His dad buckled Kyle into the seat as the engine roar peaked again. He felt the world turn, then the river was dropping away beneath him. The tilt-jet banked. Kyle looked out the window. There was the boat, being pulled in to shore by the soldiers, and Salim standing in the stern staring up at the aircraft, a hand raised: goodbye.

~ * ~

Gitmoisation part three.

Dad did the don’t-you-know-the-danger-you-were-in/trouble-you-caused/expense-you-cost bit.

‘It was a full-scale security alert. Full-scale alert. We thought you’d been kidnapped. We honestly thought you’d been kidnapped. Everyone thought that, everyone was praying for you. You’ll write them, of course. Proper apologies, handwritten. Why did you turn your palmer off? One call, one simple call, and it would have been all right, we wouldn’t have minded. Lucky we can track them even when they’re switched off. Salim’s in big trouble too. You know, this is a major incident, it’s in all the papers, and not just here in Cantonment. It’s even made SKYIndia News. You’ve embarrassed us all, made us look very very stupid. Sledgehammer to crack a nut. Salim’s father has had to resign. Yes, he’s that ashamed.’

But Kyle knew his dad was burning with joy and relief to have him back.

Mom was different. Mom was the torturer.

‘It’s obvious we can’t trust you; well, of course you’re grounded, but really, I thought you knew what it was like here, I thought you understood that this is not like anywhere else, that if we can’t trust each other, we can really put one another in danger. Well, I can’t trust you here and your dad, well, he’ll have to give it up. We’ll have to quit and go back home and the Lord knows, he won’t get a job anything closer to what we have here. We’ll have to move to a smaller house in a less good area, I’ll have to go out to work again. And you can forget about that Salim boy, yes, forget all about him. You won’t be seeing him again.’

Kyle cried himself out that night in bed, cried himself into great shivering, shuddering sobs empty of everything except the end of the world. Way way late he heard the door open.

‘Kyle?’ Mom’s voice. He froze in his bed. ‘I’m sorry. I was upset. I said things I shouldn’t have said. You did bad, but all the same, your dad and I think you should have this.’

A something was laid beside his cheek. When the door had closed, Kyle put on the light. The world could turn again. It would get better. He tore open the plastic bubble-case. Coiled inside, like a beckoning finger, like an Arabic letter, was a lighthoek. And in the morning, before school, before breakfast, before anything but the pilgrims going to the river, he went up on to the roof at Guy’s Place, slipped the ’hoek behind his ear, pulled his palmer-glove over his fingers and went soaring up through the solar farm and the water tanks, the cranes and the construction helicopters and the clouds, up towards Salim’s world.