Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

Asking no questions, she stepped aside—a
gesture I took as an invitation to enter. Kiel
stood on the balcony, a glass-encased ledge
that overlooked the canyon as it wended
south. His arms were crossed over his chest
and from the look on his face, I knew that if
there was no glass barrier there, he would enjoy
throwing me over the precipice.
The door whispered in its tracks, and as it
closed my atrium informed me I was signaldead,
cut-off from the network. I froze in
shock—though I should have expected it.
This was a luxury hotel, offering the best, including
electronic privacy, and Shay and Kiel
were fugitives.
I sent a gel ribbon gliding down my arm,
wondering what else they were willing to do
to protect themselves.
Shay circled around me, keeping her eyes
fixed on me as she gave me a wide berth.
“What was I supposed to do?” she asked me
in a desperate voice.
“What did you do?” I wondered.
“I came in from the dark. That’s all.”
“So it is you? Mika Brennan. How much did
Officer Pana make you pay for your new identity?”
My DI confirmed the confusion I saw on
her face. “It wasn’t like that—”
“And her name is Shay Antigo,” Kiel interrupted,
stepping in from the balcony.
“Kiel, please. You need to stay out of it.”
He didn’t listen, no more than I would have
in the same situation. “She is Shay Antigo. An
unknown from the rocks. The cop at Sato
confirmed it and we didn’t pay him a damned
thing.”
“It’s true,” Shay said. “There was no record
of me in the system, because I came to life
out there in the rocks.”
The DI studied her, and to my surprise it
did not suggest she was lying—but then, time
changes the way we define ourselves. “You
came to life after Mika Brennan died?” I asked
her.
“The prospector? I heard that story. It was
a long time ago.”
“She never went home.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard her family
restored her from backup. I heard she made it
home.”
Kiel added, “I heard that too. I heard she
made a fortune, and set up a life for herself.”
OUT IN THE DARK
JUNE 2013
“A good life,” Shay added, tears glinting in
her eyes. “A life I wish I’d had.”
“What happened out there?” I asked her.
She turned and, crossing the room, she
sank slowly onto a sofa.
“There was an accident.”
Mika Brennan had been one of a crew of
three, on a prospecting boat running on marginal
resources. They’d found a comet remnant
and knew their fortunes were made.
Engines were fixed to the ice, but there were
fault lines that they didn’t detect, and when
the engines fired, a massive chunk of ice
sheared away and struck the ship.
“We lost all power,” Shay said. “The reactor
was damaged. It was only a matter of time before
the radiation killed us. But we figured if
we could get back to the main ice fragment,
eventually another prospector would come
along and we’d be found.”
So they wrestled cold sleep pods and a
bivouac tent to the hopper bay. Mika jumped
first, taking her pod with her. And because
she was the lightest, she took the bivouac
tent too. Her hopper was fully fueled, and she
made it. Her companions didn’t. They overshot
the ice, and had no fuel left to turn
around.
The three of them talked, until the distance
was too great for the suit radios. Then Mika
bolted her cold sleep pod to the ice. She set
up the bivouac tent around it, inflating it with
the last of her air reserve. Then she stripped
off her suit, and before the cold could kill her,
she climbed into the pod.
“I thought it’d be a year or two before I was
picked up. But it was thirty-one years until
Kiel and his crew found me, and by then I
didn’t exist anymore. I mean, the Mika Brennan
of thirty-two years ago, she no longer existed
in the Commonwealth. It was too late
for me to go home.”
“Shay’s harmed no one,” Kiel said gruffly.
“She’s done no wrong.”
I wished that was true. “She lied about her
name.”
Shay wasn’t going to give in easily. “It
wasn’t a lie! That name didn’t belong to me
anymore—and you know what would have
happened if I tried to take back my life.”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I
walked out to the balcony, thinking about the
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