Or maybe, something I’m not yet allowed to see.
There are actually people on the outpost who remember Ewing Trekov. They’re old now, but most of them still work in their respective departments.
All of them are willing to talk with me, and after days of interviews, only one seems to have a story that I can’t find in the records.
Her name is Nola Batinet. She wants to meet in the officers’ mess.
The mess isn’t a dining hall, like the mess for regular soldiers. The officers’ mess is divided into six different restaurants, each with its own entrance off the central bar. People in uniform fill that bar. They all have an air of authority.
A tiny woman stands near a real potted plant. The plant is taller than I am, probably taller than Trekov was. It’s bright green, has broad leaves, and smells strongly of mint.
The woman is so small she could hide among the leaves. She seems too tiny to have worked as a doctor, particularly one with as many accolades as she has.
As I approach, she holds out a hand, which I take gently in greeting. The bones are as fragile as I feared. I’m careful not to squeeze at all, afraid I’ll break her.
“We have a reservation in Number Four,” she says.
Apparently the six restaurants here have no names. They go by number.
Number Four is dark and smells of garlic. There are no tables, just built-in booths with backs so high you can’t see the other diners.
A serving unit—a simple holographic menu with audio capabilities— whisks us to the nearest seat. At first, I figure that the unit does so with each customer. Then I realize it’s addressing Nola Batinet by name and has reassured her that they never let her favorite booth go when there’s the possibility that she will come into the mess.
She thanks it as if it were human, nods when it asks if she wants the usual, and then she turns to me. I haven’t even looked over the menu yet, but I’m not really here for the food. I take whatever it is she’s having, order some coffee and some water, and wait until the server unit floats away.
“So,” she says, “Ewing Trekov. I knew him well.”
A faint smile crosses her face as she thinks of him. Her memories—at least the one she’s lost in—are clearly pleasant.
A tray floats over with our beverages and with a large plate of cheeses and meats. I’ve never seen so many different kinds. The meats are clearly manufactured and are composed of so many different colors that I’m hesitant at first.
But Nola has been eating here for decades and seems no worse for it. After she eats a few pieces, I try one. The meat is peppery and filled with the garlic that I’ve been smelling. It’s remarkably good.
“You’re working for his daughter, right?” Nola asks. “The created one.”
“She wants me to recover her father,” I say, even though I’d told Nola this when I first contacted her through the outpost networks. “She thinks he’s in the Room of Lost Souls.”
Nola nods just enough to confuse me. That tiny movement could mean she knows he’s in the Room or that she has heard of this daughter’s whim before. Or it could simply be an acknowledgment of what I have to say.
“Why does she want him?” Nola asks. “She never knew him.”
And I had neglected to ask that question. Or maybe it wasn’t neglect at all. If I knew, I wouldn’t have taken the job, and the job had—in the end— intrigued me.
“It’s not my concern,” I say. “I’m just supposed to find him.”
“You won’t find him,” Nola says. “He’s long gone.”
“How did you know him?” I ask, trying to get the conversation away from my job and back to her.
That small smile has returned. “The way most women knew him.”
“You were lovers.”
She nods. For a moment, her gaze rests somewhere to the left of me, and I know she’s not seeing me or the booth or any part of Number Four. She’s lost in the past with Ewing Trekov.
“You make it sound like he had a lot of lovers,” I say.
Her eyes focus and move toward me. When they rest on me, they hold a bit of contempt. She knows what I’m doing, and she doesn’t like it. She wants to control this conversation.
“A lot of lovers,” she says, “a lot of wives, and more children than he could keep track of.”
Maybe that’s where the disapproval comes from. Riya Trekov isn’t special in Nola’s eyes.
“He didn’t care about family?” I ask.
Nola shrugs. “The man I knew didn’t have time for relationships. Not long ones, anyway. His entire life was about the wars and the entire sector. He saw lives the way we see stars—something far away and yet precious. Individual lives meant something to him only for a few weeks. Then he moved on.”
There’s pain in her voice.
“He moved on from you,” I say as I take some yellow cheese. It’s slimy against my fingers, but I don’t dare put it back.
“Of course he did. Anyone who believed he would do otherwise was a fool.”
But the bitter twist on the word “fool” makes it clear to me who “anyone” was.
“You said that you know things no one else does.” I make myself eat the slimy cheese. It’s remarkably good. Rich and sharp, a taste that goes well with the pepper and garlic of the meat.
“Of course I do,” she says. “And some of it will go with me to my own death.”
It’s my turn to nod. I understand that kind of privacy.
She sets the plate near the edge of the table. Something moving so fast that I can barely see it whisks the plate away.
“But the story I’m going to tell you,” she says, “isn’t one of those. And it’s not something you’ll find in the histories either.”
I wait.
“It’s about his plans,” she says with that secret smile. “He never planned to go to any of the ceremonies, and he wasn’t going to sign any treaties.”
“He told you this?” I ask, mostly because she’s surprised me. Everything I’ve seen says he fully intended to go to the ceremonies. He sent notice as to when his ship would arrive. He had a contingent of honor guards waiting for him on another outpost nearer to the ceremony. He even had a dress uniform ordered special for the occasion.
“No, he didn’t tell me anything,” she says. “At least, not in so many words. He wasn’t that kind of man. I figured it out, years later.”
She figured it out when she remembered what happened that last day. How he’d been, how sad he seemed.
They met in his VIP cabin. It was large and lovely, with a bed the size of her quarters. But he wasn’t interested in sex, although they had some.
He ordered food for them—an astonishing meal for a place this remote. Yet he didn’t enjoy the food. He picked at it, letting much of it go to waste. She couldn’t—she hadn’t had a meal this good since she was stationed here.
But he waited until she was finished before he spoke.
“How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you save lives when you know they’ll just go to waste?”
She didn’t understand what he meant. “Go to waste?”
“Most of your patients here, they’ll get sent back out and they’ll die out there. Or they’ll go home and they won’t be the same. Their families will no longer know them. Their lives will be different.”
“But not wasted,” she said.
He kept picking at the food. He wouldn’t look at her. “How do you know?”
“How do you?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Most of these soldiers I see, they’re children,” she said. “They’ll go home and remake their lives.”
He shrugged again. “What about career military?”