So she walked back with the clouds, through narrow streets walled by apartment blocks and gardens, to Hunt Mesa and their home under the dance studio. Michel and Spencer were out, and for a long time she just stood in the window and looked at the clouds racing over the city, trying to do Michel’s job for him, to lasso her moods and pull them back to some kind of stable center. From the ceiling came little uncoordinated thump thump thumps. Another class beginning. Then the thumps were in the hall before the door, and there was a hard knock. She went to answer it, heart pounding like the ceiling.

It was Jackie and Antar, and Art and Nirgal, and Rachel and Frantz and the rest of the Zygote ectogenes, pouring in and talking at the speed of sound, so that she couldn’t quite understand them. She greeted them as cordially as she could, given Jackie’s presence among them, and then collected herself and removed all hatred from her eyes, and talked with all of them, even Jackie, about their plans. They had come to Burroughs to help organize a demonstration down in the canal park. Word had been sent out through the cells, and they were hoping that a lot of the unaligned citizenry would join them as well. “I hope it doesn’t precipitate any crackdowns,” Maya said.

Jackie smiled at her, in triumph of course. “Remember, you can never go back,” she said.

Maya rolled her eyes and went to put water on the stove, trying to quell her bitterness. They would meet with all the cell leaders in the city, and Jackie would take over the meeting, and exhort them to immediate rebellion, no sense or strategy involved. And there was nothing Maya could do about it— the time for beating the shit out of her had passed, unfortunately.

So she went around taking off people’s coats and giving them bananas and kicking their feet off the couch cushions, feeling like a dinosaur among the mammals, a dinosaur in a new climate, among quick hot creatures who disdained her gallumphing around, who dodged her slow blows and ran end runs behind her dragging tail.