Take Back the Sky

by Greg Bear

  “Any idea what they are?” Borden asks us.

  I shake my head, to her disgust.

  Joe says, “If the bugs got rid of the Gurus, how did they come back? Where are they from originally? What can Ulyanova tell us about that?”

  “She’s communicated bits and pieces about the ship,” I say. “But there’s lots of stuff that either the Gurus don’t know or the ship doesn’t know.”

  “I find that truly dismaying,” Kumar says.

  “Huh!” Jacobi says.

  “How closely connected are the Gurus and this ship?” Borden asks. “How much do they need it to get around and survive?” That may be the smartest question yet.

  A long pause. Nobody can answer—but I tuck the question away.

  “Heads up,” Tak says, looking to the curtain.

  Without warning, Vera has passed through. She moves in the spooky fashion she and Ulyanova have mastered, then clambers down the canes to the ribbons, very like a spider, to where we are.

  “From now, take searcher if you go aft,” she cautions. “They know how to return. Never try to go near or pass through puzzle gate. During next leap, it will be very bad back there. We leave Pluto soon. Next stop, transmitter.”

  She turns to Litvinov. “Polkovnik, gardens on screws are how we move so quick through space. Some plants on Earth plot ahead, all together, to maximize quantum chemistry and bind sunlight. But now they plot, think ahead, to change how slippery space is.” She slices her hand out. “Whoosh! Why we sleep. You and me, at least. Where plants go, is difficult for us, since we cannot follow.”

  “What about the starshina?” Litvinov asks.

  “Brain needs Queen awake.” Vera makes a face and kicks away before we can ask follow-up. A searcher slings itself out from between the clock faces and firmly but politely blocks us from any attempt to go after her.

  We haven’t been invited. Not yet.

  “Servant to ‘Queen,’” Litvinov says, shaking his head. “Crazy scheme. And plants! Crazy idea.”

  “Every ship we’ve traveled on is different,” Jacobi says. “Maybe they’re just fucking with us to keep us confused.”

  “You don’t use a bicycle to cross the ocean,” Joe says. That’s either profound, or profoundly stupid. “Every ship works on a different scale.”

  “What’s that even mean?” Jacobi asks.

  Ishikawa and Ishida listen to this back-and-forth with unhappy glances. Bilyk seems fascinated. With nobody to converse with in Russian but Litvinov—who doesn’t seem interested—the efreitor has tried to join our Skyrines, but he’s being frozen out by the sisters, possible payback for his comment about blow jobs.

  Or maybe they think he’s ugly.

  JACOBI, JOE, MYSELF, and a searcher have ventured aft to see the situation that prevails. Following the cane bridges and with an occasional assist from a helpful searcher, we discover that the Antags have now moved into quarters about a klick behind us, aft and inboard of the nearest screw gardens. We aren’t invited to inspect, and make contact with only one or two of them, both armored, both not particularly forthcoming—and after these sentinels send us back, with obvious irritation, our report to the rest of the squad brings up crude speculation, or extended wish fulfillment, that the birds are all engaged in a prolonged, wild orgy.

  “Yeah, feathers everywhere,” DJ says.

  Bilyk laughs too loudly, which brings scorn from Ishikawa and Jacobi. I’m starting to like Bilyk.

  Joe and I, with Kumar’s tacit approval, say we think it’s more likely the Antags are reassembling the social structure they once enjoyed on Mars and Titan, and maybe back home as well. How many males there once were, I don’t know. How important the males are to military planning and discipline, I also don’t know. Maybe the male is reasserting an aggressive posture and they’re planning to come forward and take control of Ulyanova. Her crucial importance is no doubt a sore point with Budgie.

  Of course, they could be preparing defenses against the remaining fighters—but we haven’t seen any signs of them, either. Bird Girl is being remarkably thorough at staying offline. Maybe they want to keep our channels clear so we can listen for Ulyanova.

  Would that mean we’re still essential, even to Budgie?

  REMEMBRANCE PAST

  More hours, more days—more weeks.

  Really hard to track.

  Vera wasn’t being straight with us. Or maybe her Queen wasn’t being straight with her.

  I’ve retreated from the cubby, where I now reside alone, to the ribbons, moving aimlessly from ribbon to ribbon. Only about half are illuminated and showing images I can understand—Pluto and occasionally its big moon, Charon. Forward, still visible in the quincunx, the asterisk—there’s our mystery ornament, still blocking stars, and otherwise doing nothing.

  I keep trying to find refuge in nerding out, but that part of my intellect has become very thin. Bilyk says he once read an article in a Russian science magazine about the quantum capabilities of plants—choosing chemical pathways, planning ahead based on some sort of botanical intuition, a quantum double-down on their chances of fixing photons … So how much weirder is it that the screw gardens can also look ahead and double down on making space slippery?

  Yeah, it’s weirder. Past is no preparation for present. When you keep stepping off the edge of the page and skipping over to another book, it’s hard to keep track of the story.

  How many months until we take the leap and push the plants in the screw gardens to their limits?

  How long until the cage fighters decide to reappear?

  I’m just around the corner from stir crazy when DJ and Kumar echo up near. I hide behind a twisted, dark ribbon. I do not want company, not now—certainly not Wait Staff.

  They’re quietly discussing Planet X—DJ’s favorite topic. Another from our squad spiders from the cubbies along the canes to the ribbons, where I recognize him; it’s the lonely Russian efreitor. Like DJ, Bilyk seems to be a fount of knowledge about science, about astronomy. His English is poor, but they manage to make themselves understood, and I envy them.

  They murmur ideas and theories like kids, discussing the surface of our former ninth planet. Kumar listens quietly. Kumar rarely says anything since the Gurus were slaughtered.

  Russian scientists (according to Bilyk) tried to figure out what had happened to Pluto, and what might still be happening—tried to understand what smoothed and rearranged those features even into modern geologic times. Pluto had either been subjected to tidal stress or had substantial sources of internal heat—radioactive thorium, possibly, which still keeps Earth warm. One of our Socotra professors described thorium as the atomic battery of creation.

  Some speculated that maybe the planet and its moons had swung close to Neptune during one of Pluto’s inward passes—too close, on the edge of the Roche limit, below which the bodies would have broken up completely, joining another set of rings. The grazing orbit would definitely have stressed Pluto, and could have added or subtracted moons for both worlds.

  Something had definitely messed with Neptune’s big moon Triton, the only satellite in our system with a retrograde orbit. Physically, Triton looks a lot like Pluto—with a supercold nitrogen surface. Could have been imported from the Kuiper belt, just like Pluto.

  And whatever pushed Triton around might have tilted Neptune itself into its weird orientation, pole aligned with the planet’s orbit. But was Pluto responsible for these disruptions?

  Not likely.

  Something even larger, farther out—

  Big enough to rearrange everything.

  Bilyk insists that Russian scientists had long suspected a massive world with an eccentric orbit, way out beyond the edge of the solar system.

  DJ enthusiastically agrees.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet on it—Bird Girl’s planet could have made a pass through our system,” he says. “It really is Planet X, rolling around the big old billiard table!”

  WINTER DREAMS

  I’m a
lone in the nest, still trying not to sleep—too many bad dreams—but drifting off anyway, when I feel a light touch on my wrist and open my eyes with a startled moan. Ishida hangs on a stretched cord a meter away, her metal arm and the metal half of her face gleaming in the light from a strip outside the round opening. Her hand hovers over my wrist, shining fingers suspended, silent, no quiver or betrayal of flesh—steady hand, steady body. One of the most steady of our Skyrines.

  “What’s it like?” she asks after a murmured apology for waking me.

  “What’s what like?”

  “Being dosed with tea.”

  I stretch a little. Exercise is difficult under these conditions, consisting mostly of choosing a partner—usually Tak or Joe—and trying to run in a circle inside a nest, or wrestle while hanging on to canes. I feel stiff and unsure. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed Ishida paying attention to me, and I’ve certainly paid attention to her, but there was a kind of lost cause about the whole situation, the attraction, for so many reasons, and now I’m embarrassed that she’s made the first move. We haven’t exactly violated any code, but I always thought a beautiful woman should have the luxury of not having to make the first approach—if this is an approach.

  Truth is, she is beautiful—strange and strong and beautiful. I’ve never known what to make of her or her situation. But now she’s neatly reversed the puzzle.

  “Kind of like dreaming while awake,” I say. “There’s a part … ” I pause, not sure she wants details.

  “Go on,” she says, not actually touching my wrist.

  “There’s a part that’s separate.” I tell her about the sensation of word balloons being filled, which was true for both Captain Coyle and often enough for Bird Girl. “But they aren’t actually word balloons, just parts of me that aren’t really from me.” I shrug.

  “I get it,” she says. “Can I tell you what I feel, sometimes?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “After I was hurt—in training on Socotra—I was taken to a field hospital and things sort of blanked out.”

  I nod. “Yeah,” I say.

  “When I woke up, the surgeons and the mechanics were eager to talk to me. They were Japanese, and very proud of what they had done.”

  “It looks like fine work,” I say. “And you’re still here.”

  “But everything felt different. They’d saved most of my internal organs, but hooked them up to a layer of what they called false tissue, to pad the metal parts when I bumped around. Plastic buffers and slings. Combat-ready, they said. I could do anything I wanted. I’d live a good, long, active life.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Felt strange to move.”

  “I bet.”

  “But none of them wanted to spend much time with me,” she says. “Always busy. Moving on. They spoke Japanese, not English, but used an inflection, like they were speaking to a servant, an untouchable. A Korean. That made me sad, but I had seen it before. Female soldiers … We get kind of lost, even in the new Japan.”

  “Wow,” I say. Tak had never mentioned such attitudes, but we’d heard about them.

  “Do you have things that protect you, cushion you, when you speak with Bird Girl or the bugs?”

  “I don’t speak with the archives now. That was back on Titan, and we—I mean, humans—pretty much wiped out those voices.”

  “I always thought that part was fascinating. Captain Jacobi gets weirded out, but we—the Japanese sisters—we feel a little more familiar with the idea—with being hooked up to kami. Maybe just from anime, but … more familiar.”

  “I remember the markings on your suits. Senketsu and Junketsu. Anime?”

  “Old anime, old-fashioned. Lots of jiggle. Nothing like that in Japan now. Mostly heroes and history and emperors and such.”

  “Right,” I say. Oddly, my sense of discomfort is fading. I’m next to her, she’s talking to me, more than ice has been broken—a new protocol is being established.

  Technically, Skyrines are not supposed to open up to the possibility of anything sexual or romantic, but of course we do. Some of us get in trouble, but usually only when rank is involved, or one of a pair or team gets out of bounds, professionally and emotionally, and feels left out, badly used. Because of that, and because my stations have been hard and desperate, I’ve never established anything I could call a romance with a Skyrine. I’ve thought about it in a vague way, of course, but it’s never come up.

  And now it seems to be coming up, starting out as a letting down of the barriers, telling stories—enjoying company. While alone. Which I am. My roommates have all cleared out, or I’ve left them in the other cubbies and set out on my own. Maybe they knew before I did.

  Other than to DJ or Joe or Tak, I haven’t talked much at all about the links, what it’s like to be dosed with the tea … not much at all.

  Ishida asks, “When you interact with Bird Girl, what do you see?”

  “Mostly hear, rarely see,” I say. “Sometimes there are hints of deep stuff, but mostly it’s what she wants me to hear. When Captain Coyle faded, she handed me over to Bird Girl, and she served as bug steward, hooked me up to the archives on Titan, which she knew pretty well by then. DJ got hooked up to her as well, but Bird Girl seems to favor dealing with me.”

  “I like DJ, but you’re different,” Ishida says.

  “DJ is okay,” I say, as if giving her an out. “We’ve served together a long time. He’s a real friend, and he’s funnier than me.”

  “But you’re the one I’m talking to,” Ishida says. My level of embarrassment returns. It would be very bad for my long-term opinion of myself if I said something awkward to this fellow Skyrine, either about her being Japanese, about those difficulties—we hear so many stories, and not all of them are true, probably—or being a Winter Soldier. Same there. So many points where I could get things very wrong. I do know it’s hard for female soldiers in Japan now, as everything has gotten so conservative, reverting to historical norms—but I have no idea what to say about that, what I know, and what crap I’ve just heard that’s all wrong.

  And then her being half-metal. Sort of. Metal and colloid and plastic and all kinds of synthetics. Half-organic. She’s almost like an angel from Fiddler’s Green, most of her organs intact, saved, stuffed back in, fully functional.

  I’m far more ignorant about all that.

  So I stop talking and just tilt my head, big eyes, sad smile, like a real asshole. She skips past all this, cutting me substantial slack, and gets to her point.

  “I need to talk to somebody who’s male and who I respect,” she says, “and who knows what it means to hook up with something that isn’t you. Something essential—but really different.”

  “I’m listening,” I say. I’ve always preferred listening. The last girlfriend I had, back in Virginia Beach—and where is she now?—left me because she thought I didn’t care. I just listened more than I talked, and it turned out she took that all wrong. So off she went. We’d been together for two weeks. Longest I’ve ever been involved. Joe always seems to do better with women.

  “Don’t take this wrong, the wrong way, but I’m not all there,” Ishida says with a kind of hiccup. “Not yet. I’m scheduled to be attached—that’s what they call it, but it hasn’t happened yet, there hasn’t been time. Does that bother you?”

  I don’t know whether it does or not. Again, what boundaries can I cross and cause pain by so doing?

  “You’re beautiful, I know that much,” I say.

  She keeps staring at me, with one natural eye and one mechanical eye.

  “It’s like a new kind of beauty,” I say. “I don’t know about all the rest. Maybe it’s not important right now.”

  “But it will be, right? If I’m going to stay human. And that’s … that’s what I think about you. Are you still human?”

  “Mostly,” I say, as if it’s a joke.

  “I don’t think it’s a funny question,” Ishida says. “I thought I was no longer a wom
an, but that turned out to be wrong.” Still watching me. “I feel everything, I feel the old … parts … as if they were still there. But I reach down and they aren’t. Just skin and metal.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” I say. “Phantom limbs.”

  “Phantom cunt!” Ishida says, with the most brilliant shy smile on half of her face, lighting up her eye and seeming like a prelude to something sadder, more direct and painful. “I dream about it. And someday, I’ll go back to Madigan or Sasebo or somewhere and get the plumbing finished off. Get hooked up. I’ll stop being half a female and be a whole one. They say I can even have kids, through caesarean—through a hatch!” She raises her hand and giggles behind it. “I’d enjoy having a family. I come from a big family.”

  “Best of luck,” I say.

  “I don’t think any Japanese man will have me,” she says.

  “Try a Skyrine,” I say. “They’ve seen a lot.”

  “Yeah. Wonder if that would ever work.” She smiles … at me. “What I miss most is just talking. Relaxing. Holding. Until I get hooked up again, right?”

  Her need, her expression, her words—so direct. So human and appropriate. I slowly reach out and pull her toward me. We hold each other for a few minutes, nothing much more, and she snuggles into my arm, flesh face against my skin, keeping the metal side away.

  “My God,” she murmurs. “You’re hard. That is sweet. That is special.”

  I touch her face with one hand, stroking lightly along the boundary between metal and flesh, and then, touching the metal.

  “I feel that, too,” she says. “I feel all of my other half. It’s almost normal to me now. Is that Guru tech?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe. But we’d have found it eventually.”

  “Sometimes I wake up and think it’s all just the old me. And sometimes when I sleep … I think the metal half is dreaming. I can never remember, but that’s what I think.”

  “Then you understand me,” I say.

  “It’s like that?”