how clueless her dad was. She’d mentioned Eris at dinner because she wanted to provoke him, because she was sick of pretending that everything was fine, that a cozy pasta dinner could fix things the way it had when she was little. He was the one who’d started sleeping with her friend, and had betrayed everything their family was built on.

But more than that, Leda was disgusted with herself. She’d been keeping it a secret too, and that made her as culpable as he was.

So many times since Eris’s death she had wanted to confront her mom with the truth. She would march up to Ilara, ready to spill it all: that Dad was a two-timing scumbag and that they needed to leave him. “I have something to tell you,” Leda had said, on more than one occasion, “something important—”

Yet Leda could never bring herself to actually say the words. Eris was already gone, she told herself; what good would it do to tear her family apart now? Each time Ilara looked at her with those dark eyes, so full of love, Leda wavered and fell silent. She didn’t want to be the one to break her mom’s heart.

The child in Leda couldn’t bear the thought of her parents splitting up. Her family might be riddled with secrets and betrayals, but it was still her family. And she would rather keep them together, even if it meant sitting on this secret for the rest of her life.

She had earned this, she thought darkly. This twisting, tormenting guilt was her penance, for what she’d done to Eris.

“I’m fine,” she said tightly, in answer to her dad’s question. What else could she say to him, anyway? Hey, Dad, remember how you were having an affair with my friend, and then she fell off the roof? Guess what? I’m the one who pushed her!

“You and Eris were close, right?” her dad persisted. God, why couldn’t he just go away? And why did everyone keep asking that? Just because she and Eris had some friends in common didn’t mean they were attached at the hip.

“We were friends, but not best friends.” Leda was ready to end this conversation. “Actually, Dad, I have a lot of studying to—”

“Leda,” her dad interrupted, and now he was the one who seemed to be desperate, “There’s something I want to tell you about Eris—”

No, no, no. “Sorry!” Leda stood up abruptly, knocking her chair to the floor, and began frantically throwing items in her massive tote bag. She was wearing floral yoga pants and a black zip-up, but it didn’t matter; she needed to get the hell out of here. She absolutely could not stay and listen to her dad’s fucked-up confession about how he’d been sleeping with her so-called friend. “I’m late to study at Avery’s. Can we talk later?”

Understanding, and a little bit of hurt, flashed in her dad’s eyes. Maybe he knew that she knew. “All right. We’ll talk another time.”

“Thanks! See you later!” she said with false brightness, and ran blindly out of the apartment.

Only after she’d slipped inside a hover did Leda realize she had no idea where she was going. Of course she couldn’t actually head to Avery’s. It was too late for a workout class at Altitude, though she could go to the coffee bar there … but then she might see Avery or, worse, one of Eris’s parents … Leda was far too angry and shaken up for that.

The hover started beeping angrily, indicating that it would charge her for the delay if she didn’t enter a destination soon, but Leda couldn’t be bothered to care. God, what had her dad been thinking, bringing up Eris? Why would he make that kind of confession to his own daughter?

Leda felt like everything was spinning wildly out of control. If she hadn’t sworn never to touch drugs again, she would be searching for a xenperheidren right now; but it had become a matter of pride, and Leda’s pride was matched only by her stubbornness.

She hated thinking about that night. Of course, Leda knew that she was safe: no one could prove what she’d done to Eris. There’d been no cameras on the roof, no way for anyone to find out that it was Leda’s fault. Nothing except her three witnesses.

Come to think of it, maybe she should check in on them, make sure they were sticking to their story.

Suddenly Leda knew exactly where to go. She entered an address in the hover’s system and leaned back, closing her eyes. This would be fun.

WATT

WHAT IF YOU compose the first draft, then I tweak it to sound like me? Watt begged Nadia for at least the tenth time.

“May I remind you that last fall, you gave me firm orders never to write anything for you again. These are instructions from your past self.”

Last fall Watt had been called into the school office for plagiarism, because Nadia’s essay had come out a little too perfect. He’d been more careful since then. These are extenuating circumstances, he thought huffily.

“I’m just the messenger. Take up the fight with your past self.”

“Nadia—”

“That’s it. Per your past instructions, I’m turning off. Wake me up when you have a draft,” Nadia replied, and beeped into silence.

Watt stared at the blank monitor uncertainly. It was true; he had definitely told Nadia to turn herself off if he kept begging her to write his papers. Past Watt was too damned clever for Present Watt to want to deal with right now.

He began speaking aloud, his dictation-screen picking up the words as he said them.

“The reason I want to work with quantum computers is …”

He paused. There were a million things he could discuss in this essay: that quants were faster and smarter than people, even though people had made them, of course; that they could solve problems that humans never dreamed of. God, just a hundred years ago, it took a digital computer several hours to factor a twenty-digit number. Nadia could do it in four seconds flat. Watt couldn’t even imagine what she would be capable of if she were linked to other quants—and put in charge of international trade, or the stock market, or even just the operations of the U.S. food bank. Nothing would go to waste anymore. Human error would be virtually eliminated.

But none of that had to do with Watt on a personal level, or why the program should choose him over the other thousands of applicants.

If only he could write about Nadia, about how unerringly good she was. She can’t be good; she’s a machine, he corrected himself. But Watt knew that at his core, he believed in Nadia’s good intentions as if she had a human conscience.

He thought of what Vivian Marsh had said, that she wanted to personally read his application essay, and felt his heart sink.

“Watzahn!” His mom knocked at his door. “Your friend is here. For your group project.”

“Cynthia?” They had a video to make for English class. He wondered why Cynthia hadn’t warned him that she was coming over. “You should have pinged, we could have met at the library,” he added, opening the door—only to see Leda Cole standing there, wearing pink floral yoga pants and a self-satisfied smirk.

“We could’ve,” she said smoothly, “but I wanted to use your computer. It’s so much better than the ones at the library, you know?”

“Of course. Watzahn is so proud of his computer. He works on it all the time!” Watt’s mom pronounced, beaming.

Quant on, Watt thought frantically, feeling disoriented and blindsided. What the hell was Leda Cole doing here?

“Thank you, Mrs. Bakradi,” Leda said sweetly, her eyes wide and innocent. She stepped into Watt’s room and swung a tote bag onto the floor, kneeling as if to get out the fictional homework assignment. Watt stared in shock at his mother. He couldn’t believe she was even letting a girl into his bedroom. But Shirin just nodded and smiled at Leda, reminding them to let her know if they needed anything. “Don’t work too hard!” she said, and shut the door quietly behind her.

“Sorry I’m not Cynthia,” Leda purred. “Though I’m glad to hear that one of us has moved on from the Fuller siblings.”

“She’s just a friend,” Watt shot back, then felt ashamed that he’d risen to her bait.

“Too bad.” Leda’s fingers kept tapping against the floor. He didn’t think she was on anything—her eyes were too clear, her gaze steady—yet there was a taut, thrumming nervousness to her movements.

He knelt next to Leda and took her bag from her hands. “Seriously, you need to go.”

“Come on, Watt. Be nice,” she admonished. “I came all the way down here to talk to you.”

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded. Watt, be careful, Nadia cautioned. He let his hands fall uselessly to his sides, clenching them into fists, and sat back on his heels.

“I thought you knew everything, with your little supercomputer tracking all of us all the time,” Leda said acerbically.

Nadia, if you hadn’t turned yourself off, I wouldn’t have been caught like this!

Perhaps you shouldn’t have violated the guidelines you set for yourself, Nadia replied, with ruthless logic.

“What did you tell my mom, for her to let you in?” he asked Leda, to buy time—and because she was right, she shouldn’t be able to sneak up on him like this. He wanted to make sure it never happened again.

Leda rolled her eyes. “I was nice to her, Watt. You should try it sometime. It often works on people.” She stretched her legs out and leaned against his bed, glancing up at the tangle of clothes floating near the ceiling on cheap, disposable hoverbeams.

“I don’t have a closet in here. It’s the best I could think of,” Watt said, following her gaze, not sure why he was explaining himself.

“Actually, I’m impressed.” Leda’s eyes were still darting around the room. “You’ve really maximized the space in here. What was this originally, a nursery?”

“No, the twins got the bigger room when they were born.” He shifted, suddenly seeing the room through Leda’s eyes: the rumpled navy bedcovers, the cheap halogen lighting along the ceiling, the narrow desk littered with secondhand virtual reality gear.

“Twins?” Leda asked, as if she was genuinely curious.

Nadia, what’s she doing?

I believe this is the rhetorical tactic of koinonia, whereby the speaker gets the opponent to talk about himself instead of tackling the subject of the debate.

No, I mean, what does she want?

Watt stood up, losing patience. “You didn’t come over here to make small talk about my family. What’s going on?”

Leda unfolded herself in a slow, graceful movement to stand next to him. She took a step closer, tipping her face up to look at him directly. Her eyes were darker than he remembered, her lids dusted with a smoky powder. “You aren’t even going to offer me a drink before I go? Last time you gave me whiskey,” Leda murmured.

“Last time you seduced and drugged me!”

She smiled. “That was fun, wasn’t it? Well, Watt”—she reached up to tuck a stray hair behind his ear and he yanked his head angrily away; he was starting to feel very confused—“if you must know, I need you to monitor some people for me.”

“Forget it, Leda. I told you, I’m done with all that.”

“That’s too bad, because I’m not done with you.” She’d dropped the playful tone, her voice cold with the veiled threat. She had him cornered, and they both knew it.

“Who do you want me to monitor?” Watt asked warily.

“Avery and Rylin, for starters,” Leda said. There was a new energy to her voice, as if bossing Watt around somehow lent her strength. “I want to make sure they stay in line, that neither of them is talking to anyone about what happened that night.”

He realized she was wearing the same pearl studs that she’d had on the last time she came over here, and the memory caused his anger to bubble up even hotter. “You want me to spy on both of them and report anything unusual?” Watt asked. “Two full-time monitoring tasks. That’ll cost you.”

Leda burst out laughing. “Watt! Of course I won’t be paying you! Your payment is my silence.”

Watt didn’t need Nadia to tell him he’d better not respond to that. Anything he said would only dig him in deeper. He just nodded once, jerkily, hating her.

“You see, Rylin started at my school today,” Leda mused aloud. She’d started circling through his room like a predator, opening various drawers and glancing at the contents, then shutting them again. “It really caught me off guard. I hate that feeling. The whole reason I pay you is to never feel that way, ever again.”

“I believe we just established that you don’t pay me,” he replied evenly.

Leda slammed another drawer shut and lifted her eyes to look directly at Watt. “Where is it?” she demanded. “Your computer.”

Nadia. Can you pretend to be an external? he thought, and made a show of pushing a useless button on his monitor. “Right here. Look, I’m turning it on,” he said. “And now it’s starting up.”

“I don’t need a running commentary.” Leda took a seat on Watt’s bed without being invited. Some strange part of Watt realized that was the first time a girl had ever been on his bed. He’d hooked up with plenty of girls before, of course, but he always went back to their places. He shook his head, a little irritated; why was he thinking about sex right now?

“Let’s start with Avery,” Leda began.

“What? Right now?”

“No time like the present,” she said with false cheerfulness. “Come on, pull up her room comp.”

“No,” Watt said automatically.

“Too painful a memory?” Leda laughed, but it rang hollow to Watt’s ears. He wondered what had happened tonight, to send her down here. “Fine, then. Her flickers.”

“Still no.”

“Oh my god, move over,” she snapped, pushing him impatiently from his chair. Their legs brushed, sending a strange row of sparks up Watt’s body. He quickly edged away from her.

“How do you input commands?” She leaned forward and gazed expectantly at the monitor.