Refugee

by Piers Anthony

  On Callisto, dawn outside the dome is pretty but unremarkable since we have our own day-night schedule inside the domes. Here dawn was immediate and forceful—in fact, more savage than we had imagined.

  Sulfur dioxide sublimates to gas in the ambiance of day on Io. It is frozen only during the night. With the first touch of sunlight, the snow around us began to heat and convert. As that light slowly intensified, this conversion became explosive. The gas expanded upward and outward, filling the vacuum, swirling past the irregular features of the landscape. We were soon amidst an upward-flinging storm.

  In addition, the ground quaked. Io was now in the close, swift phase of its orbit about Jupiter, and the tidal force was manifesting. The entire body of this world was being squished, and her molten interior was squirting out of every available pore. This was not a volcano, it was an entire planetary face of eruptions. We were caught in an awakening hell.

  And this surely was the physical location of Hell, I realized. Hell did have to be somewhere, if it had any reality at all, and this was conveniently located. Satan could ship the newly damned souls out here at light-speed by the busload, less than an hour’s trip from Earth, and dump them out amidst the burning sulfur and leave them to their own miserable devices. Where could they go? And we, like the unlikely fools we were, had come here voluntarily. Our souls would not have far to travel when they departed our bodies.

  We had to rope ourselves together again, lest the rising winds of the filling vacuum blow us away. New crevices were yawning, and the constant shaking of the ground was as deeply unsettling to our attitude as to our bodies. We were accustomed to a stable planet. Where could we hide from this?

  We plowed on toward the target dome, huddling against the titanic forces of nature being unleashed about us. When a person fell, two more picked her up. When a segment of our line of people was blown toward a crevice, the rest of the line dug in instantly and pulled it back. We were learning to react correctly.

  But vicious Io would not permit us to continue so readily. She opened a battery of jets almost beneath us. The ground cracked open, and a line of ejecta spewed out immediately behind Helse. The sulfur sand and gas rose like the cutting edge of a knife—and what it cut was our rope. Suddenly the last eight women in our line were separated from us; we perceived their suited outlines dimly through the haze.

  We tried to rejoin them, but now the vent widened, as if seizing on its advantage, and the wash of gas and sand expanded. The ground beneath the eight of them broke up; fragments of it were blasted out, raining down in a larger pattern. A central plume of eruption formed, surrounded by an envelope of swirling gas. We could no longer see our friends—and I suspected that was just as well. They could not have survived that blast.

  It may seem that I lacked emotion as I watched my companions perish. I think this was not the case; my emotion was stifled, suppressed, voided, because I knew there was nothing to be gained by it, for me or the others. I had concerns of survival too pressing to be dissipated by the energy of emotion. So I watched with a kind of numbness, unable to comprehend the larger significance of what I saw, and plodded on.

  The woman before me doubled over. I saw her suit deflating; a particle from the eruption had holed it. I tried to clap my hands over the puncture, but it was useless; her remaining pressure leaked out around my clumsy gloves and she was dead before I knew it. I saw her face inside the helmet, bloating out, the eyes—oh, God, depressurization is a terrible thing!

  My numbness suffered another jolt. I realized that there was absolutely no merit in my survival. That particle could have holed my suit as readily as this woman’s; only pure chance had dictated that she had occupied that spot in its trajectory instead of I. Had we been moving ahead a trifle faster, I would have been there; slower, and the woman ahead of her would have been there. Similarly, it had been luck that cut off the eight women behind us; it could as readily have been nine. That would have taken out Helse. At that point my speculation balked.

  There was nothing to do but salvage the dead woman’s oxygen tank. Fumblingly I moved it to my suit as a potential spare for whoever might need it. My suit had had about twenty-four hours of service remaining at the start of the Io venture, but some of the other suits might have less. I disconnected her body from the chain and we went on. Already I wished ardently that we had never landed on terrible Io; but it was far, far too late for any change of mind.

  The angry planet was not through with us. She would not be satisfied, I realized, until every one of us was dead. A new gas vent opened, this one at a slant, and its blast shoved the twelve of us who remained rapidly forward toward the dome we were headed for. This might have seemed fortunate—but we already knew the danger of too-swift progress and didn’t like this. We tried to slow down, to control our route and our destiny, but the vent only increased its exhalation, while the ground shook violently, impeding our footing, and we had to move at Io’s will, not our own.

  The consequence of this loss of control was not long in coming. We found ourselves charging a vent overflowing with sulfur lava, the viscous bright-yellow material flowing slowly across out path. It would have been easy enough to avoid—if the wind behind us had not been shoving us directly into it.

  We saw it coming and tried to veer left to get around it. But the lead women were already too close; they were carried right into the glowing mass. Their suits inflated like bubbles and burst with the sudden heat overload.

  One woman, just at the edge of the flow, managed to brace her feet and turn and point left. Helse and I and the woman now in front of us scrambled desperately left—and the braced woman pulled on the rope, helping us crack the whip, so that we could gain impetus to avoid the lava.

  It worked, and we scrambled to relative safety. But the woman who helped us could not maintain her footing and was carried on into the lava. She fell headlong, her suit immersed for a moment before the rapid heat expansion lifted it to the surface and popped it. She died helping us to live, and so did several of the women closest to her. The rope burned through, setting our end free.

  More sacrifice for us—and we didn’t even know their names. They had surely known ours, though, for the sacrifice had been too deliberate; they were preserving us so we could speak English to the scientists of the dome and complete our mission.

  I don’t care if Io is literal Hell. I am sure those gallant women went to Heaven.

  Helse and I and three women cleared the lava. We survived—we five, of the twenty-seven who had started this trek. And we still weren’t at the dome.

  The lava flow was following a great U-shaped channel. We were now in that channel, ahead of the flow, and knew we had to get out of it quickly. The lava was moving slowly, but that could change quickly, or a reverse gust of a gale could drive us back into it. All low ground was treacherous while lava was spewing.

  We spotted the edge of the escarpment that sheltered the observation dome. This rose into a mountain not more than two kilometers high, but it was as jagged as the other. There should be shelter from wind and lava in its lee, as this was not a volcanic structure. It seemed that solid rock floated on the half-molten crust of the planet, much as continents were supposed to do on planets like Earth. We were very glad to have this solidity amidst this horribly living surface. Security was hard to come by, here in Hell.

  It was effective. The wind cut off as we passed into the mountain shelter, and the ground was more stable here. We stayed at the base, close in, knowing better than to try to climb the impossibly steep slope looming beside us. Therein was the final error in our judgment of Io.

  The foot of the mountain was not a straight line; it wound in and out in a series of sculptured bays. It was really quite pretty in its fashion, with the sulfur changing shades of orange depending on the angle of the sunlight and shadow and the direction from which we viewed it.

  Massive and somber, an island of stability in this ocean of violence, it seemed almost to lean over us protectively. The su
n rose slowly higher as we walked, further warming the region. The yellowish atmosphere was thickening.

  Then the avalanche started. I think a volcanic tremor actually set it off, but it was the softening sulfur snow that made it ready to happen. Too late, we realized what we had been flirting with when we cozied up to this mountain.

  The entire face of it seemed to slide. Snow flew up in a yellow cloud, obscuring the more solid motion, but we could tell by the rumble that shook our bodies through ground and vapor that there were massive boulders within it. This probably happened every morning as the mountain warmed, while at night the sulfur dioxide solidified and coated it again. The mountain was more or less eternal, as this region went; not so its clothing of snow.

  I knew that avalanches tended to flow in channels, as the material took the easiest route down. Thus it would concentrate mostly in one bay or another, by the time it struck the bottom. But which bay? Our survival depended on our choice of locale.

  By common consensus we drew into one bay. We would ride it out together. But Helse, at the end, suddenly unlinked herself and bolted, terrified. She had panicked and done the worst possible thing.

  I set out after her—and was brought short by the rope that linked me to the three women. With anger and desperation I untied myself, while the rumble swelled around us. Then I launched after Helse. I didn’t know whether I could catch her and fetch her back in time, but I had to try. I suppose that was brave of me; I really didn’t think about that at the time. I just knew I had to save Helse.

  I sprinted after her, making better time than she in the clumsy suits because I had more power. But by the time I caught her, it was too late. The avalanche was upon us.

  I wrapped my arms about her and threw her down, seeking to protect her with my body, though knowing it was useless. The mass of the failing material would crush us both to death in an instant. My last thought was that this was as good a way to die as any: embracing the woman I loved.

  But it didn’t happen. A few chunks of discolored snow fell beside us; that was all. The noise was all about us, however, swelling to a crescendo, which then stifled out. The horrendous fall of sulfur had come—and we were alive.

  We climbed back to our feet, somewhat dazed. I wondered how I had been able to hear so much, and realized that the atmosphere had filled out considerably as the snow sublimated; sound was indeed now possible in the normal fashion.

  The avalanche had settled in the other bay, where the three women waited. Now that bay was filled with the rubble of the mountain.

  We examined the monstrous orange pile, cogitated a moment, and went on. As usual, Io had given us no other course.

  We trudged on, burdened more by the horror of twenty-five women dead than by the fatigue of the trek. But now we walked some distance out from the base of the mountain, though that put us at the fringe of the wind and belching ground. We knew how far out we had to be to avoid the main mass of an avalanche, because we had just seen an avalanche. We could walk within that range, but had to be ready to bolt out of it at the first sound of a slide.

  Sure enough, before long we felt the rumble of another avalanche, and saw the clouds of yellow snow. We were clear of it, but I was developing a profound dislike for that color. I think for the rest of my life I will associate yellow with Hell.

  We were beyond the threat of the snow-slide, but sympathetic vibrations in the ground opened new crevices at our feet, and we hastened right back toward the mountain snow. Scylla and Charybdis, the perils of the left and right—we had to be alert and quick to avoid them both.

  Then we rounded an outcropping and spied the station dome. Never had a structure looked more beautiful to me! We bounded up to it, to the tiny-seeming lock at its base—and were met by a suited man.

  He didn’t even try to question us. He conducted us right inside, and soon we were in a blessedly warm chamber, breathing fresh air, feeling full Earth gravity. The gravity around the dome must have been reduced, as it was wherever a gravity lens focused the waves, but we hadn’t noticed. That shows how far gone we were.

  Best of all was the feeling of security. There were no storms in here, no jetting vents, no lava flows, and no avalanches. We could relax without risking prompt extinction. It was like a crushing burden evaporating from our bodies.

  The head scientist showed up immediately to question us. He was an older man, obviously from Jupiter. He had short gray hair, large spectacles that would have been fashionable half a millennium ago, and of course he spoke nothing but English.

  Our original plan was no good, despite our ability to speak the language. The fake bomb had been lost with our companions and we had no way to hijack this station, even if we had wanted to carry through. Too much had happened; we did not care to honor the memory of the women who had sacrificed themselves by the commission of a crime. Perhaps this was illogical, but it was the way I felt, and I believe Helse agreed. So we simply told the scientist the truth.

  The man shook his head in polite amazement. “They actually towed you back out to space?” he asked, referring to an earlier part of our story. “I find that awkward to believe!” That was the word he used: awkward. He was trying to avoid implying that we were not telling the truth.

  “Believe it, Mason,” an associate told him. “The new administration has instituted a get-tough policy on immigration. No more Hispanics.”

  “But the governments of the moons are notoriously repressive!” the scientist said. “What other recourse do these people have?”

  “Evidently to die in space,” the other returned wryly. It was obvious that the scientists were humanitarians, unacquainted with the specifics of political policy.

  The scientist, Mason—I was not certain whether that was his given or his surname—returned his attention to us. “So you plotted to hijack this station to obtain supplies—to go where?”

  “Hidalgo,” I repeated.

  “But that’s impossible! Hidalgo is on the far side of the Solar System at the moment!”

  “We had planned to get an ephemeris to locate it exactly,” I said. Such details hardly mattered, now that we had failed.

  Mason went to a computer terminal. “Here is our ephemeris,” he said, punching buttons. The screen illuminated, showing three-dimensional coordinates. “See—Hidalgo is just about as far away now as it is possible to be. You could travel more readily to Mars or Earth at the moment.”

  My weight seemed to increase. “We didn’t know. We thought it could be close to Jupiter.”

  “It is close—in season. You happen to seek it at an inopportune time.”

  “Then we have nowhere to go,” I said, thinking again of the twenty-five women who had given their lives for this hopeless mission. We had never had a chance, from the outset. Perhaps some other year I would be better able to appreciate the irony.

  Mason pondered. “Politics is not my specialty. But I think you would be well advised to seek asylum on Leda. There is a Jupiter military station there whose commandant is of Hispanic descent. I suspect he would interpret the law more liberally than did those you encountered before.

  “You’re not arresting us?” Helse put in.

  The scientist refocused on her. “Arrest you? For what you have told me? That would be self-incrimination! As I explained, I am not a political man, and if I were, I suspect I would not endorse this particular brand of politics.” He shook his head, smiling. “Besides, you remind me too much of my niece.”

  Helse’s face froze. I realized she was thinking of the supposed uncle-niece relationship she had had as a child prostitute. For all the apologies she had made for that system, it was evident she wanted no more of it.

  “Leda,” I said quickly. “The next moon out from Callisto, but too small to house a population.”

  “Indeed,” Mason agreed, returning his attention to me. Helse relaxed, realizing that the scientist’s remark had been innocent. “Its diameter is hardly ten kilometers. That would be about six miles in your measure
ment.”

  “No, kilometers is fine,” I said. He really didn’t know our culture. I realized that scientists, while certainly intelligent people, were not educated in things beyond their fields. Miles was his culture’s unit of measurement, outside the scientific and technical arena, not mine.

  He smiled. “Leda would fit within the shadow of one of our sulfur mountains here. But if you can reach it, I think it would be worth your while.”

  “We can reach it,” I said, optimism returning. “If we can get the supplies we need, and an exact course. It’s pretty far out.”

  “Eleven million kilometers from Jupiter,” he agreed, checking his figures on the terminal, though he surely knew them in his head. “About twenty-five times as far out from Jupiter as is Io. But I think we can let you have a good drive jet and sufficient supplies.”

  Helse came alive again. “You can?”

  The scientist smiled. “We suffer frequent losses here, owing to the violence of the geography we study. This is one loss I shall be glad to sustain.”

  “But we were going to hijack you!” she cried, chagrined.

  He looked at her pretty face. “You did, my dear, you did.” Then, perceiving her reaction, he asked: “Did I say something wrong?”

  I realized we would have to tackle this head-on. “Do you have a picture of your niece?” I asked.

  Perplexed, Mason gestured to a desk. There was a picture of a family of three. “My brother and his charming wife, and their daughter Megan, a winsome girl.”

  I stared at the picture. There was an uncanny resemblance between Helse and the pictured Megan. The scientist had not been joking about being reminded of his niece. “How old is she?” I asked.

  Mason considered. “I lose track of time, in a place like this. I can tell you quickly about the past five eruptions of Vent 37C here, but mundane details like the party of my brother’s politics or the age of his child—let me see.”

  “You have it on file,” his associate reminded him.