by Lena Nguyen
Despite herself, Park looked over his shoulder. Natalya Severov was there, sitting up in Holt’s cot; her honey-colored hair fell over her thin, freckled shoulders in a golden cloud. She held Holt’s blanket over herself to cover her nakedness, but her eyes were huge and defiant as she stared at Park. Her expression seemed to say: And? What the hell do you want? Park nearly laughed; instead she looked at Holt as if her field of vision had narrowed to just his face and said, “I’m sorry to bother you.”
He knew she had seen; he smiled unhappily. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell the commander,” he said. Behind him, Natalya huffed. The commander couldn’t care less who you sleep with, Park wanted to say. Neither could I. But before she could respond, a kind of piercing wail came from behind her.
Park turned. It hadn’t been the HERCULES pacing, after all; the android had been standing placidly by her shoulder the whole time. The heavy tread she’d heard was Bebe’s—the botanist had followed them to Holt’s tent. Now she stood there in the sterile moonlight, her breath streaming out of her in gouts of white. Her small frame swelled and expanded like a hot-air balloon.
“A child!” she screamed. “You’re a fucking child, Eric!”
“Look,” he said, coming a little out of his tent, “I’m sorry. But I wanted things—simple.”
“They are simple!” Bebe said. “I love you!”
“I know.” Holt rubbed his head in an embarrassed way; his bare toes shuffled against each other self-consciously. “It’s cold,” he said, looking at Park. “Maybe we can talk about this later.”
Which meant, Park thought grimly, it was up to her to deal with the fallout. It wouldn’t do for Bebe to make a scene, to disrupt the surface-level peace of the community: now she had to herd her off and shut her up someplace secluded. She felt an edge of deep annoyance. Couldn’t they be professional, for God’s sake? Couldn’t anyone get through the mission—which hadn’t even started yet—without these kinds of entanglements? And as for Park . . . this wasn’t her job. She shouldn’t be some unnoticed go-between. Didn’t they have androids to do this—delivering messages in the middle of the night, escorting unwanted bodies elsewhere?
Bebe was still yelling at Holt, who had vanished back into his cozy tent with Natalya. Park turned to the HERCULES and said in an undertone, “Help me take her away.” It nodded—somehow it seemed to understand perfectly—and clasped its metal hand around Bebe’s elbow. Bebe yelped at the iciness of its touch; her head swiveled to gawk at the android, as if some eldritch creature had wrapped its tentacles around her. Park said, “It’s all right, Bebe. Let’s go talk about this somewhere else.”
Bebe meant to fight her, Park saw, or more likely meant to fight Natalya, but then she stared up into the HERCULES’s face and seemed to change her mind. The HERCULES smiled at her, jerkily, the movement like the dents in a crumpled soda can popping back out. Together the two of them led Bebe back to Park’s tent, where Bebe lay flat on her back on the tarp floor, crying, while Park sat on the edge of the cot and droned at her: first standard words of reassurance from the ISF scripts, and then, helplessly, whatever Park thought would have made herself feel better if the situations were swapped.
You wouldn’t want to crack, she insinuated, to lose your composure—not before getting to Eos. The opportunity of a lifetime. Of a million lifetimes. A virgin planet to help discover! Nothing was worth losing that! The violence of emotion would not be allowed aboard the ship, she told Bebe. The irrationality of love had no place in space. So . . . get rid of it.
When that didn’t work, she attempted to explain further. “When you feel love,” she said, “your ascending reticular activating system is stimulated. It’s a cluster of cells deep in your brain stem. It doesn’t discriminate. Not in the way you would think. So you’ll move on. Find someone else.”
Bebe kept weeping. “In other words,” Park said, “this isn’t the end of the world. You can love again.”
Though she didn’t know why Bebe would want to. Luckily, it didn’t seem that the botanist heard any of what Park was saying: she seemed intent on lying on the floor and howling at the arctic moon while the HERCULES watched tentatively through the slit in the tent. Park was reduced to cradling her chin in her hand and making soothing sounds while Bebe gasped and hiccupped with heartbreak.
An hour passed, then two. Eventually the other woman fell asleep on the floor, her tears forming a transparent crust on her face so that it seemed blurry and undefined to Park. Park was left sitting on the edge of her cot, wondering what it was like to feel the things that Bebe felt. What was love, really? Biology, as she’d said—but also nothing more than a pain in someone’s ass.
* * *
—
The next morning, Park trudged toward the mess tent for breakfast. She couldn’t keep her head from drooping a little: she’d scraped barely three hours of sleep, and even then Bebe’s snoring had jolted her awake throughout the night. She bumped forehead-first into someone’s shoulder; they put out a hand to steady her and said, “Are you all right?”
“Fine, thank you,” Park said automatically. She could barely raise her eyes. Later she would realize it was Fulbreech addressing her, though she hadn’t known him then—he was Keller’s patient, and there had been over one hundred recruits in the Antarctica biodome compared to the thirteen who would make it out. She registered a friendly smile, the glimpse of a strong chin. He’d said something in warm tones, but the words were as muffled as if she had stuffed her head with cotton. Park nodded vacantly and marched on without answering.
Commander Wick approached her in the mess tent. Park was gulping coffee so quickly it didn’t even have time to scald her tongue; when the commander sidled up, she choked. In those days Park had still felt shy with him. Wick was a veteran of a dozen colony missions; he had the hallowed glow of a folk hero. She wiped her mouth and said, “Commander. Good morning.”
“Park,” he said. “I need you to do something for me.”
Park waited without saying anything; she didn’t want to appear too eager, too subordinate. It also felt like people needed her a lot, lately. She was beginning to feel worn down with it, fever-warm, like wood after vigorous sanding. Wick continued, “Natalya’s heading out to find an ice aquifer this morning. I’d like you to go with her.”
Park stared at him; she didn’t even try to mask her surprise. As the expedition’s surveyor, Natalya would be in charge of locating landmarks like reservoirs, valleys, and caves on Eos. In Antarctica, of course, they already knew where things were—but for the sake of simulation, they had the recruits go out blind, relying on only what they would have on Eos to find what they needed. Park had heard that there was pressure on Natalya to find a large source of water nearby: they had enough to drink in the biodome, with the water reclaimers, but people wanted baths. They were tired of hastily sponging themselves clean, of always being smelly—especially when it came to showing off, or courting each other. Work performance and personal confidence both suffered. So they needed more water, and now Wick was sending Natalya out to find an aquifer. Along with Park.
“I’m not trained for that,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to help.”
“It’s not that I need you to survey the land,” Wick said. “But Natalya seems . . . on edge this morning. She needs some company when she goes out on the ice. I figure you’d be good at keeping her head on straight while she’s out there.”
It’s not my job, Park wanted to say again, but she looked into Wick’s deep gray eyes and felt her scalp tighten. “All right,” she said.
So she suited up, donning her bulky helmet and faceplate, which was standard for expedition members when leaving the biodome: it was supposed to replicate the spacesuits and exo-armor jackets they’d be wearing on Eos. Before she left she went to check on the HERCULES, mostly to procrastinate. The thought of spending the morning alone with prickly Natalya filled her with dr
ead. The HERCULES was still standing quietly outside her tent, giving its joints a rest; Park had noticed all throughout that morning that its limbs had been creaking more than usual.
She approached it. The HERCULES peered blandly into her faceplate when she walked up; Park wasn’t sure at first if it recognized her behind the golden visor. Then it said, “You’re leaving the biodome.”
“Temporarily,” Park said. “Yes.” She had it lift an arm, ran her fingers helplessly over its bulky shoulder joint, which was beginning to streak with coppery rust. She’d been the one to help Glenn with his basic maintenance, in the old days; she had a rudimentary knowledge of robotics. But the HERCULES was a foreign model to her—and she didn’t want to risk breaking it completely. For a moment she wondered at her own concern. But it was a little sad, to her. The HERCULES had to hear its own creakiness, the evidence of its own disrepair. It had to be fully aware of its vulnerability. For them to ask it to press on without addressing its slow breakdown seemed cruel.
“I’m sorry,” she said to it. “I don’t know why the roboticists aren’t taking better care of you. I don’t know how to treat you. And of course you don’t have the ability to fix yourself.”
“Do I need fixing?” the HERCULES asked, with what she imagined was concern.
“Not fixing, exactly,” Park said. “Maintenance, yes. Your movements seem hampered.”
The HERCULES nodded slowly, as if it was surprised she had noticed. “Yes. The weather conditions here are extreme. I apologize for my lowered performance.”
“No,” Park said, almost moved. “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. I’m just sorry I can’t—help you.”
“No,” the HERCULES echoed. Its eyes sought hers; they bore into her faceplate like twin lightbulbs. “Don’t apologize.” It was mimicking her in its metallic way. “There’s nothing to apologize for, Dr. Park. It’s not your fault. I am here to help you. Not the other way around.”
Natalya was waiting outside the biodome in the cab of an Earthmover drill; the drill’s conic bore of Martian steel gleamed dully in the hard light in front of her. When Park clambered in the cab, already shivering from the cold, Natalya started the drill without a word. Within moments they were churning along across the tundra.
For twenty minutes, neither of them spoke. The snarling grind and grumble of the drill filled the air. Park couldn’t read Natalya’s expression behind her reflective amber faceplate; she could barely tell it was Natalya at all, except by the icy contempt that seemed to be radiating from the surveyor. Evidently Natalya wasn’t too happy about Park’s interruption of her time with Holt the night before; she was probably worrying about how it would look if Park reported it back to ISF. Park was too tired to placate her, to tell her that no one gave a damn about her fling with Holt—except Bebe, of course. As long as it didn’t interfere with work, Park thought. That was the only thing that mattered. It shouldn’t be so hard to understand.
They were heading toward the jagged, bone-white line of cliffs to the south of the biodome—toward the coast, Park estimated. The movement of the Earthmover lulled her; once or twice she caught herself nodding off. Damn Bebe, she thought, and damn Holt and Natalya. Damn anyone who thought she was here for anything other than observing.
“Something’s following us,” Natalya said, finally. Park craned her head to look. In the side mirror of the Earthmover, she could see the HERCULES loping along after them, its metallic body arcing over the ice like a dolphin’s.
“It’s the HERCULES,” she told Natalya. She sensed rather than saw the woman frowning under her faceplate.
“I didn’t request it,” Natalya said.
“Neither did I,” Park answered. “But it’s been—following me.”
If Natalya had thoughts about this, she didn’t voice them. She merely grunted and put her hand on the throttle of the drill like it was the holster of a gun; as if she was preparing to confront some enemy, some approaching wild animal. The Earthmover continued to growl along. Through the searing brilliance of wintry light, Park watched the HERCULES jog after them. She couldn’t see its expression from this distance.
She hadn’t expected it to leave the biodome to follow her. It hadn’t mentioned anything when she left. Would its joints be able to handle the exertion? She thought about its limbs shattering, brittle from the cold—a piston locking up and sending it plunging through the ice. It should be all right, she told herself. Androids were built for conditions that humans couldn’t handle. It could withstand extreme temperatures, immense pressure, endless treks. It didn’t feel weariness or pain. She shouldn’t have to worry about it; after all, what good would a rescue bot like the HERCULES be if a human had to worry about rescuing it from destruction? It’s stronger than it looks, she thought. It doesn’t need me to look after it. I have enough on my plate as it is. She turned her face away from the HERCULES’s needlepoint of light.
She must have drifted—the glassy featurelessness of the horizon made it hard to stay alert. Suddenly Natalya was bringing the Earthmover to a halt beside a towering plateau, a lone knobby white thing that looked like a clenched fist.
“Is this the aquifer?” Park asked, straining to be heard over the rumble of the engine.
Natalya thumped her own shoulder fiercely, signing, Yes. She bent over the Earthmover’s console and began to manipulate the drill over the ice. Park looked around. She couldn’t see how Natalya intuitively knew that this was a place to drill for water. It looked no different than any other place on the tundra. Was it some hidden intuition she had, like the needle of a compass? Or had she been consulting a map without Park noticing all this time?
The HERCULES was still some distance away. Its small body bobbed over the ice like the lure of a fishhook. A high, painful squeal jerked Park’s attention back to the drill; Natalya was hunched over the console, cursing.
“What’s wrong?” Park asked.
“Pneumatic hammer,” Natalya said curtly. “It’s gotten stuck. Some ice in the hydraulic impacts, maybe.” She fumbled with the controls for a while more; the drill screamed in protest until she finally powered it down.
“Can you climb down and take a look?” she asked Park. “I need to figure out this system.”
“I wouldn’t know what to look for,” Park said nervously.
Natalya’s helmet jerked impatiently. “Just see if anything looks caught in the inner mechanisms,” she said. Her voice sounded tight and creaky, like the stretching of a belt behind her visor. She continued to glare until Park opened the cab door and slowly clambered down.
She lifted her faceplate and felt the brutal wind scald her cheeks raw. Park peered helplessly at the coupling of the drill and the cab, then at the enormous cone of the drill itself. It was frozen at full extension, as stuck and rigid as a nail shot through an invisible wall.
“I think I see something,” she shouted.
“What is it?”
Park shuffled closer. “It looks like there’s—” She stopped.
“There’s what?”
There was a small metal rod jammed between the hammer of the drill and the part that moved it, the extension lever or chuck or whatever it was. And the rod was not a rod from the Earthmover, Park thought, but something like the metal stakes the expedition members used to pin their tents to the ground. Probably from someone’s spare pack, she realized. She could feel the blood pulsing in her eyelids. Natalya couldn’t have put it there; the metal stake looked as if it had been balanced precariously within the coupling of the drill, waiting for the right movement to lean full-tilt against the hammer and jam it to a grinding halt. Half of the stake had been twisted and chewed by the explosive force of the drill’s pistons. Yes, someone had put this in the drill to damage it—and if it wasn’t Natalya, and it wasn’t Park . . .
“There’s some rocks caught between the coupling,” Park said. “It looks bad. Hard to remove. You
might not be able to use it.”
“Remove them,” Natalya rapped from within the cab. Park turned to gawk at her: hadn’t these people ever heard of credentials? She wasn’t authorized to even look at the Earthmover, let alone touch any part of it. But when Natalya didn’t move—Park could see her busily examining some schematic—Park tentatively turned back to the drill and stretched her glove toward the scrap metal that had been caught in it. This was best, she told herself. She couldn’t let Natalya see evidence of the—she refused to call it sabotage—until Park could get back to camp and figure things out for herself. It wouldn’t do to jump to hasty conclusions, to reinforce the tensions that were already brewing within the dome . . . Best to get rid of the thing and put it out of sight.
But despite herself, she squeezed her eyes shut. She imagined the sudden whir of the drill, the sensation of her fingers catching—the screaming hot emptiness of pain. Then her hand wrapped around the warped piece of metal that was caught between the coupling, and she tugged it free. She was left standing there, blinking in the light, gripping the curled steel stake in her hand.
“Thanks,” Natalya said, without looking at her. She started up the drill again, and this time its whir sounded smooth and clear; the blade dug eagerly into the ice, with an enormous crunching sound like a giant biting into an apple. Park stood beside the drill and watched as it cut a perfect circle into the ice. She tucked the metal stake into the inner pocket of her jacket, feeling it weigh down her torso. The frigid air bit into her bones through her suit, but somehow she still felt weary, rubbed raw; she could have lain flat on the rime and gone to sleep. Maybe she ought to leave the biodome more often, she thought, watching Natalya and the Earthmover burrow deeper into the ice. Maybe there were more things she could do to help the crew—things that didn’t involve letting people cry on her floor all night. Maybe if she pitched in, made more of a physical effort for the community, the collective perception of her would improve. But what was she going to do about this discovery? Maybe Keller could handle it . . .