Yeah, that’s a fair point.
“Look,” she says. “What do you actually know about the lock on the download system? I mean, do we need his entire thumb? Is it a print reader? A DNA sniffer? Both?”
I shrug. “No idea. All I know is that he always had to put his thumb to the pad before it would go.”
Nasha rolls her eyes. “You’re hopeless, you know that?” She lolls her head back and looks up into the clear pink-blue sky. “If it’s just a print reader, we could maybe … I don’t know … get a scan of his thumbprint somehow? If we had that, we could mock up a duplicate with one of the small-bore printers.”
“Huh.” Down below us, something leaps from the cliff face, spreads two meters’ worth of spidery wings, and soars off into the distance. “That’s…”
Nasha sits up again and turns to look at me. “That’s what?”
I point to the dwindling black vee out over the grassland.
“That’s the first flying thing I’ve seen on Niflheim,” I say. “Do you see it?”
“I see it,” she says. “Can we focus, though?”
“I am focused. One of the things I’m focused on is that there’s a ton of stuff on this planet that we have no idea about. I mean, what was that thing? It looked like what you’d get if a tarantula fucked a bat. What else are we missing, you know? The more of that kind of stuff I see, the less I want to kill myself based on a bunch of Miko Berrigan’s assumptions.”
She tilts her head to one side. “Assumptions? Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like that it’s gonna get cold again, and stay that way. Like that we actually need that antimatter back.”
“That’s not an assumption, Mickey. That’s a science fact. This place was a snowball when we got here, remember? What possible reason would we have to think that it’s not gonna be that way again?”
“I don’t know. What reason would we have to think that it will be that way again?”
Her eyes narrow, and her cadence becomes slow and deliberate. “Thirty years’ worth of observations, Mickey. Thirty years of watching this place from Midgard, and then two years of modeling from Berrigan’s people since we got here, and also the basic fact that if it was cold as hell two years ago it’s definitely going to be cold again someday because that’s just how planets work. You’re not making sense, babe.”
“Thirty years’ worth of observations from Midgard had them thinking this place was warm and wet, remember?”
She shakes her head. “Their observations were spot-on. They just blew the explanation. You know this, Mickey.”
“Okay. So who’s to say they’re not blowing their predictions now?”
Nasha pulls her legs up under her, rocks back, and then pushes to her feet. “Look,” she says. “I’m trying to be helpful here, but if you don’t want to be serious about this, I’m out.”
“No,” I say. “Wait.” I catch her hand. She makes a halfhearted effort to pull away, then sighs and sits back down. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“Just what, Mickey?”
Just that I don’t want to be serious about this. I don’t want a solution to the problem of not knowing, because if we manage to steal Quinn’s thumb or whatever and I find out that what Marshall told me is true, I’m gonna have to dig that bomb up and hand it over to him.
Can’t say that, though.
“Just that I get off onto tangents sometimes and lose track of what we’re actually supposed to be talking about,” I say. “I’m focused now, though. Fake thumbs, right? So we don’t actually need pinking shears?”
Nasha shrugs. “Maybe not. Depends on how serious they are about security on the download system.”
“Why would they put heavy security on something like that? It’s not like people are dying to find out what it’s like to have terminal radiation poisoning.”
“Yeah,” Nasha says. “That’s probably true. Fine. You get something with Quinn’s print on it, and I’ll see if I can figure out how to make us a thumb.”
She gets to her feet again, then takes my hand and pulls me up beside her.
“Okay,” I say. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“Well,” she says, “I guess then we can talk about breaking out the pinking shears.”
ON THE WAY back to the dome, I almost hope to see the creeper again. Even though it didn’t respond to my ping, there was something about our run-in with it yesterday that made me feel like we had some kind of connection. We don’t, but as we crest the hill and start back down toward the dome, I’m pretty sure I see the spider-bat thing drift by, so high overhead that it’s barely more than a black smudge against the light pink sky.
GETTING QUINN’S THUMBPRINT turns out to be surprisingly easy. All it requires is me hanging around the caf for two hours like a homeless person, which I have no problem doing because as of two days ago I have no job. Around 14:00, Quinn comes in to get his lunch. He sits at a bench on the opposite side of the room, pretty much as far away from me as he can possibly be. There are a few other groups scattered around the room, but nobody seems to be paying either one of us much attention. Quinn eats his food, downs his recommended daily shot of vitamin/protein slurry, gets to his feet, and deposits his tray on the conveyor that will carry it back into the bowels of the food prep system. All I have to do is get to the conveyor after he’s turned away and before his tray disappears, carefully grab his slurry cup, drop it into a medical sample bag, and make my escape.
This all goes swimmingly until I’m two steps from the corridor.
“Mickey? What are you doing?”
I stop and turn. Cat is sitting at a table with a bunch of other Security goons. She’s staring at me.
“Oh,” I say. “Hey, Cat.”
I try to keep moving, but she’s on her feet now and crossing the room toward me. I’m barely into the corridor before she catches my sleeve from behind.
“Hey,” she says. “What the hell, Mickey? Hold up.”
For one adrenaline-fueled moment I seriously consider yanking my arm free and running.
“Cat,” I say. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got a thing—”
She points to the jacket pocket where I stashed Quinn’s mug. “Yeah. The thing you’ve got is a slurry cup you stole from somebody else’s caf tray. What are you doing?”
I open my mouth, hesitate, then close it again. Cat takes a half step closer. “You know I’m legally authorized to beat this information out of you, right?”
I’m not sure that’s true, but I’ve known Cat long enough to know that she could definitely do it if she wanted to.
“I needed something with Quinn’s fingerprints on it. That’s why I took the cup. I’ll bring it back as soon as I’m done with it.”
She tilts her head to one side. “You needed Quinn Brock’s fingerprints. Why, exactly?”
I sigh. “So I can make a fake thumb.”
She stares me down for a long five seconds.
“Fine,” she says finally. “Don’t tell me. When Marshall hauls you in for making voodoo dolls or love potions or whatever you’re up to, though, don’t expect me to vouch for you.”
I force a laugh. She gives me one last look, then turns and heads back into the caf. I stand there for thirty seconds or so, half expecting her to come back out with her friends and haul me off to cup jail. She doesn’t, though, and eventually I give a mental shrug, and I go.
“SO THAT’S IT, huh?”
“Yeah,” Nasha says. “That’s it.”
I turn the thumb over in my hand.
“It doesn’t look like Quinn’s thumb.” I look at Nasha’s hand, then back at the thing in my palm. “It looks like your thumb.”
Nasha snatches it back from me. “Look, Mickey, this is the best I could do, okay? I didn’t have Brock’s thumb for a model, so I used mine. I had to call in a bunch of favors and throw down a couple of threats that I probably couldn’t actually follow through on to get twenty minutes alone with the printer to make this thing. If it’s not good enough, then I guess you’re out of luck.”