Probability Space by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online Page B

understood.
    *   *   *
    She woke to fierce arguing and the dim sound of engines. They were in space, accelerating at one-gee. Her neck tickled and she groped for the patch and pulled it off. A sleeper, probably. Father Emil couldn’t know that she didn’t sleep long from somnambulizer patches. “A light drug responder,” her father always said about her. Amanda lay still, a bit groggy, listening to the voices in the common room beyond the bunk curtain.
    “—unconscionable!” Father Emil said, a word Amanda didn’t know.
    “And what would you have us do with her?” Captain Lewis said, and the anger in his voice brought Amanda out of the last of her sleep. “If she doesn’t make that broadcast, the fact that we have her only reinforces the impression that we kidnapped them both, God, you smeared this with shit, Emil.”
    “I wanted to help. I thought she’d make the broadcast. And I wanted to get her somewhere safe.”
    “Oh, your motives were impeccable,” Captain Lewis said sarcastically. “The road to hell and all that. We never should have listened to a Sunday revolutionary like you.”
    Father Emil said something Amanda didn’t catch.
    “The longer we have her,” the woman said, “the worse the situation gets. No one will believe we didn’t abduct her ourselves.”
    Father Emil said, “Amanda will tell them the truth about the hot shop and about me and about our bringing her to Luna. She’s a truthful child.”
    “Then she’ll also tell the world we tried to pressure her into making a broadcast. Unless she broadcasts voluntarily—which you said she would, Emil!—and does it soon, it looks to the eyes of the media like we’re holding her.”
    “Aren’t we?” Father Emil said.
    “No, Goddamn it, we’re doing what she wants! Now we’re taking her to Mars in search of a genetic abomination and government stooge like Marbet Grant!”
    The woman said, “Essentially, a fourteen-year-old kid is calling the shots for this spaceship. She has to make that broadcast. We can make her do it, Dennis.”
    “How?” Captain Lewis said. “Threats? Drugs? Don’t you think she’ll tell people about that, too, afterward?”
    “Not if you terrify her enough.”
    “Lucy,” Father Emil said, “stop right there. She’s a child .”
    “A child in a position to hurt the entire Life Now organization, thanks to you,” Lucy said bitterly.
    Father Emil said, in a different voice, “Dennis … did Life Now kidnap Thomas Capelo?”
    “Oh, God,” Lucy said. “Amateurs.”
    “Yes, I am, Lucy,” Father Emil said. “Amateur, Sunday revolutionary, as bottom of the organizational ladder as possible. Just a believer in its goals. Which is why I don’t know the answer to my question and why I want to know. Did Life Now, or any of its affiliate antiwar organizations in the AWM, kidnap Thomas Capelo?”
    Amanda clasped her hands tightly together. What would Captain Lewis say? But it was Father Emil who spoke.
    “You don’t know the answer, do you, Dennis? I’m in a bottom cell of Life Now, but you’re not in a top cell. You don’t know.”
    “We don’t operate through kidnapping,” Captain Lewis said, and even through the curtain Amanda heard that there was something wrong with his voice.
    “You don’t know that, either,” Father Emil said.
    Lucy said, “You’re both losing sight of the main point. Amanda Capelo has to make that broadcast pinning the kidnapping on the government, and she has to do it now. You have to persuade her, Emil. You’re the only one the little bitch trusts.”
    “She’s not a little bitch, Lucy,” Captain Lewis said. “But, Emil, Lucy’s right. You have to persuade her, now, as soon as she wakes up.”
    “And if I can’t?”
    Captain Lewis said, Then we’ve got a huge problem. We can’t go on holding her, or we’re kidnappers. And we can’t release her to Marbet Grant, or Amanda tells the world how we pressured her to pin that kidnapping on Stefanak. Even