“That must be it,” Ned said. It was a small cabinet in one of the mechanical bays. Power fluctuations were fairly regular there, as things were charged or shorted out during the repair process. That’s why no one had ever noticed. Pendt could walk right up to the lock and lay her hands on it, if she wanted.
“What will happen when you break it?” Fisher asked.
“I’m not going to break it,” Pendt said. “Mostly because we don’t know what will happen. I can’t exactly experiment with a station full of people. But I can change it. I can tie it to the Brannick DNA without using the Y chromosome for control. It sounds small, but it’s going to be the biggest thing I’ve ever tried to do.”
“I believe you,” said Fisher. “And after?”
“After, you and Ned will both be able to work the Net and Well,” Pendt said. “And so will I, if the foetus and I both survive the effort.”
“We’re going to do everything we can,” Ned said.
“I appreciate that,” Pendt said. “I’m going to start calculating how many calories I’ll need to consume, both before and after. I should be able to figure out the numbers, but there’s a slight amount of chance involved here. It might not work, or there might be complications.”
“You could have a heart attack,” Fisher said.
“Amongst other things,” Pendt agreed. “But I still think it’s our best shot.”
“The timing is going to be really specific,” Ned said. “We’ll have to have the Harland’s arrival down to the minute.”
“I can factor it into my math,” Pendt told him.
“I thought this was something you just knew,” Fisher said.
“It is,” Pendt said. “But I want to be sure. And also, I want to leave directions for you two. If it were me watching, I’d feel better if I understood the whole process. Would you rather not?”
“No,” Ned said. “I want to know every step.”
“Me too,” Fisher said.
“It’s a best-case scenario plan,” Pendt said. “If Dr. Morunt tells Arkady I’m revivable, I don’t have a contingency.”
“We trust you,” Ned said before Fisher could say anything to further complicate the matter. “We’ll have to trust her as well.”
Pendt began to calculate the number of calories she expected to spend to get enough æther through her system to change the lock. The amount was staggering. It made her stomach queasy thinking about having to ingest so much, even though much of it would be intravenous. She separated the number into before and after, the calories she would need to prepare and the calories she would require to pull herself back. She tinkered with the formula for the embalming fluid until she found something a scanner would think was for the dead but would actually help the living. It was barely enough to sustain her, but it would let her hold on for long enough.
She read the numbers back to the boys. They didn’t really understand them, so she rephrased them as actual food types to give them something to picture. Ned put his hand on his stomach in sympathy. Eating was fun, but this was going to suck.
Fisher took her hands in his when she was done and squeezed them, as though to reassure himself that she was real, and she was here. She leaned forward to press her forehead against his. She could hear all the things he wanted to say, and she appreciated him so much for not saying them. She wanted to be free of the Harland forever, and that was going to take an incredible risk. She loved Fisher—she knew it now—and she loved him in part because he trusted her enough to let her do this.
Ned gave them space, even though he too was clearly on edge about the whole thing. He checked his communications. The only person who could send him anything right now was Dulcie. There was a notification from her.
“Operations says the Harland is due in four days,” Ned reported, looking up from his datapad. “Is that enough time?”
“It’ll have to be,” Pendt said. “I’ll make a schedule.”
“All right then,” Ned said. “What do you want for dinner?”
26.
PENDT STARTED TO REGRET her decision on the third solid day of eating. She had to be careful about it: too much and she’d vomit, too little and her body would turn it into regular waste. She could feel every calorie in and out, measured every effort she took against the efforts she was going to make with the energy she had when the Harland arrived, and she hated it. It was, she realized, the life she was destined for if this didn’t work. If the Hegemony got her, she doubted they’d be as nice about it as Fisher and Ned were.
The Harland drifted ever closer on the charts. Pendt had begun exploration of the gene-lock, carefully exploring it without triggering anything that might shut it down. She was paranoid enough to assume the Stavengers had left traps around it, but no matter which angle she took, she couldn’t see any.
“It was the last thing they did,” Ned reminded her. “They couldn’t exactly come out here and check it. They just made it work.”
It was a valid point.
Still, she was very careful as she circled closer and closer to the centre of the gene-lock’s pattern. She knew what Ned’s chromosome looked like, of course. She carried a copy of it inside her. It was a matter of picking the lock far enough to find the chromosome, and then changing the specific tumbler without disturbing anything else.
“Does it help to picture it like that?” Fisher said. “It just confuses me.”
“Yes,” Pendt said. “It’s how I think about the Net and Well, so it makes sense to me to think of it like this. I know the pattern and I know the key. Usually I just turn it, but the principle is the same. It helps me reason out how I’m going to do it.”
The airlocks would take two hours to cycle after the Harland docked. Pendt was sure that would be enough time, and Dulcie said they could always manufacture a stall if they had to, without raising too much suspicion. The foreman was the only other person on board who knew what they were trying, and while she wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, she wouldn’t stop them either. Dr. Morunt was under unofficial house arrest in his quarters and would not be permitted out until it was time for him to meet with his sister. Pendt did not believe he would betray them any further, but Fisher pointed out that if they used the other Morunt as leverage, he could become unpredictable. Fisher needed to control as much of this as he could, Pendt knew, and so she stopped arguing.
The Harland came in exactly on schedule, so Pendt was already sitting in the repair bay with Ned when it docked. Fisher had to be in operations to make everything look normal, which she knew was driving him up the wall. He’d come down as soon as he could.