HELPER12, Jack Blaine [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

or look out the window.  I don’t think he’s caught me.

I admire his hair, which is worn in the Society style: long and straight and combed back away from the forehead.  Thomas’s hair is dark and shiny, and so thick it looks like you could bury your hands in it.  I’ve only touched it once, the night he came in drunk, and I wasn’t thinking of him in very kind terms then.  I wish I could touch it now.

He looks up, and I’m caught.  He smiles at me slyly.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”  I hope I sound innocent.

“It seemed as though you were staring at me.”

“What?”  I fumble with my sweater cuff.  “Oh, I was just daydreaming.  You know how you can just drift?  And you’re not really aware of what you might be looking at . . .”

“Ah.”  He nods, very serious.  “Yes.”  He snaps his reader shut and looks out.

“Almost there, Driver?”

“Almost, Mr. Thomas.”

“We’ll be staying all day.  So perhaps you can come back around nine?”

“That will be fine, sir.”

The view out the window has changed from the private dwellings on the Sloane’s street, to the edges of the city as we skirted around it, to long expanses of green fields, sort of like the Commons, only wild looking.  There are tall, tall trees here and there, and we stop at a smallish building set into a clearing next to the road.  We unload Jobee and the whizby and my baby bag and Thomas’s bag full of goodies that Helper packed.  Thomas taps the back of the vehicle and the Driver takes off.

There is a sign next to the building that has the words Nature’s Inn on it.

“Are we going in there?’

“We are,” says Thomas.  “Just to rent a car.”

We enter the building and there is a man there, standing behind a counter.  He looks at Thomas and I can see his eyes working like a calculator.

“Help you, sir?”

“Yes.”  Thomas strides to the counter.  “We need a car—one of your larger ones, and a map.”

“Half day or full day?”

“Full day, please.”  Thomas waits while the man enters some numbers on a keyboard on his side of the counter.  He swivels the keyboard across to Thomas, who takes out his C-card and slides it through a slot.  The man hands him a chip for his reader and a fob of some sort.

“Cars are around the back.  Enjoy your day with your family.”  The man looks over at me and smiles.

“Thank you.”  Thomas picks up his bag and the whizby and I carry the baby bag.  We head back out the door and walk around the building.

There are two rows of battered, old hovercars parked on a cracked pad.  Thomas looks at the fob the man gave him.

“Number 12.  Where,” he scans the cars, “is number 12?”

“There.”  I point to a blue one with the number 12 painted on its doors.  We walk over to it.  Inside it’s clean, and fairly large.  Thomas looks at the sky.

“It doesn’t look like rain.  Shall we take down the top?”

I don’t know what he means.  He shows me the way the top of the car folds down to make it open to the air.

“Yes!”  I am thrilled.  We’ll be able to watch everything go by.

We load our bags in and Thomas helps me in and hands me Jobee.  Then he climbs in too, and puts the fob into a slot meant for it.  The hovercar sputters and shudders and heaves.  Then, like magic, we’re floating, smooth and steady above the ground, just like we’re in a giant whizby.  I laugh out loud before I can stop myself.

“Okay?” Thomas grins at me.

I nod, grinning back like a fool.  He eases us out of the line of cars, and we slide over the pad.  Thomas touches a knob and we stay in one place, hovering.  He takes out the map chip he bought from the man and loads it onto his reader.

“Let’s see.  It looks like if we head due west, we’ll come to a lake.  Does that sound okay?”

I nod.  A lake.  I’ve never seen a real lake.

“All right.”  Thomas checks to see that Jobee is strapped into his whizby seat.  “Hold on,” he says, and touches the knob again.

Off we go, sailing over the ground.  We pick up speed until we’re going just fast enough to make it fun, but not so fast we can’t enjoy what we see going by.  It looks like the fields go on forever.  There are clumps of tall, wild grass, and I see some more trees in the distance.  Jobee is laughing at the way everything seems to be whizzing by him, or maybe he’s just laughing at the air on his face.  We come to a sloping hill and slide up it.  At the top, Thomas makes the hovercar stationary, so we can enjoy the view.  Below, there is a real lake.  It’s just what I thought it would be, a large, roundish crater filled with water.  It’s not quite blue, like you see in the pictures.  More greenish grey.  But still, absolutely breathtaking.

“Is it your first time to see one?”  Thomas is watching my reaction with interest.

I’m embarrassed, because I think he just caught me with my mouth hanging open again.

“Yes.  I didn’t think I ever would see one.”  All we have in the complexes are reservoir towers.  I didn’t know if lakes like this really still existed.

“Let’s get down there, then, shall we?”  Thomas makes the hovercar come to life again, and we glide down the hill to the lakeshore.

“Why don’t you explore a bit while I get us unpacked here?”  Thomas takes Jobee from me and gestures toward the lake’s edge.

“Really?”  I’m not used to being the one who relaxes.  The only time I’ve ever experienced that is with Kris, who used to let me listen to my stories while she clippered my hair, and recently, with Thomas.  He’s served me dinner, and bought me gifts, and asked me what