Ten Thousand Skies Above You (11 page)

“Trust me,” Theo says, more quietly. “He's gonna melt the minute he sees you.”

I pretend I can't hear him. Instead, I finally conquer the zipper, then step as far back as I can to look at myself in the small mirror.

Josie's slightly shorter than I am, and her boobs are way better. But the way this dress is cut, the differences in our sizes don't matter. The neckline cascades in soft folds, Grecian-style, then flows freely down to slightly past my knees. Although the dress has no sleeves, some of the red fabric drapes over my shoulders almost to the elbow. It doesn't show much skin at the neck or arms or legs, and the fabric remains cheap, but the overall effect is undeniably sexy.

My short hair makes me wince. If I could tie it up in a messy bun, that would look perfect. Instead, I work with the bob as best I can, pulling one side back with a shiny metal clip.

Lipstick here is almost always worn dark red. The shade matches the dress, so I'm happy with it. I have no jewelry besides the Firebirds, tucked beneath my neckline so that only a hint of the gold chains shows at my throat. I fluff my hair again, step out of the bathroom, and smile. “How do I look?”

Theo just stops. He stares at me like he can't move, or maybe even breathe. His expression reminds me of the picture I found in this Marguerite's pocket.

I think maybe the tiny bathroom mirror didn't do justice to this dress.

Then Theo snaps out of it. “You look smashing, my dear.”

“Very British of you.” Stupid joke. I have to joke, distract him, do something to break the tension between us.

“Should I say ravishing? Gorgeous? How about lovely? Lovely works.”

I manage to smile. “Thank you.”

When I step into the shoes, I wobble—heels aren't my thing. Theo leans close, so that I can brace my hand against his shoulder. Once I've got them on, though, he doesn't move back. I don't take my hand away, either.

“You know . . .” His voice trails off.

“What?”

Theo shakes his head. “Better left unsaid.”

Normally I would let him get away with that. Tonight I don't. “Tell me.”

His eyes meet mine. “I'm in this extremely weird position where I'm jealous of myself.”

It's hard not to look away, but I don't. Remembering London, I admit, “We came close enough before.”

“But that wasn't me either!” Theo starts laughing, and I can't help but smile. “Do you think we're serious? This Theo and this Marguerite? Or is this just, you know, seize the day, seize the girl, because tomorrow never knows?”

At first I think I won't even be able to say the words, but Theo deserves this much of the truth. “We're in love.”

“You think so?”

“I know.” I fold my arms in front of my chest, one tiny barrier between me and Theo as he stands so very close. “During the air raid, I found a picture of you in my pocket. You wrote on the back, ‘with all my love.'”

Actually he said something about
eternal love
, but maybe I can leave that part out.

“I can believe that,” he says evenly. “Doesn't mean the feeling's mutual, though.”

“It is. I found my drawings of you. The way I sketched your face . . .” I switch out of first person. “She loves the Theo from this dimension. Deeply. Completely.”

“Lucky guy.”

When our eyes meet again, we're both listening to the words we haven't said. Even though I don't feel the same way Theo does, he's important to me—and apparently there was more potential between us than I ever realized. He wasn't wrong to fall for me. Just in the wrong universe.

I summon the courage to say, “In the bomb shelter—right before the blast—”

“I said the kind of thing people say when they think they'll never have another chance,” Theo says. “Let it go, okay?”

I should. I will. Just as soon as I figure out how.

NO TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID. NO COLUMBUS TOWER.
Either Ghirardelli Square was bombed to oblivion a while ago or they never built it in the first place. People walking by me on the street seem quieter, more furtive, less themselves—it's like I'm surrounded by the same hundred black coats with changing faces. This isn't the San Francisco I remember.

Something of the city's spirit survives, though. I'm able to take a cable car part of the way, and the place where Paul asked me to meet him is in the neighborhood still known as Chinatown.

I stand on the corner, my long dark coat pulled tightly around me. The temperature turned colder today—winter's last futile howl against spring. I wonder if weather conditions are the same in alternate dimensions, if at home Mom and Dad have pulled their sweaters back out of the closet. Or
maybe the “butterfly effect” holds up, and the tiniest possible changes in each world create new climates, new storms.

Meanwhile, Theo's stuck in our hotel room, waiting for me to come back and tell him all about flirting with Paul.

I keep remembering that picture I found in my pocket, and what was written on the back. Theo and the other Marguerite love each other so much here. I guess—I guess I fell in love with him before I even met Paul.

The strange part isn't that I'm with Theo. To myself I can admit that I understand how I could fall for him, with his sense of humor, devilish eyes, and the kind of full lips most girls would kill for. Despite the darker side of his character I'm still coming to terms with, Theo has a lot to give.

The strange part is that I didn't fall for Paul.

This Paul's love for me might as well be tattooed on his skin. Anyone near him can see it, no matter how hard he works to remain at a polite distance, to show me no more attention than he should. But he's
always
paying attention to the details and emotions other people miss. Paul sees the real me in ways no one else ever has.

Did this Marguerite just not understand how much he cares?

I tamp down my frustration.
You didn't understand him either at first, remember? It took you nearly a year to realize who Paul really is. This Marguerite got involved with someone else first. So it's going to take her longer. But she'll get it eventually—won't she?

The question, I guess, is how much this Marguerite loves Theo.

If our souls are the same in world after world, then Theo must in some fundamental way be the same person as the one from the Triadverse who betrayed us all. I've fought hard not to measure my Theo by the actions of another, but that silent judgment has lurked in the back of my mind.

Yet he stayed silent about his own pain. Came on this dangerous journey, breaking his own resolution never to travel between the worlds. Helped me come to San Francisco and set up a date with another man. The Theo from the Triadverse—I can't imagine him being so brave. But, of course, we're not only here to save Paul; we're also after the cure for Nightthief. So far I have no idea whether this world's Theo is more like the one from the Triadverse or more like mine.

At that very moment, amid the dull, faceless crowd, I glimpse Paul.

His uniform is different from Theo's or even the one he wore to our house the other day: crisper, all in spotless white, except for navy and gold stripes at the sleeves—an officer's insignia. The hat he wears has a brim and a small flag on the front. He could almost have stepped out of the 1940s.

It's like Paul was built to wear uniforms. I remember how he looked in Russia, when he was a soldier and my guard.

Which makes it even sweeter to lift my hand and wave.

He stops short. “Oh, Miss Caine. I didn't expect you to be—”
Dressed up
, maybe. Or
smiling
. But Paul says only, “—here so soon.”

This is the time we chose, almost to the minute; he's punctual in a scary, inner-atomic-clock way. I let it slide.
“Hey, let's make a deal. If you'll call me Marguerite, I'll call you Paul.”

It takes him a moment to say, “All right. Marguerite.”

“All right, Paul.”

“Well,” he says, then doesn't seem to be able to come up with anything else right away. I stifle a smile; Paul's as awkward in this dimension as he is in mine. “So. Dinner. I made reservations.”

“Wonderful.” He must be taking me someplace special.

Then he adds, “Very few places are able to cook well with the new ration standards. This is an exception.”

Restaurants that have to feed you off a ration card? I remember the dismal meals at home—cheese on toast, canned peaches, eggs that are not real eggs—and lower my expectations.

Apparently cheesy Chinese-restaurant decor has the power to travel through dimensions unchanged. Red-and-gold fans unfold across the walls, and small paper lanterns dangle in the corners. They're all a little faded, like nobody's replaced them with new ones in a long time, but they still add color to the room. Paul and I are seated in a curved booth just beneath one of the lanterns. The setting is perfect—intimate, so I can ignore the noise and activity around us and just be with him.

And betray him
, whispers Theo's voice in my memory.

“At first I didn't understand why you weren't working at the munitions plant,” Paul says, instead of normal human conversation like
what happened with Theo
or
how was your trip
.
“But it was destroyed in the air raid. I'd forgotten.”

“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.”

“It says blue on my ID form.” He's even worse at flirting than I am.

“But you know they're gray, right?” Maybe he doesn't.
Paul has never been a guy to spend much time looking in a mirror. “What color does your ID form say your hair is?”

“Brown,” he replies, which isn't exactly a wrong answer. But it isn't exactly right, either.

“Light brown, but also a little red, and a little gold.” The hours I've spent mixing paints, trying to get the right shade. Paul is a difficult man to capture. “You have good shoulders, good skin—good everything, really.”

“You make it sound as if I were very handsome.”

“You are.”

This gets me not a smile but a skeptical glance. “Most women seem to disagree with you.”

There was a time when I wouldn't have agreed either. His beauty isn't boy-band cute; he's rougher than that, his appeal not as easy to see. Once I'd seen it, though, I became drawn to him on a primal, instinctive level I couldn't deny.

I suspect Paul is feeling much the same way now.

We eat our chicken chow mein; it's a messy meal for a date, but I'm pretty good with a pair of chopsticks, and so is he. I keep the conversation going, and Paul—well, he tries to flirt back, clumsy as ever, but for me it's enough just to see how much he's enjoying himself.