Radiate

by C. A. Higgins

  Arawn thumped the table hard with a fist, and in the distraction of the sound and the malfunction Mattie dislocated his right thumb.

  The pain hit him so hard that he missed the moment when the holograph jolted back into a perfect rendition of the map of Europa, but he did have the presence of mind to slip his hand out of the one cuff before the swelling could make that impossible and to grab the cuff once it had slid off to stop it from clattering to the chair. He held it in place and breathed through the shocks of his self-inflicted pain and the muscles that spasmed around his displaced thumb while Arawn said, “Fucking computers.”

  “You were saying about Venus…” Vithar began.

  “Venus,” said Arawn, leaning onto the edge of the table, warping the hologram. It was still chittering, the hologram, bits of other wavelengths showing in the seemingly gray surface of simulated Europa. “And Marisol Brahe. She’s the one”—he pointed one finger across the latitudes of Europa at Vithar—“who turned the Mallt-y-Nos aside to begin with. She weakened the Huntress, stole her army, and broke her spirit. The System is going to take advantage of her. When the System comes back, it’ll be because Marisol let them come back, because she’s weak.”

  Mattie tried to figure out how he would manage to get his second hand free without alerting Arawn. With one hand out, he could reach over and pick the other cuff—there were picks down his boot where no one had thought to look—but if he reached down to his foot and then reached over for his arm, Arawn would see.

  “And she is weak,” said Arawn, like a wolf tearing strips from a carcass with its teeth. “A teenage girl with limited battle experience. Who does she have to help her? Rayet? The man was a foot soldier and then a bodyguard. And he’s old System. Once System, always System. We can’t let her and hers continue.

  “But if Anji and I pool our forces,” Arawn continued while Mattie braced his left thumb against the chair and waited for the moment when he was most distracted and Vithar shifted strangely, and then, strangely, moved to stand, “and come down on her, then we—”

  The bullet struck Arawn in the throat before he could finish speaking. Arawn grabbed for his neck with one hand, the other going for his gun, but Vithar didn’t move and Arawn never completed the motion. The blood that pumped out fell through the holographic surface of Europa to pool on the table beneath, a color too dark to be red, blocking the transmission of holographic light. Arawn’s hand slackened, fingers going loose, and the blood pumped out faster now that the brief impediment had moved. He breathed out a last bubbling breath through his torn throat and went still, lids twitching until even that at last stopped.

  Mattie sat frozen next to the corpse while Vithar walked over to the soundproof door and cracked it open. “He says to come in,” Mattie heard him say, and then two men—guards at the door—came into the room. One of them saw Arawn and the blood that soaked all the layers of draping fabric he wore; the guard had just enough time to draw his gun before Vithar shot him, and his friend had only enough time to watch the first guard fall before he, too, was jolted by a shot to the head.

  The first man wasn’t quite dead. Mattie heard him wheezing for breath and trying to move out of sight on the other side of the table. Vithar stepped over the dead guard, aimed his gun, and fired for a fourth time, and the wheezing stopped.

  Then he looked across the table at Mattie.

  “Are you out of those cuffs yet,” he asked, putting his gun back in its holster, “or do you need some help?”

  Numbly, Mattie lifted his free hand. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

  “Good.”

  Where Arawn’s blood was spreading on the table, the hologram fuzzed into static, and as that blood traveled lazily over the surface, the hologram slowly transitioned into chaotic nothingness. Mattie said, “How did Anji know we were here?”

  “She didn’t. I only came to deal with him.”

  “Is Con with Anji now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then she’s all right.”

  Vithar shut his eyes and shook his head, very nearly smiling, thin and bitter. “When you see your friend Ivan again,” he said, “you should tell him he was right.” He moved toward the door.

  “Wait!” Mattie said. “Anji’s going to kill her.”

  “You know that she is.”

  “Then why not kill me, too?” There was a pressure behind his eyes; he tried to swallow it, not shout it. “I’m on Constance’s side.”

  “Because Anji can afford to protect you,” said Vithar. “Even if you came to Saturn today, trying to save the Huntress, she would still protect you. But not the Mallt-y-Nos.”

  “Then you help me,” Mattie said. “Not Anji. You.”

  For an instant, Mattie thought he might. There was bitterness in Vithar’s face; Ivan had, after all, been right.

  Then, “Compliments of Anji Chandrasekhar,” said Vithar with a gesture to Arawn, and left Mattie alone in a room full of corpses.

  Mattie scrambled for his boot and jolted his swelling thumb against the edge of it, ignoring the shock of pain. The picks were just inside the lip of the boot, and he managed to pull one out with his forefinger, catching it between that and his middle finger once it was free of the boot. For a moment he was certain he would drop it, his hand was shaking so badly, but he pulled it up and in a moment had his left hand free.

  The first thing he did was shove his thumb back into place. He grayed out for a moment when he did and knew that his right hand wouldn’t be much use, but he was left-handed anyway. Then he took Arawn’s gun and extra ammunition and after a moment’s thought took his knife as well.

  Vithar had left the door slightly ajar. Through that tiny space, some sound could make it into the room from outside. An alarm was going off, a high and wailing Klaxon.

  Ivan was out there somewhere, and Constance was still alive. Readying his stolen gun, Mattie slipped out into the camp.

  BACKWARD

  The crew of the Jason had Mattie, and Ivan had left him there. At least Ivan had managed to slip a device onto the other ship, and so he could access the Jason’s computer.

  The device had been of Mattie’s design. It was a moment’s work to find the cameras on the Jason, less time to find Mattie’s cell in them. The System crew was questioning him now. Ivan watched Mattie fall to his knees, one hand grabbing his ribs—broken, from the look of that kick.

  Ivan could watch Mattie die from here, safely on the Tam Lin.

  Watch but do nothing. Ivan left the screen and paced the Tam Lin’s tiny cabin. Watch, helpless and out of control.

  No, Ivan realized. Not entirely out of control.

  In a moment Ivan had found the life support systems. A quick blow, he knew, with the immediate grasp of the situation his mother had trained him to have. That was the only way to control it.

  Like the breath of ice on the back of his neck, he remembered Saturn. All those corpses floating frozen and dead in the rings, and all because of him. He drew back his hand incrementally from the controls.

  In the camera footage, Mattie was trying to crawl away from the System man who was beating him. He did not get very far.

  A strange calm settled over Ivan. He reached for the controls and shut down the Jason’s life support.

  FORWARD

  Ivan’s summons was answered at once.

  In the seconds after his words rang out through the quiet control room, Ivan leaned down on the computer terminal, his attention fixed on the blurry spot of light on the viewscreen that marked Ananke. Around him, the computer blinked its lights gently on and off. Danu was silent where she had been tied, silent and still.

  Then the holographic terminal, tall and dark and empty by the stairs, chimed.

  The lights in the terminal flashed on and off in an expanding pattern like a ripple traveling along its floor. Politely again, the terminal chimed, reminding Ivan that someone would like to speak to him.

  ACCEPT CALL? It asked.

  Out of curiosity, Ivan loo
ked at the source of the call. Where it should have told him allegiance and name and mission, the call had been signed with a single equation: the equation for the shape of a logarithmic spiral.

  If Ananke could have, she would have simply forced her way into the shuttle’s systems. Ivan’s work on the shuttle had succeeded in locking her out.

  He accepted the call and took a step away, as if with distance he could gain greater safety from the shape that was forming on the holographic terminal, diodes warming up, lighting up, glowing and flashing, their light interfering, building. The cameras in the room were gone and a hologram was blind; Althea and Ananke would not be able to see Ivan, but he altered his expression anyway so that he had the smile that had so charmed Althea ready on his lips.

  The hologram built, shuddered. A long arm became visible, a freckled shoulder. Ivan’s smile began to fade. From the static a proud chin lifted, and hazel eyes traveled blindly through the room, lips catching into a frown. The words Ivan had had ready, the prepared manipulations, died on his lips.

  In the dim blue grotto light, Constance Harper’s face and form glowed. Her light-blind eyes blinked; one hand lifted slightly, then lowered itself, with her old decisive grace, back to her side.

  She said, “Ivan?”

  It was her voice. Recorded, transmitted, filtered through the harshness of electronics, but it was her voice. It was instantly familiar, yet his mind churned over the sound of it, for there is such a difference between a voice heard and one merely remembered.

  “I can’t see you,” Constance said. “There aren’t any cameras.” Her voice was caught between annoyance and pride. That was her doing, after all. That was her legacy. “Are you there?”

  All his ready defenses, his fast and charming smile, were no good against her. “I’m here,” he said.

  The hologram’s eyes could not see; they had no chance of meeting his. Still they moved, drifting over him, the control panels, the empty floor, over Danu tied up and rousing slowly in the corner.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” said Constance. The hologram had somehow captured the delicate arch and turn of her neck. “Where’s Mattie?”

  “He’s nearby.”

  She nearly smiled, that slight press of her lips that showed when she was pleased but too tall and proud to show it. She said, “You’re wondering how I came to be on this ship.”

  “It crossed my mind, Constance.” Ivan watched the curl and loosen of her long fingers.

  “It found me,” said Constance as if she had not heard him speak. That was familiar, too. “Anji had me. She was going to kill me—funny how you think you can trust a person.” A faint curl of bitterness threaded into her voice but faded almost immediately, like candle smoke into air. “She had me standing out on the grounds for my execution. Her people were ready to fire, and I’d accepted it. I was ready.” She fell silent for a moment, her sightless gaze turned inward. He had turned his face up to look at her like a plant bending toward the sun.

  Constance said, “And then this ship came.”

  The tip of her ponytail slipped over her shoulder, brushing over her smooth freckled skin as she turned her head, her eyes searching. She said, “I’ve talked to Ananke. I know what she wants. I know what she can give us. Ivan? Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Ivan said.

  She almost smiled again when he spoke. “I’ve missed you.” It wasn’t a confession. Constance confessed nothing. It was a declaration. “We have so much to talk about. This ship—she can destroy the System for us without letting anyone else get hurt. Without letting you or Mattie get hurt. I thought you were dead. But Ananke can keep us safe, you and me and Mattie, like it should be. Ananke wants to help us. She only wants a little help in return.”

  Constance paused again. “Are you there, Ivan?”

  Ivan looked at her, the glorious sight of her, her brown eyes and her proud chin and her long and elegant neck and the freckles on her bare and graceful shoulder. He drank in the sight of it. And then he said, “What exactly do you want, Ananke?”

  The image flickered. Constance said, “Ivan—”

  “You’re not her,” Ivan said, and Constance opened her mouth one last time, proud chin held high, beautiful and alive, but the hologram began to fade before she could speak. The image on the terminal morphed, shifting, shrinking, growing pale.

  Then a different woman opened her blue eyes to look out sightlessly from the high terminal.

  “Leon, are you there?” said his mother.

  “No,” Ivan said, and agitation drove him to move, pacing across the floor, “You’re not her, either.”

  His mother’s brow furrowed the slightest amount. “Leon, listen—”

  “No.”

  “I believed that you were dead,” said the image of Doctor Milla Ivanov. “I nearly died believing it, but this ship found me on Mars. Constance thought I was dead, and she left me. The medical facilities on this ship are incredible. The things they can do to the human body—she brought me back. And here I stand, and here you are. I thought you were dead,” she said, and the diamond perfection of her composure cracked as it never had before. “A mother’s grief is deep and vast. Come help me, Ivan.”

  “Ananke,” Ivan warned, and the hologram drew back into itself. Milla Ivanov’s expression settled back into smooth impassivity. The static rose from her ankles up, and his mother cast him one last cool blue disappointed glance, and then was gone.

  In her place Althea Bastet stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her curly hair in chaos and her old System uniform rumpled.

  She said, “Can you blame me?”

  Ivan stopped pacing. “I called you, didn’t I?”

  “Only when you couldn’t avoid it anymore.”

  Ivan said, “Can you blame me?”

  She scowled. It was a familiar expression, and a part of Ivan nearly wanted to smile, though he felt no nostalgia for Althea Bastet’s frowns. He said, “You’ve been looking for us, haven’t you?”

  “You’ve been running away.”

  “We’ve been traveling our own paths.”

  She scowled at him again. “You’ve been running,” she said. “I helped you, but when I needed your help in return, you ran away.”

  “You’ve found me now.”

  A shadowy smile stretched Althea’s lips. “I have.”

  At the base of the steps, Ivan saw, Danu had woken. Blood streaked down her cheek, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. He did not know how long she had been listening.

  Ivan said, “What do you need us for, Althea?”

  “For your help. Ananke is…she’s been out of control. Restless. Rebellious. She’s been”—Althea almost laughed, almost sighed, a sound like metal bending—“a teenager.”

  Restless. Rebellious. Ivan thought of Julian and all his people, dead. “What do you want me and Mattie to do about it?”

  “I’m not enough for her; I’m just a human. Ananke needs a companion, another computer like herself. Someone to make a pair with.”

  “Another ship,” Ivan said.

  “Yes.”

  Her wide eyes were rounded with sincerity, the brown skin of her cheek smeared carelessly with some sort of oil. She waited with preternatural stillness for Ivan to respond. Even her eyes went still, staring straight in front of herself, over Ivan’s head.

  Ivan said, “Is that what Althea wants, or is that just what you want, Ananke?”

  For a moment the hologram was frozen with a stillness unnatural and inhuman. And then all of a sudden holographic wires were snaking out of nowhere and plunging into the flesh of the image, skin swelling in response to the intrusion, Althea strung up and pierced with metal and looking at him, right at him, with a dull and desperate gaze—

  The image shattered into static, a reset harder and more complete than all the other changing images had been. Whatever shape Ananke wanted to show next struggled to re-form, and for a moment that lasted an eternity Ivan saw her, the image that made
up the base of Ananke’s holograms, the form and figure of the dead Ida Stays smiling at him from out of the snow.

  In a crash of static Ananke appeared.

  “How did you know?” she asked. Ivan had never heard her voice before. It unnerved him to know how like Mattie she sounded.

  But he smiled, charming, even so. “Know what?”

  “That it was me.”

  “I’m good at that.”

  She smiled. Like Mattie, she had dimples. Ivan said, “Did you think it would work?”

  “I thought it might.”

  “It wasn’t necessary.”

  “Wasn’t it?” said Ananke. “I learned it from you.”

  Like the other holograms, her gaze could not quite manage to reach him. Like the Sybil, she gazed blindly past.

  “Perhaps you did,” Ivan said. “But you didn’t need to lie to me now. I called you, Ananke.”

  “You did. And for what purpose?”

  Behind Ivan, Danu was conscious and listening. Ananke could not see their audience, but Ivan could let her know they had one.

  “You’re fond of me and Mattie, Ananke,” Ivan said, “aren’t you? I am your Scheherazade.”

  She blinked. She had blue eyes. God save him: she had his eyes.

  Ananke said, “You are my Scheherazade. You told me stories as a child. I am very fond of you…and I am very fond of my father, Mattie Gale.”

  She was using his own inflections now, and so Ivan knew that she understood. “You would be very angry if we were hurt.”

  “If you were harmed,” Ananke said, “I would be much wroth.”

  “And what would you do, if you were so angered?”

  “I would descend upon the icy moon where you had been harmed,” said Ananke. “The ground would quake with my nearness. The sky would fall in. I would take every machine that breathed on the surface and make it mine—humankind’s slaves would turn against their masters and tear men apart like wolves, my people coming to bloody liberation.”

  The hologram’s voice soared, at once childlike and mature, echoing and filled with a beautiful and terrible music.