Innocently Viktor said, “Can hear their inner thoughts?”
Jordin blinked. “Those may be the plasma waves we’re getting. Can’t understand them, though.”
Julia said, “Thought isn’t like singing, I suppose?”
Jordin spread his hands. “Guess not—our thoughts aren’t, right? Not mine, anyway.” This got a laugh. He went on, “Maybe the stuff we don’t understand is leakage. From whoever is sending the talk. I dunno.” Vigorous head shake.
“Amazing,” Julia said. “We’ll have to integrate our data with yours, through Wiseguy.”
Shanna let out her breath. It was going to be hard to break in on all this, but she had to get some things straight. “Say, let’s take a break, gang. How about a tour of your ship?”
This was fun, especially watching the ’bots working near the drive systems. Robotics plus nukes were the future.
Cameras tracked the impromptu tour everywhere; the Consortium would wring every dime out of the footage. After an hour of this, when she and Julia were out of view, Shanna said, “You and I have some stuff to discuss. Don’t want to bore everybody. Can we take it into another cabin?”
“We call them rooms,” Julia said slowly. “Seems better, more homey. Uh, of course, let’s.”
They slipped away with a nod to Viktor, who was leading the tour, holding forth as host. Julia led the way through a circular hatch rimmed by pale emerald emergency phosphors.
Shanna followed briskly. They came into a compact compartment she assumed was Julia’s office, though no adornment of the inward-sloping faux-mahogany walls testified to this. There were contour chairs made of something pale effervescent blue and so thin that when she lifted it the 0.38 g field to face Julia, Shanna flung it toward the ceiling—and, startled, let the revolving chair spin with classical slowness into the corner. “Uhhhhh—oops.” She retrieved the chair with one quick swoop of her left arm, flicked on the magnetic anchors, sat—
And wondered how to start. She had fretted for weeks about this moment, but now, actually in Julia’s presence, she marveled. The years had lined that face, but it was still the one Shanna had on her dorm room wall in college. This woman had changed space travel, revolutionized biological studies. Julia didn’t just take part in the first manned mission past the moon but stayed there and made a home, back when astronauts were still hopping up and down from space like it was hot water they couldn’t stand to stay in. Shanna swallowed, and set aside her hero-worship attitude toward Julia. Face it—you want to be like her, the benchmark of greatness. Which means you have to keep hold of your results out here, not let the media feature the Mars Couple every other minute…
The absurd chair gymnastics seemed to break the ice between them. Unplanned, but who knew what the unconscious could do? Shanna had learned to go with the flow of events and surf on it when she could. It was the only wisdom she could pretend to herself that she had actually discovered, instead of just reading about, but maybe it was enough. Anyway—“Let’s talk as captains, eh?”
“I’m actually not captain,” Julia said.
“What? Earthside—”
“I’m in charge of scientific matters. Viktor’s Captain, but he and I are married, so we have split the duties. That’s our style.”
“That’s completely contrary to—”
“Chain of command, I know. We cut a deal with Earthside. Whatever they want to call it, fine.”
Shanna kept her face as impassive as a firm wall against getting irked and losing it. “Because you’re famous, you think you can abuse—”
“Use, not abuse.” Julia leaned on the slim black poly table between them. “Having the Axelrod name must’ve been useful in keeping your captaincy, eh?”
“That was a little matter—”
“Look, we’re 6 billion klicks from Earthside regulations—”
“And you and Viktor,” Shanna spat back, “the oldest crew in the astronaut corps, you’re going to be in charge?”
“Not at all,” Julia said mildly. “Experience does count, seniority might matter—but we have two ships, so we have two captains. As we’re all on the same scientific expedition, we have to agree on methods, results, risks. Viktor and I have more experience than you—”
“On Mars, which is an oven compared with Pluto. Why, we’ve had telepresence crawlers freeze right into the regolith, first day out! Took steam piped from the ship to get it free. I’ve had a lot more experience—”
“Than we have at superlow temperatures, yes.” Julia’s eyes narrowed, her mouth twisted wryly. “But the biggest problem out here, the reason for the gigabucks spent to put us here at top speed, is the bow shock.”
“If it’s a threat.” Shanna’s words rapped out. “Earthside weather hasn’t shown any changes—except for the global warming, of course—even though the shock wall has gone from 100 AU to 42 AU in thirty-some years.”
“I know the data, for goodness’ sake! But a hell of a lot of numerical simulations show big effects in the offing. The molecular hydrogen that’s leaking into the inner solar system, it’ll build up and start reacting with the free oxygen in our upper atmosphere.”
“And make water, big deal. Nobody knows—”
“Plenty of energy yield there, that’s the point. Heat up the upper mesosphere, and that drives big changes below. Screws up the stratosphere temperature profile, and pretty quick that heat moves down toward the business end, where our weather gets made.”
Shanna sniffed, nose turned up. “I see where you’re going with this. We should be looking mostly at the shock edge, find out what’s driving it. But Pluto is key here. That’s what my, our discoveries show. Something’s running all this, and it isn’t stupid.”
“Nobody said the problem wasn’t interconnected.”
“This isn’t about dumb weather!” Shanna tossed her head back, her hair cascading slowly in the low gravity.
“Okay, smart weather, then. Point is, the zand are pretty interesting. You were lucky to have stumbled into first contact with a self-aware species.”
Shanna felt her defensive walls come up. “Not stumbled—more like ferreted out,” she shot back. “Some people thought I was just imagining the whole thing, that I was faking the data, even.”
“To be sure. The early criticism was unwarranted, but that’s often what you’ll get from Earthside. A lot of second-guessing and tall-poppy cutting.”
“Huh? I don’t get it.” Shanna looked perplexed.
“Aussie slang. Grow into a tall poppy, people slice you off, whittle you down to size. Put another way, the Greeks felt their gods punished excessive hubris. It’s the same thing.”
“Oh, I see. Hm. Never thought of it that way.”
“It helps not to take the automatic criticism personally. Save that for the important objections. The trick is to tell them apart.”
Shanna felt some of her anger ebbing away. In her defense against coming across as a hero-worshiper she’d forgotten that Julia had endured decades of scrutiny and bad-mouthing. Julia pressed on. “But we’re moving beyond the zand, now, to contact with the movers and shakers out here—that’s the main event. And if I may offer a bit of advice on the zand, you have to get over pretty fast your claim of exclusivity. You don’t own the zand just because you discovered them. Hundreds of scientists Earthside are now reworking their research agendas to focus on the ecology of Pluto. No, make that thousands. Not to mention all the ink that will be wasted by the ‘What does it all mean?’ crowd.”
“You want to have a crack at them?” Shanna resented the rebuke.
“Look.” Julia sat back, shaking her head. “We can’t start out like this, with a fight. We cooperate out here or we die.”
Shanna nodded, thinking furiously for a way around this woman, to hold her own. Go crying to Earthside? Not again. Try to marginalize her in future? Hard to do, on another ship. Okay, put that aside for now, but keep looking for an advantage. “Okay.”
“I know Axel—sorry, your fat
her—spoke with you about our taking some Darksiders back with us.”
“Hey, ‘Axelrod’ is fine. I didn’t see him much as a child.” She made a wry face. “Yeah, I know he wants them. I even agreed to deliver some, if we can.” She felt suddenly drained. Time to end this conversation.
Julia sat, unmoving. Shanna made herself smile slightly. Bad beginning. She looks tired. My turn to try to lighten this up. “Hey, my father thinks we’re both bad girls.”
Julia made a small, thin smile. “We are, no doubt. Maybe we’re both a bit, how to say, heavy-handed? One thing you learn as captain is that there are very few problems that can’t be helped by orders ending with ‘or die.’”
Shanna sighed. “I discovered that myself. My crew is irritated with me.”
Julia studied her. “You’ve been on duty too long. You’re worn down.”
Shanna’s eyes flashed. “Uh-uh. I and my crew are as fit for service as anybody.”
“I’m sure,” Julia said stiffly, getting up. “Look, you and I haven’t exactly hit it off—”
“I’ll say!”
“—but let’s keep it to ourselves.”
“Right. Professional.” She cocked a wry smile. “I guess this day was a total waste of makeup.”
This made Julia smile faintly, grudgingly. “It wasn’t wasted on my crew, believe me. The guys have had only two women to look at for a year, me and Veronique.”
“Same on Proserpina, me and Mary Kay, only it’s been years.”
“Not easy, working in tight quarters. The hormones get going.”
“Sure do, and not just among the men.”
“Ha!—I’ll say. Luckily I have Viktor.”
“Yes, a husband. I neglected that point before shipping out.”
Julia smiled without mirth. “You may not know this ancient history, but our being married was a, shall we say, ‘condition of employment.’ Marry or be replaced.”
“Huh? That’s Victorian.”
“They felt that an unmarried woman couldn’t go into space for years with three men.”
“Who? The Consortium?”
“No, Axelrod—your father.”
Shanna opened her mouth, closed it. The silence stretched. Julia said softly, “Luckily it’s worked out terrifically. We made it alone on Mars for two years without killing each other.”
Shanna just stared.
Julia looked tentative, half turned, then looked back. “A piece of advice…”
“In dealing with the men?”
“Yes, and not just for the men.” A thin smile. “Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.”
5.
STRANGE SYMPHONY
JULIA WAS GLAD to see them go.
She had thought that she would be very glad to see fresh faces, but they wore out their welcome in a day.
Maybe she was getting too old for this spacer stuff. Or maybe her diplomatic skills were wearing thin. Had that been behind the trouble with Praknor? Anyway, the Shanna woman was abrasive, self-obsessed, smug—and those were her good points. Julia suspected that in a pinch the woman might also be careless, the one sin reality never forgave.
The first hour had told the tale. Of course, they had more techy discussions, crews getting to know each other, all aware of the collaboration to come. But the edgy distance between herself and Shanna had been an undercurrent beneath every moment. Everybody felt it, but thank God, didn’t talk about it. Until they were gone.
“You need rest,” Viktor said flatly when the lock clanged down.
“Yes, sir, Cap’n, sir.”
“Really.”
“Point taken. That Shanna really wore me out. The way she tosses her hair back, showing off—arrggh! That’s always irked me. Worse than dealing with that Praknor—hey, think it’s a generational thing?”
“Hope not. Am not ready to be ‘old fuddy-duddy generation.’”
She looked at Viktor appraisingly. “I’d choose your old fuddy-duddy over any young guy.”
“According to Praknor, many women Earthside agree with you.”
“Ah, the sperm king!” She laughed and collapsed into a lounger. The logistics and tech issues had dominated everything, as one would expect of astronauts. But somehow all the time she was seeing their ship anew, through the others’ eyes. They thought it wonderful, ornate, opulent compared with their fission-driven craft. Fat cats of High Flyer. Well, fair enough—fusion had come available at just the right time to make High Flyer a whole step up, and it showed. A great way to sail into the abyss, indeed.
High Flyer’s designers hadn’t much consulted any of the future crew about interior design—it had all been done on the hustle—so it reflected Earthside’s latest notions. Appliances and even furniture looked as though they had grown there—ductile, rounded, even drippy as if recently melted. The style was called blobjects, and this look made them seem organic, natural.
But, in fact, they were the opposite, stuffed with smart chips that processed data without letup. If a crew member was carrying a virus—no medcheck caught all of them—High Flyer wanted to know it. If you had fallen asleep in the common room and were about to miss your watch, the room noticed and High Flyer beeped you awake. Even in the stringy little microgravity “beds” at the axis for low-grav sleep, they could mommy you to death, if you let them.
Like many of Earthside’s cities, the “smart ship” embraced its inhabitants, keeping tabs and worrying over health, safety, supply and demand of air, moisture, heat, power, the works. She had found it weirdly claustrophobic at first and for weeks did not sleep well, feeling that some thing was watching. Then as they flew at great speed into cold, dark spaces with no humanizing glimmer of promising light, High Flyer seemed to become warm, comforting, restful. Home. Which was the idea of her designers all along.
“The Vid Kids hauled off their stuff,” Veronique reported briskly. She was trim but managed to have an Earth Mother persona, a real trick in the astronaut corps. She was the crew comic, too, hearty when all the rest were withdrawn. Valuable beyond measure, on a long mission.
Viktor nodded. They had labeled the Proserpina crew with that name because they had anxiously asked for the latest vids the High Flyer might have brought—indeed, it was a big part of the “mail” they’d asked for from Earthside.
“Maybe they don’t like their own company too much by now,” Viktor said with a wry eyebrow lifted.
“How long have they been gone?” Veronique asked.
“Two years, five months,” Julia supplied. “Time wears out the best of friends. Be grateful we’re riding a fusion torch, not a fission one.”
“They also tried out the smart-ship functions,” Veronique said, stabbing at the air irritably. “One of them I found ordering a martini from ship’s stores!”
“I know, I came in after you stormed out,” Julia said wanly. “And ship was delivering, too. I never thought to ask before.”
Veronique said sharply, “You should’ve protested! Hospitality is one thing, but—”
“Yes, is waste of ship time and resources,” Viktor said mildly. “But is diplomacy here, too.”
Veronique wasn’t buying this, Julia could tell. She was a brilliant all-round type, good at six different skill sets, but a bit wearing when she got on a cause. Viktor started speaking in his mild, calming manner, and she left that job to the resident expert. Julia needed to get away from them all. Far away.
Decades of Mars duty had taught her to create her own privacy. Nothing like cramped quarters to concentrate the mind! She had learned to disappear within herself, walling out sounds and smells and vibrations, to create a still, silent space where she could live, rest, think. In the continual noise of the hab she had learned to hear well, diagnosing the ship’s vibrations. But just as well, she knew how to listen carefully, or to deliberately not hear. An essential skill, taking years of daily practice to master.
Living in space created rituals and customs, even taboos, to keep buffers
between people. This extended even to language, allowing her to politely avoid any question she didn’t want to answer.
So she had insisted on this cabin artfully crafted of paper walls and tatami mats and small, delicate decorations. Simplicity made it easy to stay within her mass limit. And illusion helped. If it was high-resolution enough, even knowing that a view was phony did not rob it of its effect.
She sat cross-legged.
Watching a sunset on a personal wall screen was perfect for this. Listening to the interior rain—the fall of vapor sheets on each wall, images playing on their thin surfaces—brought delicate splashes into her concentration…and the present vanished.
The simple thatched hut sat on thick hardwood pylons above a sweep of immaculate white sand. Maples surrounded it, and she approached it on stepping-stones so perfectly set in the moss that they seemed to have grown there. On the veranda were sitting cushions, for seldom would anyone want to sit inside, in the single room of hewn beams and rustic screens. This ceremonial teahouse was for tea and thought alone.
All hers for now. She shared it only with Hiroshi Okada, and he was on ’bot duty. Crew needed their retreats, and Julia had in the long decades on Mars come to understand well the Japanese cultural way of dealing with an ever-pressing crowd you had to get along with. Getting away was the only strategy. She and Hiroshi had pooled their allotted ship space in this way.
She rose and entered the massless retreat she had fashioned herself—the essentials of a classic garden: stone, water, bridge, pavilion. They all hung in the spaces of her own private place. Only visual, but still telling, restful.
It was a cylindrical volume of falling mists, each a thin translucent sheet that descended in the light air as holographic projections played on its surface. A few feet away the pleasant moisture tingled in the nose, and the images framed the room into the Harmonies Garden of Wu Xi, a classic spiritual retreat. Cinnamon camphor trees perfumed the air. A tinkling waterfall splashed on worn stones. She sat in lotus position on a tatami mat and watched the cascading stream leap over convoluted limestone. The walls had curious cylindrical holes that had been worked by flows millions of years ago.
The Sunborn Page 23