Tekla was, maybe, cagier than she looked. She anticipated that someone like Dr. Crewe would be horrified by the fact that we were now nuking people. She wanted to get it out in the open right away, while it was still fresh.
Lost in contemplation of the structure of Tekla’s arm, Moira was startled when a large, strongly built man slammed down into the chair next to her. She looked over to see that it was Markus Leuker. He placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of him and contemplated it for a moment, almost pointedly not looking at the video screens with their infinite multiangled replays of mushroom clouds and briefing rooms. Then he turned and looked at Moira, greeting her with raised eyebrows and a nod, and then giving Tekla the same treatment.
So Moira was absolved from having to answer Tekla’s question.
Markus answered it, even though no one had asked him. “I know that I am at somewhat of a disadvantage here because I am a speaker of German, and so there is certain baggage. So. Yes. The baggage is acknowledged. I see the awkwardness of it. The delicacy. But—”
“Did you know it was going to happen?” Moira asked him.
“No, it comes as a complete surprise to me.”
Moira nodded.
“But, had they asked for my opinion, I would have said yes,” Markus said.
“They are all going to die anyway,” Tekla said, nodding.
It struck Moira, just then, that Markus and Tekla were quite comfortable with each other. It made sense. Markus would not be the least bit troubled by Tekla’s sexuality; on the contrary, it would make things much simpler for a man like him if he knew she were unavailable. He was an ex–military pilot; so was she. Naturally they would tend to view certain things in the same way. For a while, during the Cloud Ark’s first year, Tekla had been a sort of itinerant laborer. It might seem strange that a space station could support a person with no particular job. But none of the Scouts had really been expected to survive, so none of them had been sent up with long-term roles in mind. Her alienation from the Russians who took the brunt of the spacewalking work had led her to try her hand at a number of different tasks. She knew the interior of Izzy as well as anyone, but she also knew how to operate the controls of an arklet, and she could put on a space suit and go out and weld things in space. Her period of wandering in the wilderness seemed to have ended when Markus had taken over. Moira was no longer precisely certain what it was that Tekla did for a living. But she now had the clear sense that Tekla was working for Markus directly, that he was trusting her to do something.
“They’re all going to die, yes,” said another voice. “But we’re not.” It was Luisa. She came up behind Tekla and wordlessly asked permission to use the chair on which the Russian had draped her arm. Tekla not only gave it but rose to her feet and pulled the chair out as a courtesy.
“We’re not all going to die, or at least that’s what I’m hoping,” Luisa went on, “and we have all just seen this happen. It’s in our memories now. And not just that. But in a few hours we’ll be taking deliveries from Kourou, reaping the benefits of having used fuel-air explosives and nuclear weapons against people who were basically defenseless. It’s in our DNA now.” Her eyes flicked toward Moira. “If you’ll pardon the poetic imagery, Dr. Crewe.”
Moira gave her a little smile and nodded.
Markus said, “So, do you disagree with it?”
“No,” Luisa said. “Let’s be clear, Markus, I have baggage too. I’m a brown Spanish speaker from South America. I devoted years of my life to hanging out with refugees on boats. And I’m a Jew. That’s my baggage, okay?”
“Understood,” Markus said.
“I’m not down there, I don’t know what advice J.B.F. was getting, what she knew that we don’t.”
“So what is your point?” Markus asked, crisply but politely.
“We have no laws. No rights. No constitution. No legal system, no police.”
Markus and Tekla looked at each other across the table. It was not a sneaky look, or a guilty look, or a conniving look. But it was a significant look.
“It is being worked on,” Markus said. He wasn’t kidding; ever since the Crater Lake Accord had been signed, a whole think tank full of constitutional scholars had been toiling away on it in The Hague, and one of them was now resident up here.
“I know it is,” Luisa answered, “and it is very important to me that atrocities such as what we’re seeing on these screens don’t somehow infect that process. This cannot be business as usual.”