29: ALEXEI

It was an hour since Bisesa had vanished into the Eye.

Myra, bereft and confused, sought out Alexei in his storeroom cabin. He was curled up on his bunk, facing the plastic-coated ice wall.

“So tell me about Athena.”

Without turning, he said, “Well, Athena singled you out. She seems to think you’re worth preserving.”

Myra pursed her lips. “She’s the real leader of this conspiracy of yours, isn’t she? This underground group of Boy Scouts, trying to figure out the Martian Eye.”

He shrugged, his back still turned. “We Spacers are a divided lot. The Martians don’t think of themselves as Spacers at all. Athena is different from all of us, and she’s a lot smarter. She’s someone we can unite around, at least.”

“Let me get it straight,” she said. “Athena is the shield AI.”

“A copy of her. The original AI was destroyed in the final stages of the sunstorm. Before the storm, this copy was squirted to the stars. Somewhere out there, that broadcast copy was picked up, activated, and transmitted back here.”

This was the story she had picked up from the others. “You do realize how many impossible things have to be true for that to have happened?”

“Nobody outside Cyclops knows the details.”

“Cyclops. The big planet-finder telescope station.”

“Right. Of course the echo could have been picked up anywhere in the solar system, but as far as we know it’s only on Cyclops that she’s been activated. She’s stayed locked up in the hardened data store on Cyclops. Her choice. As far as Hanse Critchfield can tell, she managed to download a subagent into your ident tattoo. Nobody knows how. It self-destructed after she gave you that message. I guess she has her electronic eye on you, Myra.”

That was not a comforting thought. “So now my mother has gone through the Eye. What next?”

“We wait.”

“For what?”

“I guess, for whatever comes of your mother’s mission to Mir. And for Athena.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, Myra. We have time. It’s still more than eighteen months until the Q-bomb is supposed to reach Earth.

“Look, we’ve done what we could. We delivered your mother to the Eye, and pow, that pretty much short-circuited all the weirdness in the solar system. No offense. Now we’ve come to a kind of a lull. So, take it easy. You’ve been through a lot—we both have. The traveling alone was punishment enough. And as for that shit down in the Pit with the Eye—I can’t begin to imagine how that must have felt for you.”

Myra sat awkwardly on the single chair in the room, and pulled at her fingers. “It’s not just a lull. This is a kind of terminus, for me. You needed me to get my mother here, to Mars. Fine, I did that. But now I’ve crashed into a wall.”

He rolled over and faced her. “I’m sorry you feel like that. I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You’re a good person. I’ve seen that. You love your mother, and you support her, even when it hurts you. That’s a pretty good place to be. Anyhow,” he said, “I’m not one to give you counseling. I’m spying on my father. How dys-functional is that?”

He turned back to the wall.

She sat with him a while longer. When he began to snore, she crept out of the room and closed the door.