by Nancy Kress
“Wait, maybe…”
“You are approaching a highly restricted area. Leave this area immediately.”
“Fucking snakes! Shoot it!”
“I…”
“Fucking coward!”
“Sir, flyer accelerating.”
“One more warning, Mr. Tambwe.”
“Yes, sir.”
“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING! YOU HAVE INVADED A HIGHLY RESTRICTED AND HIGH-DANGER AREA. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR YOUR CRAFT WILL BE FIRED ON!”
“Unknown craft … SOS … Help! I’m—”
“What … how the hell is that son-of-a-bitch sending—”
“Being held prisoner here—This—”
“Fire!”
“Is Tom Capelo—”
The flyer on the view screen was hit by the invisible proton beam and vaporized. One moment it was growing larger and larger on the view screen; the next moment there was only empty space decorated with cold stars.
“Got it, sir. Should I file an incident report?”
“No. Not for this project. Just mark the automatic record.”
“Yes, sir.”
The terminal went blank.
Magdalena didn’t move. She looked unchanged, gazing impersonally at the screen, her lips faintly curved. Hofsetter lumbered uncertainly to his feet. He glanced at Rory, whose face Kaufman couldn’t see. A long moment passed.
She suddenly sagged against Hofsetter’s desk, a quick collapse as if all her bones had dissolved. It lasted only a second. She straightened, and an animal sound was torn from her throat, a sound Kaufman had never before heard a human being make. She launched herself at Hofsetter, her nails going for his eyes.
He dodged, fat and clumsy, and started yelling. Magdalena’s terrible sound went on, drowning out his. Footsteps pounded in the corridor. Rory leaped forward and pulled his boss off of the colonel as the MPs burst into the room. Rory threw Magdalena at Kaufman and went into defense stance, moving so fast that Kaufman, with a small part of his racing mind, wondered what kind of augments Rory had. He’d never seen a soldier move that fast. Magdalena sagged in his arms.
The MPs stopped, confused, awaiting orders. Hofsetter waved them out. “Fuck! She clawed me, the bitch! Get her out of here!”
She had gone limp. Kaufman hoisted her dead weight, but Hofsetter snapped, “Retina-signature first! She promised!”
Kaufman looked at him.
“I delivered!”
Kaufman nodded at Rory, who hesitated, looking for orders from Magdalena. She didn’t move. Her lips, so drained of color they looked blue, were rigidly clamped. Kaufman knew this stage wouldn’t last. He didn’t know the nature of Magdalena’s other dealings with Hofsetter. He said to Rory, “Do it.”
Rory picked up the credit chip, pried open one of Magdalena’s eyes, and flashed the chip against her lens. Hofsetter cried, “It ain’t legal unless she can blink!”
Rory leaned over and slapped Magdalena lightly. She wasn’t unconscious; she blinked. Rory peeled off the chip and threw it on the floor.
Kaufman carried Magdalena out the door, past the staring MPs. He snapped, “Guide us to our docking bay.” The MP bristled, but Hofsetter repeated the order and the MP obeyed.
If she would just stay in shock until they reached the flyer …
She didn’t. In a narrow corridor on E deck, she jerked in Kaufman’s arms and struck him. He dropped her, stepping back. She half fell, then got to her feet, and he had to look away from her face.
“They won’t get away with it. I won’t let them get away with it. They won’t get away with it. I won’t let them…”
Kaufman reached for her hand. She struck his away and he withdrew instantly. He’d seen what Hofsetter had not: The barb shooting from under her nail when she’d clawed him. Kaufman just hoped it was a slow enough poison to let them escape Caligula System before it put Hofsetter in agony.
“They won’t get away with it.” Now her voice was flat, more horrible than her raging. She looked as if she wanted to pull down the galaxy, and could.
Kaufman said respectfully but firmly, ‘We’re following this MP to the flyer.”
To his relief, she didn’t argue. She strode along, and Kaufman dropped a few paces back so he didn’t have to look at her face. Now, from the back, she resembled the purposeful, cold empire builder she was.
But she couldn’t sustain it just short of the docking bay, she turned to Kaufman, and he saw that the horror had reached her brain, no less deadly than the poison she had sent to Hofsetter’s. “Laslo…” It was a whisper now “… Laslo…” Again she toppled to the deck, and this time it was a genuine faint. Her body had shut down the horror in the only way it could.
That wouldn’t last, either. And now came the first part of Kaufman’s plan, which was not supposed to happen like this. Although it might make it easier. If Capelo could do it, that is …
This time Kaufman didn’t pick up Magdalena. Instead he strode toward the flyer, which meant Rory had to carry his boss. He handled her as if she weighed two pounds. Kaufman walked past the openmouthed messenger of the watch and his slovenly chief, past the uncertain Kendai, and yanked open the flyer door. He stood aside to let Rory go first with his burden. To the watch he said, “Immediate departure. Check your screen, damn it.”
“Startled at his tone, the same one he’d used on derelict soldiers all his life, the chief scuttled to his watch cabin. The messenger ran after him, and Kaufman heard the lock hiss as they closed the door preparatory to depressurizing.
Rory climbed into the flyer and dumped Magdalena into a passenger seat, not the pilot’s chair. The head door opened. Kaufman didn’t move. He knew that Rory, from long training, had only half his mind on Magdalena. The rest kept careful track of Kaufman, the trained soldier, and lesser track of the tiny civilian woman and the wimpy scientist. They only had a second before Rory moved to his habitual position, back to the bulkhead with the entire cabin under surveillance.
Tom Capelo fired from the bathroom. Kaufman slammed and locked the flyer door before Kendai could enter.
The nervewash was intended for a normal soldier, not an augment. Also, Capelo—even at this range!—had not hit Rory square in the nape, as he was supposed to, but in one shoulder. The bodyguard whirled and went for Capelo. But the nervewash, acting instantly, had at least slowed if not paralyzed him. Before he could slam his augmented fist into the physicist, probably killing him, Kaufman had grabbed Rory from behind. Kaufman couldn’t have sustained a full, direct blow from Rory either, but Rory’s eyes wobbled in their sockets and he stumbled. Kaufman yelled to Capelo, “Fire again!” hoping that a double dose wouldn’t kill the augment. Capelo fired, missed, fired a third time, and finally Rory collapsed on top of the unconscious Magdalena.
“Jesus Christ, Tom, Marbet could have done better!”
“Then you should have let her do it!”
Marbet had already squeezed past Capelo to the pilot’s seat. She said clearly into the comlink to the watch cabin, “Open vehicle bay door. We’re leaving.”
Kaufman said, “I’ve got it now, Marbet.”
She slid out of the chair and began to pull Rory off Magdalena and into a seat, and to strap both of them in. “Help me, Tom!”
He did. Kaufman said to the stupefied watch and Kendai, pounding uselessly on the flyer, “Your instructions indicate departure, sailor. Do it. Kendai, get into the watch cabin before depressurization or you’ll die.”
“Sir—” the watch said, and the title told Kaufman the disgraceful travesty of a soldier was going to obey.
“Do it, sailor! It’s in your bridge instructions!”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The signal for depressurization sounded, a steady clanging.
Kendai sprinted for the watch cabin. Kaufman, relieved, saw the watch let him in and reseal the door. He hadn’t wanted to kill Kendai, although he would have if necessary. He had already ended the gangway petty officer’s career in a court martial, which the fool hadn’t yet
realized. Just as he deserved.
The air hissed out of the bay, the outside door slid open, and Kaufman flew Magdalena’s flyer out of Caligula Station and toward the space tunnel leading into Allenby System.
* * *
She was half dead and half alive, and Laslo was dead.
Something was happening around her, but Magdalena didn’t care what. She would never care again, about anything. None of it mattered. None of it could.
Laslo was dead.
He couldn’t be dead. She could see him too dearly, feel him, smell him, that sweet smell babies have at the back of the neck, where the hair curled, fine as spider silk. He lay in his crib, the pink crease around his plump small wrists like a doll’s. She hefted him, that dense damp weight of small children, and she could feel the bones in his strong back. He lifted his arms, “Up, up, up…” and she lifted him. He rode beside her in the flyer, proud when she let him touch the codepad, craning his head to see better, that head too big for his body the way all little boys’ heads seemed too big for their bodies. He laughed, and it was the most powerful sound in the universe, a sound to work and scheme and cheat for so that he would have everything she had never had, be safe as she had never been safe … she would always keep him safe.…
And now he was dead.
Help me, Sualeen, help me …
She hadn’t been able to help Sualeen, either. Sualeen had died without the one thing she’d wanted most, real headstones for her family. The first thing May Damroscher had done with Amerigo Dalton’s money had been to travel back to Atlanta and buy carved granite headstones for everyone dead in Sualeen’s family. She personally watched them be erected in the cemetery.
The second thing she’d done was hire someone to find the Harris uncle from fourteen months before. When he’d been found, she had him robo-raped. She didn’t watch that herself, or even the holo the man brought her in corroboration. It was enough to know that it had been done, and that the uncle knew by whom.
She could kill for Laslo, but she couldn’t save him because he was already dead. Dead, and no headstone, Sualeen had the best headstone money could buy but Laslo …
“Fire!”
“Got it, sir. Should I file an incident report?”
She hadn’t known anything could hurt like this. If she moved, if she took a deep breath, pain shot through her body like fire. Burning pain, penetrating pain …
“Got it, sir. Should I file an incident report?”
They would pay. She’d make them pay. They’d all pay …
She hurt too much to do anything. Oh, God, let it be me, not Laslo, let this end let it end let it end.
Everything was ended.
She was screaming, and no one could hear her, and the pain of losing him would go on forever and ever.
Laslo—
TWENTY-FIVE
THARSIS, MARS
When Amanda returned from accompanying Konstantin and Demetria to church, the apartment was empty. Aunt Kristen and Uncle Martin had left a note: AMANDA—HAD TO GO OUT, BACK BY DINNER.
“That’s strange,” Amanda said.
“Excuse?”
She showed him the note. “Aunt Kristen and Uncle Martin went somewhere, but they didn’t say where.”
Konstantin laboriously read the note, and his face brightened. “Demetria to cook splendid dinner at they!” He turned and rattled away to Demetria in rapid Greek. Amanda fought her unease.
Where had they gone? And why did they leave her alone with Konstantin? Of course, Demetria was here. She was answering Konstantin and laughing, her teeth white against red lips and golden skin. They were both so beautiful. Genemod? Maybe. Amanda suddenly felt too pale, too wispy. Too all-one-color. There was a word for that, they’d had it in the vocabulary software, but she couldn’t remember it.
Church had been nice and scary and sad, all at once. It turned out that Konstantin wanted something called a “Greek Orthodox church,” which Lowell City didn’t have. He settled for Our Lady of the Angels. But even though it was Catholic, Amanda could hardly see any way it resembled Ares Abbey. The only singing was by all the church customers, and it was pretty terrible. Amanda, thinking of Brother Meissel and the Holy Office, felt her throat close. Konstantin had noticed her distress and reached for her hand, and that was the scary part. He’d held her hand through all the rest of church. Amanda felt herself go hot, then cold, but she hadn’t pulled her hand away. It was so thrilling. She wished she could tell Yaeko or Juliana or Thekla about it.
But not Daddy. Amanda had a feeling he wouldn’t have liked Konstantin to hold her hand. That made her feel disloyal, which was silly, but she couldn’t help it. Her worry about her father was always there, a vacuum waiting to swallow her.
She’d felt better on the walk back from church. Konstantin had taken her and Demetria to a cafe for breakfast. He seemed to have inexhaustible credit. The three of them had ignored the soldiers with green bars on their caps and eaten greedily, talking in English (Amanda and Konstantin) and Greek (Konstantin and Demetria), laughing at nothing. It had been fun.
Now Demetria bustled into the kitchen and Amanda heard her opening cupboards and taking out dishes. Amanda made up her mind to ask Konstantin something she’d been wondering about, even if the question was nosy.
“Konstantin.… your family is rich, aren’t they?”
“Rich, yes. Much of money. Splendid. I to buy you anything, Ah-man-dah!”
She blushed. That hadn’t been what she meant! “Then why does Demetria know how to cook? Don’t you have a cook? Or at least kitchen ’bots?”
“Yes, of course. Many cooks. Also ’bots. Demetria to cook because she is good Greek woman. At to marry Greek man.”
This made no sense to Amanda. “Then … when you many someday, your wife will have to know how to cook, too.”
“Oh, no! I to marry not Greek. Greek womans not too pretty. You are too pretty, Amanda.”
“Demetria is beautiful!”
He shrugged. “Nikos to think yes. My father to comlink since morning. He to want Demetria by home. He to want I to take Demetria.”
“To Greece? You’re going back to Earth?”
“No.” He smiled. “I say at my father, I not to go. I to stay by Mars. My father to…” he fumbled for the word “… another woman to go for Demetria.”
“He’s sending a woman to take Demetria home?”
“Tonight. She is very good. Friend since many years. She is by Mars now, by Lowell City.”
“Oh,” Amanda said. “Does Demetria want to go?”
“Yes. Nikos to go Greece again. My father is not know.”
Apparently they both defied their father regularly. Amanda couldn’t imagine it. Demetria came out of the kitchen, spoke quickly to Konstantin, smiled at Amanda, and vanished into the spare bedroom, firmly closing the door.
“She to go…” Konstantin mimicked packing “… and to sleep. Before tonight. She to need much of time.”
Amanda couldn’t imagine what Demetria had to pack that would take much time, or why she’d need a nap. Demetria had always seemed to have endless energy.
“Come to sit by me, Ah-man-dah. Now we to can to talk.”
He led her to the sofa in the living room. Amanda had always liked Aunt Kristen’s living room. Simple furniture, and not too much of it. Actual books, a sculpture of a soaring bird, flowers even before Konstantin had emptied Lowell City’s florists. (“They’re expensive here,” Aunt Kristen always said, “but I’d rather have fresh flowers than fashionable clothes. My prime indulgence.”) The view out the third-story window and through the dome: The rocky red plain of Mars, austere and beautiful in the changing light. In Amanda’s father’s house in Massachusetts the living room was dark and frumpy, cluttered endlessly with Sudie’s toys and Carol’s tennis rackets and physics data cubes and everybody’s jackets and shoes and handhelds.
Konstantin said, “I want to say at you something very important, Ah-man-dah. Two somethings.”
Her breath came faster, she didn’t know why. “What?”
“One, I to do anything to help your father, Dr. Capelo. Anything. You to ask, is my father very rich? Yes. Very very rich. I have…” a Greek word Amanda didn’t understand “… at his money. He good by me. I can to get much of money always, not questions. You to need money to get your father, to ask me. Always. Not question: You to understand?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Really, he was so sweet. She didn’t see how money would help rescue her father, but he was so sweet to offer.
“Also, my father to know Admiral Pierce. Big buddies. I to ask my father, my father to ask Admiral Pierce, you want somethings to help.”
“Be careful, honey. Don’t ever criticize Pierce to your new friends,” Aunt Kristen had said. Was Konstantin just trying to get her to say something she shouldn’t about Admiral Pierce? He didn’t seem like that. But, still …
She was quiet so long that he said, “Ah-man-dah? You to believe me? I to ask my father anythings to help you?”
“I believe you, Konstantin.”
“Splendid. Not money only, also. My father have many flyers, everywhere by Solar System. I know to call by them. All codes. My father to tell me, if I to need transportation quick.”
That was impressive. Amanda wished she’d had flyers at her command everywhere in the Solar System during the last months. Konstantin was really important. How come he liked her so much?
“Thank you.”
“Really, yes. I to send flyers everywhere by you say. Two, I to ask you important question. Is okay?”
“Yes, go ahead.” What now? Amanda and Yaeko and Juliana and Thekla had had a lot of discussions about boys and things and, well, sex. They’d all agreed that if a boy ever asked them for sex, they’d say no. It was dangerous and they were too young and it was easier to think about saying no if they all stuck together. Girls needed their friends’ support to combat personal pressure, her school said so. She braced herself, not looking at Konstantin.
He said, “How old you are?”
Was that all! But … if she told him her age, he might not like her anymore. Suddenly Amanda didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want to have sex with him (or anyone), but she didn’t want him to stop liking her, either. He was too wonderful.
