Edge of Dark (39 page)

He blinked at her.

“Did I get it right?”

“I have no idea. But I do remember having the matching shirt and sandals.”

The look in his eyes didn't telegraph belief in her humanity.

Chrystal walked beside Nona on the way back. Neither of them said anything until their robot escort left them with a smile and a nod, surely heading back to report that he had successfully seen them to their quarters.

Chrystal followed Nona into her room, which was bigger than Chrystal's and had a little sitting room in addition to the bedroom. “I don't trust him,” she told Nona. “You know him better.”

“He loves power more than anything. But he has it, and he might be trying to use it well.”

“You're not sure,” Chrystal probed.

“I'm never sure of Gunnar.”

“Fair.”

Nona's room was big and luxurious, fancier than anything on the
Sultry Savior
. The walls had original paintings on them. “You should move in here. You don't even need the bed.”

Bless Nona. “Thanks. That way I won't feel so lonely.”

Nona pulled her close, into a hug. “You must miss your family.”

Nona could never know how much. “I do.”

“I don't remember the butterflies,” Nona said. “I barely remember the trip.”

“The butterflies mattered to me.”

“When was the last time you remembered them?” Nona asked.

Chrystal shrugged. “I don't know. Probably years ago. My mind seems to be picking up bits of itself, things I'd lost because I didn't really need them. It feels like there's more room for memories. They're clearer, too.

“Tell me about our first day of school.”

“High school?” Chrystal asked.

“Any school.”

“The first day of high school I was five minutes late. Mom was in the middle of one of her endless lectures about my clothes. You were waiting for me, so we were both late for our first class.”

“I remember being late. What was I wearing?”

“White pants with orange threads at the seams. Your favorite that week. They were low and had side slits. Your mother hated them, so you snuck them out in your bag and changed in the bathroom. You had an orange top and gold earrings—the earrings were diamonds your dad gave you.”

“I forgot the earrings. I must have lost them.”

Chrystal had forgotten them, too. Until she'd been asked.

Nona looked perplexed. “So how am I going to convince people they don't want to be you? I want your memory.”

“No you don't,” Chrystal snapped. “I couldn't bear it if they killed you.”

“Okay.” Nona chewed on her lip. “I don't think I meant that anyway. But people will see how smart and beautiful and strong you are.”

Chrystal stopped short for a moment. That wasn't how she saw herself. “I'll tell them what I lost, and that I would give anything to go back.”

Nona smiled softly. “They're not going to believe you.”

“Do you? I want to erase it all. To have our animals back, alive. Jalinerines.” She remembered that last horrible day, when they had needed to kill Sugar and the others. “We spent years on them, and they'd just been approved as a product. They had small heads and wide, dark eyes, eyelashes they could bat, and the cleverest feet. They could walk on almost any surface, even something smooth, and not slip. Yi spent seventeen animal generations on the feet, each time making them better.”

She stopped, momentarily out of words.

Nona waited, patient.

Memories cascaded through Chrystal's brain, so clear she could see details like the sway of Katherine's hair and the gold-flecked irises in Sugar's eyes when she was a baby. It was a few moments before she was ready to speak again. “I would kill to hear Katherine's laugh, or her songs in the morning when she woke up before any of us and didn't think we were listening. She sang every morning, every single one. I would lie in bed and listen to her, and her voice would pull me gently into the day, until I got up to kiss her good morning.”

Nona chewed on her lower lip and looked even more upset than Chrystal herself felt.

“I'd love to react with the same feeling I used to have. I would love to breathe. To simply breathe.”

Nona looked stricken, but now that she'd been asked, Chrystal wanted to keep talking. “I should be crying right now. I'm sad, thinking about Katherine. I miss her. But I don't feel like I am crying, or like I could cry—I can't. But I
should
be crying. I should be crying and screaming and wailing and mourning every day. It's like everything that made me human is still there, only it's a whisper inside me, a reminder that I'm not me and I'll never be me again.”

Nona put her arms around Chrystal. A tear dropped down onto Chrystal's shoulder.

Nona jerked a little, and wiped the tear away with a finger.

“It's okay,” Chrystal said. “I know that you can cry and I can't. That's why I want a path forward that doesn't make any more of me.”

“If we could defeat them, kill them all, would you?”

“No. But I want them to leave the Glittering forever.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

NONA

A
month later, the Deep bulked huge in the view screens as they came in. Staring at it, Nona felt like a tiny woman with a huge task. She chewed on her lower lip so hard it hurt. “I am stronger now,” she whispered to herself. “I am strong enough to create change.” She did feel stronger, and she also felt different. She had been a captain and a lover and a diplomat since she left here, she had done things with more purpose and reason than she was used to, things that had scared her.

She had become bigger. On the other hand, the Deep was so big she couldn't see it all. And she had left it as the captain of the
Sultry Savior
and returned as a virtual prisoner on the same ship.

Two bells sounded to warn them they were docking. She closed her eyes and said it one more time before she left to find Chrystal. “I am strong enough to create change. I am.”

Satyana and a flock of reporters met her and Chrystal just inside the door between the docking facility and the station. Satyana had dressed in a power suit: a deep blue form-fitting coat with neon-blue trim that matched her eyes, tight black pants, and black boots. She had dyed her hair the color of the night sky on Lym. It hung in rings down her shoulders and chest, stopping at her waist. A single neon blue streak on the right framed her face and mirrored the coat, the colors blending.

Nona swayed, apprehensive. What would Satyana think of how she'd done? What would she think of Chrystal?

At least she and Chrystal were both dressed in clean and pressed ship's uniforms and Nona wore her single civilian captain's bar on her sleeve. Gunnar had stolen her ship, but she had never given up her insignia.

Satyana kissed Nona on both cheeks and then played Chrystal exactly right, welcoming her home and apologizing for her losses.

Maybe it would be okay.

There was an unreasonable amount of picture-taking and a short interview where Chrystal stated that she was happy to be home and Nona echoed her. After ten minutes, Satyana shut the reporters and drones all down, murmuring that everyone needed to rest for the many meetings starting tomorrow.

Britta bundled all three of them into a private flitter and took them to the
Star Bear
, a refurbished spaceship that was Satyana's most common home on the Deep.

Britta left them, and they wound their way past a vast cargo area which had long ago been converted to a series of stages for concerts and dances. In one room, a portrait of Ruby Martin dominated a whole wall, with Ruby in working clothes and holding a microphone shaped like a gun. As Nona walked through the room, the image of Ruby seemed to be watching them pass. Nona squared her shoulders.

Deeper inside the
Star Bear
, they came to a small sitting room where wine, berries, crackers, and sweets had been set out on a round mosaic table surrounded by five chairs. Chrystal glanced at the food and sat in a soft chair near the table.

Satyana frowned. “I'm sorry.”

“Go ahead,” Chrystal said. “You have to eat. What should I expect tomorrow?”

“Let me tell you about process first. You've been gone a while, but certainly you remember how much we love to dissect a thousand possibilities around our simple little laws?”

“I do.” Chrystal smiled and looked truly interested. Nona poured a glass of chilled white wine and sat back to listen. After a month of Gunnar, Satyana seemed almost reasonable.

“Well, there's a timeline,” Satyana explained. “We've only got a few days to make this decision.”

Nona sipped her wine. Heaven. “Is everyone deciding now? We're not the only station in the solar system.”

“We aren't. But everyone else is watching us.”

“Do you know what you want?” Chrystal asked Satyana.

“For the Next to come in, take what they want, and not to kill anybody else. And even more, for this station not to do anything stupid.”

“I noticed more defense bubbles on my way in,” Nona mentioned.

Satyana almost spit out her words. “Twice as many. We already had enough guns to put down an attack by any single power in the system, and most alliances that seemed even vaguely possible. Now some people think we're ready to defend ourselves against the Next.”

Chrystal reacted first. “You can't.”

“I know that,” Satyana snapped. “But not everyone here understands how strong they are. It's as if they've already forgotten the High Sweet Home.”

“Or perhaps they haven't,” Nona mused. Silence fell.

Nona finished her wine and ate most of the berries. She'd never seen Satyana so openly tense. “Is the Deep using the court to decide?”

“Well,” Satyana poured herself some wine, “Sheenan Bolla is Headmistress now. That happened right after you left. First time we've had a woman in three turns.”

The Headman position—part ceremony and part ruler—had become a job that turned over every six years after the minor revolution that Ruby had unwittingly helped Winter Ohman start.

“Sheenan should have one third of the vote.” Satyana was speaking toward Chrystal, as if checking to be sure that she understood. “One third for her, one third for the Councilors, and one third for the Voice. You remember the Voice?”

Chrystal nodded. “Rich people selected to represent the people with interests.”

Satyana frowned. “Not always rich people.”

“Almost,” Nona said. “But you said Sheenan
should have
one third of the vote.”

Satyana was still frowning. “Sheenan did something very brave, which I'm hoping was not also very stupid.” A note of slight disgust colored Satyana's voice, undoubtedly on purpose. The woman was a born actor. “She gave her vote to the collective.”

Nona put her glass down, surprised. “How will that be decided?”

“Social vote. The main computer will read the social web in the same way it does for concerts.”

Nona relaxed and poured a tiny bit more wine. “You manipulate the socweb all the time.”

Satyana narrowed her eyes. “This will be harder.”

Satyana would still try. Maybe she didn't want to say so in front of Chrystal. The social web was generally an insubstantial and ephemeral force of ideas pulled one way and then another. But not always. Sometimes it coalesced and caused actual change—fashion, behavior, belief, adoption or destruction of a technology. Socweb opinions occasionally infected the whole station in waves. Satyana was a queen of public opinion, but there were other influencers.

“Who is the Voice this time?” Nona asked.

Satyana smiled broadly, a little secretively. There will be three this time. “Gunnar. Winter Ohman.” She fell silent.

“And the third?”

“You.”

Nona sat back. No way. “I'm . . . I've never . . .”

“Close your mouth. You'll do fine. I spoke for you. After all, you met the Next. You've traveled back for weeks with Chrystal and her family. You've been on Lym lately and with its ambassador. What more perfect choice is there?”

Chrystal was grinning widely. “And look—you're not already a superpower here.”

Satyana choked back a laugh. “Exactly. Which means you'll influence the social web more than anyone else could. Best friends, reunited after a disaster.”

Nona and Chrystal shared a look that was part horror and part amusement.

“Everything you say, everyone you meet—either of you—is going to be magnified a thousand times. I've had clothes ordered and we're going to start rehearsing as soon as we finish eating.”

Nona grinned. Satyana telling her what to do felt like truly being home.