Nova (17 page)

I can’t
, I whisper.
I’m afraid.

The old man smiles gently.
You don’t have to be.

No?

No
,
he answers with a shake of his head.
You don’t have to be afraid because it will be glorious. More glorious than you could possibly imagine.

Glorious.

I wake to find that while I was sleeping, another two seconds have slipped away.

*00:00:39*

22
THE NEXT MORNING, I TAKE
my neighbor’s suggestion and hie myself from the bay before they even raise the lights. It’s just as well; I couldn’t sleep anyway with all the dreams. They’ve been coming every night now, ever since Shar touched me. Even in the day, sometimes, I find my mind starting to drift, as if reaching for something. What if, just what if . . . ?

A chill comes over me, and I shake my head, breaking off the thought before it can fully form. Grabbing the lift up, I go about my morning routine of breakfast, jog, and watch the news. When the hour gets late enough, I seek out the freighter I’ll be shipping out on,
Comet’s Kiss
. The ship is slightly smaller than Kerr’s, with a complement of nine, plus the captain and now me. Les Standish is just as Kerr said, hard but not unfair. He links me my contract, explaining the various details as I bite my lip in anxiety and try to take it all in.

“Don’t ’print it if you’re not sure,” Standish says briskly as I hesitate, my thumb hovering just over the screen. “Once you sign, you’re mine for a year. The freighter life isn’t easy. I have no room for anyone who doesn’t want to be here.”

“I do want to be here,” I protest, but my thin voice doesn’t convince even me.

“Look, you don’t have to sign right now. Go home, think about it. We’re leaving at oh-eight-hundred the day after tomorrow. If you want to come, be here with the contract ’printed by then. Otherwise, we’ll go without you. I’m sure we could always pick up someone at one of our other stops.”

I want to protest—
I’m ready to sign right now!
—but instead I find myself nodding and shaking his proffered hand. As I walk away, I castigate myself for my indecision. I know I have to go. Why couldn’t I just sign that deffin’ contract?

I think back to what Kerr said the night before, about making sure all my business is finished. Maybe that’s my problem—I can’t leave without seeing Michael one last time. For all that it would be safest to link him from space, he deserves better. He deserves to have his best friend from Aurora tell him she’s leaving. In person.

The thought elates me and fills me with dread at the same time. I want so badly to see Michael again, but how do I tell him he’s losing his best friend forever? It would almost be better to leave with the Auroran refugees; at least then I would have an excuse for going. Still, it should be safe enough to talk to him, I reason. I’ve seen Michael a million times without ever losing seconds. As long as he doesn’t kiss me, I should be okay.

As long as
I
don’t kiss
him,
I should be okay.

I link Michael before I can lose my nerve. He doesn’t pick up, but that doesn’t surprise me. He’s probably in class right now. Instead, I leave a message for him to meet me on the roof of his apartment building later this afternoon. I think of the rose he left on my cot, that expensive rose, and I know he’ll come.

It occurs to me that there’s someone else I need to link before leaving tomorrow. I pull up the station directory, and soon after, Rowan’s face comes up on my chit.

“Lia, you read my mind. You’re one of the final people I was intending to meet with in the next couple days. Are you sure you’re not a psychic?” he asks, and I smile wanly at the old joke only psychics ever seem to find funny. “So what’s going on? Did you talk to that family you told me about?”

“No, but I got a job. I’m shipping out on a freighter the day after tomorrow. I thought you’d want to know.”

“A freighter? Wow, you’re the last person I would have pegged for that kind of life. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Is my alternative any better?”

He hesitates for a second. “No,” he admits. “So what happened with that friend you mentioned before?”

“It didn’t work out,” I reply shortly. To deflect attention away from myself, I ask, “Is it true what they’re saying, that a convoy will be coming for all of the released prisoners soon?”

“It is, but keep it quiet for now, okay? An announcement will be made later today or tomorrow, but until then, we’d prefer to keep the gossip to a minimum.”

“What about the Aurorans? Where are they going? Not that it matters since I already have a job,” I hasten to add. “I’m just curious. I won’t tell anyone.”

Rowan gives me a look, and for a moment I think he can see straight through my eyes and into my soul. “I believe you.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “I suppose it will be coming out soon enough. There are a couple colonies—Dayav and Mechanra. The Aurorans are going to be resettled there.”

Dayav and Mechanra. The names don’t sound familiar. A bad feeling starts pooling in my stomach. “Just how old are these colonies?”

“Dayav is two years old. Mechanra, a little less. They’re twin planets orbiting the same star.”

Two years! That’s barely enough time to even get the terraforming process started. The only people on a colony that young are the terraform workers themselves, the people who treat the soil and water with the compounds that will begin the planet’s transformation. Sending the refugees there is in effect sentencing them all to a lifetime of hard labor. No wonder Rowan urged me to cultivate my relationship with Michael’s family.

“It’s not what I would have chosen, believe me, Lia, but it wasn’t up to me. It wasn’t up to PsyCorp. The Celestian government saw a chance to kill two birds with one stone—solve the refugee problem and staff the new colonies—and they took it. Why pay good creds to support a bunch of refugees when they could put them all to work instead? At least, I’m sure that’s how they see it.”

For all that the reasoning makes a certain amount of sense, it’s still horrid. All those unsuspecting people in the bay . . . How betrayed they’ll feel when they learn their fate! My heart skips a beat when I think of Kaeti, and then I remember what Rowan told me previously, that minors under sixteen wouldn’t be affected.

“What about the children?”

“Families with two parents will go to the colonies. Orphaned children will be sent to settled worlds and put into foster care. Single parent families are being decided on a case-by-case basis.”

So Kaeti will go into foster care somewhere. I suppose it was always bound to happen with her parents both gone. I feel bad for Lela, though, who will be losing her “children” for a life of hard labor on a new colony. Shar, too, won’t escape the sentence. She’s at least sixteen, I’m sure of it. I should feel smug and self-satisfied at my enemy’s fate, but somehow I don’t. Instead, I find myself hoping she’ll get over whatever hang-up she has about her psychic abilities and just fess up to PsyCorp. Well, just so long as she waits until after I’m gone to do it. Can’t have her ratting on me to the brain-drainers with whatever she
thinks
she knows about me!

Rowan enjoins me to secrecy once more, and I agree not to say anything. As I link off, I wonder briefly why he trusted me with the news, but I don’t have to ponder it for long. After all, if anyone could understand how hard it is to keep a terrible secret shut up inside, it’s me.

When I step out onto the roof of his building, Michael is already waiting for me, standing by the ledge, looking out over the ring. He doesn’t turn at the scrape of the door, though I know he must have heard it. I lean on the ledge beside him.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he says back. Michael turns to look at me fully, and my hands self-consciously go to my jumpsuit. He’s not looking at my clothes though; he’s looking at the rose tucked carefully in my hair. For a brief instant, I think he’s going to reach out and touch its soft petals. Then the moment passes.

I pause, uncertain how to start. “Thank you for the flower. It’s beautiful.”

Michael nods but doesn’t say anything. His characteristic smile is missing today, replaced by this grave, oh-so-grave face, as if he already knows what I’m here to say. It’s tripping me up, making the impossible words I have to say even more impossible.

I inwardly laugh.
Who am I kidding?
The words would have been impossible no matter what face Michael showed me. Well, I came here to say something. Best to just say it. “I’m leaving, Michael.”

Whatever he expected me to say, it wasn’t that. He blinks, head shaking slightly as he takes in my words. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

I take a breath. “I’ve taken a job on a freighter. I ship out the day after tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I helped out one of the freighter captains a four-square ago. She offered me a job—”

“You’ve known you were leaving for a
month
,
and you never told me?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” I hasten to explain. “I only found out about the job yesterday. The captain has a friend who had an opening.”

“So you took it? Just like that?” Michael shakes his head again, and it’s clear he’s having trouble processing it all. Not that I blame him. If he came here and told me he’d enlisted in the navy and was leaving in two days, I would be just as overloaded. “I don’t understand. Why do you want to leave?”

“It’s not that I
want
to leave—”

“Then don’t go!”

“It’s not that simple.” I try another tack. “Look, we both always knew my time on this station was temporary. I don’t live here like you, Michael. I’m a refugee, a former prisoner from an internment camp. It was only a matter of time before I had to go.”

“That’s why you’re going? The authorities are kicking you out?”

“Well . . .”

“Then it’s no problem!” His trademark smile is suddenly back, so bright it could run a million solar collectors, and my heart stutters under its power. “You can stay with us. Gran loves you; she would say yes in a heartbeat.”

“It would never work. The apartment is already small for the three of you. Where would I even sleep?”

“You can have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch. Trust me—Teal would far rather share a room with you than me.”

His answer is so quick, I know he’s thought about it before. It’s like a kick in the heart, to know I could stay if only I asked. Something starts crumbling inside of me, and I know that if I don’t end this and get out of here soon, I never will.

“Michael—”

“It’ll be perfect. You can finish school with me, and then once we graduate—”

“
Michael
.”

“—we can do anything we want. Stay and work on the station, join a colony, even take a freighter job if that’s what you really want. It’ll be you and me, Lia, just like it was befo—”

“
No
, Michael, it
won’t!
”

He blinks as my vehement words finally get through to him. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not Lia.”

“This again? I thought we talked about—”

I grab him by the shoulders, cutting him off mid-sentence. “No, you don’t understand, Michael. I’m not speaking metaphorically. There
was
a Lia Johansen who lived on Tiersten Internment Colony. I just don’t happen to be her.”

I might have hauled back and struck him, he looks so stunned. He doesn’t speak for a full ten seconds, but just stares at me with this uncomprehending expression on his face. Should I have held back the truth? Gone to the grave with my secret? It’s what I’d planned to do, but he was so sincere, so earnest as he invited me to stay that I suddenly couldn’t
not
tell him the truth. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I try to explain: “My name isn’t Lia Johansen. I’m not Auroran; I’m not even Celestian.”

“I don’t understand. Your name was on the screen.”

“That’s because I told the station officials that’s who I was when they checked me in. Since the Auroran database doesn’t exist anymore, they had no way to disprove my story.”

Michael stares over my shoulder, eyes fixed on something in the distance, and I can practically see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to make sense of things. “No, that can’t be right. If you’re not Lia, then how did you know all those things about me? About us? Like how I lined my cap with alumna-seal because I was convinced Mr. Russell was an alien, or how Lia always said ‘To the sky’ when I pushed her on the swings. How did you know Teal’s name or even my name, for that matter?”

“They gave me some of Lia’s memories before I came, to get me past PsyCorp. That’s how I knew.”

“They?”

“I can’t tell you who.”

“Can’t tell me who? What, like you’re some kind of spy working for a secret Tellurian agency?”

I nod my head.
Yes, Michael. Better for you to think I’m a spy than a bomb.

“So an unnamed secret agency used Lia’s identity and memories to get you onto New Sol so you could spy for them.”

“Something like that.”

“Then these peace talks they’ve been talking about on the viewer all this time are just a smokescreen while the Tellurians plan their next attack. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

He cocks his head and meets my eye. “So what’s your real name, then?”

I hesitate a moment, then admit, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t remember. Not my name, my past, my parents, not even my mission! Something went wrong with my memory, and all I know is that I shouldn’t be here. I’m dangerous, Michael. To you, to Teal, to Taylor, everyone. I have to go before I hurt someone I care about . . .”