Providence - Max Barry Page 0,78
like an interesting show, a series she could tune in to and then forget, that was happening far away, to other people. She walked down Third Avenue with her hands stuffed into her pockets against the cold, passing bright stores and bubbles of conversation, and salamanders were pouring down from the sky, falling like a plague of stars that no one else could see. She felt disassociated from the human race. She felt like she’d never left Fornina Sirius, a trillion miles away. Like the most important part of her was still out there, with her fallen brothers and sisters, who’d seen the enemy and learned its horror. She felt like she might never make it home.
* * *
—
Out of curiosity, she looked up the rest of the crew of Providence Five. The Weapons candidate, Paul Anders, she didn’t know. The Life candidate, though, was Talia Beanfield, whom she’d seen struggle toward the finish of a grueling pack run, then return to help those behind. Afterward, Beanfield had sat with a cadet who’d recorded a disqualifying time, genuine grief written across her features. She would make a good Life officer, Jolene thought. For a few days, she began to feel that Nettle’s suggestion might not be completely preposterous; maybe there was a set of circumstances in which she would consider going back out. The idea was curiously exhilarating. David picked up on her good mood and, on the spur of the moment, suggested they go away. They rented a cabin in western Massachusetts where they woke to bird calls and explored red gums and pulled wicker chairs together on a porch to watch the sunset and talk about small things that didn’t matter. In the mornings, he made eggs. It was the closest she’d felt to him since she left. She hadn’t given herself the choice, she realized. She had felt, on some level, compelled to stay and heal and become a good wife, but she couldn’t do that unless it was truly voluntary. Only by walking to the edge of leaving her life with David could she discover that she didn’t want to.
“You’re happy,” he said, on the return trip.
“Yes,” she said. “I made a decision.”
“A good one?”
She nodded, and he smiled and didn’t press, as always. She would like to have a baby with this man, she thought. It had been one of their plans and then she had gone away and they’d not discussed it since. She would like to discuss it.
She had to leave for Camp Zero the next day, and daydreamed as the aircraft skipped over snow and ice. She’d never felt a part of this place but was now an outright fraud, returning empty salutes, mouthing meaningless ranks. She passed three days in reviews and meetings, her mind already on the shuttle home. And then in line at the mess hall there was shouting and flying trays and two men throwing punches. The shorter of the two gained ascendancy and drove the taller man to the floor, then fell on him to continue the assault before being dragged away by others.
“Who is that?” she asked a neat, clipped Life candidate in line behind her. Because that was not cool, carrying on the fight after he’d already won. That was no way for a candidate to behave.
The girl’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose. “That’s Paul Anders, sir.” Her tone implied surprise that Jolene didn’t already know. As it happened, she recognized the name: Anders was the Providence Five Weapons Officer. That night, out of curiosity, she pulled the tape from his postincident interview, the vision following her around her quarters as she brushed her teeth. An unimpressed NCO asked Anders to explain why, exactly, he’d felt the need to assault a fellow candidate, and why he shouldn’t be discharged on the spot. Anders’s answers were spectacularly unimpressive, and Jolene wondered again about the AI that selected these crews. How bizarre did its choices need to be before people stopped ascribing them to advanced intelligence and realized it was simply broken? she wondered.
“Your brothers gave their lives at Fornina Sirius,” said the NCO, and she stopped, because she hadn’t known that. “How do you think they’d feel about your conduct today?”
“I reckon they’d understand,” Anders said. His demeanor was cocky, as if he didn’t realize