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A shadow passed low overhead, silently. A Boeing passen- ger plane, an intercontinental, its tail marked with the red and blue of Aero Cubana. It reminded Laura of an albatross, with vast, canted, razorlike wings on a long, narrow body. Its engines hummed.
The sight of planes always gave Laura a nostalgic lift. She had spent a lot of time in airports as a child, in the happy times before her life as a diplomat's kid fell apart. The plane dropped gently, with computer-guided precision, its wings extruding yellow braking films. Modern design, Laura thought proudly, watching it. The Boeing's thin ceramic wings looked frail. But they could have cut through a lousy tract house like a razor through cheese.
They entered the airport through gates in a chain-link fence of red plastic mesh. Outside the terminal, vans queued up in the taxi lane.
Laura helped her mother unload her bags onto a waiting luggage trolley. The terminal was built in early Organic
Baroque, with insulated, fortresslike walls and double sliding doors. It was blessedly cool inside, with a sharp reek of floor cleaner. Flat display screens hung from the ceiling, shuffling arrivals and departures. Their luggage trolley tagged along at their heels.
The crowd was light. Scholes Field was not a major air- port, no matter what the city claimed: The City Council had expanded it after the last hurricane, in a last-ditch attempt to boost Galveston's civic morale. A lot of taxpayers had quickly used it to leave Galveston for good.
They checked her mother's luggage. Laura watched her mother chat with the ticket clerk. Once again she was the woman Laura remembered: trim and cool and immaculate, self-contained in a diplomat's Teflon shell. Margaret Day: still an attractive woman at sixty-two. People lasted forever, these days. With any luck, her mother could live another forty years.
They walked together toward the departure lounge. "Let me hold her just once more," her mother said. Laura passed her the baby. Her mother carried Loretta like a sack of emeralds. "If I've said anything to upset you, you'll forgive me, won't you? I'm not as young as I was and there are things I don't understand."
Her voice was calm, but her face trembled for a moment, with a strange naked look of appeal. For the first time Laura realized how much it had cost her mother to go through this-how ruthlessly she had humbled herself. Laura felt a sudden empathetic shock-as if she'd met some injured stranger on her doorstep. "No, no," she mumbled, walking. "Every- thing was fine."
"You're modern people, you and David," her mother said.
"In a way you seem very i
Laura thought it over as they walked into the departure lounge. For the first time, she felt a muddy intuition of her mother's point of view. She stood by her mother's chair, out of earshot from the sprinkling of other passengers for Dallas.
"We seem dogmatic. Smug. Is that it?"
"Oh, no," her mother said hastily. "That's not what I meant at all."
Laura took a deep breath. "We don't live under terror,
Mother. That's the real difference.. No one's pointing missiles at my generation. That's why we think about the future, the long term. Because we know we'll have one." Laura spread her hands. "And we didn't earn that luxury. The luxury to look smug. You gave it to us." Laura relaxed a little, feeling virtuous.
"Well ..." Her mother struggled for words. "It's some- thing like that but.. The world you grew up in-every year it's more smooth and controlled. Like you've thrown a net over the Fates. But Laura, you haven't, not really. And I worry for you."
Laura was surprised. She'd never known her mother was such a morbid fatalist. It seemed a weirdly old-fashioned attitude. And she was in earnest, too-as if she were ready to nail up horseshoes or count rosary beads. And things had been going rather oddly lately... . Despite herself, Laura felt a light passing tingle of superstitious fear.
She shook her head. "All right, Mother. David and I-we know we can count on you."
"That's all I asked." Her mother smiled. "David was wonderful-give him my love." The other passengers rose, shuffling briefcases and garment bags. Her mother kissed the baby, then stood and handed her back. Loretta's face clouded and she began snuffling up to a wail.
"Uh-oh," Laura said lightly. She accepted a quick, awk- ward hug from her mother. "Bye."
"Call me."
"All right." Bouncing Loretta to shush her, Laura watched her mother leave, blending in with the crowd at the exit ramp.
One stranger among others. Ironic, Laura thought. She'd been waiting for this moment for seven days, and now that it was here, it hurt. Sort of. In a way.
Laura glanced at her watchphone. She had to kill an hour before the Grenadians arrived. She went to the coffee shop.
People stared at her and the baby. In a world so crammed with old people, babies had novelty value. Even total stran- gers turned mushy, making faces and doing little four-finger waves.
Laura sat, sipping the airport's lousy coffee, letting the tension wash out of her. She was glad that her mother was gone. She could feel repressed bits of her personality rising slowly back into place. Like continental shelves lifting after an ice age.
A young woman two booths away was interested in the baby. Her eyes were alight and she kept mugging at Loretta, big open-mouthed grins. Laura watched her, bemused. Some- thing about the woman's broad-cheeked, freckled face struck
Laura as quintessentially Texan. A kind of rugged, cracker look, Laura thought -a genetic legacy from some hard-eyed woman in calico, the sort who rode shotgun through Comanche country and had six kids without anesthetic. It showed even through the woman's garish makeup-blood-red waxy lipstick, dramatically lined eyes, hair teased into a mane.... Laura realized with a start that the woman was a hooker from the
Church of Ishtar.
The Grenadians' flight was a
Miami. The Church hooker leapt up at once, a flush of excitement on her face. Laura trailed her. She rushed at once to the embarkation lounge.
Laura joined her as the plane emptied. She cataloged pas- sengers at a glance, watching for her guests. A family of
Vietnamese shrimpers. A dozen shabby but optimistic Cubans with shopping bags. A group of serious, neatly dressed black collegians in fraternity sweaters. Three offshore oil-rig rough- necks, wrinkled old men wearing cowboy hats and engineer- ing boots.
Suddenly the Ishtar woman drew near and spoke to her.
"You're with Rizome, aren't you?"
"Rye-zoam," Laura said.
"Well, then, you'd be waiting for Sticky and the old man?" Her eyes sparkled. It gave her bony face a strange vivacity. "Did the Rev'rend Morgan talk to you?"
"I've met the reverend," Laura said carefully. She knew nothing about anyone named Sticky.
The woman smiled. "Y'all's baby is cute.... Oh, look, there they are!" She raised her arm over her head and waved excitedly, the deep-cut neckline of her blouse showing fringes of red brassiere. "Yoo-hoo! Sticky!"
An old-fashioned Rastaman in dreadlocks cut his way out of the crowd. The old man wore a long-sleeved dashiki of cheap synthetic, over baggy drawstring pants, and sandals.
The Rastaman's young companion wore a nylon wind- breaker, sunglasses, and jeans. The woman rushed forward and embraced him. "Sticky!" The younger man, with sudden wiry strength, lifted the Church woman off her feet and spun her half around. His dark, even face was expressionless be- hind the glasses.
"Laura?" A woman had appeared at Laura's elbow, si- lently. It was one of Rizome's security coordinators, Debra
Emerson. Emerson was a sad-looking Anglo woman in her sixties with etched, delicate features and thi