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After the guards closed the door behind her, I got up, pacing the room with my hands clasped behind my back At the Leonardo screen, I stopped and stared Not at the sketch, but at the reflection of theat it It had been three days since I’d left the roonize hly, went through years without a h I personally knew almost three dozen

Even with my hair barbered, my scrub-brush beard shaved away, I looked feral So my years in the room, I’d developed jowls Little sacks of skin puffed under my eyes, a shade darker and bluer than the brown of ray hair nohich I’d known intellectually, but seeing it now felt shocking Quintana’s attacks on me had left no marks Even the knife wound, cared for by the station’s medical expert system, would leave no scar Tie, as it did with everyone If I squinted, I could still ht of when I pictured myself But only traces I wondered how Alberto had been able to bring himself to fuck the tired old ars and choosers

That I would not return to the rooiveninterrogations, hadn’t been allowed to shave My naked, white-stubbled chin bore witness to the fact that I’d surpassed hi hypothesis for one person, then another, then another, then the first again Then they gave one Two thousand pages, and I read it with the kind of longing and jealousy I ied child From the uncanny transit of Eros to the surface of Venus to the creation of the ring gate to the discovery and activation of ates that opened to a thousand empty solar systeret that I hadn’t been there to see it happen

I dropped the egg theory and took up iven me a cheat sheet, a way to pass myself off as better than I was for the Martian I wasn’t concerned hat they thought If they considered ht of theotiation between the Belters and Mars ell My fate was in their hands, as it had been for years now

The door opened and Michio Pa returned The Martian was at her side The same unfortunate skin, the same nut-brown hair My heart beat with a violence that left

“Dr Cortázar?” the Martian said

“Yes,” I said, rushing toward hi my hand out before me like the unfounded presumption of intimacy “Yes, I am That’s me”

The Martian smiled coolly, but he shook my hand No physical contact had ever been more electric

“I understand you’ve ates?”

Michio Pa, at his side, nodded as if unconsciously pro me

“Not in exhaustive depth,” I said “But I have the broad strokes”

When he replied, it was like a punch in the gut “Why did you lie to us at first?”

“About?” I asked, trying to buy time

He sh the expression had no hu cell is monitored and recorded”

No I hadn’t known that Though in hindsight it seemed obvious