Omnitopia Dawn by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

her attention from the orange, now half raggedly peeled, and gave him a most piteous and calculating look out of those big brown eyes. “You’re going to ride the bike,” she said.
    “Yes, I am,” Dev said.
    Lola heaved a sigh and went back to peeling the orange. “I am being very good, ” she said.
    Dev stood up, grinning at Marla. “You have a good day.”
    “You too, Daddy Dev.”
    Dev headed out, once again filled with relief that his daughter had such super people around her as Marla, Poppy, and Crazy Bob (whose nickname was apparently the result of the second of his two Ph.Ds, the one in Greek philosophy). The three of them were more like PAs for Lola than nannies, and were always on call, in shifts, ready to cover those times when neither Dev or Mirabel were able to be with her for much of the day. And Lola, thank God, loved her life. She was a sunny child, independent for her age, fascinated by the (admittedly interesting) world around her, happy at the Omnitopia preschool, and completely oblivious to who her dad was, or why it should particularly matter. This blessed state wouldn’t last forever, of course. Sooner or later, Lola would have to go out into the great world, with all the dangers that entailed; she couldn’t stay in the Omnitopia play groups and crèche forever. But right now Dev was aware that he was party to a golden time in her life—and certainly in his—when every day he could break off work when he liked and come home to play with his daughter.
    However, his next chance to do that was at least eight hours away. Right now he had to get to his main place of work and start putting out brushfires, some of which would have been kindled hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and some of which might turn out to be inextinguishable. But you’ll never know if you don’t get busy. Dev headed back to the elevator in the corridor and went downstairs.
    There in the main- floor elevator lobby, standing against the polished marble wall by the guard’s desk, was a big shiny black city bike with saddle baskets, old-fashioned bull’s-horn handlebars, streamers coming out of the handlebar grips, and a big shiny brass bell. The uniformed guard at the desk looked up and said, “Anything you need, Mr. Dev?”
    “Yeah, thanks for reminding me!” Dev said, went to the desk, grabbing a sticky pad and a pen. He scribbled on the pad. “Give that to Maurice when he comes in, okay?”
    “No problem, Mr. D.”
    “Thanks, Rob,” he said, and went to the bike, raising the kickstand. The glass doors of the downstairs lobby slid open for him. He walked the bike out, pushed it down the flagstone walkway, mounted up, and rode off across the little bridge that arched over the moat around the stucco-and-tile edifice that Omnitopia’s employees referred to as Castle Dev. Quietly, under the indigo twilight of an Arizona summer dawn, the CEO of the world’s fourteenth largest company pedaled off along the main drag of his main corporate campus, humming to himself as the third most important business day of his life began.

TWO
    W HEN DELIA HARRINGTON PICKED UP HER RENTAL CAR at Sky Harbor and headed out of the airport in the direction of the Red Mountain Freeway toward Tempe, her nerves were already on edge. The weather forecast for the Phoenix area this morning had been for clear, hot, sunny weather. But half an hour out from Sky Harbor, clouds had suddenly appeared and the plane had begun to shake. If there was one thing Delia couldn’t cope with, it was turbulence.
    At least in the physical sense, she thought as she got onto the on-ramp for I-10. There’s going to be enough emotional turbulence before this is over. Ideally, not mine. But turbulence in the air was another matter. “Oh, I’m sorry about this,” the flight attendant had said when Delia had asked her about it. “It’s just the monsoon. Though it’s kind of early this year. Climate change, I guess.”
    Delia hadn’t thought that the words