Juno's Order

Argus was humming with the low sound that ear didn’t register until it got under your skin, slipped into your blood like a disease, and grew inside. The old puzzle suggested trying to decide whether there was a sound of a tree falling in a forest if there was nobody around to hear that, and William remembered himself asking his children the very same question at the very gentle age. Alex, a determined kid of five, listened to the puzzle eagerly, and gave it a thorough thought. “Yes,” he said at last. “There is a sound, I think.” “Explain,” suggested William, and it would be ten more years until he started demanding an explanation. And ten more to go until he would start suggesting again, because Alex Yu was not only his son anymore, but a young scientist who deserved respect for his work. “When something falls… it is not only about the sound, I think,” Alex said and thumped his palm on the desk. The pencils jumped a little. One of them, the yellow one, moved. “Snakes don’t have ears to hear the sound but they will know if the tree falls, I think. So, there is a sound.” William remembered smiling then. Partially to his son and his “I think”, yes, but partially to the idea that his five-years-old kiddo offered an explanation from a physical perspective and had a good example ready to back him up on this theory. Alex was a smart child, everybody noticed that. Some years passed. When he asked Morgan, his five-years-old daughter, the same old puzzle, she didn’t come up with the very logical reply her older brother had once had. She gave the question six seconds of consideration, then tugged at one of her pigtails and shrugged shoulders in the way that was neither typical for William, nor for Cathy, not a copy, not a mixed combination of their genes, identities and ideas, but a whole new creature of pure light and sharp intellect. “Who cares?” she asked dismissively, and blinked when father started laughing. “Exactly,” William said, and tugged her other pigtail, only for Morgan to join in, giggling. Argus was humming, the low vibration getting under his skin, coiling around his bones, and William thought that he didn’t care anymore either.

***

Argus was a complex complex. Once upon a time this wordplay used to make Cathy smile. She had several dozens of smiles at her disposal, each one for a special occasion, and though some of them looked alike, they were all as different as snowflakes. An overused comparison but only until you realise how cold those of her perfectly preserved for an occasion smiles were. With the years passed, she had lost some because there was no more need for them. The Alex-is-learning-to-walk smile, the Morgan-is-in-her-rebellious-phase smile, the I-know-you-can-do-this smile. The Walther-Dahl smile. The last one was lost for a reason, and it didn’t occur to William how often he had actually seen it until it was gone. He missed this smile even if it was not intended for him even more than he missed Walther Dahl. To be perfectly fair, he did not. He missed the comfort of having captain Dahl around, the effortless way he had once fitted in their lives and stayed there for good… how many years? Time didn’t matter anymore, not on Argus, at least, where it became more of a philosophical perspective than a physical one, mirroring in a way the falling-tree puzzle. Cathy obviously was not mourning Walther, nothing that kitsch for a woman of her age, upbringing and wealth, but she missed him being around. Somehow captain Dahl had become a very convenient type of a barrier between them, the barrier that had also been a connection of a sort. He used to be an easy-to-grasp concept of evil, somehow very humane and understandable, even though he preferred working with machines. His evil was natural, deep in his bones and part of him, like his accent, his walk, his way of holding the glass of whiskey. He was easy. He was simple. He was alive. What is my evil like? William thought watching his wife tending the bonsai tree he had brought to Argus from the Earth. Her gestures were gentle and measured, and the level of attention she was paying to something so irrelevant as the bonsai tree seemed eerie. She was here, and not here at the same time, the Schrödinger’s cat of a person, and William thought for the first time that he did not want to lose this woman. He also thought it was probably too late. “Pytheas is ready to accommodate new personnel, by the way,” Cathy said without even turning. “They are insisting on getting your opinion.” “What about your opinion, Cathy?” “I don’t know if this project can potentially be as profitable as expected.” “Nothing is profitable anymore,” William didn’t have any energy left to create an illusion of any sort anymore, not even an illusion of a smile. And it’s not like his wife was looking at him anyway. “At least, not in the way that is expected.” “Kasma might disagree.” “Kasma is earthbound now. They don’t have a say anymore.” She finally turned to William and chose one of the smiles out of her arsenal that he liked. The truth-telling one. “Do we?”