Wednesday nodded wordlessly, tears flowing.
“Looks like they lost the liaison network completely,” Martin observed, looking away. What set that off? he wondered. Her family? He wanted to be able to speak freely, to tell her that the scum who’d done it weren’t going to get away, but he also wondered how true any such reassurance would be. “On the bright side, they revalidated our passports.” Including the one in the name of Anita, with Wednesday’s face and biometric tags pasted in. “Liaison,” he said, raising his voice, “what’s this station we’re putting into for repairs?”
The liaison network took a moment to reply. Its voice was slightly flatter than it had been the day before. “Our repair destination is portal station eleven, Old Newfoundland. This station is not approved for passenger egress. Do you require further assistance?”
“That will be all,” Martin said, his voice hollow.
“Old Newfie?” Wednesday asked incredulously, raising her tear-streaked face from Rachel’s shoulder. “Did you hear that? We’re going to Old Newfie!”
Thirty-two hours:
They stayed in their suite as instructed, forcing small talk and chitchat to convey the impression of familial claustrophobia. Wednesday milked her role for all it was worth — her adolescent histrionics had a sharp edge of bitterness that made Martin fantasize about strangling her after a while, or at least breaking character sufficiently to give her a good tongue-lashing. But that wasn’t on the cards. His book-sized personal assist, loaded with nonstandard signal-processing software, showed him some curious patterns in the ambient broadband signals, worryingly tagged sequential pulse trains.
“I’m bored,” Wednesday said fractiously. “Can’t I go out?”
“You heard what the officer said, dear,” Rachel responded for about the fourth time, face set in a mask of unduly tried patience. “We’re diverting somewhere for repairs, and they want to keep the common spaces clear for access.” Wednesday scribbled furiously on Martin’s paper notepad: OLD NEWF LIFE/SUPP DOWN HEAVY RAD. Rachel blinked. “Why don’t you just watch another of those antique movies or something?”
WORRIED ABOUT FRANK.
Martin glanced up from his PA. “Nothing to gain by worrying, Anita,” he murmured: “They’ve got everything under control, and there’s nothing we can do to help.”
“Don’t want to watch a movie.”
“Sometimes all you can do is try and wait it out,” Rachel said philosophic “When events are out of your control, trying to force them your way is counterproductive.”
“That sounds like bullshit to me, Mom.” Wednesday’s eyes narrowed.
“Really?” Rachel looked only half-amused. “Let me give you an example then, a story about my, uh, friend the bomb disposal specialist. She was called out of a meeting one day because the local police had been called in to reckon with a troublesome artist…”
Wednesday sighed theatrically, then settled down to listen attentively. She seemed almost amused, as if she thought Rachel was spinning these stories out of whole cloth, making them up on the spur of the moment. If only you knew, thought Martin. Still, she was putting on a good act, especially under the stressful circumstances. He’d known more than a few mature adults who’d have gone to pieces under the pressure of knowing that the ship had been taken by hijackers, and they were the target of the operation. If only …
He shut down his PA’s netlink and scribbled a note on it, leaving it where she’d spot it when Rachel finished, WHY OLD NEWF? “Anyway, here’s the point. If my friend had tried to rush the crazy, she’d have triggered the bomb’s defense perimeter. Instead she just waited for him to open up a loophole. He did it himself, really. That’s what I mean by waiting, not forcing. You keep looking at the door. Was there something you were thinking of doing out there?”
“Oh, I just need to stretch my legs,” she said disingenuously. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been pacing up and down the floor every half hour as it was. “Maybe p look at the bridge, if they’ll let me in, or see things. I think I left some of my stuff somewhere and I ought to get it back.” She caught his eye and he nodded minutely.
LEFT STUFF OLD NEWF? “What did you lose?”
“Oh, it was my shoulder bag, you know the leather one with the badge on top And some paper I was scribbling on. I think it was somewhere near the, um, purser’s office. And there was a book in it.”
“We’ll see about getting it back later,” Rachel said, glancing up from her tablet. “Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the closet?” she asked.
“Quite sure, Mom,” Wednesday said tightly, B-BLOCK TOILET BY POLICE STATION — GOVMNT BACKUP DISK.
Martin managed not to jump out of his skin. “It was quite expensive, as I recall.” He raised an eyebrow.
“One of a kind.” Wednesday blinked furiously. “I want it back before someone else finds it,” she said, forcing a tone of spoiled pique.
Trying to figure it out, whatever it was that Wednesday had stashed near the police station in Old Newfie, was infuriating, but he didn’t dare say so openly while they might be under surveillance. The combination of ultrawideband transceivers, reprogrammed liaison network nodes, and speech recognition software had turned the entire ship into a panopticon prison — one where mentioning the wrong words could get a passenger into a world of pain. Martin’s head hurt just thinking about it, and he had an idea from her tense, clipped answers to any questions he asked her that Rachel felt the same way.
They made it through a sleepless night (Wednesday staked out the smaller room off to one side of the suite for herself) and a deeply boring breakfast served up by the suite’s fab. Everything tasted faintly of plasticizers, and sometime during the night the suite had switched over to its independent air supply and life support — a move that deeply unsettled Martin.
Wednesday was monopolizing the bathroom, trying to coax something more than a thin shower out of the auxiliary water-purification system, when a faint tremor rattled the floor, and the liaison system dinged for attention. Martin looked up instinctively. “Your attention please. We will be arriving at our emergency repair stop in just over one hour’s time. Due to technical circumstances beyond our control, we would appreciate it if all passengers would assemble in the designated evacuation areas prior to docking. This is a precautionary measure, and you will be allowed to return to your cabins after arrival. Please be ready to move in fifteen minutes’ time.”
The bathroom door popped open, emitting a trickle of steam and a bedraggled-looking Wednesday: “What’s that about?” she asked anxiously.
“Probably nothing.” Rachel stared at her and blinked rapidly, a code they were evolving for added emphasis — or negation. “I think they just want us where they can keep an eye on us.”
“Oh, so it’s nearly over,” Wednesday said heavily. “Do you think we should do it?”
“I think we all ought to play our parts, Anita,” Rachel emphasized. “Might be a good idea to get dressed, too. They might want us to go groundside” — blink blink — “and we ought to be prepared.”
“Oh goody.” Wednesday pulled a face. “It’ll be freezing! I’ll wear my coat and trousers.” And she vanished back into the bathroom.
“Think she’ll be all right?” Martin asked.
Rachel slowly nodded. “She’s bearing up well so far.” She scribbled hastily on her notepad: COMM CENTER? CAUSAL CHANNELS? R-BOMBS?
“Well, we ought to go and see what they want, shouldn’t we?” he asked. “Let me just get my shoes on.”
BACKUPS
“Y’know, it’s funny. For years I’ve had this recurring dream, nightmare, what the fuck. I’d be going about my life just like normal, when suddenly they’d be there. In the background, just — running things. Business as usual, same as it ever is. And I’d shit myself and go to the port and buy a ticket to, like, anywhere else. And I’d get on the ship and they’d be there, too, and all the crew would be them. And then I’d get to wherever the ship was going, and it would be the same. And they’d be all around me and they’d, they’d…”