Freefall

by Joshua David Bellin

  The aura accentuates the lines in Conroy’s face, deepening his smile.

  “You’ll come back,” he says again. “Won’t you?”

  Earth, 2150

  Upperworld

  The girl staggered back, her face covered in blood. But it wasn’t hers.

  It was Sumati’s.

  The old woman slumped on the table. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see where she’d been hit. But even with the crowd in an uproar, diving for cover and stampeding toward the exits, I knew she was dead. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t even twitching.

  I was moving, though. Moving toward the podium, shoving bodies out of my way.

  The next person to go down was one of Sumati’s bodyguards, who collapsed in a spray of blood. I glanced up to see where the shots were coming from, thought I saw a flash of white in the balcony. But I was running too fast and there was too much commotion in the room for me to make the shape out clearly. The girl’s composed expression had shattered, and she’d ducked beneath the table, the rest of the guards forming a tight phalanx in front of her. Their faces toughened when they saw me coming, and it occurred to me that I’d never be able to fight my way through them.

  They weren’t armed, not that I could tell. But they were muscled.

  The first man to block my way yanked me around so hard I felt as if he’d torn my arm from its socket. Then another shot rang out, and he went limp, pulling me to the ground as he fell. I pushed him away, but not before I saw that the top of his head was gone.

  Adrenaline the only thing that kept me from losing my lunch, I scrambled under the table, avoiding the hands that reached for me. The girl, wide-eyed, her face covered in blood, backed away. What I must have looked like, with my flushed skin and wild expression, I didn’t want to think. I had only a second to blurt out my first words to her before her bodyguards got a hold of me and beat me to a bloody pulp.

  “I want to help—” was all I managed before brawny arms dragged me from under the table.

  The biggest of the bunch held me by the throat a half meter off the floor. His fist went back for the knockout punch, but before he completed it, the girl in purple grabbed his arm and yelled at him shrilly in a language I didn’t understand. The contest between them was totally unequal, but the instant her hands touched him, he lowered his fist and dropped me to the floor. I was about to get back on my feet when she shouted a few more words to the man, and he wrapped his arms around me and charged after her. The rest of the troop followed, leaving Sumati and the dead bodyguards behind.

  “Cam!” I heard Griff yell over the sound of screams and running feet, and then we were gone.

  Muffled shots sounded behind us as we burst into the corridor at the rear of the auditorium. The girl led the way, purple robe flying, the five remaining bodyguards storming after her. The one who held me squeezed so tight I could barely breathe. We ran down a maze of identical cement corridors filled with rusting pipes and the rank smell of piss and mildew. The girl darted around corners and pushed through doors as if she’d memorized the place. At the end of one hallway she hurtled through a door with a once-illuminated sign reading fire exit, and we entered a chilly stairwell. I thought she’d head down to the parking level, but she started up the flight of stairs, speaking rapidly in her own language into a comm device. Pounding feet and the heavy breathing of the guards and the bright swirl of the girl’s robe blurred into a fuzz of light and sound as we ran.

  We exited the stairwell at roof level, emerging into the relative brightness of a smog-shrouded New York CITI day. Wind whipped the girl’s bloody robe and the strands of black hair around her face. She moved to the edge of the roof, her guards right behind, the biggest one maintaining his hold on me. We looked out over a street crammed with the milling, multicolored crowd that had escaped the building. Distantly, I heard sirens screaming. The girl fixed me with her bright, penetrating eyes, and for a single awful moment I imagined her giving her guard the order to drop me to the street below. But she merely scrutinized me carefully, as if she was deciding whether she could trust me. The blood smeared on her cheeks should have made her look frightening, but somehow it didn’t. I held still under her gaze and tried to look, well, trustworthy.

  I must have passed the test. She spoke a word to the guard, and he let me go.

  With the sleeve of her robe, she wiped as much blood from her face as she could. Now that I saw her up close, I saw that she was even more beautiful than video could do justice to. Her skin was flawless, her cheeks flushed after the terror of the auditorium and the run to the roof. Her eyebrows arched sharply, and her lips were naturally pursed, giving her a look of animation I hadn’t always seen in the stoic calm of the videos. But what struck me most was the passion in her eyes. Large and lined in black pigment, with a corona of blue-green shimmering around the gold, they jumped from her face with an intensity that made me feel both totally exposed and, in some strange way I couldn’t put into words, totally safe. I started to say something, but she cut me off.

  “In my country, it is considered impolite to stare,” she said in her lilting voice, a bit huskier from the run. A small smile on her lips made me wonder if that was supposed to be a joke, considering she’d also been staring at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but I didn’t look away. “It’s considered rude here, too.”

  “Imagine,” she said. “A custom we share.”

  Before I could respond or decide if she really was joking, her robe and hair rose in a hurricane of wind. I looked up and saw a helicar descending to the roof, the strange red lettering of her language printed on its side, a man leaning out of the open frame. I tensed to run, but I was dragged along by the guards as the car touched down. The girl shouted to the pilot, her words lost in the wind, and he nodded. A moment later we had all tumbled into the car, and it sprang into the sky.

  The instant we were airborne, the guards reached beneath their seats and pulled out handguns, which they trained on me. So much for trust. I put my hands in the air while one of them patted me down.

  “Our operatives exist throughout the Upperworld,” the girl said to me. Despite the roar of the rotors and the rushing wind, I heard each word distinctly, as if it was an arrow delivered to my ears alone. “But we must be cautious, as you have seen.”

  “I’m sorry about Sumati,” I said.

  Her eyes widened as if in surprise, and for a second I thought I saw them moisten with tears. But her voice remained precise and businesslike. “She was the first to unite the Lowerworld in the cause of righteousness. But in later years she grew tired and despondent. She continued to travel with us to shield me—to protect me from the violence that follows in the wake of those who seek justice.” This time I was sure the tears were going to fall, but they didn’t. “Now she has been gathered to her rest, and her wisdom has become ours.”

  She paused, lowering her eyes briefly, then spoke again.

  “ ‘Sumati’ means ‘wisdom.’ We who follow her example take another such name. I am known as Sofie. Another ancient word, adapted from a long-dead language. Among my people, this red bindi”—she pointed to the jewel on her forehead—“represents marriage. But I wear it, as did my teacher, to represent devotion to the truth, to the ideal of wisdom she practiced all the long days of her life.”

  Again the flicker of sorrow passed over her face, only to be replaced by a calm efficiency.

  “So,” she said. “Who are you, and how do you propose to help us?”

  “I’m Cam,” I said. “Cameron Newell. I’m from Can-Do Amortization. In the Upperworld.” I blushed. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” she said, nodding.

  “I saw you on the worldlink,” I said. “When all of this started—”

  “All of this started hundreds of years ago,” she interrupted. “When the people of your world determined that the people of mine were pawns to be manipulated in the pursuit of wealth and power.”

  I had the uncomfortable feeling I�
��d taken the place of the moderator back in the auditorium. “I know that,” I said. “But—”

  “Do you?” she cut in again. “Do you know the lives of my people? The centuries of oppression they have suffered in their own lands? The colonies, the slave-labor camps, the factories—only just better than slave-labor camps—where they have lived and worked and died?”

  “I mean, I don’t know all that—”

  “Or is this merely another thrilling adventure for you?” she rushed on. “Slumming, I believe you call it? An opportunity to soak up some local color, to experience the exotic, before settling into your life of ease on the next interstellar pleasure spot? You do know that the natives there may not prove so tractable as the natives here, do you not?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but she never stopped.

  “We get many such pleasure-seekers hanging around us. We have become something of celebrities in the Upperworld, you know. Among the young and disaffected particularly. Those who feel ill at ease about the lives of unearned privilege they have inherited, though never in their darkest dreams would they imagine actually living as we do, not for longer than a token moment. Groupies, I believe you call them? Camp followers? Oh!” Her hand flew to her mouth, giving me my first look at her long, elaborately painted fingernails. “I believe that expression has another, less genteel meaning?”

  Without her seeing, I ran the expression through my selfone, then glanced at the screen. When I looked back at her, my face burning with embarrassment, her lips were set in a mocking smile.

  “Look,” I said. “I didn’t come here to be insulted.”

  “Heaven forbid!” She spoke rapidly in her language to the guards, and they laughed, deep, throaty laughs that made their broad shoulders shake. “That a trifling girl from the Lowerworld should speak disrespectfully to such an illustrious personage from the great corponation of Canada-America Financial!”

  I was taken aback to hear her use the old-fashioned name for CanAm. But more than that, I was seriously starting to doubt everything I’d thought about her. Or, worse, to see myself the way she was making me out to be: as a pampered child from the Upperworld chasing some alluring Lowerworld siren. What did I know about her anyway? About her people? Her struggle? I’d seen her on the worldlink and thought I’d heard her calling out to me. I’d thrown all caution to the wind, alienated and bullied my friends, risked my life to see her in person. Looking into her eyes right now made my heart turn somersaults. But maybe she was right. Maybe there was no way a guy like me and a girl like her could have anything to say to each other. Maybe we didn’t belong on the same planet, whether it was this one or one a thousand billion kilometers away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess—maybe this was a mistake. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought you might . . .” Need me, were the words that popped into my head, but they were far too awkward to say out loud, no matter which way she took them. “You can—I mean, if it’s possible, you can drop me at the next bullet train station. Not literally drop me, I mean,” I added with a weak smile. “I can make it back home from there.”

  She studied me. The insufferable smile had changed to something else, and her eyes had lost the haughty, belittling look. They’d turned searching, probing, the way they’d always appeared when I’d seen her on the worldlink. Her gaze wasn’t gentle or compassionate, in fact it was pretty much the opposite of that. But it was real, and as always it made me feel real too.

  She leaned forward, and her hand closed over mine. I jerked away, but she gripped me with both hands and wouldn’t let go. Her hands were warm, and I felt the blood flowing through them as she lifted our linked hands between us and stared into my eyes.

  “So you did not come here to be insulted,” she said, her voice softening. “That much I can now see. What did you come here for, Cameron Newell?”

  Otherworld

  Earth Year 3151

  Night

  I exit the ship at midnight, when planetary UV is supposed to be at its safest level. I’m decked out in radiation gear, a full-body suit with detachable boots and gloves and hood, but Griff told me weeks ago that the science squad might be downplaying the risk of exposure or the suits might not be working—or both—so who knows. A lifetime or a year or a day from now, when my skin sloughs off or my lungs corrode from cancer, I might find out what counts as safe on this ghost world.

  But I don’t have a lifetime. The night predators took my former best friend. And they’re not going to hesitate to make it a matching set.

  My mission is as simple as it is impossible. I’m charged with locating Adrian and returning with him to the Executor. Reasoning that his lost son is being held hostage aboard the Freefall, Conroy’s told me to head directly there. What he won’t accept, what he resolutely refuses to believe, is that I’m not part of some grand conspiracy involving Sofie, the Lowerworlders, and the night creatures. If I wanted to spin a good conspiracy theory myself, I might conclude that this whole setup is Conroy’s sick idea of punishment—that he knows his son has been slaughtered and is preparing me to suffer the same fate. He’s too civilized to splatter my brains all over his nice clean ship, but he doesn’t mind sending me out to certain death where the last thought that’ll cross my mind is that I found Sofie against all odds, failed her, and lost her again.

  But the truth is, his motivations are probably a lot less sinister than that. The strongest likelihood is that the old man’s gone nuts with grief and/or the pressure of piloting a shipwreck, and he actually believes I have a chance of surviving out here, bargaining for his son’s life, and bringing him back home.

  Either way, I have no choice but to go on his suicide mission. He explained to me how they had found Sofie when they went to search for Adrian, found her sleeping in a renegade pod that had ejected like mine. They’d brought the pod back intact, without disturbing its occupant or her thousand-year sleep. But the aura that holds her in suspended, dreamless, timeless forgetfulness could be switched off at any moment, and without the proper reentry she could arrest, stroke out, go into complete systems failure. Griff told me once, though even he admitted it might be no more than a rumor, that if the deepsleep is improperly disengaged, the millennium of suspension attacks the body at once, mummifying it in seconds. At least that’s a relatively painless death. He also passed along the theory that people go stark raving mad when the switch is flipped wrong, and their last moments of life are spent trying to tear out their viscera with their fingernails.

  My mother, the deepsleep expert, is the one who removed Sofie from her pod, set her up in the mobile stasis-field generator, and advised Conroy on how to handle the situation. I guess I can’t blame her, given not only her opinion of me but her fear of what Conroy has on her. Maybe she bought herself some immunity that way. All I know is Conroy’s finger is on the switch. And he’ll flip it if I return without his son.

  What he’ll do if I don’t return at all I can easily guess. But at least under those circumstances, I won’t have to watch Sofie die.

  He’s given me an hour to prepare, so even if I knew where to find Griff on this city-size starship, I don’t have a chance to say good-bye. Most of the time I do have, I’ve spent cleaning my bloody face and getting my swollen forehead patched by one of Conroy’s PMP flacks. I’ve taken some supplemental oxygen kits, plus the same model of ionizing beam Adrian used against the creature that attacked me. Based on that experience, it works pretty well. I wish I could take a handful of the sonic devices, but they’re too awkward to cart around, and they don’t work unless they’re planted in the rock anyway. I’ve got binoculars, a couple of electronic flares in case I need to signal the ship for help, a portable homing device to locate the Freefall via the pods stored inside. It flashes red to show me direction and distance. I’ve got enough freeze-dried food and purified water to last me a few days.

  I’ve also got no idea how I’m going to survive if the night creatures come out in force. And no clue what to do if by som
e miracle I do make it to the ship alive.

  I’ve got practically no chance. And very little hope.

  What I’ve got, and it’s enough to get me out the door, is her. I’ve got my memories of the months I spent with her, memories that have lasted longer than the ages I spent without her. I’ve got my memories of the plans we made, the world I thought we were building, the dreams I thought we shared.

  I’ve got those dreams, and they’ll have to be enough.

  Even if, in the end, they weren’t the same as hers.

  PART TWO

  The Sound the Stars Make

  Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  —Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

  Earth, 2150

  Lowerworld

  Sofie told stories every night. During the day she was busy running from place to place, dealing with the fallout from the New York CITI fiasco, meeting with her advisory team. But at night, no matter where she was or how crazy her day had been, she fulfilled a routine Sumati had begun: telling stories to anyone who would listen.

  Actually, Sumati had revived this practice from other storytellers, other leaders of revolutions in the past. Back then, they’d been called lamas, or swamis, or mullahs, or mahatmas, or priests, or pundits. Or philosophers—the word that had given Sofie her name. But they didn’t exist anymore, at least not officially. The corponations had done away with them. They weren’t good for business.