Chapter 10

Danielle stared at the darkened ceiling of her room. Her mother was a spy. She couldn't get over that. But what did she spy on? Or who? As far as she knew, spies didn't just sit in one place and report on the weather, or the local news. Of course there was that one spy she'd read about in a romance novel. The girl had lived in Germany in World War 2, and had simply counted the railroad cars, and what they were carrying, as they rolled past her house every day. But that was fiction. Spies snuck into places, they photographed top secret things, and they had special gizmos and stuff like that.

But her mother was a housewife. She stayed at home most of the time, except for a little shopping and socializing. And yet she was a spy for the people in this place. Were they planning on invading or something? As far as she knew, they only had two or three of those door things. How could you mount an invasion through those? And to what end?

For a moment she fantasized that the people here were going to invade California, overthrow the state government, and impose a sensible school system. She hadn't been here that long, but she knew she had learned more in that brief time than she had all of the rest of her years in high school. She'd had to work for it, and somehow that made her feel better.

She wondered if there was a way she could ask her mother what was going on. She'd have to be discreet; she wasn't sure what her father would do if he found out.

She sighed and rolled over. That was another problem. Now that she was outside of it, she could see some of the craziness her father talked about. He was trying to make a difference, trying to stop something even he recognized as insanity. But there came a time when you just said "Enough!" and got out of the way. From the sound of it, he was almost at that point. But her father was stubborn, and he'd probably hang on until it was too late to do anything constructive.

This was all too much for someone her age to be dealing with. She knew she'd worry at this all night if she gave it half a chance. Finally she got up, put on her slippers and robe, and went downstairs to the study. In the past a little mindless TV watching would let her get to sleep.

"Huh," she muttered after checking the dozen or so different channels that were available. "Lots of bare skin."

Every movie seemed to include nude shots. She'd seen late night cable back in Tiburon, and the closer it got to midnight, the more skin was revealed. They didn't actually show all of the details, but you had a good idea what was going on. This was like that, but more so. For one thing, the guys were naked, and they showed everything. In some way she liked that. The cable movies would show plenty of female nudity, but the men were always carefully covered, at least in one part of their body. You didn't get that here. In five minutes she saw six naked guys, both front and back, and only one naked woman.

She checked the listing. This was a film shot in some ancient time. Those weren't fake slave collars they were wearing, but actual ones. She felt a little ill. That was reality. She preferred something a little more 'sanitized'. She changed channels at random.

This wasn't much better. There was a couple, and they were clearly making love. She'd seen enough fake sex on TV, and that x-rated movie one of the girls she used to hang with back in Tiburon had found, to know the difference. If you saw something, it wasn't flaunted. And from the look on the woman's face, she was totally into it. And when they were done you could see nearly everything, something they didn't show on the cable movies.

She watched that for a bit. She was a little surprised that she didn't get turned on by it. She wondered if that was because it was written for guys, who responded to visual cues. But that didn't make much sense. She saw much more of the guy's naked body than the woman's.

She realized she was beginning to analyze again. She'd found herself doing that more and more lately. Part of it was because her teachers were always asking her 'why'. That was another difference between here and Tiburon. Back there, you were told 'why'. Here you could ask, but you felt more satisfaction in working it out yourself.

The movie finally ended. She turned off the TV, not at all curious what would follow. Instead she went back to her room. This time sleep claimed her.

On Saturday Jenny asked if she wanted to go bike riding.

"I thought you'd have a date or something."

"Not this weekend. He's visiting family, and so I'm at loose ends."

"Where did you think of going? I don't want to do too many hills. I don't think I'm up to that."

Jenny shrugged. "I thought we'd take the train up the valley a ways, and then ride back. If we get tired, we could catch the train the rest of the way."

Danielle frowned. "I thought there weren't any roads on the valley floor. I thought it was, you know, all given over to crops and stuff."

"There's a road," Jenny said. "It runs right next to the tracks. It's how the farmers get their tractors and wagons from one field to another."

"Oh. Sure, why not?"

"Good. Let's pack a lunch. Bring some money, too, in case we stop somewhere and do a little shopping."

"I don't have much."

Jenny waved that off. "You need to get a job, but we'll talk about that some other time. Today let's just get out and enjoy the day."

Danielle was all over the street on her bicycle, at least at first. She almost took a spill, and only avoided it by dragging both feet on the ground. She didn't want to admit it had been years since she'd been on a bike. She used to be pretty good at riding, but like a lot of things, that had fallen by the wayside from lack of practice. Bike riding was something the 'cool' kids didn't do. It was dorky or something. After a while it was acceptable again, but you had to have a bike helmet and special biker clothes. She noticed nobody did that here. There wasn't a bicycle helmet in sight, and nobody wore the sleek riding clothes that were common back in Tiburon.

Jenny set a fast pace, shaking her head and let her hair stream out behind her. Danielle had to peddle furiously to keep up, finally doing so when Jenny pulled over at the edge of town.

"Why so fast?"

"I love the feel of wind in my hair," Jenny said. Her cheeks were flushed and she was smiling from ear to ear.

"I haven't ridden in a while. I was having a hard time keeping up."

"I promise I'll go slower in the future." She turned and pointed up the valley. "See that outcrop in the distance? That's where we're going, at least at first."

Danielle squinted. "Is it my imagination, or is there a town up there?" She could see some buildings on the slope.

"That's Outlook. You can see quite a bit from the top."

"We don't have to peddle up that, do we?"

"Oh no! They have a way to get up there. C'mon, let's go."

"Just not so fast."

Jenny laughed. "Spoilsport, but all right, not so fast."

Danielle had to admit that it was kind of fun. The wind in her hair and against her bare legs felt good. Once out of the town and its trees, the day turned out to be pretty warm. She wasn't going to admit it to anyone, but on days like this a skirt was probably cooler than shorts. Now if she could just stop wanting to push it down so people didn't see too much...

It took a couple hours of steady peddling to get to Outlook. Jenny stopped frequently, pulling off for this reason or that reason. It was obvious she could have kept going, but this seemed a polite way to let Danielle keep up without admitting it.

"The noise of the falls is so constant that you don't notice it," she said at one point. "That's one of the reasons I like coming out here. It can be so quiet."

Danielle could hear a few birds, and the soft whoosh of the tram as it went past, but that was it. The closer they got to Outlook, the more the breeze picked up. It cut what could have been a stifling day into something that was fun to be out in.

They got to the base of Outlook a little after noon. They had to wait while a train unloaded a few passengers. They joined them in a sit-down escalator, seats that rode a cogged-track up the steep side of the hill. Jenny locked her bike in a rack and sprawled on one of the seats. "Tuck your skirt in," she said. "A bunch of us from school came here last year, and the wind flipped our skirts practically up to our faces."

The breeze felt good, but it got stronger as they rose. One gust threatened to do just what Jenny had described. Danielle finished the trip up the hill with everything tucked in tight and her hands holding her skirt just to make sure.

Outlook was a town built on terraces, much like Upper and Lower. But these terraces had been carved into the side of the hill. The escalator only took them to the lowest terrace, and they had to use steps after that.

"The houses are on the other side," Jenny said as they climbed. "They don't have the view that the businesses have. They get a much more dramatic one, instead."

"Better than this?" Danielle gestured. They could see out over the whole valley. Valley's End and Terminus were green splotches to the right, and farm fields stretched out to her left, contained in a way by the other side of the valley. She tried to estimate how high they were, and gave up. They had to be at least 500 feet up, maybe more. Her eye could see the bottom of the hill, but it was far enough away that it didn't quite feel real.

"What if you fall?" she asked as they resumed climbing.

"That's why there are landings every 20 feet," Jenny said. "And there's a big net, too."

Danielle's heart was racing from the effort when they turned off on the next terrace. It was like a plaza, with shops on either side. Jenny made directly for a store selling shaved ice. She handed one to Danielle and took a healthy sip of the other.

"Feels good, doesn't it."

Danielle nodded. "Great." She needed something to cool her down.

"Dad says an ice-cold beer tastes best when you've been working hard."

"I didn't know he drank much."

"He doesn't. I think he only does it when he's been working in the yard." She took another sip. "We could have the same thing back home, but it wouldn't taste this good."

They explored the rest of the stores, but didn't buy anything. Most of the things she saw were things available in the stores back in Valley's End. Danielle noticed that just like back in Valley's End, there weren't dressing rooms in the stores selling clothes. She'd wondered about that. Were you supposed to take it home to try something on? Or maybe she was just missing something. She was going to ask Jenny, but her cousin was already out the door and headed for the stairs.

"You have to see the view of the mountains," Jenny said. "After that, maybe we should head home."

Danielle checked her watch. It was already mid-afternoon. She wondered where the day was going. It didn't seem that long since they'd left home.

The view from the top was everything Jenny had promised. The mountains were like a wall of snow and stone, and seemed close enough to touch.

"They aren't," Jenny said in a quiet voice. "They're at least 20 miles away, but..."

The slope in front of them wasn't as abrupt as the one that faced the valley. There were sidewalks here, not steps, and kids playing and riding. Danielle saw something she'd seen in Valley's End: parents were where they could watch the kids, but they weren't trying to direct the play, turn it into something "productive", whatever that meant, or otherwise interfere. Back in Tiburon there was the constant worry of some weirdo snatching a kid; if that happened here there would be at least a dozen adults right there.

She walked off to one side. She could see part of the valley, and a few houses. She could also hear laughter and the squeal of kids. Curious, she followed a brick path over to some steps. She stopped at the top, looking at the scene below her.

It was a swimming pool; it was more than that, it was several pools together. Kids were playing at one of them, and adults were at another. And everyone was naked.

That took a few seconds to register. There wasn't a bathing suit in sight. Everyone, from the youngest kids to adults with white hair was bare-ass and buck naked. It looked a lot like what she'd seen in Lower, but more so.

"They don't have anything on," she told Jenny when the girl stopped next to her.

"You'd think putting the pool here would make it too cold," Jenny said in a matter-of-fact voice. "That breeze wouldn't be very nice if you came directly out of the pool."