Probability Space

by Nancy Kress

  “You told us she would make the broadcast.”

  “I can’t! I don’t know who kidnapped my father!” Amanda cried. Her head felt as if it might burst. She hated that. With as much dignity as she could gather, she got off her chair, went through the common room to her bunk, and pulled the curtain. She buried her face in her pillow.

  I don’t know who kidnapped him, she told herself fiercely, and clung to that, because it was what her father would have said and it was true and it was the only thing she was sure she understood.

  * * *

  She woke to fierce arguing and the dim sound of engines. They were in space, accelerating at one-gee. Her neck tickled and she groped for the patch and pulled it off. A sleeper, probably. Father Emil couldn’t know that she didn’t sleep long from somnambulizer patches. “A light drug responder,” her father always said about her. Amanda lay still, a bit groggy, listening to the voices in the common room beyond the bunk curtain.

  “—unconscionable!” Father Emil said, a word Amanda didn’t know.

  “And what would you have us do with her?” Captain Lewis said, and the anger in his voice brought Amanda out of the last of her sleep. “If she doesn’t make that broadcast, the fact that we have her only reinforces the impression that we kidnapped them both, God, you smeared this with shit, Emil.”

  “I wanted to help. I thought she’d make the broadcast. And I wanted to get her somewhere safe.”

  “Oh, your motives were impeccable,” Captain Lewis said sarcastically. “The road to hell and all that. We never should have listened to a Sunday revolutionary like you.”

  Father Emil said something Amanda didn’t catch.

  “The longer we have her,” the woman said, “the worse the situation gets. No one will believe we didn’t abduct her ourselves.”

  Father Emil said, “Amanda will tell them the truth about the hot shop and about me and about our bringing her to Luna. She’s a truthful child.”

  “Then she’ll also tell the world we tried to pressure her into making a broadcast. Unless she broadcasts voluntarily—which you said she would, Emil!—and does it soon, it looks to the eyes of the media like we’re holding her.”

  “Aren’t we?” Father Emil said.

  “No, Goddamn it, we’re doing what she wants! Now we’re taking her to Mars in search of a genetic abomination and government stooge like Marbet Grant!”

  The woman said, “Essentially, a fourteen-year-old kid is calling the shots for this spaceship. She has to make that broadcast. We can make her do it, Dennis.”

  “How?” Captain Lewis said. “Threats? Drugs? Don’t you think she’ll tell people about that, too, afterward?”

  “Not if you terrify her enough.”

  “Lucy,” Father Emil said, “stop right there. She’s a child.”

  “A child in a position to hurt the entire Life Now organization, thanks to you,” Lucy said bitterly.

  Father Emil said, in a different voice, “Dennis … did Life Now kidnap Thomas Capelo?”

  “Oh, God,” Lucy said. “Amateurs.”

  “Yes, I am, Lucy,” Father Emil said. “Amateur, Sunday revolutionary, as bottom of the organizational ladder as possible. Just a believer in its goals. Which is why I don’t know the answer to my question and why I want to know. Did Life Now, or any of its affiliate antiwar organizations in the AWM, kidnap Thomas Capelo?”

  Amanda clasped her hands tightly together. What would Captain Lewis say? But it was Father Emil who spoke.

  “You don’t know the answer, do you, Dennis? I’m in a bottom cell of Life Now, but you’re not in a top cell. You don’t know.”

  “We don’t operate through kidnapping,” Captain Lewis said, and even through the curtain Amanda heard that there was something wrong with his voice.

  “You don’t know that, either,” Father Emil said.

  Lucy said, “You’re both losing sight of the main point. Amanda Capelo has to make that broadcast pinning the kidnapping on the government, and she has to do it now. You have to persuade her, Emil. You’re the only one the little bitch trusts.”

  “She’s not a little bitch, Lucy,” Captain Lewis said. “But, Emil, Lucy’s right. You have to persuade her, now, as soon as she wakes up.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  Captain Lewis said, Then we’ve got a huge problem. We can’t go on holding her, or we’re kidnappers. And we can’t release her to Marbet Grant, or Amanda tells the world how we pressured her to pin that kidnapping on Stefanak. Even if she doesn’t tell anyone, the Grant woman will read that she’s uneasy, that she’s hiding something, that she’s lying, and will get it out of her. Have you ever known a Sensitive, Emil?”

  “No.”

  “I have. Go wake up Amanda, Emil, and get to work. Be persuasive. Be very persuasive.”

  Lucy said, “Wait … even if Emil does persuade Amanda, and she makes the broadcast, and then later Marbet Grant finds out Emil pressured Amanda … that’s just as bad for us!”

  “No,” Captain Lewis said. “If she publicly recants her statement, she’s just going to look like a confused kid. It’s if she goes on stalwartly refusing to make one at all that she becomes a heroine insisting on ‘truth.’”

  “Which is what she is doing,” Father Emil said. “She is an idealist, unwilling to lie. We should not consider that a sin.”

  “Oh, fuck sin,” Lucy said. “This is practical politics, Emil, not airy-merry abstract religion. She’s got to make that broadcast, almost as soon as we wake her up. And she’s got to genuinely believe she’s doing it voluntarily.”

  “And if—”

  Another voice cut in, a very deep voice Amanda had not heard before. The third man. He had a thick accent. “If she does not, she is a grave liability to the movement. No one knows we have her. She must just disappear.”

  The other three started talking at once. The man with the deep voice silenced them all. “You are all dilettantes. The life of one child does not outweigh the lives of the thousands of children who will die if Stefanak is not stopped. Do not be so sentimental.”

  No one spoke until Captain Lewis said, “Salah—” at the same time that Father Emil said, “I will not allow that to happen.”

  “Nor I,” said Captain Lewis. “We are not barbarians, Salah. It’s the other side that are barbarians. Remember that!”

  Salah said nothing.

  Amanda lay rigid, waiting. After a long pause she heard Father Emil get up and leave the area. She knew it was Father Emil because she could hear the faint mutter as he prayed.

  FIVE

  EN ROUTE TO MARS

  The curtain was pulled back. Amanda, pretending to be asleep, felt the wake-up patch laid on her neck and pretended to wake up. Father Emil stood beside her bunk. “Amanda…”

  She nodded, too scared to say anything.

  He looked at her hopelessly, a badly dressed little man with a scraggly beard and wrinkle-rimmed eyes. Then he climbed into the bunk, careful not to touch her, and sat with his back against the bulkhead and his knees pulled up to his chest. Amanda did the same and so they sat side by side, facing the heavy curtain, like bookends with nothing between them. And everything. Father Emil’s lips moved soundlessly, and Amanda knew that once again he was praying.

  “Amanda,” he finally said, “I’m going to ask you once more. I don’t want to hound you, or scare you, so this will be the last time you’ll hear all this.” After a moment he added, “From me, anyway.”

  She said nothing. Her hands were clasped together tightly. Father Emil was quiet so long she thought maybe he wasn’t going to talk to her after all, only to God, but then he began and what he said was a surprise.

  “The mission where I work is about saving souls. Getting the wretched to leave their sad and sinful lives and turn back to God. The mission is called the St. Theresa the Little Flower Mission after a saint, a holy woman, named Therese of Lisieux and nicknamed ‘The Little Flower.’ She wasn’t really a woman, she was a little girl. Li
ke you.” He stopped.

  “Oh,” said Amanda, because she had to say something. Although she couldn’t see what this Little Flower had to do with anything. And anyway Amanda wasn’t a “little girl.” She was fourteen.

  “The little Flower’s mother died when she was very young, like your mother. When the Little Flower was still a girl, just a few years older than you, her father was taken away, too. At age fifteen she became a nun—”

  “What’s—”

  “A woman who devotes her life to God and never marries. The Little Flower always tried to do the right thing, the thing that would most help others. She wrote a book about her life. I want to quote you two things in it, and I want you to think about both of them.”

  Father Emil didn’t look at her. With his knees drawn up to his chest like that and his scraggly beard, he looked like a child grown horribly old before growing up. She turned her head to stare at the blue curtain.

  He said, “The first thing the Little Flower said was, ‘I tried very hard to never make excuses.’” He paused briefly, then continued. “The second is longer. It’s a prayer that goes like this: ‘My Lord and my God, I have realized that whoever undertakes anything for the sake of earthly things or to earn the praise of others deceives himself. Today one thing pleases the world, tomorrow another … but You are unchangeable for all eternity.’ Do you understand, Amanda?”

  “No.”

  “It means that today people want you to do one thing, tomorrow another thing, but that you should always do the right thing no matter who pressures you, without making any excuses. The right thing is eternal. It’s always right.”

  Facts, Amanda thought. He meant “stick to facts.” Father Emil was talking about what Daddy called “scientific integrity.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good, Then I’m going to ask you again. Remember that what is fashionable or widely believed today doesn’t matter. The eternities matter, like kindness and helping people—the Little Flower devoted her life to helping people—and doing our small bit to stop evil in the world. Since all that is true, will you help stop the war by making this broadcast saying that government agents kidnapped your father?”

  “No, Father Emil. I can’t.”

  He said nothing. His lips moved in prayer. Then he drew aside the curtain and climbed down from her bunk.

  Amanda waited for what would happen next. Nothing did. She heard no sounds. Finally, frightened, she peeked around the curtain. The common room was empty, and the door to the galley closed. So they were all in there, discussing her. Or else on the bridge, or in the storerooms.

  She lay back and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she would be back home. She would be back in her own bedroom, waking up for school. Downstairs Sudie would be racketing around with the holotoons on, and her father would be in the kitchen cooking bacon and grumbling. Her bedroom would smell of bacon, and trees from the open window, and the sharp new smell of her book bag on the floor. She would get up and go to the bathroom and then go downstairs, and Carol would smile good morning, and Sudie would stick out her tongue at her, and Daddy—

  She imagined it all, eyes closed, until she fell asleep.

  * * *

  When she woke, it was ship’s night and all the lights were dimmed. Amanda looked at her watch: 0300 hours. She’d slept so much of the day that she woke up in the middle of the night.

  No—something had awakened her. Sounds. Someone was in the common room. Someone pulled aside the curtain to her bunk. Salah, with something in his hand.

  Amanda screamed. Frantically she scrabbled to the far side of the bunk. Salah cursed and reached for her. She kicked at his hand, and now she could see what was in it: a patch. He was trying to drug her.

  “No! No!” She went on screaming, knowing it was hopeless. Her kick hadn’t deterred him at all. He was too big and too strong and he’d said to the others, “She must just disappear … the life of one child does not outweigh the lives of the thousands…” But they had all yelled at him! Father Emil and Captain Lewis and Lucy, they’d all yelled at him and so Amanda had thought she was safe—“No! Get away!”

  He grabbed her arm with one huge hand and effortlessly pulled her toward him. She hit him in the face, which seemed to have no effect at all. He was going to kill her—

  Salah’s head rolled off his body.

  Blood gushed in a huge fountain from his neck, spattering on the ceiling and soaking Amanda. At the same time, alarms started to shriek and the ship system said loudly, “The hull has been breached. The hull has been breached. The hull—”

  In a moment it stopped. The nanocoating extended itself to make a thin, temporary cover over the hole, which was so small Amanda couldn’t see it.

  “It won’t hold!” Father Emil said. He stood there, incredibly, with a laser gun … you never permitted a laser gun to be used aboard ship!… in front of an open storage cabinet. “I don’t know how to do a permanent patch—do you?”

  Of course she did. Amanda scrambled down from the bunk and yanked open the bright red cupboard found in every chamber aboard every ship. She grabbed the permanent patch and ripped it from its bag, but then slipped on the blood covering the floor. Wildly she grabbed at something, anything. Father Emil caught her and pulled her to her feet. Gagging, she made herself climb back into the bunk. Then she couldn’t find the hole.

  “The hull has been breached,” the ship began again, but not as loudly. “You are advised that a temporary patch must be replaced with permanent sealing. The hull—”

  “The hole will be long and thin,” Father Emil gasped. “I swung the gun to cut off his head, I didn’t know how else to be sure…”

  “The hull has been breached. You are advised that a temporary patch must be replaced with permanent sealing. The hull has been—”

  Amanda found the gash. It now glowed bright red from the temporary nanos, a beacon. It was only the blood that had made it hard to see. She slapped on the patch and the expensive, highly engineered nanos began to fill in the minute breach. Ship stopped nattering.

  In the silence, Amanda and Father Emil looked at each other.

  “I was hiding in the storage closet,” Father Emil said quietly. The violence seemed, strangely, to have steadied him. He had seen so much of it. His calm, in turn, steadied Amanda. “I guessed he would try to kill you and then put your body out the airlock. Once it was actually done, the others wouldn’t have turned him in to the cops, because they couldn’t have done that without admitting they’d had you. And the problem would be solved.”

  “Wh-where are the others?”

  “Undoubtedly patched out. He would have patched me, too, but he couldn’t find me. Salah wasn’t a trained killer, just a fanatical believer in his cause. He probably decided I was praying in the cargo hold or something, and that by the time I got back, he’d be finished anyway.”

  “There’s all this blood,” Amanda said.

  “Don’t start crying, Amanda.”

  “I’m not crying! Do you see me crying? I’m—” What was she? “—disgusted!”

  A small smile curved his mouth. “Oh. Then get a scrub brush.”

  She did, carrying herself on trembling legs into the galley. By the time she returned, Salah’s head was gone. His body was wrapped in the heavy, dark blue bunk curtain torn free of its hooks.

  Father Emil said, “This is nothing for a child to be doing, Amanda. Go get in the shower. Just don’t empty the entire water tank.”

  In the shower she began to shake. That man had tried to kill her! If it weren’t for Father Emil … oh, she wanted Daddy! She wanted to go home!

  She clasped her hands in front of her, water streaming over them, until the shaking stopped.

  When she finally left the shower, the common room was spotless. Not only from hand scrubbing but also from cleaner nanos, she guessed, which ate organic molecules and then swiftly died of them. The dead nanos had been sucked up as well. Salah’s body was gone. Hidden? Out the airlock?
She didn’t ask.

  Father Emil’s eyes looked so tired; Amanda hadn’t known eyes could look that tired. He motioned her toward an empty bunk, not the one she’d had before. “Go to bed, Amanda.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “I know. Do it anyway. You’re safe now.”

  Safe? Oddly, she believed him. “Where are we going?”

  “Cleopatra Station.”

  Cleopatra Station orbited Earth, out beyond the Moon. It was a major solar transfer point, as well as a big city in its own right. “I want to go to Mars to find—”

  “Go to bed, Amanda! Now!”

  Lying in her new bunk, she waited, every muscle tense. She knew what Father Emil would do. She knew from the way he’d said “Go to bed! Now!” And she knew because Daddy would have done the same thing. Father Emil crept in just a few minutes later, and the sleep patch kissed her neck softly.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. It might not give her a very long sleep, but any sleep was better than none.

  “Sleep well,” Father Emil said. “You’re a brave girl. The bravest and stubbornest and stupidest child I ever met.”

  She would have answered him, but she was already asleep.

  SIX

  SPACE TUNNEL #1

  The ship Cascade of Stars left Mars in July, cleared as a merchant vessel to Titan and an emigration ship from Titan to the remote world of New Canaan. She was a huge ship, chartered to Liu Wang Interplanetary, New China Republic, Earth, although she had never been near Earth and probably never would be. Large enough to carry two flyers and two shuttles, her passenger manifest numbered eight thousand. Six thousand of these were Amish settlers bound for New Canaan, that quixotic attempt to create a non-technological civilization after first arriving on a high-tech starship. The crew was mostly Chinese. The cargo included plows and anvils for New Canaan and a near-AI for the government geological station on Titan.

  The other two thousand passengers were a mixed group of business people, techs, scientists, government leaders, adventurers, and the unclassifiable group that travels around the Solar System displaying a polite detachment that never gives away their reasons for journeying. Some of these were crime leaders, some fugitives, some spies. Ship etiquette, demanded that you accept whatever identity a traveler chose to present. This etiquette did not, of course, apply to the government agents aboard who checked passports and itineraries.