Authors: Nancy Kress
* * *
She heard them whispering in bed, after they thought she was asleep. A stern-looking woman had come to collect Demetria, thanking the Blumbergs in flawless English for their “hospitality to my employer’s daughter.” Uncle Martin had set up a fold-away cot in the master bedroom for Amanda, the same cot she’d slept on during previous visits, although then it had been set up in the living room. No one mentioned the change.
“She’s growing up,” Uncle Martin whispered. “You have to accept that, Kris.”
“She’s only fourteen!”
“She’s been through a lot to age her.”
Well, that was certainly true. Amanda had always liked Uncle Martin best, even though it was Aunt Kristen who was her blood relative. Aunt Kristen was a lot like Daddy, quick-tempered and sometimes even sarcastic.
“I love her so much,” Aunt Kristen whispered brokenly, and immediately Amanda felt bad for preferring Uncle Martin. “If Tom never returns…”
“Sssshhh, dear heart.”
“I just don’t trust that boy. He’s too rich and too self-assured and too presumptuous.”
“He’s been raised with all the money in the world, and apparently Ouranis treats him like an adult. He was explaining to me after dinner the decisions involved in their mining operations, I asked him about Pierce.”
The bedclothes stirred. “You didn’t!”
“Yes. Carefully and casually, of course. Konstantin isn’t stupid. He sees Pierce’s excesses. But he’s loyal to his father and anyway he disliked what Stefanak was doing, especially the kidnapping of Tom. He seems to worship leading physicists.”
“Which accounts for his exaggerated attraction to Amanda.”
“Amanda has plenty of attractions of her own,” Uncle Martin said, and a good warm feeling spread through her. At least Uncle Martin understood.
“She’s becoming beautiful, isn’t she?” Aunt Kristen said. “Like Karen. I only want her to be careful.”
“We’ll be careful for her.”
“But Dr. Ewing this afternoon … identifying the body … all frozen and stiff like that…”
“Don’t think about it.”
“It was Pierce’s men who did it, no matter what the police said. Why? Because of Tom’s work?”
“I don’t know,” Uncle Martin said. “We may never know,” and both of them fell silent.
Later, when she could hear them snoring, Amanda lay awake. Her mind wouldn’t stop racing. Dr. Ewing’s body, they meant. He must have been found, maybe out on the Martian plain. And he’d been killed by Admiral Pierce’s men. Maybe he’d had an allergic reaction to a Pandya Dose, like Aunt Kristen said could sometimes happen. Or maybe they’d murdered him because of something he’d been working on. What if it was the same something her father had been working on? Amanda shivered. And all this was mixed up in her mind with Konstantin’s kisses and lying next to him on the sofa and his offer to help find her father in any way he could, with any money he could. Money, and physics, and kisses, and soldiers, and fathers.…
Her aunt and uncle still snored. Amanda pulled the pillow over her head but it didn’t help, she still couldn’t sleep. For hours and hours, she couldn’t sleep.
Where was her father?
TWENTY-SIX
ARTEMIS SYSTEM
T
he flyer approached Space Tunnel #437 leading from Caligula System to Allenby System. The computer was in control, but in a few moments Kaufman was going to have to take the helm and use Magdalena’s clearances for the tunnel. The package she’d negotiated on the
Murasaki
had included clearances for the Caligula–Allenby and Allenby–Artemis Tunnels, bringing them to the populous and crucial Artemis System. Military flyers would have already beamed the data ahead, and Kaufman anticipated no difficulty with tunnel guards. Not yet. The current difficulties were all within the flyer.
Rory was still out, cuffed securely to his chair. Capelo sat in the pilot’s chair, frowning at Marber’s handheld, oblivious to everything except whatever was going on in his head. Magdalena slumped in her seat at the back of the craft, but Kaufman thought she could probably hear. She wasn’t unconscious, wasn’t catatonic. She was somewhere deep in an abyss of despair he couldn’t imagine and didn’t know how to handle. Magdalena angry, Magdalena calculating, Magdalena vengeful, even Magdalena self-deluded because her delusion kept alive hope … all those Kaufman could have coped with. They went with negotiating. But this profound despair was outside his own emotional range, and he knew it.
“You never had a child,” Marbet said softly, watching him. “Poor Lyle.”
Poor
Lyle
? Surely it was the person with a child who was in trouble here. Added to which, Marbet had never had one either. Pushing down his dislike of her assumed superiority, he whispered, “Will you bring her out of this? We need her, Marbet.”
“I can’t. She would never respond to me. It has to be you, Lyle.” She got up, went into the head, and closed the door decisively, leaving him effectively alone with Magdalena. Capelo didn’t count; he was oblivious.
Kaufman took the seat next to her and put a hand on her arm. “Magdalena. It’s Lyle Kaufman.”
To his astonishment, she twisted violently and put her arms around him, hanging on as if she were drowning.
Oh, shit.
He did his best. He held her, patting her back, offering the comfort of another human touch. She murmured something. He didn’t hear it and leaned his ear closer to her mouth.
“Sualeen…”
The name meant nothing to him. Helplessly he held her tighter, not knowing what else to do, and she lifted her head and kissed him hard.
It was the last thing he’d expected. After the initial shock, he understood: This was the only response Magdalena had to men, other than various types of challenge. Combat or copulation. Pity flooded him, along with impatience. It was the first time since he’d set eyes on Magdalena that he felt no desire whatsoever. Not the place, not the time, and Marbet … He kissed Magdalena back, thinking,
Oh God
.
A moment later, however, she pulled away and bit him on the neck, hard. Before he could even react, she sat up straight. “Don’t ever do that again, Kaufman. You understand?”
She
had kissed
him
. And she didn’t even realize it. But somehow his embrace had jolted her into her old combative responses … or something.
Kaufman tried to keep his tone level. “What’s in your saliva, Magdalena? Am I going to die the same death as Hofsetter?”
“Nothing’s in my saliva.” Her startlingly blue eyes gleamed at him, and Kaufman realized she wasn’t back to her habitual responses after all. Or, rather, she was, but only as habit, role, a part she was trapped into playing. The core of her was elsewhere, and what Kaufman saw in her eyes was not sane. He put his hand to his neck. Blood flowed freely.
She said, “They’re going to pay, Lyle. All of them. They’re going to pay.”
It was what he’d wanted from her, what he’d needed, what he had been going to bring about himself, if Hofsetter hadn’t, out of necessity. But not with this sharp hard shine of madness. Her voice came out too high, and when she got up, her usually graceful movements were jerky, as if something else controlled her. Kaufman, who had never been religious in any way, thought suddenly of demon possession.
She squeezed between the seats and plucked Tom Capelo from the pilot’s chair as if he’d been so much superfluous padding. Capelo, incredibly, went on scowling at his handheld, and Kaufman saw that her pushing him aside hadn’t even registered. Capelo had heard nothing of Kaufman’s exchanges with Magdalena, had no realization of the volcano roaring within the cabin. The physicist was absorbed in his physics, and the rest of the world ceased to exist even if it was about to erupt and obliterate him.
They were both nuts.
Magdalena sat in the pilot’s chair. Kaufman hurried forward and moved Capelo as unceremoniously as Magdalena had. Capelo took the chair behind them.
Kaufman didn’t have much time. He couldn’t be sure what she would do next. “Magdalena. You need to go through the next two tunnels according to Hofsetter’s clearances. Then in Artemis System—”
“I’m going to blast Artemis System to hell,” she said, so casually that he was stopped for a moment. She meant it. Kaufman had investigated the totally illegal firepower aboard the flyer. She could take out at least Artemis Station and a few warships before they got her.
“There’s a better way,” he said. “You can—”
“There’s no better way.” Utter, casual certainty. She knew destruction was her response in the way Kaufman knew he needed oxygen to breathe.
His job just got a lot more difficult.
Marbet came out of the head just as Magdalena pushed the flyer into maximum acceleration. Marbet was thrown back against the bulkhead, slid to the deck, and lay there. At least three gees pushed Kaufman against the back of his chair; he couldn’t help her. A sudden panic gripped him. Marbet …
“I’m … all right,” she called.
“Stay where you are.” As if she had a choice. Kaufman couldn’t lift a hand. “Magdalena!”
She ignored him, but she also couldn’t keep it up. The auto course was set for the Caligula–Allenby Tunnel, and the flyer decelerated as it approached. They went through. Kaufman heard Marbet pull herself into a chair. He realized that Magdalena had not remarked on Kendai’s absence or Rory’s bonds. Perhaps she hadn’t even noticed them.
“Flyer,” said a voice from the single warship at the tunnel, “Identify self.”
“Flyer from the
Sans Merci
, civilian, travel permit number 1264A, issued July eleven,” Magdalena said in her strange, high voice. “Four persons aboard, citizen IDs in data packet.”
“Flyer from the
Sans Merci
cleared for Space Tunnel Number Four-three-seven, four persons aboard, no docking clearance,” the voice said. “Proceed through the tunnel.”
In another moment they were in the Allenby System, one hundred fifty light-years away. All three gas giants were visible, almost in conjunction. The flyer was cleared at the other side of the tunnel and again Magdalena accelerated wildly, flying toward Tunnel #210 and Artemis System.
Kaufman had two choices. He could allow her to clear the tunnel and then overpower her before she started firing at anything in Artemis System, or he could take the controls away from her now. He didn’t know what other personal weapons she carried besides the poisonous talon. If she’d had weapons installed at one of the chop shops in the Belt—and she probably had—they could be really nasty. Best to do it as soon as she slowed this lunatic acceleration. His chest hurt; every breath was a torture. “M-Mag—”
She took no notice of him. Kaufman fought to stay conscious. Most likely Capelo and Marbet had already blacked out; they were unused to this. Kaufman had been once, but no longer. Why wasn’t Magdalena out? Then he understood: She had augmented breathing capacity.
After what seemed infinity, the flyer decelerated. Kaufman gathered his strength. He had never strapped himself in; neither had she. Her first acceleration had left no time for such niceties. He stood.
She said, “If you try to interfere with me, Kaufman, I’ll kill you.” Casual, matter-of-fact, deadly. “And I can. Before you can do anything at all to me.”
He sat down again. “Magdalena, don’t just go into Artemis System shooting. We’ll all die, and—”
“Too bad.”
“The fabric of spacetime itself is at risk. Pierce is going to bring the artifact into the Faller System and set it off. They’ll set off theirs and space will tear to—”
“Good,” she said, and in her voice Kaufman finally heard that the greater the ruin, the greater her revenge. Destroying all of spacetime itself would not be compensation enough for Laslo’s death.
He had no way to deal with her. No way to dissuade her. No way to stop her.
He was preparing to try anyway, to die trying in hopes that Capelo and Marbet alone could carry out his plan, when Capelo spoke behind him. “Magdalena. I’ve got kids, too.”
She ignored him.
Capelo’s voice was harsh and flat. “Two daughters. Sudie is seven. Amanda is fourteen. She looks like her mother, who is dead. My wife was killed in a Faller raid five years ago. My kids are all I’ve got left and I don’t want them to die.”
“Tough. Mine did.”
“I know. I won’t say I’m sorry because I know how much I hated hearing that when my wife was killed. Nobody can be sorry enough. Where do they get off, saying they’re sorry when in the next half hour they’re going to go back to their lives, enjoying their friends and doing their work and eating their fucking dinners like nothing happened? They don’t know what sorry is. The universe should have been sorry she was dead. The stars should have gone out, and the Big Crunch retracted the entire misbegotten universe. I would have done it myself if I could have.”
“Then you know why I will.”
“No, you won’t You’ll destroy maybe two or three ships before they get you. That’s nothing.”
“It’s enough.”
“No, it’s not. I know better. That’s why you want to take out all of spacetime, if you can. But listen to this before you do: They won’t suffer.”
She was silent.
“I’m the physicist who figured this all out, remember? The tear in spacetime from simultaneous setting prime thirteen travels at light speed. Even if tunnel macro-entanglement makes it faster … Forget all that. What matters is that the wave will hit at three hundred thousand kilometers per second, as fast as light, so that no one knows it’s coming. There’s no way to send information ahead. And no one knows when it hits them because they just go out like a candle. The fundamental particles of their body are transformed instantly. They never knew what hit them. So they won’t suffer.”
Silence. The tunnel came into visual perception.
“You got that?
They won’t suffer
. That’s not what I wanted when Karen died. I wanted the bastards who killed her to be as torn apart and still breathing, as I was. You want that, too. I know.”
Kaufman thought he had never heard a silence as profound as that in the flyer. Magdalena’s profile, intent on her displays, told him nothing.