by Nancy Kress
“You sure you can fly this thing?” she said lightly to Kaufman.
“Since cadet training. Are you glad to be freed from solitary confinement?”
“Yes and no. It was very peaceful, Lyle. Although I missed you.”
“Can you speak fluent World yet?”
“We’ll find out.” She smiled, and he pushed down his misgivings and flew away from the Cascade of Stars.
New Canaan System had two tunnels. Kaufman flew through the other one, which gave onto Caligula System. This was a remote military base, one tunnel away from World. Kaufman’s flyer was hailed as soon as it emerged from the tunnel.
“Identification,” the patrol ship said. Kaufman noted its prominent weapons.
“Flight #6754B, civilian, from Mars via posted tunnel route. Aboard: Colonel Eric James Peltier, SADA, retired, and Ms. Ellen Fineman, citizen. Husband and wife. Citizen numbers to follow.” Eric James Peltier and his wife Ellen Fineman were very recently dead in the South American Hegemony, which had the faultiest reporting of any member of the Solar Alliance Defense Council. Especially now. General Stefanak was not popular in the Hegemony. Kaufman had no passport for Ellen/Marbet, but this far out from Sol, military usually relied more on verified forwarded flight approvals than on individual civilian passports. Kaufman held his breath.
Silence. Then a voice said on the comlink, “Your flight is filed, Colonel Peltier. However, orders are no flights to World System. I don’t know how you got approved this far.”
Money. “I don’t understand! We have approvals!”
“Please wait, Colonel, while I check this. What is the purpose of your mission?”
“Personal. My wife is a cousin to Dr. Ann Sikorski, left on the planet World during the last approved scientific mission.” Effective lies stay as close to the truth as possible.
“Checking…”
“Soldier, is the World System proscribed?” Kaufman said.
“No.”
“And are all approvals in order?”
“Yes, sir,” the voice said, in automatic response to the authority in Kaufman’s voice.
“Then I don’t see the difficulty.”
“My orders are to let no ship through this tunnel.”
He wasn’t going to budge. Kaufman went to his second tactic. “Please refer my request to your commanding officer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kaufman turned off the comlink. “Get comfortable, Marbet. We’re going to be here for some time.”
“I don’t understand. Why don’t they want anyone in the World System? There’s nothing left there. We took it all.”
“I don’t know. But I’m hoping they would rather let us go through than turn us back and have us start asking inconvenient questions on Mars.”
It didn’t take as long as Kaufman expected. In less than an hour, a tiny flyer left the patrol ship and zoomed into the tunnel.
“What is it, Lyle? Why are you so surprised?”
He still wasn’t totally used to her ability to read his thoughts from the body language he didn’t know he was using. He said, “They’re checking with someone on the other side of the tunnel. I didn’t know anybody was there … oh, Christ I hope they’re not going to comlink down to World to raise Ann in order to check our story. Ellen Fineman was most certainly not her cousin.”
They waited, Kaufman rehearsing contingency plans if they were identified. God, it would be a mess.… But then the flyer returned through the tunnel in a half hour and he relaxed. “They weren’t talking to Ann, the time lag from the tunnel to World is fifty-four minutes. But, then, who were they talking to on the other side?”
“Colonel Peltier, you are cleared for tunnel passage.”
Marbet reached for his hand. He squeezed it, then turned on the flyer’s engine.
To Kaufman’s surprise, the Murasaki orbited on the other side of the tunnel. That was same warship that had been there nearly three years ago. But then it had been guarding the system that held the alien artifact and Dr. Thomas Capelo’s attempts to decode it. What was the Murasaki guarding now? There was nothing here. To keep a warship off duty for three years during a war which humans were losing … it didn’t make sense.
“What’s the Murasaki doing here?” Marbet asked.
“I don’t know. But if McChesney’s still in charge, he’ll recognize us. Oh, hell…”
“This is the Murasaki,” said the comlink. “You are cleared to proceed directly to the planet World. Verify your destination.”
“The planet World,” Kaufman said, trying to disguise his voice. He wasn’t very good at this. But the Murasaki said, “Proceed. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Kaufman said, and kicked the flyer into acceleration. They were going to World.
SEVEN
LOWELL CITY, MARS
When Amanda Capelo finally woke up, it wasn’t at the place she expected to waken, Cleopatra Station. Someone had kept her in deep sleep—not the sleeper-patch kind!—for the whole long trip to Mars. The ship, a different and larger one, had just landed at Lowell Spaceport.
“You can’t do that without telling me! It isn’t fair!” she cried to Father Emil, who stood beside her bunk.
“They did it. Get up, Amanda, you have two hours to get your legs back. The drugs are already in your system. Get up.”
Two hours ’til what?” She sat up too quickly, unused to the lighter gravity. She’d experienced deep sleep before, for part of the long trip from Mars to Space Tunnel #1 with Daddy. When you woke up, you needed to do physical therapy, and you still didn’t feel right for about a week. Amanda hated it. They had no right—
Her hair didn’t touch her shoulders.
When she sat up, it didn’t swing forward, but it wasn’t tied back or up. She groped with one trembling hand at her head, pulled forward a tress. Short! And black, not blonde!
“What did you do to my hair?”
“Cut and dyed. Don’t waste time on trifles. Get—”
“My hair!” she wailed! “My hair! My hair!” Father Emil stared at her, dumbfounded. Finally he spoke.
“You can be almost murdered—twice—can assist at a murder, can hold out against an entire adult organization … and you break down over a haircut?”
“My h-h-hair!”
“Get up! Now!”
She did, to peer into a shiny bulkhead. A poor enough mirror, it still showed an alien: a girl with short black hair and bangs. Dressed in some dark blue coverall.
“Amanda,” Father Emil said, with great forced patience, “stop that. Now. We’re on Mars. Get up and follow the phys-therapy holo instructions before I put you under again.”
Actually, she looked older with her hair cut. Alien, but older. And a little bit exotic, like Yaeko. And they had brought her to Mars, where Marbet Grant was. Soon she would see Marbet. She put up a hand to smooth the black bob.
The holovid turned itself on. Painfully Amanda grasped the bar beside her deep-sleep bunk and began the first muscle-restoring exercise. Father Emil left before she could ask him any more questions.
He came back when she’d finished the holovid and sat panting on the edge of her bunk. Everything in her body hurt. Father Emil carried a tray of food. Famished, Amanda fell on it. She’d probably lost weight, that was a good thing. In deep sleep, fed through tubes, you always lost weight. Amanda wanted to become as slender as Marbet.
On the other hand, Father Emil had also lost weight, which was not a good thing. His wrist bones stuck out. His cheeks looked like chisels. He looked sick.
The exercise and food restored her thinking. “Has anyone found my father?” She held her breath; he might say they’d found Daddy’s body, or that Daddy was free again, or—
“No, child. He’s still missing, and the government is still blaming Life Now. There have been riots, protests. Most of the membership has gone underground.”
She refused to answer this. “Were you in deep sleep, too, Father Emil?”
“No.”
“Amanda, Marbet Grant isn’t on Mars.”
She stopped with fork suspended in the air. “She has to be!”
“Because you want her to be? Doesn’t work like that, child.”
“But you said, she was here! Where is she?”
“She disappeared. No, not kidnapped. She and Lyle Kaufman left Mars together months ago, just after we left Earth. Apparently they’d spent months making application to the State Department for permission to travel to World. All the applications were denied because of wartime travel restrictions. The best guess is that they found a way to get there illegally.”
“How could—”
“Oh, don’t be naive, child. We did it. Do you suppose anybody but Life Now knows you’re on Mars? You’re an illegal now:”
Amanda pushed back the tray. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.
“An illegal, and the same problem you were before. Amanda, if anyone knows you’re here now, Life Now will get the blame for kidnapping you. Just like we told you three months ago.”
Three months ago? She’d been en route to Mars for three months. It was—
In a small voice she said, “What date is it, Father Emil?”
“July third. The month of Our Lady.”
It meant nothing to her.
“If Life Now is accused of kidnapping you with the solid proof that you’ve been with us, as opposed to merely speculative accusations, people will die. I want you to remember that.”
“Where am I going?” she asked. Her stomach felt sick. “Oh, please, can I go to Aunt Kristen? She lives in Tharsis, right here on Mars, I could—”
“I don’t know where the organization is going to put you. It’s out of my hands. Our instructions, Dennis’s and Lucy’s and mine, were simply to bring you to Mars and turn you over to the Life Now top cell. They’ll know what’s best for everyone concerned.”
Amanda stared. “You’re … you’re not going to take care of me anymore?” Protect me?
“I’m going to take you to a place where you’ll be met by the Life Now leaders. They’ll know what’s best for everyone concerned,” he repeated, and didn’t meet her eyes.
Something was wrong. Father Emil didn’t sound like himself. Fear rippled through Amanda.
“Come on, child. The car is here.”
She followed him through the ship, because she couldn’t think what else to do. They didn’t see a single other person. I can run, she thought desperately. Ships had exit ramps, and cars had to wait at the bottom of them, and there would be a few seconds in the open air when she could scream and run and shout out her name … Lowell Spaceport was a busy and crowded place. She’d been there, on visits to Aunt Kristen. Someone would hear her, maybe even recognize her despite the short black hair … She must have been in all the news holo, like Daddy was. Someone would see …
The “car” was a closed nuclear-energy transport that waited in the ship’s sealed cargo bay.
“No,” Amanda said. “I’m not getting in it.”
“Then we—I—will drug you,” Father Emil said.
Then why hadn’t they done that already? Carried her still asleep from her bunk to the car … If they were going to kill her, they’d have done it already. So they weren’t going to kill her. It must be all right. Father Emil wouldn’t kill her. He’d stopped Salah from doing that!
Father Emil wouldn’t kill her. But after he’d given her to these “leaders,” they might. And Father Emil would never know, not for sure. That would be his excuse to himself.
“They’re going to kill me!” she cried. “To ‘solve the problem!’ After you leave me there with them!”
“Nonsense, Amanda. They wouldn’t do that.”
“You and Lucy and Captain Lewis wouldn’t. But Salah would, and what if the leaders are more like him than like you?” “She must just disappear … the life of one child does not outweigh the lives of the thousands…”
“Nonsense,” Father Emil repeated, and didn’t meet her eyes, and it was all very, very wrong.
She bolted, running toward a pile of strapped-in crates at the far end of the cargo bay. He caught her easily. She struggled, but even though Father Emil looked sick he was strong, and within a minute, straps bound her. She threw herself on the ground and kicked at him, and he fought to get straps around her ankles, too. His face was gray and purple veins stood out around his nose.
“No, no, help!” she screamed, but there was no one inside the cargo bay. He got her into the lead-shielded car.
“Vehicle, go. Cargo bay doors, open,” he gasped.
Prerouted programming. Open comlinks with the outside. Amanda started screaming. Maybe the comlinks were two-way and somebody, anybody, would hear her on the other end.
No one responded. The car glided forward. Amanda screamed until she was hoarse.
She lay on the floor, Father Emil facing her on a small metal seat. His lips moved continuously in prayer. She jerked violently to try to kick him, and he leaned forward as if to move her. He slipped a piece of paper into her coverall pocket. His eyes said, Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, don’t say anything.
She stopped screaming, panted hard, and watched him. He went on soundlessly praying.
She felt the car stop and guessed they were at one of Lowell City’s airlocks. Usually all passengers’ identities were checked at this point—wouldn’t someone come to open the car?” Amanda wasn’t even sure whether she still had her “Jane Verghese” passport. Surely someone would check the car …
No one did. Life Now must have found a way to cheat. The car started again and rolled on. That at least told Amanda something: Cars were only permitted in one of Lowell City’s three great domes, the one filled with factories and warehouses. East Sector. That’s where she must be.
Every few seconds Father Emil glanced at his watch. Finally he said, “Vehicle, stop. Override programming. Password ‘Ghandi.’” The car stopped. “Vehicle, open door.” It did.
In one swift moment he had freed her from the straps. “Amanda, run! Go with God, child—” He pushed her out the door.
She didn’t completely have her legs back yet. She stumbled, fell. Father Emil watched her from the vehicle, which had erupted into sound from the comlink: “—traitor, afraid you couldn’t be trusted—” They had been monitored.
She was in a temporarily deserted street between two windowless buildings. No street on Mars was ever deserted for long. Amanda staggered to her feet and tried to run, but her legs would only lurch forward in an uneven gait that made her afraid of falling. Father Emil stepped out of the car, finally meeting her eyes. He said, “Run! You’ve got a little time before they can get here, but I don’t know how much—” His eyes widened.
Amanda turned to follow his gaze. A woman strode out of the building beside them, walking purposefully forward. She carried a gun.
Instantly, it later seemed to Amanda, Father Emil was standing between her and the advancing woman. He held something in his hand. The woman fired. There was no sound, but Father Emil toppled over. The woman did, too. Someone else, a passerby who had just rounded the comer, screamed.
The scream brought other people. Suddenly the narrow street was jammed with people. Someone pulled Amanda back, to what he must have imagined was safety. He jabbered at her in a language she couldn’t understand. More people came running. A cop suddenly appeared, and then two soldiers in the uniforms of the Solar Alliance Defense Army. There were shouts and questions. From nowhere a robocam from Martian Transglobal News buzzed in.
Amanda slipped to the edge of the crowd, then down another street. No one noticed her. She tried to walk naturally, despite her space legs, despite her panic. Father Emil was dead. Father Emil was dead. Father Emil was dead.
He’d died helping her get away.
She’d seen the thing in his hand. Would the soldiers recognize it?
She didn’t know. But she recognized it. She’d seen it before, and she’d been terrified then, too. Maybe terror made you remember things. What had been in Father Emil’s hand was a weapon, one of the many that had studded the sides of the Wrath of God, protector of the St. Theresa the Little Flower Mission.
She walked until she couldn’t stand up anymore. By moving always in the direction with most people, she eventually reached the clear walk-tunnel to Lowell City’s huge main dome. The tunnel, too, was made of clear piezoelectric plastic, broad enough to be open to trucks as far as the Main Sector. Amanda sank to the floor to rest.
She pulled out the paper Father Emil had put in her coverall pocket. It was folded around something hard. The paper was handwritten:
Go to the Ares Abbey at Rho Street 8451. Ask for Brother Meissel. Give him this letter. Take a sled, ten percies anywhere under the main dome. ‘My Lord and my God, I have realized that whoever undertakes anything for the sake of earthly things or to earn the praise of others deceives himself … but You are unchangeable for all eternity.’
Inside were a ten-percy coin and another letter.
Amanda folded it back up. My Lord and my God … She still thought Father Emil was a lunatic. But he had gotten himself killed for her. And despite his note, he belonged to an organization that undertook “earthly things.” It was all very confusing. She was tired of being confused, and afraid, and hunted. She was tired.
Nonetheless, she made herself stand and trudge through the tunnel. Above the roof, the Martian sky shimmered with pink dust. On many walls were large holoposters of General Stefanak, and soldiers thronged the main streets. Flatbed trucks carrying goods from the industrial East Sector to the main dome passed her, but only very gradually. Everything in Lowell City moved slowly.
