Pushing Ice (17 page)

Cagan shook his head regretfully. “If there were some way that I could have avoided sending this message, I would have. For what it’s worth, I’ve also spoken to Craig Schrope. He’s fully in the loop. But I know it will be different for you. I know you are friendly with Barseghian, that you like and trust her. I can only hope this necessary action does not damage that friendship.”

Cagan’s message ended, and for a moment the flexy was silent. Then the incoming-call icon popped up and Craig Schrope’s face filled the display surface.

“Bella,” he said. “I take it you’ve you heard from Powell?”

“Yes,” she said, still numbed.

“Then we need to talk.”

* * *

He came to her office. They sat looking at each other, waiting for the other to speak. The fish formed an anxious audience, crowding each other, darting around the tank with hyperactive attentiveness. Normally they would have been fed by now, but the strain of recent days had thrown Bella off her routine. She was neglecting the fish, neglecting herself. She felt a vortex of tension building and reaching out from her like a magnetic storm.

“I’m not going to do this,” Bella said flatly. “I’m not going to screw Svetlana just because she’s raised concerns that Powell doesn’t happen to like.”

“No one’s screwing anyone. We’re just talking about the acquisition of facts. Facts first, then judgements. It’s how I handled Shalbatana.”

“This isn’t Shalbatana, Craig. This is my best friend we’re talking about here.”

“Best friends run off the rails too.”

“Not Svieta. I’ve never known anyone less likely to lose it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen enough psych evaluations to know that these things hit you out of the blue. In high-pressure careers, people sometimes crash and burn.” He looked at her carefully. “Happens to the best of us.”

Bella blushed. She’d had no idea that Schrope knew anything about her own burn-out episode. She imagined Jim Chisholm sitting across from her, willing her not to say something rash.

“I had problems, but no one accused me of faking data.”

“I know, I know. I’m just saying — nobody’s immune.” He clicked the end of his pen, then tapped it against the table. “Okay, got a plan. We need to look at those numbers ourselves, independently of Svetlana. That’ll mean getting someone from her team to cooperate with us.”

“What?”

“Someone competent, but who doesn’t have strong ties to Svetlana. I’m thinking someone who came on team during the last rotation.”

“Why? What are you planning?”

“I’m thinking Meredith Bagley. Young kid, right? She’s a company player. She knows ShipNet. She can get us those numbers. Then we’ll have the facts.”

Bella flustered. “I want to talk to Svieta first.”

He looked at her sadly. “Talking to Svieta now would be a serious mistake. She’s too clever, too resourceful. Talk to her if you absolutely must… but I’d advise strongly against it.”

“I’m not sure why I need to remind you of this, Craig, but I’m the one running this ship.”

“Absolutely.” He suddenly looked abashed. “Look, I’m sorry — sometimes I catch myself sounding as if I’m trying to take over the show. It’s insolent and inexcusable. It’s just that on Mars I was given pretty much free rein to do what I wanted. The only person I answered to was Powell Cagan. It’s a hard habit to break.”

“I understand,” Bella said, “but I urge you to put some effort in that direction.”

“I will — and I’m genuinely sorry. I only want to do the best by DeepShaft.”

Bella managed a smile. “Everyone knows you did a good job on Mars. That’s why I was happy to have you as my second. But this is a woman I’ve known and trusted for years. I won’t treat her like a common criminal, and I won’t see her humiliated in public.”

“I’ll make absolutely sure this entire matter is handled with maximum discretion.” He looked at her encouragingly. “Do you mind if I use your flexy?”

Bella hesitated for a second, then slid the flexy across her desk. Schrope checked the duty roster, establishing that Meredith Bagley was awake. He placed the call, drumming his fingers against the desk while he waited for her to answer.

“Meredith,” she said brightly, as if she had been expecting someone else. “What can I — ?”

Bella leaned into the visual field of the flexy. “Meredith, can you come to my office immediately?”

“And make sure you don’t speak to anyone on the way,” Schrope added.

She arrived within two minutes, her demeanour visibly fearful, as if expecting a reprimand. Bagley was a young addition to Svetlana’s flight-operations team: keen but nervous, still not fully meshed into the social matrix of the ship. She fiddled with her thick black hair, her eyes darting from Bella to Schrope and back again.

“It’s all right,” Bella said, “there’s nothing to worry about, and you’re not in any trouble. As a matter of fact I’m more than happy with your performance.”

“We need you to do a job for us,” Schrope said. “It’s simple, and it won’t take long. The car-line’s running today, isn’t it?”

“We’re still making some adjustments —” Bagley began.

“That’s okay — we won’t complain if the ride is a little rough.” Schrope leaned over and consulted the duty roster again. He glanced at Bella. “She should be sleeping now. This is as good a time as we’re going to get.”

Bagley looked at the two of them. She didn’t ask who “she” was, but she must have had some inkling.

They left Bella’s office and worked their way to the nearest car-line access point. A car was already there, but Schrope took a moment to call up a schematic showing the positions of the other vehicles on the line.

“Someone’s in the sweatbox,” he said. “I was hoping we’d have the place to ourselves.” Using his flexy, he tried to get a picture from one of the sweatbox webcams, but the links were down.

“I’ll call ahead and ask them to leave,” Bella said.

“Actually,” Schrope said, “it might be better if we just showed up.” He paused and added, “Just a suggestion.”

They filled the three-seat car and Schrope punched in their destination. The car took them down the spine at a slower-than-normal rate, easing to a crawl as it navigated the area where the worst damage had occurred. Then it picked up speed, passing the ruined mid-spine workshop and sinking between the four looming cylinders of the fuel tanks.

Bagley sat in the rear seat of the teardrop-shaped capsule. She said nothing during the entire journey.

As expected, another car was already on the line at the sweatbox end. Bella’s car slowed to a walking pace and nudged the other car forward until her vehicle was aligned with the airlock and they were able to disembark onto the titanium flooring. They were a kilometre nearer
Rockhopper’s
stern than in Bella’s office, with a good deal less shock-absorbing insulation between them and the engine. The floor rumbled, as if intense drilling work was taking place just a few metres below. Once more, Bella had that almost palpable feeling of the engine working ferociously.

Schrope opened the inner airlock door to find that the sweatbox was already lit and warm. Two figures turned around, surprised at the arrival of anyone else. Bella recognised them: Robert Ungless and Gabriela Ramos, long-serving crew members — in a crisis their loyalty would lie with Svetlana.

“Robert, Gabriela,” she said by way of greeting. “I’m really sorry, but something’s come up. We’re going to have to ask you to leave the sweatbox for a few minutes.”

They looked at her with obvious affront. Their equipment spooled entrails of fibre-optic line into the walls. Their flexies, spread out on the floor and folding tables, showed mind-numbing three-dimensional fuel-flow diagrams: schematics that would have given Escher a headache.

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Bella insisted.

“You’ve been given an order,” Schrope said. “Put aside whatever you’re doing and leave. There’s a car outside. You can wait in it until we call you back in.”

Ungless and Ramos knew better than to argue. They left their equipment where it was, still plugged in, and slid past Bella into the airlock. When the inner door had sealed itself, she said to Schrope, “I don’t think they’ll wait. I think they’ll ride back to the hab and wake up Svieta.”

“They’ll be contravening an order.”

“They’ll say they misunderstood. They’ll say they didn’t know you had authority to give orders.”

Schrope snapped his fingers at Bagley. “I need a dump of the fuel-pressure data in the memory buffer. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Bagley said warily.

“Then get on it. Load the data into a clean partition on your flexy, then give the captain and me read-only privileges.”

“I’m on it,” Bagley said, fiddling with the flexy’s data line. Bella was glad that the woman knew what she had to do. She wanted to get this whole tawdry business out of the way as quickly as possible.

She felt a momentary increase in the rumble through the floor, a shuddering reminder of the engine instabilities that occasionally shook the ship. “What was that?”

“That was the car disengaging from the lock,” Schrope said. “They’re on their way up.”

* * *

Svetlana splashed water on her face, sponged herself into some state of cleanliness and slipped on her jogging pants. She fastened on her bra and reached for a fresh T-shirt. The one at the top of the pile was mud-brown, with a cheaply printed copy of the
Rockhopper
mascot on the front: that toothsome, grinning, drill-toting penguin that had now been censored from the hull of the ship. Her hand dithered, about to reach for another shirt. Then she said “fuck it” and put on the penguin anyway. She pushed her hair into shape and exited her quarters, leaving Parry room to wash and dress.

Ungless was still waiting outside. “Five minutes ago, you said?” she asked.

“More like six or seven by now,” he said.

“Did you ride the last car up the spine?”

“No,” Ungless said, “there’s another one down there.”

Svetlana jogged around the curve of the corridor until she reached a viewing window set into what was currently the floor. She slid back the glare shield, exposing a pane of scuffed and ablation-mottled glass. She looked down along the length of the ship. A car was ascending the spine.

Parry crouched next to her, his trademark cap already jammed into place. “Are you ready to tell me what’s happening?”

“What do you
think
?” she asked snidely. “We took our fears to Bella. This is the response.”

“But you trust Bella.”

“I trust her. I don’t trust Schrope. Schrope wins.”

She stood up and barefoot — she hadn’t even had time to slip on her trainers — padded further along the corridor. Parry followed her, pushing his arms into the frayed sleeves of an old denim shirt.

“This could be anything,” he said.

“Behind my back? I don’t think so.”

“Svieta, will you stop? You’re acting as if this has already turned into a mutiny.”

“My judgement has been questioned.
Doubted
. That’s good enough for me.

The car was just arriving when they reached the line. No one else was waiting at the airlock. Svetlana stationed herself by the inner door, arms folded as if she were the one about to dispense summary justice. Behind the inner door’s dark window, the car slid up through the floor. Figures bustled into the lock. With no pressure to be equalised, there was no delay between the closing of the outer door and the opening of the inner one.

“Svieta,” Bella said, as their eyes met. To her credit, she barely blinked.

“Bella. Nice to see you. Been anywhere I ought to know about?”

“You know where we’ve been,” Craig Schrope said. “That’s why you’re here. I take it Ungless and Ramos tipped you off?”

“No one tipped anyone off. And if I find that you’ve even looked at Robert or Gabriela —”

“You’ll what?” He looked amused. “Come on, I want to hear it. What will you do?”

“Never mind,” Bella said, positioning herself between Svetlana and Schrope. “Let’s keep this civil, shall we?”

“Can I go now?” Meredith Bagley asked timidly.

“Yes,” Bella said. “Thank you, Meredith.”

“Whatever it is, you shouldn’t have dragged her into it,” Svetlana said. “You shouldn’t have
used
her against me.”

“I didn’t drag her into anything. I asked her to do a job for me.” Bella glanced around. “Look, we can’t talk here. Let’s take this to my office.”

“All of us?” Parry asked.

“No, not you,” Schrope said. “This is between us and Svetlana.”

“Then it’s between you and me.”

Schrope looked at him warningly. “Don’t clean out your options box, Boyce.”

“Or what?” Parry asked.

“Come on,” Bella said. “My office. Parry, too — and let’s all try to behave like professionals, shall we?

In Bella’s room they faced each other across the desk: Bella and Schrope on one side, Parry and Svetlana on the other. Bella slipped her flexy from her zip-up jacket and flattened it on the table, turning it to face Parry and Svetlana.

“You know what this is about, I think, Svieta.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“You brought an issue to me,” Bella said. “I listened to your argument and I consulted headquarters about it.”

“And they fed you a bullshit explanation.”

“So you said. That’s why I decided I needed more help from home.”

“Oh, no,” Svetlana said, with a sudden sinking feeling in her gut, as if the engine had just skipped a beat. “You didn’t
send
it to them, did you? After everything I told you?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“You could have acted on it. You could have trusted me.”

“And scrubbed the most important mission in the entire history of spaceflight? A mission with UEE backing? A mission that the entire system is counting on to succeed? A mission that
cannot
be repeated? Give me a break, Svieta. This was never going to be an easy call.”

“I can’t believe you
sent
it to them. Of all the things you shouldn’t have done —”

Bella’s tone turned strident. “I took action on the basis of what you told me. I could have just dismissed it.”