A farther black door waited beyond those desks and chairs and blue glass cubicles, and yet another tall, pretty woman was emerging from it. That door was different, huge and circular, carbon black, with a big spinning lock like the kind in Old West vids.
“Dr. Colbie!” Paxton crowed, spinning briefly to look at Han with what the boy could only describe as a “can you believe my life?” smirk. “I assume you got Brea’s alert?”
“I did, however this is all a bit irregular . . .” She closed the massive door behind her and stood poised there as if to guard the way. Dr. Colbie looked like she would fit right in with the NC-17 arcade AR experiences back on the station. Han had only tried and failed twice to hack a VIT ID to enter. White-blond, long hair had been pulled into a severe bun on the top of her head, her lips painted coral red. Two razor-sharp black wings swooped out from her denim-blue eyes.
“This is Han.” Paxton stepped behind him, putting both hands on his shoulders. Han couldn’t remember the last time he had experienced this much physical contact with other humans.
“It’s . . . it’s a pleasure to meet you, Han.” Dr. Colbie sighed and managed a quick, impatient smile. “I didn’t think LENG would be used today, Paxton. Even for demonstration purposes I like to be warned about these things ahead of time.”
“That’s really great,” Paxton replied dismissively. “Super. I’m your boss, though, and my authority is absolute, as you well know, so I’m going to take Han in there and LENG will be juiced up and ready to go, won’t it?”
Dr. Colbie leaned back against the door, her affect suddenly flat and cold, though she seemed to subtly glare at her boss. “It’s primed.”
“Good.” Paxton brightened instantly and walked Han forward until Dr. Colbie was forced to move out of the way. “Very good. You can monitor from your station, just to make sure us boys don’t get up to too much mischief.”
He almost missed Dr. Colbie’s roll of the eyes and the huff she made as she strode by them. His attention had been drawn to the circular vault door she abandoned. Something pulsed behind it. An energy. A presence. Paxton pushed on his shoulders but he couldn’t move. His feet had become lead, and a force drew on him, pulling as if it could suck him through the floor and into Ganymede’s molten iron core.
The pressure on his shoulders eased but he still felt glued to the ground. He trembled. Paxton walked around him, and as he drew near, the black door opened. There was only more darkness beyond. Han looked into it, and it was dense, murky, thick with . . . something. The word occurred to him again. Presence.
“It’s just a chair and an IV,” Paxton laughed, gesturing him forward. “I promise.”
Han had seen a vid once about a pair of circus brothers on Earth. They had built striped tents and packed elephants and tigers and tightrope walkers inside. From the outside, nobody could guess the wonders that one tent contained. He remembered a specific moment—one of the brothers stood outside, peeling the tent flap open, leering with excitement and knowledge as he plucked off his big weird hat and bowed, and beckoned the viewer inside.
Just a chair and an IV.
This was the smartest man, unanimously voted, in the universe. Han wasn’t about to hesitate in front of him. Something in the darkness behind Paxton moved, but Han put one foot in front of the other and went beyond the door.
As soon as it closed behind him, he wished he hadn’t.
11
“Smartest man in the universe my asshole.”
Zurri stared with half-dead eyes at the twisty, sculpted bust on the pedestal before her. She had an eye for good art. This was not good, but it only took her thirty seconds to realize what it was meant to be. A bust of their illustrious host, Paxton Dunn, created in stone. Without bothering to glance around, she reached up and flicked it on the forehead. The way it felt against her nail was odd . . . She rubbed her thumb over the grotesque nose and realized it wasn’t even marble, but some cheap printed knockoff.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to touch the art.”
Cult girl. Of course she would be a Goody Two-shoes. Zurri swiveled, finding the woman lingering near the admittedly grand open doorway between the corridor with the statues and the courtyard. The corridor reminded her of the private jet hangars in London back on Earth.
“This isn’t art,” Zurri told her flatly. “It’s cheap.”
“Art can’t be cheap?” she asked.
Zurri chuckled, then realized the woman was earnestly asking. What a walking sob story. “Entertainment can be cheap, but art always has a cost, the one you pay for it or to make it. I’m Zurri.”
“I know,” the woman said softly, and to her credit. “I’m Senna.”
“Oh, I know.” Zurri saw a familiar flicker of fear pass across the woman’s face. She knew it well, the realization that a fan—or in Senna’s case a critic—was connecting an image to a name. Fame was a bitch, didn’t matter how it came. “It’s all right. I’m not here to judge you.”
Not much anyway.
“How much are you here to forget exactly?” Zurri asked, seeing the woman’s dairy cow–brown eyes widen in shock. “Me? I’m not so sure. I thought I was coming just to get a little off the top, maybe I’m thinking I need a whole new style.”
“I thought you were leaving,” Senna replied. She wandered deeper into the cavernous space, a white trellis table sketching itself into being behind them. The whole place was weird and slightly hard to believe, so a table creating itself out of thin air didn’t surprise Zurri much. She had seen stranger stuff at vid after-parties.
“I will be,” Zurri said with a shrug, flicking the bust on the forehead again and smiling. It was petty, but it amused her. “I’ll make sure I get my time’s worth while I wait for the next shuttle. But this Dunn guy is full of shit.”
“Oh?”
“He’s not the smartest man in the universe.” Turning to face her fully, Zurri folded her arms across her chest and sighed. “The smartest man in the universe would have found a way to build me my private wing, storm or no storm.”
“Wow,” the woman breathed, her eyes still huge and liquid. “This feels shabby to you?”
“Sweetie, everything feels shabby to me.”
“I think it’s pretty incredible,” Senna admitted with a shrug. “I’ve never seen plants like that before. Even in Hydroponica the growth never gets that big . . .”
Damn it all, she felt some pity for the girl. “Wasn’t that crash of yours a year ago? Have they kept you locked up in therapy this whole time?”
She shook her head, rippling her close-cut helmet of dirty blond hair. “I locked myself up.”
“But you know me.”
“You’re hard to miss.” Senna glanced down at her shapeless, sad shoes and then slowly raised her eyes to Zurri’s. She felt suddenly chilled, like the girl was peering into her soul. “I saw what happened to you on the broadcast. I’m so sorry, I know what that feels like. The shock. The horror. The violence.”
“Thanks.” It was the only thing she could think to say. She dropped her arms. “I guess you can imagine it, huh? I’ll bet you’re one of the few who could.”
“Not for much longer,” Senna reminded her with a half smile. “If the smartest man in the universe lives up to his reputation. I’m . . . sorry he lied to you. I’m sorry you didn’t get your private wing.”
Zurri squeezed her eyes shut and waved her comment away. “I bet you never expected to string that sentence together.”
“Not really, no. I didn’t even have one of these growing up,” Senna said, wiggling the wrist with a VIT monitor strapped to it. “I can’t get any of it set up. Does it stop itching after a while?”
“No, it will always be annoying, but then you’ll wake up one morning and realize you can’t find your own ass without it.” Maybe it was the three vodkas talking, but Zurri was beginning to soften up a little
. At least if she had to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with subpar accommodations, she could go home with the story of how she spent time with the infamous cult girl. Getting access to her was apparently even harder than getting access to Zurri. She could respect that. “I’m sure Paxton Dunn can get that thing running however you want.”
“I’d rather just not use it,” Senna replied, going to one of the white, squarish chairs that had just been printed from the ground up and sitting. She flinched a little. “Whoa. Weird. It’s warm.”
“This whole damn place is weird,” Zurri countered. She stared up at the glitzy chandelier above them, watching the artificial light bounce off its pink-and-purple panes. Then her eyes slid back down to the table and the chairs being printed there. She took a quick headcount. “Eight of us.”
“Three patients,” Senna murmured, nodding. “Five staff.”
“How do five people keep this place running? It’s gigantic.”
“It does seem a little . . . lonely.”
A pair of stilettos piloted by a perfect hourglass woman clicked across the polish-bright tiles toward them. Zurri had just enough time to register her irritation before turning to her right, facing the larger hangar-like hall and an alcove at the very end of it.
“Smile!” A woman Zurri had not yet met crowed.
Zurri put up her hand to block her face just as that woman flashed a little camera object at them from her palm. “I absolutely will not.”
“Just making sure we record this first day with you all,” the woman said. She looked like she might be from South America. Maybe Spain. Or whoever grew her in a lab had been inspired by those places.
“Do I look like I want my picture taken right now?” Zurri asked, glowering.
“It is part of the NDA you signed.”
She heard Senna’s chair legs scratch across the floor as she shifted around uncomfortably. Long ago, Zurri had become immune to onlookers responding to her outbursts. She would never get a single thing done in her life if she constantly stopped to consider whether they felt awkward or not. “We’ll see about that. Bev is incompetent but she’s not that incompetent.”
“I did not mean to offend you,” the woman said, though her tone did not really indicate contrition. If anything, she sounded strangely flat and lifeless. “Archiving this historic program launch is my job. I handle the public relations for Paxton’s brands.” Then she tapped the little name tag over her left breast. “Brea.”
“Senna,” she heard the cult girl say. “I think we’re all just tired, not really in the mood for pictures just now. I must look a state . . .”
Judging by her overall style, Senna always looked a state. Back to Brea. Zurri studied her for a moment. God, she thought. Does he only hire Los Angeles tens?
“When do we eat?” Zurri asked. She could at least get a decent meal before disappearing into her room for the rest of her time on Ganymede.
“Soon, of course,” Brea replied, offering them both a mollifying smile. “There was . . . a small misunderstanding concerning dietary restrictions and—”
“Okay, that’s great,” Zurri interrupted. More squeaking and squirming from Senna in her brand-new chair. “From now on? Just have the kitchen send my food to my room.”
“Please, you have come all this way, can you not be a good sport?” PR asked.
“This is me being a good sport.” She crossed to the table and behind Senna, then took the chair to the woman’s left. “And so help me, if you point that thing at me while I’m eating . . .”
That seemed to frighten the woman off, and she bounced out of the gallery with her dark curls flying, her heels clickity-clacking like chattering teeth across the tiles. A heavy, dreadful silence fell, and she and Senna sat there while the table scooted up and up and up until at last the noise of its creation ceased and they were left in even moodier stillness. Time seemed to be moving more quickly, as if Paxton had the daylight simulators cranked just a touch too high. The pleasant golden light streaming in behind Senna from the deciduous courtyard trended toward sunset orange. Above, the crystalline chandelier turned a morose shade of plum.
“Can I ask you something?” Senna asked suddenly.
Strangely enough, Zurri welcomed the break in the silence. “I suppose.”
“When you leave on the next shuttle, could I go with you?”
Paxton had already screwed up her demands and let her down, and it was hard not to take pity on the cult girl. With her hunched posture and strange hair and stranger clothes, she could have been a Sector 7 bag lady shuffling against the current of foot traffic at rush hour. She wasn’t quite broken, though. Close, but something in the center was holding. That made Zurri pity her, too, because Zurri knew exactly what that felt like.
“Yeah,” Zurri said, shrugging her slender shoulders. “Yeah, I don’t see why not.” A door across the table from her opened, black and small, and two males emerged, Paxton and a teenage boy she hadn’t seen yet. Paxton had his hand on the boy’s shoulder like they were old, old pals. The boy wore a loosely fixed expression, as if all the muscles in his face had forgotten how to work at once. “When that shuttle comes? We’ll both be on it.”
“Unfortunately, you’ll both be waiting for a while, then,” Paxton said, overhearing. He didn’t even pretend at disappointment. From the alcove to Zurri’s left, double doors opened, and the rest of the staff appeared, filing in with flight attendant precision. “Predictive weather algorithms are projecting a bad week. Next shuttle won’t be cleared for the LZ for at least four days. Half of a Ganymede day. Ha! Wild, right?”
“Something like that,” Zurri fumed. Four. Days. The vid selection in her apartment better be incredible, or she would lose her mind waiting out the storm. She glanced at Senna, who might at least be interesting company to pass the time with; she wouldn’t mind hearing stories of her life in the cult. Everyone on the station was dying to know about it, and everyone had predicted she would show up on the Daily Bliss to have her fifteen minutes of sad-girl fame, or that a book would get announced, but nothing. Cult Girl went into hiding, and it only extended the mystery. Then again, if Senna was there to forget all that, maybe she wouldn’t be so willing to chat about it with her.
Either way, Senna’s lips twisted open in what seemed like agony. She leapt to her feet, backing away from the table as Paxton’s four employees streamed toward the table and Paxton steered the new kid to the chair just to Senna’s right.
“Sit down,” Paxton told her, stern. Then he winked at her, but Zurri caught it, too. “Everything has been handled.”
12
Senna begged silently to disappear.
The chair was there to catch her when she lost her balance and tumbled downward. She tore her eyes away from the familiar boy, her chest hot and stuffy, sweat dampening the collar of her shirt. Preece, her mentor, her jailor, her father figure, her nemesis, had hijacked the craft that careened into the surface of Mars and killed this boy’s mother.
She wanted to vanish. No, vanishing wasn’t enough . . .
“Handled?” she breathed, eyes flying to Paxton for an explanation.
He took the chair next to the teenager’s, leaning back in it with casual, boyish ease. Anju and Brea joined them, as well as a third woman with blond hair and blue eyes that Senna didn’t recognize. A sleek, silver Servitor AI bot appeared, its innards encased in a shining chassis, its three-toed “feet” clacking softly on the floor as it carried in a tray of miniature stone bowls, pickled vegetables and wafers and nuts heaped inside. It set down the tray near Paxton, who immediately grabbed a handful of almonds and popped one in his mouth. The Servitor retreated the way it had come, returned almost immediately with another tray, carrying half a roasted chicken and a steaming pile of leeks and asparagus and depositing it right in front of Senna, then honked out a stilted, robotic, “You enjoy.”
Even if the food loo
ked and smelled delicious, it made her stomach turn.
“It’s going to be a long experiment if you can’t learn to relax and enjoy the process,” Paxton teased. He caught her eye over the boy’s shoulder. “Han and I had a talk, you know? Man to man. You don’t need to worry about things being tense.”
“Still,” Senna murmured, wishing the hot chicken steam would rise somewhere else. Her guts were in knots. She could feel Zurri staring at her, gawking. She hated that feeling. “I just feel so awful. So, so awful. Han, I’m sorry . . .”
The Servitor made another trip back through the double doors, this time bringing Han a mountain of fluffy buns and bowls of broth, noodles steeped in lava-red oil, and french fries. She wondered if the bot had done the cooking as well.
“For what?” he asked. His face, which had been slack and less than blank, snapped back. It was like someone had jammed a new battery into his brain or something. He snatched up a french fry and crammed it into his mouth. Even before Senna could think of what to say in response, he pointed across the table and gasped. “Whoa. You’re Zurri.”
“You noticed that, huh?” The model rolled her eyes, then leaned primly away from the table while the woman delivering food brought her a plate of tossed greens, a single piece of whitefish, and a tiny serving of slivered sweet potatoes.
“You’ll be a celebrity, too,” Paxton told the boy, munching another almond. “This technology is going to change the world. Every world.”
“I got to see it,” Han boasted, grinning around at them all, french fry gunk stuck between his teeth. The Servitor had finished delivering meals, and returned to pass out glasses, then fill them. Han received what looked like fizzy battery acid, and he gulped it down the moment it finished pouring.
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