“Husband?” I’m used to bad news, but this mix of good and bad leaves me hollow. My stomach starts to ache. “I thought…”
“Do we ever get what we want, Vinnie?” Joe asks.
“You seem happy,” I say.
“Weirdest thing is how happy Joe is,” Tak says.
“I’m a happy guy,” Joe says. “You met Kumar at Madigan, right?”
“Yeah.” We look back at Kumar, walking between Borden and Mushran. Behind them I see our Skyrines, Jacobi and Ishida leading the way. “Real head-fucker. What the hell is this place?”
Joe ignores that for now. “Back at Madigan, they tested your blood and shit. You came up triple cherry. The tea had done a real number on you, strongest they’d seen off Mars. So Kumar decided you had to be brought here, or the Wait Staff—the other divisions, still mostly in control—would kill you for sure.”
“Venn was high on the list,” Borden says.
“Which pushed everything forward faster than they wanted,” Joe says. “Kumar was still playing faithful servant to the Gurus. And second fiddle to Mushran. Mushran gets around. It’s weird how he gets around.”
“Why not wait until I got back to Mars, for Teal…?”
“Elder de Groot wanted to breed a master race that would understand everything there was in the Drifter. He thought that would make him the ultimate power in our big old war. No good if the baby is fathered by a Skyrine, and besides, how would he know about you? Turned out none of his surviving sons were suitable, so he found another Voor who was.”
“I don’t understand any of it,” I say.
“Good. Clear out the bullshit and think fresh thoughts. Where we’re going…”
We enter another wide room, with a ceiling only marginally higher than the last one. The natural gloom here is broken by chains of lamps drooping from the roof. Rows of folding tables are spaced between rock columns and plastic braces, and where possible laid end-to-end beneath the brightest lamps. A few of these are attended by scruffy Muskies, not as tall as Teal. Shorter folk. Uglier, I think, but I’m irritated the Voors married one of their own off to Teal. Joe’s right. What was I thinking? Joe’s always right. Nothing better.
I look into a corner and see DJ working away madly at one of the farther tables, hands racing over sheets of gritty beige paper, covering them with crude pencil sketches. Scraps and wads litter the table and the floor. Where they got the paper, I have no idea—but what he’s doing is important enough that someone found it and gave it to him.
As I walk over, DJ glances up, eyes crossed, face pink, feverish, looking even more of a dumbass than usual, like he’s on drugs—and I suppose, like me, that he is. “Hey, Vinnie!” he calls out. “It’s coming in a rush. I can’t get any of it right! Come help!”
“Sure,” I say, lifting a page. The sketches he’s making are from the time of the old ice moon, and they’re not half-bad. DJ has drawn the gnarled outer shell of a big, regal-looking bug, rearing up to show its underbelly—which is uglier and more complicated than its upper parts. I recognize the triad of large eyes, and behind those, peering over curiously, another triad—the smaller passenger. Partners. Parasite-friends.
“That’s the boss, but in my head, he’s not just one bug—he’s like a composite memory of a thousand or so, spread out over centuries, I don’t know which one he is, really. Recognize him?”
I shake my head. “Sorry. Shouldn’t that be ‘it’?”
“Definitely him,” DJ murmurs, returning to his drawing. “Do some more tea. Come back when you feel it stronger. Man, this sucks, this really sucks—who the fuck are these guys, and why are they all lumped together?”
“Maybe it’s a dynasty,” I suggest. “You know, inherited rule.”
DJ shakes his head. “No way,” he says. “These guys are way more Spock than that. They were better at running things than we’ve ever been. Good guys, inside—really.”
“They’re dead, DJ. Extinct.”
“Not in here,” DJ says, tapping his head.
I back away, a little spark jogging up my back.
“How many here like DJ?” I ask Joe.
“Before the strikes, we had six, including Kazak,” Joe says.
“Now we’re down to DJ,” Tak says. “And you. Maybe.”
“He looks pretty strung out.”
“Screw you,” DJ says, fingers dancing over the paper. “This is power. This is knowledge.”
“I don’t feel that devoted,” I say.
“Give it time,” DJ says.
“What about the kids? The third-gen babies? Where are they?”
“They’re not here,” Joe says. “Lifted off Mars forty sols ago. Moved to safety on Earth.”
“Earth! What about the Gurus, what about Wait Staff who aren’t going along?”
“They won’t know,” Kumar says.
“Yeah, right. That’s insane!” I say.
“Safest place for them,” Joe says. “Far safer than here. The only kids still with us are the Voor and Muskie children—those not affected.”
I’m fuming at this bit of news when I hear and then feel someone on the opposite end of the workroom. A clear, throaty female voice followed by a soft padding of feet. “Who’s all t’ere?”
Three tall women walk together, heads nearly bumping the lights. They look much alike: thin, worn, mousy fine brown hair cut short, skin pale, eyes wide. They all wear tunics that drape to their knobby knees. Green-stained tunics. They’ve come from the mine pit. We stare. None is the woman I saw earlier carrying her baby.
Joe whispers, “Recognize anyone?”
I don’t, at first. The two women on the outside of the group hold out their arms to guide the woman in the middle. She looks lost, out of place, as if focusing on things we can’t see, people not here. As she’s helped forward, I make out scars around her eyes. They outline the edges of a faceplate. Flash burns. She’s blind.
“Say something,” Joe says.
“Is t’at Michael? I feel him,” the woman says.
Behind me, the Skyrines push up close, I don’t know why, instinct maybe, even now, even with my being such an asshole—we have to stick together. Or maybe they just want to see the tall women and figure out what this means.
“She’s been asking after you for months,” Joe says. “Talk to her.”
They’ve taken Teal’s child away and now she’s here, she’s trying to find me, and I barely even know her. “Why?” I ask. “What good am I?”
Teal raises her head. “It is Michael!” she says. “He’s here!” She bumps into a table. The other women guide her. I want to run. God help me, we’ve made these poor people suffer so much.
“Vinnie, if it’s you, come a here!” Teal says, her voice bright. She gives her most radiant smile and holds out her arms. I remember that smile. “Come a me. Talk a me! So long, so much a tell!”
JOURNEYS NEVER END
With no tact at all, Kumar and Borden and Joe separate me and Teal from our protective posses—Teal from her helpful tall friends, me from the Skyrines, who all of a sudden want to stick like glue. Borden tells them, and Joe confirms, that this is okay, no harm, we need our privacy, Teal and I, and then we’re shepherded across the workroom to a small side cubby with chairs and a small table—a single lamp. Isolated and quiet.
The look on Kumar’s face is intense. Borden is trying to be discreet, but Kumar doesn’t give a damn—he might as well be watching porn and jerking off. This is why we’re here. This is why he assigned Borden to me and brought me here.