by S. K. Vaughn
“Copy,” she said.
“I’ll look in on the relay switches,” Ian said. “They’ve been showing some power-flow anomalies.”
He went to the engine room. Stephen came out of his quarters and saw him pass.
“Ian, can I have a word?”
“Sure, I’m just headed to the engine room if you want to tag along.”
Stephen was reeling from May’s confession, and now he was struggling with how to address it. The rage and betrayal he felt was overpowering. He had trusted Ian’s intentions, his motivations for rescuing May. Now they felt like a very efficient smoke screen, clouding an ulterior motive.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
Stephen hadn’t noticed that he’d been walking silently with Ian, his guts roiling.
“Florida. Two weeks before launch.”
Ian stopped walking, a silent confession. Stephen stood across from him, trembling, his world collapsing all around him.
“She told you?” Ian asked, incredulous.
Stephen nodded. His mouth was bone dry, his hands cold and clammy.
“She’d forgotten about it, but it came back. Things like that always do. And it’s been killing her ever since.”
Ian sighed impatiently. “Listen, Stephen. I know what you must be thinking—”
“Really? What am I thinking, Ian?”
“That’s not why—”
“Of course it is. You believe you might have a daughter out there. Just like me. That is why. I’m sure everything else is icing on the cake: my work, Raj’s work, other things you haven’t earned but are trying to steal. So don’t try to bullshit me.”
Ian looked tired. And old. His usual verve had abandoned him.
“I’m sorry—”
Stephen laughed and threw Ian’s own words into his face. “Come on, you were doing so well, being brutally honest to gain my trust. Don’t stop now.”
“Listen, man,” Ian said, summoning his signature bravado, “this is my—”
Stephen lashed at Ian with his fist. It happened so quickly that it felt involuntary. And it wasn’t a punch but a full-strength, rage-fueled swing. Every ounce of its power landed on Ian’s cheek, just below his eye. Stephen felt the sickening crunch of bone. Blood spurted from a long split on his cheekbone. Ian fell back hard, his head hitting the wall, and tumbled backward down the corridor.
“Stephen, please . . .”
Ian was trying to get to his feet, holding his face while blood gushed through his hand. Normally that would have been enough to snap Stephen out of it, but now it just made him angrier. He wanted to hurt Ian, maybe even kill him. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. He lunged at him again, pummeling him mercilessly. Ian yelled. Stephen wanted to strangle him, watch the life go out of his eyes. Killing him wouldn’t matter, because Stephen wanted to die too.
Sensing that he was in serious danger, Ian pulled out his laser cutter and blindly slashed at Stephen, opening a deep gash in his hand. The pain was white-hot and excruciating. Stephen lunged again, trying to get his hands on the cutter so he could rip the other man to pieces, but Jack came at him from behind and tackled him. Stephen fell hard and blacked out.
When he came to, he was strapped to his launch chair, his wrists and ankles tied down. A blood-soaked bandage was on his aching hand. There was chaos on the flight deck. Ian sat next to Jack and Zola, one side of his face hugely swollen and bandaged.
“We’ve lost all comms,” Zola was saying. “Mission Control too.”
“What do you mean?” Ian said, his voice slurring from his injured mouth. “Even the biggest solar flare in the universe couldn’t make us totally blind.”
“Take a look,” Zola said.
Again, they examined their equipment in the eye and found nothing.
“That makes no sense,” Ian said, frustrated. “Everything’s fine. Operational. But it’s not. We must have missed something.”
“I’ll check again,” Zola said.
“Please do. Jack, switch to manual nav so we maintain our course. Don’t take your eyes off it till we get this figured out.”
“Roger that,” Jack said.
When he switched to manual, Jack noticed something on the board. “Wait. Sir, I’m showing erratic power flow in propulsion.”
“What? Live schematic,” Ian snapped.
The schematic of their entire propulsion system filled the eye.
Ian looked it over and shook his head wearily. “Again, I see nothing,” he shouted. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Should I throttle down until we’ve had a chance to suss this out?” Jack asked.
“No,” Ian said firmly. “It has to be an anomaly. Stay the course.”
79
May was walking from one end of the ship to the other and back again. Sitting still was simply not an option; it was an invitation to misery, because her mind was now nothing but a mirror, reflecting the one thing that scared her the most: herself. She now understood the psychosis of feeling total separation from self. The person she had been before she nearly died was a hostile stranger, a saboteur of a much higher and far more sinister order than Jon Escher or even Robert Warren could ever be. Their actions, although despicable, at least had a logic, a dogma that was somewhat defensible. Hers did not. The only purpose she could see to them was to serve that self she no longer knew: an ice-cold, grasping reptile with no heart.
She’d once said Ian had no soul, but she was the only occupant of this particular hell. Damned to relive the betrayal of her husband and destruction of their love. Damned to watch her mother, sitting in her chair at the nursing home, her confusion turning to anger as she swore and spat at May, disgusted at the sight of her, refusing her touch, becoming more belligerent, digging her fingernails into May’s skin, drawing blood. Damned to the vision of her lifeless body, empty, battered, and alone. She died alone.
“The Maryam I has gone dark,” Eve said.
May didn’t respond. She walked.
“May, what is wrong? Did you hear what I said? We’ve lost the Maryam I.”
“I know,” May said. “It’s my fault. He switched off.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please clarify.”
“It was me,” she shouted. “I told him. It’s over. He just . . . switched off.”
“I’m not talking about Stephen, May. Communications are gone. We’ve lost telemetry. We are off course.”
May stopped walking. “When?”
“It’s been hours. Where were you?”
“I was asleep. Then I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’m very concerned. Please come to the bridge.”
May walked there, feeling numb. She saw it for herself. Hours ago? No telemetry. No navigational guidance. For hours. At this velocity, there was no room for that kind of error.
“Manual flight,” she barked.
The manual flight controls came up on the board. Her mind drew a blank.
Her mother’s voice slapped her awake. It’s not just you anymore, Maryam. You’re right about who you are. But it’s not just you anymore. You have a responsibility. Nothing else matters, least of all your senseless self-flagellation. Get to work.
“Eve, we need to forget about the rendezvous sync and make sure we emulate our previous course heading to Mars.”
“Calculating correction. Here is our original course.”
The astral map displayed it.
“And here is where we are.”
Another line appeared on the map, this one shifted to the side of the original course.
“How much time to correct?” May asked.
“Seven hours, thirty-three minutes.”
“No no no. That will annihilate our rendezvous timing.”
May stared at the map, searching for an answer.
“Once we get back on course, can we make up any of that time?”
“We can try to increase our velocity, but we will run the risk of shortening the amount of tim
e we can safely remain in Mars orbit.”
“Do it. If we don’t get there when the Maryam I does, at that exact time, we’re finished. Our orbit time won’t matter. Nothing will matter.”
“Okay, I am doing that now. Unfortunately, until we lock onto their telemetry signal again, you’re going to need to monitor navigation.”
“There’s nothing I’d like better, Eve. You’ll keep me company, of course?”
“Always.”
“How is your system duplication going?”
“Seventy-three percent. It has slowed a bit due to more complex file structures in my personality processors, but it is still progressing.”
“Good. I can’t afford to lose anyone else.”
May watched their flight path and tried to tell herself that it was probably just some anomaly or glitch or whatever else engineers used to say when they didn’t know what the hell was going on. She’d been burned too many times to believe it, but that didn’t matter. It was something to occupy her mind so she wouldn’t ask herself over and over why she had told him. Had it really been out of duty to him, or was it simply to push him back? The latter made sense. He was close, a few weeks away, and she would have to be real. He would be real.
80
Houston, Texas
January 25, 2067
“We’ve tried to reach your husband, but the folks at Johnson Space Center say their communications satellite is down. They expect it to be back up in a couple of hours.”
May was in a Houston hospital, twenty-one weeks pregnant. She was in the labor and delivery tower, in an area that had been designed for expectant mothers and their families. Instead of the usual drab environs, the decor was cheerful, with bright colors on the walls and furniture that resembled what one might find in one’s living room. But instead of putting her at ease, it made May feel mocked and alone.
She’d been admitted for observation after experiencing some bleeding and dizziness. The nurses were monitoring the fetal heartbeat, coming into the room frequently to watch the screen and take notes. May was frightened. The sound of the monitor and the blank faces peering from behind clipboards were making everything worse, wearing down her last nerve. Stephen was at Wright Station, supervising work on the Hawking II’s laboratory deck. Up to this point, everything with the pregnancy had been fine—better than fine, actually. Then, of course, as soon as Stephen left, things had gone sideways. She hadn’t been able to reach him for hours, and scowled at the nurse who’d just delivered the latest status report.
“Goddammit,” May replied, slightly loopy from the mild sedative they’d given her. “Tell those assholes it’s an emergency.”
“I have, hon. We’ll keep trying. You just get your rest for now.”
“I want to go home.”
“The doctor wants to keep you here overnight, okay?”
“Why?”
“Just to keep an eye on things.”
“Such as?”
“With women your age, this far along in the pregnancy, we monitor bleeding for at least twelve hours.”
Women your age? May wanted to punch the nurse, but she was tethered to too many tubes and wires and was feeling very drowsy.
“I want to speak to the doctor,” May said firmly. “When is she coming back?”
“She’s gone for the day.”
“Oh, that’s convenient. What if something happens? I assume I wouldn’t be here being monitored if it wasn’t serious.”
“We have a resident on call all night, so don’t you worry about a thing. You’re in good hands. Dinner will be here soon. Do you want to watch the TV?”
“No. And I’m not hungry,” she said, nauseated by the antiseptic reek.
The nurse smiled dismissively and started for the door.
“Could you get me something to drink, though? My mouth is very dry.”
“Of course, hon. Be right back.”
May gave her back the middle finger as she padded out of the room. When the coast was clear, she lifted herself up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She sat there for a moment, trying to catch her breath, and closed her eyes until the wooziness passed. When she felt that she could take a step, she carefully lowered one foot to the floor, then the other. The tile felt like a sheet of ice, but her wits welcomed the chill.
“Just put one foot in front of the other,” she began quietly singing, a tune she’d heard somewhere as a child, “and soon you’ll be walking out that door.”
She took another breath and stood, mentally encouraging her legs to keep her upright. They shook a bit, muscles twitching, but held.
“Now then. Clothes.”
Slowly, carefully, she shuffled over to the closet next to the bathroom, wheeling her IV stand and using it for balance. Her clothes weren’t in there, and she didn’t see her overnight bag anywhere in the room.
“What is this, prison?”
Panic crept in. Obviously, asking the nurse for help was out, and she was going to be back at any moment. Being on her feet made May that much more desperate to escape. She cranked the window open as far as she could until the safety latch caught. The night air was cold, but it made her feel more alert. Down the hall, the smell of the dinner cart heralded its imminent arrival. May couldn’t imagine what could be done to food to make it smell so awful. Her mind pivoted back to her escape attempt.
“There you are,” she whispered, eyeing her overnight bag in the bathroom.
May started to shuffle that way but stepped in something warm and wet. She looked down. Blood was running down the inside of her leg, pooling on the floor.
“Nurse,” she tried to call out, but only managed a whisper.
The room started spinning and she pitched backward, looking for anything to break her fall. She grabbed the IV stand and yanked it down as she fell. Landing on her back, her head hit the hard tile floor, knocking her unconscious.
Lights flickered, and the roar of reality faded up in her mind. She was on a gurney, surrounded by people. Everyone was running, talking too quickly for her to understand. The overhead lights blinded her. She tried to speak, to ask a question, to find out what was happening. An oxygen mask came down. A man wearing a surgical mask was talking to her. She shook her head. He was underwater, gurgling, waiting for a reply. May’s mouth opened to scream but couldn’t draw enough air. Now she was underwater. Then cold, then dark.
“Mrs. Knox, can you hear me? Maryam?”
She heard the voice. Where was it? Her head was too heavy to move. Light rimmed the edges of her eyelids, orange-red crescents. The voice persisted. May’s eyes moth-fluttered, flashing fire, and a dark, amorphous figure stood over her.
“That’s it,” the nurse said. “Concentrate on my voice. Open your eyes again.”
The figure slowly came into focus. A smiling woman. The doctor. May wanted to say something, but all she could do was moan and stare.
“Relax,” the doctor said. “You’re safe. You’re in the surgery recovery room. As soon as you’re a little more awake, we can remove those nasty belts. They’re only there to keep you from touching your incision.”
May moaned loudly. With consciousness came a throbbing pain in her belly. She felt the restraints on her wrists and ankles, and adrenaline kicked her back into the land of the living. Lucidity radiated through her body with pins and needles.
“My stomach,” she said, in agony. “God, it hurts so much.”
“We can get you some more pain meds once the anesthesia has worn off and your blood pressure is back up to normal.”
“What happened?”
“We had to perform a D&C.”
May’s fear spiked and she tried to sit up, nearly retching from the pain. “My baby. My son. Where is he?”
The doctor touched her shoulder softly and shook her head. “I’m so sorry. You had significant blood loss, and—”
“No,” she said, violently pulling at the restraints. “What have you done?”
“Please try to calm down,�
� the doctor said. “You need to sleep.”
May fought like a wild animal to free herself, attempting to head-butt or bite anyone who came to hold her down. The room started to spin. She vomited. The nursing staff got hold of her and cleaned her up.
“I don’t want to go to sleep again. You took him while I slept. You took . . . him.”
81
Ian sat strapped to his chair on the bridge, hunched over, exhausted, in terrible pain, and defeated. He had tried in vain for hours to track down the source of a rapidly growing list of problems. Comms were still dark. The erratic power flow had gotten worse. Internal systems were glitching—lights were dimming or shutting down, instruments only intermittently responding. The diamagnetic gravity field had become dangerously discontinuous, shifting from overpowering pressure to nothing, so Ian shut it down, and everyone was working weightless and half in the dark. He had finally agreed to throttle down velocity, but that didn’t stem the flow of malfunctions.
“Ian, I know you’re having a hard time believing your untested masterpiece is failing, but you need to get a grip,” Stephen said, still lashed to his chair.
Ian ignored him. No one said anything to stop him, so he continued.
“You’re a fucking megalomaniac who doesn’t have the ounce of humility it takes to be honest with himself about the real problem here.”
“And what might that be?” Ian asked sharply. “Please enlighten us.”
“The real problem is you,” Stephen said. “You’re so in love with yourself that you no longer have a mind for science or engineering. It’s all about innovation and pushing the envelope, and all that nonsense will never serve you in a crisis like this. Instead of asking yourself what’s causing it, you’re asking yourself how it could possibly have happened. I don’t know what’s wrong with your ship, and I can’t help you fix it. But I do know that if you don’t get out of your own way and the way of your people, we’re all going to die out here, and ‘your girl,’ Maryam, will too.”
Ian looked at Jack and Zola and waited for them to come to his defense, but they sat silently, staring at their consoles.