“I just had the most interesting conversation,” Fayez said.
“I could say the same,” she said. “But mine’s classified, so why don’t you go first.”
“Well, he was being awfully cagey. But I think our old friend Holden just told me Cortázar’s plotting murder.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Teresa
Nothing was the same anymore. She tried to pretend that it was. That her father was only sick, the way normal fathers were sometimes. She woke up in the morning, and Muskrat was there. She walked through the gardens and the State Building the way she always had. Everyone she saw treated her just the same, except Ilich, who knew the truth.
She assumed that everyone thought her father was in deep consultations with the best minds of the empire because of what happened to the Typhoon. They had faith in him. He was Laconia. She thought the guards stood a little taller when she walked by. That the cooks at the commissary saved the best dishes for her. It wasn’t because she deserved them. It was because she was the closest thing they could get to him, and they wanted to make their offerings. They were scared by what they’d seen. She was too. But they had a story where everything would be all right, and she didn’t.
The closest thing she had was Ilich, and he was gone now more than he was with her. When he did see her, the only lessons they did were the new rules. Don’t tell anyone about the high consul. Don’t act frightened. Don’t leave the grounds of the State Building.
She tried watching her favorite films and newsfeeds, but they didn’t hold her attention. She tried reading her favorite books, but the words all slid off her mind. She tried running the length of the security wall as fast as she could for as long as she could until the pain and exhaustion made it impossible to think or feel anything. It was as close as she came to peace.
And in the afternoons and early evenings, she went and sat with her father. He suffered Kelly to bathe and dress him, so whenever she came he looked trim and neat. She sat beside him at his desk and used his displays to go over simple mathematical proofs or the diagrams of ancient battles. Sometimes he would nod at the images, as if deep in thought. Sometimes he would pat at the air around her head like he saw something there.
She found herself really looking at him. Staring. His cheeks were rough from old acne scars. His hair was a little thin at the temples. The skin at his jaw was soft with age. And there were other things. The opalescence that sometimes made his skin shine like mother-of-pearl and other times nearly vanished. The darkness in his eyes, like storm clouds.
The more she looked, the less he seemed like her father—the great man who strode the universe and her personal life with the confidence of a god—and the more he seemed like … just someone. The worst times were when he looked sad. Or frightened. He didn’t particularly notice when she cried.
Ilich did what he could.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been as available since … Well. Since.”
They were sitting at the fountain where he’d taught her about displacement. How to make something heavier than water float by making it hollow. She looked at the rippling surface of the water and wondered whether she’d float now too.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”
His skin looked ashy. His eyes were watery with exhaustion and stress. His smile was the same as it had ever been. She’d thought before it was because he wasn’t afraid of her. Now it just seemed well practiced.
“This may not help,” he said, “but part of what you’re feeling right now is normal. There’s a moment that everyone eventually experiences when they see that their parents are just people. That these mythic figures in their lives are also struggling and guessing. Doing their best without knowing for certain what their best is.”
The anger in Teresa’s chest was the first warm thing she’d felt in days.
“My father is the ruler of the human race,” she said.
Ilich chuckled. Had he always chuckled exactly that same way, and she was only noticing it now? “That does change some aspects of it, yes. But I don’t want you to feel alone.”
Have you considered not making me alone? she didn’t say. Or is it just the feeling that matters?
“I know it’s hard, having this secret,” he said. “The only reason we’re doing this is that your father and you are so important.”
“I understand,” she said, and pictured what he would look like if she drowned him in the fountain. “I’ll be okay.”
She didn’t sleep that night. The anger that had surprised her so much in Elsa Singh had infected her. As soon as she put her head on her pillow and closed her eyes, she was in a shouting match with Ilich. Or with Cortázar. Or with James Holden. Or with her father. Or Connor. Or Muriel. Or God. Even when she drifted just a little bit away from herself, she woke up minutes later with her back teeth aching from being clenched together. Seriously? You’re one of the angriest people I know, Tiny, Timothy said in her memory. Now it felt true.
After midnight, she gave up. Muskrat thumped her tail against the floor twice.
“What are you so fucking happy about?” Teresa snapped.
Muskrat stopped wagging, and her gray canine eyebrows rose in an expression of concern. Teresa turned on the state news-feed and watched one of the professional voices of Laconia make reassuring mouth noises. The repair of the gate repeaters is already underway, and the communications network should be restored in a matter of weeks. Normal trade between worlds will resume very soon after that. Until then, the high consul is determining which supply ships are critical to the empire and approving transits on a case-by-case basis. The tragedy in the ring space which claimed the lives of so many loyal to the Laconian dream has shown no signs of recurring, according to the Science Directorate. Lies, half-truths, fictions, and bullshit.
Rage and grief fought in her heart, and behind them, looming larger than the sky, a sense of overwhelming betrayal that she couldn’t put a name to.
Muskrat chuffed once in concern. Teresa bared her teeth in a grin. “I’m not allowed to tell the truth. I’m not allowed to feel anything. I’m not allowed to leave the compound,” she said. “I can’t do anything. You know why? Because I’m so important.”
Teresa got up, stalked to her window, and opened it. Muskrat looked away nervously.
“Well?” Teresa said. “Are you coming or not?”
She had never been to the field outside the compound at night. In the darkness, it seemed larger. Swarms of tiny insectile animals crawling along the ground glowed in patterns of moving stripes as she walked past, like her footsteps were making dry ripples on the ground. A cold breeze hissed through the bare trees. In the distance, something called out, its voice like a flute. Two others answered, farther away. A smell like pepper and vanilla hung in the breeze. Ilich had told her once that the chemistry of Laconia was so different from the one humans had evolved with that people struggled to make sense of it, inventing smells that weren’t really there out of confusion. She had grown up here, though, and it seemed perfectly normal to her.
Muskrat trotted along at her side, glancing up every few steps as if to ask, Are you sure about this? Teresa knew the way to the mountain like it was the back of her hand. She didn’t worry at all about straying from the trail.
In her imagination, Ilich sputtered and scolded. He told her that the rules existed for good reasons. For her safety. That she couldn’t just go and do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. He’d know she was gone. That she’d ignored his rules. That was part of what made it worth doing. What could he do? Lock her in her room? When her father came back to himself, Ilich would have to answer for everything he’d done in the meantime. Her father had known she went off the compound. If he hadn’t stopped her, Ilich wouldn’t dare. He’d only make rules he couldn’t enforce. A law without consequences wasn’t a law. It wasn’t anything.