by Greg Bear
We do know how to treat our sisters in the Corps. They’re fellow Skyrines, no more, no less, ever, as long as we’re in service. It’s a hard code and both sides are held responsible. Tak and Kazak once served rough justice on a flagrant violator of the sister code, a corporal named Grover Sudbury. Sudbury had raped and beaten a female PFC in his crummy apartment outside the depot at Hawthorne. Tak excluded me because I had a list of sketchy fitness reports and might have been DD’d if caught. But I saw the bastard after they had finished with him, crawling bloody and mewling across the deck of a second-floor walkway. They had finished by shoving him through a door that was closed at the time. Corporal Sudbury did not appear capable of standing, much less fit for duty. Months later, the Corps booted him in disgrace.
And then, Sudbury just vanished. Nobody ever heard from him again. Remember his name: Grover Sudbury. There have been a lot like him in the last couple of years, far more among civvies than Skyrines.
So I know when to stop thinking about sex. But I’m tired, pretty sure we’re doomed, and the dust widow is exotic, not like women back on Earth—not like any female in the Corps. Great fun to watch.
We ferry the general out of the buggy on the stretcher. He’s mostly out of it, awake but delirious. Vee-Def keeps him from plucking at his faceplate. I glance at my glove and wrist joins, usually the first to reveal increasing pressure. We’re still in Mars normal.
Michelin stays close to the ranch wife. “Where exactly are we…?” He runs a glove along the dark stone walls.
“Te Drifter, I told you,” she answers softly, reluctantly. Does she regret bringing us here? “Te eastern Drifter.”
“But what is that?” Michelin asks, glancing around for assistance. We know as little as he does.
“Te garage will pressure, if t’ere pressure on t’other side. T’at’s the inner lock. If a pressure, you strip, go naked—except for te general. Brush down now. Doan a want you bring in batTle sand.”
I’m not sure what she means, battle sand, with that brittle T of thinspeak—spent matter waste? What do the Muskies know about that? That’s all she’ll tell us until we open yet another smaller hatch, less rusty, quite thick, serious about keeping stuff in and out. An inner sanctum must lie beyond.
Gamecock has said little throughout our trek. Now he bumps helms with Tak and they seem to reach some agreement. I hope it doesn’t mean we’re about to commandeer this place or otherwise take charge.
As we open the thick hatch, enter the inner lock, and crowd in around the stretcher, I feel a deeper, almost creepy sense of awe. This formation is so very different from anything I know about Mars. The stone is remarkably dark and looks exceptionally dense and hard. Every few meters, ceiling and walls are shot through with glints of large metal crystals—wider than my hand. Nickel-iron, I guess. Beyond the polished crystals, there are more runs of grooves and other signs of excavation. Must have been a bitch to carve and finish. If the Muskies did all this, years ago, then they’re a lot more accomplished than we were ever taught at SBLM.
Vee-Def comes close to me, grinning at whatever he is about to blurt. He bumps helms. “Vast!” he intones. “Fremen warriors! Vast!” At my recoil and grimace, he shouts, “Duncan Idaho, right?”
Neemie and Michelin ignore him. I doubt Vee-Def reads much, he’s probably quoting one of the many movie versions. Never a drop of rain on Mars. Snow, yes, but never rain.
The fabric around my wrist finally dimples. The airlock is pressurizing. Our ears feel it next. Teal opens the opposite hatch. A tiny, dim light flicks on out there somewhere. It looks far away.
“Batteries on. Might still be good. If I don’t pass out, join me?” She pops her faceplate. She doesn’t pass out.
The dimple around my wrist gets deeper—we’re surrounded by maybe two-thirds of a bar. Then she cracks open the hatch we just passed through and air rushes by, filling the garage.
“Go ahead,” she says, once the wind subsides, and peels out of her own suit. In a few minutes, we’re all naked. The relief is amazing. I do not want to ever put on a skintight again. Slumped and rumpled on the deck, our suits stink, but the air seems good, even fresh—not a bit stale.
Not that I’m paying much attention to the air. The ranch wife wears only squared-off panties. I cannot help myself. My God, she is amazing. I never knew a woman could be that tall, that slender, that spidery, and still be so beautiful. Even the general ogles her with a pained grin and asks us to remove his helm.
She doesn’t seem to notice; possibly doesn’t care. We’re not part of her tribe. We’re not Muskies.
Why bring us here? What use could we be?
And what the fuck is this place?
WHAT THE LOCALS RECOMMEND
We have ready access to the garage, and as little star lights flick on in the high ceiling we start to inventory supplies on the bus—Teal’s buggy—and on the older vehicles, which it turns out are already pretty stripped down.
Then Teal wanders off, leaving us in the dim glow. She returns a few minutes later wearing dark green overalls—ill-fitting, made for a shorter individual, worn through at knees and elbows, but more decorous than near nudity. Draped over her forearm is a stack of similar clothing. She tosses it to the floor. As I pick one out of the pile and give it a shake, my fingers rub away green dust. I bend over and swipe the compacted floor with my palm, bringing away the same dust, along with a few grains of grit.
“Algae?” I ask nobody in particular. DJ and Vee-Def are scratching and trying to make their overalls fit.
Teal kneels beside the general and gives him more water. “Can you talk?” she asks him gently.
For the moment, his delirium has passed and his English has returned. “Must tell them soon,” he murmurs. “Looking for this. Looking for just this.” The general settles back, closes his eyes. Teal scowls in concern. She glances my way, aware I’ve caught her lapse. Her face goes bland.
Tak and Kazak squat behind the general, taking it all in. Gamecock is probably waiting for the right moment to suggest to our hostess that careful, thorough recon might be a fine idea. He does not like the shadows. Nor do any of us.
The ranch wife seems to be deciding who our leader might be. She focuses on Tak—of course. I’m used to that. He and I have been on liberty together from Tacoma to Tenerife. Women always look his way first.
Tak, with a dignified nod, directs her to Gamecock.
“My name is Teal,” she says to the colonel. “Nick for Tealullah Mackenzie Green.”
Gamecock introduces himself as Lieutenant Colonel Harold Roost. After him, we all divulge our proper names and ranks—all but the general, who has drifted off again. Tak gives him another dose of morphine. Teal warns him, that’s it, no more. Although I’m wondering if she prefers that the general would simply fade away…
“T’ere a much trouble here,” Teal says as we rearrange, like kids around a campfire. She becomes the center of our attention, but we might be a pack of dogs, she might be talking to us just to relieve boredom, for all the emotion we seem to arouse. “We stay away a trouble, but now it comes a-doorstep, right a T’ird Town, my Green Camp.”
“There’s more than one town nearby?” Gamecock asks.
She doesn’t answer this, but keeps talking, eyes over our heads, searching the darkness and stone. “I come here until te bad time passes.”
“Bad time,” the general says. Perversely, the morphine seems to perk him up. Maybe he drifts off to escape the pain.
“ST’ere a battle coming?” Teal asks Gamecock.
“We’re stragglers from a bad drop,” he says. “Waiting to regroup.”
“So t’ere wor more…” She nods slowly. “Many?”
Gamecock lifts his lips, adds nothing.
“I figured,” Teal says. “From te buggy, while heading sout’east… Kep rolling by broken ships, buggies, abodes—tents—bodies across te flat. Hundreds.”
“Human?” Gamecock asks.
“Hard a know.” She
throws out her hands. “Couldna stop. I had a make speed a get here.”
The general struggles to sit up. His eyes are bright, feverish. “Knew about this. Looking! Long time past,” he says, “big strike. Big as a moon. Ice and stone metal core. Heat of impact tremendous, but shove ice deep, superheat steam, blow out… Biggest basin! Chunks not mix.”
Teal watches him with a veiled glare, as if he is a snake trying to bite. She gently pushes him back down, then changes the subject. “Tell what you can, what a-happening a t’ere,” she says to Gamecock.
“Major effort,” Gamecock says. “Troops and supplies, survey parties.”
“Robots?” she asks.
He shakes his head.
“Why na robots? Why people? Far Ot’ers supposed a be smart, from anot’er star, right?”
We’ve asked ourselves that same question. Same reason, I suppose, that robot football never caught on. Real bones, real snaps.
“Robots can’t replace a Skyrine,” Gamecock says.
Teal sniffs disdain. “Figure t’at out, save yourselves.”
“Where’s the fun?” Michelin says. “Life is being there.”
“Deat’ S’a never going home,” Teal responds. Death’s never going home. Right. She crouches again by the general, checks his neck pulse; her knees show through holes in the jumpsuit. Fascinating knees. “We stay ouT way. We’d like a know how long ’twill last.”
The general’s eyes flutter. “Hard battle coming.”
Gamecock’s face is stony, but I suspect he’s still trying to figure out what he can say in front of this noncombatant, whether we need to commandeer her supplies, her vehicle… everything in these caverns.
It’s Tak who speaks next, maybe out of turn, but what the hell. We owe our lives to her. “We dropped without tactical,” he says. Gamecock swivels on his ankles to face him, brow wrinkled. “No complete update. We’re pretty ignorant.”
“I know,” the general says, voice weak. “I tell more. But she must not listen,” he says, staring at Teal.
Without a word, Teal rises and walks toward the darkness where she retrieved the jumpsuits. “Let me know when you’re done,” she calls.
We sit for a moment in silence, out of uniform, worn to nubs. The air in the hollow is cool, strangely sweet… Active environmental. All of it just adds to our enormous puzzle.
Gamecock looks down at the general’s face, then up at the rest of us. “Get ready to listen,” he says. Closer to the general’s ear, he says, enunciating each word, “Sir, we’re secure. You need to tell us what you know.”
The general swings his head right and left, scanning us, the side of the bus—then looks straight up at the stone roof. “This is retreat, reservoir,” he murmurs. “Place to hide.” A wave of pain racks him.
“Maybe it is,” Gamecock says.
“Much more,” the general says, eyes searching for relief. Gamecock gestures for Tak to give the general more morphine—a half dose. Tak complies.
“What’s the plan, sir?”
“Old plan, year old,” the general says, eyes moist. “Land and reinforce, lay forts and tunnels, claim low flats, establish networks of resources, fountains, depots. Big drops, rocket descent pods. Big effort from Earth, funded by Russia, China. Lots of my soldiers. Informed not much enemy orbital. All wrong. We arrive, Russians first. All wrong. Lots of enemy orbital, recently inserted, take us down, Antags have big ground presence, dominance. We fight. Lose big. We know so little!” He looks away, ashamed. Nothing to be ashamed of.
“We were in transit when all that went down,” Gamecock says to the rest of us. “We were meant to be a backup or modest supplemental to the big push.”
“They could at least have told us,” Kazak complains.
“Antag G2O mopped us from the sky. All but one of our satellites were down.” He pauses, then adds, “That’s what must have happened.”
“No resources, no weapons, can’t do much down here,” the general says. That seems to be it, then. We’re all we’ve got, and we’re relying on the hospitality of a ranch wife and her peculiar cave just to stay alive.
Michelin and Tak and I go back to the others. Gamecock stays with the general, in case he has more to say.
“Muskies!” DJ says. “Bless ’em. Sure talk strange.”
“Not that strange, after so many decades,” I say, thinking on Teal, idly considering what it might be like to go AWOL and join the Muskies—not that we have another choice, right now. Hardly any command. Hardly any AWOL involved.
“What the hell is this place?” Kazak asks.
“Surprised there’s still air and water and power.” Tak shakes his head. “Don’t know how long it’s been empty.”
“If it is empty,” Vee-Def says, eyes searching. “Like the Mines of Moria. Orcs everywhere, man.” He spreads his hands, makes crawly motions.
“Fuck that,” DJ says.
Tak stretches his neck, then does a few yoga moves. I follow his lead. “She’s not telling us much,” he says, assuming downward dog.
“Why should she?” DJ asks. “What I’d like to know is, why is she out here all alone?” He puts on a squint-eyed frown that could be either suspicion or skepticism.
Gamecock and Michelin join us. “The general is out. We peeled back his skintight. Gangrene. He needs surgery.”
“Good luck with that,” Kazak says.
“He said something odd before he passed out. Mumbling in Korean and English, back and forth, about broken moons, uneven settling…” He shrugs. “I’m not sure this place is any kind of surprise to command.”
“They’ve been looking for it?” I ask, again feeling that spooky prickle.
“We don’t know what orders the first wave might have had. The general’s not exactly making sense.”
“Teal didn’t look happy when he was talking,” I say.
Gamecock glances between me and Tak, settles on me. “You’ve been studying her.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Not at all. She’s receptive.”
“BS, sir,” I say. “She glammed Tak.”
“I’m a good judge,” Gamecock says. “Go after her. Find out what this place has to offer, how long we can stay, how long we should stay. Whether we’re alone. If this is a big ore concentration, then it’s dead cert the Antags will have scoped it out.”
“And we haven’t?” Tak asks.
“No need asking our angels,” Gamecock says. “They won’t carry strategic data we don’t absolutely need, and that includes planet-wide gravimetry. Still, that kind of info has got to be pretty old… Why wouldn’t the Antags know?” He shoves all this aside with a push of his palm. “Go,” he tells me.
The others smile as I stand. I shove my hands into the overall pockets, feel something cold, then, surprised, pull out a metal disk about the size of a quarter. I hold it out, catch the light, see that it’s featureless on one side like a slug, but made of what could be silver. Very white silver. And on the other side, there’s a long, coiling string of tiny numbers and letters.
“Holy crap!” Neemie says, and grasps at the air. I pass him the slug. Neemie’s father runs a rare coin shop in Detroit. He looks at it up close, turns it over, rubs it in his fingers, sniffs it. “It’s platinum,” he says. He passes it around and when everyone is done marveling, as much as any of us have the energy to marvel, Kazak hands it back to me.
“A sample of the local ore?” Gamecock asks.
No idea. I replace the purloined platinum in the pocket where I found it and move off after Teal.
THE DARKNESS BEYOND the antechamber to the buggy barn is broken only by occasional star lights, low-power jobs about the size of a grain of wheat. They look as if they might have been glowing for years.
I can see Teal’s footprints in the damp green dust that lightly coats the tunnel floor and almost everything else. A few minutes and I arrive at a juncture connecting other tunnels, right, left, straight ahead, up… and down.
Way down. I pull
back and lean against a wall, heart pounding against my ribs.
Almost fell into a shaft.
Maybe she wants us all dead. That would make sense, given the situation. Maybe she thinks, or was told, that there are troops out here looking into the family secrets. She could pick us up off the Red, fake concern, take us to the very place someone’s looking for, but it’s a mine where she can just dump us down a deep, deep hole…
I nearly died in a mine at Hawthorne. Joe pulled me back at the very last instant. Rocks rolled from under my boots into a pit, splashing into stagnant water dozens of meters down.
This hole is about four meters wide. With considerable care, I walk around it and try to pick up Teal’s footprints on the other side, but the floor beyond is suddenly bare—no dust, no prints. However, I hear distant padding sounds… echoes of someone breathing. I hope it’s Teal.
The walls are marked again by regular grooves, scoring the stony surface in a fashion that makes me think machines might have done the excavation, leaving grooves so that other machines could use them for stability or guidance. Maybe the machines are still down here. I imagine a mobile printer/depositor, serviced by a truck carrying buckets of slurry for different builds… going from place to place and building stuff for the miners.
Another thirty meters and I hear a voice off to one side, coming from a cubby. Teal emerges, rises to her full height, and looks down on me in the dim light.
“Are t’ey coming?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
“Just you?”
“Just me.” I take out the coin and hold it up in the palm of my hand. “Found this in a pocket. Any idea what it’s for?”
She glances, sees the coiling string of numbers, gives a little shudder. “Caretaker,” she says. “Must be his jumper.”
“They left caretakers behind?”
“Maybe. Hang onna’t.” She moves on. I follow. She’s slowed down a bit, as if she can’t find what she’s looking for.