“Any diagnosis yet?”
“Li’s leaning toward a nutritional deficiency. Vanadium, in fact.”
“Leaning.”
“Here.” Dana pulled up the message. “You now know what I know.”
It wasn’t much. Blake sent Li a reply asking her to have Rikki contact him.
Dana, reading over his shoulder, said, “You worry too much. And confident that you won’t listen, here’s my free advice. Let the poor woman sleep. And leave Li and Carlos alone.”
“We’ll see.” Which they both knew meant “no.”
“Between you and Antonio, I will go nuts.”
Blake dropped into the copilot’s seat, content to change the subject. “Asteroid albedo?”
“In part. They’re too splotchy for his taste, and he wants to drop down and visit a few. Mostly he’s worked up that too few asteroids dip within Dark’s orbit.”
Blake stiffened. “This isn’t a science project. I hope you told him he can collect rocks where we find vanadium.”
“I told him I loved him dearly, but that the absence of threatening asteroids is a good thing. I said the fewer rocks we landed on, the fewer we risked nudging the wrong way.”
“Good answer.”
“And after that rare vote of approval, I hand over the bridge to you. Vaporize wisely.”
“Will do,” Blake said. “Sleep tight. I’ll wake you if I find anything.”
She stopped in the hatchway. “Back home they’re busier than we are. When they have news, they’ll let us know.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Blake said.
That didn’t keep him, as soon as Dana had vacated the bridge, from emailing Marvin for an update.
Blake was beginning to smell a rat.
34
The measure of just how lousy Rikki felt was that, lifting her head at the sudden tapping on her window, she felt relief at seeing Li.
“Door’s open,” Rikki croaked. She let her head flop back onto the sofa arm.
“I see you’re better,” Li chirped coming into the house. “I expected to find you in bed.”
“I was going for some dry crackers. Halfway to the kitchen I reconsidered.” When I remembered they were made from sea slime.
Li set down her med kit. “I’d like to take a scan.” Whatever Rikki’s nanites had to report or the scanner found on its own must not have merited specific comment. “You’ll live, though from the looks of you, at the moment that isn’t a selling point.”
The woman had no bedside manner.
“When will I be over this? Whatever this is?” Rikki hesitated—fearful, almost superstitiously so—of evoking a nightmare from an era before med nanites. “Am I contagious?”
“Don’t know, don’t know, and do you see me wearing a mask?”
Then came the repeat lecture about keeping hydrated and foods that might stay down, followed by megadoses of vitamins and anti-nausea meds. It all wore Rikki out. “What have you heard from Endeavour?” she asked as Li helped her back to bed.
“Only that they’re still searching.”
“And Blake?”
“He’s busy. Now get some rest.”
Fitfully, disappointed that Blake hadn’t written, or even acknowledged any of her brief notes, Rikki drifted in and out of sleep.
*
A few more seconds, Li told herself. And, don’t look bored.
Finally, it stopped.
Wearing his customary smug and oblivious smile, Carlos rolled off her onto his side of the bed. He pulled up the sheet. His breathing slowed. In a minute or two, he would be snoring.
They needed to talk, and the best time for that was after sex. When he was relaxed. When even more than usual, the little head did most of his thinking.
Propping herself up on an elbow, resting her hand lightly on his chest, Li said, “You awake?”
“Mmm?”
“The sun’s still high and there’s just us. We can’t sleep now.”
“Watch me.”
“I’m serious,” Li said. “And this is important.”
“Marvin is watching the kids.”
“Eyes-open important. And sit up.”
Carlos sat. Li spoke. And he, once she had finished, as she had known he must, had agreed to everything. She had Carlos well-conditioned. Like Pavlov’s salivating dog. If only just saliva were involved….
On the verge of triumph, she felt pangs of disappointment. The grandeur of her vision was wasted on Carlos. The meticulous beauty of her planning—as much of it as she had shared—interested him only as it assured their success. All that he responded to was the expectation of future coupling.
She could live with that. She needed his help, and what mattered to her was the outcome.
As for the other four, she had given them their chance.
*
Shuffling more often than walking, but feeling human for the first time in days, Rikki made her way down Main Street. She tried to forget the uphill trip that she faced to return home. As she passed the garage, its door began to rise. Carlos had hitched a trailer to the back of their dump truck; he sat on the backhoe-loader, revving the motor, evidently about to drive the contraption up the ramp onto the trailer.
Her voice was as feeble as a kitten’s; he must not have heard her over the growl of the engine, asking what he was doing. Whatever, she could find out later. Or not: curiosity seemed too much like work. She waved, he waved back, and she shuffled on.
Between fence slats, Rikki watched children ramming around, climbing, swinging. Marvin had unlocked the gate at her approach, but she could hardly make it budge. “Marvin,” she called. With a squeal of grit-clogged hinges, the gates swung inward.
Activity in the yard all but ceased.
Children fell silent, some staring, others sidling away. A few of the littlest took shelter behind Eve and the twins. Despite assurances that she wasn’t contagious, Rikki was just as happy this one time that the kids were shy around her.
“Hi!” she called. “Who can tell me where I can find Ms. Li?”
It fell to Marvin to answer. “At her office in the childcare center.”
Inside the center, Rikki paused at the glass wall that opened into the toddlers’ room. All those little ones, unhugged. Untouched. Alone for most of the day, every day, apart from the insubstantial company of an AI. It broke her heart. She reached for the door, and hesitated.
“You’re not contagious,” Li said. “Go ahead.”
Rikki jumped. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
“I
