Desperate because Ruth had known—as her daughter, Sarah, had known, when she had seen the madness in her long-dead father’s eyes—that the child, the infant in her mother’s arms, had been the true target of his wrath. He’d murdered his wife, drawn the knife across her white throat, only to get at his own child . . .
“But he didn’t.” Sarah spoke her thoughts aloud. She didn’t care whether anyone else heard them. “For a moment he wasn’t crazy. And that was all it took. He must have heard what she said to him, what Ruth had said.” Sarah, watching from the dark corridor, hadn’t been able to make out the words her mother had spoken. Words in a ghost’s mouth; perhaps they hadn’t even been words at all but just some inarticulate cry. Or articulate enough. For that brief section of the past, the past that had happened so long ago and so far from Earth, one sixth of the way to the Proxima system; for just that long, a matter of a few seconds, Anson Tyrell had been sane again; whatever gripped him had relaxed its hold, letting a horrified rationality possess him once more.
He had his dead wife at his feet, the blood still running from her opened throat and pooling around the two of them, forming a redly shining mirror in which he looked down and saw his own unrecognizable face. And saw the knife in his upraised hand, which he might not even have known was there, he’d been that crazy. And saw his face in that smaller red mirror, the one smeared on the blade’s bright metal; and recognized.
That was how it had appeared to Sarah, watching the ghosts. Who were so locked into the past that she would have seemed like a ghost to them if she had stepped out of the dark corridor. If they had been able to see her at all.
Sarah’s time, that she was locked into and that she carried around with her as though it were some invisible diving bell, had separated out from the time held in the Salander 3, like the markings of trace elements divided by their specific gravity. Those elements, her time and the ghosts’ time, had been swirled together for a little while, when she had first descended and entered the transport. So that the elements had bumped up against each other, become visible to each other, the dead looking at the living, or at least the not-so-dead. Her dead father had been able to see her, had probably thought she was one more part of the craziness sparking away inside his head. Would he have been able to do more than just look at her and say crazy, murderous things? She didn’t know; that had been when she had turned and ran, snatching up the Rachael child by the hand and pulling her along after herself, not caring that the child was even less real than her dead father.
“And then your father killed himself.”
She didn’t know which of the men had spoken. “That’s right.” She supposed that was something else of which they had been aware all along, another little fragment left in the company records, transcribed from one of the employees who had gone aboard the returned Salander 3. What else they found: the two corpses with slashed throats, the knife still in Anson Tyrell’s hand. “When he was sane again, and he could see what he had done. He used the same knife on himself.” That kind of grief, she knew, being another sort of insanity. Or else it was being really, truly sane at last. It all had the same results. “He didn’t worry about the infant lying in the pooi of blood, wailing away and kicking its little feet. He knew that the Salander 3’s computer and all its built-in autonomic machinery would take care of me. Better than he would be able to; that’s what it was designed for. Especially since he had no way of knowing how long he would stay sane. The craziness had come over him like a storm, and it had passed, but it might come again. Better to let the ship bathe and feed and comfort his child.”
“And bring it back to Earth,” said Wycliffe. “Bring you back. The Salander 3’s return program wouldn’t have kicked in while your father was still alive.
The computer only went into autopilot when it could no longer detect any adult human presences aboard.”
There was some small comfort to be had from that. Sarah felt cold and empty, the hard bravado she had been displaying now worn thin, as though the warmth of the yacht’s lounge had failed to reach the bones chilled by the ocean’s storm. Still, she thought as she gazed at the elaborate marquetry of the cigarette box’s lid and did not see it. Still . . . he was trying to protect me the only way he could. From all the bad, crazy things. From himself.
“But . . . we don’t know why he did it. What could have caused Anson Tyrell to go mad.”
Sarah looked up and saw the two men in conference, heads leaning toward each other, voices lowered but not to whispers, as though they had simply put her presence out of their minds for a moment. Between them, seated in the wing chair, her hallucination of the Rachael child looked up at them, following their conversation like a tennis spectator.
“That’s true,” replied Zwingli. He nodded thoughtfully. “We have more details . . . but not really any more information. Not that we can use.”
“That’s a problem.” Behind the square-rimmed glasses, Wycliffe’s eyes seemed to focus on his own deep considerations. “To have come all this way .
“Yes As though in a slightly distorted mirror, Zwingli’s gaze looked the same, complete to the spectacles exactly like those of the late Eldon Tyrell. “It seems a shame .
Wycliffe remained silent, lips pursed in thought.
“Do you really suppose we could? I mean, ask her to do that.”
“Ask me to do what?” Sarah heard her own voice cut across the yacht’s lounge.
“What are you two talking about?”
“We wouldn’t ask it of you, Miss Tyrell Wycliffe raised and spread his hands. “If it weren’t so absolutely critical to our mission.”
“That’s right.” Zwingli nodded vigorously. “We’re really only thinking about the ultimate fate of the Tyrell Corporation.”
“I bet.” A bitter taste formed on Sarah’s tongue. “You want me to go back down there. Back down to the Salander 3. I didn’t bring back enough information with me on that last trip. Not enough to suit you, at any rate.”
“As I said.” Wycliffe made an attempt at looking apologetic. “Only because it’s so crucial. That’s the only reason. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Oh, I understand all right.” Sarah stood up from the chair. She pulled the robe tighter around herself, grabbing the dangling ends of the belt and cinching it hard at her waist. “And as you also said—” She could feel the stiffer embroidery of the company logo against her skin, just above her heartbeat. “Without the Tyrell Corporation, I’m nothing. So I really don’t have much choice in the matter.”
“That’s rather a . . . harsh way of looking at it—”
“Stuff it. You’re supposed to be working for me. And I don’t need your lectures.” Sarah held out her hand, palm upward. “You promised me something.
Back on Mars. And I haven’t gotten it yet.”
Wycliffe looked puzzled. “Promised you what?”