Lightless (28 page)

Her tears had dried. Althea rested her head against her ship's familiar metal, and breathed, and watched as the holographic diodes died back down into darkness.

There was one thing left she had not tried. A week and a half ago, even a few days ago she would not even have allowed herself to consider it. But she had nothing left to try, and still the
Ananke
was broken.

She could talk to Ivan.

Matthew Gale had broken Althea's ship. Matthew Gale had been Ivan's friend and partner for ten years. Ivan already had admitted that he knew something about what Gale had done, something about “a little bit of chaos.” Surely if Althea questioned him more closely, he would be able to tell her precisely what Gale had done. Ida already had made it clear that she had little interest in interrogating Ivan about the ship, and Althea did not want to have to confess that she'd been speaking to Ivan against orders. Ida Stays already hated her. If Althea admitted that—or if she even troubled Ida again without the
Ananke
being functional—she doubted she would ever work, or even see Earth, again.

Gagnon had kept his word; Althea had not guarded Ivan's cell since the day Milla Ivanov and Constance Harper had been on board. But Ida had taken to leaving Ivan alone in the white room for hours at a time, and Althea knew that Ida had already left today. Ivan would be alone, unguarded. The camera in the white room wasn't working; no one would know what Althea had talked about with Ivan. They wouldn't even have any proof that she had said anything to him at all.

Slowly, without feeling that she had really made a decision at all, Althea stood up and began to walk up the
Ananke
's spiraling hall.

She had not really, truly made a decision, she felt, even when she was standing in front of the door to the white room, even when without hesitation she turned the knob and walked in.

Ivan sat in the center of the white room, the bow of his back very tense. Althea could not speak, did not know what to say, and so she only walked forward, her boots making dull sounds against the floor.

“What happened?” Ivan asked, tense, before she had come into his line of sight.

“What?” Althea asked, slowing down.

He twisted around to glance at her and did not seem surprised to see her there. Her shoes, Althea realized. He'd recognized she wasn't Ida from the sound of her walking. “With the lights,” he said. “What happened?”

“The ship,” said Althea. “She malfunctioned again.”

Ivan looked up at her sharply as she came to stand a little distance away from him. Althea felt pinned, pierced. It was different seeing him and speaking to him than it was just to speak to him; he was more real somehow, not a voice from behind a metal wall, yet he was different somehow, too, now that she could see his blue eyes, the way they searched her face, as if he was reading things off of her she did not know were there to be read.

Ivan leaned back slowly in his chair. The chains around his wrists clinked with the movement.

“Why did you come here, Althea?” he asked.

“I need your help,” she said.

This was it, the point from which she could not return, yet Althea had a strange fear that she had passed the extremal point already and simply had not recognized it.

Against his silence she began to explain, the words falling nervously from her as if from a broken dam, all in a rush. “I can't figure out what Gale did. You knew him. You could tell me; you could tell me what exactly it is that he did. You know Gale, so you know what he did. You told me something about ‘a little bit of chaos'; what does that mean? I can't— I can't fix the computer. I need you to tell me.”

“First of all,” said Ivan, and there was something dark in his tone, “his name is Mattie.” He cocked his head to the side. “If you're going to try to convince me to help you, you're not off to a good start. Call him by the name I use; that's how you generate a rapport.”

Althea's tears had started to flow again. It happened without her volition, without her understanding. She stood very still, like prey in sight of a wolf, and for the first time in weeks—perhaps for the first time since she had caught him dressed all in black and toying with her computer—she was afraid of Leontios Ivanov.

He did not speak again immediately. Althea could not find the courage to speak, and only stood and let him take her apart with his eyes.

He said, “Did you come here to make a deal with me, Althea?”

“I just wanted to ask you a question.”

“Information is my only currency right now, Althea. It's my only power. I'm not just going to give that away because you asked me nicely.”

Althea swallowed. She felt very small, hopeless and desperate, in that vast white room and under Ivan's piercing attention.

“You're smart,” Ivan said. If he had said this to her before, Althea's heart would have glowed at the compliment. Now she felt only chilled. “You must have known, coming in here, that you would have to make a deal.”

“What do you want?”

He did not look surprised. At the moment Althea could not imagine anything so fallible in him as being surprised. “What will you offer?”

“Food,” said Althea. “Drink. A word with Domitian.” Ivan was stone-faced, and even to her own ears her offer seemed petty, poor. She said, “I have nothing else to offer,” and heard her own desperation.

“And why would I want food, or drink, or a useless conversation with Domitian?” Ivan asked. “Think bigger, Althea.”

“I have nothing else to offer.”

The way Ivan looked at her was almost, Althea hardly dared to think, pitying.

“No,” she said in response to that look, to what it said without saying.
“No.”

“Not even for your ship?” Ivan asked with a peculiar mocking emphasis on “your ship.”

“I can't do it,” she said, and braced herself and said it outright. “I can't set you free. I'm risking enough just being here, just talking to you. The System could throw me in prison, maybe even execute me, just for talking to you like this!”

“And that,” said Ivan, cruelly ironic, deliberate, “would be terrible.”

“Don't do that to me,” Althea said, caught between anger and pleading. “Ivan, I need your help.”

For an instant, a desperate hopeful instant, she thought she saw pity in his face again, pity for her.

“Fine,” he said. “But here are my terms. They can't be negotiated. They can't be changed.”

Althea took a shuddering breath. “I can't set you free, Ivan.”

“I want two things from you before I tell you a damn thing,” Ivan said. “First I want you to tell me something, and then I want you to do something for me. I want you to tell me the mission of the
Ananke
. And then I want you to lengthen the chains on my arms.”

She couldn't do it. That was her first thought; it was so overwhelming that for a moment she could not speak for fear that nothing would come out of her mouth other than “I can't, I can't.” Then she swallowed and asked, “Why?”

“The first,” said Ivan, “is so that I can actually diagnose your problem for you. I can't tell you what's wrong with the ship if I don't know how it's supposed to work, Althea.”

That much was probably true. Althea's mouth was dry when she said, “And what about the second?”

In answer, Ivan lifted his arms for the first time since she had walked into the room. They were arrested a few short inches away from the chair's armrests by the chains, which had been hooked shut several links above the full length of the chain. It had to be uncomfortable. It had to be humiliating.

“Ida and Domitian have been shortening them,” he said, and she shifted her attention reluctantly from the chains to see that he had been watching her the entire time. “It's not very comfortable.”

Lengthening the chains would lengthen his reach. Fully extended, he probably could reach above the top of the table or perhaps up to Althea's waist if she stood right beside him. He would be less contained, less well trapped.

“You're not going to…do anything, are you?” she said. “If I lengthen the…” She trailed off with a gesture.

“It's just for my comfort,” Ivan said, and she wanted to believe him.

“Domitian and Ida will know—”

“—when they unchain me,” Ivan finished. “No, they won't, not if I keep my arms down. When they bring me back, they'll shorten the chains again, but they won't know they were ever lengthened.”

It would be a brief comfort, but Althea could nearly justify it in her head.

What she could not justify was the betrayal of her ship and of Domitian.

“I can't tell you about the
Ananke,
” she said. “It was the highest of my oaths when I took this position, that the mission of this ship be kept a secret.”

“No,” Ivan said, “the
highest
of your oaths is to obey the System, and you're not doing that very well, are you?”

Althea set her jaw.

“Look,” Ivan said, seeming to relent. “There is no working surveillance in this room. Ida can't get me to tell her what she wants to know; there's no way I'll tell her about this. I understand loyalty, Althea, and I understand keeping secrets, but I can only help you if you tell me this.”

This was all too much, and Althea was so exhausted. She ran her shaking hands over her face and could not even think how to decide.

“And anyway,” said Ivan, “I'll be dead in a few days.”

Althea lowered her hands and stared at him, at the shadows under his eyes and the pallor of his skin, and could not decide if she was afraid of him or for him, only that she was overwhelmingly afraid.

“I can't,” she said, and she whispered it, but it seemed very loud even at a whisper and in that vast white room.

“Then I won't help you.”

“You have to understand,” Althea began, driven by some incomprehensible impulse to explain herself to him, to explain Domitian, and the
Ananke,
and the System, and her own fear.

“I understand,” Ivan said, but there was neither absolution nor forgiveness in his voice.

Althea tried again. “You know if something happens because I can't fix the ship, you'll die, too.”

Ivan leaned forward. There was an intensity to him, Althea decided, and that was what made him so frightening.

“Like I said,” he told her. “I'll be dead in a few days.”

There was nothing she could possibly have said to that, so she let her fear drive her from the room. The door swung shut with a heavy clang behind her and nearly covered up the sound of her name being called from a nearby intercom.

“Althea,” said Domitian's voice in a tone inching steadily from annoyed to angry. “Althea, come in.”

She could have just as well fixed the
Ananke
on the spot as not replied instantly to that tone. Hoping only that she did not sound too shaken, she opened the connection and said, “I read.”

“Control room. Now.”

She went.

It was a testament to how rattled she was that she did not realize immediately that she had walked into an ambush.

Domitian was sitting in the main chair, which had been swung around to face the door. Gagnon leaned with affected casualness against the wall and swung the door shut once she entered, and she found herself in the center of the tiny room, the object of both men's attention.

“What is it?” she asked, although she already could guess.

Domitian had his hands folded in front of his face, bent elbows braced on the arms of his chair. He took his time before speaking, and that frightened Althea, that long, thoughtful silence.

“Althea,” he said. “We need to know when the ship will be fixed.”

“Soon,” Althea said, her fingers trembling against her sides; she stuck them in her pockets. They knocked against the tools she carried, the bits of wire, the slender silver box cutter, sharp and flat.

“When?” said Domitian. “An exact time frame, Althea.”

For a moment she contemplated a lie. In the next moment the very idea shamed her; she turned her head aside without answering.

“Do you even know what's wrong with it?” Gagnon asked from behind her, and when Althea dared to glance Domitian's way again, he did not look surprised at her lack of an answer.

“I have some ideas,” said Althea, but her only idea was a wolf in a white room.

“But you don't
know,
” Gagnon pressed.

“Not exactly, no.”

She had the distinct impression that the two men were holding a conversation with each other over her head.

“If the computer can't be fixed,” Domitian said at last, “then it must be deactivated.”

Her head snapped up.

“What?” She had misheard, she must have—even though she knew she hadn't.

“The dead man's switch is at the base of the ship,” Domitian said. “The ship can be operated by the crew without the computer.”

“Not completely,” said Althea. “Not perfectly, not entirely…”

“But it can be operated well enough to fly, to sustain life, and to perform the basic experiments of our mission,” said Domitian.

It was true, but Althea would not admit it.

“Stopping this insanity is worth the price of a few lost experiments,” Domitian said. “All the System needs to know is if the process this ship is designed to test is physically possible. That is the core purpose of this ship, and we can achieve that without the computer. Everything else the computer was designed to test can be tested in later experiments, but there will be no second ship with a black hole core if this ship fails. With the amount of resources the System has sunk into this mission, we must succeed or there will be consequences for all three of us. And there is still the matter of whether Ivanov can be removed from the premises while the computer is operational. Miss Stays is not happy, and do you realize what her unhappiness—”