The commander knows that, too. But what can he do? Order her shot, theoretically, since the Beacon Muster and the civilian government have joint control of the mission. But short of the nuclear option, he’s got nothing. The colonel was right about that. And shooting her would be such an outrageously stupid move that she doesn’t even feel scared. They’re short-handed already, running out of time and options and ideas. Not a good time to lose one member of the team and traumatise the rest.
But she has underestimated Dr. Fournier. He has one last shot left in his locker. Four shots, actually, and the locker in question is the medicine locker. The four packages must have been sitting on his knee all this time. He lays them out on the flimsy folding table now as though the two of them have been playing poker all this time and he’s putting down a pat hand.
Laminaria in a big, bulky box.
Oxytocin pills.
Misoprostol suppositories.
And Digoxin, in a tiny plastic bottle like a nasal spray—with an eight-inch hypodermic syringe taped to it for ease of use.
Khan stares at the pharmacopoeia, at first in polite surprise and then in queasy wonder.
“You’re kidding me,” she says without inflection.
“No,” Fournier says. “I’m not. A late-term abortion in this instance is the only course of action that—”
“Late term? That’s what you call this?”
“—the only course of action that will guarantee your safety and allow the mission to proceed in—”
Khan’s incredulous laugh cuts through the mealy words. She shakes her head. “Shut up,” she says. “My God! Shut up right now.”
“Rina.” Fournier chides her, seriously affronted. “I’m thinking of you here.”
That makes her laugh again. “Then think of someone else!” She picks up the ampoule of Digoxin strapped to its little rocket-ship hypodermic, holds it up for him to see. “You think I didn’t consider an abortion?” she asks him. “Seriously? You think that never occurred to me? Seven weeks out, in Luton … right after I found out, I got the methotrexate out of the cabinet and I sat there in my bunk with two little white pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other. I thought it through, Dr. Fournier, and I decided not to go for it. So it’s not likely I’d wait until my baby is almost ready to be born and then stick a needle in its chest to induce a fucking heart attack.”
It’s a heartfelt speech and she holds to every word of it, but Fournier tries one last blustering end-run. He puts on a consultative face and leans forward across the table, like a hanging judge who wants to discuss drop heights and thicknesses of rope. “Until we can re-establish contact with Beacon, Rina, I’m the sole authority on board Rosie. I’m suggesting that you do this for your own good and for the good of the rest of the crew. A baby will divert resources and distract us from the job we’ve undertaken to do. On my authority as mission commander—”
“Your authority ends at my skin,” she reminds him.
“But the risks, Rina. The risks associated with the birth itself, and then the difficulty of keeping a baby alive out here. Having to take you out of the roster …”
She waits him out. But he started that sentence without knowing how to finish it, and now he’s all out of ideas. If he tells her it’s just a little prick with a needle, she’ll probably have to brain him with the table.
Fournier shoots a haunted look at the recorder, capturing every word for posterity. It seems to have a chilling effect on his eloquence. About time!
Finally he gives in and dismisses her. “I’ll refer this to Beacon as soon as comms are up again,” he warns. “Obviously I’ll protect you as far as I can, but the ultimate decision is in their hands. There will be consequences for this.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Khan says. “Thanks for your support.”
“You’ll get no exemption from your duties. And when the baby is born, you will continue to receive a single ration. I can’t make exceptions for you because of these unwarranted circumstances.”
She makes her exit without another word, because she really can’t think of any. Her sense of relief at getting out of the sweat box is tempered by a very strong urge to go take a shower so she can wash this whole conversation off her skin. But the roster puts her next turn in the shower at 4.00 p.m.
In the lab, Akimwe and Penny and John Sealey are prepping the tissue samples and keeping up a determined pretence that they weren’t trying to eavesdrop through the closed door. Khan closes the engine-room door, but then runs out of steam. Out of volition. She rests her body, which is feeling heavy and awkward and bloated, against the cold steel of Rosie’s bulkhead.
John finds a way to get in close to her, pretending to stack some petri dishes in the steriliser. “Hey,” he murmurs, letting his forearm rub up against hers. “You okay?”
“Leave it,” she tells him tersely. “I’m fine.” And she is. Fournier can go screw himself. If they get Beacon up on the radio again … well, then that will be a different situation and she’ll deal with it when it comes.
They’re all of them waiting for that moment. The lab and the crew space and the cockpit all one big pent-up breath waiting to be breathed out. All of them separately asking themselves whether no news is—
Wait. All of them?
With a sudden sense of vertigo Khan realises what’s wrong with this scene. What’s missing.
“Where’s Stephen?” she demands. “John, where the hell is Stephen?”
7
Stephen Greaves stands stock still, frozen in a posture he has held without a break for most of the afternoon. He is simply and perfectly happy: a happiness made of observations and inferences. His brain is a computer. Nothing perturbs its dispassionate calculations.
He is in the water-testing station at the eastern end of the loch, in the main pump room. He is not alone there. Hungries surround him, and will attack and devour him if they notice he is there—that is, if he moves too suddenly or makes any loud noise. They will not detect him by scent: the chemical gel smeared over his body protects him, makes him smell like nothing much at all instead of like a meal.
The discomfort of standing so still for so long doesn’t trouble Greaves over-much. He has refined the skill over a long time. He started practising the day after his thirteenth birthday, two years ago, when Dr. Khan first told him that his name was on the longlist for the Rosalind Franklin’s crew. Close observation of the hungries was clearly something that would be highly desirable, so he trained himself in the necessary skills. He feels the strain, of course, but he lets it lie at the outer limits of his perceptions, all but ignored. This is not so bad. He has chosen a position that puts minimal strain on his arms and legs, braced in an angle of a wall so that he can even lean back and relax a little if he gets tired.