“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” the woman said. Which was probably true on a literal level; she could not accept a favor from someone she was interrogating. “But if you would allow me to sit with you . . .”
“Of course,” Kath Two said, and waited while the woman’s coffee was made. The screen above the counter had cut to a different part of the Epic, consisting of a conversation that had taken place aboard Endurance shortly before the Final Burn, in which Dinah and Ivy had talked each other into believing that Julia wasn’t as bad as all that. Kath Two had always found it a little cloying. People quoted lines from it all the time. It had served as the basis for political movements and parties that had sought to build stronger alliances between the Julians and other races. As such, its timing was fortuitous. Had Kath Two been of a Julian turn of mind, she’d have wondered whether the whole thing had been staged, the playlist’s timing rigged by someone behind the scenes at Quarantine so that she would see it just before sitting down to coffee with this woman. Because that was how Julians were. It was the choice that Eve Julia had made during the Council of the Seven Eves. Her strain, living in relative isolation in their segment of the ring, had intensified it through the selective breeding process known as Caricaturization. Julians had developed huge eyes, sleek ears, and small mouths as part of that; it was the single easiest way to identify one from across the room.
The woman saluted before sitting down. Julians saluted with their left hands, kept off to the side of the face so that the hand never passed through the eyeline. “Ariane,” she said. A common Julian name, derived from the rockets launched from Kourou, which Eve Julia had defended by nuking the Venezuelans. “Ariane Casablancova.” Meaning that she was the daughter of a woman named Casablanca, after the White House.
Kath Two saluted back. “Kath Amalthova Two.” For Kath Two’s mother had been named after the asteroid that had sheltered Moira and her lab through the Big Ride.
Ariane sat down across from her, huge eyes fixed impassively on Kath Two’s face.
“Look,” Kath Two said, “I’m no good at this. I don’t belong to any kupol and I don’t want to join. Just ask me what is on your mind.”
“Just wondering if you saw anything interesting on the surface.”
“My whole point in going there is to see interesting things. I hardly see anything that is not interesting.”
Ariane just sat expectantly.
“I filed a report,” Kath Two said.
“And discussed its contents with Beled Tomov?”
“Yes.”
“But not with Rhys Alaskov.”
“Rhys was asleep when Beled and I were talking.”
“You slept quite a bit as well,” Ariane remarked. “Ten hours on the flivver.”
“I had been flying a glider all day.”
“With frequent naps.”
“Every time a Moiran sleeps in a little bit,” Kath Two said, “it doesn’t mean that we are going epi. Sometimes we are just tired, is all.”
“Time will tell. Now you are journeying to have a face-to-face conversation with your mentor,” Ariane said. “Or so you think.”
“What does that mean?”
“Dr. Hu is not on Stromness. You would know as much if you had coordinated with him. But you didn’t. Instead you made an impulsive plan, spur of the moment, to visit a place with which you have good associations. Something’s troubling you. You are aware that you might be starting to go epi. You won’t discuss it with ‘Doc’ until you are face-to-face with him, in a place where you feel safe. It must be something you observed on the surface. Something unexpected.”
Telling Ariane Casablancova to read Kath Two’s report wouldn’t help. Probably she had already perused it several times. She wanted to hear the story fresh.
“I might have seen a human,” Kath Two said.
“Might?”
“It was a glimpse. From a distance.”
“Not another surveyor—or else you wouldn’t see anything remarkable in it.”
“Surveyors wear bright clothes, for visibility.”
“Beled didn’t.”
“When he was passing near the RIZ, no, of course not. I’m speaking in general.”
“Go on.”
“This person was wearing the opposite. Sort of like—”
“Like what?”
“You ever see pre-Zero videos with hunters? They used to wear clothes that would make them less visible.”
“Camouflage,” Ariane said.
“Yeah. I think this person was in camouflage.”
“Not a surveyor, then.”
“So—military, perhaps?” Kath Two asked. “But the only purpose of military is to fight other military. And I’m pretty sure there’s no other military down there. Unless there’s been some kind of infraction. But if there’d been an infraction, I’d have been warned of it before I was dropped. Hell, they’d have sent a Thor after me.”
“Did it occur to you that it might be a fresh infraction? Which you were the first to notice?”