Probability Space (31 page)

The air hissed out of the bay, the outside door slid open, and Kaufman flew Magdalena’s flyer out of Caligula Station and toward the space tunnel leading into Allenby System.

*   *   *

She was half dead and half alive, and Laslo was dead.

Something was happening around her, but Magdalena didn’t care what. She would never care again, about anything. None of it mattered. None of it could.

Laslo was dead.

He couldn’t be dead. She could see him too dearly, feel him, smell him, that sweet smell babies have at the back of the neck, where the hair curled, fine as spider silk. He lay in his crib, the pink crease around his plump small wrists like a doll’s. She hefted him, that dense damp weight of small children, and she could feel the bones in his strong back. He lifted his arms, “Up, up, up…” and she lifted him. He rode beside her in the flyer, proud when she let him touch the codepad, craning his head to see better, that head too big for his body the way all little boys’ heads seemed too big for their bodies. He laughed, and it was the most powerful sound in the universe, a sound to work and scheme and cheat for so that he would have everything she had never had, be safe as she had never been safe … she would always keep him safe.…

And now he was dead.

Help me, Sualeen, help me …

She hadn’t been able to help Sualeen, either. Sualeen had died without the one thing she’d wanted most, real headstones for her family. The first thing May Damroscher had done with Amerigo Dalton’s money had been to travel back to Atlanta and buy carved granite headstones for everyone dead in Sualeen’s family. She personally watched them be erected in the cemetery.

The second thing she’d done was hire someone to find the Harris uncle from fourteen months before. When he’d been found, she had him robo-raped. She didn’t watch that herself, or even the holo the man brought her in corroboration. It was enough to know that it had been done, and that the uncle knew by whom.

She could kill for Laslo, but she couldn’t save him because he was already dead. Dead, and no headstone, Sualeen had the best headstone money could buy but Laslo …

“Fire!”

“Got it, sir. Should I file an incident report?”

She hadn’t known anything could hurt like this. If she moved, if she took a deep breath, pain shot through her body like fire. Burning pain, penetrating pain …

“Got it, sir. Should I file an incident report?”

They would pay. She’d make them pay. They’d all pay …

She hurt too much to do anything. Oh, God, let it be me, not Laslo, let this end let it end let it end.

Everything was ended.

She was screaming, and no one could hear her, and the pain of losing him would go on forever and ever.

Laslo
—

TWENTY-FIVE

THARSIS, MARS

W
hen Amanda returned from accompanying Konstantin and Demetria to church, the apartment was empty. Aunt Kristen and Uncle Martin had left a note: AMANDA—HAD TO GO OUT, BACK BY DINNER.

“That’s strange,” Amanda said.

“Excuse?”

She showed him the note. “Aunt Kristen and Uncle Martin went somewhere, but they didn’t say where.”

Konstantin laboriously read the note, and his face brightened. “Demetria to cook splendid dinner at they!” He turned and rattled away to Demetria in rapid Greek. Amanda fought her unease.

Where had they gone? And why did they leave her alone with Konstantin? Of course, Demetria was here. She was answering Konstantin and laughing, her teeth white against red lips and golden skin. They were both so beautiful. Genemod? Maybe. Amanda suddenly felt too pale, too wispy. Too all-one-color. There was a word for that, they’d had it in the vocabulary software, but she couldn’t remember it.

Church had been nice and scary and sad, all at once. It turned out that Konstantin wanted something called a “Greek Orthodox church,” which Lowell City didn’t have. He settled for Our Lady of the Angels. But even though it was Catholic, Amanda could hardly see any way it resembled Ares Abbey. The only singing was by all the church customers, and it was pretty terrible. Amanda, thinking of Brother Meissel and the Holy Office, felt her throat close. Konstantin had noticed her distress and reached for her hand, and that was the scary part. He’d held her hand through all the rest of church. Amanda felt herself go hot, then cold, but she hadn’t pulled her hand away. It was so thrilling. She wished she could tell Yaeko or Juliana or Thekla about it.

But not Daddy. Amanda had a feeling he wouldn’t have liked Konstantin to hold her hand. That made her feel disloyal, which was silly, but she couldn’t help it. Her worry about her father was always there, a vacuum waiting to swallow her.

She’d felt better on the walk back from church. Konstantin had taken her and Demetria to a cafe for breakfast. He seemed to have inexhaustible credit. The three of them had ignored the soldiers with green bars on their caps and eaten greedily, talking in English (Amanda and Konstantin) and Greek (Konstantin and Demetria), laughing at nothing. It had been fun.

Now Demetria bustled into the kitchen and Amanda heard her opening cupboards and taking out dishes. Amanda made up her mind to ask Konstantin something she’d been wondering about, even if the question was nosy.

“Konstantin.… your family is rich, aren’t they?”

“Rich, yes. Much of money. Splendid. I to buy you anything, Ah-man-dah!”

She blushed. That hadn’t been what she meant! “Then why does Demetria know how to cook? Don’t you have a cook? Or at least kitchen ’bots?”

“Yes, of course. Many cooks. Also ’bots. Demetria to cook because she is good Greek woman. At to marry Greek man.”

This made no sense to Amanda. “Then … when you many someday, your wife will have to know how to cook, too.”

“Oh, no! I to marry not Greek. Greek womans not too pretty. You are too pretty, Amanda.”

“Demetria is beautiful!”

He shrugged. “Nikos to think yes. My father to comlink since morning. He to want Demetria by home. He to want I to take Demetria.”

“To Greece? You’re going back to Earth?”

“No.” He smiled. “I say at my father, I not to go. I to stay by Mars. My father to…” he fumbled for the word “… another woman to go for Demetria.”

“He’s sending a woman to take Demetria home?”

“Tonight. She is very good. Friend since many years. She is by Mars now, by Lowell City.”

“Oh,” Amanda said. “Does Demetria want to go?”

“Yes. Nikos to go Greece again. My father is not know.”

Apparently they both defied their father regularly. Amanda couldn’t imagine it. Demetria came out of the kitchen, spoke quickly to Konstantin, smiled at Amanda, and vanished into the spare bedroom, firmly closing the door.

“She to go…” Konstantin mimicked packing “… and to sleep. Before tonight. She to need much of time.”

Amanda couldn’t imagine what Demetria had to pack that would take much time, or why she’d need a nap. Demetria had always seemed to have endless energy.

“Come to sit by me, Ah-man-dah. Now we to can to talk.”

He led her to the sofa in the living room. Amanda had always liked Aunt Kristen’s living room. Simple furniture, and not too much of it. Actual books, a sculpture of a soaring bird, flowers even before Konstantin had emptied Lowell City’s florists. (“They’re expensive here,” Aunt Kristen always said, “but I’d rather have fresh flowers than fashionable clothes. My prime indulgence.”) The view out the third-story window and through the dome: The rocky red plain of Mars, austere and beautiful in the changing light. In Amanda’s father’s house in Massachusetts the living room was dark and frumpy, cluttered endlessly with Sudie’s toys and Carol’s tennis rackets and physics data cubes and everybody’s jackets and shoes and handhelds.

Konstantin said, “I want to say at you something very important, Ah-man-dah. Two somethings.”

Her breath came faster, she didn’t know why. “What?”

“One, I to do anything to help your father, Dr. Capelo. Anything. You to ask, is my father very rich? Yes. Very very rich. I have…” a Greek word Amanda didn’t understand “… at his money. He good by me. I can to get much of money always, not questions. You to need money to get your father, to ask me. Always. Not question: You to understand?”

“Yes. Thank you.” Really, he was so sweet. She didn’t see how money would help rescue her father, but he was so sweet to offer.

“Also, my father to know Admiral Pierce. Big buddies. I to ask my father, my father to ask Admiral Pierce, you want somethings to help.”

“Be careful, honey. Don’t ever criticize Pierce to your new friends,”
Aunt Kristen had said. Was Konstantin just trying to get her to say something she shouldn’t about Admiral Pierce? He didn’t seem like that. But, still …

She was quiet so long that he said, “Ah-man-dah? You to believe me? I to ask my father anythings to help you?”

“I believe you, Konstantin.”

“Splendid. Not money only, also. My father have many flyers, everywhere by Solar System. I know to call by them. All codes. My father to tell me, if I to need transportation quick.”

That
was
impressive. Amanda wished she’d had flyers at her command everywhere in the Solar System during the last months. Konstantin was really important. How come he liked her so much?

“Thank you.”

“Really, yes. I to send flyers everywhere by you say. Two, I to ask you important question. Is okay?”

“Yes, go ahead.” What now? Amanda and Yaeko and Juliana and Thekla had had a lot of discussions about boys and things and, well, sex. They’d all agreed that if a boy ever asked them for sex, they’d say no. It was dangerous and they were too young and it was easier to think about saying no if they all stuck together. Girls needed their friends’ support to combat personal pressure, her school said so. She braced herself, not looking at Konstantin.

He said, “How old you are?”

Was that all! But … if she told him her age, he might not like her anymore. Suddenly Amanda didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want to have sex with him (or anyone), but she didn’t want him to stop liking her, either. He was too wonderful.

She said, “I’m not seventeen yet.” Well, that was true. She wasn’t sixteen yet, either, or fifteen, but she didn’t mention that. She knew she looked older than she was.

“I to think you are more old,” Konstantin said, and Amanda felt pleased.

“Everybody says I’m very mature for my age.”

“Splendid. Your father to let you to visit me by Greece, maybe? He, too, and your family. You have brothers, sisters, mother?”

“I have a stepmother and a little sister. I’d love to visit you in Greece.” She was doubtful her father would take well to this expedition, but after all, she wasn’t a baby anymore and he should take her more grown-up places. Anyway, Carol would take her. Carol was a sweetheart, and let Amanda do a lot more than her father did.

What really felt good was Konstantin’s assumption that her father was going to be around to decide about visiting. Konstantin believed Tom Capelo was coming home.

“Splendid!” Konstantin said. His dark eyes shone. He was sitting very close to her on the sofa, and Amanda felt her chest tighten. “Ahman-dah … I can to kiss you?”

He’d asked before, and she’d said no. Also, Amanda and her friends had all heard that when boys wanted you to get you to have sex, they started by kissing you. From there, everything got complicated. It wasn’t worth it, they’d all agreed.

But suddenly she very much wanted to kiss Konstantin Ouranis.

“If … if it’s just a little kiss, I guess it would be okay.”

He didn’t say “Splendid,” as she expected. Instead he leaned over and gently pressed his lips against hers, his right arm going around her body and holding her as if she were the most precious thing in the entire galaxy. She kissed him back, and such a powerful wave swept over her from head to chest that she actually felt dizzy. She was sorry when he pulled his mouth away.

“I love you, Ah-man-dah.”

The wave ebbed, She was still Tom Capelo’s daughter. “Konstantin, you don’t know me well enough to love me. We just barely met. That’s silly.”

He only laughed. Maybe he didn’t know the word “silly.” But he leaned over again for another gentle kiss, and Amanda found herself leaning into him, and again the wave raced over her and she gave herself up to it.

*   *   *

The door to the apartment opened and Amanda leapt up. She and Konstantin had been lying full-length on the sofa with their arms around each other. She felt the blood rush to her face as Aunt Kristeh and Uncle Martin came into the living room. Konstantin got to his feet more slowly.

“Oh my God,” Aunt Kristen said, which was so unfair! Amanda and Konstantin hadn’t been doing anything bad. They had only kissed. What was wrong with kissing? She wasn’t a baby anymore, and they shouldn’t treat her like one!

Uncle Martin put a hand on Aunt Kristen’s arm. He said calmly, “Hello, Amanda, Konstantin.”

“Hello, sit,” Konstantin said cheerfully. “Hello, Mrs. Blumberg.”

“Amanda, could I see you for a moment in the kitchen?”

She followed Aunt Kristen into the kitchen. “What?”

Aunt Kristen looked stem. “Don’t you think you’re a little young for this sort of thing, Amanda?”

“I’m fourteen!”

“Precisely. Honey, your father would be very upset at this.”

“He thinks I’m a baby. Well, I’m not. And anyway, we weren’t doing anything.”

“I know you weren’t. You’re basically a sensible girl, I know that, and you aren’t even contracepted yet. But you’re so young and he’s such a very attractive young man.”

So Aunt Kristen did understand! Amanda smiled at her. “Yes. But he only kissed me.” She decided not to say how many times he’d kissed her.

“And Where’s Demetria?”

“Taking a nap. Her father is sending someone tonight to take her back to Earth. A chaperone.”

“To take Demetria home but not Konstantin?”

Amanda said, not without pride, “Konstantin is old enough to go where he wants.”

“Which means he’s too old for you, honey.”

Sudden, totally unexpected impatience came over Amanda. She said, surprising herself, “Aunt Kristen, in the last few months three people have tried to kill me. I’ve been in a kidnapping and an illegal ship and a … a revolution. I’m old enough to decide if I can kiss a boy.” And she turned and walked back to the living room, head high and legs trembling, leaving Aunt Kristen staring astonished after her.