Mia Molvray © 2014
pdf ISBN: 978-0-9829518-2-8
 epub ISBN: 978-0-9829518-1-1

Thieves of Sorrow

Chap­ter 1

There is some­thing about the cry of a very young child. In the mid­dle of the most bor­ing task in the world -- it was forc­ing Corin­na to skip din­ner, which made it worse -- she sat up. She stopped her­self from rac­ing out to help. There were no chil­dren in the re­search sec­tion of the Sta­tion. Were there?

An­oth­er wail sound­ed, al­most a shriek.

She was in her cu­bi­cle, be­hind a lab full of hum­ming equip­ment, around a cor­ner, at the very end of the hall, but the sound cut through every­thing like the on­ly thing that mat­tered.

Her feet moved in­to leap-up po­si­tion. She shoved them back un­der the chair. That was def­i­nite­ly a child. But oth­er adults had to be there. Maybe a proud par­ent was show­ing Ju­nior around, and the kid had tripped over his an­kle weights.

But what would any­body be do­ing show­ing a tod­dler around? It wasn’t like a five year-old would be fas­ci­nat­ed by a genome scan of Mar­t­ian bac­te­ria. And if a kid did get fas­ci­nat­ed, it would prob­a­bly be by some­thing that could elec­tro­cute her. In the six months Corin­na had been on Mars, no­body had ever brought a child to this part of the dome.

A third wail split the air. Corin­na jumped up and ran out. Her tiny of­fice was off one of the labs she su­per­vised for Dr. Mor­bier. She dodged around lab bench­es and reached the door just as the cry abrupt­ly cut off. It was com­ing from some­where about halfway down the hall. Why had it been cut off? Had some­one muz­zled the child? Or of­fered him or her a can­dy bar? Was this an emer­gency? Or an over­re­ac­tion? Corin­na kept right on go­ing, glanc­ing in­to every open door, right and left.

Corin­na Mansur’s of­fi­cial ti­tle was Post­doc­tor­al Con­sult­ing Sci­en­tist and her of­fi­cial work was billed as re­search for the ter­raform­ing of Mars, but her job in­clud­ed every­thing that some­one more im­por­tant didn’t want to do. Now, since it was din­ner time and there was no one to pester her, she’d been plan­ning tasks for the lab techs dur­ing the com­ing week.

There was an­oth­er wail, weak­er, less ur­gent.

It seemed to come from Dr. Wal­lis’s of­fice. Could the great doc­tor be see­ing a pa­tient? Not like­ly. He was too fa­mous to deal with hu­mans ex­cept as brain cells in tis­sue cul­ture flasks. Of course, this far from help, even Dr. Wal­lis might have to pitch in if there was an emer­gency.

She felt the usu­al creep­ing an­noy­ance when she thought about Dr. George Wal­lis and brain cells. She was the one who should have been the great doc­tor’s right hand post­doc. Her dis­ser­ta­tion had been on brain chem­istry. In­stead, she’d had all that trou­ble with Nat, and now she was a glo­ri­fied flunky mess­ing about with cold tol­er­ance in rab­bits. Rab­bits! Some­thing safe enough to study in a high school lab on Earth. The whole point of the Sta­tion was do­ing pro­jects too dan­ger­ous for Earth, and too in­ter­est­ing not to do at all. The kind of pro­jects every­one else was do­ing. Every­one ex­cept her.

Stop it, she lec­tured her­self. She was lucky to have found an aca­d­e­m­ic job. So what if she was a glo­ri­fied rab­bit farmer. It paid the bills, and some day a re­al job would show up.

The cries seemed to have stopped. Maybe there wasn’t a prob­lem. Maybe she should just con­tin­ue on down the hall and take din­ner at a nor­mal hour in­stead of go­ing back and sched­ul­ing techs.

Hah. Very fun­ny. She’d be up till the wee hours if she did that. She cast a glance through the half open door in­to Wal­lis’s lab be­fore turn­ing back.

And froze. She could see past the lab in­to an in­ner ex­am­in­ing room. A small blond boy, now list­less and droopy-eyed, with his head in a brace, was be­ing held by a nurse while Dr. Wal­lis in­sert­ed a flex­i­ble nee­dle be­hind his ear and straight in­to his head.

The great doc­tor was wear­ing a head mon­i­tor, prob­a­bly show­ing the nee­dle’s path, and did not see Corin­na. The nurse was fo­cused on hold­ing the child and track­ing the nee­dle’s progress on the wall mon­i­tor.

Every­one was at din­ner and there had been no one to hear, ex­cept Corin­na stand­ing stu­pid­ly in the hall.

They were tak­ing a brain sam­ple. Why the hell were they tak­ing a brain sam­ple? If she star­tled any of them now, the boy might suf­fer ir­re­versible brain dam­age. The nee­dle was in so deep, on­ly the sy­ringe por­tion was vis­i­ble. Briefly, Dr. Wal­lis pulled on the sy­ringe, and the mag­ni­fied im­age on the wall showed a thin short line of whitish ma­te­r­i­al move in­to the nee­dle. Care­ful­ly and slow­ly, he pulled the nee­dle out. The nurse pre­pared the an­ti­dote in­jec­tion, ap­plied dis­in­fec­tant and a patch of clearskin, and then loos­ened the brace. The sur­geon re­moved his gloves. The whole process had tak­en less than a minute.

Corin­na fi­nal­ly no­ticed a very wor­ried-look­ing man be­hind the adult-sized pa­tient chair hold­ing the child. He, too, looked at noth­ing but the boy. He must be — he must be the boy’s fa­ther. Did that mean every­thing was all right? She felt as if she’d screamed at the sight of a hor­ri­ble bug, on­ly to have it turn in­to a harm­less dried leaf. Sure­ly, if the fa­ther was there, there must be some good rea­son why they were car­ry­ing out a risky biop­sy on a grow­ing brain.

She won­dered what the good rea­son could be. She’d tak­en dozens of brain sam­ples her­self dur­ing her grad­u­ate work on neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, but on­ly from adults. Even teenagers’ brains were chang­ing too fast to jus­ti­fy the risk ex­cept in cas­es of dis­ease. Any child sick enough to need a brain biop­sy wouldn’t be on Mars. Un­less he got … what­ev­er it was … af­ter ar­riv­ing.

Be­sides, Wal­lis’s work was all growth flasks and petri dish­es. The clos­est he got to ac­tu­al hu­man be­ings was wait­ing in line at the cafe­te­ria. And re­search on chil­dren would re­quire a file draw­er-full of per­mits. Al­though he was cer­tain­ly a grand enough old man to get them. If it was re­search, she’d be em­i­nent­ly qual­i­fied for a job on the pro­ject and it was much more like­ly to ad­vance her ca­reer than—.

“Oh, hi Corin­na,” said the nurse. She was look­ing po­lite­ly sur­prised while she nod­ded in a friend­ly way. “What brings you here?”

Corin­na opened her mouth and then closed it again when her dis­or­dered thoughts didn’t boil down in­to any­thing she could ac­tu­al­ly say. It was ob­vi­ous­ly sil­ly to ad­mit she’d pan­icked about a child be­ing mur­dered. With the fa­ther right there, she couldn’t start mak­ing small talk about the re­search pro­ject — if it was a re­search pro­ject — and if his son re­al­ly was sick, she cer­tain­ly couldn’t grill him about that.

“Corin­na?”

“Um, yeah, sor­ry to barge in. I heard the cry­ing. I thought a kid must be lost, but I guess every­thing’s okay.” This was not the time to find out what was go­ing on.

“Yes, just a bit of fuss­ing. But we’ll soon get over that, won’t we?” The nurse cooed at the child. He looked woozi­ly but sus­pi­cious­ly at the woman and reached for the wor­ried man, who scooped him up.

“Well, I’ll be get­ting back. Sor­ry to barge in,” Corin­na re­peat­ed, al­though every­one was ig­nor­ing her by now.

She slow­ly made her way back to her claus­tro­pho­bic cu­bi­cle. About halfway there, she be­came aware of the usu­al faint smell of rab­bits. It nev­er ceased to amaze her how brief an ab­sence was enough to make her no­tice it again. The rab­bits might be tucked away in their own gov­ern­ment-ap­proved and sealed an­i­mal room, but the odor in­sist­ed on com­ing out, as un­wel­come facts of­ten do.

She was still walk­ing slow­ly when she reached the lab lead­ing to her of­fice. Gen­er­al­ly she walked fast enough to make her lab coat bil­low like a sail, but her mind was in a whirl about switch­ing to a re­al job in Wal­lis’s lab. If neu­ro­chem­istry re­search was re­al­ly hap­pen­ing right down the hall, and if she could get Wal­lis to hire her, and if it was as high-pro­file as Wal­lis’s oth­er work, she might get her ca­reer back on track.

She was so oc­cu­pied with the world of her thoughts that the world of sol­id ob­jects bumped in­to her, and she no­ticed Jonathan at the oth­er end of the of­fend­ing lab bench, be­hind the big graph­ics work­sta­tion.

She stopped. Had he been there the whole time? Had he heard the child too? And then had he just sat there? He’d prob­a­bly watched her with those fish-like blue eyes of his.

For the sec­ond time that evening, she opened her mouth and then had noth­ing to say. There was no point ask­ing him any­thing. He’d come back with some­thing like, “You seemed to be han­dling it, and I came here to get some work done.” She marched on in­to her clos­et dis­guised as an of­fice.

Jonathan had start­ed work two months ago, a new­ly mint­ed post­doc who should have been ju­nior to her, but some­how, he wasn’t. When he talked, which was not of­ten, it was about pa­pers he had pub­lished, was in the process of pub­lish­ing, or was go­ing to pub­lish. She’d nev­er seen him smile. Jonathan had been hired to re­place a much old­er and even more stand­off­ish post­doc with whom he shared at least one char­ac­ter­is­tic. His pre­de­ces­sor had al­so con­ferred con­stant­ly with Mor­bier. Maybe it was Jonathan’s bril­liance that earned him this treat­ment, but she doubt­ed it. To her it looked more like an old boy net, one that meant he didn’t get loaded up with umpteen ex­tra gofer jobs.

Well, at least he stayed out of her way. It could be worse. And the old boy net wasn’t every­thing ei­ther. His well-con­nect­ed pre­de­ces­sor hadn’t been saved by it when he found him­self out on the sur­face in a bad suit with an emp­ty re­serve tank. For a while the en­tire staff, her­self in­clud­ed, went safe­ty-mad. Every­one lec­tured every­one that it took on­ly one sec­ond of care­less­ness to die on Mars. But it was im­pos­si­ble to main­tain max­i­mum alert for­ev­er, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause in­side the dome there was no re­al sense of be­ing on Mars. Most of the time you could just as well be in Antarc­ti­ca or a base­ment in New York. Re­search in­sti­tutes were like that.

Tak­ing a breath deep enough for an ocean div­er, Corin­na forced her at­ten­tion back to sched­ul­ing lab chores.

 

Corin­na glanced at the time on her screen and rubbed her eyes. Eleven o’clock. Last night she had man­aged to get away by nine, a record that was ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to stand for a while. She rubbed her whole face. She was bone-tired and starv­ing. It was de­ci­sion time. Should she crawl back to her room or should she drag her­self over to the cafe­te­ria and eat some­thing? To think she had friends at home in New York who en­vied her abil­i­ty to stay thin.

Eat­ing won out. She was too wired to go straight to sleep any­way. She stood up and thread­ed her way past the rows of lab bench­es cov­ered in stained and tat­tered bench pa­per. One more thing to tell the techs: tape down new pa­per.

White, gray or beige lab ma­chines, boxy cen­trifuges and DNA read­ers, probe syn­the­siz­ers and gel rigs, all clicked and hummed while their in­di­ca­tor lights winked green or blue or yel­low. Corin­na’s prac­ticed eye read the pat­terns with­out even think­ing as she passed to­ward the hall­way. And then her prac­ticed eye served up a memo to her con­scious mind. Note: the pH probe is not soak­ing in its buffer so­lu­tion. It is ly­ing on the table. It will be ru­ined if it is left to dry out overnight.

Jonathan, grum­bled her con­scious mind com­ing back from its wak­ing-sleep state. It wasn’t the first time he’d left stuff for some­one else to clean up. She fought down the urge to leave the thing ly­ing there. She’d seen him us­ing it, and it would be his fault when a new one had to be or­dered all the way from Earth. How­ev­er, it didn’t feel right, even near mid­night af­ter a long day. The pH probe had faith­ful­ly mea­sured pH and didn’t de­serve ne­glect just be­cause Jonathan was a jerk. Be­sides, she was go­ing to need it to­mor­row.

She de­toured to his work area, and found the beaker full of buffer stashed in his sec­tion of the fridge. Next to it was a rack of sam­ple tubes that she nor­mal­ly wouldn’t have no­ticed amid the thou­sands of tiny tubes in the lab. A fa­mil­iar la­bel drew her at­ten­tion. EDRP-15.

En­dor­phi­nase? EDRP was the stan­dard la­bel for var­i­ous en­dor­phin preps and as­so­ci­at­ed neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, some­thing she’d spent six years study­ing for her doc­tor­ate. She looked at the la­bel again. No, she might be ex­haust­ed, but she was not hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. It said EDRP-15. It wasn’t pos­si­ble, even for Jonathan, to be work­ing on her spe­cial­ty and nev­er so much as men­tion it to her. Be­sides, Mor­bier didn’t work on neu­ro­trans­mit­ters. The on­ly one on Mars like­ly to be do­ing that was Wal­lis, and sure­ly Wal­lis wouldn’t have tapped Jonathan to work on a brain chem­istry pro­ject with­out so much as ask­ing her to ap­ply. Jonathan didn’t have half her ex­pe­ri­ence, nor, she was will­ing to bet, one tenth the smarts.

The ini­tials had to be a co­in­ci­dence. She’d ask him some­time what they ac­tu­al­ly stood for. Once the buffer was put away, she looked on­ly at the floor on her way out. She didn’t want to see one sin­gle soli­tary oth­er thing that need­ed work.

She plod­ded down the length of Artemis cor­ri­dor, one of the six ra­di­at­ing out from the hub of the sta­tion. Mor­bier’s labs were way at the tip, so she had the whole white and grey and ster­ile length to go. She thought she might fall asleep stand­ing, wait­ing for the bulk­head door at the end of Artemis to open. The doors seal­ing the spokes closed at 2100 hours, opened at 0600, and as of­ten as not her sched­ule made her wait for them whether it was ear­ly or late. She trudged up the stairs to the sec­ond lev­el of the dome’s cen­tral bulge and around the pe­riph­ery of the hub, past the plush ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices. Here some of the few win­dows in the Sta­tion over­looked the Boyle and Curie spokes and the Mar­t­ian land­scape, but there was lit­tle to see in the un­lit night. Two lines of slow pin­point strobes marked rover tracks near the Sta­tion and curved out of sight. Stars like dust were vis­i­ble through the pocked and scratched plas­tic scoured by Mar­t­ian winds, stars that stopped abrupt­ly, prov­ing that she was on a plan­et in­stead of a space ship. One or­phan star, nes­tled im­prob­a­bly un­der that black hori­zon, was the bea­con of a hy­dro­form­ing sta­tion. She walked on past con­fer­ence rooms and the back sides of the shops. Fi­nal­ly, she reached the cafe­te­ria over­look­ing Dar­win spoke and the lights of the clip­per and rover port at its tip.

Peer­ing with a jaun­diced eye at the fos­silized sand­wich­es and boiled-look­ing let­tuce, she de­cid­ed all she re­al­ly need­ed was a brown­ie. Two, per­haps. They were small. She sat down at one of the big round eight-per­son ta­bles al­ready oc­cu­pied by an­oth­er night owl or two and be­gan munch­ing mood­i­ly. The plas­tic sur­face of the table mas­quer­ad­ed as rose gran­ite, which, at this hour of the night, struck her as in­ex­press­ibly sad. Ta­bles should be made of wood, and the clos­est wood­en table was tens of mil­lions of miles away.

“Is one of those for me?” said a man’s voice jok­ing­ly a cou­ple of chairs over from her.

Corin­na skid­ded back to re­al­i­ty. She frowned. She had pleas­ing, reg­u­lar fea­tures of the sort that would have looked re­mark­able with make-up, which she nev­er wore. She al­so had large brown eyes, large brown hair in ringlets that nev­er did what she want­ed, and a good fig­ure. The re­sult was that she had been fend­ing off op­ti­mistic males since about the age of four­teen.

She re­served her an­noy­ance when she saw a de­cid­ed­ly good-look­ing, tall, black-haired fel­low smil­ing at her. She could have re­cit­ed the pri­va­cy rules. In­stead she on­ly raised her eye­brows to say, “And what do you want?”

“You’re Doc­to­ra Mansur, aren’t you?” he asked with a nod of greet­ing added to his pleas­ant smile.

The strange ter­mi­nol­o­gy stopped her. She’d nev­er been called “Doc­to­ra” be­fore. Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, she would have said some­thing like, “No, I’m ex­haust­ed. Please just leave me alone,” but her tired mind was re­peat­ing Doc­to­ra? What? to it­self. Fi­nal­ly she no­ticed that he was still look­ing at her with that friend­ly air of good fel­low­ship. Some­how, that and her slow­ness made it hard to tell him she was to­tal­ly un­in­ter­est­ed in every­thing. She nod­ded briefly.

“Oziel García,” he said, and reached over with his hand ex­tend­ed.

She found her­self shak­ing it, as if they had just been for­mal­ly in­tro­duced. Who was this guy? Why did he know her, but she couldn’t place him? She’d been on the Sta­tion over six months, which was long enough to rec­og­nize just about all six hun­dred in­hab­i­tants, es­pe­cial­ly one who looked like he’d walked off a movie set. He had a broad fore­head, short glossy black hair, and skin like pol­ished cop­per. He must not have been on Mars long enough to be­come sal­low. His eyes were so dark, there was al­most no dif­fer­ence be­tween his iris­es and pupils. Cen­tral cast­ing could give him a big part be­cause he had a very ex­pres­sive face. The di­rect way he looked at peo­ple made it seem that he could read the thoughts of every­one in the room. How­ev­er, the mid­night shad­ow on his cheeks would have to be edit­ed out in post-pro­duc­tion. It was prac­ti­cal­ly a young beard and made him look like —.

And then she fi­nal­ly had him placed. It made him look like any­thing ex­cept what he was: one of the new work­ers in day care who’d ar­rived about two months ago. Life sure didn’t take any cues from cen­tral cast­ing. She re­mem­bered notic­ing his looks and think­ing it odd that he’d been hired for day care, con­sid­er­ing how many qual­i­fied women there had to be for an un­usu­al­ly well-paid job in that field.

“Don’t they teach you sci­en­tists about bal­anced meals?” He cast a crooked smile at the brown­ies on her plate.

When she shrugged, he fol­lowed up with,

“And reg­u­lar meal times? Kind of wast­ed, yes? Dessert at mid­night?”

She shrugged again.

“Yup,” she said. “Dessert at mid­night. You got a prob­lem with that?”

“No, not at all. I’m just won­der­ing,” he pre­tend­ed to se­ri­ous­ness, “why?”

“Why?” she echoed him again. “Why your­self. I’m eat­ing. You just seem to be sit­ting here for your health.”

Ac­tu­al­ly, he was sit­ting there with a book, one of the li­brary’s print­outs. Strange that he didn’t just — but then she no­ticed he didn’t have a wrist­pad to which he could down­load books. He had a very blue watch that looked like one of those things they hand out as pro­mo­tions at fun fairs. It prob­a­bly couldn’t do one sin­gle thing ex­cept tell time. The on­ly oth­er per­son she’d ever met with­out a wrist­pad had been an an­ti-tech­nol­o­gy buff in the Mars for the Mar­tians move­ment.

He’d hes­i­tat­ed a mo­ment be­fore speak­ing again, and she knew per­fect­ly well she was be­ing brusque, but what made these un­nec­es­sary males pick on her? Was she wear­ing a sign that said, “Talk to me”? No. And what did she want with some day care work­er? Now, if on­ly she could find a post­doc with a sense of hu­mor who was this easy on the eyes. Nat, for in­stance, had been de­fi­cient in both de­part­ments, al­though he’d been bril­liant, of course. Corin­na had al­ways en­vi­sioned her part­ner as be­ing bril­liant. To­geth­er the two of them would make a team that went from strength to strength. On­ly they didn’t. How­ev­er, that was nei­ther here nor there. The man was say­ing some­thing.

“— on Mars. I would stroll down the boule­vard in Cara­cas at mid­night, with the gen­tle breeze blow­ing in off the moun­tains.”

Very nice, Corin­na thought, but she wasn’t re­al­ly lis­ten­ing. Bob Kruskal had just walked in­to the can­teen. He was ob­vi­ous­ly work­ing late too, ex­cept in his case it would be some vi­tal­ly im­por­tant re­search that he would in­sist on talk­ing about, com­plete­ly dis­re­gard­ing the fact that it was the mid­dle of the night and she was not in­ter­est­ed. He had nev­er been any­where but the fast track and he worked as a re­search post­doc for Ching, Di­rec­tor of Sci­ence for Mars. He was in his late twen­ties, same as she was, and she couldn’t stand him. It was prob­a­bly noth­ing but jeal­ousy, but she was glad he was al­ready start­ing to go bald. It served him right.

She hoped Kruskal would con­cen­trate on his food and she would not have to talk to the toad. Be­sides, the brown­ie was mak­ing her ill. She should just go to bed.

But she did not get up to leave in­stant­ly and then it was too late. Kruskal spot­ted her and, true to form, could not pass up an au­di­ence.

“Boy, late hours, huh?” He sat down next to her at the big table. “Me too. There’s all that work Hanzhe has me do­ing on pari­etal neo­cor­ti­cal path­ways. I had to fin­ish up some north­erns, prob­ing for acetyl­cholinesterase. Hanzhe thinks there may well be a ma­jor fund­ing in it, if the mem­o­ry en­hance­ment ap­pli­ca­tion pans out. The RNA-as­es are a huge prob­lem, of course, but I came up with a much bet­ter method for lim­it­ing aerosoliza­tion dur­ing cap­il­lary tube trans­fers.”

He car­ried on. And on. He ig­nored Oziel. Corin­na had just de­cid­ed to stand up in the mid­dle of one of his sen­tences and leave, when she awoke to the fact that he was no longer ig­nor­ing Oziel.

“I guess you fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to go out on a date, huh?” He looked at Oziel as if he was bare­ly vis­i­ble through the wrong end of a tele­scope. “Good to see you’re start­ing some­where.” The last was said with the smug grin some peo­ple use to flag a joke.

Kruskal achieved of­fen­sive­ness on so many lev­els that Corin­na woke all the way up. She looked at him for a sec­ond, enough to get her ques­tion worked out.

“Are brown­ies in the can­teen your idea of a date, Bob? I doubt I’d ever have to start that cheap. But,” and now she eyed him again, “if this is a date, should you be join­ing us?”

“Ex­cuse me,” huffed Kruskal, picked up his tray, and moved to a dis­tant table.

“That cut him down,” came Oziel’s qui­et voice.

Yes, thought Corin­na. And now I’ll be damned if I leave be­cause that blot will as­sume it’s be­cause I don’t want to be seen with a day care work­er. The fact that she felt guilty about think­ing some­thing sim­i­lar her­self on­ly made her more de­ter­mined to stay.

“You were say­ing some­thing about Cara­cas. You’re not from the States?” Ex­cept for his odd way of ad­dress­ing peo­ple, a mu­si­cal in­to­na­tion, and beau­ti­ful-sound­ing vow­els, his ac­cent was Amer­i­can.

“I lived in Flori­da for a few years, Doc­to­ra, but, no, I am from Venezuela.”

“Hey, call me Corin­na.”

He gave her a small, for­mal nod that was def­i­nite­ly un-Amer­i­can, and a warm smile that was uni­ver­sal. He re­al­ly was ex­treme­ly good-look­ing.

“So,” she said, “you still haven’t ex­plained why you’re bask­ing un­der the lights here.”

“Well,” he said, and some of his good fel­low­ship fad­ed, “I am here be­cause I couldn’t sleep.”

“Ah,” she said, start­ing on the sec­ond brown­ie. Her ap­petite seemed to have re­cov­ered af­ter the spike of adren­a­lin. “Rat­tling fan?” Peo­ple on Earth dis­cussed the weath­er. Here it was the ven­ti­la­tor fans, and the care, oil­ing, and some­times en­raged re­moval there­of.

“No.”

Af­ter a while, her sleep-slow mind no­ticed he hadn’t said any­thing fur­ther.

“No? That’s it? Just no?” She glanced at him and then for­got to look away.

He was star­ing at his hands. His right was a fist which he was grip­ping with his left, mak­ing it seem he was try­ing hard not to punch some­one. He sat so still, it felt like he might stop try­ing any sec­ond.

Peo­ple did run amok on space ships and sta­tions. Maybe he re­al­ly had been sit­ting here for his health be­fore she stirred him up. She grew un­com­fort­ably aware that he wasn’t just tall. He was broad too, at least at the shoul­ders, and prob­a­bly weighed near a hun­dred ki­los on Earth. If he ex­plod­ed here, he could break every­thing and every­body in the cafe­te­ria with­in min­utes. She must be se­mi-co­matose if she hadn’t no­ticed how for­mi­da­ble he was.

He shot a glance at her with no ex­pres­sion. It felt like a wall, a great high one with no doors.

“You re­al­ly want to know?” He was star­ing straight ahead, as if he might have added, “Don’t blame me. You asked.”

“Well, uh, not if you’d rather not talk about it.” She took an­oth­er bite of her brown­ie, think­ing that it wasn’t called a com­fort food for noth­ing.

Some­thing about her quick re­treat in­to the po­lite phrase seemed to make him an­gri­er, at least judg­ing by his hu­mor­less grin. He was look­ing at his hands. It was gone when he looked back at her.

“It’s about what I want?”

He said it so even­ly, he made it sound like a ques­tion in­stead of sar­casm, but there was al­most a rum­ble in the can­teen, he was think­ing so loud. You want nice, com­fort­able small talk. She re­al­ly hadn’t meant that. She meant on­ly that some­one who looked ready to throw the table across the room could have all the pri­va­cy he want­ed.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I meant just what I said.”

“Ah,” he said too qui­et­ly, look­ing at his hands again. She could see the ten­dons stand out on his grip­ping hand. “Talk­ing is easy.” He stressed “talk­ing” slight­ly. “Pues …, the last time I heard from home, I found out my youngest sis­ter’s ba­by died. My moth­er’s try­ing to help my worth­less youngest broth­er’s girl­friend take care of their lit­tle daugh­ter, be­cause his gang must not have paid some­body off fast enough, so he’s do­ing time for deal­ing spike.” He took a no­tice­able breath and added, “My sis­ter-in-law was al­so in prison, but when she came home, my oth­er broth­er said she’d changed some­how.”

He stopped and looked over at Corin­na. She had for­got­ten her brown­ie and was star­ing at him.

“And I am here in this emp­ty place … and they are there. So I can­not sleep some­times.”

Corin­na fin­ished chew­ing and swal­lowed.

“What —,” she be­gan.

Then she got a grip on her­self. She had no busi­ness ask­ing ques­tions.

“I — I’m very sor­ry to hear that. That’s — that’s a ter­ri­ble run of bad luck. I hope things get bet­ter.” She had no idea what to say, but to say noth­ing was un­think­able.

He smiled a very small smile that didn’t reach his eyes, yet the ten­sion around him sub­sided from a roar to a hum and he re­laxed his hands. It was his do­ing, she sud­den­ly re­al­ized, that she hadn’t no­ticed how fright­en­ing he could be. When he wasn’t us­ing all his en­er­gy to fight his own demons, he some­how erased fear in those around him. It must be a use­ful tal­ent when work­ing with kids.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, com­pared to many of our neigh­bors,” he con­tin­ued, “we do okay. All my broth­ers and sis­ters are alive. Most of us sup­port our­selves legal­ly enough. And I can send them mon­ey now.” In an­swer to Corin­na’s still-shocked ex­pres­sion, he ex­plained, “We live in a bar­rio of Cara­cas, with a few hun­dred thou­sand oth­ers. We do okay.”

Corin­na looked down at her plate, its white plas­tic sur­face, the brown crumbs scat­tered on it, the in­cred­i­ble strange­ness of the fact that she and it were here, now, and not some­where else in a huge­ly vast uni­verse. Talk­ing might be easy, but lis­ten­ing had tum­bled her in­to a dif­fer­ent world where noth­ing be­longed. She could see a cramped plas­tic hut with pans on the floor to catch the rain leak­ing through the roof, while an in­domitable woman made sure all her chil­dren sur­vived and learned enough to live in a ter­ri­fy­ing world.

It al­so ex­plained that odd ref­er­ence to “emp­ty.” The Sta­tion could be lone­ly, with­out a doubt, but it was about as emp­ty as an ant heap. But a mass of kids in one room would make any sub­se­quent space seem de­sert­ed.

Which, now that she thought about it, made no sense.

“It’s none of my busi­ness,” she be­gan apolo­get­i­cal­ly, “but how many of you are there? Aren’t the penal­ties for hav­ing more than two kids kind of ex­pen­sive? Es­pe­cial­ly if….” She al­most blurt­ed out, es­pe­cial­ly if you’re poor.

“Es­pe­cial­ly if we’re poor?” he fin­ished her thought for her with an­oth­er smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “My moth­er had three chil­dren and for us the ex­tra tax­es start with the fourth. We’re part Guahi­bo.”

Oh, yes, she’d heard about that. The ge­net­ic di­ver­si­ty preser­va­tion rules for small groups with rare genes.

“The younger two are my cousins, but we're her­manos, we grew up to­geth­er. My moth­er took them in when her younger sis­ter died and they were ba­bies. Quintón wasn’t even sit­ting yet.”

The mix of pain and af­fec­tion on his face re­mind­ed Corin­na that this was the youngest broth­er, the ba­by whose di­a­pers he had prob­a­bly changed, and who’d grown up to deal spike. That must feel hor­ri­ble.

Yet his ten­sion con­tin­ued to fade. She won­dered how much ef­fort it cost him. Af­ter a while, with noth­ing but his orig­i­nal friend­li­ness, he said,

“You still haven’t said why you’re eat­ing an un­bal­anced din­ner at this time of night.”

Corin­na’s own world seemed like noth­ing but a sil­ly fog. Com­pared to dead ba­bies and broth­ers jailed for drugs, the com­plex­i­ties of do­ing three jobs at once and deal­ing with Mor­bier looked like a jug­gling act doomed to fail­ure in a slap­stick com­e­dy. In her ex­haust­ed fugue state, she start­ed to laugh.

“Me? I’m a post­doc.” She saw that now Oziel was look­ing at her as if won­der­ing whether to call the medics. She tried to stop chuck­ling. “A Post­doc­tor­al Con­sult­ing Sci­en­tist,” she said with great mock grav­i­ty. “A Post­doc­tor­al Con­sult­ing Sci­en­tist right here at the old Bur­bidge Bio­engi­neer­ing Re­search Sta­tion. Sup­pos­ed­ly, I was hired to do re­search for Dr. Mor­bier. I bio­engi­neer rab­bits so that they will tol­er­ate Mar­t­ian cold. Then they can be kept in much cheap­er domes and pro­vide meat and fur.”

“This costs less than vat pro­tein?” he asked sur­prised.

“Of course not, but you have to have some­thing to feed the ex­pen­sive tourists on Ar­sia. Not that they say that. When some­one has to hand out the of­fi­cial line, it’s that ter­raform­ing will start a cou­ple of years from now. Once they land that comet full of wa­ter and volatiles, there’ll sup­pos­ed­ly be a big need for lo­cal re­sources. And for some rea­son, rab­bits were right up there. Pos­si­bly it’s be­cause ad­min­is­tra­tors are hare-brained, but I think it’s be­cause this place is called Fog­gy Bot­tom.”

Oziel sat there for no­tice­able sec­onds, puz­zling.

“Ey? I thought the name was be­cause of the fogs here in Mariner’s Canyon.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” She wagged a fin­ger, still pre­tend­ing to be ter­ri­bly se­ri­ous. “No, no, no. It’s be­cause no­body has the fog­gi­est no­tion what’s go­ing on.”

“Ah,” he said, puz­zle­ment gone. “. It is a good name for too many places. So you stay up till the small hours to find out what’s go­ing on?”

Corin­na went back to laugh­ing out loud.

“Yeah, right.” She made an­oth­er ef­fort to sim­mer down. “I’m al­so sup­posed to ‘keep an eye on’ the good doc­tor’s lab. That means man­ag­ing it. He’s got three oth­er post­docs and five grad­u­ate stu­dents here. They all have ques­tions and need help. Guess who deals with that. I take care of the com­put­ers and make the lab’s back­ups so no­body los­es da­ta. There are three techs. I su­per­vise them all, fig­ure out what they need to do, tell them to do it, check to make sure they’ve done it, and re-do it my­self when they haven’t done it right.”

“Sounds like a full time job by it­self,” was Oziel’s com­ment.

“Oh, but we’re not done yet,” she said. “I’m al­so sup­posed to pub­lish mul­ti­ple pa­pers that Mor­bier can have his name on, and get bags of grant mon­ey. It usu­al­ly takes more than one ap­pli­ca­tion to get a grant, and each ap­pli­ca­tion is more work than a ma­jor sci­en­tif­ic ar­ti­cle. And,” she wound up, “that doesn’t even touch on the re­al­ly im­por­tant work I do. Like make sure the new ar­rivals know to call the boss ‘Mor-be-yieh’ and not, heav­en for­fend, ‘More-beer.’ Do you have any idea how to­tal­ly that lab would cease run­ning if some­body ad­dressed him as Dr. More­beer?”

“The world will fall,” he said, mir­ror­ing her wide-eyed se­ri­ous­ness.

“Well, un­less I’m go­ing to put my head in the tray and go to sleep right here, I re­al­ly have to get back to my room.” She stood up. “It was nice meet­ing you.”

“Ah,” he said, look­ing hes­i­tant for the first time. “I ac­tu­al­ly want­ed to ask you about … an is­sue.”

Now what? thought Corin­na. It was al­ways some­thing with guys.

“Do you work with X-ray-type ma­chines at all?”

Not the ques­tion she had ex­pect­ed.

“‘X-ray-type’? What do you mean?” She sat back down.

“You know, ma­chines that take those per­fect pic­tures of the in­sides of peo­ple.”

“Sure. I work with MRI all the time be­cause of my rab­bits.”

He looked down at his hands, stud­ied his fin­gers for a while, and didn’t say any­thing.

“Well,” he fi­nal­ly be­gan, “I’m not sure where to start. I’m prob­a­bly not sup­posed to be do­ing this. I’d ap­pre­ci­ate it if you didn’t talk to oth­er peo­ple about it.”

“As­sum­ing it’s noth­ing crim­i­nal, of course,” Corin­na stip­u­lat­ed. She was awake enough for that.

He nod­ded.

“One of the chil­dren got a strange punc­ture at the clin­ic. Right here.” He in­di­cat­ed the back of his neck.

Corin­na’s eye­brows went up. That was the com­mon­est point of en­try for tak­ing a brain sam­ple, care­ful­ly snaking the can­nu­la past the brain stem.

It was not the same point as on the child she’d seen. That meant it had to be a dif­fer­ent child. A sec­ond child. If a sam­ple had been tak­en from a sec­ond child healthy enough to be in day care, it had to be for re­search. If this wasn’t a new and fas­ci­nat­ing re­search pro­ject, it was the first sign of a bizarre epi­dem­ic of brain dis­ease brew­ing on Mars. In which case, the whole Sta­tion would al­ready be un­der quar­an­tine.

“Where, ex­act­ly?” she asked, to make sure it wasn’t some oth­er med­ical pro­ce­dure. “Here?” She point­ed to one spot near the top of her neck, shov­ing a bunch of tan­gled ringlets aside to do it.

“Yes! That’s it. You know some­thing about this?”

“Not about this specif­i­cal­ly. I did my grad­u­ate work on neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, on en­dor­phi­nase ac­tu­al­ly, an en­zyme that keeps one of the neu­ro­trans­mit­ters in bal­ance. The fora­men mag­num is one of the ways to get hy­po­thal­a­m­ic sam­ples.”

“Ah,” said Oziel, look­ing at her du­bi­ous­ly. “Could you say that again,” he asked, “but this time slow­ly?”

Corin­na let out a lit­tle snort of laugh­ter at her­self. She shouldn’t even be try­ing to car­ry on a con­ver­sa­tion when she was this tired.

“En­dor­phins are chem­i­cals in the brain that make you feel good. Too many of them, and you’ll lose touch with re­al­i­ty; too few and you can get de­pressed. En­dor­phi­nase is an en­zyme that de­stroys en­dor­phins in the brain, so it pre­vents them from build­ing up too much.”

“Oh,” he said, giv­ing her the feel­ing that she still wasn’t be­ing very clear. “So you’re say­ing they were tak­ing a brain sam­ple?”

“Prob­a­bly,” she said ab­sent­ly, as she watched Kruskal stand up at the oth­er side of the cafe­te­ria and leave. Why hadn’t any­one talked to her about this re­search? A sec­ond child proved it had to be re­search. She was the on­ly per­son she knew of at the Sta­tion be­sides Wal­lis him­self who had worked on neu­ro­chem­istry, and yet he’d gone and hired some­body else for this pro­ject with­out even men­tion­ing it to her. Kruskal wasn’t the on­ly toad around.

“But why do they need to take brain sam­ples?” Oziel ex­claimed, his eyes look­ing even black­er in anger.

Why in­deed, she won­dered.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Nor­mal­ly, in chil­dren, it’s on­ly done for a med­ical con­di­tion. Se­vere epilep­sy, for in­stance. That could de­vel­op sud­den­ly.” She had the feel­ing she was try­ing to con­vince her­self it wasn’t a re­search pro­ject and she wasn’t be­ing ig­nored. “Or they might be look­ing for the bio­chem­i­cal ba­sis of a be­hav­ioral prob­lem.”

Oziel lis­tened and frowned a cou­ple of times, but he didn’t in­ter­rupt. Now he shook his head once in an em­phat­ic no.

“Prob­lem! That lit­tle kid is a prob­lem like a friend­ly pup­py. He’s a ray of sun­shine. And pok­ing around in the brain dam­ages it, yes?”

“Well, if you poked around in the wrong way, it would. But oth­er­wise, it ac­tu­al­ly does less dam­age than, say, a glass of beer or some strong cof­fee.”

¡Qué vaina! He’s just a lit­tle kid. I don’t go around feed­ing him beer!”

Corin­na looked at him close­ly. He seemed like a nice, car­ing fel­low, when he wasn’t fac­ing demons. If he didn’t ba­by sit kids and had enough ed­u­ca­tion so she could talk to him, and if she’d met him be­fore guys be­gan to seem like a waste of space, she might have…. Once up­on a time, she would even have been in­ter­est­ed, just to see what hap­pened. But not these days, and cer­tain­ly not on a sta­tion with a few hun­dred peo­ple. She could see her­self at every meal in the cafe­te­ria, hav­ing to wade through the de­bris of old lovers.

“The boy was pret­ty clear that there was an in­jec­tion and so forth?” she asked.

“No, ac­tu­al­ly. He just said he was scared and couldn’t see and it felt fun­ny. I think they gave him some sort of seda­tive as well as a lo­cal anes­thet­ic.”

“What about his par­ents? What do they say?”

“I’ve nev­er seen his fa­ther. His moth­er is some kind of too-busy lab work­er.” He glanced quick­ly at Corin­na and looked down. “Sor­ry. I didn’t mean —. Do you have chil­dren?”

She shook her head.

“You could ask the doc­tor, I sup­pose.”

“No,” said Oziel with a dark look. “The doc­tor was too busy to speak to me, and the nurse slid it off. Said it was a med­ical mat­ter and they couldn’t dis­cuss it. That’s why I thought I’d ask one of the sci­en­tists when I could. I’m wor­ried they’re try­ing to cov­er some­thing up.”

“When did you no­tice this punc­ture?”

“This one hap­pened to­day, and there was one a lot like it a few weeks back.”

“Well, bring him to my lab to­mor­row,” she found her­self say­ing. She was go­ing to find out what was go­ing on and worm her way in­to this nifty new pro­ject, whether they want­ed her or not.

 

Chap­ter 2

In the sober light of morn­ing, Corin­na won­dered about the wis­dom of let­ting per­fect strangers in­to a lab whose boss did not see the hu­mor in be­ing called More­beer. Her jit­ters were matched by in­creas­ing cer­tain­ty that let­ting him know what she was up to and sim­ply ask­ing his per­mis­sion would be a bad ca­reer move. She’d had no chance yet to find out whether Wal­lis even had a re­search pro­ject go­ing, and no way at all of know­ing whether he’d hire her if he did. Mor­bier, once he knew she was look­ing around, would have no sense of hu­mor about that ei­ther. In the cause of cau­tion, she tried to call Oziel and tell him to come around 12:30, dur­ing what would, she hoped, be lunch time, es­pe­cial­ly for Dr. Mor­bier.

Her first call to the day care cen­ter went unan­swered. A child an­swered the sec­ond one, which she found as odd as no an­swer at all, but the lit­tle girl took a mes­sage with the self-pos­ses­sion of some­one far old­er. The mes­sage didn’t de­liv­er any re­sults, though, and Corin­na tried a third time with ris­ing an­noy­ance. They must be se­ri­ous­ly un­der­staffed at day care. Oziel con­firmed that im­pres­sion when she fi­nal­ly reached him, be­cause most of his at­ten­tion seemed to be else­where.

He was punc­tu­al, how­ev­er, and ar­rived with a sub­dued-look­ing three year-old just af­ter the lab had co­op­er­a­tive­ly emp­tied out. How long it would stay that way was any­body’s guess, so Corin­na hur­ried them both to­ward the MRI equip­ment that she’d put close to her of­fice. She’d bor­rowed it from Clem Kil­burn’s lab ear­li­er that morn­ing, as she had dozens of times be­fore, and she’d even used it on a cou­ple of rab­bits, just to make every­thing look as nor­mal as pos­si­ble. Imag­ing one bi­o­log­i­cal or­gan­ism, such as a child, was the same as an­oth­er one, such as a rab­bit, but she want­ed to avoid ex­plain­ing that to Mor­bier, if at all pos­si­ble.

Oziel lift­ed the boy on­to a high lab chair next to the MRI ma­chin­ery, and she start­ed to wrap the cuff around his head. They were both very qui­et and se­ri­ous, as if one of them was about to be di­ag­nosed with a dread dis­ease. She knew she should try hard­er to be re­as­sur­ing, but she felt too pre­oc­cu­pied her­self.

“Isk­ender Mah­moud, Doc­to­ra Mansur,” Oziel in­tro­duced them with that odd for­mal­i­ty of his.

Corin­na was tak­en aback. One of her techs was named Mah­moud. Did Djami­lah have a son? She couldn’t re­call. She need­ed to spend less time pipet­ting and more time get­ting to know peo­ple. Or maybe there were oth­er Mah­mouds on the sta­tion.

“That’s the same as Alexan­der,” the lit­tle boy an­nounced, “but I like Isk­ender bet­ter.”

“Isk­ender is a beau­ti­ful name.” She smiled at the boy. “Is your mom’s name Djami­lah?”

“No,” the tod­dler shook his curly head. “She’s ma­ma.”

“Yes,” said Oziel. “It is.”

“Well, for Pe­te’s sake. She’s a tech in this lab. Your ma­ma works with me, Isk­ender, so you should feel right at home here.”

He looked around as if ex­pect­ing to see his ma­ma some­where.

For a sec­ond, Corin­na doubt­ed whether she was wise mak­ing the con­nec­tion so clear to the boy. What if he told his moth­er he’d been here and she men­tioned it to Mor­bier? Then she de­cid­ed there was noth­ing to wor­ry about. Djami­lah had fled from a Mid­dle East­ern sheik­dom to avoid be­ing killed for hav­ing dri­ven a car or some­thing. She was friend­ly, hard-work­ing, if not ter­ri­bly tal­ent­ed, and she bare­ly said hel­lo to Mor­bier, she was so in­tim­i­dat­ed by him.

With the MRI cuff fit­ted around Isk­ender’s fore­head, over his ears, and around the back of his head, she start­ed the scans.

“You may hear a buzzing or whin­ing sound,” she ex­plained. “It’ll take about five min­utes of scan­ning be­cause what we’re try­ing to see is dif­fi­cult.”

“Mr. García ex­plained to me,” he said with a se­ri­ous nod. “It’s called mag-net­ic res-nance.”

“I re­mem­bered they have an MRI ma­chine at Ciu­dad Bo­li­var. But I told him he’d be in­side it,” said Oziel, with a du­bi­ous look at the black cuff and its em­bed­ded mag­nets. “That one is huge.”

“Those are pret­ty old,” said Corin­na. “In this kind, you don’t need a big ma­chine be­cause the mag­nets don’t spin. In­stead the sig­nal is passed around the ring, and the sen­sors are much more sen­si­tive so the mag­nets can be much small­er and weak­er.”

A faint elec­tri­cal hum filled the air and trans­verse sec­tions of Isk­ender’s head start­ed to ap­pear on the as­so­ci­at­ed mon­i­tor. The lit­tle kid, hav­ing been asked to sit still, was as qui­et as a stat­ue, but Corin­na did not do so well. With noth­ing to oc­cu­py her ex­cept wait­ing, she fid­get­ed and kept glanc­ing at the lab door, wait­ing for one of the ear­ly lunch­ers or, worse yet, Mor­bier him­self, to come padding in.

The MRI ma­chine emit­ted a long beep, in­di­cat­ing com­ple­tion. She im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed re­mov­ing the cuff from Isk­ender’s head. She was in the process of lay­ing it on the counter when foot­steps sound­ed in the hall and en­tered the lab. She glanced over her shoul­der, and saw Jonathan. Why couldn’t it have been some­one nice, like Mei-mei, for in­stance? At least he al­ways ig­nored every­thing ex­cept him­self, and much as that had ir­ri­tat­ed her in the past, now she was glad of it.

How­ev­er, she’d count­ed her bless­ings too soon. To­day, of all days, he seemed to have de­cid­ed to broad­en his hori­zons and take an in­ter­est in her work.

“You’re do­ing some MRIs again?” he asked, head­ed to­ward her end of the lab.

If he came close enough to see the im­age of Isk­ender’s head on the mon­i­tor, he might start ask­ing even more ques­tions. She thought fast.

“Peo­ple have been wait­ing all morn­ing for you to get those aliquots done. I’d sug­gest you get on it.” The set-up for that task was all on the far side of the lab, and as the un­of­fi­cial lab co­or­di­na­tor, she had a per­fect right to re­mind him of it.

Jonathan stopped in mid­stride and his eyes ac­quired the blank but ac­cus­ing stare of a large fish.

“Some of my gene ex­pres­sion da­ta for the pa­per in Neu­rochem is com­ing off the DNA read­er in a few min­utes. It’s not my job to run the lab—”

Some­thing about the way he said “my” rubbed Corin­na the wrong way. It was amaz­ing how quick­ly “keep­ing an eye on” the lab de­volved in­to be­ing the “hey-you” in the lab.

“It’s not my job ei­ther. It’s no­body’s job and it needs to be done. That’s why we all take turns.”

“I have time-sen­si­tive pro­ce­dures go­ing.”

“Jonathan, we all have time-sen­si­tive pro­ce­dures. The da­ta can sit on the read­er all week, if it needs to. It’s not like it spoils. Now, please get to the aliquots, be­cause you’re hold­ing every­one up.”

Jonathan’s shoul­ders hunched in an­noy­ance, and he marched to the far end of the lab.

Corin­na breathed a sigh of re­lief and be­gan to hope she re­al­ly might sneak this en­ter­prise past every­one. She piped the pre­lim­i­nary im­ages to her own work­sta­tion and cleared them off the lab sta­tion. She shep­herd­ed Oziel and Isk­ender in­to her tiny of­fice, and found a new set of things to wor­ry about. It was a tiny room, and Oziel was a big guy. He near­ly filled the small space to ca­pac­i­ty all by him­self, but he did his best not to crowd her, and kept Isk­ender on his lap. He was ei­ther con­sid­er­ate, or she wasn’t his type. Ei­ther way worked for her.

“You want­ed to get him away from the mon­i­tor?” he asked qui­et­ly, tip­ping his head to­ward the end of the lab where Jonathan sat.

“Jeez. Was it that ob­vi­ous?” Her re­ced­ing ir­ri­ta­tion inched back.

“On­ly to me, I think, be­cause I know what we’re do­ing. I just want­ed to sug­gest that next time, you could try telling him there’s an emer­gency with his own ex­per­i­ments in some oth­er room. That’ll work bet­ter as a dis­trac­tion.”

Corin­na stared briefly at the im­age be­ing processed and took a breath. How, ex­act­ly, did a day care work­er fig­ure he knew more about lab work than she did? The fact that it was a good idea some­how made it even more an­noy­ing.

“Mm,” she mum­bled in grudg­ing ac­knowl­edg­ment and went back to work. Boss­ing tod­dlers all day prob­a­bly meant he had lots of prac­tice dis­tract­ing peo­ple.

Af­ter set­ting all the dozens of dif­fer­ent pa­ra­me­ters for the analy­sis, she hit “go” and sat back to wait for the soft­ware to gen­er­ate a col­orized three-di­men­sion­al im­age from the scans. It was amaz­ing how fast tech­nol­o­gy pro­gressed. When she’d start­ed grad school, the pro­cess­ing took half an hour and couldn’t re­solve any­thing small­er than a mil­lime­ter. Now it would take five to ten min­utes and she could zoom down al­most to in­di­vid­ual cells.

How­ev­er, five to ten min­utes with a large man in a small clos­et was still a long time. She tried to find some­thing to talk about.

“When I called this morn­ing, one of the kids an­swered. Did a good job, too,” she has­tened to add. “I guess you start them young.”

“No,” he said. This time, how­ev­er, he con­tin­ued be­fore she said any­thing.

“We had an emer­gency this morn­ing.”

“Oh,” she said, not know­ing how to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion since he didn’t ex­plain.

Isk­ender sud­den­ly spoke.

“Dorie died this morn­ing.”

Corin­na looked from the boy to Oziel and back with­out un­der­stand­ing. Who or what was Dorie?

“One of the chil­dren,” said Oziel with the sub­dued, se­ri­ous air he’d had since he’d ar­rived. “Do­ran Jack­son. We had, as I said, an emer­gency.”

She sat there, thun­der­struck, open-mouthed in shock.

No­body said any­thing.

This wasn’t some kind of mis­take. They meant it.

“My God,” she fi­nal­ly man­aged. “That’s — that’s aw­ful. What hap­pened?” In the same in­stant, she doubt­ed whether she should have asked in front of Isk­ender, and glanced at the lit­tle boy be­fore she could stop her­self.

“It’s all right,” said Oziel, sound­ing tired. “I ex­plained what hap­pened as soon as I could. It was bad enough with­out the kids imag­in­ing things even worse.” He wait­ed a mo­ment be­fore con­tin­u­ing.

“Do­ran’s moth­er dropped him off as usu­al this morn­ing. It was just me there, be­cause Zoë, who’s usu­al­ly on my shift, was out sick. He just slumped over. I called the medics. His breath­ing stopped, and a mo­ment lat­er his heart stopped. He felt re­al­ly cold. I did CPR right up to when the medics ar­rived a cou­ple of min­utes lat­er, but all they could say was that it looked bad.”

“Jee-sus,” she mut­tered. “How aw­ful.” There didn’t seem to be any­thing else to say. No won­der they’d both been so qui­et and se­ri­ous. The won­der, now that she knew, was that they’d been co­her­ent at all. And, of course, this be­ing Mars, it wasn’t like the day care cen­ter could be closed for the week while every­one tried to get over it. “Did the medics say what the prob­lem was?”

Oziel shook his head.

“I asked one of them, and he just shrugged. I thought that boy was fine when he came in this morn­ing.” For a mo­ment, his eyes looked through the walls at a uni­verse too far away. “At least in the bar­rio, the chil­dren get sick be­fore they die.”

Corin­na wished she could com­fort him, some­how. She’d nev­er seen any­one die, much less a child. She no­ticed that as he talked, he’d kept one hand pro­tec­tive­ly around Isk­ender’s back, and that the lit­tle boy was def­i­nite­ly too qui­et and se­ri­ous for a three year-old, but noth­ing worse than that. Oziel re­al­ly did calm fear. Maybe, she thought as she glanced at him again, he’d had a lot of prac­tice.

She won­dered who the dead child had been, and whether she’d seen him around the Sta­tion. She opened a win­dow on her mon­i­tor, called up da­ta on the Sta­tion’s in­hab­i­tants, and searched for Do­ran Jack­son. And then she felt like her heart had stopped in her chest. It was the same blond boy she’d seen at Wal­lis’s of­fice last night.

Wait, wait, wait, her sci­en­tist’s mind shout­ed at her. Wal­lis didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly kill him. Maybe the blond boy had been sick. Maybe Wal­lis had been treat­ing him.

“You knew him?” asked Oziel, sound­ing very far away.

She turned to­ward him and shook her head, un­able to speak at first.

“I saw him in Wal­lis’s of­fice,” she said, and Oziel re­spond­ed,

“Ah.”

He’d jumped to the same, pos­si­bly wrong, con­clu­sion. It was im­pos­si­ble not to.

The symp­toms he’d men­tioned hap­pened in cer­tain kinds of cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem fail­ure, and on­ly then, as far as she knew. Had the great Wal­lis man­aged to in­ject wa­ter in­stead of tak­ing a sam­ple, like some flunk­ing first-year stu­dent? No, then the child would have died in his of­fice. Maybe he’d caused a slow he­m­or­rhage with­out re­al­iz­ing it, al­though that was al­so too stu­pid for words. Was there re­al­ly a strange brain dis­ease out there? Was it catch­ing?

“Has — will they be do­ing an au­top­sy?”

“I sure hope so.”

That sound­ed odd. She glanced at Oziel, be­wil­dered.

“I was the on­ly one there, re­mem­ber? I just spent two hours an­swer­ing ques­tions to see whether I’d over­looked some­thing ob­vi­ous and called for help too late.”

His im­pas­sive ex­pres­sion didn’t change, and Corin­na stared at him dumb­ly. It was true. Peo­ple didn’t thank you for try­ing to save a life. They con­cen­trat­ed on find­ing some­one to blame.

“But at least they didn’t say any­thing about start­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion on me. Yet.”

To think that when he’d ar­rived at the lab, all she’d no­ticed was that he looked a bit se­ri­ous. She would have been a bas­ket case, her­self.

“Well, the au­top­sy will prob­a­bly clear up the cause, at least.” She looked at him hes­i­tant­ly. “I know it’s eas­i­er said than done, but try not to wor­ry. I’m not a physi­cian, but I’m pret­ty sure those symp­toms don’t fit any­thing or­di­nary, and you can hard­ly be ex­pect­ed to di­ag­nose ex­tra­or­di­nary con­di­tions.”

He looked at her for a long mo­ment, so di­rect­ly that it felt al­most like a touch, but his ex­pres­sion was no longer im­pas­sive. It was some­thing else. Sad? Re­lieved? Grate­ful? All of the above?

“That’s me,” said Isk­ender, an­nounc­ing a fact.

Corin­na looked over and saw that while the grownups had been on an­oth­er world, an en­hanced im­age had tak­en shape on the screen, so three-di­men­sion­al it seemed to float in­side the mon­i­tor. She re­mem­bered she was sup­posed to be hur­ry­ing, and that she’d for­got­ten all about Mor­bier.

She need­ed to take her cue from Oziel and car­ry on, so that Isk­ender didn’t think things were even worse than they were.

“That’s right.” She did her best to smile at the lit­tle kid. He smiled back as en­dear­ing­ly as on­ly a tod­dler can, and she could see why Oziel had said he was a ray of sun­shine. She point­ed to a yel­low re­gion on the screen. “This bit is right here,” she reached over to touch the boy’s head just above his ear, “and helps you re­mem­ber things. This bit which is red on the screen,” she touched the back of his head, “helps you un­der­stand what you’re see­ing. And this bit is the one we’re go­ing to look at.”

Un­like any­thing she could do with the re­al Isk­ender, Corin­na chose a spe­cif­ic slice of his head, one that she ex­pect­ed to show the whole path of the punc­ture, as­sum­ing there was one. Oziel looked in fas­ci­nat­ed hor­ror at the mul­ti­col­ored im­age of skin, bone, blood ves­sels, and brain. Mean­while, the re­al Isk­ender was vig­or­ous­ly whole and be­hav­ing like a true sci­en­tist, reach­ing to ex­plore in new di­rec­tions. Oziel man­aged to stop him just be­fore his chub­by lit­tle fist closed around the nice red wire car­ry­ing 220 volts to the ju­ry-rigged gel perched on a shelf above her desk.

Luck­i­ly for her im­pa­tience, she had guessed the cor­rect slice to dis­play. She hadn’t spent a cou­ple of years do­ing this as a grad­u­ate stu­dent for noth­ing.

“See for your­self,” she point­ed at the faint path still vis­i­ble where the nee­dle had passed through the tis­sues, straight in­to one of the low­er re­gions of the brain.

Oziel stared.

“So they are tak­ing brain sam­ples.” Af­ter a pause he added, “Why?”

“I wish I knew,” Corin­na frowned at the screen. The nee­dle went right to the part of the lim­bic sys­tem she knew well: one of the main en­dor­phin-pro­duc­ing ar­eas. Wal­lis had to know that she was the on­ly per­son on Mars with any back­ground at all in the mor­phi­noid neu­ro­trans­mit­ters. Her pa­pers would have come up in any search for re­cent work on the sub­ject. Was she con­sid­ered such a no-ac­count tech that peo­ple didn’t even think of her as a po­ten­tial source of in­for­ma­tion?

“What can I do?” Oziel asked.

She didn’t an­swer. She was too busy won­der­ing about Jonathan’s EDRP vial. If he was in on this while no­body had even men­tioned it to her, it meant she wasn’t be­ing ig­nored. They were ac­tive­ly ex­clud­ing her.

If Do­ran’s death was con­nect­ed with this, she want­ed to be ex­clud­ed. To­tal­ly ex­clud­ed.

On the oth­er hand, she had to re­mem­ber that she had no ev­i­dence at all that it was con­nect­ed. She was jump­ing to con­clu­sions in leaps and bounds.

Oziel, she grad­u­al­ly be­came aware, was sit­ting there, pa­tient­ly wait­ing for an an­swer. What had he asked? Some­thing about do­ing some­thing.

“I’m not sure you need to do any­thing,” she said slow­ly. “This is prob­a­bly just a re­search pro­ject.” One that Wal­lis had been too im­por­tant to speak to her about, since he was too im­por­tant to speak to any­one ex­cept God. How­ev­er, the post­doc or grad stu­dent work­ing on it would have boast­ed about be­ing in­volved in life-chang­ing re­search. Es­pe­cial­ly if it was Jonathan.

“But they’re tak­ing brain sam­ples,” per­sist­ed Oziel. “That can’t be good.”

“Well, like I said, it’s not harm­ful when it’s done right. And this,” she frowned again at the dis­play, “was done very right.”

Do­ran Jack­son, how­ev­er, was an­oth­er mat­ter. He might have been done very wrong. At this point, she want­ed no part of Wal­lis’s pro­ject un­til she knew whether the au­top­sy cleared him of blame.

“It would be a good idea,” she con­tin­ued, “to tell Djami­lah not to let her son go for any more tests. I’ll tell her too. And if any oth­er kids come back with these sorts of punc­tures, let me know. Al­so, if they give you a copy of the au­top­sy re­port, let me see it.”

Oziel nod­ded once, very def­i­nite­ly.

He­cho,” he said.

Her cou­ple of years of col­lege Span­ish in the dim past told her that meant done. She won­dered why he sud­den­ly spoke in Span­ish. Maybe it felt more like a promise in his own lan­guage.

He rose and took Isk­ender’s hand.

“Thank you, Corin­na,” he said. “For every­thing.”

He turned to leave and Isk­ender waved good­bye to Corin­na with a smile on his face.

Corin­na watched them go with­out mov­ing, even though there were a hun­dred things that had to be done in the lab. She need­ed a minute to get a grip on her­self af­ter every­thing that had hap­pened. And some­thing about the im­age of Oziel, van­ish­ing through the door­way with the curly-head­ed lit­tle kid made her wish her life was less sim­ple and had more peo­ple in it. She stared un­see­ing through her door at the far lab wall, lis­ten­ing to the whis­per of the thin Mar­t­ian wind. She was one of the few who kept a ra­dio tuned to out­side noise. Even she wasn’t sure why. In case some­thing ap­proached? For a con­nec­tion to a wider uni­verse be­yond the ivory-col­ored walls? To re­mind her­self that she re­al­ly wasn’t in a base­ment in New York? It was a sound she could for­get, but it was al­ways there, en­velop­ing all the hums and clicks and whines of lab ma­chines.

Mor­bier came in as she sat sunk in thought. Nat­u­ral­ly. She didn’t un­der­stand how it hap­pened, es­pe­cial­ly since she worked six­teen-hour days with bare­ly time to eat, but if she ever did do noth­ing for thir­ty sec­onds, Mor­bier was bound to come in. Then he would look at her in his chilly way, as if to say, “Yes. Much as I ex­pect­ed.”

 

Chap­ter 3

Mor­bier said noth­ing, mak­ing Corin­na in­creas­ing­ly ner­vous. She knew the MRI cuff was ly­ing in plain view in the lab, but why shouldn’t it be? The same cuff could be wrapped around rab­bits. There was noth­ing to show this one had been around a child.

Mor­bier’s thin grey hair was al­ways plas­tered to his head in ex­act­ly the same neat lines. His lab coat was al­ways clean and pressed, all dis­or­der stamped out with each new day. He pot­tered about the lab in his sharp-eyed man­ner, tak­ing stock of the amounts of ex­pen­sive chem­i­cals left in their tiny vials. That way he could judge both how much work was be­ing done in the lab and, if there were not enough re­sults to jus­ti­fy the us­age, how much ma­te­r­i­al was be­ing wast­ed. He was dread­ful­ly sharp in every way. Corin­na wished she could re­mem­ber what it was she need­ed to be busy with, but there was some­thing about her boss’s as­sump­tion of fail­ure that froze her. She fin­gered print­outs ner­vous­ly, know­ing that his small grey eyes had al­ready summed her up and come per­ilous­ly close to a neg­a­tive num­ber.

“Ah, Corin­na,” he said as he passed her door. “Was that child vis­it­ing this lab, and the man with him that I saw in the hall­way?”

Corin­na’s heart jumped in­to the back of her throat and stayed there. He was back ear­ly, but this sound­ed like he was ear­ly on pur­pose. Was he keep­ing tabs on her? How much had he seen? Flat de­nial stayed stuck in her throat, keep­ing her heart com­pa­ny, and by the time she found her voice she re­al­ized de­nial was use­less. Jonathan had seen them. Maybe Jonathan had called Mor­bier to let him know, to see if he could get her in trou­ble. Would Jonathan do that just to get back at her? The an­swer to that was hope­less­ly ob­vi­ous, as was the on­ly an­swer to Mor­bier’s ques­tion.

“Yes, that child was here.” She tried wild­ly to think up an an­swer to his next ques­tion.

“The lab is not in­sured for vis­its by mem­bers of the pub­lic, as I trust you are aware.”

She hadn’t giv­en that as­pect of it any thought. But the phrase “mem­bers of the pub­lic” gave her an idea.

“The lit­tle boy is Djami­lah’s son,” she said. There. She had not ac­tu­al­ly lied and, by im­pli­ca­tion, his re­la­tion­ship ex­plained his pres­ence.

Mor­bier nei­ther ac­cept­ed nor re­ject­ed the ex­pla­na­tion, but some­how the very lack of change in him sug­gest­ed sus­pi­cion.

“You’ll be go­ing to the par­ty tonight, of course.” He moved on.

The stu­pid of­fice par­ty? Not if she could help it. She stood up to fol­low him in­to the lab, since he had not stopped for her re­sponse.

“I want my lab to be well-rep­re­sent­ed dur­ing Di­cas­til­lo’s stay.”

Di­cas­til­lo! He was the ma­jor stock­hold­er and Chair­man of the Board of Clip­per Trans­port and Ser­vices. He’d pro­vid­ed the seed mon­ey for the whole ex­er­cise in clois­tered bio­engi­neer­ing that was Fog­gy Bot­tom. He’d or­ga­nized five dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments to par­tic­i­pate. And he was po­si­tion­ing him­self to be the on­ly play­er once Mar­t­ian ter­raform­ing start­ed in earnest.

“Di­cas­til­lo is at Bur­bidge?”

“Yes,” said Mor­bier in his pre­cise way, “that is what I just said.”

“But — I on­ly know about an of­fice par­ty. I haven’t been in­vit­ed to any­thing im­por­tant enough for Di­cas­til­lo to be there.”

“Yes, you have,” he con­tra­dict­ed her even­ly, his back to her as he con­tin­ued ex­am­in­ing sup­plies in the lab while he talked. “I made sure of it this af­ter­noon. Read your email.” Doesn’t even check her email, his stiff back seemed to say.

What the—? Since when did Mor­bier knock him­self out mak­ing sure she met im­por­tant peo­ple? Blow­ing Mar­t­ian dust could cause some re­spectable light­ning. Maybe he’d been struck by a bolt out of the pink.

She stopped be­tween the lab bench­es so she could tap at her wrist­pad for her lat­est mes­sages, and there it was. “Leira Di­cas­til­lo y Jerez re­quests the plea­sure of your com­pa­ny Wednes­day at sev­en, June 12th.” And there, in keep­ing with the most re­fined man­ners, was the guest list and a lit­tle space to mark whether you were com­ing or not.

She need­ed to find out ex­act­ly what Mor­bier saw as her pur­pose at this shindig.

“Is there any­one in par­tic­u­lar I should be sure to meet? Or a point you’d like me to make?”

“I’m sure if you use your ini­tia­tive, you will make good use of your time.”

He just want­ed her to go and net­work and make his lab look good. If there was any ac­tiv­i­ty more re­pul­sive than net­work­ing, she didn’t know what it was.

“Uh, cer­tain­ly,” she said, re­solv­ing pri­vate­ly to de­vote no more than fif­teen min­utes to the or­deal of putting in an ap­pear­ance.

He’d worked his way around to the MRI cuff she hadn’t had a chance to put away. This was go­ing to get worse.

He picked it up.

“Was this a rou­tine scan? I did not think you had scans sched­uled for an­oth­er two weeks.”

Thank God she’d thought to run a cou­ple of rab­bits as well as Isk­ender.

“The newest gly­co­pro­tein al­ters blood vis­cos­i­ty more than the oth­ers, so I was check­ing blood flow in the kid­neys.”

“And how is my GP-17 syn­thetase com­ing?” Mor­bier asked.

Corin­na bit back a smart re­mark. His syn­thetase! This was the sev­en­teenth “an­tifreeze” en­zyme this lab had worked on. Her pre­de­ces­sor had worked on one through eleven with­out find­ing a func­tion­al en­zyme. She had made steady progress with twelve through sev­en­teen. Eigh­teen was prob­a­bly go­ing to be the one, but it was Mor­bier’s en­zyme, even though it was her ideas and her six­teen-hour days. She was writ­ing the pa­per on the sub­ject, and she was in the mid­dle of the list of au­thors, af­ter Mor­bier and a string of cronies to whom he owed fa­vors.

She had her lat­est three-di­men­sion­al mod­el of the en­zyme on the work­sta­tion in her of­fice and be­gan point­ing out the salient im­prove­ments since last week when he’d been around to check.

“It syn­the­sizes a gly­co­pro­tein that works well when we in­ject the mol­e­cule it­self straight in­to rab­bits. But its cat­alyt­ic rates are pret­ty slow.” As a mat­ter of fact, her en­zyme made “an­tifreeze” so slow­ly, a rab­bit would turn in­to a frozen lump be­fore the an­tifreeze could do any good.

“It might be that the ac­tive site is too shal­low,” Mor­bier jabbed a bony fin­ger at the im­age, “so it los­es the mol­e­cules it should be hold­ing. If you could deep­en these arms, maybe with an­oth­er sul­fur bond here, the con­for­ma­tion would change enough to hold it.”

Corin­na stared at the im­age with sud­den in­sight. He was right. She took the light pen out at once and made del­i­cate marks at sev­er­al spots on her mod­el where she would try changes. Mor­bier nod­ded, as if his pro­fes­sion­al­ism forced him to ad­mit she had not on­ly un­der­stood, but had even gone him one bet­ter.

Corin­na grudg­ing­ly ad­mired Mor­bier’s in­tel­lec­tu­al edge. It was the main rea­son she was able to keep work­ing for the man. If on­ly he could have had few­er edges and more cen­ter.

As Mor­bier was on his way out the door, he men­tioned,

“Wal­lis said you’d dropped by his of­fice.” He wait­ed a beat for Corin­na to ex­plain, then con­tin­ued, “Any­thing in par­tic­u­lar?”

Hell, yes, she want­ed to shout. The kid died! But then she was brought up short by the rev­e­la­tion that this had to mean Mor­bier and Wal­lis were in ca­hoots. Why else would Wal­lis be keep­ing Mor­bier post­ed about every lit­tle thing? And why would Mor­bier care, un­less the child’s death had plunged them all in­to full cov­er-up mode?

Well, she wasn’t go­ing to aid and abet them by pro­vid­ing ad­vance warn­ings. She wasn’t telling Mor­bier any­thing.

Pre­tend­ing it had tak­en her a minute to un­der­stand what he meant in or­der to cov­er her slow re­sponse, she said,

“I heard a kid cry­ing and thought he was lost.”

Mor­bier stood there. Was he nev­er go­ing to re­turn to his of­fice?

“What was the child up­set about?” he asked.

Good grief, she thought. He’s an­gling to find out what I saw.

“You know how kids can be­have in doc­tor’s of­fices. By the time I got there, he’d calmed down, and I think his dad was there, so I just left again.” It grew more dif­fi­cult with every pass­ing mo­ment to dis­cuss the poor child as if noth­ing had hap­pened, but she cer­tain­ly wasn’t go­ing to let him know she’d heard about Do­ran’s death.

Mor­bier fi­nal­ly crossed the hall to his own of­fice, while Corin­na sat sunk in thought. This time, though, she wasn’t af­ter the large ques­tions about life and death and the mean­ing of it all. This time it was a raft of nar­row, but equal­ly unan­swer­able ques­tions. What was the se­cret re­search? How much did Mor­bier know about it? Was Bur­bidge about to be­come a seething mass of in­ves­ti­ga­tors? Or had Do­ran been ill and the whole thing just one of those un­for­tu­nate co­in­ci­dences? Two sam­ples had been tak­en from Djami­lah’s son, af­ter all, and he seemed to be fine.

 

With the mis­er­able of­fice par­ty sud­den­ly added to her agen­da, Corin­na skipped any thought of din­ner. If she ar­rived at the par­ty be­fore all the food was gone, it wouldn’t mat­ter any­way. She put off every sin­gle non-crit­i­cal task ex­cept lay­ing down new bench pa­per. If Señor Diego Di­cas­til­lo de­cid­ed to come through on a site vis­it, it wouldn’t do for the place to look like an alien slaugh­ter­house, cov­ered in strange-col­ored stains.

The oth­er non-crit­i­cal task she sim­ply could not put off was call­ing home. Her moth­er would dis­own her if she missed an­oth­er re­served di­rect-con­nect time slot. There wouldn’t be any of these prob­lems with plain old email, but there was no way to con­vince her par­ents to take the sen­si­ble ap­proach.

She ran down­stairs to the nether­most lev­el and the comm room, but stopped as soon as she stepped through the open door­way. Oziel was the on­ly per­son there, sit­ting at one of the car­rels, head sunk on his hands, and head­phones on even though he al­so had the speak­er go­ing. Venezuela was on­ly one time zone away from New York, so it made sense he’d be call­ing now. There was no vi­su­al, which meant he’d be get­ting mon­ey back on his al­lot­ment for us­ing a low-band­width, voice-on­ly con­nec­tion. If there was a way to save a nick­el, he took it.

In the sec­onds while she stood there, think­ing emp­ty thoughts about nick­els and try­ing to pick a car­rel, her two years of col­lege Span­ish co­a­lesced the words in­to mean­ing, and then it was too late. He must not have re­al­ized the speak­er was still on be­cause the head­phones cut out voice fre­quen­cies so ef­fec­tive­ly.

The man’s voice com­ing over the speak­er sound­ed up­set. “No, Zielo. I don’t mean it like that. Of course I would be glad if she was re­al­ly hap­py. I was wild with joy when I thought Se­le­na was get­ting out ear­ly, but when I went to meet her, it was all wrong. I mean, for in­stance, I bought her some choco­late and all she said was, ‘Thanks, dear,’ and ate it. Last time, she had tears in her eyes—”

Get­ting out ear­ly? This must be Oziel’s broth­er, the one who’s wife had been in prison. “Last time” sound­ed like she’d been through this be­fore. Was she an­oth­er drug deal­er, like the youngest broth­er?

“—you know how ex­pen­sive that stuff is — and she broke it in half to give me some, and she asked about Juani­to.”

Oziel’s head sank deep­er in­to his hands.

“This time she didn’t even ask about Juani­to. She’ll sit with him in her lap — he’s dy­ing Zielo, I tell you, he’s dy­ing — and she just has this stu­pid smile on her face, and she isn’t even hold­ing him. And when I look in­to her eyes, they’re emp­ty, ex­cept that some­how, I have this hor­ri­ble feel­ing, that if she could say what she want­ed, she’d be scream­ing.”

Corin­na could see Oziel’s hands tight­en around the sides of his head as he heard this. She should tell him about the speak­er, but his broth­er’s words were so ob­vi­ous­ly meant for his ears on­ly, she couldn’t face let­ting him know she’d heard them.

“And … the way she is with Juani­to is the worst, but … well, she doesn’t seem to want me any more. I mean she doesn’t say no, she doesn’t say yes. It’s just, ‘That’s nice, dear,’ ei­ther way. It’s killing me, Zielo. What can I do?”

She could see Oziel straight­en­ing, one hand mov­ing to rub his fore­head while he ob­vi­ous­ly racked his brain, or, more like­ly, his soul, to find an an­swer that could help. As if any­thing could help, when your part­ner no longer loved you. Al­though that busi­ness about how she treat­ed her son sound­ed very strange. Be­fore Oziel could turn and see her, Corin­na stepped qui­et­ly back through the door and fled.

Her par­ents were just go­ing to have to wait. She’d dress up and try again just be­fore head­ing to the par­ty. To think that one scant day ago, she would have said Oziel was just some good-look­ing guy who worked in day care. And ac­cord­ing to him, com­pared to his neigh­bors, he didn’t have it too bad. You re­al­ly nev­er knew what bur­dens peo­ple car­ried.

 

Corin­na pushed the ac­cess but­ton at the door to Di­cas­til­lo’s pent­house suite and tugged un­hap­pi­ly at her blouse with the em­broi­dered col­lar. Clothes, to her, were just some­thing she put on, but now they fo­cused her ner­vous mind like a bro­ken zip­per in a cru­cial spot. The tai­lored blue skirt was for job in­ter­views, not evening wear. Her footwear was billed in the of­fi­cial in­ven­to­ry as “leisurewear slip­pers.” It had been a choice be­tween that and space suit boots. The whole ef­fect was hope­less. Maybe her hosts would give her points for try­ing.

A but­ler in a tail coat, an ac­tu­al tail coat, an­swered the door. My God, she thought, I hope he’s not go­ing to an­nounce me to a star­ing room­ful of peo­ple. He took no no­tice of her clothes. Corin­na’s breath was tak­en away by the wealth of the apart­ment. It had rooms, whole, large, nor­mal-sized rooms, the like of which she hadn’t seen since Earth, and they were full of the deaf­en­ing chat­ter of peo­ple. The place didn’t just have win­dows, it had win­dow-walls in the two rooms that faced out­ward. The plas­tic was nei­ther scuffed nor scoured, which meant some­body had to resur­face the out­side of each en­tire win­dow about twice a year. There was a re­al view with thou­sands of stars, and no scuff marks to de­stroy it. As usu­al by the time she got out of the lab, the land was in­vis­i­bly black, but one dis­tant strobe marked Be­ta Sta­tion, where the sci­en­tists study­ing Mar­t­ian bac­te­ria worked.

As she en­tered one of the win­dowed rooms, Corin­na saw a large arch­way that turned both rooms in­to one space. Then she gaped at the glassy sur­face of one of the in­te­ri­or walls. The whole thing was an im­age pro­jec­tor, cur­rent­ly dis­play­ing a glo­ri­ous night­time view of Mt. Ar­sia sil­hou­et­ted against stars, with the bril­liant­ly lit space­port at its sum­mit, and the streak­ing fire­fly lights of space­craft. A pro­jec­tor that size would cost more than en­tire hous­es on Earth. And this was just an oc­ca­sion­al week­end re­treat for these peo­ple.

The apart­ment was full of plants, as was every space on the whole Sta­tion in the in­ter­ests of im­prov­ing air qual­i­ty. In rooms this size, the ef­fect was of a well-be­haved for­est. An elfin young woman ap­peared from be­hind a bushy fig tree. It cost Corin­na con­scious ef­fort not to stare at her. She had a del­i­cate, bone-chi­na face, ice-blue eyes, and black hair with a sil­ver band en­cir­cling her fore­head to keep the glossy swirl of her hair­style in place. The sil­ver cir­cle held two small pea­cock feath­ers above her left ear, and they ac­cen­tu­at­ed her every move­ment. She wore a di­aphanous white dress of many lay­ers, so that on­ly the edges were translu­cent.

“I’m so pleased you could come,” said this vi­sion mu­si­cal­ly. “You’ll have to ex­cuse me. I’ve on­ly just ar­rived and I don’t know peo­ple’s names yet. I’m Leira Di­cas­til­lo y Jerez.”

“Corin­na. Corin­na Mansur. So pleased to meet you.”

Leira nod­ded grace­ful­ly, and her pea­cock plumes swept for­ward to help her.

“Let me in­tro­duce you to my fa­ther. He ar­rived in his clip­per an hour ago, so he’s even more dis­ori­ent­ed than I am.”

Corin­na want­ed to ask why her il­lus­tri­ous fam­i­ly felt this sud­den need for Fog­gy Bot­tom, but couldn’t think of a po­lite turn of phrase.

They ap­proached a group of three. A stocky, hard-fea­tured man Corin­na had nev­er seen at the Sta­tion be­fore was hold­ing forth.

“Yes, that’s pre­cise­ly the prob­lem. Poor peo­ple are dis­ad­van­taged, which is why they go for self-de­struc­tive be­hav­ior, and since they won’t help them­selves it’s very hard for any­one else to do any­thing ei­ther. The first step is to break that be­hav­ioral cy­cle.”

Why, Corin­na won­dered, with so many peo­ple ex­press­ing a de­sire to help the poor, did so few of the poor ac­tu­al­ly find help?

She sud­den­ly re­al­ized that the small Chi­nese man wear­ing glass­es was Hanzhe Ching, the UN Di­rec­tor for Sci­ence on Mars him­self and her ul­ti­mate boss. She had seen him on news­casts and once in per­son giv­ing a speech. He looked dif­fer­ent from on­ly a few feet away: short­er, flab­bier, less im­por­tant some­how. She found him dif­fi­cult to smile at be­cause his an­tique, flat glass­es re­flect­ed the light and hid his eyes.

The woman com­plet­ing the trio had a pol­ished, im­per­vi­ous sur­face from which, Corin­na thought, both in­sults and com­pli­ments would slide off with equal ease. If she ever cried, the tears would bead up and drop with­out a trace. She was Bukovsky, if Corin­na re­mem­bered right, Ching’s new sec­ond-in-com­mand. Corin­na not­ed with en­vy that she was wear­ing a busi­ness suit with­out any pa­thet­ic at­tempts at par­ty clothes.

Leira be­gan the in­tro­duc­tions and Corin­na said she was pleased to meet each of them, but all she felt was the awk­ward­ness of a peas­ant in a palace. The three im­por­tant peo­ple looked at her, but they did not con­tin­ue with their con­ver­sa­tion.

Des­per­ate to fill the si­lence, Corin­na bab­bled.

“Keep­ing up with your busi­ness­es must be dif­fi­cult. I mean, the time lag. Be­tween Mars and Earth. Must make it dif­fi­cult.”

“No, not at all,” said the bil­lion­aire, po­lite and bored, as one who had an­swered the same ob­vi­ous gam­bit a hun­dred times be­fore. “I am lucky to have a very ca­pa­ble son who is in busi­ness with me and he takes care of any emer­gen­cies.”

“Oh, how nice,” said Corin­na. For some rea­son she felt the daugh­ter, stand­ing right there, might con­strue this as a slight. “And your daugh­ter must be a great help to you while you trav­el.”

“Cer­tain­ly, she does all she can,” said the great man, now po­lite and dis­mis­sive.

The daugh­ter, clear­ly, was not in the same ca­pa­bil­i­ty league as the son, mak­ing Corin­na feel like a so­cial id­iot for hav­ing brought the sub­ject up.

“Dr. Mansur,” Ching was say­ing, “yes, I re­mem­ber now. You did your grad­u­ate work on en­dor­phins, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, as­ton­ished that the great man would re­mem­ber such a de­tail. “En­dor­phi­nas­es, ac­tu­al­ly.”

“Still keep­ing up with the field?” Ching asked.

All she need­ed, Corin­na thought, was for word to get back to Mor­bier that she spent time on any­thing but an­tifreeze.

“Oh, heav­ens no,” she said with a bit too much hearti­ness. “I’ve got too much to do work­ing on the gly­co­pro­teins to have any time for hob­bies.” Every­one joined in the emp­ty lit­tle ex­ha­la­tions that were the so­cial equiv­a­lent of laugh­ter on these oc­ca­sions.

Leira smooth­ly sug­gest­ed that she would show her the re­fresh­ments, to Corin­na’s im­mense re­lief, and then the sci­en­tists could get to­geth­er again lat­er and talk shop.

Corin­na hoped not.

They thread­ed their way through the pot­ted for­est to where the knots of peo­ple were thick­est. Leira steered her around the back of the table to a gap in the crowd be­tween the table and the im­mense win­dow. Corin­na’s eyes widened at the sight of the table. No­body had told her there would be cheese, ac­tu­al cheese, re­al, true, Earth cheese in about twen­ty va­ri­eties. The aro­ma, now that she was close enough, al­most made her dizzy. There was a whole smoked salmon, half gone, half neat­ly sliced. And there, mak­ing her eyes feel like they might fall out of her head, was a buck­et of caviar. The Di­cas­til­los must have brought all this over on their pri­vate ship. They were go­ing to have to knock her out to get her away from here.

Leira in­tro­duced her to an Al­fred Marks, shift­ing from foot to foot by him­self at the table, and left her to fend for her­self. Corin­na re­mem­bered him as one of the fel­lows in Hor­ti­cul­ture, work­ing on hy­dro­pon­ics or some­thing. She mar­veled briefly at how Leira, for whom every­one here was bare­ly more than a da­ta blip in a com­put­er, could nonethe­less un­err­ing­ly foist Corin­na off on some­one of her own rank. These things had to be taught at fin­ish­ing schools.

Corin­na helped her­self to a crack­er and brie and tried to make po­lite con­ver­sa­tion with Al­fred, but their mu­tu­al low sta­tus had pow­er­ful re­pel­lent prop­er­ties. Al­fred soon cir­cu­lat­ed off to net­work with peo­ple worth know­ing. Corin­na wast­ed no time in dig­ging shame­less­ly in­to the caviar and re­treat­ing in­to a small grot­to of pot­ted palms right up against the win­dow to eat her plate­ful of in­de­cent­ly heaped crack­ers. Af­ter months of vat-grown burg­ers, re­con­sti­tut­ed car­bo­hy­drates, and hy­dro­pon­ic veg­eta­bles, she felt a hunger for this food right down to her toes. She wasn’t the on­ly one, and the wine was ob­vi­ous­ly hav­ing the same ef­fect on many peo­ple. The vol­ume of chat­ter in the rooms was al­ready on the con­vivial side.

She’d thought the child’s death that morn­ing would be the main top­ic of dis­cus­sion, but it wasn’t. In all the chat­ter, she heard on­ly a cou­ple of peo­ple re­fer to it. The scut­tle­butt made it sound like the death was just one of those un­for­tu­nate things, ag­gra­vat­ed by the dif­fi­cul­ty of liv­ing on Mars.

Well, maybe it was.

She de­cid­ed there was no rea­son not to make her­self com­fort­able by sit­ting on the floor in her al­most-hid­ing place and us­ing a palm pot as a back­rest. There were a num­ber of peo­ple sit­ting on the floor near the couch­es, so it was okay.

She could pick out bits and pieces of half the con­ver­sa­tions in the room, as peo­ple like Kruskal, for in­stance, brayed loud­ly for em­pha­sis as he flat­tered his boss. It sound­ed like they were talk­ing about food pro­duc­tion, of all things. What did His Bob­ness know about food pro­duc­tion? He worked for the mil­i­tary on us­ing po­lio virus­es to car­ry mol­e­cules in­to cells. They were os­ten­si­bly hop­ing to cure ra­di­a­tion poi­son­ing or some­thing. How­ev­er, be that as it might, she had to ad­mit that Kruskal cer­tain­ly didn’t waste time with friv­o­li­ties like eat­ing when there was net­work­ing to be done. She pol­ished off her first plate in peace, and then, once she had a sec­ond, more mod­er­ate plate of good­ies, went to join the two of them with much con­cealed re­gret. Mor­bier was bound to ar­rive soon, and it would be po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect if she were hob­nob­bing with Ching, Di­rec­tor for Sci­ence on Mars, when he did.

Ching was talk­ing about food ri­ots some­where on Earth as she ap­proached, and Kruskal had opened his shrewd lit­tle eyes wide in cal­cu­lat­ed ad­mi­ra­tion.

“Down forty per­cent! Ex­cel­lent!” he cried as if he could taste the word. “At this rate, ri­ots will be a thing of the past.”

“There are in­creased bur­ial costs, of course,” Ching was say­ing with sci­en­tif­ic ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, point­ing out the neg­a­tives equal­ly with the pos­i­tives.

Why “of course,” won­dered Corin­na. De­creased ri­ots im­plied de­creased deaths, not an in­crease. She was go­ing to ask what they were re­fer­ring to, but they fell silent when they no­ticed her. It made her feel as wel­come as the time she’d climbed a tree when she was six and ap­peared un­ex­pect­ed­ly among her broth­er and his bud­dies in his tree­house. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this time she couldn’t break the ice by threat­en­ing to tell Mom where the kitchen satel­lite re­ceiv­er had dis­ap­peared to. In­stead, she asked whether Di­cas­til­lo’s pres­ence meant there was a chance for in­creased fund­ing for Bur­bidge, while in her mind she puz­zled about why they couldn’t dis­cuss world news in her pres­ence.

The con­ver­sa­tion or­bit­ed ef­fort­less­ly around fund­ing — that was al­ways a safe bet in any group of sci­en­tists — while she kept re­turn­ing to the pe­cu­liar food ri­ots. If they hadn’t act­ed like it was a se­cret, she would nev­er have giv­en it a thought, but now … now she was go­ing to look it up on her wrist­pad the first chance she got.

She no­ticed Mor­bier with a po­lite­ly mea­ger plate of food talk­ing to Di­cas­til­lo him­self. As usu­al, her boss didn’t miss much, and he gave her one of his pre­cise lit­tle nods across the room. She nod­ded back. Good. He’d seen her talk­ing to Ching. Now she could get away from Kruskal, who seemed to be in­tent on mo­nop­o­liz­ing the Di­rec­tor, and cir­cu­late else­where.

Bukovsky, she saw, was stand­ing not far away with a small group around her, so Corin­na pre­sumed on her in­tro­duc­tion to the woman to join the group. She asked her about plans to ex­pand the sci­en­tif­ic fa­cil­i­ties at Bur­bidge, and while the ad­min­is­tra­tor be­gan hold­ing forth on new habi­tats and car­bon scrub­bers, Corin­na saw Mor­bier walk up to Ching and she heard Kruskal bray­ing again.

“Ha­ha, Dr. Mor­bier. I guess I re­al­ly am get­ting on in the world if the Di­rec­tor looks for me first at par­ties. Ha­ha.”

She saw Mor­bier look at Kruskal with­out the slight­est ex­pres­sion, and had the sud­den in­sight that he dis­liked Kruskal as much as she did.

Then he be­gan talk­ing about some­one splic­ing in­to his com­put­er.

That was odd. He hadn’t said any­thing to her about it, and since she did the back­ups for the lab, he should have alert­ed her.

“Don’t you think?” she heard Bukovsky say.

“Def­i­nite­ly,” said Corin­na, not miss­ing a beat. In the hope of main­tain­ing the il­lu­sion that she’d been lis­ten­ing, she added, “But the oth­er thing that would be re­al­ly nice is, if in ad­di­tion to fixed plant, we had more ve­hi­cles for field stud­ies.”

Bukovsky nod­ded in com­plete agree­ment and dis­cussed ve­hi­cles. Corin­na breathed a care­ful­ly sup­pressed sigh of re­lief that she’d man­aged to cov­er up a ma­jor floater. As soon as she could, she ex­cused her­self to go har­vest a third help­ing of caviar and salmon and crisp­breads and cheese.

A child­ish peal of laugh­ter rang out some­where else in the pent­house, and then through the big arched door­way she glimpsed a tiny, sharp-faced tod­dler rac­ing by. Corin­na was dumb­found­ed when Oziel ap­peared next, gain­ing on the boy in long, easy strides. Yet it made per­fect sense. If Leira had a child, who bet­ter to ba­by-sit than a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion­al day­care staff?

Oziel caught up with the young­ster, scooped him up in one sweep­ing mo­tion, and plant­ed him on top of his shoul­ders. Un­der these cir­cum­stances the child thought it was great fun to be caught. Oziel turned his head and grinned up at the kid, as if he didn’t have any more cares than the boy.

She couldn’t take her eyes off Oziel. In the same way as col­ors seen on a dif­fer­ent back­ground can change hue, he be­came more than some­one with a cheap watch and a lot of trou­bles who worked in day care. His warmth and kind­ness ra­di­at­ed from him like heat. He was such a con­trast to every­one she’d seen since en­ter­ing the pent­house, she just stared at him as if he was a win­dow on­to a dif­fer­ent and a bet­ter world.

She’d drift­ed to­ward the door­way, and he no­ticed her as he head­ed back down the hall. For a mo­ment he seemed un­sure whether she’d want to say hel­lo to him here, among her peers. He smiled in a ten­ta­tive greet­ing. She smiled back, even more ten­ta­tive, but he sud­den­ly, briefly, just glowed.

Oh, she thought, and felt every­thing stop for a sec­ond. He moved to­ward the nurs­ery, Leira came run­ning, and Corin­na start­ed to turn away. What brought on that in­can­des­cent smile? What should I do to see it again?

“Pe­dro Xavier Diego Di­cas­til­lo, you naughty lit­tle boy! Are you be­ing dif­fi­cult?” His moth­er was try­ing to sound play­ful, try­ing not to be ob­vi­ous­ly wor­ried about a scene in front of her guests.

Oziel turned back, and the lit­tle boy from his po­si­tion over two me­ters high shrieked ju­bi­lant­ly about some­thing that sound­ed like “French fries!”

“Pe­tey,” scold­ed his scan­dal­ized moth­er in an un­der­tone as guests’ heads turned in in­creas­ing num­bers to see what was go­ing on out in the hall, “be qui­et! Now,” she switched to wheedling, “you stay in your room like a good boy and nice Oziel will come and take care of you again to­mor­row.”

Corin­na thought if Leira was re­al­ly try­ing to teach her son not to shriek, wheedling sent the wrong mes­sage. Nor did she see the need for it. The boy, rid­ing on Oziel’s shoul­ders, was go­ing to go wher­ev­er Oziel went. She turned to­ward the crowd. A mo­ment lat­er she heard Leira’s sil­very laugh among the guests again and saw the splen­did eyes of her pea­cock feath­ers float­ing above the throng.

“Hey,” said a qui­et al­to voice in Corin­na’s ear as she stood by her­self, try­ing to de­cide what to do next. She turned to see her friend and fel­low post­doc, Tam­bi­ka Mlong­weni, who worked in Kil­burn’s lab.

“You can’t stop to think,” Tam­bi­ka mur­mured. “It’s like ski­ing. Think, and you’ll fall down.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it.” Corin­na ex­changed a wink and, as Tam­bi­ka moved on, tried to make up her mind whom to ac­cost. Kruskal was in a deep dis­cus­sion with the Sta­tion’s main fi­nan­cial bu­reau­crat, and Corin­na won­dered why she hadn’t thought of that. The fel­low prob­a­bly had the in­side scoop on dozens of sources of fund­ing. The group co­a­lesced around Di­cas­til­lo was too in­tim­i­dat­ing, and be­sides, they seemed to be dis­cussing the coun­ter­pro­duc­tive habits of the poor again.

Tam­bi­ka was right. If you stopped to think, it was all over. The col­or con­trast worked both ways, and some­thing about Oziel made the crowd even duller than be­fore. Corin­na went back for fourths, try­ing to look in­no­cent, and checked in­for­ma­tion on food ri­ots while she ate. Fa­tal­i­ties and food ri­ots gave her noth­ing. Oth­er com­bi­na­tions of key­words proved equal­ly un­in­for­ma­tive. Un­like the past, there weren’t that many places these days that even had food ri­ots, and the on­ly one with no­tice­ably few­er than last year was im­pov­er­ished Suri­nam. How­ev­er, there weren’t any fa­tal­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the ones they did have. She gave up. It was just go­ing to be one of those ir­ri­tat­ing facts wait­ing for an ex­pla­na­tion she couldn’t find. She fin­ished her last slice of salmon and left for the lab. She’d stayed al­most an hour. What more could any­one want?

She turned to­ward Artemis — and stopped dead. Jonathan was com­ing out of Wal­lis’s door, head­ed to­wards Mor­bier’s labs, so he had his back to her and did not see her. He was car­ry­ing a small white rack with pur­plish spec­i­men vials. What was he do­ing, car­ry­ing spec­i­mens from one lab to the oth­er? She might as well face the fact that he was in­clud­ed in this new re­search no­body had even told her about. There was go­ing to be hell to pay, if she could get the ac­count­ing de­part­ment there to send a bill.

She hung back, wait­ed till he was safe­ly in­side the lab, and then made au­di­ble foot­steps as she ap­proached.

“Oh, hi, Jonathan. Didn’t you hear the edict from the Head Man? You’re sup­posed to be at that par­ty.”

He stood up the mo­ment he heard her com­ing, and was try­ing, with pa­thet­i­cal­ly trans­par­ent non­cha­lance, to car­ry the sam­ple rack to­ward the freez­er while he screened it from view.

He’d buried his head in the freez­er, but took it out to turn his blank, blue eyes on her.

“What about you, then?”

“Been there, done that,” she came back at him. “You bet­ter shake a leg and get on up there. Be­sides, it’s worth it. They’ve got caviar. And wine.”

“Caviar,” mut­tered Jonathan in­to the freez­er. “Might as well eat cod liv­er oil.”

He was now mak­ing a pa­thet­ic at­tempt to hide the rack while pre­tend­ing to look for some­thing in the freez­er.

The way he was be­hav­ing, those sam­ple tubes would be worth a look once he was out of here.

He fi­nal­ly took his head out of the freez­er again and saw that she was still look­ing at him, wait­ing to see what he would say.

“I can’t waste time on a stu­pid of­fice par­ty,” he said. “I’m work­ing on an im­por­tant pro­ject for Mor­bier. On methy­la­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry genes,” he added, as if to make sure she didn’t as­sume it might be some­thing else.

The squirt was re­al­ly start­ing to ir­ri­tate her.

“Jonathan, I’d be sur­prised if it came as news to you that every­one in this lab, from Tom on up, is work­ing on the boss’s pro­jects. So what does that make all of us? Chopped liv­er?”

She walked over to the syn­the­siz­er, and be­gan mea­sur­ing out reagents for a DNA primer that need­ed to be ready to­mor­row.

Jonathan didn’t an­swer, but punched at his wrist­pad with al­most as much em­pha­sis as she squeezed the but­ton on the pipet­ter to re­lease mea­sured amounts of liq­uids.

She was load­ing the com­plet­ed mix­tures in­to the syn­the­siz­er when Mor­bier came in.

Now what? she thought. It was not the great man’s habit to stay up till the wee hours in the lab.

“The Di­rec­tor of Com­put­ing Op­er­a­tions just ar­rived, and Di­cas­til­lo’s per­son­al sec­re­tary, and I un­der­stand from Dr. Ching that sev­er­al more im­por­tant peo­ple are still due.” For some rea­son, he was look­ing at Corin­na while he said this.

“I just need­ed to set up a syn­the­sis. Then I was head­ed back,” she lied. How­ev­er, it was one of those lies which be­comes a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. Now she had to do it. She wait­ed as long as she could to see if Jonathan felt com­pelled to leave too, but ap­par­ent­ly not.

She marched back up the stairs in quick, irate steps.

So. Mor­bier want­ed her out of the lab. Not Jonathan. Just her. Giv­en the long hours she worked, she prac­ti­cal­ly lived in the lab, which, ob­vi­ous­ly, was why Mor­bier him­self had made sure she was in­vit­ed to this par­ty. Well, that did it. She was go­ing to take apart those three pur­ple tubes right down to their com­po­nent atoms.

At least the food wasn’t gone yet when she was ush­ered back in­to the op­u­lent suite by the im­per­turbable but­ler. They must be putting fresh sup­plies out as peo­ple snaf­fled up what was there. Corin­na found that the brief hia­tus in the lab had gone a long way to­ward melt­ing away her pre­vi­ous four help­ings, so she loaded up on a fifth with the feel­ing that she de­served some sort of com­pen­sa­tion for every­thing.

She stood near the big arched door to the hall, most­ly be­cause of a psy­cho­log­i­cal need to feel that she could es­cape quick­ly if she had to, and she could hear Pe­tey still shriek­ing in a room not far away. Play­ing qui­et­ly was ob­vi­ous­ly not in that kid’s reper­toire. Or maybe he was feel­ing el­e­vat­ed be­cause the place was full of peo­ple.

Leira Di­cas­til­lo, like the high­ly pol­ished host­ess she was, cir­cu­lat­ed around to Corin­na to make con­ver­sa­tion, and Corin­na took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank her for the mar­velous feast.

“Your couri­er must have been packed right up to the con­trol con­soles.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, it’s much less than it seems. You’ll no­tice it’s all rather com­pact food. Every­thing fit­ted in three crates.”

Corin­na saw her throw a brief, wor­ried glance in the di­rec­tion of the shriek­ing, and then turn back to her guest with noth­ing but pleased po­lite­ness on her per­fect face.

“Your fa­ther was talk­ing ear­li­er about help­ing the poor break out of their dis­ad­van­taged ways,” said Corin­na as she nod­ded with a grin at the table by the win­dow, “and this has cer­tain­ly gone a long way to­ward lift­ing the tone of the Sta­tion.”

Leira let out a peal of mu­si­cal laugh­ter.

“I hope you didn’t get Fa­ther start­ed on self-help and the poor. The on­ly sub­ject on which he’s even hard­er to stop is tax­es.”

Corin­na saw Di­cas­til­lo Sr. march pur­pose­ful­ly to­ward the shriek­ing sounds, and no­ticed Leira see him too, look­ing even more wor­ried than be­fore.

He yanked a door open on the oth­er side of the hall, the vol­ume of child­ish noise sud­den­ly in­creased. Corin­na could see Pe­tey bang­ing some­thing on a flow­er­pot, stop, race over to his grand­fa­ther, and bang the thing glee­ful­ly on his leg. Corin­na mar­veled at the boy’s fear­less­ness. Giv­en the thun­der­ous look on Di­cas­til­lo’s face, she would have board­ed a space ship and found an­oth­er plan­et to live on.

The cap­tain of in­dus­try had just be­gun to hop up and down on one foot, and was go­ing to start ex­press­ing him­self ful­ly any sec­ond, when Corin­na saw Oziel scoop the kid up and Leira hasti­ly ex­cused her­self.

Corin­na could see Pe­tey now bang­ing the fa­vored ob­ject — a mod­el car, that’s what it was — on Oziel’s head. Luck­i­ly, it was the tires that hit him be­fore he in­ter­posed his large hand be­tween it and fur­ther dam­age.

Leira swept in, every­thing stopped for a mo­ment, and then start­ed all at once.

Pe­tey was yelling, “I got the win­ner! I got the win­ner! I got the win­ner!” to the beat of the bounc­ing car.

Di­cas­til­lo Sr. was de­mand­ing to know, “When will this child be taught to be­have?”

“Fa-ather,” Leira ex­pos­tu­lat­ed, sound­ing like an ado­les­cent. “He’s a healthy, ac­tive lit­tle boy. You just don’t like chil­dren.”

The Di­cas­til­los, like many of the up­per class­es world­wide these days, ap­par­ent­ly spoke Eng­lish at home. Corin­na no­ticed the oth­er guests near the door al­so grin­ning at their plates and en­joy­ing them­selves.

“I like kids well enough,” growled Di­cas­til­lo, still rub­bing his shin. “It’s wild an­i­mals I dis­ap­prove of.”

Mean­while, not ex­act­ly in the back­ground, Pe­tey in­formed every­one that he had gone down the slide, down the slide, down the slide.

“Fa-ather,” said Leira again. “He’s on­ly four. Four year-olds need to ex­plore the world, not be put in a strait­jack­et.” She sound­ed like she was quot­ing from a child-rear­ing book.

“You should have a doc­tor look at him. This is the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, in God’s name. They can fix chem­i­cal im­bal­ances that lead to tantrums. Dr. Wal­lis could give him one treat­ment, and you could have a bright, smil­ing child who knows how to be­have.”

Leira was clear­ly of­fend­ed by the im­pli­ca­tions.

“Fa­ther, I don’t think —”

“Vroom, vroom, ye­owww, BLAM!” Pe­tey drove his car over Oziel’s head and crashed it off his nose.

“Oh, Pe­tey, do be qui­et!”

Pe­tey, now that some­one be­sides Oziel had fi­nal­ly no­ticed his ex­is­tence, re­turned the fa­vor by cheer­ful­ly throw­ing his car.

The essence of the more ex­pen­sive mod­el cars is that they are met­al, and acute­ly painful, es­pe­cial­ly when they land on a cheek­bone as del­i­cate as Leira Di­cas­til­lo’s.

“Pe­tey!” shrieked his moth­er.

Oziel, who had one hand free since he no longer need­ed to de­fend him­self from the car, moved over to the door and closed it.

Re­gret­ting that the show had end­ed, Corin­na won­dered whether she should shame­less­ly at­tempt a sixth help­ing and wait around, in case the fun start­ed again, or whether she should go back to the lab. Mor­bier was still there, over by the win­dow, deep in a dis­cus­sion with the head of Com­put­ing Op­er­a­tions. She fig­ured she bet­ter wait till she could leave with­out him notic­ing, and sneaked a sixth help­ing, hop­ing no­body else was count­ing.

When she head­ed back to­ward Artemis Hall, she won­dered what she’d find Jonathan up to this time. If on­ly she could look through a hid­den cam­era —. Then she re­al­ized she could. The se­cu­ri­ty cam­era panned the lab for the ben­e­fit of emer­gency ser­vices and cen­tral se­cu­ri­ty. She could feign wor­ry to the guard on du­ty about a fic­ti­tious stranger in the lab. Most of the se­cu­ri­ty guards knew her by now, so it would not in­volve a lot of te­dious ex­pla­na­tions. She ducked to­ward the hub in­stead of her hall­way. The guard let her in­to the con­trol post im­me­di­ate­ly and even zoomed the im­age on her lab when she asked him to.

Jonathan was there, all right, and he was fid­dling around at the back of the serv­er. The zoom showed he was hold­ing some­thing. It looked sort of like a pipet­ter. What would he be do­ing with a pipet­ter at the serv­er? Maybe he was try­ing to fix a loose con­nec­tion and just hap­pened to be hold­ing a pipet­ter, but some­how she doubt­ed it. What­ev­er it was, he was done now and was look­ing at his notes. She wasn’t go­ing to find out any­thing us­ing this clever method.

“Okay, thanks a mil­lion. That’s just Jonathan, so there’s no prob­lem.” She smiled her best smile and head­ed back to her own hall­way.

Her smile van­ished the minute she was by her­self. This time, she didn’t try to let her ar­rival be heard, but Jonathan didn’t seem star­tled. He must be done with what­ev­er he was do­ing. A mo­ment lat­er she was sure of it be­cause he up and left. She looked around to see if she could fig­ure out what he’d been work­ing on. It was all just the usu­al lab things all in their usu­al places. For once, he’d put every­thing away. All the pipet­ters were hang­ing in their cir­cu­lar racks. She looked around the area where he’d been work­ing and felt a per­verse sense of smug dis­ap­proval to see that he’d left one pipet­ter out af­ter all. Ex­cept it wasn’t a pipet­ter. Now that she saw the thing up close, she re­al­ized it was a log­ic probe. The two were a vague­ly sim­i­lar shape, es­pe­cial­ly from a dis­tance or on a fuzzy se­cu­ri­ty mon­i­tor. But the on­ly pur­pose for a log­ic probe was to test hard-wired com­put­er cir­cuits. What the hell had he been do­ing, fuss­ing around at the serv­er with a log­ic probe?

Was he per­haps the mys­tery splicer Mor­bier had men­tioned at the par­ty? Or was he try­ing to deal with the splic­ing?

Some ten min­utes had passed since he’d left, so it was more than just a trip to the bath­room. Now, while the lab was emp­ty, was as good a time as any to look at the three mys­te­ri­ous sam­ples. Lat­er on it would be more crowd­ed when peo­ple came back to fin­ish pro­ce­dures they’d been work­ing on and to make sure they had every­thing ready for to­mor­row.

She went to the freez­er, found the sam­ple rack with very lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty, and be­gan the process of iden­ti­fy­ing the stuff in­side the tubes. Hav­ing put on rub­ber gloves, as for any lab pro­ce­dure, she scooped a lit­tle bit of ma­te­r­i­al out of each vial. They were la­beled the way pu­ri­fied DNA usu­al­ly was. She melt­ed the top lay­er enough so that no sign of her scoop­ing could be seen and put the vials back in their rack. The big, table­top DNA read­er worked on her sam­ples, and once the ma­chine as­sessed the size of the frag­ments, the count­down timer told her she had twen­ty min­utes to wait.

She pot­tered about, lis­ten­ing for re­turn­ing foot­steps and clean­ing up and putting away the equip­ment she’d used. It was hard not to gloat that the grand old men were go­ing to be fright­ened out of a cou­ple of years of lat­er­al growth once she had the goods on them. That’s what they got for ex­clud­ing the most qual­i­fied per­son around. And if Do­ran’s death re­al­ly was their fault some­how and they were try­ing to cov­er it up, then her re­sults might be use­ful to the in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

The DNA read­er fi­nal­ly beeped. She lost no time in pip­ing the files to her of­fice com­put­er and nam­ing them some­thing in­nocu­ous, like fish-GP-19, 20 and 21. It on­ly took the blast search sec­onds to come up with a near-per­fect match for the first one. En­dor­phi­nase.

She stared at the re­sult and re­al­ized she hadn’t re­al­ly be­lieved it her­self un­til this mo­ment. Every­thing else had been con­jec­ture. This was proof up to sci­en­tif­ic lev­els of cer­tain­ty.

They were work­ing on en­dor­phins. She was the most knowl­edge­able per­son on this sub­ject on all of Mars. They were ex­clud­ing her. The on­ly pos­si­ble rea­son had to be that they were try­ing to cov­er some­thing up. And that had to mean Do­ran’s death was their fault.

She down­loaded the files to her per­son­al lap­top and re­moved them from the DNA read­er, the serv­er, and her of­fice desk­top. She won­dered if she’d get any sleep that night.

 

Chap­ter 4

Feel­ing wild­ly over­worked and un­der­ap­pre­ci­at­ed was one thing. Now Corin­na felt like she was work­ing for the Mob. For this she had slaved through six­teen-hour days. Well, no more. She was go­ing to start hav­ing a life and she was go­ing to start now. The fol­low­ing day she took din­ner at din­ner time.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the cafe­te­ria re­mind­ed her why she gen­er­al­ly worked through meals. The place was a seething mass of blue, green, white, red, and brown Sta­tion suits; dif­fer­ent col­ors, but all the same jump suits with the same Unit­ed Na­tions Plan­e­tary Bu­reau lo­go. The line snaked out the door, and al­ready al­most every table was full. Had all things been equal, she would have gone back to the lab, but all things were far from equal. She stood in line. A quar­ter of an hour lat­er, with her veg­gies and vat-grown pro­tein, she sur­veyed the bois­ter­ous room in the ide­al­is­tic hope of a qui­et seat. There was a small table by the wall with an emp­ty chair, but then she no­ticed Oziel there. She stopped. Would he mis­in­ter­pret it if she joined him? An­oth­er per­son on an in­ter­cept course for the same chair de­cid­ed her. She didn’t care what he thought. She want­ed to eat her din­ner.

She sat down, but he did not look up. Then Corin­na no­ticed de­pres­sion in every line of his body. What could be so bad that it vis­i­bly af­fect­ed him, of all peo­ple?

“Oziel,” she said just loud enough for him to hear un­der the din. “What’s wrong?”

He looked up then, his face drained of joy, grey and hol­low.

“Read that,” he said, push­ing a hand­writ­ten fax to­ward her. He didn’t say “hel­lo” or seem to care who knew his trou­bles. That, by it­self, was un­like him. “It came by mail to­day. From my broth­er.”

Mail, phys­i­cal mail, was ex­pen­sive. The en­crypt­ed scan­ner at the sender’s end cost mon­ey, in­ter­plan­e­tary bits and bytes al­ways cost mon­ey, and the de­crypt­ing print­er keyed to the re­ceiv­er’s iris scan cost even more mon­ey. All this mon­ey bought ab­solute se­cu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy. His broth­er must have had to save up for it, if the fam­i­ly was poor. Costs in­creased by the page and she no­ticed it was ex­act­ly one page long.

She took the pa­per, and buck­led down to dredg­ing up enough of her Span­ish to make sense of it. Her pro­tein blocks cooled in their con­geal­ing sauce on her plate.

Zielo,

I don’t know where to start.

Se­le­na died last night.

Corin­na froze in un­be­liev­ing shock. Died? This was the sis­ter-in-law he’d been talk­ing about on­ly yes­ter­day. She’d been alive then. She was dead now. Death seemed to fol­low him around.

They must have done some­thing to her in prison, but when I begged her to tell me what hap­pened, she said, “Noth­ing.” Juani­to’s —.

“What’s this word?”

Oziel looked over.

“Di­ar­rhea.”

— isn’t get­ting bet­ter, so I fi­nal­ly took both of them to your old friend, Dr. Miguel Sanderas. He said no, he could find noth­ing wrong with Se­le­na. But Juani­to, he said, is not get­ting enough food to his brain be­cause the di­ar­rhea is drain­ing him of every­thing. So now he needs drugs that cost more than I make in a year.

I walked home with them in de­spair. She sat in the door of our ran­cho.

“A ‘ran­cho’? He has a ranch?”

“That’s what they call the shacks in the bar­rio. Ran­chos.”

“Oh.”

I put Juani­to on her lap. My heart was break­ing. She still did not even wrap her arms around him. She stared with noth­ing in her eyes.

Af­ter much time, I have no idea how long as I sat there, she spoke. Her voice sound­ed dif­fer­ent, sound­ed like she meant it, as if she was fight­ing her way up to air. She said, “I love you, Mar­co.”

I was go­ing to put my arms around her, but our son cramped up in one of those fits he’s been get­ting. I took him from her be­cause he might have fall­en, the way she held him. I shout­ed for a doc­tor, our neigh­bors ran for him. Then I saw that Se­le­na was gone. Oth­er neigh­bors ran to find her.

But she was gone for­ev­er. They found her af­ter mid­night. Hit by a bus on Calle Bo­li­var. The dri­ver said she jumped in front of it. No way to stop in time.

Sanderas saved our boy for now. He is still sick.

I do not know if there was some­thing I could have done for Se­le­na, or not done, that might have made a dif­fer­ence. I don’t know what I’d do with­out Juani­to.

Gra­ciela was laid off again, so she is help­ing me, tak­ing care of things. She says to say ho­la.

Mar­co.

Corin­na slow­ly raised her eyes from the sin­gle, ter­ri­ble page. She could imag­ine no words that would be of any re­al use. Oziel hadn’t moved, not even to shift his gaze to an­oth­er spot on the floor.

“How aw­ful,” she said. “How ab­solute­ly aw­ful.” Af­ter a while, she asked, just to have some­thing to say, “Who’s Gra­ciela?”

“Our youngest sis­ter.”

“It’s good he has fam­i­ly to help him.” It was im­pos­si­ble to say any­thing that didn’t sound stu­pid. “Did Se­le­na have a big fam­i­ly too?”

“On­ly one liv­ing sis­ter.”

Good God, thought Corin­na. When you heard about the short av­er­age life span in the third world, and didn’t think much about it, there was some vague as­sump­tion of a com­pressed life much like your own. Peo­ple just got old at forty five and died peace­ful­ly at fifty sev­en. But of course that was non­sense. What it meant was that peo­ple’s chil­dren died. Their younger sis­ters died. Their broth­ers and wives and nephews died.

Slow­ly she reached out to touch his hand.

“I am so sor­ry to hear this,” she said soft­ly. “I am so sor­ry.”

He felt warm and dry, as if fire burned with­in him. She felt the lit­tle hairs on the back of his hand, and the smooth, round­ed bones un­der his skin.

He bent his head down, fight­ing tears Corin­na guessed.

“I don’t un­der­stand,” he fi­nal­ly whis­pered, bare­ly au­di­ble even now that the din­ner crowd had thinned a bit. “I just don’t un­der­stand. Se­le­na had all the fight in our fam­i­ly. She was a school or­ga­niz­er. That’s what she did. She made sure peo­ple could learn to read.” He made a wry face in the mid­dle of his grief.

“A ‘school or­ga­niz­er’?” Corin­na couldn’t see how that fit in with deal­ing drugs. Or had she been in jail for some­thing else? “She was in a fight?”

“You could say that,” he mut­tered. “She fought to let peo­ple read. The au­thor­i­ties want on­ly gov­ern­ment schools around the bar­rio, but no­body learns any­thing there. Se­le­na or­ga­nized read­ing class­es. So of course it had to be a con­spir­a­cy to over­throw the gov­ern­ment be­cause there are groups of poor peo­ple all putting their heads to­geth­er.” Dis­gust and con­tempt joined the grief on his face.

“That sort of thing is still go­ing on?” asked Corin­na, feel­ing what a stu­pid ques­tion it was the sec­ond the words were out of her mouth.

He gave her a brief, black stare and looked back down.

She could have kicked her­self. She felt as frozen as if she re­al­ly had kicked her­self, right in the chest. Peo­ple were dy­ing while id­iots like her blun­dered around say­ing Prob­lem? There’s a prob­lem? At least with plain old cru­el­ty, your suf­fer­ing wasn’t in­vis­i­ble.

“I’m sor­ry,” she whis­pered, but she couldn’t seem to find enough voice to make sure he could hear her.

He took a long breath.

“Yes,” he said, speak­ing too slow­ly, but not oth­er­wise rub­bing in how dumb a com­ment it was. “That sort of thing is still go­ing on.” Af­ter an­oth­er long breath, he added, “It’s bet­ter than in my grand­moth­er’s day, I guess. Then peo­ple like Se­le­na just dis­ap­peared. Now … they don’t kill pris­on­ers and we don’t blow up planes.” He took up the let­ter again. “But this…. I’d kill the rats with my bare hands if I was in Cara­cas right now.”

Corin­na could see that it wasn’t a fig­ure of speech.

Af­ter an­oth­er long time he said, “How could some­one like her change so much? If noth­ing hap­pened?”

How in­deed, thought Corin­na.

“How long was she in prison?”

“On­ly a month. They tried, but they could nev­er make their stu­pid charges stick.” Corin­na could see he was proud of his broth­er’s wife. “Then all of a sud­den they changed their minds and let her out. To die.”

To kill her­self, Corin­na cor­rect­ed, pri­vate­ly. That sound­ed to­tal­ly out of char­ac­ter for this woman, which meant it would take dam­age to the brain to make her change so sud­den­ly. But the doc­tor would have no­ticed a blow to the head or a drug over­dose. The right neu­ro­trans­mit­ters could have done it, of course, but they were way too ex­pen­sive to be hand­ed out to some­one as poor as Se­le­na. Come to think of it, her symp­toms, at least the stu­pid smile, sound­ed like an en­dor­phin over­load. Had the doc­tor test­ed for any­thing like that when he’d said he couldn’t find any­thing wrong? Then she an­swered her own ques­tion. Of course he hadn’t. Why should he? Stuff that made gold look cheap didn’t ex­ist in the bar­rio.

En­dor­phins seemed to be pop­ping up every­where. Wal­lis’s brain sam­ples, Jonathan’s vials, and pos­si­bly they ex­plained Do­ran’s, and now Se­le­na’s, symp­toms. If there was a con­nec­tion, though, Corin­na couldn’t see it.

“Oziel, tell me, it’s very im­por­tant I know the ex­act sit­u­a­tion —”

“Hi! Any­one sit­ting here?”

The din of talk, of scrap­ing chairs, of clat­ter­ing plates rushed in­to Corin­na’s and Oziel’s pri­vate uni­verse. The stranger looked tak­en aback at the two blank faces star­ing as if he had tele­port­ed in through the wall.

Corin­na waved her hand ex­pan­sive­ly at the chair. “Take the chair. We don’t need it.” That solved the prob­lem for every­one. The re­lieved stranger ab­scond­ed with the chair to a less oc­cu­pied table and Corin­na said,

“Now, where were we?”

“You want­ed to know, you said, ‘the ex­act sit­u­a­tion’,” Oziel re­peat­ed me­chan­i­cal­ly, as if he was read­ing it off a screen in­stead of re­mem­ber­ing it.

“Oh, yes. Did your sis­ter-in-law ever show any be­hav­ior at all sim­i­lar to what Mar­co de­scribes?”

Oziel shook his head with­out need­ing any time to think.

“When she was very sad, for in­stance?” Corin­na per­sist­ed. Oziel shook his head more vig­or­ous­ly.

Then it had to be some­thing that hap­pened in the prison.

“She said ‘noth­ing’ hap­pened, but maybe she meant ‘noth­ing painful.’ Did she get any in­jec­tions? Any sort of med­ical treat­ment?”

“I don’t think so,” said Oziel. “We’re all so sus­pi­cious of any­thing that gets done in prison, she wouldn’t have said ‘noth­ing’ then. If she said ‘noth­ing,’ she meant ‘noth­ing.’ She ate, she slept, she was re­leased.”

“It makes no sense,” said Corin­na to her­self. “These are great big mol­e­cules. The lungs won’t ab­sorb them, al­though I sup­pose they could —.”

“What are big mol­e­cules?”

“Neu­ro­trans­mit­ters. Be­hav­ior mod­i­fiers. I thought maybe they’d giv­en her some, but there’s no vis­i­ble means of de­liv­ery, and there’s no mo­tive. Why would any­one spend thou­sands of dol­lars on en­dor­phins for a poor woman, or a felon, how­ev­er you look at it?”

Oziel seemed to be think­ing, com­ing out of his stunned grief. Corin­na was glad to see it.

“Could they have fed her some­thing that last­ed for weeks af­ter her re­lease?”

“No, there’s noth­ing like that. And an in­ject­ed time-re­lease cap­sule is def­i­nite­ly some­thing you’d no­tice.”

“We are not be­ing log­i­cal about this,” said Oziel out loud but to him­self. “If there’s no plot, we have sep­a­rate events with no ex­pla­na­tion. We should as­sume they’re up to some­thing, and see where that takes us.”

“But why? What’s the con­spir­a­cy for?” urged Corin­na.

“Se­le­na has been in prison three times. They beat her the oth­er two times.” Corin­na in­haled sharply. “As soon as Se­le­na was out, she was or­ga­niz­ing again. This time she did noth­ing. … She did more than noth­ing. She did their work for them. She … she killed her­self.” The grey­ness stole back on­to his face.

“I see,” said Corin­na in a very small voice. “Okay. Con­spir­a­cy. Some­body is us­ing en­dor­phins, and who knows what else, sero­tonins per­haps, in­stead of wa­ter can­nons. They’d have to dis­trib­ute the stuff — OH.” She stopped abrupt­ly, re­mem­ber­ing.

“Food ri­ots. Down forty per­cent,” she whis­pered.

“What?” asked Oziel.

“They’re past the test­ing phase al­ready,” she mut­tered. “Un­less us­ing it in pris­ons is like a field test. God help us, I won­der how many peo­ple they’ve de­stroyed by now.”

“They kill peo­ple, these drugs of yours?” asked Oziel, star­ing at his let­ter.

She want­ed to say “they’re not my drugs,” but she let it go.

“The en­dor­phins wouldn’t kill you, but the hor­ri­ble feel­ing you were los­ing your mind … that could dri­ve you mad. It would ex­plain the pe­cu­liar in­crease in bur­ial costs Ching men­tioned, if what they’re us­ing takes some peo­ple the way it did Se­le­na.”

She tried to run the rest of that con­ver­sa­tion through her mem­o­ry.

“Mor­bier was there too, talk­ing about some­one splic­ing in­to his com­put­er. Plus, I know for a fact they’re work­ing on some­thing to do with en­dor­phins, and that they clam up when­ev­er I’m there.” She felt choked, as if she’d for­got­ten to breathe. She took a gulp of air.

“They must all be in it. All the way here on Mars.” Af­ter a sec­ond, she added, “I doubt this is what UNPB meant when they want­ed dan­ger­ous re­search done away from Earth.”

Oziel didn’t seem to be lis­ten­ing.

“Splic­ing?” he mut­tered. “What did your boss say, ex­act­ly?”

Corin­na was sur­prised that her boss’s sil­ly com­put­er prob­lems should con­cern him at a time like this.

“All I heard was that he’d no­ticed a break-in.”

Oziel leaned back and stud­ied the floor, as if vi­tal an­swers were wo­ven in­to the gray tiles.

“It is in­ter­est­ing, Corin­na.” He said her name as if it was a ti­tle. “You seem to do noth­ing but help me. This is the fourth time.”

“It is? What do you mean?”

He looked straight at her for many sec­onds longer than or­di­nary con­ver­sa­tion al­lowed, and seemed to come to a de­ci­sion.

“What I mean is you have saved me a lot of trou­ble. Trou­ble like los­ing my job and go­ing to jail. I’ll have to be more care­ful in fu­ture.”

“More care­ful!” Corin­na sput­tered. “Was it…?” She had as­sumed he was in day­care be­cause he was too, well, too un­skilled for any­thing else.

“The night life was not healthy in my bar­rio in Cara­cas,” said Oziel qui­et­ly. “We stole com­put­ers and played with them.”

“The night life here is on the bor­ing side,” said Corin­na slow­ly. “Par­tic­u­lar­ly if you can’t sleep.”

“Yes,” he said.

“But,” she be­gan and stopped and then be­gan again. It was a rude ques­tion, but she was too cu­ri­ous. “But what are you do­ing in day care? You could be pulling in se­ri­ous mon­ey.”

Oziel let out a small emp­ty puff of a laugh.

“They’ll hire some­one out of a slum with no back­ground and with bare­ly a high school de­gree to take care of their kids. But their com­put­ers? I don’t think so. No, I like chil­dren. I make enough to live on and to send mon­ey home to my fam­i­ly. I’m out of the bar­rio.”

Well, she’d meant he could steal it, but that op­tion didn’t seem to be on the table for him. And as far as mak­ing an hon­est liv­ing went, he was suc­cess­ful in his own con­text. Both safe and not starv­ing. How did that dif­fer from her de­sire for in­ter­est­ing work rather than high pay?

“I see,” she said. He had suc­ceed­ed much bet­ter than she had.

Af­ter min­utes of si­lence passed, Oziel star­ing at his let­ter, Corin­na star­ing at the wall, she said,

“That means it’s def­i­nite­ly not just No­bel prize-win­ning re­search that went wrong.”

“What?” he said, com­ing back from an­oth­er uni­verse.

“They’re not keep­ing some neat, new pro­ject se­cret be­cause they don’t want to be scooped. Or be­cause they’re try­ing to cov­er their tracks af­ter a bad ac­ci­dent. They’re keep­ing it se­cret be­cause it’s se­cret. They’d have a fit if they knew I know. And you know what else makes sense now? Brain sam­ples from kids who are rays of sun­shine. I’ll bet any­thing they’re test­ing nat­ur­al vari­a­tion in the en­dor­phin sys­tem in dif­fer­ent peo­ple.” She leaned back in her chair and fold­ed and re-fold­ed her nap­kin. “I thought Do­ran’s symp­toms sound­ed a lot like a hero­in over­dose. That’s what too much en­dor­phin would prob­a­bly look like. I bet Wal­lis re­al­ly did kill that poor kid with some ex­per­i­men­tal gene ther­a­py that went wrong. Has the au­top­sy come through yet?”

Oziel shook his head.

“God,” she said, mut­ter­ing to her­self, “brain­wash­ing. Lit­er­al brain­wash­ing. World paci­fi­ca­tion by brain­wash­ing. All us­ing clever lit­tle hap­py genes be­ing made right here.” The train of con­jec­tures kept grow­ing, pulling in what had been ran­dom facts.

“Wal­lis! What was Di­cas­til­lo say­ing about Wal­lis?” Oziel hadn’t moved, so she tapped his arm.

“At the par­ty,” she prompt­ed him. “When Di­cas­til­lo was growl­ing about his grand­son be­ing a wild an­i­mal. What did he say about Wal­lis?”

Oziel pulled him­self to­geth­er with a vis­i­ble ef­fort.

“Wal­lis?”

“The kid was scream­ing his head off, he’d just used grand­dad as a race­track, the daugh­ter was recit­ing, and he said some­thing about … let me think …. ‘Take him to Wal­lis and just one treat­ment will make him a po­lite and smil­ing boy.’ Or some­thing to that ef­fect.”

Oziel frowned.

“Yes. I re­mem­ber that too.”

“Is there any such treat­ment for dif­fi­cult kids?”

“I haven’t heard of any. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t ex­ist. Al­though in my pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion,” there was the slight­est quirk of a smile on his grey face, “he doesn’t need any treat­ment his moth­er couldn’t get in a few par­ent­ing class­es.”

She an­swered that with wry agree­ment, then the two of them stared at each oth­er as the im­pli­ca­tions sank fur­ther in.

“His own grand­son,” she whis­pered. “That means Di­cas­til­lo is in on it. He’s prob­a­bly fund­ing the whole thing. He prob­a­bly thinks it’ll be a great way to deal with pesky pro­tes­tors who in­ter­fere with his plans.” She drew a deep breath. “We’re not fool­ing around in the lit­tle leagues, are we?”

Oziel shook his head.

“His own grand­son,” she re­peat­ed. “I won­der if they could pos­si­bly re­al­ly be­lieve that they’re do­ing any­one a fa­vor with this stuff? Oh, hell. Can we warn his moth­er some­how? With­out get­ting killed?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t see my­self walk­ing up to the Señora and say­ing, ‘Ey, keep Pe­tey away from Dr. Wal­lis.’ She’d want ex­pla­na­tions, and her fa­ther would hear about it.”

“Mm-yes. That prob­a­bly wouldn’t work. Still, watch for an op­por­tu­ni­ty. If we can, we should warn her. Too many peo­ple have died al­ready. We have to fig­ure out some­thing we can do.”

She looked at him with wide eyes. Noth­ing in her ex­ten­sive ed­u­ca­tion had pre­pared her to do any­thing but hand it over to the po­lice, and she had noth­ing ex­cept three pil­fered sam­ples to show them. They would laugh at her.

He had gone back to star­ing at his let­ter when she men­tioned dy­ing.

“What I’m go­ing to do,” he said apolo­get­i­cal­ly, “is go to my dorm. I think I could stand it now.”

He stretched his legs as if he’d for­got­ten he had them. He took the fate­ful let­ter from the table, fold­ed it care­ful­ly, and put it in his breast pock­et.

“I’ll tell Mar­co what you said — by se­cure mail.” He paused.

“It’ll help him just as much as me.” He looked straight at her and didn’t look away.

Gra­cias, Corin­na.”

 

Chap­ter 5

One prob­lem Corin­na had failed to con­sid­er was the dif­fi­cul­ty of in­ter­act­ing with Mor­bier as if noth­ing had hap­pened. When he came in­to the lab just be­fore lunch the next morn­ing, she felt as if she had a sign on her say­ing, “Sus­pect Me.”

She just hoped he would wait till she was done show­ing one of the techs and a grad stu­dent how to pull a ce­sium chlo­ride den­si­ty gra­di­ent. These things could be ru­ined by an awk­ward breath and then, of course, Mor­bier would give her one of his sum­ming-up looks.

He wait­ed stolid­ly till she drew the pipette tip out of the so­lu­tion, com­plet­ing the demon­stra­tion.

“Okay, prac­tice on these tubes. I’ll be back in a minute.” She turned to Mor­bier and he came straight to the point.

“Corin­na, I’d like you to take this week’s trip to check on the ex­posed rab­bits.”

“Uh,” she said un­cer­tain­ly. A hun­dred thoughts were whirling through her head, and she could nev­er think of the right thing to say then. Why was Mor­bier giv­ing her a job nor­mal­ly re­served for the techs? It was noth­ing but clean­ing rab­bit cages. The rab­bits might be ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered, but they were still just rab­bits. A doc­tor­ate was hard­ly need­ed for the task.

“Is that, uh, the best use of my time?” she asked, try­ing to put it po­lite­ly. “I’m pret­ty swamped here with things the techs can’t do and—.”

“I want to be sure it gets done right,” Mor­bier in­ter­rupt­ed. “Check the con­di­tions in the habi­tats care­ful­ly while you’re there. We’ve been get­ting high­er death rates in some of them, and I want to be sure that re­flects ge­net­ics and not just poor care.”

He turned away, the dis­cus­sion at an end, while Corin­na was still say­ing, “Uh, sure.”

For some rea­son, he seemed to be de­ter­mined to get her out of the lab. Again. What could they be plan­ning that would take all day? And why did they have to do it here? There were tens of labs, Ching’s among them, that had the same equip­ment, where they could per­form lengthy pro­ce­dures with­out fear of in­ter­rup­tion by watch­ful post­docs.

In any case, her mere phys­i­cal pres­ence in the lab wouldn’t stop them from work­ing on sin­is­ter pro­jects. Then she had a chill­ing thought. Maybe the point was not to get her out of the lab, but to get her out on the sur­face. Out where Jonathan’s pre­de­ces­sor had died.

If he’d stum­bled across a se­cret he wasn’t sup­posed to know, and if they’d found out, it would be sim­plic­i­ty it­self to arrange an “ac­ci­dent” out on the sur­face. Maybe the emp­ty tank had been that sort of an ac­ci­dent. For a pan­icked mo­ment she thought she should have re­fused to go. She should have … but she knew she couldn’t have. If she start­ed dis­obey­ing the boss’s di­rect or­ders, he’d fire her, and in her busi­ness that meant she would nev­er get an­oth­er job.

Then, as she be­gan to get a grip on her­self, she de­cid­ed she must be over­re­act­ing. They didn’t know she knew, and even though Mor­bier was ob­vi­ous­ly in­volved in some­thing that re­sult­ed in deaths like Do­ran’s and Se­le­na’s, he hadn’t per­son­al­ly mur­dered them. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the mal­func­tion­ing suit hadn’t found any ev­i­dence of foul play. There was a long road be­tween find­ing clever ways for oth­er peo­ple to kill peo­ple and do­ing it your­self. Af­ter all, the sci­en­tists who in­vent­ed the atom bomb, on both sides of that par­tic­u­lar war, had prob­a­bly been well-man­nered peo­ple who were kind to dogs.

It would not, how­ev­er, hurt to plan for all con­tin­gen­cies. Who knew what Mor­bier was ca­pa­ble of? She need­ed to check out the rover and her suit by the book. She would take ex­tra oxy­gen tanks. And she would take a bud­dy this time, in­stead of qui­et­ly flout­ing that reg­u­la­tion as she usu­al­ly did. For a mo­ment, she wa­vered in her de­ci­sion to take no ex­tra risks. Round­ing up some­one was in­con­ve­nient and mak­ing con­ver­sa­tion for umpteen hours was even worse, but she lec­tured her­self that this was no time to be finicky. Her tech, Gor­don Smith, would be her first choice, since he had once been a rover me­chan­ic be­fore switch­ing to lab work. How­ev­er, she had no sol­id da­ta prov­ing he was not one of Them, in which case it might be worse than use­less to take him along.

Most peo­ple had to be un­in­volved in what­ev­er Mor­bier and his cronies had cooked up, but the on­ly proven out­sider was Oziel. She could take him. So far, he hadn’t crowd­ed her, and maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. Of course, so far, they seemed to do noth­ing but dis­cuss death, which might cramp even the pushi­est fel­low’s style. How­ev­er, she would just have to hope for the best. Tam­bi­ka and Mei-mei were both much too busy to take a day off. There wasn’t any­one else.

Look­ing on the bright side, there was al­so the fact that she quite en­joyed rab­bit-feed­ing trips. It gave her an­oth­er rare chance to see Mars up close and to lis­ten to the whis­per of its wind­blown sand grains on her hel­met when she held her breath enough to hear. If the truth were told, she en­joyed the rab­bits too. They were alive and re­al and fur­ry and com­plete­ly un­fazed by their abil­i­ty to live where no an­i­mal had lived be­fore. In ad­di­tion to the an­tifreeze genes be­ing test­ed in them, the rab­bits had new, im­proved he­mo­glo­bin that al­lowed them to live in low pres­sure habi­tats where Corin­na couldn’t even take her suit off. It was strange to think that an­i­mals might be de­vel­oped, in time, for whom Mars was hard­ly dan­ger­ous.

By now it was well in­to the lunch hour and, ex­cept for a cou­ple of grad­u­ate stu­dents, the lab was emp­ty. Corin­na sneaked her con­tra­band files off her lap­top on­to her more pow­er­ful desk­top work­sta­tion. Al­though she’d iden­ti­fied two of the spec­i­mens as en­dor­phin-re­lat­ed, the third one didn’t match any­thing ob­vi­ous, and her lap­top’s puny 3D mod­el­ing abil­i­ties couldn’t get a han­dle on it. She need­ed to try some of the more so­phis­ti­cat­ed ge­net­ic search en­gines avail­able on the web. Then she’d have her an­swer in min­utes.

What came back in min­utes was “no match.” That was be­yond strange. The first two had been straight­for­ward hu­man genes, one cod­ing for en­dor­phi­nase, one for a reg­u­la­tor of en­dor­phin pro­duc­tion. Could the third have been part of some to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent pro­ject? But then why would Jonathan have been car­ry­ing it care­ful­ly from lab to lab?

She was star­ing at the se­quence on her work­sta­tion when she be­came aware of some­one en­ter­ing the lab. Be­fore she could so much as close the win­dow, Mor­bier was there.

He looked at her screen.

“GP-19, hm­mm? You’ve al­ready giv­en up on 18?”

“Oh, this is just an idea I want­ed to check out. It should rad­i­cal­ly change the con­for­ma­tion of the arms,” she lied des­per­ate­ly, “which should ei­ther work bet­ter than half mea­sures, or not at all.”

“Hmm?” he said again. “Well, show the align­ment. If it’s too far off, you know it won’t work.”

Corin­na’s brain seized up. On­ly a very sim­i­lar mol­e­cule would line up with the oth­er gly­co­pro­tein genes she had, and if this did not line up, it would be ob­vi­ous she was work­ing on some­thing else. He knew that. He was pur­pose­ly try­ing to catch her out, which meant he knew this was not re­al­ly a gly­co­pro­tein gene. But how did he know?

She slow­ly start­ed the key­strokes of do­ing an align­ment, fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to get her brain in gear. It oc­curred to her to call one of the grad­u­ate stu­dents over. They were eter­nal­ly bug­ging her when she had oth­er work to do. For once, they could in­ter­rupt when she need­ed them to.

“Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“You may want to ask Dr. Mor­bier your topo­log­i­cal geom­e­try ques­tion. It’s go­ing to take me a minute to get this align­ment up.”

The stu­dent did not need to be told twice. He pounced.

“Oh, Dr. Mor­bier, that’d be great. I’m re­al­ly hav­ing trou­ble with some of my mol­e­c­u­lar mod­els. Let me show you on my ter­mi­nal over here.”

Since Mor­bier was ap­par­ent­ly do­ing noth­ing more than tak­ing a friend­ly in­ter­est in Corin­na’s work, he couldn’t refuse. Still, Corin­na was pret­ty sure she saw an­noyed im­pa­tience leak­ing around his im­pas­sive fa­cade.

In a twin­kling she pulled up some re­al fish gly­co­pro­tein se­quences, ran­dom­ly al­tered some bases, re­named the se­quences GP-19, and re­moved her trans­gres­sions.

“It aligns,” she told Mor­bier over the grad stu­dent’s shoul­der, “but it doesn’t look very good. I’ve left it up on my screen. I was go­ing to get a bite to eat, so I can get back in time to clean up the sam­ples com­ing out of the ex­trac­tor.”

Mor­bier waved her on in­dif­fer­ent­ly, ap­par­ent­ly aban­don­ing the pro­ject of catch­ing her this time.

 

The cafe­te­ria at lunch time was quite as bad as din­ner time. The hub­bub was deaf­en­ing. Sta­tion work­ers might as well be star­lings the way they con­gre­gat­ed at meal times, like bored pas­sen­gers on space lin­ers.

She spot­ted Oziel eat­ing lunch with a cou­ple of women. She pulled over a chair and joined them. Right now, the last thing she want­ed was to sit at a table full of sci­en­tists car­ry­ing on one of the usu­al, in­ter­minable dis­cus­sions of lab tech­niques.

Oziel gave no sign of his trou­bles. He was a bit sub­dued. That was all. Corin­na wouldn’t have even no­ticed it if she hadn’t looked for it. He in­tro­duced her to the pleas­ant-faced, mid­dle-aged woman.

“Doc­to­ra Corin­na Mansur, who is work­ing for Dr. Mor­bier. Al­ice Drum­mond, my boss.”

She was go­ing to have to speak to him about this “doc­to­ra” busi­ness, even though on a se­cret lev­el she was tick­led at the im­plied re­spect. She nod­ded at Ms. Drum­mond with an em­bar­rassed smile.

“And Zoë Ag­nel­li, who usu­al­ly works on my shift.”

Corin­na nod­ded again. Luck­i­ly she did not have to find top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion be­cause they car­ried on where they had left off, dis­cussing whether dust from the canyon or dust from the plateau made bet­ter clay for the kids when it was mixed with wa­ter.

She had ar­rived late and the two women were soon fin­ished with their lunch­es and left, af­ter more friend­ly nods all around.

“You’re not usu­al­ly here at meal times,” said Oziel. “Why break the tra­di­tion?”

His smile was pleased and wel­com­ing, and down­right hap­py. At first she was hap­py too, but then she be­gan to wor­ry that he might de­cide to run with it. Eight hours in a rover fend­ing him off would be hor­ri­ble. He’d been a pleas­ant change from most guys, so far, in keep­ing him­self to him­self. It’d be a shame if that evap­o­rat­ed. Then she re­mind­ed her­self to hold on. He hadn’t done any­thing. Yet.

“Oh, I’ve de­cid­ed to get a life,” she fi­nal­ly an­swered. “Any­way, Mor­bier was gun­ning for me just be­fore I es­caped.”

Oziel’s eye­brows went up.

“He ap­peared the minute I start­ed look­ing at en­dor­phi­nas­es on my com­put­er. It was un­can­ny.”

“They must be track­ing your net ac­cess. They prob­a­bly have flags set to see if you look at any­thing to do with those drugs of yours.”

“Jeez, they could do that, couldn’t they? But if I ever found out, I could get them for in­ter­fer­ing with my aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom, what there is of it. There was a law­suit about some­thing like this decades ago.”

“Re­al­ly?” Oziel seemed en­ter­tained by the idea. “Well, an un­trace­able tap would re­quire a hard­wired con­nec­tion at the serv­er, which would take a lot of knowhow.”

“A hard­wired…. They could do that, couldn’t they? It wouldn’t even be that dif­fi­cult. Look up the schemat­ics on the net and then use a log­ic probe—.”

That’s what Jonathan had been do­ing while she was at that damn par­ty. Why hadn’t she thought of that im­me­di­ate­ly? Ad­mit­ted­ly, it had hap­pened be­fore she’d un­der­stood the scope of the se­cret pro­ject.

“Hell,” she said, “if that’s true, they could al­so be go­ing over my files look­ing for god-knows-what. And — oh, Christ — I was us­ing the net to search for an en­dor­phi­nase match just af­ter he put that damn tap on. They could as­sume it’s just some­thing left over from my PhD work, but I’ll bet they don’t. … But maybe it’s not too bad. I’ve been delet­ing stuff off the work­sta­tion as I go along. … But that was just in case of or­di­nary boss-type snoop­ing. If they start go­ing through every­thing I’ve ac­cessed on the whole net­work …. Could you clean up any log files and make sure the deletes are re­al­ly gone?”

He nod­ded, and smiled again. He said he’d deal with it from one of the game ter­mi­nals in the park, and he seemed glad she’d asked him.

She sup­pressed a frown. Was he go­ing to start as­sum­ing she owed him some­thing now?

“Game ter­mi­nals?” she asked. “You mean so they can’t trace it back to any­one in par­tic­u­lar? Why not the li­brary or the shops?”

“I know the game ter­mi­nals work. I’ve used them be­fore to play com­put­er tag.”

“Com­put­er tag?”

“You get in­to dif­fer­ent parts of the sys­tem and then you have to hang around long enough to give oth­er play­ers a chance to find you. You win if they can’t get in, they win if they tag you.”

“How can you get in­to sys­tems all over the place? Sure, a few use pass­words, but the big ones use prime en­cryp­tion or iris scans. You can’t fake that.”

“What hap­pens af­ter you en­ter the right sig­nal?” he asked pa­tient­ly.

Corin­na frowned at the ex­am­i­na­tion, but an­swered.

“The com­put­er match­es it up some­where, I guess.”

“Right. So all you have to do is tell it there’s a match.”

“Oh. Sort of like hot-wiring a car.”

. That’s why they call it splic­ing. It can be hard to find the splice point, but there has to be one or you’d have to be phys­i­cal­ly in front of a phys­i­cal ma­chine to do any­thing if it went wrong.”

“So, there’s bunch­es of you mid­night ban­dits play­ing games with each oth­er?”

“On Earth, yes. We had a ring of a hun­dred and more from all over the world.” He smiled at the mem­o­ry.

“And on Mars?” she prompt­ed him.

“Here there’s on­ly two. Me and some­body on the main base at Ar­sia.”

Corin­na shook her head.

“But don’t you guys think about the dam­age you could do? What if you de­stroyed da­ta?” Da­ta, for her, was some­thing you guard­ed with your life. She was a sci­en­tist.

Oziel just looked at her and she re­al­ized she’d in­sult­ed him.

“Any­way,” she said, look­ing down at the table, “them mess­ing about with my com­put­er may not be the worst prob­lem. All of a sud­den Mor­bier wants me, and no one else, to go out and check on the rab­bits.” Now that she knew about the net­work tap, and that they were aware of her en­dor­phi­nase search­es, the or­der to spend time on the sur­face looked even more sin­is­ter.

He didn’t seem to catch the im­pli­ca­tion.

“The rab­bits are in four mi­ni-domes pret­ty far away from the Sta­tion. Mor­bier could try to arrange an ac­ci­dent for me. I mean, what could be eas­i­er once you’ve got some­body out in a rover?”

“There would be much pa­per­work if you died un­der mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances,” said Oziel as if this was a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty, there­by mak­ing Corin­na’s blood run cold­er by sev­er­al de­grees.

“The poor did­dums,” she mut­tered.

“No, se­ri­ous­ly. It would draw at­ten­tion to them. They don’t want that. I don’t think they’re go­ing to try some­thing like that. Not yet any­way.”

“Well, that’s pret­ty much what I thought too, but I fig­ure it might be a good idea to find some­one re­li­able as a bud­dy. I’m sure as lob­sters not go­ing alone this time. Best, of course, would be some­one who knows about rovers, but main­ly it has to be some­one who’s not go­ing to mur­der me.”

“I won’t mur­der you,” said Oziel with some­thing that came aw­ful­ly close to a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al wink.

She tried again not to frown.

“Yes. That’s what I fig­ured. You re­al­ize it’s go­ing to be a lot of bor­ing work clean­ing out rab­bit cages.” Judg­ing by the pleased gleam in his eyes, he ex­pect­ed this to be a hol­i­day trip.

“I’ll be glad to help any way I can. I haven’t been out on the sur­face yet. Rover rental costs as much as I make in a month. And I’m hap­py you thought of me.”

Yes, she’d gath­ered that.

“It’s just a rab­bit-feed­ing trip,” she re­it­er­at­ed. “Do you have any use­ful skills for that?”

The mo­ment the words left her mouth, she re­al­ized there were sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter ways to phrase the ques­tion, even if she did want him to grasp that they weren’t go­ing to have fun.

“For rover work, I mean,” she added quick­ly in a use­less at­tempt to cov­er her gaffe.

“I know noth­ing about rovers,” he said with­out any de­fen­sive­ness, as if she hadn’t just been rude. “But if there was an emer­gency, you could do worse. One of the rea­sons I was hired for the day­care job is that I have ba­sic train­ing as an emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian. We’ll hope that’s use­less on this trip. Be­sides that, Corin­na, I grew up in a bar­rio.” She looked up and saw him look­ing straight at her. “My whole life was an emer­gency in ways that I think you maybe can’t imag­ine.”

It was lucky she had de­cid­ed long ago not to get in­volved with any­one again. Oth­er­wise, un­der that in­tense, black-eyed gaze, things might have be­come dif­fi­cult.

“You prob­a­bly couldn’t go Mon­day?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Well, I work most week­ends any­way. I could go Sun­day. You’re up on your safe­ty train­ing?”

He nod­ded.

“That’ll have to do then.”

“I have to work Sun­day evening, but we’ll be back be­fore then, yes?”

“We’ll be back be­fore dark.”

“When should I be at the rover ter­mi­nal?”

“Six am, Sun­day.”

They both stood up.

“To the park?” he asked. “I still have fif­teen min­utes be­fore I’m due back.”

“Jeez, you can break in and clean every­thing up that fast?”

“I’m as­sum­ing I don’t have to break any­thing. You’ll be there to let me in.”

“Mmm,” mum­bled Corin­na. It was a sim­ple sys­tem that used pass­words rather than scans, to make it easy for dif­fer­ent peo­ple to man­age it. She won­dered whether be­ing in Oziel’s vicin­i­ty with pass­words was such a good idea. Then she thought that he could prob­a­bly break in faster than she could re­mem­ber the stu­pid things any­way, so it hard­ly mat­tered.

 

Chap­ter 6

The big met­al doors of the rover air­lock slid closed be­hind them with slow pre­ci­sion. The rover rolled on, guid­ed by satel­lites, to­ward its first pro­grammed stop an hour away. Corin­na took a deep breath. She had been up since four in the morn­ing, go­ing over the truck-sized ma­chine lit­er­al­ly by the book. The me­chan­ic on night shift had been hap­py to help just to keep him­self awake. She had found noth­ing. More im­por­tant­ly, he had found noth­ing. If They had any­thing planned, it prob­a­bly was not sup­posed to hap­pen un­til she and Oziel were be­yond help, so she could re­lax for now.

How­ev­er, now that the time had come to test her as­sump­tion about Mor­bier’s un­will­ing­ness to kill her, us­ing her­self as the guinea pig — and, to be fair, us­ing Oziel too — she was ner­vous. There was no deny­ing it. She couldn’t have felt jumpi­er if a cou­ple of ba­by rab­bits had de­cid­ed to take up res­i­dence in her midriff and scam­per around.

She stared back­ward through the clear plas­tic dome cov­er­ing the top of the front third of the rover and en­clos­ing the con­trol sec­tion. Rovers looked some­thing like out­size tanks, ex­cept that they had eight big, con­i­cal wheels in­stead of treads. Each cone could roll over an ob­sta­cle in­de­pen­dent of all the oth­ers, and the widest part of the cone formed a very sta­ble wheel. The win­dow­less cab­in nestling be­tween the wheels of­fi­cial­ly had four bunks in it, but Corin­na was glad she’d nev­er been in the two me­ter by three me­ter space with more than one oth­er per­son. The nicest place to sit was in the two-seater con­trol sec­tion with its 360° view, perched above the main body of the rover. The big air­lock had just eased in­to fi­nal po­si­tion and sealed. It posed an in­ter­est­ing philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion. Not on­ly was there no one to hear the door’s clos­ing hiss, there was al­most no air to trans­mit it. So did the door still make a hiss? Or not?

Speak­ing for her­self, she was quite sure that if she need­ed to scream in that end­less desert of dusty stone, she would be scream­ing, whether any­one heard her or not.

Oziel near­ly pressed his nose against the plas­tic, star­ing up at the moun­tain tow­er­ing over Fog­gy Bot­tom and at the whole basin rimmed on one side by the Labyrinth of Night and on the oth­er by Mariner’s Canyon. He had come on board with noth­ing, not even a dis­pos­able tourist cam­era.

“We’re not go­ing to be that busy feed­ing rab­bits,” she’d said. “You’ll have time for a pic­ture or two. You want to run back and get a cam­era?”

He’d done noth­ing but smile faint­ly and shake his head.

It dawned on her that it was a dumb thing to say. Even dis­pos­ables cost mon­ey.

“Do you want to bor­row a cam­era?” she asked.

He shrugged in what was per­haps em­bar­rass­ment.

“It’s Mar­co,” he be­gan ex­plain­ing. “I’m try­ing to send him every­thing I can for Juani­to. He says it’s go­ing bet­ter, but I think he’s just say­ing that. He sounds kind of des­per­ate and I’m re­al­ly wor­ried — and, well, any­way, that isn’t the point.”

He stopped him­self abrupt­ly.

“The point is, yes, I would like it if I could bor­row a cam­era.”

She’d come back with one of the lab’s cam­eras.

“I’ve set every­thing to au­to, so it should just be a mat­ter of push­ing this but­ton.” She showed him which one. “But let me know if you have any ques­tions, okay? These things have more op­tions than a space ship.”

Right now he was pho­tograph­ing tow­er­ing hoodoos of rock gath­ered at the base of the bro­ken cliffs on their right, scoured by eons of wind in­to elon­gat­ed sculp­tures. In Earth’s grav­i­ty and wa­ter, they would have tum­bled long ago, but here they stood, look­ing un­nat­ur­al to earth­ly eyes, like the prop­er­ty of be­ings about to stride forth from the crevices. The land­scape was more brown and ocher than red, al­though Corin­na re­mem­bered it had looked red­der to her the first time she saw it. The hu­man brain seemed to ab­sorb the im­prob­a­ble pinks and trans­fer them on­to some tem­plate of what a land­scape ought to look like.

The sky was the hard­est thing to get used to. It was a milky, or­ange-pink­ish bowl with oc­ca­sion­al green­ish tones, the sort of sky which is beau­ti­ful on­ly from be­hind a stout plas­teel win­dow. No­body, af­ter one glance, would dream of walk­ing in­to it and tak­ing a deep breath.

Fog­gy Bot­tom was now a lit­tle whitish dome in the dis­tance. Its cen­tral hub was a spher­i­cal bub­ble sit­ting on the larg­er, flat­tened low one. The spokes in the low­er part formed a skele­ton an­chor­ing the skin that cov­ered the tri­an­gu­lar spaces in be­tween, which con­tained hy­dro­pon­ic farms, oxy­gen pro­duc­tion, and re­cy­cling zones. How was it pos­si­ble for some­thing over a kilo­me­ter across to look so puny so quick­ly?

The desert swal­lowed the Sta­tion. It dwarfed the rover in­to a tiny bug on a plate as big as the whole world. The rocks and sand and dust stretched for­ev­er in time as well as space, con­trast­ing huge­ly with the short­ness of hu­man life in a way that was un­healthy to con­tem­plate for very long. Corin­na start­ed scan­ning for signs of life all but in­vol­un­tar­i­ly.

“Oziel, see that big stone at the base of the es­carp­ment? At about two o’clock?”

He stood and leaned to­ward her side of the bub­ble. She leaned away, as much as the cramped, two-seat, space al­lowed. Any­thing less, she was sure, would be mis­con­strued.

“Which one? The one like a big pig or the pointy one more like a sit­ting bear?”

“The bear. See the pur­plish shad­ow on the shady side?”

He peered.

“Oh, yes. Brown­ish-pur­plish.”

“That’s a bac­te­r­i­al mat. It’s part of Sha­han­jah’s ter­raform­ing pro­ject.”

“Life starts small, I guess,” said Oziel, du­bi­ous­ly eye­ing the shad­ow that looked like noth­ing at all. He held the cam­era up and clicked. “They re­al­ize, don’t they, that a land­scape of pur­ple slime is not go­ing to be a big sell­ing point?” He sat back down in his seat and re­fas­tened the safe­ty belt.

“It’s not slimy. It’s hard and dry. And it’s just there to build up or­gan­ics. They’re work­ing on re­sis­tant blue-green al­gae al­ready, which are about to the same stage as the bac­te­ria were five years ago. Sha­han­jah has en­gi­neered al­gae that can sur­vive un­der par­tial ex­po­sure, and he keeps tak­ing sam­ples at the edges of the al­gal mats, where they have the least pro­tec­tion, fig­ur­ing that one of these days he’s go­ing to find a mu­tant that can make it. There’s al­so a whole suite of aquat­ic or­gan­isms ready to go as soon as the Sinai lake pro­ject starts. More slimy, but al­so more in­ter­est­ing.”

“Mean­while,” said Oziel qui­et­ly, in the voice Corin­na was com­ing to rec­og­nize meant sad­ness or anger, “the na­tives have been pushed off in­to the bar­rio, hmm?”

Corin­na made a wry face.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Sealed con­tain­ers of na­tive bac­te­ria at the Mar­t­ian Biorepos­i­to­ry in Be­ta Sta­tion prob­a­bly qual­i­fies as a ghet­to.”

“Was there re­al­ly much of a fight? I re­mem­ber the news mak­ing a big thing out of Mars-for-the-Mar­tians demon­stra­tions, but it nev­er seemed like it made any dif­fer­ence to the peo­ple who pay for the rock­et ships.”

“No, not much. I read a pa­per a cou­ple of years ago about a five-year study of one of the en­gi­neered bac­te­ria out on the sur­face, which means that the sci­en­tists had to have been qui­et­ly do­ing their thing from the minute they land­ed. The de­ci­sion to ter­raform was just a rub­ber stamp on what they were al­ready do­ing.”

The in­frared scan­ner in the ar­ray of mon­i­tors fac­ing Corin­na showed the first rab­bit dome as a speck of bright­ness. The ground on the shad­ed south side of the dome had the tell­tale pur­plish cast of ter­raform­ing. They were go­ing to need suits for the low pres­sures and tem­per­a­tures in­side the dome, so Corin­na first, then Oziel, slid out of their seats and down five steps to the cab­in part of the rover. The suits hung side by side in the back, look­ing like golems who need­ed on­ly the word to un­hitch them­selves and walk.

Corin­na man­aged to avoid con­tact, even in that con­fined space, by us­ing the ex­cuse of show­ing Oziel how to ma­neu­ver him­self in­to the suit. The first step was to re­move all the grav­i­ty-in­duc­ing weights that kept their mus­cles ready for Earth: the lead vests, the arm bands, the an­kle bands, and the lead-soled shoes. Oziel stepped as care­ful­ly as he could, but still near­ly flew at the suit. Strength was a dis­ad­van­tage in this case. Af­ter on­ly a mi­nor col­li­sion, he grap­pled the thing in­to sub­mis­sion and man­aged to get his legs in­to the low­er half of the joint­ed met­al suit. Like most peo­ple with noth­ing but suit drills be­hind them, she could tell he was go­ing to cut cor­ners by not hook­ing up the suit’s plumb­ing.

“Um, be sure to hook every­thing up. Not just check for air.”

“We’ll on­ly be here about half an hour, yes?” asked Oziel. “Why both­er?”

“Safe­ty re­quire­ment,” an­swered Corin­na. “You might have to re­ly on the suit for days. Last thing you want in an emer­gency is to wor­ry about the plumb­ing.” And out here, fifty kilo­me­ters from Fog­gy Bot­tom, was as good a place as any for an emer­gency.

Once the bot­tom half was ad­e­quate­ly arranged, the top half of the suit went on like a ter­ri­bly stiff shirt and locked on­to the bot­tom. The arm­holes were wide enough so that he could draw his hands in­to the boxy tor­so sec­tion and check the clo­sure from in­side. She ran through the in­ter­nal con­trols ac­ces­si­ble to him on the in­side of the chest sec­tion just to be sure he had every­thing right. Fi­nal­ly, the clear dome of the hel­met snapped on­to the tor­so sec­tion just be­low the chin. The on­ly flex­i­ble part was the im­pos­si­bly thin and im­per­vi­ous gloves, made on a prin­ci­ple sim­i­lar to spi­der silk, which he was test­ing by wig­gling his fin­gers. Even in the near-vac­u­um of Mars’ sur­face, they felt like or­di­nary gloves be­cause small ser­vo-as­sist mo­tors in the fore­arms used sen­sors to de­tect mus­cle ac­tion and con­nect­ed to the gloves. The mo­tors coun­ter­act­ed the pos­i­tive pres­sure in the gloves so it took no spe­cial ef­fort to use your fin­gers.

Clum­sy in their suits, which felt more like round­ed, portable hous­es, Oziel and Corin­na climbed out of the now tiny and awk­ward cab­in. Corin­na al­ways dis­liked the sound of her breath­ing echo­ing around the small space of the hel­met. It made her feel as if she was breath­ing used air. Mak­ing it worse was the noise of Oziel’s breath­ing com­ing over her suit ra­dio. Some­times she just want­ed to take the whole damn thing off and lis­ten to the si­lence of Mars, even though it would be the last thing she did.

Corin­na’s wor­ries about prox­im­i­ty to Oziel were as noth­ing com­pared to the at­ti­tude of the rab­bits. They scur­ried mad­ly in every di­rec­tion. She poured a mix­ture of vi­t­a­minised treats in­to a spe­cial hold­er that re­quired the rab­bits to pass through a low hang­ing bas­ket one at a time, and from which they were re­leased in­to a hold­ing area that pre­vent­ed them from in­sist­ing on sec­onds. In the bas­ket, they were weighed and a laser probe read over a hun­dred as­pects of their blood chem­istry in a sec­ond. An em­bed­ded chip in each rab­bit iden­ti­fied it. The process was fast, but deal­ing with two hun­dred rab­bits still took a long time. She turned to get Oziel start­ed on clean­ing out their hutch­es, and then she saw that he al­ready had. One rab­bit snaf­fled its treats and es­caped its bas­ket while she stared in sur­prise. He was one in a mil­lion if he knew enough to look around, see what had to be done, fig­ure out what he could do, and then just do it with­out any fuss or muss. And do it right, as far as she could tell. It was as if he’d been clean­ing rab­bit cages all his life.

“You didn’t tell me you grew up on a farm,” she said, as she re­trieved the sec­ond es­cap­ing rab­bit.

“No, my moth­er kept chick­ens for years. They find their own food. And she’d sell the drop­pings for fer­til­iz­er. It was the job of us kids to col­lect that, of course,” he said with one of his small smiles. “For a while she was part of a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den and used the fer­til­iz­er her­self. Those were the best veg­eta­bles.”

“I see. Once you’re done with a hutch, wheel all the stuff over to that bin. We at­tach it to the rover and take this fer­til­iz­er back to the Sta­tion’s gar­dens.”

“Ah, that’s what that those strange bins are for on the back of the rover. The re­place­ments, right?”

“Yup,” said Corin­na. “So how come she stopped do­ing the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den af­ter a while?”

“She didn’t stop,” said Oziel. “It was not their land, of course. It was one of those com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fit things that some­body starts up and that dis­ap­pear in a few years. Every­thing is like that in the bar­rio. Ex­cept the pover­ty. The gar­dens dis­ap­peared be­cause some­body else de­cid­ed it was time to help us by build­ing a clin­ic and it was a nice bit of un­built land, so the gar­dens were bull­dozed.”

“Oh,” said Corin­na.

He wheeled the full bins out to the rover, while she herd­ed the re­main­ing, shyest rab­bits to­ward the weigh­ing ma­chine. She checked the au­to­mat­ed wa­ter sup­ply and timed food re­leas­er. Oziel helped her ex­change the hun­dred-liter wa­ter con­tain­er, han­dling a thing that weighed near­ly forty ki­los on Mars as if it was a wa­ter­mel­on. She won­dered if his ex­cep­tion­al strength and hand­i­ness were an­oth­er rea­son he’d been hired for his job. A sta­tion long on sci­en­tists tend­ed to be short on fit­ness.

Back in the rover, they re­moved and hung up their suits. She pushed the en­gine start but­ton. It start­ed. It hummed nor­mal­ly. It rolled off to their sec­ond des­ti­na­tion with­out a hitch. What­ev­er the plan was, it did not in­volve strand­ing her at this rab­bit sta­tion.

The whole sit­u­a­tion was so damn sil­ly. It wasn’t as if she had come to Mars to spy on them. They had brought her here.

“You know,” she be­gan out of the blue, “I just don’t get it. Why would Mor­bier hire a spe­cial­ist who could fig­ure out what they’re do­ing?”

“Speak­ing of that,” said Oziel, “I’ve been mean­ing to tell you. I sent a mes­sage to Miguel Sanderas about … Se­le­na. I thought per­haps there might be things he didn’t want to lay on Mar­co. Ap­par­ent­ly not, but he did say he’d seen three more peo­ple with the same sort of prob­lem, and that the on­ly thing they had in com­mon was that they’d been in prison.”

“Oh, Je­sus,” mut­tered Corin­na. “Well, with Ching talk­ing about high­er bur­ial costs, there’s ob­vi­ous­ly more than a few peo­ple suf­fer­ing from it. And then they go and hire ex­act­ly the per­son who can fig­ure it out.”

He thought for a mo­ment.

“Ex­act­ly the per­son, hm? Aren’t there oth­er sci­en­tists who study this stuff?”

“Not very many. And those are most­ly in se­cure uni­ver­si­ty jobs be­cause all the big-bucks, be­hav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion work that the drug com­pa­nies are in­ter­est­ed in has been done and patent­ed. It’s hard to get a job work­ing on en­dor­phins at this point.” She made a wry face. I’m liv­ing proof, she thought.

“So, if they want­ed to make sure you didn’t in­ter­fere with their plans, the eas­i­est way to neu­tral­ize you would be to hire you.” She had not con­sid­ered that an­gle. “Be­sides, if they need more sci­en­tists, this isn’t the sort of pro­ject where they can ad­ver­tise. ‘Want­ed: De­sign­er of mind con­trol drugs.’ But if you’re work­ing for them, they can look you over and see if they can use you.”

An­oth­er an­gle she hadn’t con­sid­ered. She thought she was the one with the doc­tor­ate.

“No­body’s ever even vague­ly ap­proached me about any­thing,” she point­ed out.

Oziel raised his eye­brows in mock dis­be­lief.

“Sure. In be­tween the time you spend help­ing every­one, you’re go­ing to work on ways to turn their brains to mush. That would be a mas­ter­piece.”

Yet one more good point. It was high time for some­one be­sides him to be right.

“So, the em­i­nent­ly clever and ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple who hired me missed the boat. How about the peo­ple who hired you? The on­ly qual­i­fied per­son they could find was a man in a field ab­solute­ly bristling with women?”

Oziel’s small smile be­came small­er.

“Of­fi­cial­ly it’s be­cause of my ex­cel­lent train­ing and ref­er­ences. But it didn’t hurt that I charmed the di­rec­tor of hu­man ser­vices ….” He left the sen­tence hang­ing, leav­ing Corin­na won­der­ing just what he meant.

He no­ticed her du­bi­ous ex­pres­sion.

“I’m glad to see you’re con­cerned, but no, the charm was just my won­der­ful per­son­al­i­ty.”

Corin­na frowned. Du­bi­ous did not mean con­cerned.

“Well, it cer­tain­ly worked on me too,” she said with a brit­tle edge. “Just don’t ex­pect much be­yond an MRI and a ride.”

Hos —.” He bit some­thing back. “Dios ayúdame! I was jok­ing.” He threw his hands up in ex­as­per­a­tion.

Corin­na con­tin­ued brit­tle. Of course he was jok­ing, but that did not stop it from al­so be­ing true.

“Lis­ten to me,” he said in a low and un­mis­tak­ably an­gry voice. “It’s all right. Okay? I’m not af­ter you. You can stop de­fend­ing your­self.”

She leaned over the con­trol pan­el, stung. What right had he to get an­gry with her? Guys were al­ways be­ing pushy and un­called-for. Here she was, con­fined the whole day with a man, who was nec­es­sary pure­ly be­cause an­oth­er bunch of men were mak­ing her life im­pos­si­ble, and she had every right to make sure it was not an of­fen­sive ex­pe­ri­ence.

Al­though, in fair­ness, she had to ad­mit that he, per­son­al­ly, had nev­er been ei­ther un­called-for or pushy. The worst thing he had ever done was smile at her.

And that hadn’t been too bad.

So, he wasn’t af­ter her. Well…, good.

She con­tin­ued to frown over the read­outs on the pan­el. She saw him reach for a book, al­though she stared nowhere but straight ahead. The on­ly book in the con­trol sec­tion was the rover man­u­al.

 

They said noth­ing for sev­er­al kilo­me­ters, or about ten min­utes. Then Oziel asked in a nor­mal tone of voice, as if noth­ing had hap­pened,

“My moth­er al­ways said that all knowl­edge is use­ful. How about you teach me to dri­ve this thing?”

Corin­na knew with­out a doubt that he was giv­ing them both a way out of a sticky sit­u­a­tion. Whether this was his oblig­a­tion, as the one who had start­ed it, or hers, as the one who had start­ed it be­fore him, she wasn’t sure. But he had ac­tu­al­ly done it, while she was still sit­ting and stew­ing.

“Um.” She cleared her throat, which seemed to have gone all tight and squeaky while she fumed. “Yes, it’s al­ways good, in any case, for every­one in a rover to know how to dri­ve it man­u­al­ly, in case of emer­gency.”

With a sense of grudg­ing grat­i­tude, she strug­gled to match his neu­tral­i­ty. Soon­er than she ex­pect­ed, her em­bar­rass­ment re­ced­ed be­hind an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­stru­ment read­ing point­ers, steer­ing tips, and satel­lite dish ad­just­ment meth­ods.

Just be­fore the sec­ond of their four planned stops, a whirring noise sud­den­ly in­ter­rupt­ed the usu­al hum­ming of the en­gines and the grind­ing, thump­ing nois­es of the wheels rolling over rocks. Corin­na jumped. Ohmy­god, here it comes.

“Sor­ry,” said Oziel. He flipped off the switch he had bumped with his el­bow that had start­ed up a cab­in fan.

Corin­na tried to calm down the bang­ing of her heart. It was bad enough feel­ing jumpy when she was afraid she had a rea­son. It was even worse when she didn’t.

Noth­ing un­planned hap­pened at the sec­ond stop, or on the way to the third stop. They ate lunch while the rover trun­dled along. She caught him star­ing im­pas­sive­ly at the com­part­men­tal­ized food pack­et of mashed pota­toes, spinach, and a chipped beef ana­log made of vat pro­tein. There was a square of pound cake with pink frost­ing for dessert.

“What?” she asked.

He looked up, saw her in­quir­ing glance at his lunch, and smiled apolo­get­i­cal­ly.

“I get so tired of this stu­pid food. The norteam­er­i­canos and the Rus­sians start­ed the space pro­gram, and we have to eat their dumb food ever since. How hard could it be to make a good arepa? Some­thing some­one might ac­tu­al­ly want to eat? Any­way,” he waved his hand down­ward, dis­miss­ing the sub­ject, “ig­nore me. I’m hun­gry and this food is bet­ter than no food.”

She grinned.

“You know, even among us grin­gos, I on­ly ever knew one guy who thought space food was ac­tu­al­ly good. And the in­jus­tice of it all was that his wife was an ab­solute­ly mar­velous cook. The rest of us would have killed for the din­ners she made and he didn’t care one way or the oth­er.”

“Life,” said Oziel, “is like that.”

As the rover mo­tored for­ward, Corin­na be­gan to feel a per­verse sense of let­down. She had not re­al­ly wor­ried, of course, but ap­par­ent­ly she had not wor­ried for noth­ing. Of course, the day wasn’t over yet.

The last rab­bit stop was near the top of the moun­tain they had trav­eled along and up most of the day. As the rover climbed high­er, the wind grew stronger, and an oc­ca­sion­al hiss of dust on the clear dome sur­round­ing them be­came au­di­ble over the hum of the mo­tors and the grind­ing of the wheels. They could see oceans of sand and boul­ders in the basin be­low and glac­i­ers of rock perched threat­en­ing­ly ahead. As they fi­nal­ly came over the rim of the moun­tain on­to its cen­tral plateau, the true na­ture of the peaks in the dis­tance be­came clear. They were noth­ing but the out­rid­ers of even lofti­er land, a mas­sive wall be­yond which lay an­oth­er whole world, the air­less plains of high Mars. In the oth­er di­rec­tion lay the tum­bled rocks and chasms of Mariner’s Canyon.

Since they were suit­ed up any­way, they took some time, once the rab­bits were done, to sit at the edge of the south­ern cliffs over­look­ing the Labyrinth’s basin and to ad­mire the view to the north. Oziel filled up the re­main­ing mem­o­ry in the cam­era, so Corin­na pushed a few but­tons, used the satel­lite up­link to down­load his pic­tures to his Bur­bidge ac­count, and en­abled him to start afresh. Mariner’s Canyon stretched away to their right, look­ing like an im­pos­si­bly wide riv­er in a plain of seem­ing flat­ness. The tiny, whitish but­ton that was Fog­gy Bot­tom could be seen at the base of a cliff just to the north.

What in­sane dream­er thought you could launch life in­to the un­known, like a spi­der on a sail of its own mak­ing, and imag­ine that it could suc­ceed?

“You’ve men­tioned your moth­er sev­er­al times,” said Corin­na, mak­ing con­ver­sa­tion as they sat, “but not your fa­ther.” She didn’t ac­tu­al­ly ask any ques­tion, be­cause once she reached that point she re­al­ized she didn’t know what to say. What could she ask? Did he aban­don you? Was he a los­er?

Oziel an­swered the un­spo­ken thought, voice crack­ling slight­ly in the suit ra­dio.

“He died when I was ten. Caught in a cross­fire.”

He said no more, and Corin­na asked no more. She was go­ing to have to learn to stop ask­ing ques­tions. None of the usu­al top­ics was neu­tral where he came from.

They looked at the land­scape, red­der from a dis­tance than close up. A breeze she could not feel blew oc­ca­sion­al, in­vis­i­ble puffs of dust that whis­pered on the clear dome of her hel­met. Maybe he would en­joy it as much as she did.

“Oziel, if you hold your breath, you can hear the winds of Mars blow­ing dust grains on your hel­met.”

He looked pleased at the thought and she heard him over the suit ra­dio im­me­di­ate­ly take a deep breath. It seemed to go on for­ev­er. The size of his lungs had to match the rest of him, but it felt fun­ny that she hadn’t ex­pect­ed it with­out be­ing re­mind­ed. She held her own breath to re­duce the noise still fur­ther and saw a beau­ti­ful smile of won­der il­lu­mi­nate his face. He glanced at her to share the mo­ment and she found her­self smil­ing back. But she couldn’t hold her breath any­where near as long as him, so she had to break down and ex­hale. They co­or­di­nat­ed breath­ing again to lis­ten.

All of a sud­den, he point­ed at a tiny dot crawl­ing down the zigzag path that led from the high plateau to­ward Fog­gy Bot­tom along the shal­low­est face of the north­ern cliffs.

“Looks like some­body else is out for a Sun­day dri­ve,” he said.

They both squirmed around in their suits, pulling their hands in­to the tor­so sec­tion. She ac­ti­vat­ed her heads-up mag­ni­fi­ca­tion dis­play, and told him how to do it. It took a while to get the cen­ter of fo­cus right on the ve­hi­cle.

“That’s fun­ny. It’s a car­go rover. On a Sun­day.” Puz­zle­ment slowed her voice. “Judg­ing by its track, it crossed the high plains from Mt. Ar­sia. There aren’t any re­search sites on the plain. Not so much as a ter­raformed rock. Very strange.”

By now the tiny speck trail­ing dust was draw­ing close to the Sta­tion. Whether be­cause it was fas­ci­nat­ing to see some­thing mov­ing in that ut­ter­ly still world, or be­cause peo­ple are al­ways cu­ri­ous about the do­ings of oth­er peo­ple, they both sat and looked. Corin­na checked the time to make sure they would still get back be­fore dark.

The ve­hi­cle did not ap­proach the colony’s main car­go port. It went all the way to the oth­er side. There a tiny suit­ed fig­ure got out, un­loaded four crates, opened an air­lock us­ing the ex­ter­nal safe­ty ac­cess and start­ed shov­ing crates in­side. They could see him kick­ing a re­cal­ci­trant box. Af­ter of­fload­ing, the rover fi­nal­ly turned to­ward the tip of the Dar­win spoke and the car­go port.

This was more than strange. For some time nei­ther said any­thing, as if wait­ing for the pe­cu­liar ve­hi­cle to turn back and re­al­ize the car­go had been mis­de­liv­ered.

“Sun­day de­liv­ery,” Corin­na fi­nal­ly breathed. “The next thing will be doc­tors mak­ing house calls again.”

“And why not use a clip­per? Ar­sia has the biggest clip­per port on the plan­et, yes?”

“Clip­per car­go is checked for ex­plo­sives, drugs, weight, la­bel­ing, the works,” Corin­na point­ed out. She knew. She had spent enough hours fill­ing out end­less man­i­fests.

“What part of the Sta­tion is that where the crates got dropped? The out­er lock door doesn’t look right, and I don’t see any­one com­ing out in a hur­ry to pick them up.”

“I don’t know. Let me get a schemat­ic here.” Col­ored lines and dots and let­ters ap­peared on Corin­na’s hel­met. “I need to ro­tate it … like that …. Bio­haz­ard con­tain­ment stor­age. You need spe­cial clear­ance to get in there, be­sides dress­ing up in the equiv­a­lent of a space suit.”

“This de­liv­ery is strange and that stuff with the brain sam­ples is strange. I bet they’re con­nect­ed,” said Oziel.

“Well, as an of­fi­cial Post­doc­tor­al Con­sult­ing Sci­en­tist, I have the clear­ance to use that stor­age.” Corin­na said slow­ly.

“How about tonight?” Oziel sug­gest­ed.

Corin­na looked at him du­bi­ous­ly.

“We’re go­ing to get back pret­ty late, and it may look weird if I’m des­per­ate to get in­to con­tain­ment at all hours on a Sun­day night. To­mor­row. I’ll say I need more space for my hu­man-trans­fer­able RNA en­zymes and have a look around.”

The trip back was un­event­ful. There were no me­chan­i­cal prob­lems, there were no guid­ance prob­lems. She had not so much as twid­dled the steer­ing bar, ex­cept to show Oziel how to use it. The sta­tion’s great blast doors opened on­to the rover lock with­out in­ci­dent. She climbed down out of the rover and be­gan clean­ing up her suit, feel­ing fool­ish at ever hav­ing thought there might be dan­ger.

“Be sure to stow your suit prop­er­ly, or we’ll get snip­py notes from Ming Hue.” Suit techs were se­lect­ed for their ob­ses­sive at­ten­tion to de­tail. “And the fer­til­iz­er bins have to be put back over there.” She point­ed to the oth­er side of the hangar.

He pushed them, all four to­geth­er in a train, past two or­di­nary clip­pers and a sleek, pri­vate one be­long­ing to Di­cas­til­lo, past three un­gain­ly, spe­cial­ized re­search ro­bots with bul­bous pro­tu­ber­ances and arms all over them, and past a sub­or­bital evac­u­a­tion ship.

He was painstak­ing­ly stow­ing his gear, with brief, prac­ti­cal tips from Corin­na, when a woman in a de­cid­ed­ly non-reg­u­la­tion, gor­geous sil­ver jump­suit ap­peared in the hangar.

“Ah, Señor García,” she sang out as she ap­proached. Corin­na fi­nal­ly rec­og­nized Di­cas­til­lo’s daugh­ter. “I de­cid­ed to leave for Ar­sia a cou­ple of hours ear­ly. Pe­tey is with the but­ler, but if you are able to start ear­li­er, I’m sure that would be bet­ter for every­one.”

Corin­na saw di­a­monds wink­ing in her ob­sid­i­an hair.

“Cer­tain­ly, Señora Di­cas­til­lo,” said Oziel, nod­ding po­lite­ly.

“Yes, I’m afraid he’s been quite im­pos­si­ble to­day, and the but­ler means well but he’s not near­ly as good with chil­dren.”

“I will go as soon as I have stowed my suit, Señora,” said Oziel.

Leira be­gan a rather de­tailed ac­count of all Pe­tey’s ac­tiv­i­ties that day.

It seemed to Corin­na that she was ac­tu­al­ly proud, in her own way, of her son’s hi­jinks. Oziel let her boast to her heart’s con­tent, Corin­na no­ticed.

“But he’ll be eas­i­er to deal with soon,” Leira re­as­sured him, who had shown no sign of need­ing re­as­sur­ance.

“Ah? And why is that, Señora?”

“I’m tak­ing him in for a new treat­ment which solves the prob­lem once and for all, with­out all these stu­pid pills that most­ly don’t work any­way.”

Corin­na felt Oziel hold his breath. They care­ful­ly did not look at each oth­er. Corin­na had no idea how to jump in­to the con­ver­sa­tion.

Then he spoke.

“How very … in­ter­est­ing. You know, I’ve worked with kids for years and haven’t heard about this treat­ment. Is it ex­per­i­men­tal?”

“Oh, heav­ens, no. Of course not.” Pe­tey wasn’t a guinea pig!

“I’d be very in­ter­est­ed to know more about it. Maybe there is some­thing about it on the net?” Oziel looked po­lite­ly in­quir­ing.

Leira Di­cas­til­lo was a woman of ac­tion, be­cause she stepped to a ter­mi­nal in the hangar and start­ed a search then and there. Oziel helped her with key words. He called Corin­na over and in­tro­duced her as a sci­en­tist at the Sta­tion. Leira re­mem­bered her then and glad­ly ac­cept­ed her help, but noth­ing turned up.

“Well, maybe we’re just not get­ting to a suf­fi­cient­ly spe­cial­ized data­base,” he said, to keep the fic­tion of a well-ac­cept­ed treat­ment alive. “But it might be as well to get a sec­ond opin­ion from Pe­tey’s pe­di­a­tri­cian on Earth.”

That would slow things down. Well done, Oziel, thought Corin­na.

Leira nod­ded thought­ful­ly, and then gave a del­i­cate gasp af­ter glanc­ing at the thin, sil­ver hands of a watch clasp­ing her left wrist.

“Oh, I must run. But I think you may be right. I hope Pe­tey be­haves. By-y-ye.”

She float­ed out to her clip­per and the glit­ter­ing so­ci­ety of Ar­sia.

Oziel looked af­ter her thought­ful­ly.

“It al­ways feels kind of strange. She comes from Cara­cas. Like me. A very dif­fer­ent part of town, of course.”

“Takes all sorts,” said Corin­na to fill the si­lence, and im­me­di­ate­ly felt stu­pid. “Why didn’t she speak Span­ish, come to think of it?”

He looked at her won­der­ing­ly and then said,

“For­give me, but you norteam­er­i­canos live in a world of your own. Would you speak Eng­lish to­geth­er in front of a per­son who doesn’t?”

“Oh,” said Corin­na. She’d nev­er giv­en it any thought. Every­one spoke Eng­lish. “Eng­lish is usu­al­ly all we know,” she mum­bled, but then added, “I do speak be­gin­ner’s Span­ish, you know.”

“But the Señora doesn’t know that. In Venezuela we have Por­tuguese speak­ers, Ger­man, Eng­lish, al­so Cre­ole. It wouldn’t work to have one group pre­tend­ing the oth­ers don’t ex­ist.”

It felt strange to be taught man­ners by some­one she’d pegged as — as what? As a warm, help­ful … poor, un­e­d­u­cat­ed me­nial. So much for be­ing be­yond stereo­types. And yet, she was com­ing to re­ly on his help, to look for­ward to his warmth. He had han­dled that al­ter­ca­tion in the rover bet­ter than she would have done. She said good­bye to him with a smile and didn’t wor­ry about how he’d take it.

“I’m glad you could take the time for this trip,” she added, and he re­turned one of his in­can­des­cent smiles.

He went to­ward the up­per lev­els to tire Pe­tey out with games, and she went the oth­er way to the low­er lev­els and the lab where she could of­fload the rab­bit da­ta and put spec­i­mens away. The door was open and the light was on. Jonathan was in there, work­ing late, which was not un­usu­al, but he was by him­self, which was. Why was she not sur­prised? She won­dered if there was some way she could rig up a hid­den cam­era to keep track of that fish-faced post­doc’s move­ments.

 

Chap­ter 7

Corin­na pot­tered in to work on Mon­day morn­ing in the usu­al, semi­con­scious way, but much ear­li­er than usu­al. There was al­ways so much to do when new rab­bit da­ta came in that it was es­sen­tial to get a jump on things. Like an au­toma­ton, she start­ed pipet­ting reagents for a vi­su­al­iza­tion gel. If she got it go­ing be­fore she went for the elixir of life known as cof­fee, the gel would be ready be­fore the rush start­ed.

But she did not have to wait for cof­fee. She woke up com­plete­ly when the air was split by a stran­gled shriek in the tech’s lab next door, fol­lowed by the heavy thumps of a body hit­ting a table, chairs, the floor — and then si­lence.

Corin­na cast one glance at the re­ac­tions she was prepar­ing — a hun­dred cred­its worth of chem­i­cals that would be ru­ined if she let them sit — and threw down her pipet­ter and raced next door.

She stared stu­pid­ly for a mo­ment at Djami­lah ly­ing in a heap on the floor. Her arms were blis­ter­ing with a bad burn even as she watched.

She reached for her wrist­pad, but she’d tak­en it off in the oth­er lab so she could put it back on lat­er over her rub­ber gloves. No time to go back. Corin­na yelled.

“Some­body! Medic to Artemis 56! NOW!”

She lunged to­ward the tech, put her fin­gers on Djami­lah’s neck. No pulse. She start­ed CPR be­fore she was even aware of mak­ing a con­scious de­ci­sion to do it.

Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, through what al­ready felt like a mil­lion rep­e­ti­tions. Tilt head back. Was she breath­ing? No. Pinch nose shut, tis­sue over mouth — no tis­sue — mouth over mouth. Quick puff in. Hell. Corin­na had al­most no breath of her own. She’d been hold­ing it, wait­ing to ex­hale, wait­ing for every­thing to be okay. The same stu­pid mis­take every CPR train­er told every new class not to do. Gulp a cou­ple of breaths. Puff. Puff. Hands back on chest. Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. Corin­na’s arms felt like falling off. She was for­get­ting to breathe again. Gulp. Puff, puff. Push, push, push, push, push, push. Soon she would be ex­haust­ed. Where were the medics?

In be­tween des­per­ate breaths, she lis­tened fran­ti­cal­ly for the sound of some­one who had heard. It was so ear­ly. None of her oth­er techs were here. The grad stu­dents would not show up for an­oth­er hour or two. Breathe. Stop. Push, push, push. Stop. Breathe. Poor Djami­lah. She had worked so hard and so cheer­ful­ly. It was not her fault she had less abil­i­ty for lab work than a wom­bat. Al­though it might be her death.

There had to be some oth­er post­docs around some­where. She de­prived Djami­lah of a breath to yell again.

“MEDIC! NOW!”

Fi­nal­ly some­one’s foot­steps pat­tered down the hall and in­to the room.

“I thought I heard — Je­sus-Joseph-and-Mary!” Tam­bi­ka from Kil­burn’s lab down the hall tapped once at the comm on her wrist.

“What hap­pened?” she asked the mo­ment she fin­ished the call. “No, I’m sor­ry, don’t say a thing. Here, I’ll take a turn do­ing com­pres­sions.”

The sound of run­ning feet came down the hall and grew loud­er.

Four medics burst in­to the room. Corin­na found her­self shunt­ed aside, now a pas­sive, un­nec­es­sary on­look­er. She felt void, float­ing, as the huge pres­sure on her lift­ed and noth­ing re­placed it.

Us­ing elec­tri­cal pad­dles, the medics restart­ed Djami­lah’s heart. The sound of her ragged breath­ing filled the room over the sound of Corin­na’s resid­ual pant­i­ng and the medics’ ef­fi­cient bustling.

One of them came over to the two sci­en­tists.

“Looks like elec­tro­cu­tion. She should be all right, but she’s very lucky you were around to start re­sus­ci­ta­tion im­me­di­ate­ly. Any idea how it hap­pened?”

Corin­na looked around the lab. Elec­tro­cu­tion? Prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing there ex­cept the beakers could de­liv­er thou­sands of volts if han­dled bad­ly. And know­ing Djami­lah….

“There,” she point­ed at the table­top DNA read­er with its cov­er awry. “If that wasn’t paused, about two thou­sand volts run through those plates.”

The medic ap­proached cau­tious­ly and touched it with a probe.

“Two thou­sand five hun­dred volts, at two amps,” he said. “She’s lucky to be alive. Though you have to won­der why those rub­ber-soled shoes even let the cur­rent through.” He pulled the ma­chine’s pow­er cord out of its sock­et.

God, thought Corin­na, if good old Djami­lah had fried the cir­cuits on that five hun­dred thou­sand dol­lar piece of ma­chin­ery, no pow­er on earth, or Mars, would keep her from get­ting fired.

Djami­lah was lift­ed on­to the stretch­er by the two most mus­cu­lar medics and Corin­na found her­self look­ing at the soles of her shoes.

“They’re cracked,” she point­ed out. “The rub­ber is cracked right across, right through to the lead in­ner sole,” she ex­plained in more de­tail be­cause the medic was too busy to lis­ten.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Then, to his co-work­ers, “Right, move her on out.” And they were gone, leav­ing an enor­mous si­lence in the lab.

Corin­na looked at the DNA read­er. But the ma­chine had been paused. There was the three-way switch, right at “pause,” be­tween “off” and “on.”

She stared at it, con­vinced it was try­ing to tell her some­thing that her shocked brain was too numb to hear.

Tam­bi­ka, who had fol­lowed the medics out, came back.

“This’ll be the ad­dress to call the nurse’s sta­tion once they’ve got her set­tled.”

Corin­na copied the ad­dress on­to a cor­ner of the bench pa­per, tore it off, and stuck it in her pock­et.

“Did they say when she could be ex­pect­ed to come to?”

“Could be re­al soon be­cause they said there prob­a­bly weren’t any cere­bral ef­fects.”

Corin­na nod­ded me­chan­i­cal­ly. It was not nor­mal to be sit­ting here. She was nev­er sit­ting here. She was al­ways rac­ing, flat out. There was prob­a­bly some­thing she was sup­posed to be do­ing.

She shook her head.

“There’s prob­a­bly some­thing I’m sup­posed to be do­ing.” She looked around the lab. “Oh, yeah, I was pipet­ting —”

“You prob­a­bly bet­ter let More­beer know,” Tam­bi­ka said gen­tly.

“Oh shit. Of course. Jeez, I’m re­al­ly los­ing it, aren’t I?”

“Hey, hav­ing peo­ple try to drop dead in your lab tends to break the con­cen­tra­tion. Don’t be too hard on your­self.”

Corin­na smiled fee­bly, but grate­ful­ly. Thank God it was Tam­bi­ka who had come run­ning to help. Her po­si­tion was sim­i­lar to Corin­na’s own, and the two of them were like good neigh­bors, bor­row­ing cups of sug­ar over the fence all the time, on­ly in their case it was pipette tips and time on ul­tra­cen­trifuges. Every­one would have helped re­sus­ci­tate Djami­lah, few­er peo­ple would have held Corin­na’s hand af­ter that.

She start­ed to walk to­ward the lab’s one big, of­fi­cial desk­phone across the hall in the main lab, then stopped. Bet­ter to find out about the DNA read­er first. It might well be Mor­bier’s on­ly ques­tion.

She went back to the techs’ lab, gin­ger­ly plugged the ma­chine back in, and start­ed the self-test. The pow­er came on, but that was it. Un­like Djami­lah’s brains, the ma­chine’s had been scram­bled.

Mor­bier was not at his of­fice yet. Tak­ing a deep breath, Corin­na called his per­son­al ad­dress.

“Yes?” he said. Not “Good morn­ing,” or “Hel­lo.” Just “yes,” with “what do you want?” for a sub­text.

“I’m afraid there’s been an ac­ci­dent.”

“Yes?” he said again.

Corin­na plowed on.

“The DNA read­er glitched and Djami­lah Mah­moud suf­fered a se­vere elec­tri­cal shock.”

“Ah?” he said. Even for him, he didn’t seem very sur­prised. “She will be all right?” he con­tin­ued.

At least, thought Corin­na, he asked about her be­fore the DNA read­er.

“I don’t know. It on­ly hap­pened about half an hour ago. I was go­ing to call sick­bay as soon as I’d let you know about it.”

“Ah,” he said again. “Nat­u­ral­ly, with an in­ci­dent this se­ri­ous, you un­der­stand that I will need to care­ful­ly ex­am­ine the pro­ce­dures fol­lowed in the lab.”

She had not thought about it, but it was to be ex­pect­ed. How­ev­er, she was a stick­ler for lab safe­ty and she had no great fear of in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Of course, she hadn’t told Mor­bier what he was bound to con­sid­er the worst news yet.

Corin­na took an­oth­er deep breath.

“The DNA read­er glitched pret­ty bad­ly, I’m afraid. It failed the self-test and the laser prob­a­bly no longer works.”

“Ahh,” he said.

She wished he would stop say­ing that.

Af­ter she closed the con­nec­tion, she felt even worse then be­fore. Whether it was de­layed re­ac­tion to the ac­ci­dent or Mor­bier’s “ah’s,” some­thing made her feel like she hadn’t a friend in the world. She just want­ed to go home.

But where was home? Her moth­er’s first ques­tion would be, “Jeez, what did you do to get fired?” And her fa­ther, well, he might not have been shot when she was ten, but in many ways he wasn’t re­al­ly there. He would say “Urr” and they would all wind up word­less­ly watch­ing a video.

She had to stop think­ing like this. Quit brood­ing. Find her comm band wher­ev­er she’d put it down in the lab. She gave her­self a lit­tle shake, the lat­est one in a morn­ing where she seemed to have done noth­ing but try to shake or­der back in­to her life. She de­cid­ed to check on Djami­lah her­self in­stead of call­ing the nurse’s sta­tion.

The peo­ple sent to Mars, al­though not nec­es­sar­i­ly fit, were healthy to the lim­its of res­o­lu­tion pro­vid­ed by mod­ern med­ical test­ing, so Corin­na had nev­er had rea­son to vis­it the Sta­tion’s clin­ic be­fore. It bris­tled with equip­ment to an ex­tent that made her lab look like a low-key high school bi­ol­o­gy class­room. With few peo­ple to care for and with a po­ten­tial need for every ma­jor gad­get in the med­ical ar­se­nal, the clin­ic had walls of ma­chines sur­round­ing the small­est pos­si­ble spaces. Djami­lah was tucked away be­hind one of the walls, eyes open, star­ing at the ceil­ing.

Corin­na caught her breath, think­ing oh-my-god, a sound which caused Djami­lah to turn her head. Corin­na saw with a flood of re­lief that there was a per­son be­hind the eyes and that she was all right.

“Dr. Mansur, I’m so glad you came.”

At first Corin­na feared this might mean Djami­lah did not have an­oth­er friend in the world, but that was not the prob­lem.

“I’m so wor­ried about Isk­ender. Has he been told? Is he okay? Is some­one tak­ing care of him? If I’m still here tonight, who’ll look af­ter him?”

“It’s okay, Djami­lah, re­al­ly. Don’t wor­ry. They have re­al­ly good peo­ple at the day care cen­ter and I’ll make sure some­thing’s in place for tonight.” She al­most said I’ll take care of him, if that’s what it takes, but then con­sid­ered that there was no way to run Mor­bier’s lab and take care of a tod­dler. “I’ll go to the cen­ter right af­ter this and bring him back for a vis­it.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

Djami­lah looked so re­lieved, Corin­na was em­bar­rassed.

“It’s noth­ing, re­al­ly. So, how are you feel­ing?”

“Strange. Dizzy, with a bad headache. And if I move my head too much I start feel­ing like I might throw up. What hap­pened, any­way?”

“I don’t know. You were hit with two and a half thou­sand volts on the DNA read­er.”

“But I paused it,” cried Djami­lah, “I know I paused it.”

Corin­na nod­ded.

“You did. I checked. That’s why it’s so weird. It’s just one of those freak things where some­how the ma­chine was car­ry­ing cur­rent even though it seemed to be paused.”

“So it’s not re­al­ly my fault.”

The re­lief in her voice was so tan­gi­ble, it came to Corin­na that Djami­lah had been ly­ing there by her­self, fran­tic about her son and beat­ing her­self up for hav­ing ru­ined equip­ment.

“Oh, Djami­lah, not every­thing is your fault, you know.” She smiled to stress that it was a joke. “It didn’t help that your shoes were cracked right through, but the qual­i­ty of your shoes is not your fault ei­ther.”

“My shoes were cracked!” She echoed the words with as­ton­ish­ment. “They weren’t. They def­i­nite­ly weren’t.”

Corin­na glanced around, spot­ted the stor­age draw­er un­der the bed, and pulled it open. She took out the shoes and hand­ed one over to Djami­lah, sole up.

Djami­lah reached for it and winced. She reached more care­ful­ly and took it.

The sole was cracked right across at the ball of the foot and all the way through to the con­duc­tive lead in­ner sole.

“They weren’t like that when I put them on!”

“How can you be sure? Did you check them that very morn­ing?”

“No, but I did the night be­fore.” In an­swer to Corin­na’s sur­prised look, she con­tin­ued, “They’d start­ed to crack a lit­tle bit, so I kept check­ing them. You know, you have to pay for them your­self if you buy them soon­er than you’re sup­posed to, and they’re ex­pen­sive. But, of course, they’re not safe if they’re re­al­ly cracked, so I want­ed to be sure I re­placed them be­fore that hap­pened.”

“Oh,” said Corin­na. This was more than strange. It re­quired the as­sump­tion that grem­lins roamed the Sta­tion with noth­ing bet­ter to do than mess about with shoes.

An eas­i­er ques­tion was ar­rang­ing some­thing for Djami­lah’s son. A few search­es turned up the fact that the neona­tal nurs­ery al­so pro­vid­ed 24-hour emer­gency care for chil­dren whose par­ents died or were in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed. A nurse would set up a crib for him in Djami­lah’s tiny room, take care of his meals, and walk him to day care.

“That takes care of that,” said Corin­na, snap­ping the cov­er back on her wrist­pad. “No, no, Djami­lah, re­al­ly, there’s noth­ing to thank me for.” She waved down her protes­ta­tions of grat­i­tude. “I’ll check with your nurse and then I’ll go get him now.”

Be­fore she was even past the first bank of equip­ment, the wide, gray bracelet of her wrist­pad vi­brat­ed against her skin, in­di­cat­ing a new mes­sage. It was a note from Mor­bier telling her to be at his of­fice at two p.m. “to dis­cuss lab pro­ce­dures and safe­ty is­sues.” No doubt he would want to hear all the de­tails, so she bet­ter get back to the lab in a hur­ry and find out what they were. Ex­cept for know­ing that the read­er had some­how mal­func­tioned and that poor Djami­lah did not have very good shoes, she had not done any­thing to check the ex­act cir­cum­stances at the time of the ac­ci­dent. She al­ways walked fast, but now she be­gan fly­ing down the cor­ri­dors at suf­fi­cient speed to be a dan­ger to traf­fic.

Oziel glanced up when she sud­den­ly blew in at the door­way of the day­care area and a pleased smile lit his face—

—which turned straight in­to alarm. She re­al­ized she must look wild, rush­ing in with lab coat fly­ing, her eyes dart­ing every­where, hunt­ing for Isk­ender in the whirl of chil­dren. She tried to force her­self to seem nor­mal, but she was breath­ing too hard for that.

“I’m look­ing for Isk­ender.” Then, be­tween breaths, she had a bright idea. “Come to think of it, it might be best if you tell him. It’ll be a bit eas­i­er com­ing from some­one he knows.” She quick­ly ex­plained what had hap­pened.

Oziel frowned, but took a breath and cleared his ex­pres­sion. He crossed the room to Isk­ender, who was play­ing with three oth­er chil­dren. He took him aside. Corin­na saw Oziel sit down on the floor with him. She saw him speak to the child earnest­ly. She saw the live­li­ness drain out of Isk­ender’s face. She saw the ter­ri­ble, age­less still­ness of a hu­man be­ing in fear and she knew, like a stone drop­ping in her heart and drag­ging it down, that he would nev­er be as young again.

Oziel picked Isk­ender up and came over to Corin­na. Shy­ly, she pat­ted the lit­tle boy’s back and said soft­ly, “It’ll all be okay Isk­ender. Re­al­ly it will. I know it will.” She kicked her­self while she said it. She knew noth­ing of the kind.

He start­ed to cry then and she flinched in­ward­ly for nev­er know­ing the right thing to say.

But Oziel smiled at her as if it had been the right thing and ad­just­ed Isk­ender in the crook of his left arm in a way that said he was go­ing to car­ry him all day.

“I thought it would be a good idea for him and his moth­er to see each oth­er….” She trailed off. Oziel did, af­ter all, have a job to do and oth­er chil­dren to take care of. She could not re­al­ly ask him to bring Isk­ender to his moth­er, but he was ob­vi­ous­ly so much more com­fort­ing to the child than she could be. To tell the truth, she had to ad­mit there was some­thing about him that was com­fort­ing even to her. She had some­how, some­where, lost the feel­ing of not hav­ing a friend in the world.

“I’ll ask my boss, and go with you,” he said, as if she had spo­ken every thought.

 

Corin­na took an ear­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty to start tak­ing care of her own prob­lems. Moth­er and son, once they had each oth­er, clear­ly could car­ry on with­out her.

The first ques­tion from Mor­bier would nat­u­ral­ly be, “How did this hap­pen?” “I dun­no” was a weak re­ply.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as she stood be­fore the cul­prit DNA read­er, “I dun­no” seemed like the on­ly an­swer. The ma­chine had been paused, no ques­tion about that, and she was far from be­ing enough of an elec­tri­cian to di­ag­nose the pause cir­cuits them­selves. Item one: have some­one qual­i­fied go over the cir­cuits. She leaned to­ward the back of the ma­chine to see if there were any ob­vi­ous­ly fried wires. Her shoes made an un­usu­al squeak­ing noise as she moved to brace her­self for the stretch. She looked down. The floor was shiny. She was stand­ing in a spill.

It had to be some­thing Djami­lah had spilled just be­fore her ac­ci­dent. The Geiger counter showed it was not ra­dioac­tive and Corin­na breathed a sigh of re­lief. UV light did not show any of sev­er­al oth­er vi­cious chem­i­cals flu­o­resc­ing. Corin­na breathed an­oth­er sigh of re­lief. It did not smell, or re­act with any of sev­er­al in­di­ca­tor dyes. Ap­par­ent­ly it was just wa­ter.

But where had it come from? If Djami­lah had spilled it, she should have been hold­ing a con­tain­er. Corin­na put on a pair of lab gloves and be­gan mop­ping up the pud­dle with ab­sorbent tow­els. The damn thing went on and on. She had to reach way to the back of the table. No, all the way to the wall. It came from un­der the wall. Some­thing had to be leak­ing back there. She squat­ted down and re­moved a wall pan­el. There was a tiny drip from a pipe back there. A brief ex­am­i­na­tion showed it trav­eled down the pipe a short dis­tance from a leaky joint. What enor­mous­ly bad luck that the leak should have cho­sen a place that would pool right at the read­er.

Too much bad luck, thought Corin­na. First a paused ma­chine that was not paused. Now this. She looked nar­row­ly at the pipe, held in po­si­tion away from the floor­ing by sty­ro­foam blocks. One of them was a clean­er white than the oth­ers. She shift­ed to her hands and knees and shoved her head and shoul­ders in­to the wall open­ing. The white block was firm­ly wedged un­der the pipe. There were even marks in the dust where it had been pushed in.

None of the oth­er blocks had vis­i­ble push marks.

She wig­gled the block and pulled till it came out. The leak stopped as soon as there was no strain push­ing the pipe in­vis­i­bly out of line.

Corin­na sat back on­to the floor with a sud­den bump as if the im­pli­ca­tions had bowled her over phys­i­cal­ly as well as men­tal­ly. The pipe had been pur­pose­ly and sub­tly made to leak. The cracks in Djami­lah’s shoes had been deep­ened. The pause on the read­er had been cir­cum­vent­ed.

Why would any­one try to kill Djami­lah? Maybe Djami­lah knew some­thing too, al­though that seemed on the sil­ly side of im­prob­a­ble. They pre­sum­ably could not get at her in the clin­ic, so she was safe for now. Or had Corin­na her­self been the tar­get? At the very least, this an­swered the ques­tion of whether They were per­son­al­ly ca­pa­ble of mur­der.

Corin­na tried to think with mount­ing fear of what she was to say to Mor­bier. If he was in­volved in this non-ac­ci­dent, telling him about the sab­o­tage would do noth­ing but let him know ex­act­ly how much she knew. She would have to main­tain the fic­tion of an ac­ci­dent, avoid men­tion­ing the cracks in the tech’s shoes, say the pud­dle prob­a­bly came from some­thing she spilled, pre­tend the read­er’s cir­cuits just need­ed to be checked. She pushed the block back in where it had been and re­placed the wall pan­el. She’d call Main­te­nance when the “spill” reap­peared.

Her wrist­pad vi­brat­ed in the ap­point­ment-re­mind­ing pat­tern. She looked at the time: fif­teen min­utes to wait and then cross the hall to Mor­bier’s of­fice. She knew be­fore it start­ed that the wait would make her nerves curl right up and out of her skin.

By the time she stood in Mor­bier’s of­fice, she had lost the abil­i­ty to be­come more ner­vous. Even Ching’s pic­ture on the tele­con­fer­encer, in­di­cat­ing that this was go­ing to be a grilling at the high­est lev­els, had lit­tle ef­fect. Good old neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, she thought. Use them up and then you don’t feel a thing.

There were the usu­al cour­te­sies. “Please take a seat.” “Do you ob­ject to record­ing equip­ment?” “We can move the video feed if it’s too close for you.” The sil­ver tube of fiberop­tic el­e­ments point­ed at her like a snake just inch­es away from her face, but she mur­mured that no, it was fine. Her at­ten­tion had been flit­ting fever­ish­ly, but now her mind fas­tened on mi­nor so­cial cour­te­sies, which served to steady her when the cer­tain­ty of be­ing right could not. An un­nat­ur­al still­ness en­veloped her. She felt that while it last­ed she could ex­am­ine any­thing, no mat­ter how hor­ri­ble, with equal dis­pas­sion.

Ching had launched in­to his speech, but she had trou­ble slow­ing her nerves down enough to lis­ten. They did not ask her any of the ques­tions she had pre­pared her­self to an­swer. It was clear­ly not go­ing to be a hear­ing with much lis­ten­ing in­volved.

“— sor­ry that this meet­ing has been made nec­es­sary, but on Mars we do not have the lux­u­ry we might have on Earth of over­look­ing laps­es in safe­ty pro­ce­dures. Dr. Mor­bier has checked the lab care­ful­ly and has giv­en me his find­ings.” His im­age bobbed its head at Mor­bier as a sig­nal for him to pro­ceed.

Mor­bier read from a sheet of pa­per, and me­thod­i­cal­ly ticked off each point as he made it. “Lab coats are not laun­dered week­ly in­creas­ing the like­li­hood of chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.” Tick. “Im­pro­vised con­tain­ers are used at some sta­tions for dis­pos­able pipette tips and oth­er small dis­pos­able items, in­creas­ing the like­li­hood of er­ror on the part of the clean­ing staff.” Tick. “One of the first aid kits was in­com­plete and the oth­er had had its scis­sors re­moved.” Tick. “Two labs out of the four com­pris­ing the area un­der Dr. Mansur’s su­per­vi­sion did not have evac­u­a­tion route maps.” Tick.

He car­ried on for quite a while. No­body could beat Mor­bier for a thor­ough knowl­edge of lab pro­ce­dures. No­body as smart as Mor­bier could be­lieve for an in­stant that all those “laps­es” were not a reg­u­lar part of get­ting work done in a lab. Were you sup­posed to sit on your hands, cost­ing UNPB thou­sands of dol­lars in wast­ed time, un­til reg­u­la­tion waste bas­kets showed up?

He moved on to more spe­cif­ic points. “A spill un­der the Laser Flu­o­res­cence Se­quence As­sem­bler was still ev­i­dent at oh-nine-hun­dred hours. The pres­ence of un­cleaned spills is very poor prac­tice and may have been a con­tribut­ing fac­tor in this ac­ci­dent.” Tick. “Faulty pro­tec­tive rub­ber gloves were de­liv­ered, but were not test­ed pri­or to use as per reg­u­la­tions.”

Faulty gloves? What the hell?

Corin­na opened her mouth to protest the whole litany of fab­ri­cat­ed charges, but then shut it again. There was noth­ing she could say that they did not al­ready know, of that she was sure by now.

Ching was speak­ing again. “In the light of this ac­cu­mu­la­tion of ev­i­dence, I sup­port Dr. Mor­bier’s con­tention that it is a li­a­bil­i­ty to con­tin­ue the em­ploy­ment of a per­son ap­par­ent­ly in­ca­pable of main­tain­ing or­di­nary lab­o­ra­to­ry safe­ty, to say noth­ing of the spe­cial pre­cau­tions one would hope to see in our more dan­ger­ous en­vi­ron­ment. It is my re­gret­table du­ty to sec­ond Dr. Mor­bier in ter­mi­nat­ing —”

Corin­na was shocked as if il­lu­mi­nat­ed by light­ning.

They were not try­ing to mur­der her. Mur­ders get in­ves­ti­gat­ed. They were try­ing to get rid of her. No­body would in­ves­ti­gate the fir­ing of mi­nor, un­sat­is­fac­to­ry cog in the sci­en­tif­ic es­tab­lish­ment. They had de­cid­ed they could not use her; they had de­cid­ed she was get­ting sus­pi­cious; and they had de­cid­ed to fire her in dis­grace so that any­thing she might say would be dis­cred­it­ed as sour grapes.

With an af­ter­shock, she re­al­ized that Djami­lah’s death would have made her, Corin­na’s, sup­posed in­com­pe­tence look lethal. No­body would have ever ques­tioned their judg­ment then. Mor­bier’s first ques­tion had been about Djami­lah, but not be­cause he cared about a hu­man life. The fact that the poor woman was the sole sup­port of a small child was ob­vi­ous­ly a mi­nor de­tail to them. A small child that they had had the bloody gall to use in their hor­ri­ble ex­per­i­ments, no less.

The rea­son Mor­bier had in­sist­ed she had to be out of the lab check­ing rab­bits was all too clear.

They could have fired her for in­ad­e­qua­cy in ten dif­fer­ent, trumped-up ways she could nev­er have fought or even de­tect­ed. If they had let her slink off to some oth­er job, she could nev­er have fought back be­cause she would still have some­thing left to lose. In­stead, they had suc­ceed­ed in cor­ner­ing her to the point where she might as well fight. Some­body was not a very good strate­gist. Or they had a clear grasp of just how lit­tle a dis­cred­it­ed post­doc could do to them.

“What are my rights in this sit­u­a­tion?” she found her­self say­ing with, to her, as­ton­ish­ing self-pos­ses­sion.

Mor­bier and Ching ex­changed looks. Not in the script? Or would her re­sponse mere­ly trig­ger Plan B?

“You may ap­peal to the Coun­cil Om­buds­man and have a hear­ing,” said Mor­bier with such com­plete neu­tral­i­ty it sound­ed like sar­casm. If you want to waste your time and every­one else’s, his tone said, by all means ap­peal.

“I would like the record to show, then,” she nod­ded to­ward the record­ing ma­chin­ery, “that I will be ap­peal­ing. I as­sume this puts my dis­missal on hold?”

Mor­bier nod­ded with no more emo­tion than a man con­firm­ing the weath­er re­port.

Ching said, “Yes,” in a snip­py tone.

“Am I free to go now?” Corin­na asked, the same mask of self-pos­ses­sion still cov­er­ing her soul.

Mor­bier nod­ded neu­tral­ly again.

Ching re­peat­ed, “Yes, yes,” in an ir­ri­tat­ed voice.

She stood up, said “Thank you” be­cause noth­ing else was ap­pro­pri­ate ei­ther, and left.

It took few­er than ten steps in the cor­ri­dor be­fore her knees start­ed shak­ing. She just about ran the hun­dreds of me­ters to Fog­gy Bot­tom’s tiny park. Quick­ly, she sat down on a shel­tered bench to wait the jit­ters out. It did not help that she knew ex­act­ly which neu­ro­trans­mit­ter was caus­ing her to sweat and which one to shake and how long it was like­ly to last.

 

Chap­ter 8

How much time passed as Corin­na sat in the au­di­to­ri­um-sized park she was not sure. The meet­ing with Mor­bier had tak­en near­ly an hour. She was sure she had not been sit­ting more than a few min­utes. It could not be much past three. So what was Oziel do­ing there, car­ry­ing a book and munch­ing on a bag of crunchy cheese pops that one of the kids had prob­a­bly not want­ed? He spot­ted her a mo­ment lat­er.

“They let you out of the lab? Not pos­si­ble.” His eyes glim­mered in a friend­ly smile, but Corin­na couldn’t dig up a match­ing re­sponse.

“What are you do­ing here?” she man­aged to ask.

His eyes lost their smile, but he sat down next to her on the bench. The crunch­ing nois­es as he ate his cheese pops ir­ri­tat­ed her wild­ly. He of­fered her some, but she re­spond­ed on­ly with a few short, tight shakes of her head.

“Or­di­nary peo­ple on­ly work eight-hour days, you see, and have things called over­time and hol­i­days. I’m on the morn­ing shift this week, six to four­teen hun­dred. We have to be open round the clock for the night work­ers, and no­body wants to deal with our shift changes right when the par­ents are drop­ping their kids off around eight and six­teen hun­dred and mid­night.”

How nice, she thought.

“Now tell me, Corin­na,” he said in a voice as qui­et as vel­vet, “what’s gone so wrong?”

She want­ed to throw her­self on his chest and weep. The voice like a ca­ress, the strength and so­lid­i­ty of him, the promise of safe­ty he some­how man­aged to pro­ject, how did he do these things? Why did he do them? Was this why chil­dren flocked to him?

Damned sil­ly, she’d look, flock­ing. She pulled her­self to­geth­er.

“I found out what they were try­ing to do on Sun­day.”

“Elec­tro­cute Djami­lah?”

“Yes, but that was just a means to an end. They’re fir­ing me for in­com­pe­tence be­cause of these ter­ri­ble laps­es in lab safe­ty.”

Af­ter a pause she added,

“I think Djami­lah was sup­posed to die, since that would have made my in­com­pe­tence in­fi­nite­ly worse.”

“In­stead,” he said, still soft­ly, “your to­tal­ly un­want­ed com­pe­tence saved her.”

She felt a shad­ow of a smile. He was right. Nice to think she was good for some­thing.

How­ev­er, it did not change the fact that she was be­ing fired. It did not change the fact that she would nev­er get an­oth­er job even close to her field. Who would hire her when the Di­rec­tor for Sci­ence on Mars said she was a dan­ger in the lab? If hear­ings ex­on­er­at­ed her, still no­body would hire her be­cause then, at the very least, she was a trou­ble­mak­er who de­mand­ed hear­ings. Twen­ty five years of school­ing, and it was all go­ing to be for noth­ing. Did they even pay your pas­sage back off Mars in these cas­es?

And with­out a lab, how was she sup­posed to un­mask what­ev­er they were do­ing with en­dor­phins?

“What’s your next step?” he asked.

She had not thought that far ahead. The hear­ing, she sup­posed, for all the good it was go­ing to do. She told him so, but added,

“That’s just to give me a cou­ple of weeks to wrap things up. Hear­ings are al­ways fore­gone con­clu­sions. They’re go­ing to dis­cred­it me to make sure no­body pays any at­ten­tion to me about what­ev­er it is that they’re up to. A no­body like me can’t do any­thing that will make any dif­fer­ence. I’m just dead meat.”

“Corin­na, you al­ready al­most ru­ined their plans by sav­ing Djami­lah and by hav­ing the pres­ence of mind to de­mand a hear­ing. You have on­ly two weeks to nail the pu­toneros, but you do have two weeks. If we can get enough ev­i­dence of sab­o­tage to jail them, they’re the ones who’ll be dead meat, not you.”

“Yeah, that would be nice.”

“What have you got so far?” he pressed on. He wasn’t go­ing to let her fold.

She told him about Djami­lah’s shoes and the propped pipe and the un­paused pause.

“At least the pipe doesn’t have my fin­ger­prints all over it, since I was wear­ing lab gloves the whole time. As for the pause, I don’t even know how to be­gin check­ing the elec­tri­cal in­nards.”

His eyes nar­rowed in thought.

“It’s paused with a com­put­er com­mand?”

“Well, it’s a but­ton on the front of the ma­chine, but it goes through soft­ware to take ef­fect.”

“You’re sure it’s the cir­cuits and not the soft­ware that they messed with?”

“I don’t know, ac­tu­al­ly. I just as­sumed it would be the cir­cuits.”

“Soft­ware is much eas­i­er. How do you get at it?”

“You need to have ac­cess to the root ac­count.”

“Which you have?”

“Well, sure, but what good does that do? I don’t know how to check it and you sure as hell can’t park in the lab and open com­mand win­dows on the serv­er.”

“I can park my­self any­where. The on­ly way to keep me off a com­put­er is to dis­con­nect it. What’s the ac­count?”

When she did not move, he stood, went to one of the park’s game ter­mi­nals and called out,

“You gonna make me wait till frogs grow hair?”

She joined him then, told him the ac­count and pass­word.

“This’ll take a while,” he mut­tered, “since I don’t want to leave any trace of ac­cess.” With­in min­utes, he nod­ded.

Bueno. Next. What’s the com­mand syn­tax for pause?”

“ ‘Lsr­pause -x -a,’” she reeled off.

He typed com­mand af­ter com­mand. The screen filled up with hexa­dec­i­mal num­bers. He scanned down care­ful­ly, as if it all meant some­thing to him, and then jabbed his fin­ger at one par­tic­u­lar bit.

“I’ll bet any­thing that’s it. ‘Pause’ is 70 61 75 73 65 in hex and you see it every­where in this ex­ec file. Ex­cept here where there’s a 72 in­stead of 75.” Some­how, while he spoke, the num­bers were con­vert­ed to text. It was still gob­bledy­gook, but even Corin­na could see that it was a pro­gram hav­ing to do with paus­ing. And right in the mid­dle of one bit that was all curly brack­ets and paren­the­ses and semi­colons with words like “else” and “then” and “Ob­jectMapFetch” was the word “parse.”

A mere “r” sub­sti­tut­ed for a “u” had made the com­mand non-func­tion­al and near­ly killed Djami­lah.

“That was changed on pur­pose. A ac­ci­den­tal glitch usu­al­ly makes an end-of-file, but that would have been eas­i­er to see if any­one looked and they couldn’t have pre­tend­ed some­one was care­less. You can ac­tu­al­ly fig­ure out the prob­a­bil­i­ty that a glitch would turn it in­to an­oth­er Eng­lish word, and it’s very low.”

A snap­shot of the screen curled out of the ter­mi­nal’s print­er slot. He hand­ed it to her.

“You see the prob­lem with this, yes?” he con­tin­ued.

“Well, yeah. It’s still just a prob­a­bil­i­ty. It’s not proof.”

“No. There comes a time when the prob­a­bil­i­ties add up to some­thing so im­prob­a­ble that any ‘rea­son­able’ per­son —”

Corin­na could hear the quotes on the word, im­ply­ing rea­son­able ju­ries and the whole nine le­gal yards.

“— will see it as proof. The prob­lem is that, if you ar­gue it’s sab­o­tage, peo­ple have to have a rea­son for sab­o­tage. It’s just like need­ing a mo­tive for mur­der, or else the law feels you’re prob­a­bly in­no­cent, even if it looks bad.”

“You mean they could say, ‘Gee whiz, why would fine, up­stand­ing cit­i­zens like us do this?’”

“Yes.”

“So, let me see if I’ve got it. The on­ly de­fense against a charge of in­com­pe­tence is to prove sab­o­tage. But if I prove sab­o­tage I al­so have to si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly prove every­thing about their hap­py gene scheme or they can just wrig­gle off the hook and — I guess — kill me to get rid of my dan­ger­ous ideas. Is this sup­posed to make me feel bet­ter?”

The fact that he al­ways seemed to be right was as bad as his crunchy cheese pops for ir­ri­ta­tion val­ue. She would much rather be right her­self.

He looked down at the floor. When he spoke again, it was in that low, qui­et voice which seemed to un­twist the knots in­side her by sound alone.

“Corin­na, there is no way to feel bet­ter when a gun is point­ed at your head. But if you know what kind of gun it is and ex­act­ly where it is point­ed, you have a bet­ter chance of fight­ing it.”

She felt the anger drain­ing out of her. What was she do­ing, be­ing an­gry with him, any­way? It was thin­ly veiled hys­te­ria, that’s what it was.

“Two weeks doesn’t give me enough time to find all the ev­i­dence I need, do all the se­quenc­ing, and do the analy­sis that will tell me what it means. Analy­sis can take days — weeks — by it­self.”

“You can on­ly do what you can. If it looks like you won’t have enough time, well, we have a few days to come up with an al­ter­nate strat­e­gy.”

We, hmm? The tiny pro­noun com­fort­ed her out of all pro­por­tion to its size.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly,” he con­tin­ued, “you’ll be watched in the lab, so it won’t be easy. Speak­ing of find­ing ev­i­dence, I al­most for­got: I got a copy of Dorie’s au­top­sy re­port.” He pulled a crum­pled print­out from his thigh pock­et and hand­ed it to her. “I don’t think it’ll be in­ter­est­ing, though, be­cause no­body act­ed like there was any­thing strange.”

“‘Id­io­path­ic car­dioneu­ropa­thy’,” Corin­na read off the sheet with a snort. “The ex­pen­sive way to say ‘his heart stopped and we don’t know why.’ All the symp­toms of CNS in­volve­ment and they didn’t even look at brain chem­istry. It’s way too late now, in any case, even if they’d take my word on what to look for. Hell. I’d bet any­thing that poor child died be­cause one of their hor­ri­ble ex­per­i­ments failed, and a com­pe­tent au­top­sy would have nailed the bas­tards.”

“I don’t think there are any in­com­pe­tent doc­tors here, Corin­na. But there are prob­a­bly some who can be con­vinced not to look too hard.”

“Yeah,” she mut­tered, slid­ing in­to hope­less­ness again as she con­tem­plat­ed the pow­er of the peo­ple try­ing to crush her.

He made a dis­mis­sive, down­ward, “case closed” wave of his hand.

“As I said, you do what you can. Did you have a chance to see what was in the box we saw dropped off?”

“At the P6 air­lock? Hell, no. And at this point, I prob­a­bly won’t ei­ther. I mean, what’s my ex­cuse for need­ing P6 stor­age? Here I am be­ing fired, but for some rea­son I need to be in P6.” Her ex­as­per­a­tion was spilling out again, even though it was any­thing but his fault.

“You just say that you may not be in your cur­rent job much longer and you need to make sure that every­thing is stored right for the next per­son.”

Corin­na felt a sud­den gid­dy sense of the ridicu­lous. The guy re­al­ly was al­ways right. How­ev­er, his ed­u­ca­tion had been so ex­pen­sive, she couldn’t have af­ford­ed it.

“You’re right,” she said. “P6 to­mor­row. What’s his name, the lit­tle dwee­blet, is on du­ty then and he won’t give me any trou­ble. And now I have to go do deep breath­ing ex­er­cis­es or some­thing so I can get back to what pass­es for nor­mal. I’m still feel­ing pret­ty hys­ter­i­cal.”

She walked to­ward the ex­it. Oziel had just said, “See you lat­er,” when Kruskal walked in. He was car­ry­ing a sand­wich bag and a ther­mos and looked at them both nar­row­ly. Let them once link her with Oziel, and they would prob­a­bly fire him as well.

“How come they let you out of the lab?” she asked Kruskal with­out break­ing her stride to­ward the door. She did not feel up to in­vent­ing her own di­ver­sion­ary jokes.

She reached her tiny room, but there was no sanc­tu­ary there ei­ther. Her thoughts fol­lowed her in. She threw her­self on the nar­row bed and brood­ed.

 

Chap­ter 9

When Corin­na had oc­ca­sion to lament some dis­ap­point­ment, her fa­ther, in his en­cour­ag­ing way, of­ten point­ed out that things can al­ways get worse. She hat­ed to ad­mit it, but ev­i­dence was on his side. As bad as her feel­ings of over­work and un­der-ap­pre­ci­a­tion had been be­fore, naked hos­til­i­ty was worse.

The terms of her qua­si-aca­d­e­m­ic ap­point­ment were such that Mor­bier could not sim­ply lock her out of the lab. She was woe­ful­ly un­der­paid be­cause sup­pos­ed­ly she was ad­vanc­ing her ca­reer by do­ing her own re­search as part of this job. The fact that it was all Mor­bier’s any­way had galled her, but the flip side of the fic­tion now ben­e­fit­ed her, be­cause they had to al­low her to fin­ish up “her” work. So there she was, try­ing to think log­i­cal­ly about how to col­lect the ev­i­dence she need­ed, while Jonathan breathed down her neck. He had ob­vi­ous­ly been told to keep tabs on her. He had ob­vi­ous­ly been keep­ing tabs on her for weeks al­ready, and she’d been too trust­ful to even no­tice. Mor­bier him­self al­so came in every hour and looked around as if ex­pect­ing to find an­i­mal waste in the DNA read­er and fin­ger­prints on the ster­ile pipettes.

The gloves, she re­mem­bered, her mind skit­ter­ing fruit­less­ly among re­pel­lent top­ics. She need­ed to check the strange com­ment Mor­bier had made about gloves. She crossed the hall to the techs’ lab, and so did Jonathan, who sud­den­ly ap­peared to need to do some­thing there.

“Jonathan,” she said abrupt­ly, “I just re­mem­bered, Mei-mei said there were some tubes of yours with tis­sue cul­ture cells that she saw in the reg­u­lar freez­er in­stead of the ul­tra­cold.”

“What! They’ll be use­less af­ter even a day in there. I need those for my pa­per with Mor­bier, and if I have to wait for an­oth­er ship­ment from Earth — where ex­act­ly were they?”

“She didn’t say. But I’m sure if you look through the freez­er, you’ll see them pret­ty quick if they’re there. They’re in the big tubes.”

And he was gone, no fuss, no muss, just as Oziel had said once, days ago. She hoped that would keep him oc­cu­pied long enough for her to study the gloves.

There was noth­ing ob­vi­ous wrong with them, but when held up to the light, tens of lit­tle pin­pricks showed through every mi­cro­scop­ic fault in the thin, rub­bery film. Every box in that lab had de­fec­tive gloves and every box was full, just as they would be if some­one had re­placed them all at the same time and quite re­cent­ly. The oth­er labs be­long­ing to Mor­bier did not have this prob­lem. Some­body ob­vi­ous­ly want­ed to make sure there was no chance of get­ting a good glove in that room.

Ev­i­dence for sab­o­tage was over­whelm­ing, but ev­i­dence for the bio­engi­neered brain­wash­ing scheme be­hind it was still non-ex­is­tent. She need­ed to find a vial of some­thing dread­ful with Mor­bier’s name on it. She need­ed to find a plot to over­throw world gov­ern­ments on Mor­bier’s com­put­er. She stopped abrupt­ly as she crossed the hall back to her cu­bi­cle. Oziel prob­a­bly could get on­to Mor­bier’s com­put­er and find god-on­ly-knew-what. But then she start­ed walk­ing again.

It was no good. How would she ad­mit at a hear­ing that she had all Mor­bier’s pri­vate files? The au­thor­i­ties took a very dim view of splic­ing, and if she was good enough to break in­to his com­put­er, she was good enough to plant those files, which would be pre­cise­ly his de­fense. Could she get a se­cret but of­fi­cial search war­rant for his files? On­ly if she could show prob­a­ble cause to sus­pect crim­i­nal wrong-do­ing, and she had no ev­i­dence hard enough to help an un­der­ling against a heavy­weight. She had come full cir­cle.

Jonathan came bleat­ing in­to her of­fice that his tis­sue cul­ture cells were nowhere in that freez­er and where were they?

“Have you looked in the ul­tra­cold it­self?” she asked. “Maybe some­body put them back for you.”

He gal­loped off to the freez­er in ques­tion. She could hear him bang­ing around, then a string of ex­ple­tives when he found the cells right where they be­longed. Mo­ments lat­er he was back. He kept hang­ing about, os­ten­si­bly to ask a de­tailed ques­tion about reagents, but in re­al­i­ty to read her screen and see what she was work­ing on. As it hap­pened, she had been pon­der­ing splic­ing, not work­ing, and he lacked the abil­i­ty to read her mind.

This, she said to her­self, is in­tol­er­a­ble. The hu­mil­i­a­tion of hav­ing this pip­squeak pre­ferred over her was so ir­ri­tat­ing she could not think. On top of that, it al­so both­ered her that she was both­ered. She knew per­fect­ly well that if they’d tried to re­cruit her for this hor­ri­ble pro­ject, she would have re­fused, but they’d nev­er tried. Log­i­cal­ly, this meant she was too good for them, but on some lev­el it didn’t feel like that. It felt like she wasn’t good enough.

She stood up. She would go and check out P6 right now. It would get her out of the lab and away from the spies, if she worked it right.

“Here,” she said to Jonathan, park­ing him at a ter­mi­nal in the lab and pulling up the reagent data­base. “I’m sure if you go through that you’ll find what you’re look­ing for. I need to vis­it the bath­room.” Pre­sum­ably he would not fol­low her there.

He scowled at be­ing brushed off, but there was noth­ing he could do.

 

In the an­te­room to the con­tain­ment cham­ber, Corin­na was scowl­ing too. Work­ing in P6 was for the techs. She had al­ways thought so, but just now she re­al­ly thought so, as she strug­gled with yet an­oth­er fas­ten­er on the bio­con­tain­ment suit. The mis­er­able fas­ten­er was placed, for some rea­son known on­ly to UN-Space, be­tween her shoul­der blades. Was the damn thing on back­wards? When she fi­nal­ly had it right, her mood was not good. She wad­dled to­ward the lab’s in­ter­nal air­lock, feel­ing like a tod­dler dressed in two snow­suits by an over­anx­ious moth­er.

The com­put­er okayed her iris scan and let her in­to the cham­ber. She was pleased to see she was ap­par­ent­ly alone there, but then an ap­pari­tion like her­self ap­peared from be­hind the shelves sur­mount­ing one of the lab ta­bles. Her ear mike crack­led to life.

“Howdy doo­dy. I’m Ben­son.” He glanced at her ID badge, “Oh, hi, Dr. Mansur. Let me know if there’s any­thing you can’t find. I’ll be here.” And he popped back in­to his in­vis­i­ble den.

“Uh, right. Thanks,” mum­bled Corin­na. It re­al­ly was too much to ex­pect the high­est-lev­el bio­con­tain­ment cham­ber to be de­sert­ed. Well, if he ran true to past be­hav­ior, he would re­main untalk­a­tive.

She pot­tered about, try­ing to do the things she would nor­mal­ly do when check­ing stor­age space. Then she pot­tered about some more. But no mat­ter how much she pot­tered, she found noth­ing with red let­ter­ing on it an­nounc­ing “Il­le­gal.” She start­ed to feel hot. The suit was mak­ing her itch be­hind her shoul­der blades where she could not reach it, and at her crotch where she would look like an orang­utan if she scratched, and around one an­kle where the suit was too thick to get at the skin.

Fi­nal­ly, tucked in a cor­ner, but too big to hide in any re­al sense, was a fa­mil­iar-look­ing half cu­bic me­ter crate with a bro­ken cor­ner. There had been two days to un­pack it, but the crate was still full. Corin­na held her breath in ex­cite­ment and moved clos­er. One of the dam­aged box­es in­side had a large crack with not-so-frozen sam­ple vials peek­ing through. Corin­na squat­ted down to peer at them. One was la­beled “EDRP-1gen,” the stan­dard name for an en­dor­phin-sys­tem genome kit, no doubt a com­mer­cial prepa­ra­tion or­dered from Earth. She had no use for any­thing stan­dard, but it sug­gest­ed she was get­ting close. Three of the vials had gib­ber­ish la­bels. She quick­ly grabbed them and tucked them in­to the thigh pock­et of her “snow­suit.” Time enough to throw them out lat­er if they were use­less.

“Dr. Ben­son?” she asked in her best of­fi­cious voice. “I hope this is not in­dica­tive of the usu­al han­dling meth­ods for sen­si­tive ma­te­ri­als.” As he came rustling and puff­ing around the cor­ner, she in­di­cat­ed the bro­ken crate.

“Of course not. Heav­ens, no. Of course not. Kruskal had a rush or­der that couldn’t wait for the next clip­per slot, he said, about two weeks from now. He gave it to the Pony Ex­press, they had a new guy work­ing, and, well, there you are. Even so, most of the ma­te­ri­als seem to be in­tact.”

Corin­na tried to re­sist ask­ing why it was still there, but she was too cu­ri­ous.

“Why’s it still here if it was a rush or­der?”

“Well, I mean, jiminy Christ­mas, it’s a P6 pack­age. If it’s dam­aged, I can’t re­lease it un­til I can ver­i­fy ab­sence of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.”

Bless the bu­reau­crats, thought Corin­na, for the first time in her life.

“Of course. That makes sense. Okay, thanks for let­ting me look around. I’ll start mov­ing spec­i­mens in­to Freez­er 6 ear­ly next week.”

First she had to check out the stolen vials. Then tonight, Corin­na de­cid­ed, she was go­ing to take a look around Kruskal’s lab. If the ship­ment was for Kruskal, it could on­ly mean one thing: he was do­ing the ac­tu­al work on this pro­ject and if any­one had in­crim­i­nat­ing vials, it would be him. To­geth­er with the three sam­ples she had al­ready ab­stract­ed from Wal­lis, maybe the whole puz­zle would co­a­lesce in­to some­thing suit­ably damn­ing. She would wor­ry lat­er about how to ex­plain the ex­trale­gal­i­ty of the sam­ples.

 

Corin­na was not sure when she de­cid­ed to en­list Oziel’s help in her plans of crim­i­nal tres­pass. What she did know was that she had nev­er felt so friend­less in her life and that aid and com­fort were about as op­tion­al as air. She, a dis­pos­sessed and dis­cred­it­ed post­doc, was to save her­self and the rest of the world, all with­in the next two weeks. The least she could do was call in re­in­force­ments from the nurs­ery school.

One cor­ner of her mouth was quirked in a sar­don­ic grin at this thought as she slid her din­ner tray on­to Oziel’s table af­ter her trip to P6.

He looked up, sur­prised.

“I’m go­ing to break in­to Kruskal’s lab tonight,” she said very qui­et­ly with­out any pre­am­ble. “I’m go­ing to need a look­out.”

He seemed amused and gave her a sup­pressed, qua­si-mil­i­tary salute.

“Await­ing your or­ders, Señora.”

Corin­na grinned at the salute, but then stopped.

“No, re­al­ly. It could be dan­ger­ous. It could put your job on the line, and you don’t have to do this. It would just be nice for me to have help.”

The glint in his eyes turned in­to a glare, but he was star­ing at the table, not at her.

“I told you. I’d kill the putos with my bare hands, if I could.” He took a no­tice­able breath. “But I don’t know how to kill them. If you have any ideas, just tell me what to do.”

She gave him a long look, which he re­turned just as steadi­ly.

“Okay. First some back­ground. I checked out P6 to­day and—”

“And?” he in­ter­rupt­ed, lean­ing for­ward.

“The box was for Kruskal. Yes,” she an­swered his look, “al­ways the same names. I got away with three vials and ID’ed them this af­ter­noon. One was DNA and one was RNA, and both of them seem to be vac­cines against their docil­i­ty gene. The last one is three dif­fer­ent pro­teins. I have the se­quences on my lap­top, but I haven’t fig­ured out what it is yet. As for the oth­er two, the DNA one seems to be the an­ti­sense strand to the gene that makes en­dor­phi­nase, which is one way to shut that sys­tem down. I’d think it would be more ef­fi­cient, as well as eas­i­er to fine-tune, if you shut it down us­ing reg­u­la­to­ry genes, but —”

“Ah, Corin­na,” Oziel in­ter­rupt­ed again. “There were three vials. You iden­ti­fied them and two of them are vac­cines. Good. Then what?” He chased some peas around his plate with what she now rec­og­nized as a po­lite lack of ex­pres­sion caused by damn gringo food.

“Um. Yes.” She start­ed on her sal­ad. “The pro­tein vial is very, very weird. Noth­ing to do with en­dor­phi­nase at all, as far as I can tell. There are some DNA im­pu­ri­ties in it, but they don’t match any­thing on my sys­tem. I’d guess it was a vac­cine too, but for what, I can’t tell. It may just be some­thing as­so­ci­at­ed with Kruskal’s oth­er re­search. I’d know in a minute if I could search the net, but that’s the one thing I bet­ter not do.”

He nod­ded agree­ment, clear­ly still wait­ing for her to go on.

“Any­way, the point is that Kruskal is do­ing the ba­sic lab work for this pro­ject. So the thing is to break in­to his lab, get away with as many sam­ples as pos­si­ble, and then fig­ure out ex­act­ly what they’re us­ing, how they’re de­liv­er­ing it, and how to cure it.… In 24 hours or less so as not to make it too easy,” she added with a shrug.

“It sounds promis­ing,” said Oziel hes­i­tat­ing­ly, “but — please don’t get me wrong — but the­o­ret­i­cal. How are you go­ing to break in? Or do the labs stay open all night?”

“A lot of labs do stay open, but not Kruskal’s, I’ll bet. No, I was plan­ning on us­ing the ex­ter­nal emer­gency ac­cess air locks.”

She was rather proud of her scheme. Every spoke of the Sta­tion had emer­gency air locks at the tips. The tips poked out past the skin of the dome cov­er­ing every­thing, in­clud­ing the hy­dro­pon­ic gar­dens and waste re­cy­cling ar­eas be­tween the spokes. The emer­gency locks at the spoke tips pro­vid­ed di­rect ac­cess to the out­doors. They could be ei­ther emer­gency ex­its, if there was trou­ble in­side the Sta­tion, or en­trances for some­one caught out­side. They had to re­main un­locked at all times or alarms went off. Of course, Kruskal might have alarmed them against en­trance, but that seemed un­like­ly be­cause no­body in their right mind would break in­to a lab by clunk­ing around in a space suit. And a break-in from out­side with­out a space suit was in­con­ceiv­able. That was the beau­ty of it.

Oziel did not look like he ap­pre­ci­at­ed the beau­ty.

“So you en­ter the lock. How does that get you in­to the lab?”

“The end-of-the-spoke labs are the best re­al es­tate be­cause you can use your whole end of the hall­way as an ex­tra room. The biggest wheels get them. That’s why Mor­bier has one. Ob­vi­ous­ly, Ching gets his pick of spaces and his is the next one over to the west.”

“So, once you’re through the air­lock, you’re al­ready in their area?”

“Yup.”

“Won’t an alarm go off as soon as you ac­ti­vate the lock?”

“There’s five sec­onds to turn it off in case it was start­ed by ac­ci­dent.”

“But the open­ings and clos­ings must be mon­i­tored.”

“Well, yeah, but at that hour I don’t think they’ll be pay­ing much at­ten­tion.”

“They might not no­tice you us­ing an air­lock in the mid­dle of the af­ter­noon, not in the mid­dle of the night. And you need a space suit to get away.” He stared thought­ful­ly in­to the mid­dle dis­tance. “What do you do if there’s a prob­lem? It takes a lot of time to put on a space suit and cy­cle through an air­lock.”

“No space suit.” She felt pleased at the strate­gic bril­liance of such an un­think­able av­enue of at­tack. Oziel’s eyes widened in amaze­ment. “I’m go­ing to run like hell be­tween the two air locks with an emer­gency bag over my head and one of the emer­gency aerosols of canned air. I’ll have about five min­utes of use­ful con­scious­ness and I can cov­er the space in less than three min­utes. I timed my­self in the gym. And by hav­ing some­one on the look­out,” she nod­ded to­ward him, “I’ll have enough time to dive for the air lock and fling my­self out be­fore they find me. So stop pick­ing nits. The im­por­tant thing is to do it.”

By now, Oziel’s ex­pres­sion could have been summed up as You may have a Ph. D. but you have rocks for brains. How­ev­er, all he said was,

“The point is not to plan for suc­cess if every­thing works. The point is to achieve suc­cess no mat­ter which road we have to take.”

She liked his use of “we,” but she said “Go for it,” rather gruffly. She had con­sid­ered her plan el­e­gant in its sim­plic­i­ty.

“How do I keep a look­out in this plan of yours?”

“In the hall­way lead­ing to­ward the lab. There’s a bath­room fa­cil­i­ty there. You could prop the door open. We’ll car­ry two suit ra­dios and you let me know if you see any­one. I was plan­ning on do­ing this at about two in the morn­ing when there shouldn’t be any­one around.”

“We’ll stick out on the se­cu­ri­ty videos like per­form­ing ele­phants. We’ll have to fix the cam­eras.”

“I’d planned on just stay­ing out of their range as much as pos­si­ble.”

He shook his head. “That’ll nev­er work.”

Corin­na frowned. She was get­ting tired of this.

“Pic­ture it,” he con­tin­ued. “You’re a guard sit­ting in front of a bank of mon­i­tors where noth­ing moves and all of a sud­den some­thing flits across. It’ll draw his eyes like a mag­net un­less they’re closed.”

“Well, it’s a moot point any­way. I don’t know how to jim­my cam­eras. So un­less it’s one of your many tal­ents…?”

“My broth­er is the man for that, but he’s a bit far away. All we re­al­ly have to do is freeze a still im­age for a while, so I could prob­a­bly man­age it.”

Corin­na eyed him.

“Why in hell aren’t you mak­ing a bun­dle with a life of crime? You’ve got all the skills.”

“Be­cause I don’t like hell. I told you: I like a qui­et life. Any­way, back to the point. We shouldn’t fix more cam­eras than we have to. So I should be in the lab with you, so there’s on­ly one set of cam­eras to splice. I should prob­a­bly come in through the air lock with you too, so I don’t show up on the hall mon­i­tors ei­ther. But I’m not run­ning around on Mars with­out a suit.”

She shook her head.

“You can’t do that. It hard­ly mat­ters if I get caught. I’ve al­ready been fired. There’s noth­ing they can do to you for be­ing in the bath­room, but if you’re in the lab with me, that’ll be the end of it.” And if he didn’t want to run around on Mars, why was he pre­tend­ing he want­ed to help? There was no oth­er way.

He ig­nored her.

“We need a way to know who’s com­ing and we need to be able to use suits. Let’s see….”

He pon­dered and Corin­na frowned. All sug­ges­tions were grate­ful­ly ac­cept­ed, of course, but where did he get off tak­ing over from her?

“How long would it take you to get in­to your suit?” he asked. “Less than a minute?”

“I’ve done it in forty sec­onds in emer­gency drills.”

“That would solve one prob­lem. I wait just out­side the air­lock with your suit all ready. You hop in­to it and I make sure every­thing’s buck­led if you pass out. It al­so keeps me out of the lab. Run­ning around out­side in the mid­dle of the night may look fun­ny, but there’s no law against it. Now, the prob­lem of ad­vance warn­ing.” He pon­dered again.

“Well,” she said, think­ing it out as she spoke, “if there was some way to pipe in the feed­back from the bulk­head doors, which are closed at that time of night, we’d know if some­one opened one and was com­ing down the hall. It wouldn’t be as good as hu­man eyes and ears, but it’d be some­thing.” She re­turned to pick­ing at her now near­ly cold din­ner.

“Mm,” he agreed. “As you say, it would be some­thing. That leaves the prob­lem of how to hide your use of the air­locks.” He sat so long in thought, Corin­na was start­ing on dessert be­fore he spoke again.

“Wait here. I’m go­ing to check some­thing out on a ter­mi­nal.”

She thought of fol­low­ing him just to demon­strate that Wait here was no way to talk to peo­ple. But she didn’t. Flaunt­ing their col­lab­o­ra­tion to get a few sec­onds’ sat­is­fac­tion was stu­pid.

A long half an hour passed. She was tired of read­ing the news on her wrist­pad and was about to give up and leave, when he re­turned.

“Right. I’ve got it. I can get in­to the air­lock sen­sor stream. In­ter­rupt­ing it is way too ob­vi­ous, but I can redi­rect the sig­nal, so what hap­pens at one lock can look like it’s re­al­ly hap­pen­ing at an­oth­er one. Now, to­mor­row the mid­night shift does the reg­u­lar week­ly sched­uled clip­per port main­te­nance check, so there will be lots of techs go­ing in and out at the rover ter­mi­nal spoke. You just suit up and leave with the crowd. I’ll file an out­ing for the pur­pose of stargaz­ing. I’ll ex­it half an hour ear­li­er and be wait­ing for you near Ching’s air­lock. You jump out of your suit and in­to the lock. Same in re­verse when you’re done. Then we go back in at the clip­per lock about half an hour apart. That way I on­ly have to redi­rect the sen­sor stream from one lock and the chances of be­ing found out are less.”

“And the cam­era jim­my­ing?” He wasn’t the on­ly one who could pick nits.

“Ah, yes. I record tonight’s in­put be­tween, say, mid­night and four am, and then to­mor­row, I redi­rect the cam­era’s da­ta stream to come from the record­ing. That’s the sec­ond rea­son why we should do this to­mor­row rather than to­day.”

So they set­tled it. At one am next morn­ing she would step out of the rover ter­mi­nal air­lock. Corin­na set her wrist­pad to vi­brate on the same spe­cif­ic fre­quen­cy as a lab pager she could lend him to strap to his wrist, and they worked out a set of sig­nals. Three short bursts from her to Oziel meant, “Emer­gency. Get your butt in here and help.” A long con­tin­u­ous sig­nal meant, “All is lost. Save your­self if you can.” And so on.

“Hey, one more thing,” said Corin­na as they picked up their trays. “Is your watch Mars-rat­ed?” Wrist­pads and ex­pen­sive dig­i­tal watch­es lis­tened for the satel­lite sig­nal to keep per­fect time. Cheap tourist watch­es just ap­prox­i­mat­ed the longer hours on Mars that the ex­tra thir­ty sev­en min­utes in the day re­quired, and ap­prox­i­ma­tions weren’t go­ing to be good enough. Oziel’s watch looked the op­po­site of ex­pen­sive.

“Oh. No. Good point. I’ll re­mem­ber to syn­chro­nize to satel­lite time just be­fore I leave.”

“Okay,” said Corin­na, adding in a firm un­der­tone with­out any dou­ble mean­ing at all, “One o’clock to­mor­row and we’ll Do It.”

 

Chap­ter 10

Corin­na had no trou­ble pre­tend­ing to be pre­oc­cu­pied as she snapped her­self in­to a suit, hid­den from view in a grove of ghost­ly suits wait­ing for oc­cu­pants. The car­go pock­ets of her pants were so full, it was a tight fit in the legs of the suit. She had tak­en every­thing: cold box­es, plen­ty of vials, a scoop, and a la­belling scan­ner, in case she hit the jack­pot. Just now, that seemed about as like­ly as a di­rect pro­mo­tion to Chief Re­search Sci­en­tist. Her hands had tremors. This would not do. She might have spo­ken light­ly of how it did not mat­ter if she were caught, but in fact it would prob­a­bly mean a con­vic­tion for break­ing and en­ter­ing. She tried to breathe slow­ly and even­ly and tell her­self that all she had to do was damn well not be caught.

She snapped the hel­met dome in place and turned the po­lar­iza­tion up as much as she plau­si­bly could. No­body had par­tic­u­lar­ly no­ticed her yet and she want­ed to keep it that way. Now her breath sound­ed pan­ic-loud in her ears. The suit was too hot, but af­ter mov­ing the ther­mo­stat down, it rapid­ly be­came too cold. It was like run­ning a fever. She cy­cled through the lock right af­ter a group of techs and set off around the dome, still of no vis­i­ble in­ter­est to any­one.

It took less than ten min­utes to walk past two sides of the hexag­o­nal sta­tion. She could make out Oziel look­ing more like a rock than a per­son, sit­ting a lit­tle way from the air­lock to Ching’s lab at the tip of the Fara­day spoke. Some­how she knew he had spot­ted her, but he did not move for a few sec­onds, prob­a­bly un­til he was sure no­body else was around. Word­less­ly, they both con­verged on the air­lock. She de­po­lar­ized her hel­met and looked a ques­tion at him. Then he cleared his and she could see his face, an eerie, blotchy red and green from the lights of the read­outs in­side the chest of his suit. They gave each oth­er a nod. He moved to the air­lock and poised his hand above the ac­cess but­ton. The idea was for him to push it at the last pos­si­ble mo­ment, ex­act­ly when she was free of the suit, to give her the full five sec­onds to can­cel the alarm. Above all, Corin­na had stressed, they could not risk set­ting off the alarm. She took one last look at the ex­act steps she would take to reach safe­ty, start­ed open­ing her suit and shut her eyes hard against the frigid near-vac­u­um.

A cold sharp as knives took her breath away. She bare­ly sup­pressed a gasp, but af­ter the first tiny, in­vol­un­tary one, she closed her throat as tight­ly as her eyes. The plan­et tried to turn her in­side out. She fought free of the suit, groped blind­ly to­ward the air­lock, and then she felt three hard quiv­ers against her wrist. Then again and again.

Oh my God. Now what?

She flailed back to­ward her suit. Oziel lift­ed her in­to it, snapped it shut just as swirling stars start­ed to form be­hind her still-shut eyes. She gasped for breath and grad­u­al­ly re­gained as much nor­mal­i­ty as she was go­ing to. It was maybe a very good thing she had not test­ed any fool no­tions about run­ning. She looked around. No sign of any­thing ap­proach­ing.

She kept her suit ra­dio off. With this many techs around, there was no point tak­ing chances on some­one pick­ing up their words. She leaned her hel­met against his and spoke loud­ly, know­ing sound would con­duct suf­fi­cient­ly where the two hel­mets touched.

“What the hell was that about!”

“You can’t go dressed like that!” he said, look­ing ex­as­per­at­ed. “You’re wear­ing a white shirt!”

Corin­na just stared at him, a hand’s breadth away in­side his own hel­met. Was he afraid she’d get it dirty? Was it the col­or of the wrong gang? Had House Dior nixed white for bur­glar­ies this sea­son? She sup­posed it was lucky she was wear­ing black car­go pants.

“How are you go­ing to hide in white? If you have to hide,” he added.

“Of all the — okay, so what do you sug­gest? I’m not go­ing all the way back to my room just to make the right fash­ion state­ment, be­lieve me.”

“I’ll give you my turtle­neck. One of us should be all the way in a suit at all times. And re­mem­ber: if you hide, pull the neck up over your head. Faces are mag­nets. And crouch down so you don’t ob­vi­ous­ly look like a per­son.”

She could see him pulling his arms in and strug­gling might­i­ly. Fi­nal­ly he was ready. He un­fas­tened just the hel­met, passed out his dark navy top and snapped the hel­met down again quick.

Af­ter an equiv­a­lent se­ries of gy­ra­tions, she was fi­nal­ly dressed to his sat­is­fac­tion and stuffed her shirt in­to one of the suit’s in­ter­nal clasps. The heady, spicy scent of him filled her suit. Her heart sped up, not with fear for a change, and her breath­ing deep­ened. She sneaked a glance at him and found him look­ing at her. He was all red and green and blotchy and gor­geous and it was time to go for God’s sake. Her fear seemed to have left her, trans­mut­ed in­to ex­cite­ment.

Some­body need­ed to study his pheromones and bot­tle them.

She had him push the air­lock ac­cess but­ton first this time, stepped smooth­ly out of her suit, and in­to the open­ing door. Every­thing is eas­i­er the sec­ond time.

She slapped off the alarm with a sec­ond to spare. The air lock in­ner door opened on­to a dim and hos­tile lab.

Heart beat­ing much too fast, now in just plain old fear, she tip­toed in on her thick, rub­ber­ized space suit socks. The se­cu­ri­ty cam­era panned the lab slow­ly, its red eye blink­ing calm­ly and nor­mal­ly. Corin­na just hoped that Oziel knew what he was do­ing and that the cam­era was suf­fer­ing delu­sions. She slipped on a pair of thin rub­ber gloves.

This lab was even bet­ter-fund­ed than Mor­bier’s and even fuller of equip­ment. The spec­i­mens had to be stored in an ul­tra­cold freez­er and there were two of the huge things in this room alone. It was go­ing to take for-ab­solute­ly-ever to go through them. This was the on­ly part of the plan Oziel had not crit­i­cized, no doubt be­cause he thought that when it came to spec­i­mens she knew what she was do­ing. Wrong. As she care­ful­ly opened the heavy door of the first freez­er, she was wish­ing fer­vent­ly he had come up with one of his bright ideas for how to go straight to the vials she need­ed.

Her ears felt as large as satel­lite dish­es, search­ing for sounds that were not there. Two of the five com­part­ments were less heav­i­ly frost­ed, which meant they were used the most. She’d start there. Her eyes scanned tens of frost­ed plas­tic box­es for one that looked promis­ing. Noth­ing. But she was scan­ning so fast she could be miss­ing things. Must slow down. But then the freez­er would heat up too much. She checked the tem­per­a­ture on the front of the door. Ten de­grees to go be­fore the freez­er’s alarm went off, an alarm that would be as bad as the air­lock alarm. Af­ter the first com­part­ment, she would al­ter­nate be­tween freez­ers to give each one time to cool back down while she worked on the oth­er one.

She had worked through one com­part­ment on each freez­er with noth­ing to show for it, when the thing she dread­ed most be­gan: the in­ter­mit­tent prick­le on her wrist that meant the bulk­head door at the be­gin­ning of Fara­day Hall had opened.

They might not be com­ing here.

Yes, and hy­dro­pon­ic toma­toes would soon taste good.

She had to hide. She closed the freez­er quick­ly and silent­ly and looked at the tem­per­a­ture read­out. It would be the first thing a sea­soned lab sci­en­tist like His Bob­ness would check. Her strat­e­gy of al­ter­nat­ing meant each freez­er was now on­ly a cou­ple of de­grees warmer than ide­al — close enough, she hoped.

She looked mad­ly around the lab for the like­li­est spot to hide. Un­der that lab bench be­hind the big car­boys for waste liq­uids? She was not go­ing to find any­thing bet­ter in the next thir­ty sec­onds. She dove un­der the bench, squirmed as far be­hind the car­boys as she could man­age, pulled the turtle­neck right up over her head, as per in­struc­tions, and tried to breathe en­tire­ly through her pores. At the last minute, she pulled her hands in­to the sleeves as well. If faces were mag­nets, hands must be too.

The light flipped on.

She tried not to flinch.

“It’s a re­al prob­lem.” It was Kruskal’s voice, sound­ing as loud as a foghorn to Corin­na’s overex­tend­ed hear­ing. “I don’t know how long that ass, Ben­son, is go­ing to sit on that ship­ment and if Hanzhe or­ders its re­lease, Ben­son is just the sort of nit­pick­er who’ll start fill­ing out re­port forms in trip­li­cate.”

“Some­body with some clout needs to push him.” That was Jonathan, sound­ing nasal and whiny. She could ac­tu­al­ly see rather well through the mesh of the fab­ric now that the light was on, but all she could see was two pairs of legs at the oth­er end of the lab. “If I don’t have the tem­plates for the vac­cine ac­ti­va­tion study, my pa­per on that will come out too long af­ter my cur­rent pa­per on methy­la­tion and gene ac­ti­va­tion. At this stage in my ca­reer, hav­ing gaps in my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty looks bad, so I need to keep the pa­pers com­ing, and if I don’t have the vacc—”

“Yeah, yeah, right. Look, that’s just the ul­tra­pure syn­the­sis. I didn’t get you up in the mid­dle of the night to be part of the prob­lem, be­cause I’ve got the so­lu­tion. I made some sam­ples right here. Ob­vi­ous­ly, it’s pret­ty damn dif­fi­cult with­out a full in­dus­tri­al-grade fab­ri­ca­tion unit, and I don’t know how many oth­er peo­ple could have done it, but, of course, I man­aged.” He moved over to an or­di­nary kitchen re­frig­er­a­tor close enough to Corin­na’s hid­ing place to send her to the edge of pan­ic. He opened the top freez­er sec­tion and fid­dled with spec­i­men box­es in there. If she sur­vived this in­ter­minable in­ter­rup­tion, that in­no­cent-look­ing fridge was go­ing to be her on­ly stop on the way to the air­lock.

“Okay,” Kruskal con­tin­ued, putting two small vials in a cold box. “These are on­ly 98% pure, but that’ll get you start­ed. So don’t go yam­mer­ing at Ben­son. Hanzhe would not like that.”

Every­body else in the world called him Dr. Ching, but Kruskal had to let every­body know how well he knew the man, once every cou­ple of min­utes at a min­i­mum. Were they nev­er go­ing to get out of here?

The an­swer to that was ap­par­ent­ly not. They stood around dis­cussing pu­rifi­ca­tion tech­niques for sev­er­al hours. Pos­si­bly days. Fi­nal­ly, Kruskal saw Jonathan to the door, say­ing,

“Wow, near­ly three. No point go­ing back to bed now. I think I’ll just take the time to get some work done and then go to bed once the crowds ar­rive.”

Corin­na dis­cov­ered she could fall in­to a deep­er funk than the last one, some­thing she wouldn’t have be­lieved pos­si­ble. Her silent scream —

”No, no, no. Go, go, get out of here!“

— had no psy­chic ef­fect on Bob Kruskal. He con­tin­ued con­tent­ed­ly pot­ter­ing about the lab.

She didn’t dare move, even to the ex­tent of press­ing her wrist­pad to sig­nal Oziel. And if she could, she had no idea what to sig­nal. They hadn’t worked any­thing out for, “Help! I’m pinned by a bo­zo and may die of a stroke.”

She tried to fig­ure out what Kruskal was do­ing. Maybe he was set­ting some­thing up and would leave while it ran, long enough for her to get out. He tone­less­ly bur­bled a soupy, sen­ti­men­tal top hit she par­tic­u­lar­ly hat­ed. She grit­ted her teeth and tried to think of an es­cape.

But there was none. She could not cre­ate a di­ver­sion with­out mak­ing her pres­ence ob­vi­ous. The lab was too small to sneak out be­hind his back. She could on­ly hope he would have to go to the bath­room at some point.

As if in an­swer to her thoughts, he stepped out of the lab. Was he re­al­ly—? No, he was just across the hall. She could hear him do­ing some­thing over there. By the sound of the clanks and thumps, he was open­ing and clos­ing an ul­tra­cen­trifuge. Sure enough, sec­onds lat­er, he was back. The on­ly good thing was, she had man­aged to use the time to change po­si­tion and make her­self mar­gin­al­ly more com­fort­able.

Then some­thing worse hap­pened. He walked to­ward the lock. He start­ed to push but­tons. No code for “some­one com­ing out!” of course. Good God, what if these lu­natics were wait­ing for an­oth­er ship­ment? What if this whole lab was due to be­come a vor­tex of ac­tiv­i­ty any mo­ment? She felt cold sweat trick­ling down from her armpits.

He closed the in­ner lock door. He had not suit­ed up. He could not be go­ing out. A few mo­ments lat­er, she could see his legs step back in again. His move­ments were still un­hur­ried and calm, so he must not have no­ticed the re­cent use of the air­lock. She tried to tell her heart­beat it could slow down.

Damn all in­som­ni­acs, she thought.

There was noth­ing for it but to wait him out. But if he didn’t go some­where be­fore four, the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era would show her up like a per­form­ing ele­phant, as Oziel had made much too clear. For that mat­ter, if Kruskal and com­pa­ny checked the se­cu­ri­ty da­ta for tonight be­fore it was over­writ­ten, the peace­ful im­age of an emp­ty lab would start an in­ves­ti­ga­tion all by it­self.

And how long would Oziel wait? She was al­ready more than an hour over­due. He was not like­ly to sit there for­ev­er. He would as­sume she had been caught and that he should get away while he could. There she’d be, div­ing out of the air­lock in­to the wait­ing arms of Mars. She bet­ter be ready to try that run she had con­tem­plat­ed when she still be­lieved in luck.

Kruskal hummed the same top hit for the fif­teenth time. Corin­na could see a lab timer on a bench. It read three thir­ty. Kruskal stopped hum­ming long enough to yawn. He pushed a but­ton on his DNA read­er and pot­tered over to the cof­fee pot, un­com­fort­ably close to Corin­na’s hid­ing place. She felt her neck grow so rigid it start­ed to hurt.

He was rat­tling some­thing up there and swear­ing. There was much rif­fling around in the re­frig­er­a­tor. More curs­es and mut­tered com­ments about damned id­iots. Then he walked out. Corin­na held her breath.

If he was re­al­ly go­ing to the cafe­te­ria for cof­fee, she might even be able to get what she came for be­fore div­ing out the air­lock. She wait­ed, strain­ing every nerve to hear where his foot­steps went. They quick­ly fad­ed out in the cor­ri­dor. She forced her­self to wait un­til he could have reached the bulk­head door, but her wrist felt no com­fort­ing quiv­ers sig­nal­ing the door had been opened. Slow­ly, she eased out of her hid­ing place, ready to make a dash for the lock.

Then came the quiver.

It trans­formed in­to a thrill of re­lief.

She stood in front of the re­frig­er­a­tor. She no­ticed the cof­fee pot next to it and could not see what his prob­lem was. There was the cof­fee, the cream­er, the sug­ar. Know­ing Kruskal, he prob­a­bly ob­ject­ed to cream­er. He must have been look­ing for “re­al” cream — as re­al as it got on Mars — in the re­frig­er­a­tor.

There were on­ly two spec­i­men box­es in the freez­er, which felt far cold­er than it should have. It must have been mod­i­fied to get down to -80ºC. There were not that many vials in each box. She count­ed. Twelve. With fum­bling fin­gers she pulled emp­ty vials out of her pock­ets and laid them on the counter. She des­per­ate­ly want­ed to take the full vials and run, but then Ching would take the Sta­tion apart in­to tooth­pick-sized frag­ments. The on­ly way was the orig­i­nal plan: scrape tiny amounts of the sam­ples in­to her own vials so that there was noth­ing ob­vi­ous­ly miss­ing. She scooped a bit out of the orig­i­nal, put it in her vial, scanned and copied the la­bel, and moved on to the next one. By the third vial, her hands calmed down enough to be ef­fi­cient and au­to­mat­ic. Most of her brain was con­cen­trat­ed on her wrist, wait­ing for the sig­nal that spelled the end.

She capped the last vial, slipped the cold box back in­to her left thigh pock­et, closed the freez­er, and head­ed for the lock. She sent two short buzzes on her wrist­pad. “I’m com­ing out.”

One short vi­bra­tion an­swered her. “Ready and wait­ing.”

“You wait­ed,” she said once she was safe out­side, suit­ed up, speak­ing hel­met to hel­met. “I fig­ured you’d have giv­en up hours ago.”

“I nev­er give up,” came his fuzzy voice through the plas­tic. “What hap­pened?”

“Why don’t I tell you when it’s eas­i­er to talk? I got the spec­i­mens.”

His face, still strange­ly red and green, lit in a tri­umphant smile.

They set off around op­po­site sides of the dome. Corin­na took the long way this time, past three spokes. About twen­ty min­utes lat­er she fi­nal­ly reached Dar­win, but there were still plen­ty of techs around. They seemed to be fin­ish­ing up. A mob of them head­ed to­ward the rover lock. They were ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to use that in­stead of wait­ing singly for the per­son­nel lock. She joined the crowd.

Back in her tiny room, the feel­ing of tri­umph sub­sided. Pa­pers rel­e­vant to her hear­ing were spread every­where. Dif­fi­cult as hid­ing un­der a bench in Kruskal’s lab might be, it had al­lowed her to for­get about the hear­ing for a while.

 

Chap­ter 11

Corin­na spent the week lead­ing up to her hear­ing whiplashed by emo­tions. She went from fury at the in­jus­tice of it all, to gnaw­ing fear about how she would ever get an­oth­er job, to hope­less­ness at the over­whelm­ing pow­er of the peo­ple de­stroy­ing her, to fran­tic wor­ry about what their ef­forts at mind con­trol could do to life as she knew it on Earth, and back to rage that she was just one lit­tle pe­on de­prived of any pow­er to save her­self, to say noth­ing of the world. None of this was any use in help­ing her pre­pare for the hear­ing. It wore her to a fraz­zle and she bare­ly slept. That made it even more dif­fi­cult to ap­proach her prob­lems with a cool, lev­el head, which, she knew per­fect­ly well, was the on­ly kind of head that could be­gin to han­dle them.

Dur­ing the day, she could gen­er­al­ly force her­self to be­come ab­sorbed in lab work, so she threw her­self at the an­tifreeze prob­lem, some­thing no­body in Mor­bier’s lab could ob­ject to. The irony of it was, GP-18 did in­deed seem to func­tion per­fect­ly in sim­u­la­tions. She filed for a patent on it un­der her own name, some­thing sure to make Mor­bier dis­arrange his per­fect­ly part­ed hair. Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances she would nev­er have done it be­cause an irate boss would mean she could nev­er get an­oth­er job. But now she had noth­ing to lose. If they grant­ed the patent, her name would be as­so­ci­at­ed with it, which would give Mor­bier the va­pors for years to come. To be sure he couldn’t con­test the patent, she re­tained the ev­i­dence of which work was hers by tak­ing one of the big back­ups she’d made when it was still part of her job to be do­ing that sort of thing. They would prob­a­bly try to de­ny her ac­cess to her files, but this way she could sort out lat­er which ones she need­ed, when there were few­er peo­ple breath­ing down her neck.

She qui­et­ly arranged with Tam­bi­ka to run the clan­des­tine spec­i­mens through on her equip­ment. All Corin­na need­ed was the se­quences on her lap­top. She sneaked in, set up a run in a few min­utes, and then dropped in lat­er for the re­sults. Not one sin­gle amino acid or nu­cleotide ever saw the net­work. She no longer had any doubt that the sam­ples she had stolen from the P6 ship­ment were tri­al vac­cines to pre­vent the mind-con­trol mol­e­cules from work­ing. It made per­fect sense. The peo­ple who con­trolled the stuff would want to be sure no­body could in­fect them. She won­dered if the ship­ment had in­clud­ed du­pli­cate vials or if she had got­ten away with the on­ly copies. Be­cause if she had, there was no way Kruskal’s im­pure ver­sions could be used for fi­nal test­ing.

Of course, there was not much she could do with tri­al preps ei­ther, since she knew noth­ing about them. There was no way to know which of the vac­cines were ef­fec­tive, how much you were sup­posed to take, whether they were even safe, or how to take them. Vac­cines were nor­mal­ly mi­celle sus­pen­sions, with the ac­tive bits trapped in tiny bub­bles, which pro­tect­ed them in the stom­ach and al­lowed them to be tak­en by mouth. These were just the lyophilized vac­cine mol­e­cules them­selves, which meant they had to be in­ject­ed or ab­sorbed through the skin, like in the dark ages. The good news was they did not have to be stored cold so she took to car­ry­ing them with her. You nev­er knew.

The days passed and she worked as if de­mon-pos­sessed. But no mat­ter how fast she tried to push the clan­des­tine se­quences through the pro­ce­dures, it was be­com­ing clear she would not have time to an­a­lyze them be­fore the hear­ing.

She put this point to Oziel at din­ner four days be­fore the hear­ing. She saw him al­most every day at din­ner now. Per­haps peo­ple no­ticed them sit­ting to­geth­er in the swirling din­ner crowds, per­haps they didn’t. She hoped it wouldn’t get him in trou­ble, but she need­ed a sym­pa­thet­ic ear too much to do with­out it.

“You know,” she be­gan, “I had a dread­ful thought. They could say I’d set the whole thing up for some rea­son and charge me with at­tempt­ed mur­der.”

“I think, Corin­na, it would be so hard to show you had a mo­tive, they would nev­er try that. Be­sides, why would you go to all the trou­ble of sav­ing Djami­lah then?”

“Yeah. I guess. Any­way, I’ve been work­ing like a dog, but I’m not go­ing to make it. So, ei­ther I have to let them call me in­com­pe­tent or I run the risk of be­ing killed when I show enough ev­i­dence to ex­on­er­ate me but not to im­prison them.”

“So, time for Plan B?”

“Plan B! I have no Plan B. It’s been all I could do to try to keep Plan A on track.”

“It’s okay, Corin­na.” His voice had gone all vel­vety and sooth­ing. “That’s what you’ve got me for.”

“Oh?” she said, with an en­tire­ly un­war­rant­ed sub­text of and what do you think you can do?

“If we can’t ac­com­plish the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive, we need to fall back to a less vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion.”

It was pe­cu­liar how he talked about it like a mil­i­tary cam­paign. Still, that felt bet­ter than feel­ing over­whelmed and help­less, which was what she did most of the time.

“We could go along with pre­tend­ing that all of this just hap­pened,” he con­tin­ued. “Don’t de­fend your­self by claim­ing sab­o­tage, but by show­ing how it was a freak ac­ci­dent and noth­ing to do with you. Get as many peo­ple as you can find to tes­ti­fy that you’re good at what you do. Find out who put those gloves in there. It wasn’t you, so it wasn’t your in­com­pe­tence.”

“That’ll nev­er—” fly, she’d been go­ing to say, but he in­ter­rupt­ed her.

“I know it’s far-fetched to call it a freak ac­ci­dent. But all you want is to stop them from pin­ning it on you, and for them not to know how much you know. As you said your­self, the im­por­tant thing here is to come out of it and fight an­oth­er day.”

Well, no, she had on­ly talked about com­ing out of it, pe­ri­od.

She nod­ded slow­ly. He was right. It was not time to be think­ing in terms of win­ning yet. For some rea­son, that made her feel bet­ter.

But then he struck a jar­ring note.

“Now, the last fork of the strat­e­gy, of course, is that if they do get you, we have to be sure it’s a hol­low vic­to­ry. We need to send copies of all the da­ta you have to some­one to­tal­ly be­yond their con­trol.”

Corin­na stared at him. He said the most ap­palling things so calm­ly. She had nev­er planned for events af­ter her death be­fore.

“Do you know peo­ple you could trust like that?” he went on.

She didn’t know how to ex­plain to him the hide­bound world of acad­eme. Sci­en­tists want­ed sci­en­tif­ic stan­dards of proof about every­thing.

“A few,” she said. “Mc­Clin­tock is a good guy. He was my the­sis ad­vis­er, and be­lieve me, if some­one is less than one hun­dred per­cent fair and hon­est, you feel it on your own hide as a grad stu­dent. I sent him se­cure mail once I knew I need­ed a job, and dropped a few hints about why, to see how he’d re­act. He said he’ll help as much as he can on the job front, but as for the shenani­gans, there was just a lot of stuff about how it was nec­es­sary to have proof be­fore I could make any ac­cu­sa­tions. I don’t know how he’d feel about be­ing pulled in­to the cen­ter of the storm by hav­ing all the da­ta dumped in his lap for safe­keep­ing.”

“And since you need him to find an­oth­er job, you don’t want to an­noy him, I guess,” said Oziel.

“Yeah. And as for fel­low grad stu­dents, I re­al­ly don’t know. I haven’t kept in touch with most of them ex­cept my best friend, Lin­da. She just got mar­ried, and prob­a­bly doesn’t need any tick­ing bombs hand­ed to her. I mean, the per­son we give this to could get killed. As for the oth­ers, I don’t know…. Peo­ple can change a lot in a cou­ple of years.” The im­age of Nat sprang to mind. One more thing she had to fight down.

She went on quick­ly. “I al­so know a re­porter at the Lon­don Times.” She smiled to her­self at the thought of pen­cil-thin Chol­ly, fer­ret­ing out a drug scan­dal and pre­tend­ing to give her the rush of a life­time on the as­sump­tion that she had use­ful in­for­ma­tion about an en­dor­phin-re­lat­ed drug. She’d point­ed out that he knew per­fect­ly well she wasn’t his dream girl and she knew per­fect­ly well she had no scoops for him. Chol­monde­ley Ny­mans had found that fun­ny and bought her an ex­tra round of cham­pagne.

“Re­porters pub­lish things,” ob­ject­ed Oziel. “We need it kept qui­et un­til we have all the ev­i­dence to nail the putos.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “We can’t be sure what he’d do with it.”

“What do you think of send­ing it to Miguel Sanderas?” Oziel asked. “He’s the doc­tor in the bar­rio who Mar­co wrote about. I’ve known him since we were both knee-high. He’s … amaz­ing. He could have aban­doned the bar­rio years ago, but he came back. I would trust him with any­thing, any­thing at all.” Af­ter a mo­ment, he added, “Mar­co sent me an­oth­er pri­vate mail that has to do with this, by the way. He said while he was vis­it­ing Quintón, he bought a bot­tle of Fan­ta off an­oth­er pris­on­er who wouldn’t stop grin­ning. He gave it to Miguel, who asked for the name of that mind-al­ter­ing stuff so that he could tell some friends of his at the Uni­ver­si­ty what to look for in the drink. Ob­vi­ous­ly, if we send him all the in­for­ma­tion, he’ll have every­thing he needs.”

“Hm,” said Corin­na. “I don’t mean to be rude, Oziel, but some lit­tle slum doc­tor doesn’t have the pow­er to with­stand the likes of Di­cas­til­lo.”

He smiled wry­ly.

“Fun­ny you should say that. He’s a shrimp, for sure. But it’s not about stand­ing up to Di­cas­til­lo. It’s about some­one we can trust to hide the in­for­ma­tion un­til we need it.”

“We’d be putting him in dan­ger.”

“He has more than enough courage for that. Be­lieve me. He’d sign up in a sec­ond to get the rats.”

So they de­cid­ed that Sanderas would be the lucky re­cip­i­ent of this par­tic­u­lar pow­der keg. Corin­na got her lap­top, put to­geth­er a co­her­ent mes­sage while Oziel fin­ished up his din­ner, and then he went with her to the se­cure mail sta­tion at the post of­fice. Three hun­dred dol­lars it cost to send all the pages of se­quences and ex­pla­na­tions, but she left the booth feel­ing more hope­ful. She had struck the first re­al blow and it felt much bet­ter than be­ing tied in knots by fear.

“How is Mar­co, by the way?” she asked as they walked away.

“His last cou­ple of mes­sages sound­ed bet­ter. He’s think­ing about the fu­ture. I’m wor­ried though. He’s say­ing things like, ‘I’m not go­ing to spend any more time wait­ing for peo­ple to hand me things.’ He nev­er sat around wait­ing for hand­outs. He’s an in­cred­i­bly hard work­er. So I’m not sure what he’s say­ing. Which wor­ries me.”

“Well, he prob­a­bly just means he’s re­al­ly go­ing to hus­tle,” said Corin­na in an at­tempt to be com­fort­ing, feel­ing how fee­ble it was. But as Oziel turned away to go to his dorm, he had a small smile on his face in­stead of bone-deep wor­ry.

 

Corin­na sat in the lux­u­ri­ous, but win­dow­less, con­fer­ence room in the ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­tion of the cen­tral dome. It was fill­ing up with peo­ple’s small talk try­ing to beat back the tense, gap­ing si­lence at the heart of the room. A large U-shaped con­fer­ence table oc­cu­pied most of it, lit­tle carafes of wa­ter and glass­es dot­ted at in­ter­vals along the shiny sur­face, look­ing much too gen­teel for the may­hem con­tem­plat­ed here.

Across the top of the U sat the mem­bers of the Hear­ing Board. The Sta­tion Om­buds­man this year was none oth­er than Bukovsky, so Corin­na had the hap­py prospect of see­ing the hear­ing run by Ching’s right-hand as­sis­tant. Clem Kil­burn from the imag­ing lab and Hideyoshi Sagawa from al­go­l­o­gy were the oth­er two mem­bers of the Board from the Sta­tion, both of them quite neu­tral as far as Corin­na knew. And then there was the out­side ob­serv­er she had a right to re­quest, and whom she had so re­quest­ed. His name was Lev Snin­sky and he had flown in from the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion on Ar­sia in a clip­per just be­fore the hear­ing. She stud­ied him with in­ter­est. He had black hair and the sal­low skin of a Cau­casian spend­ing too much time off-Earth. He hunched over the table, tall, thin and stooped. He need­ed more ex­er­cise. Did he have a back­ground in sci­ence? Would he un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of mi­nor points of lab pro­ce­dure? Some of these ad­min-le­gal types wouldn’t know which end of a mi­cro­scope to look through.

Corin­na sat on one side, Mor­bier and Ching on the oth­er, and their re­spec­tive wit­ness­es fur­ther along the table. She was not sur­prised to see Jonathan there. Djami­lah was there, beam­ing with ob­vi­ous sup­port to Corin­na. Not a good idea she thought. What­ev­er she says will count for noth­ing if she doesn’t act "ob­jec­tive." One of her oth­er techs, Gor­don Smith, was just tak­ing his seat. Tam­bi­ka had come and gave Corin­na a friend­ly nod. She was too ner­vous to man­age more than a weak smile back.

Now that the dread­ed mo­ment had ar­rived, she was both worse and bet­ter than she had been. Worse be­cause, de­spite her best ef­forts, she could not stop her­self from hav­ing a dry mouth, sweaty palms, and a pound­ing heart­beat. Bet­ter be­cause there was noth­ing fur­ther she could do and soon it would all be over.

Bukovsky start­ed the pro­ceed­ings.

There was a pre­pared state­ment from Mor­bier, a sum­ma­ry of all the lax things Dr. Mansur had done or not done. It end­ed in a sen­tence so vast and trans­par­ent in its hypocrisy that Corin­na bog­gled at his abil­i­ty to say it with a straight face.

“None of these crit­i­cisms are of­fered in a hos­tile spir­it. On the con­trary, I hope Dr. Mansur can learn from them and use them to achieve bet­ter suc­cess in fu­ture po­si­tions.”

Yeah, right. Then there was a pre­pared state­ment from her. She kept it to the bare min­i­mum: “I do not feel any of the charges against me are jus­ti­fied.” Fi­nal­ly they moved on to why the stu­pid things were not jus­ti­fied.

“I would like to start by re­spond­ing to the points raised about mi­nor gen­er­al­ized in­frac­tions, such as im­pro­vised waste con­tain­ers.” Corin­na read from her pre­pared sheet in an ef­fort to ward off nerves. “I con­duct­ed an in­for­mal sur­vey of ap­prox­i­mate­ly twen­ty labs here on the Sta­tion.” She had spent most of yes­ter­day and the day be­fore on this. “Every sin­gle one had some un­laun­dered lab coats and im­pro­vised waste con­tain­ers. Al­though these are cer­tain­ly laps­es from an ide­al stan­dard that we all strive to achieve, it does not seem to me that they can be ev­i­dence of in­com­pe­tence on my part with­out al­so be­ing ev­i­dence of in­com­pe­tence in many oth­er labs on the Sta­tion and, for that mat­ter, in labs every­where. I will be glad to pro­vide the in­quiry board with a list of the labs I vis­it­ed.” She waved a print­out. It sud­den­ly oc­curred to her that she had sim­ply looked at the first twen­ty labs clos­est to her own, which meant that Bukovsky’s and Kil­burn’s labs were on the list. This was prob­a­bly — no, def­i­nite­ly — a po­lit­i­cal­ly stu­pid move. Too late now.

Mor­bier raised a fin­ger, like a buy­er at one of those ter­ri­bly gen­teel auc­tions of price­less an­tiques, and Bukovsky nod­ded at him to pro­ceed.

“The fact that care­less­ness can build up over time does not ex­cuse spe­cif­ic in­stances there­of. Fur­ther­more, giv­en that the care­less­ness had such dire con­se­quences in this in­stance, it must be as­sumed Dr. Mansur has a deep­er ig­no­rance of im­por­tant as­pects of safe­ty pro­ce­dures than I, as the per­son re­spon­si­ble for her ac­tiv­i­ties, feel com­fort­able with.”

Corin­na stared stolid­ly at the wall be­hind Mor­bier while he slan­dered her, then pro­ceed­ed. “I dis­agree that the spe­cif­ic prob­lems re­lat­ed to the ac­ci­dent are in any way an ex­ten­sion of any gen­er­al prob­lems. The gen­er­al­ized safe­ty in­frac­tions are both wide­spread and harm­less. The spe­cif­ic prob­lems that con­tributed to the ac­ci­dent are all an ex­cep­tion­al con­cate­na­tion of cir­cum­stances that amount to a freak ac­ci­dent, not to in­com­pe­tence. For in­stance, Dr. Mor­bier notes that the floor spill which con­tributed to the sever­i­ty of the ac­ci­dent was still not cleaned up at nine am. This,” she had trou­ble keep­ing her teeth un­clenched, “was not a nor­mal work day. I had just fin­ished ad­min­is­ter­ing CPR to a near­ly fa­tal­ly elec­tro­cut­ed per­son. As it hap­pens, I cleaned the spill up as soon as I no­ticed it some hours lat­er. Who­ev­er no­ticed it at nine A. M., I might add, did not clean it up.”

“Of course,” said Mor­bier af­ter re­ceiv­ing per­mis­sion to speak, “no­body is sug­gest­ing that mop­ping floors is more im­por­tant than sav­ing a life. But spills should be tak­en care of im­me­di­ate­ly, be­fore there is a prob­lem. If one spill has been ig­nored un­til there is a prob­lem, how many oth­ers have been as well?”

“Is Dr. Mor­bier sug­gest­ing I add jan­i­tor to all my oth­er du­ties, or is he sug­gest­ing that a spe­cial work or­der to the jan­i­to­r­i­al staff will lead to in­stant spill cleanup?” There were a few grins around the room, which gave Corin­na a fleet­ing sense of tri­umph. The board, no doubt, was tak­ing points off for sar­casm, but she could not help it. It was all she could do not to stand up and shout the ob­vi­ous truth.

She moved on to the next big one.

“The glitch in the DNA read­er could not have been fore­seen. Rou­tine di­ag­nos­tics had been run the week be­fore the ac­ci­dent, on sched­ule, and showed no ab­nor­mal­i­ties.” She point­ed to an­oth­er print­out. “The elec­tri­cian has checked the read­er, but un­for­tu­nate­ly some cir­cuits were de­stroyed in the ac­ci­dent so at this point it is not pos­si­ble to tell which one was at fault.”

The longer she talked, the calmer she felt. This was sound­ing good to her own ears, and there was noth­ing in it to let Ching and Com­pa­ny know that she was on to them.

Mor­bier men­tioned the gloves, an­oth­er ex­am­ple, he said, of care­less­ness that was mi­nor in it­self but, com­bined with all the oth­er in­stances, had had ter­ri­ble con­se­quences.

“I ques­tioned the tech­ni­cians as to which of them had re­placed the gloves be­fore the ac­ci­dent,” re­spond­ed Corin­na. “Ap­par­ent­ly none of them had. In­ter­est­ing­ly, on­ly the gloves in that lab had been re­cent­ly re­placed.” Damn, she thought. Should not have men­tioned that. Not the sort of thing you’d no­tice if you were think­ing on­ly in terms of ac­ci­dents. “Clear­ly it was a case where one of the grad stu­dents or post­docs had want­ed to be help­ful but had un­for­tu­nate­ly re­stocked with a ship­ment of de­fec­tive gloves. It is not com­mon prac­tice to check each glove be­fore use and there is no rea­son why any­one would have no­ticed the mi­cro­scop­ic de­fects in those gloves. Again, faulty gloves hap­pen some­times and are not ev­i­dence of in­com­pe­tence.”

Dr. Sagawa raised a ques­tion.

“It is pre­cise­ly be­cause gloves have been known to fail that work­ers wear dou­ble gloves in dan­ger­ous ap­pli­ca­tions. Why was that not done here?”

Corin­na wait­ed a beat be­fore re­spond­ing, try­ing to quell the im­pa­tience in her voice.

“Our ap­pli­ca­tion is not dan­ger­ous. We’re work­ing on im­prov­ing mam­malian cold tol­er­ance. Nei­ther the DNA, the prod­uct pro­teins, or the sub­strates are of any dan­ger to us. A few of the RNA-as­es could trans­fer to hu­mans, and when we’re han­dling those we dou­ble-glove and ob­serve full P6 con­tain­ment pro­ce­dures. I’m pret­ty sure that had we dou­ble-gloved for every­thing as a mat­ter of course, Dr. Mor­bier would have felt it was a waste of his mon­ey.”

Of course her boss de­nied it, but Sagawa did not ask fur­ther ques­tions.

“The crux of the prob­lem,” Mor­bier in­toned, “and I would like, if I may, to bring us back to that, is not any spe­cif­ic mi­nor or ma­jor in­stance of in­com­pe­tence. Ex­pla­na­tions and ex­cus­es can be brought for­ward for any one in­stance. The prob­lem is the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of all the in­stances. They ex­ceed crit­i­cal mass, which is where they dif­fer from the oth­er labs Dr. Mansur vis­it­ed, and lead to dis­as­trous con­se­quences.”

How won­der­ful­ly cir­cu­lar, thought Corin­na. The same prac­tices are okay if you can get away with them, but are not if you can’t.

“This per­va­sive lax­i­ty,” he con­tin­ued, “is per­haps most ev­i­dent in the in­ad­e­quate stan­dard of tech­ni­cian train­ing and su­per­vi­sion. Every­body in the lab should be alert to spills, to faulty gloves, and to the nu­mer­ous oth­er prob­lems I have de­tailed. Ba­sic pro­ce­dures such as cor­rect­ly paus­ing elec­tri­cal equip­ment should be sec­ond na­ture to every­one in the lab. That they are not is sim­ply the most se­ri­ous prob­lem gen­er­at­ed by Dr. Mansur’s low stan­dards for safe­ty.”

Corin­na sup­pressed a laugh at the irony of it. Her weak point was not go­ing to be lack of bril­liance or pub­li­ca­tions or grants or any­thing she had feared. No, it was go­ing to be an in­abil­i­ty to see peo­ple like Djami­lah fired for their stu­pid mis­takes.

Be­fore she could frame a re­sponse to this newest con­vo­lu­tion, Jonathan re­quest­ed per­mis­sion to speak and piped up with his two cents’ worth.

“I’d like to say that Dr. Mansur does try to be help­ful when she can find the time. How­ev­er, just a few days ago, for in­stance, when I came to her with a ques­tion about reagents, all she did was point me at the com­put­er data­base.”

The lit­tle rat­bag, was all Corin­na could think for a sec­ond. Af­ter a cou­ple of calm­ing breaths and per­mis­sion to speak, she asked her wit­ness­es to ad­dress the is­sue of her teach­ing abil­i­ties. Gor­don and Djami­lah, who, bless their hearts, were putting their jobs on the line for her since Mor­bier was their boss too, gave her ring­ing en­dorse­ments, as did Tam­bi­ka. She even added that if this was an open hear­ing they could have re­ceived the same in­for­ma­tion from dozens of oth­er peo­ple be­cause, she said, “Corin­na is one of the best teach­ers on the Sta­tion.”

Corin­na was touched, and this was not the time to feel touched. The on­ly way she could keep her grip was by pre­tend­ing to feel noth­ing. She no­ticed that none of the “es­tab­lished” sci­en­tists felt like stick­ing their necks out far enough to sup­port her.

She then pulled her job de­scrip­tion out of the pile of print­outs in front of her. She point­ed out that train­ing was not part of it. She was sup­posed to “su­per­vise” the lab, not train every­body in it. The fact that she did help peo­ple when­ev­er and wher­ev­er she could was some­thing over and above her job.

“And last­ly,” she wound up, pin­ning Mor­bier’s eye di­rect­ly for the first time in the hear­ing, “if I am some­how re­spon­si­ble for the train­ing of every­one in the lab by virtue of a su­per­vi­so­ry po­si­tion, then it is not re­al­ly my in­com­pe­tence that is a prob­lem here. I am not the ul­ti­mate su­per­vi­sor. By that ar­gu­ment, Dr. Mor­bier should be tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for these events.”

There was a si­lence. Corin­na knew that this di­rect at­tack would be seen as shrill, at best, re­gard­less of how log­i­cal or true it was. They had caught her un­pre­pared with this unan­tic­i­pat­ed new wrin­kle on the old lies, and her first re­ac­tion when cor­nered was al­ways to lash back.

“We will be tak­ing all your points un­der ad­vise­ment, Dr. Mansur,” Lev Snin­sky in­toned un­ex­pect­ed­ly in a deep, bass voice. “I had one brief ques­tion, if I might. Was the tech­ni­cian in­volved,” he re­ferred to his notes, “Djami­lah Mah­moud, not wear­ing the usu­al weight­ed, rub­ber­ized shoes? Why did they not pro­tect her?”

Corin­na had very much hoped this point would be over­looked. She no­ticed Mor­bier had not brought it up ei­ther, no doubt for the sim­ple rea­son that he should have had no way of know­ing about the state of some­body’s shoes in the nor­mal course of events.

Djami­lah was quite ob­vi­ous­ly in the au­di­ence and ea­ger to an­swer the ques­tion. Bukovsky nod­ded to her to pro­ceed.

“The shoes had cracks in them.”

“You should have re­placed them.”

“I know, but I did try to keep track and I was sure they were all right. Ob­vi­ous­ly, I was wrong.”

Corin­na ex­haled a sigh of re­lief. Some­how, Djami­lah had picked up on the mood of pre­tend­ing it was an ac­ci­dent. She might be a wom­bat at lab work, but she was a ge­nius at of­fice pol­i­tics. She was do­ing a mas­ter­ful job of be­ing the en­thu­si­as­tic, naive, truth­ful tech. It oc­curred to Corin­na that she was a woman with enough smarts to es­cape from a coun­try that would not even is­sue her a pass­port. She could prob­a­bly run rings around every­one in the room when it came to know­ing what to say to au­thor­i­ties.

The meet­ing broke up, while every­one was re­quest­ed to wait out­side un­til the board had agreed on its de­ci­sion. Half an hour lat­er, they were called back in. Corin­na took her place with a strange, drained feel­ing. She had no con­trol over her fate. If she could have trust­ed to truth and jus­tice, it would have been one thing, but she could do no such thing. Three peo­ple, col­leagues of Mor­bier, sub­or­di­nates of Ching, would be com­ing up with some­thing that suit­ed their con­ve­nience and there was not one thing she could do about it. She fold­ed her hands to­geth­er to keep from clench­ing them in­to fists.

Bukovsky sum­ma­rized.

“The events in Artemis 56 were high­ly re­gret­table and will, we hope, nev­er be re­peat­ed now that we have all been forcibly re­mind­ed of the need for con­stant vig­i­lance. De­spite their un­for­tu­nate na­ture, the board is not con­vinced that they form pri­ma fa­cie ev­i­dence of in­com­pe­tence. The board there­fore will not be is­su­ing a for­mal find­ing to that ef­fect as re­quest­ed by Dr. Mor­bier.”

Corin­na sat back, amazed. She had won. Of all the un­ex­pect­ed out­comes, she had won. This was what hap­pened when you called in im­par­tial out­siders.

“On the oth­er hand,” Bukovsky con­tin­ued, “the board does not feel it can dic­tate to any­one re­spon­si­ble for a lab on this Sta­tion ex­act­ly how they are to run their fa­cil­i­ty. Whether Dr. Mor­bier re­tains the ser­vices of Dr. Mansur is a mat­ter for them to re­solve be­tween them­selves.”

So, she had won, but she was still fired. Bukovsky had, no doubt, made sure of that.

“Dr. Snin­sky has some clos­ing com­ments he wish­es to make.” Bukovsky leaned back to show she was fin­ished.

Snin­sky took over.

“I have to agree with Dr. Mansur that the spe­cif­ic safe­ty prob­lems lead­ing to the ac­ci­dent were both un­usu­al and dan­ger­ous on­ly in com­bi­na­tion. I find this se­ries of cir­cum­stances to be suf­fi­cient­ly im­prob­a­ble that I will be re­quest­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the sit­u­a­tion. This, there­fore, is to in­form every­one in­volved that every­thing as­so­ci­at­ed with the ac­ci­dent, in­clud­ing com­put­er files, mes­sages, and the like, is to be viewed as ev­i­dence and is not to be de­stroyed or tam­pered with un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tors give per­mis­sion to do so.” He leaned back, fid­dled with his pa­pers, brought one to the top, and con­tin­ued in­to the stunned si­lence.

“Pur­suant to Ar­ti­cle 10 sub c of the Plan­e­tary Char­ter, I am here­by ap­ply­ing the sub­poe­na pow­ers vest­ed in me to re­quire that the most re­cent com­plete back­ups from all servers on this Sta­tion be brought to me be­fore I leave in,” he checked his wrist­pad, “one hour.” Then he calm­ly start­ed putting doc­u­ments away in his brief­case.

The stunned si­lence con­gealed. There wasn’t even any of the usu­al post-meet­ing small talk.

So much for pre­tend­ing it’s an ac­ci­dent, was Corin­na’s first co­her­ent thought. Facts must speak loud­er than words, cer­tain­ly to some peo­ple. This, too, was what hap­pened when you called in im­par­tial out­siders.

Two hours lat­er she was still in her room where she had gone for some des­per­ate­ly need­ed peace. There was a knock on her door. She did not want to speak to any­body. There was an­oth­er knock, an im­pa­tient, loud knock. Re­luc­tant­ly she rose and looked through the peep­hole. It was Oziel. He had a bag over his shoul­der.

“What hap­pened?” he asked with­out even say­ing hel­lo when she opened the door.

“I was go­ing to come find you at din­ner,” she said. She hoped he wasn’t of­fend­ed that she’d holed up in her room in­stead of talk­ing to him. He had done a tremen­dous amount for her. “I’m still fired, but they said I was not in­com­pe­tent. I was care­ful to stick to the it’s-an-ac­ci­dent an­gle, but the out­side ob­serv­er de­cid­ed the whole thing smelled fun­ny and will be start­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Was his name Snin­sky? On his way back to Ar­sia?”

Oziel seemed strange­ly ag­i­tat­ed. She had nev­er seen him like this.

“Well, yes. What about it?” she asked.

“He’s dead,” said Oziel.

What?”

“The clip­per crashed. And burned. Every­one and every­thing on board lost.”

“What?” gulped Corin­na again.

“So start pack­ing. We’re get­ting out of here.”

“But — but, wait. What —”

“They don’t know you know yet. The pi­lot’s daugh­ter is in day care so I heard, even though they’re keep­ing it qui­et. Sup­pos­ed­ly so they can tell rel­a­tives first. Va pisa’a! Get go­ing! Get packed. We’re get­ting in­to a rover and get­ting out of here. If it takes them a while to find us, we may have a chance.”

Like an au­toma­ton, Corin­na start­ed putting to­geth­er the pack she had planned for emer­gen­cies. Change of un­der­wear. Tooth­brush. Food packs. First aid kit. Lap­top. Mem­o­ry cards. Back­ups. Spec­i­men vials. Cold box with more spec­i­men vials.

“But if we go in a rover, we’ll have to steal it.”

Si. Con­cha.

He’d nev­er, ever, dropped in­to Span­ish he knew she didn’t un­der­stand. It brought home the scale of the dis­as­ter much more than any mere words.

“Oziel,” she said, her brain fi­nal­ly start­ing to click in­to ac­tion, “what are you do­ing in all this? You’ll get fired. We’ve been keep­ing you out of the pic­ture so you wouldn’t be. This makes no sense.”

“Do you think you can es­cape all the way to Ar­sia by your­self?”

It was a ter­ri­fy­ing thought.

“You see.” Oziel an­swered her look.

“But why are you do­ing all this for me? I mean, you’re just about ru­in­ing your life. I know your broth­er’s wife meant a lot to you, but….” She trailed off once she looked up and saw the in­ten­si­ty of his stare.

“Kind of ob­vi­ous, yes?” he said qui­et­ly.

She stared at him for the space of many more heart­beats. On­ly one thing made sense but,

“But you said you weren’t af­ter me.”

“Well? Was I?” His voice grew even qui­eter, yet some­how it cut through every sound in the room: the air vent, the com­put­er hum, the ion gen­er­a­tor, the ra­dio tuned to the winds of Mars whis­per­ing on the skin of the Sta­tion.

She shook her head. But then…,

“You’ve been re­strain­ing your­self nobly?”

His lips pulled back in a white smile.

“Nobly.”

She was numb. There was no time. There was noth­ing her frozen mind could think of to say or do. She had de­cid­ed long ago not to get in­volved again. She had —.

His grim smile fad­ed and he re­turned to his ear­li­er, less­er in­ten­si­ty.

“And now, un­less there’s some­thing else you’d like to dis­cuss, or you need to fix your hair, or re­or­ga­nize your com­put­er di­rec­to­ries, could we get go­ing?”

 

Nav­i­gat­ing through a sur­re­al world, Corin­na sat at the con­trols of the rover they had pi­rat­ed. The Sta­tion re­ced­ed be­hind them. She had a de­tailed map of the canyons and labyrinths that faced the rover; noth­ing so con­ve­nient for her­self. Her uni­verse had changed too quick­ly and her mind lagged be­hind in a realm of its own. She had wor­ried about be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed with ex­treme prej­u­dice, but now she un­der­stood she had nev­er be­lieved it. Oziel, on the oth­er hand, had wor­ried less but planned more. He was a lot clear­er than she was on the con­cept that you could re­al­ly die.

Com­man­deer­ing the rover had been sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple once she re­al­ized that the me­chan­ic on du­ty would nei­ther stop her nor call se­cu­ri­ty im­me­di­ate­ly. He had made fee­ble protests that the rover was signed out for use in a few hours. Corin­na said teleme­try showed an emer­gency in one of the rab­bit domes that would ru­in years worth of re­search un­less she could get to it. They’d be back soon, she lied force­ful­ly. Oziel hauled in two suits of the right size and checked for new fil­ters and full reser­voirs. She signed the rover out. That way, for a while, it was not ac­tu­al­ly stolen. They had dri­ven through the rover lock with the me­chan­ic still squawk­ing over the ra­dio.

“Not good,” Oziel grum­bled. “He’ll re­port to his su­per­vi­sor, and they’ll be af­ter us in min­utes.”

“Maybe. But maybe not. It’s din­ner time. He’d be go­ing off shift at six. He’s not go­ing to want to put that off just in case I’m ly­ing. He’s dealt with me fif­teen times be­fore. He’ll prob­a­bly as­sume I re­al­ly do have an emer­gency and I re­al­ly will be back. How’s he sup­posed to know we’re now out­laws?”

“Let’s hope so. Sign­ing this thing out has its bad sides too.”

“Well, not sign­ing it out would have raised alarms in­stant­ly. This way the whole thing will work its way through chan­nels, and we all know how fast they are.”

“True.” said Oziel.

They head­ed south from the Sta­tion at just un­der thir­ty five kilo­me­ters an hour, the top sus­tain­able speed. No voice ma­te­ri­al­ized on the ra­dio or­der­ing them to halt. Corin­na turned off the satel­lite trans­ceiv­er, which would al­low any­one to lo­cate them right to the cen­time­ter, and pre­pared to nav­i­gate the old way, by hand. She stud­ied her maps fast and fu­ri­ous­ly, plot­ted a course, then course cor­rec­tions. She cal­cu­lat­ed the pow­er the fu­el cells could de­liv­er and the rate of wa­ter loss giv­en max­i­mum speed. It might be a closed sys­tem in the­o­ry, but some wa­ter was al­ways lost and they were go­ing too fast and too far not to re­ly on the hy­dro­gen and oxy­gen re­serve tanks. “Yes‑s,” she mut­tered at the num­bers the com­put­er gave her. They could sus­tain top speed for forty eight hours. It was sev­en­teen hun­dred kilo­me­ters to Ar­sia. They could make it in thir­ty six, even with the de­tours re­quired by the ter­rain. They could make it in one mad run, with­out any nerve-stretch­ing waits for the tanks to recharge.

She an­gled right, to­ward the south­west, away from the moun­tain tow­er­ing over Fog­gy Bot­tom. Be­fore her mind had even be­gun to catch up, the whitish but­ton of the Sta­tion in the dis­tance had com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared and the Labyrinth lay be­fore them. Dark­ness fell, the to­tal, com­plete, all-con­sum­ing dark­ness of the Mar­t­ian night. She sat back af­ter a fi­nal few tweaks to the course plot­ted on the most de­tailed topo­graph­i­cal map she had, aug­ment­ed by what she could see on the for­ward tele­scop­ic sights. That would hold them for a few hours.

She was not sure what to do once they reached the space­port. With luck, they wouldn’t sim­ply walk in­to the wait­ing arms of Ching’s hench­men. With­out luck….

No, wait, she thought, this couldn’t be just Ching. He was Di­rec­tor of Sci­ence and lacked the con­trol over clip­pers that would en­able him to blow them up in mid-air.

“You re­al­ize,” she said, think­ing out loud, “on­ly Di­cas­til­lo could pos­si­bly have the re­sources and the hench­men in place to pull off a clip­per crash.”

“Yes, that had oc­curred to me.”

She glanced at him. That sound­ed rather like Duh.

Pues,” he mut­tered, notic­ing the glance. “Think about it. Ar­riv­ing alive is ob­vi­ous­ly the first prob­lem. But then, if Di­cas­til­lo con­trols the whole space­port, there might be no way to get the word out from there.

“It’s pos­si­ble,” he in­ter­rupt­ed him­self when she looked at him, star­tled and dis­be­liev­ing. “If he’s blow­ing up clip­pers, he’s not too wor­ried about in­ves­ti­ga­tions, and for that he has to have his hooks deep in­to the ad­min­is­tra­tion. So,” he con­tin­ued, “we may not be done es­cap­ing once we’re at the base. And if we have to get you all the way to Earth….” He didn’t fin­ish his sen­tence af­ter an­oth­er look at her.

Damn right. I’ve had about as much as I can stand. The past week she’d been stretched to burst­ing, try­ing not to ex­plode. Af­ter that hear­ing, she’d had all the vim of a de­flat­ed bal­loon. This es­cape felt like it was hap­pen­ing to some­one else. Ex­cept she was sit­ting in a rover now and all she want­ed to do was sleep for a week.

Dear God, if he was right and the base didn’t mean safe­ty, and goons cap­tured them, then…. There was no way to es­cape to Earth. None. It took ma­jor forgery to smug­gle so much as a bar of choco­late. A whole hu­man be­ing was im­pos­si­ble. Which meant that….

Stop it. Some­times plan­ning for fail­ure was just too de­press­ing. And, be­sides, suc­cess was not im­pos­si­ble.

“Di­cas­til­lo can’t have in­fil­trat­ed the en­tire hi­er­ar­chy, be­cause Snin­sky wasn’t part of his group,” she point­ed out. “There has to be some­one in the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion we can go to.”

“He might have been the on­ly one in the dark. Maybe that’s why they sent him.”

She was go­ing to say, That’s para­noid, but she looked at him, star­ing fixed­ly in­to the black night where there was noth­ing to see, and said noth­ing.

She wasn’t the on­ly one run­ning for her life.

Her fo­cus on her own prob­lems stretched and popped. He didn’t even have to run for his life. He’d just thrown away his safe­ty, his liv­ing, the rel­a­tives who need­ed him, every­thing. Just to help her. And, what was more, there was noth­ing about him, noth­ing at all, that sug­gest­ed even now that he thought she owed him any­thing for it.

Ac­tions were sup­posed to speak loud­er than words. What his said about him im­plied she’d been wrong about … about prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing.

She’d fig­ured the two of them had noth­ing much to share. But there was more to life than mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gy. Just be­cause she couldn’t dis­cuss N-ter­mi­nal map ki­nas­es with him didn’t change the fact that he was in­tel­li­gent, fun­ny, down­right tele­path­ic about how she felt, and loy­al like — like some­one who could have sur­vived no oth­er way.

She had to ad­mit she’d al­so held his looks against him. Most hand­some men were creeps. But him? Noth­ing. Not even an echo of creepi­ness.

So what was her prob­lem?

“Oziel,” she said. “About what we were talk­ing about just be­fore we left. Do you want to con­tin­ue now, or af­ter we’ve had some sleep?”

“Now.”

“Well, let me tell you about Nat.”

 

Chap­ter 12

“I was in­volved with Nat for about three years,” Corin­na be­gan, star­ing at the topo map as if it was vi­tal­ly in­ter­est­ed in this in­for­ma­tion.

“Oh,” said Oziel in a re­lieved un­der­tone.

She glanced at him. What did he mean, “Oh”?

“I thought you were go­ing to tell me you were mar­ried or some­thing.”

To Nat? Not bloody like­ly.

“No.”

The topo map had no hints about how to pro­ceed. Start some­where and hope any of it made sense.

“We were grad­u­ate stu­dents. He worked on nerve growth fac­tors, which is, ad­mit­ted­ly, a sex­i­er top­ic than en­dor­phins. There’s a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ty, though, in the tech­niques and prob­lems in both those fields. The lab work is all the same, we were deal­ing with a lot of the same mem­brane chem­istry, the same trans­port pro­teins, as well as some of the same prob­lems in sig­nal trans­duc­tion.” An­oth­er glance at Oziel showed him look­ing at her strange­ly.

“What?” she said.

He looked down quick­ly.

“Noth­ing. Sor­ry, go on.”

“What?” she de­mand­ed more loud­ly.

“Noth­ing, re­al­ly,” he mum­bled. Then he caught the look on her face and con­tin­ued a bit des­per­ate­ly, “I’m sor­ry. I was just think­ing rude thoughts. The two of you ly­ing far apart in bed and speak­ing long words to each oth­er.”

In spite of her­self, Corin­na grinned vi­cious­ly.

“Too right.”

“And he wore glass­es in bed, and socks.”

She al­most laughed at the pic­ture Oziel paint­ed and be­gan to feel a tiny bit less de­flat­ed.

“Well, not glass­es. He’d had the usu­al vi­sion cor­rec­tion surgery. Oth­er­wise he prob­a­bly would have. Any­way, the point was that I helped him with his work to some ex­tent. I saw us as a part­ner­ship, each help­ing the oth­er, and all that good stuff. Some­how, when I need­ed help, he gen­er­al­ly had a loom­ing dead­line. Your whole life is a con­tin­u­ous, rolling, and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing se­ries of dead­lines in sci­en­tif­ic work, so it was le­git­i­mate in some ways, but it was one-sided.”

“My dead­line is big­ger than your dead­line,” Oziel mur­mured.

Again, he brought out a twist­ed smile on her face.

“Yeah. It seemed be­neath con­tempt to get in­to some sort of tit for tat of oblig­a­tions. It wasn’t un­til the end that I re­al­ized it on­ly works when it goes both ways.

“The fi­nal blow was the sig­nal trans­duc­tion pro­ject. It’s some­thing that re­lates to both our fields. I’d had this re­al­ly great idea that, if I say so my­self, was some­thing of a break­through, and we were work­ing it out to­geth­er. I was re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about it. Some­thing like that could get both of us known in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty and put us on track for good jobs. Nat thought so too, ob­vi­ous­ly, but he was smarter than me. He re­al­ized it would work even bet­ter if all the cred­it went to one per­son. He pre­sent­ed our re­sults as his at a ma­jor meet­ing and got a great job of­fer. I wasn’t at that meet­ing, but a friend of mine emailed me about Nat’s won­der­ful new idea.”

Si­lence fell, bro­ken on­ly by the mo­not­o­nous hum of the rover and the grind­ing of its treads on rocks. There was noth­ing but the dis­col­ored re­flec­tions of ghost­ly in­di­ca­tor lights, iso­lat­ed in a deep black sea. Their run­ning lights were off and short range sonar tapped out the ob­sta­cles ahead of them, like an in­vis­i­ble blind man’s cane.

“So,” said Oziel qui­et­ly. “Not an­oth­er lover, or drugs, or mon­ey. I nev­er knew any­one who broke up over an idea.”

“It prob­a­bly seems pret­ty sil­ly to you. Get­ting worked up over au­thor­ship on a pa­per no­body has ever heard of.”

“No. Cheat­ing is cheat­ing, whether you use your mind or your hands.”

Corin­na nod­ded, not trust­ing her­self to speak. She had not talked about it since it hap­pened, and she was amazed that the pas­sage of time had done noth­ing to blunt the pain.

“So,” said Oziel, “when he came home, you ripped him apart?”

She shook her head.

“My world just sort of dis­in­te­grat­ed. I mean, every­thing I’d be­lieved about part­ner­ship and so on was ob­vi­ous­ly bull­shit. I saw our whole re­la­tion­ship through dif­fer­ent eyes, the same things meant the op­po­site of what they’d meant be­fore. Like those op­ti­cal il­lu­sions where you can ei­ther see a seag­ull or a hag in a hat, but not both. So I just packed up and moved out. I nev­er spoke to him again. I saw him at school some­times, be­cause I still had a few months to go to fin­ish my de­gree. He tried some crap about how he just want­ed to be sure ‘his’ idea wasn’t scooped by an­oth­er lab, and that he did it for us, and that he was sure he’d be able to wan­gle a job for me in his new hot­shot lab now that ‘we’ had a foot in the door, and so on and on. But I nev­er spoke to him again.” Af­ter a pause, she added,

“I couldn’t even get him for aca­d­e­m­ic mis­con­duct be­cause we’d worked on it to­geth­er. I didn’t have any proof it was my idea. With an or­di­nary col­league, there might have been emails or some­thing, but with me and Nat it was all con­ver­sa­tions.”

“And so you’ve been see­ing hags in hats ever since?”

Yeah. No kid­ding. How he man­aged to be hu­mor­ous and in­of­fen­sive on this top­ic, both at once, was be­yond her.

“Well, that was when I re­al­ly de­cid­ed guys were a waste of space. But I didn’t have all that good an at­ti­tude be­fore then ei­ther.”

“Oh? There were ear­li­er Nats?”

He made it sound like they were tiny and bit and had six legs.

“There were a cou­ple of, how should I put it, more or­di­nary fail­ures be­fore. Guys I turned out not to get along with. But that wasn’t re­al­ly the prob­lem. The re­al prob­lem was that men in gen­er­al seemed pushy and grab­by and will­ing to beg, lie, cheat, or steal to get what they want­ed.”

“You mean you.”

“I mean women gen­er­al­ly. Any­thing that didn’t have to shave its face in the morn­ing. They don’t seem re­al fussy.”

Oziel blew out a slow breath.

Dios san­to. You’ll have to tell me how you re­al­ly feel some time. For a sec­ond, that al­most sound­ed like con­tempt.”

Con­tempt, thought Corin­na, was too weak a word.

Af­ter an­oth­er si­lence, he asked,

“Would you be­lieve me if I said I know what you mean?”

“I’d be sur­prised. I’ve nev­er met a man who un­der­stands how ob­nox­ious it is. I had one guy tell me, in all se­ri­ous­ness, that it was flat­ter­ing.”

“Well, it’s hard to see how any­one can have too much when you’ve nev­er had enough. In the bar­rio, like I said, my fam­i­ly ac­tu­al­ly does rather well. Once I was old enough to grow a mus­tache, I had girls falling all over me. I can’t say I got to the point of want­i­ng to spit, but I don’t think I had as big a prob­lem as you ei­ther.”

“You got sick of girls?” she said in­cred­u­lous­ly.

“Some girls. To some ex­tent. Yes. But, un­der­stand me, I would have no ob­jec­tions if you fell on me.”

She smiled in spite of her­self again.

“The part I don’t see is why. I’ve been pret­ty dis­cour­ag­ing, I would think.”

“Corin­na, mí queri­da, how can some­body who is so smart be so stu­pid? Here you are, fear­less, bril­liant, kind, fun­ny when peo­ple aren’t both­er­ing you to hell, and you ask why? I’ve nev­er met any­one like you. I feel like I’m fly­ing when you’re around.”

She looked at him in flat­tered sur­prise just in time to see a lit­tle grin ap­pear on his face.

“It has, of course, ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with your body. I am to­tal­ly un­in­ter­est­ed in your body.”

She laughed out loud, for the first time in what felt like weeks. Good God, what a change it would be to find a man with a sense of hu­mor about sex. She had nev­er met any­one for whom it was not a se­ri­ous per­for­mance art re­quir­ing crit­i­cal ac­claim.

He looked at her a bit hes­i­tant­ly.

“When I was small I re­mem­ber once, when my fa­ther made my moth­er laugh about some­thing, he saw me look­ing at them. ‘Chiq­uitín,’ he winked at me, ‘re­mem­ber when you are big and need to know this sort of thing, if you can get a woman to laugh, she’ll do any­thing for you.’”

“It’s all part of a plot, hm?” She was still chuck­ling. “Well, I guess it works. You seem to be able to find hid­den pass­words in­to all sorts of sys­tems. I’ve gone from think­ing all men are gnats to think­ing that there might be ex­cep­tions. That’s al­so, sort of, the prob­lem.”

She looked at him un­cer­tain­ly.

“You’ve be­come my friend, just about my best friend.” He looked pleased and nod­ded en­cour­ag­ing­ly. “I’ve nev­er need­ed a friend so much in my life. So I — I don’t want to go off in a new di­rec­tion. I mean, if it doesn’t work out. I couldn’t stand it. And my track record is not good. It nev­er has worked out for me.” So much for be­ing fear­less.

“Good,” he said. “Oth­er­wise you wouldn’t be here talk­ing to me. And my record is no bet­ter.”

She knew he was try­ing to make her feel bet­ter, but she didn’t be­lieve him. He was sin­gle, sure, but giv­en the way he was, that had to be by choice.

“Has any­one you re­al­ly cared about left you?”

He seemed to grow very still and in­ward for a mo­ment, star­ing at the in­fi­nite night ahead of them. She al­most didn’t hear his an­swer, he spoke so qui­et­ly.

“I was nev­er that lucky.”

The rover grum­bled and see­sawed its way over a kilo­me­ter of sand and rocks be­fore she re­al­ized what he meant.

“She nev­er left be­cause she was nev­er yours? She mar­ried your broth­er in­stead.”

He looked as shocked as if she’d hit him with a brick.

“How did you know?” he fi­nal­ly asked. “I’ve nev­er told any­one. I nev­er even told her.”

“You’ve been so … de­stroyed … by the news about Se­le­na. You had to have loved her.”

“Oh, I did.” His voice was al­most a whis­per. “I did.” Then with a wry look of pain, “And I got to be best man at the wed­ding.”

“They were mar­ried for a while, weren’t they? This must have been a few years ago.”

“Sev­en. I was twen­ty three.”

And in sev­en years, he hadn’t found any­one who mea­sured up. Oth­er hope­fuls, take note. Her ex­haus­tion flood­ed back and for some rea­son all she want­ed to do was cry. And then sleep. God, she was tired.

“Any­way,” she couldn’t very well say this is all be­side the point when he’d just told her he’d lost the love of his life, “I’m pret­ty use­less right now. And prob­a­bly will be for a long time.”

“No, Corin­na. Nev­er use­less.” He was us­ing that voice that un­kinked knots by sound alone. The tight­ness in her throat re­laxed. “It’s all right. You’re straight­for­ward enough to — to let me know if — when you want me. ?”

She smiled faint­ly and he reached out and stroked her hair, just once. It was, she sud­den­ly re­al­ized, the first time he had ever touched her. Her whole head felt warm.

“You seemed kind of mad … be­fore.”

“Oh, it’s just hard. I’m do­ing every­thing I can, and you didn’t even see it. But don’t wor­ry about that. It’s all right now. You take a turn for some sleep,” he said. “All I need to do is make sure the ac­tu­al track keeps match­ing the course plot­ted on the screen, right?”

“And check the at­mos­phere read­outs to see if any vi­bra­tions ap­pear that could be a plane.” She crawled down the five steps in­to the dim body of the rover, stretched out on one of the two length­wise bench­es, and was asleep in min­utes.

 

Corin­na opened her eyes. It was still dark. The rover was still crunch­ing and grind­ing its way for­ward over Mar­t­ian dust and rock. Noth­ing had changed. She was still in a rock­ing cab­in full of the elec­tric hum of mo­tors and a faint chem­i­cal smell of plas­tic and ozone and some­thing sharp, al­most metal­lic, that had to be the Mar­t­ian dust. While she slept, this uni­verse had tak­en over and her old life had re­ced­ed in­to some unimag­in­able dis­tance. She had nev­er been any­where but in­side a rover trav­el­ing for­ev­er to parts un­known.

What time was it? An hour till dawn. Oziel had kept watch all night. He should have wok­en her and got some sleep him­self. Then again, maybe he was get­ting some sleep up there, slumped over the con­trols while the rover went god-knew-where. She glanced up in­to the con­trol sec­tion. No, there he was, sol­id, re­as­sur­ing, read­ing a print­out propped against the pan­el so he could track their progress con­tin­u­ous­ly. The light clipped to the page made a lit­tle pool of il­lu­mi­na­tion, a poor re­la­tion of the hun­dreds of stars all around him in the clear dome of the rover.

He turned as he heard her mov­ing.

“Ah,” he said with a pleased smile. “Cap­tain on the bridge. This is a re­lief.” He shift­ed seats so she could take the place in front of the mon­i­tors and main con­trols. “Noth­ing much to re­port. I steered us around a cou­ple of boul­ders and gul­lies that there didn’t seem to be any need to go over the top of. Noth­ing on the ra­dio, since we’ve been out of range for hours. I’ve kept the satel­lite trans­ceiv­er off, of course. Noth­ing on the sen­sors that might show search air­craft, as far as I could tell. They ei­ther don’t know we’ve left and are still get­ting their beau­ty sleep, or they haven’t found us yet.”

“You need your beau­ty sleep too. How come you didn’t wake me up ear­li­er?”

He did not an­swer her ques­tion.

“I’ll go get my sleep now. How’s that?”

Five min­utes lat­er he was back with a cup of cof­fee for her.

She smiled at him. If this was an ex­am­ple of what it would be like to have him af­ter her, she could get used to it.

“You’re sup­posed to be go­ing to sleep. Why are you run­ning around be­ing nice?”

“You know those guys you were talk­ing about? Who would do any­thing? I’m just the same. On­ly smarter.” And he winked at her and dis­ap­peared in­to the rover’s cab­in.

Was it pos­si­ble she’d found some­one who could laugh at him­self? She couldn’t think about it now, not while she was cooped up in a rover with him for the du­ra­tion. It wasn’t like there was any­where she could go, once things didn’t work out.

She turned to her maps and sen­sors and cal­cu­la­tions.

They had trav­eled — she checked the log — four hun­dred and twen­ty three kilo­me­ters of the sev­en­teen hun­dred they had to go and gained six thou­sand me­ters in al­ti­tude. They had that far to go again through the re­main­ing canyons of the Labyrinth of Night and then the same dis­tance plus an­oth­er two thou­sand me­ters high­er across the great plain, as ex­posed as bugs on a plate. She was hop­ing that by steer­ing a path through the canyons, they would be hard to spot on satel­lite im­ages, but it was al­so slow­ing them down. They had to fol­low me­an­der­ing, jum­bled tracks and climb ridges and rock falls, where­as the Syr­i­an plain, just to the south, would have been a straight shot.

She care­ful­ly checked the logs of the at­mos­pher­ic sen­sors for any sign of tell­tale vi­bra­tion. Oziel had been right. There had been no air­craft yet. Keep your fin­gers crossed, she told her­self. We just may make it.

She plot­ted the rest of their course to Ar­sia. Then she start­ed study­ing the map of the moun­tain in de­tail, try­ing to fig­ure out how to get in­to the base or the space­port. If Di­cas­til­lo re­al­ly did have thugs at every en­trance, it would be smarter to sneak in and see what was go­ing on be­fore knock­ing on any doors.

She dreamed for a minute about fly­ing to the top and the two of them pre­tend­ing to be tourists, just merg­ing in­to the clip­per traf­fic that foun­tained in the caldera. Hun­dreds of tourists up there amused them­selves on a moun­tain so high it reached in­to or­bit, and some bright wit had even start­ed a ski slope us­ing poly­styrene beads. But un­less they cap­tured a clip­per, they might as well flap their arms to fly home to Earth.

The main base at the bot­tom of the moun­tain was the biggest set­tle­ment on Mars. It was bet­ter than the space­port any­way, aside from the fact that they could ac­tu­al­ly reach it. There’d be more places to hide and more peo­ple to blend in with than up at the space­port. Car­go dis­tri­b­u­tion, the on­ly re­al hos­pi­tal, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mars were all there. The big fu­el fac­to­ry was there, even though the wa­ter to split in­to hy­dro­gen and oxy­gen had to be trucked in from Clar­i­tas, New­ton, and Gor­gon in the frigid south. Maybe they could sneak in with the reg­u­lar traf­fic, ditch the rover, dis­ap­pear in­to the tun­nels, and some­how find some­body in the ad­min­is­tra­tion some­where to talk to. Oziel would no doubt ob­ject that a plan which de­pend­ed on every­thing work­ing was no plan at all.

Dawn be­gan to break, paint­ing the swath of sky be­tween the tow­er­ing canyon walls a weird pale green­ish pink. The bot­tom of the canyon was still in deep twi­light, but the top, two kilo­me­ters high­er, was flam­ing red. It was amaz­ing how much dif­fer­ence the mind made to how you saw things. The first time she had seen the gi­gan­tic maze of the Labyrinth, the moun­tain­ous rock falls, the wind-sculpt­ed la­va, the un­touched sand dunes, she had been thun­der­struck. Now she could on­ly think that they still had all that up­ward dis­tance to climb. The per­fect, tear drop-shaped sand dunes with del­i­cate trac­eries of minia­ture dunelets on their sur­faces were just some­thing to bog her down. The im­men­si­ty of the land­scape was just that many more kilo­me­ters be­fore they reached safe­ty. Mars was small­er than Earth, and when she stood on one of the big plains the hori­zon al­ways looked a bit too tight. But here, in these cracks right through the plan­et’s crust, much too big for any world with run­ning wa­ter or re­al air, it was the erod­ed Earth that was the weak sis­ter.

The light spread down to­ward the bot­tom, warm­ing the frosts of night in­to a fog. Whitish ten­drils wisped up, shroud­ing the rover from easy view and lend­ing Corin­na hope. She kept ex­pect­ing to see a reg­u­lar squig­gle ap­pear on the at­mos­phere mon­i­tor, the sign of air­craft en­gine vi­bra­tion. Any minute now, the trou­ble would start if Di­cas­til­lo’s peo­ple had fig­ured out where they were. But the min­utes trick­led by with no break in the rou­tine. She took to scan­ning the canyon wall near­est the rover, check­ing for bolt holes. There were oc­ca­sion­al nar­row gul­lies vis­i­ble through the mist that would of­fer some cov­er. The trick would be get­ting back out again. They were al­so no good if they had sandy bot­toms be­cause she need­ed rock to dis­guise the rover’s treads. The canyons in this part of Mars were pret­ty well criss­crossed with sev­er­al years’ worth of tracks, but fresh, sharp-edged ones lead­ing straight in­to nowhere would look ob­vi­ous. Still, if her ab­sence and Oziel’s was not no­ticed un­til the busi­ness day had start­ed, they had hours to go be­fore they had to wor­ry. One could al­ways hope.

She dug out her lap­top and tried to fo­cus on the se­quences of the spec­i­mens she had stolen from Kruskal. An hour lat­er she re­al­ized with a shock that she had been con­cen­trat­ing so tense­ly, she had for­got­ten to keep tabs on the rover. But a quick check showed no prob­lems. They were chug­ging for­ward as if they were noth­ing but the Pony Ex­press.

Sev­er­al hours lat­er, Corin­na leaned back in her seat and rubbed her face. Be­tween star­ing at se­quences and star­ing at the rover’s course, her eyes felt like two boiled eggs. Oziel was still asleep, which meant — she checked her wrist­pad — he’d been sleep­ing over nine hours. He must have been pret­ty worn out, too.

She knew now, in ex­haus­tive de­tail, what the great, se­cret pro­ject was. It was sim­ple and di­a­bol­i­cal and it would have worked if they had been less heavy-hand­ed about it. In­stead of en­gi­neer­ing some­thing that turned peo­ple in­to grin­ning mo­rons, they should have just tak­en the edge off things and made the rebels too busy hav­ing fun to save the world. With just a lit­tle bit of per­spec­tive … but maybe that was al­ways the miss­ing in­gre­di­ent in peo­ple who thought they could run the world.

The en­gi­neered gene was capped with fat­ty ends, typ­i­cal of drugs that were to be en­closed in mi­cro­scop­ic mi­celle bub­bles and tak­en by mouth. So now she al­so knew they were in­fect­ing peo­ple via food or drink. Cara­cas was ob­vi­ous­ly one of the test sites. That soft drink Mar­co had bought off the pris­on­er would prob­a­bly turn out to be fas­ci­nat­ing. She wrote down a sum­ma­ry of all the de­tails to show to the ad­min­is­tra­tors at Ar­sia, as­sum­ing she ever got that far. The rover kept on trundling like a bor­ing old bus on an ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly bad road.

Oziel’s head bobbed up from be­low, his glossy black hair not even mussed from sleep­ing. He was ap­par­ent­ly one of those an­noy­ing peo­ple who wake up look­ing well‑groomed and cheer­ful, but she was glad to see him any­way. Not-think­ing about dan­ger all by your­self was a lone­ly busi­ness.

“Now who’s not wak­ing who up?” he asked. “Or is it whom? Eng­lish is dif­fi­cult.”

“Mm. So where’d you learn all that per­fect Eng­lish, any­way?”

He came all the way up and took the sec­ond seat.

“Every­where I could, be­cause I al­ways thought it might be one tick­et out of the bar­rio. I lis­tened to Eng­lish-lan­guage broad­casts. Every­thing to do with com­put­ers is in Eng­lish. I read Eng­lish books. I was a bell­boy at the Cara­cas Re­gency for three years.”

“A bell­boy?” Corin­na was not sure why she was sur­prised. “And what? They wouldn’t pro­mote you up through the ranks?” she added wry­ly.

“I quit when I was thir­teen. Some of the rich men scared me.”

Thir­teen, af­ter three years, and his fa­ther had died when he was ten. There was a con­nec­tion, she was sure. She would nev­er have made it in his world. Nev­er.

“Then I was in Flori­da for four years start­ing when I was eigh­teen. I was hired by a con­struc­tion multi­na­tion­al af­ter one of the big hur­ri­canes there, and then they kept me on. It was most­ly gen­er­al la­bor in con­struc­tion, but that was al­so when I got cer­ti­fied as a ba­sic emer­gency tech and to do day care.” He gave her a side­long grin. “Too much heavy lift­ing in con­struc­tion, es­pe­cial­ly when you’re the biggest grunt around.”

He must have worked eigh­teen-hour days. Like a post­doc. “Well,” she said, “ad­mire the view for a few min­utes. I’ll see what food packs I grabbed.”

Mo­ments lat­er, she re­turned with new cof­fee and two bowls of stew on a tray.

“Seems to be a USO,” she said apolo­get­i­cal­ly.

Any­one who had spent any time away from Earth knew what that was. Uniden­ti­fied Stew Ob­ject. Oziel gri­maced, but ate too fast to talk any­way. The last meal for both of them, aside from the oc­ca­sion­al emer­gency ra­tion bar, was about twen­ty hours ago.

“What do you keep look­ing at?” asked Oziel, fol­low­ing her glances at the mon­i­tors to his left.

“I’m just wait­ing for air­plane vi­bra­tion to show up. Any minute now, I keep think­ing.”

“It would be good if there were some way to make it send out a beep if there’s a vi­bra­tion. Then we wouldn’t have to keep star­ing at it,” he said.

“Yes, well, it would al­so be handy if we had a mil­i­tary-grade tank. Then we’d be able to find air­craft all the way to Olym­pus. The good news is that any­one who’s af­ter us is equal­ly hand­i­capped by hav­ing sci­en­tif­ic field ve­hi­cles.”

“Not hand­i­capped enough,” he ob­ject­ed. “Weren’t you the one who was telling me sci­ence ve­hi­cles had every kind of cam­era? We must look like flood­lights in in­frared.”

“It’s not as bad as you might think,” said Corin­na. “Suits and ve­hi­cles are very heav­i­ly in­su­lat­ed and — what’s that?”

She put her stew down and stared at the mon­i­tor. The gain was turned up as high as it would go. There was no way to mag­ni­fy the graph show­ing lev­els of at­mos­pher­ic vi­bra­tion any more than it al­ready was. Was that a tiny, reg­u­lar wave, or just the back­ground sta­t­ic that was al­ways there?

It could be her para­noid imag­i­na­tion, but the lit­tle peaks and troughs seemed to be get­ting big­ger. By the time she was sure, what­ev­er it was would be on top of them.

Hide now.

Where?

The rover was in very rough ter­rain, some­thing she had been qui­et­ly curs­ing just a mo­ment ago. There was a gap be­tween two moun­tain­ous falls of boul­ders. They would be vis­i­ble as hell when viewed straight on. She made a sharp turn to­ward the gap.

“Turn off every­thing we don’t need for im­me­di­ate life sup­port,” she said to Oziel.

He mut­tered some­thing un­der his breath in Span­ish that Corin­na was pret­ty sure trans­lat­ed as, “How the hell am I sup­posed to know which switch­es to push?” But when she spared a glance to see if he was man­ag­ing, the biggest drains on en­er­gy, like heat and ven­ti­la­tion, were off.

Maybe with that ex­tra bit of pow­er, top speed would be­come more top. The rover trun­dled leisure­ly to­ward the north wall of the canyon.

“Go,” she mut­tered un­der her breath. “Go.” The need to talk to the ma­chine at mo­ments like this was al­ways stronger than rea­son. The squig­gles had grown in­to nice, reg­u­lar sound waves. There was some­thing out there.

“Ah, not to teach you your job or any­thing, but,” said Oziel, hes­i­tat­ing, “but that gul­ly there is a bit clos­er.”

“Sand. Must have rocks.” With every­thing off that could be turned off, they were mak­ing forty three kph. She could do no more. The squig­gles were get­ting small­er again. They must be go­ing back and forth in a search pat­tern. That was good for giv­ing her time to hide the rover, but bad once they were hid­den and could not move.

“Ah,” he said, “for the tracks. Of course.”

He’d fig­ured it out in­stead of spend­ing time she didn’t have on ques­tions.

They were al­most to the boul­ders. The squig­gles start­ed grow­ing larg­er again. They were be­hind the big out­ly­ing rocks that had bounced the fur­thest in their an­cient fall, a long, long time ago, when the an­ces­tors of peo­ple were still up in the trees, eat­ing in­sects for break­fast.

The lit­tle val­ley be­tween the two avalanch­es was far too broad. Their on­ly hope was that the pi­lot would be look­ing in the wrong place at the right time, and since he had to scan cam­eras as well as look, he might be dis­tract­ed. The plane would prob­a­bly have one vis­i­ble light cam­era, one in­frared, and per­haps one mil­lime­ter wave, plus all the usu­al spec­tro­graph­ic equip­ment that would be use­less for find­ing them. Sci­en­tif­ic study of Mar­t­ian rock did not re­quire fast, si­mul­ta­ne­ous imag­ing of some­thing that might get away.

She tucked the rover as far back in­to the rock fall as she could. The rocks had fanned out at the base, so there was a pro­tec­tive arm pro­vid­ing some screen­ing un­less the pi­lot hap­pened to look in ex­act­ly the right di­rec­tion. If he searched main­ly for­ward, as peo­ple usu­al­ly did, he might miss them. Then she would sprint the rover across the gap and hide be­hind the oth­er rock fall when the craft re­turned. If he did not start search­ing side to side, they might be able to keep up the hide and seek through sev­er­al pass­es.

The waves on the mon­i­tor were large now. Corin­na stared through the gap in the rocks, hold­ing her breath. A ten-me­ter drag­on­fly flashed past, head­ed west.

“It’s a drone!” she ex­claimed. “Of all the luck. They’re sit­ting back at the Sta­tion try­ing to fig­ure out what that thing is see­ing on some lit­tle screen. Okay. Wait for it to fade west … run for the oth­er side.”

Run was too strong a word, but the rover reached the oth­er side be­fore the drone’s vi­bra­tions start­ed grow­ing again. The drone flashed past the open­ing, re­turn­ing east.

Corin­na moved back to the oth­er side of the gap, up against their first rock fall.

The vi­bra­tions fad­ed to sta­t­ic. They did not re­turn.

“Je­sus. Those guys aren’t even try­ing. Or maybe the drone is run­ning out of pow­er. I’d guess they’ve been search­ing for sev­er­al hours and you can’t fill those things up with hy­dro­gen-oxy­gen tanks or bat­ter­ies like you can a rover.”

“Or,” said Oziel, “they spot­ted us and now they’re go­ing to send out the troops.”

“Yeah.” Corin­na sub­sided. “There is that.” She cal­cu­lat­ed. “We’re about six hun­dred kilo­me­ters on a straight line from the Sta­tion. The pi­lot­ed craft can go about two hun­dred kilo­me­ters an hour, so we can ex­pect them in about three hours.

“We can’t get very far in three hours,” she added, de­pressed.

“We do what we can,” said Oziel. “Go for it. Now,” he said when she did not move.

“Right.” She had trou­ble see­ing the point. If a plane was be­ing sent out to get them, they were dead meat. Still, they might as well go for­ward as sit there. He was right about that.

“If pi­lots ar­rive, so what?” he point­ed out. “As you said, they have to use the same sci­ence planes as every­one else. They don’t have nose-mount­ed ma­chine guns any more than we do. If we can get them out of their plane, maybe we can take it over.”

“And fly to Ar­sia? Like re­al peo­ple?” She grinned.

The on­ly prob­lem with the sce­nario was that nei­ther Di­cas­til­lo nor Ching, who could cer­tain­ly scram­ble re­search air­craft if he want­ed to, had the cour­tesy to send them a plane to take over. Three hours lat­er, no at­mos­pher­ic vi­bra­tions showed up. Oziel plied her with cof­fee and told her fun­ny sto­ries about his child­hood. Four hours lat­er, there were still no vi­bra­tions. She told him un­fun­ny sto­ries about her child­hood. Five hours lat­er they sat down to an­oth­er meal.

“You’d think they’d try to get us dur­ing day­light,” she said. “Us­ing an in­frared scope is hard­er than us­ing eye­sight.”

“Once we get to Ar­sia,” be­gan Oziel.

“Op­ti­mist,” she in­ter­rupt­ed.

“Once we get to Ar­sia,” he re­peat­ed with some em­pha­sis, “we might have a place to stay. I tried to shoot a cryp­to to my splicer friend be­fore I left. I don’t know whether it got any­where, of course.”

“Oh. Good. That gives us some­thing to go on. I must ad­mit, I had no re­al ideas about what to do once we got there. How do we meet him? Or her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know any­thing about him. Or her. Any more than they do about me. If they get the mes­sage, they know there’s two of us, we’re in trou­ble, we need a place, and I’ll get in touch once I find an un­oc­cu­pied ter­mi­nal at the base.”

“Oh,” she said again. “Sounds a bit iffy. It is bet­ter than noth­ing, though. And speak­ing of noth­ing, I don’t have any re­al ideas about how to get in ei­ther. The on­ly plan I’ve come up with is to try to sneak in­to the car­go en­trance with one of the car­go drones and hope for the best.”

“If they’re not watch­ing the en­trances, that will work. But then we don’t have to be that elab­o­rate ei­ther.”

“Mm. Well, what would you do?”

He sat for a while in thought.

“I think I would prob­a­bly try to sneak in with one of the car­go drones,” he said fi­nal­ly with a spread­ing grin.

She chuck­led.

“You go get some sleep,” he said. “In an­oth­er six hours we have to climb out of the canyon and on­to the plain and I def­i­nite­ly don’t want to be at the con­trols for that.”

“Yeah. Okay. Keep one eye on that at­mos­phere mon­i­tor and the oth­er on the course.”

 

Corin­na zigzagged their faith­ful rover up the slope she had cho­sen to reach the plain. It was one in the morn­ing, pitch dark, and she did not dare use any­thing as vis­i­ble at a dis­tance as head­lights. She did what she could with the maps, the sonar, and the in­frared. So far no cliffs or precipices had loomed dis­as­trous­ly. Oziel slept.

He was sav­ing her life, risk­ing his own, and treat­ing it all as if it was a per­fect­ly nor­mal thing to do. He asked for noth­ing, he ap­plied no pres­sure. She’d as­sumed some­one car­ry­ing so many bur­dens would be bent when you got to know him bet­ter, but he seemed to be like those firs in the far north that had moun­tains’ worth of snow thrown on them. He was ar­row-straight. Any­thing less, and he prob­a­bly would have bro­ken. It was scary to think of the pres­sures he lived with that had made him that way.

Maybe it was be­cause he knew all about pres­sure that he nev­er ap­plied any. In­stead, he was warp­ing space-time and putting him­self at the bot­tom of the deep­est grav­i­ty well. He was def­i­nite­ly smarter than oth­er guys.

The rover crest­ed the top of the canyon as dawn broke. The en­tire plan­et was spread out be­fore her. They were so high up, the sky was near­ly black over­head even though a bluish glo­ry of sun filled the east­ern hori­zon. The hori­zon it­self was in­vis­i­ble, shroud­ed in the ten­u­ous at­mos­phere that lay most­ly be­low her. There was a dust storm far to the south, a ochre smear. It was late in the sea­son for storms, but not un­heard of. She had to hope they would be in­side Ar­sia be­fore it spread. The plains be­tween the Labyrinth and Ar­sia rolled on and on and on, an or­ange sea with no shore. The tip of the moun­tain called Pavo­nis was just vis­i­ble to the north­west. Mount Ar­sia it­self was big on the west­ern hori­zon, sides slop­ing sym­met­ri­cal­ly up­ward to the flat top. It looked like they would be there in an­oth­er cou­ple of hours, but re­al­i­ty, as it usu­al­ly is, was less be­nign. She knew she was see­ing on­ly the top of the gi­ant. Most of it was hid­den be­hind the curve of the plan­et. They had over four hun­dred kilo­me­ters to go.

At least now the rover’s top sus­tain­able speed of thir­ty five kilo­me­ters per hour would trans­late in­to thir­ty five kilo­me­ters cov­ered on the ground, trav­el­ing in a straight line to­ward their goal. They might be as ex­posed as bugs on a plate, but they were faster bugs. There were still no signs of re­newed pur­suit, nor was the rover show­ing any in­di­ca­tions of be­ing dif­fi­cult. She was be­gin­ning to feel quite af­fec­tion­ate to­ward this rover. She would have to think of a name for it, and when they reached Ar­sia she was go­ing to paint it across the front.

Oziel woke up a cou­ple of hours lat­er and they ate break­fast. He took the con­trols and she took an­oth­er turn sleep­ing. It was be­gin­ning to look like they were re­al­ly go­ing to make it, even if the moun­tain re­fused to look any clos­er as time trick­led by.

When Corin­na woke at noon, there was all the dif­fer­ence in the vol­cano she could ask for. It filled half the world. Old la­va flows and de­bris fields as big as moun­tain ranges stretched north and south from halfway up its flanks. She knew the main base was tucked in­to the groove where the south­ern skirt of de­bris lay against the west­ern side of the moun­tain, but that was still be­low the hori­zon.

She or­ga­nized some lunch and com­ment­ed,

“It’s start­ing to look like we just may make it.”

He shook his head at her sad­ly.

“Don’t they teach you any­thing at these grad­u­ate schools? Don’t you know that say­ing such things at­tracts the evil eye?”

“Hah. A few hours ago it was you mak­ing plans for our ar­rival.” She munched on an­oth­er Uniden­ti­fied Ob­ject, a bread­ed pro­tein thingy that was soy pre­tend­ing to be, she guessed, chick­en.

“Guilty as charged, but,” he said solemn­ly, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

She made a face at him and checked the con­trols. They had two hun­dred and thir­ty kilo­me­ters to go. Just two hun­dred and thir­ty. Less than sev­en hours. They would be in by night­fall. Ad­min would be closed. They might have to avoid Di­cas­til­lo’s goons for the night.

“So, what are you plan­ning, when this is all over?”

He pre­tend­ed to wince at this re­peat­ed as­sump­tion of suc­cess, but did not com­ment.

“Me? I’m plan­ning noth­ing. I’ll see what hap­pens.”

“You can’t teach nurs­ery school for­ev­er.”

“No?” His tone said, Why not?

“Well, I mean, come on. You’re smart, re­source­ful. You could be do­ing so much more.”

Af­ter a long while, he an­swered,

“I don’t want more. Quintón, he want­ed more. For­get it.”

She could not think of a re­ply im­me­di­ate­ly. She had got­ten no fur­ther than open­ing her mouth when a plane flew by low over­head, fol­lowed rapid­ly by an­oth­er one.

The at­mos­phere mon­i­tor showed the squig­gles plain as day and she felt like kick­ing her­self. They’d start­ed ig­nor­ing the small­est vi­bra­tions be­cause there were so many ir­rel­e­vant ones this close to the space­port, and now they’d missed the big one. Al­though she had to ad­mit that there was lit­tle they could have done out here in the flat­lands even if they had known it was com­ing.

She could have sworn there had been a slight thump af­ter the first air­craft passed, as if a clum­sy pi­geon had land­ed too hard some­where to­ward the back of the rover. She twist­ed around in her seat, but from the con­trol dome she could not see any­thing un­usu­al. Maybe the rover had gone over a rock. There was no time to think about it be­cause the sec­ond plane was per­form­ing pe­cu­liar gy­ra­tions, much too near the rover. She and Oziel looked at each oth­er, at the planes, and at each oth­er again. Were they go­ing to be bombed any minute? Should they suit up and get out while they could? Or was this a bunch of tourists out on ma­neu­vers?

As the plane dipped past them again, a cou­ple of crazy-ass guys draped in cam­eras waved at the rover. Def­i­nite­ly tourists. The first plane con­tin­ued qui­et­ly on to­ward Ar­sia, ig­nor­ing them. Fi­nal­ly, the sec­ond plane lev­eled out and fol­lowed the first one back to­ward Ar­sia.

“They don’t seem to want any­thing with us,” said Oziel sus­pi­cious­ly. “Looked like tourists. We are get­ting close to the port.”

“Did you hear the thunk?” asked Corin­na, track­ing the dis­ap­pear­ing plane with equal sus­pi­cion.

“No. What thunk?”

“I’m go­ing out to have a look,” she de­cid­ed. “Maybe it was just a bump we went over, but I want to be sure. We’re too close to slow down. Don’t stop the rover. I’ll just crawl around while it’s go­ing.”

“Are you crazy?” ex­claimed Oziel. “Think about it. You’re in a suit like a house. How are you go­ing to keep your bal­ance if we go over a rock? No, I don’t care what you say. We’re stop­ping.” He matched his ac­tions to his words.

She shrugged and climbed down the five steps to suit up.

The back of the rover looked per­fect­ly nor­mal as she clumped around out­side, al­though dusti­er than any rover she had ever seen. The planes showed no signs of com­ing back. They had prob­a­bly just been tourists and she was prob­a­bly just jumpy. She climbed la­bo­ri­ous­ly on­to the bumper that ringed the rover about a me­ter above the ground. That was the on­ly way to see the roof above the cab­in and — and the spread­ing black stain on it. Gin­ger­ly she moved clos­er. It was a vi­o­lent cor­ro­sive. She could see it bub­bling as she watched in hor­ror, send­ing up wisps of gas that dis­si­pat­ed in­stant­ly.

Un­der­neath that were the oxy­gen and hy­dro­gen feed lines to the fu­el cells. Once those were cor­rod­ed, there would be a spec­tac­u­lar ex­plo­sion. They might have min­utes. They might have an hour.

Crank­ing down the gain on her suit ra­dio as far as it would go, just to make sure any lis­ten­ers had to be very close in­deed to pick up the sig­nal, she com­mand­ed,

“Oziel, get suit­ed up with every­thing you can car­ry in there. Food. Wa­ter. We have to aban­don ship. In­stant­ly.”

He asked no ques­tions.

,” he said.

She picked up her cold box from where it was strapped to the out­side of the rover. It had stayed well-frozen out there. She would have to strap it on out­side her suit. She cy­cled back through the lock, took her hel­met off and opened the top half of her suit. She start­ed strap­ping the con­tents of her car­ry bag in­to the in­ter­nal hold­ers on the in­side of the tor­so sec­tion, lap­top first. Sleep­ing in this thing was go­ing to be hell. They di­vid­ed up all the avail­able emer­gency food. At two thou­sand calo­ries a day each, that was go­ing to last three days. Great. She was go­ing to lose weight on this trip, ex­cept that she did not have much to spare. He’d lose even more. The oxy­gen-car­bon diox­ide scrub­ber and re­cir­cu­la­tor would work for a week. They filled the long, emer­gency wa­ter tubes and draped one each down the space suit legs. A drink­ing hose snaked up to the top of the suit. The wa­ter re­cir­cu­la­tor, though she did not like to think about it, would work over a month with all this ex­tra wa­ter. Pow­er for the suit was func­tion­al­ly lim­it­less, so long as the oc­cu­pant was alive, since it used the heat gra­di­ent be­tween in­side and out­side for en­er­gy, as well as the mo­tion of the wear­er. Pho­to­voltaics on the suit’s sur­face pro­vid­ed an added boost. As­sum­ing they ever reached their des­ti­na­tion, they were go­ing to need some­thing be­sides body suit un­der­wear, so they both tucked their Sta­tion suits in the last re­main­ing nooks.

She took one last look at the in­stru­ment pan­el. Two hun­dred and twen­ty kilo­me­ters to go. They should be able to do a min­i­mum of fifty a day. About four days. Piece of cake. Her hands were shak­ing as she closed the tor­so sec­tion of the suit.

 

Chap­ter 13

“How are we go­ing to hide out there?” Oziel moved his head to point to the great out­side. They stood like un­wieldy ro­bots in­side the cramped rover.

“We aren’t,” she stat­ed flat­ly. So close, they had come so close.

He stood and thought.

“Come on. We got­ta get out.” Why was he just stand­ing there?

“Wait. They have to have space blan­kets here, right?”

“In the emer­gency lock­er. What for? Our suits have to keep us warm. A space blan­ket won’t do squat out there.”

He had pulled the sil­ver thing out. “Now, some­thing gluey,” he mut­tered. “Some­thing gluey.”

There was noth­ing gluey.

“What the hell are you talk­ing about? Let’s get go­ing.”

“If there’s some way to make sand stick to one side, we can spread it over us and look like part of the land­scape.”

“Oh.” Af­ter a mo­ment’s thought she said, “Lu­bri­cant. We can drain some of the crud out of the tread bear­ings. Got every­thing you need from here?” She told him where to drain the lu­bri­cant out. “Let me know as soon as you’re done.”

He nod­ded, snapped his hel­met down, and stepped in­to the lock.

He cy­cled through and out. The lock re­turned to its in­side po­si­tion. Mo­ments lat­er his voice came back say­ing the blan­ket was cov­ered in goop. She en­tered some last com­mands in­to the nav­i­ga­tion con­sole and stepped in­to the lock just as the rover start­ed mov­ing again. There was a pan­icked shout over the ra­dio.

“It’s okay, Oziel. I’ve set it to ac­cel­er­ate to­ward Ar­sia, but it’ll on­ly be at five kph when I jump out.”

It was in­deed bare­ly mov­ing when she jumped, but she fell over any­way. It was amaz­ing how much hard­er every­thing was in a suit. She hard­ly felt the fall, buffered as she was by low grav­i­ty and by the lay­ers of wa­ter, un­der­wear, food packs, and all the sun­dries.

They set off, Oziel draped in a dis­gust­ing blan­ket of sandy glop, while their trusty rover trun­dled off to its des­tiny. Corin­na felt very up­set. It seemed like such a poor re­turn for ex­cel­lent ser­vice, an all-too-per­va­sive prob­lem, and here she was pass­ing it on.

“I won­der if that’s how long it took them to find us, or just how long it took them to get that el­e­gant scheme arranged,” said Corin­na, so she had some­thing to lis­ten to be­sides the sound of her breath­ing and his breath­ing over the suit ra­dio.

“Yes, what was the scheme?”

She looked at him in sur­prise as she re­al­ized that in the rush she nev­er had giv­en him an ex­pla­na­tion, and that he had not wast­ed time by de­mand­ing one.

“That thump was cor­ro­sive they dropped on the rover that they were prob­a­bly hop­ing we wouldn’t no­tice. I think they aimed it pre­cise­ly be­cause at some point it’s go­ing to eat through to the hy­dro­gen-oxy­gen feed lines. And then boom.”

She heard him let out a whistling breath and saw him look at the dis­tant speck of the rover.

“Would that look like an ac­ci­dent? Some kind of rust that just hap­pened in a bad place?”

“I doubt it. It’s an aw­ful lot of rust to hap­pen all at once. They’re prob­a­bly hop­ing to be the ones to re­port the ‘ac­ci­dent’ and to be able to get away with pre­tend­ing that an oxy­gen leak caused the prob­lem.”

They trudged fur­ther.

“How are we go­ing to get in­to Ar­sia now?” said Corin­na break­ing a long si­lence. “The car­go idea may not have been all that swift, but now we can’t even do that.”

“No.” He did not sound hap­py ei­ther.

“And we’re leav­ing these cute tracks,” she con­tin­ued the cat­a­logue of their mis­for­tunes as she looked back over her shoul­der. “Once they search far enough out from the rover, they’ll find them.”

“Can’t wor­ry about that,” he said short­ly. “Can’t do any­thing about it.”

They trudged fur­ther in si­lence.

“Ac­tu­al­ly,” she said, “we can. We could trav­el at night in­stead of dur­ing the day. It would make us a lot hard­er to find.”

“All right,” he said, with­out any ar­gu­ment, like some­one who was fed up. “Where would you like to stop?”

It was the first and on­ly sign he’d giv­en of los­ing pa­tience. He was, as he’d said, good in emer­gen­cies.

She sur­veyed the ter­rain. There were a se­ries of shal­low fur­rows a few hun­dred me­ters away, minia­ture dunes shaped by wind.

“How about there? We could deep­en one of those a bit, per­haps, then spread the blan­ket over the top.”

There was a sud­den hiss of sta­t­ic on the suit ra­dios, which shocked both of them and start­ed them search­ing in all di­rec­tions for dan­ger.

“There,” said Oziel grim­ly.

Their tiny rover, a speck some fif­teen kilo­me­ters away, was blow­ing up in a spec­tac­u­lar fire­ball with a plume of smoke blow­ing north. The elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse had car­ried far in that emp­ty space. New flash­es ex­plod­ed every cou­ple of sec­onds as oxy­gen and hy­dro­gen tanks blew up. That would be vis­i­ble in Ar­sia. Of course, as­sum­ing the wrong peo­ple were on the res­cue squad, they were bet­ter off out here. Then again, out here there was just a few cen­time­ters of suit be­tween them and all of Mars. It was im­pos­si­ble to know which choic­es were best. There was noth­ing to do but sol­dier on.

She start­ed help­ing him make their sandy bed as use­ful as pos­si­ble. There were a cou­ple of hours of day­light left, but maybe the goons would spend them ad­mir­ing the mess the rover had made.

Hours lat­er, her wrist­pad beeped at the pre-arranged time. She was sure she had not so much as closed her eyes, so she did not un­der­stand how the beep could have wok­en her up. She moved to sit up but the blan­ket felt odd­ly heavy. Her move­ment brought an an­swer­ing move­ment from Oziel.

“On­ward and up­ward, Cap­tain?” was all he said. Then, “What’s the mat­ter with the blan­ket?”

“I don’t know. Let’s push it up and find out.”

And they found out. The south­ern dust storm had moved north. The good news was that it had al­ready cov­ered their tracks with the same lay­er of grit that had weighed down the blan­ket. The bad news was that it was sand­blast­ing them.

“Oh, man,” was all Corin­na said, quick­ly get­ting un­der the blan­ket again.

“I guess we could call Ar­sia for res­cue and hope for the best,” she said a few min­utes lat­er.

“Let’s keep that in re­serve,” Oziel fi­nal­ly spoke. “We’re not dead yet. We were go­ing to walk by com­pass read­ings in the dark any­way, yes?”

She nod­ded and then re­mem­bered he might not be able to see that. “Yes.”

“So, we just drape the friend­ly blan­ket over us and go.”

Well, yes, there was no rea­son why they could not do that. She had no idea what the wind speed was, but there was so lit­tle air that it hard­ly mat­tered. A three hun­dred kilo­me­ter per hour gale might as well be a breeze. Their legs would still get sand­blast­ed, but the suits could prob­a­bly with­stand that for days.

It took a while to get co­or­di­nat­ed, with the blan­ket arranged over both of them so that noth­ing stuck out and they could both move well. They wound up with his arm around her shoul­der to hold the blan­ket in place on that side, and hers around the fat waist of his suit. He short­ened his stride to match hers and some­how man­aged to stay in step so that they did not pull their cov­er­ing in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. She showed him how to pro­ject the com­pass read­ings on­to his hel­met as well. That way there were two pairs of eyes mak­ing sure they stayed on course. They walked like that for hours, chang­ing sides every so of­ten to change the po­si­tions of their arms. They did not talk much. Their prob­lems loomed too large to al­low any oth­er sub­ject to be dis­cussed, but the prob­lems them­selves were too de­press­ing to dwell on. Every so of­ten, one would have to grab the oth­er to pre­vent a fall when they stum­bled on­to rocks in the dark.

Oziel spoke af­ter an hour or two of si­lence. All their con­ver­sa­tions on this hike had im­mense paus­es.

“As soon as they can search for us again, they’ll find us, I sup­pose. By the life signs, or some­thing, right?”

He sound­ed de­pressed.

“There aren’t any ‘life signs,’” said Corin­na. “That’s sci­ence fic­tion. We’re not leak­ing air or wa­ter va­por or any­thing. The suits are sealed. Our trans­ceivers are off. There’s a bit of ex­cess heat that in­frared could pick up. The suits would show up as big blobs of met­al us­ing the right kind of sen­sors, but those aren’t stan­dard equip­ment. Min­er­alog­i­cal sur­veys don’t need to wor­ry about rocks run­ning away.”

“Oh,” he said, sound­ing less de­pressed.

Ex­haust­ed, with half the night still to go, they sat down for a rest and for some­thing to eat. The dust storm beat up­on their blan­ket.

“I’ve been think­ing about how to get in,” said Corin­na be­tween mouth­fuls of a tough, pro­teina­ceous ra­tion bar.

“Yes?” he said af­ter many mo­ments had passed.

Her brain felt like gelatin too.

“Wa­ter is brought up in ro­bot tanks from the south. There’s a con­stant se­ries of them, trav­el­ing down emp­ty, com­ing back full.” Well, duh, of course they came back full. She rest­ed for a bit. “Any­way, they hook up to a pipeline at the base, of­fload, and head south again. But if they have a prob­lem, they’re shunt­ed in­to a hold­ing area where a tech­ni­cian can look at them.”

“So we hitch a ride on one and then make it spring a leak, or some­thing?”

“I was think­ing more in terms of un­plug­ging the pho­to­voltaics. No point com­mit­ting wa­ter van­dal­ism if we don’t have to.”

“How fast do they go? Are we go­ing to be able to jump on one?”

“The ro­bots I know are pro­grammed to go around ob­struc­tions, but to stop if some­thing they missed looms up close. Then they go around. So we can prob­a­bly just stand in front of it.”

“And get squashed like bugs if it has dif­fi­cul­ty mak­ing up its tiny mind,” grum­bled Oziel. “But it’s the best idea so far, Cap­tain.”

It was the on­ly idea so far. She sud­den­ly had to know what this “Cap­tain” busi­ness was.

“Hey, you’re the guy who start­ed us on this trek. You’re the guy who keeps us go­ing. What does that make you? The ad­mi­ral?”

“You’re the on­ly one who knows enough to get us through this, Corin­na, mí cielo. That’s why the ‘Cap­tain.’ I can on­ly hold your hand.”

How did he do it? Through two suits and a dust storm, he warmed her right down to her toes.

“Well,” she fi­nal­ly said, “you do a bet­ter job of it than I ever knew was pos­si­ble.”

They walked the rest of the night af­ter that, com­ing up with word games to stay awake to­ward morn­ing. Af­ter she won too many of them, Oziel switched to Span­ish, which kept her both more awake and less tri­umphant.

The moun­tain was still shroud­ed by the dust storm when dawn broke. They could have been walk­ing in the same place on a tread­mill for all the signs the land­scape gave them.

“We can walk dur­ing the day,” said Oziel. “They can’t fly through this.”

Af­ter a few hours sleep and an­oth­er emer­gency ra­tion bar, they set off again, look­ing, no doubt, like a strange un­gain­ly spook in the sand­storm, had any Mar­t­ian grem­lins been there to see them.

The days and nights melt­ed to­geth­er. Corin­na won­dered how much fur­ther her world could shrink. She had start­ed out on a lim­it­less green and blue plan­et. That had dwin­dled to a kilo­me­ter-wide Sta­tion. From there she had moved to a rover whose op­po­site walls she could just about touch with her out­stretched hands. And now she was in a suit, shar­ing space with spare un­der­wear and a smell that need­ed con­sid­er­ably more room than she could give it. She won­dered whether Oziel’s aro­ma had gone as far over the line as her own.

“How’s your food hold­ing out?” she asked at one point, the same as all the oth­er points dur­ing which they walked blind un­der their shroud. Their eyes had noth­ing to rest on in all that time but the ghost­ly green trac­eries and num­bers pro­ject­ed on­to their hel­mets.

“One of the good things about be­ing re­al­ly stressed,” he an­swered, “is I don’t have much ap­petite. A ra­tion bar every cou­ple of hours, and I can for­get about it. How about you?”

“Yeah. Same here.” It was the first time he had said any­thing about fear.

“How about the waste sys­tems?” she asked. “Still up to spec?” The com­mon­est prob­lem with long term suit use was not run­ning out of oxy­gen or leaks in the shell or any­thing spec­tac­u­lar. It was the sol­id waste dis­pos­al sys­tem. Uric acid crys­tals and a brown dust that looked like it came from Earth had to be re­moved through an ac­cess latch every cou­ple of days or of­ten­er. The pro­cess­ing was the most com­pli­cat­ed part of the suit, and if it start­ed to leak or fail, it caused in­cred­i­ble prob­lems. It was al­so the sort of thing peo­ple re­fused to men­tion un­til it was a dis­as­ter.

“Seems to be okay,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell if some­thing’s go­ing wrong with that.”

“Oh, you’d know.”

On the third day, ac­cord­ing to her wrist­pad, the dust storm fi­nal­ly thinned and they had the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing Ar­sia fill three quar­ters of the world in­stead of on­ly half. The storm died away com­plete­ly in the mid­dle of what they hoped would be their last night out. The sky filled with stars, which end­ed much too high up where the huge bulge of Ar­sia blocked them out. But at the top of that omi­nous black stand­ing wave, some of the stars moved. They were space­ships with peo­ple in them who meant her and Oziel no harm, who did the two of them no good, and who knew as much about them as the stars them­selves.

“Look,” said Corin­na, un­able to keep the qua­ver out of her voice. “That light. That’s the base.” This time she was not about to say they were al­most there.

When dawn broke, they could see two of the wa­ter ro­bot trucks rolling to­ward the moun­tain, and three head­ing away. She had judged their course per­fect­ly to in­ter­cept the line of ro­bots about thir­ty kilo­me­ters south of the base.

“I sure don’t want to hide till night­fall at this point. Do you?” she asked.

He shook his head in­side his hel­met em­phat­i­cal­ly. Now that she could see him more clear­ly, he seemed to be turn­ing all black. Af­ter a mo­ment she re­al­ized it had to be his beard as­sert­ing it­self.

“You know, as we get clos­er to the base, we should stop us­ing the ra­dios. Go back to lean­ing our heads to­geth­er and talk­ing through the hel­mets.”

“Just say when.”

This close to their goal, Corin­na could well be­lieve that space was ex­pand­ing. Noth­ing seemed to get any clos­er, no mat­ter how long they walked. Nei­ther of them spoke. Mak­ing hope­ful nois­es sound­ed stu­pid; mak­ing pes­simistic nois­es even stu­pid­er. There were on­ly so many sto­ries from child­hood she want­ed to tell, though she could have lis­tened to Oziel’s for­ev­er. Or at least for sev­er­al more days.

Since nei­ther of them spoke, Corin­na heard the noise when it came.

She had spent six months lis­ten­ing to the winds of Mars. She knew what the plan­et was sup­posed to sound like. Now there was a pe­cu­liar lit­tle hum added, more like the dis­tant drone of a lazy fly than any­thing.

“Can you hear that?” she asked, turn­ing her out­go­ing ra­dio sig­nal off and lean­ing her hel­met against his. “That sort of buzz?”

He lis­tened, but shook his head.

Sud­den­ly she knew.

“It’s a plane! That’s what it’s got to be. A plane.” She scanned every which way, but Oziel spot­ted it.

“There.” It was just a dot, fly­ing back and forth out from the base.

“Looks like a search pat­tern to me,” said Corin­na. “Time to get un­der our se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket. They prob­a­bly combed through the rover wreck­age and re­al­ized the suits were miss­ing.”

They lay down near the sandy wind shad­ow of a few boul­ders. The peb­bly ground this close to the moun­tain showed their foot­prints if you knew they were there, but made them very hard to spot. They threw the fresh­ly sand-cov­ered blan­ket over them­selves, and held it up off their suits as much as pos­si­ble by hold­ing their feet and fore­arms ver­ti­cal, their el­bows rest­ing on the ground. The suits might lose al­most no heat, but what they did lose es­caped though the hel­mets. By mak­ing a tent of sandy blan­ket, there’d be no warmth to show up on any in­frared scan­ners.

They lay there for hours, Corin­na was sure, but her wrist­pad said it was on­ly thir­ty min­utes when she care­ful­ly pulled her arm in to check. The suit’s arm stuck stiffly up on its own. Af­ter sev­er­al more hours that con­densed in­to min­utes when she checked the time again, the drone be­came un­mis­tak­able. She froze. It passed over the top of them and con­tin­ued south. She heard it come back, a lit­tle fur­ther to their left. Grad­u­al­ly, it re­ced­ed and dis­ap­peared al­to­geth­er. Af­ter an­oth­er eter­ni­ty, they fi­nal­ly emerged from their co­coon.

“I think, Corin­na, the pu­toneros have start­ed try­ing. Let’s hope they keep fail­ing.”

An hour more of walk­ing brought them to the road beat­en in­to the sand by the stream of rolling wa­ter trucks. They sat down to wait for the next one.

The first ro­bot stopped like an at­ten­tive cab dri­ver when they stood up. Corin­na un­plugged the con­nec­tion be­tween its so­lar pan­els and its fu­el cells while they were ac­ces­si­ble, trust­ing that it had enough hy­dro­gen stored to reach the base, and they climbed on to a ser­vic­ing ledge at the rear. Two hours lat­er, it of­floaded wa­ter for fif­teen min­utes and then, fi­nal­ly, the slow-mov­ing truck rolled through a low tun­nel sized for it. It paused in an air lock and then rolled in­to a large hangar. They dropped off the back im­me­di­ate­ly and tried to stay low while they found the qui­etest spot out of se­cu­ri­ty cam­era range. There did not seem to be any techs around. Their hel­mets fogged up.

Air. That meant air. Well, it meant wa­ter va­por which meant air. Corin­na yanked her hel­met off, and Oziel fol­lowed suit. For a minute they just breathed.

 

Chap­ter 14

Hud­dled in the cor­ner of the hold­ing room for ail­ing ro­bots, sit­ting right un­der the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era so that they would not show up on its scans, and hid­den be­hind a large wa­ter truck, they eased them­selves out of their suits. Oziel’s was like sand­pa­per from the thighs down, Corin­na’s from the knees. She pushed at the met­al ex­per­i­men­tal­ly. It was still sol­id as a rock.

“I guess we could have walked through the storm for an­oth­er cou­ple of weeks.”

“Ex­cept that we would have been as bored as oys­ters.”

She gave a lit­tle snort of agree­ment.

Both of them pre­tend­ed the smells lib­er­at­ed from the suits did not ex­ist. Both of them were rum­pled and dusty and bedrag­gled. Oziel’s cheeks were cov­ered in a black beard. Stick a knife be­tween his teeth and he could pass for a pi­rate, no ques­tions asked. Corin­na did not even want to think about what she could pass for.

“Wow,” she said, check­ing her wrist­pad, “it’s on­ly three. If we could get to ad­min, we might be safe be­fore night­fall.”

“We need to make our­selves less filthy first, yes? Or we’ll be picked up by the po­lice for out­gassing be­fore we even reach ad­min.”

“They’re go­ing to have to take us as they find us,” ar­gued Corin­na, “but if we see bath­rooms on the way to the el­e­va­tors, let’s use them, by all means.”

She looked around the cold, silent room full of wait­ing shapes. The techs ob­vi­ous­ly had more ur­gent things to do.

“We need to sneak out of here, but once we’re in the hall­ways, we can try to act like we be­long there.”

“No, we should avoid peo­ple when we can. We look like scare­crows and we still don’t know who’s who. The fact that Di­cas­til­lo, or Ching for that mat­ter, can scram­ble planes from here when­ev­er they want does not look good.”

“All they’ve got to do is say it’s for re­search.”

. And if they nab us in the hall­ways, they can say they need us for re­search.” He stood up. The emp­ty suit lay like an ail­ing hu­manoid ro­bot on the floor.

She fin­ished repack­ing her bag. Then, to his ob­vi­ous amaze­ment, climbed back in­to her suit. The suit, she re­mem­bered, had plans of the base stored in its mem­o­ry. She stared at the trac­eries on the hel­met.

“We’re go­ing to get lost,” she said, “sure as lob­sters. Try to re­mem­ber this: we go out that door, which ac­cord­ing to this leads straight in­to a hall­way. Turn left. That’s north, in­to the moun­tain. Sec­ond right. Af­ter half a kilo­me­ter, an­oth­er left. Then the first left takes us to the el­e­va­tors. This thing says there are ac­tu­al bath­rooms, in oth­er words with show­ers, fifty me­ters past the el­e­va­tors. This is all stor­age and util­i­ty down here, but it’s al­so the emer­gency shel­ter, which I think is what the bath­rooms are for. So. Did you get all that?”

Much to her sur­prise, he had. He re­peat­ed it flaw­less­ly.

“How long do you think the com­mands are when I’m splic­ing?” he asked with a small smile at the look on her face. "A few turns are noth­ing. And be­fore you get out of there, can you find a ter­mi­nal for me to use?”

“The el­e­va­tors go up to a mall lev­el which is bound to have pub­lic ac­cess ma­chines. Lev­el 15. Ad­min is lev­el 20, at the top. Why am I not sur­prised?”

They hid the suits as well as they could in a dusty cor­ner un­der the tat­tered space blan­ket and head­ed for the door.

They avoid­ed one en­counter with a util­i­ty work­er by duck­ing down a side cor­ri­dor. The halls stretched on like ri­fle ranges, long, end­less, and of­fer­ing no cov­er. Feel­ing like a grub­by bulls-eye, Corin­na fol­lowed Oziel down the left turns and right turns and left turns. At least they were mov­ing tar­gets; maybe that was why no one spot­ted them.

They piled in­to the bath­room, and Corin­na near­ly broke in­to hys­ter­i­cal laugh­ter. There were twen­ty stalls, four show­ers, toi­letry dis­pensers, a wall full of wash basins, all wait­ing for a dis­as­ter which, she could not help feel­ing, had just ar­rived in the form of their un­couth selves.

She washed, turned the blow­ers on full to dry, brushed her knot­ted hair, and put on clean un­der­wear and body suit. Maybe this was how but­ter­flies felt when they fi­nal­ly emerged from their old, cramped co­coons. She pulled on her Sta­tion over­alls, de­cid­ed­ly the worse for hav­ing been wadded up and slept on, and looked like she’d ac­quired a wrin­kled lay­er of blue bark. When she stepped out of her show­er cu­bi­cle and saw Oziel repack­ing his things, his suit looked just the same. She gave him as much space as pos­si­ble, and he po­lite­ly ig­nored her too. Corin­na fin­ished study­ing her hol­low face in the mir­ror. She must have lost ten ki­los on this ad­ven­ture. They were ready to push the door to step out when they heard voic­es out there. Ex­chang­ing one alarmed glance, they fad­ed back.

“In­to the stalls,” hissed Oziel. “Crouch on top of the seat, but don’t lock the door.”

Corin­na wished that be­sides crouch­ing like a frog, she could al­so breathe like one, through her skin.

The voic­es would ei­ther pass on down the hall or — or they would come in, damn it.

Well, it made sense, she sup­posed. Peo­ple did have to use toi­lets, al­though she hoped not hers.

Two pairs of shoes went clump­ing down the whole line of stalls to the wash basins. A dull, male voice con­tin­ued the same con­ver­sa­tion these two prob­a­bly had every day of their work­ing lives.

“Well, that’s just it, Sam. It’s like I said. That’s just it. You work all week, and then all of a sud­den it’s ‘Hey, Jeff, do some over­time on Wednes­day.’ Then ‘do some over­time on Thurs­day.’ Then Fri­day. I mean it’s all damn week. This is, what, like the twen­ti­eth time in two days they’ve had us do­ing this search?”

Mean­while, “Jeff” was clump­ing around on his flat feet.

An­oth­er voice mum­bled, “Yeah. It’s not like you have any choice.”

“Well, they can’t say we’re not look­ing every­where.” The first fel­low’s tone im­plied that they could make him go through the mo­tions, but they couldn’t make him work. “What was the de­scrip­tion on these goops we’re look­ing for?”

Corin­na held her breath again.

“Just a His­pan­ic male and Cau­casian fe­male, both late twen­ties or ear­ly thir­ties. There’s pic­tures at the sta­tion you’re sup­posed to look at.”

“His­pan­ic male. Cau­casian fe­male,” the one named Jeff was mut­ter­ing. “Yeah, sure. That could be just about any­one. And when I get sued for false ar­rest, you watch, it’ll be my ass on the line and no­body else’s fault.”

Corin­na could hear him bang­ing open doors as he walked down the line of stalls and closed her eyes. It was all over. As he neared her door, she had to open her eyes, des­per­ate though she was to shut every­thing out.

Her door slammed open. She had a fleet­ing im­pres­sion of a pudgy, pasty guy in an olive drab uni­form. His head was turned away to con­tin­ue his com­plaints to his part­ner. He wasn’t even look­ing.

He hit the last door. “It’s like I said, Sam…“ and his voice was cut off by the clos­ing hiss of the door to the cor­ri­dor.

There was no sound in the stalls. Min­utes went by. First Oziel, then Corin­na, climbed gin­ger­ly down, and out, and stared at each oth­er, afraid to speak.

“Those were just or­di­nary se­cu­ri­ty guards,” he whis­pered.

She nod­ded. “I won­der what they’ve told ad­min we’ve done. I won­der if there are signs up for us: Want­ed, Dead or Alive.”

“Maybe we bet­ter find my friend first, be­fore we do any­thing stu­pid.”

“Maybe we should try to look less His­pan­ic and Cau­casian.”

“What do you sug­gest?”

“If I had a tow­el I could use it as a head scarf and try to look Mus­lim.”

“You don’t have a tow­el.”

They stood for a while, non­plussed.

“We shouldn’t be seen to­geth­er,” said Oziel af­ter some thought. “That just makes us more ob­vi­ous. And I guess I look hope­less­ly his­pan­ic with all that,” he nod­ded at him­self in a mir­ror, “but al­so less like my pic­ture. I think, un­less you ob­ject,” he raised his eye­brows to Corin­na, “I’ll leave it as is.”

She gave him amused per­mis­sion.

“Okay,” he said. “Now, I’ll go up first to fif­teen and try to find one of those ter­mi­nals. You take an­oth­er el­e­va­tor. When you get out, try to spot me. If you can’t, stare at the stores near­est the el­e­va­tor where I can find you. If we see each oth­er and I move away, fol­low me with­out be­ing ob­vi­ous. And wet your hair down again and plas­ter it to your head. If you’re not cov­ered in curls, you’ll look less like your­self.”

“It on­ly stays plas­tered about five min­utes,” she mut­tered, but did as he sug­gest­ed.

She had nev­er been so sor­ry to see any­one go as to see the door to the cor­ri­dor close be­hind him, blot­ting out his re­as­sur­ing nod and smile. She sup­posed she ought to try equal­ly hard to keep his spir­its up, but she kept for­get­ting.

She hid in the bath­room an­oth­er few min­utes, then scoot­ed out to find her own el­e­va­tor. She wait­ed an eter­ni­ty for it to ar­rive. Did that mean some­one was us­ing it? Who would be in it? Should she try to see be­fore they could see her? The de­ci­sion was tak­en out of her hands when the el­e­va­tor pinged, made her jump, and whooshed open its doors. It was emp­ty.

With a small mea­sure of re­lief, she stepped in and pressed fif­teen. It seemed like the damn thing stopped at every floor and took on peo­ple. She pre­tend­ed to be look­ing for some­thing in her bag and kept her face down. She hoped the musty smell of her over­alls was less ob­vi­ous to every­one else in the small space. No­body seemed to care. Most of them got off on fif­teen.

A quick scan showed Oziel across the cen­tral plaza of the mall, stand­ing non­cha­lant­ly at one of the rings of five ter­mi­nals put there for the con­ve­nience of the shop­ping pub­lic. He glanced past her, but gave no sign he saw her. She tried to look at a store win­dow and him, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. So far, there were no want­ed posters to be seen. Nor had she spot­ted any se­cu­ri­ty guards. If there was no all-points alert, se­cu­ri­ty guards were the on­ly peo­ple they re­al­ly had to wor­ry about. She tried des­per­ate­ly to look like some­one who’d nev­er done any­thing more stren­u­ous than shop.

Min­utes trick­led by, then tens of min­utes. What was he do­ing there? Writ­ing the great Amer­i­can nov­el? More min­utes passed, every sin­gle one of them a large and sol­id pres­ence that seemed to in­tend to stay for­ev­er.

He glanced past her again and he moved away. Her breath caught in her throat and she tried to drift af­ter him. It felt like a vis­i­ble string stretched be­tween them.

He went down a hall­way. She fol­lowed at a dis­tance. He was buy­ing a tick­et in­to the plan­e­tar­i­um.

Fi­nal­ly, some­thing she ap­proved of.

Min­utes lat­er, she too was in­side, flood­ed with re­lief at no longer hang­ing around in the hall­ways, feel­ing like the X that marked the spot. The show ran con­tin­u­ous­ly, so she had to wait for her eyes to adapt to the dark. Soon she could make out his shape, wait­ing for her. They stood a few more min­utes in the en­trance hall by the dim light of galax­ies evolv­ing in hu­man time. Then they found seats in the out­er­most ring, com­fort­ing­ly hid­den by the ar­ti­fi­cial night.

“So what’s the deal?” she whis­pered in ag­i­ta­tion.

“It took a while to make con­tact. She’ll meet us out­side here at nine as soon as she gets off work. She says she’s quite short.”

“Short, huh? That’s as bad as the de­scrip­tion those two guys had on us. And it’s about four thir­ty now.”

“Are you go­ing to be able to stay awake?” he whis­pered.

“With all this com­fort, warmth, and dark? No way.”

“Bet­ter set your timer.”

She set her wrist­pad to vi­brate just be­fore nine.

“And use me as a pil­low,” he in­di­cat­ed the shoul­der near­est her, “if it can make you more com­fort­able.”

She curled up in her seat and wedged her­self against him. Mus­cles, she thought muzzi­ly, make ex­cel­lent springy-soft pil­lows.

At the ap­point­ed time, the quiver at her wrist woke her up. She found her­self ly­ing in the crook of his arm, head on his chest, his arm rest­ing loose­ly over hers. His heart beat loud and slow. Had she moved? Or had he? Or both?

Corin­na plas­tered her hair down again in the plan­e­tar­i­um’s re­stroom. They stepped out in­to the blind­ing­ly bright hall­way and wait­ed for some­one small to show up.

“You haven’t told me yet, you know,” said Oziel grave­ly.

“Told you what?” she asked ab­sent­ly, scan­ning for lit­tle peo­ple.

“Whether it was good, sleep­ing with me,” he con­clud­ed, sud­den­ly grin­ning and about to burst out laugh­ing at the look on her face.

A tiny mid­dle-aged Asian woman came up to them be­fore Corin­na had even be­gun to find an an­swer.

“So nice to see you again,” said this per­fect stranger in a high, mu­si­cal voice.

“And you. They’re all fine at home,” said Oziel in what was ob­vi­ous­ly the coun­ter­sign.

“Let me take you to our place. It’s on lev­el ten. Every­thing is ready for you.”

Corin­na’s for­mer no­tion of an­gels as tall, winged crea­tures un­der­went a rad­i­cal al­ter­ation. Hence­forth they were go­ing to be short and have the round­est faces and the small­est smil­ing eyes she had ever seen on a hu­man be­ing.

 

Chap­ter 15

Corin­na’s mind suf­fered an­oth­er dis­con­nec­tion as she sat at the table oc­cu­py­ing most of the tiny kitchen of Oziel’s im­prob­a­ble fel­low splicer. Now her mind was stuck in a rover, stuck in a bath­room stall, stuck in an el­e­va­tor. It stayed stuck any­where but where it was: safe, of all the im­prob­a­ble things.

Maybe be­cause she was safe, for now, she start­ed wor­ry­ing about where she was go­ing to sleep tonight. She had en­vi­sioned her­self and Oziel doss­ing on anony­mous couch­es, buffered from any … de­ci­sions. But the liv­ing room, which was cen­tral to every room in the apart­ment and ad­joined the kitchen where they sat, had on­ly one couch.

“My name is Ani­ut In­gush,” the lit­tle woman in­tro­duced her­self. Oziel fol­lowed, and then Corin­na abrupt­ly re­mem­bered to blurt her name.

“I’m an ac­coun­tant at the Uni­ver­si­ty,” their diminu­tive host­ess con­tin­ued. “The on­ly ac­coun­tant, in fact.”

She was in the process of telling them she was from Irkut­sk in Siberia, when Corin­na sud­den­ly thought she was go­ing to die of heart fail­ure. The hugest man she had ever seen had come in­to the apart­ment silent­ly and stood be­hind her. He could have been a sumo wrestler, al­though maybe a bit old for that now. He was dark-skinned and had star­tling dark blue swirls paint­ed on his face and dis­ap­pear­ing down the col­lar of his very white shirt.

“Ah, Mo­mo,” said their host­ess with an­oth­er of her trade­mark smiles that caused her eyes to dis­ap­pear in­to joy­ful arcs. The big man sat down at the fourth side of the table and seemed to fill the kitchen to burst­ing.

Corin­na tried to catch her breath. How threat­en­ing could he be with a name like Mo­mo? As she looked more calm­ly, she re­al­ized the swirls were tat­tooed, not paint­ed. That must have hurt.

“These are my friends, Oziel García and Corin­na Mansur. A good Russ­ian name, you know, gol­ubchen­ka.” She smiled and bobbed her head en­er­get­i­cal­ly.

This was all mov­ing too fast for Corin­na. Who was the huge man? And what was a gol­ub-what­ev­er? And her name was not Russ­ian. “Eng­lish, I be­lieve, ac­tu­al­ly, at some point in the past.”

“Mo­rorua Tarana­ki,” the lit­tle Siber­ian woman in­tro­duced him more for­mal­ly.

So what were they sup­posed to call him? Mr. Tarana­ki sound­ed strange un­der the cir­cum­stances.

“He runs the worm farm,” added Ani­ut.

“Earth­worms,” the big man ex­plained to Corin­na’s be­wil­dered look. “For the re­cy­cling and the veg­eta­bles. And call me Mo­mo. Every­one does.”

“What you re­al­ly need to ex­plain to her,” said Oziel with a side­long glance at her, “is why you have de­signs on your face. Oth­er­wise she’ll keep look­ing like some­one who got off the metro at the wrong sta­tion.”

Every­one burst out laugh­ing, in­clud­ing Corin­na. He was, it ap­peared, a Maori from New Zealand. The tat­too­ing had spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance, al­though very few peo­ple had the com­plete de­signs these days. Yes, it had hurt.

“Oh,” said Corin­na, “some­thing ur­gent. I have a cold box of spec­i­mens which will keep frozen for twelve hours, which on­ly gives me an­oth­er three or four be­fore they start warm­ing up. They’re re­al­ly im­por­tant. Do you have ac­cess to any lab freez­ers?”

“I do,” said Mo­mo, “down with the worms. Would it work to put it in our kitchen freez­er overnight and take it down to­mor­row?”

“That should be fine,” she said, re­lieved, as she hand­ed the pre­cious box over and saw it put away. Oziel had to duck his head to give Mo­mo room to open the freez­er door above the re­frig­er­a­tor.

Corin­na’s mind set­tled down grad­u­al­ly, helped by a din­ner that melt­ed in her mouth. Maybe it was just the con­trast with a week of food packs and ra­tion bars, but it felt like the food of the gods. The main course in­clud­ed won­der­ful lit­tle three-cor­nered, herbed won­ton‑y things float­ing in a de­li­cious broth. She made a pig of her­self eat­ing two help­ings of a lay­ered pas­try for dessert. The meal stopped more than hunger; it sat­is­fied a need for fla­vor sad­ly ne­glect­ed by USOs.

Oziel dis­cussed what had brought them here, while Corin­na con­cen­trat­ed on eat­ing.

Ani­ut first, then Mo­mo, both for­got their din­ners in as­ton­ish­ment as the sto­ry un­fold­ed.

“Ai,” Ani­ut mur­mured at one point. “That is ter­ri­ble. They must be stopped.”

“They called her the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary at home,” said Mo­mo, fond­ly pat­ting her hand.

“They must be stopped,” she re­peat­ed. “I have to say, I as­sumed you did some silli­ness and were try­ing to leave the plan­et qui­et­ly. Now that I know you are run­ning for the law in­stead of from it, I would like to help. Mo­mo?”

“Count me in,” was all he said.

Corin­na munched silent­ly, amazed. Qui­et­ly, with­out any par­tic­u­lar fuss, they had just en­list­ed in the fight. It took peo­ple like that to re­store the bal­ance af­ter the Mor­biers and Di­cas­til­los of the world had trashed it.

“We’ll see if we can find an hon­est man af­ter din­ner by comb­ing the net­work,” said Ani­ut. Then she con­tin­ued in the same melo­di­ous tone, as if what she said next was not thun­der­ing­ly em­bar­rass­ing, “I don’t know what sleep­ing arrange­ment suits you.”

Corin­na came back to re­al­i­ty with a thud.

“We have a small stor­age room which is just big enough for two, or you can al­so use the couch,” Ani­ut nod­ded to­ward the liv­ing room.

For one des­per­ate mo­ment, Corin­na pre­tend­ed it was not up to her to an­swer the ques­tion and tried to sip tea ca­su­al­ly. The si­lence told her that this tac­tic was not go­ing to work. The liv­ing room, she no­ticed, had a neat pile of box­es wedged in one cor­ner. The stor­age room had al­ready been emp­tied out. Should they now al­so take over their hosts’ liv­ing room, just so she could main­tain her space?

“Oh, it doesn’t mat­ter ei­ther way,” mum­bled Corin­na in­to her tea cup, fierce­ly an­noyed with her­self for feel­ing em­bar­rassed. “We shared a rover, we can cer­tain­ly share a room.”

The two un­like­ly geeks set­tled down at Ani­ut’s ter­mi­nal and start­ed speak­ing com­put­erese. Corin­na felt shut out, even though she knew it was noth­ing they were do­ing. She be­gan to un­der­stand how Oziel must feel when she spout­ed bi­ol­o­gy.

She tried to make her­self use­ful putting the din­ner things away, but, with space at such a pre­mi­um, she could tell that every­thing was metic­u­lous­ly or­ga­nized and that she had no clue what that or­ga­ni­za­tion was. It would be no help to tuck every­thing away in the wrong place. Mo­mo loaded the dish­wash­er. Let­ters and num­bers scrolled up the screen, ap­par­ent­ly full of mean­ing for Oziel and Ani­ut. Corin­na sat and watched every­one work and felt use­less.

“Bad news,” said Oziel af­ter an hour or so. “Snin­sky was based at the space­port, not the main base. All the au­di­tors seem to be up there, which is in­ter­est­ing. They must get of­fices with a view or some­thing. Two of the high­er-ups down here have a lot of emails to and from Ching. And those emails use prime en­cryp­tion.”

“That’s stan­dard for any­thing bud­get-re­lat­ed,” Corin­na point­ed out.

“But these are short mes­sages, go­ing back and forth all the time. Bud­gets or grants or some­thing would be long and grouped at dead­lines, yes?”

“Yeah. I guess. That does seem fun­ny.”

“So we don’t know how far the rot has spread,” Oziel said. “We bet­ter get to the space­port to be sure we’re out­side it.”

All four dis­cussed how to go about this while mak­ing up a mat­tress in the tiny room where Corin­na and Oziel would sleep. Mo­mo stood in the door­way, keep­ing out of the way. Ani­ut apol­o­gized for hav­ing on­ly one nar­row pad and dug out every blan­ket she owned to make a soft­er sur­face for the sec­ond per­son.

“We’ll take turns,” said Corin­na, but Oziel had al­ready put a pil­low on the blan­kets and was clear­ly go­ing to be first for the un­com­fort­able spot.

They shut the door and set­tled down to sleep in si­lence, while Corin­na tried to find a way to fill it be­fore it be­came dif­fi­cult.

“Ad­min to­mor­row,” she said.

There was al­so the small mat­ter of the three vac­cines she still had in her waist pack. Would it be a good idea to take them, just in case? They’d need an in­ci­sion to get in­to the blood­stream, un­less a hy­po­der­mic nee­dle con­ve­nient­ly showed up. Should she dis­cuss that? If the two of them had been caught to­day, she’d wish she’d tak­en them. But hor­ri­ble things could hap­pen with un­proven vac­cines. Al­ler­gic re­ac­tions. Ana­phy­lac­tic shock. Death. It would re­al­ly be bet­ter if they could hand every­thing over to a re­spon­si­ble par­ty and avoid the risk.

“Yes,” an­swered Oziel, “ad­min to­mor­row. Should I hit the night switch?”

“Uh, sure,” she said.

He reached up to dim the lamp to the faint pseu­do-moon­light that meant night on sta­tions, domes, and tun­nels every­where away from Earth. Rolling over, he added,

“Good night.”

And that was that. Push­ing peo­ple was ap­par­ent­ly against his re­li­gion. She was not go­ing to have to make any big de­ci­sions tonight. When was she go­ing to make them?

Well, not tonight.

She was not sure if she was re­lieved or … or some­thing else. While they were stum­bling around out­side, en­cased in their suits, she had imag­ined what she might do when they were free of them. She had en­joyed the thought of falling in­to his arms then, when she could not. Now they were here, in one warm, qui­et room, not en­cased in any­thing, and she hes­i­tat­ed again.

She was just as cooped up as in the rover. If sex with him turned out to be hor­ri­ble, where could she go? A voice in her mind, which she sus­pect­ed of com­ing straight from her hor­mones, guf­fawed at the idea of sex with him be­ing hor­ri­ble. But she was cooped up and you nev­er knew. Or, worse yet, what if sex was great and she fell for him like a sky­div­er and he de­cid­ed she was less than he had hoped? Whichev­er way you looked at it, it was a risk.

Not, sneered the voice. A risk? Imag­ine that. Every­thing is a risk. Putting one foot in front of the oth­er is a risk. En­close your­self in a glass box and fill it with formalde­hyde and then noth­ing will ever hap­pen to you again.

She rolled over to face the wall. Was that Nat’s last lega­cy? No hope for the best. Just fear of the worst.

 

Chap­ter 16

Corin­na woke to an emp­ty room, but mo­ments lat­er a blond ap­pari­tion walked in. It was Oziel. Even his eye­brows were now brown. His eye­lash­es were still black as ink, which made him look like he was wear­ing mas­cara. The pi­rate’s beard was gone. So was his uni­form Sta­tion suit. Some­where he’d scared up a set of clothes pre­tend­ing to be blue den­im. He looked like a tourist with more mon­ey than brains.

“Jeez,” said Corin­na. “Been up a while, have you?”

“The next ca­ble car to the port is at ten, so if you want any break­fast, now is a good time. Ani­ut got you this.” He laid an anony­mous bur­gundy jump­suit on top of her blan­ket. “They left for work a cou­ple of hours ago be­cause they’re on the ear­ly shift to­day.”

“And what should I do? Go all blonde too? Shave my head?”

He waved his hand in a ‘no.’

“Bald hasn’t been the fash­ion in years. It would look like an ob­vi­ous dis­guise. And I own the blond idea.”

Be­fore she had time to point out there was pri­or art on that, they heard the main door of the apart­ment click open, and they both froze. But it was just Mo­mo.

Then they found out it wasn’t just Mo­mo. It was Mo­mo with bad news.

“I was go­ing up to the ad­min lev­el with some pa­per­work. Se­cu­ri­ty was there, us­ing iris scan­ners on every­one. One of them I know pret­ty well, so I asked why. He said CTS had a ma­jor theft and they were look­ing for the cul­prits. Af­ter that, I checked, and Se­cu­ri­ty was at every floor where I stopped the lift and at the sta­tion for the sky­car to the space­port. It's no good even try­ing to go up there.”

Mier­da! It's worse than that. They’ll start go­ing over apart­ment teleme­try any minute and find two ex­tra peo­ple here! We have to get out or we’ll get you in trou­ble.”

“You need Lev­el Three war­rants, the vi­o­lent crime kind, to read oth­er peo­ple's teleme­try” said Mo­mo. “I’d guess Di­cas­til­lo hasn’t in­fil­trat­ed that Lev­el — yet — or they’d be here al­ready. So I don’t think that’s our wor­ry.”

“Well, then I guess the good news is that they must not con­trol every­thing down here yet,” said Corin­na.

“And the bad news,” said Oziel, “is they con­trol enough to get us the minute we step out­side. We have to make sure they can’t de­stroy all Corin­na’s ev­i­dence, at least.”

There he was, plan­ning for fail­ure again. He was al­so right again, of course.

“Where’s a safe place to hide the mem­o­ry and the sam­ples?”

Mo­mo stood a while in thought.

“The safest place for the sam­ples is down in the worm farm. The da­ta should be en­crypt­ed and hid­den wher­ev­er we can man­age it. I’ll call Ani­ut. She’ll know the best way to go about it.”

Ani­ut ar­rived with­in min­utes. Once Corin­na ex­plained what she want­ed to do, Ani­ut felt that hid­ing the in­for­ma­tion on­ly on Mars wasn’t good enough.

“If Di­cas­til­lo is crash­ing clip­pers, what's to stop him blow­ing up the whole base?”

What! That's pre­pos­ter­ous! No­body would ever do that! Then Corin­na re­mem­bered she'd felt the same way when Oziel turned up with the news of the clip­per crash.

“Or any­where else that has ev­i­dence he wants to de­stroy?” Ani­ut con­tin­ued. “He could prob­a­bly get at any­thing on Mars. We should be sure a copy goes to Earth as well.”

“Yeah,” said Corin­na. “That’d be nice.” With the sub­text, us­ing which of your many fine pri­vate satel­lites?

“Well, I on­ly tried it once be­fore, and on­ly to send a one-sen­tence birth­day greet­ing to my sis­ter as a joke, but I’ve pig­gy­backed on weath­er da­ta. That us­es its own au­to­mat­ed satel­lite re­lays. Not nor­mal comm chan­nels.”

“How in hell did you—” be­gan Oziel at the same time as Mo­mo said,

“The crit­i­cal da­ta for life sup­port sys­tems al­so gets re­layed straight to Earth so that there's an in­de­pen­dent record in case of ac­ci­dents.”

“I can’t wait to see how you do that,” said Oziel. “But won't it be aw­ful­ly slow?”

“Even in the old days, when da­ta went at 300 char­ac­ters per sec­ond, it got there even­tu­al­ly. And the soon­er we go, the soon­er the trans­fer can start.”

“Go where?” Corin­na want­ed to know, while Ani­ut called her de­part­ment to let them know she'd be gone “a while.” This looked worse and worse. Corin­na had kind of been hop­ing she could just hide un­der a bed in a safe place un­til all this was over.

“Air re­cy­cling,” said Mo­mo. “It has a di­rect feed through teleme­try satel­lites. Parts of that can be sealed, too, which may be use­ful. And it’s right near the worm farm, so I know the whole place like my own bed­room. There are good places to hide peo­ple, not just da­ta cards down there.”

“‘Down there,’” re­peat­ed Corin­na. “Isn’t that like umpteen floors down? How do we go if they’re guard­ing all the el­e­va­tors?”

“Re­cy­cling is all pipes and ducts,” said Mo­mo. “The pipes go all over the base. Let me think. I’m not sure where the clos­est pipe clos­et is.”

“Pipe clos­et?” Corin­na mut­tered to Oziel.

“Ac­cess hatch­es in­to the main trunks of pipes,” ex­plained Mo­mo, the de­signs on his fore­head still crooked in thought. “I think there’s one be­tween Dubrovsky and Ep­silon. Take your things, and we’ll go.”

“Things? I have all my da­ta right here,” she pat­ted her waist­pack, “and the sam­ples are al­ready in a freez­er some­where, right?”

Mo­mo nod­ded.

“Al­so any­thing crit­i­cal while you hide un­til Earth gets Di­cas­til­lo.”

“Jee-sus.” she mut­tered. “That could be months. Where’s my steam­er trunk?”

Once more, she was slink­ing through the hall­ways by her­self. Soon she would start scream­ing just at the sight of a hall­way. Oziel could tell how much it both­ered her and made sure she fol­lowed Ani­ut and Mo­mo, walk­ing to­geth­er up ahead. He went last him­self.

She wasn’t hap­py that he thought she need­ed spe­cial help. And she was even un­hap­pi­er that she did need it. She was far past the point where she would have done any­thing to be safe, if there was any way she could have bought safe­ty.

They turned down a last end­less cor­ri­dor. Mo­mo and Ani­ut slowed down, wait­ing for the one se­cu­ri­ty cam­era to pan away, and then scur­ried to a blank bit of wall. Mo­mo in­sert­ed a cod­ed key, a pan­el swung open, and there were the pipes. Just like that. She sup­posed it made sense. As head hon­cho of the worm farm, he was a mem­ber of the re­cy­cling sec­tion and had keys. Key us­age was record­ed and they’d just marked their trail in red, but he was fol­low­ing prop­er pro­ce­dure, in a sense, and it would not raise any in­stant alarms. Ani­ut first, then Mo­mo, dis­ap­peared in­to the hole in the wall. He pulled the pan­el closed. Her turn next, once the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era was out of the way again.

Her heart in her throat, she fum­bled at the pan­el, but it opened by it­self. Mo­mo pulled her in.

“Head on down. I’ll fol­low as soon as he’s in.”

Corin­na’s breath caught as she looked ten floors up and then ten floors down the dizzy­ing hole. Lad­der rungs pro­trud­ed from the wall. She won­dered whether some­one Mo­mo’s size even fit be­tween those gar­gan­tu­an, col­or-cod­ed pipes and the wall hold­ing the rungs.

There was some say­ing about a jour­ney start­ing with the first step. What oth­er step could it pos­si­bly start with? Thank God it was down, not up.

Of course, as­sum­ing they sur­vived, they might have to climb all the way back. She could see Ani­ut, two or three floors down al­ready, work­ing her way steadi­ly along. Corin­na saw her wince as she stepped off the last rung, and she was still hold­ing her knee when Corin­na jumped down be­side her.

“It’s noth­ing, dushen­ka,” she whis­pered when she saw Corin­na look­ing con­cerned. “I had arthri­tis in that knee. The med­i­cines took care of it, but this,” she looked up at the in­fi­nite pipes, “is ob­vi­ous­ly a bit too much.”

The worm farm seemed won­der­ful­ly de­sert­ed. It was a vast, cav­ernous space, over a hun­dred me­ters across, the bowl of the ceil­ing ex­ca­vat­ed in an arch so that it would be self-sup­port­ing. The dim light showed rows up­on rows of broad tres­tle ta­bles with deep pans of brown earth on them. At the far end were big cribs, filled to dif­fer­ent de­grees with com­post in var­i­ous stages, and a broad, high freight door, cur­rent­ly open.

The two of them wait­ed at the bot­tom un­til Mo­mo caught up, Oziel just above him.

Mo­mo looked around.

“This is not right,” he mut­tered. “Bir­gits­dot­tir should be run­ning the mix­er to turn the heap in crib sev­en. You two,” he turned to Corin­na and Ani­ut, “stay low, make sure you’re not seen, and hide un­der those worm flats over there.” He nod­ded to­ward one of the clos­est ta­bles. “Se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras don’t cov­er most of this sec­tion, so that’s good. Oziel and I will go see what’s go­ing on, if any­thing.”

Corin­na was not sure she ap­pre­ci­at­ed be­ing told to sit still and keep qui­et while the men did the re­al work. She was not to­tal­ly use­less. But she crouched down and fol­lowed Ani­ut to the ta­bles. The lights dimmed. Mo­mo must have done that. It would make the se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras less use­ful and it would put any­one in a hel­met at a big dis­ad­van­tage. Hid­den un­der a table, she could see Oziel’s and Mo­mo’s legs head­ing away in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions, and then they were gone in the for­est of tres­tles and vats stand­ing on the floor. She could hear noth­ing. They moved silent­ly.

Sud­den­ly there was a yell and a shout and all hell broke loose. Male voic­es bel­lowed, “This way!” “They’re over here!” Big, boot­ed feet pound­ed along a pas­sage­way. Maybe some­one no­ticed when the pipe clos­et was opened and scram­bled a wel­com­ing com­mit­tee; maybe there just hap­pened to be a pa­trol there.

There was a sound of a door rolling closed and then grind­ing.

“Mo­mo tried to close the door, but they jammed it.” Ani­ut lis­tened care­ful­ly. “Sounds like they couldn’t get in all at once. I hope that gave our fel­lows time to take cov­er.” Ani­ut spoke qui­et­ly, but even at nor­mal vol­ume, no­body would have heard any­thing over the sound of all the hum­ming and whirring ven­ti­la­tors, aer­a­tors, and mix­ers in the room.

There was a meaty thud fol­lowed by a gur­gle.

Who was it? One of ours? Or one of theirs? Corin­na start­ed to cau­tious­ly poke her head up to have a look. Ani­ut pulled her firm­ly back.

There was an­oth­er big, dull thud.

“I have to know what’s go­ing on!” she mut­tered ur­gent­ly to Ani­ut.

“No, you don’t,” said Ani­ut. “You have to hide.”

When Corin­na seemed about to ar­gue, she added,

“It’s a war, dushen­ka. In a war, every­one has to do what they do best. There is no time for any­thing else. I know. I spent my child­hood run­ning and hid­ing. We were refugees dur­ing the Siber­ian war.”

“The war of in­de­pen­dence?”

There was a sound like a side of beef hit­ting the wall, quite far away.

“Yes. That was when I learned my com­put­er skills. That was how we man­aged to get tick­ets out of there to Ulan Ba­tor. We couldn’t have made enough—” there was a sound of abrupt­ly sprint­ing feet, a stran­gled gar­gle, then a yell of sur­prise from an­oth­er di­rec­tion “—to pay for those in a year. And then I robbed banks for a while. I had to learn enough ac­count­ing to do that well.”

There was a shout of, “This way, you mo­ron!” an­oth­er dull thud, an “ooof” sound, and then a se­ries of punch­es hit­ting some­one. But whom?

Run­ning feet came straight up one of their rows. Strange feet. Corin­na shrank as far down as she could. She hoped the bur­gundy jump­suit was dark enough. Ani­ut tracked the boot­ed feet care­ful­ly. Quick as a cat, she turned a vat un­der the table on its side and rolled it in­to the aisle the boot­ed feet were go­ing to take.

A loud yell punc­tu­at­ed the man’s bel­ly flop on­to the floor. Be­fore he could un­scram­ble his limbs or see the two sets of star­ing eyes un­der the table, a huge silent shape ap­peared and threw him some­where. He broke a table in his fall, but there was no fur­ther sound once the table had fin­ished break­ing. Mo­mo was ob­vi­ous­ly all right. The noise of fight­ing moved away from them again. It was not like the vids. No one yelled. The bel­lyflop­ping guy showed what hap­pened when you gave away your po­si­tion.

A loud thud was fol­lowed by a sharp crack­ing noise that had to be a bone break­ing. But no scream.

Mier­da! ’S muerte?” Then more thunks and thuds.

Oziel was still okay. Corin­na tried to keep qui­et and not laugh in re­lief, hid­den un­der her earth­worm bench. Maybe, if Di­cas­til­lo de­stroyed all the ev­i­dence and won, the four of them could just spend the rest of their lives hid­ing and eat­ing worms in the base­ment.

“So you see,” Ani­ut re­turned calm­ly to her top­ic, as if they just hap­pened to be so­cial­iz­ing un­der a table, “all knowl­edge is use­ful. You nev­er know when a skill will be handy. Here I am, mak­ing my liv­ing in ac­count­ing.”

“It’s just a mat­ter of time be­fore they come back with more peo­ple.” That was Mo­mo’s voice, on­ly a few rows of ta­bles away.

. We need a qui­et com­put­er to send our in­for­ma­tion. Be­fore they fi­nal­ly get us.”

One set of foot­steps came to­ward them at a walk­ing pace. Mo­mo nev­er made a sound when he moved. Corin­na poked her head up above the earth­worm beds.

Oziel’s face was scraped, a cut above his eye was bleed­ing in a thin stream, his shirt was torn, and his eyes lit when he saw Corin­na.

“We got ‘em,” he an­nounced, “for now.”

“Are — are they dead?”

“Just knocked out. I think.”

“So we need to change hid­ing places be­fore they wake up,” said Ani­ut mat­ter-of-fact­ly.

“Mo­mo’s aren’t wak­ing up in a hur­ry, be­lieve me.”

Now that the first re­lief was set­tling down, Corin­na found her­self re­sent­ing the feel­ing that she was sup­posed to ap­plaud. It was not as if her part in all this had been a cake­walk, crawl­ing around un­der bench­es, nev­er know­ing which mo­ment was go­ing to be her last.

“Well, let’s get go­ing, then,” she mut­tered.

“Air re­cy­cling first,” said Mo­mo. “It has blast doors, and there’s a com­put­er sta­tion. Then we’ll go where they can’t just break down the doors and haul you out.” He took Ani­ut’s hand and head­ed off.

Oziel and Corin­na fol­lowed be­hind. He was prac­ti­cal­ly bounc­ing, fizzing with tri­umph. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Oy, Corin­na,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

There were dis­ad­van­tages to that damn telepa­thy of his. She just want­ed him to leave her alone un­til she got over her fit of pique.

“Oh, noth­ing. I’m just jeal­ous. The two women cow­er un­der ta­bles while the men take care of every­thing.”

He laughed out loud for some rea­son.

“It’s one of the things I love about you. You don’t care where the truth falls, you tell it.” He swept her up in a hug that lift­ed her right off her feet and near­ly cracked her rib cage be­fore he sud­den­ly re­mem­bered to loosen his hold. He set her down gen­tly.

Oziel on adren­a­lin was a bit over­whelm­ing.

“You’re good at so many things, queri­da. Let me at least beat peo­ple up for you.” A pi­rate’s gleam shone from his smudged, scraped, bloody face. He looked ready to take on an­oth­er ten goons or so.

Then he added, sud­den­ly more se­ri­ous and sub­dued,

“Wait­ing well is hard­er than fight­ing. I know. I’ve done both.”

“So where’d you learn this?” she mut­tered at him as they crept through the hall­ways be­hind Mo­mo. “Or is it just on the Y chro­mo­some?”

“I was al­ways fight­ing,” he mut­tered back as they crouched and wait­ed for an all-clear from Mo­mo.

Peace­able Oziel? Who played with chil­dren for a liv­ing? Who, be­fore now, she’d nev­er seen do any­thing worse than clench his fists?

“It start­ed out I had to, just for my broth­ers and sis­ters,” he an­swered her look. “At sev­en­teen, I ran with a gang for six months. Al­most broke my moth­er’s heart.” He paused. “Then she set the whole fam­i­ly on me and al­most broke me.”

Mo­mo fi­nal­ly waved them on and they raced for the air re­cy­cling sec­tion. He said there would prob­a­bly be two techs on du­ty, since it was din­ner time. The prob­lem was how to get the techs out and them­selves in. He and Oziel did not cur­rent­ly look like re­spectable cit­i­zens. Corin­na might be on a want­ed poster. They could ei­ther try their luck with Ani­ut or start a fire in the hall­way. Ani­ut raised one eye­brow when Mo­mo sug­gest­ed that, and marched in.

“There’s big trou­ble in solids,” they heard her sing out. “Hig­gins needs every­one there. Mo­mo sent me to tell you.”

Peo­ple in Re­cy­cling knew Ani­ut. Mo­ments lat­er the two techs were hur­ry­ing down the cor­ri­dor with their gear. Big trou­ble in solids was some­thing you want­ed to stop quick­ly.

The three of them ran to join Ani­ut in the huge room full of two-sto­ry-high pres­sure ves­sels and re­cir­cu­lat­ing fans the size of hous­es. The roar was im­mense. Mo­mo and Oziel stopped at the blast doors.

“Get start­ed,” Mo­mo nod­ded to­ward the com­put­er. “I’ll sort out the next step.”

Ani­ut need­ed an ad­dress and Corin­na could think of no one off the top of her head ex­cept Jol­ly Chol­ly of the Lon­don Times. They need­ed the UN, but maybe the me­dia was not a bad way to prod the folks at the top in­to ac­tion.

Mo­mo stepped out­side the doors. Trou­ble? No, Oziel was look­ing mere­ly watch­ful.

Corin­na fum­bled around in her waist­pack for the mem­o­ry chip, slot­ted it in, queued the files, and watched Ani­ut start the trans­mis­sion.

“I’m al­so send­ing copies in a high speed burst to every serv­er I can get in to here. Some of them will al­so try to trans­mit to Earth lat­er, so at least one mes­sage should get through no mat­ter what Di­cas­til­lo does. In some ways it's bad that the di­rect one is so slow, but in oth­er ways maybe it's good. They may not even re­al­ize it's any­thing but the usu­al trick­le of teleme­try.”

“How slow is slow?” asked Corin­na.

Mo­mo came back car­ry­ing two space suits, one in each arm. She did not like the look of this.

“About two hours,” said Ani­ut.

That gave Di­cas­til­lo way too much time to or­ga­nize in­ter­fer­ence. But there wasn't a thing they could do about it.

“Once you’re done,” Mo­mo had come up to make him­self heard over the ven­ti­la­tor roar, “take a suit. I had to grab them off the tech’s pile, so who knows what con­di­tion they’re in. It’s hard to find ones in his size, but it shouldn't mat­ter too much for a short time in the gray zone.” He turned to Ani­ut. “Can you fool them that we’re still in here af­ter we close the doors?”

Ani­ut thought a mo­ment.

“I blocked any in­com­ing com­mands so they couldn’t over­ride the door. So they al­so can't see what we're do­ing on this ma­chine. I could set a send­mail to push ran­dom en­crypt­ed files out, which will look to them like we're mes­sag­ing some­one from here.”

“Sounds good. Set the doors to close, wait over by them, let Oziel send the ac­tu­al close com­mand from in here so it's com­ing from in­side, then he sprints like hell to get out be­fore they grind shut.”

Oziel, Corin­na want­ed to say, is not ex­pend­able. Even if he can run the fastest.

He made it with sev­er­al me­ters to spare. Corin­na picked up her suit and ran af­ter Mo­mo, breath­ing as if she was the one who had just sprint­ed for her life.

Mo­mo ducked in­to an­oth­er cav­ernous space, a vast, un­peo­pled tank farm. Boot­ed feet sound­ed in the long cor­ri­dor they had just left. They came clos­er.

Mo­mo led his lit­tle group on, around and be­hind the tanks. Out of range of any cam­eras, she no­ticed.

The feet stayed some­where up the hall.

“Try­ing to get the doors open,” rum­bled Mo­mo, with an wicked grin at Ani­ut. Her small eyes looked back with the same sin­is­ter smile.

They went out through an­oth­er ex­it and an­oth­er me­ter-thick door.

“We’re out of the re­in­forced emer­gency shel­ter sec­tion,” said Mo­mo. “Some of us in Re­cy­cling are part of the team go­ing over the emer­gency sec­tion mil­lime­ter by mil­lime­ter in prepa­ra­tion for the comet land­ing eigh­teen months from now, and it turned out that back through here….”

The cav­ern seemed to be dead stor­age, left over from con­struc­tion per­haps. Hulk­ing ma­chin­ery be­ing can­ni­bal­ized for parts lay around in var­i­ous states of dis­so­lu­tion and de­cay. The air was bad.

“Ah!” said Mo­mo. “Right. Suit up.”

What? Here? What for?

Oziel leaned over to her and spoke soft­ly.

“When the man says, ‘Suit up,’ then you suit up, queri­da. Come on.” He helped her by hold­ing the suit for her.

“Yes, but —” and then she closed the hel­met and her mouth. Ex­pla­na­tions lat­er.

Mo­mo was pulling at a pe­cu­liar bumpy sec­tion of wall. He jerked his head to have Oziel come over and help. To­geth­er, they peeled back a tough, rub­bery sheet that had been laid as a seal over a pile of rocks. Corin­na could feel the pres­sure of a sud­den rush of air around her suit. Then she un­der­stood. There must have been a rock fall and the punc­ture had been tem­porar­i­ly patched like a tire, us­ing a rub­bery sheet and the base’s own air pres­sure to keep the lay­er in po­si­tion. In a place where the air was al­ready so bad, the pres­sure sen­sors prob­a­bly wouldn’t reg­is­ter the loss, es­pe­cial­ly if she hur­ried. That was prob­a­bly why Mo­mo, his hands full hold­ing back the sheet, mo­tioned ur­gent­ly with his head for her to go through. She clam­bered over the rocks. Oziel fol­lowed her as the whistling air rushed past, push­ing them in­to the black­ness. She felt the whoomph of air pres­sure when Mo­mo let the sheet go from where he stood on the oth­er side and it slapped back in­to place.

Nei­ther he nor Ani­ut was com­ing in to the tun­nel. He was go­ing to get cleaned up at one of the util­i­ty show­ers and re­port all the un­con­scious bod­ies in the worm room to one of his friends in Se­cu­ri­ty. It would go on the books as a brawl, and the Di­cas­til­lo's goons were hard­ly like­ly to point out that, no, they'd been at­tack­ing civil­ians with­out go­ing through the for­mal­i­ty of an ar­rest war­rant. Then, for as long as he and Ani­ut could, they were go­ing to go about their busi­ness as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Corin­na felt painful­ly jeal­ous.

She and Oziel stood in a sight­less world, ex­cept the splotchy green and red glows from the hel­mets il­lu­mi­nat­ing their heads. She could hear noth­ing, since the suit ra­dios were off in case they were with­in range of oth­er re­ceivers.

She switched on her suit’s chest light and went first through a lumpy crawl space. It opened in­to a nat­ur­al cav­ern.

The space was house-sized, but not huge. The roof was all glassy con­gealed la­va, with long, point­ed pro­jec­tions reach­ing down, like the root tips of the moun­tain search­ing for some­thing. It must be an an­cient mag­ma cham­ber, Corin­na guessed, which was nev­er shaped by wa­ter once the la­va drained away. Deep in­side the moun­tain some of the in­te­ri­or cham­bers might be enor­mous, big enough to build towns. With­out wa­ter, there were al­so none of the sculp­tures and crys­talline jew­els that make Earth caves un­earth­ly. Here it was all sweeps of smooth rock, flu­id mo­tion stopped for all time. The floor was weird­ly flat where the la­va had pooled, as if some­one had made it that way.

There were al­so sev­er­al open­ings that led out.

They had to find this one if they ever want­ed to get back. Her breath stopped for a mo­ment as she re­al­ized how close she’d been to just charg­ing ahead.

Oziel had caught the same thought. He shift­ed a large stone and put it near their en­trance. They be­gan to cross the space when she stopped and care­ful­ly walked around an ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty in the floor. It was a la­va pipe, a pas­sage over a me­ter across, go­ing straight down. Corin­na’s brain spun at the thought of how far that black­ness might reach. She leaned gin­ger­ly to­ward the hole to shine her light down it. Oziel added his light to hers, but even then the hole went down for­ev­er, plen­ty big enough to swal­low a per­son in a suit. They backed slow­ly away from it.

She chose the largest hole lead­ing out of the cham­ber, one he al­so marked with a rock, but it led to a rock­fall and an even nar­row­er crawl­space than the last one. They squeezed in­to an­oth­er nat­ur­al cham­ber, much big­ger than the last.

There was no way the suit ra­dios would reach through that much rock so she switched hers back on and mo­tioned Oziel to do the same, with the gain turned as low as it would go.

“We bet­ter not go much fur­ther,” she said. “I've been spelunk­ing ex­act­ly once, and the first thing they said was how easy it is to get dis­ori­ent­ed and lost.”

“Spe— qué?”

“Yeah. Fun­ny word. I don't know where it ac­tu­al­ly comes from. It means ex­plor­ing through caves. And I think we bet­ter not. We’re far enough in that they’ll nev­er find us here in any case.” Corin­na quite liked this thought.

“Yes,” said Oziel, “that’s what’s wor­ry­ing me.”

One side of her mouth quirked in­to wry agree­ment.

“Well, yes. There is that. Let’s check the suit sup­plies and see how long we can wait for Earth to get their act to­geth­er. The food pouch on mine is full of rat bars. Looks like enough for … for-just-about-ever.” Part of her groaned in­ward­ly. She was get­ting re­al­ly, re­al­ly, re­al­ly tired of taste­less ra­tion bars and liv­ing in lumpy suits and re­breath­ing her own air—.

“Ey, we won’t have to eat too many of them,” said Oziel. “My wa­ter is al­most emp­ty. About 100 ml.”

Hell. You need­ed some two liters a day to sur­vive. More per­haps for some­one his size. How much did she have? Maybe she could use the emer­gency trans­fer tube to give—.

“Jee-sus. I’ve got less than a quar­ter of a liter. Two hun­dred measly ml.”

Pues, I haven't pissed in a while, so that'll add about 600 ml.”

The wa­ter re­cir­cu­la­tion sys­tem that she al­ways tried not to think about.

“I've got a blad­der the size of a wal­nut, so say some ex­tra 300 ml for me. The liter or so we lose breath­ing and through the skin isn’t com­plete­ly re­cap­tured, and doesn't get us very far any­way be­cause you need it re­placed to keep breath­ing.” She paused.

“Man, it would’ve been nice if we could’ve just sat here qui­et­ly chew­ing rat bars un­til Mo­mo came to tell us it was safe to go out.” Sud­den­ly, rat bars were the good al­ter­na­tive.

She fid­dled with the con­trols in­side her suit for a bit. “It’s telling me if I sit still and do noth­ing, I’ll start get­ting or­gan dam­age in a week. And re­al­ly un­com­fort­able soon­er than that.“ She told him the steps to get the same read­out in his suit.

“Four days for me.”

Hell. Hell, hell, hell. There wasn't a bu­reau­cra­cy on Earth — in the uni­verse, she was will­ing to bet — that could re­ceive a mes­sage, de­cide on its le­git­i­ma­cy, for­mu­late the re­sponse, mo­bi­lize the nec­es­sary re­sources, and then ac­tu­al­ly do some­thing in less than a month. Maybe a year.

“We wait as long as we can, I guess, and then sneak out and try to find wa­ter. Let me see if this suit has the Sta­tion schemat­ics….”

The worst of it was now she kept think­ing about thirst. She wasn’t even thirsty. Yet. But she could feel part of her mind prob­ing for it all the time. Does your mouth feel dry? No? How about now? Do you need a drink? Maybe just a sip? She was go­ing to have to force her­self to think about pink ele­phants or some damn thing just to try to get it to shut up.

The Sta­tion map was there all right, but it had toi­lets and bath­rooms marked. Not the lo­ca­tion of every tap. All they need­ed was a tap. And come to think of it, a bot­tle of some sort. They couldn't clump around in full suits un­til they found a reg­u­la­tion con­nec­tor to re­fill. That led to an in­volved dis­cus­sion of lo­gis­tics. Oziel want­ed Corin­na to stay safe in the cave while he got wa­ter. She would have been glad to stay safe, but on­ly if they both stayed safe and she didn’t have to wait around, sick with wor­ry about why he wasn’t back yet. Wait­ing was a lot hard­er than do­ing. Be­sides, she knew more about Sta­tion plumb­ing than he did and he’d be out there with on­ly one pair of eyes.

He ad­mit­ted the point that two pairs of eyes and more knowl­edge was bet­ter. Af­ter some back and forth, they de­cid­ed they'd go to­geth­er when they went.

Now there was noth­ing to do but sit back and wait. She couldn’t even chew on one of her many fine rat bars for amuse­ment be­cause if she did, she’d get thirsty. Eat­ing was go­ing to be a min­i­mal­ist thing.

“There’s a strange noise in the rock,” said Oziel, who’d leaned all the way back till his hel­met rest­ed on the stony wall. “I could swear there is.” He tried to stretch his neck so he could lean an ear against the in­ner sur­face of the hel­met.

Corin­na squ­unched down in­stead of up and put her ear against the met­al of the suit. Sure enough, there was a sound al­most like a dis­tant chain saw, some­times reach­ing a crescen­do, some­times be­com­ing qui­eter and low­er. Then her eyes grew wide and she popped her head back up in­to the hel­met.

“I bet that’s the sound of them drilling their way in­to the air room.” She let out a chor­tle. “It’s go­ing to take them hours if they have to cut their way in since that’s all part of the blast-re­in­forced emer­gency shel­ter. Which means they haven’t fig­ured out an over­ride for Ani­ut’s door lock. So the mes­sage will reach the re­lay and get to Earth.”

Bueno. Now we wait.”

And wait. And wait. And wait.

They sat in the silent, free-form cathe­dral shaped by a hand too old and too large to un­der­stand, and wait­ed. The drilling was still go­ing each time she checked, long af­ter the mes­sage would have suc­cess­ful­ly gone all the way through. That was the good news. The bad news was that Di­cas­til­lo’s men still had a free hand.

Then an even more de­press­ing thought came to her.

“All the stuff I sent con­cerns the peo­ple based here. If Di­cas­til­lo can pre­tend he wasn’t in­volved, they may nev­er get him… in which case…. I won­der if we could start an un­der­ground so­ci­ety in the caves? Bleed off air from the base. Steal food. Like in the sto­ries.”

“We’ll wor­ry about that when it hap­pens, Cap­tain,” said Oziel with a small smile as he took her gloved hand in his. “For now, chew on a rat bar.”

 

Chap­ter 17

You could get used to any­thing. With­out a padding of smelly cloth­ing, ly­ing down in the suit pro­vid­ed all the com­fort of stretch­ing out on a tree branch. Yet when Corin­na woke up in what her dis­play told her was ear­ly the next day, she had to ad­mit that the ev­i­dence in­di­cat­ed she’d fall­en asleep. Then, as if she’d spent her whole life liv­ing in a suit, she found her­self drop­ping back in­to her rou­tine from the days she’d spent out on the sur­face. She went be­hind a weird­ly elon­gat­ed la­va out­crop to deal with per­son­al hy­giene is­sues. She emerged, sipped a tiny sip of her now-400 ml stock of wa­ter, ate a ra­tion bar, and dis­cov­ered she’d done every­thing she need­ed to do for the day. She should have re­mem­bered to bring a book.

Oziel wasn’t there, so he must be at the en­trance to their hide­out, try­ing to keep track of what­ev­er news there might be. It was the on­ly place where oth­er ra­dio sig­nals could be picked up from re­peaters in the base.

She clunked her way cau­tious­ly out to the rock fall pas­sage. He looked pleased to see her, as far as she could de­tect any ex­pres­sion through the hel­met and lurid re­flec­tions of green and red glows on his face. She said noth­ing, since they both had their suits set to re­ceive on­ly.

As she ap­proached, stat­icky chat­ter co­a­lesced in­to speech.

“You want me to check which quad­rant, sir?”

“Look, they’ve de­feat­ed in­frared be­fore.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, I’ve looked every­where.”

“I’m not some damn rab­bit farmer. Sir.”

She rolled her eyes at Oziel and he gave her a sar­don­ic nod. It was all con­ver­sa­tion and no con­text. Were these peo­ple look­ing for them to kill them or to res­cue them? What they need­ed was a news bul­letin.

Then a sec­ond day passed. Corin­na had the lay­out of every Mars base in the suit’s da­ta bank mem­o­rized. Us­ing the help man­u­al, she had mas­tered the art of al­ter­ing la­bels on menu items or re­plac­ing them with icons, and she start­ed show­ing Oziel how it was done. She no longer need­ed the nag­ging men­tal imp to ask whether she was thirsty. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and even her nose felt dry.

Corin­na won­dered, as the third day rolled around, whether tak­ing the suit apart from the in­side, as in the man­u­al un­der Emer­gency Ser­vic­ing Pro­ce­dures, would re­al­ly be that bad an idea.

The worst of it was that when not some­how stay­ing oc­cu­pied, there was noth­ing but this huge, over­whelm­ing, all-en­com­pass­ing thirst. Her kid­neys were start­ing to ache. It had to be even worse for him.

And not a word on any of the trans­mis­sions they eaves­dropped which even hint­ed at Di­cas­til­lo’s ar­rest.

“I guess,” she fi­nal­ly said, “we’re not go­ing to be do­ing this the easy way and com­ing out safe­ly. We have to go look for wa­ter.”

He nod­ded. She heard him say “” very qui­et­ly so that he hard­ly moved his mouth. It was def­i­nite­ly hit­ting him hard­er than her. Time to go. Her heart went back in­to her throat and stayed there. She’d for­got­ten in a few short days just how much she hat­ed run­ning through hall­ways with a tar­get paint­ed on her back.

It was din­ner time and shift change, both good. Peo­ple would be pay­ing less at­ten­tion.

They crawled to the en­trance. Oziel pushed the rub­bery sheet back and held the open­ing so she could get through. I couldn’t get out by my­self. … I can’t get back in by my­self ei­ther. Both hor­ri­ble thoughts over­laid on plen­ty of hor­ri­ble fear. None of it helped mat­ters.

They climbed out of their suits and start­ed mak­ing their way to what Corin­na hoped was the clos­est source of wa­ter, a tech's area in the hall with all the tanks. They ran through the cav­ern with bad air and no cam­eras. Now they were go­ing to have to be care­ful. With­out Mo­mo and his knowl­edge of ex­act­ly where the cam­eras were, what they cov­ered, and when they panned around, they'd have to be lucky to stay out of sight.

They reached the tank farm. Not far now. Stay care­ful! Don't start rac­ing straight to the wa­ter! Go slow. But it was so hard. She could just about feel that first gulp of glo­ri­ous wa­ter and feel it run­ning down her chin.

She was fol­low­ing Oziel when it hap­pened. She saw his back stiff­en. What? Now what? She stared around wild­ly and caught sight of a uni­form dis­ap­pear­ing be­hind a tank in the dis­tance. Be­hind her was one who didn't both­er dis­ap­pear­ing. There was an­oth­er one to the right.

They were out­num­bered. It was all over.

But one thing was cer­tain. She re­fused to be changed in­to a grin­ning id­iot. She reached in­to her waist pack and pulled out the three vac­cine vials, shield­ing her­self from the goons’ view as well as she could be­hind Oziel. To hell with the dan­ger. She tipped half the con­tents of all three in­to her mouth and found sali­va from some­where to swish them around. Then she bit down hard on her tongue. She winced, but it had worked. She could taste blood. Now the oth­er half. She re­peat­ed the dose and swished. The beefy fel­lows, at some in­vis­i­ble sig­nal, be­gan to move to­ward them. No mat­ter. It would take them some time to march past the re­main­ing four sets of tanks. She ditched the emp­ty vials un­der the low­est stair of the steps spi­ralling up the side of the clos­est tank. She grabbed Oziel, whose gaze had been flick­ing from one set of thugs to the next, ob­vi­ous­ly try­ing to cal­cu­late a use­ful move. She start­ed kiss­ing him.

She felt his be­wil­der­ment, his why-the-hell-is-she-do­ing-this-now? But with­in a heart­beat she felt him de­cide he didn’t care why now. A charge flowed be­tween them, as elec­tric­i­ty might move in a world where light was liq­uid. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to him, and set the pre­vi­ous charge to noth­ing by what he was do­ing with his tongue. She had near­ly swal­lowed so she could draw in the vol­ume of breath this work re­quired when she re­mem­bered that she wasn’t here to swal­low. She had things to do. She put her hand around the back of his head, held on, and bit.

He jerked back with all the strength she had ex­pect­ed and she hung on like a limpet. With­in an­oth­er sec­ond, the beefy guys had sur­round­ed them.

A crude voice said,

“Time to quit frog­gin’, lover­boy. You two are comin’ with us.”

Oziel looked at her, shocked, hurt, won­der­ing whether she was some kind of per­vert. But she hadn’t seen him swal­low yet. That was good. The vac­cine need­ed as much time as pos­si­ble to get in­to the blood­stream. Maybe that was cal­cu­la­tion dawn­ing in his eyes. She hoped so. There was no way to ex­plain. The goons pulled her away to­ward one hall­way, but she kept look­ing back to him star­ing at her with equal tenac­i­ty. It might be the last time she ever saw him. The tanks closed in, as if noth­ing had hap­pened.

 

Chap­ter 18

Corin­na sat in a small, white, win­dow­less room, re­lent­less­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the ceil­ing light. They had tak­en her wrist­pad and her waist pack. The on­ly good thing was she’d thrown her­self on the liter bot­tle of wa­ter stand­ing on the bare floor next to a lit­tle pile of ra­tion bars and fin­ished it in what felt like one gulp. She re­mem­bered the thugs look­ing at her weird­ly and re­fill­ing it. The place smelled like a re­cent­ly emp­tied util­i­ty room, judg­ing by the sharp, chem­i­cal odor of cleansers and dis­in­fec­tants. She had been here for hours and hours and hours. She wished she knew whether Oziel was all right. So far. She cir­cled back to wor­ry­ing about what was go­ing to be done to her. And to him. It felt longer than a night, but she knew she was not hun­gry and thirsty enough for that. Af­ter what must have been a few hours, she banged on the door and yelled.

“Hey! I need a bath­room!”

There was no no­tice­able re­sponse. How­ev­er, a long time lat­er af­ter much more yelling, the lock gave an elec­tron­ic click and the door opened. A bulky male guard plunked a small chem­i­cal toi­let down in one cor­ner. With­out look­ing at her, he left.

Hmf. No doubt her jail­ers were deeply con­cerned about us­ing male guards for a fe­male pris­on­er in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the Gene­va con­ven­tions — or some set of hu­man rights rules — but had not been able to lo­cate a suit­ably thug­gish fe­male on short no­tice. Well, at least she had some­where to pee now.

She won­dered again whether Oziel was all right, her mind run­ning in cir­cles that were dri­ving her mad. She won­dered when they would fi­nal­ly bring her some more wa­ter and some more food. She sup­posed that meant it was still night time and that break­fast was in the fu­ture. Or maybe they had no in­ten­tion of feed­ing her. Just take her out for a last walk on the plan­et’s sur­face as soon as they could work out the lo­gis­tics. She won­dered if they had the same thing planned for Oziel. Some­times she thought she was more wor­ried for him than for her­self.

Some­times she thought she wasn’t.

She fi­nal­ly fell in­to a fit­ful doze on the hard floor, but the first time she moved she woke up. They did not seem to have any­thing set up to hold pris­on­ers, such as cells. That meant she and Oziel were not in the hands of the po­lice. It could mean Di­cas­til­lo’s peo­ple had nev­er re­al­ly ex­pect­ed to catch them. Or it could mean they did not plan on hold­ing them for long. It was cer­tain­ly not be­cause they planned on let­ting them go.

Some­one scraped against the door, and it clicked and opened. Corin­na re­al­ized in a de­tached way that, as time went by, if it went by, not hav­ing any con­trol over the open­ing of that door was go­ing to be the thing that drove her in­sane.

There were two beefy guards this time. That did not look good. Be­ing worked over by a cou­ple of male guards was an even worse op­tion than suf­fo­cat­ing and evap­o­rat­ing away on the sur­face. One guard stopped by the door. The oth­er one ad­vanced on her. She was sit­ting on the floor, her arms clasped around her knees.

“Stand up.”

“What for?” She tried not to qua­ver.

“I said, stand up,” the thug growled, grabbed her up­per arm and hauled her up as if she was a doll.

She stood.

She saw the sy­ringe in his right hand. Oh God no. The worst op­tion of all, un­less any of those vac­cines worked.

He moved to jab the in­jec­tor at the ex­posed skin of her neck.

She pulled back. “What’s that?”

He did not an­swer. In­stead he grabbed her arm hard­er.

She felt the con­tents of the in­jec­tor prick­ling through the pores of her skin and in­to her neck. She knew it was use­less to fight, but it took all her willpow­er not to give them the sat­is­fac­tion of strug­gling.

Then the two guards left.

She sat back down on the floor again, clasped her hands around her knees, and leaned her head down on her knob­bly kneecaps. For a time, she had no thoughts be­yond an un­end­ing wail of in­jury and rage. They had ru­ined her life, tried to kill her, kid­napped her, and stuffed her in this clos­et. And then they had the un­mit­i­gat­ed gall to man­han­dle her with­out an­swer­ing a sim­ple ques­tion. Why that should be worse than all the oth­er vi­o­lence com­bined, she could not say. Her mus­cles and joints grew stiff from sit­ting rigid. She un­clasped her arms and shift­ed to sit­ting cross-legged and slump­ing against the wall. The mo­tion moved her mind from its wound­ed stu­por.

She re­mem­bered Oziel’s voice com­ing over the suit ra­dio in the dust storm say­ing, “We’re not dead yet.” No, and if the vac­cines worked, there was still hope.

The good news about the in­jec­tion was that it must mean they in­tend­ed to keep her alive long enough for the stuff to take ef­fect. Maybe that was what they had planned for her af­ter their docil­i­ty gene start­ed work­ing. They would take sam­ples of her brain to see what was hap­pen­ing and where. It would be in­ter­est­ing, she thought. For the per­son at the right end of the scan­ner. Un­til they had de­stroyed too much of her gray mat­ter, she would ac­tu­al­ly be the best per­son on Mars, ex­cept for Wal­lis, to tell them what it all meant. She even grinned at the black irony of it all.

Of course, if the vac­cines worked and the in­jec­tion did not take ef­fect, they would prob­a­bly take her apart, mol­e­cule by mol­e­cule, to find out why not. It would not do for them to find out it was not tak­ing ef­fect. It would not do at all. The stuff ought to start be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed with­in twelve hours, with no­tice­able ef­fects cer­tain­ly with­in a cou­ple of days. The full ef­fect would prob­a­bly take about a week to de­vel­op. So, as­sum­ing the guards had ar­rived at the start of a new day — when were these meat­heads go­ing to bring her some­thing to drink and eat? — she should start smil­ing too much af­ter they brought her break­fast to­mor­row.

In the mean­time, she could spend her time go­ing in­sane star­ing at the four walls, the ceil­ing, and the floor, wait­ing for the first signs that the vac­cines had not worked. She de­cid­ed to vary the rou­tine by pound­ing on the door and de­mand­ing wa­ter.

An in­ter­minable num­ber of min­utes lat­er, it could not have been an hour but it felt like it, she had won through to hav­ing two wa­ter bot­tles and an­oth­er lit­tle pile of emer­gency ra­tion bars. They ob­vi­ous­ly did not want her bug­ging them every few min­utes. Just for that she would have done it, ex­cept she re­al­ly did not want to see them ei­ther.

The hours ran to­geth­er in­to what must have been a day. Since they did not feel called up­on to bring her meals, and since the glar­ing white light stayed on all the time, she had no way to know. Hunger was no re­al in­di­ca­tor. She was too stressed to feel or­di­nary hunger. She would gnaw on one of the ra­tion bars and lose in­ter­est half way through. In a dif­fer­ent way, it was the same with thirst. She felt thirsty al­most con­stant­ly, in a ner­vous, dry mouth way that could not be re­lieved.

She tried run­ning through the pe­ri­od­ic table and re­mem­ber­ing all the steps of the Krebs cy­cle, just to keep her mind moored to re­al­i­ty. It was like loft­ing weath­er bal­loons in­to the vac­u­um of space. The thoughts va­por­ized with­out re­duc­ing the noth­ing­ness in any way.

She could think of Oziel, but that made her want to cry. If the damn hap­py gene was sup­posed to have tak­en ef­fect, noth­ing would give her away faster than tears. She leaned her head up­on her knees again to hide her face from pry­ing hid­den cam­eras or peep­holes, and thought about how he had sac­ri­ficed every­thing to help her es­cape. He had lost his job, risked his life times out of num­ber, now he was risk­ing his mind, yet he nev­er wait­ed for any re­turn from her. Noth­ing. Not so much as a kind word. A man who tru­ly be­lieved that the best things in life are free.

She thought about dri­ving the rover with him, and about walk­ing across Mars to­geth­er. She had not imag­ined that stum­bling over rocks, hold­ing on to each oth­er, could be­come a good mem­o­ry. She won­dered if next time, if they both man­aged to come out of this as the same peo­ple, she would hes­i­tate again.

She be­gan to won­der if the guards would ever come back for her. Maybe she would start to hear voic­es soon. The damn toi­let was start­ing to smell of some­thing be­sides chem­i­cals. The door clicked and opened, shock­ing her so much she in­vol­un­tar­i­ly jumped. She was ir­ra­tional­ly fu­ri­ous and hu­mil­i­at­ed that they should see her look­ing fright­ened when they came in. How­ev­er, for all the no­tice the guard took of her, she could have been a fly. He dropped off an­oth­er bot­tle of wa­ter and a pile of ra­tion bars and left. Time stopped again.

They did so many things to make sure she had no sense of time that it must be in­ten­tion­al. If she did not know whether it was ear­ly or late, she could not fool them by pre­tend­ing to symp­toms ear­ly and putting them off their guard. Putting on a hap­py­face was go­ing to be dif­fi­cult in any case, when her on­ly feel­ing was one long scream of bore­dom and fear.

We’re not dead yet, said an in­ner voice.

No. And the good news was that al­though she might be go­ing in­sane, she was not yet in­sane­ly pleased.

How long she spent in the com­pa­ny of noth­ing but her own dis­solv­ing mind, she didn’t know. It was cer­tain­ly tor­ture, but she was not even sure it was in­ten­tion­al. Quite pos­si­bly, they sim­ply did not care.

The lock clicked and the door opened. She had been in a doze on the floor, ac­quir­ing a new set of bruis­es in the con­tin­u­al ef­fort to find a com­fort­able po­si­tion, so she had not jumped. This gave her a small sense of ac­com­plish­ment and made it eas­i­er to paste on a goofy smile. It had to be time for the goofy smile by now.

The guards flanked the door­way, but did not come in. Ching en­tered in­stead.

Now what?

He had a smile on his lips, not shared by the rest of his face.

“And how are we feel­ing to­day?”

Corin­na very care­ful­ly kept the stu­pid lit­tle smile up. What she want­ed to do was pound his face to pulp, glass­es and all. In­stead, she held the smile in­tact, even though it took more strength than she thought she had.

“Oh, fine.”

The right tone. Re­mem­ber Se­le­na. That’s nice, dear. She should keep him talk­ing and hope some use­ful in­for­ma­tion ap­peared.

“Be nice to go for a walk, you know, around.”

“Yes. We’ll try to get you out for a good long walk.” He seemed pleased.

Corin­na smiled some more. That sound­ed like they meant to leave her body some­where out on the sur­face.

“Oh, good. Can we go soon?”

“You’ve been sick. You re­al­ize that, don’t you?”

“I’m fine now,” she nod­ded, with the con­tin­ued sil­ly smile.

“Yes, I’m sure you are. We’ll have to take you where we can do some tests in a lit­tle while. First I had a few ques­tions. Are you get­ting bored?” He looked at her care­ful­ly through his re­flect­ing glass­es.

“Oh, no,” she said, and just man­aged to re­strain her­self from say­ing There’s this cute toi­let to look at, and hav­ing my brain sucked out to look for­ward to. Sar­casm would be a dead give­away.

“You worked on en­dor­phins in the past.”

Now where was he go­ing? Keep the stu­pid smile in place. Don’t let it slip.

“Oh yes.” En­dor­phins did not make you lose your mem­o­ry, just your mind.

“Are there gen­der dif­fer­ences in how peo­ple re­act to high lev­els of en­dor­phin?”

Whoa, what was all this about? Com­ing to the lo­cal ex­pert on en­dor­phins at last, were they? The on­ly per­son of an­oth­er gen­der around here who was like­ly to be hav­ing these prob­lems was Oziel.

As fast as those thoughts flit­ted through her mind, the over­rid­ing res­o­lu­tion to stay goofy at all times kept the smile on her face. Luck­i­ly, slow re­sponse times were an ex­pect­ed symp­tom.

“Oh, I dun­no. Hard to say, re­al­ly.” If the vac­cine had worked on her, it had prob­a­bly worked on him. Was he over-re­act­ing or un­der-re­act­ing? “De­pends what the prob­lem is, re­al­ly.”

A third se­cu­ri­ty guard came up to the door. Where did they get all these goons? Di­cas­til­lo was field­ing a pri­vate army on Mars.

“Sir?” He seemed hes­i­tant in front of the pris­on­er.

“Yes? What is it?” When the man did not speak, Ching said im­pa­tient­ly, “She’s not a prob­lem. What is it?”

“A call, sir. I think it’s ur­gent, sir.”

“I told Bukovsky to han­dle every­thing. Tell her that if she feels un­able to run the of­fice with­out com­ing to me for every lit­tle prob­lem, she may not be suit­able in her cur­rent po­si­tion.”

“Uh, yes, sir. Of course, sir. It came via her of­fice, so, uh, any­way, it’s, uh,” he seemed to be hav­ing the great­est dif­fi­cul­ty spit­ting his mes­sage out with Corin­na there, “it’s Di­cas­til­lo ask­ing for you, sir.”

“I see. All right.” He switched on his wrist­pad and re­moved the ear piece to hook over his left ear.

He ob­vi­ous­ly didn’t care what Corin­na heard or might think in her sup­posed en­dor­phin stu­por, as if she was dead al­ready. But the so­cial nice­ty of turn­ing away when speak­ing to some­one else was stronger than any of his con­scious as­sump­tions. He looked at the wall while he talked.

Ching’s side of the con­ver­sa­tion made it clear that Di­cas­til­lo want­ed an up­date and he want­ed it now.

It start­ed out with “Hel­lo, my dear Diego,” which sur­prised Corin­na. Even his daugh­ter ad­dressed him with more for­mal­i­ty. The equiv­a­lent would have been for Leira to call him Pop­pakins.

“Yes, every­thing is en­tire­ly un­der con­trol.”

“Yes, thank you for your as­sis­tance. Ex­tra per­son­nel are al­ways in­valu­able.”

“We’ll be do­ing tests for a few weeks.”

She hoped that was not in ref­er­ence to tests on her or Oziel.

“No, I’m afraid you do not un­der­stand the sci­en­tif­ic val­ue of this op­por­tu­ni­ty. Cut­ting it short is not an op­tion.”

She had a creep­ing cer­tain­ty he was talk­ing about his two pris­on­ers. She would pre­fer not to be killed at all, and cer­tain­ly not soon­er rather than lat­er, but this was no way to speak to Señor Diego Di­cas­til­lo. Even she could have told him that.

“I have the high­est re­spect for Dr. Mor­bier, but he is not aware of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.”

“No, I did not know he had, as you put it, ‘aban­doned ship’. Such a rash act was un­nec­es­sary in any case, re­gard­less of how clever he thought she was, but it is com­plete­ly su­per­flu­ous in light of cur­rent events.”

What the—? Mor­bier had nev­er ex­pressed a high opin­ion of her abil­i­ties, not even by the quiver of an eye­brow. Know­ing him, he was cov­er­ing his ass against be­ing tagged an ac­ces­so­ry to mur­der once his part­ners-in-crime suc­ceed­ed in killing her.

“No, Diego. I ap­pre­ci­ate your con­cerns, but they are not valid here. I can­not jeop­ar­dize the sci­en­tif­ic val­ue of my pro­ject for short term and ex­tra­ne­ous ob­jec­tives.”

She would bet mon­ey that his friend Diego did not view it as Ching’s pro­ject. The goofi­ness of her smile slipped slight­ly in­to vi­cious­ness as she con­tem­plat­ed the fi­nancier see­ing a pet sci­en­tist on a leash while the sci­en­tist saw an an­i­mat­ed cash ma­chine.

“Yes. I will cer­tain­ly take your con­cerns un­der ad­vise­ment. Now, I am afraid I have tests that need to be per­formed with­in a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row time­frame, so if you will ex­cuse me?”

Ap­par­ent­ly, Ching did not feel he knew his friend Diego quite well enough to hang up on him. Even with­out that, though, he had prob­a­bly done enough for Señor Di­cas­til­lo to tell his goons to send Ching back to Earth, shrinkwrapped.

The lit­tle man turned back to Corin­na, not no­tice­ably ruf­fled.

“Yes,” she bab­bled with a suit­ably muzzy grin, “nev­er cut sci­en­tif­ic work short. I nev­er did. You shouldn’t ei­ther.”

“Heh, heh. No, of course not. It is al­ways im­por­tant, of course, but it is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant when the work ex­tends far be­yond the bound­aries of sci­ence. This will solve a vast ar­ray of prob­lems stem­ming from neg­a­tive think­ing. It will save mil­lions of lives. I cer­tain­ly can­not let any mi­nor con­sid­er­a­tions stand in the way of some­thing so vi­tal.”

Corin­na al­most for­got to keep her inane grin in place. Of course. He was sav­ing the world. Any­body with half a brain could see that.

A whole brain, how­ev­er, was a dis­tinct hand­i­cap.

“Now let’s go for a few tests,” he was say­ing. “Just a few tests to make sure you’re re­al­ly all right.” Ching turned to the door and the light flashed off his blind glass­es.

Once they were out in the hall­ways, maybe she could find a chance to make a break for it. The im­por­tant thing was to keep her eyes stu­pid and not look like she was look­ing.

Ching walked be­side her. One guard walked in front, one be­hind. Duck­ing in­to some­thing side­ways would there­fore be her best bet. It was des­per­ate­ly hard to de­cide when to do it, though. If she just took a hall­way, like the three they had al­ready passed, it would be ridicu­lous­ly easy for them to re­cap­ture her. She could yell for help, but know­ing the way peo­ple re­act­ed to uni­forms, that would prob­a­bly get her nowhere ex­cept beat­en up in a deep­er dun­geon. But if the hall­ways were not good enough, what was? Should she try for a door, any door? This was go­ing to be her on­ly chance to run for it, but she could not tell whether she was pass­ing up op­por­tu­ni­ties or avoid­ing lost caus­es. De­cid­ing to make a run for it was one thing; de­cid­ing when was an­oth­er.

Then Ching opened a door cod­ed to his face, and it no longer mat­tered what she de­cid­ed. There was an­oth­er guard in­side. He opened an in­ner door.

There was Oziel, chuck­ling to him­self. They had not been giv­ing him any bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties than her, be­cause his ob­streper­ous beard was all over his cheeks again. He looked up.

Corin­na’s eyes met his. The air seemed to so­lid­i­fy be­tween them and hold their gazes locked. Then Oziel’s face split in­to a broad smile and with the sil­li­est salute, he said,

“Señora Capitán.”

Melt­ing with re­lief, Corin­na knew the vac­cine had worked in him too, that he had un­der­stood what she had done, and that he was do­ing his best to play his part. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he didn’t have a clue. He was do­ing a good im­i­ta­tion of drunk, not a doof on snow­ball.

“The tests must be si­mul­ta­ne­ous, but he’s not ready yet. We should give him a boost­er,” she heard Ching say­ing. “It may not be a gen­der dif­fer­ence so much as a mass dif­fer­ence.”

He was mov­ing to­ward Oziel. Corin­na had no idea if the vac­cines would work against a re­peat dose. Ching had to be stopped at all costs. Her mus­cles tensed. She felt light and fo­cused from hav­ing more adren­a­lin than ra­tio­nal thought in her head.

She threw her­self at Ching. As they fell, she grabbed at his hand in his pock­et and wrenched the in­jec­tor away. She gave no thought to stop­ping her fall. Ching was go­ing to hit the ground first. He did, and shrieked.

Rat­bag, she thought as she grabbed and twist­ed his right arm be­hind him. If you’re get­ting too old for this, you shouldn’t have start­ed it. She yanked him to his feet and held him as a shield in front of her. In her left hand she had the in­jec­tor pressed against his neck.

She looked around and saw Oziel strug­gling with a guard, and the oth­er two guards who had been be­hind her near the door lung­ing to­ward him. Sex­ism was work­ing for her. Hah. No doubt they thought they could take care of her at their leisure.

“BACK!” she barked.

As if in slow mo­tion, the two men kept bear­ing down on the strug­gling pair. They were all just pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty. Un­armed, ex­cept one who’d pulled out what had to be an il­le­gal stun­ner, and if he got close enough to reach Oziel—

“Tell them,” she snarled at Ching, press­ing the in­jec­tor deep­er in­to his neck.

His crack­ing, ter­ri­fied voice was bare­ly loud enough.

“Do as she says,” he croaked.

But they didn’t. The guards seemed to con­sid­er both her and the un­der-sized Ching ir­rel­e­vant to the re­al dan­ger. Mus­cles spoke loud­er than words.

“STOP! OR HE GETS IT!” She bel­lowed as com­mand­ing­ly as she could.

That slowed them on­ly for a split sec­ond. She wasn’t hold­ing a gun. They didn’t see how she was any kind of a threat.

She was go­ing to have to make good on her warn­ing. And she was go­ing to have to do it in a mi­crosec­ond. No time to think about do­ing un­to Ching what he would do un­to oth­ers. It was her on­ly chance to save Oziel. She pressed the in­jec­tor. Let Ching take his own med­i­cine. Do him good.

He screamed as the poi­so­nous mol­e­cules prick­led in­to his skin.

The guards stopped, form­ing a wall be­tween her and Oziel. Sud­den­ly, she had their full at­ten­tion.

Maybe this wasn’t so good.

But one of the three was lift­ed in­to the air — with the stu­pid­est ex­pres­sion on his face — and Oziel slammed him in­to the oth­er two, bring­ing all three down.

He lunged af­ter the falling guards and wrenched the stun­ner away.

Corin­na edged to­ward the door, still drag­ging Ching, as if he was a prize of some kind.

Oziel moved to­ward the door, keep­ing him­self be­tween her and the guards, stun­ner in hand. The guards were go­ing to be back in ac­tion in a heart­beat.

“Let go of him,” Oziel com­mand­ed her in a voice that had her arms obey­ing be­fore her mind could protest.

He stuck the stun­ner in his waist­band and picked the old man up in one mo­tion. He swung him around to build up mo­men­tum and threw him in­to the guards, bring­ing the whole group down. Ching wailed as he hit the guards. There was a dull crack when he fell, fol­lowed by such an ear-split­ting scream, it froze Corin­na for an in­stant. Then she dove for the door—.

And slammed in­to it. Oziel, right be­hind her, would have slammed in­to her if his re­flex­es weren't so fast.

The door was keyed to Ching's face. Of course. Noth­ing was go­ing to open it—.

It ex­plod­ed in­ward and an­oth­er four guards with CTS lo­gos on their shoul­ders burst in.

Oh shit. Ohshi­tohshi­tohshit.

But odd­ly enough they didn't even look at Corin­na and Oziel.

“Him,” barked the leader, point­ing at Ching.

Two of the beefy guys hauled him up­right off the floor, and he let out an­oth­er blood­chilling scream. It shocked even the guards. At some point they’d fig­ure out he’d bro­ken his arm, but she doubt­ed that was go­ing to stop them from de­liv­er­ing him to Di­cas­til­lo shrinkwrapped. Be­cause that was what this had to be about.

Oziel was push­ing her, gen­tly, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, ur­gent­ly.

Duh! Get out while you can! In­stead of stand­ing around sight­see­ing like an id­iot.

She slipped out, Oziel right be­hind her, and she heard a cou­ple of the guards shout be­hind her. Two boiled out of the room af­ter them.

“RUN!” he yelled. But he didn’t. He charged the guards so fast he was on them be­fore she saw him move.

No! Aban­don­ing ship to save your­self was de­spi­ca­ble. But that col­lid­ed with Ani­ut’s voice say­ing You do what­ev­er you do best. There’s no time for any­thing else. Corin­na was worse than use­less here. He was right. She ran as fast as she could, throw­ing des­per­ate glances back the whole way.

A cou­ple more guards had run out. She’d nev­er seen any­one fight like that, not even in vids. Two of the guards were moan­ing on the floor, a third — she was look­ing when it hap­pened and couldn’t even see what he’d done — sailed through the air and hit the floor and didn’t move. Oziel wasn’t us­ing the stun­ner, maybe be­cause his bare hands could do more and he was us­ing them both, as well as throw­ing bonecrush­ing kicks. Two more guards ran out. She'd heard some­where that a mas­ter of karate wouldn’t stand a chance against a good street­fight­er. She could see why now. He was fight­ing all three of them, but one of them broke away to run af­ter her.

Hell. Me and my sight­see­ing is go­ing to get us all killed. She found she could run a lot faster than she thought. But she could hear the feet pound­ing be­hind her. This wasn’t go­ing to work. Ter­ri­fy­ing hands grabbed her—.

But not all that well. He on­ly grabbed one of her arms. She dropped to the floor, he bent to haul her up, she tried to kick his feet out from un­der him. Her face was a hand’s breadth away from the video feed and throat mic on his col­lar, but she was will­ing to bet it wasn’t record­ing this in­ter­ac­tion. It’d have a wire con­nec­tion to the main comm unit though, to make sure it couldn’t be jammed. She grabbed for it as she fi­nal­ly suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing him stum­ble. The box came out like a fish on a line. Every kind of comm in the world would pass through emer­gency calls. Luck­i­ly, she had on­ly one guard to deal with so she could catch at it with her one free hand, mash the red but­ton, and start scream­ing,

Help!

She wrig­gled and dodged a blow to her head to knock her out and shut her up. She kept scream­ing and strug­gling for all she was worth.

But there were too many of them. Oziel couldn’t get to her — she could see him try­ing to — her guard was drag­ging her off some­where, try­ing to bash her head in. At least he was too busy to turn his comm off. Judg­ing by how des­per­ate he was, he must be hear­ing voic­es in his ear ask­ing him what the trou­ble was.

The bulk­head doors at both ends of the hall opened and emer­gency ser­vices per­son­nel poured in.

At last, at last, at last. Thank God Almighty—

A huge blow hit her head.

 

Chap­ter 19

Corin­na awoke in the qui­etest ship she had ever heard. She must be on a ship, not the Sta­tion, be­cause the ac­cel­er­a­tion was strong enough to push her right in­to the bed. Mars didn't have that kind of grav­i­ty.

Had she been hurt bad­ly enough that they were send­ing her to Earth? No, she could move her fin­gers. And her toes. She could even sit up.

There was an eerie ab­sence of vi­bra­tion. There wasn’t even any ven­ti­la­tor hum. And the cab­in was huge: about four me­ters by six. This wasn’t the hos­pi­tal cab­in on any ship she knew about.

There were two doors, which meant it was a cor­ner cab­in. She was be­ing treat­ed like ab­solute roy­al­ty. She stood up care­ful­ly. When she felt no dizzi­ness, she de­cid­ed to trust the ac­cel­er­a­tion field’s sta­bil­i­ty, and be­gan to move to­ward one of the doors. The first door opened when she twist­ed the old-fash­ioned knob — a strange ac­cou­trement for a ship — and found she had walked in­to a bath­room. It was a sil­ly bath­room to have on a ship, be­cause the re­la­tion be­tween the wa­ter flow and the fix­tures meant they could on­ly be used in one spe­cif­ic ori­en­ta­tion. She hat­ed to think what would hap­pen to the toi­let when —.

Then she fi­nal­ly un­der­stood what she felt and saw. This was not ac­cel­er­a­tion. This was grav­i­ty. And the on­ly place with grav­i­ty like this was Earth.

She stum­bled back to the bed and bumped heav­i­ly down on to it.

What? … How…? It would take over a week to get to Earth. I can’t have been out for a week. … Can I?

She tried to check the time, but there wasn't any dis­play any­where with time on it. Nor did she have a wrist­pad.

That means I'm not among friends.

Was she sure? It was easy enough to find out. If the sec­ond door opened, then maybe. If not, then not.

The sec­ond door did not open.

So, she’d been smug­gled all the way to Earth. It could be done.

She sat down with a thump on the bed again, her heart beat­ing too fast, her mind rac­ing. If she was a pris­on­er, there were prob­a­bly cam­eras. She should make sure she looked blank. If she was a pris­on­er, why was she a pris­on­er?

Well, she could tell Di­cas­til­lo where she'd sent her mes­sages about his hap­py gene scheme. Then he could do what­ev­er peo­ple like him did to si­lence in­for­ma­tion. Had she maybe al­ready bab­bled every­thing un­der the in­flu­ence of any one of sev­er­al drugs that would work? No, she couldn't have. Then she’d have been dumped out of an air­lock days ago. They must not have had suit­able drugs for bab­bling on board ship. And peo­ple who were adept at pulling out fin­ger­nails might al­so be hard to find on short no­tice.

But she had been drugged in­to am­ne­sia, at the least, for the en­tire week-long flight. She even knew which of three drugs they had prob­a­bly used, giv­en that it had cleared out of her sys­tem with­out no­tice­able af­ter-ef­fects.

On sec­ond thought, though, get­ting her to bab­ble seemed like a side is­sue. From Di­cas­til­lo’s per­spec­tive, that is. From her per­spec­tive, it was life-end­ing, but from his, it was point­less. All the ev­i­dence was still on Mars. They'd get him no mat­ter what he did to her.

Un­less …. Un­less he’d al­ready de­stroyed all the ev­i­dence on Mars. Once up­on a time that thought seemed crazy. Now it seemed so sim­ple and ob­vi­ous, her heart shrank at the cer­tain­ty he'd done it. One good tear through the skin of Bur­bidge, say by crash­ing a re­search drone in­to it, and every­thing in there would dry out in­to dust with­in hours. In­clud­ing the peo­ple.

Where was Oziel? He was prob­a­bly back at Fog­gy Bot­tom by now. If it was still there.

Maybe he was still at Ar­sia. It would be hard­er to kill every­one on a much big­ger base, es­pe­cial­ly one dug in­to the moun­tain. Wouldn’t it? Un­less you blew it up, and the moun­tain buried the base for you.

The fact that she was a pris­on­er, now that she thought about it, must mean every­thing that mat­tered was al­ready oblit­er­at­ed on Mars.

She tried to go back to think­ing about some­thing else. Any­thing else. Her mind kept cir­cling around the miss­ing week, or how­ev­er long it had been, try­ing to fill it in, try­ing to re­mem­ber any­thing. Af­ter a while, dream se­quences came back to her, so un­moored and dis­joint­ed she couldn't be sure they re­al­ly weren't just drug-in­duced dreams.

There was some­one talk­ing next to her. She was sit­ting in a chair. The world was full of shapes and col­ors. They were very nice col­ors.

“You gafo. Is this what I pay you good mon­ey for? She’s com­ing to.”

It was such a nice voice. The speak­er, he was over to her left some­where. She looked over to her left. Yes, there was some­one there, a stocky per­son, much taller than she was. You’re sit­ting, sil­ly, a voice in her mind told her. Of course he’s taller. She gig­gled.

Some­body be­hind her was speak­ing. He al­so had a nice voice. A very nice voice.

“Sir, you want­ed her sys­tem clear as soon as pos­si­ble, so I gauged it as best I could. I can’t give her any­thing here, un­less —.” The voice fell silent.

Life was so sad. He want­ed to give her some­thing, and he couldn’t. It was al­ways like that. She won­dered whether she could see him. It was hard. It in­volved turn­ing around and look­ing back and up. The chair start­ed to move. How strange. Chairs had al­ways stood still be­fore. She gig­gled again, and waved to the de­light­ful-look­ing woman who was shin­ing a light in her eyes.

“A cousin of my wife’s,” the stocky man was say­ing as he qui­et­ly passed the woman some fun­ny-col­ored mon­ey.

Such a nice man. He was giv­ing her a pre­sent.

“She re­act­ed bad­ly to the nau­sea med­ica­tion, so I’m just try­ing to get her home as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

An­oth­er man had showed up. He stood on the oth­er side of the woman and he wore a fun­ny peaked hat, like a choco­late sol­dier. That was strange, be­cause he didn’t look like he was made of choco­late. He was touch­ing the hat and say­ing,

“Home, sir?” and start­ed talk­ing in­to his wrist­pad.

There was a fun­ny rum­ble from the stocky man, al­most like an un­hap­py dog. He was look­ing at the woman who was do­ing some­thing with a light pen. Corin­na didn’t want any­one to be un­hap­py. Every­one should be hap­py. The world was full of beau­ti­ful col­ors.

“We don’ haf­ta go home, y’ know. We don’ haf­ta go any­where. We can —”

“Are we done, ma’am?” said the stocky man, look­ing red. “I should re­al­ly get her home.”

The de­light­ful woman waved him through and Corin­na waved back. The man in the peaked hat opened the door of a flit­ter that had pulled up to her chair. The chair had wheels on it. Oh, she thought. This is a wheel­chair.

“We’ll have the lit­tle la­dy home in no time,” said the choco­late sol­dier so kind­ly, Corin­na tried to take a good look at him too.

“Where’s Ri­co?” growled the stocky man. “What are you do­ing here? Who asked you to bring a flit­ter?”

That didn’t sound very nice. She tried to fo­cus the stocky man again. He didn’t look very nice at all, now that she could see him bet­ter. The voice in her mind, she re­al­ized, was try­ing to say some­thing. You’d think some­one who stud­ied this stuff would rec­og­nize a god­damn drug when it’s giv­en to her.

You’ve been drugged, it yelled at her.

Drugged?

She should get out of the chair.

“Oh, hell,” said the stocky man. “Take her home. We’ll take care of her there.”

And then some­one put a fun­ny-smelling mask on her face.

She won­dered what sto­ry they’d giv­en to the nurs­ing at­ten­dant who had to have tak­en care of per­son­al hy­giene and fed her while she was co­matose. In the next in­stant, she wished she hadn’t thought about food. Judg­ing by how rav­en­ous she sud­den­ly felt, they hadn’t fed her very much.

Well, if this was Earth, food should be plen­ti­ful. Ex­cept in this huge room. It mad­dened her to think of a plan­et full of food just be­yond the door and no way to get at it. Then she no­ticed the lit­tle stack of ra­tion bars on the night table right next to the bed. To think there had been a time when she had dis­dained the leath­ery things. She start­ed tear­ing at one, while slog­ging over to the sink with the rest to soak them in wa­ter so she could eat them faster.

Some time lat­er, a search of the room hav­ing turned up no fur­ther caches of emer­gency food, she sat back down on the bed. It was the on­ly place to sit be­sides the floor. She went back to think­ing about what came next.

And then she im­me­di­ate­ly tried not to think about what came next.

She should think about es­cape. She had to es­cape.

But where was she? Es­cape was on­ly pos­si­ble from some­where … and to some­where.

Judg­ing by the op­u­lence of the bath­room’s sculp­tured taps and the wall-cov­er­ing of light blue silk, the part of her dream that said she was in one of Di­cas­til­lo’s hous­es must be true. This room must be a guest room. She sup­posed Di­cas­til­lo couldn’t very well have dun­geons for his en­e­mies, be­cause if the wrong peo­ple stum­bled across a pri­vate jail, there’d be a scan­dal. Nonethe­less, de­pend­ing on how dif­fi­cult this room was to break out of, it would make a fine prison. When she checked, she found the sec­ond door was not on­ly locked, but al­so set flush with the wall. There were no hinges to take off, even if she’d had the tools to at­tempt it. Nor did the room have any win­dows she could climb through or sig­nal out of. She won­dered how much time she had be­fore they came to take her apart. The door would prob­a­bly click open once the oth­er drugs had com­plete­ly cleared out of her sys­tem, so that there would be no un­fore­seen in­ter­ac­tions.

The smooth face­plate of the elec­tron­ic con­trols near the door gave no hope of sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to jim­my­ing. When she looked close­ly, she no­ticed that one large pan­el of silk was sep­a­rate from the rest. Some ex­plor­ing and prod­ding re­vealed a taste­ful­ly con­cealed set of but­tons, and ran­dom tap­ping at them made the pan­el re­cede noise­less­ly to­ward the ceil­ing. Be­hind it was an enor­mous screen.

That was all. Just a damn video screen. An ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive, damn video screen. Great, she thought, if I can fig­ure out how to turn it on, I can watch schlock un­til they come and take me away. Or find out how much of Ar­sia had been de­stroyed. And how many peo­ple died.

She wasn’t sure she want­ed to know, not yet any­way, but she pushed at the but­tons nev­er­the­less. Noth­ing hap­pened.

She sat back down on the bed, dis­cour­aged and breath­ing heav­i­ly from the ex­er­tion of drag­ging her­self around in the enor­mous grav­i­ty. A year ago, she used to run through this stuff like it wasn’t there. If it came to run­ning now — and if she was lucky, it would — she’d prob­a­bly col­lapse be­fore she reached the door.

So, this was it. No win­dows, a door she couldn’t open, a bath­room that func­tioned on­ly as a bath­room, and a night table with a shiny black sur­face glow­ing with the usu­al elec­tron­ics: a blink­ing clock show­ing noon, a comm pan­el, and a ba­by mon­i­tor. An el­lip­ti­cal, black re­mote rest­ed on the night table’s glassy sur­face. The re­mote did noth­ing, and a quick check showed its pow­er pack had been re­moved. The comm pan­el didn’t reg­is­ter any ad­dress­es that she tapped in. The ba­by mon­i­tor’s green light winked rest­ful­ly on and off, on and off, to show that it was ready to per­form its func­tion of mon­i­tor­ing ba­bies. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Corin­na had no ba­bies for it to work with.

How­ev­er, some­body here ob­vi­ous­ly did. Oth­er­wise the thing would have been an in­vis­i­ble part of the black back­ground. Would yelling “help!” in­to its speak­er bring some­one run­ning?

Yes, the guards, most like­ly, who could be trust­ed to hear every word just as well as the moth­er or nan­ny.

But would the guards come if she sound­ed like a ba­by? They might ig­nore that. And then, if some neu­tral third par­ty opened the door sud­den­ly…. The idea couldn’t be dig­ni­fied by call­ing it a plan, but be­fore it was even com­plete in her mind, she leaned for­ward, the bet­ter to hide her face from any cam­eras, and tried to make a noise like a dis­con­tent­ed in­fant. To her own ears, she sound­ed more like a cat than a hu­man, but maybe none of the guards were fa­thers and wouldn’t be able to tell the dif­fer­ence.

Noth­ing hap­pened, so she mewed again.

Corin­na jerked back­ward on the bed when a sharp, ir­ri­tat­ed woman’s voice broke in­to the silent room, speak­ing in Span­ish.

“What was that?” the voice de­mand­ed.

Corin­na was speech­less. She hadn’t said any­thing the woman could be an­noyed—.

“Is that so?” came the voice again. “You said your part­ner’s ‘a whiny brat’? I’m glad to hear it. I would not like to think you could be re­fer­ring to Pedri­to.”

Corin­na re­al­ized she was hear­ing on­ly one end of a con­ver­sa­tion, ap­par­ent­ly be­tween the guards and a woman who had heard them over an­oth­er in­ter­com sys­tem some­where else in the house.

“Well,” she con­tin­ued sharply, “I don’t know what you two are still do­ing here, when I told the staff to take the evening off, but if you’re here any­way, you can make your­selves use­ful by look­ing for Pedri­to.”

There was si­lence on Corin­na’s end while the guards no doubt tried to say they couldn’t leave their post. It oc­curred to her they might be check­ing their se­cu­ri­ty dis­plays, so she lay back on the bed and tried to look as obliv­i­ous and harm­less as pos­si­ble.

“Less of the backchat, if you please, and more ser­vice. Oth­er­wise I’ll see you sacked. Pedri­to was play­ing with the mon­i­tors, and when I went to make sure he was all right, he hid some­where. I just heard him cry­ing. If he gets out in­to the gar­den, he could go over the edge. So get out there and start search­ing.”

The woman sound­ed close to scream­ing, her voice was so shrill.

Well, thought Corin­na, so much for that idea. It sound­ed like the guards were be­ing dis­persed all over the place, which would have been very nice if she could have got out of this room, but she had as much chance of go­ing over the wall as “Pedri­to.” She won­dered whether the “edge” re­ferred to some­thing phys­i­cal, or pos­si­bly men­tal. Was he a kid who hat­ed plants and be­came delu­sion­al at the sight of them?

And then the door slid silent­ly open.

Leira Di­cas­til­lo stood on the thresh­old, stock still in shock at see­ing Corin­na leap out of bed. From a room not far away came the high-pitched sounds of a kid shriek­ing in tri­umph.

“I’ve got it!” And then the rapid pat­ter of his lit­tle feet down the hall and away. A mil­lisec­ond lat­er she heard the bel­low and heavy thump­ing of the guard in pur­suit.

Corin­na sud­den­ly knew who ‘Pedri­to’ was. And that he was no longer lost. Un­for­tu­nate­ly.

Leira looked up the hall­way to­ward the foot­steps and back at Corin­na.

Why hadn’t she called the guards?

In­stead, Leira point­ed at a spe­cif­ic door down the hall and whis­pered, “Bath­room!” as Corin­na streaked past in the in­di­cat­ed di­rec­tion. She heard Leira set off af­ter the guard, scream­ing, “Pe­tey!”

Doors start­ed open­ing and clos­ing, ap­par­ent­ly at ran­dom, up and down the hall as Corin­na ran past. She won­dered if, per­haps, the kid had snatched the guards’ hand­held lock con­trol. That would ac­count for them aban­don­ing their sta­tion to run af­ter him, and for the be­hav­ior of the doors, and, quite pos­si­bly, for the door she need­ed lock­ing in her face. Then it opened again, long enough for her to leap through it, but closed be­hind her. Was that ran­dom or was she trapped again? What­ev­er Leira had planned for her couldn’t be any worse than her fa­ther. Bath­room, she’d said. Corin­na plunged in­to the bath­room, closed the door, and clutched the sink, gasp­ing. Then she sank to the floor, still gasp­ing. It was amaz­ing what adren­a­lin could do for you. She hadn’t even no­ticed that run. But now she felt like her lungs were about to burst.

Af­ter God-on­ly-knew how many min­utes of gulp­ing and wheez­ing, her breath­ing slowed down to mere­ly stren­u­ous, and she be­gan notic­ing the room she was in. It had the same op­u­lent taps, but oth­er than that it re­sem­bled the oth­er bath­room as Buck­ing­ham Palace re­sem­bles a bank. It was big enough to get lost in. There was a bath the size of a swim­ming pool sunk in the floor. There was a show­er with mul­ti­ple heads vis­i­ble through frost­ed glass walls, and a toi­let tucked in its own al­cove by the door. The wash­stand above her as she sat on the floor looked like a per­fect, gi­ant scal­lop shell rest­ing on a sin­gle swirl of stalk. The jew­el box on the boudoir table spilled out things that were too re­fined for cos­tume jew­el­ry, in which case that was a di­a­mond tiara, a sap­phire pen­dant the size of a robin’s egg set in di­a­monds, and an emer­ald neck­lace and ear­rings. This had to be Leira’s own bath­room.

And in Leira’s own bath­room there would be no se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras. The risk of a splicer break­ing in­to that da­ta stream and pub­lish­ing those pic­tures would be un­ac­cept­able, to say noth­ing of the se­cu­ri­ty guards them­selves watch­ing at the wrong mo­ment. Corin­na’s breath­ing slowed down some more. She should try to find a place to hide be­cause the in­evitable search would start soon. At the bot­tom of the bath might be good, if she could find some bub­ble bath and a long enough some­thing to breathe through, un­ob­tru­sive­ly.

Too late. The door opened be­fore she could so much as scram­ble to­ward the pool, but it was Leira.

“Are you all right?” she whis­pered breath­less­ly.

“I don’t know,” said Corin­na, al­so breath­less. “Am I?”

¡Dios mío! I don’t know if any of us are.” She was go­ing to say some­thing else, but they both heard the guards yelling to each oth­er in the hall out­side. Leira point­ed ur­gent­ly at a pan­el Corin­na hadn’t no­ticed be­fore, while she her­self moved to­ward the door.

Corin­na re­al­ized the pan­el was an­oth­er door and found it opened in­to a clos­et big enough for a Man­hat­tan apart­ment. She had no soon­er closed the door than she heard the bath­room door wrenched open and a shrill, “Do you mind!”

She heard a male voice gasp and say, “¡Perdón, Señora! ¡Perdón!” and the door banged closed again. In the midst of her trou­bles, she had to sti­fle a snort of laugh­ter. Leira must have cut short the search of the bath­room by sit­ting on the toi­let.

Corin­na wait­ed to see whether the guard had been on­ly tem­porar­i­ly squelched, but ap­par­ent­ly he was too mor­ti­fied to face Leira again or to ex­plain to his col­league why he should take over the search of that par­tic­u­lar bath­room him­self. The pan­el lead­ing to her clos­et opened slow­ly and Leira peered in with wide eyes. Corin­na stepped out with­out say­ing a word.

“I — I don’t know what to do,” Leira choked out.

Some­thing had gone very wrong in the Di­cas­til­lo house­hold if his daugh­ter was help­ing out­siders es­cape her fa­ther’s se­cu­ri­ty men.

“What’s go­ing on?” asked Corin­na.

“I took Pe­tey to his pe­di­a­tri­cian to­day.”

That’s nice, thought Corin­na. Next she’ll tell me she bought a new hat.

“He’d nev­er heard of that treat­ment.” Leira broke down, sob­bing. “Fa­ther doesn’t care what hap­pens to Pe­tey. He doesn’t care about any­thing. It’s all my broth­er and his pre­cious sons. Fa­ther —”

“Have you,” Corin­na in­ter­rupt­ed, “heard any­thing more about ‘that treat­ment’?”

“I … I think so. I hope not.”

That made no sense. Corin­na took a deep breath. She led Leira over to the boudoir chair, sat her down, sat down on the floor her­self, and be­gan.

“Leira, I’m re­al­ly, re­al­ly sor­ry to be the one to tell you, but there’s no time, and you have to know. I’ve stud­ied every­thing there is about ‘that treat­ment.’ It per­ma­nent­ly af­fects the brain and makes you in­ca­pable of any­thing ex­cept feel­ing hap­py. It was in­vent­ed to keep rebels docile. It’s be­ing used in pris­ons here right now.”

The heiress, lean­ing on a few emer­alds ap­par­ent­ly with­out even feel­ing them, opened and closed her mouth a few times. Fi­nal­ly, with­out pro­duc­ing any ac­tu­al sound, her lips shaped the words,

“I — I heard some­thing about that. I couldn’t be­lieve… Fa—, Fa­ther … Pe­tey ….”

“It’s hard even for me to be­lieve.”

Leira had stopped cry­ing. She sat, stunned, silent.

“Now that you know, your fa­ther may try some­thing even against you. I think it would be a good idea for you to get the hell out of here, same as me.”

“Where would I go?” Leira whis­pered, but it sound­ed like a wail any­way.

“Any­where! A ho­tel, if that’s all there is. Just out of here and away from his guards.”

“If I use my cred­it, he’ll know where I am, re­gard­less. What’s the use?”

“So use cash.”

“Cash?”

“Um, yes. Cash.”

“I don’t have any cash.” The wail was back. “What would I do with cash? Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances.”

Corin­na re­al­ized she need­ed to res­cue Leira as well as her­self. She aban­doned her first thought, start­ing with “pawn­shops.”

“Lis­ten, I know this is a dumb ques­tion, but where ex­act­ly are we?”

“What do you mean?” Leira was clear­ly doubt­ing whether Corin­na had as firm a grip on events as she’d hoped.

“Well, you were speak­ing Span­ish, so I as­sume we’re in Venezuela?”

“Yes, Cara­cas.”

“Ex­cel­lent. Sanderas is here some­where. If I could get in touch with him, I’m sure he could help. He’ll get us both out.”

“And Pe­tey!”

“Yes, of course. And Pe­tey.”

God help her, if she had to spend time in the con­fines of a flit­ter with that brat. Where was Oziel when she need­ed him?

“Do you know if the guards rou­tine­ly trace calls made from here?” Corin­na asked.

“I — I don’t know. They’re prob­a­bly not trac­ing calls from my pin. Yet.”

That was when Corin­na no­ticed that Leira wore the lat­est mod­el comm pin, one of those that should have a warn­ing la­bel on it about be­ing swal­lowed by small chil­dren.

“Go for it,” she urged. “Miguel Sanderas. Runs a clin­ic in Petare.”

“Petare….” Leira’s eyes went even wider at the men­tion of the slum, but she gave the nec­es­sary voice com­mands.

A tired man’s voice an­swered.

“Sanderas here.”

Corin­na spoke up.

Miguel Sanderas?”

Leira took the pin off and hand­ed it to her.

“Yes, in­deed. What can I do for you?”

“Do you know Oziel Gar­cia?” It would not do at all to get the wrong Sanderas.

“Yes, Señora, I know Oziel Gar­cia. Now, would you mind telling me what’s go­ing on or else let­ting a weary man go home? It’s been a long day.”

Corin­na would have bet he nev­er had short days, in his line of work.

“I’m sor­ry. I don’t even know what time it is. This is Corin­na Mansur.”

“What?”

“I’m some­where in Cara­cas” — she looked ques­tion­ing­ly at Leira, who mouthed back,

“Top of the CTS build­ing.”

—”at the top of the CTS build­ing, if that means any­thing to you.”

Di­cas­til­lo’s build­ing? What are you do­ing there?”

“He kid­napped me. I need to be res­cued. Right now.”

Oy, mier­da,” the voice at the oth­er end breathed. “So what’s your sit­u­a­tion?” he asked, not wast­ing more than a sec­ond.

“Right now, there’s just two guards to con­tend with. I don’t know how many more could be called out if they want­ed to.”

“Holy God, you need an army. You need mus­cle. And I, Doc­to­ra, be­lieve me, am not mus­cle. Give me a minute. Let me think.”

Corin­na pre­pared to give him a minute, but be­fore it was over, he said,

“Do you have a flit­ter, per­haps?”

Leira nod­ded.

“Yes,” said Corin­na.

“Okay, there’s no way we can match Di­cas­til­lo’s strength. The on­ly thing is to be faster. And I’m go­ing to need some help. And a flit­ter. Then, as­sum­ing there’s pur­suit, we can draw them off with one flit­ter, while you make it through in the oth­er one. I’ll call you as soon as I have things ready.”

“Now, wait a —” but he had closed the con­nec­tion. She stared at the comm pin in her hand. He would leave a hole like a me­te­or crater in the lives of those around him if he died.

She looked up to see Leira star­ing at her, eyes as wide as ever. She pulled her­self to­geth­er.

“Well, we bet­ter be ready when he ar­rives. You’ll prob­a­bly be gone for a cou­ple of days at least, so take what you need for Pe­tey. With­out let­ting any­one see you pack­ing. And, lis­ten.” She took a deep breath. “Have you heard any­thing from Ar­sia?”

Ar­sia? Mars?”

Corin­na nod­ded im­pa­tient­ly and man­aged to re­strain her­self from say­ing, No, Ar­sia, North Dako­ta.

“No. Why? Should I have?”

Corin­na shook her head. It didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean any­thing. If on­ly Oziel had been killed, it wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make head­lines on Earth. Nor would a sub­tle de­struc­tion of ev­i­dence. Al­though any­thing sub­tle would prob­a­bly take more than a few days to arrange. She let her­self feel the tini­est bit re­lieved.

“Stuff for Pe­tey,” she re­it­er­at­ed. “Hur­ry.”

Leira nod­ded, but didn’t move.

“What are we go­ing to do about Fa­ther?” she whis­pered. “He’ll get us soon­er or lat­er, if we don’t do some­thing about him.”

Yes, there was that. Corin­na had let her­self set­tle in­to the no­tion of es­cap­ing first and get­ting Di­cas­til­lo lat­er, from a po­si­tion of slight­ly more strength. But go­ing for the jugu­lar at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty was prob­a­bly ex­act­ly what Di­cas­til­lo him­self would be do­ing, even if he didn’t know where to find a pawn­shop ei­ther.

Corin­na was, af­ter all, in­side his house; the house where he felt safe enough to store valu­able pris­on­ers. There had to be ev­i­dence of what he was up to all over this place. Es­pe­cial­ly all over his per­son­al, pri­vate com­put­er.

“Do you think there’s any way I could get at his com­put­er with­out the guards notic­ing? It would prob­a­bly take all of five min­utes to mir­ror it.”

Leira looked du­bi­ous.

“I don’t know. It would be sim­pler for me, wouldn’t it?”

“You? Could you do that?”

“I’ve mir­rored mem­o­ry be­fore.” Leira sound­ed of­fend­ed to be thought so in­com­pe­tent. “It won’t be dif­fi­cult, as­sum­ing he left it on, so it doesn’t start check­ing for the cor­rect iris pat­terns. But he usu­al­ly does. It’s just a home ma­chine.”

“Okay,” Corin­na said slow­ly. “Go for it. I’ll wait here.” Well, ob­vi­ous­ly, she thought. Where else would she wait? Some­thing about be­ing un­der pres­sure brought on inani­ty.

Leira left her with the comm pin, in case Sanderas called be­fore she re­turned.

As time oozed by far too slow­ly, Corin­na thought she should have asked for her watch too. With­out any way to tell time, she was con­vinced about an hour had passed be­fore Leira breezed back in, look­ing smug.

Leira protest­ed that she’d been gone bare­ly ten min­utes. She pat­ted the pock­et on the sleeve of her up­per left arm.

“I have the chip. Now let me just throw a few things to­geth­er. Noth­ing from Sanderas yet?”

“No. I was get­ting wor­ried, but if it’s re­al­ly on­ly been ten min­utes, maybe we’re still all right.”

“I think so. I went look­ing for the guards to dress them down for their atro­cious be­hav­ior, so I know they’re back in their room, try­ing to stay cool with all the elec­tron­ics they have in there, star­ing at mon­i­tors and drink­ing cof­fee.”

“They’ve giv­en up on hunt­ing for me?” Corin­na was in­cred­u­lous.

“No, I think they fig­ure they’ll pick you up on a mon­i­tor soon­er than they’ll find you by hunt­ing through clos­ets.”

With­out Leira’s help, that would have been true.

“I won­der they don’t call in ten or twen­ty as­sis­tants.”

“And let every­body know they’ve failed? I don’t think so. Not while they’re hop­ing to catch you again qui­et­ly.”

“If they have their eye­balls glued to the mon­i­tors, we’ll have to come up with some di­ver­sion to get out.”

For a mo­ment, Leira’s eyes widened again, but then she went back to look­ing smug.

“Pe­tey will man­age that. He’s good at that.”

It was Corin­na’s turn to look hor­ri­fied. She could just imag­ine Pe­tey’s idea of a di­ver­sion, if giv­en a free hand. The whole build­ing would prob­a­bly end up a smol­der­ing pile.

The comm pin fi­nal­ly war­bled, and Corin­na grabbed it to start press­ing but­tons un­til she re­mem­bered that there were none. She or­dered it to open the con­nec­tion.

“Doc­to­ra?”

She was nev­er go­ing to get used to that His­pan­ic for­mal­i­ty. Nev­er.

“Yes,” she said.

There was a lit­tle click of sta­t­ic. These days, sta­t­ic oc­curred on­ly on an­tiques. So much for comm pins small enough to swal­low.

“We got a chip,” she con­tin­ued quick­ly. “It may be en­crypt­ed. Can you line up a per­son to de­crypt?”

“There’s no short­age of splicers here, but I’m not sure we want them with us. Any oth­er ideas?”

“Try Chol­ly Ny­mans. He should be able to line some­one up, pron­to. I have his ad­dress mem­o­rized.” She gave it to the doc­tor, and could hear him del­e­gat­ing to some­one else the task of call­ing Lon­don at two AM, lo­cal time.

There was more sta­t­ic on the line. Corin­na was be­gin­ning to won­der whether it was re­al­ly sta­t­ic. If she’d heard that pat­tern of clicks in some of her equip­ment, she would have as­sumed in­ter­fer­ence. On a call that could mean some­one eaves­drop­ping.

Jee-sus. She hoped not. What had they said so far? Pret­ty much every­thing. Maybe that was why no­body was try­ing very hard to re­cap­ture her. This way, she’d tell them every­thing they need­ed to know.

Leira reap­peared as Sanderas was point­ing out that they hoped to have some mus­cle ready at his end, should that prove nec­es­sary. Corin­na had lost the thread of what he was say­ing. The mus­cle was need­ed here, not there.

“They’ll be out in front of the clin­ic some­where,” he was say­ing as a whole burst of sta­t­ic hap­pened and a voice sud­den­ly in­ter­rupt­ed.

“Doc­to­ra?” the uniden­ti­fied man said with hes­i­ta­tion.

“Who’s that?” Leira asked sud­den­ly and sharply, tak­ing her comm pin from Corin­na.

Oy,” said the voice, tak­en aback. Then he con­tin­ued, sound­ing re­signed, “Yes, I was … there on Mon­day. But what I want­ed to say was I’m cer­tain some­one has been lis­ten­ing to this con­ver­sa­tion. That sta­t­ic is not right. You must get out of there in­stant­ly.”

Oh, shit, thought Corin­na.

“What!” ex­claimed Leira. “But I thought you’d come here. Where should we go?”

“Go to where you dropped me off. And don’t, don’t say where that is over this con­nec­tion. Just go, as fast as you can. We’ll meet you there.”

“All—, all right,” she qua­vered. Then, ob­vi­ous­ly tak­ing his words to heart, she cut the con­nec­tion with­out even say­ing good­bye. “O Dios mío.” She seemed about to wring her hands. “I have to fin­ish pack­ing. Pe­tey has to…. O Dios….” She ran out of the bath­room in­to her bed­room, leav­ing Corin­na in a quandary as to what to do. What did Leira mean, “fin­ish pack­ing?” There wasn’t time, for Christ’s sake. They had to leave now, but she couldn’t run af­ter her in­to the bed­room and risk be­ing seen on the mon­i­tors.

The sec­onds trick­led by, con­geal­ing in­to min­utes. Corin­na had just de­cid­ed to take her chances with the se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras when a noise like a troop of fight­ing chim­panzees broke out in the dis­tance. Above it all rose Pe­tey’s de­light­ed war whoops.

Now! thought Corin­na. Go, go, go. But she was stopped al­most im­me­di­ate­ly by a lug­gage cart in front of the bed­room door to the hall­way, piled with three suit­cas­es. Their out­er sur­face im­i­tat­ed ta­pes­tries. With cold cer­tain­ty, Corin­na knew this was Leira’s idea of a few things for a cou­ple of days. She grabbed the han­dle and towed it be­hind her, heart pound­ing.

There was a cloud of white pow­der bil­low­ing out of a room down the hall, and the sound of thump­ing bod­ies.

Now where? thought Corin­na, stand­ing ir­res­olute in the mid­dle of the hall, form­ing an ex­cel­lent tar­get, with no clue where else to go. Leira popped out, cov­ered in white dust, car­ry­ing Pe­tey cov­ered in the same stuff, and made ur­gent mo­tions with her head, point­ing some­where down the hall.

Corin­na set off in the in­di­cat­ed di­rec­tion, won­der­ing what the white stuff was. Pes­ti­cide? Co­caine? Were they all go­ing to die?

Leira caught up, hur­ried through an arch­way in­to a huge room. Corin­na had a fleet­ing im­pres­sion of cream-col­ored fur­ni­ture and the biggest Per­sian car­pet she had ever seen and a pe­cu­liar wall of stars.

No, it wasn’t a wall. It was a huge win­dow, which was open­ing at a word from Leira, and they were run­ning on flag­stones through pot­ted plants and trees. The stars were the lights of Cara­cas stretch­ing on for­ev­er be­low them. Be­low them. Corin­na’s gasp­ing breath­ing ac­quired sud­den depth when she grasped how very far be­low them. The CTS build­ing was a sky­scraper. This was a pent­house. Go­ing over the edge here would be any­thing but fig­u­ra­tive. She con­cen­trat­ed on putting one foot in front of the oth­er and drag­ging the jolt­ing suit­cas­es over the cracks in the flag­stones.

Where were the guards? They must be right be­hind them. She kept hal­lu­ci­nat­ing the sound of pound­ing foot­steps, but they van­ished every time she threw a des­per­ate glance back­ward.

 

Chap­ter 20

Corin­na blind­ly fol­lowed Leira, stum­bled through an open­ing in the low stone wall around the rooftop gar­den, and found her­self drag­ging the suit­cas­es over grav­el. Rows of flit­ters were parked at a lift-off area. Thank God. She had maybe an­oth­er fifty steps in her be­fore her heart and lungs ex­plod­ed.

There were still no guards. Had Pe­tey killed them?

Gull-wing doors on a flit­ter start­ed open­ing as Leira scur­ried up. She set Pe­tey in­side, took one look at Corin­na and helped her in­side. Then took a look at her suit­cas­es and be­gan strug­gling to lift them in. Corin­na reached out to try to help, but could do lit­tle more than lean on them to push them to­ward the back be­tween wheez­ing breaths. Pe­tey was shriek­ing.

“Shut up,” she mut­tered, with­out hope. To her sur­prise, he did. Maybe no­body had ever told him to shut up be­fore.

Leira fi­nal­ly jumped in, and the flit­ter lift­ed off smooth­ly, clos­ing its doors at the same time at a word from her. Corin­na took the lux­u­ry of a glance to see how close be­hind them the guards were … and saw that they weren’t.

“Sheesh. What’d you do with those guards?”

“That was Pe­tey. Yes,” Leira said, turn­ing to her lit­tle boy as he jounced up and down on the cab­in con­trol pan­el be­tween the two seats. Af­fec­tion­ate­ly, she flapped some of the white pow­der out of his hair, “you’re Ma­mi’s clever lit­tle boy, aren’t you?”

“Um, be­fore you do that, what is this stuff? I mean, if it’s tox­ic, we—”

“It’s just flour. Pe­tey squeezed a plas­tic liter bot­tle of oil at the guards’ faces and fol­lowed it up by ex­plod­ing a bag of flour on the desk fan they had run­ning. Such a clever lit­tle man, aren’t you?” she cooed at him again.

“I see.” It cer­tain­ly had the virtue of sim­plic­i­ty. And the guards had prob­a­bly thought noth­ing of see­ing Pe­tey hors­ing around, rais­ing hell in the kitchen and every­where else. She won­dered where he got the idea. Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons, prob­a­bly. He, mean­while, still bounc­ing and send­ing fine flour dust in­to the cab­in’s lim­it­ed air, was go­ing to give Corin­na a cough­ing fit any sec­ond now.

“Did you see that? I got ‘em! I got ‘em! Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” she mut­tered, the cough­ing fit com­ing on as per sched­ule, “me and the guards, both.”

Leira turned the ven­ti­la­tion to max­i­mum and tried to get Pe­tey to sit still, which had about as much suc­cess as Corin­na ex­pect­ed. Maybe they would reach wher­ev­er they were go­ing be­fore she tied him up.

“Where are we go­ing?”

“It’s a shop­ping mall. Not far any more.”

“And you dropped this fel­low off there who we’re go­ing to meet?”

Leira nod­ded. She seemed … ret­i­cent.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t ac­tu­al­ly know his name.”

“Oh. Is he, how should I say this, okay?”

“Yes,” said Leira. “It was some­thing he said that made me think I re­al­ly need­ed to fol­low Señor Gar­cia’s sug­ges­tion and get a sec­ond opin­ion be­fore tak­ing Pe­tey in for that treat­ment.”

Oh.” This was get­ting stranger and stranger. They’d ob­vi­ous­ly had a far-reach­ing con­ver­sa­tion, he lived in Petare, and she didn’t know his name. “So how’d you meet him?”

Leira didn’t an­swer the ques­tion.

“That’s them don’t you think?” She point­ed to­ward two lit­tle fig­ures stand­ing next to a scuffed rental flit­ter in a vast park­ing lot full of air and ground cars.

The two fig­ures were look­ing up at them.

“Let’s hope so,” said Corin­na.

Leira point­ed at the spot on the heads-up dis­play where she want­ed her craft to land, and said,

“Fast.”

It spi­ralled in at dizzy­ing speed, be­ing a lit­er­al-mind­ed ma­chine. The gull-wing doors were open­ing be­fore Corin­na was sure she’d re­cov­ered her stom­ach from where she’d left it, at the top of that de­scent.

Miguel Sanderas — it had to be him — came run­ning up to help her out of the flit­ter.

“Thank God. We were get­ting wor­ried.”

He was a small, slight man, bare­ly taller than she was, with a firm, gen­tle touch that seemed to draw the anx­i­ety right out of her. Talk about a bed­side man­ner — he must be an ex­tra­or­di­nary doc­tor.

“Yes, well, the guards are go­ing to be fol­low­ing soon­er or lat­er, so don’t quit wor­ry­ing yet.”

He smiled re­as­sur­ing­ly and was about to say some­thing when Pe­tey, con­tin­u­ing the theme he’d been de­vel­op­ing in the flit­ter, start­ed telling the whole park­ing lot that he’d-got-’em, he’d-got-’em, he’d-got-’em.

Oh Christ. All they need­ed was that squirt draw­ing every­one’s at­ten­tion to them so that when the guards start­ed ques­tion­ing by­standers about where they’d gone—.

Sud­den­ly Pe­tey stopped yelling. He’d been caught up and spun around by a large man who looked so much like Oziel, Corin­na’s jaw dropped, briefly. He was al­most as tall, al­most as strong-look­ing, and as hand­some, in his own way. Leira’s mys­tery man had to be Mar­co. He’d set Pe­tey down now and squat­ted next to him, say­ing very se­ri­ous­ly,

Ey, Señori­to, an ad­ven­ture, yes? Come on. You have to help your moth­er,” and he lift­ed the lit­tle boy in­to the rental flit­ter and showed him how to do his bit by strap­ping him­self in. There weren’t any fur­ther shrieks or protests.

“Right,” Sanderas con­tin­ued, “you and the Señora and her son in that flit­ter.” He in­di­cat­ed the rental. “Mar­co and I will draw them off in the one where they ex­pect you to be.”

“No,” said Corin­na. “I have no idea where to go and au­topi­lot may not be enough if we have to ex­er­cise any ini­tia­tive. She’s got the chip, which is all that re­al­ly mat­ters now. You take her and the boy. Mar­co and I draw them off. I should be able to pi­lot that thing.”

Sanderas was ob­vi­ous­ly torn, want­i­ng to be every­where at once. Mar­co was stand­ing there, both in a fever of im­pa­tience and look­ing at the ground, as em­bar­rassed as she’d ever seen a man.

“Come on,” said Corin­na. “It’s the best idea.”

“My things,” cried Leira, mak­ing mo­tions to­ward her flit­ter, as Corin­na shooed her to­ward the rental ma­chine.

Mar­co strode over and stuck his head in­side the door of the sleek flit­ter.

“Get go­ing,” cried Corin­na to Leira, still dither­ing to­ward her suit­cas­es.

As Mar­co caught sight of the lug­gage, Corin­na heard him mut­ter, “Dios ayúdame,” sound­ing so much like his broth­er, it caught her heart.

Oy, mier­da!” ex­claimed Sanderas soft­ly, point­ing to the dis­tant speck of a flit­ter on a non-stan­dard flight path, head­ed to­ward them.

For a mo­ment, Corin­na won­dered what had tak­en Di­cas­til­lo’s men so long, and then re­al­ized it couldn’t be any­thing good. They must be com­ing af­ter them in force, if it had tak­en them this long to as­sem­ble the troops.

“Go, Señora Di­cas­til­lo,” Mar­co said ur­gent­ly, but still some­how def­er­en­tial­ly. “I’ll bring them.” Corin­na saw him wave his hand in Oziel’s down­ward, “case closed” ges­ture. He shoved one bag un­der his arm, grabbed both the oth­ers, raced over to the rental, and flung them in.

Leira, mean­while, mo­tioned Corin­na ur­gent­ly over to the con­trol pan­el of her flit­ter and said, “Speak!”

“What? Speak what?”

Leira touched an­oth­er cou­ple of con­trols, and then ran to­ward Sanderas’s flit­ter while Mar­co ran the oth­er way to­ward Corin­na and flung him­self in­to the pas­sen­ger seat.

“Doors. Close,” said Corin­na ex­per­i­men­tal­ly, and was as­ton­ished when they did. Leira must have trans­ferred voice con­trol over to her. Which was very nice, but she’d be more com­fort­able us­ing man­u­al. “Go. West. Fast,” she com­mand­ed. Time enough to fig­ure out man­u­al lat­er, when she’d drawn the goons away from notic­ing small rental flit­ters slow­ly and un­ob­tru­sive­ly head­ed east.

It took her end­less sec­onds to call up the right heads-up dis­play to track the flit­ter fol­low­ing them. It took more sec­onds to catch a glimpse of the rental, qui­et­ly stay­ing parked in the lot, ap­par­ent­ly un­no­ticed. Sanderas sure knew how to keep his head in an emer­gency.

Di­cas­til­lo’s men were gain­ing on her. “Faster,” she urged. The flit­ter calm­ly con­tin­ued at its pre­vi­ous speed. Des­per­ate­ly, but de­lib­er­ate­ly, she called up help screens. The stu­pid thing had to go faster than this. Then she saw it. It had user-de­fined speed ranges, cur­rent­ly set to “av­er­age.” She se­lect­ed “rac­ing” at the top of the scale, and tried say­ing “faster” again. The thing pressed them in­to their seats at, she guessed, over two gees as it smooth­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed to four hun­dred kph. She hoped it had every au­to­mat­ic avoid­ance de­vice known to sci­ence. The oth­er flit­ter was no longer gain­ing. She called up more help man­u­als, and found out Leira’s flit­ter al­so had some­thing list­ed as “over­drive.” This lit­tle sports mod­el might be able to run loop-the-loops around the guards’ flit­ter while it led them on, if she could fig­ure out how to make it do loops.

She leaned back, turned to Mar­co, ex­tend­ed her hand, and said, “Corin­na Mansur.”

He shook her hand and nod­ded.

Si. Doc­tor Sanderas said. My broth­er wrote us about you.”

He spoke in Span­ish, and Corin­na had al­ready gath­ered that he was less than fa­mil­iar with Eng­lish. She tried to pull to­geth­er enough of her Span­ish to con­tin­ue, but he said,

“It’s okay. I can un­der­stand some Eng­lish, if you don’t speak too fast.”

“Well,” she grinned, “then we’re even. The same goes for me and your Span­ish.”

He gave her a faint smile back, and that was when Corin­na no­ticed he looked like he’d for­got­ten how to do it. The set­tled sad­ness of his face was so deep, it seemed em­bed­ded in the shape of his bones.

She gave at­ten­tion to their pur­suers again, who had ac­cel­er­at­ed enough to keep up. So, they hadn’t been go­ing at top speed ei­ther. She won­dered what their max­i­mum was. Then she won­dered what her max­i­mum was.

“They’re go­ing to call for help pret­ty soon, when they re­al­ize they may not catch us. Time for a change of scenery, don’t you think?”

She head­ed south to­ward dis­tant hills shroud­ed in night, but vis­i­ble as ghost­ly green trac­eries in the heads-up dis­play. In­frared showed that the dark land be­neath them crawled with peo­ple, in­vis­i­ble be­cause they were most­ly too poor to have lights. When she’d led the guards far in­to the coun­try, she looped back and seemed to lose them.

She slowed down a bit to make sure she didn’t lose them en­tire­ly. She kept scan­ning the dis­play, but leaned back again, and tried to find some­thing rea­son­ably neu­tral to talk to Mar­co about.

“Leira said you and she had talked, and it sounds like she has a lot to thank you for. How did that all come about?”

The ques­tion met with si­lence, and when she glanced over, she was sur­prised to see Mar­co look­ing so far be­yond em­bar­rassed that he need­ed a whole new cat­e­go­ry, all to him­self.

“So what’s the prob­lem?” she want­ed to know. “I’d think hav­ing a multi­bil­lion­aire in your debt is a good thing.”

Dios san­to,” he mut­tered, so that Corin­na could bare­ly hear him over the sub­dued whine of the flit­ter. “She is not in my debt. Didn’t she tell you?”

“Well, no, or I wouldn’t be ask­ing you about it, would I?”

Dios san­to,” he mut­tered again.

Corin­na wait­ed, check­ing the dis­plays. Damn, the pur­su­ing flit­ter cut in from the side, to­geth­er with a sec­ond one, which looked faster and mean­er. Time to see what “over­drive” on the rac­ing scale meant. They were pressed back in their seats again, and once they reached top speed, Corin­na blew out a breath. Over­drive seemed to mean five hun­dred and fifty kph. The oth­er flit­ters were falling be­hind, but not far enough for her tastes. She de­cid­ed to find out just how good au­topi­lot was on this thing, since she and Mar­co were en­tire­ly at the mer­cy of the ma­chine in any case. She head­ed for the canyons be­tween the sky­scrap­ers of the busi­ness dis­trict and, if they came out of this alive, some tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar speed­ing tick­ets for Leira once the satel­lite had processed her transpon­der sig­nal.

They emerged on the west­ern side and were over oth­er dark hills in mo­ments. The two pur­su­ing flit­ters were some­where be­hind them, fight­ing with traf­fic.

She glanced over at Mar­co to see him look­ing at her as if she was a tiger and he was cor­nered. Her dri­ving wasn’t that bad. Or maybe it al­so had to do with her em­bar­rass­ing ques­tions.

“Mar­co, for heav­en’s sake, I don’t know what you’re wor­ried about. I mean, if it’s some­thing you don’t want to talk about, tell me to mind my own busi­ness. I was just cu­ri­ous. It seemed so odd.”

“It was odd,” he said qui­et­ly. “It was cer­tain­ly odd.” He vis­i­bly took a deep breath and seemed to come to a de­ci­sion. “I don’t know how much it mat­ters if you know. But don’t tell any­one, okay? Es­pe­cial­ly, for the love of God, don’t tell Zielo.”

“Well, sure,” promised Corin­na, be­mused in spite of his se­ri­ous­ness by his faith that her word was enough. He was a lot like his broth­er that way.

“Doc­to­ra, lis­ten.” But then he said noth­ing.

She wait­ed.

“Juani­to was dy­ing. If we’d had the mon­ey to deal with it ear­ly, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but at that point he need­ed hun­dreds of dol­lars worth of med­i­cines. Not bo­li­vars. Hard cur­ren­cy dol­lars. The nerve growth fac­tors were the worst, but with­out them the doc­tor said Juani­to would prob­a­bly be re­tard­ed. There was the — what did he call it — phage treat­ment for the re­sis­tant bugs. Vi­t­a­mins. It just went on and on. You get so tired of beg­ging. Ma­mi cer­tain­ly didn’t have any­thing ex­tra. She’d al­ready giv­en me every­thing she had. Zielo was send­ing a for­tune. I don’t know how he did it. Noth­ing was enough. I guess I’d giv­en up. It was soon af­ter Se­le­na died and I knew he was go­ing to die. I had noth­ing left to lose. So. Well. I de­cid­ed to steal it.”

Oh,” said Corin­na. Sud­den­ly his em­bar­rass­ment made sense.

“Drugs in the bar­rio are kept in safes, so I went for one of the easy rich phar­ma­cies. Zielo men­tioned that he was tak­ing care of Pe­dro Di­cas­til­lo, the name of his reg­u­lar nan­ny, and a few oth­er de­tails. I used that to get to know her, and once you’re in one of these rich build­ings, well, it’s not that dif­fi­cult to fig­ure the place out. I marked a phar­ma­cy that was in the shops on the first floor. I knew I might not find what I need­ed, but at least then I could trade for it lat­er on. I had three friends help me, and get­ting in was easy. The hard part was how fast the cops ar­rived. It was like they came up through the floor. In Petare, they nev­er … I mean, I should have known. Some of my neigh­bors would have known, but I didn’t want to ask them for help be­cause some­times guys black­mail you then. So, any­way, it was just me and some friends and the cops boiled up. I drew them off, so my friends could get away. I would have been caught, ex­cept I broke in­to the Señora’s pent­house. Scared her three quar­ters to death.”

“Her pent­house! What’d you do? Take the ex­press el­e­va­tor?”

“No. One of the cod­ed keys I faked got you in­to the emer­gency stairs. I don’t think they re­al­ized how fast I could run up nine­ty floors. Any­way, I was up on the roof be­fore any­one knew it, and there was this nice dark house to hide in. On­ly it turned out the Señora was home. I knew it was all over. I was go­ing to kill my­self. I was just try­ing to de­cide which side of the build­ing to jump from. Any­way, she helped me. Which is the on­ly rea­son I live. But Zielo will kill me if he ever finds out.”

Corin­na sat, speech­less. She stared at Mar­co in­stead of the heads-up dis­play. He point­ed at the two dots fol­low­ing them again.

“Oh, shit,” she said, and con­cen­trat­ed on out­run­ning them. “Af­ter this loop, we’ll do an­oth­er one to the north, and then—”

“Doc­to­ra, I don’t know how much charge these things hold, but I doubt it goes long dis­tances.”

“Oh, shit,” she said again. “Of course.” Now that she looked, she saw that the slid­er scale was down to one quar­ter. “One more loop, I guess, and that’s all the time we can buy Leira and her chip.” She con­cen­trat­ed on div­ing and weav­ing through the canyons of the busi­ness dis­trict again. It was the best cov­er around, al­though an ac­ci­dent here would be cat­a­stroph­ic. The au­topi­lot, how­ev­er, did just as well as the first time. This would be a nice lit­tle car to fly if you weren’t be­ing chased by thugs look­ing for­ward to suck­ing your brains out.

When she was out over the ocean, head­ed north, she said, “I’ll get them as far as the is­lands and then loop back at max­i­mum speed to — to where?”

“If we can make it there, I’ll show you where to land near the clin­ic. I, well, I got in touch with Quintón’s friends, if you know what I mean. If things go right, even Di­cas­til­lo’s troops will have a hard time deal­ing with them.”

Corin­na let out a whistling breath. She need­ed an army, Sanderas had said. And here it was.

“Must be nice folks, if they race out and do good deeds when­ev­er re­quest­ed.”

Mar­co looked em­bar­rassed again.

“Well, I did tell them it would help stop the prob­lem of guys go­ing lo­co in prison. Which is true,” he added, as if he need­ed to jus­ti­fy him­self.

He was, Corin­na de­cid­ed, a lot like his broth­er. Sol­id gold in a cri­sis. The biggest dif­fer­ence she could see was that Oziel had an air of be­ing will­ing to try any­thing, where­as Mar­co just want­ed si­lence. Yet he was the one whose wife had died, while Oziel trav­eled be­tween plan­ets and … heard about her death all alone and with­out be­ing able to tell a sin­gle soul his heart was bro­ken.

Life was much more un­fair than it had to be.

“So, any­way,” Corin­na con­tin­ued in the lull as they raced out over the ocean at the “fast” set­ting, giv­ing over­drive a rest, “it’s hard to have a co­her­ent talk un­der these cir­cum­stances, but you were say­ing that Leira helped you. How, in the mid­dle of all that was go­ing on, did you hap­pen to start dis­cussing your son’s med­ical needs?”

Mar­co shook his head.

“We didn’t. Like I said, I was des­per­ate. I was ram­bling on about … Se­le­na. About … what hap­pened to her. Sud­den­ly the Señora said, ‘Af­ter just one treat­ment?’ And then she start­ed help­ing me.”

“Oh-h,” said Corin­na to her­self, as the pieces fell in­to place. Yes, she could see the light bulb go­ing off in Leira’s head as that sto­ry un­fold­ed.

“You’re wrong about one thing, Mar­co. She is in your debt. She is in­fi­nite­ly in your debt. And don’t you for­get it.”

There was an odd sound, like hail hit­ting the skin of the flit­ter, but not like hail, be­cause there was on­ly one of them.

“What was that?” asked Corin­na.

“I think that was a bul­let bounc­ing off.”

“Oh, hell. Okay. Hang on to your hat. We’re go­ing in.” The ac­cel­er­a­tion flat­tened them both once again in­to the soft suede up­hol­stery of the per­fect­ly padded seats.

At five hun­dred and fifty kph, the flit­ter cov­ered the dis­tance to the bar­rio far enough ahead of the pur­su­ing guards to avoid be­ing shot right out of the sky. Once she land­ed, she just had to hope they had enough of a head start to reach the clin­ic, and that there was enough of a wall of gang­sters to keep the guards away till their boss could be ar­rest­ed.

She mag­ni­fied the view ahead to its max­i­mum and told Mar­co to in­di­cate the land­ing spot as soon as he could iden­ti­fy it.

“There,” he said sud­den­ly. “Not too close to the clin­ic, be­cause the gang might shoot at us since they don’t know who’s in the flit­ter.”

Corin­na touched the same spot and said,

“Land. Fastest.”

The flit­ter dove like a hawk.

“Je-e-e-e-sus,” mouthed Corin­na as the ground came rush­ing up.

And then, the flit­ter smooth­ly slowed and set­tled down in a per­fect three point land­ing.

Af­ter just one gasp, she or­dered, “Doors, open,” and they were both tum­bling out in­to a dark street with graf­fi­ti on some walls, old cars, and shut­tered shops.

Corin­na ran af­ter Mar­co as fast as she could go, which wasn’t very fast. She’d just about had it with all this run­ning in all this damn grav­i­ty. He was hold­ing back for her sake, she could see. He ran down a side street, glanc­ing over his shoul­der to make sure she fol­lowed. Corin­na heard the two pur­su­ing flit­ters whine by over­head, most­ly hid­den by the hous­es.

Would the guards blow up the hous­es to get the two of them? It would be the surest way to kill them.

But the flit­ters passed on and land­ed a few streets ahead.

Mar­co slowed to a walk.

“That’s where the clin­ic is. They must have traced it from that tapped call.”

Corin­na grate­ful­ly al­so slowed to a walk and breathed long, ragged breaths.

“It could al­so be that the Señora must have an em­bed­ded track­er chip, be­ing as rich as she is,” added Mar­co. “They know its fre­quen­cy.”

“She’ll have it turned off,” said Corin­na. “It’s not like she wants any­one to know where she is.”

“Yes, that would make sense. They prob­a­bly fig­ure they’ll cut us off this way.” He had a strange, dark look on his face.

They had en­tered a nar­row and ex­treme­ly smelly track full of dump­sters. Mar­co’s walk be­came cau­tious. Then he hun­kered down be­hind one of the dump­sters and point­ed. Corin­na re­al­ized she could see part of the next street and the two pow­er­ful-look­ing flit­ters parked in the mid­dle of it. Across the street were wrought iron doors pro­tect­ing glass ones on which was writ­ten, Clin­i­ca de la Co­mu­nidad de San Juan. The guards had climbed out, about eight from each flit­ter, and the ones from the rear ve­hi­cle formed a tight knot. Com­ing out in force, in­deed. She won­dered whether to be flat­tered that Di­cas­til­lo thought she and his elfin daugh­ter rat­ed eight guards each. The guards were all in hel­mets and full-body bul­let­proof suits. They weren’t mov­ing.

Corin­na fi­nal­ly saw why. The street seemed de­sert­ed ex­cept for Di­cas­til­lo’s men, but now she spot­ted a gun bar­rel. Af­ter the first one, sud­den­ly she could pick them out every­where. The street was alive with armed men be­hind the parked cars, in­side the hous­es, up on the roofs. Di­cas­til­lo’s id­i­ot­ic guards had just stepped right out in­to the mid­dle of it, as­sum­ing they had to be the biggest mus­cle around.

She opened her mouth to say some­thing, but closed it again at Mar­co’s look of alarm. He pan­tomimed some­one lis­ten­ing, then shoot­ing. Any sound could make you a tar­get. She hid com­plete­ly be­hind the dump­ster with him and whis­pered,

“They land­ed right in the mid­dle of the gang­sters?”

He nod­ded.

“That’s many more than just Quintón’s gang. Some of the oth­ers must have come out too. A co­op­er­a­tive ef­fort.” His mouth twist­ed in a strange smile.

Maybe it was the first such ef­fort in liv­ing mem­o­ry. What peo­ple would do to stop go­ing lo­co in prison.

There was the noise of a cheap, rasp­ing mega­phone, but Corin­na couldn’t make out the words. She could see the guard with the most stripes yell a thin, un­am­pli­fied re­sponse.

Af­ter some more back and forth, a thing the size of a grenade launch­er point­ed down from a roof and she heard Mar­co gasp.

¡Dios san­to, No!

A car ex­plod­ed in a sheet of flame.

But that was all. Ap­par­ent­ly, it was just some sort of demon­stra­tion.

How­ev­er, un­less some­body start­ed get­ting his act to­geth­er, this could turn hideous in no time.

The guards seemed to think so too. There was a dis­cus­sion go­ing on be­tween Mr. Max­i­mum Stripes and some­body at the cen­ter of the sec­ond knot. The dis­cus­sion seemed to grow heat­ed, and the sec­ond knot loos­ened up enough for Corin­na to see Di­cas­til­lo him­self at the cen­ter.

She gasped and glanced at Mar­co, who threw her an equal­ly be­wil­dered look. What was Di­cas­til­lo do­ing here? He must know the chip was gone, but was he that des­per­ate to re­cov­er it? In that case it was go­ing to be good. Or maybe he just hadn’t been able to find a suf­fi­cient­ly trust­wor­thy hench­man on such short no­tice.

Sure­ly, the gang­sters would kid­nap him, now that they had him. They could get a ran­som to re­tire on from some­one like that, and it would get him out of her hair, at least short term.

The dis­cus­sion con­tin­ued, but the gang­sters didn’t like be­ing left out, judg­ing by the im­pa­tient bark com­ing from the mega­phone. Corin­na thought she heard a word she rec­og­nized: “flechette.” She’d heard of flechette rounds. They came out of the gun and ex­plod­ed in­to whirling ra­zors, some­times hard and sharp enough to shred steel.

The guards seemed as clear on what this would do to their bul­let­proof­ing as Corin­na was. Af­ter a fi­nal curt sen­tence to his boss, Max Stripes yelled up at a roof and threw his guns and am­mu­ni­tion down. His men ea­ger­ly fol­lowed suit.

A rasp­ing, mock­ing or­der came from the mega­phone and the men hes­i­tat­ed. Then they took off their hel­mets and stepped out of their bul­let­proof suits, leav­ing them in a pile, be­fore head­ing away. It must have tak­en them a mo­ment to de­cide that walk­ing home in their Y-fronts was not a fate worse than death.

Now Di­cas­til­lo stood un­pro­tect­ed in a bar­rio street sur­round­ed by guns point­ed to­ward him in­stead of away. It was ob­vi­ous­ly a new ex­pe­ri­ence for him. She saw Sanderas ap­pear on the steps of his clin­ic, and then, God help her, Leira wan­dered out, clutch­ing Pe­tey.

Her fa­ther start­ed to­ward her like a charg­ing bull, and stopped on­ly be­cause a bul­let dent­ed the as­phalt in front of him.

What the hell did he think, Corin­na won­dered. That his daugh­ter still car­ried that chip and that he could just rip her clothes apart till he got it? Or did he no longer think at all? Leira looked ready to faint from fear.

“I bet­ter go out and help,” Mar­co said. “You stay here till the thugs have cleared out. Will you be okay? There won’t be any­one around for quite a while even af­ter they’ve gone.”

“Hey, a dump­ster is down­right cozy af­ter fac­ing the prospect of Di­cas­til­lo’s com­pa­ny.”

That earned an­oth­er faint smile, and he strode out in­to the street and in­ter­posed him­self be­tween the en­raged fa­ther and his daugh­ter. Mar­co in­di­cat­ed that Di­cas­til­lo should go in­to the clin­ic. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it looked like the gang­sters planned to leave him alone. Di­cas­til­lo, how­ev­er, didn’t seem to know when he had it good, be­cause he was snarling at Mar­co. Mar­co tow­ered over the bil­lion­aire, his arms slight­ly flexed, his hands curl­ing in an imag­i­nary grasp. He looked like he was go­ing to throw the ty­coon across the street any sec­ond.

Corin­na saw one of the gang­sters ap­proach and some con­ver­sa­tion. Then Di­cas­til­lo went in­side, Mar­co right be­hind him, herd­ing him in.

The pile of weapons and bul­let­proof­ing melt­ed away. The street be­came qui­et. Corin­na came out from be­hind her stink­ing dump­ster and picked her way around bits of trash she tried not to iden­ti­fy in the dark. She scanned ner­vous­ly left and right, and kept glanc­ing be­hind her, lis­ten­ing hard for any sign of move­ment in the shad­ows. It was less than a block to reach the clin­ic, but it felt much longer, and it was with vast re­lief that she yanked open the door, which had been left un­locked for her. She locked the met­al gate and the glass doors be­hind her and fol­lowed the sound of voic­es to Sanderas’s of­fice. She could hear, in par­tic­u­lar, a breezy, Eng­lish ac­cent that sound­ed far from lo­cal.

The big screen desk­phone showed a fel­low, thin as an ex­cla­ma­tion point, with a long nose, droopy amused eyes, and tou­sled, wispy hair. It was Chol­ly Ny­mans, far from lo­cal in­deed. Judg­ing by the vi­cious com­pres­sion of Di­cas­til­lo’s mouth, it was the on­ly way to be. Corin­na joined Leira on the oth­er side of Mar­co from him, and with­in range of the video feed. Di­cas­til­lo was re­spond­ing in a tight, even voice to some­thing Chol­ly had said.

“I have no idea what you are all play­ing at. I re­ceived word my daugh­ter had been kid­napped. I came to res­cue her and have been as­sault­ed in­stead. I will not let this out­rage pass.”

“I think you’ll find you have to, old chap,” said Ny­mans. “Have a look at this, why don’t you?” And he switched the mon­i­tor to dis­play a long file of names and ad­dress­es.

Di­cas­til­lo choked and then made a fu­tile at­tempt to pre­tend it had been a cough.

“Yes,” said Ny­mans, reap­pear­ing. “Con­tact logs, cor­re­spon­dence, or­ders, bud­gets”— he dis­ap­peared again while a spread­sheet scrolled up the screen — then popped back. “There’s a per­fect match be­tween some of the sci­en­tif­ic da­ta sent ear­li­er to Dr. Sanderas by Corin­na Mansur”— he nod­ded to her with an added twin­kle — “so there’s no point try­ing to pre­tend this has noth­ing to do with it.”

That was all in­for­ma­tion from Leira’s chip and her own first mes­sage. Noth­ing about her most re­cent mes­sage to Chol­ly, Corin­na no­ticed. What the hell had hap­pened to that?

“If you turn your­self in qui­et­ly,” Ny­mans con­clud­ed, “it’ll save the­atrics all around.”

Di­cas­til­lo strug­gled briefly for con­trol of his shock, and won. His usu­al air of hard in­dif­fer­ence re­turned. He glared at Ny­mans.

“You will be hear­ing from my lawyer,” he said, and closed his mouth as firm­ly as if he was go­ing down, but de­ter­mined not to drown.

“My plea­sure,” said Chol­ly af­fa­bly. “It’ll give me more to write about.”

Di­cas­til­lo didn’t look like he could get any mad­der, and Corin­na won­dered how long an am­bu­lance would take if he popped a blood ves­sel. Judg­ing by the amount of time the cops were tak­ing, the foren­sic en­to­mol­o­gists would scoop him up well be­fore the medics.

He stood up to walk out and found Mar­co be­tween him and the door.

“I’ll have you up on charges of as­sault, false im­pris­on­ment, and every­thing else the best-paid lawyers in the coun­try can think of, you cunt. You’ll be so beg­gared by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be glad of the chance to sell your­self to the prison guards.”

Not a mus­cle moved in Mar­co’s face. Not a mus­cle moved in his body. He ra­di­at­ed enough men­ace to fill the room. Corin­na sud­den­ly re­al­ized it took no courage for Mar­co to stand up to Di­cas­til­lo. What took all his strength was not rip­ping apart the man who, ul­ti­mate­ly, had mur­dered his wife. The on­ly thing re­strain­ing him was prob­a­bly the thought of what would hap­pen to his son if he went to jail for homi­cide.

Di­cas­til­lo backed down and sat in the same chair again. He called a lawyer briefly, but on­ly to alert him to call, and main­tained stony si­lence.

“Chol­ly,” said Corin­na, “it’s vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to reach Ar­sia and Bur­bidge im­me­di­ate­ly. It’s en­tire­ly pos­si­ble he,” she glared briefly at Di­cas­til­lo, “plans to do some­thing to the Sta­tions to de­stroy all the ev­i­dence there. Can you get a di­rect line? In­stant­ly?”

Chol­ly’s down­ward-slop­ing eye­brows went fur­ther up at this sce­nario.

“Bit ex­treme, wouldn’t you say? Of course, the whole thing is a bit ex­treme. Let’s see now….”

He looked to the side, tap­ping away at some­thing and briefly say­ing things like, “Yes, pri­or­i­ty one.” “Yes, I mean it.”

How, she won­dered, could she be sure it was some­one trust­wor­thy, if there was noth­ing but an au­dio-on­ly con­nec­tion?

“Ah, Pick­le,” she heard Chol­ly say be­fore he switched over to the Mars chan­nel he’d achieved at last. Nico­la Ter­williger was the name of the Times re­porter on Mars, which, know­ing the Eng­lish, had be­come Nick­le and end­ed up as Pick­le. When he re­vert­ed to Cara­cas five min­utes lat­er, he said now all they had to do was wait for Oziel Gar­cia. On vi­su­al, he added sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Good old Chol­ly. He’d al­ready thought of the trust­wor­thi­ness prob­lem, and he must have wast­ed no time in pump­ing Sanderas for in­for­ma­tion, be­cause he knew ex­act­ly who to ask for. Now, as he’d said, all they had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Maybe, if the base tru­ly had been oblit­er­at­ed, the wait for that one voice from Mars would stretch for­ev­er.

No­body seemed able to make con­ver­sa­tion in front of Di­cas­til­lo, but the po­lice ar­rived af­ter in­ter­minable min­utes passed, and broke the op­pres­sive si­lence. Di­cas­til­lo stood up and looked at his daugh­ter once, bale­ful­ly. She shrank fur­ther be­hind Mar­co. Her fa­ther seemed se­vere­ly dis­ap­point­ed in her for not fol­low­ing him blind­ly in­to mur­der and be­yond.

She piped up from be­hind Mar­co’s large back,

“I wasn’t go­ing to have you hurt­ing Pe­tey.” There was no change in her fa­ther’s glare, so she threw out an­oth­er de­fense. “You al­ways said your­self, Fa­ther, life is not fair.”

Di­cas­til­lo ig­nored her and told the po­lice curt­ly that they were to arrange for his son to meet him since he had to give him pow­er of at­tor­ney un­til “this non­sense” was over.

“That will not be pos­si­ble, Señor,” said the se­nior of­fi­cer. “Your son was ar­rest­ed an hour ago on a charge laid by the Fan­ta com­pa­ny. They ac­cuse him of be­ing com­plic­it in adul­ter­ation at the lo­cal bot­tling plant he owns.”

Once he and his son had been con­vict­ed, Corin­na thought, con­trol of every­thing would pass to Leira, but Di­cas­til­lo didn’t seem to con­sid­er giv­ing her pow­er of any­thing vol­un­tar­i­ly. The po­lice took him out to their bul­let­proof flit­ter with­out fur­ther words, fol­lowed by the doc­tor and Mar­co.

When they came back, the doc­tor had a sar­don­ic ex­pres­sion.

“They want­ed to know who burned the car. Why do they even both­er ask­ing? They can just fill in ‘perp. un­known’ on their use­less forms and save every­one time.”

“What I don’t un­der­stand,” said Corin­na, her eyes wan­der­ing back to the phone’s screen every few sec­onds, “is why the gang­sters didn’t kid­nap Di­cas­til­lo. I mean, all’s well that ends well, but for a while there, I was re­al­ly wor­ried when they didn’t.” Then sud­den­ly she thought that this was a rather in­sen­si­tive thing to say with Leira stand­ing right there, but she seemed to be in com­plete agree­ment.

Mar­co, who looked har­ried about some­thing, said,

“I had the same ques­tion. The leader said, ‘I don’t need to fuck with the kind of trou­ble he’d bring. I got a busi­ness to run. Don’t the cops want him for any­thing?’ And when I said they did, he said, ‘Well, fine. They de­serve each oth­er.’”

That, thought Corin­na, might be the worst in­sult a gang­ster could hurl.

Mar­co, mean­while, grew even more ner­vous.

“We should get the Señora’s flit­ter,” he said when Corin­na looked ques­tion­ing­ly at him. “It’s been out there far too long. We’ll be lucky if there’s more than the hull left, but I didn’t want to leave be­fore Di­cas­til­lo was ar­rest­ed.”

“Oh,” said Leira. “Oh dear.”

Corin­na kept look­ing at the hold­ing pat­tern on the screen of the phone.

“Doc­to­ra,” said Mar­co very qui­et­ly, “it’s at least ten min­utes be­fore we can hear from them.”

“Yes,” she said, “you’re right,” and forced her­self to fol­low him out. Leira brought up the rear.

Once Corin­na saw the two flit­ters that had car­ried Di­cas­til­lo’s se­cu­ri­ty guards, it oc­curred to her to point them out to Leira.

“Those are yours too now.”

“Oh.” Leira looked even more shocked and numbed by the re­al­iza­tion. She stood there. “I’ll call Ale­jan­dro.” She seemed to be speak­ing to her­self. Then she added more firm­ly, “He’ll know what to do.”

“Is that your lawyer?” asked Corin­na.

“He’s our — my — but­ler.”

Corin­na sud­den­ly saw how things had al­ways worked in Leira’s life. Ale­jan­dro did it. Ale­jan­dro would mes­sage the fam­i­ly lawyer. Ale­jan­dro had busy weeks ahead of him.

When Corin­na flew Leira’s flit­ter to the clin­ic — it did still fly — Leira took its stripped con­di­tion calm­ly. The leather had been cut off the seats and there was noth­ing left of the cab­in elec­tron­ics ex­cept emp­ty sock­ets and tor­tured wires. But maybe, giv­en the way her whole life had been stripped and turned in­side out in the last few hours, she was more con­fi­dent of fix­ing the flit­ter than all the rest.

They re­turned to Sanderas’s of­fice, and the screen still showed a hold­ing pat­tern.

Corin­na couldn’t stand it. She opened the con­nec­tion to Lon­don.

“Still noth­ing, Chol­ly?”

“If Pick­le can find Gar­cia im­me­di­ate­ly, we should hear from them in an­oth­er,” he checked some­thing off to the side, “two min­utes and forty five sec­onds. Gar­cia doesn’t have a wrist­pad, so it’ll take some min­utes to lo­cate him, and then for him to reach a vid link. Start wor­ry­ing in ten min­utes.”

Easy for you to say, she want­ed to tell him. Every­thing she cared about was on Mars.

Six and a half min­utes lat­er, Oziel ap­peared, warm smile, re­as­sur­ing nod, and all.

“Every­thing is fine at Ar­sia and Fog­gy Bot­tom.”

Corin­na felt such a huge wave of re­lief, she sat down. Luck­i­ly, there was a chair there.

“Bur­bidge had a lot of pow­er fail­ures, but no­body was hurt. We’re all re­al­ly glad to hear you’re okay. Af­ter Corin­na got Emer­gency Ser­vices in­volved dur­ing that last fight, even — uh, I mean, Di­rec­tor Singh al­so un­der­stood that CTS need­ed in­ves­ti­gat­ing. But at first he couldn’t get any or­ders from UNPB about what to do be­cause all the CTS-con­trolled comm satel­lites were down.” He paused just long enough to turn the si­lence in­to sar­casm.

“That was what CTS did to stop Corin­na’s mes­sage will all the ev­i­dence from reach­ing Earth. Then they re­al­ized it was go­ing via the teleme­try satel­lite and just blocked the sig­nal with one of their biggest ships. The mes­sage was still cached on the servers and it was sent first thing af­ter the sit­u­a­tion was un­der con­trol at Ar­sia.”

“Hey, Chol­ly,” she mut­tered on their open con­nec­tion. “That should be in your email. Isn’t it there?”

She saw him lean side­ways to push a few keys else­where, and heard him mut­ter,

“Bloody hell. Pushed in­to the bot­tom of the in­box. It was the gen­er­al pub­lic box, you know.” He gave her an apolo­getic glance, rais­ing his eye­brows a bit. “I’ll have to start com­ing to work awake.”

“It took some work to get it un­der con­trol,” Oziel was con­tin­u­ing, “and then Singh seemed to be pret­ty sure he was done. Mo­mo man­aged to con­vince him that all the phys­i­cal ev­i­dence was on Mars and that meant Di­cas­til­lo would try to de­stroy it. Singh fi­nal­ly or­dered a gen­er­al alert. Every­body was look­ing for bombs, virus­es, any­thing. One of the wa­ter techs found a leak in the heat­ed part of the waste­water treat­ment tanks. Flow track­ing on those isn’t so ex­act. So in a few days about a thou­sand liters got in­to fis­sures. As soon as the warm flow stopped, it would have frozen sol­id and cracked off the whole face of the moun­tain on that side of the base. Mo­mo’s con­vinced no­body could have sur­vived it. And bury­ing the ev­i­dence un­der a whole mass of bod­ies would make it look more like an ac­ci­dent, not less.

There was com­plete si­lence in the room where Corin­na sat. She re­al­ized her jaw had dropped and she closed her mouth.

“The wa­ter is be­ing heat­ed to keep it liq­uid and be­ing pumped grad­u­al­ly back where it be­longs. So don’t wor­ry. Every­body is fine. And Di­cas­til­lo can add a cou­ple of thou­sand counts of at­tempt­ed mur­der to his rap sheet. I’ll wait to hear that you’ve re­ceived this and … and any oth­er mes­sages you have for us. Over to you.”

Dur­ing that cu­ri­ous pause he looked … Corin­na wasn’t sure ex­act­ly what his ex­pres­sion meant, but it wasn’t calm or con­fi­dent. More like he want­ed to tele­port to Earth by the pow­er of his eyes. Where had they ac­tu­al­ly reached him? It felt like yes­ter­day to her, but over a week had gone by. What was he do­ing now? He was prob­a­bly back at Fog­gy Bot­tom, back at his old job, un­like her. What was he think­ing? How did he feel?

She couldn’t ask any of the ques­tions she want­ed to. In­stead she said she was go­ing to fill up on arepas, and then call and make him jeal­ous by de­scrib­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence.

Mar­co added some­thing, Corin­na wasn’t sure what, be­cause it was in slang so quick and strange, she could make noth­ing of it. Any­thing of a per­son­al na­ture was ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to wait for a more pri­vate con­nec­tion. Miguel Sanderas spoke to Oziel in the same slang be­fore the pack­et was squirt­ed across space, but Corin­na was pret­ty sure she caught the phrase “street rat,” said with a broad grin.

Af­ter the con­nec­tion was closed, she sat there, at loose ends. The dis­ad­van­tage of sur­viv­ing, she now re­al­ized, was that she’d have to fig­ure out what to do next.

Leira, Corin­na no­ticed, looked like she was hav­ing the same prob­lem. There was noth­ing now to stop the heiress from go­ing home, but she made no move to do it. She was curled up in one of the doc­tor’s chairs, clutch­ing Pe­tey who had fall­en asleep clutch­ing her, and star­ing with wide eyes at noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar.

Corin­na de­cid­ed that she could fol­low her own ad­vice to Leira, and book in­to a ho­tel, but Miguel Sanderas wouldn’t hear of it.

“You’ll stay with me,” he said. His in­flec­tion made it a state­ment, and his nod in­clud­ed Leira.

The doc­tor, Corin­na thought, could ob­vi­ous­ly di­ag­nose more than mere dis­eases. He called his wife, and when she ar­rived she turned out to be like him in that re­spect. She didn’t ask any ques­tions. She didn’t talk about what hap­pened. She ad­mired Pe­tey, and told them how hap­py she was that they could stay at her house. Araguela was her name, and she was, it turned out, a full-blood­ed Guahi­bo In­di­an.

Mar­co car­ried Señora Di­cas­til­lo’s con­cept of overnight bags one more time to a car. Corin­na wait­ed out­side the ma­chine, un­sure how to thank Mar­co or what to do next or what, for that mat­ter, to do with the rest of her life. She was on Earth, with the clothes on her back, and no di­rec­tion home. Ex­cept in the amount of bag­gage, there was lit­tle to choose be­tween her and Leira.

Mar­co closed the trunk and said to her qui­et­ly,

“Tell Zielo, when you see him, that we all miss him at home.”

Corin­na looked up abrupt­ly.

“Uh, I will, but I don’t know if, or when, I’ll see him ei­ther. I have no idea what’s hap­pen­ing next.”

She seemed to keep wind­ing up on the wrong plan­et. When she thought she cared about Earth, she’d been on Mars. Now that her thoughts were full of places whose path­ways didn’t pull her down, she was on Earth.

“Lis­ten, Mar­co, I don’t know how to thank you for every­thing you’ve done.” She had the feel­ing peo­ple of the op­po­site sex didn’t run around hug­ging each oth­er here, es­pe­cial­ly not when they were as sad as Mar­co. She ex­tend­ed her hand and he grasped it.

“You saved my life and my son’s life. You have noth­ing to thank me for.”

She just shook her head, want­i­ng to stay some place where they all missed her. Her clos­est al­ter­na­tive was to get in­to Sanderas’s car.

As it rolled away, she heard the doc­tor ask,

“And maybe to­mor­row I could show you around the clin­ic, Señora?”

Corin­na hid a smile. Miguel Sanderas didn’t miss much.

“I would be de­light­ed,” the new boss of CTS an­swered, in­clin­ing her head grace­ful­ly.

 

Chap­ter 21

The first thing Corin­na did af­ter some eigh­teen hours of sleep was check with UNPB whether any­one had iden­ti­fied the mys­tery se­quence in her files of ev­i­dence. Its im­por­tance was flagged on the first line of the Readme in­tro­duc­tion. The file name was in all caps. Short of mak­ing the font blink in red, she’d done every­thing pos­si­ble to make it clear it had to be stud­ied now, now, now.

No­body had looked at it yet. They prob­a­bly had lawyers go­ing over her files, not mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gists. Mut­ter­ing un­der her breath, Corin­na did it her­self. She had to both­er Chol­ly for a copy of her own files at what was night for him, and then she had to trek all the way to the Uni­ver­si­ty to find com­put­ers with fast con­nec­tions. Then a ten-sec­ond search of one of the big se­quence data­bas­es gave her the re­sults.

But, af­ter all that, the re­sults made no sense. The pro­teins matched a stan­dard malar­ia-he­pati­tis-en­cephali­tis vac­cine. It would do no harm, that was the good news, but what was it do­ing as part of Kruskal’s sin­is­ter spe­cial or­der? She looked at every­thing. She even looked at the im­pu­ri­ties their lax process hadn’t fil­tered out.

Part of the DNA im­pu­ri­ty matched reg­u­la­to­ry se­quences for a vi­cious flu virus, the part that made it re­pro­duce so well. That was cer­tain­ly nasty, but it hadn’t pro­duced any flu symp­toms. The rest of it matched noth­ing — ex­cept that the su­pe­ri­or search pro­gram she was now us­ing served up match­es to six dif­fer­ent self-splic­ing in­trons. In­trons didn’t oc­cur nat­u­ral­ly in virus­es, but once a hu­man cell was in­fect­ed, these in­trons would cut them­selves out of the se­quence. And when Corin­na did that and searched for the sig­nif­i­cance of what re­mained, an in­vert­ed copy of the brain­wash­ing gene popped out, plain as day. Flip the damn thing back to front, and you had a self-re­pro­duc­ing docil­i­ty dis­ease.

Af­ter what felt like min­utes, she re­al­ized she was for­get­ting to breathe. She took in a bit more air. She ex­haled slow­ly, as if the world might shat­ter if she did it faster. If the two vials that re­al­ly were vac­cines hadn’t worked, she would have suc­cess­ful­ly in­oc­u­lat­ed her­self and Oziel with their aw­ful gene. Talk about not us­ing un­known preps.

She tried to get over her shock. Her hand reached for her new wrist­pad and she called the high­est func­tionary she knew of at UNPB.

When she fi­nal­ly had him on the line, she ex­plained.

“They were plan­ning to, or al­ready are, us­ing pub­lic health vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams to try to in­fect peo­ple with their hap­py gene.”

What!

“Yes. I’d sug­gest halt­ing any pro­grams us­ing malar­ia-he­pati­tis-en­cephali­tis vac­cine un­til the pu­ri­ty of the sup­ply has been checked.”

“I’d say that, too. Thank you for that in­for­ma­tion. I’ll get off the phone, Doc­to­ra, so I can get start­ed on this.”

For the next cou­ple of days, Corin­na just knocked around, still not know­ing what to do. She sup­posed she ought to fly back to New York and get se­ri­ous about look­ing for a job, but not one sin­gle part of her want­ed to do that. The whole idea felt like a chore the size of Mt. Ever­est, so she rat­tled around Cara­cas in­stead. Leira in­vit­ed her to stay at the pent­house for as long as she liked, and she thought, Good idea. Why not? Af­ter one day, she found out why not. Pe­tey was there. Work­ing in a lab for eigh­teen hours a day start­ed to look good.

Mean­while, the UNPB in­ves­ti­ga­tors kept call­ing her for in­for­ma­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tions had been launched in all di­rec­tions. Where had such-and-such been stored in Mor­bier's lab on Mars? Had it al­so been stored any­where else? How about this-and-that? Had it been stored any­where else? One of the first things she'd told them was where to find her sam­ples and her lab serv­er back­up at the Ar­sia base sta­tion. The back­up, she point­ed out, would have an in­ven­to­ry list on it.

Yes, but the prob­lem was there’d been that un­for­tu­nate se­ries of pow­er prob­lems which hit freez­ers and servers. So they were look­ing for pen­nies be­hind the couch, as it were, not in the wal­lets where you’d ex­pect to find them.

“‘Un­for­tu­nate’?” she said. “More like con­ve­nient, no?”

“Well, not so con­ve­nient for the peo­ple who lost ma­te­r­i­al. I un­der­stand there are even some law suits pend­ing for will­ful neg­li­gence, for in­stance from, let me see here, Jonathan Franzen, Tom—”

“They de­stroyed every­body’s work? Not just the ev­i­dence?” Why was she sur­prised? As if any­one who be­lieved in brain­wash­ing would care­ful­ly re­spect oth­er peo­ple’s pri­or­i­ties. If they’d de­stroyed Mei-mei’s work, Tom’s work, and her own for that mat­ter, she was glad she wasn’t there, try­ing to pick up the pieces.

“And Jonathan? Are you se­ri­ous? I mean, I can see him in a snit be­cause some­body slowed down his pub­li­ca­tion sched­ule, but he was the Tech Flunky-in-Chief, for cryin out loud.”

“He was? In­ter­est­ing. Let me make a note of that. In any case, we don't re­al­ly have any­thing on Mor­bier, so—”

“You mean he de­stroys ev­i­dence so there’s no ev­i­dence?”

Did I just say that out loud?

“Well, uh, broad­ly, yes.”

“You know, that makes no sense. That lab was much too big and com­plex for Mor­bier to have cov­ered up every last trace of his part in the pro­ject. He didn’t have the time.”

“Well, yes. That's why we're look­ing for stray sam­ples every­where we can think of.”

“The pro­ject was spread over at least three labs. There’ll be plen­ty of ev­i­dence of his in­volve­ment in the oth­ers.”

“Wal­lis’s lab al­so suf­fered pow­er fail­ures. And Ching’s lab is so huge, we've on­ly start­ed in­ven­to­ry­ing every­thing.”

“Why not ask him? I’d think he’d be glad to help about now.”

“He wasn’t be­fore. He just gave us a re­al­ly long lec­ture about the val­ue of sci­en­tif­ic re­search.”

“Yes, but that was then. Have you asked late­ly?

No, no­body had.

She’d told the high­er-ups at UNPB what she’d done to Ching, and they wrote it down as a clear case of self-de­fense, but no­body seemed to draw the ob­vi­ous con­clu­sion.

“Well, if I might make a sug­ges­tion, set up a video con­fer­ence where Mor­bier can see you ask Ching whether he has any files that in­crim­i­nate him. Mean­ing Mor­bier. I’ll be glad to feed ques­tions to an in­ves­ti­ga­tor, if that would help.”

It would help, they said. They set up the call, and she was sit­ting next to an In­spec­tor Ab­bas, out of cam­era and mic range with a di­rect line to the In­spec­tor's sec­ondary ear piece.

Mor­bier’s head was on one mon­i­tor. He looked just the same, as if he’d nev­er left Bur­bidge and was about to give Corin­na one of his sum­ming-up glances.

Ching’s smil­ing im­age ap­peared on an­oth­er mon­i­tor. He seemed de­light­ed to see every­one. His right arm was in a cast, and it didn’t seem to both­er him one bit.

“Why, Philip,” cried Ching. “You here too? How nice. Yes, in­deed.” His head bobbed up and down in pleased nods.

Corin­na saw a slight shade pass over Mor­bier’s face.

When Ching was asked about his files, he re­spond­ed sun­ni­ly.

“I have lots of files. Lots and lots of files. It’s a very im­por­tant pro­ject. Every­one should see it. I’ll be glad to show you all,” the sweep of his left arm in­clud­ed the world, “the files.”

Even Corin­na was sur­prised at the ex­tent of his good­will. There must have been enough in that in­jec­tor to soz­zle a horse.

“So,” Ab­bas con­tin­ued to Ching, “noth­ing has been lost?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no, not at all.” He wagged his head from side to side and his glass­es slipped askew.

Mor­bier looked green­ish, but his voice, when he spoke, was even and con­trolled.

“I am glad Dr. Ching has his files—”

“And sam­ples, Philip. Every­thing. I have saved,” he made an­oth­er all-en­com­pass­ing sweep of his arm, “every­thing.”

Mor­bier lost an­oth­er frac­tion of his cool­ness, but he con­tin­ued as if no one had spo­ken.

“—but they have noth­ing to do with me.”

Corin­na mur­mured for Ab­bas’s ear on­ly,

“That’s non­sense. Some of the sam­ples will match the ones on Mor­bier’s in­ven­to­ry list. You can bet your bot­tom dol­lar on it.”

“Philip, you old bof­fin,” said Ching with an­oth­er sun­ny smile at Mor­bier’s words, as if he had just now processed what his for­mer col­league had said. “Don’t talk rot. You told me many times that you were most in­ter­est­ed — that’s the way he talks,” he ex­plained kind­ly to the de­tec­tive, “‘most in­ter­est­ed in re­ceiv­ing sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing as a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the suc­cess of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­ject.’ You said—”

Mor­bier in­ter­rupt­ed him abrupt­ly.

“Nor am I re­spon­si­ble for what you may have imag­ined I said.”

“Imag­ined? Oh, no. No, no. Not at all.”

Mor­bier, mean­while, said he would not dis­cuss any­thing fur­ther with­out his so­lic­i­tor pre­sent, and that was the end of that. With­in hours, plen­ty of match­es turned up be­tween Ching’s sam­ples and Mor­bier’s in­ven­to­ry list. The next day she heard that Mor­bier had been charged, was out on bail and was plea bar­gain­ing.

The cov­er-up in the Bur­bidge labs was mas­sive, but, as Corin­na had sus­pect­ed, not to­tal. Her tips had al­ready pro­vid­ed some re­sults, so the au­thor­i­ties de­cid­ed, with un­com­mon log­ic, that she was the best per­son to un­rav­el it all. They hired her for two months, us­ing Mor­bier’s salary for the pur­pose, to close down his, Ching’s, and Wal­lis’s labs, and pre­serve as much ev­i­dence as she could. The irony of be­ing the one sad­dled with pick­ing up the pieces af­ter all would have been fun­ny if it had hap­pened to some­one else. To con­sole her­self, she kept drop­ping in­to lists of things to buy with all that nice, new mon­ey. But then she lec­tured her­self about sav­ing it, since she’d be un­em­ployed all over again once she was done. Good jobs for a mol­e­c­u­lar neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist took far longer than two months to find.

 

Two weeks lat­er, Corin­na watched Mars ap­proach through a space ship’s port­hole for the sec­ond time in her life. She’d had a week of be­ing a celebri­ty on Earth, which, as far as she was con­cerned, was more than enough for the rest of her life. It was a toss-up whether un­nec­es­sary re­porters, of ei­ther sex, or un­nec­es­sary males were the more pes­tif­er­ous. She’d told the sto­ry of the hap­py gene scheme so many times it was start­ing to sound non­sen­si­cal, like a word re­peat­ed too much. Be­sides, stick­ing to a co­her­ent sto­ry was dif­fi­cult, be­cause so many as­pects had to be glossed over, such as the fact that Mar­co knew a bil­lion­aire (“Oziel García has worked for the fam­i­ly”) and the “spon­ta­neous” at­tack on two flit­ters full of se­cu­ri­ty guards (“Di­cas­til­lo ap­par­ent­ly land­ed in the mid­dle of some gang ter­ri­to­ry is­sues”).

She’d tak­en all sorts of job ap­pli­ca­tion ma­te­ri­als to work on dur­ing the long, bor­ing voy­age to Mars. She’d tak­en tech­ni­cal da­ta to help pre­pare her for what she need­ed to do in clos­ing the labs down. She hadn’t looked at any of it. She used the lack of her trusty lap­top as an ex­cuse, even though UNPB had giv­en her a sleek new one with the lat­est, great­est quan­tum mem­o­ry stor­age and nifty nan­otech zip­pers in the case. Eat­ing, sleep­ing, and veg­e­tat­ing with oth­er bored pas­sen­gers in front of a wide screen video was all she’d ac­com­plished. She sup­posed it made sense that she was ex­haust­ed enough to sleep for a week, but it still felt strange. It didn’t help that the ship was ar­riv­ing in the mid­dle of the night by her body clock, even if it was the mid­dle of the af­ter­noon at the space port.

When a pen­e­trat­ing voice came over the pub­lic ad­dress sys­tem, she found she’d fall­en asleep while wait­ing for Mars to grow large enough to land on.

“We need to re­quest every­one’s co­op­er­a­tion with an Ac­com­mo­da­tion Alert. The down­stream con­se­quences of the flight can­cel­la­tion three weeks ago—”

That had been one of the CTS-gen­er­at­ed “emer­gen­cies” for her sake.

“—and an­oth­er can­cel­la­tion due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties this morn­ing have re­sult­ed in two hun­dred and thir­ty two pas­sen­gers who need quar­ters. Pas­sen­gers with op­tions for al­ter­nate lo­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion are ur­gent­ly re­quest­ed to make the nec­es­sary arrange­ments, so that the max­i­mum num­ber of ho­tel beds are avail­able for tran­sients.”

Well, that’s me, thought Corin­na. She’d been booked in­to a ho­tel at UNPB ex­pense be­fore she caught her clip­per flight to Bur­bidge, but un­der the cir­cum­stances, she was sure Ani­ut and Mo­mo would put her up. Be­sides, al­though the space they had might be a stor­age clos­et, Ani­ut’s cook­ing beat any ho­tel.

She mes­saged them, and a re­ply bounced right back say­ing they’d be de­light­ed. She hadn’t specif­i­cal­ly told any­one when she was ar­riv­ing, since she didn’t want them to feel oblig­ed to trav­el all the way to the space port to meet her, but her ar­rival was no se­cret and they’d prob­a­bly been ex­pect­ing to hear from her. The re­ply added that they hoped she wouldn’t mind shar­ing on the same ba­sis as be­fore. No, she cer­tain­ly wouldn’t, es­pe­cial­ly since it was prob­a­bly an­oth­er waif of a friend of theirs who’d been bumped by the same cas­cad­ing se­ries of flight stuff-ups.

The next time she woke up, it was be­cause the ship’s ori­en­ta­tion had changed as it docked with the or­bital trans­fer sta­tion, and now one of the safe­ty belt buck­les was dig­ging in­to her ribs. She dim­ly re­mem­bered the strap-your­self-in-an­nounce­ment, but she didn’t re­mem­ber vague­ing out be­fore it was even over. She sleep­walked through the trans­fer and in­to the or­bital shut­tle. She sleep­walked out of the shut­tle and in­to the se­cu­ri­ty con­course at the end of which—

—was Oziel.

Sud­den­ly and com­plete­ly awake, she looked at him as he looked at her and saw noth­ing else. Why wasn’t he at Fog­gy Bot­tom? He looked like he might leap the se­cu­ri­ty con­course in a sin­gle bound to reach her. That crazy blond dye job of his came as a shock. Again. She was nev­er go­ing to get used to it. The alarm­ing­ly black roots were about a fin­ger’s breadth long by now.

Then she no­ticed a herd of pro­fes­sion­al-grade cam­eras tar­get­ing her, and re­al­ized all four of the re­porters based on Mars were tak­ing her damn pic­ture. Enough al­ready, was all she could think. She tried to make her­self as ex­pres­sion­less as pos­si­ble, prepara­to­ry to telling them that any pic­tures and in­ter­views would have to wait. She was au­tho­riz­ing noth­ing right now. Thank God there were pri­va­cy laws these days that gave her the pow­er to tell them to get out.

Af­ter she’d passed through all the sen­sors check­ing for any con­tra­band, she dealt with the re­porters first. She was so an­noyed they’d in­trud­ed — and at a time like this! — she had no trou­ble giv­ing them her cold­est don’t–mess–with–the–sci­en­tist face. They melt­ed away.

But Oziel was star­ing at the gray-blue util­i­ty car­pet­ing on the floor, hands clasped be­hind his back. He seemed to be in for­mal mode. Clos­er up, he didn’t look like he want­ed to leap any­where. She must have been read­ing too much in­to it.

Corin­na hugged Ani­ut. Then she — she sup­posed if she hugged Mo­mo, she bet­ter hug Oziel too, or it would look fun­ny. But he could have been at mil­i­tary pa­rade rest, ex­cept that his eyes weren’t for­ward. Hug­ging wasn’t some­thing peo­ple did dur­ing pa­rade rest. Maybe she bet­ter not hug Mo­mo.

Damn those re­porters. Now every­thing was awk­ward and con­strained.

“It’s so nice to see you all again,” she said.

Oziel looked up when she hap­pened to be look­ing at him.

“Yes,” he said.

That was all. He went back to look­ing at the floor. He seemed … well, ner­vous, if that was pos­si­ble. She’d nev­er seen him ner­vous about any­thing, and they’d gone through things much worse than meet­ing a shut­tle.

Was it some­thing she’d done? Or hadn’t done? Ac­tu­al­ly, now that she thought about it, she was feel­ing kind of ner­vous her­self.

This is stu­pid. She made her­self slow down with a deep breath. Maybe she should stop jump­ing to con­clu­sions and just ask.

“What brings you here?” she said.

For a mo­ment, his face grew ex­pres­sion­less and im­pas­sive, al­most as if he was an­gry and try­ing not to show it — try­ing not to show some­thing, any­way — but then the look dis­ap­peared and he an­swered with a small smile.

“One of those re­porters you just chased off paid for me to come out here and take her over the ground we cov­ered, in the main base and out­side.”

“Oh! I’m sor­ry. Was this part of what you’d au­tho­rized her to do?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t—”

An­oth­er woman came bound­ing up, car­ry­ing a pro­fes­sion­al re­porter’s vid cam­era. Was there an end­less sup­ply of these peo­ple? This one looked young enough to be an in­tern. Ap­par­ent­ly that’s what she was, be­cause she didn’t re­mem­ber to re­quest per­mis­sion be­fore start­ing with the ques­tions.

“Hi! I’m so glad I caught you! You’ve prob­a­bly al­ready talked to the oth­er re­porters, but I hope you’ll con­sid­er giv­ing me your take on what you’ll be do­ing at Bur­bidge.” She point­ed her mi­cro­phone at Corin­na, and, not­ing Oziel’s pres­ence with a nod, added, “Are you two an item now?”

Be­fore that last, Corin­na had mere­ly been tired. Now she frowned. An item, in­deed. Stu­pid­est term she’d ever heard. The in­tern looked tak­en aback but she got over it im­me­di­ate­ly. Oziel, on the oth­er hand, did not. He was back to hav­ing no ex­pres­sion at all, stand­ing like a stat­ue, star­ing at the floor.

“I’m not giv­ing any in­ter­views,” Corin­na said slow­ly and clear­ly, not deign­ing to no­tice the id­i­ot­ic ques­tion.

“Oh, I’m re­al sor­ry to hear that. Well, I’ll get in touch with you to make arrange­ments for lat­er.” Then she turned to Oziel, not giv­ing up.

“So? Are you two an item?” she asked.

He looked up. If his ex­pres­sion had been turned on her, Corin­na would have felt like crawl­ing in­to a safe and pulling it closed af­ter her.

“Did you not hear the Doc­to­ra?” he said, look­ing down at the re­porter as if she bare­ly came up to his waist.

“Well, if she speaks for you then you two must be an item.” The woman was grin­ning all over her fatu­ous face.

“If all the peo­ple who don’t want to talk to you were her part­ners, she’d be a very busy woman.”

His ex­pres­sion seemed to get through to the in­tern.

“Uh, well, um,” she said, and dis­ap­peared.

Corin­na breathed a sigh of re­lief that he’d got rid of the pest with­out say­ing any­thing print­able.

The four of them were gath­ered around Ani­ut’s kitchen table be­fore Corin­na re­al­ly re­cov­ered from her ir­ri­ta­tion. Oziel’s for­mal­i­ty seemed to be fad­ing at about the same rate. Was he wor­ry­ing about what she thought while she wor­ried about what he thought?

She’d been grad­u­al­ly re­al­iz­ing that when Ani­ut said she’d be shar­ing the tiny room “on the same ba­sis as be­fore,” she meant with the same per­son as be­fore. Oziel was apol­o­giz­ing about this.

“If I’d known this was go­ing to hap­pen,” he was say­ing, “I would have found some oth­er time to show re­porters around.”

So he’d picked this time on pur­pose. He’d get paid no mat­ter when he showed the re­porter around, so it had to have been to meet her flight com­ing in. But then why wasn’t he hap­pi­er to see her? Maybe he’d had sec­ond thoughts once he saw her again. Or maybe he just thought it would be nice to get to­geth­er again, the four of them, old friends who’d been through the war to­geth­er. She told her­self there was noth­ing wrong with that.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s okay. Don’t wor­ry. We shared the room be­fore. We’re not on worse terms now. I guess.”

“No,” he said im­me­di­ate­ly.

Then, when Ani­ut start­ed dis­trib­ut­ing bed­ding and Corin­na ob­ject­ed to his in­sis­tence that she take the one foam pad, he seemed ready to sleep out on the sur­face in a suit. She gave up and took the pad.

Ani­ut pulled del­i­ca­cies out of the cool­er and off the stove un­til the table was piled with pre­serves and pick­les in jars, with bread, with cakes on plates, and with down­right good toma­toes — no doubt Mo­mo’s pri­vate sup­ply.

“This may be the mo­ment,” said Corin­na, grin­ning in an­tic­i­pa­tion, “to show you what I brought. I had the usu­al twen­ty ki­lo lug­gage al­lowance, but, of course, I couldn’t car­ry any­thing I’d need to take back, since I’ve al­ready got at least twen­ty ki­los here. So I filled my bag up with….”

She pulled out a gold­en jar of cloud­ber­ry pre­serves to the sound of Ani­ut’s de­light­ed gasp, fol­lowed by pick­led her­ring, and a ki­lo of pow­dered milk made from milk, not plas­tic. Last, she pulled out a pint of re­al, true sour cream from a cold box, which she’d kept care­ful­ly charged every mo­ment she’d had ac­cess to a pow­er source. Ani­ut was near­ly jump­ing with de­light. Next, to Mo­mo Corin­na slid a foil-wrapped some­thing that had filled the freez­er side of the cold box. He un­wrapped one end of the three ki­lo pack­age to find a slab of tu­na. Corin­na could have sworn he had tears in his eyes. To Oziel she hand­ed the re­main­ing con­tents of her case: two of the biggest bags of the best Venezue­lan cof­fee she’d been able to find.

¡Dios san­to! ¡Café!” He stood up, ob­vi­ous­ly to start mak­ing cof­fee im­me­di­ate­ly, but stopped and turned to her, one of his in­can­des­cent smiles il­lu­mi­nat­ing his face.

She felt her own smile light up, and felt her­self lean to­ward him and then just kept mov­ing. They had their de­layed hug af­ter all.

When she sat back down, she tried to make sure she wasn’t glow­ing too ob­vi­ous­ly. Now, at last, it felt like com­ing home.

“By the way,” she said, just af­ter Oziel had fin­ished mak­ing a dread­ful rack­et, grind­ing cof­fee beans in Ani­ut’s blender, “I’m for­get­ting. Mar­co said to tell you that they all miss you at home.”

Some of the in­can­des­cence left his face.

,” he said, mut­ter­ing it to the blender. “Me too.”

“Any­way,” he smiled again at Corin­na and went back to mea­sur­ing cof­fee in­to a clean cloth Ani­ut had giv­en him to use for a fil­ter, “what ex­act­ly hap­pened in Cara­cas? Mar­co sent me a com­plete em­pana­da of a mes­sage. He made it sound like the army had been called out.”

As the aro­ma of cof­fee filled the kitchen, she launched in­to a de­tailed de­scrip­tion, start­ing with the blue silk room and the dread­ful grav­i­ty. How­ev­er, be­fore she even reached the point when the guards were bel­low­ing in a cloud of flour, Oziel tapped her arm.

“You know, this is all wrong. This ei­ther waits till af­ter you eat, or you eat while you talk. We can’t have some­one who still hasn’t gained her weight back wast­ing her time like this.”

Corin­na came back to here and now with an amused puff of laugh­ter.

“What? You’re go­ing to make me eat my veg­eta­bles, like a re­cal­ci­trant tod­dler?”

“Mm-hm,” he nod­ded firm­ly, “if you need to be tak­en care of like one.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, grin­ning and tak­ing a small help­ing of tu­na sashi­mi that Mo­mo had cut from the now un­frozen end and her third help­ing of the par­tic­u­lar­ly de­li­cious, herbed, won­ton-y things. Ani­ut looked on hap­pi­ly, her eyes like hor­i­zon­tal com­mas.

The four of them talked and ate, and then ate some more un­til fi­nal­ly they were too full to al­low their brains to sus­tain a con­ver­sa­tion.

 

Corin­na lay back un­der the sil­ver blan­ket on the nar­row foam pad in the nar­row lit­tle room, hands clasped un­der her head, and stared at the ceil­ing. Now it fi­nal­ly felt like it was re­al­ly over and they had won. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that still didn’t solve the prob­lem of what came af­ter these two months. She was go­ing to have to find a job do­ing some­thing, some­where, some­how.

Be­fore she could get rolling, wor­ry­ing about it, Oziel came in. She knew as plain­ly as if he’d spo­ken that he was giv­ing her time to set­tle in with­out hav­ing him look­ing on. She’d re­al­ized dur­ing din­ner that she didn’t ac­tu­al­ly need to get used to his crazy blond hair. At the rate she was go­ing, it would all be black again long be­fore she’d man­aged it. He was wear­ing one of Mo­mo’s big vests over his bare chest and sweat­pants held up with what looked like string. He’d ob­vi­ous­ly felt he had to bor­row some­thing to wear. He bus­ied him­self re­fold­ing his blan­kets, putting his pil­low in place. He gave her as much space as if they were two linework­ers who hap­pened to be in the same dorm. Ex­cept that it was very in­con­sid­er­ate of him to be so easy on the eyes. She looked back at the ceil­ing.

“It’s fun­ny,” she said, still look­ing at the ceil­ing. “We seem to be do­ing every­thing back­wards. We sleep to­geth­er with­out sleep­ing to­geth­er. Now we’re liv­ing to­geth­er with­out liv­ing to­geth­er.”

She could tell he turned to­wards her.

“Corin­na,” he said slow­ly, as if the mat­ter re­quired se­ri­ous thought, “do you think we should do some­thing about it?”

 

Glos­sary of for­eign words

terms of en­dear­ment or af­fec­tion
queri­da f. (-o m.)
dar­ling, dear (lit. ‘de­sired one’), al­so used be­tween close friends
mí cielo
my sky
mí amor
my love
mí vi­da
my life
mí hi­ja f. (-o m.)
=mí ’ija, mi­ja
my dear (among friends, not lovers) (lit. ‘my daugh­ter’, ‘my son’)

Ex­cla­ma­tions
Dios san­to
holy God
Dios ayúdame
God help me
pu­ra ver­dad
pure truth
Ey, Oy
in­ter­jec­tions, like “oh”
raro
weird
perdón
par­don [me]

Food
arepa
un­leav­ened fried and baked bread made from maize, eat­en with or with­out fill­ing
em­pana­da
a baked or fried pat­ty with sweet or sa­vory fill­ing, al­so used fig­u­ra­tive­ly to mean mixed up or con­fused

Terms of an­noy­ance, anger, den­i­gra­tion
qué vaina
what non­sense
pu­toneros
men who vis­it whores
mier­da
shit
hos­tia
lit. "com­mu­nion wafer," part of me ca­jo en hos­tia, "I shit on the wafer"
lo­co
fool, crazy

Russ­ian terms of af­fec­tion
gol­ubchen­ka, gol­ubchi­ki
dear (lit. "lit­tle pi­geon(s)"; dif­fer­ent end­ings are dif­fer­ent de­clen­sions)
dushen­ka
dear (lit. "lit­tle soul")

Oth­er
’s muerte?
is (he) dead?