Homeland

Chapter 14

"I know," I said. "I'm a rotter. Sorry, darling."

"Have yourself bathed, waxed, perfumed, and put into bed. I'll be there in thirty-five minutes."

"Aye aye, Cap'n."

The reunion, when it came, was just what I needed and then some. Both of us had been hurt. Ange had been gassed and trampled, arrested and freed, and while her story had some minor variations in its specifics, it came out to about the same thing as mine. She'd been with Lemmy through most of the process -- they'd stayed together somehow, Lemmy bodily lifting Ange free of the crowd at one point when the crushing started, holding her over his head like a freaky circus act. She'd seen him again after they were released, and promised to call him as soon as she found me.

We talked about it for a few minutes, kissing each other in the places where we were bruised or hurt, holding each other, murmuring to each other, until sleep took us.

And the next day, I went to work.

Well, of course I did. It was Tuesday, and the election was coming up, and someone had to get Joseph Noss elected, and it was going to be me. A hundred times on the way to work, I reached for my phone -- to make a reminder for myself, to send a text to Ange (who was still sleeping in my bed; her first class didn't start until after lunch), to check the weather for that night, to read what my tweeps had to say. Each time, I thought, Crap, I've lost my phone. Got to call it from my laptop and talk to Dalia and arrange to get it back from her. Then I thought, ⌠/Huh, I should really make a note about that, now, where's my phone?⌡/ And it began again. It was so funny I forgot to laugh.

I came through the door of the Joe for Senate office and stopped. Something was different. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, and then I realized what it was.

Everyone was staring at me.

Every single person in the office was watching me with owl-eyed intensity, giving off a mixture of awe and fear. I gave a little half wave and took off my jacket and headed for my desk, plunked down in my seat, pulled out Lurch and plugged in my monitor and keyboard and mouse and started entering the passwords that got my disks mounted and my network connection going. There was near-total silence as I did this, and it was so unnerving that I fatfingered my password twice before getting it.

I sat down at my computer and started going through my start-of-day routine: downloading my email, checking the server log summaries to see if we were in danger of running out of bits, kicking off my own personal backups -- stationkeeping stuff I could have done while half asleep.

I started off half asleep -- or half distracted -- and so it was only after a few minutes that I pounced on my mouse and started un-closing the browser tabs I'd just closed, hammering on crtl-F12 with a series of whaps so hard I actually felt the spring under the key start to lose its sprungedness. I clicked and clicked again.

Then I got up from my desk and looked into the sea of stares. "Can someone please explain to me what the hell's going on?"

As one, the whole office turned to look at Liam, who got up and came over to my desk.