“I know, right?” She smiled. “I forget sometimes where we are. It’s so… real, you know?”
He nodded. “I’m still not used to that.” He pointed up at the overarching sky. “Okay, so what do I do?”
She released the nozzle from the side of her tank. “Each one of these contains a biological soup that’s engineered to break down the rock into usable soil. We work around the world, one circuit at a time, in a swath about thirty meters wide. Like so.” She set a proximate meter on her belt, started at the edge of the grass, and walked off toward the distant peaks, spraying the agent across the rocks. It hissed when it hit the surface, and Aaron imagined it burrowing down into his own skin.
“Is it dangerous?”
She shook her head. “It’s only hungry for carbonaceous rock.” Where she had sprayed the ground, the rock was already taking on a gray color, pitted as if with acid. “When you find a bigger rock, use the poker to turn it over and get the underside too.” She demonstrated, neatly flicking over a flat rock. “It helps the agent penetrate.”
Aaron suppressed the dirty thoughts that comment elicited. He was so ten years old sometimes.
When she reached thirty meters, she turned and came back, spraying the ground along the way. “Now you try it.” She handed him the meter.
He set it and stepped out onto the rocky ground. It was treacherous. He made his way carefully out across the bleak landscape, spraying as he went.
Once an errant breeze blew some of the mist onto his exposed arm, but it dried almost immediately. He brushed it off with the back of his hand and stared suspiciously at the skin. There seemed to be no damage.
“Told you,” Keera called.
Aaron stuck his tongue out at her.
He spent the next hour spraying down the patch she assigned to him. He wasn’t nearly as practiced, but he thought he’d done a decent enough job by the time he returned to the grassy verge. He looked out at his handiwork. “What happens next?”
“The agent digests the rock, breaking it down into topsoil. Given time, it will work its way down until it builds a soil base about twenty feet deep. Then it’s programmed to expire.”
“Wouldn’t want it eating a hole through the bottom of the world!”
“No, that wouldn’t be good. It loses effectiveness after a short while. Hey, you got a little on your face.” She reached up to brush it off.
“Thanks,” he said awkwardly, aware suddenly, intensely, of her physical closeness. She must have felt it too.
“Well, you seem to have the hang of it.” She turned away abruptly.
“Wait… what happens next?”
She looked flustered. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The ground—what happens after it’s turned into topsoil?”
“Ah.” Her shoulders relaxed visibly. “The grass will grow out onto it, and then some of the other native plants. In some areas another crew will come along and plant something specific… an orchard or a new plant sample.”
He nodded. “It’s amazing,” he said, barely aware he was repeating himself.
“Well, go to it. We’ll stop at nightfall, or when the rain comes.” She looked back once as she walked away and then turned and left him staring after her, his imagination afire with possibilities.
THE STORM closed in around her like a living thing, but Ana didn’t care. She had to get away from that hateful thing at the North Pole.
That she was inside the belly of the beast she was fleeing didn’t factor into her thinking at all—logic wasn’t operative here. She was driven by shame and anger and primal fear.
Shame at what she had done that had ultimately led to Jackson Hammond’s death.
Anger that the world-mind, which she had saved and brought to this place, would treat her with such biting disdain.
And fear of what might happen next.
The sky darkened as the cloud of light was broken up by the storm. The wind buffeted her around through banks and streamers of cloud, and soon the rain started up in earnest as the accumulated moisture in the air reached saturation.
She could see little beyond the menacingly glowing clouds, and had no choice but to continue on, hoping she could outrun the worst of the storm.
It dawned on her that this had been a truly stupid idea.
The first lightning bolt took her by surprise, streaking across the sky before her like a massive short circuit, rendering a wide swath of the glowing pollen that permeated the dark clouds.
Ana started to panic. She had to get down out of this storm or she’d get herself electrocuted.
Another bolt passed so closely behind her that she could smell the ozone.
She picked a direction that felt like down and dove into the roiling clouds.
The rain grew stronger, and the wind shoved her hard sideways. She struggled to regain her equilibrium, feeling her weight increase. She must be getting closer to the ground.
At last she broke out of the cloud cover, although the driving rain continued. At the same time, her chute deployed, and she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Then there was a flash of light and nothing more.
Chapter Eight: Jackson
AARON, KEERA, and her crew managed another hour or so of work treating the soil before the storm blew in from the North Pole. It started slowly, a light wind teasing his hair, a patch of darkness in the distance in the strange circular sky.
As the wind picked up, Keera called a halt to the work, gathering everyone to stow their tools in a portable carryall that they tied down just under the tree line, protected somewhat from the wind.
Aaron worked side by side with Keera, well aware of her proximity. She was like no one he had ever met before—brash, strong, with a fire in her eyes that immediately attracted him. “You can bunk with me to wait out the storm,” she shouted as they finished tying things down.
By then the wind had picked up, and she had to shout to be heard over it.
“What about Devon?”
She laughed. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” She pointed, and he followed her glance. Devon was chatting with one of the other team members. “He and Rafe have an understanding.”
He grinned. “Fair enough. Lead on.”
As the sky dimmed, she pulled them back into the trees. They followed a well compacted footpath that led several hundred meters into the forest. For it really was a forest here—wild and unmanicured, unlike the even rows of the orchards they had passed through earlier in the day.
They left the path and soon came to a small tent just big enough for two people kneeling. She opened the flaps, let him inside, and sealed the tent from the weather outdoors.
A soft glow came on inside, seeming to emanate from the fabric itself. She handed him a pillow, and they sat down opposite each other in the small space. “I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer you.” She handed him a cup and filled it with water out of a metal canteen. “Living up here is a little like going back in time. They want us to be self-sufficient, just in case.”
“In case of what?” he asked.
“In case we ever get cut off from Earth.” She stared at him over the rim of the cup as she sipped the water. “Tensions are worse than ever between the Chinese states and the NAU.”
“Oh come on, things aren’t that bad down there.” Even as he said it, he wondered. Wars were breaking out around the world, basic resources were tight, and the Heat meant there was less arable land to go around every year as the oceans continued to rise.
“My family lives in Ireland.” She set down the cup. “My grandmother tells me stories of the way things used to be, back when Ireland had a northern climate. Did you know that Dublin didn’t always have palm trees? That there was a time when a warm, sunny day was a rarity up north, before reunification?”
He nodded. “My mom tells me stories about those days too. Ones that were passed down from her father. He was from Mexico City. It was hot and dry back then, but now they get mo
re rain than some places in California.”
As if he had conjured it up from thin air, the raindrops began to fall on the roof of the tent, at first just a light patter, quickly ramping up to a full-scale assault. His eyes widened at the sound, and Keera laughed at him. “This place does take some getting used to.”
“You’re telling me. I just can’t get my head around the fact that we’re millions of miles away from Earth, in a hollowed-out asteroid, hiding from a rainstorm.”
“I know, right? Well, we do have some time to kill.” She shifted forward, her lips meeting his.
She smelled like an earth goddess, full of warmth and life.
She was beautiful, they were all alone, and he needed a little “normal.”
Or something.
He didn’t resist.
AFTERWARD THEY lay together as the rain still beat insistently on the fabric of the tent.
He was utterly relaxed, spent. He turned toward her, and she grinned at him. “That was amazing.”
“Not bad.”
He stuck his tongue out at her again. It was kind of their thing. “How long will the rain last?”
“Usually three to four hours.” She turned to look at him, and her mouth curled up in a wicked smile. “I have an idea. Come on!” She opened the tent flaps and pulled him outside, while he protested his lack of clothes. “Let the rain wash you clean.” She shook her hair out under the downpour.
The water was coming down in thick sheets, obscuring even the nearest of the trees. He let it cascade over his body. It was primal, so different from an ionic shower.
He pulled Keera to him and kissed her hungrily, and they dropped to the wet earth, entwined.
His hands touched the ground, and everything vanished.
ANA WOKE in darkness. The storm seemed to have passed. She looked around—the world was gray and formless.
She tried to sit up, and a searing pain arched up her spine. She gritted her teeth until the pain settled down to a dull ache.
She set about exploring her surroundings carefully with her hands. She lay upon something smooth and padded. After a while, she worked out that it was her glider pack. It had been broken beneath her when she hit the ground, but she hoped that the rescue beacon was still working.
She found the button Colin had shown her and pressed it, but the light didn’t come on. No way to tell.
She’d been a fool to run out into the storm like that. Now here she was, all alone, God knows where. She felt the terrain around her with her hands. She seemed to have landed in a ditch or gully of some sort. She was lucky the storm hadn’t washed her away while she was out. The surfaces around her were hard and sharp and rose on either side of her at least as far as she could reach from her supine position.
Next she performed a careful inventory of her body. Her head seemed fine; she could feel a few cuts and abrasions on her arms and legs, but there was no wetness to indicate bleeding.
She twisted slowly one direction, then the other. Nothing felt out of place inside, although it was hard to be certain.
For the moment, her worst affliction seemed to be her spine.
She wiggled her toes experimentally. They all still worked. One less thing to worry about.
She tried to get up again and slowly, painfully managed to reach a sitting position. She breathed heavily after the effort. She was not going to climb out of here on her own anytime soon.
Her eyes adjusted. There was a dim light in the ravine. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but she could finally see where she was, at least the immediate vicinity. She sat in a deep cleft in the ground, propped up between two walls, above a pool of water. At least she should be able to get something to drink.
The parachute that had slowed her fall was crumpled nearby, shocking yellow against the black shale around her. Above, the walls towered out of sight.
She closed her eyes, pushing down the sudden upwelling of panic. I can do this.
She would figure her way out of her situation, or they would come and find her. Thinking otherwise was not an option.
COLIN FLEW through the heart of the storm, barely managing to remain airborne, drawing on his years of experience flying through this new sky.
He doubted Ana would have been able to avoid being forced down in such an unusually strong guster. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought that Lex was taking out her wrath on the good doctor.
The storm blew itself out a few minutes before he arrived at the South Pole. He alighted and pulled off his wings, practically falling down the stairs to the control center. “Any sign of the doctor?” he asked Gianna, the station master on duty.
“Sorry, sir, not yet.” She frowned. Twenty years his junior, she was one of the newer crop of recruits from Earth. “The storm scrambled some of our sensors. It’ll take a few moments for them to reboot.”
He paced back and forth, going over the whole thing in his head. Who knew Lex would unload on the poor doctor like that? The world-mind had been holding a grudge all these years…. What else was locked away in that immense mind of hers? Was she dangerous to anyone else? To the colony?
Not only that. He swore he’d seen Jackson Hammond’s face for just a moment. Ghosts of the Dressler, indeed.
“How’s it coming?” he asked impatiently.
“We should be back up in three, two, one… now.” She stared at her screen. “Sorry, Director, there’s no signal.”
Dammit, Doc, where are you?
AARON FELT as though he was falling, like the world had collapsed beneath him and flung him into the darkest pit of space. He flailed about for a moment, trying to find something, anything to grab on to. At last he gave up and just let himself fall.
He realized two things.
One, he could breathe, so this was definitely not outer space.
Two, he wasn’t falling. At least he didn’t think so.
He had no frame of reference to tell if this was true. The darkness around him was absolute, but it didn’t feel like falling. It was like dipping. Like what had happened to him back on the ridge.
As he thought about it, the blackness lessened, almost imperceptibly at first. A faint glow appeared below him, spreading out to slowly push back the inky dark, rendering it slate gray, and then filtering strands of gold through it.
Aaron was descending now—and the golden glow resolved itself into a giant tree.
He stared at it, virtual mouth agape. He’d never seen a data form like this before.
Its branches were like spun gold, tipped with glowing yellow and green leaves. He dropped down through them, and they parted to allow his passage with a parchment rustling.
Soon he settled down onto the rocky surface below where the tree was rooted.
Aaron reached out to touch the golden bark. It was warm, and he could “feel” the data being shunted back and forth inside.
It was of an order of magnitude greater than the station-mind back on Transfer Station.
He looked up in wonder. It was like the dream he’d had before, when he’d seen his father, but with all the medieval pageantry stripped away.
“It’s about time you came back,” a man’s voice said behind him.
He spun around, startled. He knew that voice. “Dad? It really is you?”
His father smiled. This time he looked like Aaron remembered him, without the armor. “Let’s leave that question for another time. It gets into some thorny philosophical areas I’m not altogether comfortable with.”
Aaron threw himself into his father’s arms, laughing. “I don’t care,” he said as his father embraced him back. “I was hoping to find the truth about what they did to you. I never expected this.”
“What who did to me?” His father held him out at arm’s length. He looked confused.
“The doctor and the captain. The whole cover story. They said you took your own life, to save the seedling, but I know it can’t be true. You’d never… you couldn’t….” He was babbling, but he di
dn’t know how to stop.
“Calm down, mijo.” Jackson smiled, brushing a hand through his son’s hair. “You may be a full-grown man, but you’re still my little boy. Come on.” He gestured, and the world lit up around them.
They stood beneath the tree inside a stone tower. At one end, a tall red door beckoned them outside into the sunlight.
“Walk with me.” They strode out into the world, where they were surrounded by the bowl of a wide grassy valley; trees crowded the hillsides all around.
“This feels so real,” Aaron said wonderingly. “Is it?”
“No, but it makes things easier for people like us.” They walked on a well-beaten path along a bubbling creek. “Aaron, the fungus that killed the Dressler was a mistake. One the doctor made—though I didn’t realize that until much later—but still, a mistake. It wasn’t something done out of malice.”
The air smelled clean and fresh. Aaron took a deep breath. He had been certain for so long that Dr. Anatov had killed his father, and yet…. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”
As they walked, Jackson related what had befallen the Dressler as the infection had steadily eaten away at her systems. The fear he’d felt as the ship started to crumble around them. How they had tried to fight it, and what he had done to save the ship-mind.
The valley never seemed to change, and yet they continued on for what felt like an hour.
Jackson told Aaron how he had met the ship-mind, Lex, and how he had come to view her as a child of God, a creation as divine and right as his own sons.
His voice faltered. “In the end… in the end, it became clear to me why I was there. What I had to do to save Lex and the others in the crew. Even though it meant leaving you boys and Glory behind.” They’d stopped under a copse of trees. The wind blew through them, making a rushing sound like water.
“But it was all her fault.” He still wasn’t convinced. “She’s the one who brought the fungus onto the ship. She’s the one who hid her actions and put all the blame on you.”
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