by Greg Bear
Tak and I regard each other with owlish resignation. The dust and activity out there is almost certainly Antag, and they’re either heading our direction deliberately, out to get us in particular, or we’re on the path to wherever they are going. Given the nature of this place, if the Antags have tracked all these buggies from orbit, homing in on the Drifter like dung beetles to a pile, they’re going to be curious.
Likely the Drifter has distinct gravimetry and until now the Antags have ignored it, as we have, because there’s been too much else to do. But if they’re in complete charge, laying down a heavy, long-term hand, they may feel the freedom to send out targeted recon.
“I want to know as much as we can know about this place, as soon as possible,” he says. “There could be a hell of a lot more at stake than just us and them. Keep letting Teal think we’re on her side. We may be on her side, of course. Captain Coyle, you go with them—chaperone. Take the big one, Rafe, just to let the Voors feel they’re not being left out.”
“What about the old guy?” Coyle asks. “He’s the boss. And he’s real trigger.” She means a natural killer, remorseless and cold. “He might know more than the others. And the others won’t do anything without his say.”
“Isolate him,” Tak suggests. “Defuse him.”
“Take him away, the rest will get anxious,” Gamecock says. “I’ll bet he’s told his son most of what he knows. Rafe’s the one you want to get separate.” He presses his hands together, then splits them apart. “I’m pretty sure we’re all going to be together in the shit soon enough. If we can keep them in line… Get them to fight with us… Maybe we’ll die another day. But right now, we need to do our best to uplink and get instructions,” the colonel concludes with a sour look.
DJ returns. “I’ve scoped out the watchtower rooms,” he says. “Beetling brows over the ports.” He salutes a caveman ridge above his nose. “No line of sight to zenith. Maybe to the horizon, but that’s the long way.”
“Even if we had working lasers,” Gamecock says.
“We have helm lasers,” Tak says. “On a clear night, we could get a horizontal link—for a few seconds at least.”
“How? You couldn’t hold steady enough.”
“The sats could spot dust twinkle and do Fourier, then downlink.”
“Why would they?” Gamecock asks doubtfully. “Antags can spot twinkle as well.”
“If any sats survive,” I add.
“Well, what if some do?” Tak says. “Sir, we can’t not take chances. We need to compare our own tactical in real time, the updates between Captain Coyle’s launch and drop and ours—not just chew over old news. Our angels are terrible at computing command decisions, especially when the shit sets up. But you know they will. And then, we have to do what they say.” We have been instructed to follow angelic orders, even barring updates. That threat chills us all—all except Coyle, who stays cool, indifferent.
I note this with a slight itch in the back of my head.
“We’re the deciders,” I say.
Gamecock considers. “Captain Coyle—you, me, Tak, let’s draw in the dust. Michelin, you and whomever the captain assigns work the layout with Rafe. Venn, take Teal back to that watchtower and look around. Keep her away from the Voors. And get back in your skintights, all of you. DJ… go outside through the southern garage. Shoot some beams. See if we can raise a sat.”
DJ looks unhappy.
“Twenty minutes,” Gamecock tells him. “Then get the fidge back in here.”
“Just say ‘fuck,’ sir,” DJ grumbles. “Bloody Gurus can’t fucking hear us.”
“Assume nothing,” Gamecock says. “Go.”
BACKGROUNDER, PART 3
I sit in the apartment’s high morning light, flipping the inscribed platinum disk between my fingers, basking in a multicolored and subdivided square of reflected spring sun—with coffee. The lone box of breakfast cereal has long since become a village of weevils, a movable feast—if I regard them as food rather than company.
Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry. The dubious delights of being alone have worn off. I’m waiting for Joe to show up and tell me the outcome, as far as it goes, of his part of our long story.
I feel weirdly biblical this morning. Smiting and being smitten.
Lo and behold, heavenly visitors came to Earth, and at first it was good, though many were sore amazed, and some were affrighted and did rise up and protest.
That’s all I got. Never did get into that shit much.
But about two-thirds of us decided it was okay, why be a wallflower at the orgy? The second year after the Gurus outed themselves, the major industrial nations recorded near-zero unemployment. All who could work, worked—there was that much to do to exploit what little they had begun to reveal.
But everything is context. Before the real kicker, the mother of other dropped shoes—the announcement that the Antags were in our backyard—the Gurus led with an opening poke, a diagnostic of our will, of our submission.
Maybe.
Gurus seemed reasonable, mostly. They took a larger view. No surprise, given their celestial origins. They didn’t mind their benefits expanding to all nations, even those that refused to acknowledge they were real. They also didn’t mind satires or outright blasphemies against their persons or activities—seemed at times to encourage them. Lets off steam. So be it. They are not really God or gods, after all. Like us, mere mortals.
And yet, like the God of Abraham, shrouded in His secure sanctuary, the Gurus do not show themselves to the greater world. In the early years, speculation ran rampant, but those in the know managed to keep quiet about what they saw and experienced, in the presence of our visitors.
And to them—to the Wait Staff, just before the truly shitty boot dropped—was passed the first edict of Guru kind. Call it a firm request.
The Gurus made it clear, however magnanimous they might seem, that they found offensive any and all sexual profanity. Words that showed disrespect to the sacred biological functions of reproduction. Blaspheme against the Lord or Allah or Krishna or Buddha or Brahma if you will, but the F-word and its irreverent equivalents were a foul stench unto core Guru beliefs.
No physical punishment would ensue should that word continue to occupy its favored place in literature, entertainment, and common discourse—that was not Guru style—but they would be highly displeased, and if sufficiently highly displeased, they could reduce their revelations, perhaps even pack up and depart.
Some found that amusing. Upon threat of suppression, the floodgates opened. For a few months, the channels of human discourse overflowed with sexual profanity of an amazing level of creativity and vigor.
And then, as promised, the Gurus clammed up. For three months, nothing new passed to the outer world from the Wait Staff. So began the worldwide clampdown on the F-word. After all, geese with sensitive ears who laid golden eggs now rocked our economy. No reason to be ungrateful. For the first time in human history, humans managed to mostly clean up their language.
Way back in the twentieth century, creative types conjured substitutes for F-words by the dozens, like ersatz coffee or fake cigarettes—or bootleg gin—to avoid purely human censors. That talent was now revived. A young blogger in Beijing, whose reports, in admirable English, were popular worldwide, made up the word fidge as the new expletive of choice. He carefully explained—for sensitive eyes and ears—that nowise and nohow did fidge have a sexual connotation.
Fidge it became: fidge this, fidge that.
Gamecock was always extra cautious.
And that’s not all. Don’t know if there’s any relation, but respecting reproduction…
Maybe you know about the lists, the unsolved disappearances all around the world. They seem to have begun about three years after the Gurus arrived. A select group of men and even a few women are vanishing. Some have been connected with or accused of sexual crimes. Violent stuff. Like Corporal Grover Sudbury. Remember him?
The disappearances conti
nue to this day. Certainly not mystery number one, but interesting.
WAKEFUL THOUGHTS FOR SLEEPLESS GRUNTS
I think more this morning of the Red. How, wearing a skintight and standing on a flat, lifeless prairie of old lava and blown dust and sand, sometimes, even before a battle, I could feel free, liberated, useful; whereas here, in the apartment, the walls are closing in worse than any faceplate; the ample air seems denser and more confining than the sour smell of packed filters.
There’s an untouched bowl of cereal on the table. It’s still moving. The weevils are active. I don’t know whether to throw them out or sit down and talk to them. I’ve got it bad. I’m shaking, and it’s not just the pure caffeine of freshly ground black coffee, a luxury hardly ever available on Mars. I’m shaking because my extended cat whiskers tell me a moment is arriving that will both explain and traumatize. I do not want to know. I’ve switched off my phone, cut the intercom and buzzer; nobody in, nobody out who doesn’t already have a key. No news. No updates. Just the closing in and restlessness and shivering. No more, please. I’m a man without a center. I have no idea where the hell I am. Waiting for Joe. Waiting for anybody who can tell me what the hell happened and how long I have to lie low.
Christ, I am well and truly fucked.
I look at the door, above the rise and beyond the small flight of stairs, framed by the upstairs loft, clearly illuminated by rising glory reflected from a glass-walled skyscraper a few hundred meters across the downtown neighborhood—blue-green windows redirecting the eastern sunrise.
Someone’s coming. It won’t be Joe. That much my whiskers tell me. Someone new. I get up on autopilot, shivering uncontrollably, and move toward the door.
As my toe lands on the first step, the doorbell rings its Big Ben chimes. Very retro. It takes me a long while to answer, but whoever or whatever is there is patient. I finally unlatch the door and swing it open, half expecting I will take aggressive action—at the very least, jump out and scream “Boo!”
But I don’t.
A small, zaftig woman with black eyes, a stub nose, and a close-cropped patch of red hair looks at me without expression—relaxed, composed. She’s wearing a light gray overcoat and a red and purple scarf. She smells like roses, old-lady perfume, but she can’t be much older than me.
“Yeah?” I say.
“Joseph sent me,” she says with a knowing grin. “He told me you’d be here,” she adds, looking past me into the apartment. “He’s sorry he couldn’t make it. But he said you’ll understand.”
I’m staring, goggle-eyed.
The woman who smells like roses explains, into my silence, “He gave me the code to the downstairs entry. And the elevator.”
Still staring.
“Can I come in?” she asks. Straightforward. Steady. She’s dealt with fidged Skyrines before.
“Joe’s okay?” I ask.
“I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“He is always in trouble.”
“You’re his girlfriend?”
“Do I look that stupid?” But again she smiles. It’s a lovely, gentle smile. “He invited me to come talk with you. Have you got the coin?”
“I’ve got some coins,” I say.
“One important coin. Silver?”
“You tell me,” I say.
“Platinum,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“What’s on the coin?”
“Numbers,” I say.
“Good on you.”
I seem to pass, for now. The woman says, “In case you’re wondering, Teal’s alive, last I heard, but that was a while ago.”
“How do you know about Teal?”
She cocks her head, holds out one hand, may she come in? I stand aside, let her in, and close the door. My shaking has stopped. It’s better not to be alone. What I know, what I think I know, I really do not want to keep to myself. This might be progress.
“I smell coffee,” she says.
“I can’t smell coffee. Fidging Cosmoline. Miss that.”
“Do you smell my roses?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Pretty soon, you’ll smell the coffee, too.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
I go to the kitchen and get down a mug, pour her what’s left in the carafe. She doesn’t follow, doesn’t move far from the entry, just stands back there, craning her neck and looking around the apartment.
“You guys do okay.”
“Thanks. It’s not my place,” I say, and deliver the cup.
“You might put on some clothes,” she tells me, eyes fixed on my chin.
I look down. I’m naked.
“Right,” I say. “Sorry.”
“Did Joe tell you I’m a nurse?”
“Joe didn’t say a thing about you,” I say over my shoulder as I go to collect a robe.
“That’s surprising. Vac and mini-g medicine, combat metabolism, oxydep—Injuries from anoxia and hypoxia.”
“MHAT?” I ask from the bedroom.
“No. Not that there’s anything wrong with MHAT. Good for warriors in trouble. But my billets were orbital.”
“Active duty?”
“Indefinite furlough,” she says. “I’m facing courts-martial.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“Hmm.”
“What’s your name?”
“Puddin’ tame,” she says.
“Great. Just a friend of Joe’s, or a friend of Teal’s?”
“A friend to Mars,” she says. “I hope.”
I’ve put on a robe and cinch the tie as I return.
“Can I see the coin?” she asks.
I’ve been clenching it against my palm like Gollum—my Precious—as I once observed myself doing on Mars, in the Drifter, but, now, shyly enough, I drop the end of the tie, open my fingers, and hold it out.
She reaches.
I pluck it back and close my hand.
“Name, rank, serial number,” I say.
“First Lieutenant Alice Harper, U.S. Marine Medical Services, awaiting dishonorable discharge.”
“Disability?”
“Multiple cancers, all cured—but leading to profound Cosmoline sickness,” she says. “Can’t take the vac anymore.” Then she adds, when I look dubious, “That’s my real name and rank, fuckhead.”
Spoken like a true Skyrine.
Again, I hold out the coin. She picks it up between small, pretty fingers, nails cut close and clean and painted with clear polish, and turns it over, brings it to her eye, then hands it back.
“Looks good,” she says.
“What does it mean? A second coin…”
“Tell me what happened,” she says, and takes another step into the apartment. “May I sit?”
“Of course.”
She sits on the couch.
And just as she does that, the awful reluctance returns. I don’t want to tell. Telling is like making people die all over again. I stand in the living room, saying nothing, just looking out the window with a dumbass squint.
“I’m a good listener,” she says. “Tell me what happened, and maybe I’ll be able to tell you what the coin means.”
I gather up my courage. I would like to know more. I already know some of it. Not a lot. Just enough. The Algerians and the Voors weren’t the first to mine the Drifter. Not by three and a half billion years.
It’s a big story getting bigger. Let’s slip back into it slowly, like a scalding bath.
COMES THE HEAT
Teal and I return to the northern garage and put on our skintights. Scrubbed and recharged, my suit is almost comfortable. There’s six hours of oxygen in the backpack, new filters—not pristine sweetness, but no longer pickle juice. Reassuring, if things get bad and we have to exit in a hurry.
“The Voors will kill you if t’ey can,” Teal says under her b
reath. “T’ey hate brown people. And your fems are bossy, too.”
“Brown people do better in the vac,” I say.
“My fat’er t’ought so,” she says. Teal’s back is to me as we head toward the ladder leading to the cold high room, which I’m hoping is warming now that power is back on. She pauses at the bottom of the ladder. “Te Voors had all t’is,” she says, shoulders tensed, back arched, everything in her posture asking me how stupid they must be. “Wealt’ and food and metal and water power, as long as te hobo flowed. And ’tis still flowing, down t’ere, where ’tis safe and useful. But te Voors will never be happy. Na else wanted a work or trade wit’ t’em, because of te wrong t’ey did te Algerians—and my fat’er.”
I say nothing. My job is to look northwest. We climb the ladder in silence. The cold room is warming, just a little. The radiant heater mounted on one wall crackles as years of dust pop off.
Teal raises the shutter.
We both see at once. Where the steady brown blur had been, there’s now a wide wall of dust, and it’s no storm. Big movement all along the western horizon, an arc of at least thirty klicks, from one corner of the port to the other. Many things in motion.
What sort of things?
I close my helm’s plate and dial down a pair of virtual binocs. The plate measures the angles of incident light from the front of the plate to the rear, does a transform algorithm, and voila—a lensless virtual magnification of the infrared projects into my eyes, along with my angel’s analysis of what I might be seeing. More Guru tech.
Teal has pulled down the periscope, handling it gingerly. Not time enough to warm. Maybe it has its own magnification, but I doubt she’s seeing all that I’m seeing. There’s a phalanx of vehicles out there, deep in the dust cloud. The angel analyzes the most likely threat first, a large concentration of Antag vehicles. As well, aerostats are advancing slowly behind the dust, about fifty klicks from the Drifter: big suspended balloons, the smallest at least a hundred meters in diameter. But then the angel points up another, much smaller line of vehicles, moving at speed in front of the main mass, just before the leading edge of the dust. These outlines are more familiar, possibly not a threat—