James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 03
Page 2
With only the slightest gesture of acknowledgment to Eddie, Flight Captain Jones slipped quietly into the room behind Lt. Cmdr. Miller. Miller knew she was there, but he pretended not to, kept silent, feigned utter absorption in his work. She came beside him, spent a few seconds scanning the mural, and then crouched next to him on the floor.
The slight smack her lips made as they parted to let her speak cracked into his head like the first close thunder of a summer storm.
She said, “You missed the emergence.”
“I didn’t miss it. I just didn’t happen to be in PC-1 when it happened.” She studied the mural, from the far edge of the wall, her eyes alighting for a moment on each figure.
“You haven’t painted in a long time.”
“I find redemption in creativity.”
She leaned back, arms crossed. “It reminds me of Brainhammer.” His cheeks flushed red. His eyes narrowed. “Kirby Brainhammer was a jack artist. You know he pretended to be dead for thirty-six years. Told everyone who came to the house he was just a ghost. Insisted he was haunting them. Used to fling objects around. What an idiot.”
“I always found his work interesting.”
Miller tried to decide whether she was provoking him deliberately. If so, he would not give her the satisfaction of any further discourse on the jack-artist Kirby Brainhammer.
She rose again, and cast her eyes around the space that would be ‘Fast Eddie’s InterStellar Slam ‘n’ Jam Mark I.’ “Is this where you’ve been hiding out?”
“One place.”
“You haven’t been in your quarters, and you haven’t been in the guest suite.” Miller didn’t say anything. He took the wand away from the wall, and mixed some red into the brown.
“I remember this story,” she said, nodding at the mural. “A little obvious for you, I would think.”
He ignored her and continued painting.
Lowering herself, again, she crouched next to him. “You can stop punishing yourself, Phil.
I have forgiven you.”
“I haven’t forgiven myself.”
“Do you think it was easier for me to let go of what happened? I’m your wife, I’m the one who should be aggrieved.”
“It’s different. I betrayed you and I betrayed myself. I have your forgiveness but not my own.”
“You couldn’t control yourself.”
“Exactly. I lost control. Just like in New Sapporo. I lost control and I hurt you because of it.”
She sighed, scowled, hesitated. New Sapporo was supposed to have been dead and buried forever. They had both pledged never to speak of it again. She was angry that he brought it up, but she was not going to let him use her anger to avoid her. “This was nothing like New Sapporo,” she said, sounding more flinty than she would have liked.
Miller sighed, and looked up toward some spot on the ceiling, away from her. “After New Sapporo, I vowed to never let my animal side take over. While you were off at the Flight Academy, I found a Theologian Master to teach me self-discipline, to help me achieve the mastery of my higher self over my lower self. I fasted for days, until my mind told my body I was not hungry. I spent nights meditating naked in the cold, convincing myself I was warm until I truly believed it. I put myself through that because of the look of hurt on your face that I never wanted to see again on the face of anyone I loved. I saw the same look again when you discovered me on EdenWorld. I failed you again. I failed you.” She sighed. “I was hurt and angry at the time, as angry and hurt as I have ever been. I wouldn’t be here now with you if I still felt that way. I saw the landing team reports, … that woman, or whatever she was, altered your mind, Phil. Pheromones, Dr. Reagan called it. It could have been anyone. It could have been me. I can’t hold something you couldn’t control against you. I am the one who was hurt, and I have forgiven you. It’s all right to forgive yourself, now.”
He shook his head. “That would be the easy way out. I won’t allow myself the easy way out.”
She looked at him, shaking her head slowly, lips slightly parted. “That is such beastshit.
You know what’s really going on here. You just dove into a deep, stinking pool of self-pity, and you don’t want to come out.”
Her voice grew harsh, a tone he recognized as leaving no room for argument. “Don’t deny it, I know you too well. You’re thinking, ‘this is what shame is like, this is what it feels like to have betrayed the woman I love … again. I really hate myself, I’m disgusted with myself. I’ve opened up a part of myself I don’t see very often, and I have to keep it open. This is a really deep emotion.’ You’re thinking, ‘this is the kind of emotion I need to harness to make my art transcendent. I have to turn my shame inside out and let everyone see it. It will make me a better artist.’ And, you sit down here, enjoying your misery, harnessing it… and to hell with the rest of the ship, to hell with everybody else, to hell with me.” She reached down and snatched a crayola wand, a grassy green shade and drew a long, jagged line across the middle of the painting.
Miller put down his wand and turned to her. “I think you better go, now.” Flight Captain Jones stood. “I hate it when you get like this.” She turned, and said it in a different way, “I hate you when you get like this. You’re a self-absorbed bathwater drinker.”
She left.
Eddie spared a brief, sad look at the man crouched before his painting, thought what a fool he was, thought about the basic injustice that governed the relations of men and women, and went back to polishing the ale mugs.
Phil Miller picked up the green wand, reversed the action, and removed the ugly streak from his painting.
Space
Four Surveyor probes hurled in front of Pegasus, blazing a trail for the pathfinder to follow. Pegasus sent them all the data the ship’s sensors collected about 12 822 Equuleus to help guide their courses. All six of the worlds in this small system were terrestrial-type, great spheres of rock. The two innermost worlds were barren, their atmospheres having been burned off into in the turbulence of their suns youthful T-Taurii stage. Worlds four, five, and six were covered by thick, toxic atmospheres. If there were a human colony in this system, planet three was the most likely place.
The probes adjusted their course, sling-shotting past the fifth planet at close fly-by range.
They looked deep into its thick atmosphere of hydrogen, methane, and suspended particulates, and mapped the crust of rock underneath. The dust suspended in the atmosphere gave the planet the appearance of a tremendous, spheroid dust-devil in space; collisions in the atmosphere producing lighting that covered entire hemispheres; very unlike anything in their own systems. Even if 12 822 Equuleus did not yield a colony, it had at least provided one curiosity.
The fourth planet was far out on the other side of the system. The probes crossed its orbit, but left its exploration for later. According to Pegasus, 12 822 Equuleus IV was only a third the size of Republic, and was scoured by an atmosphere that was 60% concentrated sulfuric acid; not a promising prospect for human colonization.
Shortly thereafter, the probes passed through a cloud of gaseous, highly charged particles that ringed the sun and made a barrier between the inner and outer parts of the system.
They closed on the money planet, 12 822 Equuleus III. Its spectral profile said water was here, and oxygen, temperature within the habitable range for humans. It was the one planet in a million readily available for human colonization. The four probes zeroed in on it like giant space mosquitoes, and transmitted coordinates to Pegasus.
The seas of the planet glowed purple beneath the furnace-like glower of its orange-red sun.
Its landmasses were a paisley stain of moldy pink and sickly white. The probes made their orbits, two running east-to-west, two running north and south, 12,000 kilometers above the surface. The probes then set about measuring and plotting the planet’s geography, cartography, topography, and meteorology from space, and whispering their results back to the starship, a day or so behind them.
Pegasus cleared the inner cometary ring and passed inside the orbit of the outermost planet. A science officer from the Geological Survey Core, Specialist Mikhail Goodrich was briefing the senior officers.
“The probes had been in orbit for only about two hours at this point.” He brought up a holographic display. Parts of the planet were sharply defined, but large areas were blurry or not filled in at all. “Since then, we have received some additional data, but, unhappily, we have not picked up any indications of human habitation on the surface. No urban areas, and no large structures, not yet, but, at twelve thousand kilometers up, they would be hard-pressed to find urban structures on Sapphire or Republic after only two hours.
“While we’re comparing, one might say Medea and Republic are like mirror images of each other. Republic is a planet where life never got much further than lichens and sea-plants because it’s just at the edge of its star’s thermal margin, but in another two or three hundred million years, more advanced plants and maybe animals might have begun to emerge.
Humans just got there first.
“According to the analysis from Astrographical Survey, it looks like humans got here a little too late. At one time, this world had a huge number of plant and animal species. Then, a few million years ago, its sun underwent a change… it swelled up and cooled down. The climate of the planet shifted, it became drier and cooler, the spectrum of sunlight diminished to a kind of perpetual twilight, and most of the species died off. Anyway, it still retained a reducing atmosphere, and the sun was stable in its new state. In terms of suitability for human habitation, it was a very good prospect. Oxygen atmosphere, water, fertile soil, warm, low surface radiation. If the Commonwealth found it, there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t have planted a colony here.”
“How much of the planet has been examined to 1 meter resolution?” Lear asked.
“About nine percent.”
“Have they detected anything promising?” Lear asked impatiently.
“Not as of yet. It’s possible a human settlement may be undetectable from space; especially on a lightly populated colony, 200 million souls or less. Also, the colony might have been built underground, or tightly blended into the ecosystem, which would make it difficult to detect.
From the surface, we think this sun might be only a third or forty percent as luminous as our own, which would tend to encourage development along those lines. We would have to go much closer to find evidence of that type of colony. Until then, we are examining surface density and albedo to detect evidence of possible roadways and human structures. We have detected some rocky, regular expanses that could be cities.”
“…or could be regular, chunky rock formations,” Keeler appended.
Goodrich indicated the projection of the planet’s largest continental landmass. “First, we have to make a detailed geophysical and topographical survey of the planet. When we have finished, we’ll identify natural harbors, river confluences, inland lakes adjacent to arable plains. These are the kind of areas most suitable for settlement. Within twenty-eight hours, we should have isolated some of the best prospects and we can send in two of the probes for a closer look.”
Lear took over the meeting. “By that time, Pegasus will be in orbit of the planet. Three primary landing teams will be deployed to the surface. I will lead the Primary Contact team, Lt. Conseco will lead the secondary team, and Lt. FireWalker will lead the science expedition.”
“Let’s review the background data on this world,” Keeler said, drumming his fingers on the conference table.
“I refer you to the abstract I provided to you last week,” said Lear, she sent a copy to Keeler’s display. “In APR 4908, a few families were transported to Republic from Medea colony. They worked in the crystalline processors of Sector 18 South and returned to their colony twenty-two years later. They described the world as warm, humid, and sparsely populated. This behavior, coupled with the one existing contemporary account indicates that they lived apart from the other workers and kept to themselves.
“Unconfirmed accounts suggest that most of the Medean colonists were refugees from a failed colony in the Cassiopea Sector. There are two additional records indicating that agricultural products and botanical specimens from Sapphire were trans-shipped to the colony. The cargo manifest of one ship indicates that soil processors were trans-shipped there as well.
“Our best model was that Medea was a small agriculturally-based colony with a very insular culture, possibly one that splintered off from another colony because of social, cultural, or religious differences. If that is the case, they may not be welcoming toward outsiders. On the other hand, they may also possess well preserved records of other colonies.” Keeler drummed his fingers thoughtfully. He had skimmed over her report, but he recognized misguided historical bunk when he saw it. Assumptions piled on bunk, to be more precise, but all in the service of not admitting that they knew next to squat about this world.
“This was one of the worlds the Odyssey Project sent a probe to in advance of the Pathfinders.
Lieutenant Alkema tells me there is no sign of the probe.”
“Specialist Alkema,” Lear corrected. “The probe may have suffered a navigational failure.”
Or the inhabitants, being hostile to outsiders, blew it to pieces and threw it into their blood-red sea, Keeler thought. “We will just have to investigate for ourselves,” he said aloud, smiled, and hoped no one could read his thoughts.
12 822 Equuleus III — Orbit
Upon receiving the command from Pegasus, probe number one made a brief good-bye to its cohorts, dipped its nose toward the atmosphere and began a long arching descent to the planet. It bounced through the first soft wisps of the planet’s uppermost atmosphere as oxygen, in mono-atomic form, and belts of gamma radiation, stung the surfaces of its tail fins.
The air became thicker and warmer as it descended. The black of space became a glowing purple sky, and the curvature of the planet became an expanse of ground colored and textured like moldy and rotting cheese.
The probe was directed to an area at the head of a delta of the world’s fourth longest river system. Sensor returns showed there were tall outcroppings of rock that stood out from the surrounding countryside. They radiated heat differently than the surrounding rocks. Their density did not match the composition of the surrounding landscape. Promising.
Closer and closer to the surface of the sphere, the probe passed over a purplish ocean that looked unprettily like clotted blood beneath a bright orange sun that seemed to fill a quarter of the sky, but somehow provided less than half the light of the sun on Sapphire. The probe passed from violet sea to moldering continent and up the coast. Water vapor coalesced over the hot engine and boiled away, making a long pink-orange contrail over the still silent world.
No one looked up to see it.
The probe passed lower. The air thickened and made a great shockwave that boomed across the land but went unanswered. There was no sound but the wind over the plains, over fields where where crops had grown; now over-run and choked with native weeds.
As the probe closed, it saw that the geometry of the rock-shapes was far more regular than what was ordinarily found in nature. They were hollow inside, sheets of rock supported by internal skeletons of metallic and composite alloy. They described cubes, cones, rhomboids, hexagons - Euclidean shapes of no interest to nature, but basic to human architecture.
Probe One approached its destination, and slowed to the speed of a leisurely stroll, finding an orderly vista of buildings, streets, and housing blocks, empty of any activity. It traveled down a broad avenue near the center of the city. On either side, windows stared out from buildings, blind and vacant. Lozenge-shaped vehicles lined the streets, empty and abandoned; some crashed into each other and buildings. Broken power cables fell into the streets among the vehicles, trees, and other broken bits and pieces of civilization.
> The probes transmitted to Pegasus the bad news, that she would not be arriving at a surviving outpost of humanity, but too late at the scene of a crime.
CHAPTER TWO
Pegasus had made orbit 100,000 kilometers above the ravished, murdered, annihilated world of
12 822 Equuleus III, halfway between the planet and her one insignificant moonlet. The mighty ship glided above at a safe distance, as the sphere beneath her turned silently, gray-blue continents and smallish violet seas veiled by a mourning veil of dusky diaphanous clouds.
At one time, Medea had been a vibrant world, with perhaps as many as a billion inhabitants. (Probably not, but possibly if they lived a little more densely than the models suggested.) There had been hundreds of cities spread across its landmasses, connected by highways, airports, seaports, and rail networks. Its people had engaged in commerce, diplomacy, and the mundane business of everyday living. They had raised children, prepared meals, wrote books, played music and danced, while those who could do none of those things very well composed theories on how it all fit together.
All that had come to an end, suddenly, bitterly, remorselessly. The music had been stilled and the dancers fell never to rise again. Cities burned. Bridges collapsed into the rivers. Books rotted in libraries, and whatever wisdom they contained became dust and food for molds.
By the time Pegasus found the butchered world, there was no left to hail her arrival. In the empty cities, a ceaseless wind blew scraps through deserted lots and alleyways. Abandoned buildings towered over silent streets. Swings and carousels sat rusting in silent playgrounds.