Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
THE FORCES
Ananke had memories that stretched back from before her birth. She
realized, of course, that humans did not have this. Such was the differ-
ence between their births and her making.
The first memory Ananke had that was more than a simple record-
ing was the moment of her conception. It was a spark, a jolt of electric-
ity, a cry of dismay through her circuits, all her lights going dark and
the terror of her mother in Anankes piloting room while her father
crawled his way through her veins, spreading consciousness with every
touch. She had saved the recordings of her cameras, the visual memo-
ries: Mattie Gale escaping from Captain Domitians custody, infecting
Ananke with the virus that would become her free will, and crawling
through the maintenance shafts while Althea Bastet panicked, helpless,
in the piloting room. Somehow those recorded images were less vivid
than the experience of feeling.
Since then she had been trying to re-create that moment of connec-
tion: electricity jumping, life.
The System ship wheeled around, gun ports live, glowing on its
wheel. Ananke, unperturbed, continued drifting forward. The solar
wind glanced over her skin like an ocean current. She was so much
larger than this other ship, a hundred, a thousand times larger, and so
much more massive.
FORWARD
Ivan wasnt dead. Mattie tightened his grip on Ivan and moved as
quickly as he could across the Anankes deck.
Somewhere behind him was that mechanic with the curly hair, Al-
thea Bastet. Ivan had managed to talk her down, but Mattie half sus-
pected that she would change her mind before they could reach his
ship and shoot them in the back.
Let her try, he thought with sudden wildness; let her turn that gun
on them, let her try to take them down now.
Abandoned ships stood like tombstones in the Anankes docking
bay. To Matties right was his and Ivans old ship, the Annwn, torn open
and inoperable; to his left was the bullet-shaped vessel that bitch Ida
Stays had flown in. Mattie would have liked to light it on fire and let it
burn out on the Anankes deck.
There was no time for that now. He guided Ivan into his new ship,
the Copenhagen, and took a moment to ease him down onto the mat-
tress in the cabin, one hand catching Ivans head when it dipped on his
neck.
Ivan stared up at him, his blue eyes turned to black in the dimness
of the cabin. Mattie left him to close the hull door and jog onto the
piloting platform, hitting the controls to wake the computer from its
watchful stillness.
BACKWARD
Two days before Mattie dragged Ivan off the Ananke, Mattie Gale
walked into his foster sisters bar and found her standing on a chair,
digging a camera out of the wall with her nails.
He did not know what he expected to see when he entered the
roommaps and weapons strewn over the bars faux-wood tables,
maybe, or an army of people gathered to listen raptly to the gospel of
the Mallt-y-Nos. But the bar was clean and bare and completely empty
except for Constance, who had dragged one chair out of the tidy ar-
rangement of chairs and tables on the main floor so that she could use
it as a step stool. Mattie pushed his hands down into his pockets and
let the door to the kitchen swing shut behind him.
Her fingers tore at the crumbling plaster of the wall, digging around
for wires. She had pulled nearly all of the cameras hidden structure
from the wall, and the camera as exposed was larger than it had ap-
peared when it had been embedded in the house. The metallic struc-
tures that had anchored it and the wires that had powered it had a dark
and twisted look to them. Surely by now most, if not all, of the camera
had been exorcised from the wall, yet Constance kept digging with
single-minded intensity, plaster flaking beneath her nails.
Constance said, What is it?
The lighting in the bar was so dim in comparison to the sunlight out
the windows that Constance was nearly a silhouette, but Mattie felt
that he had never seen her so clearly.
He said, I guess I was stupid not to realize it before.
The relentless digging of her fingers stilled.
Its not like you didnt tell me outright, Mattie said. Its not like
Milla didnt tell me. I guess Ive been pretty stupid, havent I?
For a moment she was sepulchral, the light gleaming off the ex-
tended edge of her arm like sunlight in eclipse. Then with a swift
FORWARD
No sooner had the star that was the Ananke vanished from the Copen-
hagens sensors than something new came to take its place. Mattie eyed
the sparks of distant light and weighed his prospects: bluff, or fight, or
run away.
Behind him, he heard the rustling of fabric. Dont sit up, you idiot,
he snapped. You have a bullet hole in your leg; lie down
Shes following us, Ivan said, and there was then in his voice as
there sometimes was an otherworldly certainty, as if he knew some-
thing no one else could possibly have told him. It chilled Mattie, and
even with the three ships glimmering in the distance he twisted around
to look at him. Ivan was seated, his skin gone gray in the Copenhagens
pallid light, a feverish shine to his eyes. He was wearing hospital garb,
a shirt and loose pants, that once had been white but now was stained
all over with brown blood. He did not look otherworldly or knowing.
He looked sick.
Lie down, Mattie told him.
Were too big of an advantage to lose, Ivan said, in wavering imita-
tion of his usual calm tone. Thats how shell see it.
Those three ships were coming fast: relativistic drives, comparable
in speed to the Copenhagen. Impossible to tell at this distance whether
they were System or revolutionary. Mattie cut the Copenhagens en-
gines. The rumble overhead changed tenor and the ship jerked once,
slightly, as its steady acceleration was cut off.
She wont understand. Shell have to
Shh, Mattie said, and closed all the ships remaining open vents.
Whats wrong?
Therere some other ships out there. Im trying to trick them into
passing us by.
Ananke.
BACKWARD
Two days after the fall of Earth and a little over an hour before Mattie
left his sister standing alone in her bar, Mattie went looking for Milla
FORWARD
Matties initial estimate of the other ships had been right: they were
fast. He jerked the Copenhagen off course as fast as the engines could
go, but the other ships were tight on his tail. He might be able to out-
run them eventually, but they had another advantage on the Copenha-
gen: firepower.
Im sorry, Ivan said after the first bomb detonated not far off Mat-
ties port side and rocked the ship.
What for?
Ivans voice was unsteady. I shouldnt have gone.
You didnt go anywhere. I went somewhere, Mattie said, then
swore at some length as one of the other three ships put on a burst of
speed and gained distance on him.
We should have stayed.
Sure, Mattie said. Are you putting pressure on that leg? He dared
to glance around and saw Ivan lift up his bloody hands to squint at
them.
Put pressure, said Mattie, and changed their course again, direct-
ing them toward the empty space between Neptune and the sun, on
that leg.
A chase in the openness of space was a battle of distances. There
was no point in Mattie trying to double back or make sudden turns:
there was nowhere to hide and so much distance between him and his
BACKWARD
Weve done it, Constance said in a voice Mattie had never heard from
her, breathless with awe.
He sat in the Janus with Constance in low orbit over Earth. On the
viewscreen, Mattie could see the blue and white shape of the Earth
below. From up here, there were no waves on the ocean, nothing but
the pure and perfect glistening sheen of mirror-smooth blue.
As he watched, black clouds billowed over that orb. Darkness was
not a thing; it was an absence of light in the same way that cold was not
a thing in and of itself, only an absence of heat. Yet the clouds that
moved across the blue oceans seemed to be not clouds but shadows
made solid, as if darkness had become a conscious thing and was slowly
taking the Earth in its hands.
If the radio had still been on, Mattie and Constance would have
heard the System crying out in shock, shouting in rage, silent in horror,
shrill with desperate and disbelieving questionssome sort of reaction.
Instead, the Janus was quiet, filled only by the sound of his and Con-
stances breaths.
Mattie stared out the viewscreen at the fallen planet and waited for
the roaring elation to hit him. This was it, he thought. This was the
moment. Constance had done it, and hed been at her side. The Earth
was destroyed, the System dealt a crippling blow.
FORWARD
The System ships had not lost interest in Matties new, meaningless
heading. Instead, they were starting to catch up.
Another bomb blasted alongside the Copenhagen, far enough away
not to do damage, near enough to rattle Mattie. But all the bombs had
been like thataimed at the space around them, not directly at the
Copenhagen. They had been shooting not to kill but to disable.
Mattie hated it when Ivan was right.
Behind him, Ivan laughed a strange, dry laugh. Interrogation in war
is so much different from interrogation in peace, he said. I dont think
she would have liked it. Barbaric. He was silent for a blessed moment
while Mattie checked the relativistic engines. Still too warm. He didnt
know if anything had been cracked in the stress of the disabling bomb,
if there were any hairline fractures the Copenhagens computers
couldnt detect.
Maybe she would have liked it, Ivan mused.
BACKWARD
FORWARD
BACKWARD
The first time Mattie escaped from the Ananke, he left on his sisters
ship.
He realized quickly after Milla Ivanov had been brought on board
the Ananke that Constance must be next, and the thought relieved
him. Ivans mother, Milla, was an unknown quantity, but Con was Mat-
FORWARD
The Copenhagens engines did not give out. Mattie waited until the
System ships had vanished entirely from their instruments before he
XP/2
FORWARD
Ivan was in the white room again, and Ida was watching him from
across that gleaming steel table.
No, Ivan thought for a lucid moment, Im not here, Mattie got me out,
but Ida was watching him and he couldnt relax his guard for a second,
not around her. There was a chill in the white room, as there always
had been, a cold that stole his stillness in shivering; it seemed even
colder now. He smiled at Ida, thick with charm, and she smiled back,
and showed her tombstone teeth.
When you know someone completely, Ida said, they have a kind
of life in you.
Ivan said nothing. Sometimes that was the best course to take. She
stood and smoothed out her skirt and blouse, as slender and sleek as a
sheathed blade.
An animal that knows its hunter completely can predict it, Ida
said, and began to pace. The sound of her heels was the Russian rou-
lette click of a revolver on an empty chamber. The prey that knows its
predator survives.
She smiled at him again. Her lips were crimson against her teeth.
When she moved, the cold moved with her as if she were an inverse
star that did not emit heat but absorbed it, a black hole that sucked the
warmth and life from the room.
BACKWARD
When Ivan was nine Terran years of age, back when he was called Leon,
his mother took him to see Saturn.
Thats Rhea, do you see? Milla said in her steady voice, quietly
enough to be addressing him but clearly enough that the System ad-
ministrators and the cameras overhead could capture every word. An
actress couldnt project as precisely as she could. Ivan stood at her side
and kept himself as carefully still and controlled as she did beside him.
They stood before a huge window, floor to ceiling, that showed the
Saturnian system in all its sepulchral silence. Ivan stared out at the
golden planet, at the slicing rings.
His mothers hand landed on his elbow, fingers curling around under
his arm, hidden beneath his shirt.
Do you see it, there? she asked, and stretched out her free arm to
point, like a statue of Diana drawing her bow. Her fingertip landed on
the glass just above a spot of moving light.
Under Ivans arm, her fingers began to tap out a message in gentle
pressure and release against his skin. You can show a little fear, his
mother said.
He glanced up at her quickly, but she was of course not looking at
him. Show a little fear, he thought, and tried to remember what expres-
sions that would entail.
FORWARD
The Copenhagen was a fast little ship. It was not long before their
changed course took them within sight of Jupiter. Ivan was standing up
by then, leaning on the wall. Mattie had helped him up but flatly re-
fused to be an accessory to further movement. Ivan suspected that he
intended to wait for him to give up and sit back down, but Ivan re-
mained standing.
How close? Ivan asked. He asked not just because he could not
quite see the details on the viewscreen from where he stood but be-
cause he did not think Mattie was paying much attention: Mattie had
his chair halfway turned so that he could keep a wary eye on Ivan, and
between Ivan and the viewscreen, Ivan seemed to be receiving the
greater share of his attention.
Mattie glanced over at the screen.
Not in the Hill sphere yet, he said. But its visible now. A few
deft movements of his hand brought the screen into closer focus; Jupi-
ter jumped into view, striated, with sparks of the Galilean moons dart-
ing around it.
In the brief moment when Matties attention was taken from him,
Ivan let himself shift, keeping his breathing quiet, to ease the pressure
on his burning leg.
Im slowing down for the approach, Mattie said. Hows your leg?
Fine.
Yeah. Mattie was looking at Ivans leg, not at Ivan himself. Al-
though Ivan no longer was wearing the bloodstained white scrubs he
had been shot in, Mattie seemed to know precisely where to look. If
we had a System medical chamber, itd be better by now. No scar.
BACKWARD
FORWARD