interested in knowing why—”
“No. I’m not,” said Andrea. “I don’t know what happened to you, and I don’t care. All I want is to do my job. Give me his name.”
Katerina’s sudden change of tone had confused me at first, but I was beginning to think it was just another game. Another time-wasting maneuver designed to lead the interrogation off-track. Andrea wasn’t doing especially well, but at least she kept returning to her original question. At least she kept refusing to play whatever game Katerina was trying to play.
Katerina sighed and slumped a little. “For years, I imagined explaining it to you, but reality is often disappointing, I suppose.”
“Explain what? Your actions put billions at risk.”
Based on Katerina’s body language, that was exactly the response she’d been hoping to get. “How is that, dear?”
“You’re supporting a cabal of deathless immortals manipulating the entire system to unknown ends.”
This response surprised me, because Andrea had always portrayed herself as a skeptic when it came to Huxley’s story. Either she had known more than she was letting on all along, or she had discovered something along the way.
“And how exactly does that put anyone at risk?”
I was equally startled by Katerina’s failure to deny the accusation. There was undoubtedly just as much unsaid as spoken aloud between them.
The question seemed to stump Andrea. All she could do was to fall back on platitudes.
“Immortality removes the one equalizing force in the universe. No one can have that kind of power.”
“Is that so?” asked Katerina. “Mortals are immortals, immortals are mortals. One lives the others' death and dies the others' life.”
“Heraclitus was full of shit. What are you trying to say?”
“Yes, too obscure for you, too abstract. I’ll say it more plainly. Do you honestly believe you can understand the motives of a mind freed from the baneful corpse to which it was tethered?”
“I don’t believe you understand the situation. I’m asking the questions. Who—”
“How many people died in Hellas last year? Sloppy work there, Andrea.”
She stopped short with a stunned look on her face. How did Katerina know that had been our job in the first place?
“There’s no informant,” said Katerina smoothly. “Ares Terrestrial was involved, so the sudden explosion of chaos in the colony could only be the work of Section 9. Tower 7 was your doing as well, wasn’t it?”
“That was August Marcenn. You already knew that.”
“But you were there, weren’t you? What was the official death toll? My memory is a bit hazy…”
Andrea’s voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. “Half of all the blood Section 9 has ever shed has been on your hands.”
“That’s probably true. I’ve never taken pleasure in it, either.”
Katerina was not an easy person to read under the best of circumstances, but I was starting to get a sense of who she was. She saw herself as an elite, better qualified to make the important decisions than the majority of other people. At the same time, she saw herself as a woman of principle, blind to her own sadism. The cruelty behind her smile was the real Katerina, even if she didn’t know that about herself.
Andrea sat up, trying to rally against Katerina’s attacks. “You weren’t on Venus with us. You weren’t on Mars either. You don’t know what happened in either case, and you don’t know why. This is nothing more than another game of yours.”
“How do you think I’ve always taught you?”
“You can tell yourself you’re trying to teach me something, but we both know that’s a lie. You’re deep in it and grasping at anything to save yourself.”
“I could say the same about you. You lost one in Hellas, didn’t you? The tall one. What was his name?”
Andrea just stared at her with her teeth clenched and her eyes blazing. I sent a dataspike message to Veraldi.
Shouldn’t you intervene?
He glanced up at me and shook his head just slightly.
We have to let them play it out.
Then Andrea laughed. The atmosphere was so tense in that room that the sound almost made me jump.
“You’re so full of it even you can’t tell when you’re being insincere.”
Katerina, for once, did not reply.
Andrea pushed her chair back, as if creating distance between herself and her mother. “You’re stalling for time. All you’ve done since I came in here is to try to talk circles around me and get under my skin, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with me, does it?”
“Maybe you’re not as naive as I thought,” replied Katerina.
Andrea sent us