The Dark Reaches

by Kristin Landon

  “But by then, Iain would be dead,” Esayeh said. “Right, Pilang?”

  “He’d be dead—” But Pilang’s eyes were distant. “Unless—”

  The little room was silent, all eyes on Pilang.

  “We could keep him cold,” she said slowly. “Run a line with his blood out of the cold, warm it, do a sort—low volume, we can handle that—cool it, and run it back in.”

  Hana scratched her head. “Constant slow filtration.”

  Pilang nodded. “His whole blood volume, running through enough times to bring his level down to where our bots can handle the rest.”

  “That would take days,” Hana said.

  “We’ve got days,” Linnea said, her heart thumping. “Don’t we?”

  Pilang reached out and squeezed Linnea’s hand. “Okay, then. Esayeh, just you get me a snap of that whiskey, and Hana, get on the comm and see if you can track down Gunter, he’s the one who knows the sorter inside and out.” She took the bulb Esayeh silently handed her, drained it, coughed once, and said in a raw voice, “We’ll have to move Iain to Gunter’s lab, I don’t think he can get all the pieces here at once—”

  The next days passed slowly for Linnea. She spent as much time as the irascible Gunter would permit hovering in his lab, watching the slow trickle of blood out of Iain’s container, into Gunter’s jealously tended and obviously patched-together sorter, then back into the container and into Iain. Day by day Iain’s bot count slowly sank; day by day his condition remained steady. Sometimes she let herself imagine that he was almost saved; sometimes she woke at night in terror, sure that he had died, that the long, unnatural process had led to organ failure, cardiac arrest, any one of half a dozen possible disasters Pilang had laid out for her at the start.

  Tereu was a comfort to Linnea in the times when Gunter forbade her the lab. Linnea occupied herself with showing the Tritoner woman the sights of Hestia. She kept, reluctantly, the promise Esayeh and Pilang together had extracted from her the first day: She did not tell Tereu the truth of what was being done to Iain, or of what had been done for her. “It’s an edged gift,” Pilang told Linnea one night in Esayeh’s quarters, where the three of them were sharing a sack of tea. “If Tritoner children were immune to the bots, they’d be prey for the Cold Minds, too.”

  “Shouldn’t the Tritoners have a choice?” Linnea demanded. “Why should you decide this for them?”

  Esayeh sighed. “Look, Lin. I know those people, I was one of them. They like order, uniformity, efficiency. Zones and plans and grand civic games and ceremonies. They like what they know.” He sipped at his tea. “They don’t want to be deepsiders. They don’t want to hand themselves over to the unknown, let something they can’t control into their bodies. They don’t, they can’t trust us. And with reason.”

  “With reason,” Linnea echoed. “After all, you’re going to leave them behind. When you all vanish into your ark.”

  “Tchah, Lin, we don’t talk about that here,” Pilang said.

  Linnea frowned. “I still think it’s a decision you have no right to make for them.”

  “We have paid,” Pilang said with slow anger, “more than enough for our freedom. They have earned, more than earned, their fate.”

  “Their pilots made a bad bargain, centuries ago,” Linnea said. “And so none of their people deserve any mercy.”

  “Lin, we can’t save everyone,” Esayeh said, his voice tired.

  “Not if you don’t try,” Linnea said.

  “You saw that ship,” Pilang said. “Talk to me about mercy after you talk to those children about their parents’ death.”

  “Hard choices,” Esayeh said.

  “Ah.” Linnea felt a flare of anger. “ ‘Hard choices,’ yes. I’ve heard that a lot over the years. And do you know what I’ve noticed? Often ‘hard choices’ is code for something else. Code for ‘an easy choice I’m ashamed of making.’ ” She caught her breath, then looked up again. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re all under strain, until Iain is better,” Pilang said evenly.

  “No,” Esayeh said—and something in the tone of his voice made Pilang turn to him, her eyes wide. “No, Pilang. Lin is right.”

  Pilang gripped his arm. “Esayeh—”

  “She’s right.” He rolled his bulb of tea between his fingers, his old face lined with sadness. “I was—those were words I was taught years ago. When I came to the first and last position of power I have ever held, and learned about the bargain with the Cold Minds. When I first had to try to—find a way to live with it.” He looked very old. “ ‘Hard choices.’ ”

  “Let’s see if Iain lives,” Pilang said. “Then we’ll look at those hard choices, eh, old man?” She looked so weary, so deeply sad, that Linnea wanted to cry.

  She closed her eyes, tipped her head back, let herself float.

  Please, Iain.

  Please live.

  TWENTY

  TRITON

  Kimura Hiso reached out, almost without willing it, and picked up, again, the printed image of the guard who had betrayed him, who had struck him down and permitted the woman pilot to escape. The man deserved what had been done to him; yet sometimes, sometimes Hiso could not help but think about how far things had fallen, how far, far down from the nobility he remembered from his boyhood. . . .

  He held the flat image in nerveless fingers, trying to wake his courage with self-contempt. The guard had allowed the woman pilot to steal the ship that should have been Hiso’s. The ship that should have been his, now, for the fight that was so clearly coming.

  And so, and so it had been . . . necessary, to do what he had ordered done.

  Hiso made himself look, one last time. The harshly lit image showed a gray-white pavement of water ice, blackness beyond, just outside one of the main city locks, marred by an odd arrangement of chunks frosted white. They made up the barely recognizable outline of a human corpse. The man had been pushed out, suitless, to freeze instantly, to fall and shatter. He could have felt nothing after the first instant of absolute cold. The effect was for others. . . .

  Hiso clenched his jaw and fed the image into the cycler next to his worktable. It had been another hard and necessary act. Another act of courage.

  He pressed his clenched fists against the smooth wood of the tabletop. Courage. It was too bad there had been time for nothing worse. If Hiso ever got his hands on Tereu, he would think of something.

  The incursions were getting worse—sightings on all the long scanners, those that still functioned. The scanners were going off-line, one by one—were being destroyed, that was clear, just as it was clear that the Cold Minds were closing in on the Neptune system. Scouting it, for what action Hiso did not dare to speculate. The hideous vulnerability of his city, always real, did not bear thinking about. If they came, if they wished to kill, his city would die.

  And it might be possible, for a weakling like Tereu, to argue that it was his fault. Hiso had thought the Cold Minds would not recognize the Hidden Worlds ship; instead, it was increasingly clear that they had known it for what it was, recognized its source—and assumed, when they saw one ship, that a stronger force would follow. They clearly intended to crush their potential enemies in the Earth system in advance of that illusory attack.

  Which meant everything was coming to an end. Unless he, Kimura Hiso, could follow the example of his great predecessor six hundred years ago—and make a new bargain with the Cold Minds—

  He leaned his head on his fists. Not possible. His position was too weak. Tereu had seen to that. He had nothing, nothing to give them. Nothing of enough value that they would spare his world—for a little longer, until he could find some escape, some solution. There had to be one.

  He took a shuddering breath. He was a man of Triton, a pilot—he would die well, if it came to that. But until then he would think, plan, bargain as he had been taught to do by the example of his predecessors.

  He had the end of a thread in his hand. He would follow it, and hope. He to
uched his comm. “Have Perrin Gareth brought to the interrogation room.”

  A few minutes later, he stood in the shadows of the cold little room, studying his former aide, Tereu’s young cousin. Gareth was clamped into a metal chair, held firmly by wrists and ankles. His red prison coverall was too large, sized for a man who had finished growing; the loose cuffs at wrists and ankles hid the bruises Hiso knew were there, from the beating that he had ordered. The beating, for passing secure pilot information to his cousin Perrin Tereu, was only the beginning of Gareth’s punishment. He would have shared the fate of the guard this morning but for his family connections. Tereu was still popular within the city; her name was still something to reckon with. And so Perrin Gareth lived.

  Hiso studied the boy, letting the silence stretch. Gareth’s thin face was unmarked by bruises or cuts—Hiso had ordered that no blows be given above the neck, unwilling to risk damaging the delicate piloting implants in the boy’s brain. Gareth might still be of some use as a pilot, if only as a sacrifice in a hopeless action. And it seemed all too likely that there would be a hopeless action soon.

  Unless this worked.

  “Tell me what you know,” Hiso said mildly, “about your cousin Tereu.”

  “I know less than you do,” Gareth said, his voice low and steady. “I’ve never lived in her household.”

  “Tell me what she did with the information you gave her,” Hiso said.

  “I don’t know,” Gareth said. His hands clutched the arms of the chair.

  “Who did she give it to?”

  “I don’t know.” The boy’s expression did not change. He was afraid, yes, but he was fighting it. Hiso had to respect that. But he also had to break it, if he could.

  “I know your cousin,” Hiso said. “She has certain people who are loyal to her, certain members of her staff. She doesn’t change. I believe that you have some idea of how she passed the information to the deepsiders. You’re clever, you observe things—or I would never have taken you on, family connection or no.”

  “For all I know, she sent it by radio,” Gareth said.

  “A transmission would have been intercepted,” Hiso said. “A coded transmission would have been logged—I would have been told of it. No, it must have been passed personally, face-to-face or as a note. Surely someone strikes you as likely. Someone who might have links of their own to the deepsiders.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” the boy said again. But Hiso caught the tiny hesitation before the answer. The boy was being brave, clinging to silence.

  Which meant he had something to tell.

  Hiso touched the comm. “Dr. DeVries,” he said briefly.

  When the physician was brought in, his white cap of hair disarranged slightly from his confinement, Hiso smiled at him. “As we arranged,” he said, “I require you to make this boy willing to answer questions.”

  The physician glanced at Gareth, who was regarding him palely. Then DeVries looked away, not at Hiso, not at the boy, and Hiso knew he had already decided to cooperate. Only a few formal objections remained. “You cannot ask me for this,” DeVries said.

  “You will be freed, safe and well, when everything is finished,” Hiso said. “I want only to be assured of your cooperation. That you regret your actions in regard to my prisoner and Perrin Tereu. That in future you will be a reliable citizen of Triton.”

  “I can’t drug a man against his will. My oath—”

  “You have a difficult choice to make,” Hiso said softly. “And I can allow you no time to consider it.” This will not, I think, be the last prisoner you help me with. One name would lead to another. And what took threats to accomplish this time, a reward would accomplish the next. The downward path was an easy one, for the weak.

  DeVries gave Hiso another frightened glance. Then turned and opened his medkit.

  Hiso smiled. A thread, still; but he had hold of it now. And who knew where it might lead?

  DEEPSIDER HABITAT HESTIA

  Early morning. Linnea scrubbed her face, hard, with a rough rag that she had soaked in cold water and then squeezed nearly dry inside the drain sack. Another night she hadn’t slept well; but no wonder. There could not be much longer to wait: soon, maybe even today, Pilang would have to pronounce Iain cleared of bots, would have to wake him. The bleak fear of the past few days would end.

  Linnea ran the rag over her arms and chest and shivered in the cold, in Esayeh’s little kitchen cubby, then stuffed the rag into a clamp near the bag that covered the tap. Hastily, she grabbed her warmest coverall and slid into it. Even sealed, it still felt cold against her skin at first; she went on shivering.

  Esayeh spoke behind her. “You could go to the baths, you know. It’s warmer there.”

  She took hold of the wall and turned to look at him. “When did you come in?”

  “An hour ago. Been out on an emergency run.” Then at her startled look, he snorted, and said, “I got here just a minute ago.”

  “Hah.” Linnea floated to her sleep cubby, found her comb in her bag, and started working it through her hair. “How is it out there?”

  “More and more sightings,” Esayeh said. “More ghosts, more shadows. Lin, I don’t like it. They’re stirring like a kicked beehive.”

  “Or trying to panic us.” Linnea tucked the comb away and deftly tied a cloth over her hair. “There’s nothing we can do. Isn’t that what you say?” The old familiar fear had waked again: nightmares of Freija, nightmares of Nexus, nightmares of her nightmares through all those months and years. Nothing to be done about it. “There’s no way to fight,” she muttered.

  “I know that, Lin,” Esayeh said. “We live in a metal bubble. My pilots are evacuating as many of our people as they can, four or five runs a day each. They can’t do more, what with having to break every jump into two or three to be sure they aren’t traced somehow. And you know our ships—all the runs we can do, that totals up to maybe a hundred people a day. It will take fifteen days, twenty days, to get the last of us off Hestia. And meanwhile—they’ll be watching. They can’t track our ships to—where they’re going. But they’ll see something is up.”

  “The Cold Minds?”

  “The Tritoners.” Esayeh ran his fingers through his short hair. “Soon as this place goes silent, they’ll start making guesses.”

  “The Tritoners have problems of their own,” Linnea said flatly. “They have nowhere else to go.”

  “You haven’t—said anything to Tereu,” Esayeh said. It was more than half a question.

  “I’ve kept my word,” Linnea said shortly. She had said nothing to Tereu about Persephone, about the possibility of escape or refuge. Or about the immunity to infestation the deepsiders had been concealing for so long. The unspoken truths stuck in her throat sometimes, made her feel sick.

  There were innocents on Triton, too. Waiting helplessly, without hope, for what the Cold Minds might choose to do with them. She had seen it before, on Freija; she was afraid she was about to see it again.

  “I’m sending Tereu back to Triton,” Esayeh said abruptly.

  “No,” Linnea said in a low voice. “Please, Esayeh—Hiso will arrest her.”

  “She wants to go, Lin,” Esayeh said. “It’s her home. They’re her people. She wants to be with them at the end.”

  Linnea looked down. She knew she had to respect Tereu’s choice. Still—“I wish we could stop her.”

  “We have no right to stop her,” Esayeh said. “There is a division between Tereu and me. Between the Tritoners and our people. I know you have these notions, Lin, but it can’t be healed. Let her go the way of her people. And you and I will go the way of ours.”

  “Let me be the one to take her back,” Linnea said.

  “No,” Esayeh said flatly. “I don’t want them to know your ship is here. And”—he looked away—“word came today from Triton. Kimura Hiso is arresting deepsiders. I don’t want anyone getting into his reach who knows about Persephone.”

  “I wouldn’t tell
him,” Linnea said.

  Esayeh snorted. “He’d get it out of you. For his cause. For his people. . . . No. I told Tereu I would send her over in a freighter, as soon as I can spare one. And that will be the end of it.”

  “She was your wife once,” Linnea said unsteadily.

  “It doesn’t matter, Lin,” Esayeh said, his old eyes distant. “It can’t.”

  Linnea closed her eyes. She knew, too well, that Esayeh was the product of a society that could not afford mercy. She had learned, years ago and far away, how life in constant terror could make humans less than human.

  And yet she had known some who transcended that. She had thought Esayeh might be another. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “It’s not your worry, Lin,” Esayeh said. “You’ve got troubles of your own.”

  Linnea looked up at him sharply.

  He nodded. “Iain’s finally clean, Lin. Pilang said to say, it’s today. They’re waking him.”

  Linnea’s breath caught. “When?”

  “Soon as you can get there.”

  But she was already out the door.

  Linnea shot through the door into the cold room and swung to a halt on the opposite wall. “I’m here,” she said tensely to Pilang, who was waiting with Hana in the corner near the cold-sleep container that held Iain. Linnea pushed off and floated toward them. “How soon can we get started?”

  “Now listen,” Pilang said, straightening and catching Linnea by the arm, halting her so that her own momentum turned her to face the older woman. “You have to understand, Lin. We do not know how he’ll be when he wakes.”

  “He’s clean of the bots,” Linnea said fiercely. “Esayeh told me you said so.” She twisted away. “Please!”

  “But, Lin—” Pilang roughly seized her, turned her so they were face-to-face. “Lin, listen to me! No one has ever been put in the cold with an infestation. No one. We know it slowed the bots. We know they’re gone now—our nano cleaned out the remnants, and the trace metal levels are down to undetectable.”