by Lena Nguyen
There was the violent sound of ice cracking; the drill lurched forward like a bucking horse. Park looked nervously at the hole that it had made, but it didn’t seem to be any larger, nor were there any hairline cracks surging toward her on the ground. She turned to ask Natalya if something was wrong—but suddenly she could hear a high, piercing whistle, something that sounded like a metallic scream far behind her, made wavery by the howling wind. And also a strange sound from the cab: Natalya said something like, “Oo!” and jerked the drill free of its cavity, throwing the Earthmover into reverse. Park looked at her dumbly; had the drill gotten stuck again?
“Move!” Natalya screamed again.
Then Park saw it: the cliff above her, the white ledge of it sliding forward slowly, ponderously, almost ridiculously, like a slow-motion fist tipping forward to ready itself for a punch. Park watched it, uncomprehending. She thought, wearily, that the falling ice would cover up their hole, and they would have to start all over again.
Too late did she realize what was going on: the drill had malfunctioned again, punched too strong a hole into the ice, upsetting some deep structural foundation of the cliffs above. They were falling! And falling towards her. But by then her feet seemed rooted to the ground. She stared. Her mind was a thundering blankness. She couldn’t seem to make the connection between her own body and the enormous white waves that seemed to be moving above her. She thought, absurdly: They’re too big. There’s nowhere to run.
Then something hard collided with her body and flung her viciously out of the way.
Park cried out; whatever had thrown her had used superhuman strength to do it. Her body hurtled and tumbled and slid a long distance away and was only stopped by the tangle of her own limbs. She could feel blood running down her throat as she lay there, stunned: first a tickle of warmth, then a muted congealing around her neck. She’d cut her chin on the ice. She sat up just as Natalya crunched up towards her, hunched over like an animal, shouting.
“Are you all right?” the surveyor asked. She bent and grabbed Park’s shoulders, examined her chin. “Why did you just stand there?”
“What happened?” Park asked, dazedly. She looked past Natalya at the cliff, the wreckage of ice gathered at the bottom of it, like pieces of broken vertebrae. She staggered to her feet. The drill was safely parked several yards away, so what was that other stuff around the ice? Some unrecognizable metal debris: long pieces of alloy, straggling wires like clutches of black worms.
“What is that?” she asked.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Natalya demanded. “You were lucky—if the bot hadn’t pushed you—” She shook her head and wrapped her gloved hand around Park’s collar. “Come on. We need to go back.”
“I can’t,” Park said, though she couldn’t say why. She felt sick. “I have to—”
“You have to what?” Natalya snapped. “Stay here with it? Fine, if you want. I can leave you here, out in the cold, if that’s what you really, really want.”
Yes, Park thought. Just leave me alone and go back. Let me be out here. Let me be in the cold. That’s what I really, really want.
But she allowed the surveyor to pull her away, to drag her back to the Earthmover. Only when she was sitting in the cab, with the heat cranked on full blast, clutching a ratty towel to her chin, did she allow herself to have a good look at the cliffs. Though the drill hadn’t moved yet, it looked to Park like the crags were shrinking rapidly; it seemed like they were melting under the dazzling noon light. Beneath them, the splinters of the HERCULES were shifting in the arctic wind. Ah, Park thought. So it was strong enough, after all. She didn’t need to worry. It had done its job.
Then, silently, she began to cry. Through her tears the pieces of the HERCULES glowed like tiny stars.
* * *
—
That night, Park submitted her report to ISF, recommending the termination and recall of Bebe Hill. The botanist had confessed everything when she heard what had happened to Park and Natalya: she’d not only inserted the metal stake, but had tampered with the engine, too, causing the fatal jerk of the drill that brought down the cliffs. “I only meant to make her look bad, have her come back empty-handed,” she told Wick, while a wooden-faced Park watched from behind. She made eye contact briefly with Park. “I never thought you’d get hurt. I’m so sorry, Park.”
Don’t apologize, Park thought. Her heart was both numb and raw with hatred. That had been the HERCULES’s last statement to her: “There’s nothing to apologize for. It’s not your fault.”
But it was. She hadn’t controlled the situation. She hadn’t known how to fix things—the HERCULES, Bebe, Natalya, Holt. She’d been negligent. Things had gotten out of control. That was what happened when you threw things like love into the mix, she thought. It was the unknown variable, the chaotic element.
It couldn’t happen again.
Afterward, fingering the bandage on her chin, she decided to go on her night patrol, something she and Keller sometimes did to catch any problems that erupted under the security of darkness. Mutinous talks behind tent flaps, whispered quarrels. Nightmares. Sleepwalkers and parasomniacs would immediately be sent home.
She was annoyed to find as she stepped out of her tent that the biodome’s snow had turned to slush again. This sometimes happened: Wan Xu had explained that the combined heat and mass of one hundred bodies could turn the pristine Antarctic permafrost into a dark and soupy puddle when the biodome’s circulatory systems went awry. Calculations were off, the dome designer had told her. The air was filtered properly, but sometimes there were fluctuations in temperature; this could cause the snow to melt and refreeze, dirtily, at different periods throughout the day. Adjustments would be made in time for the expedition, Wan Xu said.
The slush, when it happened, always irritated Park. She enjoyed staring out at the tundra through the biodome’s transparent film; the milky hues of dawn would spark against the flat white blade of the land, sending streaks of mandarin, peach, gold, and royal red into the sky. But what good was that when she was trapped inside a bubble of ugliness? The slush made her feel as if she were stuck inside a pimple, pus gathering around her ankles. Almost nothing else bothered her more than the unsightliness of the slush.
Tonight she looked closer, and was startled to find that the slush was palely gleaming; there was a kind of pearly luminescence coming off the ground. Park bent down to examine it further. Yes, there was a faint light moving beneath the mud, shifting in waves.
She went to find Wan Xu. “Oh, I see,” the designer said, poking his disheveled head out his tent flap. “That’s interesting.”
“What is it?” Park asked. “It isn’t happening outside the dome. Could it be something in our atmosphere?”
“It’s plankton,” Wan Xu said. “Bioluminescent. Most likely Noctiluca scintillans. This whole tundra is composed of frozen seawater. The plankton were trapped in the ice; the more the top level melts, the more they’re disturbed, and they glow.”
“This is a common phenomenon, then?” It disconcerted her a little, thinking that there were millions of single-cell organisms milling around beneath their feet. “Do they do this during the spring thaw?”
“Oh, no,” Wan Xu said. “This is by no means a regular occurrence. It’s harmless, but unusual. This wouldn’t occur in a natural system.” He stood there brooding for a while. “Curious. The biodome causes any number of unpredictable results.”
“What’s different about this one?” Park demanded. “What’s different now?”
Wan Xu looked at her, then smiled without mirth. “Dr. Park,” he said slowly, because Park was a psychologist and he was Wan Xu, “I don’t think you understand. This is a manmade structure in a place where man was not supposed to go. A closed system of our own making, not a natural one. We’re playing in the realm of gods now; none of our variables are known. Everything is different here.”
After that, he let his tent flap fall shut, and Park was left to wander the pale-gleaming night alone. Her boots stirred through puddles of liquid light. The backs of her eyes ached—with tiredness, Park told herself. She looked at the moon and wished she were there, arrested in silence and the untouched powdery dust like snow. Beyond the moon, beyond the dark curtain that hung behind it, Eos was waiting. What had she told Bebe? An opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose sight of what’s important.
Before they left the cliffs, Park had climbed back out of the Earthmover. She’d tried to salvage something from the wreckage, tried to gather up the scattered pieces of the HERCULES. The metal shards had slipped through her hands. Her face had stung from the cold. She’d felt as if the metal stake tucked against her chest was freezing, turning the rest of her to ice. Her body was so numb that she couldn’t hold on to any of the debris.
“Leave it,” Natalya had told her tersely, standing over her like an executioner. “Just give it up, Park. It’s not as if it’s fixable.”
13.
Park returned to consciousness slowly, her mind skimming over the surface of full wakefulness like a dragonfly over water. She lay in bed and thought for a while about how she kept getting drawn backwards lately. Why did she keep thinking, seemingly at random, about these particular moments, these particular memories? Why was she dreaming in such clarity about Antarctica, or reliving so many moments with Glenn? There was an eerie quality to it all, too—as if she were an outside observer, looking in on herself with a cold and dispassionate interest. It was all very strange. And it wasn’t like her to dwell so much on the past.
But, she thought, at least it was better than nightmares. She still wondered what had dredged up these parts of herself, the memories like silt disturbed from the bottom of a deep lake. What internal mechanisms were propelling these thoughts? What anxiety or longing was manifesting as a trip to the past? The human subconscious really was a marvel. She would have analyzed herself if she had the time.
She stretched in her cot, feeling the cartilage pop in her back. She felt a sense of wellbeing she hadn’t had since she first boarded the ship at Baikonur. It was as if she’d been on a treadmill this entire time, walking ceaselessly, getting nowhere, trying to keep up with the moving ground beneath her. Now she’d stepped off the treadmill, found steady land again, and the world was no longer swaying. Wick had told her what was going on. She knew where she was headed.
She flipped over in her bunk and found Jimex’s chin resting on the bed’s edge, his lambent eyes watching her like a cat’s.
Park’s body locked up: she found that she could not scream, or even wrestle out a gasp. After a moment she said, only slightly shaky: “What are you doing?”
“I was wondering how to best wake you,” Jimex said. His voice was hushed, as if she were still sleeping; his whisper buzzed against her ears.
“How long have you been there?” Park asked, rubbing the grit out of her eyes.
“Approximately sixty seconds.”
She noticed suddenly that the room was empty except for the two of them—and that the gray artificial light that usually simulated dawn was absent. Was it still the middle of the night, then? Had she actually only slept for an hour, maybe two? Park felt a sharp sense of displacement, disorientation. She’d been in such a hard and hurtling sleep, the kind full of dense, close-fitting dreams. Now it was not the time she felt it was. Had she taken a wrong turn somewhere, forgotten something or confused her own sense of being and presence? . . .
“What time is it?” she asked, whispering too.
“Five hours until sunrise,” Jimex answered.
So she’d only slept three hours. “Why are you in here?” Park asked him. When had she even seen Jimex last? That was right—she’d left him deactivated in her office before she went off to explore the utility rooms. Had he noticed the time and gone looking for her?
Jimex’s eyes glinted like silver coins in the gloom. “There is an anomaly,” he told her, still in that strange, reverent way. “Officer Hanover is in the bridge.”
Groggily her mind groped toward his meaning. “Hunter? Is she with anyone?”
Jimex shook his head. “She’s alone. And she’s—behaving strangely. Like Dr. Holt was.”
That made Park sit up. “What do you mean?” she asked sharply, tossing aside her blanket. Her body stung from the sudden cold. “You mean she’s sleepwalking?”
Jimex opened his hands a little: the android version of a shrug, a signal of uncertainty. “Not exactly,” he answered. “She seems conscious and lucid. Her biometrics state that she’s awake. But she’s not herself. The synthetics in the bridge sensed it and tried to bar her from using the ship’s controls, but they’re not sure what else to do. They can’t restrain her without injuring her, if she fights back. They debated going to alert Sergeant Boone, since he’s her superior, but I told them we should consult you first.”
“Why?”
He stared at her. “I don’t want Officer Hanover to get hurt,” the android said. “Like Dr. Holt was.”
Park shook her head and shoved her deckboots on. No time to think about the implications of that logic now; no time to wonder what exactly she had created with Jimex, or he with the other robots. Shit, she thought. The treadmill was starting again.
“Show me,” she told him.
So down the silent corridors they crept, Jimex gliding in front like a slender ghost, Park scurrying after him, twitching at shadows. She kept expecting Sagara to loom up out of the darkness here; Boone’s sparking green gunlight shining in a corner there. But the entire ship was still asleep, it seemed, or else its inhabitants were preoccupied elsewhere. There didn’t need to be anybody in the bridge at this time of night, docked as they were again on the planet’s surface.
The bridge was where Park had caught her first glimpse of Eos during their approach, an eternity ago. It housed the massive nexus of systems and relays controlling the Deucalion, including METIS. And METIS was what their neural inlays were plugged into. Park flinched at the idea of someone—a person not in their right mind—messing around with the computer that governed their navigation, communications . . . life support systems. She had to quell a brief and chilly surge of fear as she imagined the sudden sparking in her brain, her neural implants shorting out. She quickened her pace and prayed that Hunter hadn’t damaged anything.
As they approached the bridge’s closed doors, Park could hear a soft, melting murmur from beyond the threshold: a stiff and formal blend of voices that sounded like an audience at a trial. She palmed open the doors and found, with a little jolt in her neck, that nearly a dozen androids were crammed into the room together, oblivious to their own crowding. They were all looking at something in the corner.
Forgetting Jimex, Park shoved her way through; the robots yielded to her like stalks of corn in a field. “Hunter?”
Yes, Boone’s lieutenant was there, she saw with a sinking in her gut; she was standing stock-still at a panel of controls, her eyes fixed blindly ahead of her. She was standing oddly, too, in a stiff, rigid way that made Park doubt she was sleepwalking. There was none of the slackness of sleep. But she didn’t seem quite awake, either. She wouldn’t look at Park. When Park approached, Hunter’s head cocked to the side—as if to acknowledge her—but she didn’t turn.
Park didn’t want to touch her, remembering what had happened when she’d grabbed Holt. She said instead, “Are you awake?”
“Yes.” Hunter’s voice was toneless, devoid of affect. Calm.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How are you feeling?”
Hunter paused. “I’m not. I don’t feel anything.”
Now Park did touch her, cautiously, circling her thumb and forefinger around Hunter’s wrist. The military specialist let her do it, unfazed as Park checked he
r pulse. It was steady, strong.
What am I even doing? Park asked herself. She had no idea how to handle this kind of situation; wasn’t used to diagnosing anyone without her usual aids and devices. Suddenly she realized she could tell very little about someone’s health without a machine. All she knew was that Hunter’s temperature seemed normal, her breathing sounded unobstructed. But that alone told her nothing.
She felt the expectation of the watching robots weighing on her, threatening to press her down into the floor. She said, “What do you want with the controls?”
Hunter looked at the panel distantly, as if she’d forgotten about it for a moment. “I’m not sure. Someone told me to use them. They control the ship. But I didn’t understand what they wanted me to do.”
“Who?” Park asked, even more alert now. Was Hunter hearing voices? “Who told you to do that?”
Hunter shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she said, still heavy-lidded and tranquil. “Maybe it was me.”
“Look at me, Hunter.”
Finally the woman obeyed, turning to meet Park’s gaze. Her eyes were flat and gray—glazed in that same way Holt’s had been. But before Park could decipher any more, a lancing pain shot through her head—and the ship lurched, sickeningly. She recoiled from Hunter, trying to keep her balance, but it was as if someone had wrenched the gravity controls: there was that swooping in her stomach, a lift in her chest; her feet left the ground, then touched it again. Then once more, then again. Park stumbled and tottered and fought off a wave of nausea as she thought, Oh God—she did damage the controls!
Then Hunter pushed her to the ground.
Park tucked her body into a ball as she fell, the way the emergency training had prepped her to do: it lessened her chances of breaking her neck. She felt Hunter land on top of her, felt the other woman’s hands scrabbling blindly over her decksuit. Park tried to twist away, yelling, but the fierce stabbing ache in her head had worsened—it felt as if her brain was rattling in her head like a marble in a tin cup. Hunter was shouting something at her.