“Why do you think the rest of us are here?” snaps an old man. “Wait your turn!”
But there’s no such thing as turns, or a line, or any kind of order. The crowd’s panic is so thick in the air Noemi imagines she can feel it, like a vibration in her very nerves. Mrs. Gatson is heavy against her shoulder, barely upright, shivering despite the blanket Noemi wrapped around her shoulders. People bump into them, pushing them roughly from side to side. The hospital’s white walls seem to gleam against the storm-cloud-dark sky, promising hope, but there’s no reaching it through the desperate scrum. Sick people who can’t stand throng the sidewalk, laid out on blankets or just on the grass. The pale rectangles of cloth in their long rows remind her uncomfortably of tombstones in a graveyard. Some of the patients groan or cry; most of them lie quietly. A few are so still that Noemi suspects they’re already dead.
She remembers how Cobweb feels. Remembers the bone-wrenching ache of it, the chills that swept through her, the hot scratchy dryness behind her eyes. She’d tried to get to sick bay from her cabin and had instead collapsed in the ship’s corridor, unable to walk another step.
It was Abel who found her, lifted her up, took such gentle care of her—
Don’t think about him, she tells herself. Abel can’t help you. You’re on your own.
“Hang on,” she whispers to Mrs. Gatson, but she doesn’t think the woman can hear her any longer. Eventually, as the first drops of rain start to fall, vehicles pull up to collect the sick. They’re less like ambulances, more like… cargo trucks. The nurses inside look harried and worn; they’re doing their best, but their best isn’t good enough. Noemi has no choice but to let them take Mrs. Gatson away.
Returning home means hurrying along streets empty of people or vehicles. People have begun hanging red scarves at windows to signal that someone in the house is infected; nearly every home has one. She’s not the only one who keeps looking up at the stormy sky, searching not for signs of thunder or lightning but for Earth’s Damocles ships penetrating Genesis’s atmosphere at last—for fighting mechs descending like fallen angels to claim their world.
When she gets back to the house, she’s able to bring in some emergency rations. She checks and sees that her messages to Captain Baz have gone unanswered. Official information is all about the plague, with no word on who—if anyone—is patrolling the Genesis Gate. Noemi doesn’t know if the government is refusing to tell them anything, or whether it doesn’t have enough resources left over to even gather the information. None of the possible answers are good.
In the great room, the faint light from the cloudy sky illuminates the surroundings—almost unchanged from yesterday morning, when Mr. Gatson took ill. The teacups still sit on the edge of the sink. Noemi hasn’t washed them because she badly wants some reminder of normality. Some evidence of regular life.
Although Mr. Gatson got sick first, he’s not as bad off as his wife. He sits on the low couch near the largest window, staring at the dark sky, a knitted blanket around his shoulders even though fever flushes his face. Either he doesn’t hear Noemi come in or he doesn’t care.
She has to assume it’s the first one, just in case. “Mr. Gatson?” One long step brings Noemi into his field of vision. “Is there anything you need?”
“Yes.” His voice quavers. “Tell me about the star.”
Noemi knows he means Esther’s star. After her death, her body couldn’t be kept aboard Abel’s ship; if they’d been boarded and searched, they no doubt would’ve been arrested for murder. When Noemi rejected the horrifying idea of ejecting Esther’s body into the cold of space, it was Abel who came up with the idea of burying her within the heart of a star—the star of the Kismet system, one that gives heat and light to an entire living world. She still thinks it’s the most beautiful tribute to Esther that could possibly exist.
Yet the Gatsons never asked about the star before. Noemi doesn’t know whether that’s their rejection of the mode of Esther’s burial, or their reluctance to talk about Esther’s death any more than necessary.
She goes to the couch and sits beside Mr. Gatson, though she leaves half a meter of distance between them. Habit. “You know the constellation Atar?” That formation of stars is one of the most famous in Genesis’s southern hemisphere. “The brightest star in the base of the cauldron? That’s Kismet’s star. That’s where Esther is.”
Mr. Gatson leans his head back on the edge of the sofa, gazing up at a sky too cloudy to show them any stars. The faint spiderweb rash on his face is almost invisible in the dimness. “That’s—‘Atar’ is holy fire for the Zoroastrians, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Noemi isn’t particularly familiar with that faith, more common on the northern continents. But she looked up a few things after Esther was buried there. “It purifies. It knows guilt or innocence. It’s the divine glory of God.”
After a long silence, Mr. Gatson says, “Then it’s a good place for her.”
That’s as close to forgiveness as Noemi’s ever likely to get. She knows better than to respond out loud.
A rap at the door startles her. Mr. Gatson doesn’t even seem to hear. Noemi hurries to answer it; when she sees a nurse standing there, medkit in hand, the sight is so welcome she almost wonders if she’s imagining it. “Thank God you’re here. But Mrs. Gatson—I shouldn’t have taken her away, I wouldn’t have if I’d known—”
“I’m sent to help out here while you answer the summons.” The nurse hands her a small dataread—a confidential summons to meet with the Elder Council, immediately.
Noemi doesn’t travel to the Hall of Elders. Instead,
