Lightless

by C. A. Higgins

  “I take it she was your girlfriend?” Milla asked.

  “She was,” Ivan answered. He was being perfectly serious when he said, “You and she would have had a lot in common.”

  Milla nodded very slightly, her fingers still tapping against her arm. It was convenient that Ivan had brought up Constance, Ida thought; it would lend weight to the meeting Ida had arranged.

  This time the silence stretched out almost unbearably. Mother and son no longer met each other’s eyes. Ivan stared instead at the drumming of his mother’s fingers.

  “Have you seen enough?” Milla asked suddenly, sharply, and she was looking at Ida.

  Ida smiled graciously. “If you’re done.”

  “I am.”

  “Follow me,” Ida said, and started toward the door, but she was halfway across the room before she realized that Milla had not followed her.

  She turned. Milla still stood beside Ivan’s chair. Domitian had one hand raised to urge her along but was not yet touching her shoulder. Milla reached down to her son, taking his cheek in one hand and bending down to press a kiss to his forehead. Ivan closed his eyes and swallowed, and he stayed in that attitude as Milla Ivanov strode away to join Ida at and out the door.

  —

  The alarm went off again while Althea was still trying to determine the error that had caused it to go off the first time.

  This time, when the alarm went off, she jumped up almost before her mind had consciously processed the sound and went to the other terminal, shutting off the alarm and looking immediately to see if the proximity sensors had been triggered.

  They had. Constance Harper had just come into range. Althea took a breath, and in that brief moment of inattention, the alarm came back on.

  “Come on!” she said, and shut it off again, but it resumed its wailing. “Ananke! Come on!”

  The alarm went silent.

  From behind Althea a voice said, “You need to fix the computer.” Ida Stays stood in the doorway, dark eyes, dark lips, dark look.

  Before Althea could react—to bow and scrape in fear of Ida’s rage; to shout in frustration of her own?—the alarm turned back on again.

  “Doctor Bastet,” Ida said over the screaming of the alarm, but Althea ignored her, arrested by the message before her on the screen.

  “The Ananke is reading more than one life-sign on Miss Harper’s ship,” she reported.

  Ida was suddenly standing very close to Althea. Althea tried not to flinch as she leaned over the panel, her wine-dark lips pursed. “Go to the secondary interrogation room,” she said. “Send Domitian here. Stay with Doctor Ivanov yourself.”

  “What?” Althea said, certain she had misheard.

  “Did I stutter?” Ida asked, and Althea fled.

  Ida’s “secondary interrogation room” had once been Althea’s storage closet. She reached it quickly and had to knock only once before Domitian swung the door open.

  “Miss Stays wants you in the control room. I’m to stay here,” Althea said breathlessly, and Domitian frowned but obeyed, pushing past her to stride back toward the control room.

  Milla Ivanov sat in the chair that had been Ida’s. She watched the exchange without a word. Althea stepped uncertainly just inside the room and let the door swing shut behind her. The sound of it closing seemed overly loud in the cramped, empty space.

  Milla Ivanov was still watching her with disquieting eyes that were unnervingly similar to Ivan’s. Althea looked into the corner of the room in the hope that that would make the woman stop watching her, but she was uneasily certain that Milla was continuing to stare.

  “Are you one of the people interrogating my son?” Milla asked. She had a quiet voice, and even aside from the uncanny similarity to Ivan, Althea could remember attending some of Milla Ivanov’s lectures and watching her lean into the microphone to be heard.

  “No,” Althea said. “I’m just the mechanic.”

  Milla’s eyes flicked up and down her body.

  “I suppose you are,” she said, and her gaze, her attention, held Althea as pinned as Ivan’s ever had.

  “You should be careful, little mechanic,” Milla Ivanov said, and the resemblance to Ivan was even stronger now, though Althea could not have said precisely how; perhaps there was something dangerous, something wolfish about her. Milla said, “These people don’t care about you or your ship.”

  —

  “I’m afraid we received no communication to that effect,” Ida said in as sweet and calm a voice as she could manage as she spoke through the ship’s intercom.

  “I was assured it had been sent.” Constance Harper’s voice was low for a woman, almost husky, but it was clear and carrying. She had a Mirandan accent that Mars had not been able to wash out.

  “We did not receive it,” Ida said, a little sharply. Behind her, the door creaked open and Domitian entered. She beckoned him over.

  “I could have it sent again,” Constance said, and Ida muted the communication for just long enough to bring Domitian up to speed.

  “She fosters dogs for training,” Ida said. “As part of a System program. They can’t be left alone, and she says that the summons was too sudden for her to find a sitter, so she brought them with her. Two dogs. The System base on Mars allegedly approved this and sent us paperwork, but I was not told.”

  “I’ll look for it,” Domitian promised, and moved to another interface, skimming through the communiqués received by the Ananke.

  Ida unmuted the machine.

  “Please bear in mind,” she said as mildly as she could, “that if you are found to have been lying, you will be arrested and your business seized while the investigation commences.”

  “I am not lying,” said Constance Harper.

  Domitian lifted a hand and caught her attention. Ida muted the speaker again. “What?”

  “I found it. It’s all in order.”

  “Then why wasn’t I told?”

  “It appears the Ananke has not been notifying the crew of the arrival of new messages,” Domitian said. He looked grim. “And with everything that has been going on, none of us has been checking.”

  Ida swore. She stayed for a moment with her head bowed, bent over the control panel, seething and trying quietly to bring herself back under control.

  Finally she raised her head, unmuted the connection, and said sweetly to Constance, “You may board, Miss Harper.”

  Domitian came up beside Ida. There was a certain reassurance to his presence, solid and broad and strong. He leaned over her shoulder and started some program on the Ananke.

  “For docking,” he said at her unspoken question.

  “Will it work?” Ida snapped.

  “If it doesn’t, Althea needs to fix it, not me,” said Domitian. Ida forced herself to take a breath and nodded.

  “Let’s collect Doctor Ivanov, then,” she said, and brushed past Domitian out the door.

  Althea Bastet answered the door at Ida’s sharp knock with her brown eyes held wide and stood aside to let them in immediately.

  “If you would come with us, please,” Ida said, and Milla stood up.

  “I apologize for the inconvenience,” said Ida as they walked toward the double glass doors leading into the docking bay. “And I thank you for your cooperation.”

  Through the glass, an old ungainly ship was landing carefully behind the Annwn, beside Milla’s sleek little top-of-the-line craft. Milla said, “Who is that?”

  “You’ll see,” Ida said, and met Milla’s measuring glance.

  The light came on, indicating that the bay was safe to enter; Ida led the way toward the ship that had landed.

  Someone had painted the ship’s name on its side rather than having it engraved. The paint was red and had been done with a heavy hand; drops of red sliding from the letters had dried in place. The ship was named the Janus, and beneath the bleeding letters a door opened.

  The first thing to come out of the door was a black nose, followed by a black snout and then
a second one, two canine heads sniffing at the unfamiliar air. “Back, sit!” a woman’s voice ordered, and both snouts retreated and did not return. Constance Harper stepped out of the door with her hands in the air.

  Constance was dressed like a working woman in boots and jeans and a plain top. Her hair, long and brown, was up in a ponytail, and the tip of it brushed against her freckled shoulders. While Domitian went into her ship with his gun out to search it, she stood aside, palms extended, with the patience of someone who had endured this treatment before.

  A moment later Domitian stepped out and nodded to Ida. All clear.

  Only then did Ida smile at Constance.

  “Miss Harper,” she said, coming forward. Constance, seeing that she was no longer obligated to prove her lack of weaponry, lowered her hands and strode forward.

  Constance’s grip was callused and cool. “Nice to meet you,” she said with rote abruptness. She kept glancing over Ida’s shoulder to where Ida knew Milla Ivanov stood. Ida watched her expression closely.

  “I am Ida Stays,” Ida said, pulling her hand from Constance’s grip. “You may call me Ida. I assume”—she turned slightly, angling her body toward Milla Ivanov—“that you know my other guest, Doctor Ivanov…?”

  “We have never met,” said Milla, chilly, but when she looked at Constance, her expression was less cool, almost curious, for all that Ida could read her. Milla extended her hand, and Constance came forward to take it.

  “Doctor Ivanov was just on her way home,” Ida said. Milla glanced at her—past her—and then her attention snapped back to Constance.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Doctor Ivanov,” Constance said. “I’m a friend of your son’s.”

  Milla stood perfectly still for a moment, her head angled slightly to the side, the same way that Ivan looked when he had been stricken by a thought and wanted to give nothing away.

  Milla Ivanov pulled her hand out of Constance’s grip with a quick snap of her wrist that spoke of disgust.

  “I know,” she said. “I know what you are. I know that you and your…and your friends are the reason that my son is here.”

  Milla’s soft voice had risen in brittle anger. Ida was shocked and knew she was showing it, but an outburst had been the very last thing she had expected from Milla Ivanov.

  “I think there’s been a mistake,” said Constance evenly, frowning at Milla.

  Domitian came up behind Ida and said softly into her ear, “Do you want me to break this up?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Ida.

  “Has there been?” asked Milla, and then pointed at Ida and Domitian. “Look at them. Look at the kind of people you have sent my son to. Look at them!”

  Constance turned and looked at Ida—at Domitian—at the space between them. Ida almost turned to Domitian to comment on the encounter, to ask him to remind her to bring it up against Ivan, but Constance’s clear loud voice caught her attention, and she turned again to face the scene.

  “That’s a lie,” said Constance. “Ivan hasn’t done anything because of me that would get him locked up.”

  Milla Ivanov laughed. It was thin and sarcastic, and she turned her heel on Constance and paced a few steps away. Constance pursued her, anger in the line of her spine. There was something larger about her when she was angry, something greater, as if the force of her passion made her something more. Ida turned to keep them both directly in her sight.

  “He’s here because of revolutionary activities,” Milla said. “I don’t suppose that was you.”

  “Of course not,” said Constance. There was force to the way she spoke, along with certainty. “I am a loyal servant of the System just like you, Doctor Ivanov.”

  Milla scoffed. Ida considered the honesty in Constance’s declaration and did not find it wanting.

  “I haven’t forced your son to do anything,” Constance said. “Ivan is his own man. He doesn’t listen to me.”

  “Oh, and should he?” Milla mocked.

  “Yes!” Constance had a voice that carried, no, more: it filled the entire space of the docking bay up to the high ceiling. “If he had, he would not have ended up here.”

  Whatever Milla Ivanov might have spoken was drowned out by the barking of dogs.

  Constance swore and dashed back to her ship, running between Domitian and Ida and ordering the dogs to “Sit! Still! Sit!”

  The dogs went silent, and a moment later Constance, a little red-faced, stepped back out of the ship.

  “Permission to seal my ship?” she asked, looking at Ida. “The dogs will be quieter if they’re enclosed.”

  “Granted,” Ida said, and Constance shut the door and locked it. She pushed back some escaped wisps of hair with one hand, then came forward and said to Milla, “I’m sorry for shouting.”

  Ida looked at Milla, who seemed calm again, though her fingers were drumming restlessly against her hip.

  “Likewise,” said Milla, her voice soft again. “I should not have snapped. You and I have something in common. Perhaps I shall buy you a drink.”

  “I’ll buy you one,” said Constance. “I own a bar. Will you be visiting Mars any time soon?”

  “I am vacationing on Mars these next few weeks,” Milla said. “Where is your bar?”

  “It’s called the Fox and the Hound. It’s by the Valles Marineris. Stop by soon and your drinks are on the house,” said Constance.

  There were few things Ida was certain of when it came to Milla Ivanov; she was, however, certain that Milla had never met Constance Harper before. Milla nodded stiffly and said, “I will. Permission to depart, Miss Stays?”

  “Of course,” said Ida sweetly.

  Milla met Constance’s eyes one more time—Constance dipped her chin in a nod or acknowledgment—then Milla went inside her sleek little ship and Ida led Constance and Domitian out into the hallway while behind them the great doors of the Ananke opened once more to space and Milla Ivanov left the ship for good.

  —

  “I apologize for the difficulties surrounding your arrival,” Ida said as she and Constance arrived at the second interrogation room. “Somehow the communiqué was misfiled.”

  “It happens,” Constance said with her lack of interest poorly hidden. This woman was no Milla Ivanov.

  Ida guided Constance to the weaker seat, sitting across from her and smiling. This interrogation might be nothing more than a formality—Ida doubted there was anything Constance Harper could really tell her—but it was best to cover all the bases.

  “I have a few questions for you that I’d like you to answer to the best of your ability,” Ida said.

  “Are they about Ivan?” Constance asked with an expression that anticipated the answer.

  “I’m afraid they are, mostly,” said Ida. Milla’s presence had alerted Constance to that fact, of course, but the discomfort aroused by their argument far outweighed any good the surprise might have done in Ida’s interrogation of Constance. “I know that you’ve gone over this before, but I do need to know when precisely you became aware of Ivan’s criminal activities.”

  “Six months ago,” said Constance. “The System contacted me shortly after we visited the moon.”

  “That was you, Ivan, and Mattie, correct?” Ida asked.

  Constance looked briefly uneasy. No doubt her discomfort was not from the fact that Ida knew that but from the casual way Ida referred to the two men. “Yes,” she said.

  “And you immediately cut off contact with them both; am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you have done if they had contacted you?”

  “I would have turned them in,” Constance said immediately and absolutely, without hesitation or doubt. “They know I would have. So they didn’t contact me.”

  “And why—forgive me,” said Ida, “but why would you turn in your lover and your brother to the System, knowing they would go to prison for the rest of their lives?”

  Constance’s eyes were not, as Ida first had thought, brown
; they were hazel, brown shot through with green and gray, and there was as much steel behind them as there was in all of the Ananke.

  “I was an orphan girl from an outer planet,” Constance said. “The System saved me. The System helped me. The System made me what I am today. And so I am loyal to the System.”

  “More loyal to the System than to your own family?”

  “I have worked hard to achieve what I have.” Constance’s chin lifted, proud, stubborn. “Though I love them more than…more than anyone, I will not let them ruin the plans I’ve made for my future by their own inability to just—obey.”

  She was being honest, Ida judged. Constance Harper did not seem a talented liar. Perhaps Ivan liked her for her principles and her honesty.

  “I’m sorry to tell you,” she said, “but both Ivan and Mattie have been connected to terrorist activity.”

  “You have Mattie, too, then?” Constance sounded as though she had to force herself to ask.

  Ida gave her the most gentle and sad expression she possessed. “Matthew Gale was killed in the process of fleeing custody.”

  Ida had expected tears or anger. Constance only looked away and did not respond.

  “But as I said,” Ida told her, “Mattie and Ivan were connected to terrorist activities.”

  “Like what’s happening on Titania?” Again Constance sounded as if she had to force herself to speak the question.

  “Precisely,” Ida said. “And that’s why it’s so important that we find out what Ivan knows. To stop the violence before it can become any worse.”

  Constance cast her an unexpectedly lambent glance. “That doesn’t seem like them,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” Ida said. “But you understand that because of this connection, the System has to inquire into the connections and activity of all people close to one or the other of them—including you, Miss Harper.”

  Constance took a deep breath. “Are you accusing me?”

  “It’s only a formality.”

  “I have no terrorist connections,” said Constance. “I have nothing to tell you.”

  “Then you won’t mind giving me an account of all your movements and communications lately,” said Ida.

  It was a rather obvious way of driving Miss Harper into a corner, but Ida suspected that subtlety would be lost on her. “Of course I will,” Constance said.