She pushed her way through the crowd, all of whom were staring at the screens or listening to the Space Traffic employee.
“…like this before. It usually takes an extra hour. We’re sorry for the inconvenience…”
She led the man up a flight of stairs. He kept pace with her. No one else was going up. A lot of people and a few aliens were on the other stairway, coming down.
She reached the top of the stairs. Screens danced in front of her, some interacting with her links, all of them showing the exterior of O’Malley’s.
Shut off all but emergency links, she sent to her system, just for the moment. She wasn’t able to process what was going on—not yet, anyway.
To her left, screens continued. More people, and several different groups of aliens, watched. To her left, the screens vanished. An opaque group of walls protected the children from all the turbulence outside of the children’s area.
“It’s for babies, mostly, and children who still need daily naps,” Berhane said to the man. “But I think they’ll let you two inside for a while.”
The man was holding little Fiona sideways so that she couldn’t see the screens.
“’Swrong?” she asked Berhane.
“I don’t know yet, sweetie,” Berhane said. “I don’t think anyone does. But nothing’s wrong with us.”
“Nu-uh,” Fiona said. “You were crying before.”
Of course, she had seen that. Her little hand was still clenched around the ring.
The man’s gaze met Berhane’s. He was about to say something, but she needed to speak first.
“That man who was talking to me before I met you,” Berhane said, “he was mean to me, and made me cry. But you made me smile.”
Fiona frowned, as if she didn’t understand why. “Me?”
“Yes,” Berhane said. “You were nice to me.”
Fiona grunted, as if she didn’t quite understand that, but she wasn’t going to argue with it.
Her father kissed the top of her head.
“You’ve been kind to us,” he said. “I don’t know why—”
Berhane waved him silent. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to find out what was going on.
“If you ever need anything, not that I can probably help you with anything, considering,” he said, “but if you do, I’m Donal Ó Brádaigh. I was just here to say good-bye to someone. I live in Armstrong.”
He probably knew that she lived in Armstrong as well.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll remember that.”
She hoped she didn’t sound too dismissive. She wasn’t going to ask him for anything, ever. She didn’t do things like that.
She nodded toward the children’s area. Another parent, two toddlers in tow, hurried inside.
“I suspect you won’t have to wait long,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said again. “Wave good-bye, Fee.”
Fiona didn’t let go of the ring. But she whispered, “Bye.”
Then the man—Donal—took Fiona into the children’s area without looking back.
Berhane watched them for a moment. While waiting for that bastard Torkild, she had waited to have children too. Although that probably wasn’t entirely fair. She had told Torkild she wasn’t sure she ever wanted children.
She hadn’t been ready to think about them.
And she certainly wasn’t ready now.
She sighed, then turned around. The image on the screens was all the same now. A close-up of Arek’s face. He didn’t look like himself. He almost looked like a stone visage of the mayor, toppled over and somewhat off.
Her breath caught in her throat. She’d liked Arek, even if she had thought him a bit of a media whore. He had helped her with some charity work, even when her father had opposed wasting the time.
Her father’s favorite criticism: wasting time.
Which she was doing, looking at Arek now. Dead. On Anniversary Day.
She wiped her hand over her face, surprised that the tears had stopped. Her skin was sticky, though. She needed to find a bathroom and splash some water on her cheeks.
There was probably a bathroom on this floor, but she didn’t want to thread her way through the crowd. Instead, she went back to the stairs.
As she did, she realized that her father might not have heard what was going on. He hated to be interrupted when he was at an event, and unless the governor-general had made an announcement, no one at the speech had probably heard.
Berhane reinstated all of her links. Aside from the messages from the port assuring her that things would be settled soon, she had received nothing.
Dad? She sent along her links.
She took the stairs down.
She got nothing in response, which was odd. She boosted the audio and established a written link as well, just in case she couldn’t hear. The conversation in the luxury terminal was louder than she had ever heard before.
Dad, it’s important.
She still got no response. Not an image, not some kind of Bernard Magalhães has no link access. Your message will remain in the queue until access is restored—none of the usual brush-off messages.
Nothing.
Her heart started to pound. She couldn’t remember where the governor-general was giving her speech. It was in Armstrong, right? Not Littrow, which was where the newly formed United Domes of the Moon had established itself.
Daddy, Berhane sent, this time through the family’s emergency links. Contact me now. I don’t know if you got the news about Arek, but I’m worried. It’s Anniversary Day…
And all of this was echoing for her. How many messages had she sent to her mother that long, long morning exactly four years ago?
She couldn’t lose both parents on the same day, four years apart, could she?
And had Torkild actually thought it through, breaking up with her on this day? The bastard.
She let out a breath. Anger. Good. It was better than panic and fear.
She stopped halfway down the stairs and scanned the lower part of the luxury terminal, although she wasn’t sure what she was looking for.
There was nowhere to pace now. All of the aisles were filled with people and aliens, standing, staring at the imagery coming on the floating screens. Other passengers remained in their comfortable chairs, hands pressed against their ears the way that humans did when they were trying to focus on information inside their links. A few Peyti lingered near the doorways, heads tilted as they got information, their masks elongating their faces, their sticklike hands at their sides.
There weren’t a lot of non-humans in the lounge, which was probably a good thing. The xenophobia in Armstrong had grown ever since the bombings, and the crazies often came out on Anniversary Day.
Obviously.
She had stopped in front of five screens. She couldn’t avoid the images—the mayor, sprawled; the police, talking, moving, unable to figure anything out. No visuals from wherever the governor-general was giving her speech, not yet.
People passed her, hurrying down the stairs as if there was actually somewhere to go. She leaned against the railing, trying to catch her breath.
She needed to think.
Her father was probably fine. He was either listening to a speech he didn’t want to hear or he was securing his business interests in the wake of another attack in the city.
Her gaze went to Arek’s face again, only visible on one screen now. Two other screens showed the police, conferring, and yet another showed imagery from the speech Arek had given not an hour ago.
She ran a hand over her face.
This concerned her only as a citizen of Armstrong. A survivor of Anniversary Day. A casual friend of Arek.
Nothing more.
Sad as it all was.
She took another deep breath and forced herself to feel calm. Just because everyone else was panicking didn’t mean she had to.
She stood up and was about to continue down the stairs when the doors to Terminal 20 opened.
>
Travelers flooded in, looking angry, harried, sad, confused. It looked like a large ship had arrived, but one hadn’t. There’d already been an announcement that nothing would land, or at least let the passengers disembark, until this crisis was over.
So everyone who came in was from the ships that had been about to leave.
She couldn’t help herself; she looked for Torkild.
And hated herself for doing so.
FIVE
THE TEAM PUSHED Luc Deshin out of the building. He was stumbling beside others from the Gathering, all looking inward, communicating on links.
His stomach was in knots. He wanted to contact Paavo, but knew he would just upset the boy. The school would handle things well; they always did.
And his people would be there soon. Once they arrived—once they contacted him—he would let Gerda know.
She had to be worried too.
The light from Yutu City’s dome was amber. They didn’t try to mimic Earth days here, but invented their own weird coffee- and tea-like colors that seemed to rotate randomly.
He hated it. It felt alien, and he didn’t like anything that felt alien. He liked to be in control of his environment. He didn’t like having it control him.
The air outside smelled worse than it had inside the building. Sweat and some kind of exhaust from equipment that would have been illegal in Armstrong. Not to mention the dome environmental filters, salted with something scented—some kind of incense, maybe, or a faint perfume. Scenting the air was also illegal in Armstrong.
It made him lightheaded—all of this was making him lightheaded.
He wanted to go home more than he ever had in his entire life.
“We need some kind of transport,” he said to Jakande.
“The good ones have already been hired, sir,” Jakande said.
“Then buy us one, for God’s sake,” Deshin snapped.
Jakande didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. Deshin knew the man was working his links, even as he moved Deshin forward.
Deshin didn’t ask where they were going. They were moving in a group of people who had emerged from the Gathering, all with personal agendas, all focused now on Soseki’s assassination and its aftermath, not on any business that would have happened here.
I need a report from my teams, he sent back to his office in Armstrong. I need to know that my son is all right.
Team on the ground at the academy, sir, sent the acting head of security. Your son and his classmates are protected. The school is protected.
“How’s that transport coming?” Deshin asked Jakande.
“Private transports aren’t fast enough,” he said. “At least, not the ones left. We’re taking one of the trains. Yutu City has just added three bullet trains to the schedule, figuring that people will want to return to Armstrong quickly.”
They were right about that. He liked it when a government actually did some thinking.
He let his team pull him forward—the train station wasn’t that far from here, and it looked easier to run/walk the distance than try to negotiate the roads and skyways.
It seemed like every vehicle in Yutu City was clogging the skyways and the streets. The buildings were too close together for Deshin anyway, but when he looked up and saw dozens of vehicles directly above him, he felt claustrophobic.
That and the amber light and the unfamiliar streets made him feel even more uneasy. Or maybe it was Soseki’s death.
Deshin had come to some agreements with Soseki—things Soseki’s regular constituents probably wouldn’t want to know about, but agreements that would benefit Armstrong in the end.
Now, Deshin had no idea what would happen. Soseki had promised to make those agreements happen. There had been nothing recorded, because both men had felt recording their alliance would be risky.
Deshin hadn’t expected a vibrant man with a good staff, a man ten years younger, to die so suddenly.
That kind of thing happened on Earth in the bad old days or out on the Frontier or at the edges of the known universe. It happened in alien cultures or corporations with bad owners. It didn’t happen on settled places, established places, like the Moon—
Sir?
Mr. Deshin?
Sir?
His emergency links were chattering again. He hadn’t revived his regular links, except for Gerda’s, and she was being respectful. Silent.
He wasn’t sure he liked silent.
More images on the bottom of his vision made him stumble. Jakande held him up.
The images…he had to pull up sound, because the images were just of buildings and hospitals and something (someone) too small for him to see being placed inside some kind of vehicle.
“…Celia Alfreda…”
“…Moon’s governor-general…”
“…not sure if she’ll survive…”
“What the hell?” he asked, looking around.
“Keep moving, sir,” Jakande said tightly.
They weren’t far from the station. He could see it from here.
Everything was falling apart in Armstrong. He fully expected to hear that other important figures were dying as well.
Something was very wrong, and he had no idea how to stop it.
SIX
BERHANE DIDN’T SEE Torkild in the mass of bodies streaming into the already full lounge. She kept her position near the railing, gripping it as if it were a lifeline.
Then she forced herself to walk down the remaining stairs, slowly.
She wasn’t going to look for Torkild any longer. She needed to locate her father, let him know that something awful had happened, and then she had to figure out what she would do next.
The port had released the passengers back into the terminal, which meant that nothing would leave for several hours. Longer than the authorities had said on the links and in their official communications.
She had a hunch something else had gone wrong.
She reached ground level. A Disty bumped her leg, nearly knocking her over. She hadn’t seen Disty in here earlier. Clearly, more than one ship had disembarked.
It wouldn’t do her any good to remain in the lounge. She needed to leave, maybe go to one of the upscale restaurants nearby, the ones the “peasants,” as her father would say, couldn’t afford. The fewer people who could afford the place, the greater the privacy she would have.
Then she could try to reach her father again.
She might not be able to leave the port, but she could at least get a meal, locate her father through her links, and figure out what she would do next.
Because going back to school wasn’t an option today.
She had had a hunch she wouldn’t make it to class anyway. She had thought she’d be drowning her sorrows after seeing her fiancé off for the first time this year. And if things had gone according to Torkild’s plan (the bastard), she would be drinking her sorrows away at some bar, trying not to cry because he had dumped her.
For a moment, she regretted giving away the ring. She wanted to fling it another time.
Then she made herself focus on little Fiona’s expression when she had received the ring. That had been worthwhile.
Fiona, who was upstairs with her father, hiding out from the news.
It was probably a good thing that they had gone, because this lounge had gotten very crowded. The disembarked passengers were stopping, clogging up the aisles as they stared at the imagery. Others were grabbing their ears, looking shocked. Still others kept moving, acting like they didn’t care at all.
They were moving swiftly, some of them trying to leave the lounge. Which they could do. Everyone could do it.
But they wouldn’t be able to leave the port until some authority told them it was all right.
Berhane squared her shoulders, trying to stay away from the panicked arrivals.
“Berhane?”
She started. The voice, so close to her, was Torkild’s. For half a second, she thought she had her links on audio, and then she r
ealized he was standing right beside her.
She could smell his cedar-scented cologne, faint but familiar. He hadn’t changed it in more than a decade.
She turned.
He looked a little rumpled and a lot older than he had not an hour before. His coffee-colored skin was lined, and his dark eyes, with their small fold in the corner, were red-rimmed.
He hadn’t been crying, had he? He couldn’t have been devastated by their break-up. After all, he had wanted it. He had said, Surely you should have seen this coming, Berhane.
“If you don’t want to talk to me, I understand,” he said, and his voice now was mixing with the memory of his voice from earlier in her head. She had to blink to focus. “But I’m hearing something about a murder…?”
He was offering her sympathy? What kind of idiot was he?
“Torkild,” she said, her tone icy. “It’s Anniversary Day. Had you thought that through?”
“They mentioned it as they told us to disembark,” he said, and he was clearly oblivious, the idiot. “They’re thinking that maybe something bigger—”
“My mother died in the bombing that they’re commemorating, had you thought of that?” she snapped.
Torkild caught his breath, looked around at the people streaming around them.
“Here, Berhane?” he asked in a tone that implied Really? You’re doing this now?
“Yes, here,” she said. “You chose this very spot to end our relationship.”
“But Berhane, right now—?”
“Yes, right now,” she said. “You’re the one who started this.”
“Berhane, they’ve evacuated the ships. Something is really wrong here.” Suddenly, he was the concerned Torkild, the man she had fallen in love with, not the bastard Torkild, the man the rest of her family thought he was.
But he wasn’t concerned for her. He was concerned for himself.
“Yes, something is wrong,” she said. “Arek is dead.”
She inclined her head toward the screen.
“Arek—?” Torkild didn’t know who that was. “Oh, you mean, Soseki. The mayor. You knew him?”
Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel Page 4