“Because she doesn’t know anything or because she’s recalcitrant?”
Vladimir took a replacement lens from a rack on the nearby table, carefully handling it by the edges, and slotted it cautiously in an arcane machine. A circle flared briefly around him, a swirl of dancing letters that disappeared as fast as they had materialized.
“I’m not certain,” Vlad admitted, breathing an obvious sigh of relief as he screwed in the new lens. “But since our own dear Alice Gallow is involved, I wouldn’t put any money on her holding out. She’s seems traumatized, if that’s even possible with these creatures. Rebecca suspected that they might not have emotions at all, or not the same ones as us, but that they have learned to mimic ours to their advantage. She certainly seems frightened of Alice, but who isn’t? Go talk to her, if you are curious.”
“I might,” Gaul said, looking through the glass at the women on the other side. “How are you holding up, Vlad?”
“Better than most,” Vladimir retorted, glaring at Gaul. “And if that’s what you came down here to discuss, then you wasted your time.”
“If you say so,” Gaul said, turning back to the window. “How do I talk to her?”
The lights were already on in the kitchen when Anastasia walked in, glad she’d bothered to put on a nightdress. She cleared her throat and then waited politely for Emily to notice her.
“Oh,” she said, looking up from the refrigerator. “I guess you didn’t have enough dinner, either?”
“No,” Anastasia admitted, walking into the kitchen, the silk of her slip moist with the humidity of the night. “I have this problem with cooks. The ones that aren’t vegans hate cooking for me because I’m a vegan. The vegan ones are all so crazy that I can’t stand to eat their food three days in a row. Have you ever had a jackfruit-and-tofu scramble? Because I was served one, and I’m still not sure if it was an attempt on my life or a sincere effort to feed me.”
Emily laughed, closed the refrigerator and opened a nearby cupboard, stretching to see what was on the upper shelf. The t-shirt she wore was tight enough that it had to stretch to accommodate the movement.
“You’ve lost weight,” Anastasia observed.
“Thank you,” Emily said brightly.
“And that’s why you’re here…”
“Yeah,” Emily said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I never actually eat enough at dinner these days. Oh! Do you want popcorn?”
“Yes. Yes, I do want popcorn,” Anastasia said seriously. Blitzen came wandering cautiously in, following his mistress’s voice. His head emerged from the door tentatively, until he determined that the staff, who would not have tolerated him in the kitchen, were nowhere in sight. He sidled up next to them and nudged Anastasia’s hand until she relented and scratched behind his ears. “Emily, why aren’t you with Alex? It’s only ten…”
Emily’s smile was utterly joyless.
“He fell asleep,” Emily said resentfully. “Do you know where the popcorn maker is?”
In fact, Anastasia had only been in the kitchen on a half dozen occasions in her entire life, and didn’t know where anything was. As such, she was reduced to helping Emily open the dozens of identical, white-painted drawers, hunting for anything that resembled a popcorn maker. At the very least, she managed to salvage some of her ego by being the one to find it, on her fifth try. She still had to let Emily operate it, though, since she understood the making of popcorn only in theory.
“Anastasia, can I ask you something? Are your… what are those, um, things on your slippers?”
“They are Domo,” Anastasia said helpfully, pointing at them. “These are Domo slippers.”
“I see,” Emily blinked. “They’re cute. Where did you get them?”
“Same place I get everything,” Anastasia said with a shrug. “Tokyo. I have Svetlana take me there every so often so that I can go shopping in Shinjuku. They have all the cutest stuff, and my build,” Anastasia said, grimacing, “is common in Japan. That makes shopping easy.”
“That’s amazing,” Emily said, raising her voice above the whirring motor of the air popper. “I can’t believe you go all the way around the world to go shopping. That sounds so cool.”
“Would you like to go?” Anastasia asked, searching cabinets for salt. “We could go sometime during break. Sveta can take us.”
“Could we?” Emily asked, excited. “Of course I’d love to go! I don’t have any money, but it would be fun to see. I haven’t really been anywhere exciting before this.” Emily waited until the popcorn was finished, and Anastasia returned with a saltshaker, before she went on. “Anastasia, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate it, but I have to ask — why are you being so nice to me?”
“Am I? I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it is because you are the first people from outside of my family or cartel to visit this place, and I want you to get a good impression.”
“Maybe,” Emily said, looking dubious. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
Anastasia nodded and headed toward the room with the giant television in it.
“Yes, but probably not the same one you want to watch…”
Negotiations followed. They settled on Heavenly Creatures, because they were both feeling maudlin. Emily cried a little, near the end, but Anastasia remembered it being better.
“I would appreciate it if we could have a frank conversation, Evelyn.”
The woman rubbed her wrists and looked befuddled by her surroundings. Gaul tried to remember Rebecca’s warnings about the relative humanity and the possible falseness of their emotions, but it was hard. The woman seemed genuinely distressed, and he didn’t like being a party to it. The room they were in was sterile white except for the bare wooden table they sat at and the plastic chairs they occupied. It looked like a disused meeting room, not an interrogation chamber, but Gaul still felt like an inquisitor. Normally, he thought resentfully, he had people for this sort of thing.
“Whatever you want,” Evelyn said, nodding accommodatingly. “I always cooperate. You don’t have to force me.”
“I hadn’t planned to,” Gaul said distastefully. “Can you tell me, please, Evelyn, your relative position in the Witch hierarchy?”
Evelyn ran a hand across a head made bare, and Gaul felt a dull guilt.
“I can, but you won’t like the answer,” Evelyn said flatly, looking at the table. “I’m nobody special. I don’t know how to make a comparison to your standards, but I’m about as low as our totem pole gets, without being like you people.”
“Then what would the relative worth of a captured Operator be?”
“It depends what they are using them for,” Evelyn explained dully. “If they took them prisoner, and they are still alive for you to recover, chances are they wouldn’t trade to get me back because they have some specific use for them. Otherwise, they would have gotten rid of them a long time ago. There’d be no precedent for something like an exchange, anyway. We are expected to hold our own.”
“Is there someone I could talk to? Someone who might be concerned about your wellbeing? Or might want to see you returned on the basis of security?”
Evelyn shook her head hesitantly.
“A superior? A central organization?”
“You don’t understand,” she said, with something that sounded like pity, as impossible as that was. “You couldn’t possibly understand. We aren’t organized that way. I told you all right from the start, but none of you believed me. We have a… an awareness of each other. There is no word to describe it. Nothing that you have done has restricted, in any way, my connection with them. You may as well be talking to them directly when you speak to me. They do not care what happens to me. Understand this, please — I am very, very afraid. I do not want any more bad things to happen to me. But they do not care.”