“I am happy to report that the operation was one hundred percent successful. We are completing our site assessment and will be wrapping up operations over the next few days. We also expect that the blockade, which was necessarily put in place around the system, will likely be lifted sometime in the next two or three days, as soon as we have completed our verification.”
“One unfortunate result of this will be that we will have to re-designate the area around this operation as a military reservation, to protect you from hazards and assure everyone’s safety. We’ll be publishing the new boundaries of the reservation into all navigation systems in the next few hours.”
“I know that the events of the past few days have created a lot of anxiety, and I assure you that I am working, all day and every day, to make sure that everything is back to normal just as soon as possible. Meanwhile, please go about your business. Remember that your job needs you and the families need you. Thank you and have a great day.”
The producer looked pleased with the result. “Thank you so much for coming, Governor, and we’ll get you right back to your tournament. The players have all halted as a courtesy to you, so it will be your turn to play just as soon as you get there.”
The seventh hole. Par four, eight hundred ten yards. Rezar had launched a fantastic drive and would be hitting his second from only two hundred yards out. If he could stick the green, he had a great chance at birdie. It was the one golf course on Kelter that had actual living grass on the greens, and that was softer than the usual turf. It was his favorite course.
“Please send my regrets to the other players,” Rezar told the producer. “I must attend to a pressing matter.”
“Marcom advises that the appearance of normalcy is critical on today of all days,” the producer protested. “And I heard you’re in a great position on the seventh.”
“Then everyone else will just have to appear normal in my stead,” the governor said, and headed out of the studio.
His guard detail fell in with him. Colonel Ellis had been with him for five years. She approached her duty to protect the governor with a seriousness that sometimes embarrassed him. The others in the detail were all highly trusted but less personally vested. They simply did their jobs, in rotating shifts.
Rezar knew, without even having to check, that Ellis had planned the egress route, and made sure that others had swept it within the past few minutes. That the vehicle was secure. That nothing would happen.
“Deborah,” he said. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Name it, Governor,” Ellis replied.
“I need to know what’s happening out there. In the Valley of Dreams. We can’t rely on the information from Affirmatix.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I want you to go to the site. Find any evidence you can. Check for survivors in the vicinity. Anything you find, bring it back directly to me. Nobody else. Will you do that for me? As a personal favor.”
“I’ll send a detail, sir.” Ellis started to pull up her phone.
“No. You. Lead the force in person.”
“But my first duty−” she protested.
“Is to protect me, I know.” They had gone down this road before. “And at this moment, investigating the Valley of Dreams is the best way to do that. Please.”
Ellis considered for a moment. “I’m on it,” she said.
Unfinished Business
For more than a kilometer Evan and Kate followed Mira along the course of the stream through the cave, doing their best to stay out of the water. It was a raging torrent in most places, and stunningly cold, as they found out when they refilled their water containers. Cold, but fresh, instead of the saline of all other natural water known on Kelter.
Above the stream, a braided series of upper level passages wound along. Once, the stream had flowed up there, until it had cut farther and farther down to its present course. In some places, the upper passages were separate and had their own floors, making for easy travel. In other spots, an upper passage would cut directly over the stream passage, and they needed to leap across.
The noise was omnipresent.
The walls and floor of the cave also looked very different from before. In the dry passages, the rock was coated with a fine layer of dust, or floored with sediment. While the passage often had strange and fantastic shapes, the color was a dull grey or tan.
Here, the wetness provided a view into the layers, veins, and other fine features of the rock. Evan found himself stopping to look at the details, before the cold and Mira’s urging hurried him along.
In some places the ripples of the water reflected their lights into waves that reflected all over the walls and ceiling of the cave, a fantastic effect of which he had never seen the like.
It was a cold, forbidding, and dangerous place. And it was amazing.
The most difficult stretch of passage was the place where every level aligned, forming a single tall hallway over a hundred meters high, floored with rushing water. Mira took them on an intricate route along a series of ledges, twice having to jump entirely across to the opposite wall. In those places she had trailed the line, which made the crossing easy for Kate. Evan leapt across as the tail, with the line tied around him but no certainty that it would help if he missed his mark.
When they were back in a safer upper level, they walked along, until Mira pointed to a small hole in the floor. They could hear the roar from below. “That’s it,” she said. “The last of the river.”
Evan and Kate looked at each other with a joy that belied their overall situation. That ordeal, at least, was done.
“Where does the stream come from?” asked Evan.
“It’s a mystery,” Mira told him. “I have gone another two kilometers upstream. I came to a waterfall and was able to jump up it, using some ledges. Then I got up another two waterfalls. At my farthest point, I got to a fourth waterfall, taller than the others, and pouring down through a small hole at the top. Air and mist swirling everywhere.”
“Could you see beyond?”
“Big, and black. There is some kind of huge room up there. And the river must go a long way farther. I tried to jump up through it. Once. Very bad idea. I think the only way to get to the top would be to set some bolts in the wall to anchor a climbing rope or a ladder, and work up it a few steps at a time. I have always wanted to come back, with a crew, and climb it, because I think it’s the greatest mystery in this world. But I couldn’t bring myself to show the river to anyone else.”
“The edge of knowledge,” Evan considered. “You know, when we were digging at the Valley of Dreams, I wasn’t too interested in climbing around in the cave. I had my own puzzles to solve, ” he told her. “But if you don’t find anyone better, I’ll help you with the climb. You would have to show me how to do all of it, with the bolts and the ropes.”
“You’ve got a deal. The name of the waterfall is Unfinished Business. If we climb it, then it will need a new name.”
“Oh, no,” he disagreed. “Keep the name. For history.”
They left the hole in the floor, and the river, traveling in passages that were once again bone dry.
Now the passage walls were covered with angular white crystals that sparkled in their headlights. In some places the crystals grew in the form of bushes, up to three meters across, mostly filling up the passage so that it was necessary to squeeze past them.
The most beautiful part of the cave was also the sharpest. Evan was grateful for the gloves that had been part of the chopper gear, and which he still wore.
After the sounds of water were completely gone, Mira signaled a break. A round room with a perfectly flat floor greeted them. It was even soft. Some ancient stream, or perhaps the wind, had seen fit to provide them with a perfect cushion of sediment. They ate a light meal in the comfortable spot. It was hard to imagine moving any time soon.
“We may as well get some rest here after dinner,” Mira told them. “Best place we’ll have for a while, an
d we can’t go all the way without at least a little more sleep.”
“I’m good with that,” Evan said. “At least I’m not in an EVA with the suit telling me I need to sleep in order to conserve oxygen.”
“I was just camping,” Kate said. “Trying not to think of the end of my family. And a few hours later we’re deep in the cave, running from Arn Lobeck and his minions. What brought them upon us?”
“It’s kind of a long story. I’ll tell it all to you, and it will make quite a tale. When this is all over, maybe you could write another book, except it wouldn’t be Tails of Versari. What are you up to, five of them?”
“It’s seven now, Evan.”
“Vanity press,” Mira put in. “You give them away, right? And the Versari didn’t even have tails. Just stubs, really. Stubs of the Versari, there’s a name for you.”
“Mira, enough! If you could stop that backbiting for just long enough for us to get out of this cave−”
“Thank you Evan, but I don’t need you to defend me,” Kate said. “The schools need my books, and they have no budget any more. Tail of Rissta was read by practically the entire eighth grade on Abilene. I’m proud of that, and it doesn’t matter what Mira or anyone else says.”
“I picked up one just before I went to Aurora,” Evan told Kate. “Tail of Uve. A nice read.”
“You said that it was filled with unproven and unscientific crap,” Mira added helpfully.
“Well, the part about the Versari sensing where the glomes went, that’s pretty far out,” Evan admitted. “But, maybe I have a different perspective now. I enjoyed it.”
“Evan, you read Tail of Uve? Why didn’t you send me a note? I would have loved to hear from you.”
“I’m not much of a letter writer, you know. I didn’t know what to say. Oh Kate, I liked your book, and by the way I’m sorry to hear about your parents. Oh, no. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, that’s okay,” Kate told him. “And I wish you would have written.”
Evan felt an old hurt rise. “Well, I didn’t know that. When it happened, you know how I found out? A news report. The obituary. Three weeks old. Just saw it by accident. Your parents, and you didn’t even tell me. Didn’t even ask me to come to their celebration.”
“I didn’t write you. Do you want to know why? Do you really want to know the reason? You ask and I’ll tell you!”
Evan knew he was going the wrong way. The death of her parents, and he was being the angry one. But he couldn’t help himself. “You tell me. Why it wasn’t worth even sending me a note.”
“Because you were gone! Always gone, always light years away. No letters. Just another dig. When you stopped coming back to Kelter, I knew I wasn’t worth the trip. Some rocks a million years old were more important than me. That’s why!”
Evan looked down. He had no answer. Nowhere to go. Only the woman in front of him, speaking the truth.
She had been with him on the day, years before, that he had stood on the low hill overlooking the Valley of Dreams, as the emergency room doc told him the narrative from halfway across the planet, of everything they had tried. The audio had phased in and out, but Evan had heard enough to know that the moments he had always hoped for, with his own father, would never be. And he had thanked the doc for her efforts, signed off, and stood there, entirely empty.
Kate had comforted him, stood by him, and helped him. Not just at that moment, but in the days and weeks to follow. She had gone with him to the celebration. She had taken care of those things he suddenly didn’t care about, but still mattered. She had forgiven him when he had said things that were horribly wrong. She had held him. She had been there.
In turn, when he had had the chance to do one good thing for her, he had done – nothing.
He remembered his mother’s advice, the best advice he had ever received, although he had scoffed at the time. She had taught him what to say when nothing else would serve.
“I was wrong. And I am sorry,” he told Kate. He looked back up to see that she shared his tears. “And I have missed you. I’m just really bad at showing it.”
Mira abruptly got up. “Oh no,” she said. “If you two are about to get all snuggy, I’ve seen enough of that for one lifetime.” She grabbed her pack and walked down the passage, sticking her index finger into her open mouth.
As Mira’s steps faded in the distance, Evan looked at Kate. He knew what he hoped for. Reconciliation. Another chance. But did she also?
Kate called out to the departing Mira. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that!”
The Daughters of Atlas
“It is a very fine day, is it not?” Ravi appeared to be in great spirits.
Sonia equivocated. “There’s no weather up here, you know. Space. It’s not even day or night.”
“But it is a fine day in our lives. On our campus on Alcyone, it is early morning, did you know that? Your little ones, about to enjoy a Saturday. The blossoms opening for the day. There is so much hope now.”
Ravi had never struck her as much of a botanist. What was with him?
“I do miss them,” Sonia agreed.
“And soon you will not have to. The gods will deliver us safely back.”
“You mean instead of us going back by ship?” She tried a little humor.
“You may think that we have long since left the gods behind, centuries ago, but it is not so. They walk among us now. Doing what gods have always done. Providing well for those who serve, and punishing those who do not.”
“Ravi, what in the world are you talking about?”
“Look.” He dialed in a display to show a starfield, and then zoomed in to a star cluster. Familiar, except the positions of the stars were not quite the same as she remembered from her childhood. “The daughters of Atlas. On every planet in known space they shine. From each place where we may go, we see a different arrangement, but they are always there. Ruling the lesser stars that surround them. The shape may change, but the seven are always there.”
“You mean, the Sisters,” she said.
“And if the altar at our village is Affirmatix, then let it be so. All we must do is serve well.”
‘They’re just families, you know,” Sonia told him. “Companies, they used to be called.”
“Just. Exactly. They define what is just, through the exercise of their power. And that we must not question. It is a practical thing. In former days, people imagined they could please the spirits, and their offerings would bring them good fortune. But now, it is really so.”
“Good fortune? What do you mean?”
“For the first time I confessed what I have most wished for in my life, even knowing that it is impossible. Just one day later, I find out that it may be so, once I get home. It is a miracle. Do you not see?”
Sonia was still trying to come to terms with the strike on the Valley of Dreams. Almost certain death for those they were pursuing. And she had done nothing to prevent it. Just a logical continuation, as Ravi had so incisively pointed out, of years of her work on Alcyone.
But Sonia knew that she could not share any of her turmoil with Ravi. “Which one is Alcyone?” she asked.
“From this view, it is the lowest on the left. See, we can look upon our home, even from here. A home that has been granted to just a few of us, who are privileged to live in such a place instead of out here in the cold universe. A home where even the impossible might be. We will be there soon.”
Sonia put a hand on his shoulder. “Ravi. Krishnan. I hope we can get home soon. Each of us, we must do those things we think are best, for ourselves and for those we love. And then believe that it will be all right. Maybe it still will be.”
For a moment, they held each other. “Yes, that is right,” he told her. “I think you do see it.”
Shared Burden
Evan awoke, stiff, to see that Kate and Mira had made breakfast, using what they had available. It actually wasn’t bad, considering the circumstances, and there was even coffee
that Kate had originally brought for her camp.
“My plan was to publish a paper,” Evan said between sips, “with my latest findings from the Aurora dig. Exo Expo Twelve, coming up in four months. The call for papers is already past, but I know all the organizers, and I was sure I could get a slot. Maybe a keynote, with my new stuff.
“Big fish, small pond, you know,” he continued. “We might get only fifty attendees. But they would be people that matter. To me, anyway. If you give a good paper, then you get to hold court at the evening reception. People come up and ask questions, and challenge your findings. And you drink bad wine. Not sure what it is, the wine is always bad. Horrible white or worse red, take your pick. But you drink it anyway because it’s part of the experience. I was really looking forward to that. This paper was going to be great. Such a breakthrough.”
“Now we’re getting to it. Please go on.” Kate.
And then Evan told her everything.
Kate listened carefully, asking for clarification on a few points, but mostly allowing Evan to narrate as he would. Mira, who had heard it before, added a few observations. Evan’s words echoed off the walls and ceiling of the cave chamber as he spoke. At last he was done.
“We could go anywhere” Kate said. “Any star system! And we would know how to get back.”
Evan couldn’t see her expression, because they had all learned hours before not to shine their lights directly in anyone’s face. But he could hear her emerging amazement.
“There might be a few star systems that don’t have a feasible route,” Evan pointed out. “But that’s the sum of it, more or less. Over a million glome routes, to over a hundred thousand stars. The whole network for our corner of the galaxy. And there could be more – I just worked with the data set that had the least cosmic radiation damage.”
“No wonder Affirmatix wants it to themselves! You didn’t see that coming?”
“I didn’t know what it was until I had it. The record could have been anything. The stock market results from a million years ago, whatever. But in retrospect, Affirmatix was betting I would find something big. For this expedition, they sponsored one hundred percent, exclusive. They got commercialization rights, and I could publish academic papers. The way I saw it, if they wanted to make Versari action figures, or a video game, then they could.”
The Great Symmetry Page 18