Stephen is parsing these words as he steps into the lab, and one word in particular. Voices, plural.
Rina is standing at the work station beside the freezer. Actually she is leaning forward with both elbows on the bench. Her face is close up against the eyepiece of the TCM400 inverted phase microscope but her eyes, Greaves can see, are closed. They come open slowly as he pulls the bulkhead door across, and she turns to face him. She seems to have expected him, or at least she shows no surprise at his arrival.
On Stephen’s side, the surprise is absolute. He has come here to be alone. To do work that nobody else must see. And for a moment he mistakes the vials and jars on the bench in front of Rina for his own samples. But they’re not. They’re the last batch of legacy cultures from the Charles Darwin, the ones that Private McQueen and Private Phillips brought down from Ben Macdhui the day before. Back when Private Phillips was still alive, along with Dr. Sealey and Dr. Penny.
So long ago.
Rina comes away from the bench with a wince of pain or effort, and crosses to where Greaves is standing. In this constricted space, it takes only four steps. She stares into his eyes. Normally she would know not to do that, would remember how hard it is for him to bear the searchlight beams of other people’s gaze. Her own eyes are open very wide, the full circumference of each pupil clearly visible, and her irises are bigger than he has ever seen. They don’t constrict at all, although the fluorescent tubes are very bright. Shadows like bruises underline them with savage emphasis, visible even on Rina’s olive skin.
“What did you do to me?” she asks him. The words come out low but forceful, with a growl of exhaled breath. She smells of sickness. Her breath is freighted with bile and medicine.
“Rina,” Stephen says. And for a moment that is all he can offer her. Her own name, like a badge, like an incantation to conjure her back into herself.
She clutches at the lapels of his pyjamas and drags him close with surprising strength. “What did you do?” she repeats. Greaves is still struggling with the words, still not quite able to marshal them into a coherent sequence, but in any case Rina lets him go, as suddenly as she seized him. Her fingertips scrawl wavering lines down his chest as she turns away. Abruptly she sits down, in the middle of the floor. Her head sinks onto her clenched fists.
“It wasn’t you,” she mutters. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. John is dead, and I feel … I don’t feel enough. It’s as though I’m a long way away from you all. From everything here. None of it is real.”
Greaves is filled with dismay. Rina is reporting altered affect, which probably means that the inoculation’s effect is wearing off. He has to make up another batch of serum immediately, using the new tissue samples he took from the dead children after he repaired the treads.
Also he has to answer her questions. Holding back the truth—although he has done so recently, with terrible effect—is for him like stopping a truck from rolling down a steep slope just with his hands.
He dumps the sampling kit down on the workbench and starts to remove the individual containers from their receptacles.
“It was,” he says. Quickly. Running across a minefield made of words. “It was me, Rina. One of the children bit you and I had to stop you from changing. I gave you medicine I made out of the dead boy’s cerebrospinal fluid. I came in here now to make some more.” He holds up two of the sampling tubes, one in each hand, to show her; but Rina isn’t looking at him. Her head is drooping at an odd angle on her neck, as though it is too heavy to hold up, and she is staring with wide-open eyes at her bandaged arm. The bandages dangle loosely: at some point she must have removed the dressing and looked inside. She must have seen the bitemarks on her forearm.
“Yes,” she mutters at last. “I knew that, really. I just forgot.”
Memory lapses. Another warning sign. He has to do this now, and he has to do it right.
He tells Rina the whole story as he works, in great haste, to prepare another batch of the serum. He doesn’t really believe she’s listening. He is just throwing out the words in the hope of holding her there—her consciousness, her Rina-ness—for a few minutes longer. He throws out questions, too. Does she remember what happened after they got back inside Rosie? How he locked the door, and how he pushed Dr. Fournier back into the engine room? “You should have seen his face, Rina,” he babbles. “You would have laughed!” It’s only a guess. Not even that: it’s something people say, about strange and grotesque moments when people act out of character or something unexpected happens. You should have seen their faces!
He can’t look at her face, as he mixes and filters the live vaccine. He draws off seven millilitres, which leaves about twenty-five in the retort. It’s a slightly bigger dose than before, but with the ingredients in exactly the same ratio. What he did before worked: he can’t afford the luxury of experimentation.
Remembering the traumatic wrestling match that happened last time Greaves stays away from Rina’s neck and injects instead into the median cubital vein, inside her left elbow. Rina helps, tapping the vein to make it dilate and protrude. That reassures him, but only for a moment. Does it mean she understands what he’s doing, or is it only a muscle memory stimulated by the sight of the hypo?
He kneels beside her and waits in a nightmare of anxiety for her to respond. To say or do something that will tell him whether she’s still there with him or gone for good. His interior clock keeps time: he can’t turn it off. For seventeen desolate, drawn-out seconds there is nothing.
Then she reaches out and touches the back of his hand. With the tip of her index finger.
He lets out a held breath, trembling all over with relief.
“Hey,” Rina whispers weakly. “Stephen. When did you get here?”
“Hey,” Greaves answers. His voice thickens and he can get no further.
Dr. Khan’s head comes up, slowly. Their eyes meet. Only for a moment this time. She knows to look away at the moment when he starts to tense. But her fingertip presses harder against his skin. “I need a drink,” she croaks.
They can’t go through to the crew quarters without passing under Sixsmith’s gaze, and neither of them is ready to do that. Also, it would be impossible for them to talk in there. Rina has some instant coffee hidden away at the back of a shelf, a precious store that John found on one of the forays they made when they were heading north. She draws off water from one of the stowed drums into a beaker and heats it with a Bunsen burner. They sit side by side on the workbench, their legs dangling, and take alternate sips. It’s too bitter and too hot: the only comfort it brings is from the fact of their sharing it.
They talk in low voices.
“So how did Alan react when you told him?” Rina asks.
“When I told him what?”