It shouldn’t have been Ghazwan who had died.
Tiny numbers, the time, flashed in the lower right corner of Esoch’s reality visor: 0324:58, 0324:59, 0325:00. Esoch watched the first probe drop, then trace a path parallel to the ship. The probe’s metal reflected two different days, the light of the planet, the light of the sun; one third of the probe’s curvature was cast into its own night. Invisible, soundless thrusters must have fired, countering the probe’s orbital velocity, because now it appeared to be falling away, arcing downward. The air Esoch breathed tasted the same. If he removed the visor, he would see how close the walls were on either side of him. He knew he was manufacturing his own anxiety, that this drop would be fine. He found himself waiting for Jihad’s voice to break the radio silence and tell him the mission had been canceled, that Dikobe had made contact.
The second probe dropped into view. The curve of the heat shield, the rounded edges, would ease the turbulent slide into the atmosphere. He couldn’t see, but he could imagine seeing, the outlines of the places where wings and solar panels and waldoes would emerge from the probe’s surface.
The third probe dropped. This one came out night first, daylight sliding away as the Way of God’s orbit carried it away from the sun, which now looked like a white explosion on the edge of the world. The third probe fell away and down.
The fourth probe was his. He felt a kind of internal lurch, stomach rising into throat, when full gravity became microgravity, his body startled, like that of a baby dropped, then caught, by its father. He felt as though he would float away, if not for the faint pressure of the straps across his chest and thighs, while at the same time his whole body registered the change with a kind of confusion, a dizzying disorientation, because his reality visor still showed him the view from the Way of God: his back was pressed against the acceleration couch, in the coffin, but his eyes watched the decoy probe that contained the coffin run parallel with the ship. Thrusters fired, a moment of acceleration pressed his body into the straps, and he saw his own probe fall away.
The coffin shuddered, then slowed when it slid into the atmosphere. If he had remained with the standard images, the coffin’s tiny computer would have automatically shifted his visor to the image taken through an imaginary viewport. He would watch a faint whiteness gather round the decoy probe, then with the fall planetside it would heat to pink, then red, finally becoming a burning orange and red. Ghazwan must have been watching the flare of colors as his air ran thin.
But still Esoch had an external view from the Way of God, and the fifth probe was already dropping from the ship. He was mesmerized by the process. There was the glint of something in the distance, and he wondered if it was sunlight or planetlight that had caught a probe on its way down. Which probe would that have been?
The sixth probe fell away. He once again noticed the flash of metal and light, but it seemed farther away from the planet, not closer, as it should have been with the probes. Perhaps it was light reflected off one of the mapping satellites. But what he had seen suggested something bigger than a compact satellite. Could the ship’s intelligence have miscalculated and sent the probe in at the wrong angle, causing it to bounce off the atmosphere and head away from the planet?
He forced his eyes to concentrate, to try to see the glint again. He wished he could break radio silence and ask Jihad what it was. The planet seemed to drift away, which, of course, it couldn’t do, so the Way of God must have started to move away from the planet. Was it going into a wider orbit, or was it leaving the planet? This wasn’t part of the plan.
He heard himself asking questions to the emptiness of the coffin, but he couldn’t remember the words after he had said them. The planet was pulling him downward. He should have heard thruster fire, followed by the whine of stabilizing wings spreading into the air.
Then: everything was white.
Bright white.
Before he knew it, his eyes were squeezed shut, a painful afterimage exploding across closed eyelids. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The coffin floor jerked up under him, impacting feet, jarring his body. He felt as if he was traveling up, then he stopped, hovered, floated. His eyes opened. The reality visor was cleared. All he could see was the coffin’s dim lighting, the walls, the few controls, the compartment latches, and he knew, in that instant, that the Way of God had broken contact and that he was going to die. He reached out for the reality control and hit the default toggle. There were several brief flashes as the coffin’s tiny computer took in the data from the external eyes and composited them. Then he was surrounded by night sky. Above him were three holes in the sky, three holes darker than the night itself, wavering with the breeze: the emergency parachutes. He was drifting landward, and he had no idea where he was.
He toggled off the surroundimage‚ and with his right hand he fingered the necessary keys to call up the data screens on his visor. The coffin was receiving no transmission from the ship, and he was under orders to maintain radio silence. The coffin’s limited radar told him how far above the surface he was, and it estimated that he would be down within five minutes. The imaging showed him that the probe was heading toward the shore of a large freshwater lake, but there was no way to tell if he would touch down upon land or water.
The short minutes were too long for quick and scattered thoughts: the probe was buoyant, but he swam poorly; the land was hard, best to land on water, perhaps far away from shore, where the waves could overtake him, where everything he had done wrong in his life would no longer matter. But the truth was: he didn’t want to die. He wanted to make it to the shuttle and find Dikobe. He saw how it would be. She was safe, hunched over a screen, going over data. Upon hearing him enter the shuttle, she turned. Her face was free of fever.
Her smile was tremendous when the decoy probe hit, and what it hit gave way with a resounding splash. Esoch felt his weight fall toward his feet, his head slapped against the headrest; then his body fell into the straps. The internal lights blinked, or he did. Esoch felt as if he were losing his balance, about to fall, and he realized that the probe was tumbling over, falling top down into the water. His body slammed again into the straps; his head snapped forward hard enough that he was surprised that it didn’t hurt, that he could raise his head again. The probe rocked back and forth, then settled. Water lapped dully against the outside, making his breathing on the inside sound terribly empty. The contour couch was now the ceiling from which he hung, his slim weight pulling him into the straps. Every bruise created by impact was now being outlined by the restraints.
He undid the buckle of the restraint that held his right thigh in place. His foot dropped down, hit the opposite wall, and the probe rocked gently. He undid the left buckle, and even though he intended to lower the foot gently, it still fell. The chest harness pressed against his ribs, and he positioned his feet, flexed his knees, and pressed his butt back into the contour couch in order to relieve the pressure against his chest. The probe rocked a bit forward with the shift in weight.
Esoch felt sweat dripping down his face, from under his arms. He shouldn’t be sweating this much. Breathing was becoming difficult. He was inhaling and exhaling too hard in too small a space. The recycler couldn’t keep up with his breathing, or… The thought overwhelmed him, and all he wanted to do was to get out of this thing. He undid the chest harness, and without the grace or delicacy that he had hoped for, he slid one arm out, then the next, and eased himself down onto the flat wall that was now the coffin’s floor. With each movement the decoy probe tilted.
Against the sound of the lapping water outside, the six walls inside felt incredibly close. It was hard to inhale and feel like he’d taken in enough air, and he told himself it was just psychological, the air was fine. He reached out, played fingers over the right keys, and the graphs and numbers indicated a working air recycler. It had to be psychological. Or had the diagnostic broken down in tandem with the mechanism? Had Ghazwan fallen to his death thinking that it was anxiety and claustrophobia th
at were making it so hard to breathe?
He keyed up surrounding visuals and saw nothing. He punched out the command for short-range infrared, and all he saw was water, the vague stripes of the parachute, and the night sky. He couldn’t tell where he was, how far out he was from land. If the recycler wasn’t working, he didn’t want to crouch here until he breathed up whatever oxygen was left.
His first thought was to tip the decoy probe, get it hatchside facing up. He rocked back and forth, he threw his body from one end to the other. The probe tipped each time, angled down, then abruptly righted itself. He lay there on the coffin hatch, breathing heavily, counting fresh bruises. There was one way out. He wondered if the lake contained carnivorous fish.
Esoch shifted onto his back. The flat metal of the hatch was cold. The rolling of the coffin felt like a secondary anxiety. He removed lightweight hikers. He unfastened his onesuit and withdrew arms, rolled the fabric off legs. He kicked the uniform aside. After removing the pack from its compartment, he checked through it. He’d stick to one set of clothes, to reduce weight. He added the hikers. He kept the food, and he kept the tracking disc. The rifle was heavy, too. He decided to keep the pistol. He hesitated with the med-kit‚ but it was heavy. If he made it to Dikobe’s ship, there would be a whole diagnostic lab there.
He pulled the cords that tightened the pack’s exterior, then slid his arms through the straps. He stowed the remaining gear, including the med-kit‚ in the compartment.
He was still breathing, still conscious. Maybe the recycler was working. If he stayed now, he might never decide again to leave.
Esoch placed his hand against the round plastic knob and turned. He heard the external hatch of the probe slide open. He touched the next knob. He pressed. Metal moved beneath him. A touch of water rose up, but the air inside the coffin kept the rest out. The hatch couldn’t be stopped midway. It slid out from under him, and his body was in the water. Cold enveloped him. He reached up, grabbed hold of one of the restraints. The line where water met air circled his body like a thin band of ice. The air around him was warm, and he shivered. For a while he just hung there, the pack tugging on his bare shoulders. The pack was light compared to what he had been trained to carry. Leaving the med-kit behind was a mistake.
Two strokes, and he was by the compartment. But there was nothing there to take hold of. He had to tread water with one hand while he reached up and slid the compartment door open. It was harder to reach in than he expected, but he got his hand around the med-kit handle and brought it out. It had no buoyancy when it hit the water. The weight tugged at his fingers. His grip wasn’t tight enough. The handle rushed by fingertips and was gone. Before he could go after it, the white box had wavered, shrunk, disappeared into the waters below.
He made his way back to one of the restraints and held on. He told himself he didn’t really need the med-kit. And he took in five deep breaths. Eyes closed, he dropped down into the water, into the coldness, and found himself rising back up, pushing up along the curve of the probe, kicking his way along. He had hardly swum another stroke when something took hold of him, wrapped itself around his head.
Eyes snapped open. Air bubbled out of his mouth. He was surrounded by the striped silk of the parachute. He took hold of the material and tried to pull it away, but there was just more of it. This would be worse than suffocation. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. His lungs felt empty. How far up was the surface? The cold closed in on him. He couldn’t feel toes or fingertips. Below him there was the faint glow from the coffin’s lights. Everything else was parachute. He pulled at the silk, pushed it down, swung his arms up to grab more and push it down, away from him. He kicked hard. He wanted to open his mouth. He needed to breathe. His lungs felt like vacuum balloons that blew up with the absence of air. He kicked away at water and silk, he pulled silk, pushed through water. He forced his head upward, and his chest and shoulders hurt with the effort and with the water’s deep chill, and he still thought he was going to die when his head broke surface.
He sucked in air and water with the first breath, choked, tilted his head back and trod water furiously, inhaling a second time, then a third. The water was impossibly cold. The way it closed around his skin made him aware of how vulnerable he was.
Once he had regained control of his breathing, he swam small, careful strokes until he found some of the parachute that was floating atop the water. He pulled himself along the fabric, feeling for the tugs that would give him a sense of where the decoy probe bobbed in the water. The sky was black and full of stars. One of the two moons hung upon a horizon etched with treetops. He couldn’t tell how far away those trees were. But there was one of two moons. E-donya had one moon. Living in the desert, he had danced himself into trance under its brightness. This moon seemed tiny and far away, like the horizon. He reached the edge of the parachute. He could make out the dark curve of the probe, the faint glow below it in the water. He swam to it, and climbed atop.
He crouched there and shivered. He told himself dawn would not be long in coming. Sleep would be like a blanket to the cold. Sleep would be a salve to all the bruises, to the cramped calves and thighs. But he shivered and he fought against sleep. It would be so easy to slide back into the water.
He watched the sky go from deep blue to gray to pink. The early-morning noises were so alien that exhaustion filtered their individuality and blanketed his brain with the comfort of white noise. His eyes were half-closed with the first hint of dawn. The early-morning gray turned the horizon’s shadows into an expanse of land spread out as beach and thickets and trees. Land was not more than two hundred meters away. He could swim two hundred meters.
Dawn flared orange, then red, and the landscape beyond the sand was green, unbelievably green and alive.
The following is excerpted from a draft of Pauline Dikobe’s memoirs, a project she started and abandoned while The Way of God made its return trip to E-donya E-talta.
The return of the fourth Raman probe initiated a series of events that led to the moment when I joined the war effort.
The massive probe was essentially a small starship engine hooked to a large computer and populated by a variety of investigative drones. Scientists at the Amichai Darwish Research Center had programmed the probe to chart the solar systems of several distant F- and G-type stars and to launch the drones to explore any planet that supported life or offered the possibility of commercial exploitation. The latter task was of the utmost importance, because most, if not all, of the project’s funding had been provided by the Hindu-Muslim Investment Developers of the Northern Continent, who expected a return for their investment. The probe was launched four years before the war broke out.
While the Raman probe headed for its jump point at the edge of the solar system, I was working on my doctorate, doing my field research among the Ju/wasi‚ a group of primal Utopians who earned their living gathering and hunting on a desert reserve that had been established four generations earlier. My research was funded by the Institute for Cultural Studies, which had sent out numerous ethnographers to examine the biosocial dimensions of the various utopian communities that had come into being as humanity spread itself across three humansafe worlds and too-many-to-count orbital colonies. We were using redefined Cosmides-Tooby culture-generation algorithms in order to examine further the dynamic of how individuals select, from a menu of nonconscious evolved behaviors, the specific behaviors that best match the current social environment. I was interested in the biological and social forces that shaped an individual’s human nature. My schoolgirl’s yearning devotion to God and my natural curiosity about humanity’s place in a very large universe had diminished, and like all true loves, its fundamental energies were drained away by newer, smaller concerns. If I had read or heard anything about any of the Raman probes, I didn’t remember it later.
I returned from the field, worked on a monograph, married, earned a doctorate, and gave birth to a son. When my son was weaned, when he could walk without amazement
at his steps, I returned to the field to verify some of my data, and I returned to find both husband and son gone.
I had spent all my credit and had gone into debt searching for them when the war started. It was background noise to my private pain, distant news from a distant solar system.
For six years slazan and human had shared a world called New Hope, each species living more or less contentedly on its own continent. One day several humanmade satellites and one orbital colony flew over different parts of the slazan-inhabited continent, and slazan missiles brought each one down. There were no diplomatic meetings, no lengthy explanations, no frantic negotiations. Human missiles struck slazan targets calculated to cause equal losses in credit and casualties, and then some, for added measure, as if destruction were a loan to be repaid with interest. Close up, it was anger and it was honor, it was avenging lost lives and lost capital. From light-decades away, on E-donya‚ in Wadi al-Uyoun‚ in the University district, where intellectuals could simultaneously balance lives like accountants and argue morality like priests, it all seemed so wasteful.
After New Hope was destroyed, the war expanded and continued until it seemed like nothing more than one long series of search-and-destroy missions. During the six years of prewar contact, both sides had worked hard never to turn over to the other anything with a chart, a map, or an image that would help one set of aliens learn the location of the other’s homeworlds. The slazans knew of Earth, Nueva España‚ E-donya‚ and the innumerable colonies that were perched on moons, embedded in asteroids, and encased in steel, but they did not know around which suns those worlds and satellites orbited.
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