Freefall

by Joshua David Bellin

  It’s another endless trip, and my arms and legs tremble so badly the ladder feels as if it’s shaking loose from the interior of the hull. But somehow I hang on, my feet finally touching bottom. My body celebrates by collapsing onto the cold titanium floor.

  It feels like forever before I have the strength to stand. When I do, I look up and down the hallway, expecting to be greeted by the person who opened the door and saved my sorry ass. But I’m alone.

  I’m in. The ship will protect me from radiation. For the moment, I’m safe.

  What to do now?

  I take out the tracker, find it flashing away. I’m too shaken to be sure what just happened, but evidently, when I said Sofie’s name, the homing device from the Executor signaled the Freefall to open the hatch. That would make sense only if it was programmed to do so, which would make sense only if both ships were programmed to arrive at this destination. Reluctant as I am to endorse Conroy’s cuckoo theories, it really does look as if the whole thing was set up beforehand, and by someone who wanted me to get into the Lowerworld ship. Someone other than Conroy himself, who would have simply told me if that was the way things were supposed to work. Someone aboard the Executor who chose the name of the Lowerworld revolution’s leader as the key to open the vault.

  But other than me, who in hell would do that?

  I hold the tracker at arm’s length. It’s not flashing merely for the sake of flashing, I decide. It gave me the steady signal when I reached the ship, but now it’s indicating that I have to search for the rest of the pods. That’s part of its programming too. It wants me to find them. And if I’m reading it right, it’s showing me the way.

  I don’t know this ship. But if its basic layout is the same as the Executor’s, the cargo bay will be forward, the drive astern. The tracker’s pointing me forward. I shuck the radiation suit, do a few quick squats and stretches in shorts and T-shirt to limber up cramped muscles. Then I strap the supply pouch back on and set off in the direction the tracker’s telling me to go.

  It’s a long walk. My bare feet ping on the metal floor, but the hull’s far too big for the ping to carry any authority. The hallway’s littered with random boxes and pieces of machinery, stuff that must not have fit into any of the standard storage areas. There are practically no windows, and the few that exist are nothing but small circular portholes, completely different from the soaring, tourist-friendly viewing panels of the Executor. The doors leading to the front of the ship slide open at my approach, so it seems the Freefall’s hospitality systems have come alive to welcome me. I detect a hum, a vibration, just below the threshold of hearing, which supports my theory. I slip the valve of my oxygen kit from between my teeth and take a tentative breath. My lungs fill obligingly, so that clinches it. The Freefall has no commuter monorail system, no plasma cannons, no rec rooms—it wasn’t designed for passenger use, and it’s lucky there’s a place to eat—but it’s woken up all the same. And though I can’t understand how or why, it’s starting to look as if it’s woken up specifically for me.

  A good hour has passed before I pull up in front of the cargo bay, which sits where I expect it to, right behind the nose. But as with the rest of the ship, it doesn’t look anything like the bay from the Executor, with its orderly rows of docked pods. The Freefall was originally built as a test model, then repurposed for storage and supply, a backup to follow the Executor to its destination and to support us once we got there. In the frantic months between the signing of the Joint Otherworld Colonization Amity Pact (JOCAP) and the loading of the passengers, the ship was turned upside down to make space for hundreds of thousands of human beings. A lot of the materiel that formerly occupied this ship was moved to the Executor, but plenty was left behind for the Lowerworlders’ own use, or merely by mistake. What that means is that in the dingy, unfinished cavity of the Freefall’s main bay, life-carrying pods share space with supply crates and the equipment designed to unload them on arrival. And when I say “share space,” I mean there is no space to share: Pods are stacked on other pods or on boxes full of supplies, and what with the addition of cranes and loaders, everything is crammed together more tightly than the most crowded street in the most crowded Lowerworld city. It’s not immediately apparent how I’ll manage to squirm into the area, much less open any of the pods. Nor is it apparent how Sofie’s pod found its way out of this chaos, a heap of living containers and inert machinery packed together with no room to spare and no exits in sight.

  An even bigger question is why, if the ship’s woken up in response to my presence, it hasn’t tried to rouse the other pods the way it was supposed to on touchdown. So many things have gone wrong with this mission, I worry that all of the Lowerworld passengers might have died in deepsleep. But I’ll never know unless I can open a pod.

  The bay is four kilometers square if it’s a centimeter. It doesn’t seem to matter where I start. I squeeze into the pile of pods nearest to the door, searching for one not completely surrounded or weighted down by junk. To my surprise and gratitude, as soon as I enter the sea of pods, the ship helps me by shining a spotlight from above. I move through pods like a rock climber, grappling for hand- and footholds, sucking my stomach in to wiggle through crevices. Everywhere I go, the light tags along, illuminating the dark crannies between stacked crates and pods. Unfortunately, all it shows me is what I already suspected: Everything’s so buried under everything else, there’s nothing I can access without shoving loads of equipment out of the way.

  I extricate myself from the pods and step back into the hallway to take in as much of the area as I can, but all I see are pods stretching for hundreds of meters in every direction and heaped to the rafters above my head. The crazy thought flits through my mind of scaling the pile to see if I’ll have better luck higher up, but the vision of teetering atop a mountain of haphazardly balanced pods makes me decide against it. It seems ridiculous that with this many pods lying untended in front of me, I can’t find a single one whose door or controls I’m able to reach. I’m about to give in to the childish impulse to kick the nearest stack of crap when I remember my trusty tracker.

  I hold it to my mouth as if it’s a comm device. Now that I’m doing this on purpose and not by pure accident, I get that embarrassed feeling that happens even when you know no one could possibly be watching. But I say it anyway.

  “Sofie,” I say to the tracker.

  It beeps.

  And, from somewhere far away, something else beeps in answer.

  It’s faint, buried deep in the pile, and I can’t pinpoint its location. I repeat Sofie’s name, then hold my breath and listen. There’s no sound for such a long time I convince myself I must have imagined it.

  But then I hear it again. Closer this time, louder. As if it’s moving toward me.

  I step back, say her name to the tracker one more time. I feel like I’m playing a game of hot and cold with a piece of technology. When the beep comes again, more faintly than before, I realize the player on the other end must be having trouble finding its way to me. I talk to the tracker again, listen for the response.

  There it is. A tiny bit louder, stronger. It’s getting hot.

  A minute later a wave passes through the pods in front of me. Metal shifts against the floor with a screeching sound that makes my shoulders clench. Something’s nudging the logjam out of its way.

  The wall of pods parts, and the one I’ve been calling to floats free of the bay.

  It drifts to my feet before settling, a red light flashing on its nose. I set my hands on the smooth white metal, feeling its coldness against my palms, then rest an ear on the curved door in hopes of picking up signs of life. The hum of the deepsleep mingles with the rush of blood in my own ear, turned slightly metallic by its contact with the pod. The source of the flashing light is the release button, which lies flush with the pod’s body, beneath the JIPOC lettering and logo. My spotlight friend hovers cheerfully on the pod while I inspect it, as if urging me to give it a try.

 
I reach out, hesitate. What if this pod is like the ones in the cavern? What if it was Conroy who set this whole thing up, and the point of sending me here was to unleash a new plague of mechanical monsters?

  What if I’m giving in to paranoid delusions?

  I press the button.

  And nothing happens.

  I’m disappointed, but not entirely surprised. I don’t know the programming of the pods, but it would make sense if not just anyone could open them. Probably there’s thumbprint recognition on the outside same as on the inside, and only people with the right clearances can pop the top. Still, it’s annoying to be this close and not be able to get in.

  I set the tracker on the floor and walk around the pod, looking for something I might have missed. But there’s nothing: The rest of the pod is all smooth, spotless metal.

  It’s only when I complete my circuit that I realize the thing I missed is right in front of me.

  The pod’s release button isn’t just flashing. It’s flashing in time with my tracker.

  I pick up the homing device, press its screen randomly, knowing the commissary clerk never told me anything about this. I say Sofie’s name again, without success. I try pointing the tracker at the pod like a worldlink controller, but that works about as well as the random-screen-pressing approach. Then, in a rare spasm of inspiration, I touch the flashing light of the tracker to the flashing light of the pod.

  Instantly the twin lights stop flashing. I guess I should be thankful I didn’t try this with the creatures in the cave.

  The pod hums, whines, and opens.

  I stand back and watch warily, simultaneously fascinated and, truth be told, a bit freaked by the process. The components shimmer like a reflection in water, then take on a liquid quality and peel back from the pod’s shell, leaving a glowing aperture where solid metal had been. Once opened, the components solidify again, which makes me wonder if that’s what it looked like from the outside when I exited my own pod.

  But this pod bears one notable difference from mine: The deepsleep field is engaged, and the body of the sleeper lies within.

  The yellow aura pulses and crackles, so thick it seems like a liquid, a current bathing the sleeping figure. My eyes take a minute to adjust to the light, but I can see enough to tell that the misty blob is no monster but a human being. When I’m able to make out the figure’s face and clothes, I take another step back in disbelief.

  The white-garbed man lies on his side, arms and legs curled in a fetal position. But there’s no doubt in my mind he’s one of Sofie’s bodyguards.

  Earth, 2151

  Lowerworld

  The ExCon interview took place as planned, at a safe location chosen by Sofie’s team. Her bodyguards were there, though she assured me that was only because they wouldn’t let her go anywhere without them. I remained on edge during the entire trip to the interview site, the prep for the interview itself. There were lights, microphones, lenses everywhere. Sofie and I sat side by side, in matching canvas seats, while a young blond woman in heels and a tailored suit sat across from us, smiling and chatting and trying to put us at ease. A corponation propagandist, of course, the kind Griff used to call an adjournalist, master of phony news. As soon as the link went live, she was all business. Her voice deepened, her eyes riveted us. Worldlink lenses whirred while she did her intro, monitors over her head showing us miniature versions of ourselves. It was hard not to be distracted by our own images, by the realization that whatever we said was about to be beamed worldwide.

  The adjournalist rattled off a slew of questions without waiting for an answer. She asked Sofie how she responded to accusations that her organization was nothing but a Terrarist front. She asked why the Upperworld should make room on its own multi-trillion-dollar starships for Lowerworlders who had done nothing to plan, prepare, or finance the colonization. She asked whether what had happened in New York CITI didn’t prove that Lowerworlders were not to be trusted. She said nothing about the village massacre, and my heart lifted when she didn’t. I knew enough by now about how the news worked to know that the adjournalist was hoping the topic wouldn’t come up.

  She was good, but Sofie was better.

  When the woman finally paused for breath, Sofie jumped in, asking whether the babies who’d been slaughtered in their huts were Terrarists.

  The adjournalist opened her mouth to answer, but Sofie talked right over her. Calmly, with a restrained passion that thrilled me by its nearness, she reviewed the history of Sumati’s movement, the wrongs we were fighting, the ideals we were fighting for. She explained that the Lowerworld would gladly have devoted itself to the colonization had it been allowed—that, in a very real sense, the sweat and blood of its people had been poured into the Upperworld starships in the form of wealth gained at the Lowerworld’s expense. Returning to the unasked question about her village, she admitted that, yes, the Lowerworld had given rise to Terrarists, who had killed wantonly in the misguided belief that further violence could heal the planet’s wounds. But the vast majority of her people, she insisted, were peaceful, and the Lowerworld shouldn’t be made to suffer death and disinheritance for the actions of a few. She defied anyone to portray the movement she headed as a movement of violence when it was, in both its principles and practices, founded in love. When the adjournalist’s eyebrows arched at that answer, Sofie silenced the response I could see forming on the woman’s lips.

  “We have with us today a resident of the Upperworld who has willingly married his fate with our own,” Sofie said. “Perhaps you should ask him what he thinks of the rightness of our cause.”

  The woman turned to me, her perfect teeth fixed in a hungry smile. I got the feeling this was the moment she’d been waiting for, the whole staged event leading up to this point.

  It was the moment I’d been waiting for too.

  “Cameron Newell,” she said. “Son of the Upperworld. Is that what this movement means to you? Did you join it, as Miss Patel insists, for love?”

  My heart thumped so hard I was sure the worldlink lenses would spot it. The word Sofie had used to describe my place in her movement was “married,” not “joined.” But I smiled back—at Sofie, not at her—and responded in what I hoped was a steady voice.

  “I’ve lived in the Lowerworld for months now,” I said. “I’ve seen what it’s really like. And yeah, I guess you could say I’ve fallen in love. But not the way you think. There’s one thing I’ve learned to love more than anything else.”

  “And what is that?” she asked.

  Sofie and I shared a look.

  “Justice,” I said, smiling.

  “Justice,” Sofie agreed, and the adjournalist smiled back, her teeth as white as those of the girl beside me.

  When it was finally over and the lenses shut down, Sofie squeezed my hand and the interviewer smiled again—but a natural smile this time, like I was seeing the person and not the propagandist at long last.

  The flight back to camp was celebratory. Initial projections indicated that we’d been seen by hundreds of millions worldwide. And, thanks to our team’s hacking into the feed, what viewers had seen was the real thing, not the expurgated stories that typically got broadcast in the Upperworld. The interview, it turned out, had been a trick—but a trick orchestrated by Sofie’s team to take control of an Upperworld transmission. Her communications director said it had been the most watched worldcast in history. While he went on and on about the numbers, I savored the memory, the moment Sofie had squeezed my hand.

  Someone on the helicar popped open a bottle, then two, then three, some overly sweet, syrupy stuff that burned bad when it went down and left a glow from my stomach to my fingertips. Sofie laughed throatily, telling me it was rice wine. She shook her hair free from her braid and gaily offered a toast. Her chief bodyguard glowered as she raised the glass, but she ignored him. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, her lips moistened by the drink and her hair spilling over her shoulders. I’d never seen her like this, and the combination
of booze in my belly and her flushed cheeks and the scent of her skin, all on top of the wildly successful interview, made me feel bold and invincible. I wasn’t totally drunk, but I was drunk enough that all the feelings I’d kept tamped down for months bubbled up inside and made their way to the back of my throat, where they sat waiting for an opportunity to spill out. Not much of an opportunity. Just enough.

  My opportunity came when Sofie stood to make another toast and stumbled, falling into my arms. Her smell and warmth and beauty enveloped me, and I whispered in her ear the first thing that came to my dizzy mind.

  “You’re my flower,” I said. “My fragrance.”

  She smiled, disentangling herself from my arms.

  “I would do anything for you,” I whispered before she danced away, purple robe fluttering.

  I followed her. My steps felt like they weighed ten kilos each. I found her in one of the helicar’s private rooms, alone for once, her clutch of advisors celebrating outside. She sat on a bench that looked like a couch. At the sound of my footsteps, she looked up.

  I wasn’t too drunk to stop in shock. Tears stood in her eyes.

  “Cam.” She sniffled, wiped at her cheeks. “You should not enter a lady’s room without knocking.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, starting to close the door and withdraw.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I did not mean that. Stay with me for a minute?”

  I entered, closing the door partway. I wondered whether I’d ever figure out if she was asking a question or if that was just her voice.

  I sat beside her. Her eyes searched mine, wobbling a little. The heat from her oh-so-close body set a fire inside me. The words I’d said on the worldlink seemed to come from another lifetime. The words I’d said to her moments ago sounded both impossibly stupid and incredibly right. I thought of saying them again. I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

  Instead, I leaned toward her, my mouth nearing hers.