[ 3.8 ]
The meeting is held in the Corbray Room, a dark, spacious oval with large representations of the university’s biggest sponsors looming over a pure white consensus table, which also serves as the room’s dominant source of light.
The room is packed — not only is every seat occupied, but the walls are lined with unhappy faculty, murmuring and grumbling when they hear unsatisfactory answers. Captain Keita is exhausted, of course, but maintains his dignity and does his best to be forthcoming, only deferring to others when their expertise is relevant, rather than in an attempt to avoid or deflect blame.
“… as of this moment,” the captain continues, “we’re looking at twenty-seven fatalities, one hundred and eight casualties. The Avicenna has sent over all available medical personnel.”
“We will naturally be waiving all fees for treatment,” the director of student services interjects, hastily.
“What about the ship?” asks a professor in the back. “Should we be concerned about structural damage?”
Keita shakes his head, motioning toward a model of the ship floating above the table. “The greatest damage was suffered by third ring — which you can see here at sectors two, seven, and eight. Eight took the brunt of the assault, but was almost entirely unoccupied, praise God.”
“Praise God,” says Chancellor Gooderham, with a tone that suggests he believes God might need to start putting in longer hours. He raises a ringed hand lazily, and the questions cease. “I think that will be enough for now. Thank you, captain.”
Uzair Gooderham is a proper Earthman, the son of powerful families from England and Iran — more of a corporate merger than a wedding, by some people’s reckoning. He is apparently even a lord, although there’s some question as to how much value the title carries in space, considering the lack of land for him to lay claim to.
He is heavyset, in the way that many planetborn men seem to go in space, and his heavy brow droops over his eyes and his jowls droop over his collars and were he not such a powerful man, his appearance would likely earn him some small measure of ridicule.
But Lord Gooderham had power, even before he came to Firnas, and his iron grip on the education and future prospects of the brightest minds of Copernica has made him a force to be reckoned with. He seems to lack, mercifully, his daughter’s enthusiasm for mischief, but he can be just as vicious when he feels his employees are not living up to his expectations.
“Let’s keep this moving along,” Galloway murmurs. “Who’s next?”
“That would be the head of the medical department—”
“No, no.” Gooderham waves this idea off like a bad smell. “I think I’d like to hear from… Dean Galloway. Dean, if you please?”
Galloway steps up, clearly exhausted, clad not in the standard academic robes, but in a lab uniform, perhaps in the hope that it might grant him some additional respect. He stands aside to let the captain pass before taking the lectern, where he hunches down and waits for the inquisition to begin.
“Good morning, Rosty,” Gooderham says, leaning forward and tapping his fingers on the table, ringing clicking loudly against the glass as he does so. “Thank you for joining us locally. I hope you’ll excuse the somewhat lackluster state of our transit systems, in light of recent events.”
Galloway nods, adjusting his tunic. “Of course, sir.”
“Now, this is a preliminary meeting. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of what happened here. So you don’t have anything to worry about. We’ll start with the damage, I think. That Iblis ship took some pretty nasty bites out of our hide, and appears to have left some of its teeth behind. Do we need to be concerned?”
“No, sir.” Galloway brings up a simplified model of the Iblis drone units, gesturing to pull it open, showing the innards of the device, which appears twisted and broken. “War Tech has quarantined all of the implanted foreign objects and examined them thoroughly. Everything we’ve seen indicates that the Thorns are inert, but of course we will continue regular testing until such a time as we can safely remove them the ship—”
“Safe!” someone shouts in the back. “We’d be a lot safer if you hadn’t sailed into a graveyard and spat in the Devil’s face!”
“Why should we trust War Tech, when they’re the ones who got us into this?!”
Shouts of agreement rise up, and the meeting descends into a squabble. Galloway tries to yell back, but instead sinks back miserably into his seat. Small wonder: War Tech has essentially had the run of the university since the war started, but now they’ve terrified the entire fleet and earned the ire of some of the wealthiest, most powerful families in Copernica.
“Enough!” Gooderham barks at last, banging his fat fist on the table. He makes a wave of his hand toward Galloway that appears to be equally conciliatory and condescending. “My apologies, Dean Galloway. Obviously, emotions are running high. But let’s get to the heart of the matter. I was led to understand when I authorized the reroute that none of the ships in the Phobos graveyard could present any sort of threat to the ships of Firnas. I was given assurances by War Tech. And yet, here we are. Would you care to explain this… unfortunate discrepancy?”
Galloway takes a deep breath. “That was — and continues to be — our understanding, as a matter of fact—” The shouting begins again, but Galloway raises his voice and keeps going. “We’ve seen nothing to indicate that the Iblis fleet has reactivated! I really can’t stress that enough!”
“Then why did we get attacked?!”
“Consider the nature of the assault,” Galloway says. He motions toward his assistant, who loads a diagram of the Infernalis that appears above the table. This is poorly received by the crowd. “We were attacked, yes, but we were only attacked by a single ship. Properly functioning Iblis machines operate in swarms and packs. As you can see here, the primary computation infrastructure of the Infernalis — its brain, so to speak — remains fully inactive; we’ve detected some smaller units moving in the lower decks, but they’re not autonomic, they’re likely just running on hard-coded control chains.
“Our current hypothesis is that the Infernalis was likely engaged in a swarm reinitialization sequence when it suffered a catastrophic systems failure. In order to maintain combat readiness, some functions would be offloaded to auxiliary computation cores throughout the ship. Assuming these systems were non-quantum — which appears to be the case — they wouldn’t have been impacted by the decoherence strikes, but they were likely damaged in the battle and so the ship was unable to initiate self-repair protocols. This is something of a mixed blessing, so to speak: it limited their offensive capabilities, but also made them almost impossible to detect. Although, I should mention, the AICM labs are working on some very promising—“
“I’m sure you’re on the verge of uncovering the very engines of creation,” Dean Kannon says acidly. “But perhaps you might save that for another time. Perhaps you might instead favor us with an explanation of how a ship with limited offensive capabilities engaged in what I think we can all agree were rather offensive maneuvers?”
Galloway flinches. “Yes, yes, of course. When the Archimedes came within range, some of the Infernalis auxiliary clusters, such as the, ah, grappling mechanisms, came online, responding more or less automatically to the fleet’s presence… you might think of it as akin to the bite of a rattlesnake after its head has been removed.”
One of the younger starborn professors furrows his brow — what’s a rattlesnake? — but is smart enough not to ask.
“Unfortunate, to be sure!” Galloway continues. “But reflexive behavior, essentially. It had just enough left in it to attach itself to the ship, but without further direction from its first level systems, it couldn’t really do much more than that. That’s why the Infernalis ultimately disengaged and released the ship — without further directives, it concluded that its operational objectives had been fulfilled.”
Gooderham closes his hands, squeezing them together, and considers this. “So, if I am to understand you correctly, Professor Galloway, the official position of the Department of War Technology is that this attack was, to put it simply… bum luck?”
“Well, no. I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t quite put it like that….”
“How would you put it?” asks Gooderham, and it sounds like he’s resisting the urge to climb over the table and start pulling Galloway apart.
“I don’t — obviously, this was… this was a terrible tragedy… and War Tech stands by to render all possible assistance to the fleet.”
“I see,” says Galloway.
“Mister Galloway!” the Reverend Mendelson barks. “Does War Tech still intend to attempt salvage of the Iblis?”
A nice and nasty little question. Galloway tries his best to answer: “In light of recent events, we believe it would be best if all reclamation projects remain suspended until such a time as we can be fully confident that we can proceed without putting any of our ships at risk—”
“So just until the bodies are buried and the outrage has settled down, then?”
Galloway stiffens, raising his chin. He might have to take this sort of ill treatment from the chancellor and the other deans, but Mendelson isn’t even faculty. “I beg your pardon, but I would remind everyone that if it were not for War Technologies, the Iblis would never have been stopped at all! The work we’re doing is extraordinarily difficult — we are attempting to reverse-engineer technology that was created by non-human intelligence decades ahead of our own. And while I grieve for the lives that have been lost, to find an Infernalis in such a state is unheard of. This is an extremely rare specimen! We have an unprecedented opportunity—”
Someone throws a shoe, and a very clumsy fight ensues, if it can be called that: it’s mostly shouting, angry shoves and tugged robes, the sort of awkward combat only possible between overdressed eggheads who know everything except how to throw a punch. Gooderham makes no attempt to intervene — he seems to particularly enjoy watching Galloway flail. As the mushada continues, no one notices when the lowly interlocutor weaves through the crowd and makes his escape.
This meeting has been a massive waste of time, Serafin concludes. Not just this — the entire quarter, really. As he walks down the stairs, he can’t stop thinking about how much he’s looking forward to being free of the university, free of these miserable, status-obsessed schemers and their little plots and games.
He can’t deny, though, some small satisfaction in seeing the king of the prags get his knuckles rapped. It won’t matter, in the long run — the fleet wouldn’t even be flying without the massive contracts that War Tech pulls in — but the damage to Galloway’s reputation will probably slow the campaign against the humanities and soft sciences. One must take one’s victories where one finds them.
But none of that is Serafin’s concern now. He’ll go pick up Billy from Miriam, leave his instructions and codes with Norah, close his accounts, say his goodbyes to his family, and then he’s moving on. He hasn’t quite worked out what his next move will be, but he’d rather take a menial than spend one more day in Firnas.
When he pushes through the exit to Odom Hall, he is mildly surprised to see a crowd of students, almost two dozen in number, gathered outside, all dressed in silver and white. They seem to be in the midst of an argument with the peacekeepers outside, who are clearly outnumbered.
Serafin’s first instinct is to close the door before they can enter, but he realizes one of the protesters is none other than Ben Masri, who seems mildly surprised to see him.
“Interlocutor Serafin.”
“Mister Masri,” Serafin says. He gives the students a quick once-over. They definitely appear to be here to cause trouble, but he doesn’t see any weapons, so he pushes the door open wider and welcomes them in with a wide, sweeping gesture. “Coming in?”
Masri grins. “Much appreciated, sir.”
“Excuse me! Excuse me! Stop!” the peacekeeper protests, as the crowd begins to move inside. He turns to Serafin, flustered. “They don’t have clearance, sir!”
“‘I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it,’” Serafin says dryly. “These students have clearly felt the spirit move in them and call them to share their feelings with the Administrative. Who am I to stand in their way?”
That afternoon, full transit resumes, and Lucy and JJ are on the first shuttle back to the Augustine. Serafin and Billy are waiting for them when she hurries out of the airlock.
“My boy, my boy,” she says, kneeling down and hugging her son, patting his cowlick down and checking his collar before she hugs him tight. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
“I heard you had quite the adventure while we were gone!” JJ says, grinning. “Thanks for keeping the old man safe.”
“It was scary,” Billy says. “But we went in the ziggy course! That was neat.”
“My little racer,” says Lucy. She takes his hands in hers, kissing his fingers. She’s crying, but she’s doing her best not to show how upset she is — on the flight over, she mentioned to Serafin she wants to avoid overwhelming the boy with her own post-traumatic feelings.
They have dinner at the Oasis Grill, Billy’s favorite, and let him order whatever he wants, which is quite a lot, and make sure to get booza afterward for dessert. Despite his excitement when he’s informed he can stay up late and use his consensus goggles, he gets so sleepy JJ has to pick him up and carry him to bed.
JJ seems equally exhausted, truth be told, but he still insists on heading back to the dorms after hugging everyone goodnight.
“Does he seem alright to you?” Lucy asks, watching Billy through the wall.
“He’s doing fine. Better than me, maybe,” Serafin says. “Although I admit it might be a little hard to tell… he does seem to have inherited my stoical tendencies.”
“I talked to Doctor Holub about anti-traumatics,” Lucy says. “Apparently there’s a shortage in the fleet….”
“Not just the fleet,” Serafin says. “The Iblis went out of their way to target medical facilities. Yet another part of the grand campaign to break our spirit.”
“And he didn’t… he didn’t see too much?”
Serafin leans back, thinking carefully about his answer. “He saw some things. But he was a trooper. Held it together better than a lot of the students and faculty, to be honest. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“I should have been here,” Lucy says. She’s trembling now, all of the fear she’s been pushing away finally sweeping over her. “I should have been here. I’m his mother. What was I think?”
“Oh, honey,” Serafin says, embracing her and kissing her forehead. “You couldn’t have seen this coming. And being a parent… it isn’t just about being there for your children. It’s about making sure he can survive when you’re not there. You should be proud of him.”
“All well and good,” Lucy sobs, dabbing at her eyes with her scarf. “But I haven’t been here. I’ve been so busy, with the clubs, and my classes, and work, and when this happened… I wasn’t even on the ship, for God’s sake. And why? Because I wanted to run around and play investigator!”
“Lucy—”
She sits up, looking him in the eye. “No, no. I’ve made a decision. As soon as the semester is over, I’m going back to Mitchell with Billy. We’ll go see mom.”
“What about your classes?” he says, as her pours her some water, which she accepts, but is too distracted to actually drink.
“The credits will transfer? I’ve done everything I meant to do here, anyway. Honestly, the biggest reason I came here was that I wanted to be here for you. And you seem to be doing fine, as far as I can tell.”
“Of course I’m fine!” Serafin raises an eyebrow. “Haven’t you heard? I’ve been invited to Aphelion. Isn’t that grand? I’m finally taking my place among the elite of the solar system.”
Lucy smiles, but can’t maintain the levity.
“It’s just… I was just so sure.” She takes a moment to blow her nose. “About Valerie, I mean. Everything about her death seems so strange. I spoke to her ex-boyfriend and he said she’d taken up with someone else, but he didn’t know who. But when I spoke with Mister Dennison, and he said there was no record of her requesting a chaperone or relationship disclosure authorizations or anything… but God! After all this business with the Infernalis… you were right, I shouldn’t have been wasting my time on all this.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Serafin says. “You believed something was wrong, and you took it upon yourself to try to correct it. It’s admirable.”
“You don’t think I was…?” Lucy struggles to find the right word. “I mean, I suppose I never asked you. Do you think there was something more there, with what happened to Valerie?”
The plaintive tone is familiar: am I onto something, or am I crazy? He recognizes it, because he’s used it himself, at times — most recently, when he was discussing the Idea with Ashley’s ghost.
Serafin does his best not to lie to his family. He has become quite practiced in the art of omission and elision, but he’s done his best to avoid outright falsehoods. He hasn’t always succeeded, of course, but….
He looks into Lucy’s wide eyes, pleading — his firstborn, his little starburst — he thinks about the way she’s run herself ragged, for him, for Billy, and for Valerie Moss, a woman she barely knew — how large, her heart is! — and he knows what the answer must be.
And so, with love, he makes the hard call.
“It was probably just an accident, sweetheart,” Serafin lies. “I’m sorry.”
He’s a talented liar, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth he feels how unconvincing they are — maybe it’s the guilt, or the exhaustion, or the emotion of the movement, he isn’t sure. But he’s also her father, it doesn’t matter.
She trusts him. Believes him. She purses her lips, nodding. He can see her relax, ever so slightly, as she accepts defeat, and envies her that. He feels awful as soon he sees his lie has taken root — but the worse it feels, the more confident he becomes that he’s made the right decision. It’s not the first time; just one of the hazards of the job.
It’s for the best.
“It’s been nice spending time with you and JJ,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder. “I think it’s been good for Billy, too, having you around.”
“I’m going to miss him,” Serafin says, and feels relief that this is true. “He’s a fine young man, and you’re raising him well. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Same to you, on all counts. And I expect you to be better about responding to my messages this time, mister!”
“Yes, ma’am. And don’t you worry, I’ll be back in Churchill space soon enough — I just have a few things to attend to, first.”
Lucy stands, helps him up, hugs him good night. “I’ll hold you to that. I love you, baba.”
“With all my heart,” Serafin says, and he means it.
The night before his departure, Serafin takes the people-mover down to third ring to look for a drink. The university doesn’t have a proper grey zone, of course, but the third ring is where most of university’s non-faculty employees reside, and while they’re technically subject to the same restrictions as the rest of the campus, the rules aren’t enforced.
The old watering holes from Serafin’s student days have long since been shut down, but one of the locals pins the new location for him. In order to get there, Serafin has to head through one of the residential sectors and pass by the gateway to sector eight, where a makeshift memorial has been prepared for the employees who were killed in the attack, fond wishes and prayers and photographs. Serafin pauses to pay his respects,
Soon, Serafin finds his way through the dockyard and up a series of rickety stairs to the top of a stack of shipping containers until he arrives at the Nosy Cuff, a dimly lit hovel full of recycled chairs and tables and other surplus that the school has sold off over the decades. The bar is being tended to by a scruffy flip and a reprogrammed dockyard manipulator arm, which seems to be doing most of the work. Serafin orders arak and a bottle of water, because he doesn’t trust either of them with anything more complicated.
“Mister Serafin! Mister Serafin!”
At the back of the container, Francis Soames waves eagerly, motioning for him to join them. He appears to be starting a empty container collection with some of his co-workers, including Ozzy, the young man who was with him at the riot.
“Hello, Francis,” Serafin says, raising a finger for the bartender’s attention and motioning toward the table when he gets it. “Next round’s on me.”
“Why thank you, Mister Serafin,” Soames says. “You are too kind! How’s the little one?”
“Alive, thanks to you. I really can’t thank you enough.”
Soames waves this off. “Just a little professional courtesy, is all that was! Not that I’m gonna be a professional for much longer….”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“They’ve fired him,” says Ozzy, looking up from his drink to scowl.
“Oh, Good Lord, Francis, I hope I didn’t get you in trouble—”
“Oh no! No no no, no.” Soames shakes his head. From the roll of his head, it’s clear he’s been at it for a while, he is clearly the most intoxicated member of the party and the competition is fierce. “That might actually make sense. After all… a lockdown override? During a Condition Red? Involving an Iblis? That’s about as bad of a protocol violation as it gets! But nope. Nope. La nope. Nobody’s even mentioned that, believe it or not. You wanna know the real reason?”
“What’s the real reason?”
“I don’t know if you heard, but we were attacked! By an Infernalis.” Soames mimics the machine’s assault, clamping his hand onto Serafin’s forearm. “Catastrophe, really. Very scary stuff! Quite a few people died.”
Serafin smooths out his collar. “Yes, that caught my attention. But they can’t blame that on you, surely—”
“Who else?” Soames throws his arms in the air. “Apparently it managed to catch everybody off-guard because we had a sensor malfunction or something, that’s what I was told—”
“It was some sort of cloak!” Ozzy interjects. “Well, not a cloak, exactly, but a system that helps them dissipate their thermal signature and diffuse it with a radiation cloud. There’s a whole packet, I can share it with you—”
“Nobody cares, Ozzy!” Soames barks. “You’ll have to excuse him, Mister Serafin, he’s the resident tinker-head. I’m pretty sure he’d marry a blank if he thought it was legal.”
“I just thought it was interesting,” Ozzy grumbles.
“So wait, how are they blaming all this on you, exactly?” Serafin asks, trying to drag the conversation back on the track.
“The families want their pound of flesh. Got to punish someone.”
“I suppose,” says Serafin, “but… this was an external threat! Surely the most responsibility should rest with fleet defense — the watch officer, for example—”
“The watch officer is Aubrey Greatorex’s cousin,” says Ozzy.
“Ah, well, that’s no good. Captain Keita?”
“Keita is Guild!” Soames says, disgusted. “Still has five years on his contract.”
“Can’t afford that, then,” Serafin muses. “Our military escort should probably shoulder some of the blame, but they don’t answer to the university….”
“Indeed!” And who does that leave, when they need a head to roll?”
“… the acting head of security.”
Soames slides his thumb across his own neck. “Sahih sahh!”
One of the peacekeepers returns with a round of shots of something that tastes like a mixture of battery acid and tequila. “It’s not all bad,” Soames says, taking a break to hiss as the drink crawls down his throat. “They’re going to kick some money my way so I keep quiet. They didn’t say keep quiet, but I’m no dummy. I’d have kept quiet for free, of course….”
“Well, glad to hear they’ve softened the blow.”
“And some of the graduates have reached out with job offers… mostly personal security.”
“Personal security pays great!” Ozzy says.
“It’s glorified babysitting!” Soames grumbles. “But not so different from what I’ve been doing here, I suppose. Prolly take some time off first, visit my family on Lewis. Be good for the girls to see the grands….”
He looks down at his drink, drifting into melancholy.
“Well, I’m sorry, Francis,” Serafin says. “It all sounds rather rotten.”
Soames nods, patting him on the back. “I appreciate that, Mister Serafin! You’ve been a real pal these last few months, with the dinners and everything. Some of the teachers, they don’t show much respect for us wagers.”
“Not that Admin’s any better,” grumbles Ozzy. “We had a Hell of a fight getting them to authorize that special investigator from the Khobar.”
“Oh yes, the Valerie Moss business,” Serafin says. “How did all that shake out, anyway?”
“Still shaking,” says Soames. “We finally got permission to access to her brain chip… turns out your instincts were bang on. They found traces of the… what was it called?”
“Overclock,” Ozzy volunteers.
“Overclock! Some sort of hack. Can’t prove it, but we think it’s what caused her episode.”
“The geeks said it’s SOTA,” says Ozzy. “Real nasty stuff.”
“So, foul play, then?” Serafin asks, cautiously.
“Can’t be positive, but it’s sure looking that way.”
“It looks like a mess,” Ozzy says. “It would have to be uploaded through a physical interface, so someone who could get close to her for an extended period of time.”
“Not that it matters,” Soames says, sadly. “They didn’t care about it before the attack, and they’re certainly not going to give us any resources for the investigation now.”
“I suppose not.” He’s about to drop the subject, but then suddenly finds himself seized by a strange, irresistible impulse: “It is disappointing, how callous people can be. Why, when I spoke to my boss, Christopher Fyfe, do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said he wasn’t surprised.”
“What does that mean?” asks Ozzy.
Serafin shrugs. “I really couldn’t say. Perhaps he was merely upset about her passing — they were rather close, as I understand it.”
“Really?” says Soames, confused. “He didn’t mention that when I interviewed him.”
“Oh? Well, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Serafin says. He takes a sip of his arak, letting the gears turn. Soames isn’t the brightest star in the sky, and he’s probably had a few too many, but Ozzy is listening very carefully, and will hopefully remind him tomorrow.
Could it be Fyfe? Serafin wonders. Intelligence-related, maybe — Valerie compromised; grim order given? Or perhaps some tawdry personal motive; yet another dishonored woman sacrificed on the altar of decorum. Anything’s possible. Fyfe’s definitely capable of it, that’s for sure.
But, probably not.
Serafin almost opens his mouth to offer some exculpatory remark, but embraces the silence instead. It sounds like the investigation needs something to get it going again. And If Fyfe’s innocent, what’s the harm in making sure? I’m sure the whole mess will get cleared up eventually.
“Well, whatever happened — not much I can do now, is there?” Soames says, drumming his fingers on the table. He tosses a bottle at the mechanical arm, which catches it and sets it in the wash bin in one smooth, fluid motion.
“I don’t know about that,” says Serafin, sipping his drink. “You’re still acting head of security until we reach port, aren’t you?”
“That’s right!” Ozzy points eagerly at Serafin, and then hits Soames on the arm until he starts paying attention again. “That’s in the regs! Francis, if you want to keep going, they can’t do anything about it! What are they going to do — fire you?”
“Why, you’re right!” Soames laughs. “I’m untouchable!”
“You’ve got to trust your instincts, in your line of work,” Serafin says. “My brother, if I were you? I wouldn’t let this go. I’d chase it down as far as I could, though the heavens fall.”
There’s a gleam in Soames’ drunken eye, and he nods his head vigorously as he becomes more and more excited. “‘Though the heavens fall.’ You’re absolutely right! I could sit around and gloom, or I could break some straps and rattle some cages!”
“That’s the spirit!”
Soames raises his glass. “To Hell with whatever Admin says — you’re tayeb in my book, Mister Serafin!”
Serafin accepts the toast humbly. “I try my best.”
On his way home, Serafin receives a notification that Norah is local, and wants to see him. He follows her marker back to the third ring residential sector. Even at this late hour, the courtyard is alive, with long-limbed and unkempt young children climbing over the low fence and crawling under the table where the old women play Mancala and murmur to each other in half a dozen different languages. One of them smiles and exchanges a few words when she sees Norah appear — Serafin doesn’t recognize it, it appears to be an old terrestrial dialect that mixes German and Hebrew.
“Please, come in,” Norah says. Serafin has never seen her out of her robes before — it makes her seem even smaller, somehow, although her hips are wider than he might have expected. She accepts a wrapped plate of food from someone on the way in.
“I didn’t know you lived in third ring,” Serafin says.
“Hmm? Oh, yes,” she mumbles. “I grew up on one of the Kuiper rings, so the gravity doesn’t bother me. And I appreciate the simplicity, more than anything. Everyone here is focused on making a living; they don’t really concern themselves with grants or who’s getting credit for what.”
“The academic squabbles of it all.”
She motions for him to follow her into the lift. It groans and shudders when it powers up, a loud clunking sound echoing outside, punctuated by an intermittent banging.
“Took some damage, it sounds like?” Serafin has to raise his voice to be heard over the racket. “Is this entirely safe?”
“Oh, that’s normal!” Norah says cheerfully. “It’s all a bit ramshackle. Very affordable, though!”
“I understand you were in the thick of it, though?” Norah asks, when they finally disembark.
“More or less. Not my favorite fiasco, as fiascoes go, but no permanent damage done. Went to see the medics after and they gave Billy and me the all-clear quick enough.”
Norah looks horrified. “Oh, Lord. Poor Billy! How is he?”
Who knows, with kids? “He’s had some trouble sleeping,” Serafin says, following her down the hall. “But we’re monitoring him, checking his brainwave patterns and all that. He’s been talking about it with his toy dinosaur and it sounds like he’s processing it well.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. It’s… hard to think about, a child being in such circumstances,” Norah says. “My girls were on the Palmyra.”
Norah’s never mentioned her children before — three girls, if he recalls correctly, and her husband only once or twice.
“An absolute outrage,” he says. “I never understood how anyone could support those monsters after that.”
“It was an outrage, yes. But it was a long time ago.” She motions toward a door that looks so old it might have been on one of the Sixsmith flights. “This is me.”
Serafin pauses, surprised. He had expected this to be a brief encounter, to simply hand off his final instructions and his classroom passcodes and head home. He hadn’t really stopped to think about where they were going, honestly.
(He might be a little drunk. He can hold his liquor, but this is the first night he’s touched the stuff in months.)
“My apologies, Norah, I didn’t mean to follow you home—”
She giggles. “This is third ring, Mister Serafin. They’re not quite so beholden to the rules out here as all that. Please, come in, come in.”
He is struck by a gust of hot air when the door opens, and Serafin steps into a spacious camel-hair tent, the fabric covered in intricate red, green, and gold patterns, with carpets on the floor and stacked and overlapping on the floor. There is a sandali at the center, rather similar to the one that appears in First Light in the Pandsher Valley; as well as stacks of books and a pile of blankets and pillows that might pass for a bed. The end of the tent is open, offering a stunning view of a river lined with salt cedars, and mountains rising up toward the night sky.
“Good Lord,” Serafin says, moving over for a better view. “Is that the Hari River?”
“Good eye,” Norah says. “We’re near Garmao. The Minaret of Jam isn’t too far. I keep the room on rotation, though — there’s a spot north of the Bamiyan Valley I simply adore. It’s where I met Oliver, actually.”
Converting one’s apartment into a full-spectrum interface room is no easy feat. She’s obviously spent some time on the project — it’s very convincing, all the textures and scents are just right. “Impressive work, Missus Lincoln. If it weren’t for the gravity, I’d swear I was on Earth.”
Norah kneels, and begins preparing some tea. “It was an awful lot of work,” she says. “I had to install the last set of holo-lens arrays myself. But I think it was worth it — now I get to live in my favorite place in the world.”
They take their tea outside, drinking it underneath the light of the moon, discussing the country and the class and the students. When he mentions the Hartshorne issue, she accepts the young man’s return immediately, without question, even volunteering to help him get back up to speed.
“I’ve done the best I can to make sure we cover the highlights,” says Serafin, scrolling through the final classes. “Obviously we’ve had to leave a lot out. I would have liked to have covered the end of the war in more detail — although I suppose we’ve managed to hit the important notes, Soviet withdrawal, the Durranis ascendant, and so on.”
“It is such a fascinating period,” Norah says, nodding vigorously. “Do you give any credence to the theories around the Siege of Jalalabad?”
“What theories? It’s rather cut and dry, isn’t it? Rasul managed to break through the Soviet blockade, despite being outnumbered seven to one, but he was killed helping civilians to move out of the city.”
“Well, yes,” says Norah. “But why was Rasul outnumbered seven to one? Most of the 40th Army had moved to Kabul by then.”
“A fair point.”
“This actually came up when I was working on my thesis!” Norah says, and she abandons her tea to begin pacing back and forth. “I was actually there as part of a team researching the zhongguoren influence, but when I was in the field, I spoke with some women in one of the villages… they keep histories of their own, you know.”
“Oh? And what did these histories say?”
“There’s a theory, on the ground, that Abdul deliberately failed to provide his brother with enough troops to defend the city. They had gotten into terrible rows about how to prosecute the war since 2007, of course, and so Abdul saw this as his opportunity.”
Serafin leans back against the rocks, mulling this over. “Securing his position as the future leader of the country, while creating a martyr for the cause. An effective, if monstrous, decision. Do you think there’s any truth to it?”
“It’s… not impossible,” Norah says. “Their relationship was certainly strained by then, but I did a fair amount of digging, and was never able to find anything definitive.”
“Mm. Fratricide is not the sort of thing you’d want to keep records of, I suppose.”
“It’s frustrating!” Norah says. “So many stories, going unrecorded. So much history, buried in the earth, lost in the wind.”
In all their time together, Serafin has never seen Norah like this. Her voice is strong and clear, and her eyes are wide. If she could do this in a classroom, she’d be the most popular teacher at Firnas.
“I must say,” says Serafin, “I am glad you got in touch. I know things have been rather strained between us; I do apologize for my part in that.”
“Oh, no, Mister Serafin!” Norah cries, hand against her chest. “It’s my fault entirely… it was rather churlish and girlish of me, to not simply raise the issue with you from the start.”
“Well. At the risk of disturbing the peace, might I ask how I gave offense?”
She looks down, twisting her fingers together. “It was… it was the Hartshorne business. Your harsh lesson. So to speak.”
Serafin looks up at the sky, where a lonely raptor cuts across the stars. “I regret that,” he says at last. “Certainly not my finest hour—”
Norah cuts him off, which he can’t recall ever happening before. “Oh, you misunderstand me!” she says, earnestly. “The little creep has had it coming. He tried to make a pass at me last semester, can you believe it? But no, that’s not why I was upset. I was upset because you didn’t include me! After all — I am your assistant, am I not?”
Serafin feels as though he has stepped not only into a different place, but perhaps an entirely different reality. “Really?”
“It’s not the sort of thing I could ever do myself, of course.” She raises her chin forcefully. “But I could have helped!”
“Well, I’ll be sure to include you, next time.”
She laughs, and playfully smacks him on the shoulder. “See that you do!”
She has very pretty eyes, Serafin realizes, when she isn’t staring at her shoes.
“You’re in a mood, aren’t you?” Serafin says. “I feel like we’re meeting for the first time.”
“Perhaps we are.” She gathers up the empty saucers and cups and returns them back inside. “Nearly getting torn to shreds by hell machines may have a galvanizing effect on one’s mind. I think. Or it might just be a matter of location.”
“Oh?”
“I was a different person here,” Norah says, motioning at the landscape around them. “I can’t really explain it. I felt bold. Unafraid. Unapologetic. Once, when we were passing through the Wakhan Corridor, I got into this awful row with this guard at a checkpoint, and I just started shouting at him, calling him the most awful names, telling him I’d speak with his superiors and have him thrown down a well if he didn’t let us pass. He could have shot me!”
“Norah the lioness,” Serafin says, smiling.
She runs a hand along one of the wooden support poles, lost in her reverie. “That’s why I set this up, I suppose. To memorialize that version of me.” She looks back at him, nervous. “I suppose I must sound terribly silly.”
“Not at all,” Serafin says. “I’m certainly not the same person in Firnas that I am anywhere else in Copernica. Do you ever think of going back?”
“Oh, all the time. But I don’t think I can.”
“Why not? It sounds like there’s work to be done — work that would need to be done by a woman.”
She sighs. “There is. But there are different sorts of freedoms, Mister Serafin. A widow is free, in her sorrow. My father was an addict, but in his addiction, he was free of all of the responsibilities that burdened him in his life. Afghanistan is… it’s the same for me, I think. If I went back there, I would be free. And I am tempted. But if it would be the freedom of a man falling to his death.
“I apologize, Mister Serafin. I’m sure I must sound mad to you.”
“No. I know exactly what you mean.” He reaches out a hand, and pulls her close. She rests her head against his chest, and they sway together, enjoying the connection. She smells of lignin, of poplars, of Rossana and saffron.
“I feel like I got left behind, sometimes,” she murmurs. “That everyone else is somewhere lovely, and I’ve got to stay behind and hold the fort alone. Do you ever feel that way, Mister Serafin?”
Serafin feels the tendons in his false hand jitter slightly. He shakes it out, and then places it against the small of her back. “Not quite,” he says. “I feel like I’m always leaving.”
“Forty-four thousand souls in this fleet,” Norah whispers. “Thirty-five thousand of them men. And when the Devil came knocking, what could they do? What could any of us do?”
Serafin thinks about the sentries, and the airlock doors closing. “Not much.”
She takes his real hand, and holds her cheek against it, closing her eyes. “Would you like to…” Even now, at her bravest, she can’t quite bring herself to say what she wants to say.
He takes her hand, kissing it gently. “I would. But I wouldn’t want to take advantage.”
“I’m not some blushing undergrad, remoting into your class, you know,” she says, amused. “I’m almost the same age as you, actually.”
“Are you really!” Serafin leans back in feigned surprise, turning her head as if searching for the wrinkles. “Honestly, who can tell these days?”
She pulls the shawl from her head, shaking out her copper hair, and retires to the bed, stretching out across the brocade bedding. “We’re young and old.”
“Alive and dead.”
“Coming and going.”
“Wise and foolish.”
He takes off his jacket, taking a seat next to her, admiring the contrast of her hair against the celadon sheets. She runs her fingers across her slender forearm, and the lights go out.
He feels a great deal, in this moment. He feels her moving underneath him, feels her shiver when he runs his hand across her sternum, feels the warmth of her skin against his. He feels as if he doesn’t know her, as if he’s never known anyone, that all social interactions are entirely random, and that all meaning ascribed to them are simply apophenic delusion. That any truth can only arise from the body, through action and motion.
And so, he expresses himself, seeking truth.
She is still the same shy woman as before, in some ways; she does not like to stray far from him, and she can never quite work up the nerve to say what she wants. Language has failed her, as well — but she finds other ways to make her desires known.
Together, they reach an understanding.
He feels lost. He feels strong. He feels like a conqueror, like Alexander the Great making his way across the Land of Bones, like Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. He feels free, like a man falling to his death.
Tonight, just for tonight, he does not think, but only feels. There will come a day when Serafin will bitterly regret this night. But in the moment, the beautiful moment, it is undiluted joy, a secret delight he cherishes, a memory that keeps him warm as he travels through the vast darkness that stretches between the small pockets of life still flickering in the solar system.
* * *