Take Back the Sky

by Greg Bear

  Arrives before us a wainscot with a beat-up wooden strip and worn wallpaper printed with tiny flowers. The floor and wall become part of a long hallway that smells of cabbage and bacon. I hear voices from down the hallway, tinny laughter—children shouting.

  “Ship cares not much about us,” Vera says. “But she is still Queen. You cannot know how much it hurts her!”

  Vera opens a wood-panel door. We step through. Beyond lies a small apartment: three tiny, overheated rooms, a kitchen to the right, half-hidden in dark orange light, where someone makes sharp noises with pots and dishes. An old refrigerator sticks out of the kitchen, humming and buzzing. Through another door, half-open, I see a bedroom, a small bed on a gray pipe frame, paint flaking.

  I’m more than half-convinced I’m going through another instauration—but this time, perhaps not mine. Maybe Ulyanova’s or Vera’s.

  I tongue my mouth and realize I’ve lost a couple of teeth. Through all of my childhood and my adventures with Joe, through Mars and training back on Earth, I never lost teeth. Fuck, that’s a mortal insult.

  Shoes are neatly paired beside the foot of the bed, men’s shoes, and a short, flower-print dress has been draped across the gray and pink quilted cover. A dress suitable for a party.

  Ulyanova emerges from the kitchen, holding a pot filled with steaming potatoes. “Hard journey!” she says, with a pale, stressed-out smile. “You don’t know how wicked ship can be.” She raises her arms—and the pot goes away. Some of the steam remains. Then she wipes her hand on a towel. She’s looking, if that’s possible, even worse. Like me, she’s lost some teeth—but not through being beaten. I think she’s malnourished, despite the potatoes. What’s real here and what isn’t?

  “We have arrived around Antagonista home,” Vera says. “Nobody knows we are here—again, we are invisible.”

  Ulyanova avoids meeting my eyes. Gray, finely wrinkled around her face and neck—as if she has grown old here! And Vera is looking older as well. They’re becoming part of this apartment, this life—this instauration.

  “Look at him, he is hurt!” Vera says, and suddenly, as if our Guru Queen has seen me for the first time, she notices the blood and swelling.

  “Get him ice and a rag,” she tells Vera, her voice deadly calm.

  Vera goes to the kitchen and brings back ice wrapped in a worn towel. Both of them apply it to my face, my neck, my forearms. Feels cold. Soothes—a little.

  “Do you know what’s happened?” I ask. “The cage fighters—”

  “I know,” she says. “Like I said, when I opened gate. Did you not watch for them?”

  “They came during the leap, while we were still … stunned.”

  “Ah,” she says. “They learn not to sleep, like me. Vera, find chair for Vinnie. We must talk.”

  “The ship didn’t tell you they would find us, attack us … that way, that time?”

  She shakes her head. “Ship has its motives. Vera! Chair!”

  Vera brings forward a cheap dining chair, made of deal and pine. As I sit, I look left. Filmy white drapes billow before a narrow glass door that opens to a shallow patio with cheap iron rails. Through the drapes, as they slowly flap and spread, I see that beyond and across a narrow street, other apartment buildings rise gray and stolid.

  How far does the illusion go? How real is it out there? How far can she walk across town, to the park, up and down the streets—when she wants to relax? Queen of the apartment. Of the world outside. Queen of the voices and the children, of the blocks that could very well be out there, if I wanted to look.

  “Queen of the city,” I say.

  “It is what I tell her!” Vera says. “Queen of Moscow, of all we see. Here Gurus once live and dream of other lifes. But now—only her.”

  “I am not entirely queen,” Ulyanova says, with an irritated glance at Vera. “Wrong move, boring move, and ship knows, brain knows—everything will change. All will die.”

  “How many human fighters were in the cages?” I ask.

  “Fifteen. Some have died since. Humans not best at cage fighting, it seems.”

  “Where did the others come from?”

  “From where ship has been.”

  “Between stars?” I ask.

  “No. Big planets out where comets are born. Ship has already carried beings not from Earth, out to Antagonista planet. I warned you.”

  “Right.”

  I want to get back, organize … warn Bird Girl and the Antags. If they don’t already know.

  “A few planets swing down through system every thousand centuries,” Vera says, as if reciting from a textbook. What sorts of beings would grow up on all these worlds? The cold ones, the warm ones? How much more complicated can this get?

  “What’s all that to this ship? To the Gurus?”

  “Victors of long fights in cages explore, find you. I lose searchers. Do fighters know you? Hate you?” She nearly aspirates the word.

  “One does,” I say.

  “Male?”

  “Yeah. Barely. A monster.”

  “Why does this one want to kill you?”

  “Four of us helped put him on this ship, indirectly, ignorantly—years ago.”

  “The cage fighters kill Antags, searchers—kill with much pain. Pain as they have experienced, and more.”

  Her face is so like the face of my mother the morning after she woke up and her boyfriend was gone. Quiet. Not in the least curious. Almost dead-looking. She cooked eggs and made me breakfast.

  “Why do you let them move around?” I ask her. “Why not just cage them again?”

  “Think!” Vera cries. “She tells you! Even now, she plays game with ship. She builds walls inside. Ghosts cannot cross. Brain cannot hear.”

  Ulyanova gives me her own sadly critical look. “Brain and ghosts are fascinated by revenge. And so am I. When I open gate, as if to test me, cages open as well. I can do nothing. I cannot protect! I must not. I must not show you are important to me.”

  Despite the ice, my whole body aches. I dread the thought of what I might find if we go aft … if we do what we have to do.

  “You are more interesting if you fight,” Ulyanova says softly, moving near the window. She seems to want to lean into the sunlight, the breeze through the filmy white drapes. “And you will live … if you fight. Be as brave as searchers, who do not fight—but protect, and die.”

  This discussion has long since crossed the line to scaring the shit out of me. So casual, so isolated—behind the curtain. How much time does Ulyanova have before the brain, the ship, the ghosts catch on to our little ruse?

  She’s playing with me. She’s making my life more interesting by making me think she controls. How long can that be enough of an excuse? Until we get boring. Then we’ll just be fused like those fucking ships coming back from the transmitter. Maybe the cage fighters are just prelude to that.

  Ulyanova straightens and walks around a beat-up coffee table. “Worse is done by Gurus, by ship, before we come. Years before battle seasons on Mars, on Titan, ship grew, ship traveled to a large moon. This moon orbits two worlds, tossed and heated for billions of years … Kept alive without sun, not made by bugs, but older, with very strong inhabitants. Ship auditioned them in little wars, then gathered them by tens of thousands … and carried them to Sun-Planet. It supplied them with arms and landed them … to eliminate Antagonista and searchers. New soldiers, new species—not affected by bug archives. Very popular for Gurus. New show begins.”

  Vera says sadly, “Antagonista have no home. Nearly all have died. For those we carry, there will be one last, short war, short fight … death.”

  “What if you help them?” I ask, my heart suddenly made of lead.

  “I will confirm this mask. And then, ship will cancel us.”

  The heat in the fake Russian apartment is muggy, oppressive. “What happens to us, then? If we kill the cage fighters, stay interesting … Are we going to leave the ship and fight down there, on Sun-Planet, with them?” I ask.<
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  “Antags will leave ship. It is their duty,” Ulyanova says. “Hard part comes after.”

  “We must not let Guru plans finish,” Vera says.

  “I tell Verushka. If I do not stay Queen, ship will gather fighters from yet more moons, more worlds—also not from bugs. Ship will deliver them to Earth. Many, many of them. Soon it will prepare by growing for them new weapons, interesting weapons, evenly matched—and more ships.

  “These new recruits, brought to Earth, will be told story, like what Gurus told us—and they will fight to kill humans, all humans, and then, will be set up for long war against those victorious on Sun-Planet. Not Antagonista. Those will already be dead.

  “But I have my own plan. If I stay in control, if I do not make stupid move! First, we will go to Mars and Earth and gather up last of Gurus, and last of those Wait Staff and leaders who live only for Gurus. They will be brought into ship and receive promotions, live as we do. For days, they will be happy.” She points out the window at the long, hot summer of Moscow.

  “Brain and ghosts will be happy. If I convince, if I am interesting, they may do what I say. I will send you off on ships that carried Gurus and traitors, and you will return to Earth. Then Guru ship will begin trip to far place, to opposite system—three hundred billion klicks. Very long leap.”

  In my head, she’s helping me see that path, that grazing, high-speed journey out beyond everything we know, out to the far side of the Kuiper belt.

  And I see her opportunity quite clearly. Just a twitch, really. A very small deviation.

  “I will help ship finish well,” she says.

  Vera shivers.

  “I will stay,” Ulyanova says. “To finish my work. Vera … ”

  “I will stay, too,” Vera says.

  “But now, Antag ships are free to go home,” Ulyanova says. “There is nothing for them to return to. So they will die sadly, valiantly. They have honor. Ghosts and brain love tragic homecoming.”

  I’m so lost now in useless backtracking that I start asking really dumb questions. “What about the Gurus who died? How does the ship, the brain react to that?”

  “Ship can make more Gurus, if there is need. Ship can even replace itself, given warning. But not in sun.” Her smile is maddening. “You heard Antagonista female,” Ulyanova says. “She wants I will die, after I am used.”

  I can’t think how Ulyanova heard that. Perhaps the ship ratted us out. Maybe those of us on the tea have no secrets—boring, lost, all our stories nearing their sad ends.

  “You think the rest of us want to kill you?” I ask. “Rather than take a risk you’ll fail?”

  “Yes,” Ulyanova says. “Would ship make new me, I wonder? Can you see, Vinnie? I dance on edge of knife. We play with brain. Brain plays with us. All to make story. Audiences wait. We might be popular again—as popular as those who fought on ship for years, fought and died. You sent them here, from Earth—and so did we.”

  “So did Antagonista,” Vera says. “Many worlds contribute.”

  “How did the cage fighters stay awake?” I ask. “Why didn’t they sleep, like us?”

  “Many trips. If they not awake, others kill them. So … they adapt. They learn, do not sleep, no matter how long the time, how hard the trip. Like me. If I sleep, ship knows me to my soul … For now, plan is good. Ship is happy to return to Earth, to Mars, to pick up Gurus, then travel far and start new big show.”

  Vera’s expression is that of a deeply puzzled child, as if this is finally getting to her. Madness leads. Reason sleeps. And sitting on the knife’s edge, two of our own, willing to do—what?

  It seems to me they’ve got it good here. A waking dream of home.

  “You help me open gate,” Ulyanova says. She waggles her fingers and the pot with potatoes reappears. “I remove Guru bombs from your head, use them … All but one. There is one more time I will reach out and use it to speak to you. And after that, one more time we will see each other here.”

  She carries the pot back to the kitchen.

  “Now go,” Vera says, shooing me. “Tell others Queen is tired. Being Guru is difficult.” With a quick backward glance, Vera follows me out the door to the hallway and then through the curtain, into the ribbon space, still dark, empty now—where have the others gone?—but for the drifting shadow of another dead searcher, its arms hacked away, blood drifting in beads and fist-sized green-brown gobs around the blinded ribbons. The blood has formed a wrinkled crust, making the gobs look like big raisins. I wonder how it got here—killed recently, another fight?

  But the blood is old. This one has drifted forward, more likely.

  Vera inspects the corpse and hmms sad sympathy. Then she takes my arm and spins me around, as if we’re dancing in the dark, between the drops of searcher blood. “I do not know how, or even if, Queen fools ship, brain, ghosts. They make hard time. She never sleeps, not to let them in.”

  “But she’s back home—you’re back, too, right? This is the best you’ve had in years. What would you give to keep it this way?”

  Vera looks at me as if I am some sort of vermin, a spider, a filthy mouse.

  “Do you get out and go for walks on the streets, through the city?” I ask. “Do you live a normal life? Enjoy the weather? Is it all out there, a solid dream?”

  I can’t shake the layers of illusion, both the ones behind the curtain and the ones that wrap my own thoughts. Maybe we’re all still caught up in Guru mind shit. Maybe everything is no more or less real than Ulyanova’s apartment, her pot of potatoes.

  Is it possible for me, for any of us, to break free of whatever has been ordained by the Gurus or by their great resource, their master, their reservoir—this fucking ship?

  “What is that to you?” Vera says, keeping her voice low.

  “Do you know it isn’t real?”

  “Queen knows,” Vera says tightly. “This life will end soon enough. Now go!”

  She shoos me again, then returns to the curtain.

  “HOW IS SHE?” Borden asks.

  “They seem strung-out but in control, for the time being,” I say.

  Kumar joins us at the asterisk. The ribbons are still dark. All we can see is the illumination from a thin coat of searcher skin juice, probably from the beaten and murdered, scattering deep-ocean guidance around our living spaces.

  “How long have I been gone?” I ask.

  “Hours!” Kumar says.

  “Didn’t feel that long.”

  “DJ, Sanchez, and Jacobi have gone aft,” Borden says. Makes me feel a little sick, that they didn’t wait. “They should be back any time now. I’ve ordered Tak and Ishida and Ishikawa to keep guard aft of the ribbon space, in case Antags come forward and try to catch us by surprise.”

  “Why would they do that?” I ask.

  “We’ve already found dead Antags. They might blame us.”

  Litvinov returns from going forward, along the nose. “Is nothing but hollow,” he says. “Empty. What about Ulyanova and Verushka? Is still sane?”

  I try to describe their situation—the apartment, the warmth, the familiar comforts of home.

  “Life of Gurus!” Litvinov says. “Are they in danger from fighters? From criminals?”

  “I don’t think so. But both are looking older. There’s definitely a cost. Ulyanova says the Antags are about to be badly disappointed.” I tell them more about the ship’s past journeys, the rearrangements and transfers from far worlds to Sun-Planet. “The Gurus have been planning for some time to get rid of bug influence.”

  Kumar listens intently. “We have failed them, I suppose,” he says, still groggy. Nobody’s paying much attention to him, not even Borden. I check him over but there doesn’t seem to be any particular injury—his bruising is light. “I am fine,” he insists, waving me aside. “Do you still connect with Bird Girl?”

  “Just more of that baseline signal. They’re alive, they’re busy, they don’t seem to want to interact … and the big male is the core of their efforts.
They want to take him home. They all just want to go home.”

  “But they do not know the situation?” Kumar asks.

  “If what Ulyanova says is true,” Borden says.

  “If they don’t,” I say, “they could learn very soon.”

  Joe, DJ, and Jacobi return to the ribbon space. All are looking more than a little out of it, as if the scale of what they’ve seen takes time to absorb, and there is no time.

  “Ship is changing all the way back,” DJ says, taking a deep breath.

  “Fighters?”

  “Three dead ones,” DJ says.

  “All nonhuman,” Jacobi says.

  “Hurray for our side,” Borden says.

  “There are dead searchers and a few Antags all along the route we took, trying to follow the spine of the ship,” Joe says. “The cage fighters must have caught them by surprise—like us.”

  “You can’t believe what’s going on back there,” DJ says. “There’s a gigantic tree-thing growing down the centerline, between the screw gardens and over the clover lake—branching and fruiting all sorts of mechanical shit, like making apples!”

  “Armaments for our new opposition,” Kumar says. “I would like to see those growths. We might understand what sort of creatures they’re hoping to use to extinguish us.”

  “The searchers aren’t being much help,” DJ says. “All we saw are dead—dozens of them. But remember that transport we used around the screw garden?” He seems unwilling to continue until we admit we remember that much.

  “Well,” he says, weirdly satisfied, as if he’s sounding out our sanity, “there’s something like that along the tree, maybe half a dozen tracks moving in and around the branches, carrying shit forward and back—fruit, half-formed weapons, ships.”

  “Some of those ships look like ones we’ve used,” Joe says. “Others are new and different. And as for weapons … I can’t understand any of them.”