I don’t ask what the disturbance is. They’ve already told me they don’t know, and a commander doesn’t waste questions on answers that don’t exist. I ask the only thing that’s mine to decide.
“When do we leave.”
“Immediately.”
Chapter 8
Brock
The Earth kit comes out of storage smelling like the last time we wore it — long enough ago that the jeans have gone stiff in the folds and nobody’s sure anymore whose boots are whose.
We don’t cross often. Every few years something drags one of us over and back, and in between the clothes sit in a box getting stranger, because every trip somebody adds to the pile and nobody ever throws anything out. It’s less a wardrobe than a record. You can date our crossings by what’s in there, if you know how to read it, and I do.
Gunnar pulls his favorite free of the heap and holds it up for judgment. POWERED BY BACON, over a pig that seems pleased about the arrangement.
“The people’s shirt,” he says.
“You’ve worn that the last three crossings.”
“Because it works. Humans see it and they trust me.”
“Humans see it and cross the street.”
He pulls it on anyway, and I watch him do it — the small satisfaction of a man putting on armor he’s decided is lucky. Gunnarbelieves in luck, completely, and would deny it to his grave. It’s one of the more honest things about him.
Rayner’s already in his — jeans, a soft gray thing washed pale at the seams. KEEP CALM AND TAKE A NAP. On anyone else it’s a joke. On the one of us who hasn’t slept right in a week, it isn’t, and he knows it isn’t, which is why he picked it. He catches me reading the shirt, then reading him under it. He grunts, goes back to what he was doing. That’s Rayner telling me to leave it. I note that too.
On top of Leif’s pack, folded into a square with corners you could measure: the cat shirt. Black, a cat on the front with lasers coming out of both eyes. He’s brought it every crossing for as long as I’ve known him, and every crossing one of us starts in on it, and not once has he given us the reaction we’re hunting for. Gunnar’s been at it for decades. He throws everything he has at that shirt and Leif just looks at him until he runs out of words, every time. It is, without competition, my favorite part of going to Earth.
Mine says, accurately, I WANT TO BE A NICE PERSON BUT EVERYONE IS JUST SO STUPID. Gunnar gave it to me two trips back as an insult. He’s never once worked out that it just happens to be true, and I’ve never told him, because watching him wait for me to be offended is a small renewable pleasure and I’m not made of stone.
Leif isn’t dressed yet.
He’s at the table with the long case open — the one we don’t take on ordinary work — fitting the heavy comm down into the foam, slow, each catch seated by hand. The one built to hold a signal through anything.Through the disturbance.He hasn’t said it. He doesn’t have to; I’ve been reading Leif for centuries and the man packs his conclusions before he speaks them. If he’s bringing that case, thenwhatever’s wrapped around Erik is the kind of thing that swallows a signal whole, and he decided that hours ago, and he figures the rest of us will catch up eventually.
I hope the case is enough. I don’t say that either.
Nobody’s said the obvious thing yet. We’ve been circling it for an hour, all four of us.
Erik.
Gunnar breaks first. He always does. It’s not weakness, it’s just how he is — the man can’t help himself.
“He’s alive.” To the room. To nobody. “Three years, and the bastard’s alive.”
“Told you,” I say.
“You did not.”
“Six months in, you said—”
“That’s not—”
“—and I’m quoting — ‘we should clear his quarters.’”
“That’s logistics.”
“You wanted his boots.”
