The Burning Dark (15 page)

But it was her friend—the only true friend she thought she really had, the Japanese medic who was working with her on her training program—who made her understand. She asked her finally, and the medic laughed. She said she was pretty, and being pretty made men angry and women jealous. But the Japanese girl was pretty as well and she’d never seen any of them look at
her,
but her friend laughed again and smiled and told her she would find out why one day.

She was also smart, gifted even, and this
also
made men angry and women jealous. But she couldn’t understand that either—it was all being done for the State, not for herself. Her friend laughed and said that she was a true hero and would get a medal after her flight, and this would make people even angrier. There were some, she was told, who had worked for years or even decades on the program, only to be leapfrogged by the newcomer, the simple girl from the country. Did she know that there had been a pilot chosen before she arrived? No? And that before she arrived, the first pilot had been welcomed by the fat man and had been visited by him just as much as her? No?

She watched her friend laugh, late at night, and when she laughed her eyes flashed blue and were filled with stars and suddenly the girl was afraid and she remembered the cold mist and dark shadows of her dreams, before her friend smiled and asked if she wanted another drink.

On the morning of the launch, she awoke refreshed from a deep sleep, but as she ate her special meal in a laboratory while scientists watched scrolling reels of paper and whispered to one another, she remembered a dream she’d had, one with her mother and her father and her friend in it. She ate her protein and carbohydrates and fats and tried to remember more, but she was cold and her eyes were playing tricks on her because everywhere she looked, black shadow-shapes jumped out of corners and streaked away in every direction. The men watching the paper didn’t say anything, so she knew it was just the stress and excitement of the launch.

Some of the men who hated her—she understood that now, having thought long and hard about what her Japanese friend had told her—were the first to wish her good luck, the first to smile and shake her hand. As they walked away she saw them smile to one another as well, and she thought that perhaps they really were happy for her now. But there was no time to think about it because the fat man was due to arrive for a final meeting. She was in her suit now and stood proudly with the round helmet under one arm and the insignia of the State in bold red across her chest. There were photos, and the man gave a speech, and everyone smiled and clapped.

She opened her eyes. She’d been cold, so very cold, and every time she looked out the window of the capsule she saw the dark shadows again. They’d been following her, a freak atmospheric effect as the capsule pulled around the Earth for yet another orbit. She realized she’d blacked out again, but the controls made no sense. Seventeen orbits? The plan had been for three. And when the controls stopped responding, the radio went dead. Another fault, perhaps, but it had gone off with a sharp click and now when she turned it on all she got was a pulse, a heartbeat of static. It was dead, like the rest of the capsule. She was alone in the sky, encased in two tons of metal that were melting from the outside in. She could feel the warmth on the panel beside her, heating one side of her body while on the other side the panels cracked with a dense frost. Around her the black shadows swarmed, and if she turned her head, she could swear the shapes were in the capsule with her, sometimes blotting the view of the small square window from the inside.

She opened her eyes. Now it was hot, too hot, and she realized she’d blacked out again. The radio popped and cracked and she reached for the controls, her silver hand cast in orange and yellow by the flames from the window. Someone was calling on the radio, someone from very, very far away. The words were distorted and buried under a roaring she soon realized was the capsule on fire.

She remembered her mother, and she remembered her father, and she remembered standing proudly with the First Secretary in the warm sunshine as the photographer lined the pair of them up against the rocket sitting on the launchpad half a mile behind them.

She remembered her duty and she remembered her country and the sacrifices that must be made. She flicked the radio and made her report. She wasn’t sure if she could be heard, but she trusted the Soviet technology that surrounded her, even as it burned, even as the capsule hurtled toward oblivion as it skipped the atmosphere of the Earth too fast, too low.

“Five, four, three, two, one…”

Nothing.

“One, two, three, four, five…”

A pop, a voice, far away. They were listening. Someone was listening.

“Come in, come in, come in. Listen! Come in! Talk to me. I am hot! I am hot. Come in. Please.

“I am hot.”

PART TWO

DARK SHADOWS

15

Ida spent the next
cycle looking for Izanami, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. He couldn’t even find any signs she was on board at all—the desk in the medical unit looked like it had been packed up, ready for the trip home. After stalking the hub for what felt like hours, Ida was about to give in and get the bridge to put in a station-wide call for her, when there she was, waiting in the corridor by his cabin. As soon as he saw her, he called out. She recoiled from his door in surprise; then her face broke into a broad smile.

“Where have you been?” They both said the words at the same time, and then laughed.

Izanami moved out of Ida’s way so he could operate the door panel.

“I’ve been looking for you.” Ida tapped the lock code. The red LED winked to green, but Ida stopped before pressing the open button. “I can’t get the damn recording out of my head.”

Izanami nodded. “It is unique. You have captured a freak event.”

Ida rolled his shoulders. “Well—”

He stopped short just inside the door. Izanami ducked around him to see into the cabin.

“Oh my God!”

Ida strode inside, picking up a handful of clothes as he did so. He tossed them onto the bed, where the blankets and covers were bunched in the middle of the mattress.

Every inch of the cabin was covered with papers, clothes, bits of equipment, and broken items—a smashed ceramic mug here, Ida’s deodorant there with its screw-cap a few feet away. The chair was overturned and the main desk had been moved and stuck out of the wall at an angle. Ignoring the rest of the room, Ida headed straight for it.

The computer terminal had been moved and the screens were pushed back on their sprung arms against the wall, but both were undamaged. The space radio hadn’t been touched, but the blue LED was on.

“I am seriously losing patience with this place.” Ida pushed the computer screens out of the way and shoved at the edge of the desk. It was a heavy table, and it took some considerable effort for him to move it back just an inch before he had to stop to catch his breath. The table was still angled nearly a foot off the wall. Ida blinked and regarded the gap between the table and the wall. Whoever had turned his cabin over had been strong.

“What happened?” Izanami tiptoed through the debris.

Ida swore and the table thudded against the wall as he gave it one almighty shove. “The space apes happened.” Ida turned and scooped another armful of clothes from the floor to the bed. “DeJohn, Carter, whoever, I don’t care. I came down to this end of the station to keep out of their way. Assholes.”

“But what did they want?”

“Damned if I know.” Ida sighed. He turned back to the desk and waved a hand over the top of the radio set. The blue LED went dark and a very quiet background rushing sound Ida hadn’t noticed suddenly stopped.

“Huh.”

Izanami joined him at the desk. “What?”

“Well,” said Ida, “they didn’t come here to smash the radio. But I didn’t turn it on.”

“Maybe they didn’t know how to work it?”

“If they wanted to use it…” Ida shook his head, took one more look around the cabin, and then headed to the door. He looked back at Izanami. “If we have a VIP on the way, then I doubt King will be able to sweep this one away. You coming?”

Izanami shook her head. “Do you mind if I listen to the recording again?”

Ida opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “Ah, yeah, sure. Knock yourself out.” He turned and began to walk away.

“Wait, Ida!” She ran to the door.

“Yeah?”

“The cabin was locked, wasn’t it?”

Ida stepped back toward her and looked at the door panel. The control was simple, a small qwerty keypad with a display above it about two inches square and a series of small LEDs; below that, the touch-sensitive chrome pad. Currently the screen was dark and a green LED was lit, indicating the door was open. Izanami was right—when he’d arrived the LED was red, and he had locked the cabin when he left it a while before. Only Ida knew the PIN to open it—that was something nobody could know or even look up on the station’s log. The Fleet was big on security. If anyone on the
Coast City
had managed to breach Ida’s privacy in such a manner, it would become a very serious matter. Court-martial and imprisonment, at least.

“Sonovabitch,”
said Ida. He turned on his heel to jog down the corridor. “King has to listen to me now.”

*   *   *

Ida disappeared around the
corner. Izanami watched the empty corridor for a moment and then turned back into Ida’s cabin. The environmental lighting had dimmed automatically when Ida left, but the door remained open. In near darkness, Izanami sat at the desk and turned the radio on.

The woman’s voice—the original recording—crackled into life, filling the cabin and echoing down the empty corridor outside it.

At the far end of the corridor, long after Ida had passed by on his way to the elevators, something crossed the faint light cast by the dim yellow service lights. A few moments later, the shadow moved again. In Ida’s cabin, Izanami sat still and silent, listening to the recording over and over and over again.

In the dark, she smiled.

*   *   *

“Captain Cleveland,” King said,
“nobody has been near your cabin. For crying out loud, you’re at the other end of the crew berths. There’s nothing around there but demolition drones. In fact, your cabin will be spare parts in just a few weeks, so you might want to consider moving back—”

Ida ran a hand through his hair. He’d run onto the bridge and confronted King—even the crew, so expertly practiced at ignoring distraction, had stopped what they were doing to look. King, to his credit, had simply laid his hand on Ida’s shoulder without another word and pushed him over to the security console himself.

“You sure this captures everything?” Ida nodded at the computer display. King looked Ida up and down, his face pulled off-center by a scowl. Ida returned the look.

“Yes, Captain,” said King. “This captures everything. All doors, locks, bulkheads, panels. Anything that needs to be turned on or off, locked or unlocked, coded or passed on board the station.” He pointed to the schematic rendered in green and amber on the large rectangular screen. “Not only do we have the record of the lock and door controls of your cabin, but we’ve got camera coverage right down the corridor. Look.”

King’s fingers moved with speed over the touch-sensitive keypad. Ida watched the screen.

The schematic flipped horizontally, replaced by the security camera feed for the corridor outside Ida’s cabin. The image was high definition and crystal clear but, given most of the station hub was perpetually in low-energy mode, was lit only in the warm twilight now so familiar to Ida. The corridor was still, silent, and it took Ida a moment to realize that King was fast-forwarding through the camera feed. Then something olive green flashed over the screen, and Ida reached forward to almost, but not quite, tap the screen.

“What was that?”

King glanced up. Then he watched the screen as he tracked back. “That was you, Captain.” A few seconds later, Ida watched himself walk backwards toward his cabin door and turn awkwardly on his heel. Ida hated seeing himself on camera, let alone video run in reverse; he was not the ruggedly handsome young man he imagined himself to be. But he recognized the scene as King scrolled backwards along the timeline—his arrival back at his cabin to find Izanami waiting, then his hasty departure to report the break-in. He frowned. Something was wrong with what he was seeing, but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

“Nothing, then?” he asked, peering closer at the screen. King had paused the feed just as Ida was pulling a very odd face. He was pretty sure the marshal had done it deliberately.

“Nothing.” King tracked again, going back and forth across a large chunk of the last cycle. Ida coming and going, stopping, coming and going again. Ida watched himself but he also checked the background—the camera provided a fish-eyed three-quarter’s top-down of the whole corridor, positioned as it was on the bulkhead frame at the end of the passageway. He could see the edge of his cabin door and the control panel set into the mesh wall outside it, sticking out after the standard tiling had been removed as part of the demolition of that part of the station.

Nothing. Just him, moving around, coming and going. The odd feeling returned as he watched. His eyes roved the background, seeking out any corner or nook that the intruder could have hidden in to escape the view of the camera. But there was nothing, nobody except Ida.

“And look,” said King, this time rapping a knuckle on a smaller display inset in the flat surface of the security console. “No life signs in that area, none except yours for nearly the last seven cycles.” He straightened up, adjusting the bottom of his tunic. The look he had in his eye as he met Ida’s gaze was a clear invitation to leave his bridge.

Ida raised his hands in surrender. At least King had helped scan the feed with him. King’s obsessive attitude toward his own job was, this time, to Ida’s advantage.

King made a stiff nod before turning back to the console to shut everything down.