Selected Stories: Volume 1

by Kevin J. Anderson

  She doubted the baby would wait until they reached the Earthers’ inflatable base.

  The airlock door closed behind them, leaving them in claustrophobic darkness. Already Cora longed for one last breath of the cold air on top of Olympus Mons.

  As the southern hemisphere of the planet Mars entered its winter season, the falling temperature caused great portions of the atmosphere to freeze out. Water vapor and carbon dioxide piled up in layers to form a polar icecap. The resulting drop in air pressure sucked wind from the northern hemisphere down across the equator. Gathering force, the wind rushed to fill the invisible hole at the bottom of the world, picking up dust particles in a fist as tall as the sky.

  The storm hit them three hours after they had left the adin encampment. Rachel could barely see as the roiling murk pounded and shook the crawler from side to side. The brilliant high beams of the vehicle’s lights revealed only an opaque haze; the low beams illuminated no more than a shallow puddle of ground directly in front of her. Rachel squinted through the whirlwind, hoping to swerve in time to avoid the largest rocks or another gaping chasm. The walls of the crevasse sheltered them from the worst gusts, but vicious crosscurrents forced her to wrestle with the controls.

  Rachel had no idea where the narrow canyon would take her, but she had to follow it. She wound her way along the crevasse floor, hoping it would spill out onto the Tharsis plain or climb back up to the flat surface of Olympus Mons. She did not know where the nearest settlement would be, or if she would have a better chance heading straight for the main base facilities.

  As they continued, Rachel increased the air pressure in the crawler, gradually acclimating Cora to the change. The muffled sounds of the scouring gale came through only as distant whispers. Her suit worked double-time to absorb her perspiration. She no longer felt like someone who wanted to surrender.

  A wry smile came to Rachel’s face; she had never imagined she would be facing the dust storm in such a manner. Her planned suicide had seemed poignant and dramatic at the time, like a great hero going to meet doom—but now she realized that most people would have shaken their heads sadly and pitied her instead. They would have found her pathetic. They would have reevaluated all of her successes, used her final madness to brush aside the accomplishments and then forgotten about her.

  She kept her mind focused on moving ahead, on the need to return to the main base, where she could show Jesús Keefer how important she still was to the Mars project. Keefer had always been impatient with the slow work of the adin and the dva, wanting instead to have humans scrape out a direct existence on Mars from the start.

  But Rachel and her team had made it possible for the first humans to walk free on another world. No matter how the future changed, no one could alter that. Her work had resulted in the birth of the first Martian, a landmark event never before rivaled in human history.

  Behind her on one of the passenger benches, Cora Marisov spoke little, gasping as another labor spasm hit. Rachel used the vehicle’s chronometer to time them. They occurred about every four and a half minutes. Cora seemed oblivious to the storm outside.

  “I think …” Cora said, gasping words that Rachel heard muffled through her helmet, “you had better find a place to stop the crawler. Park it. Shelter. I need you now.”

  Rachel slowed the vehicle and risked a glance backward.

  Cora lay on the floor, her back propped against the curved metal wall and her legs spread as far apart as she could manage around the mound of her belly. Between her legs a gush of liquid spilled out, steaming and freezing in the icy air.

  Her water has broken! Rachel lurched the crawler over to the canyon wall under what she could dimly see as an overhang. Now what would she do? Rachel was a doctor, no problem. No problem! But she had studied environmental adaptation, worked with cyborg enhancements. The closest she had come to witnessing birth was in staring at cells dividing under a microscope. It had been a long time since her basic training, and she had used none of it in practical situations.

  She looked down the treads of the crawler and turned back to Cora. The pregnant adin woman looked up at her; Rachel hoped the faceplate hid her uncertainty.

  “I may be able to help you now,” Cora said, “but when the final part of labor comes, I will not be able to hold your hand through this.”

  The thought of Cora helping her in the emergency made Rachel stifle a raw-edged giggle, but Cora continued. “I helped my grandmother deliver two babies when I was small. Midwives still do much of that work in Siberia.”

  Rachel fought away her scattered emotions and stared into Cora’s dark, slanted eyes. “All right, should I check to see how far you are dilated?”

  “Yes. Reach … inside me. Then we will know how much time I have.”

  Rachel looked down at her clumsy gloved hand. She checked the external air pressure monitor; though the suit seemed more flexible now that the differential was not so great, she still could not survive unprotected in the crawler cabin. “I dare not remove my suit yet. There is not enough air for me. And the glove is too big as it is. I would hurt you.”

  Cora’s eyes shut in a wince and her body shook. Rachel watched her body straining, the augmented muscles stretched to a point where they seemed to hum from the tension. Cora’s fingers scrabbled on the smooth metal floor, looking for something to grasp. After a minute or two, the spasm passed.

  Cora took five deep breaths, then brought her attention back to the problem. “We need to learn how long it will be. If I am not fully dilated, we might have enough time to reach your base. If I am, then the baby could come in as little as an hour.”

  Rachel drove the panic away and tried to dredge up alternatives from the thin air. “There are small cutting tools in the repair box, and some metal tape.” She looked down at her suit. “I could cut off my glove, seal the sleeve around my arm with the tape. Then I could feel inside you.”

  Cora looked at her, saying nothing, as Rachel continued. “My hand would get numb in this cold, but I can raise the internal temperature here as much as you can stand.”

  “If you damage the suit, you will never be able to go outside until we reach your base.” Cora closed her eyes in anticipation of another labor pain. “Perhaps you should keep driving. Hope we will find help within another hour or so.”

  Instead, Rachel made up her mind and went to the crawler’s tool locker. In this storm, and with the distance yet to travel, they would never get to a safe haven in an hour. She had spent most of a day maneuvering the crawler up the smooth slope of Olympus Mons, making good time and seeing exactly where she was going. She had now been driving barely four hours, over rough terrain, unable to see for the past hour. They would never make it. Better to prepare here.

  First, she wrapped the tape around her forearm as tightly as she could, making a crude tourniquet. Then she pulled up the slick fabric around her wrist and removed one of the small cutting tools from the locker. The tough suit material could resist most severe abrasions, but not intentional sawing. Keeping the metal tape at hand, she pulled in a deep lungful of air and sliced across the fabric.

  Her ears popped as air gushed out. She could feel the wind and the cold pushing against her skin. The tourniquet could not make a perfect seal. She cut the gash longer, enough that she could pull her fingers out of the glove and thrust her hand through the ragged opening. With her protected hand, she wrapped more metal tape around her wrist where the suit material met the skin. She taped back the flopping, empty glove, then sealed the seam over and over.

  Panting, Rachel tried to catch her breath as the suit re-inflated. The chemical oxygen regenerator on her back hissed and burbled, adding to the ringing in her ears. Her head pounded, but her thoughts cleared moment by moment.

  Cora squirmed on the floor in her own ordeal. Rachel knelt in front of her. “Cora? Cora, I am ready.” She touched the adin woman’s bristly coating of fur, the waxy texture of her polymerized skin. Rachel’s hand felt crisp from the cold, then sens
itivity faded as it grew numb. “Tell me what I should expect to feel inside you.”

  Cora blinked and nodded.

  The placental water on the crawler floor had sheeted over with a film of ice, clinging in gummy knots to Cora’s inner thighs. Rachel slowly felt the folds of skin between Cora’s legs, dipped her fingers into them, then slid her hand inside.

  At first the temperature felt too hot, like melted butter, in startling contrast to the frigid air. She forced herself not to withdraw. Her skin burned.

  “Feel the opening deep inside. It is surrounded by a ridge,” Cora said, biting off each word as she said it. “Tell me how wide it is.”

  “A little wider than my hand and thumb.”

  Cora bit her lip.

  Rachel withdrew and grabbed the other woman’s arm. The biting cold of the air felt like acid on her wet hand. “Is that good or bad? I can’t remember my training.”

  “Bad. No, good. That means this should be over much sooner. A few hours, perhaps.”

  The sound of the storm outside suddenly turned into a monster’s roar, a grinding, crunching sound that pounded through the walls of the crawler. The rock outcropping above them came crashing down, tossing boulders and blankets of dirt.

  Rachel fell on her side, clawing at the air; Cora rolled over and curled into a ball to protect her abdomen. Rocks pummeled the top of the crawler, bouncing and thudding. Reddish smears clogged the view from the main front windowports, blowing away in patches as gusts of wind tore it free of the smooth glass.

  Rachel got to her knees. She felt herself shaking. The palm of her bare hand seemed to burn into the frigid metal of the floor. “Are you all right?” she asked Cora. The adin woman nodded.

  The sounds of the avalanche faded into the roar of the storm, but then another, softer thump sounded on top of the crawler. Cora froze, and her eyes widened.

  Rachel got up to go to the crawler’s control panel. Luckily none of the falling rocks had smashed through the front windowports.

  Then a face and shoulders appeared from above, hands reaching down from the roof of the crawler, brushing the dust aside. The face pressed against the glass, peering inside and grinning.

  An adin. Boris Tiban.

  In shock, Rachel caught herself from crying out. She smacked her hands down on the controls for the protective plates, which slammed over the windowports. The last thing she saw was Boris Tiban leaping aside in surprise, vanishing into the tangled murk of the storm. Then the metal clanged into place, leaving the crawler in dimness. The central illumination automatically stepped up, bathing the interior in a blue-white glow.

  Cora stared wide-eyed at the sealed windowport. “Boris!” she muttered. She seemed to have forgotten about her labor. “He caused the avalanche. He must have been working at it ever since we stopped.”

  “Out in the storm?” Rachel could hardly believe what she had seen herself. “How could he survive without shelter?”

  Cora shook her head; Rachel saw a smile on her lips. “He likes to do that, pit himself against the elements. He is proud of how he can cope with anything Mars throws at him. Tamer of Worlds—that is what he wants to be called. He does not like to see you domesticating this planet. Then he will be obsolete.”

  “I know what that feels like,” Rachel muttered, then stopped. “But if Boris tries to kill me, he will also destroy you, and his baby. Does he not realize he will murder his own child?”

  Cora hung her head, then shuddered with another spasm. Rachel adjusted the air compressors to increase the pressure inside the crawler more rapidly. When Cora recovered, she looked Rachel in the eye and kept her voice flat.

  “He needs the baby to die. He has always planned on it.”

  Rachel opened and closed her mouth without words; she knew that behind the faceplate she must look like a dying fish in a bowl. “I don’t understand.”

  Cora let her slanted eyes fall shut beneath the thick lash membranes. “His grandest gesture of all. He has been anticipating it for months. We have always known the baby would die at birth. I should never have gotten pregnant. That loss would be a direct fault of the Earthers. He has found a way to blame all of our troubles on you. He is good at that.

  “When the baby dies, he will have all the reason he needs to strike back. It will be a catalyst, an excuse. Everything must be perfectly justified. Those are the rules by which he plays.” She sighed. “No one ever thought someone like you would come.”

  Rachel struggled with the sick logic. “What will he do?”

  “He plans to go to your inflatable base and destroy it. With his metal staff, he can tear holes right through the sides of the walls. He can run from one section to the next as fast as his legs will take him, striking and moving. He can do it. The alarms will send everyone into confusion. He can burst every module even after they seal themselves. The people inside will be trapped and he can pick them off, one room at a time. The Earthers might repair some of the walls, but Boris can just strike again. He can wait longer than any of them.”

  “But what about you? He’s trying to kill you now, too!”

  “That is incidental. He loves me in his own way, but he sees the cause as more important. Just like a great revolutionary.”

  Rachel felt anger welling up inside of her. “Well then, I must make sure he has no reason to attack the base. Your baby will live.” She patted Cora’s bulging stomach with her bare hand and turned to look at the heavy metal plates covering the windowports. “We are safe here, for now.”

  Surrounded by the muffled whirlwind of the storm, Cora Marisov gave birth to a daughter. The crawler walls creaked and groaned as the wind tried to push in, but the shelter remained secure.

  As soon as Cora’s final labor began, Rachel had no choice but to begin pressurizing the crawler interior as rapidly as the pumps could bring in more air. Many of the intake vents had been clogged with dust from the storm and the avalanche, but the gauges showed the air pressure increasing.

  Cora cried out with the effort of her labor, but also gasped, complaining about how difficult breathing had become. “Like a metal band around my chest! My head!”

  “There is nothing for it. The baby must breathe when it comes.” No matter what it does to Cora, Rachel thought. “You are strong. I made you that way.”

  “I … know!”

  When Rachel had pulled the slick baby free, it steamed in the air, glistening with red wetness. “A girl!” she said.

  Cora’s mouth remained open, gasping to fill her lungs. The baby, too, worked the tiny dark hole of her mouth in a silent agonized cry of new life, but she could not find enough air.

  Rachel moved quickly now. As she had planned, she shucked her suit and popped open the faceplate, letting the blessed warm air gush out. The shock stunned her, but she forced herself to keep moving, to plow through the black specks in front of her vision. A bright pain flashed behind her forehead. Moments later, a warm, thick trickle of blood came from her nostrils.

  She grasped the loose end of the metal tape sealing her wrist to the suit. The grip slipped twice before her numb fingers clutched it and tore it off. She let out a howl of pain, releasing half the air left in her lungs. She felt as if she had just flayed the skin off her arm.

  She had to hurry. Grogginess started to claim her, but she stumbled through the motions.

  Shivering already, she stepped out of the empty suit, letting the metallic fabric fall in a rough puddle on the floor. She wore only a light jumpsuit underneath, clammy with sweat that froze in icy needles against her skin.

  Rachel clamped shut the empty faceplate and grabbed up the baby. The infant skin, smeared with red from the birth, took on a bluish tinge as she tried to breathe. The umbilical cord, tied in a crude knot, still oozed some blood.

  Cora found the strength to reach over and touch the infant one last time before Rachel slid the girl inside the loose folds of the suit and sealed her whispered cries into silence. She began pressurizing it immediately. The folds began
to straighten themselves as air pumped inside.

  Heaving huge breaths but still starving for oxygen, Rachel grasped the limp sleeve where she had cut off the glove and knotted it. Suit-warmed air blew from the edge, squirting onto her skin. Rachel clutched the roll of metallic tape and wrapped it around and around the end of the sleeve. The hissing noise stopped, replaced by the ringing in her ears. She crawled over to where regenerated air streamed into the chamber, but that helped only a little.

  Cora, though, grew worse. “Can’t inhale,” she said. “Like stones on my chest. Breathing soup.” She was too weak to cope with the increasing difficulty.

  Rachel felt all her words go away as she looked at the exhausted new mother, at the mess of blood and amniotic fluid and afterbirth tissue on the crawler floor. This had not been clean and quick like the make-believe births shown in entertainment disks. It looked like some slaughter had occurred here. But not slaughter—new life.

  Somehow, Cora got to her knees, wavered as she tried—and failed—to draw a deep breath, then crawled toward the airlock. “You must let me out. Dying. Need to breathe.”

  Rachel, dizzy from her own lack of air, tried to fight against confusion. “Not in the storm! Not right after the baby. You are too weak.” But she knew Cora was right. If the adin woman had any chance for surviving, it had to be outside, not in here.

  Cora reached the door and rested her head against it, panting. “Strong enough,” she said, repeating Rachel’s words. “You made us that way.”

  Rachel watched her open the inner door and haul herself into the airlock. The noise of the storm outside doubled. Cora looked at the sagging environment suit on the floor, focused on the squirming lump that showed the girl’s movements, then raised her deep-set eyes to meet Rachel’s. She looked intensely human and inhuman at the same time.

  “I will tell Boris his daughter is alive. Safe.” With great effort, she filled her lungs one more time. “He must face that. Adapt to new conditions—his own words.” She raised her hand in a gesture of farewell, then sealed the door.