by Nancy Kress
And Konstantin had seen her looking like this.
A knock sounded on the door. Amanda dropped the brush and opened the door to Major Harper.
“Ready, Miss Capelo? Come with me, please.”
“Where are my aunt and uncle?”
“Comfortable in guest quarters. You’ll see them soon.”
Amanda said, “Can’t they come the first time in the first time in the first time in Admiral Pierce?”
Major Harper didn’t even answer, just led her briskly by her elbow to an elevator to the top of the building. Amanda felt her heart begin a slow, hard hammering that made it difficult to catch her breath.
They passed more soldiers, finally entering a room at the very top of the Summit. “This is Miss Capelo, sir.”
“Fine. Leave us, please, Major.”
Major Harper saluted, and Amanda was left alone with the new supreme commander of the Solar Alliance Defense Council.
After the years of holos of General Stefanak’s imposing bulk, Admiral Pierce looked small, although he was of average height. He was lean, with thin, long-fingered hands. Amanda especially noticed the hands. She was too nervous to register much about the office except that it had a huge desk, a row of wall terminals, and a wonderful view of Lowell City at Admiral Pierce’s feet, with the red Martian plain beyond.
He said courteously, “Thank you for coming, Miss Capelo.”
As if she’d had a choice!
His voice was low and musical, which surprised her. She’d have thought an admiral would sound rougher, somehow. Or maybe that was just Stefanak again.
“Miss Capelo, I know you have been through a great deal in the past month. And the hardest of all, I’m sure, has been worry over your father.”
She nodded, her throat suddenly too tight to speak.
“I completely understand your worry. Dr. Capelo, from everything I’ve been told, is not only a great physicist but a wonderful father. I’m in regular contact with your stepmother and sister, you know, and I want you to know we’re taking good care of both of them.”
Amanda nodded again.
“You’ve been very brave on your father’s behalf, Miss Capelo. Now I’m going to ask you to be brave for his sake one more time. We have very good reason to believe that General Stefanak had your father kidnapped. We don’t know the reason, but we think it was probably so that his corrupt regime could blame it on Life Now. Which, of course, they did. Believe me, Miss Capelo, I’m as anxious as you are to get your father back. Science should remain above politics, if it’s to do its job.”
“That’s what my father always said,” Amanda blurted. She felt herself relax a little. Admiral Pierce seemed really nice, like he understood.
“Your father’s a wise man. Now, our problem is this: We don’t know where your father was hidden by Stefanak. No, don’t look like that—the situation is far from hopeless. I have my very best intelligence operatives locating secret military records, questioning the traitors we’ve captured, doing every single thing we can to find your father.”
He had moved closer to her. The fine, long-fingered hands folded in front of his chest. “Miss Capelo, we need your help. We think only a very few people in Stefanak’s regime knew where your father was being kept. So far, we haven’t been able to identify those people. It’s crucial that we do so. They’re the ones who will lead us to your father. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but … how can I help?” The folded hands had begun to twitch a little. She watched them, mesmerized.
“Oh, you can indeed help. You can do something very important to help your father. If you’re willing to do so. Are you?”
“I’ll do anything!” Long, thin fingers, twitching while folded together.
“It’s possible you remember something about what you witnessed the night of April second. You were watching from an upstairs window—”
How did he know that? Amanda wondered, startled.
“—and you might have seen some identifying mark, something very small, in how the kidnappers looked or talked or behaved. So small that you probably don’t even know you know it. Amanda, do you know what a Pandya Dose is?”
Now she was even more startled. “I’ve seen it in the holomovies. But I didn’t know it was real!”
He smiled. His fingers still twitched. Amanda made herself look away. “Oh, a Pandya Dose is real enough, although it’s not as dramatic as in the holos. It’s an injection into the brain, past the blood/brain barrier, of a selective-cell activator. That means—”
“I know what a selective-cell activator is,” Amanda said, offended. After all, she was going to be a biologist!
“Wonderful. You’re a very intelligent young lady. Then you know that the dose contains a chemical that intensifies the chemical cascade in the brain connected with memory.”
“Cyclic-AMP response elements, plus LTP proteins.”
Now Admiral Pierce looked startled, but Amanda felt a little ashamed. Her father always said only mediocre minds showed off.
“You are intelligent. So I’m sure you understand that the Pandya Dose works by shutting down most of the cortex except for long-term memory, and by sharpening that until you recall every single detail your senses registered for a given occasion. Details that your conscious brain doesn’t usually have access to because it would become too overloaded with trivia. Are you willing to take a Pandya Dose so we can learn anything about the kidnapping that might help us find your father?”
He really was nice. Concerned, caring … Amanda didn’t look at the fingers. She nodded vigorously. “I’ll do anything!”
“You’re a wonderful daughter and a great patriot,” Admiral Pierce said, which made Amanda pause because her father always said patriotism was a front for power games. But the admiral was summoning another man, who led Amanda away, and suddenly she was in a room with a couch and lab bench and doctors.
“Now?” she said. “We’re doing it now?”
“Just lie still,” a woman said, smiling warmly.
“Will it hurt? What are those tubes for?”
“Nothing will hurt,” the woman said, and it didn’t. Amanda felt a patch on her neck, and her scalp went sort of numb. I’m helping find my father, she thought fuzzily, and all at once she was certain everything would be all right. Of course it was! In fact, she felt happier than she ever had in her life … Then she slid into sleep.
* * *
“Amanda.”
“Five more minutes…” But the alarm was ringing and she would be late for school and today was Yaeko’s birthday party. Amanda had bought Yaeko a great present, she’d be so surprised …
“Amanda. Wake up now, honey.”
She came to with a start and tried to sit up. Something was wrong with her bones. They wouldn’t support her, and she sank back on the bed.
“Stay still, honey. Your muscles have weakened temporarily. Just stay still.” It was Aunt Kristen’s voice.
Amanda turned her head and was surprised at how hard it was to do. Other things were wrong, too. Her lips were dry. She licked them and tasted blood.
Aunt Kristen wiped her lips, raised Amanda’s head on her arm, and held a glass of water for her. Amanda sipped. It took all her strength.
“Damn them!” Aunt Kristen said. “No, I don’t care who hears me, Martin. They could have at least kept her properly hydrated!”
“A Pandya Dose is not supposed to go on that long, Kris,” Uncle Martin said, and Amanda had the impression he, too, didn’t care who heard.
Amanda croaked, “What … happened?”
“You were out for twenty-four hours, dear. You’ll be fine, but right now your throat is raw from talking for so long.”
She had talked for twenty-four hours? What had she said for that long? Amanda tried to concentrate, and slowly the experience drifted back into her mind. That was in the holomovies, too. A Pandya Dose didn’t make you forget what you had said under its influence. The villain was always horrified at how much he’
d told the good guys.
“They asked … about…”
“I said don’t talk, dear,” Aunt Kristen repeated, in that voice that said, I mean it. Amanda shut up.
But she could think without hurting her throat. The doctors had asked her about much more than the kidnapping. They’d made her describe every single last thing she’d done, every single person she’d talked to, between her flight to Walton Spaceport on Earth and the arrival of Major Harper. All of it: Father Emil and looking for Marbet on Luna and Salah’s attempt to kill her and the brothers at the abbey and Konstantin. Amanda felt her face go hot. What had she said about Konstantin?
“What is it, Mandy?” Aunt Kristen said. “What did you just think of?”
“Did … did they find out where … Daddy is?”
“They wouldn’t tell us that,” Aunt Kristen said. “They just said you’d been very helpful and we can take you home now.”
“Home?”
“To Tharsis, not Earth. They want you to stay on Mars for now.”
Uncle Martin said darkly, “Potential press value.”
“SShhhhh, don’t talk,” Aunt Kristen said, and it wasn’t clear to Amanda if she was speaking to Amanda or to Uncle Martin.
Amanda tried to remember more. Herself talking and talking and talking … she had told them about Konstantin!… and the doctors leaning over her and asking questions, asking a lot of questions, especially about Marbet Grant …
Amanda had told them Marbet wanted to go back to World.
That was supposed to be a secret. Marbet had told her in confidence, months ago, when Amanda had asked to come visit Luna during winter vacation from school. “I’d love it, but I might not be here, Amanda.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I’ll bet you’re going back to World. To see Dr. Sikorski and Dr. Gruber and Enli.”
“You should be a Sensitive yourself, Amanda. But let’s not say anything to anyone, all right? Travel outside the Solar System is so … difficult.”
“You can trust me, Marbet!”
She had felt so grown-up that Marbet would confide in her like that. And now she’d told a friend’s secret, one of the worst things you can do. When Juliana had told Yaeko a secret of Thekla’s, that Thekla liked Misha Chuprikov, it had almost ruined the whole friendship.
Then the doctors had asked her a lot of questions about her trip to World, and her father’s work there, even though that was years ago. And—this was weird—even more questions about the trip back from World to the space tunnel, with the Protector Artifact aboard. How long had it taken, what had people said, how long had they docked with the Murasaki. Until this moment, Amanda hadn’t remembered that they’d docked with the Murasaki at all. But the doctors had asked a whole lot of questions about it. It was baffling.
The whole thing was baffling. Most of all, she didn’t understand why Admiral Pierce wouldn’t say if he now knew where Daddy was. That was the point of the whole Pandya Dose! And he’d seemed so nice!
“I don’t … understand,” she rasped, and Uncle Martin gave a short hard laugh.
“No one does, Mandy. But now we do the only thing we can. We take you home, and wait to be told more.”
Home, to Tharsis. Was Konstantin still there? Had he waited for her? She turned to look at Aunt Kristen. Her neck felt stronger now; she was feeling better every minute. She noticed more patches stuck on her arms.
“Aunt Kristen?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Before we go, can … can I see a hairdresser?”
* * *
Admiral Pierce did not fly them back to Tharsis. They never saw Admiral Pierce again. Major Harper thanked them, said they were free to leave, and had them escorted to the door. “It’s a good thing I have credit here,” Uncle Martin muttered.
He checked them into the Lowell Hilton overnight. Soldiers with green bars on their caps checked their retinas, smiling courteously. Everyone was so polite, Amanda thought. At least that was better than General Stefanak.
Uncle Martin caught her smiling back at one of the soldiers. “‘A man may smile and smile and be a villain,’” he said, which sounded like a quotation. Amanda didn’t ask. Uncle Martin had once taught literature; it gave rise to quoting disease, her father always said.
Her father! She would see him just as soon as Admiral Pierce found him!
She felt freer and lighter than she had in months. Uncle Martin sat at the hotel room terminal to arrange transportation back to Tharsis the next day, and Amanda and Aunt Kristen went shopping. At last she could get out of her sweaty, stinking clothes! She bought trousers and a tunic in light blue, plus some additional things for her stay in Tharsis. Aunt Kristen took her to a hairdresser, who trimmed her hair and stripped out the patchy black dye. Then he made it a soft gold, brighter than her natural pale wheat color. Amanda looked in the mirror and smiled. She looked pretty again.
“Thank you, Aunt Kristen!”
“You look so much like your mother, honey. More and more.”
“Daddy won’t ever talk about her.”
“No, that doesn’t surprise me. Tom only allows himself a very limited range of emotions.”
That surprised Amanda. She’d never heard anyone criticize her father before … if it even was a criticism. Aunt Kristen was talking to her as if Amanda were grown up. Amanda said shyly, “Am I like my mother in other ways?”
Aunt Kristen smiled. “You’re a mixture, honey. You have some of Karen’s calm and optimism, and some of your father’s rationality and daring. You’re you.”
“I love you, Aunt Kristen.”
Her aunt hugged her. “Can we talk about this boy you’ve installed in our house?”
Amanda felt herself blush. “He saved me after the dome was breached in Lowell City—I told you.” Involuntarily she glanced up at the dome, intact again. But how could anyone trust it to stay that way? She would be glad to get back to Earth, where you could count on the air … and Konstantin, too, was only visiting on Mars.
Aunt Kristen was watching Amanda. “I see,” she said wryly. “Well, he seems like a nice boy.”
“He is! And guess what—he wants to be a physicist, like Daddy! He’s really smart.”
“Smart is good,” Aunt Kristen said neutrally.
“Do you think Daddy will like him? When Admiral Pierce finds Daddy?”
Aunt Kristen stopped walking. They stood in the middle of the shopping-district square, surrounded by the plenty Mars mostly imported from elsewhere. Aunt Kristen looked around to make sure no one was near enough to hear. She said, “Honey, I know how badly you want your father back. We all do. But I want you to be prepared for the fact that Admiral Pierce may not return him to us.”
The bright air seemed to darken. “You mean … Daddy might be dead.”
“He might. But he might also be alive and Admiral Pierce will not release him, for the admiral’s own reasons.”
“But he said—”
“I know what he said, honey. And I know you liked him, and you like all the politeness his men have been ordered to show. But under all that courtesy, Piece is a very dangerous man, much more dangerous than General Stefanak. I wanted to tell you this before they took you away for questioning, but that major stuck so close that Martin and I didn’t get a chance. You’re old enough to know how things stand on Mars, honey. Especially after all you’ve been through already.”
Amanda’s knees trembled. But she kept her voice steady. “Tell me.”
Again Aunt Kristen checked that they weren’t overheard. “People who oppose Pierce just disappear. Stefanak balanced a hunger for power with a sense of fairness, although he’d sacrifice the fairness to the power if it came to a choice. Pierce seems to have only the power sense. We’ve heard from Tom’s colleagues ever since he disappeared, you know. All of them have been questioned about what Tom might have been working on, and what it might be applied to in terms of either the Protector Artifact or
any weapons. One scientist, Dr. Ewing, never returned from questioning.”
Amanda vaguely remembered Dr. Ewing. She said uncertainly, “A tall man with a reddish beard?”
“Yes. He was an obscure scientist and a Martian citizen, so it was easier for him to disappear than some of the others. We don’t know why.”
“Maybe he’s with Daddy!”
“He might be. Or it may be that questioning Dr. Ewing went … wrong. Some people are fatally allergic to Pandya Doses, you know. I just want you to be very, very careful. Konstantin Ouranis’s father is a big supporter of Admiral Pierce. Business interests that—yes, the color’s nice, but it’s a rather big change, isn’t it?” She touched Amanda’s hair. A soldier had walked close to them.
When the soldier had passed, Aunt Kristen didn’t resume the discussion. She merely took Amanda’s hand and held it, whispering, “Be careful, honey. Don’t ever criticize Pierce to your new friends. Remember that.”
Amanda kept a tight hold on her aunt’s hand as they walked back to the hotel. In five minutes, Aunt Kristen had made everything look different. Yet Amanda could see why Aunt Kristen had done it. “Face facts squarely,” her father always said. Amanda needed the facts.
Oh, why couldn’t facts ever be good?
Aunt Kristen had said that Amanda had her mother’s calm and optimism, with her father’s rationality and daring. It was the nicest thing anybody had ever said to her. So she would try to live up to that. To stay calm, to stay optimistic, to look at everything rationally. That was what she had to do.
She’d done it before.
Carefully, Amanda began to think. She went over everything she and Konstantin had said to each other, everything she could remember saying under the Pandya Dose, everything Aunt Kristen had said. She would face all the facts, sort through them, try to make sense of them. “Science is organized data,” her father always said.
A half hour later, during which her aunt respected her silence, Amanda felt she had all the facts straight, at least as well as she could. There was only one thing that still puzzled her. She still didn’t understand why so many of the questions the doctor had asked her concerned the trip to World three years ago. Especially the trip back, from World to the space tunnel, when they’d been bringing the Protector Artifact to the Solar System. It was old history. Why were Admiral Pierce and his soldiers so interested?