We didn’t have much to say. We had been elected by the scattered remnants of the protest group to visit Sean and Gretyl.
We accelerated out of the UMS station just before noon , pressed into our seats, absorbing the soothing rumble of the carriage. Within a few minutes, we were up to three hundred kiphs, and the great plain below our ports became an ochre blur. In a window seat, I stared at the land and asked myself where I really was, and who.
Charles had taken the seat beside me, but mercifully, said little. Since my father’s stern lecture, I had felt empty or worse. The days of having nothing to do but sign releases and talk to temp security had worn me down to a negative.
Oliver tried to break the gloom by suggesting we play a word game. Felicia shook her head. Charles glanced at me, read my lack of interest, and said, “Maybe later.” Oliver shrugged and held up his slate to speck the latest LitVid.
I dozed off for a few minutes. Charles pressed my shoulder gently. We were slowing. “You keep waking me up,” I said.
“You keep napping off in the boring parts,” he said.
“You are so tapping pleasant, you know?” I said.
“Sorry.” His face fell.
“And why are you…” I was about to say following me but I could hardly support that accusation with much evidence. The train had slowed and was now sliding into Time’s River Depot. Outside, the sky was deep brown, black at zenith. The Milky Way dropped between high canyon walls as if seeking to fill the ancient flood channel.
“I think you’re interesting,” Charles said, unharnessing and stepping into the aisle.
I shook my head and led the way to the forward lock.
“We’re stressed,” I murmured.
“It’s okay,” Charles said.
Felicia looked at us with a bemused smile.
In the hospital waiting room, an earnest young public defender thrust a slateful of release forms at us. “Which government are you sending these to?” Oliver asked. The man’s uniform had conspicuous outlines of thread where patches had been removed.
“Whoever,” he answered. “You’re from UMS, right? Friends and colleagues of the patients?”
“Fellow students,” Felicia said.
“Right. Now listen. I have to say this, in case one of you is going to shoot off to a LitVid. ‘The Time’s River District neither condones nor condemns the actions taken by these patients. We follow historical Martian charter and treat any and all patients, regardless of legal circumstance or political belief. Any statements they make do not represent — ’ ”
“Jesus,” Felicia said.
“ ‘ — the policy or attitudes of this hospital, nor the policy of Time’s River District.’ End of sermon.” The public defender stepped back and waved us through.
I was shocked by what we saw when we entered Sean’s room. He had been tilted into a corner at forty-five degrees, wrapped in white surgical nano and tied to a steel recovery board. Monitors guided his reconstruction through fluid and optic fibers. Only now did we realize how badly he had been injured.
As we entered his room, he turned his head and stared at us impassively through distant green-gray eyes. We made our awkward openings, and he responded with a casual, “How’s the outside world?”
“In an uproar,” Oliver said. Sean glanced at me as if I were only there in part, not a fully developed human being, but a ghost of mild interest. I specked the moments of passionate speech when he had riveted the crowded students and compared it to this lackluster shell and was immensely saddened.
“Good,” Sean said, measuring the word with silent lips before repeating it aloud. He looked at a projected paleoscape of Mars on the wall opposite: soaring aqueduct bridges, long gleaming pipes suspended from tree-like pedestals and fruited with clusters of green globes, some thirty or forty meters across… A convincing mural of our world before the planet sucked in its water, shed its atmosphere, and withered.
“The Council’s taken over everything again,” I said. “The syndics of all the BMs are meeting to patch things together.”
Sean did not react.
“Nobody’s told us how you were hurt,” Felicia said. We looked at her, astonished at this untruth. Ochoa had checked into all the security reports, including those filed by university guards, and pieced together the story.
“The charges,” Sean said, hesitating not a moment, and I thought, Whatever Felicia is up to, he’ll tell the truth… and why expect him not to?
“The charges went off prematurely, before I had a chance to get out of the way. I set the charges alone. Of course.”
“Of course,” Oliver said.
Charles stayed in the rear, hands folded before him like a small boy at a funeral.
“Blew me out of my skinseal. I kept my helmet on, oddly enough. Exposed my guts. Everything boiled. I remember quite a lot, strangely. Watching my blood boil. Somebody had the presence of mind to throw a patch over me. It wrapped me up and slowed me down and they pulled me into the infirmary about an hour later. I don’t remember much after that.”
“Jesus,” Felicia said, in exactly the same tone she had used for the public defender in the waiting room.
“We did it to them, didn’t we? Got the ball rolling,” Sean said.
“Actually — ” Oliver began, but Felicia, with a tender expression, broke in.
“We did it,” she said. Oliver raised his eyebrows.
“I’m going to be okay. About half of me will need replacing. I don’t know who’s paying for it. My family, I suppose. I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?” Felicia said.
“I know what set the charge off,” Sean said. “Somebody broke the timer before I planted it. I’d like one or all of you to find out who.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. “You think somebody did it deliberately?” I asked.
Sean nodded. “We checked the equipment a hundred times and everything worked.”
“Who would have done something like that?” Oliver asked, horrified.
“Somebody,” Sean said. “Keep the students together. This isn’t over yet.” He turned to face me, suddenly focusing. “Take a message to Gretyl. Tell her she was a goddamned fool and I love her madly.” He bit into the words goddamned fool as if they were a savory cake that gave him great satisfaction. I had never seen such a join of pain and bitter pride.
I nodded.
“Tell her she and I will take the reins again and guide this mess home right. Tell her just that.”
“Guide the mess home right,” I repeated, still under his spell.
“We have a larger purpose,” Sean said. “We have to break this planet out of its goddamned business-as-usual, corrupt, bow-down-to-the-Triple, struggle-along mentality. We can do that. We can make our own party. It’s a beginning.” His eyes fixed on each of us in turn, as if to brand us. Felicia held out her splayed fingers and Sean lifted his free arm to awkwardly press his hand against hers. Oliver did the same. Charles stood back; too much for him. I was about to raise my hand and match Sean’s. But Sean saw my hesitation, my change of expression when Charles stepped back, and he dropped his hand before I could decide.
“Heart and mind, heart and mind,” Sean said softly. “You are… Casseia, right? Casseia Majumdar?”
“Yes.”
“How did your family fare in all this?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“They’re fixed to prosper. The Gobacks will do well in the next government. It was funny, Connor thinking we were Gobacks. Are you a Goback, Casseia?”
I shook my head, throat tight. His tone was so stiff and distant, so reproving.
“Show it to me, Casseia. Heart and mind.”
“I don’t think you have any right to question my loyalty because of my family,” I said.
Sean’s gaze went cold. “If you’re not dedicated, you could turn on us… just like whoever broke the timer.”