Solaris Rising 1.5 Read Online Free PDF Page B

over-delighted about it; but M. and I discussed it at length and it seemed best not to drag a baby onto an airplane, and then into a Swedish hotel and then back again for a ceremony she was much too young to even remember. I would express some milk, and M. would feed her that from a bottle, and we’d give her some formula, and everything would be fine. I would go, alone, and then I would come back.
    It was exciting and I was excited. Or I would have been, if I’d been less sleep-deprived. If I’m completely honest, the thing that had really persuaded me was the image of myself, solus, in a four-star hotel room—sleeping, sleeping all night long, sleeping uninterruptedly and luxuriously and waking with a newly-refreshed and sparkling mind to the swift Stockholm sunrise and a five-star breakfast in bed.
    You’re wondering: did I feel bad for my three colleagues—that they wouldn’t be there? Even though it was their choice?
    You’re wondering: so that’s all there is to it?
    No, that’s not all there is to it.
    The day before the flight, I took Marija for a walk in her the three-wheeled buggy. We strolled by the river, and back into town. Then I went into a Costa coffee shop, bought myself a hot chocolate. Then I fed her. After that she went to sleep, and I painstakingly reinserted her into her buggy. Then I checked my phone, and tapped out a few brief answers to yet another interview about winning The Nobel Prize For Heaven’s Sake! Then I sat back, in the comfy chair, with my hands folded in my lap.
    “Hello, Ana,” said Tessimond. “Are you well?”
    I had seen him only once before, I think; when Jack had introduced him to everybody by the water cooler, all those months earlier—before he’d said whatever he’d said and sent my boys vanishing like breath into the wind. He had struck then me as a tall, rather sad-faced old gent; clean-shaven and with a good stack of white hair, carefully dressed, with polite, old-school manners. I remember Jack saying “This is a friend of mine from Oregon; a professor, no less.” I don’t remember if he passed on the man’s name, that first time.
    “You stalking me, Professor?” I said. I felt remarkably placid, seeing him standing there. “I googled you, you know.”
    “If Google suggests I have a history of stalking people, Ana, then I shall have to seek legal redress.”
    “Go on, sit down,” I instructed him. “You can’t do any more damage now. I’m”—I was aware of a heady, floaty feeling as I said it, boastful but not caring—“off to Stockholm tomorrow to collect the Nobel Prize for Physics.”
    Tessimond sat himself, slowly, down. “I’ve seen the media coverage of it all, of course. Many congratulations.”
    “It belongs to all four of us. Have you been in touch with the other three?”
    “You mean Professors Niu Jian and Prevért and Doctor Sleight? I have not. Why would you think I have?”
    “It doesn’t matter.” I took a sip of hot chocolate. “You want a drink?”
    “No, thank you,” he said. He was peering into the buggy. “What a lovely infant! Is it a boy?”
    “She is a girl,” I said. “She is called Marija.”
    “I’m happy for you.”
    “Yes,” I said. “It’s been a big year. Childbirth. And winning the Nobel Prize.”
    “Congratulations, indeed.”
    We sat in silence for a little while. “You spoke to my three colleagues,” I said, shortly. “And then after that conversation they all left my team. What did you tell them?”
    Tessimond looked at me for a long time, with blithe eyes. “Do you really want me to say?” he asked eventually, looking down to my sleeping child and then back up to me.
    “No,” I said, feeling suddenly afraid. Then: “Yes, hell. Of course. Will it take long?”
    “Five minutes.”
    “Will you then leave me alone and not bother me any more?”
    “By all means.”
    “No, don’t tell me. I’ve changed my mind. What are you, anyway? Some kind of Ancient Mariner figure, going