Children of the Divide
Page 4
“Well they certainly pad all the right places.”
“Hello? Your husband is sitting right here!”
“And he’s dead sexy,” Theresa cooed. “For a fifty-two year-old.”
“Oh God, I’ve hit ‘qualified’ age.”
“Sweetie, you hit qualified age about seven years ago. Which is a lot longer than most men manage, so be proud of yourself.”
“I do try,” Benson said, then fell quiet again.
“Hey,” Theresa pressed, “you’re tuning me out again. What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something. It’s not like you to forget appointments, especially not when Benexx is involved… well, usually.”
“Sorry. I’ve just been distracted.”
Theresa reached across the pod and lightly rested her hand on his knee. “You’re not just distracted. You’ve been distant. I hoped that zer summer with Kexx and Sakiko would give you enough time to look forward to seeing zer again, but–”
“No, it’s not that at all. I miss zer terribly. You know that.”
She leaned in and took his hand in hers. Her hands had lost a lot of their youthful softness, hardened and creased by a law enforcement career now entering its third decade. But to him, they’d always be velvet.
“Then what is it, Bryan? Because I still can’t read your mind, even with the plants.”
“Benexx and I have…” Benson paused, afraid of what he was going to say. Afraid that putting it into words would somehow cement it into reality. “…have been growing apart. I’ve tried to fight it, but she, excuse me, ze keeps pushing me further away. We can’t agree on anything lately. It feels like I’m losing zer to something.”
Theresa squeezed his hand. “God, Bryan, I love you so much, but you’re an idiot.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I’m serious. Ze’s a teenager, Bryan. How well did you get along with your father when you were a teenager?”
“That’s different,” Benson said. “Fathers and sons always have a hard time dealing with each other through adolescence.”
“And you think mothers and daughters don’t?” Theresa said, barely suppressing a laugh. “My mother and I nearly killed each other.”
“But ze’s not fighting with you.”
She squeezed his forearm. “Bryan, I know you’ve tried really, really hard to treat zer like an Atlantian child, but I know you think of Benexx as your daughter. I do too, even if I hide it better. But ze’s not a girl, and the expectations you have for what your relationship with zer should be are screwing up your ability to process what it is.”
“That’s not it.”
“No?”
“No, well, maybe some of it, but not all. I just miss…”
“Being zer hero.” Theresa smiled warmly. “Sorry sweetie, but that happens to everyone eventually. Recognizing that your parents aren’t infallible or indestructible is part of growing up for every kid. So is rebelling against stuffy old mom and dad, otherwise they’d never leave the damned house. I have a feeling it’s just as true with Atlantians and us. But I don’t know. Talk to Kexx, ask zer if Atlantian kids are supposed to become insufferable little pricks around fifteen.”
“Let’s hope not.” Benson nodded out the window at the last of the makeshift housing units, lean-tos, and even traditionally-built Atlantian mudstone buildings made by those immigrants with the skills who didn’t feel like waiting around for the construction robots to catch up. “Otherwise, we’re going to have real problems.”
Theresa shivered. “Don’t remind me. I already have nightmares about what this place is going to look like in another couple years.”
Among those living in the Native Quarter, almost eighty percent were younger than twenty, most of those having been born right here after the first wave of bearer immigration fifteen years ago. And thanks to the Atlantians’ unusual lifecycle, it would be another eight to ten years before the first of them started transitioning to the elder gender.
An entire generation of adolescents coming of age in an alien city with no one around to mate with. It was a demographic time-bomb no one was talking about, but Benson knew it was already ticking.
But, it wasn’t his problem anymore. He’d been out of the law enforcement game for a very long time. This was Theresa’s wheelhouse. Benson only had to worry about one unruly Atlantian teenager.
The pod rolled gently to a stop at the small terminal building at the edge of the airstrip. To the north, a large, utilitarian hangar had been erected to service the growing fleet of passenger jets and to shield them from the occasional severe weather that the long summers tended to whip up.
The doors rotated open and Benson held Theresa’s hand as she stepped out. The pod reversed out of the terminal and accelerated back towards the city just as the airliner’s wheels touched down on the tarmac, throwing out little swirls of blue smoke.
The pudgy blended-wing craft slowed rapidly and coasted to the end of the runway, then rolled down the smaller taxiway to one of the three waiting terminals. A small crowd of people assembled near the door, either waiting to pick up returning friends or waiting to get on the plane before it turned around for the return trip. A security guard waiting by the jetway recognized Benson and Theresa and waved them through. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t have done that, but Theresa was unlikely to complain.
Benson psyched himself up for the reunion. He put on a smile that was at least seventy percent genuine and tried to ignore the other thirty.
“There ze is,” Theresa said, pointing down the jetway. Benexx, a large wheeled bag rolling along behind zer, saw them and walked over. Zer skin seemed a little darker from the sun, although with Atlantians’ constantly shifting chromatophores, it was hard to tell a sun tan from a foul mood. The finely braided bracelets and choker, however, were new. Tiny volcanic glass beads and the iridescent shells of as-yet unnamed sea creatures adorned zer wrists and neck. New acquisitions from G’tel’s constantly expanding bazars.
Ze embraced zer mother in a tight hug.
“Welcome home, sweetie,” Theresa said.
“Hi mom.” Benexx looked over Theresa’s shoulder at Benson’s smiling face. “Dad,” ze said, cool and non-commital.
“Hello pumpkin.” Benson held his arms open to offer a hug, working hard to keep the thin veneer of his smile from cracking under the weight of his child’s chilly indifference.
“I’m tired,” Benexx said, suddenly bored. “Let’s go home.” Ze let go of Theresa, then stalked away towards the light rail station and hailed a pod.
“Well,” Theresa said, “That could have gone worse.”
“How? If ze’d shot me?” Benson asked.
“Yeah.” Theresa bobbed her head. “That’s one way.”
Four
“Ah. Flight, repeat your last, please,” Jian said anxiously.
“Atlantis, your mission objectives have changed. You are to touch down and aid the harvester techs in conducting an initial survey of the anomaly before reporting back.”
“Flight, we’re not really trained for that kind of assignment,” Jian said.
“The order comes from Ark Actual directly.”
“Well then put Ark Actual on the line,” Jian said, hoping his annoyance masked his apprehension.
The line clicked over a moment later. “This is Ark Actual, go ahead Atlantis.”
“Ark Actual,” Jian said, sticking to radio titles and protocol. “I’d like clarification on the new mission parameters.”
“What do you need clarified? We need you to survey the anomaly.”
“But we don’t have any trained surveyors aboard. And we certainly don’t have the equipment.”
“You’ve got cameras, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah…”
“It’s not that complicated, Jian. This is just a preliminary survey. You’re the only ones there right now. We’re prepping another mission with the proper specialists and equipment, but it will be r
eally helpful if they have some idea what they’re walking into. Just step outside, poke your head around, and take some pictures.”
“Actual,” Jian said. “Dad, I’m not qualified to survey some weird, probably alien artifact buried on a moon. I don’t have any experience with this.”
“Who the hell does?”
Kirkland snorted from the copilot’s seat. “He’s got a point, you know.”
“Not helping.” Jian keyed the com again. “Copy that, Actual. Starting our deorbital burn in five. Atlantis out.”
The shuttle had been orbiting Varr for the better part of a day now, first from its initial fifteen-kilometer orbit, then dropping down to less than five klicks to try and get higher resolution images of whatever was lying inside the cave underneath the crippled helium harvester. They had to wait several hours and many orbits until the system’s primary was directly overhead and poured light into the hole the harvester had punched through the cave’s ceiling.
It didn’t help much. Even bathed in light, the anomaly, as they’d taken to calling it, was covered with too much debris from the cave-in to reveal much information beyond its outline. Which was why they’d been ordered to land. That had been the plan all along, of course. The harvester techs needed a ride down to the surface to fix their broken Hoover. But the stakes had since been drastically raised.
Jian warmed up the mains for a fourth time, worrying about the additional stress he was putting on the five that were still working, but unable to do anything about it. It would be a quick, hard burn. They already orbited so close to the surface that they needed to bleed off almost all of their velocity in less than two minutes to hit their insertion window.
Complicating matters further, Varr was completely airless, so the shuttle’s airfoils and control surfaces were just dead weight. They’d be landing ass-first on a column of rocket exhaust, using only their thruster packs for terminal maneuvers.
It was like trying to balance an angry cat on top of a broom handle; a feat far beyond the capabilities of even the most experienced pilot, much less one commanding his first mission. Fortunately, that duty had been turned over to software centuries ago. All Jian had to do was punch in the coordinates of the landing site and a couple of other variables into the computer, take his hands off the stick, and relax.
He absolutely hated it.
“OK, kids, this one is going to be fast and rough. Deorbit burn in. Five. Four. Three. Two–” With the suddenness of a car accident, Jian was slammed back into his seat under seven gees, damned near the limit of the five engines they had left.
“One?” Kirkland asked through clenched teeth.
Jian tried to lift his head to see the readout, but his skull remained glued to the headrest. Not that it would’ve mattered as his vision was blurring on account of the high gee pressing his eyeballs into the backs of their sockets hard enough to deform their shape. Instead, he routed the flight computer data into his plant’s augmented reality display, which was unaffected. He spotted the problem immediately.
Jian grumbled. The LZ might be marginally safer for the shuttle, but the longer walk would leave his team exposed to the shooting gallery that was Varr’s surface. The Tau Ceti system was a notoriously dirty place to begin with, and without an atmosphere or the Ark’s nav lasers to burn them up, micrometeorites were an ever-present risk.
As suddenly as they had come on, the gees disappeared as the mains cut out. Jian felt a moment’s sensation of pure freefall before the shuttle’s flight computer fired the forward thrusters to reorient itself for a vertical landing.
With all its forward momentum bled away, the shuttle started falling straight and true towards Varr’s surface. The only indication of movement Jian could see as he looked out the cockpit windows was their altimeter readout dropping, glacially at first as the moon’s paltry three and a half percent standard gravity clawed meekly at the craft. But without any atmosphere to drag against the hull, their velocity built up until at a hundred meters the engines fired again, although less exuberantly. At only five meters above the regolith, the flight computer pitched the shuttle over again until it was level with the ground, then settled down into the billowing dust on thrusters alone.
The shuttle nestled into the ground on its belly. They didn’t dare open the landing gear doors; the statically-charged dust played merry hell on any moving parts it clung to and shorted out electronics like a bucket of salt water. Everyone unbelted and silently, solemnly started prepping their vacuum suits. Jian picked up on their dour moods.
“Hey, everyone.” He clapped to get their attention. “What’s with the faces? Is this a funeral?”
“Potentially,” technician Madeja muttered.
“Look.” Feng ignored her. “I know this isn’t what any of us were expecting to find out here. I certainly wasn’t. And I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t scaring the living fertilizer out of me…” A round of polite, if awkward laughter passed around the cabin. “But whatever it is has been buried here for God only knows how long. If it was going to hurt anybody, it probably would’ve done it a long time ago.
“So, instead of a boring maintenance assignment, we’re out here right on the knife’s edge of exploration and discovery. C’mon, that’s exciting, right? Let’s get buttoned up and get started. Last one into the hole is a reclamation chute.”
Kirkland hopped over and whispered in his ear. “Great speech, commander. Are you going to call them doody-heads next?”
“If it gets the job done,” Jian said. “Speaking of jobs, don’t bother getting dressed.”
Kirkland cocked her head. “Why not?”
“Because if I’m wrong and things do go sour down there, we’ll need a fast evac. So you’re going to stay here and keep Atlantis’s engines warm and ready to dust off on a tripwire.”
“And if things go really wrong down there?”
“Then you may have to bug out and make the return trip alone.” Jian noticed Kirkland wasn’t exactly broken up by the prospect. “Which would be terrible. Right?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, just awful. Me, alone, commanding my own shuttle? A real tragedy. C’mon, let me help you get in your suit.”
“Only if someone else checks my seals.”
“So suspicious,” she said teasingly. “We’re a team, remember? Our trust is our foundation.”
“I’m doomed.”
Kirkland laughed. “Get in those jammies, commander. You’ve got work to do.”
Twenty minutes later, six of them walked across the dirt. Actually, “walked” was entirely the wrong verb. With the incredibly low gravity, they hopped across the surface in great, bounding leaps, like the ancient footage of the original Apollo astronauts bouncing across Luna’s terrain, only exaggerated.
But unlike Luna’s rocky, bone-dry surface, Varr was a dirty snowball. Layers of rock and water ice laid buried under meters of cosmic dust that had fallen over eons. Outcrops of ice protruded from the surface here and there, while deep fissures crisscrossed the surface, pulled and stretched by the tidal forces Gaia exerted on the moon with each orbit.
Instead of Luna, Varr was more like Ceres, or even Pluto from back in the Sol system. Between the wildly elliptical orbit and the moon’s composition, the consensus among the Ark’s astronomy department was that it had been captured by Gaia several billion years earlier as it plunged towards the system primary, likely disturbed from its orbit by the outward migration of the ice giant Tau Ceti F, before it too found a stable orbit to call home.
With each hop, Jian sailed effortlessly several meters above the surface. Indeed, it was almost impossible not to. In such a shallow gravity well, he weighed scarcely four kilos, vac suit included. Each footfall sent out a little plu
me of dust, pulverized into a fine powder from billions of years of micro, and not so micro, meteorite impacts. But he didn’t take long to adapt to it. Considering the amount of time he’d spent in zero gee aboard the Ark over his lifetime, it felt almost natural.
The rest of the expedition stopped at the edge of the cliff and leaned over to inspect it. Jian rolled his eyes. Instead of slowing down to stop, he took two long hops to build up momentum, then hurdled over the crevasse. He arced through the sky in a perfect parabola, easily clearing the icy canyon and landing on the far side with meters to spare.
Tentatively, the first of them backed up and charged at the divide, jumped, and landed with room in reserve. Three more made the leap without incident. Then, it was Madeja’s turn.
She stood at the edge, wringing her hands nervously.
Madeja winced, then started to run, building up speed and height with each bounding leap. But she misjudged her final jump, landing and pushing off almost five meters from the edge of the cliff. At first, it looked like her parabola would be high enough to clear the icy schism, but as she reached her apex and started to drift down, the augmented reality display projecting her trajectory into his vision said she was going to come up almost a meter short.