Others raised questions and brought up technical points; the discussion continued. As Manda watched her clone siblings and the other teammates, a sour feeling settled into the base of her gut. Once they left, she’d be all alone among the others, not one of whom cared whether she lived or died.
Well, it was too late to change her mind about joining IceFlame now. Even if she’d wanted to.
Gift. I need a gift. That evening after her second-watch work shift, while hurrying down through the colony tunnels from her work station to the Mound, she remembered and reversed her direction. It had to be something valuable. Something with personal meaning.
At her cubby, she picked hurriedly through her few belongings, set in the niches around the small room’s perimeter. Then she spotted her rock collection. Perfect. She’d gathered all sorts of interesting specimens over the years.
Manda picked up a geode she’d found once. Its crystal interior caught the light in many small, rosy prisms. She remembered how when she’d broken the egglike rock open, she’d exclaimed with delight. How could such a rough, ugly exterior hide such inner beauty? She’d spent many a time gazing at it, imagining she had discovered a tiny fairy city in its depths. She loved it.
Then there was her lichened shale. She fingered the pale, grey-green, lacy growth that covered the rock, and bits of lichen and rock flaked off onto her fingers. She rubbed her fingers together, smelled its dust: imagining the rich scent of topsoil the lichen was building, molecule by molecule.
As a child, during a stint helping the herders with their reindeer, Manda had discovered a small outcropping blanketed with the stuff. The lichen growth was a volunteer—not planted by the colonists and not expected. Everyone had gotten excited. It was one of the first indicators that their early terraforming efforts were taking hold. The geologists she’d reported her find to—LuisMichael: Jim, Brian, and Amy’s two older sisters, back when they were still alive—had given her this small piece in thanks.
It was that incident as much as anything else that had filled Manda with a desire to explore this icy moon they inhabited. Though several efforts had been made to explore overland and aerially, the colony’s early efforts to explore the ocean floor had ground to a halt, back when Manda was little, when the JebediahMeriwether twins had died. All kinds of wonders might await them. Even Brimstone-based life.
Manda hesitated, then put the lichened rock back onto her shelf and took the geode.
She didn’t want to lose her lichen. The stuff was all over the place now, and the geode was her rarest and prettiest stone—unusual enough to buy a lot of coup, at the upcoming ceremony. But to Manda, the lichen and the memory it stood for was worth more.
The Mound lay in almost the exact center of the great cavern that held Hydroponics and the bulk of the bamboo forest: the lowest inhabited level of Amaterasu.
The bamboo forest itself grew in a series of dozens of interconnected large chambers, each in different stages of growth or harvest. These crop chambers surrounded a single, vast chamber—the second biggest in all of Amaterasu, after Hydroponics—that had a naturally-formed low hill in its center.
The eco-engineers had worked hard to grow a wild meadow and tree forest there, out of the barren, metal-salt-laden dust of Brimstone. And they’d been reasonably successful. Though marred in a few places by bald or sickly patches, in the main it was a lovely spot: a big, gentle hill shot through with wandering stands of ash and birch and black spruce (albeit dwarfish and spindly compared to the majestic virtual specimens in their Earth archives), and covered with silvery, cold-resistant, drought-resistant, metal- and salt-tolerant grasses, spritzed with pink, gold, and white wildflowers (-resistant, ditto) pollinated by bees and butterflies.
The lights set way overhead created a shadowless twilight—a dim setting, which left enough light to see by but gave the nocturnal animals time to come out of their burrows, to mate and graze and collect seeds. The acoustics were excellent here: bamboo leaves whispered; birds chirped and cats yowled; distant machinery in the hydroponics and machine-shop caverns echoed their arrhythmic, dissonant clanking; the soft lowing and yipping of the domesticated animals in their stables up and down the cavern walls wove a unifying harmony for the other sounds.
In the Mound’s center lay the ceremonial circle where many of the colony’s major fertility and harvest rituals were held. The circle was defined by a ring of carved stalagmites and rocks. She’d been told its design harkened back to some ancient sacred places on Earth. The carvings were geometic patterns, some of them, while others sported an assortment of caricaturish faces.
From the forest’s edge, Manda saw that everyone else from both clones was there: CarliPablo seated on the far end of the circle, and JennaMara, an eightclone, seated on the near side. Farrah and Janice both wore long white gowns, as did Paul and Arlene, and of Janice’s clone, Lawrence’s vat-mate Donald and Janice’s two vat-mates: a man and a woman whose names Manda didn’t know. There must have been a drawing to see who would be the main participants. Manda felt a twinge of gratitude that they had left her out of it. Her role would be minimal.
Teresa held bamboo clavés in her hands and one of Janice’s younger siblings had a multireed flute. Stacks of blankets and large cloths lay around the circle, behind the main participants. Both clones had arranged themselves by age. Manda stepped between the tall stones and crossed over to where her siblings sat. As she passed around the outside of the circle, she overheard Bart and Charles whispering to Derek in excited tones, “Drill eighteen broke through, eleven hours early!” “Fourteen and one are scheduled to hit magma in the next few hours.”
“Excellent,” Derek replied. “Great news.”
Manda pressed her hands on her stomach as another wave of anxiety hit, followed by anger at her weakness. Stop being a wimp. You don’t need them. You don’t need anybody. She just wished it were true.
“Any tremors?”
“A few small ones. Nothing serious so far.” “We’re keeping a close eye on things.”
“Good. Good … .”
She passed behind Janice and Farrah, and then Paul, who spared her a rather curt nod (what had she done to anger him this time?) and sat cross-legged at the end of the line, next to Teresa. Janice was holding Farrah’s hand but looking across at Charlotte, who gazed back at her as if no one else were present. Farrah’s face was stony. Manda thought, That’s not an auspicious start.
At a glance from Arlene, Teresa started a syncopated beat on her clavés. The wooden sticks clack-a-clacked a short, repeating pattern, while the JennaMara flutist played a cheerful little tune. Manda winced. JennaMara apparently didn’t have much native musical ability.
Arlene, taking prime for CarliPablo, and Donald, acting as prime for JennaMara, both stood and came to the center of the circle. Arlene carried a huge, stemmed bowl of mead, and Donald carried a burning taper and a meterlong waterpipe filled with tobacco and cannabis.
Arlene held the cup up. “I—we bless the joining of Janice and Charlotte.” Then she took a sip of the liquor and dabbed at her lips with a long cloth napkin she had draped over her arm. From his seated position near her, Derek mimicked her gestures in miniature, moving his lips in synchrony with her words. Manda was sure he wasn’t conscious of it. None of the others ever were, either. She felt that familiar old pang of isolation.
Donald, an older man with black skin and hair and a cordial gaze, lit the ceremonial herbs and sucked on the pipe till tendrils of smoke curled upward. The air above the water in the bulb filled with smoke. He lifted the pipe. “I—we celebrate this union of JennaMara and CarliPablo.” Then he inhaled deeply. After this, he ground the taper out in the dirt and then exchanged pipe for stemmed bowl with Arlene, as twin streams of smoke trickled from his nose.
“My-our thanks to CarliPablo for this drink,” he said, and took a deep draught of mead from the ceremonial cup. He coughed a bit, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“And my-our thanks to JennaMara for this sm
oke.” Arlene put her lips on the mouth of the waterpipe and inhaled. Then they traded back. Donald brought the pipe of herbs over to CarliPablo while Arlene went to JennaMara with the liquor. Manda watched while Donald handed the pipe to each of her siblings. Her turn came last. Donald gave her a nod as he held out the pipe. She drew a deep breath, and coughed, as the cool, sweetish smoke scoured her throat and bronchia.
Arlene had finished sharing mead with the youngest of JennaMara, adolescent male twins perhaps fifteen seasons in age, who were avoiding meeting anyone’s gaze. Manda guessed they’d never attended a covalence before; they were barely old enough. Children, for obvious reasons, weren’t expected to participate.
Now Arlene came across to Manda and knelt, putting the stemmed bowl of mead to Manda’s lips. Manda took a big swallow, and managed to keep from sputtering as the liquid scorched her throat.
“Thanks,” Arlene whispered, as she dabbed Manda’s lips. Thanks for coming, she meant. The remark only annoyed Manda.
What the hell am I doing here?
If only she’d had the nerve to renege on her promise to Teresa. She didn’t believe in any of this mystic shit. It was a all a big lie. Nobody really cared about anybody. They just wanted her to pretend. Don’t make a scene. Pretend to be like the rest.
The gift exchange came next. Manda presented her geode to the youngest JennaMara vat-twins, who thanked her nervously. One of them gave her a framed photo of a dog, and the other gave her a bamboo boothorn he’d made. She muttered thanks and tucked them into her pockets, but instead of sitting next to the young JennaMara twins, she went back over to her original spot, and ended up next to Teresa, who was chatting with her own JennaMara counterpart.
I’m acting like a nervous adolescent myself, she thought. What’s the big deal? They’re certainty cute enough, and I could probably teach them a thing or two. (Not that she was all that experienced.) But she didn’t get up and go over.
Several more passes were made of liquor and smoke, and Manda was getting dizzy. The music seemed to be getting better. She listened for a moment. Yes. Definitely improving. But the rest of it still infuriated her. People were talking in whispers, laughing. Manda merely sat there, arms folded. The twins were eyeing her. She studiously avoided their gazes—looked instead at the glistening stalactites far overhead, and the bamboo stairways and bridges that conjoined the holes along the walls, along which distant human and animal figures moved.
Bowls of curried ox-steak with bamboo shoots were served with mana bread, and afterward more alcohol and smoke was dispensed. Some sweets went around. Manda relaxed a bit, and chatted with Teresa and Paul, and with the two young men, who had moved over at some point. They seemed nice enough, and eager to please. They made a big deal over the geode and asked her where she’d found it. She told them the story, and they shared anecdotes about their experiences upside.
After a while, Arlene and Donald called for everyone’s attention. Janice and Charlotte came to the center and kissed each other, lingeringly. Everyone whooped and clapped. They looped strips of leather over each other’s wrists. Meanwhile the other active participants stood up and came to the center as well. Everyone was a little drunk or a little high, or both, and their gaits weren’t too steady—except for Farrah, who looked stone-cold sober, and a lot like she was going to explode.
I know just how you feel, Manda thought. But she didn’t, really. She didn’t have a vat-twin to be jealous over, and wasn’t all that angry anymore. Just anxious, and—for some reason—sad.
Arlene joined Farrah’s left wrist to Charlotte’s right with the leather strap, saying, “CarliPablo embraces JennaMara through its member Charlotte. Share you-yourself with each of me-us as you have with one.”
Donald JennaMara joined Janice’s wrist to one of Charlotte’s vat-mates’, the male one. “JennaMara embraces CarliPablo, through its member Janice. Share you-yourself with each of me-us as you have with one.”
Next Arlene gestured at Paul. “Since Janice is a two-mate and Charlotte is a three-mate, Paul has agreed to covex with Martha for CarliPablo.” She joined his left wrist to the right wrist of Charlotte’s female vat-mate, saying, “CarliPablo embraces JennaMara through its member Paul. I-we share ourself with you-you through you-your member Martha.”
The bindings were only ritual, and fell away as Charlotte reached up to kiss Farrah. Manda watched some of the tension leave Farrah’s body as she released herself to Charlotte’s passion. Everyone applauded and laughed. When the kiss ended, Farrah bowed her head, dashing away tears.
With a tender smile, Charlotte put an arm around her, picked up a blanket, and led her away from the circle. Janice watched them go with an expression of relief and approval. Then she kissed her own partner, Charlotte’s triplet brother, while Paul kissed Charlotte’s triplet sister Martha, and both couples got much appreciative applause. They also took blankets and left the circle.
More food, mead, and smokes went around. Manda got woozy. A while later, she found her head in the lap of one of the youngest boys. His twin was stroking her thigh while the first fondled her breast, smiling down at her. A very pretty young man, whose eyes were as dark and friendly as those of Donald. Still, terror lanced her, sharp and hard as a knife blade, dispelling the pleasant ache of desire low in her belly.
Shit.
She sat up and pushed them away, and staggered to her feet. Concerned and confused faces swarmed around her—what’s wrong? are you okay?—as, swearing, she stumbled out of the stone circle and off into the bamboo forest.
Teresa came after her and grabbed her arm.
“You promised!” she said. Her speech was a bit slurred but her gaze was piercing.
“Leave me alone!” Manda threw off her grasp.
“You owe me this.”
“I don’t owe you a fuck with strangers. They aren’t my exo-bond.”
“You don’t have to do anything with them. Nobody made you. But you shouldn’t leave alone like this, before we do the wrap. It’s rude.”
Manda shook her head slowly, confused. She heaved deep breaths, trying to clear her head. Her heart was thumping, striving for her attention. Somewhere off to her left, one of the couples was engaged in lovemaking. Their moans and rustlings made her aware again of the ache throbbing low in her belly.
“I don’t belong here,” Manda said, wiping away tears. “This is hurting me.” She grabbed Teresa’s hand. “Please release me from the promise. Please.”
Teresa glared at her, and snatched her hand away. She stalked back toward the circle, with a “Go, then,” flung over her shoulder. Manda lifted a hand after her, then dropped it. She turned and made her sad and drunken way back to her cubby, where she relieved her unrequited desire with her fingers, thinking of those two lovely young men she couldn’t bring herself to covex with.
She woke in the morning with a slight hangover. The prior night’s events had taken on, mercifully, a dreamlike vagueness. The absence of her clone in the crowded, noisy mess hall at breakfast—they were probably hungover or sleeping in with their lovers or something—anyway, their absence, and the absence of any JennaMaras, made it easy to put it all out of her mind. Besides, she had work to do.
Back at her work station, Manda saw the seismic data she’d been waiting for had come in. She set it aside for the moment, first slipping into the liveface pack and hooking up the leads. Instantly her liveware interface reconfigured itself around her to a higher-resolution, more sensorily based mode.
Her icons floated in the middle distance. She pivoted until she located the dodecahedral commandball from the signaling waldo, gestured to bring it closer, and when it was in range, reached out to touch it; instantly its data exploded into assorted complex shapes that moved to the periphery of her vision. A model of the waldo unfolded around her, as if she were a clear glass version of it, surrounded by the cold, deep, falsecolor sea. Her arms were enfolded in Septimus’s pair of rotary blades, her fingertips were transparent wires that connected to the
key sampling and communications controls, and her feet became glacine connectors to steering, speed, and other controls. She was Manda-Septimus.
First she noted, with a frown of surprise, that both of Septimus’s thermocouples were reading higher than normal this time, not just one. Not much higher. Nothing to call the council about, but there was one other thing: the readouts didn’t appear all that different from usual, but the current’s tug felt just a tad stronger than usual against her-Septimus’s skin. It was nothing her engines couldn’t easily handle, but the two of these factors together could mean that undersea volcanic activity somewhere in the vicinity was creating convective cells of warmer water within the trench. Her heart started beating a little faster.
Easy, Manda; don’t set yourself up for disappointment. Confirm it. Her-Septimus ’s rotors hummed, keeping her-it in place, as she disengaged from the view of the ocean floor and brought up the marine-waldo’s assorted datashapes.
This data was mostly several hours old. Her marine-waldos were hundreds of kilometers away—or more-beneath a kilometer and a half of ice and many kilometers of water. Early during their occupation of Brimstone, the colonists had installed a series of phased-array sonar transponders beneath the ice layer just offshore, and had used them to locate a large, shallow deposit of crude oil. Beneath the crust of ice, about five or so vertical meters of chilly salt water lay atop the continental shelf with its crude oil deposits.
The refinery had long since abandoned the drill hole, since its location hadn’t been ideal for tapping into the reservoir. But the drill hole had been ideal for Manda’s purposes. Three seasons ago, when she’d first started this project, she’d pulled up the sonar transponders, refurbished them, and configured them in a phased array that would relay sonar signals to and from a fleet of marine-waldos. Manda’s commands were processed by the colony computers and broadcast via radio to an exploratory drill site near the colony’s petroleum refinery, which squatted in a valley three hundred kilometers east of Amaterasu, near the mouth of a glacier on the larger of Brimstone’s two major continents, Arcas. It was a crude setup, compared to some of the elaborate computational links she had used with other explorer waldos in the past, but it worked.
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