by Greg Bear
Kumar observes our exchange as if we’re all lab rats in a maze. Mushran also seems intrigued. At heart, both are still whirly-eyed inquisitors.
I say, “Your turn, DJ. Who’s with you?”
“This is Camellia,” DJ says. “And you remember Rafe. He’s okay now. We’re all a big family down here. This place is amazing, Vinnie. You got to take the tour.”
Rafe is unhappy to see so many sisters packing heat. He remembers well and slowly edges back.
“Who else is in there?” Jacobi asks.
“Fucking everybody!” DJ says, grinning. “Everybody who counts. We’ll show you! There’s no danger, Vinnie, it’s not like the Drifter—not like that at all. Everything’s changing, active, but it’s under control, it’s friendly—no turning glass! We’ve accomplished awesome shit! Really! You need to see the stuff we’ve found. Come on!” He’s like an excited little boy.
Rafe takes the opportunity to turn around and glide silently back down the tunnel. The rifles twitch but do not rise. The tall woman and her baby remain, curious, transfixed—fearless? Or just ignorant?
“Let him go!” DJ says. “He doesn’t like you guys. He’s okay, really.”
Borden keeps her hand on my shoulder.
“Who are this infant’s mother and father?” Kumar asks.
Mushran chooses to speak. “I may introduce Camellia Vanderveer, and her son, the second of our third-gen offspring.”
“Where’s the first?” I ask. Before Mushran or DJ can answer and dash my long dreams—
The hatch behind our welcoming committee fills with clambering, clacking clusters of shiny pipes like thick gray straw—translucent, cross-connecting into individuals, then letting loose. Kobolds, DJ called them—the self-assembling workers we found in the first Drifter. The unexpected and alarming mass is punctuated by beady black eyes like camera lenses.
Borden draws back, bumping into Mushran.
DJ says, “It’s okay! They’re here to help. We’ve made amazing progress—once we learned to listen to the tea.”
I hear “the tea” as well—the gentle suggestion deep in my head that these assemblies, these servants, are no threat. They are familiar to a subset of the things that fill my cranium.
But Jacobi and Ishida and Borden have once again raised their weapons and aimed them at DJ, the Muskies, and the kobolds. Knife’s edge, I think. Kumar seems fascinated by the entire mess. As if willing to let bygones be bygones, or at least to hold his anger in reserve, he moves closer to Mushran and tells Ishida and Jacobi to release him. “What is this… happening now?” he asks.
Mushran shakes out his arms. “I have not been treated with respect, Kumarji. Let this make itself known without my help!”
“Open your minds!” DJ invites the rest with a big smile. “Let the tea in! If the old moon likes you, things clear up fast.”
Nobody knows how to accept his invitation. Nobody, I think, would even if they could.
“Suit yourselves,” DJ says with a shrug. “I’ll go tell Joe and Tak you’re here. See you down deep when everyone’s ready to have their minds blown.” He steps back through the kobolds, who clatter out of his way and flow back into the darkness.
Camellia’s infant has settled down to suckling at her exposed breast, hardly more than a bump on her ribs. The baby’s pale skin is mottled with green. The tall mother seems reluctant to leave us—hungry for fresh faces, diversions, society. But finally, with spooky grace and composure, she pulls the baby from her nipple, to soft complaint—then folds up her tunic, turns, and follows DJ.
Mushran takes advantage of our divided attentions. He makes a cautious step forward. Nobody stops him. “There should be a meeting before we enter the preserve. We need to brief these fine soldiers. Please do not interfere with or attempt to damage the workers—the assemblies you saw earlier. That I implore! Am I understood?”
Borden says that no harm will be done to them.
“Good,” Mushran says. “The consequences could be catastrophic. Much that is down here, and the reasons we are all here, needs be described. And I am owed explanations, as well, Kumarji. I need to know what has happened on Earth since I left, and since communication was cut off with Mars.”
Mushran has adeptly put Kumar in his place, yet strangely, both former Wait Staff seem totally down with the reversal of mood and tactics. They’ve gone through these games before, I guess, like retainers sparring in a royal court—which is what they are. Or were. And their game is far from over. “First, since you insist on staying in your suits, we should provide replacement filters and top you up with the necessaries,” Mushran says. “There must be a chance to rest and recuperate. Do any require medical assistance? Calming drugs?”
“We’re fine, sir,” Borden says. “We’ll keep our filters and such for the time being. We’d like to move on to the next phase.”
“Then please, come with me.”
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
Mushran makes sure the way is clear and leads us from the garage and equipment hangar through rough-cut tunnels to a hemispherical chamber about ten meters across and five tall, which leads to three branching corridors—all lined with the same pale gray plastic and lit by strings of low-power lights. Kumar is content to be quiet and follow, so Borden and the rest of our group follow as well. Mushran turns into a broader corridor, this one square in profile, with two long, parallel grooves like guide rails cut into the floor.
The sheets of plastic come to an end, revealing that walls and ceiling and floor are no longer dark stone but almost pure nickel-iron, shiny and etched with sprays of big metal crystals formed over millions of years deep in the heart of the old ice moon. The way the lights reflect on the buffed walls, we seem to walk in a shadowy fog. I remember that from the Drifter.
Mushran leads us up a gentle incline and then through a dogleg into a narrow, long room lit by three lamps on stands. I could be getting closer to seeing my buds again, and closer to Teal. Things might be moving forward at a real clip. And something inside me is reacting positively, as well—not my inner shellfish. Captain Coyle. If she thinks we’re making progress, finally getting somewhere, I have no idea how I should feel, because she’s past cark and care, right?
I am not a fucking ghost, Venn. Got that? And what the hell does cark mean?
All righty, then. The word balloon has filled in very clearly, accompanied by a voice that sounds at least vaguely female.
I’m not alone, wherever the hell I am. This place is full of extremely weird shit, the kind of shit nobody can train for—nobody has ever prepared for—and I’d like to know what the bloody hell is going on.
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmur. “Me, too.”
Borden sees my lips move. “You okay, Venn?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “We’re fine.” Borden doesn’t even favor me with a pitying look.
Mushran has pulled a flat rectangle out from the wall. I wonder if it’s a door, a hatch, or maybe something exotic. It’s giving him difficulty, wedged behind a flap of insulation, catching on a plastic strap. We watch with wary fascination. What’s this fucker up to? What magic trick is he going to demo to our amazed and childlike eyes? If it’s a door, is there something weird behind it—more kobolds, or worse, something we’ve never seen before? The long rectangle is not cooperating. “Just a moment,” Mushran says, and gives it a jerk. It clatters back, rattles against the wall, and teeters loose into his hands.
Everyone lifts their weapons.
“Here it is,” Mushran says. “Not a problem.”
“Goddamn,” Borden mutters through her teeth.
Mushran frees the rectangle from the strap, lowers it to the floor, then looks up at us. “Some assistance, please?”
It’s a folding table. We’re all pretty strung out. All but Kumar, who has kept this disembodied, steady smile on his face the whole time, observing with his big, warm black eyes.
“A little help?” Mushran asks again around the group of stock-still Skyrines. �
�I believe there are chairs over there—behind those boxes, perhaps.”
Borden tips her head. The Skyrines fall out and chip in to set up the makeshift conference room. When the table and enough chairs to seat eight have been unfolded and arranged, Borden acts as mother and decides who sits where. She puts Kumar at the head, which Mushran accepts without protest.
I notice Rafe has joined us again. He’s standing in the doorway, listening.
“Mr. de Groot—please, come in,” Mushran says.
De Groot gives me a look, as if trying to think why my face should be familiar, then sits at the far end. He doesn’t like Skyrines. No reason he should. The sister who’s taken up lodging in a corner of my head would have killed him and his entire family. And after listening to Teal’s story, maybe I would have as well.
This is getting cozy.
“I will begin,” Mushran says. “Some years ago, a settler at Green Camp reached out to ISD troops and passed along descriptions of the Drifter and several other mines, which he thought might be of strategic importance—for their mineral stores.”
I assume this was Teal’s father. For his pains, he was eventually put out on the Red—left to die by the Voors.
“He thought that Earth would lavish more money and attention on the settlers if they knew of their expertise regarding these resources. The news caused a stir throughout Wait Staff. Contradictory responses emerged. The division charged with strategic planning for the war against the Antagonists expressed interest in exploring the old fragments, and in recruiting the settlers to help us secure their resources. But another division took a quite opposite point of view. They began to plan for the complete destruction of the settlements and any settlers who had visited these sites. No explanation was given, and such was our loyalty to the Gurus that none was requested.”
Rafe clenches his jaw.
“But some pushed forward a more reasoned plan. Before any drastic action would be taken, it was decided that a reconnaissance survey on Mars had to be conducted. The Gurus did not seem to object. As part of a larger strategic push, select groups of soldiers would be tasked with finding and describing the old mining sites. Despite our best efforts, however, our planning came a cropper.”
“What does that mean?” Ishida asks. “I don’t know that word.”
“Fucked-up,” Jacobi says.
“Yes. That.” Mushran continues: “Antagonists shipped many divisions of troops to Mars, along with a tremendous increase in orbital assets—and finally, a barrage of comet strikes. What appeared to be an attempt to disable or totally destroy our forces seemed, under closer observation, to more plausibly be an attempt to render the Drifter—the primary old moon site—inaccessible.
“Some of us—I credit Kumarji here—found this coincidental focus on the Drifter by both the Gurus and the Antagonists to be suspicious. Why would the Antagonists not want to exploit all available resources? Their supply lines were even more strung out than ours.
“And then, we discovered that those in Division Four responsible for long-range strategic planning—”
“And clandestine operations,” Kumar says.
Mushran defers. “They ordered that Special Forces be trained and sent to destroy the Drifter. Perhaps not coincidentally, my original division—Division One, release and promotion of technological benefits—was kicked into high gear to make available the technology necessary to produce far more powerful spacecraft. High-speed probes sent to Jupiter and Saturn added to our knowledge of distant moons with deep oceans of liquid water, encased in shells of ice. The same sort of ice moon that once fell on Mars. The technology used on those probes was expanded. When the first three ships were finished, because of their configuration, they were referred to by our construction teams as Spooks. The Russians called them Star Gowns.”
“There was one in orbit around Earth, last we saw,” Kumar says. “Along with a very large Box.”
“Yes. Well, each of these Spooks carried four divisions of Skyrines and forty scientists out to Saturn. The journey took three weeks. All in secret. We soon discovered that Antagonists had already begun extensive operations on Titan.”
“Old and cold,” I murmur.
“Old and cold,” Mushran agrees. “The Gurus insisted that we could not allow Antagonists to exploit the resources of the outer solar system, any more than we had on Mars. Our troops were supplied with very large, specialized weapons and vehicles. They journeyed down to Titan and soon engaged Antagonist forces on practically equal terms. That front heated up until it consumed more than half of our resources, which put a strain on our Martian operations.
“To some of our brightest minds, the coincidences became too great to be ignored. It seemed the Gurus were feeling more threatened by the old moons, or something they contained, than by Antagonist domination. What could this possibly be?” Mushran looks around the room. He must have been a teacher once. He’s enjoying the chance to play professor.
“Turning glass,” Jacobi says, lips pursed behind her plate.
Kumar folds his arms and surveys the dark metal ceiling.
“Most interesting,” Mushran says. “But not our primary concern.”
“Shellfish,” I say.
Jacobi gives me a disgusted look, like I’m the snotty kid acting out in class.
“What the hell does that mean?” Ishida asks.
But Mushran agrees. “Indeed, the former inhabitants of the old moon that fell on Mars. Powerful and consistent visions were being supplied to a few settlers, as well as a small number of our troops, after exposure to the contents of the Drifter.”
Jacobi asks, “Why bring Venn here? What does he know about it?”
Rafe has been tapping his finger on the table, a hollow drumming signaling his impatience. Kumar ignores Jacobi’s question and turns toward the Voor, who shoves back his folding chair and rises. “Time a look-see,” Rafe says. “Everyone as thinks they wor masters, powered an’ wise, come a with.” He sounds more like Teal now. I’m not sure I like that. What the fuck does it mean that his accent has changed?
“Lead on,” Kumar says.
OLD AND IMPROVED
Two hours before we need to hit the taps,” Jacobi reminds Borden. The commander nods. That’s a kind of time limit, then, to determine what our options are—whether we go all in and throw in our lot with the settlers and Joe and DJ and whoever else is here, or get back outside, decontaminate, and…
What?
Another possibility presents itself. If this mine is the wellspring of an undesirable variety of madness—uncontrollable shit that nobody wants to deal with, worse than turning glass—then we’ll simply be cut loose. The next step—whatever that may be—will be made without us.
At the head of a widening tunnel, Rafe is joined by three other men I don’t recognize, all dressed in the same white tunics streaked with green. No introductions are made. Rafe speaks to them in that bastard version of Dutch-Afrikaans affected by the Voors. Two break off and head down a side branch into a shadowy gloom with a white glow at the end. Jacobi arranges her sisters in a spaced V, as wide as the tunnel allows. I itch to join their formation, but despite our action on the Red, she doesn’t invite me. I do not want to be kept apart, but—
I get it. I hate it, but I get it. If I were Jacobi, I’d distance myself both from Borden—Navy rank—and me, shithead, VIP POG, as far as I could run.
It’s Ishida who haunts me in a way I can’t define. I keep looking at her. Jacobi and Ishikawa notice, but we’re moving too fast for them to call me out. I’ve met three Winter Soldiers in my years in the Skyrines—never in space, never in combat. We all wonder what it would be like to be torn apart and put back together, made into something not quite human—better than human, more than flesh-and-blood Skyrine, according to some reports from those who should know—but difficult to reintegrate with the Corps, a judgmental and suspicious culture that resists challenge and change because everything we go through and especially combat overloads us with chal
lenge, drowns us in uncontrollable change. We hate change. We hate newbies because they replace people we were getting used to. What if the newbie is actually someone we knew who is now someone different? But my fascination with Ishida goes beyond that.
Is it because I’m not entirely human, myself?
You’ve got real problems, Venn, Coyle says.
There’s that, too.
The tunnel has gradually expanded to about ten meters wide and five meters high as other tunnels combine, the supporting walls replaced by textured beams that then also go away as we’re surrounded by solid ancient rock and nickel-iron, not going anywhere. Vetted by the best mining engineers on Mars. Maybe by some of our people as well.
The light brightens ahead. Mushran and Rafe lead the way around a broad, curving corner—metal phasing into rock, finally becoming rock all around, with the plastic cover going up again as a moisture block.
What stretches up and out beyond that curve has been lit up like a nighttime bridge on a holiday. Red, blue, and green lights rise in sweeping lines along ramparts that begin on a broad, flat floor, then gradually descend to wrap around and intersect more rocky pillars, creating an interwoven, maniacally complicated cloverleaf with nine or ten levels—dropping hundreds of meters below the firm, dusty floor into the heart of the old fragment—encapsulating and supporting great masses of diamond-white crystal.
Borden and Jacobi and Kumar stare in astonishment at this immense and extraordinary excavation. “Is this like the first Drifter?” Borden asks me.
“Yeah, but more.”
The first Drifter’s digs—what the Voors called the Church—had revealed a tall, intact chunk of white crystal, surrounded by braces and struts of rock. In retrospect, and seeing what has been done here, I think the goal of the kobolds had been, and still is, to expose as much crystalline surface as they can. Inside Fiddler’s Green, at least three times as much has been revealed.
So it can make tea, Coyle says. Tea to train kobolds.