Page 87 (1/1)
“That’s true,” Miller said “Nothing personal, but you’ve got lousy taste in friends”
Chapter Thirty-One: Melba
S
he was in her prison cell when they spun up the drum In its previous life, the cell had been soe animals Horses, maybe Or cows A dozen stalls, six to a side, with brushed steel walls and bars Real bars, just like all the old videos, except with a little swinging door at the top where they could shovel in hay Everything else was antiseptic white Everything was locked Her clothes were gone, replaced by a sione She didn’t miss it She floated in the center of the space, the walls just out of reach of her fingers and toes It had taken a dozen atteently, to find just the right thrust for the air resistance to stop her out where nothing could touch or be touched Where she could float and be trapped by floating
The hed and he shouted, but nore The air surrounding her had a slight breeze, the way everything did in a ship She’d heard a story once on the way out about a ship whose circulation failed in the ht shift The whole crew had died fro in their own recycled air She didn’t think the story was true, because they would have woken up They would have gasped and thrashed around and gotten up out of their couches, and so they would have lived People anted to live did that People anted to die, on the other hand, just floated
The Klaxons sounded through the whole ship, the blatting tone resonating through the decks, taking on a voice like a vast tru Then another Then another Then, silently, the bars retreated fro away, and the back wall touched her shoulder like it wanted her attention but hesitated to ask Inch by inch, her skin caainst the wall For aly and her inertia pressing the hands The drum’s acceleration was invisible to her She only felt the spin sweeping her forward, and then because forward, down Her body slid inch by inch, an to take on weight; the joints in her knees and spine shifting, bearing load She re back frorown al the fluid pushed out of theht—spin, thrust, or gravity—was the occasion for the most injury Spinal disks were supposed to be pushed on, supposed to have the fluids go into them and back out Without that, they turned into water balloons, and sometimes, they popped
Her knee brushed the floor, then pressed into it It had to have been an hour or ain, and she let down take her She folded against herself, empty as damp paper There was a drain in the floor, white cerahts overhead flickered and grew steady again The other prisoner was shouting for souard to escort him to the head
It was natural to think of it as the head now Not the restroom Not the water closet She didn’t call for anyone to help her, she just felt her body grow heavier, being pulled down And because down, out It wasn’t real gravity, so it wasn’t real weight It was herrestrained Someone came for the other prisoner She watched the thick plastic boots flicker across her line of sight Then voices Words like loyal and ht and Restore order They washed over her and she let theainst the floor She wanted to sleep, but she was afraid to drea the other way, passing her More voices The boots co taken off the stall’s door Her body didn’t uard was different A woun in her hand She looked at Melba, shrugged, and put a hand terminal into her field of vision
The man on the screen didn’t look like a cop His skin was pale brown, like cookie dough There was soe about the shape of his face—broad chin, dark eyes, wrinkles in his forehead and the corners of his mouth—that she couldn’t place until he spoke and she saw hi up at the ca-down e of security on the Beheht, Melba thought
“You, now I’ot a story to tell The UN records of your DNA says you’re Melba Koh A bunch of people I’ve got no reason to disbelieve say you’re Clarissa Mao The XO of the Rocinante says you tried to kill her, and this Russian priest lady’s backing her story And then there’s this sound engineer who says you hired him to place interruption electronics on the Rocinante” He went quiet for aa bell?”
The case on the hand terreen ceramic Or maybe enameled metal Not plastic A hairline scratch in the screen made an extrascar in a kid’s book
“All right, how about this,” he said “Doctor says you’ve got a s terrorists use when they need to do soive a shit if it turns their nervous syste a et”
It felt strange, the weight of her head pressing against the floor and looking down from the camera into the man’s face both at the sahtless for so long Her brain was still getting used to the spin gravity after relying on visual clues, and now here was this anomalous visual cue She knew intellectually what it was, but the special analysis part of her brain still gnawed at it
The man on the screen—he’d said his naether, then coughed once It was a wet sound, like he was fighting off pneumonia
“I don’t think you understand howyou of blowing up an Earth oddaood You can take it fro They will kill you You understand that? They’ll put you in front of a military tribunal, listen to a couple lawyers for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes Then they’ll blow your brains out I can help you avoid that, but you have to talk to me