Karen Langelier interrupted. “It was from a fault in the apparatus, I think. You can check the system out. You know it better than we do.”
Anna scowled at them. “Thank you for that concession. Why did Commander Rurik not stop you, or at least assist you? He knew the process well enough.”
Karen and Ramis looked at each other. Karen spoke in Russian. “Who is this Commander Rurik?”
Anna frowned. “If it has been only a month.… He and another officer, Cagarin, remained to watch over us, to keep the colony intact. They did not go under sleepfreeze with the rest of us. They had enough supplies to last them for years.”
Ramis looked puzzled, then swallowed. “We found—I found—another body, in the command center. It was a man. He was large and had brown hair. He was wearing a dark uniform with many medals and insignia. He had been dead several weeks when I arrived.”
The blow was too much for Anna. She closed her eyes, but did not lie back on the bed. Karen took the cup from her hand.
Rurik dead? But how? He had said he would stay, for all of them. Some kind of accident?
Anna recalled his quiet strength, how the others had looked up to him and listened when he spoke, how he had drifted along the edges of the Soviet bureaucracy and somehow retained a clear perception of what he wanted and how to dance around the ineffective political machinery. He could ignore orders from his superiors and all the while convince them that he had done exactly what they’d meant to ask him.
She remembered holding Rurik, feeling warm next to his skin. Warmth seemed like such a foreign feeling to her now.
“Leave me alone,” she whispered. She kept her eyes closed as she heard them leave her quarters.
Rurik was dead.
She gave a quiet moan.
Anna Tripolk stood in the infirmary, looking at the rows of glass cases, like baubles in a china shop. The hundreds of other
Ramis Barrera and Karen Langelier left her alone, perhaps ashamed of themselves, or perhaps just afraid of her. This suited Anna fine. Every time she saw the two of them, she resented what they had done. She thought of Grekov’s wasted life and the arrogant ignorance that had led these outsiders to believe that Soviet technology and scientific prowess was so trivial they could decipher its nuances by pushing random buttons and keeping their fingers crossed.
Anna inspected both of the newly empty cubicles—Grekov’s and her own. The first cubicle had indeed malfunctioned. The awakening steps had occurred out of sequence, and the Barrera boy hadn’t known how to react to the warning signals.
Grekov’s body remained down in the lower deck, in the cold-storage locker by the recycler pool—frozen again, but this time, only as so much meat. Rurik’s body lay there, too.
She needed to know why the commander had died. She felt a knot in her throat. She would have to do an autopsy on him.
She remembered Rurik’s bravery, his charisma, his presence. He was like a legend to them all, so different from the manipulative, bureaucrat director on
Anna had listened, repulsed by this slimy little man who rubbed his hands together, prattling his empty welcomings and congratulations and babbling shallow words through his image on the tall central holotank. But Anna drew herself up.
“Mr. Brahms, I want to assure you that under no circumstances will I allow you to revive any more of the people on this station. You have nothing to offer us. You are ruining our sacrifice. We were to go into sleepfreeze until conditions had returned to normal. You should not have directed your lackeys to waken me. Now that my commander has died, I am in charge of this station.”
Brahms appeared taken aback, but then he smiled at her. “The rules have changed, Ms. Tripolk. Lines of authority and nationality no longer mean the same thing. Your sleepfreeze process could save the lives of many people on
He folded his hands, appearing to thrust them through the walls of the holotank.
