“Nicholas,” she said, trying to put as much warmth into her voice as she could manage. “Thank you for taking the time.”
“Nick,” he said, then sat on one of the metal chairs in front of her desk. The metal chairs were lower than her own, which gave the room a vaguely courtroom-like setting, with her in the position of judge. It was why she never sat behind the desk when meeting with one of her parishioners. There was a comfortable couch along the back wall that was much better for personal conversations and counseling. But every now and then, the air of authority the big chair and heavy desk gave her was useful.
Like now.
“Nick,” she said, then pressed her fingertips together and rested her chin on them. “Sophia came to see me this morning.”
Nick shrugged, looking away like a schoolboy caught cheating on an exam. He was a tall man, with the narrow, raw-boned look outer planets types got from hard physical labor. Anna knew he worked in surface construction. Here on Europa, that meant long days in a heavy vacuum suit. The people who did that job were as tough as nails. Nick had the attitude of a man who knew how he looked to others, and used his air of physical competence to intimidate.
Anna smiled at him. It won’t work on me.
“She wouldn’t tell me what happened at first,” she said. “It took a while to get her to lift her shirt. I didn’t need to see the bruises, I knew they’d be there. But I did need pictures.”
When she said pictures, he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing and shifting from side to side. He probably thought it made him look tough, threatening. Instead it made him look like a rodent.
“She fell—” he started.
“In the kitchen,” Anna finished for him. “I know, she told me. And then she cried for a very long time. And then she told me you’d started hitting her again. Do you remember what I said would happen if you hit her again?”
Nick shifted in his chair, his long legs bouncing in front of him with nervous energy. His large, bony hands squeezing each other until the knuckles turned white. He wouldn’t look directly at her. “I didn’t mean to,” he said. “It just happened. I could try the counseling again, I guess.”
Anna cleared her throat, and when he looked at her she stared back until his legs stopped bouncing. “No, too late. We gave you the anger counseling. The church paid for you to go right up until you quit. We did that part. That part is done.”
His expression went hard.
“Gonna give me one of those Jesus speeches? I am sick right up to here”—Nick held his hand under his chin—“with that shit. Sophia won’t shut up about it. ‘Pastor Anna says!’ You know what? Fuck what Pastor fucking Anna says.”
“No,” Anna said. “No Jesus speeches. We’re done with that too.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Do you,” she said, drawing the words out, “remember what I said would happen if you hit her again?”
He shrugged again, then pushed up out of the chair and walked away, putting his back to her. While pretending to stare at one of the diplomas hanging on the wall he said, “Why should I give a fuck what you say, Pastor Anna?”
Anna breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Preparing for this meeting, she’d been unsure if she’d actually be able to do what was needed. She had a strong, visceral dislike of dishonesty, and she was about to destroy someone by lying. Or if not lying, at least deceit. She justified it to herself by believing that the real purpose was to save someone. But she knew that wouldn’t be enough. She’d pay for what she was about to do for a long time in sleepless nights and second-guessing. At least his anger would make it easy in the short term.
Anna offered a quick prayer: Please help me save Sophia from this man who’s going to kill her if I don’t stop him.
“I said,” Anna continued at Nick’s back, “that I would make sure you went to jail for it.”
Nick turned around at that, a rodent’s low cunning back on his face. “Oh yeah?”
“Yes.”
He moved toward her in the low-gravity version of a saunter. It was intended to look threatening, but to Anna, who’d grown up down the well on Earth, it just looked silly. She suppressed a laugh.
“Sophia won’t say shit,” Nick said, walking up to her desk to stare down at her. “She knows better. She fell down in the kitchen, and she’ll say it to the magistrates.”
“That’s true,” Anna said, then opened the drawer of her desk and took the taser out. She held it in her lap where Nick couldn’t see it. “She’s terrified of you. But I’m not. I don’t care about you at all anymore.”
“Is that right?” Nick said, leaning forward, trying to frighten her by pushing into her personal space. Anna leaned toward him.
“But Sophia is a member of this congregation, and she is my friend. Her children play with my daughter. I love them. And if I don’t do something, you’re going to kill her.”
“Like what?”
“I’m going to call the police and tell them you threatened me.” She reached for her desk terminal with her left hand. It was a gesture meant to provoke. She might as well have said, Stop me.
He gave her a feral grin and grabbed her arm, squeezing the bones in her wrist together hard enough to ache. Hard enough to bruise. She pointed the taser at him with her other hand.
“What’s that?”
“Thank you,” she said, “for making this easier.”
She shot him, and he drifted to the ground spasming. She felt a faint echo of the shock through his hand on her arm. It made her hair stand up. She pulled up her desk terminal and called Sophia.
“Sophia, honey, this is Pastor Anna. Please listen to me. The police are going to be coming to your house soon to ask about Nick. You need to show them the bruises. You need to tell them what happened. Nick will already be in jail. You’ll be safe. But Nick confronted me when I asked him about what happened to you, and if you want to keep us both safe, you need to be honest with them.”
After a few minutes of coaxing, she finally got Sophia to say she would talk to the police when they came. Nick was starting to move his arms and legs feebly.
“Don’t move,” Anna said to him. “We’re almost done here.”
She called the New Dolinsk Police Department. The Earth corporation that had once had the contract was gone, but there still seemed to be police in the tunnels, so someone had picked it up. Maybe a Belter company. Or the OPA itself. It didn’t matter.
“Hello, my name is Reverend Doctor Annushka Volovodov. I’m the pastor at St. John’s United. I’m calling to report an assault on my person. A man named Nicholas Trubachev tried to attack me when I confronted him about beating his wife. No, he didn’t hurt me, just a few bruises on my wrist. I had a taser in my desk and used it before he could do anything worse. Yes, I’d be happy to give a statement when you arrive. Thank you.”
“Bitch,” Nick spat, trying to get off the floor on shaky limbs.
Anna shot him again.
“Tough day?” Nono asked when Anna finally got home. Nono was dandling their daughter on her lap, and little Nami gave a squeal and reached for Anna as soon as she closed the door behind her.
“How’s my girl?” Anna said, and dropped onto the couch next to them with a long sigh. Nono handed the baby to her, and Nami immediately set about undoing Anna’s bun and trying to pull her hair. Anna squeezed her daughter and took a long sniff off the top of her head. The subtle and powerful scent Nami had given off when they’d first brought her home had faded, but a faint trace of it was still there. Scientists might claim that humans lacked the ability to interact at the pheromonal level, but Anna knew that was baloney. Whatever chemicals Nami had been pumping out as a newborn were the most powerful drug Anna had ever experienced. It made her want to have another child just to smell it again.
“Namono, no hair pulling,” Nono said, trying to untwist Anna’s long red hair from the baby’s fist. “Don’t want to talk about it?” she said to Anna.
Nono’s full name was N
amono too. But she’d been Nono ever since her older twin had been able to speak. When Anna and Nono named their daughter after her, the name had somehow morphed into Nami. Most people probably had no idea the baby was named after one of her mothers.
“Eventually, yes,” Anna said. “But I need baby time first.”
She kissed Nami on her pug nose. The same broad flat nose as Nono, just below Anna’s own bright green eyes. She had Nono’s coffee-colored skin, but Anna’s sharp chin. Anna could sit and stare at Nami for hours at a time, drinking in the astonishing melding of herself and the woman she loved. The experience was so powerful it bordered on the sacred. Nami stuck a lock of Anna’s hair in her mouth, and Anna gently pulled it back out again, then blew a raspberry at her. “No eating the hair!” she said, and Nami laughed as though this was the funniest thing ever spoken.
Nono took Anna’s hand and held it tightly. They didn’t move for a long time.
Nono was cooking mushrooms and rice. She’d put some reconstituted onion in with it, and the strong scent filled the kitchen. Anna cut up apples at the table for a salad. The apples were small and not very crisp. Not good for munching, but they’d be fine in a Waldorf with enough other flavors and textures to hide their imperfections. And they were lucky to have them at all. The fruit was part of the first harvest to come off of Ganymede since the troubles there. Anna didn’t like to think how hungry everyone would be without that moon’s remarkable recovery.
“Nami will be asleep for at least another hour,” Nono said. “Are you ready to talk about your day?”
“I hurt someone and I lied to the police today,” Anna said. She pushed too hard on the knife and it slipped through the soft apple and scored her thumb. It wasn’t deep enough to bleed.
“Well… okay, you’ll have to explain that,” Nono said, stirring a small bowl of broth into her rice and mushroom mix.
“No, I really can’t. Some of what I know was told in confidence.”
“This lie you told, it was to help someone?”
“I think so. I hope so,” Anna said, putting the last bits of apple in the bowl, then adding nuts and raisins. She stirred in the dressing.
Nono stopped and turned to stare at her. “What will you do if you get caught in the lie?”
“Apologize,” Anna said.
Nono nodded, then turned back to the pot of rice. “I turned on your desk terminal today to check my mail. You were still logged in. There was a message from the United Nations about the secretary-general’s humanitarian committee project. All those people who they’re sending out to the Ring.”
Anna felt the sharp twist of guilt. Of having been caught out at something.
“Shit,” she said. She didn’t like profanity, but some occasions demanded it. “I haven’t responded yet.” It felt like another lie.
“Were we going to talk about it before you decided?”
“Of course, I—”
“Nami is almost two,” Nono said. “We’ve been here two years. At some point, deciding to stay is deciding who Nami is going to be for the rest of her life. She has family in Russia and Uganda who’ve never seen her. If she stays here much longer, they never will.”
Nami was being fed the same drug cocktail all newborns in the outer planets received. It encouraged bone growth and fought off the worst of the effects low-gravity environments had on childhood development. But Nono was right. If they stayed much longer, Nami would begin to develop the long, thin frame that came with life out there. To life in low gravity. Anna would be sentencing her to a life outside her home world forever.
“Europa was always supposed to be temporary,” Anna said. “It was a good posting. I speak Russian, the congregation here is small and fragile…”
Nono turned off the stove and came to sit by her, holding her hand on the table. For the first time, the faux wood tabletop looked cheap to Anna. Tacky. She saw with startling clarity a future in which Nami never lived anywhere with real wood. It felt like a punch to the stomach.
“I’m not mad at you for coming here,” Nono said. “This was our dream. Coming to places like this. But when you asked for the transfer out here, you were three months pregnant.”
“I was so unlikely to be chosen,” Anna said, and she could hear the defensiveness in her own voice.
Nono nodded. “But you were chosen. And this thing for the UN. Flying out to the Ring as part of the secretary-general’s advisory group. And our baby not even two.”
“I think two hundred people signed up for the same slot,” Anna said.
“They chose you. They want you to go.”
“It was so unlikely—” Anna started.
“They always choose you,” Nono interrupted. “Because you are very special. Everyone can see it. I can see it. I saw it the first time I met you, giving your speech at the faith conference in Uganda. So nervous you dropped your notes, but I could’ve heard a pin drop in that auditorium. You couldn’t help but shine.”
“I stole you from your country,” Anna said. It was what she always said when Nono brought up how they met. “The Ugandan church could have used a young minister like you.”
“I stole you,” Nono said, like she always said, only this time it had a disconcertingly pro forma feel. As though it were an annoying ritual to be rushed through. “But you always say this. ‘There were so many others. I was so unlikely to be picked.’”
“It’s true.”
“It’s the excuse you use. You’ve always been one to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.”
“I won’t go,” Anna said, pushing her hand against her eyes and the tears that threatened there. Her elbow banged into the salad bowl, nearly knocking it off the table. “I haven’t said yes to them. I’ll tell them it was a mistake.”
“Annushka,” Nono said, squeezing her hand. “You will go. But I am taking Nami back to Moscow with me. She can meet her grandparents. Grow up in real gravity.”
Anna felt a white-hot spike of fear shoot through her stomach. “You’re leaving me?”
Nono’s smile was a mix of exasperation and love.
“No. You’re leaving us. For a little while. And when you come back, we will be waiting for you in Moscow. Your family. I will find us a nice place to live there, and Nami and I will make it a home. A place where we can be happy. But we will not go with you.”
“Why?” was all Anna could think to say.
Nono got up and took two plates out of the cupboard, then dished up dinner and put it on the table. As she spooned Waldorf salad onto her plate she said, “I’m very afraid of that thing. The thing from Venus. I’m afraid of what it will mean for everything we care about. Humanity, God, our place in His universe. I’m afraid of what it will do, of course, but much more afraid of what it means.”
“I am too,” Anna said. It was the truth. In fact, it was part of the reason she’d asked to join the expedition when she heard it was being assembled. That same fear Nono was talking about. Anna wanted to look it in the eye. Give God a chance to help her understand it. Only then could she help anyone else with it.
“So go find the answers,” Nono said. “Your family will be waiting for you when you get back.”
“Thank you,” Anna said, a little awed by what Nono was offering her.
“I think,” Nono said around a mouthful of mushrooms and rice, “that maybe they will need people like you out there.”
“Like me?”
“People who don’t ask permission.”
Chapter Five: Bull
“It’s not in the budget,” Michio Pa, executive officer of the Behemoth, said. If she’d been an Earther, she would have been a small woman, but a lifetime in microgravity had changed her the way it did all of them. Her arms, legs, and spine were all slightly elongated—not thin exactly. Just put together differently. Her head was larger than it would have been, and walking in the mild one-third-g thrust gravity, she stood as tall as Bull but still seemed perversely childlike. It made him feel shorter than he was.
“We might need to adjust that,” he said. “When they put in the rail gun, they were treating it like we had standard bulkheads and supports. Thing is, the Mormons were really trying to cut back on mass. They used a lot of ceramics and silicates where the metals usually go. Directional stuff. We fire a round right now, we could shear the skin off.”
Pa walked down the long, curving corridor. The ceiling arched above her, white and easily twice as high as required, an aesthetic gesture by designers who hadn’t known they were building a warship. Her stride a little wider than his, moving a little more comfortably in the low g and making him trot slightly to keep up. It was one of a thousand small ways Belters reminded earthborn men and women that they didn’t belong here. The XO shook her head.
“We came out here with an operational plan,” she said. “If we start rewriting it every time we find an adjustment we’d like to make, we might as well not have bothered.”
Privately, Bull thought the same thing, but with a different inflection. If he’d been XO, the operational plan would have been called a suggested guideline and only opened when he wanted a good laugh. Pa probably knew that. They reached the transit ramp, a softly sloping curve that led from the command and control levels at the head of the Behemoth down to the massive drum of her body. From Pa’s domain to his.
“Look,” Pa said, her mouth twitching into a conciliatory smile, “I’ll make note of it for the refit, but I’m not going to start reallocating until I have an idea of the big picture. I mean, if I start pulling resources out of environmental control to cover this, and next week we find something that needs doing there, I’ll just be pushing it back, right?”
Bull looked down the ramp. Soft lights recessed in the walls filled the air with a shadowless glow like a cheesy vision of heaven. Pa put her hand on his shoulder. She probably meant it to be sympathetic, but it felt like condescension.
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
“It’ll be all right, chief,” she said, giving his trapezius a little squeeze. He nodded and walked down the ramp to the transfer platform. Her footsteps vanished behind him, submerging in the hum of air recyclers. Bull fought the urge to spit.