The ’sider chose one of the plates, Gail the other. “I wait what develops with great interest, Dr. Smith,” Rosalind told her, a careful choice of words. Reinsez must have made her aware of the Earthers’ lack of respect for privacy.
“As do I.”
“And young Aaron? Surely he has gained significant value in the eyes of your Commander Grant.”
Gail looked at Rosalind sharply, stung by the implication that Aaron was another bargaining chip, not surprised by it either. She might have been tempted to talk to the older woman about Aaron, to learn more about his life, his past. But Gail was quite sure Rosalind would put a price to every answer, every revelation. This wasn’t a mother, concerned for her son. This was a leader, ready to spend whatever lives she felt necessary.
“Quite significant,” Gail nodded agreeably, grimly aware she knew exactly where they stood—and the coin Rosalind would understand. “Thank you for sharing your table,” she added, standing. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
Rosalind’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. “I look forward to it, Dr. Smith.”
Gail felt some anticipation of her own as she walked away from the table. She’d made a start. Now it was time to do more.
How very thoughtful of Grant to confine her to the science sphere.
It was time he learned why. Having excused herself from Rosalind, their business as complete as circumstances allowed, Gail went to the door. The FD on guard there, Cornell, had the grace to look uncomfortable at her approach, but stayed at attention. “Yes, Dr. Smith?” he asked.
“I’m exhausted, Specialist Cornell,” she told him. “Am I to be allowed back into my quarters for the night?” It didn’t take much to yawn, Gail discovered. Nothing wrong with some truth in a cover story.
“Sorry, Doctor. Orders are to keep everyone out of the command sphere.”
“Fine. Assign me quarters here, then. Any bed will do.” When he looked uncertain, Gail gave him her second-best smile, leaning wearily against the wall beside the closed door. “Look, Cornell. I can’t believe your commander wants me to sleep on a chair in the dining lounge—especially if he needs me up and thinking tomorrow. And he will, you know. Those are my suits that protected Dafoe and Pardell on the planet. If you people want to accomplish anything more down there, it’ll be my suits that make it possible. Call Grant, if you must. I’ll wait.”
“That’s not necessary, Dr. Smith,” Cornell decided. “I can’t see any security risk to your getting some sleep. As for those suits—they’re amazing things. I admit some of us doubted they’d work.”
“Yet you all volunteered to test them.”
Cornell looked mildly amused by the question. “Of course, Dr. Smith. Wait here a minute. I’ll call someone to escort you to quarters.”
“Thank you.”
Gail took a seat nearby, chin in her hand, as though her head was too heavy to keep up. Not hard.
It wasn’t long before FD Loran appeared, one of the science sphere stewards in tow. The steward, a mousy little man she vaguely recalled was named Bates, looked a little too nervous to be one of the FDs’ plants among the crew. He looked immediately flustered when Gail smiled at him a little more warmly than he’d expected.
A better-than-standard issue bed. Gail made herself stretch out between the cold satin sheets, ignoring the tendency of her skin to crawl. Sazaad liked his luxury.
It hadn’t been hard to arrange for this room—his room—of those available while the FD confined the science staff to the lab. Gail had merely given Bates the number of the room next to it, knowing it was vacant. Sazaad’s nocturnal habits didn’t induce popularity with neighbors. With commendable, if predictable, suspicion, Loran had refused to put Gail in the room of her own choosing, insisting on Sazaad’s instead. Everyone knew, of course, there was nothing but animosity between Drs. Smith and Sazaad. It probably seemed a safe bet there would be nothing Gail could have hidden in there, no hidden motive for wanting Sazaad’s room over any other.
Unless you knew the man, Gail thought coolly, lying in the dark. Any senior scientist’s quarters would have sufficed, but Sazaad’s had a singular advantage. He was completely paranoid about surveillance—he probably had to be, if he maintained a similarly prolific lifestyle back on Titan. She could be reasonably sure Grant hadn’t planted any vids in here, or, if he had, they’d been neutralized. Sazaad was quite the genius, in his way.
That didn’t mean Gail felt comfortable between his sheets. She lay down in case someone came in to see if she’d really intended to grab an hour or so of sleep, making sure to thoroughly crease the bedding and leave an imprint in the pillow. Unfortunately, this also had the effect of leaving proof for Sazaad that she’d been in his bed. He’d be impossible for weeks. Maybe, Gail thought more cheerfully, she could find a way to have Malley threaten to sever Sazaad’s head again.
Not that Malley had done so with any notion of protecting her. But he had thoroughly cowed Sazaad for the time being.
She didn’t put on the light—no need, all the quarters were similar and Sazaad’s was incredibly neat compared to hers. Two steps and turn, hands out. There.
Gail used her fingers to hunt for the desk pad, ruthlessly shoving anything else out of her way. She didn’t bother with the internal comm system or waste time searching through Sazaad’s doubtless revolting drawers for any illicit portable devices.
Ah. Pulling up the chair, found by the simple expedient of bumping one hip into it, she sat and began keying in the general access code every scientist on the Seeker used to send their routine updates and changes to the D-board in the lab.
Then, she began keying in something else.
This was, Gail told herself grimly, her ship.
Chapter 67
THE Seeker wasn’t Gail’s anymore.
Pardell had known something was wrong the instant Dafoe spouted code into the comm. There could only be one reason for it—the FD wanted to communicate to her commander, not Gail Smith.
He’d kept quiet, listening to Grant’s voice—not Gail’s—directing their return to the ship, sitting at a safe distance from Dafoe as the Athena bumped and jostled her way upward, the ride smoothing like magic once they’d cleared the impediment of atmosphere.
He’d kept hold of the box.
Dafoe hadn’t argued. She hadn’t said a word to him beyond notifying him of their position relative to the ship and when it was time to disembark. As if he couldn’t tell for himself. The ’Mate wasn’t all that much more complex than the pod; Pardell had grown up playing with her control panels. There’d been teaching sims, too. He’d flown as many times as he’d been allowed, until Raner had had to trade them for dibs.
So he’d been ready when the Athena sighed to her rest, doors opening on the welcoming committee in the Seeker’s hangar: Grant himself, Allyn, and two others from the Seeker’s crew waiting in a line.
Ready and angry. And more than a little afraid,
“What have you done with Dr. Smith?” he’d challenged, staring right at Grant, and keeping hold of the box.
There’d probably been smarter ways to play it, Pardell told himself glumly. Malley would have bluffed, pretended to notice nothing odd or out of the ordinary, likely carried it off.
He’d only managed to end up here, in what appeared to be a containment area for incoming shipments to the science sphere. A brig, by any other name.
Pardell sighed and leaned his head back against the metal wall. The box was heavy and cold on his lap. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t letting go of it.
The monster in the box was Gail’s.
The monster outside the box? Pardell shuddered as he remembered, not the living sculpture, but the sensations he’d experienced when he touched the Quill filament. Compared to what he felt from other human beings, it was as if he’d somehow taken a glove and wiped the condensation from the outside of a frozen helmet—that sudden a clarity.
Recognition . . .
A surprise, but one Gail ha
d tried to prepare him to face. After all, the entire premise of the suits as protection assumed the Quill either preserved or passed down some means of recognizing individual humans. She’d been right.
Pardell closed his eyes, trying to imagine the look on Gail’s face when she’d first known for sure. Her lips would have parted, so. Her eyes? Their blue would have darkened, intensified—perhaps shone with tears. None would have fallen. She should have looked triumphant, proud—not just relieved. He hoped she’d had time to feel all she’d deserved, before the Quill and Grant betrayed her.
Welcome . . .
That impression had shocked him to his core. Pardell opened his eyes to stare at his hands, folded innocently on top of the box, their markings as sure a brand of inhumanity as the Quill’s greeting for him and him alone.
Intelligence? He hadn’t needed the structure they—it—whatever—had wrought to know there was purpose on that world. He’d felt it coursing up through his fingers, flowing along his arms, invading every part of him. What did it want? What could it have to do with him?
What was he?
Had he been changed again?
Questions no one should have to ask themselves.
’Course, there was no one else to ask, Pardell reminded himself with a laugh too close to a sob for comfort.
Chapter 68
“I KNOW you’re awake.” “I Gail found herself sitting up and squinting at the figure silhouetted in the bright arc of light from the corridor. “Well,” she said, not having planned to sleep in the first place, “I am now.”
Commander Grant took a step to the side and closed the door behind him, turning on the room light as he did so.
A man chased by demons, Gail decided without sympathy, looking at the commander’s haggard face. His pulse was visible under the small, puckered scar on his temple. His dark eyes were hollow and strained, as if he’d spent too many hours staring into a sun.
Still, Grant’s mouth twitched into an unexpected smile. “Wish I had a camera,” he said. “Imagine what Sazaad would pay to see this?”
“Forgive me if I don’t find my present situation as amusing, Commander,” Gail snapped. She tossed the sheet to one side and got out as if Grant wasn’t standing there, watching, making it obvious she’d slept in her clothes. Her fury at having him invade her privacy was as good as a boost shot, not that she planned to thank him for it. “Where’s Aaron?” she snapped. “How is he?”
“The holding chamber,” Grant told her. “He’s fine. A little shaken up. A lot confused.”
“That describes most of us,” Gail shot back. “Dafoe? What were the test results?”
“There hasn’t been time to run any.”
Gail shrugged on one of Sazaad’s lab coats. By the way it fit, it wasn’t his, but belonged to one of his techs. The results had better be worth finding out all too much about this man’s life, Gail told herself.
“Those tests should have been run immediately. You’re risking everything we came here for—” Gail stopped deliberately, and glared up at him. “Everything Mitchener, Peitsch, Sasha, Joseph, Helios, Giardi, and Adams died for—”
The commander had himself under iron control. Even so, the muscles along his jaw worked before he said: “We’ll run anything necessary once the situation on the ship has stabilized.”
“Stabilized?” she repeated, not particularly caring that her voice cracked over the word. “What’s not stable, Commander? Got a mutiny on your hands now? My scientists about to leap on your armed combat troops? Of course, if you’ve kept them locked up in the lab all this time, you’d better worry about some serious forms in triplicate heading to your superiors.”
“Everything will be back to normal shortly—we had to make sure key systems were under FD control before any further action was taken. This is a critical moment in our species’ history—”
Gail stepped up to Grant and shoved him in the chest with both hands. “What the hell did you think I’d do?” she all but shouted. “What were you afraid of? What could I possibly have done that would be worse than what you’ve already accomplished? Minimum, Grant,” she accused with another push, “minimum damage—you’ve thoroughly betrayed everyone on this ship, starting with me. Just when we need to work together most, for everyone’s sake.”
She hadn’t budged him, of course, not physically, but there was something close to shame in his eyes. “Do you think this was my idea, Gail? We’re under orders—strict, highly specific orders no one imagined would apply to us, to this ship.” He ran his hand through his hair, now collar-length. “You’ve got to understand—this was the first deep-space mission in twenty years—how could we miss any chance to look for intelligence out here? But no one thought this would happen. First contact? I never dreamed it would happen in my lifetime, let alone yesterday.” He paused, then added heavily. “I didn’t betray you. The protocols, our assuming control of the ship, it has nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing?” Gail took a slow breath. “Let’s put aside, for the moment, that I’m the only expert humanity has on the Quill. Let’s even put aside, for the moment, that I’m the one who brought you here. Your superiors didn’t send you without giving you the ability to make your own decisions. You could have ignored the protocols. You could have handled it differently.” She reached for him again, this time grabbing handfuls of his uniform so he was forced to meet her eyes. “Do you think you’re the only ones who’ve looked outward and dreamed of finally being in the company of Others? What do you think filled this ship with the brightest minds Earth produced? Altruism?”
Others. Before becoming old enough to know about surveillance and appearances, about careers and the unwhimsical nature of those who opened doors, Gail had walked outside every night before bed—dew-soaked grass of summer or snow of winter, didn’t matter—simply to stretch up her arms to the starry sky and wish, wish with all her heart, to find someone different reaching back. To know humanity wasn’t alone.
They all had. She knew that about her people, as Grant knew it about his.
“I follow orders, Gail,” Grant insisted, almost leadenly. “Orders meant to ensure our first meeting with nonhuman intelligence isn’t the mutual disaster it could well be. I had no other choice but to put my people in charge immediately.” But one of his hands covered hers, pressing them firmly against his chest as if he tried to convey more.
Had no other choice, Gail repeated to herself, feeling her eyes widening. What was he trying to tell her? Then, she mouthed the words: another ship.
Grant nodded very slightly, then, slowly, almost reluctantly, touched one finger to the small, faded scar on his temple, then traced another oval in the whole skin—lower and closer to his ear.
An implant. Positional data at least—probably, from the care he was using talking to her, audio as well. It would depend on how closely they were being shadowed.
She had to give Earth credit; this time, bureaucratic paranoia had paid off.
No wonder Grant looked like a man being eaten from inside. Gail leaned forward until her cheek rested against the back of his hand, the one holding hers. “If you expect the full cooperation of the science staff, Commander Grant,” she said calmly, and not for his ears alone, “I suggest you start by letting me back into my lab.”
She felt something feather-soft on the top of her head. Grant’s chin on her hair, or perhaps a kiss. Acknowledgment and relief, definitely. But his voice remained as businesslike and unyielding as before. “That’s actually why I’m here, Dr. Smith.
“There’s been another incident.”
Gail smiled.
Chapter 69
“WE don’t want any more trouble, Malley.”
Considering the man expressing this desire was dripping blood from both nostrils, with one eye disappearing under a rapidly swelling lid, Malley thought this quite reasonable. From the FDs’ viewpoint.
The stationer grinned. “Then you’ll open the door,” he concluded helpfully, crouching with ha
nds at the ready.
The four men still facing him, which included a surprisingly tough and determined Philips, looked grim. And more than a little dismayed at the prospect of another round. Malley wasn’t—this was the most fun he’d had since coming on the Seeker. With no dibs to pay for breaking furniture, he reminded himself contentedly. The three groaning on the floor probably didn’t agree.
Aisha, standing behind them, gave him the thumbs-up signal. She was done. “Fine,” Malley said, straightening up and holding out his open palms. “No more trouble from me.”
They didn’t look comforted, searching him with unusual diligence and a remarkable lack of success. Philips kept watch; Malley kept smiling. Since he was already locked up and under guard, there wasn’t much more they could do with him.
Just like old times, the stationer thought, even though some of the Earthers were no longer very happy being crowded together in the lab. He couldn’t see why: there were enough chairs or cots for everyone to sit at the same time—and an abundance of food and drink for the asking. All they needed was some music and beer—even that gut-rotting liquor of Grant’s would do—and this place would be perfect.
No accounting for taste.
“Hey!” Malley objected, suddenly noticing one of the FDs returning with a fistful of binding cord. “I said I was done—you don’t need to do that!” Bad enough Philips was grimly determined—the FD with the cords was Mike Barber, a man who usually had a wicked sense of humor. He didn’t look to be joking now.
“Excuse us if we don’t take your word for it,” Philips said dryly. “Have a seat, Malley.”
Aisha and Temujin stepped forward, a couple of the other Earthers joining them. “We’ll take responsibility for him,” Aisha offered. “Malley just—panicked. It’s got to be hard on the man when he doesn’t know what’s going on or what to expect.”
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