That covered, Wilson finally looked around to see where he was. In the close distance the beanstalk still stood, feathering in the wind. Wilson had no idea what that was about, but it meant that he remained somewhere near Nairobi. He looked down, compared the terrain with what he had stored in his BrainPal and realized he could make it to the football field he and Hirsch were originally planning to land at.

Lowen woke up at around three thousand meters and began screaming and thrashing. Wilson spoke directly into her ear. “I’m here,” he said. “Don’t panic.”

“Where are we?” Lowen asked.

“Ten thousand feet above Kenya,” Wilson said.

“Oh, God,” Lowen said.

“I have you,” Wilson said. “We’re in tandem.”

“How did you manage that?” Lowen asked, calming down.

“It seemed a better idea than you falling alone while unconscious,” Wilson said.

“Point,” Lowen said, after a second.

“I’m about five seconds from deploying the chute,” Wilson said. “Are you ready?”

Lowen tightened up around Wilson. “Let’s never do this again,” she said.

“Promise,” he said. “Here we go.” He deployed ’bots from both of their packs so that both of them were tethered into the chute. There was a sharp jerk, and then the two of them were floating.

“We’re close enough to the ground and going slow enough that you could use your eyes if you wanted,” Wilson said, after a few moments. Lowen nodded. Wilson had her cowl open up.

Lowen looked down and then jerked her head back up, eyes closed. “Okay, that was a spectacularly bad idea,” she said.

“We’ll be down in just a minute,” Wilson promised.

“And this parachute for two won’t mess us up?” Lowen asked.

“No,” Wilson said. “It’s smarter than a real parachute.”

“Don’t say this is not a real parachute, please,” Lowen said.

“It’s smarter than other parachutes,” Wilson corrected. “It’s been compensating for wind and other factors since we opened it up.”

“Great,” Lowen said. “Just tell me when we’re down.”

They were down a minute and a half later, the nanobots dissipating into the wind as their feet touched down. Lowen disengaged from Wilson, grabbed her head, turned to the side and threw up.

“Sorry,” Wilson said.

“It’s not you, I swear,” Lowen said, spitting to clear her mouth. “It’s everything.”

“I understand,” Wilson said. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

He looked up in the sky and watched bits of Earth Station fall like glitter.

X.

“I told you it was a bad idea,” Rigney said, to Egan.

“Your continued lack of enthusiasm is noted,” Egan replied. “Not that it does us any good at this point.”

The two of them sat on a bench at Avery Park, a small neighborhood park in an outer borough of Phoenix City, feeding ducks.

“This is nice,” Rigney said, tossing bread to the ducks.

“Yes,” Egan said.

“Peaceful,” Rigney said.