“The oat and raisin isn’t bad. I think it might actually have real honey in it,” Anna said, holding up one of the white plastic squeeze packs. Tilly was no stranger to space travel. Her husband owned estates on every major rock in the solar system. But Anna suspected she’d never eaten food out of a plastic tube in her entire life before this. Any pilot who had the poor planning to put Tilly’s ship at null g during one of her meals was probably fired at the next port.
Tilly picked up a packet of the oat mush, wrinkled her lip at it, and flicked it away with her fingers. It sat spinning next to her head like a miniature helicopter.
“Annie,” Tilly said. “If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I’d have stayed on Earth with my husband.”
At some point Anna had become Annie to Tilly, and her objection to this nickname hadn’t fazed Tilly at all. “You have to eat, eventually. Who knows how long we’ll be out here.”
“Not much longer, if I have anything to say about it,” said a booming voice from behind Anna.
If she’d been touching the floor, she would have jumped. But floating in the air, all she managed was an undignified jerk and squeak.
“Sorry to startle you,” Cortez continued, sliding into her field of view. “But I had hoped we might speak.”
He was scuffing across the floor wearing the magnetic booties the navy had handed out. Anna had tried them, but drifting free while your feet remained pinned to the floor had given her an uncomfortable underwater sensation that made her even sicker than just floating around did. She never used them.
Cortez nodded to Tilly, his too-white smile beaming at her in his nut-brown face. Without asking if he could join them, he used the menu screen on the table to order himself a soda water. Tilly smiled back. It was the fake I don’t really see you smile she used on people who carried her luggage or waited on her table. Their mutual contempt established, Tilly sipped her coffee and ignored his presence. Cortez placed one large hand on Anna’s shoulder and said, “Doctor Volovodov, I am putting together a coalition of the important civilian counselors on this ship to make a request of the captain, and I’d like your support.”
Anna admired the absolute sincerity Cortez managed to pack into a sentence that was almost entirely composed of flattery. Cortez was here because he was the spiritual advisor to the UN secretary-general. Anna was here because the United Methodist Council could spare her, and her home happened to be on the way. If she was on any list of important counselors, then the bar was set pretty low.
“I’m happy to talk about it, Doctor Cortez,” Anna said, then reached for her tea bulb. It gave her an excuse to extricate her arm from his grip. “How can I help?”
“First, I have to commend you on your initiative in arranging worship services for the women and men on the ship. I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it first, but I’m happy to follow your lead. We’re already arranging for similar meetings with leaders of the various faiths on board.”
Anna felt a blush come up, even though she suspected that everything Cortez said was manipulative. He was so good, he could get the response he wanted even when you knew exactly what he was up to. Anna couldn’t help but admire it a little.
“I’m sure the sailors appreciate it.”
“But there is other work we can be doing,” Cortez said. “Greater work. And that’s what I came to ask you about.”
Tilly turned back to the table and gave Cortez a sharp look. “What are you up to, Hank?”
Cortez ignored her. “Anna, may I call you Anna?”
“Here it comes, Annie,” Tilly said.
“Annie?”
“No,” Anna cut in. “Anna is fine. Please call me Anna.”
Cortez nodded his big white-and-brown head at her, blinding her with his smile. “Thank you, Anna. What I want to ask you to do is sign a petition I’m circulating, and add your voice to ours.”
“Ours?”
“You know that the Behemoth has begun to burn toward the Ring?”
“I’d heard.”
“We’re asking the captain to accompany it.”
Anna blinked twice, then opened her mouth to speak and found nothing to say. She closed it with a snap when she realized both Cortez and Tilly were staring at her. Go into the Ring? Holden had made it inside, and it looked like he was still alive. But actually entering the Ring had never been part of the mission plan, at least not for the civilian contingent.
No one had any idea what the structures were that waited beyond the Ring, or what changes passing through the wormhole might make on humans. Or even if the Ring would stay open. It might have a preset mass limit, or a limited power supply, or anything. It might just slam shut after enough ships had gone through. It might slam shut with half a ship going through. Anna pictured the Prince cut in half, the two pieces drifting in space a billion light-years apart, humans spilling into vacuum from both sides.
“We’re also asking the Martians to come with us,” Cortez continued. “Now hear me out. If we join together in this—”
“Yes,” Anna said before she knew she was going to say it. She didn’t know why Cortez was pushing for it, and she didn’t care. Maybe it was to get votes in the Earth elections. Maybe it was a way for Cortez to exert control over the military commanders. Maybe he felt it was his calling. They hadn’t come here as explorers, not really. They’d come here to be seen by the people back at home who were watching. It was why they’d had so many protests and dramas on the way out. Once, this had been about the spectacle, but now things had changed, and this was the answer to the fear she’d seen at church.
The immediate danger wasn’t the Ring. At least not right now. It was humans taking their anxiety out on the nearest enemy they could actually see: each other. If the OPA went ahead with its plan to follow Holden into the Ring, and the UN and Martian forces joined together to follow, no one would have any reason to shoot anyone else. They’d be what they’d started out as again. They’d be a joint task force exploring the most important discovery in human history. If they stayed, they were three angry fleets trying to keep one another from getting an advantage. The whole thing spilled into Anna’s mind feeling very much like relief.
“Yes,” she said again. “I’ll sign it. The things we need to know, the things we need to learn and take back with us to all those frightened people back home. That’s where we’ll learn them. Not here. On the other side. Thank you for asking me, Doctor Cortez.”