Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [42]
Jo-Jo scraped his hand across his visor, trying to clean it, but the movement left streaks. On each rotation he glimpsed the lug with Bethany tethered onto its flat back. It was moving away from him.
Beth will make him come back. She will.
Another swipe across his visor made things worse. He could see nothing now.
For long, long, long moments he tumbled sightlessly through space. His mind revisited the sequence of events. Had he made the right decisions? What should he have done differently? What would it be like to suffocate? What would he miss most? Who?
It was the last question that unravelled Jo-Jo completely. There was no one he would miss. No one he cared for enough to grieve over. And worse than that—no one who would miss him. Not a single person to acknowledge his passing.
A sensation formed in his chest and forced its way up to the back of his throat. It would have been a relief to cry then: anything. But it vented itself in a sound that he had never made before: a whimpering animal noise that was part fear but more anguish, a noise that had no end: no intake of breath, no cathartic climax.
‘Josef. Take the tether. We can’t come any closer. You’re going to collide with junk from the detention mod.’ Bethany’s voice was in his helmet, drowning out his own cries.
Why? he asked himself. Why save myself? An answer came that surprised him. Tekton. Tekton, that’s why. The prick will pay.
‘Josef!’ Bethany cried again. ‘Take it!’
Something thumped against his chest. Jo-Jo grasped it automatically with both hands and felt a soft jerk as his momentum changed. He was no longer tumbling away from Dowl but falling towards it. It took him time to steady his forward motion enough to pull himself along the length of the tether.
Finally he felt Bethany’s gloved hand on his shoulder and the solid pressure as his thighs encountered the edge of the barge.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Can’t see anything.’
‘Just do as I say.’ Beth sounded reassuringly composed now. ‘Lift your right knee . . .’
As he followed her calm instructions, Jo-Jo’s rational mind reasserted itself. Shame over his moments of panic welled, and flowed, and subsided. Revenge might not be a noble or even a decent reason for living. But he’d take it.
THALES
The next few days passed in a pattern of conversation and meals which at another time, in other circumstances, would have nourished Thales’s soul. Amaury was truly learned but was neither pompous nor dogmatic with it—in fact, his inquiring mind was so bright and fresh that Thales sometimes felt like the older of the two. Aside, that is, from the calm that Amaury exuded.
For once, Thales and Rene would have been in agreement—no young man could have hoped to have been so at peace with himself.
They enjoyed an undisturbed exploration of each other’s minds, interrupted only by the arrival of meals that were brought in on a cart by a politic guard and left for them to arrange at the table however they wished.
Thales pursued his meditations rigorously, first upon awakening and then later in the middle of the day when Amaury was disposed to nap. He followed his contemplations with a bout of vigorous exercise—running on one spot and other calisthenics suitable for a small area—which he did in the confines of his room so as not to disturb Amaury’s sleep. He then took a protracted bath and returned to their common area where Amaury would be transferring their evening meal from the cart to the table.
The old man seemed to enjoy this ritual, like a mother who was used to supervising mealtimes for her family.
Thales surveyed the present meal with some satisfaction: a choice of tender meats, gingered kumara and salt greens on silver platters, to be followed by a splendid cream pie perched on a crystal tier.
‘A meal fit for the Sophos themselves,’ said Thales as he seated himself.
Amaury did not reply. He seemed oddly distracted.
‘Amaury, there is something I have been meaning to discuss with you. I took occasion to visit The Children