The Color of Rain (4 page)

“Dad would be doing exactly what we're doing. He'd get you to the Edge, to your cure, Walker,” I whisper. My dad was the one who told me about the Edge, that settlement on the other side of the known universe. And he told me about Mecs, the evolved people who live there. I remember the shining silver communicator on Johnny the Runner's wrist. What I wouldn't give to touch it . . . to know how and where he got it. . . .

The Blackstar Bar is several blocks away, and getting farther with each step, but I have to see Walker home and settled first. And then, I will go to Johnny. But what will I say?

I lead Walker around a corner—and right into a trap.

“No moving, missy,” a squat woman says. She's the same one with the hook through her ear from earlier. Two muscle-backed men creep to surround me on either side.

I was right: reward chasers.

“No fussing, missy. It's got to go before it infects the rest.”

It
. She means Walker.

I force my hand between my brother's stiff fingers, my pulse pounding against my ears. The men get closer. They're going to take him for the reward, and then Walker will disappear forever like the rest of the Touched.

No way.

I bring my brother's thumb from between our clenched hands and wrench it back. His body stiffens with pain, but I pull harder and harder until the tendons are about to snap. Finally, my brother's body shakes like a chill is rippling through him, but then he lifts his head. He arches his neck and then launches it forward, shooting a huge glob of saliva right into the woman's eye. She yowls.

“Just cuz he's here and now doesn't mean he ain't infected,” she says as she scrubs at her cheeks.

“Yeah, but you can't prove he's Touched, so let us pass. Besides, shouldn't you worry about being infected now?”

Horror squashes her pudgy face, and the men step back, not just from Walker and me, but from her now as well. And I don't miss the moment. I grab my brother's hand and jerk us into a sprint.

We're on the next street before I slow. “You were great, Walk.”

A crooked smile gives life to his pale lips. “I'm the greatest. So said Dad. Remember?”

“I remember.”

He touches his chest and arms like he just found them, still disoriented. “Those chasers been after us for a while?”

“‘
Have
those chasers been after us?'” I correct. “And I don't know. I only noticed them this morning.” It was a close one, but Walker is here now, and I bring out Hallisy's ten-credit note. “What do you want to do? We can do anything.”

He snatches it. “How'd you get this?”

“I earned it.” Walker frowns for a moment, and I worry that he's remembering how I earned that money. I clear my throat. “How about some eats? You hungry?”

My brother's great smile is worth five hundred credits. “I'm always hungry.”

We swing by our favorite meat-on-sticks place, and it almost feels like old times, at least it would if I wasn't counting down the seconds until his clarity fades. We pick out a shish kebab for each hand and wander through the rain-washed streets toward our makeshift home.

Walker strips a piece of tough meat and makes a pleased groaning sound. “Rain, what happened before?”

“I met a Runner. A Void captain, Walk. I'm going to trade with him to get us passage.” I look over my dinner but can't force another bite. “Maybe next time you wake, you'll be better. We'll be on the Edge.”

“And you'll be the captain of your own starship, and Mom and Jeremy will be back, and Dad will be up from the dead like he was taking a nap?” He spits a bit of cartilage out on the sidewalk. “You're full of dreaming, Rain. If you really want a shot, you'd let them take me.”

“Don't be such a depressing old man.” I wiggle my kebab in his face. He bats it away with his skewer, and we swordfight
until I de-stick him and claim arms-raised victory.

We reach an old fire escape, climbing to the roof. Our home is glass-paneled: a rooftop greenhouse from back in the eco days. People grew gardens here once, and someone even put a swimming pool in the center of it. Of course it's all gone to hell now. Many of the panes are cracked or missing, and the green plants have long since disintegrated into piles of ashy soil.

Walker sits on blankets in the shallow corner of the empty pool, and I grab my favorite tatty book from the stack that I rescued from our old apartment. The bindings have been glued and reglued. Some of them have grown mold, but I can't part with them. They were my dad's.

“Read from this one tonight.” I gently toss the book to Walker, but he doesn't catch it. It scatters on the tile, losing pages. “Watch it!”

He scoops it up. “We've already read this one.
And
I don't like poetry.”

“Too bad. Read.”

Walker tugs the book open. He starts to read a poem, struggling with the rhythm and so many of the words. My dad would have taught him to taste the words as he reads them just like he taught Jeremy and me, but I've proven to be a bad teacher. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough.

“‘I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash'd babe . . . and am not contain'd between my hat and boots.'” Walker's voice is lazy and heartless.

“Don't you feel it? ‘Not contain'd between my hat and boots.' Do you get that?”

“I'm not wearing a hat.”

“Don't be literal. It means that you're more than your body. Your mind goes outward. You know?” I close my eyes and finish the poem by memory, “‘And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good; The earth good, and the stars good . . .'”

“I guess it sounds nice.” He shuts the book.

“That's a start.” I lie back on the old diving board, my legs swinging off the sides. “We'll do more when you're better,” I add to myself. “Much more.” A brown-skinned vine grows along the rusted beams that crisscross the glass walls and ceiling. I admire that plant. The sun hasn't broken through the smog in over two years, but still it grows. A survivor. And somehow it's snaked through cracks in the glass without cutting itself.

How do you do what's wrong without losing yourself in the process? Is there a way to do what Lo does without becoming like Lo?

I push past the memory of Hallisy and rethink this Johnny.
Deal
, he said,
what you have for what you need
. Well, what I have is me. And what I need is passage.

Walker's voice breaks into my thinking. “What'll you try to trade this Runner?”

“Whatever he wants.”

“Whatever?” Walker sits. He remembers the alley now. I can see it in his reddening cheeks. “
Rain
. Earlier you were . . . you were going to let that man . . .”

I leap from the wobbling board, landing in a crouch on the tile that shoots pain from my ankles to my knees. “I need to make money fast, Walk. You have to trust me.”

“There are honest ways!”

“You don't think I've tried?” I pace. “Factory work. Mine work.
Sewer
work. You know what they all have in common? They pay nothing. And I can't wait around and watch you disappear.”

He covers his eyes with his thin hands. “You could save up without me. You could save up in just a few years.”

“Shut up.” I hug him hard, my chin covering his head.

“You'll get hurt,” he says. “Hurt bad. Remember when Jeremy said you couldn't jump from the fire escape?”

I hold him a little tighter. “Yes. And I did it.”

“But you broke your ankle.”

“But I did it.”

He shakes his head, pricking the underside of my jaw. “You think you can do anything and no one can touch you, but it's like what Dad used to say. ‘You can't run between the raindrops.'”

I can see our father through Walker's words—the phrasing he only remembers because I've told him it so many times. Some days I wonder just how much Walker truly recalls about our dad. I remember too much . . . his ginger hair. His coarse beard and green eyes. And I miss him too much. Sometimes I admit it out loud to remind myself that the pain in my chest isn't a cancer or my body going Touched.

It's just the missing.

The last time I saw my dad, the cops were dragging his body facedown into the street. Then they flew away in a hover cab, stealing Jeremy. My dad's beard had left scratch lines in the trail of blood leaving our apartment building, and I still see those lines in my nightmares . . . an endless rusted trail that I chase and chase
without ever finding the place where I lost him.

Walker pulls out of my arms to curl up on the blankets, and we trade small smiles that have nothing to do with happiness. “Rub my thumb, will you? Feels like it almost ripped off or something,” he says. I massage his bony hand and watch him fall asleep until violent shakes take him somewhere even farther away.

I run my finger down his cheek, feeling the first fuzz of soft stubble. He's been waiting for years to grow his scruff like Jeremy and our dad, waiting forever to be a man. Well, he will get his chance. I'll trade anything in the universe for it.

High above the glass panels, the smoke sky glows. It could be coming on morning or evening, but I can't hardly tell. On this planet, the day is always the same color as the night.

I wake with a start. My brother is not next to me. “Walker?” I get to my feet and check the gray room.

“Rain.” His voice comes from above—from the diving board. He stands at the very edge, minutely bouncing on the old fiber plank. “You should go without me. You should save up and do it right.” He stops bouncing. “Run the Void, and then if you do it, I'll have done it as well. Like a spirit or something.” He opens his arms wide. “Remember when Dad used to call me Night Bird?”

“Walker, don't be—”

He springs on the board and dives, his head careening straight toward the tile. A scream breaks my throat, crashing echoes through the empty pool like waves against rock.

Waves that do nothing to stop the spray of his blood.

C
rimson neon lights bear down on the crowd at the Blackstar Bar like a demented oven. I push through arms and drinks and groping hands toward a table at the back of the room.

And he is there: Johnny.

I have whatever you need
.

He fingers a drink, his legs jutting out from a slouch that brings all attention to his waist. When his eyes meet mine, he grins smugly and leans toward a guy beside him. I catch the end of his words: “. . . and you doubted me.”

Johnny taps something into the silver band on his wrist and speaks without looking up. “Rain, let me guess: you'd like to see the stars. It's always been your dream.”

I place my hand over his.

“I need . . .” My voice leaves me. Johnny pulls away, and my fingers streak blood down his tan skin.

He brings a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes at the red. Then he takes my hands and does the same. He turns each of them over, inspecting them. “You need what?”

What do I need? What could he possibly do?