“That’s what your father said. But it isn’t necessarily true.”
“Dirty, dirty!” Zane swept his arm, scattering the pieces from the chessboard. Then he slumped.
Wetherbee paused the recording.
“You pushed him pretty hard,” Grace said.
“I know, I know.” Wetherbee sighed, and massaged a pale, stubbly face. “But when he gave me the opening about the father, I thought it was an opportunity I shouldn’t miss. I think the relationship to the father is the key to the whole mess.
“Look at the contradiction he’s trying to resolve. His father loaded onto him all the pain and the blame of the sexual abuse, and the father’s own drive and ambition, and maybe his own shame at what became of his son. So Zane’s dirty because of the Harry Smith thing, and isn’t fit to have kids. But on the other hand if he can’t contribute to the gene pool he shouldn’t be on the Ark. He should have been left back on Earth in the hands of the monsters his father depicted. But that’s a primal choice, of life and death. He could hardly be put under more pressure. Maybe deep inside he’s always just evaded the whole issue, buried the contradiction. It was showing up in the memory lapses, the self-harm. And then-”
“And then I triggered the crisis,” Holle said. “That day I suggested he and I could have a kid.”
Grace said, “That’s one of the kindest gestures you could ever have made to a man like Zane. You weren’t to know what was going on inside his head. He didn’t know himself.”
“Even I still don’t,” Wetherbee said, “after years of my ham-fisted therapy. But, look, I think he has some kind of dissociative disorder. He has splits in his identity, caused by the contradictions he can’t resolve, the pain he has to bury. That explains the memory lapses, the apparent shifts in identity-the way he seems to ‘wake up,’ uncertain of where he is, or even when.”
Venus said, “You’re saying our only warp engineer is Jekyll and Hyde?”
“So what do we do?” Holle asked.
He shrugged. “I have limited facilities for MRI scans. I tried that but can see nothing physically abnormal in his brain functions, whichever aspect of himself is apparent. I think the only answer is therapy-to understand him fully, and the damage that’s been done. And then to find some way to start the healing. Hypnosis is often used in these cases. I never hypnotized anybody in my life, but there are routines in the archive I might be able to adapt.” He grimaced. “This is going to take years more, if it works at all.”
“I guess we don’t have much choice,” Holle said. “Thanks, Mike. I know you didn’t sign up for this.”
“No, I didn’t.” Wetherbee looked resentful, then grinned. “But then, neither did Zane.” As they got up to leave, he cleared the screen and turned to a computer program.
It snagged Venus’s attention. “What’s this?”
“I’m trying to teach the ship’s AI to play infinite chess. With some prompting in my ear at least I might be able to put up a fight against Zane…”
In the small hours of the next morning, Holle was woken by two more calls. The first was from Wilson Argent in Halivah. They had found the little girl, Meg Robles.
“She zipped herself up in a pressure suit. You wouldn’t think a four-year-old could do that. Then she got stuck, and couldn’t get out.”
She listened to his tone. “She’s dead.”
“I’m afraid so. First death since launch. And the first dead child.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“No, we’ll handle it. We’re looking after Cora. Just let Kelly know.”
“Sure.”
And later, she had a call from Mike Wetherbee.
“I got an e-mail from Zane’s user ID. It was in kind of broken English, and it asked for a meeting, asked for my help.”
“So?”
“The sender signed himself Jerry. Holle, there’s no Jerry on the ship. And when I checked the surveillance monitors, when he sent it Zane was alone in his room.”
64
May 2048
The siren’s guttural blaring almost drowned out the voice alarm: FIRE, SEBA DECK TEN. FIRE, SEBA DECK TEN. FIRE… Holle had been working on a replacement for a failed component in the Primary Oxygen Circuit, figuring out a simplified design that the Ark’s limited machine shop would be capable of turning out. She was listening to Paul Simon’s “Darling Lorraine” on repeat on her Angel, a favorite of her father’s because, he said, it reminded him of his relationship with her mother. And she was daydreaming of seasons on Earth, of autumn. It took her a second to clear her head.
She shut off the Angel and grabbed her Snoopy cap. “Groundwater. Watch, what’s going on?”
Masayo Saito’s voice came on the line. “Holle, get down here, we got a problem.”
She smelled smoke. Maybe that had triggered her dying-leaf dream. She could see smoke seeping under the door of her cabin. She pulled the Snoopy cap on her head and rummaged in a cupboard for a face mask.
Kelly Kenzie’s voice blared over the PA. “This is Kelly. We have a major incident. Seba crew, to your fire stations, we’ve rehearsed this often enough and you know the drill. Halivah, seal up and prep for support operations. Anybody in transit to Seba, go back to Halivah. Let’s move it, people.”
Holle rushed out of her cabin and emerged into chaos.
The fire was a few decks down. A brilliant glow shone up through the mesh flooring, as if she was standing over a furnace. Hot air and smoke billowed up through the length of the hull, gathering in the upper decks and beneath the domed roof. People were running, some shouting. Holle could hear the rush of extinguishers and sprinklers, precious volatiles being expended to fight the fire. Over all this was the clamor of the siren, and Kelly Kenzie’s voice booming out instructions echoing from the metal walls.
Holle saw Grace Gray on the far side of the hull. She was awkwardly climbing the ladders between the decks with little Helen, now six years old, clinging to her back, and with three-year-old Steel Antoniadi in one arm. Grace was evidently fleeing the fire below. But smoke was gathering above, and some of the crew were already climbing back down from the dome, choking. The hull was becoming a closing trap. Grace made a quick decision, ducking into a cabin and slamming shut the door. If she blocked the door with wet towels, she and Helen might be safe.
But Holle was responsible for more than just Grace and her daughter. For heartbeats she just stood there, outside her door, uncertain what to do. Four years after leaving Jupiter, this tiny, fragile hull and its twin Halivah were the only refuge to be had in twelve long light-years. An out-of-control fire was their worst nightmare. Holle was senior, as well trained to handle the situation as anybody else aboard. She sensed she needed to make a quick decision-but to do what?
“Holle!” Paul Shaughnessy came clambering down a ladder. He was wearing the outer layer of one pressure suit and he carried another, like a flayed skin draped over his back. He was following the training she’d given him; the suits were fireproof to an extent, and their oxygen supply would enable their wearers to keep functioning even as the air turned toxic. He looked tense, distracted, distressed.
He handed her the spare suit. She pulled it over her legs. “Paul, are you OK? Do you know how this started?”
“It was Jack. I was up in the nose. My brother was down on Ten, in the maintenance area. He was fixing a rip in his own suit. The suit just exploded! I saw it on a feed. It became a fireball, and then it spread.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.” The suits had a pure oxygen air supply, so there was always a risk of fire, but the safety features should have ensured no such accident ever happened.
“It’s what I saw. I have to go down to Jack. Masayo’s down there.”
“Go, go. I need to talk to Kelly and Venus.”
He nodded, snapped closed his faceplate, and carried on down into the furnace.
Holle closed up her own helmet. “Venus, are you there?”
