Rift (58 page)

He dreamed he was suited up for a coldwalk. He
could hear his breathing amplified in his helmet. The white Station hull stretched out endlessly before him as he pulled himself from one handhold to the next.
Hurry, hurry. Something bad going to happen, but what is it?
He crossed into the shade of the radar banks and then back into the blinding, glacial light of the sun. Up ahead was a man, suited up,
BONHERT, G
. written on his arm. He was going to kill Reeve. Bonhert stood there, waiting, knife flashing.
Hurry, before the bad thing happens
. Reeve was running out of air. He labored to breathe. What had Kalid said about killing a man with his bare hands?
Calm the fire, become dispassionate. He will show you his weakness
.

They were standing close now, facing each other. Kalid handed Reeve a knife, saying,
A short blade with a long handle will give you leverage to thrust deep
. As his hand rose up, Reeve saw his face reflected in the other’s face plate. In that moment’s hesitation, Reeve saw that his tether was cut, and then felt a sickening shove, and he floated free, falling a few feet away from Station. Brit Nunally’s voice from Station ops came through the earpiece:
That’s an unauthorized walk out there, Calder. That’s your last walk
. And he began to fall. The long, slow fall to Lithia. His stomach registered the slipping away. It was all so slow, it would take a long, long time to hit bottom. He saw Station receding from him … and he saw Tina Valejo tumbling head over heels, cut adrift as well, but falling upward, to the stars.

That dream came back a few more times over the next few nights, and a dream of lying on a travois, being dragged along a flat plain filled with shiny black plants. Loon was pulling him, passing the same tree hundreds of times, passing the Station, lying in a heap of rubble. He glimpsed his father, busily huddled over star maps. Marie waved to him, calling out,
Try not to hate him!
When he looked again, they were gone.
Sometimes the sky was black, and sometimes it was white, but the platform trees kept passing by.

In and out of dreams, he was sure he saw Marie’s face. Once she said, “Come back to us, Reeve. Come back.” And there was the face of someone he once knew … a skinny teenager who kept giving him sips of water. Above him, the struts of a dome soared into the sky.

It was noisy. People everywhere, shouting, talking, hammering. His head felt like it had been used for a soccer ball. He opened his eyes a slit and saw the kid named Mitya. Yes, Mitya, vaguely remembered from Station days.

Mitya leaned in closer. “I figured you were feeling better. Want some water?”

Reeve tried to gauge whether he was dreaming or not. After a moment or two he decided not. He was at the dome. Somehow, he was finally here. “Drink,” he heard himself say. His voice seemed deeper, like it belonged to someone else. He could breathe. He felt the gaps in his mouth where he’d lost teeth, but he felt like he might live. When he’d finished the cup of water Mitya gave him, he asked for Loon.

Mitya shrugged. “She likes it outside. Everybody thinks she’s weird. Can’t she talk?”

They were close to the dome wall, surrounded by crates on two sides. Out the makeshift doorway, Reeve could see crew intent on errands. He recognized Lieutenant Tsamchoe, Koichi …

He got himself into a sitting position, his stocking feet steadying him. “Boots,” he said.

Mitya retrieved them from the corner and helped Reeve into them.

“How long have I been out of it?”

“The girl dragged you in here two days ago. She must be pretty strong to do something like that.…”
Mitya began to lace his boots for him, and Reeve let him.

“What’s the date?” he asked the boy. When Mitya told him, his heart sank. He had two days left. “The ship … when does it arrive?”

Mitya’s face slumped. “Six days, they’re saying.”

Reeve nodded. The ship was late. A small reprieve, but sorely needed.

Perhaps anxious to change the subject, Mitya cocked his head toward the dome wall. “What was it like … out there?”

“Hard to breathe,” Reeve answered. “Cold. Dangerous.” As Mitya waited for more, Reeve added: “Beautiful.”

“You saw a river? You floated on a real river?”

It seemed like a hundred years ago, that he’d sailed on the Tallstory River with Kalid and Dante and Spar. “Yes,” Reeve said. “That was the beautiful part.” Sitting up wasn’t bad. In fact, it was pretty damn fine after what felt like a month of lying flat on his back.

“And the dangerous part?”

“That would be the Somaformers and the claver raids and”—the next he threw in to get a reaction—“the pirates.”

Mitya nodded eagerly. “One of those pirates died. Right here. One of the guards shot him.”

Thinking in alarm of Kalid, Reeve asked, “Which one?”

“You know their names?”

“Yes. Which one?”

From behind Mitya, someone said, “Dante.” Marie stepped into view. “It was Dante who died.” She knelt down by his side, taking his hand. “Reeve,” she said.

He looked into her face, tough and lined, framed by hair like fine wire. “You made it,” he said.

She grinned.
“You
made it.”

He gripped her hand, speechless for a moment.

“I see the Mercury Clave didn’t turn you into a
monster,” she said. “How’d you get free? Loon won’t say a thing.”

Reeve looked past her to Mitya. “We’ll talk more later, OK?”

When Mitya had gone, Reeve said, “Marie, God, Marie.” As she squeezed his hand, he said, “I thought I was a dead man. Several times.”

“I’m very glad you’re not.”

He waited until no one was nearby, and then said: “Marie … the cannon …”

She turned grim. “They’re building it. It’s here. Beyond that wall.” She gestured over her shoulder.

Reeve waited. “And Bonhert? Where do things stand, Marie?”

She pursed her lips. “It’s complicated. This can wait.”

“No, tell me. Where do things stand?” He watched her for a few moments in an odd silence. “Marie?”

“Reeve, it’s not that easy to describe. So much has happened.”

“Well?” He hoped they were good things, but by her manner he figured they weren’t. “Will anyone listen to us?” When she remained silent, he prompted, “What about Bonhert? Is he vulnerable?”

Now he was becoming impatient. “Lord of Worlds, Marie, where do things stand?”

A shadow in the doorway. And Gabriel Bonhert was standing there. Marie turned to see him, and stood up. As Bonhert came forward he put his arm around Marie’s shoulder. “How’s our invalid?” he said, in a deep, bass voice.

An arm around her shoulder. It stayed there.

Reeve didn’t answer Bonhert, but stared at Marie. She raised her chin a little, staring back. In the long silence that followed, Reeve’s mind cranked hard: She was pretending to be loyal to Bonhert … was cozying up to him. But the arm stayed around her shoulders somewhat too long.

Then her expression hardened. And he knew he was wrong. Bonhert had subverted her. They were … lovers. Yes, somehow that was clear. Bonhert had come in here to stake his claim on Marie, to say,
She’s with me
. Reeve closed his eyes, wondering if he was still suffering from low oxygen, hoping he was. When he opened his eyes again, nothing had changed.

Finally, Marie said, “I’m sorry, Reeve.”

Reeve smiled and nodded, affecting casualness. “Sorry …” A vent of anger was gathering energy in his core.

“Yes.”

“Well then, if you’re
sorry
 …” He said
sorry
with all the venom at his disposal. Then he slammed to his feet. “You two are together, then?”

Bonhert laughed softly. “She’s a little old for you, Reeve, after all.”

He would have rushed at Bonhert, but the man was built square and strong, and Reeve was still weak. “You’re a bastard, a murdering bastard.” His voice was getting loud, and people were stopping nearby to watch the scene.

The affability left Bonhert’s face. “You can say that once, since you’re a sick man, Reeve.” He smiled flat, like a turtle. “Once.”

“Let’s go to your quarters,” Marie told Bonhert. Then she snapped at Reeve, “For privacy. And keep your mouth shut until we get there, for godsakes.”

They walked out into the main dome, passing crew, who nodded at Reeve, smiling. Somebody shouted, “Reeve! Welcome home.” But the three continued grimly toward a room at the back of the dome.

When Bonhert had shut the door, Reeve stalked to the end of the room and then spun around and pinned Marie with his stare. “What did he offer you, Marie? A role as Mrs. Captain? A stateroom on the big ship? A chance to screw the Captain?” He paced in the confines of the small room. “How long did it take? A day?
Two? How long did it take to forget everybody who died on Station that day?”

Marie had the grace to be ashamed. Her face slumped, making her look very old. “I wanted to tell you.… I couldn’t. You had your opinions, Reeve, you had your loyalties. We had to get through our journey. We might have died. I didn’t … I couldn’t … tell you.”

“Couldn’t tell me what?” He looked at her in consternation. Then, in the quiet that followed, he pieced it together. He whispered, “You couldn’t tell me that you’ve always been with this bastard?”

Bonhert burst forward, grabbed Reeve by the front of his shirt, and cuffed him hard on the side of the head.

Reeve reeled under the blow, but kept his feet.

“Give me a reason to shoot you,” Bonhert said. “Give me a real good reason.” He stood firmly planted in front of Reeve, his hand resting on his holstered pistol. Marie pulled on Bonhert’s arm and he relented, walking over to his chair, where he sat, glowering.

Marie made as though to touch him, but Reeve recoiled. “How long, Marie? All those years with my father? You were with Bonhert all those years? Spying on him, on his work? How do you live with yourself?”

Her eyes snapped up to challenge him for the first time. “So I’m a traitor? Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a traitor?”

“You didn’t betray my father?”

“Your father,” she spat back. “Your father never knew me.…”

“Apparently not!”

“No, he never knew me. He treated me like a lackey. I did his grunt work for twelve years, Reeve, and in all that time he never knew me, never asked me how I was, what I thought.”

“So you got him back, is that right?”

“Hear me out, goddamn it!” She ran her hands
through her hair for a moment, then continued: “He thought we could build a starship. He planned for the big retrofit. To gradually consume the Station to make the big ship … And all the while, there was no planet. No planet, Reeve. We had no destination. Cyrus Calder just said we’d find one. As though we could leave here on an act of faith!”

“And faith, as we all know, is something you were born without.”

She waved him off. “Yes, maybe. And so what? I made my judgment. I judged that your father was a pathetic egomaniac who couldn’t see beyond his obsessions. He gave a lot of folks a wild-eyed, dreamy hope that we could survive in space and find a good home. He split us down the middle, diverting us from the terraforming project.…”

“A project you never gave a damn for, either of you!”

Over in his chair, Bonhert rolled his eyes.

“Oh, yes we did!” Marie cried. “We cared, because we had to! There was nothing else, no other hope!” She looked over at Bonhert, who frowned at her shrill voice. She softened her tone: “We had our doubts, but we worked on the nanotech solution for terraforming. It wasn’t going well. People doubted it was working, and they sabotaged our efforts, and sowed doubt among our science team. It was hell, Reeve. You didn’t know—you were a child, and shielded from all that.”

Reeve said, “So then, when the big ship called, you dropped terraforming like a hot bolt.”

She hurled at him, “Yes! You bet we did.”

“All of a sudden you had a revelation of faith, isn’t that fine? That the new ship would find a home in space … and prove my father right.”

“Your father wasn’t right about anything in his whole life.” Her face had turned ugly, and Reeve had the feeling he didn’t want to hear any more from her. And was going to anyway.

“He was wrong to think we could build a ship,” she
continued. “That was a pipe dream. He was wrong to think we could find a new planet with our limited technology. We could have wandered for a thousand years and not found anything … gradually slipping into decay and death. You talk of faith as though it’s a good thing. It’s not. Your father was a man of faith, Reeve. And look where it got him.”

Reeve turned to Gabriel Bonhert. “Yes. An ugly death, blown apart along with Station. Brought to us by our own Captain. A man who wanted to be sure there was no one left behind who could tell the big ship the truth. The truth about what you planned to do.”

Bonhert shook his head pityingly. “You got that one wrong, boy.”

“No, I don’t think I do. I saw you, Gabriel. That day outside Station. I was
out there
, see? I saw you push Tina Valejo off. Was she getting in the way of your setting those charges on the hull? Or was she just someone you needed to get rid of?” Reeve had advanced on Bonhert and now stood looking down at him.

“Wrong person, Reeve,” Bonhert said softly. Then he looked beyond Reeve’s shoulder to some point behind him.

When Reeve turned, he saw a terrible look on Marie’s face.

Later, he thought that it was then that he lost the impulse to kill. He had been ready to kill Bonhert, but in the next moment, he was paralyzed. “Marie?”

Her chin came up defiantly. “Anyone could have done it,” she said. “We were
all
thinking of it. But nobody else had the guts to do it.” She looked bitterly at Bonhert.

After an awful pause, Bonhert spoke up: “So Marie here, she just took it on herself to get rid of Station. She’s an unsentimental woman, our Marie.”

“As for Tina,” Marie said, “she agreed with me. She
was going to help. Then at the last minute, she got cold feet. Happens to the best of us, cold feet.” Marie threw a vicious look at Bonhert.

“Tina was one of you.…” Reeve felt the revelations coming like a succession of blows. “But I saw Bonhert’s name on the suit.…”