by Scott Mackay
* * *
At three o’clock in the morning he went outside with Deirdre, Wolf, and Ben to stand watch over the yard. Everything was still. He looked up at the skyscrapers. At floor twenty, he couldn’t see any further; the floors above that disappeared into the darkness. His back felt sore, but sore in an odd tingly way, a sensation he had never had before. He tried to ignore the feeling, but it made him think of the marrow, made him think it might be a side effect of the marrow. He had never had a sore back in his life before. If not the marrow, then perhaps a minor injury from the grav-core flux?
“I don’t know who she meant by the Father,” he said. “Nor what she meant by the human line. I asked her about it but she closed up. Like she was scared to talk about it.”
“I find their names quaint,” said Wolf. “Buster. Lulu. Agatha. I wonder why they pick names like that?”
“Who knows what kind of cultural or political structure they have?” said Cody.
“What about this blocking?” asked Deirdre.
Cody rubbed his stomach. His stomach felt odd too. He tried to ignore it, but a part of his mind kept running over the possibilities, especially the possibility of a side effect.
“I don’t know,” he said. “What good is blocking if someone like Agatha can walk right through your mind? I’m assuming she has a special gift for it, that not many can do it.”
“I wish we knew more about these orphans,” said Ben. “Their predecessors. This pack instinct. That bothers me. And how they killed for fun. I never knew anything about that.”
But Cody was only half-listening …
He turned toward Rhenium Lane. His mind felt large and open and receptive. He knew this wasn’t right. He felt like an eye, fully dilated, taking in all the light. He remembered how his mother had once grown prize peonies on Vesta, how she would cut them, put them in a vase, and how their smell would fill the house, that pungent and sweet smell of fresh-cut peonies. Was that his scent, then, a signature hooked into one of his own memories, a mind radio frequency of sorts? Because that’s what it felt like. The marrow had turned him into a receiver.
Nothing moved on Rhenium. Yet the vacuum seemed to be filled with motion. What was it? He was sensing something. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The sense of somebody out there. His stomach felt odder still and his back started to hurt even more, and it was as if someone were gently massaging his forehead with cold fingers. What was happening? He peered down Rhenium Lane all the way to where the lights ended at Homo Habilis Avenue. His shoulders tensed. And he knew, without doubt, that the Meek were coming. His stomach felt as if it were filling with foam. Didn’t feel right. As if his insides were somehow reshaping themselves. He took a deep breath … and realized he hadn’t been breathing for the last several seconds …
“They’re coming,” he said.
Everyone turned and looked. Through their various visors he saw their faces, slack, deadened the way his mind felt deadened by that multiple mind wave of approaching Meek, emanations traveling through the vacuum in sub-vocalized thoughts, images, and feelings, like an invisible dam breaking and flooding Laws of Motion Square with the cerebral equivalent of a fast-rising surge.
The Meek appeared out of the darkness at the end of Rhenium Lane, a troop of them, some brachiating like apes, others walking upright. Leading the pack was Buster, magenta-striped hair hanging oddly limp at his shoulders, no air pressure to toss it, no wind, no atmospheric resistance of any kind except a scant few millibars of carbon dioxide. Each of the Meek carried a shoulder bag. From these bags they now pulled small wads of green putty, what looked like pats of half-risen dough, each with a slight metallic sheen, enough to catch a glimmer from the temporary lights strung along the road. The Meek threw these pats with uncanny accuracy at the lights, the putty seeming to lift by itself, some pats even managing right-angle turns in midair as they homed in on their targets. One by one the lights popped out and it got darker and darker. Some kind of target-intelligent nano-putty?
Cody took out his hammer and his laser drill, acting on instinct; not wishing to attack, simply wishing to protect himself, to keep himself from bodily harm. He backed away, turned his head this way and that way, on guard against whichever Meek came near him. He again focused on Buster, and felt Buster’s waves rising above the rest, a signal of certainty, of fearlessness, and especially of determination. Buster hopped with great strength to the top of a backhoe. He threw a pat of putty at the pressurized dorm and the pat hit the window. The window burst open and oxygen hissed out in a white jet. Insta-seal began to sputter from the frame of the pressure window, scattering all over the yard.
Cody glanced wildly around the yard as it was overwhelmed. Meek infiltrated the yard around the barrels and spools. So many of them, all with that dull blue glow to their skin, with white hair, wearing only pants, all ready to pitch wads of destructive nano-putty. Cody swung at one of them with his laser drill, didn’t want to attack but he couldn’t have them wrecking his dorm, depleting his reserves of oxygen. The man jumped back, scowled at Cody, bared his small white teeth, projecting a wave of such ferocity that Cody felt it as a nearly physical shove. He backed away. Was this what Lulu meant by ghost code? This fierceness? The man darted around him, went right up to the dorm and started cycling the airlock, hacking quickly through the access code.
Wolf went after the man, grabbed him by the shoulder, but the man pulled out a knife and stabbed Wolf repeatedly in the chest. Cody felt his mouth open in numb shock. Wolf didn’t even get a chance to use his laser drill. He fell hard, and insta-seal sputtered from the holes in his pressure suit. Cody’s hand sank to his side. He didn’t want to believe it. He heard sudden radio traffic in his helmet, the crew inside the dorm scrambling into their pressure suits, asking each other if they were all right through their com-links. He shook away his paralysis. He had to help Wolf. He didn’t want to lose anyone else. Didn’t want to explain to Wolf’s wife, the way he was going to have to explain to Joe Calaminci’s wife. He dodged around some cable spools, saw Lulu come out through the airlock. He watched her raise her hands, felt the mental equivalent of a frantic command telling the Meek to stop. But her command did no good.
Another man leaped in front him, took out a pat of nano-putty, and threw it at Cody, hitting him in the leg. Cody looked down. The putty melted right through. He looked at the hole, and thought for sure he would be safe, that the insta-seal would patch the leak. But the blue insta-seal wouldn’t harden. And he realized that this was just like his dream, that his dream had been a highly accurate premonition of what was happening here. The air continued to hiss out of his suit and the insta-seal turned to gel. How could he have dreams of precognition? Something was happening to him. But what? Was it really the marrow?
The insta-seal now turned to liquid and ran down his leg. He tried to smooth it over. Just like in his dream. But just like in his dream the insta-seal was too runny. He looked up at Lulu, feeling baffled by the whole thing. Agatha appeared behind Lulu, escaping from the dorm, and ran to join her fellow Meek. He heard Agatha’s emanations: Lulu. Now. Come. This is our chance. But Lulu just stood there looking at Cody, at the way his suit hissed air through the sputtering blue insta-seal. He felt suddenly light-headed as the pressure in his suit dropped. Like climbing ten thousand feet up a mountain in the space of a second. Everything now seemed confused. Agatha leaped over the supply yard barrier into Laws of Motion Square. Someone inside the dorm put a metal plate in front of the damaged window. Someone else closed the airlock.
The pressure inside his suit dwindled to nearly nothing. Yet he remained standing. Everything was suddenly very quiet. He could hear ringing in his ears. He stopped breathing—just stopped … automatically and instinctively … didn’t feel panicked … didn’t feel any compelling need for air … just felt light-headed. His stomach again felt as if it were filling with foam. He thought of the marrow again. He fell to his knees, woozy, giddy, felt the stinging cold, cold that seemed
to paralyze his limbs, like being immersed in ice water, only a hundred times worse. His pressure gloves began to shred. Shouldn’t have rubbed at the nano-putty. He saw the backs of his hands, unprotected, wondered how long they could stand minus 50 degree Celsius temperatures without freezing solid.
He glanced around. Could anybody help him? He saw Ben keeping two of the Meek at bay with his laser drill. Buster stood at the airlock. A pinging sound came from the dorm’s alarm, transmitted through his helmet com-link, barely audible in the steadily decreasing pressure inside his suit. His tank worked at its highest capacity to keep the pressure up—but it was like trying to inflate a balloon with a hole in it.
It was dark now, with only the lights from inside the pressurized dorm shining out into the yard. He felt dizzy. His vision blurred. Lulu was talking to Buster, looked mad at Buster. Buster glowered, and in sudden anger he threw a wad of nano-putty at Ben, lobbing it with expert aim over the heads of the two Meek men Ben tried to keep at bay. The wad hit Ben right in the chest. He clutched at the stuff, tried to get it off, but his pressure suit popped and the force of the venting air knocked him down.
Cody tried to get up to help Ben, managed to climb to his feet even as the biting cold attacked his limbs, but his insta-seal continued to sputter all over the place like an out-of-control lawn sprinkler, and he fell again, overcome by faintness. Buster gave something to Lulu, what looked like a roll of orange tape, took it from his bag and shoved it at her, then turned and walked away. He bounded out of the supply yard into Laws of Motion Square. All the other Meek retreated with him, all except Lulu. Lulu jumped. An astonishing jump. A full ten meters. She landed right next to Cody. He thought she would warm him somehow. It wasn’t the air, it was the cold. He couldn’t feel his hands. The coldness spread up his arms. He was so cold he thought he was going to die.
Lulu said: You’re not going to die.
He felt the peace. He felt the safety.
With startling speed she taped the hole in the leg of his pressure suit. The nano-putty had no effect on the tape. The tape remained strong. Lulu wrapped his shredded gloves, turning his hands into big orange mitts.
She was just about to go over to help Ben when Deirdre attacked her from behind with a hammer.
Deirdre swung with the pronged end of the hammer. Hooked Lulu right in the rib cage. Punctured her skin two inches deep with two toothlike holes.
“No!” said Cody. “Get away! She’s trying to help us!”
Deirdre backed away, realizing her mistake.
Lulu fell to the ground, clutching her side. Her blood, red like his, steamed in the cold but didn’t freeze the way it should have. It seemed to have its own internal biotherms. Someone turned on the big floodlights from inside. He peered down Rhenium Lane, thinking some of the Meek might come back for Lulu. But the street was now empty and he realized in his faintness that he had lost his sense of time. The Meek were gone. They had disappeared into the darkness as quickly and as suddenly as they had come.
Once they were all inside the dorm he felt shaky. And angry. Angry at Buster. Angry at Deirdre. Wolf Steiger, ironically the one who had advised against the oxygen pop in case it should harm the Meek, lay dead on a pallet in the infirmary. Ben was unconscious, injured, but expected to recover. Lulu was sitting up with a bandage around her ribs, nibbling weakly at marrow, every so often casting nervous glances at Deirdre. Everyone was jittery. Two men dead, the deaths seeming for the moment to paralyze them all, so that all they could do was sit. Vesta City had been notified, but had sent no formal response yet. The Conrad Wilson had been notified and was working even faster to effect their repairs. They were all waiting for Peter. Cody heard the airlock cycle, saw Peter appear through the pressure glass, watched him wait as the airlock repressurized, watched the doors of the airlock slide apart. Peter came in. He unclamped his helmet. Cody smelled the faint scent of urine; everyone was in the same situation, bags full, living in suits, always these smells around.
“So how’s it look?” asked Cody.
Peter stared at Cody steadily. “The outside meter says we’ve lost about 24 hours’ worth of oxygen,” he said. “But the meter has some of that putty on it and it could be wrong. Whatever the case, I think we should still go with that reading. Twenty-four hours, gone, just like that.”
Cody turned to Lulu. He had a lot of questions to ask her. Like why his stomach felt distended. Why he had gone for several minutes without breathing while she had wrapped him in orange tape. Why he was having dreams of precognition. Why he had been able to sense the Meek coming down Rhenium Lane even before he had seen them.
He projected these questions but she didn’t answer.
He sensed she was tom, that there were greater issues now, issues that went far beyond their little drama of whether they had enough oxygen to keep them alive until the Conrad Wilson got here.
“I guess it’s back to the Actinium OPU then,” he said. “We’re halfway there. We’ve got to get that baby up and running or we’re not going to have any air to breathe.”
CHAPTER 9
He swept.
Sweeping was the center of his universe.
Sweeping a hundred years of astral debris from the photovoltaic cells out on the surface. Sweeping dust from solar panels so they could once again collect sunlight.
Every fifteen minutes or so Cody stopped to look around. He saw four other lonely figures sweeping debris off other solar panels, sixteen panels swept clear so far, their lives dependent on this repetitive janitorial activity. He lifted his eyes to the sun, wondered if this would be the last time he would see it. They had another fifteen hours to get the old OPU up and running according to Peter’s latest oxygen-supply estimates. Cody wasn’t sure they were going to make it. Even if they did make it, how long could they keep it running?
So he looked at the sun. Just in case this might indeed be the last time he would see it.
And then he looked at the Ceresian landscape in all its harsh beauty. He listened to his own breathing. Felt the sweat of his hard work on his brow. Ran his tongue over the back of his teeth. Took a moment to contemplate the fact of his living body, to take in his surroundings, to appreciate his own feelings and his own five senses. And then started sweeping again.
He imagined what he looked like out here on the vast concave surface of the solar panel all by himself. He could picture himself clearly—a small figure in a white pressure suit with the green Public Works emblem on either shoulder. A man who had loved. A man who had worked. A man who was good at building things and who loved wood. A man who had skied. A man who had admired the sparkling igneous surface of Vesta. A man who had married Christine and then had lost Christine …
A small figure, all alone on a big solar panel, with the sun 257 million miles that way and Jupiter shining like a diamond-bright star 200 million miles the other way. He felt small in all this vastness. He felt insignificant, like a grain of sand, like his death wouldn’t matter at all. He reached the edge of the solar panel. He swept. And the astral debris fell from the panel the way snow fell from the roof of his chalet in the Chillicothe Alpine Habitat back on Vesta. Swept until his muscles hurt. A marathon of sweeping, his broom silent in the vacuum, the only sound his own breath coming and going. He remembered sweeping maple keys from the back deck of his parents’ cottage in the Wordsworth Lake Country Habitat on Vesta when he’d been a boy, sweeping more as a recreation, sweeping lazily, listening to the water lap against the shore, occasionally stopping to watch some ducks fly by or to observe some programmed rain drift in. He turned around to check his progress. One by one he had uncovered the individual cells, until he felt as if he stood on top of a giant fly’s eye. He gazed at the horizon, saw now that they were up to twenty panels; they had only four more to go before they could go to the control center in the Actinium plant and see if all their hard work had paid off.
He went at his sweeping with renewed effort. He again thought of snow. Christine was gone now, but he remember
ed the snow. The snow was regulated. Always pretty. Never a blizzard. Blizzards were something he had only read about. Snow was worth living for, he thought, even if Christine was gone. Snow reminded him of Lulu’s cool menthol wind. He wanted to see snow again. To lift it in his hands. To watch it melt. To see it retreat into the shadows of the trees and glades when the Weather Board brought spring on. He swept and swept, and finally he swept the whole panel clear. His body ached. Three panels now left to go. And he thought that they might make it after all.
In the control center of the Actinium Oxygen Production Utility Cody watched Claire Dubeau bypass the interface to the Municipal Computer, subverting command access to her own portable GK laptop. She ran a diagnostic. A small window appeared on her screen.
“This is the actual number of solar panels sending voltage to the microwave converter,” she said.