The woman blinked. Her smile remained unchanged. “No new ships have arrived.”
“You’re sure?” Rhea pressed.
“Of course I’m sure,” the woman said.
“Could a part of you be malfunctioning?” Rhea asked. “Maybe someone hacked the space terminal’s cameras or sensors?”
“All systems are functioning within expected parameters in the space terminal,” the woman replied. “No viruses or other malicious code has been found. I’m sorry. No one unscheduled has arrived. Nor have there been any scheduled arrivals.”
Rhea knew the latter already. She’d checked the flight aggregator sites: the next transport was set to arrive in a week.
“Is there anything else?” the holographic woman asked.
“That will be all,” Rhea said, disconnecting.
She glanced at Will.
Maybe it was pirates who shot at us after all, he sent over a mental channel.
Maybe, Rhea agreed. Did you see the way the AI blinked when I asked it to double-check?
Meaningless, Will transmitted. It’s an AI. When they lie, their faces don’t exhibit tells or other microtics. It’s simply part of their programming. You know, to make the hologram appear as realistic as possible.
She sighed. I suppose you’re right. I’m trying to read too much into something that isn’t there.
She stood up, bounded to her room, and retrieved the parka she’d purchased to fit in with the locals.
When she returned to the kitchen, Will was eating a sandwich.
“Where are we going?” Will asked, nodding at her jacket.
“The one place we haven’t gone yet,” Rhea replied.
“Oh no, not there,” Will said.
“Yup,” Rhea said.
Will gobbled down the sandwich. He grabbed an apple from the counter and threw it at Horatio. The robot stood silently in one corner, obviously absorbed in some virtual world or other, but its arm flew up to intercept the apple. The robot studied the fruit between its fingers, as if curious, then glanced at Will. Horatio’s gaze drifted to Rhea and her parka.
“Where are we going?” Horatio asked.
“The museum,” Will replied. “Exciting, huh?”
“Actually, I think that would be fun,” Horatio said.
“You would,” Will told the robot.
“I heard they have some old Ganymede gear on display,” Rhea said. “I’d like to check it out, see if it sparks any memories.”
So far, she hadn’t had a flashback for the entire trip. Part of the reason she had come here was to revive some of her lost memories, and she was beginning to wonder if any more of them had survived the wipe. So anything she could do to induce a flashback, like visiting a museum containing Ganymede artifacts from before the war, was worth a try.
“I still think you should see a therapist, or a hypnotist,” Will said. “If you’re serious about getting back your memories.”
“At this rate I might have to,” Rhea concurred.
“When we’re done at the museum, can we go home?” Will asked. “Back to Earth?”
She smiled patiently. “When are you going to understand? This is home.”
“That’s right, keep telling yourself that,” Will said. “It’s obvious from your voice that even you don’t believe it.”
“No,” she said slowly. “I suppose I don’t.”
6
Rhea perused the different exhibits at the museum with Will and Horatio. Most of the displays consisted of replicas of Europan dwelling styles, tools, and rocket ships. At each station a virtual guide appeared to explain what they were looking at, a guide cast in the same mien as the customs woman Rhea had encountered when first debarking the Molly Dook.
Rhea gave all of those exhibits only cursory glances, and mostly walked away from the virtual guides in mid-sentence, heading for the Ganymede section.
What she found was only of moderate interest. Some old Ganymedean augmented reality tech, clothing, miniatures of their geodesic domes and buildings, reproductions of room layouts, and so forth. None of it triggered a memory.
Behind a glass display resided the mummified remains of two Ganymedeans holding hands. A man and a woman, judging from the distinct body shapes, though their faces were horribly disfigured. They were Robos, with robotic limbs attached to their arms. According to the virtual guide, these two were collected from one of the failed domes during the war. Their bodies had freeze dried in the void, preserving them. Apparently, all the air had been evacuated from the display case, so that they would remain in their current state for all eternity—or until the vacuum system failed.
“How many Ganymedean domes were there?” Rhea asked the AI-driven guide.
“Seventy in total,” the guide replied.
“They were all destroyed?” she pressed.
“Yes.”
“And where can I find the closest?” she asked.
She had tried looking up their locations while still on Earth, but got nothing, and assumed she would be able to find out more from the local Internet once she actually arrived. She’d been wrong: the search results were just as empty here as on Earth.
“That information is unknown,” the guide replied.
“Unknown?” Rhea said. “Or suppressed.”
The guide didn’t answer.
“Gotta love how forthright they are,” Will quipped.
Rhea moved on to another display, and paused, waiting for the guide to appear and explain just what it was she was looking at. But the hologram did not show up this time.
“What is this?” she asked.
Finally, a holographic guide appeared. A man this time, dressed in tight-fitting gray fatigues. No, not a hologram.
She knew him.
Or did, once. She recognized him from the first flashback she ever had, when she flew Gizmo along the perimeter of that area known as Aradne Parliament, close to the dome-shaped Parliament Building within.
He was draped in robes of white silk, with a red, tasseled rope girthing his waist. A gold medallion dangled from his throat, reaching to the center of his chest. He was bald, clean-shaven, and square-jawed, with a thick brow and penetrating blue eyes.
“You know what this is,” the man said.
He vanished. And in his place was the usual guide, the holographic woman, saying something in a language Rhea could not understand in that moment.
Rhea’s eyes drifted to the objects that floated in the center of the glass case. They looked like a pair of brass knuckles, with bright plating along their upper rims.
The woman’s gibberish became understandable once more, and Rhea
