by Neil Clarke
Her face folded pleasantly around her smile. “The rest of us are a talky bunch, so don’t let us drown you out.”
“Okay.”
After she told me the when and where of the meeting, she left, and I realized I hadn’t said more than two syllables at a time. Still, she left me feeling she had understood.
When I arrived at the meeting, the effervescence of enthusiasm triggered my fight or flight reflex. I don’t trust optimism. I stood apart, arms crossed, trying to size up my fellow travelers.
The first thing I realized was that Amal and Edie were an item; they had the kind of companionable, good-natured partnership you see in long-married couples. Amal was a big, relaxed young man who was always ready with a joke to put people at ease, while Edie was a little firecracker of an organizer. I had expected Anatoly to be resentful, challenging Amal for leadership, but he seemed thoroughly committed to the project, and I realized it hadn’t just been a power play—he actually wanted to go. The other two were supposed to be “under-contributors,” as we call them. Seabird—yes, her parents named her that on this planet without either birds or seas—was a plump young woman with unkempt hair who remained silent through most of the meeting. I couldn’t tell if she was sulky, shy, or just scared out of her mind. Davern was clearly unnerved, and made up for it by being as friendly and anxious to ingratiate himself with the others as a lost puppy looking for a master. Neither Seabird nor Davern had volunteered. But then, neither had I, strictly speaking.
Amal called on me to show everyone the route. I had drawn it on a map—a physical map that didn’t require electricity—and I spread it on the table for them to see. Newton’s Eye was an ancient crater basin visible from space. To get to it, we would have to follow the Let’s Go River down to the Mazy Lakes. We would then cross the Damn Right Barrens, climb down the Winding Wall to the Oh Well Valley, and cross it to reach the old landing site. Coming back, it would be uphill all the way.
“Who made up these names?” Anatoly said, studying the map with a frown.
“I did,” I said. “Mostly for my mood on the day I discovered things.”
“I thought the settlers wanted to name everything for famous scientists.”
“Well, the settlers aren’t around anymore,” I said.
Anatoly looked as if he had never heard anything so heretical from one of my generation. He flashed me a sudden smile, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one from the governing committee was listening.
“What will it be like, traveling?” Edie asked me.
“Cold,” I said. “Dark.”
She was waiting for more, so I said, “We’ll be traveling in the dark for three shifts to every two in the light. Halfway through night, Umber rises, so we’ll have to wear protective gear. That’s the coldest time, too; it can get cold enough for CO2 to freeze this time of year. There won’t be much temptation to take off your masks.”
“We can do it,” Anatoly said resolutely.
Davern gave a nervous giggle and edged closer to me. “You know how to do this, don’t you, Mick?”
“Well, yes. Unless the shroud parts and Umbernight comes. Then all bets are off. Even I have never traveled through Umbernight.”
“Well, we just won’t let that happen,” Edie said, and for a moment it seemed as if she could actually make the forces of Nature obey.
I stepped back and watched while Edie coaxed them all into making a series of sensible decisions: a normal work schedule of ten hours on, ten hours off; a division of labor; a schedule leading up to departure. Seabird and Davern never volunteered for anything, but Edie cajoled them into accepting assignments without complaint.
When it was over and I was rolling up my map, Edie came over and said to me quietly, “Don’t let Davern latch onto you. He tries to find a protector—someone to adopt him. Don’t fall for it.”
“I don’t have maternal instincts,” I said.
She squeezed my arm. “Good for you.”
If this mission were to succeed, I thought, it would be because of Edie.
Which is not to say that Amal wasn’t a good leader. I got to know him when he came to me for advice on equipment. He didn’t have Edie’s extrovert flair, but his relaxed manner could put a person at ease, and he was methodical about thinking things through. Together, we compiled a daunting list of safety tents, heaters, coldsuits, goggles, face masks, first aid, and other gear; then when we realized that carrying all of it would leave Bucky with no room for the cargo we wanted to haul back, we set about ruthlessly cutting out everything that wasn’t essential for survival.
He challenged me on some things. “Rope?” he said skeptically. “A shovel?”
“Rationality is about exploiting the predictable,” I said. “Loose baggage and a mired-down vehicle are predictable.”
He helped me load up Bucky for the trip out with a mathematical precision, eliminating every wasted centimeter. On the way back, we would have to carry much of it on our backs.
I did demand one commitment from Amal. “If Umbernight comes, we need to turn around and come back instantly, no matter what,” I said.
At first he wouldn’t commit himself.
“Have you ever heard what happened to the people caught outside during the first Umbernight?” I asked him. “The bodies were found in spring, carbonized like statues of charcoal. They say some of them shed tears of gasoline, and burst into flame as soon as a spark hit them.”
He finally agreed.
You see, I wasn’t reckless. I did some things right—as right as anyone could have done in my shoes.
When we set out just before dawn, the whole of Feynman Habitat turned out to see us off. There were hugs and tears, then waves and good wishes as I ordered Bucky to start down the trail. It took only five minutes for Feynman to drop behind us, and for the true immensity of Dust to open up ahead. I led the way down the banks of a frozen rivulet that eventually joined the Let’s Go River; as the morning warmed it would begin to gurgle and splash.
“When are we stopping for lunch?” Seabird asked.
“You’re not hungry already, are you?” Edie said, laughing.
“No, I just want to know what the plan is.”
“The plan is to walk till we’re tired and eat when we’re hungry.”
“I’d rather have a time,” Seabird insisted. “I want to know what to expect.”
No one answered her, so she glowered as she walked.
It did not take long for us to go farther from the habitat than any of them had ever been. At first they were elated at the views of the river valley ahead; but as their packs began to weigh heavier and their feet to hurt, the high spirits faded into dogged determination. After a couple of hours, Amal caught up with me at the front of the line.
“How far do we need to go this tenhour?”
“We need to get to the river valley. There’s no good place to pitch the tent before that.”
“Can we take a break and stay on schedule?”
I had already planned on frequent delays for the first few days, so I said, “There’s a nice spot ahead.”
As soon as we reached it, Amal called a halt, and everyone dropped their packs and kicked off their boots. I warned them not to take off their UV-filtering goggles. “You can’t see it, but Umber hasn’t set yet. You don’t want to come back with crispy corneas.”
I went apart to sit on a rock overlooking the valley, enjoying the isolation. Below me, a grove of lookthrough trees gestured gently in the wind, their leaves like transparent streamers. Like most plants on Dust, they are gray-blue, not green, because life here never evolved chloroplasts for photosynthesis. It is all widdershins life—its DNA twirls the opposite direction from ours. That makes it mostly incompatible with us.
Before long, Anatoly came to join me.
“That valley ahead looks like a good place for a satellite community in the spring,” he said. “What do you think, could we grow maize there?”
The question was about mo
re than agronomy. He wanted to recruit me into his expansion scheme. “You’d need a lot of shit,” I said.
I wasn’t being flippant. Dumping sewage was how we had created the soil for the outdoor gardens and fields around Feynman. Here on Dust, sewage is a precious, limited resource.
He took my remark at face value. “It’s a long-range plan. We can live off hydroponics at first.”
“There’s a long winter ahead,” I said.
“Too long,” he said. “We’re bursting at the seams now, and our leaders can only look backward. That’s why the Committee has never supported your explorations. They think you’re wasting time because you’ve never brought back anything but knowledge. That’s how irrational they are.”
He was a good persuader. “You know why I like being out here?” I said. “You have to forget all about the habitat, and just be part of Dust.”
“That means you’re one of us,” Anatoly said seriously. “The governing committee, they are still fighting the battles of the homeworld. We’re the first truly indigenous generation. We’re part of this planet.”
“Wait until you’ve seen more of it before you decide for sure.”
I thought about Anatoly’s farming scheme as we continued on past his chosen site. It would be hard to pull off, but not impossible. I would probably never live to see it thrive.
The sun was blazing from the southern sky by the time we made camp on the banks of the Let’s Go. Edie recruited Davern to help her cook supper, though he seemed to be intentionally making a mess of things so that he could effusively praise her competence. She was having none of it. Amal and Anatoly worked on setting up the sleeping tent. It was made from a heavy, radiation-blocking material that was one of our lab’s best inventions. I puttered around aiming Bucky’s solar panels while there was light to collect, and Seabird lay on the ground, evidently too exhausted to move.
She sat up suddenly, staring at some nearby bushes. “There’s something moving around over there.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, since we are the only animal life on Dust.
“There is!” she said tensely.
“Well, check it out, then.”
She gave me a resentful look, but heaved to her feet and went to look in the bushes. I heard her voice change to that cooing singsong we use with children and animals. “Come here, girl! What are you doing here? Did you follow us?”
With horror, I saw Sally, one of the dogs from Feynman, emerge from the bushes, wiggling in delight at Seabird’s welcome.
“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. The dire profanity made everyone turn and stare. No one seemed to understand. In fact, Edie called out the dog’s name and it trotted over to her and stuck its nose eagerly in the cooking pot. She laughed and pushed it away.
Amal had figured out the problem. “We can’t take a dog; we don’t have enough food. We’ll have to send her back.”
“How, exactly?” I asked bitterly.
“I can take her,” Seabird volunteered.
If we allowed that, we would not see Seabird again till we got back.
“Don’t feed her,” Anatoly said.
Both Edie and Seabird objected to that. “We can’t starve her!” Edie said.
I was fuming inside. I half suspected Seabird of letting the dog loose to give herself an excuse to go back. It would have been a cunning move. As soon as I caught myself thinking that way, I said loudly, “Stop!”
They all looked at me, since I was not in the habit of giving orders. “Eat first,” I said. “No major decisions on an empty stomach.”
While we ate our lentil stew, Sally demonstrated piteously how hungry she was. In the end, Edie and Seabird put down their bowls for Sally to finish off.
“Is there anything edible out here?” Edie asked me.
“There are things we can eat, but not for the long run,” I said. “We can’t absorb their proteins. And the dog won’t eat them if she knows there is better food.”
Anatoly had rethought the situation. “She might be useful. We may need a threat detector.”
“Or camp cleanup services,” Edie said, stroking Sally’s back.
“And if we get hungry enough, she’s food that won’t spoil,” Anatoly added.
Edie and Seabird objected strenuously.
I felt like I was reliving the Great Dog Debate. They weren’t old enough to remember it. The arguments had been absurdly pseudo-rational, but in the end it had boiled down to sentiment. Pretty soon someone would say, “If the ancestors hadn’t thought dogs would be useful they wouldn’t have given us the embryos.”
Then Seabird said it. I wanted to groan.
Amal was trying to be leaderly, and not take sides. He looked at Davern. “Don’t ask me,” Davern said. “It’s not my responsibility.”
He looked at me then. Of course, I didn’t want to harm the dog; but keeping her alive would take a lot of resources. “You don’t know yet what it will be like,” I said.
Amal seized on my words. “That’s right,” he said, “we don’t have enough information. Let’s take another vote in thirty hours.” It was the perfect compromise: the decision to make no decision.
Of course, the dog ended up in the tent with the rest of us as we slept.
Stupid! Stupid! Yes, I know. But also kind-hearted and humane in a way my hardened pioneer generation could not afford to be. It was as if my companions were recovering a buried memory of what it had once been like to be human.
The next tenhours’ journey was a pleasant stroll down the river valley speckled with groves of lookthrough trees. Umber had set and the sun was still high, so we could safely go without goggles, the breeze blowing like freedom on our faces. Twenty hours of sunlight had warmed the air, and the river ran ice-free at our side. We threw sticks into it for Sally to dive in and fetch.
We slept away another tenhour, and rose as the sun was setting. From atop the hill on which we had camped, we could see far ahead where the Let’s Go flowed into the Mazy Lakes, a labyrinth of convoluted inlets, peninsulas, and islands. In the fading light I carefully reviewed my maps, comparing them to what I could see. There was a way through it, but we would have to be careful not to get trapped.
As night deepened, we began to pick our way by lantern-light across spits of land between lakes. Anatoly kept thinking he saw faster routes, but Amal said, “No, we’re following Mick.” I wasn’t sure I deserved his trust. A couple of times I took a wrong turn and had to lead the way back.
“This water looks strange,” Amal said, shining his lantern on the inky surface. There was a wind blowing, but no waves. It looked like black gelatin.
The dog, thinking she saw something in his light, took a flying leap into the lake. When she broke the surface, it gave a pungent fart that made us groan and gag. Sally floundered around, trying to find her footing in a foul substance that was not quite water, not quite land. I was laughing and trying to hold my breath at the same time. We fled to escape the overpowering stench. Behind us, the dog found her way onto shore again, and got her revenge by shaking putrid water all over us.
“What the hell?” Amal said, covering his nose with his arm.
“Stromatolites,” I explained. They looked at me as if I were speaking ancient Greek—which I was, in a way. “The lakes are full of bacterial colonies that form thick mats, decomposing as they grow.” I looked at Edie. “They’re one of the things on Dust we can actually eat. If you want to try a stromatolite steak, I can cut you one.” She gave me the reaction I deserved.
After ten hours, we camped on a small rise surrounded by water on north and south, and by stars above. The mood was subdued. In the perpetual light, it had been easy to feel we were in command of our surroundings. Now, the opaque ceiling of the sky had dissolved, revealing the true immensity of space. I could tell they were feeling how distant was our refuge. They were dwarfed, small, and very far from home.
To my surprise, Amal reached into his backpack and produced, of all things, a folding aluminum mandoli
n. After all our efforts to reduce baggage, I could not believe he had wasted the space. But he assembled and tuned it, then proceeded to strum some tunes I had never heard. All the others seemed to know them, since they joined on the choruses. The music defied the darkness as our lantern could not.
“Are there any songs about Umbernight?” I asked when they paused.
Strumming softly, Amal shook his head. “We ought to make one.”
“It would be about the struggle between light and unlight,” Edie said.
“Or apocalypse,” Anatoly said. “When Umber opens its eye and sees us, only the just survive.”
Their minds moved differently than mine, or any of my generation’s. They saw not just mechanisms of cause and effect, but symbolism and meaning. They were generating a literature, an indigenous mythology, before my eyes. It was dark, like Dust, but with threads of startling beauty.
We woke to darkness. The temperature had plummeted, so we pulled on our heavy coldsuits. They were made from the same radiation-blocking material as our tent, but with thermal lining and piezoelectric heating elements so that if we kept moving, we could keep warm. The visored hoods had vents with micro-louvers to let us breathe, hear, and speak without losing too much body heat.
“What about the dog?” Amal asked. “We don’t have a coldsuit for her.”
Edie immediately set to work cutting up some of the extra fabric we had brought for patching things. Amal tried to help her wrap it around Sally and secure it with tape, but the dog thought it was a game, and as their dog-wrestling grew desperate, they ended up collapsing in laughter. I left the tent to look after Bucky, and when I next saw Sally she looked like a dog mummy with only her eyes and nose poking through. “I’ll do something better when we stop next,” Edie pledged.
The next tenhour was a slow, dark trudge through icy stromatolite bogs. When the water froze solid enough to support the buggy, we cut across it to reach the edge of the Mazy Lakes, pushing on past our normal camping time. Once on solid land, we were quick to set up the tent and the propane stove to heat it. Everyone crowded inside, eager to shed their coldsuits. Taking off a coldsuit at the end of the day is like emerging from a stifling womb, ready to breathe free.