Lightless (21 page)

On the screen before her was the surveillance footage from the surface of Titania, still playing. A System building was on fire. System soldiers were firing into the crowd. On the ground before the camera, a man had fallen to his knees, clutching at his chest.

“And if I cannot go to them,” Ida said, watching the man die, “then they will have to come to me.”

Physics, ground down to its most basic parts, was nothing more than the study of energy: where the energy was, where the energy was not, and how the energy flowed.

Humans were the same. All human interactions were nothing more than the flow of power from one to another. Whatever emotions other people professed to feel for one another—love, hate, empathy—they were nothing to that unconscious awareness of power. Crack any of those sentiments open and find inside only the dark core of a power differential informing it, defining it, giving it strength.

Ida could not say for certain if other people genuinely believed in their own honesty when they professed to be motivated by things other than power, if they simply didn't recognize that every motivation led back to power in the end. Every interaction was built on power and ebbed and flowed with the changes in who had the power and who did not. She could not say for certain, and there was no way to find out safely.

One thing she did know for certain: she recognized it, she knew it, and that by itself gave her power.

“There was violence on Titania last night,” she said to Ivan when they were together in the white room, and he thought he could gain power over her by the skill with which he lied. “Did you hear?”

He looked up at her and shrugged. “Should I have?” he asked.

“It was just a question,” Ida said with a smile.

“I don't know if you've noticed, Ida, but I've been in a cell for a week. I'm a little behind on the news.”

“The Mallt-y-Nos has claimed the activity,” said Ida. “Are you sure you haven't heard?”

Ivan said, “I hadn't heard.”

“But you don't seem surprised.”

He smiled that wolfish smile. “There's always violence on Titania. Should I be shocked that there's a little more?”

“What's she up to, Ivan?” Ida asked. “What's she going to do next?”

He shrugged as if he couldn't possibly care. “You can ask me that question as often as you like,” he said. “I still won't be able to answer it.”

Ida studied him, the arrogance in the way he leaned back in his chair and looked her straight in the eye and boldly spoke what they both knew were lies.

“We found an interesting program on board your ship,” she said. “It looks like a program that would detonate a sequence of charges. Or bombs, perhaps.”

“That?” he said, one eyebrow lifting, displaying no surprise or alarm at the mention of his ship. “We use that to blow up vault doors from far away so that we're outside of the blast radius. Surely you've seen the footage.”

He was so calm and collected, he thought he was winning. Ida knew better. And the ship's mechanic who thought she could have her way over Ida's will—she, too, did not fully realize how complete Ida's power was. Because that evening, after the interrogation, Ida received a message from the System: her request for permission to have Constance Harper and Milla Ivanov brought to the
Ananke
had been granted.

By tomorrow, the two women would be on board.

Althea found out that Harper and the doctor would be coming on board only hours before they were scheduled to arrive.

“But they can't,” she said to Domitian when he broke the news. “This ship is secret, the technology is classified. If it leaked…”

“It will not leak,” Domitian interrupted, so solid and firm that it was as if she had run up against a stone wall. “The location of the
Ananke
is being sent directly into their flight computers and then erased entirely once they have returned to their original location. They will not be able to find the ship again themselves or direct anyone else to see it. Their interaction with the ship will be limited to empty rooms, Althea.”

“They'll still see the
Ananke,
” said Althea. “They'll still see the halls, the computer interface, the shape of her…”

Domitian sighed. Althea sensed she was nearing the edge of his indulgence for her, but she pushed on.

“Milla Ivanov is a scientist,” Althea said. “She'll be able to just look at this ship and know a lot about it. That it's mass-based gravitation. That the computer is unusual—”

“We have permission from the System,” Domitian said. “If anything happens, which it won't, you will not be liable.”

Prison had been the least of Althea's concerns. “But—”

“Milla Ivanov will arrive first,” he said. “I will take Ivanov into the white room and wait while Miss Stays interrogates Doctor Ivanov in the uppermost empty storage room. She will then be brought to see her son in the white room, and then she will leave. Miss Harper will arrive shortly thereafter and go through the same process. They will see no more of the ship than two empty rooms, the docking bay, and a small segment of the hallway.”

“But they'll still see her,” Althea said, and could not quite understand why he did not see the problem.

Ida Stays, she suspected. It was Ida Stays who had stopped him from understanding.

“That's enough,” Domitian said. “I realize that you are concerned, but Miss Stays has received System permission, and she has received mine. Ivanov is not leaving this ship, which is what you wanted. This interrogation is crucial to the System, especially after the events on Titania. Regarding her presence here, Miss Stays has been very accommodating. You have expressed your concerns and they have been noted, and I suggest that now you remember your place on board this ship.”

Althea was caught short again, baffled. It sounded almost as if he had threatened her with insubordination, a serious charge on a secret military craft. She could hardly believe he would ever threaten her at all.

She nodded her acquiescence without another word and started off down the hall.

“Althea?” Domitian called, and unwillingly, feeling like a dog called to heel, she stopped, obedient even after a scolding.

“Ivanov must not know that they're coming,” he said, and Althea nodded her understanding without turning around, wanting only to be gone. She was supposed to relieve Gagnon in front of Ivanov's cell.

Gagnon's eyes were shadowed, like hers, with too little sleep. Althea still did not know what her expression must have looked like, but it made him snort and say, “Right there with you, Al,” as if they were conspirators in sentiment. Althea did not rise to the comment, and Gagnon let the conversation die. Instead of speaking, he rose from her stool and clapped her on the shoulder as he passed.

“I'll relieve you in a few hours,” he said.

Althea's voice sounded robotic in her ears. “Your sleep shift is next,” she said.

“Yeah,” Gagnon said, walking backward up the hall, “but you need sleep even more than me.”

Althea stood in place after he was gone, unmoving. She could not quite bring herself to move forward and start to work again on the
Ananke
. Behind her, in the silence, she almost imagined she could feel Ivanov's presence, like the warmth of someone standing close at her back or the soft sound of breaths in an empty room. It was strange and disconcerting and filled her with a curious uncomfortable feeling that was not dissimilar to guilt. His mother and his friend would be coming here later on, and Althea knew it, but he didn't. She knew that Ida would have interrogated them whether or not Althea had forced her to keep Ivanov on board, but she still felt a strange responsibility for the way things had fallen out.

She sat down slowly on her stool. She was under orders not to tell him, and so she wouldn't. The System did not look kindly on insubordination. It was the first step on the path that led to the kind of thing that had gotten Saturn destroyed.

Into the silence, not so much breaking it as filling it, like color diffusing into water, Ivanov said, “I guess no one's getting enough sleep around here.”

“You should be,” Althea said. “You don't have anything to do.” She spoke automatically and without real rancor.

“And you have too much.”

The
Ananke,
the
Annwn—
Althea did have too much to do. And she had too many thoughts choking her brain.

“What do you think about,” she asked out of nothing but blank, honest curiosity and the awareness that Ida Stays was making both of them suffer, “when you're in there, not sleeping?”

“I think about a lot of things.” It was a dishonest answer, and Althea sighed and turned back to her computer, cutting him off with the angle of her shoulders though he could not see the motion, but he continued, “I think about my friends. I think about my home planet.”

“Earth.” It was strange to her sometimes how even though he had left Earth, he had never stopped being from it. It made him seem very ordinary to her, very much like the people she had known there and very little like someone she should fear.

“Yes.” This silence was almost comfortable.

“You're not from Earth,” Ivanov said, as naturally as anything. “But you've spent some time there. Did you go to school?”

“Australian branch of the Terran University.” It could not be dangerous to tell him something as simple and public as that.

“I went to the North American branch,” he said. “We kicked your ass at hockey.”

That hit at a nerve and brought bright loud memories of standing on bleachers screaming at the colored shapes running on the field below, letting herself get caught up in the crowd's noise and energy despite not quite understanding, despite partly wishing she could simply go back to her dorm and put machines together untroubled. Ivanov was a little bit like that crowd, she thought. It was not like her to speak to him, but somehow she was caught up in it.

In any case, she could not resist saying, “But not at soccer.”

“Nobody cares about soccer.”

“Maybe the
North American branch
didn't,” said Althea.

Ivanov laughed, his voice low. “When did you graduate?” he asked.

“Twelve years ago.”

“We overlapped,” he said. “I graduated ten years ago.”

Althea looked at the computer screen before her, which was still blank, and said, “I know.”

With the
Ananke
in its state, she had not had much time to wonder. Still, the stray thought had appeared to her whenever she was in a place where Ivanov wasn't to wonder, Had she met him while she was there? Had she passed him on the street or in the quad during those rare times she visited the North American branch or whenever he went down to Australia? She thought she would have remembered him if she had, handsome and buttoned up and closed off, with brilliant blue eyes.

This conversation was a waste of her time. Althea opened up a program on the computer, intending to work, but the thought of Earth and the university brought to mind again Ivanov's mother, who would be on board soon.

What would Ida Stays do to her? Althea wondered, and wished she had not the wit to wonder.

“But you're not from Earth originally,” Ivanov commented. He spoke it so casually that it did not seem an insult, only the natural continuation of their conversation.

“I'm from Luna,” Althea said.

“Ah,” said Ivanov. “We were neighbors.”

She meant to ask him then what she had been wondering since she had read his file. She preferred things that way, to ask directly and immediately. She hated uncertainty. But somehow she could not ask about that time on the roof of his house. Perhaps it was because she had the knowledge of Milla Ivanov and Constance Harper sitting in her throat. Yet she could not bring herself to let the conversation die. “Have you ever been to Luna?”

“A true woman of the moon,” Ivanov said, and she knew he was smiling from his voice even when she couldn't see him. “Won't call it ‘the moon.' ”

Althea scowled, an automatic reaction, even though he couldn't see her.

“When I was very young,” he said in the slow, lilting cadence of a story, “my mother and I went there once or twice for a vacation. With the gravity so low, all the people move in slow motion. There's something eerie about the shape of a woman against the blackness of space with her hair floating around her head, falling too slowly back to her shoulders to be natural, to be anything but a waking dream. My mother,” he said, and the thought of Milla Ivanov sent a bolt through Althea's heart. “That's all I really remember from going there with her. My mother under the atmospheric dome with her hair loose and drifting. I'm not sure it really happened. She never wears her hair down.”

“Where did you visit?” Althea asked to have something to say.

“Earth-facing side. Of course. Better developed. Better reception for the System's cameras, that side.”

“I grew up on the space side,” Althea said. “It's less touristy.”

“I've been to the dark side of the moon, too,” Ivanov said. “Recently. With Mattie.”

Althea had hardly noticed when, but his voice seemed to have become softer, gentler, as if he could tell that she was weary and upset and was trying to be kind.

“Why?” she asked, and tried to summon some of her defensive scorn. “To steal something?”

“Probably,” said Ivanov.

He did not immediately go on, so Althea said, “It must've been hard to be so close to home and not go home.” She was not good at being conciliatory. She rarely took the trouble to apologize.

“Mattie said the same thing,” he said.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him,” said Ivanov, “that if I went the few thousand kilometers to go see Earth, then I'd have to realize it would only be a couple hundred thousand kilometers to actually go to Earth. And then I'd take the
Annwn
and get shot down in the atmosphere.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he thought I wasn't quite that stupid. He also told me it might be the last time I ever got to see her. I still said no.”