Killing Titan by Bear Greg

Author:Bear, Greg [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780316223997
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

BUG DREAMS AND OTHER ODYSSEYS

They take me to a side chamber, outside and away from the annex. I lie on a small cot: dim lights, cool air. Jacobi and Ishida and Borden stay with me, but Teal is gone. Joe shows up for a minute, then Tak. I don’t want any of them. So fucking tired.

“You did good,” Joe says. “Take a break.”

“Where’s Teal?” I can almost see her next to me, like an afterimage. Did she turn glass? Is she going to be in my head all the time now? “Where are we going next?” I ask.

Jacobi touches my forehead. “He’s got a fever,” she says. Alice blurs into view. Her face swims in the shadows. “It’s the tea, he’s feeling it strong,” she says. “Go to sleep, Venn. Sleep it off.”

“I want to stay with Teal,” I say.

“Not a choice,” Borden says. “She’s getting a rest, too.”

“I need to stay close.…”

“No one who stays will survive,” Mushran says. He looks furtive, disappointed. I know that look. Chain of command. Bad orders.

I try to get up, but Jacobi and then Ishida hold me down. Ishida could hold down a gorilla. “You don’t know that!” I shout.

“Teal isn’t staying on Mars,” Kumar says. “There will be ships enough to carry them back to Earth.”

“All of them?” Jacobi asks, looking up at the others.

Kumar looks away.

“Why didn’t you send them back with their babies?” I ask.

“We could have planned better,” Kumar says. “But this is where we start again.”

“How can I believe any of you?” I ask, woozy, studying them, looking for pressure points, places to put a knife—I want to kill them all, honest to God, I want to fucking gut them. Kumar is aloof, oblivious. In a fight he’d go down squealing like a shoat. Or maybe life doesn’t mean anything to him, not if he can’t be in charge, play the political power game. Maybe that’s it—he’s just a political drone.

Joe pulls up a chair beside Borden. She looks at Joe. He folds his arms and lets Kumar fumble his way through. They’re arguing about something. I’ve missed part of it. In and out. I brush away Jacobi’s hand. Alice is firmer. She takes my temperature. “Same as DJ’s,” she says.

“There is no assurance,” Kumar is droning on. “To keep privilege and power, many on the division boards have deceived and been deceived.”

“What about Mushran?” Joe asks. Mushran appears to have left. Disagreements, arguments… Like listening to my mom and dad yelling at each other in another room, while I lie in bed with the flu. “Perhaps he is still lying.”

“We don’t have any other options,” Borden says. “We’re told by people we trust that the ships are coming, and that Teal and some of the settlers will return to Earth—and that DJ and Venn will continue with us to Titan.”

“Why not take us all to Titan?” I murmur.

“Stop it,” Joe says. “We’re Skyrines.”

“I am?” I shout. “Who the fuck says?”

Joe shakes his head. “We go where we’re told and do what we’re told,” he says.

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