Anika got out of the elevator and checked with the security guards to make sure she could get back in, then slipped outside into the cold.
She took a deep breath, then pulled out Roo’s phone.
The numbers came to her fingers quickly enough. She’d tapped them into her phone often enough. Except for the last one.
Her finger always remained poised over the last number, though, unable to commit. Unable to push past the resistance of years of silence and habit.
This time she finished the sequence with a slight shudder, a release of some tension inside of her that she hadn’t realized was there. It had ridden alongside her for so long it had become a part of her world.
There was a ring, and then a second, and on the third the connection clicked, and a tired voice said, “Hello?”
“Hello, Mother?” Anika asked, her voice betraying her with a slight tremor. “It’s me, it’s Anika.”
There was no response, only a faint scratchiness that sounded like static.
“Hello?” Anika said.
It wasn’t static, but sniffling. “I’m sorry,” came a gulp in that old, precise English accent that Anika associated with a large, busy, dusty house and comfort and safety, and then heartbreak and confusion and anger. The one she sometimes heard her father listening to, when he would watch her movies late at night when he thought Anika was asleep. “I’m sorry. I never thought I’d hear your voice again.”
“All you had to do was call,” Anika said.
“After what I had done, I figured you have the right to be left alone,” her mother replied. “But when Abazu called to say you had crashed your airship, I was terrified. I started trying to call you, but your phone is cut off. When I called, he said he hadn’t heard from you in two days!”
“I’m okay.” Shit. She needed to call her father. He would be a mess. “Mother, where is your ship right now?”
She’d retired to a convalescent cruise ship. Somewhere some accountant had realized that the cost of a retirement home in the Western world wasn’t too far different from that of the daily cost for a cruise tour. Setting it up on a ship allowed the companies to attract not just the elderly with the promise of seeing the world in their twilight years, but offering the same carrot to young doctors and caretakers.
Ever since her mother’s retirement cruise ship hit the polar waters, her dad had been pressuring her to go see her mother.
“My friends and I had dinner at the captain’s table last night, and he said we were somewhere north of Ellesmere Island.”
Anika relaxed. A bit. “That’s good. Have you turned around yet?”
“Well, the captain has been waiting for this whole blockade thing to blow over, to see if we can still visit Thule. I’m rather excited, I’ve never been to the North Pole, you know.”
“It’s not going to blow over, Mother. It’s only going to get worse. Are you able to get out? Maybe fly somewhere to visit family, or a friend?”
“You know I can’t, Anika. I signed over my house and my retirement account to the ship in order to retire here. They own everything, and the only travel I can do is with the ship.”
Anika sighed heavily into the phone. “Maybe I can…” But she couldn’t. Her accounts would be frozen. She couldn’t do anything.
“Anika, what’s wrong?” her mother asked. “Where are you? Are you in trouble?”
“I’m in Thule,” she said. “Tell your captain things are getting worse. Tell him Thule is breaking apart, demesnes are fleeing. It’s bad here. Warn him away. Be safe.”
“Anika!”
She cut the phone connection off. She stared off at the sky and heard distant thuds and clanging. More activity. She should call her dad, and while she was reassuring him she was okay, see if he could pay for a helicopter ride for her mother off the ship and to Greenland.
Vy tapped her shoulder, startling her. “Hi, sweetness!” She had a pack of cigarettes in her hand.
“What are you doing up here, smoking?”
Vy shook her head, put an arm around Anika, and led her even further away from the building. “Told ’em I was out for a smoke. Wanted to see if you were okay.”
They walked back up to the overlook, then Vy glanced around.
“What’s wrong?” Anika asked.
Vy pocketed the cigarettes. “So, do you think everyone at any software company headquarters in Silicon Valley walks around with submachine guns?”
“It’s like a military base down there,” Anika agreed. “But most software companies don’t have half the world’s navies circling around like angry sharks. You think they don’t want to find the nuke?”
“No,” Vy said. “They want to find it. But we still need to be careful, okay? People with guns have a habit of using them.”
“And we’re going to need their help, and protection,” Anika said.
Vy looked over at her. “Thinking that far ahead?”
“If we secure and disable the nuke, then whoever put it out here is going to be angry with us. And who is that? Some sort of intelligence agency. We will be criminals.”
“Roo will be safe, he has the connections,” Vy said.
“And do you trust him still? He’s really taking to the whole Gaia song and dance down there. That stuff hits him hard, because of his home.”
Vy shrugged. “I trust him as much as I can trust anyone I’ve known for several years. But yes. He’s good people. He’ll be okay. As for me, this won’t change things too much. I’m already a minor criminal. Grass is legal, but you know I dabble in moving other products. You’re the one who’s hit the major career change.”
Yes. She was right. Anika looked down. Her quiet, stable, life: ripped up and torn apart. Everything she’d slowly worked toward. Gone.
Vy moved closer and turned her around. “You have a place, with me. If you want it.”
“What’ll I do?” Anika asked, looking into Vy’s pale eyes. The wind tugged at her hair.
“Shit, are you kidding me? I’ll keep you in a style you’re not accustomed to: living under an alternate identity in some non-extradition country! Don’t tell me you didn’t grow up dreaming someone would sweep you off your feet and tell you that.”
Anika laughed, and pulled her closer. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I’m stuck with you for a while, then, Vy.”
They kissed, a faint brush of the lips. And then a deeper kiss, pulling each other closer together so that they existed in a tiny world of warmth in the cold.
Their breath steamed the air between their faces when they pulled apart.
“You’re a pilot,” Vy said. “If you come with me, there will always be work for you.”
“Not flying airships, though,” Anika said, a tiny note of sadness creeping in.
“That could be a problem. But never say never.” Vy smiled.
“It was a childhood wish anyway,” Anika admitted. “And I got to live that dream for a while, anyway. I have no regrets.”
“That’s the spirit,” Vy said. Then she pointed. “Look!”
A shaggy, beige polar bear ambled its way along a floe, then jumped into the water. It paddled its way to the ice shelf underneath their vantage point, then clambered on.
It sat down and looked up at them.
The two of them stared back, quiet, only the sound of snapping ice in the distance.
Then Vy’s phone rang.
The moment broke, and the bear began to paw the air. “He’s hoping for a ham sandwich,” Vy said sadly. “The tourists probably toss him food from here.”
She turned back away and answered the phone. “It’s Roo. He says he thinks he’s found a good lead. He’s on his way up, and Gaia Security is coming with him.”