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She touched the screen with the tip of her finger

“Look again,” she said softly “Look close”

He turned, bending toward the data as if there were so there to discover She looked at his bent neck like sheainst the roof of her mouth twice, and calm descended on her

His neck popped when it broke, the cartilaginous disks ripping free, the bundle of nerves and connective tissue that his life had run through co the base of his skull until she felt the bone give way beneath her palm, and then it was time to move the body Quickly Before anyone walked in on them Before the crash came

Fortunately, there was only a little blood

Chapter Twelve: Anna

T

wo hours into an interfaith prayer , and for the very first time in her life, Anna was tired of prayer She’d always found a deep co infinitely larger than herself Her atheist friends called it awe in the face of an infinite cos about the sa didn’t bother her at all It was possible she was hurling her prayers at a cold and unfeeling universe that didn’t hear theiven ifts, and she valued it But the one i it had taken aas the value of subjective, personal experience That had been replaced with the idea that only measurable and testable concepts had value But humans didn’t work that way, and Anna suspected the universe didn’t either In God’s i a tenet of her faith

At first, thehad been pleasant Father Michel had a lovely deep voice that had thy and heartfelt prayer for God’s guidance to be upon those ould study the Ring had sent shivers down her spine He was followed by an elder of the Church of Huh severalenergized and refreshed She made a note in her hand terive it a read Not all of the faiths and traditions represented on board took a turn, of course The iive a short speech in Arabic that soh her earbud When he ended with Allah hu akbar, several people in the audience repeated it back Anna was one of thereed with

But after two hours, even the un to wear on her She began counting the little plastic doood at spotting them since the atte off to think about the e she’d send to Nono later The chair she sat in had a very faint vibration that she could almost hear if she remained very still It must have been the ship’s an to develop a rhyth under her breath She stopped when an Episcopalian in the seat next to her pointedly cleared his throat

Hank Cortez was, of course, scheduled to go last In the weeks and months Anna had been on the Prince, it had becoe of the interfaith portion of the Ring expedition, Doctor Hank was treated as a sort of “first a equals” Anna suspected this was because of his close ties to the secretary-general, who’d made the whole mission possible He also seemed to be on a first-name basis with many of the important artists, politicians, and econoroup

It didn’t really bother her No ht start out, so a leadership role Better Doctor Hank than herself

When the Neo-Wiccan priestess currently at the podium finally finished her rites, Doctor Hank was nowhere to be seen Anna felt a little surge of hope that the prayer service would end early

But no Doctor Hank made his entrance into the auditorium trailed by a camera crew and bulled his way up to the podiu s sure to end with the section the camera people had set up in

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “let us bow our heads and offer thanks to the Aluidance as we draw ever closer to the end of this historic journey”

He ed to rattle on that way for another twenty ain

After, Anna met Tilly for lunch at the officers’ mess that had been set aside for civilian use Anna wasn’t exactly sure how she’d wound up being Tilly’s best and only friend on the trip, but the wo and burrowed in like a tick No, that wasn’t really fair Even though the only thing she and Tilly had in common was their carbon base, it wasn’t like Anna had a lot of friends on the ship either And while Tilly could appear flighty and exasperating, Anna had gradually seen through the mask to the deeply lonely woman underneath Her husband’s obscene contributions to the secretary-general’s reelection caht as a civilian consultant She had no purpose on the mission other than to be seen, an extended reminder of her husband’s enor else to offer the group only made the real point clearer She knew it, and everyone else knew it too Most of the other civilians on the flight treated her with barely concealed contempt

While they waited for their food to arrive, Tilly popped a lozenge in her mouth and chewed it The faint s on o?” Tilly asked, playing with her silver-inlaid lozenge box and looking around the roo a pants and blouse combination that probably costshe hen she wanted to appear casual

“The prayerVery, very long”

Tilly looked at her, the honesty getting her attention “God, don’t I know it No one can blather on like a holy man with a trapped audience Well,as waiter for the VIP civilians Anna wondered what he thought of that The UN military was all volunteer He’d probably had a vision of what his military life would be like, and she doubted this was it He carefully placed their food in front of theave them both a smile, and vanished back into the kitchen