“Too late for that,” Roan said with a mournful expression. “Look how she’s embarrassed herself.”
“She’ll snap back,” Tess said. “Once we teach her the Demetrian way of life. How to be tough.”
“Had it too easy, on the ship. Food whenever you want it. Temperature controlled. AI at your beck and call. You can’t blame her for going a bit soft.”
“No.” Tess was looking down at Kal. Her eyes were dark blue. She and Roan played it so straight Kal flipped in and out of thinking they were serious. “Remember us, when we got here.” Tess winked, so quickly Kal wondered if it had happened. “We’ll give her another chance.”
“Do you deserve another chance, Kal?” Roan was a little overwhelming in person. She breathed, staring up at him. He put his face closer, filling up most of her range of vision through the visor. “Do you?”
She nodded.
He jerked his chin at Tess and in unison they hauled her to her feet. She was vertical so fast her head spun.
“Risen from the dead,” Tess said soberly. “We’ve brought you back to life, Kal Black Bear. Prove you deserve it.”
They stood in front of her, each holding on to one of the wrists of her exosuit. Their eyes were steady and serious, without any hint of humor in them now.
Kal breathed in and let her filtered breath out again, slowly. “I will.”
“Your oath is good,” Tess said.
“We welcome you as one of our own,” Roan said. “We are one and ourselves.”
Kal tried to think of a worthy response. She said what her aunt had quoted to her in the dream, “‘The center of the universe is everywhere.’”
“As are we,” Tess said. “Here, and everywhere.”
Now their hands were intertwined. The strength of three. Kal would cry tears of blood for this connectedness and consider it right and true.
They all lay down after this, spokes of a wheel, and looked at the sky, full of two moons and a sun. The sun, Mythos, wasn’t visible, the reason for it unclear to Kal. She thought there might be a haze high up where Mythos should be. The part of the sky filled with the moons was clear.
Her body had almost arrived here. Not quite. She wasn’t in her body yet. The dislocation of travel through space-time. To travel through space was to travel through time. To travel through time was to travel through space. Kal contemplated this intertwining with serenity.
Language had become unnecessary. The light-hearted connection she’d had with both Roan and Tess while she was on the Ocean, through holos, was still there, but the ties that bound them now were fresh and deep. If she had to run away, take the Ocean and disappear, or the Land, she would take them with her. They would find another corner of Demeter and land there. She could tell Sasha and Noor and Gwendy where it was, swear them to secrecy.
Kal had passed through something, a test or a ritual, another kind of portal. The world was always different on the other side, but the illusion she must not believe was that she was the same person before as she was after. Kal wasn’t sure if the Kal who’d gone into the portal was lost, and this self another incarnation created to emerge, or found on the other side, coincident or consequent to the other Kal’s decision to enter.
A multiplicity within and without. Every decision creating a decision tree, as Rai liked to say. Rai and her decision trees. Every person’s decision, every what if and maybe and might be, all playing out at the same time with the infinity only a universe could contain.
To be a small sliver of unreality in that universe encapsulated the precious unrepeatability, or infinite repeatably, of this moment on the ground of Demeter with Roan and Tess. Somewhere this moment was forever. It had existed and did and would, until the vacuum popped all realities out of existence.
Kal raised her hand to her collar. She pressed a button. And another. She slid her finger over a hidden panel beneath a fold of material on the the neck of her suit. Her helmet depressurized.
With both hands she slid the rings apart and removed it.
Demeter rushed at her like a wildcat, attacking her lungs, pushing its air inside, filling her lungs with itself. She hyperventilated, rapid breaths dwindling her vision. Contracting her stomach muscles as hard as she could, she crunched her upper body upward, jackknifing over her legs. Dragging her legs apart into a frog-like diamond, toes together, knees akimbo, she hung her head to the ground, touching it. Her hair, the top of her skull, the first part of her to touch the soil of the planet.
Instantly she felt its energy, a violent throb of it compared to the low thrumming when she’d first been tackled to its surface.
Demeter.
Demeter.
Demeter.
The rapid, shallow breaths she took were infused with the scent of the ground. The smell of life. Growing things, decomposing things, cyclic things. There’s life here.
The planet is alive.
Demeter’s slow rotation, slower than her former home, its pulling moons, directing the waves toward and away, its ancient sun, its calm billions becoming trillions inside Kal’s mind.
Carbon.
Nitrogen.
Hydrogen.
Oxygen.
Salt.
Oxygen.
Death.
Life.
Her body, weightless. She made a tripod of her head and hands. Without effort her feet rose lightly from the soil, the grass compressed and flat beneath her body, rising to point up to the sky. Her head and hands the triangle of connection, her feet the divining rod.
Her eyes drifted shut.
Connected to earth—to Demeter—Mythos—to a violet sky—curved bone of strange moons—the axis of being—core of Demeter—a ringing symbiosis—vibration and co-existence—Earth.
She folded her knees, curling them to her stomach before she glided them to the ground.
Her suit was an encumbrance. She removed it.
The wind was full, cutting her with small knives made of ice. Her hair, loose and wild, flew down over her face. With vision obscured, she felt again the components, the stuff of life struggling up, diving down beneath her.
Her hair was pulled free of her face. Tess held it away, encircling it with her hand, containing it.
Tess tucked it into the neck of Kal’s shirt.
One on each side of her, again, Roan and Tess carried Kal, this time with her arms around their shoulders, her knees supported by their arms linked beneath her.
Back to the roller, they delivered her inside, and took their places on each side of her.
The exosuit lay like a discarded skin on the tableland.
They rolled across the flat of the table, until with a swoosh they flew down, down, the sides far steeper and vaster than Kal had known. Their velocity made the grasses a blur, the tunnel a flute of golden fire that played them out, back to what they were supposed to call home.
The biohab looked tiny in the distance, a toy instead of a hangar. The closer they got, the more real it became, shuddering like a heat mirage until it snapped into focus. Kal saw a greenhouse, glinting like the mountains. People at work, outside, building something. A well. Light panels, to gather Mythian energy. A wind sock and the glimpse of a windmill. Wind power. The top of the Land, looming in the distance.
When Tess brought them to a stop, still too far away to be within hailing distance of the workers, they sat staring at the biohab.
“We have to go back,” Roan said. “Flicker will expect her to be in the suit.”
Tess looked over at him. She shifted her gaze to Kal. Kal said, “You know them better than I do.”
Tapping her fingers on the front panel of the roller, Tess thought. “He’s right. We have to go back.”
“It seemed the right thing to do at the time, leaving it there,” Roan said. “Symbolic.” Kal smiled. She put her hand on Roan’s padded arm. It felt warm.
The trip back was a long timeless spree. Skipping school. Kal had gained back her stomach and her heart and both brought her attention t
o them, each in its own way. She didn’t mind. She didn’t mind anything. Right now she didn’t think she would mind anything, ever again.
The tunnel was still partially open. Skimming through it like a great bird flying low, Kal knew it was true.
She was home.
On the tableland, Kal crawled over Tess to get out. She insisted on getting the suit herself. Her secret reason was to be on the plateau alone, to feel Demeter again without static. Leaning against the roller, she took off her socks and stuffed them in her pockets. The ground was cool, the wind frigid. She walked as if on the flank of a great animal lying down, trying not to rouse it from its dream.
Her suit lay where she had discarded it, empty and sunken without her. Sinking to her haunches, she pulled it to her, close like a lover. She garbed herself in its protection once again, grateful for its warmth, as grateful as she’d been to remove it. It was still warm inside. Slotting the helmet back in place, she snapped the visor shut.
Standing with feet planted wide, she looked about her, without wind or hair in her eyes. The shaded visor up, she saw clearly. The sky was a grayish blue at the line closest to the horizon, variegating up in gradual layers to lavender, indigo, and a purple deep as eggplant in the firmament. Mythos was less present. Light still sprang from somewhere above, only more subtly, indistinct. Maybe it was time for it to set, to shine on another wedge of this planet as they turned away, the brightness too much to bear until another day. Everywhere she looked was an expanse of gold, sprinkled with hills and one other plateau she could see, far distant, the mountains more shrouded, further than that.
Kal dropped her head to turn back to the roller. Now in the right garb for protocol.
Since their outing, as Kal gained strength and adjusted to the level of oxygen, she was accepted as the rightful friend of Roan and Tess. No one questioned it or tried to shoehorn their way in. Maybe it was tact, maybe it was reluctance to accept a newcomer. Kal didn’t care what the reason was. Until her crew came, she was safe with these two. That was enough.
Roan took her outside every morning on his regular rounds, tinkering on the great table in the eating area with a conductor while she got in her suit, after permission from Flicker. His job was still a little mysterious to Kal, though she accompanied him on a good part of it and had for a week. He checked on Demetrian plants, collected by him, cultivated in the greenhouse. He studied their seeds and structure and life cycle, running experiments on their well-being under varying conditions, taking meticulous notes with drawings in a large notebook.
Kal was surprised by this cruder method of record-keeping, but she didn’t ask him about it. She was sure he had a good reason. Maybe sometime he’d tell her. Inspired by him, and by the real paper-filled book she’d found in Sasha’s cabin, Kal asked Tess if there were one she could have. A couple of days later Tess offered her a blank, paper-filled book of her own. Kal accepted it gratefully. It looked handmade. It was unclear if Tess had made it, but again, Kal didn’t ask. Just as on a starship journey, living together with a small number of people in isolated conditions meant it was best to allow room for privacy. Room for secrets, even. As Chyron had once said to her, it was part of mental health, the right to keep some things to oneself. The right to mystery.
She would keep her own record of her time here.
After tending to his babies in a corner of the large greenhouse and the outside square meter of dirt he cultivated (very small, Kal thought, wondering why he didn’t tackle a larger patch of ground), they moved on. He wasn’t the agricultural engineer, but still. He seemed to keep his responsibilities broad and deep, but self-limited. Whether this was contractual or chosen, she couldn’t be sure. No one asked him to do otherwise, as far as she could see.
Every day, he ran tests on the well, which provided sixty percent of their water supply, the other forty recycled, as spacefarers were used to doing on a ship, keeping a reserve of water from the well to store in a pair of underground cisterns.
He tested the water, examined the workings of the pump, and ran leakage nanos through the whole system, every single day. Clearly the water was important. Kal had been on a ship so long the amount of water the biohabbers had seemed endless.
Now that she was pretty sure she was a human divining rod, Kal didn’t worry much about water. She’d always find some. It was a good thing to have in reserve.
After the well, he moved on to the windmill, which produced energy for the communications building, more like a fancy tent, which was the smaller structure Roan had spoken to her from in their holo conversations. A larger space for comm was under construction, partially underground, which made progress painstaking, even with the Mythian-charged diggers at work. Mythian energy was the backup for the comm building. Backups and main sources were in varying combinations of primary and secondary all across the compound, as a way to prevent full-system changeover glitches if one form failed.
The next part of Roan’s routine was Kal’s favorite. A wide circuit of the encampment and beyond, including the Land, and now the Ocean, too. The camp circuit itself he usually walked, as a way to keep a close, ground’s level eye on their surroundings, but since Kal was officially still in her exosuit, he took the roller for all of it now.
Riding shotgun, Kal didn’t have any job or responsibility other than to observe Roan’s work and familiarize herself with everything, which she would have done anyway, whether assigned to or not. It was like being a child again, when her favorite person on the rez other than her aunt was James Blue, who had gone with her out riding on horseback, herself on Black Mare, James Blue on her paint, Kane, to the far corners, the edges of everywhere. Avoiding the hunters and being shot gave some spice to their rides. They pretended a lot. Without ever discussing it, she knew they were both thinking of generations long before their own, who knew this land they rode. Certain shirts they wore, a piece of jewelry or a kind of shoe, was part of the journey in time. Talismans.
Rolling over great swathes of this part of Demeter was the same. Kal sometimes thought of herself and Roan as the only humans here, sprung from the ground. Sometimes she thought of the two of them as the last ones here, after a disaster they couldn’t prevent. They always still had a ship, in her imaginings. Kal didn’t ever daydream without a back door, an emergency exit. With Roan to fix the shit she couldn’t, Tess and herself to fly and navigate portals if necessary, they could get by, all the way home.
Roan was good company. He greased the wheels of most interactions with humor at camp (as she thought of it). The other biohabbers saw him as a lovable goofball, not quite as smart as all of them, but with the planet-smarts and natural understanding of how machines worked, from the simplest to the most complex, a skill that they assumed was more a natural ability one was born with than one anyone acquired with advanced degrees. Roan was supremely useful, and as a lesser, yet still appreciated skill in this environment, amusing. That was the most important and, really, sum total of what most of the other biohabbers seemed to think of him, not even excepting Tess.
After spending many hours with him, most of them in a companionable silence, Kal had a very different opinion of him, which she kept to herself. As Chyron said, sometimes that was best.
8
Pod One
Chyron Jones, ship neuropsychologist, found life on pod one was very different than on the Ocean. On the Ocean there was privacy. Room to exercise on something other than a physio. Room to hide from everyone, in the Tube. The pod was pragmatic, stripped down, and by comparison, tiny.
It was built from modules. A command module, dining module, sleeping module, hypersleep module, and, inevitably, a physio module. It contained what was necessary to survive, and a bit extra, so the pod was theoretically viable for long jaunts. Practically, it was more than one crew member’s version of hell. They were spoiled, it turned out, by the Ocean.
No one wanted to be on a pod instead of a starship, unless the alternative was no pod at all.
Chyron found th
e journey in the pod more mentally taxing than physically. She could maintain her physical well-being, even on a pod.
To maintain herself mentally and physically, so she could be there for the other travelers as their counselor and advisor, was another story. Some made it easier than others. The captain did not make it easy. She’d gone along—pretty much—on the Ocean. Here, it seemed, she felt it unnecessary to comply.
Chyron had a booth instead of an office, here. It could fit two people comfortably. Barely.
Captain Sasha Sarno sat in her little fold down seat, opposite Chyron in her fold down seat.
“How are you?” Chyron said, without much hope of the reply.
She waited. She didn’t get one.
“I know,” Chyron said, “it’s not ideal.” She pulled her knees a little to the side so they wouldn’t nudge against Sasha’s. “It’s what we have to put up with. You’re strong for us all.” When Sasha still didn’t respond, Chyron said, “Every tree has to bend, or it will break.” Lifting one of her legs over the other, so she could cross them, Chyron tried again. “You’re doing everything. Holding us all together. Let me give you the same.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need to go into my dreams or nightmares to captain the pod. You can check me off your list.”
Chyron smiled a little. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Sasha moved from her still position, stretched her hands over her head, as far as she could, and gave a great jaw-cracking yawn. “What do you want, Chyron? I know you’re doing your job. But just tell me what to say to get out of here.”
“All right.” Chyron took this request seriously. “Say, ‘I can’t do this alone.’”
Sasha folded her arms. “I won’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not accurate.”
Chyron narrowed her eyes. “You sound like Rai.”
“You heard about that, eh?”
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