“Abandoning…” mused Katerina. “What was it like for you that day? When you finally realized I wasn’t coming back, what went through your mind?”
“That’s not what we’re talking about. You deserted your post.”
“I moved on from one position to another, yes. When you’re looking at the big picture, to do what’s best for humanity at the grandest scale, a certain amount of flexibility is necessary.”
“Flexibility. That’s a hell of a way to say treason.”
Katerina shrugged.
Andrea took a deep breath and shook her head a little. “Why did you leave?”
“Why are you so concerned with my motives,” replied Katerina.
“I’m not concerned with you at all.” She circled back around to her first question. “Who is he?”
Katerina laughed. “This is unfair of me. I’m making it difficult for you to do your job, and it must be incredibly frustrating for you. I don’t imagine this is usually how you conduct your interviews with—”
“You know what it means to be interrogated by Section 9.” Andrea’s voice was cold, but the anger below the surface felt like it could burst out at any moment. “We can hold you without trial for the rest of your life. No one will know where you’ve gone. If you refuse food or appear suicidal, we have the authority to implant a somatic lock. Then you’ll be a prisoner in your own body, until you age beyond what even life support can sustain.”
“Or I could just be killed.” Katerina seemed unfazed. “Section 9 is above the law, and I don’t think you’ll want me whispering secrets to a cellmate or screaming them out in the common room of wherever you decide to hide me. No, you don’t have much choice when it comes right down to it. You’ll have to kill me eventually.”
I couldn’t tell what game she was playing, but it almost seemed intentionally cruel. It was like she wanted Andrea to have to face the contradiction, to own up to what Section 9 really did. If it was getting to Andrea, though, she didn’t show it. Instead, she just circled back around again. “Who is he?”
“I can see it in your eyes. You feel lost.”
Andrea blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.” Katerina sat up straight and crossed her legs.
“You’re dodging the question again.”
“It’s so irrelevant it barely warrants my acknowledgement. You want to know who he is, but that simply does. Not. Matter. The real question is why, and you don’t seem willing to face that. It’s curious, and I suspect the only reason is because of the unresolved matter between us.”
“There is nothing between us.”
“You’re still a terrible liar. The corners of your eyes give it away. I taught you to serve without hesitation, without question, but I see now that I failed to teach you the most essential corollary: the only constant in this world is change. I wonder if you now feel lost, having discovered your mother is fighting against what you were taught to obey. What you’ve sacrificed so much for. What you were never prepared to one day fight.”
There was a pause. Andrea stared at her mother in silence. Veraldi sent a dataspike message.
Tycho and Raven, stay alert. Katerina is up to something.
I think she’s just buying time, I replied.
But why? Raven added.
I don’t know. Vincenzo shifted uncomfortably. Just be ready.
Andrea finally spoke. “People change, usually for the worse in my experience.” I was surprised to hear something so cynical from Andrea’s mouth.
Katerina suddenly dropped the arrogance and lowered her head. With one hand covering her eyes, she spoke quietly. “Oh, Andrea. Is that really it? That binary thinking, that naïve cynicism?”
Andrea, for her part, seemed to have given up on the interrogation. This was an outright argument with family. “You taught me values then turned your back on those same principles. You taught me service, and then you wouldn’t serve.”
“I could accept that from a teenage girl. The reductionist viewpoint, the obtuse sense of right and wrong. You’re not a child anymore. I’d expect you to be better than that.”
“I learned from the best. You only have yourself to blame.”
“I suppose that’s true. Maybe that’s why you caught me. Maybe that’s why I let you bring me here.”
Andrea’s face turned red. “You didn’t let me do anything. You tore my arm—”
Katerina waved that detail away. “Regardless of how it happened. Maybe you need another lesson.”
“The only thing I need from you is information. Who is he?”
“So you’re really not 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?”