Probability Space by Nancy Kress Page A

was. Soon she would see Marbet. She put up a hand to smooth the black bob.
    The holovid turned itself on. Painfully Amanda grasped the bar beside her deep-sleep bunk and began the first muscle-restoring exercise. Father Emil left before she could ask him any more questions.
    He came back when she’d finished the holovid and sat panting on the edge of her bunk. Everything in her body hurt. Father Emil carried a tray of food. Famished, Amanda fell on it. She’d probably lost weight, that was a good thing. In deep sleep, fed through tubes, you always lost weight. Amanda wanted to become as slender as Marbet.
    On the other hand, Father Emil had also lost weight, which was not a good thing. His wrist bones stuck out. His cheeks looked like chisels. He looked sick.
    The exercise and food restored her thinking. “Has anyone found my father?” She held her breath; he might say they’d found Daddy’s body, or that Daddy was free again, or—
    “No, child. He’s still missing, and the government is still blaming Life Now. There have been riots, protests. Most of the membership has gone underground.”
    She refused to answer this. “Were you in deep sleep, too, Father Emil?”
    “No.”
    So he looked like that even without tube feeding. “Are you taking me to Marbet as soon as I get my legs back?”
    “Amanda, Marbet Grant isn’t on Mars.”
    She stopped with fork suspended in the air. “She has to be!”
    “Because you want her to be? Doesn’t work like that, child.”
    “But you said, she was here! Where is she?”
    “She disappeared. No, not kidnapped. She and Lyle Kaufman left Mars together months ago, just after we left Earth. Apparently they’d spent months making application to the State Department for permission to travel to World. All the applications were denied because of wartime travel restrictions. The best guess is that they found a way to get there illegally.”
    “How could—”
    “Oh, don’t be naive, child. We did it. Do you suppose anybody but Life Now knows you’re on Mars? You’re an illegal now:”
    Amanda pushed back the tray. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.
    “An illegal, and the same problem you were before. Amanda, if anyone knows you’re here now, Life Now will get the blame for kidnapping you. Just like we told you three months ago.”
    Three months ago? She’d been en route to Mars for three months. It was—
    In a small voice she said, “What date is it, Father Emil?”
    “July third. The month of Our Lady.”
    It meant nothing to her.
    “If Life Now is accused of kidnapping you with the solid proof that you’ve been with us, as opposed to merely speculative accusations, people will die. I want you to remember that.”
    “Where am I going?” she asked. Her stomach felt sick. “Oh, please, can I go to Aunt Kristen? She lives in Tharsis, right here on Mars, I could—”
    “I don’t know where the organization is going to put you. It’s out of my hands. Our instructions, Dennis’s and Lucy’s and mine, were simply to bring you to Mars and turn you over to the Life Now top cell. They’ll know what’s best for everyone concerned.”
    Amanda stared. “You’re … you’re not going to take care of me anymore?” Protect me?
    “I’m going to take you to a place where you’ll be met by the Life Now leaders. They’ll know what’s best for everyone concerned,” he repeated, and didn’t meet her eyes.
    Something was wrong. Father Emil didn’t sound like himself. Fear rippled through Amanda.
    “Come on, child. The car is here.”
    She followed him through the ship, because she couldn’t think what else to do. They didn’t see a single other person. I can run , she thought desperately. Ships had exit ramps, and cars had to wait at the bottom of them, and there would be a few seconds in the open air when she could scream and run and shout out her name … Lowell Spaceport was a busy and crowded place. She’d been there, on visits to Aunt Kristen. Someone