by Scott Mackay
He left Deirdre’s side and walked toward the hills, where the mist rolled down over tiny flowers, lichen, moss, and sparse stalks of sporelike grass. Sunless plants. Lightless plants. He crouched at the foot of the hill, put his hand against them. Dug right down and touched alien soil. He looked up and down the row of hills. The visibility was maybe fifteen meters through the mist. The sound of the waves grew distant. He stood up. Sensed Lulu coming from the right. Her menthol scent had been unleashed in his mind like a snow-laden breeze.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Deirdre approaching him tentatively. A half smile came to her face. She knew what was going on. She stopped and waited. Giving Cody some distance. He could sense Deirdre accepting it. Lulu was on the way.
But it wasn’t only Lulu. Over Lulu’s enticing menthol wind he now sensed the heavier creosote aroma of Buster.
Lulu said: You’re here?
He said: At the foot of the hill.
From Buster, unarticulated jealousy.
They appeared out of the gloom together, the two of them walking easily in their antigrav suits, fully adjusted to the satellite-assisted lift. This was not a time for verbalized thought. Cody and Lulu communicated to each other through pure feeling. He walked quickly toward her. Lulu tried to do the same, but Buster grabbed her, a detonation of rage, quickly suppressed, exploding in his mind. Cody stopped. Lulu shook Buster away, and Buster grudgingly let her go. She ran to Cody.
They embraced. They kissed. They were back together at last. Cody felt only a distant sorrow for the jilted lovers standing on either side of them. His love for Deirdre was like a candle. But his love for Lulu was like the sun. And he felt as if his life had started once again.
Later, as night fell over Our Home, Cody stood with Lulu and Agatha on the shore of the Sea of Humility staring out at the water, hoping he would see the lights of one more lander easing into the harbor. Ben’s lander. No radio contact. No radar contact. He went through the facts one more time. Analysis of satellite reconnaissance showed Ben’s lander veering off course after entry. Analysis of the lander’s own navigational readouts showed the same sudden change of course, 180 degrees toward the south. Then a sudden breakup of the sonar-generated image and a final quick descent before all readouts disappeared.
And still he hoped. He couldn’t help remembering Ben’s dream, of being out in a boat with the Meek in the pouring rain. He stared out at the waves and couldn’t help wondering if Ben’s dream had been a marrow-induced dream of premonition. Stared out at the sea until he sensed surprise, even fear from the Meek standing nearby. Look up, he heard. So he looked up.
He saw a cluster of blinking lights riding high in the updrafts coming in off the sea, all grouped together in an area of less than a square meter, each individual light looking no bigger than a Christmas tree light, each one white. The lights were no more than a hundred meters up, circling round and round. Silently. Cody counted them. Nine in all. Always keeping in a group, like a swarm, circling in a wide radius, each blinking randomly with the bioluminescent glow of fireflies.
“Can you make out any detail?” he asked Lulu, knowing that the Meek, even of the human line, could see well in the dark.
She peered more closely and finally shook her head. She said: No. All I see are the nine blinking lights.
Another grouping of lights came up from behind the far hill and began to fly around the first set, each set spinning around the other. Over the sound of the waves slapping against the embankment Cody heard a faint cry. Then another cluster of lights sprang up from behind the hills and joined the others. Two clusters swooped down out of the low-flying clouds. In the peripheral glow of the blinking lights Cody now thought he saw a much larger shadow, caught a glimpse of a membranous wing, heard a cry again, an animal cry. He watched the lights grow more erratic, spin and careen. Five more clusters sprang up out of the hills and latched on to whatever it was the lights were attacking; because that’s what he sensed now, an attack, the lights packing together. He could feel it reminding the Meek of their ghost code, the lights attacking that thing, whatever it was, with the membranous wing. The blinking of the various lights became more frenetic.
Then the whole huge cluster of blinking bioluminescent lights went into a steep dive and disappeared behind the hill.
Cody stared at the dark hills for a long time. Wondering.
Then he turned around and stared out at the Sea of Humility.
Wondering.
Wondering why Ben’s lander had gone into a sudden steep dive.
Wondering if Agatha’s child would ever see its father.
Wondering how Ben’s dream had ended.
The remaining members of Cody’s crew, having come in from the Sea of Humility on different landers, reconnected with Cody and Deirdre the next day. Cody gave Jerry and Claire a hug, even gave Kevin Axworthy a hug. Kevin seemed to have regained his old vigor and was now looking around the staging area with intense interest. Kevin gave Claire a hug, and Cody realized there was something going on between his computer systems specialist and the VDF commander.
“I’d sure like to know how they’re going to pull this migration off,” said Axworthy. “It’s already about 35 degrees Celsius. I really don’t understand the orbital mechanics of this weird world or how we can turn it to our advantage by traveling with winter. I missed too many of those damn briefings. Would someone mind telling me what’s going on?”
Cody turned to Claire. “I think Claire understands it better than any of us,” he said. “She’s been looking at it ever since she first realized the Meek were aiming their gravitational device at Highfield-Little. Claire, would you mind explaining it to Kevin?”
“Sure, I don’t mind.” It was the first time Cody had ever seen a flirtatious look on Claire’s face. “Carswell spins at a 33 degree angle on its axis,” she told Axworthy. She knelt down and drew in the dirt—the sun, Mercury, and Venus, then Carswell’s present position high above the solar system’s orbital plane equidistant between the first two inner planets. “Right now the sun is shining directly on Carswell’s south pole. I’ve been following all the developments on the remote laptop the Meek gave me. The Meek’s weather satellites are presently recording temperatures in excess of 60 degrees Celsius down at the south pole. Temperatures like that can kill a human being under direct and constant exposure in less than an hour. As Carswell pulls even with the orbital plane—and that will take another standard solar week—this intense summer will move north, not as bad as it could be because of the sharp tilt of Carswell’s axis. At this point we should be close to Carswell’s arctic circle, up on the northern peninsula of Our Home. That’ll be week one.”
She now drew a secondary position for Carswell.
“Week two’s going to be a lot harder. Though the tilt of the axis makes the equatorial summer and sunshine diffuse, we’ll have to turn around and travel as quickly as we can through this diffuse equatorial summer. Call it equatorial spring if you like. As Carswell dips under the south pole of the sun, this summer will move quickly north. The sun will be at our backs, lower and lower on the northern horizon each day as we make our way into the equatorial fall and toward the south pole’s winter. Don’t get me wrong. Every day’s going to be a scorcher. With the greenhouse atmosphere, temperatures are expected to soar to 50 degrees Celsius, and those temperatures are definitely expected in our travel area. Which means we’ll be traveling only at night during that particular segment of the migration, staying inside our carryalls during the day, under cover if we can find it anywhere.”
Claire now drew a third position for Carswell directly beneath the sun’s south pole.
“Week three will be easier,” she said. “We’ll be camped on the southern tip of Our Home, tilted directly away from the sun. There won’t be any day, only night. We won’t see the sun for a week. It’ll give the Meek a good taste of what’s to come once Carswell leaves the solar system for good. When Carswell leaves the solar system it will of course be n
ight all the time.” She peered at Axworthy, who nodded, letting her know he was following her. “We’ll spend some time on the southern tip. After a week of nights, we’ll have two days of northern dawns. The sun will again show itself above the horizon. We’ll be on the move again, quickly traversing another equatorial spring. Again, during this portion, we’ll travel only at night. We’ll migrate all the way from the southern tip of Our Home right to the islands north of the arctic peninsula, a distance of 6,000 kilometers. It should take us two weeks. In week seven Carswell will finally be on its way away from the sun, and things should start to cool down. Also in week seven, Ceres will commence its final firing sequence and head off toward the center of the galaxy. By that time, the Meek will be scouting Our Home for the most advantageous settlement sites. Marrow cultivation will begin.” She grinned again, looked directly at Axworthy. “Life will begin.”
Life will begin, thought Cody. Yet he couldn’t help feeling at least some sorrow for this final abandonment of Ceres, a place with a 350-year history. A place where generation after generation of children had come to grow up straight and strong. He thought of Newton, the most wondrous city in the Belt, then thought of the City of Resolved Differences, an equally wondrous city. Ceres was a civilization unto itself. And now it was deserted, a place of corpses and sad memories and destruction. Now it was a place that was going to be pitched like a worthless piece of junk into the inferno at the center of the galaxy. And he knew he would grieve for it.
Buster had Boris, a Meek who was extremely adept at long-range empathic contact, try to detect the mental emanations of any possible survivors from lander 2,692, Ben’s lander. Cody watched as Boris closed his eyes and leaned forward toward the sea. The wind tossed Boris’s albino-white hair. He seemed to be sniffing the air for contact. He stayed in that position for nearly an hour. But finally he opened his eyes and turned to Buster.
Boris said: They’re not out there. I can’t sense them.
Cody felt a sudden woeful emanation from Agatha at the loss of her mate. Lulu put her hand on Agatha’s shoulder, trying to comfort her, to calm her.
Agatha said: Please, Buster, we’ve got to stay. She looked frantically at Lulu, then back at Buster. We’ve got to stay until we find him.
Buster shook his head. He said: I’m sorry, but to wait even another day will put us at risk. The sun is getting hotter. We have to leave today if we’re going to survive.
Unexpectedly, Agatha came to Cody for comfort in her grief an hour later. He put his arm around her and sensed she came to him because he was human, fully human, like Ben, and also because he was Ben’s friend. She came because he too felt a great grief over the loss of Ben, a man who had been a good friend for the last five years, someone he could always talk to, whom he could lean on when his sadness at the passing of Christine became too much. Death had stalked Ben from the beginning. First his stroke. Then the chloropathoxin. He had survived both of those. But he hadn’t survived his dream of precognition.
Agatha said: All I ever wanted to do was go back. He searched through the many unarticulated layers of meaning in this statement. All I ever wanted was to return to my home, the way it was before the orphans took me away and turned me into one of them. He received from her a brief tormented image of a much younger Agatha back when she still thought of herself as Elizabeth, an Agatha naked and in shackles, violated and abused. I feel safe with Ben. I feel safe with you. Now I’m going to be a mother, and I need that safety more than ever. She looked out at the thousands of clan members as they climbed into their carryalls for the journey north. She said: These are my people now. I should love them. But I can’t trust them. Maybe I have a bit of my own ghost code. Besides Lulu, you and Ben are the only people I’ve trusted since the orphans first took me away. Her eyes filled with tears. Ben’s the only one I’ve loved, the only one I ever wanted for a husband. And now I’ve lost him.
CHAPTER 23
Agatha insisted she ride with Cody and Lulu. Cody shifted some equipment and made room for her on the seat next to his. Lulu took her place on the other side of Agatha, giving Buster a peevish look. The mist was growing heavier, and the humidity was as thick as butter. Cody suspected Buster rode in the same carryall with them just to keep an eye on them. Cody tried to sense what was going on in Buster’s mind but the leader was blocking. Deirdre, Jerry, and Claire climbed in as well and secured their harnesses. Down the shore Cody saw Kevin Axworthy helping his father into a separate carryall. Buster engaged the particle pulse propulsion system and their air vehicle rose toward the overcast sky, away from the Sea of Humility, climbing the side of the hill.
A light rain beat against the clear acrylic weather bonnet. A navigation screen showed direction, topography, wind speed, location of other carryalls, and the projected migration route north.
Higher and higher they rose, until they reached the top of the hill. To the north stretched yet more hills, an endless succession of them, all covered with lichen, moss, and flowering plants. These hills rose to between 100 and 300 meters high. He tried to concentrate on the various land features as a way to keep his mind off the grief he felt coming from Agatha. In the gullies between the hills he saw small stands of asparagus-like trees, just like the ones in his first mind-to-mind communication with Buster, no branches, just a trunk shooting straight up to a heavily seeded top. He also saw the occasional brook and stream. He was particularly interested in the trees, though, thought he might be able to use them as a building material.
For the next long while the terrain stayed the same. Hills, hills, and yet more hills. Cody was awed by how big the place was. Outer space didn’t seem as big as this. The perspectives stretched forever, thousands of times bigger than the perspectives of Vesta or Ceres, even bigger than the perspectives he had seen on Mars when he had visited there with Christine eight years ago. The sky, despite the constant cloud cover, seemed limitless.
By midday the temperature had reached 39 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere was so thick and muggy that they were all drenched in sweat. Some of the ground-clinging mist burned away, the clouds climbed to a higher ceiling, and Cody could see further.
To the west the hills climbed rank upon rank, higher and higher until they finally reached a mountain range. Many of these mountains had concave dips at their peaks—calderas—and were in fact volcanoes. Five of them billowed steam and ash, more evidence that Carswell had its own internal furnace for the long cold night ahead. All were bereft of any vegetation.
Large birds, black specks, circled in the updrafts along the leeward slopes of these volcanoes and mountains. Cody wasn’t certain if he could call them birds, but they were definitely flight animals of some sort, twenty or thirty of them, circling upward, then dipping, again and again, in an endless cycle.
They continued north for the next two days. On the third day the chain of mountains branched east, and they were finally forced to find a pass.
The pass they found was barren, a hardened lava flow, gray, basaltic, with only a few tufts of grass growing here and there. Cody saw a large four-legged creature scamper over the rock, five smaller ones following it, all of them gray, hard to distinguish from the rock.
The clan camped near an active volcano that night. Cody stared at the bare slope … and realized he had seen this volcano before. The glow of the lava from within the caldera a kilometer away stretched fingers of murky light into the night. This was what he had plucked whole from Lulu’s mind, from Buster’s mind. An image of precognition. With people walking up near the caldera, geologists having a close-up look, taking readings, measurements, trying to determine what kind of furnace Carswell had and whether it would keep them warm enough during the harrowing journey into the deep cold beyond colonized space.
They got through this east-branching range of mountains the next day by following the pass around a large volcanic lake. The water absolutely still, reflected the dull, overcast sky, and a lone island rose in the middle. After that the terrain settled again, g
rew hilly, the hills 100 to 500 meters high, with brooks and streams in between and more of the asparagus-like trees.
At midday, when the heat was at its worst, they stopped at one of these stands of trees for a rest. Cody and Lulu walked to the nearest tree, leaving Agatha in the care of Claire and Jerry. They walked silently together, reacting to each other’s reactions, overwhelmed by the huge land, glad to get away, to be alone with each other. The tree was smooth, olive-green, with a delicate tracery of purple veins in it. It smelled musky, like a damp basement. He looked at Lulu.
He said: Is she getting better?
He meant Agatha. He wanted to get Lulu’s take on the situation.
Lulu said: She’s all gray inside. She’s beyond the point of numbness. She doesn’t think about her child. She doesn’t think about the future or the past. She thinks only of Ben and how the Sea of Humility has taken him away from her.
He nodded. That’s what I thought.
He wished there was something he could do for Agatha, but he knew there wasn’t. Knew from firsthand experience.
Lulu said: Is the wood any good?
He pushed at one of the trees, and it fell right over. Does that answer your question?
On the fourth day the clan discovered three more constructs, green glass tubular structures thrusting upward out of the surrounding land. Cody and Buster looked at each other. Cody couldn’t help feeling a bit of Buster’s ghost code, a deep and abiding mistrust of anything he didn’t understand. The three constructs were about five kilometers apart, all in a row, each half the size of the one in the Sea of Humility.
The clan stopped briefly to inspect one of them. Cody ventured with Deirdre into its canyonlike thoroughfares. They didn’t see much, found a lot of dirt and windblown sediment clogging the passageways between towers.