Ten Thousand Skies Above You

“I’ll get another duty assignment soon, but not yet,” I say, which is probably the truth. Mom and Dad would have told me if I were going AWOL.

Paul nods. “I heard the younger workers were on shift. The thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. It’s terrible.” A lot of people say stuff like that about tragedies only because they think they’re supposed to, but Paul closes his eyes briefly after he speaks. Like it hurts to remember it.

When I think about a bunch of middle-school kids blown to bits in a factory already filled with explosives, my heart hurts too.

Also—kids as young as thirteen are working in factories? The war has already closed the schools, then. This dimension—at least, this nation, the one containing my family and friends and everyone I love—it’s even closer to the brink than I realized.

You’re the one who’s going to push them over the edge, I remind myself. My parents believe the Firebird project is their last hope; my job here is to take that hope away.

I hate Conley for making me do this. I hate myself for doing it.

But as I sit here, looking across the table at Paul, I remember that a splinter of my Paul’s soul is trapped within. Lost and utterly alone, in a world he can’t escape. For him, I think I could do anything. Even this.

“I’m glad you phoned today. It gives us a chance to talk.” He takes a deep breath, obviously gearing himself up to say something he’s planned. “When I spoke to you a few months ago—if I made things difficult between us, I’m sorry.”

Can I forgive Paul before I know what I’m forgiving him for? I try, “What were you thinking?”

Paul’s hands twist the napkin across his lap. “My father always told me not to let anything get between me and something I truly wanted.”

I blink. That sounds . . . encouraging. Always before, I’ve had the impression that Paul’s father was anything but supportive.

He continues, “So I thought I would ask you out, regardless of what your parents might think or—or whether you were already dating someone. I misunderstood the depth of the commitment between you and Private Beck. If I had realized, I would never have said anything. Please forgive me.”

I can picture the entire scene: Paul standing in front of me, probably scrunching his cap in his hands the way he’s twisting that napkin now. Me, so addled with love or lust for Theo that I couldn’t see the good man standing right in front of me. The depth of what he felt went unnoticed, unreturned. My heart breaks for him a little. At least I can give him tonight.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Really.”

“Oh. Good. I’d thought—well, I’d been afraid you weren’t at ease with me anymore. Even intimidated.”

Paul’s an intimidating man: his size and his rugged features make him look more like a firefighter or a SWAT team member than a scientist. I’ve seen people glance at him when we’re walking around Oakland after dark. In shadow, he looks like someone who could take you down in about five seconds. Yet I’ve seen how gentle he can be, and the memory makes me smile. “You’ve proved you’re not the big scary guy I thought you were.”

He looks skyward, like he wants to laugh but can’t. “Big scary guy,” he repeats.

“Nope. That’s not you.”

“Glad to hear it.” That’s as close as Paul can come to banter. He’s so endearingly unsure of himself that it reminds me of my own Paul. The pain of missing him mingles with the strange delight of being with this world’s Paul Markov, and suddenly it’s hard to remember where one ends and the other begins. Is that glimmer of my Paul’s soul at work here, drawing us closer together? “I hope your parents aren’t upset with me. They might have seen my behavior as disrespect.”

“Of course not. My parents know you’re okay. They wouldn’t work with you otherwise.”

“We all have our duty.”

“It’s not just duty. Mom and Dad think you’re brilliant,” I say. It’s the truth in my world, and probably in this one as well. “She even calls you a genius. Which for most people just means, ‘someone really smart,’ but you know Mom. When she says genius, she means it.”

Genius isn’t just intelligence, she explained to me once. It’s the ability to see further than anyone around you, to put together different concepts in a way no one else has imagined. Genius implies originality and independence. It’s her highest compliment, and Paul’s the only one of her students I’ve ever heard her describe that way.

Paul ducks his head. But I can see his small, almost disbelieving smile. “That’s good to hear.”

“Tell me about San Francisco,” I say. The file Theo found listed Paul as having military housing here in the city; he must only visit the base in my hometown from time to time. “What it’s like to live here. Tell me everything.”

Paul is normally so taciturn that “tell me everything” is likely to get you about two short sentences, max. Either this Paul is more willing to talk, or Josie’s red dress has magic powers. Because he starts telling me how he came to the city in the first place—and since I’m able to read between the lines, he actually tells me a whole lot more than that.

He came here “after New York fell.” Apparently he was born in NYC, just like my Paul, only a few months after his parents immigrated. His military service began three years ago, “two years before the compulsory age.” The advanced weaponry program had recruited him based on his scores on the “usual mandatory tests,” which I’m guessing don’t have much in common with the SATs. When I ask him about music, he loves Rachmaninoff as much here as he does back home—but has never heard of anyone from the past fifty years or so.

Then again, Paul is so adorably clueless about pop culture in every dimension that he wouldn’t know any performer from the past fifty years anyway.

Even this more talkative version of Paul isn’t comfortable monopolizing the conversation. So I try to do the thing I suck at the most. I flirt.

“You ought to sit for me sometime,” I say.

“Sit for you?”

“As a model, for my sketches. You have the face for it.” My mind flashes back to one time my Paul sat for me—and showed off much more than his face—but if I start thinking about that in depth, my face will turn as red as my dress.

“A face like a model. Hardly,” Paul says, but I can tell he’s flattered, and so embarrassed about it that he doesn’t know what to say. Paul has no more game in this universe than in my own.

Might as well lay it on thick, have a little fun. “The lines of your face would work well, for an artist’s subject. Your jaw, your brow, your nose—straight and strong. Plus you have amazing eyes.”

Paul’s expression is caught halfway between disbelief and pleasure. Probably he’d be more comfortable if I changed the subject, but I’ve hardly even gushed to my Paul about how much I love every single inch of his face. Might as well enjoy this. If I’d known it was so easy to bowl him over, I might have tried it long ago.

“Your eyes are actually gray,” I say, more softly, so he has to lean closer to hear. “At first I thought they had to be blue, a very pale blue, but they’re not.”