Providence - Max Barry Page 0,98

you still don’t know what it means.”

She slowed and stopped. Every muscle in her body screamed. But it was okay, she thought. They would perform when she needed them. “I can’t reach my core. I need you to detach it.”

She turned. She felt him fumbling at her back. When the survival core detached, it felt as if he’d removed an iron brick. Her suit gave a brief gasp.

Anders set her core on the rock. At first he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Then he said, “Take the gun.”

She felt oddly touched. Her first thought was to refuse—it was extra weight and out of charge—but he was right. She would need something, even if it was a club.

Already she felt hotter. No fan. No temperature regulation at all. And no air scrubbing: With every breath, she was filling her suit interior with carbon dioxide. She had to go.

“Thank you,” she said. She began to run.

* * *

—

She hadn’t sent a letter to David. She’d written hundreds but hadn’t managed to find one that felt right, and now she was out of time. He would have nothing but the clips they’d exchanged during sync windows, in which she’d mostly complained. In the back of her mind, she’d had the idea that her letter was coming, this perfect expression of everything she wanted to say, and then he would understand. Without that, it was just two years of her bitching.

He’d basically kept her sane, these last two years, when her crew was testing her faith in her species, when Anders and Gilly were spending their time devising elaborate games and pranks while the ship fought the war for them. Is this what we’re fighting for? she asked him, rhetorically. This generation? Next sync, he replied: We were the same at that age. But she didn’t think so. She had started to wonder if there was something rotten at the core of these people, who viewed war as a career opportunity. There was a depthless narcissism to them that seemed to go beyond mere youthful self-absorption.

Come home, then, he said. This was their joke. After each rant, his reply: So come home. It was a good joke because for a moment it felt possible. Like she could stand up. Tell her dysfunctional crew, I’m out, people. Best of luck. Step out of the airlock and into her apartment. Hug her husband.

She closed on the salamander. Her pace was strong; she would catch it before it reached the mound. Her breathing was under control. The heat was bad and she was dripping sweat from every pore, but that didn’t matter, not yet. She drew within a hundred yards and then her feet didn’t go where they were supposed to and she stumbled and fell and couldn’t get up.

Her vision filled with stars. Carbon dioxide, she thought. I am killing myself. Even this thought was slow and clumsy. There was poison swimming in her brain, dulling her senses. That was the problem, she knew. Not lack of oxygen, but an excess of carbon dioxide. She was enormously tempted to sleep. She wanted to close her eyes and ignore all her problems until they went away.

She grabbed at her throat and peeled back the suit strap. Air rushed past her face, hot and sharp and filled with a million tiny knives, which crawled up her nostrils and swam inside. She gasped and sat up, pulling the suit away from her body in pieces. Everywhere there was sweat, the atmosphere attacked, and that was everywhere, and she tried to wipe herself down with the suit fabric as best she could. She pulled the helmet free so that only her eyes were protected by her film, the rest of her naked except for her underthings. She found the gun and got to her feet.

She inhaled through her nose, keeping her mouth clamped shut. There was oxygen in the atmosphere, enough to sustain her for a short while, and if her sinuses burned, her throat and lungs, that wasn’t so different to when she pushed herself on the track. Her bare feet slapped hot rock. She drew closer to the salamander and it turned and saw her.

It didn’t stop. She felt furious. She was already working