Call of Worlds

by K. D. Lovgren

Now she was outside the Ocean, Kal’s feelings about Sif had shifted. Before, she pitied or worried about her, alone in the quarantine bay. Away from her, free on Demeter, Kal burned when she thought of Sif, glad if she suffered. Sif deserved a long and lonely containment to contemplate her actions (though Kal doubted she thought they were wrong) and where they had brought her. Sif knew Kal had bested her—Kal and Rai, together. Kal hoped Sif dwelled on that fact, acknowledging the superior cooperation of Kal and Rai over Sif and the Carys. Kal and Rai were a better team, without anyone possessing anyone else, and Sif knew it.

  Sif could chew on that for a while longer.

  Roan didn’t bring up Sif either.

  He assumed Kal would do the visual inspection of the Ocean, which was proper. She had no notebook at first, but she recorded it all anyway, in her memory, until she had her own Demetrian paper book. Paper was all the rage on Demeter. She touched the Ocean, the parts she could reach, and climbed up into her wheel wells, stroking her panels, feeling her materials with deep pleasure.

  I am the Ocean, she thought. She is mine.

  Sometimes Roan guided the roller away from the usual pattern, setting off in a seemingly random direction, showing Kal more of the continent, the tiny dot of it they knew, expanding his knowledge and hers. His sense of direction was unerring, another characteristic Kal clocked. They rolled for hours. Sometimes he searched out other plateaus so they could get to a higher elevation and look at the view. He never took her back to the first tableland he and Tess had brought her to.

  What struck Kal about this part of Demeter was its vastness, its uninterrupted kilometers of grasses, undulating in places, level as the horizon line of an ocean in others.

  It wasn’t the Great Plains, though Kal wanted to think of it by that familiar name. This place needed another name. The Vastness? The Golden Sea?

  Roan didn’t mind the unknown. He didn’t push against his ignorance or strain at uncertainty. For so long, so many years, Kal had been in the position of needing to know more, struggling against what she didn’t know and accumulating more and more knowledge and experience as proof against a mistake.

  Traveling along with Roan, growing used to the movements of the roller and swaying with it as second nature, Kal let layer by layer of herself go. Most of all, her burning passion to know. The more of it she left behind, the lighter she felt. The more connected to Demeter. Here, she could only be a witness. She let go of her old self, question by question. Leaving the questions unanswered was her penance and her teacher.

  It didn’t mean the questions didn’t come up in her mind every day.

  What Kal really wanted to know was where the ocean was, and what it looked like. Where were the creatures? Where was visible life, other than plant-based? Where were the insects? How did pollination happen?

  She didn’t think overmuch about her own crew, heading toward them in the pods, closer every day. After longing for them, especially some of them, so intensely during her isolation, it was sheer relief to stop for a while, forget about them a little and let them appear when they would.

  One day she found out why Roan and Tess and some of the others wore padded clothes.

  She and Roan had driven far out in the roller, southwards in a direction Kal had never been. Not sure if it was psychological or measurably true, Kal felt warmer the further south they went. Inside her suit she shouldn’t feel much affected by it, but Mythos shining in through her visor warmed her head despite the temperature control.

  Every day she wanted to take her suit off again when they were far enough from the camp. She denied herself this. Roan wouldn’t stop her; she was pretty sure. But to do it now, without a special reason other than her own desire to feel the environment, not in the middle of what had been a symbolic ritual, felt wrong.

  She would have to wait until her two weeks were up. That would end just before the pods were supposed to arrive.

  Today they went farther than ever. Kal had hopes of the sea. The human-height grasses had gradually shortened as they traveled further south. Changing climates? More salt in the air and soil, heralding ocean?

  The roller glided to a stop. No ocean in sight. Roan got out. The grass here was as close-cropped as the plateaus.

  He glanced at Kal, still in the roller since she was unsure if he was getting back in, saw he had her eye, and did a cartwheel. Kal clapped her hands. The wheel of his body kept going, over and over and over, until he became a blur. Jumping to a stop, he looked again to see if she was watching and did a standing back handspring that brought him higher than would have been possible on Earth.

  He was showing her what could be done in low grav.

  Scrambling like a kid, Kal was out of the roller, standing in front of it with her ears pricked, waiting for her turn.

  Stepping forward, he held out his hand.

  She forgot about the exosuit, forgot about camp, the rules of gravity—she took his hand, his flesh and blood hand holding her gloved one, and he threw her outward, still holding on, leaning backward as he spun her around him like a figure skater, grabbing the foot on the same side of her body as the hand he held as it flew by. As he leaned against the centrifugal force, pulling against her weight to keep her up, she spun around him, kept up as easily as a paper airplane on a string fluttering around a small child.

  The world spun and Kal knew what it felt like to fly, immortal being or a hybrid one, free of Earth and even Demeter, only lightly connected by his grasp on her hand and ankle.

  When he landed her, lightly on her feet, she looked at him with shining eyes, dizzy and out of breath.

  Her hand was still in his.

  Kal spoke. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

  She didn’t think he would say anything. The habit of silence between them was so ingrained in such a short time, it was as if he lost his voice when they left camp and only regained it when they returned.

  “Me too,” he said. They looked at each other for a long time.

  He brushed his hand against her visor. Her head was inside a bubble he couldn’t burst.

  She saw the lines of his palm. Taking hold of his wrist, she moved his hand until his open palm was over the very front of the visor, his hand outstretched the size of her head. Studying his palm instead of his face, she looked at the calluses and scars. He left it there until she let go.

  The silence dropped over them again.

  Rolling away back to camp, Kal was frozen in her seat, shocked into immobility, unwilling to move in case it broke the spell.

  10

  Chance Talon

  Habits ran deep in the biohab. Routines were locked in, relationships established, and Kal should have been odd woman out by all usual measures. The fact that Roan and Tess had adopted her as their friend meant she ate with them, relaxed with them, and when she was allowed out of the bio bubble, as she called it disparagingly to Flicker, slept near them, too.

  Rev Cooley she found hard to make out. The unsettling vibe Kal got from her while she was still on the ship didn’t carry over on Demeter, as far as Kal could tell. Whatever grudge, assumption, or resentment Cooley had on holo wasn’t apparent at all in person. Kal watched Cooley a lot, without being obvious about it, to try to understand her.

  Rules were different here. They couldn’t help but be. Demeter was Cooley’s fiefdom. The fact she was building the infrastructure for others, essentially a contractor for the travelers on the Ocean, didn’t take away the fact that she was on Demeter first. She’d taken the enormous risk of the first attempt through Wóhpe. A big ego was understandable. The bigger the daredevil, the bigger a chip on the shoulder, Kal found, but Cooley didn’t scan like that. She appeared and disappeared like a magician, suddenly behind a group sitting at a table, emerging from a room you didn’t think she’d be in, outside when you thought you were alone. It reminded Kal a little of Gunn, who liked to make a game of sneaking up on Kal, an admittedly difficult thing to do. Cooley didn’t do it for the thrill or to make an imp
ression, like Gunn. Cooley was simply good at being still and being quiet.

  Kal didn’t think she was snooping, either. She asked things she wanted to know outright. She didn’t play favorites and didn’t care much what other people thought, reminiscent of Sasha, but with a fundamental difference. Cooley didn’t appear to care—at all—about anyone.

  Tess shrugged when Kal asked her who Cooley’s closest friend was. Roan claimed it was himself. Cooley did linger when Roan was telling a story, which was the closest symptom of interest or affection Kal saw in her.

  As long as she didn’t have an antipathy for Kal, Kal could get along with her. She didn’t make any more captain digs about Kal and gave her the respect of rank. She didn’t even refer to her as Acting Captain, which would have been factually correct. She asked Kal’s advice on how to best provide for the pod travelers when they arrived, and with Flicker organized more rooms into temporary quarters for the new people while they were in quarantine.

  Thoughtful. Efficient. Kal couldn’t complain. She couldn’t expect invitations to chew the fat around the campfire, even if that was what she would hope.

  Cooley asked Kal a lot of questions about piloting through the portal. Kal would need to document this information in any case and knew once she was back to full speed it would be time to start recording it. She found she didn’t like talking about it. She knew why, sort of. There was something about the portal which she suspected, though could not prove, that was somehow…personal.

  There wasn’t a key to it, or a trick. Kal’s sense, in a deep knowing she could not defend or explain, was that she had found the portal (it had found her?) and gotten them through it because she was herself. Whether this was a delusion of grandeur or wisdom, who could tell? She would need to go through more portals to understand.

  Anyone who wanted to jump through this portal had never done it. The closest portal to Earth, the first discovered and best-traveled, had not turned Kal’s body and mind inside out like Wóhpe. Wóhpe was something else.

  Kal tried to tell Cooley what she wanted to know. It seemed Tess had not given Cooley all the data she wanted or the way she’d communicated it left Cooley unsatisfied. Once Kal tried to tell Cooley there was something deeply inexplicable about the experience of the person piloting the ship through a portal. Cooley wasn’t satisfied with that either, and Kal didn’t bring it up again.

  Sometime she’d discuss it with Tess. Not now. Not yet.

  Part of her felt it wasn’t Cooley’s business how the portal worked. How it had worked for her. She would have to explain herself. And every day she felt more sure she didn’t know who that was anymore. Instead of the trip and assimilation to Demeter being an experience of self-revelation and knowledge, it was determined to take away every part of her personality and identity she had always considered essential to who she was. So far, it had only succeeded in breaking her down, making her more suspicious, less trusting, and less sure of all she’d been taught. How was that for a report? “I no longer know myself.”

  Maybe because Kal didn’t rush them or try to know them all at once, the biohabbers came to her, over time, broaching little conversations or helping her when she got stuck somewhere in the biohab because of her suit.

  Crenshaw liked to read aloud. It was nice to listen in the evenings. A casual sitting area near the tables made for an around-the-campfire feeling. There was a geothermal heater, resembling nothing so much as a white papier-maché sculpture of a termite mound, which gave off subtle but constant heat. The cooler temperatures of Demeter and the main biohab structure made the heater a focal point of gatherings. Someone had dragged all the floppers—large, cushiony resting pads that could be molded into positions, from chair-like to bean bag to flat—to make the space around the heater more comfortable.

  After dinner, Crenshaw would disappear to his room and come back with a book. The old-fashioned kind. It creaked when he opened it. He would clear his throat, take a sip of water, and begin.

  Kal never missed a reading. Although he didn’t read every single night, she always hung around the on a flopper long enough to be there if he did.

  Lately he’d been reading Chance Talon, Space Detective. Kal was all ears. Kal and Tess sometimes shared a flopper, even though sharing a flopper with someone in an exosuit didn’t make it too comfortable for Tess.

  Chance crept closer to the engine room, almost to the edge of the coolant tank, to see who lurked below. She heard voices where voices shouldn’t be at that time of night. Was this the clue that would finally reveal who had pushed Smithson from the cargo awning onto the tank, five meters below? Chance lay down, silent as a nightflyer, to hear what was being said, sliding herself closer and closer to the edge of the tank. She didn’t make a sound, hardly daring to breathe.

  “We need to get her out of the way,” she heard in a voice pitched too quiet to recognize.

  “It’s dangerous,” replied the other voice, deeper, but still disguised in its whisper.

  “Do you want her to find out what’s really going on? We can’t take the risk.”

  “If we mess it up, it will only make it worse for us. It might be better to let things lie, until we know whether she suspects.”

  “Of course she suspects! She was in the next room.”

  “I’m not so sure. It might have been Dr. Patil, not her.”

  “What do you want to do?” the higher voice said, louder in its sarcasm. “Ask Patil and make sure? You’re not thinking straight.”

  Roan came in, late, making a loud noise when he sealed the door. The listeners shot him an annoyed look. Kal patted a flopper near her, to make up for the fact she’d been one of the ones who looked annoyed.

  He grabbed a quiet snack and settled down on the flopper slowly, so it wouldn’t make its characteristic whooshing sound and piss off everyone more.

  Crenshaw continued.

  She had been listening so intently, Chance hadn’t noticed the gradual heating up of the surface of the coolant tank as she lay on it. Becoming aware of the unusual warmth on her stomach and chest, she lifted herself suddenly, afraid she was being burned. The tank creaked. The voices stopped.

  Chance froze as her shins got hotter and hotter against the metal of the tank. She pulled her bare feet beneath her, one at a time into a crouch, trying not to make a single sound or cry out from the pain, as the surface of the tank heated to a point that would soon become intolerable. Taking her shoes off had made her approach silent. Now she was paying for it.

  She couldn’t go back, which would require walking across the wide surface of the tank. Her only choice was to jump below. They would see her, of course.

  On the other hand, she would see them.

  And she would know, finally, who conspired against the crew of the Boundless. It was either that or lose the skin off her feet. Would they kill her as they’d ruthlessly killed Smithson? Not if she could help it.

  If she didn’t leap soon, she wouldn’t be able to walk at all.

  Chance looked and leaped.

  One morning Kal woke up and was informed of two important facts by Flicker. One, she could now remove her exosuit and join the biohabbers in the sweet freedom of unencumbered movement. Two, pod one was scheduled to arrive in two days.

  When Kal walked out of her chamber shortly after Flicker’s visit, she found the entire crew gathered to welcome her. They clapped when she appeared. She felt impossibly light and happy. Part of it was the low grav and her adjustment to the weird floating feeling of her internal organs, but part of it was the sheer bliss of acceptance. She belonged.

  “Thank you,” Kal said, her hand over her heart. “Thank you so much.”

  Cooley stepped forward, something in her hand. “You’re the first,” she said. “In recognition of your achievement aboard the Ocean, safely transporting a class N starship, on your own, through the final leg of the mission to Demeter, our crew has unanimously approved the presentation of the Mythian bar, for excellence. We created it, with the
design help of Crenshaw, and we bestow it upon you. Congratulations.”

  Kal stood at attention. She wore her uniform, in honor of her first day and by Flicker’s suggestion, which turned out not to be coincidental. Captain Cooley affixed a bar-shaped patch to Kal’s upper chest. Magnetic threads allowed suits and patches to adhere smoothly. Kal looked down when Cooley stepped back. It was a bright gold bar with a sunburst at the end of it. A mythosburst, Kal thought, and smiled.

  The biohabbers waited expectantly. It seemed she was meant to say something.

  “Thank you, Captain Cooley. Thank you, Crenshaw, for a beautiful design incorporating Mythos.” She took a breath, wondering what to say. “It’s been quite a trip.”

  The crew shifted and laughed. Kal got it. Understatement of the year.

  “It’s been quite a trip,” she repeated. “You all helped me get here or helped me adjust once I was. I’m surprised and happy to say I feel more at home than I thought I ever could already. That’s thanks to this place. And to all of you. I’ll cherish this honor.” She bowed her head briefly, and they applauded her. Kal’s eyes pricked and she stepped forward, ready for the attention to be off herself. She may have been alone, almost, but hadn’t they all earned a patch for courage? She wasn’t special. It’s what any of them would have done.

  Crenshaw offered his hand and she shook it, relishing the touch of skin. Handshakes all around. A bear hug from Roan. A pinch from Tess. Kal floated into breakfast. She hadn’t been this happy since she got her pilot’s wings. And maybe out in the Vastness, with Roan.

  In the spirit of bonding, everyone sat at the big, oval table today, instead of scurrying off to their favorite corners. The bread made from the grasses wasn’t much like bread made from wheat, or barley, or rye, and its taste and consistency took a little commitment to adjust to. No cows or goats or other such animals meant no butter or cheese, but Murphy was trying to grow a cheese-like substance in the lab, which they all put on their bread today. Plates passed around and it became silent as the chewing started. Chewing took a while.