to explain to Abdikadir. Its just a phone. I was given it when I was twelve years old. Every child on Earth got a phone at that age. A communications and education program by the old United Nations. Well, it came here with me through the Discontinuity, and it was a great helpa true companion. But then its power failed.
Abdikadir listened to this rambling, his face expressionless. It rang. Chirp, chirp.
It will respond to an incoming call, but thats all. When the power went I had no way of recharging it. Still havent, in fact. Wait
She turned to her spacesuit, which still lay splayed open on the floor. Nobody had dared touch it. Suit Five?
Its voice, from the helmet speakers, was very small. I have always strived to serve your needs during your extravehicular activity.
Can you give me one of your power packs?
It seemed to think that over. Then a compartment on the suits belt flipped open to reveal a compact slab of plastic, bright green like the rest of the suit. Bisesa pulled this out of its socket.
Is there anything else I can do for you today, Bisesa? No. Thank you.
I will need refurbishment before I can serve you again. Ill see you get it. She feared that was a lie. Rest now. The suit fell silent with a kind of sigh.
She took the battery pack, flipped open the phones interface panel, and jammed the phone onto the cells docking port. Male and female connectors joined smoothly. What was it Alexei said? Thank Sol for universal docking protocols.
The phone lit up and spoke hesitantly. Bisesa? Its me. You took your time.
PART 3 REUNIONS 31: OPERATION ORDER
A new draft operation order was transmitted to Liberator from Bellas office in Washington. Were to shadow the Q-bomb, Edna said, scanning the order. How far? John Metternes asked. All the way to Earth, if we have to.
Christ on a bike, that might be twenty months!
Libby, can we do it?
The AI said, We will be coasting, like the bomb. So propellant and reaction mass wont be a problem. If the recycling efficiency stays nominal the life shell will be able to sustain crew functions.
Nicely put, John said sourly. Youre the engineer, Edna snapped. Do you think shes right? I guess. But whats the point, Captain? Our weapons are useless.
Best to have somebody on point than nobody. Something might turn up. John, Libby, start drawing up a schedule. Ill go through the draft order, and if were sure its feasible from a resources point of view well send our revision back to Earth.
Bonza trip this is going to be, Metternes muttered.
Edna glanced at her softscreen. There was the bomb, silent, gliding ever deeper into the solar system, visible only by the stars it reflected. Edna tried to work out what she was going to say to Theahow to explain she wasnt coming home any time soon.
PART 3 REUNIONS 32: ALEXANDER
Bisesa was given a room of her own in Nebuchadnezzars palace, which Alexander had, inevitably, taken over. Eumeness staff provided clothes in the elaborate Persian style that had been adopted by the Macedonian court.
And Emeline called in and gave her some toiletries: a comb, creams for her face and hands, a tiny bottle of perfume, even some archaic-looking sanitary towels. They were a selection from the travel kit of a nineteenth-century lady. You looked as if you didnt arrive with much, she said.
The gesture, of one woman far from home to another, made Bisesa feel like crying.
She slept a while. She was weighed down by the sudden return to Earth gravity, three times that of Mars. And her body clock was all over the place; as before, this new Discontinuity, her own personal time slip, left her with a kind of jet lag.
And then she did cry, for herself, the shock of it all, and for the loss of Myra. But these last few extraordinary weeks in which they had been traveling together across space had probably been as long as she had spent alone with Myra since the days of the sunstorm. That was some consolation, she told herself, even though it seemed they had hardly spoken, hardly got to know each other.
She longed to know more about Charlie. She hadnt even seen a photo of her granddaughter. She tried to sleep again.
She was woken by a diffident serving girl, maybe a slave. It was early evening. Time for her reception with Eumenes, and perhaps Alexander.
She bathed and dressed; she had worn Babylonian robes before,