Park could not remember when she had first decided to be a psychologist. There was no defining moment, no sudden epiphany. No inspirational role model who had encouraged her in the dream. In fact, almost everyone who knew her in her youth had assumed she would turn out to be a roboticist. She had a hazy memory of typing ‘psychology’ on the hobbies and interests portion of some survey. But where had the impulse come from? She didn’t know.
Later, she would test low in amiability on her career placement exams in high school. That was a problem: you needed moderate-to-high scores in amiability, empathy, and self-awareness to even get a degree in the field. The family android, Glenn, informed her that she was too “closed up inside” when he helped her practice for the retakes.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Park had asked, coldly.
“In the animal kingdom, you would be neofelis nebulosa,” Glenn had answered.
Whatever that meant. Park had never looked it up; she was afraid to find out exactly what it was. But she got the idea. An elusive, enigmatic thing. Ultimately what Glenn was saying was something she had always known: that she was not a social animal; that she was not meant to be wedged into close contact with other people. That she belonged to a single-cat home. People like her—people turned inward, people solitary and on the fringes of society—were best encountered from afar. Those on the outskirts could not understand the problems of those in the center of things. They couldn’t really bridge the gap. She understood this.
But she’d taken the test again anyway.
Park thought about that now, as she helped Hunter sedate the hysterical Elly Ma. On her other side, Natalya was sealing the wound in Elly’s arm with a kind of medical glue.
“What kind of nightmare?” Park kept asking Elly, as the woman’s eyes flickered under a wave of tab-induced drowsiness. “What were you dreaming about, Elly?”
The climatologist shook her head. “I wasn’t in control of myself,” she slurred with an effort, as if struggling to speak across a great distance. “There was some other—force guiding me. Controlling me. Making me do things I didn’t want to do.”
“What things?”
For a moment Elly didn’t answer. “I was so cold,” she said. “My eyes weren’t my eyes. There was no blood in my body. I didn’t have a tongue.”
God, Park thought. Her blood thumped hard once in her throat. She said, “It was just a dream.”
“But it was so real.”
“It wasn’t.” She brushed Elly’s brow dry with a cloth. “It was only a dream, Elly. Do you understand?”
She attached another sedation tab to the woman’s neck. Elly shook her head. “No . . .” she murmured. “No . . . I think that it was really happening. It is really happening. I’m going to turn into that. I’m going to die!” She pressed her palms to her temples. Then, in a sudden cry: “Don’t put me to sleep again!”
She went limp.
Elly Ma is sick, Park thought. Her heart felt like a burnt walnut; she was cold with a dreadful, unfeeling clarity. Holt and Reimi are sick. I don’t know how to help them. How can I? I’m too different. Apart. I’m nebulosa.
She glanced at the wound on Elly’s arm. Nightmares, she thought, just like Holt. Or at least similar. He hadn’t self-harmed. There had to be a connection—but how? Had Holt told Elly about his dream before he’d been sent to the infirmary? Had she simply been affected by the horrible things he had to say? Or was his delusion being transmitted, plague-like, from person to person? Infecting Elly?
No, Park thought. That was irrational. But it was best to quarantine it, whatever it was—keep it in isolation. She would tell no one besides Keller and Wick that Holt and Ma had shared nightmares. Once the idea was planted in a susceptible mind, someone else might manifest it, especially under heightened anxiety. They would have to keep the whole thing hidden until they could find out the cause.
Hunter left the room to fetch Dr. Chanur. Natalya, the only other person left, said: “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Park shook her head. “Not exactly.” She moved Elly’s damp, heavy hair from her face; she could feel the heat rising from the woman’s skin. A fever, Park thought, which was impossible—space lacked microbes, and it had been far too long since leaving Earth for Elly to get sick from something she’d already had in her system. How could she have a fever?
Psychosomatic, she concluded, just as Natalya said, “She dug into her own arm. Made herself bleed.”
“Yes,” Park said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
Natalya glared. “What are you going to do about this?”
She wants reassurance, Park told herself, because she’s scared. Or—more likely—Natalya was using the opportunity to challenge her. Question her abilities. She’d been doing it since Antarctica, just as she’d been refusing counseling sessions with Park in the room since Antarctica. Park wanted to feel weariness, impatience, even anger towards the surveyor, but instead felt nothing except a cool disconnected bafflement. As if she were staring at a painting in a museum that she couldn’t make sense of. She straightened and said, “Try to get some rest, Severov. You’re due to go out tomorrow.”
Natalya looked at her as if Park had suggested she launch herself into space. “And how do you expect me to sleep, Doctor, under the circumstances?”
“I can offer you sedatives,” Park told her woodenly. “Or the MAD.”
Natalya scoffed. “Of course. Your given solutions.”
Yes, Park thought, it was a challenge. Natalya was trying to pick a fight with her. And at a time like this, when they had much bigger things to worry about! Where had the surveyor gotten all of this hardness, this poisonous hostility, as if everyone in the world had wronged her? She was an orphan, Park knew that. Her file stated that her parents had been killed during the Comeback. But whose hadn’t?
Then Park reminded herself that Natalya had raised her six younger siblings in the wildernesses of southern Russia before picking up an ISF contract to get them all to the colony on Luxue. That was impressive. The hardships of her life must have forged her into this . . . unyielding, unforgiving creature. In any other situation Park might have admired her steeliness. But because they clashed so much, she could only view the other woman as a nuisance. A wounding presence—like a dagger in her side.
“You’re useless,” Natalya declared finally, shaking her head and folding herself into her bunk. Park didn’t answer; she turned instead to tend to Elly’s unconscious figure. After a few moments she heard someone’s footsteps in the corridor. When she looked up, she saw Hunter stepping through the threshold again—and Chanur following expressionlessly behind her.
“She’s scratched her left arm heavily, but no other injuries,” Park said as Chanur brushed past her. “I’ve given her three sedation tabs. Could you keep her separate from Eric Holt?”
“Holt is gone,” Chanur said as she bent over Elly’s supine body. “Somehow he left the ward, despite being sedated and watched by one of the bots. I’ve informed Wick and Captain Sagara. They’re searching for him now.”
That explained why Sagara hadn’t shown up when Elly started screaming, Park thought. The way she was going on, he’d think she was being murdered. Then Chanur’s words registered. “Wait, Holt is gone? What do you mean? Where could he even go?”
Chanur gave her a venomous look. “If I knew that, then he wouldn’t be missing, would he?”
Missing, Park thought as Hunter drew her aside. Of course. Of course Elly’s episode would somehow trigger an episode of Holt’s, from the other side of the ship. Of course Holt would somehow vanish into thin air. That would all make sense, considering how this day was going.
She shook her head. Hunter was saying, “Someone had better inform ISF.”
“I don’t think there’s any need for that,” Chanur said from the ground, where she was reading Elly’s vitals with a bioscanner.
“Bullshit there isn’t,” Hunter rapped out. “People are going to pieces. We can’t locate a crewmember. They need to know.”
“Yes,” Park said, trying to shake off the out-of-body giddiness that was threatening to take hold. There was that swaying feeling in her head again, as if she might be space-sick—even though they’d already landed. “Yes, I agree with Hunter. I’ll go tell them now.”
Chanur just shook her head and shrugged. Suddenly Park noticed that there were still people lingering in the hallway, looking into their narrow room. Conscious of the gummy soap in her hair, of her towel hanging around her body like a soggy tortilla, she nodded her goodbye to Hunter and marched past the onlookers, back to the showers. She hadn’t even had time to turn the water off; the steam was almost suffocating. She rinsed off quickly and slipped into her thermal sleeping suit. Her feet were still bare.
Shared psychosis was a possibility, she thought. In the past it had been called folie a deux. Madness of two. Two individuals with latent psychosis, living in close proximity, could mutually trigger delusions in each other—could influence each other’s delusions so that they became identical. But she’d have to establish that Holt and Ma had had extensive contact—and she found it hard to believe that two separate people with psychotic disorders had been allowed aboard the Deucalion. Even with the fast-tracked assembly. She and Keller had thoroughly vetted each crewmember, had conducted all the rigorous tests and simulations. They’d found no trace of anything like this.
Or her infrasound theory was correct. Maybe it wasn’t even the sound of the new planet’s rotation; things like this happened on Earth, too. Mountain ranges could form shapes that repetitive wind events blasted through at certain velocities, creating sound waves too low to hear. Those sound waves could subtly affect the human mind, causing the same irrational feelings of panic and terror that animals felt before earthquakes. Expeditions had gone mad because of those sound waves. People inexplicably ran out into the cold, stripping their clothes off. Clawing at invisible enemies. Dying with their eyes and tongues missing.
Or, she thought. Or Elly had simply been having a bad dream. People did scratch themselves in their sleep. It wasn’t uncommon. The similarities between the dreams could be a coincidence, or otherwise influenced by some innocent external source: a filmstream they had both watched, a book. Park could be overreacting.
She went to discuss it with Commander Wick. It was her way of paying respect; she thought he should be informed before she went to ISF. He shouldn’t have to find out about it from the higher-ups. But around the corner from his sleeping quarters, shivering despite her thermal gear, she remembered suddenly that he wouldn’t be in his bunk: he had to be out looking for Holt. She listened carefully. There were no alerts sounding, no blaring awoogas from the far-off bridge. They obviously didn’t view this as some sort of immediate danger. At least not yet.
Then she noticed that someone was talking in front of Wick’s bunk. Someone male—and angry. Park peeked around the corner and felt a little jolt in the back of her neck. Boone was standing there, gesturing and snarling at . . . Jimex?
“I told you to leave me the fuck alone,” Boone growled in a low, furious voice. Jimex looked amazed by his anger; he wore a look of blank astonishment, as if he were a baby watching someone make faces.
“I am sorry,” Jimex said. His silver eyes seemed fixed on a point past Boone’s left shoulder. “I meant to assist you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Boone said roughly. “If I did, I would have asked for it. Didn’t anyone ever tell you to mind your damn business?”
“No,” Jimex answered, with bland politeness.
The military specialist gave him a hard shove. Despite the fact that she knew better, Park found herself stepping out from behind the wall that obscured her from Boone’s point of view. Jimex staggered back against the wall behind him, then shot upright again, as if he were a weighted bowling pin.
“Boone,” Park said. “What’s going on?”
He saw her standing there and rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy,” he said, as if he were speaking to some invisible audience. “Here we go.” He gave Jimex a contemptuous gesture. “Call off your little clunk, Park. The damn thing won’t leave me alone.”
She looked at Jimex. “Sergeant Boone was told by Commander Wick to look for Dr. Holt,” the android said, in answer to her unspoken question. He didn’t look surprised to find her coming to his rescue—but then again, he rarely did. “Dr. Holt is missing.”
“What does that have to do with you following Boone?” Park asked.
Jimex’s eyes moved from Boone to Wick’s door. His head gave a little buzz. “I did not know why it was necessary for him to return to his room,” he answered. “Dr. Holt is not there. I thought he might be disobeying his directive.”
“That’s not your business, even if he is,” she told him, signaling him to come stand by her. She was aware of how her body slid in front of his, shielding him from Boone’s gaze—as if the custodian android, one head taller than her, was a child for her to protect. Boone watched Jimex retreat behind her with disgust.
“Why are you over here?” Park asked him.
“This is my bunk, too,” Boone answered, sniffing. “Not just Wick’s. Why are you here?”
“I needed to talk to Wick. Shouldn’t you be looking for Holt?”
Boone sneered. “That’s why I came back to my locker. I wasn’t going to start the search without this.”
He showed her his hip. Affixed to his belt was something that looked like a black pistol with a green sparking light at its top. For a moment Park’s vision went dark. It was an ELG—an electrolaser gun—a device that fired such a powerful ionized track of plasma that it could immobilize entire rooms, or melt the teeth of a single assailant. It was like shooting a stream of lightning at a body. Regular guns had been banned off-Earth: the hulls of ships were bulletproof, but that meant the ricochet from one projectile could be devastating to whoever was trapped inside, especially with unpredictable gravity. Electrolaser guns were the next deadliest thing. The ISF claimed that they were non-lethal even in the wrong hands, but—that was just it. They were only claims.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Park said, stiff with fear. She meant for Holt, but she also couldn’t see why Boone needed a weapon at all. The thought of him using it on a crewmember—or on her—made her stomach lurch. Why did he have such a thing? Had he had it the entire time they’d been on the ship? Did ISF know?
“Then it’s a good thing it’s not your call, isn’t it?” drawled Boone. He sniffed again, rubbed a finger under his nose. “Word has it that Holt’s gone crazy. He might be dangerous. We need some way to immobilize him.”
“He’s not an escaped mental patient. There are other ways.”
“Like what? You got a tranquilizer gun?”
She glanced sidelong at Jimex. “The androids could restrain him. He can’t hurt them.”
“I wouldn’t trust a clunker to know Holt from a handgun,” Boone said, derisive. “Speaking of, I don’t much appreciate you letting this one run wild. It watches everybody.”
“I’m not responsible for that.”
“Sure you’re not. Just like you’re not responsible for spying on me and Natalya today at lunch.”
Park pressed her lips together. “You seem to have the misconception that I’m unduly interested in what you do, Boone,” she said. “That I would go out of my way to watch you, through the androids or other means. I don’t have the time or energy for that.”
“So I imagined you eavesdropping on me earlier?”
“You were talking very loudly.” Then she looked again at the EL gun at his hip and thought twice about antagonizing him further. Boone saw her look and laughed.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Park asked him, self-correcting. She cleared her throat. “Anything you need for Holt?”
“No,” Boone said, flexing his hands a little. “He’s somewhere on this ship. It’s only a matter of time until we find him. In the meantime I’d suggest that you hole up somewhere and write your incident report.”
That was the soldier’s politest way of telling her to fuck off. Park wanted to resist it, to stand up to him. But she scanned his face and saw the sullen gray eyes, the tightly-curled hair, the blocky head scraped clean of fat and kindness. And she knew that it was not a conflict worth winning. He’d find some way to retaliate in the future. “Come,” she said softly to Jimex.
The android hesitated, then nodded. “Good night, Sergeant Boone,” he said.
Boone was watching Jimex with a grin on his face. “You see that, clunker?” he said, lowering his tone to a horror-story-teller’s sotto voce. “Your master knows when to leave well enough alone. Follow her example, or I might just zap you with this!”
He pulled out the gun and pointed it at Jimex’s face. Jimex looked at Park as if expecting her to tell him when to flinch. Park was speechless with horror. She felt her heel turn, felt her body hurrying itself away from the threat. There was a hot prickling between her shoulders, as if her system expected the shot at any moment; as if it was already anticipating the crackling, blood-boiling blow. Her heart thundered in her ears. Boone saw her fear, and he chuckled softly to himself as she left. Park fled down the corridor with his laugh following her, nipping at her heels like a hound.
“I want you to stay away from him,” she told Jimex later, after he had escorted her to her office. “In fact, tell all the androids to, if they can help it. He’s—volatile. If he does decide to shoot you with that thing, it’s game over for you.”
“I didn’t know we were playing a game,” Jimex intoned. He seemed unaffected by their encounter with Boone.
Park wanted to shake him. God damn these lower-tier models, she thought. Sometimes they were so stupid. He made her miss Glenn, and she hated that; resented it even more than the danger he kept putting himself in.
“I’ve been told by the other crewmembers that you keep bothering them,” she said aloud. “Why can’t you just clean the ship?”
“I have,” Jimex said, blinking. “Deck A is ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent—”
“Then at least stay silent when you’re done,” Park said, exasperated. “Don’t talk to anyone except me, unless you absolutely need to. It’s for your own good.”
Jimex took a while to process this. “I understand,” he said finally. His pupils focused and unfocused as his brain adapted to the new directives.
“Good,” Park said. She could feel a headache coming on. “Now, just—go somewhere, and enter sleep mode. Don’t come out of it until morning. Or unless you see Holt.”
“Understood,” Jimex said. He stood up and regarded her for a long moment, expressionless. “Thank you, Dr. Park.”
“Good night,” she said, weary. Then she closed her eyes as she listened to him leave the room, his heavy tread thumping away into the darkness. As frustrated with him as she was, she was a little glad that he had accompanied her into her office. The ship was still on lockdown—it was still technically lights-out hours for the crew—and she had half-expected to find Holt sitting in the shadows when she came in, his features glowing with the MAD greenness. The thought made her heart beat just a little more quickly.
She turned on her console in a rush and recorded a message for the ISF outpost on Corvus. She told them about Elly’s nightmares, her symptoms, the similarities to Holt, whose session transcript she had already sent earlier in the day. She mentioned her suspicions of shared psychosis. Holt’s escape from the medical bay. She confessed that she wasn’t sure what to do.
And then, hesitating, she brought up the fact that Boone was carrying a weapon that could incapacitate the entire crew. She asked, in more diplomatic terms, if the ISF Eos Committee really thought that this was wise.
“I’m standing by for directives,” Park said, rounding off the video. She added, unable to stop herself: “Please respond ASAP.”
She tapped the button; sent the video rushing off into space. Then she sat back and closed her eyes. It would take eighteen hours for the message to transmit to its destination, another eighteen hours for her to receive an answer. So she had a day and a half to operate on her own before receiving any form of guidance.
Her hair was still wet. She hadn’t taken the time to dry it. Park felt like a piece of damp paper—slowly disintegrating, on the edge of falling apart. She felt the tightness around her temples again and quelled it. Affirmative thoughts, she told herself, taking a breath. Positive action. She went over to the couch and set the MAD to ten minutes.
Fulbreech came in on minute eight. Park heard him enter but couldn’t force herself to raise her arms and lift the MAD off of her head. Her brain was adjusting its chemical levels, like a violin being tuned: dopamine and euphoria bloomed through her skull. She said something to him, half-slurring. Fulbreech sat down across from her, in the seat she usually sat in, and waited.
When the MAD powered off, Park lifted the visor and said, “How did you get in?”
She was embarrassed that he’d caught her in a vulnerable position—that he’d found her using the MAD, something he himself always refused. Fulbreech, studying her with interest, said, “You left the door unlocked. They’re still looking for Holt. I wanted to check on you before I turned in.”
“Check in on me,” Park repeated. “Because . . .”
“Well, if this were a horror stream, the woman who goes off into the dark alone is usually found murdered,” Fulbreech joked. Then he sobered at her flat expression. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—it’s just that no one can find him. It’s a little uncanny.”
“How did he get out of the medical bay?”
“Wick didn’t say.”
Bullshit, Park wanted to say. She couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t say I don’t know—only that Wick didn’t say. Couldn’t help but remember what he had told her, just a few hours ago: that he wouldn’t tell her everything. She tried to beam it at him through her eyes—Are you feeding me bullshit?
But she recognized in this a danger, a breach in objectivity. Fulbreech wasn’t obligated to tell her a thing. But then why go out of his way to win her trust in the first place? The contradiction put her on guard with him. She said in a chilly way, “I see.”
“I heard about Ma,” Fulbreech continued, probably to divert her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Park said, surprised—wondering why he wouldn’t ask if Elly was all right. Fulbreech, sensing her confusion, explained: “She was your bunkmate, wasn’t she? And you had to sedate her? And . . .”
Chagrined, he glanced at the MAD. Park felt a flaring of anger.
“I’m fine, Fulbreech,” she said. “Thank you for your concern.”
“I’m sure,” Fulbreech answered, smiling a little to himself. “You’re always fine. I just thought I should ask, since you have to ask everyone else.”
Meaning, Park assumed, that he thought no one was around to evaluate the evaluator. And Fulbreech meant to assume that role. She thought to ask him for his credentials. “Where do you think Holt could be?” she asked instead.
He shook his head. “We don’t know. He’s on the ship, certainly. And the computer tells us he’s alive and kicking. He’s just squirreled away somewhere.”
Park shook her head. “This would be much easier if we had more cameras.”
“That’s the Privacy Wars for you,” Fulbreech answered wryly. “The one time we need constant surveillance, we don’t have it.” He looked at her face, then away, as if not to stare. Then he looked back again, as if he thought, Why not stare? “You’re very guarded, you know.”
“I’m not,” Park answered automatically. It came out sterner than she was hoping, grave—as if she’d taken offense. Fulbreech mused, almost to himself, “Maybe it’s part of the job. I don’t know. Or maybe you just don’t trust anyone.”
Why should I? Park thought, sullen. Fulbreech saw it in her face and laughed; she felt an uncomfortable swooping sensation, as if she’d missed a step climbing the stairs in the dark. She looked away and said, “I don’t know why it matters to you. Whether I trust anyone or not.”
She really was angry with him, she realized. He expected her to share her thoughts with him, to open herself up—and yet he had shown he wouldn’t do the same. Of course she mistrusted that. But then the sense of wellbeing planted by the MAD picked up on her negative feeling and swarmed on it. Dampened it. She shifted in her seat and suddenly noticed that a light on her desk console was blinking.
“Have you ever been to the New York biodome?” Fulbreech asked after a moment. She noticed that he didn’t answer her question. But had she even really asked one? And was it something she wanted an outright answer to?
“No, I haven’t.” Park shuddered, thinking of the claustrophobia, the smog forming dirty gray stains against the biofilm as it curved over the city. “Well, once. For the flight to Baikonur. I didn’t leave the airport.”
“Where are you from originally?”
“I grew up in the New Diego biodome.” No harm in disclosing that.
“Ah,” Fulbreech said, a little lamely. “I was born in the New Chicago dome—but we moved to Mars when I was a teen. After that, Cambien, Elysium, Halla. I was a ship-brat.”
Of course she knew all this: it was in his files. She even knew that his great-great-grandfather had been a famous NASA astronaut, and his uncle, Isaac Fulbreech, was one of the engineers who’d settled Phobos. His brother was a lead ship-builder for the fleet there, too. ISF ran in his blood. But she said, just to be polite: “I hear that Halla is nice.”
“Oh, it is.”
“Is your family there now?”
He paused. “My parents are. My brother and his wife still live on Phobos. They just had their first baby. A boy.”
Park looked at him. She read no lie in his countenance, but there had been that barest flicker of hesitation. “Congratulations,” was all she could think to say.
Fulbreech made a visible effort to change the subject, turning toward her. “Your story is a different one,” he said. “This is your first trip into space, isn’t it?”
Now where had he heard that from? She supposed he was more observant than she gave him credit for; she’d been careful not to tell anybody that explicitly, wary of coming off as inexperienced. Easy to undermine. She thought about how Sagara had found the anti-emesis tabs. “I enjoy space travel,” Park said, levelly.
Fulbreech smiled. “You’re not much for talking, are you? Not when it’s about stuff you’re not interested in.”
“I talk.”
He was grinning now, rubbing the faint golden stubble on his chin. “But do you say much? I have such a hard time figuring you out.”
Ditto, Park wanted to say—an embarrassingly dated term that she knew he would laugh at. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to laugh at her or not. She stole a quick look at his hand, resting on his knee: it was tan and broad and strong, and honest somehow. She said, to prove him wrong, “When I was younger, I was afraid of going into space.”
Fulbreech looked at her, surprised. “Why was that?”
“I don’t know,” Park admitted. “It was—too dark for me. Too empty. I was used to crowds of people, like in the domes.”
“Interesting. But you’re used to it now?”
“I’m well-adjusted.” As if that was accurate. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say; she’d reached the end of her conversational props. She couldn’t even talk about the weather, because there was no weather on the ship. “You mentioned New York,” she said finally, a little desperately.
“Right,” Fulbreech said. He leaned back and stared up at the office’s gray ceiling, as if viewing some invisible projection up there. “There’s a famous art gallery there. I can’t remember the name. Something French. My father took my brother and me when we were teens. I can give you the address sometime.”
He was very optimistic, Park thought to herself, thinking of disaster, of Holt and Ma—but she decided to try her hand at the game. “Or you could just take me there yourself.”
Fulbreech’s eyebrows raised. “What do you mean?”
“I assume you’re coming back to Earth when the mission is done.”
Fulbreech’s face went blank. It was momentary, but Park saw it: confusion, and then shame. Quickly he hid it, but in that moment Park felt such a hatred of him that even the dumb peaceful glow of the MAD faded a little, burning at the ends like a cigarette. He was too attractive, she decided; it annoyed her. His jawline was absurd. The scraps of stubble, deliberate, vain. And the boyishness, the goodness—it was a front. She was half-convinced that ISF had put him in her way as a means to test her.
“Of course,” Fulbreech said slowly. Constructing a lie. “But I might have to hop off before then—maybe when we resupply at Corvus. They may want me to consult with the researchers there.”
“Of course,” Park echoed. Her lips felt stiff as she spoke. She noticed that his leg was close to hers, under the table that separated them. She moved hers away. Liar.
Fulbreech looked away from her. “That gallery,” he said finally, after a moment of heavy silence. “There was this amazing statue in it. I want you to see it someday—you remind me of it. Or it reminds me of you.”
“It was nude, I’m sure.” To her satisfaction Fulbreech reddened and coughed.
“It was, in fact,” he said. “It was of this naked woman, sitting in the lotus position. Looking very composed. Striving for inner peace. Total zen, you know. The artist won prizes for it. People said her expression was as mysterious as the Mona Lisa’s.”
“I see.”
“But the most striking thing about it wasn’t exactly her expression. Not to me.” He looked thoughtful. “It was that the woman’s body was full of cracks. Fissured all over. And there was light coming out of the cracks. That was what made it such a masterpiece, everybody said. That the statue was full of things you didn’t expect—empty spaces, voids, chasms. Flaws. Well, that’s what the critics called them, but I used the term ‘mysterious places,’ personally.” He paused. “Things you wanted to look into and explore, only the light was too bright for you to look at, once you came too close.”
He looked at her. Park was aware that something was happening, that there was a current of meaning passing between them that she ought to turn her cheek to. She had a hot, tense feeling in her stomach, as if she were awaiting some reprimand. She said, lamely, “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t, either,” Fulbreech said. “Not then.” Then he stood up. “Good night, Park.”
She could not help but stare at him. “Good night.”
He made to leave, then paused at the door. “There’s a solar wind that’s about to hit, by the way. A proton storm. I thought you should know; I guess they’re pretty common here. We’ll have to detach from the surface and shield ourselves on the dark side of Eos for the day. Otherwise the radiation will cook us like bacon.”
“Thank you,” Park said as he turned away. It was a white flag, she decided. An olive branch. As a non-expedition member, she wasn’t privy to such information. Things and decisions on the ship just happened, and she was lucky if she got to hear the reasons for it afterward. Fulbreech wanted to give her that much knowledge—make sure she wasn’t too left in the dark. Perhaps to make amends for earlier, sensing her upset. She didn’t know if she felt more grateful to him or annoyed.
He left. Park went to her flashing console and found an error message from the ship’s computer, METIS: it informed her that it had been unable to send her latest message out to ISF Corvus.
The atomic storm, Park thought, too tired to feel anything other than numbness. All of that radiation must have interfered with her signal; communications would probably be down until the solar wind cleared. What goddamn inconvenient timing! Of course the storm would hit just as she needed to call for help. It was almost beginning to feel as if the ship was cursed.
She sat there for a while in the dark, watching the simulated fish tank in the wall. Her favorite fish, the hologram of the bumblebee goby, was nowhere to be seen, no matter how much she hunted for it. A glitch in the program, Park thought, thinking of Holt. Just like everything else in this place.
After a while she felt a slight pressure change in the air—an airlock closing somewhere far off. Her ears plugged; a great hush seemed to settle over the Deucalion. She felt a tremor under her feet, then the familiar stagger as the ship lifted up its great legs. Energy simmered softly through the walls. Park felt both relief and a tinge of panic: for a moment she could convince herself that they were leaving Eos altogether, that they were headed back to Corvus to get Holt and Ma help, and to wake up Reimi Kisaragi.
But no, she thought. Impossible. Colony missions were never abandoned. Not even if people died.
She closed her eyes. Lay down when she felt the gut-bouncing lift of reconfiguring gravity. They were better equipped for solar storms and subatomic winds than most expedition ships. Not because they had more advanced technology, or a better-trained crew—but because they had less to save. Normally there were plants that needed to be covered or moved to protected areas. Genetically augmented animals to be herded into the little shelters. Seeds and embryos to be locked into the vaults. But here, on the Deucalion, there was none of that. Only the directive to hide—and wait.
I can do that, Park thought. She flattened her body against the cold, viscoelastic foam of the couch and imagined the Deucalion drifting silently through the dark waters of space. Her head felt full of static.
They were off; there was the jolt as they broke out of the atmosphere. The sounds of the ship slowly receded. If Park tuned out the low roar of the engines, she could pretend that she was totally alone, a single soul in a black and soothing vacuum. Thank God Fulbreech was gone. He would have tried to coach her through liftoff, talked to cover up the blast, tried to make her feel comfortable. Maybe he would have looked earnestly into her eyes and asked if she needed him to hold her hand.
Park’s insides shriveled like peach pits. Solitude for her was like a religious blessing to others: it was her church of one. Always she closed the doors behind her with the awareness that she was giving herself sanctuary, an opportunity to cleanse and be purified. Fulbreech was like the neighbor who kept her from shutting the door, asking if she was interested in participating in the annual bake sale.
That was the problem, Park thought. Fulbreech thought she was mysterious, and that appealed to him. He thought that her guardedness, her need to be alone, was all a defense mechanism that he had to get past. Either she was a puzzle to be solved—and then later, discarded—or he simply thought that he needed to get to know her better, to break through to some other place, some core where another person lived inside of her. But that was the catch. There was no other person, no self that she was hiding. Park was who she seemed to be from the outside. That would never change. Fulbreech just hadn’t realized it yet.
She liked Hilbert’s illustration of infinity, using a hotel as an example. A hotel with an infinite number of rooms could accommodate an infinite number of guests, even if the whole place was already fully occupied. Whenever a new guest arrived, the guest in room one would simply move to room two; the guest in room two to room three; and so on and so forth. What Park liked was that, even with an infinite line of people waiting out the door, the thought of making guests share a room never occurred to anyone in the hotel. Each guest had to be solitary; each had to have a room of their own, even if it meant that everyone else performed an infinite series of actions to ensure this. It was the natural order of things, assumed. This made sense to her. She wished the Deucalion was Hilbert’s hotel.
But it’s not, Park thought then. She was not like the hotel guest, come in safely from the night. She was more like a glacier, alone and adrift on a warming sea. Cold, remote. But shrinking rapidly under the circumstances.