Black Marion

19

Two and a half years went.

Alex became as intimately familiar with Astrid Nnamani as the woman's own partner might have been. She knew her early childhood friends and favorite foods, that she preferred her lamb casserole cold and her broccoli unseasoned and boiled; she'd pried apart Nnamani's doctoral thesis a dozen times forward and back; she could recite the name of every family member and friend in under thirty seconds. Every conspicuous fragment that she trailed led her to a dead end. Every note of inspiration turned up blank. Her patience was nearing its limits now, frayed along the biography of a peculiar Marion Castel.

She had been Nnamani's last lover, for all of three decades until the creation of the Tree—following which they appeared to sever all contact. Alex well knew the primary reason she spent countless hours trying to deconstruct the Tree: it was for Haneul. For, one might say, love. In Marion Castel she tried desperately to find a similar inspiration, but Castel had been a theoretical physicist, and the subject was to Alex like another language. Since March she had begun studying Castel's work and deciphering her specialization with electromagnetism; it was now July of '81, and she felt no closer to an answer than August '78.

At the department, the project team suffered the same fate. SA21 hit the same immovable roadblocks as every System Architecture team of the past century, leaving its members to take up peripheral assignments to justify their time. For them there was no rush—a chip to their pride as architects, perhaps, but little more. For Alex, every moment lost meant a moment longer that the doctor would live as a fragment of himself. Spread thin across multiple projects, she resumed a habit of taking supplemental sleep pills and quick thirty-second meals.

Her only reprieve came monthly, a mandatory hour, or two, or three spent with the Regent Scio. Sometimes it wouldn't be a dinner; sometimes, Vaughn—as he had insisted to be called—hosted their debriefs at theaters, or skating rinks, or shooting ranges, or painting classes—all manner of things. The first time had been jarring; the second time, irritating. But it seemed that the Regent genuinely enjoyed these unattached activities, and Alex soon picked up on his lead. Her company was warm too, never as interrogatory as Alex had expected. In the past year, she had associated their meetings with a breath of air in a separate, simpler world. She looked forward to them—counted, sometimes, the days to them.

July 15th, they were scheduled to meet at a House of Blues in the lower Sky. Alex arranged herself to look not as if she had been living off pills and bars for the past month, and then flew her way down to a cheap establishment precariously close to midground. It was lightly populated, dim inside. Live jazz from—Alex blinked—men with blue lights upon their necks. A bar, some small tables, and then rows of larger tables covered in green felt, with colored balls rolling atop.

In the shadowed corner, Vaughn was arranging the balls in a triangular bracket. He looked different. Dressed down—cheaply, almost, as if he were anyone but a Regent hailing from the upper. Alex approached him, almost frowning.

"Interesting venue."

Vaughn turned. He grinned broadly. "Is it? My mother used to work here. Here." He handed Alex a simple tablet. "Mark off what you'd like to eat and drink. They'll bring it by in a few minutes."

Alex scanned the menu and tapped some boxes. She handed it back shortly after, more curious about Vaughn's words.

"Your mother?"

"She was from the Ground. They permitted her to work here, and that was how she met my father on one of his inspections." He chuckled to himself, picking up one of two sticks lying by the table. "He came back for quite a few drinks after that. Do you know how to play?"

"I don't know what this is," said Alex.

Vaughn handed her a stick. Synthetic wood, it appeared, though weighted.