The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 3 by George Mann

Author:George Mann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781844165995
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2009-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

SHE NEEDS TO talk to someone about her unfortunate find, but she doesn’t know to whom. She has no idea whom she can trust with the sordid truth she’s been carrying, and with the unexpected evidence that has lingered on past X-ta’s end to haunt her. She examines each entry in her directory, considers carefully, and then discards everyone she knows. She sees, as she one by one weighs and measures her friends and acquaintances, that her relationships have never been as open and honest as she’d thought they were.

She has no one.

Then she remembers N-tro. She senses from the way he’d held himself, from the way he’d looked at her, that her husband’s supervisor might be able to take this burden from her. She decides that she will go to see him at the chromatorium, a site not as familiar to her as it should have been. She had never visited X-ta there until his memorial. There had been no urgency. There had never seemed to be any urgency. Until now.

She senses N-tro’s concern radiating toward her the moment she enters his control station. Before he can even Voice her how he can help, she explodes with information. She tells him everything. About her husband’s desires. About her feelings of responsibility for his death. About the suit. Speaking of the suit is the most difficult of all.

Once her stream of data stops, N-tro moves closer to her. He places a hand on one of her shoulder pads, and she feels a gentle pulse of electricity radiating outward to comfort her. She shouldn’t blame herself, she hears him say. Leave it all to him. Let him help her decide what’s the best step to take next.

Strangely, as she leaves him, she feels slightly better. With X-ta gone, she never expected her mood to improve again. That only lasts until she reaches the chromatorium’s outer corridors, at which point she passes a gathering of workers heading in the opposite direction, off to their appointed tasks. Once, X-ta might have been among them. As she continues on, she realizes that some of them had been familiar faces, faces she had only seen previously at X-ta’s memorial service. Her partner’s supposed friends. Her circuits sink, and before she can remind herself to calculate the consequences of all possible actions, she turns and rushes back to them.

“I know what you did to my husband!” she says to them, suddenly not caring who hears. “You’re degraded. You’re all degraded.”

“And I know what you didn’t do to him,” one of them replies. His exterior is scratched and dented, and she can see only a few remaining flecks of the enamel sheathing which had once covered him.

S-tr is shocked by his unexpected response, too frozen to come up with one of her own. What could X-ta and he have had in common? He reaches out to touch the side of her head, so that when he communicates again, only she can hear.

“If you really want to know who your partner was,” he transfers, “You will come tonight when I Voice you.

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