“I’m not in shock.”
“A dangerous experience, extreme physical exertion, of course you’re in shock.”
“I wasn’t really in danger—”
“Sometimes I think it would take a nuclear explosion to do you in, as much trouble as you get out of,” he said.
“That almost sounds like a compliment.”
“I’m mostly thinking about how to use that trait to our best advantage.”
That sounded ominous.
After a few more minutes, he asked, “What do you think happened?”
“Rockslide. You saw the way that section of trail was open—that area had a lot of rockfall. Happens all the time.”
“But this time it just happens to fall right when a group of students is walking under it,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was asking a question or thinking out loud.
“Erosion,” I said. “Coincidence.”
“You think they would have had us hiking up there if they knew that rock was about to fall? You don’t think they check that sort of thing?”
“What are you saying?” I was speaking in a hushed tone—we both were. “Someone pushed that rock down on purpose?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
Leave it to Charles to turn a simple accident into a big production. “This isn’t some kind of puzzle for you to solve. It’s just an accident.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, straightforward, like nothing was wrong. “Don’t worry about it.”
Easy for him to say.
15
Back at Galileo, Stanton escorted Angelyn and me to the infirmary. My second visit there in a matter of weeks. I wondered if that was a record? I kept telling her I was okay, I felt fine, I hadn’t gotten hurt, I was just banged up a little. My ribs hurt when I breathed, but they’d get better. She muttered something about stress and made us stay. We sat on chairs next to each other until the nurse arrived. Charles somehow avoided accompanying us, even with his torn-up hands. I didn’t know how.
Angelyn still held a thermal blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She hadn’t said much, and even now her head was bowed. She was shivering, just a little.
“Hey,” I prompted, “you okay?”
She straightened, as if I had woken her up from a nap. “Ms. Stanton says I might still be in shock. That’s why she wants the nurse to look at us.”
I didn’t feel like I was in shock. Sure, I’d been scared—the whole thing was kind of a rush, really. Lots of adrenaline. But I wasn’t sick. Angelyn still looked as pale as she had when she was clinging to the slope. “That was pretty hairy stuff. When I saw you halfway down that rockslide—oh, my gosh, I thought I was going to throw up.” I laughed—not because we’d been in danger, but because we’d survived. I remembered the thrill, when I knew I had hold of her, and she wasn’t going to fall. “But it’s okay. We were smart, we got out of it. We’re okay.”
She hugged herself tighter. “I almost died. I’ve never been that close … to almost dying. I’ve never even thought about it before. Now I can’t stop thinking about it.”
I looked at her. “You weren’t going to die. Maybe get smashed up pretty bad…” Probably best not to go there. “Besides, you can’t think about it all the time. I mean, if you really think about it, everybody’s that close to dying all the time. Our bus could have gone off a cliff, the suborbital could have crashed, some weird disease could sweep through the residence halls—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “None of that could happen, all the safety protocols, everything’s so safe. You don’t have to think about it.”
“You can fall and die spontaneously at any time, really. There was this guy who worked with my mom, back on Mars. One day, he just fell over. Died right there, without a sign or anything. Turns out it was a brain aneurysm. A blood vessel just blew up and killed him. He’d had yearly checkups and they’d never caught it. Thing is, something like that could happen anytime, to anyone—”
“Polly, can you just be quiet, please?”
I slouched and shut up. Thing was, I hadn’t really thought about it before, either. The way I grew up, the way everyone on Mars grew up—we were taught that the planet would kill us if we weren’t careful. An air lock could blow, the power systems could fail. If the colony buildings depressurized, if we went outside without enough oxygen, if the heating system went out—there were so many ways you could die on Mars, you didn’t think about it or you’d never get anything done. That was what I’d been trying to tell Angelyn. But it came out wrong.
It meant you always knew where the emergency breathers were. You were always ready to react.