“Because everyone knows him,” Roxy says slowly. “He’s the old facilities male who recently retired. Bad knees, complains constantly, gives the young ones sweets.” She looks at me. “ThatOrdek?”
“That Ordek.”
“Oh,” Leah says softly. “Oh, I love him. He used to fix the lab vents for me and lecture me about my posture.”
“He was kind to me and my brothers,” I say. “After.”
Nobody asks me to explainafter.Every being in this room, and on that screen, knows exactly which years I mean and exactly what the colony was like in them.
“He’s the only being still alive and still on this rock who was in the walls both times.”
“Scar.” Ines has gone very focused. “Have you spoken to him?”
“Tomorrow. Before shift.”
“You’ve already made contact?”
“I sent word to him last night. His grandson keys his messages for him. The reply came back this morning. He said, and I’m repeating it exactly,tell the Fever boy to come and bring food and don’t be early, I’m not up before second bell at my age.”
Leah laughs. “That’s him. That’s exactly him.”
“So I’ll go tomorrow, with food.” I glance at the screen. “Ines and I planned the approach. It isn’t an interview. It’s a visit. Ibring him something from Jana’s kitchen, I let him complain about his knees, and I let him talk about the old work until he wanders somewhere useful.”
“And you don’t push,” Ines reminds.
“And I don’t push,” I agree.
“Good.” She shifts Vela higher and I can see her mind working behind her eyes, the way it does when she’s turning a thing over from six sides at once. “Scar, who knows about this? About Ordek specifically?”
“The four of us. As of now.”
“Not Mara?”
“I trust her completely, but I didn’t tell her because her brother was standing in my office when I found the name, and I don’t discuss a live thread in front of a being I haven’t cleared.”
“Good.” Ines nods once, satisfied.
“And when we do tell her about this, or about Andrew,” Leah says, “it should be you telling her.”
I nod in agreement. “It will be me.”
Chapter Twelve
Scar
Something is wrong before I reach the door.
I come up the corridor of the senior quarters with Jana’s stew warm in my hands. Ines’s questions are in my head in the order we set them, and I am, I’ll admit, looking forward to this visit.
And then I see the beings grouped outside Ordek’s door.
A med tech, packing something into a case. A Facilities supervisor with a tablet, thumbing through a form. Two older neighbors standing in the corridor with their hands at their sides, doing nothing at all, in that particular stillness beings get when they’ve just been told something and haven’t decided how to feel about it yet.
Nobody is hurrying. Whatever happened here has finished happening.
The supervisor looks up and sees me, seven feet of scarred miner striding up the corridor with a food container in his hands and his face changes.
I stop walking.
