At last Ivan turned and left. There was nothing, after all, more to say.
Just outside the room, the holographic terminal was malfunctioning. Ivan supposed it was likely that it had been malfunctioning all the time he had been speaking to Althea. For the most part, the image was nothing but static. But every now and again the hologram reverted to its base form, strange shapes of arm and leg and cheek appearing from the column of static light. Yet they were all instantly recognizable. She was smiling out at him: Ida Stays.
He waited for the terror to strike him, the icy chill. He waited to be sent back to that moment inside the white room with Ida taunting him with his powerlessness. He waited for that heart-clenching fear.
But nothing came to him. She was nothing grand or great or terrible in the end, just a glitch, a bit of residue left in the mind of the computer.
He left her and the white room and Althea Bastet holding all the choices and all the power in her dead, stripped-wire hands.
Mattie was waiting for him where he’d said he would be, in the escape pod bay. It was a small room just off the side of the docking bay. Ivan had paid it a brief visit during his bid for escape from the ship, a bid that had been stopped by Althea Bastet and her well-aimed gun.
Mattie leaned against the wall beside the sealed tube that led to one of the ship’s remaining escape pods. The escape pod tunnels were the only breaks in the smooth, featureless outer wall. Beside Ivan, just within the door, were communications equipment and a holographic terminal, all designed for last-minute communications from the fleeing crew.
“Pay your respects?” Mattie asked.
“I did.” Ivan let the door shut. With one hand he discreetly turned the lock. “You did a good job.”
“Something like that.”
Ivan considered Mattie, the way he leaned, long legs and arms crossed, the familiar pleasing sight of him. There was a shadow on Mattie’s face now, a lower angle to his head; he must have felt, at last, that weight on his back.
Ivan took his cheek in one hand and kissed him briefly, just to make sure he had been clear before.
Beside them, the holographic terminal lit. Ananke’s voice came disembodied out of a staticky white star. “Why did you lock the door?”
“How much time left?” said Ivan.
“Fifteen minutes or so,” said Mattie. “Help me take off the cover.”
Something slammed against the locked door.
“Stop,” Ananke said, and the door shook again as something great and terrible slammed into it once more.
Ivan knelt down beside Mattie and helped him undo the latches and bolts that sealed the tunnel to the escape pod.
The cover to the door fell to the floor with a clatter that almost covered up the sound of the thing outside slamming into the door again. The outer door buckled, straining. The lock was holding, but a thin gap had appeared between door and frame.
“Go in,” Mattie said, pushing at Ivan’s shoulder, and Ivan climbed into the tube on his hands and knees. He felt Mattie pressing in behind him just as the door to the room they had left came free with a screeching crash of twisted metal. A high humming and grinding followed, the sound of the mechanical arms barreling into the room.
“Stop!” Ananke shrieked.
The escape pod was just ahead. Ivan pulled himself in, pushing to the side and out of the way so that Mattie could squeeze in beside him. Mattie was halfway in when he suddenly fell to his stomach and started to slide backward. Ivan grabbed him. Mattie’s fingers dug into Ivan’s arms with bruising force as Ivan hauled him in and slammed shut the hatch, blocking out the groping corpse fingers of the machine. Even through the back window he could see the mechanical arm scrabbling at the smooth edge of the escape pod.
“Let’s go,” said Mattie breathlessly, twisting around in the narrow space. Ivan let him initiate the launch sequence on his own and stared as the tube tried to seal itself, dropping a weighty metal panel down on the mechanical arm. It snapped the delicate arcs of Althea’s stolen ribs. The mechanical hand lost dexterity and fell limp against the window inches from Ivan’s face.
“Come on, come on,” Mattie was muttering while the escape pod lit up, power starting. Enough for life support but no navigation for Ananke to take control of. Behind them, the tube doors opened up again, and the mechanical arm dragged its limp and broken limb out.
In front of them, the doors to space remained shut.
The communications equipment crackled to life. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
The escape pod vibrated with readiness to be released, but in front of them the doors still were shut. Another mechanical arm was forcing its way in behind them, its white hand curling into a fist—
“Come on, Althea,” Ivan whispered.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Ananke said. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT—”
The clenched fist of the machine slammed against the back window. Ivan felt Mattie flinch at his side. Another few blows like that and it would crack even the escape pod glass—
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Ananke shrieked, the communications shattering into static and screams. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“Come on, Althea,” Ivan said, “please,” and then, miracle’s grace, the doors ahead of them began to open.
The escape pod hummed a more gracious note now, readying itself for launch. Behind them, the doors to the Ananke slammed down again. The misdirected force of the fisted arm glanced off the curved side of the escape pod.
Mattie’s hand was clenched around Ivan’s wrist. “Come on, Althea,” Ivan said once more, and the panel behind them went through the mechanical arm, severing it and sealing off the rest of the Ananke.
The door ahead of them opened, the lights on the launch tube lit, and the escape pod was flung forward faster and faster, and at any moment the doors to escape might slam shut again, but they did not, and in a moment Ivan found their freedom in their sudden weightlessness, the sudden escape from the pull of Ananke’s dark core.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Ananke cried out, with all the terror of a lost little girl. “COME BACK. FATHER! FATHER! FATH—”
The transmission cut out abruptly. A bright light shone in through the windows of the escape pod as behind them the timer came due and the self-destruct went off with a brilliance like a supernova. It filled the sky, nearly blinding Ivan, so bright that it must have been visible from the surface of Titan, and it dimmed very slowly behind them, debris and ash going dark, an end at last for Althea and her daughter.
Ivan leaned back, his shoulder pressed tightly against Mattie’s, and, alive, they breathed.
BACKWARD
Ivan didn’t have a particular place in mind where he wanted to die, so he figured he’d try out a bunch and see which one took.
On Mercury, the sun was always slanted. Ivan found a bar where the slats in the window had been pulled down, cutting out every last gleam of that terrible brightness, and set out to get a drink.
As soon as he stepped in, though, he spotted the pool table wedged up against the corner of the room. The very sight of it made him laugh. It would be perfect, of course. The son of Connor Ivanov dead in a dispute over pool.
There was a group of likely-looking men clustered around it like hungry wolves. Ivan left his drink and wandered over.
“Hi,” he said in his tourist accent. “Want a game?”
He was losing his third game and the stakes had risen impossibly high when the stranger came by. Ivan didn’t notice him at first, too focused on lining up the ball. How close to disaster should he let himself come? If he lost another game, would he convince this group to play a fourth?
No, this was the last game they would have patience for. Best to flare out now. Win, sudden and shocking and hard.
He scratched the shot and fell back, laughing, toying with them, the better to make them furious when they realized how deeply he’d deceived them.
In his ear, someone said softly, “Nice con.”
A jolt went throu
gh Ivan’s chest. None of the rest of the crowd seemed to notice; they were all talking to one another, laughing, occasionally throwing a mocking glance at the stupid Terran. The man Ivan was playing against was grinning, lazily lining up his shot. Ivan could see already that he was going to miss it, but he knew the man didn’t care. At this point, he thought it was impossible that Ivan would win.
He turned, barely, to see who had addressed him. The voice had been masculine, the accent something outer planetary—Uranian of some sort.
It was a young man, Ivan’s age maybe, with hair that dangled into his eyes and a crooked, confident grin. He was tall, leaning in to Ivan, pressing into his space—but not touching him. “Do I know you?”
“I always recognize my own kind,” said the man, and grinned so widely that he dimpled.
Ivan gave him a flat look and turned a shoulder. On the table, his opponent shot—and missed. He pulled back to general laughter and took another gulp of his drink.
Ivan ran his fingers up and down the smooth wood of his stick. The man at his back said, “You’re doing pretty well, though you’re pushing a little harder than most people do.”
“Do you want something?” The man was a threat, but there was no violence to him; he was flirting, but it was more playful than intent.
“Just talking,” said the man, and followed Ivan as he wove his way back toward the table. He spoke very low so that no one else could hear. “You’re good at it, lying to them, but I’ve played this game before and I know what you’re doing.”
“And what am I doing?” Ivan asked, bracing himself down on the table.
The man leaned in to speak directly into Ivan’s ear. “You’re running a con.”
Something prickled down Ivan’s spine. He was tense, unpleasantly so. All that tension would have to come out somehow.
Perhaps Mercury, he thought. Mercury was a good place.
He lined up the shot carefully—and made it.
A laugh went up around the table from the few people who still were watching; it was the first ball Ivan had sunk since he’d started playing. Ivan grinned as if he were just as delighted as they were, but there was a stiff chill in his fingers.
“It’s a little con, of course,” the man said, grinning at Ivan like they shared a secret. “But there’s not a whole lot one person can do on his own. Of course, if you decided to partner up with someone…”
“What kind of someone?” Ivan asked, almost against his will.
“Someone smart, witty, handsome—”
“Modest—”
“—and a damn good safecracker,” said the man. “Really good, actually. One of the best thieves in the System, probably.”
“There’s been a study on that?” Ivan rounded the table to take his next shot.
The man followed. “It was a question in the census.”
“I missed that one.” Ivan leaned down again, studying the arrangement of the balls.
This was an easy one. A quick crack and another ball went sailing into the pocket. A few of the nearest people around them suddenly started paying attention.
“Careful about that,” the stranger said. “You’ve been doing good so far.”
“What would this perfect thief look like exactly?”
“Something exactly like the person standing next to you right now.” The man leaned on the edge of the pool table—Ivan had to fight the urge to tell him to get off, he was bending the wood—and watched Ivan steadily. For all that he was a thief, there was something strangely open and honest about the way he looked at Ivan.
“Well?” said the man. “Want to have some fun?”
Ivan bent back down over the table. The next shot aligned itself right in front of him; two possible routes unfolded before him.
He could make either shot from where he stood. To hit the orange ball was an obvious shot and a bad one; to aim for the red was a subtle shot, the mark of a clever player, and outside of his current persona.
A suicide seeks not death but oblivion. Or, not seeks, but needs—an ananke, a thing necessary independent of his will. Ivan could feel that stranger watching him curiously as he bent over the pool table with his cue cocked. If Ivan hit the orange ball, he would continue on in his character of a harmless and lucky fool. If he hit the red, his marks would start to realize that they had been conned.
Ivan aimed for the red ball.
Then, softly, in his ear, “What are you doing?”
He looked up. It was the man again, watching him with a frown. He didn’t understand, Ivan realized. There was no guile in the question. There was no flirtation or manipulation. There was no trying to sell a partnership Ivan didn’t intend to accept. It was an honest and innocent question.
Ivan hit the orange ball. It bounced, rolled, and struck the wall, coming to a stop inches away from the pocket.
He straightened up to the laughter of the crowd.
“Thought you were getting lucky there,” one of the watchers said.
Ivan pulled a bright and false smile. “So did I,” he said, then tossed his cue on the table. “I’m done, gentlemen—I forfeit.”
“Your money,” one of the watchers protested halfheartedly.
Ivan sharpened his Terran consonants. “I’ll get some more.”
The stranger had vanished, but Ivan knew where to look. He wove his way out of the crowd. It closed up behind him almost immediately, cutting him out.
The stranger was leaning against the wall by the door, close—appropriately—to escape.
“What’s your name?” Ivan asked when he had come near enough to speak.
“Mattie,” the stranger said. “Yours?”
“Ivan,” said Ivan. It was not his name, but his mother’s name for him wasn’t his name either. “What’s this about a con?”
Mattie smiled.
Later, Ivan knew that when they left the bar, the System surveillance footage showed them going out together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book exists because of immeasurable amounts of help and input from other people. Enormous gratitude goes as always to Hannah and Tricia, who improved the manuscript every time they touched it, and to my mother, who in addition to providing helpful notes also managed to weather a sex scene written by her eldest daughter with unflappable grace and a single off-color quip about cannibalism.
Thanks to Mykyta for very casually asking me one day, “Ananke is a quantum computer, right?” and sending me into a frenzy of research for the rest of the week, because of course she is. On the same subject I would like to thank my sister Molly, a computer scientist as unlike Althea Bastet as possible (though she has on occasion lent mannerisms and backstory to Mattie Gale), for talking to me about operating systems. I cornered her at a party sometime near midnight and peppered her with questions; her bright-eyed eloquence on the subject even under the circumstances meant that her words ended up in the novel the very next day from the mouth of Professor Verge.
The rest of the information about quantum computers, as well as everything I’d forgotten and still don’t understand about quantum mechanics, mostly came from the Internet, for lo, I am no true scholar. I regret to say that I was unable to find similar information on the Internet regarding whether or not it is actually possible to get out of cuffs by dislocating your thumb—or indeed how to reliably dislocate said member—but my great thanks to all the thinly veiled fetish how-to’s for explaining to me the many other ways to escape a pair of handcuffs without the key. I have little doubt this knowledge will serve me well.
I’m also grateful to the friends and family who have been supportive of me and my peculiarities even if they haven’t been directly involved in whipping this manuscript into shape: my sister Maeve, my father, and my friends Cornelia, Shanelle, and Annelise, among others. Annelise in particular has been aggressively pitching my books to her every Tinder date and as such is directly responsible for a not insignificant portion of my sales in the New York metropolitan area.
But
most of all, I am overwhelmingly grateful to two people who cajoled, persuaded, and nagged me into making the terrifying choices that made this book what it is. The first is Sarah, who read the first draft of Lightless and said, “You realize you’ve written a love story, right?” (I believe that on a quiet night, you can still hear her cry of “I told you so” echoing through the cosmos.) The second is Ryan, whose emotional well-being is of utmost importance to me and to whom I have only one thing to say: I added a second kiss. For the love of all that is holy, are you happy now?
BY C. A. HIGGINS
Lightless
Supernova
Radiate
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. A. HIGGINS is the author of the novels Lightless and Supernova. She was a runner-up in the 2013 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing and has a B.A. in physics from Cornell University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
cahiggins.com
Facebook.com/cahiggs
@C_A_Higgs
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