by Greg Bear
Then our lead couple, our lead explorers, posit that perhaps a cloud of vapor has risen over the excavations—likely from the blast that opened the way. Makes sense, so we settle down and go dormant for an hour or so. We don’t even send signals back through the pool down to our waiting comrades. Besides, the pool has frozen over again. We might not even be able to return. We’ve brought along a small drill just to communicate, but that may not be enough.
Hours pass. Finally, we appoint our leader couple as the pair who should rise and orient the suits, big and small, so that the male can see what roof looks like. Maybe it’s another high shell of ice—a favorite hypothesis among our best philosophers down below. One shell after another, and only our own inhabitable, so why bother digging out?
Our leader couple looks up. We await his reaction. I can see that the fog has cleared, and the blackness beyond is relieved by…
But I must wait my turn.
Our leader couple is stunned into silence. Then he tells us we should all look up, if only to confirm what he is seeing.
We do.
After a long while, we come to agreement as to how to describe what we see, above the roof of our world. There is no other roof. Instead, there is a huge round blot of brilliance, radiating heavily in the infrared—our favorite mode of seeing. And all around it, like tiny creatures, much like those who surround us in the wilder regions of our inner sea: hordes of bright little specks.
But the specks are infinitely sharp, tiny.
“They must be holes in a greater roof, holes like the one we just dug,” says our fourth couple, perhaps not the best and brightest, but most amusing and beloved. “Maybe they are shining lamps filled with little glowing creatures come out to welcome us.”
They are something like “funny.” A bug version of Vee-Def or DJ. We love them, love him (the little guy is our referent in these matters), but doubt that what he thinks is true. I’m working my brain overtime, and actively comparing notes with the sluggish but often more stable and even wiser brain of my big wife.
She comes up with a solution first. I love her for that. “I think those glows are other places made of ice, like our world,” she says. “But there have been disasters. They’ve dug out to the surface, other explorers have broken through to the open, but their explosions were too powerful—and they are all on fire. They’re burning!”
Perhaps not the most fortunate hypothesis. It is convincing enough that we scramble back to the frozen pool of water and frantically chip and dig down again. The cap finally breaks up and we dive through and fall, drifting down past what is left of the scaffolding and the drills, tumbling along the side of the tower of rock and ice, rolling, endlessly rolling until we are back among our companions, our friends, our supporters.
The funny couple doesn’t survive. We will miss them.
Shit. My partner died, too. That means my host male will be dying soon as well. Makes me sad, very sad. Worse to lose that partner than to die myself.
Many sacrifices, much sadness—but also much discovery. Much to think upon.
We soon concluded that the lights in the outer blackness are not holes. They are burning spheres. Millions of them.
That was the first time.
We—that is, our doubled bug forebears—waited a very long time to try again.
JACOBI AND TAK stand over me. I’ve had my eyes open for some time, but only now do I see them.
“Wow!” Tak says. “You were way, way down. Feel better?”
“I lost her,” I say. “They dug out, but I lost her.”
“No time,” Jacobi says. “We’re moving out.”
“Everybody?” I mumble.
Tak and Jacobi lift me from the cot. “They’ve cleaned our skintights,” Jacobi says. “Pretty good job, as far as I can tell.”
“Weapons?” I ask.
She says, “See if you can stand.”
AD ASTRA OR ELSE
I’m doing better now. I know who and where I am, for a little while, maybe.
We’re suited up and back on the Red. Litvinov’s troops have lined up the vehicles to begin transporting settlers away from the mine. The settlers number about fifty. Most of the work in the mine must have been done by kobolds. DJ and Joe and the Russians organize the move. They pack as many settlers as they can into the first group of four vehicles—two Tonkas and two Trundles.
I’ve had no chance to say good-bye to Teal. Borden and Kumar and I stand with our Skyrine sisters. Captain Jacobi brushes my arm. Something about her attitude has changed. That worries me.
“Moving out?” she asks. I lift my thumb. I can’t see her face behind the plate, bright with morning sun. “About time,” she says. “Ishida asks if you’re married or otherwise bespoken.”
“Lifelong bachelor,” I say.
“Figures. We’re running a pool on whether you end up married to Borden, to your Muskie girl, or to Ishida.”
She brushes my arm again.
“Terrific,” I say.
“Gadget likes you.”
“She’d burn me to a stump,” I say.
Jacobi’s face becomes visible as she turns. She’s nervous watching the lines of settlers in their skintights. “We can hand over her instruction book if you want to study up.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Borden and Kumar approach from the Trundle. “One of those for us?” Jacobi asks.
“Three, actually,” Borden says. “We’re also taking Litvinov and ten Russians.”
“Won’t be enough for all the settlers,” Jacobi says.
“Our mission takes precedence,” Borden says.
Then Jacobi does something that astonishes me. She and Ishida flank Borden and stop her forward progress. Borden is surprised into silence.
“We won’t lift until the settlers evac,” Jacobi says. “All of them.”
Borden stares her down. “Then you’re going to die here,” she says, voice tight.
“If necessary, Commander,” Jacobi says. “I won’t take the blame for killing Muskies.”
“So says our lady,” Ishida adds. The others gather to show support.
Kumar raises his hand. “This is not an issue. We have priority to return to Earth all who have a connection with the mines.”
Borden looks astonished, and then really, really angry—like she wants to strangle Kumar. She comes plate to plate with him. “Why am I not kept in the loop?” she asks.
“To accomplish that,” Kumar smoothly continues, “we have been provided ten landers—enough for all, I think. Might take an hour more, however. By which time Antags could be upon us with, as you say, righteous hurt.”
Borden turns her back on us. She’s feeling the thorny end of the shit stick and I don’t know why. I suspect it’s because Kumar just doesn’t care.
“Maybe so,” Jacobi says. “But we won’t leave until they’re off the Red. These people have suffered enough because of us… sir.”
Kumar studies her a few seconds, then acquiesces with a bow. “I will so instruct Litvinov,” he says, and walks away. At this moment, I love our sisters with all my heart.
Jacobi’s cheeks are pink with anger. “What’s the deal with Joe Sanchez?” she asks, voice still tense. “Ishikawa thinks he’s dead cool. Is Sanchez taken?”
I don’t dignify that with a response.
“Don’t go all GI on us, Venn,” Jacobi says.
“No, ma’am,” I say.
“Until we all get in the shit again and decide to fuck or fight, to us you’re still a POG,” Jacobi says.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. Sisterhood is powerful. Warm and fuzzy, spattered with blood and spit.
AN HOUR LATER, still no sign of Antags or anyone else. All the settlers in suits have been loaded. They fill seven vehicles, including the Trundles, and twelve hang from the sides of the Tonkas. The round-faced Russian ballerina, Starshina Ulyanova, stands on the rear hatch step of the Chesty and waves for an accordion to be stretched from the nearest domicile. Not enough
skintights for complete evac. Good planning all around.
SNKRZ.
I’m tired of feeling confused and shitty. I want to feel tight and angry, like coming off a good fight—like I can shift the stars with my rage, with the righteous indignation that stupid fuckers anywhere would dare challenge me and my brothers and sisters. True grunt rage, hu-wa! Best drug of all. Back when I last felt it, it turned my skull into a white-hot, chrome-plated death’s head filled with sizzling brains—fearsome to behold. I’d like to feel that again. Having Jacobi rag me makes me think it might be possible. But not yet. Not unless we survive our lift from the Red and our big transport is ready for the long, long haul.
The round-faced starshina waves the vehicles off. The settlers are leaving first. We all wait quietly, if not patiently. I can imagine the quiet inside the mine—the second Void. Except for the kobolds. What are they doing to prepare? Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what our sisters have done. They’ve laid a network of spent matter charges, enough to collapse the mine, incinerate the Void, put full fucking stop to everything the Muskies have been doing. Expediency rules. They won’t leave a thing for the Antags, and there’s no way of knowing what they’d do, anyway. Maybe blow it up, too.
Two squads of Russians gather to either side of us as we watch the eastern skies. Together, we track the lancets of descending landers—eight sharp white needles spaced about two klicks away.
ANOTHER HOUR PASSES before the rolling stock returns and the vehicles line up to receive us. Two of the landers off to the east ascend on pillars of torch fire. Two more follow minutes after.
KUMAR AND BORDEN emerge from the hatch beside the accordion, DJ in tow. I wonder what he’s feeling. I know what he’s feeling, but I won’t acknowledge it. This is a solemn moment. Something huge is about to happen down in the mine, something beyond logistics and spent matter and physics. Because we both know that spent matter can only poke this place in the eye and make it mad.
But when it gets mad, when it feels afraid…
Difficult to believe whoever’s in command above Kumar is doing everything right. We’re all expecting that before we go, the Antags or more sappers will arrive in force and there will be another fight. My emotions are narrowing. I’ve missed that sensation for so goddamned long.… The instincts it took a claw-nailed handful of DIs to beat into me over weeks and months at Hawthorne, Mauna Kea. We’re all expecting to die, but we hope, we want, we desire with hot pink passion to fight and kill before we go.
The round-faced starshina waves her hand, all aboard.
“Ready, ladies?” Jacobi asks.
High overhead I see a fast-moving object brighter than the nearby spot of Phobos. It slides quickly east to west, opposite the typical orbital track of our space frames. My plate enhances enough to show me an elongated, slightly blurry thing like a tied-up bundle of handkerchiefs. I point this out to Borden. “Is that our ride?” I ask.
She looks up. “I think so,” she says.
“Spook?” I ask.
“Fastest thing in the solar system.” But she doesn’t look happy or secure.
The last group of Russians climb onto the frame of a Tonka.
“Sorry about the crap they’re putting you through,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, then straightens. “You’re coming with us in the Chesty. Jacobi’s team will join us. Kumar’s orders.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Kumar is coming, too.”
“Terrific,” I say.
The settlers are nowhere to be seen, but the ships that lifted them off the Red have left black-rayed smudges on the basalt.
“Godspeed,” Borden says to the vanished ships.
I instinctively look west. Over the low rise that marks the second Drifter, the second mine, and the reduced horizontal lines of the domiciles, four dust devils spin out their syncopated dance, twisted little pencils moved by invisible hands. I hope nobody will be left behind on the Red or down in the mine to experience what I sense in my hindbrain and deep in my gut. Nobody human.
We pack into the Chesty, into the tight spaces between weapons and stores. Joe goes last. Ishikawa sits beside him. DJ sits beside me. “Amazing tea,” he says. “I’m going to miss it.”
The Chesty moves out. Ten minutes’ ride to the last two landers.
Then it all blows.
The whole Chesty shimmies on its wheels. Something subsonic booms up into the chassis and through our flesh and bones. The boom rises to a roar and everything shakes and rattles as the shock wave passes under us. The Chesty heels over on its springs, lifts, and bounces back with a squealing jolt. The driver revs to full speed, ponderous at best, then spins us to face into the aftershocks. Those of us in the back crowd around the six small ports, all but our sisters, Jacobi’s team.
They stay seated.
“Oh, good,” Jacobi says, utterly deadpan. “It’s beginning to work.” She folds her hands and looks between her knees.
Kumar perches behind the Russian driver, looking through the windscreen. “Blessed Siva!” he says.
A cloud of dust towers over the mine. The domiciles are obscured—maybe they’re already gone. I see the landers, our landers, sway like trees in a high wind. Three more ships are descending despite the activity off to the west. There are now five, enough to carry the rest of us.
“Out!” the driver shouts. “Move it!”
We seal our plates and abandon the Chesty, leaping and running toward the landers, Kumar straggling—having difficulty—until Borden and I lift him by his belt pack and sling him along between us. The sound is incredible. Definitely no need to look back. Pillar of salt.
The crew chiefs of each lander grab us at random and push us toward the ladders. We climb like monkeys, all but Kumar, whose feet can’t seem to stay on the rungs. Takes far too long. Takes forever. The landers are still swaying. From kilometers off, we hear the crust complaining: deep throaty screams made worse by the thin air. I look left in time to see the dust tower into a mushroom, then spread out. Around the mushroom’s stalk, a crackle of basalt spreads from the low dome of the mine. The crust shatters like glass hit by invisible hammers and collapses, forming a vast, bowl-shaped pit, the edge too fucking close and coming closer. Yeah, Siva indeed—our wicked sisters did a real number down there.
I’m almost at the hatch, shoving at Kumar’s butt. Then I make the mistake of looking back again. The color at the center of the pit is changing. Swift, dark, riverlike branches fan out to the expanding perimeter—
“Get the hell in!” the crew chief shouts, pulling me through the hatch and shoving me back into the cabin, which is crammed with people in skintights scrambling for their lives, maybe for their souls. Borden straps Kumar into a seat and looks at me, frightened out of her wits. I strap into my own seat.
“Two minutes!” the pilot shouts over comm.
There are people still climbing as we hear the other landers begin their motor ramp-ups to launch. And then we feel our own ship rise. The hatch hasn’t closed. Alarms go off inside the cabin. We’re launching and not everyone’s in a couch, but the downward tug is just moderate—the pilot is hovering over the Red, up and away from the debris and collapse—
Maybe it all ends here.
“Sorry,” Jacobi says from behind me. And again, “Sorry.”
I can’t see a thing. Hope to hell that Teal is up and away. The hatch has closed. We have pressure. I open my eyes. Borden and Kumar are across the aisle. Our seats realign and the pods roll into position. The pilot issues safety instructions. I don’t listen. I look back over the edge of my seat. Everybody made it, we’re all strapped in, that’s a miracle, isn’t it? I make out Jacobi and a few of the sisters and a few of the Russians. I see DJ behind and to my right. He looks like he’s napping and having a bad dream. Where’s Joe? Where’s Tak? Mushran? Presumably in another lander. We’re climbing fast. The acceleration is probably at max. Leaving Mars isn’t like leaving Earth. You can stand, if you are strong a
nd fit—
And then, as if the shock is holding back my sensations and memories, I realize, I not only saw it—I felt it. The pit turned black as obsidian. All the surface for kilometers around turned deep dark glass, and then, like a second sky, a sky below, it twinkled with burning streaks and stars. The glassy, broken land filled with submerged and flashing lights.
“Twenty minutes to rendezvous,” the pilot announces. He has a distinct southern accent. Virginia, I think. Maybe Virginia Beach. “What the hell just happened back there?” he asks.
Nobody answers.
I close my eyes and let the acceleration lull me. Not so bad now. We’re off the Red, we’re alive, things are working out. Better and better. Right?
PART TWO
BATMAN AND SILVER SURFER SAY…
I’m drifting again. For some reason, I relive the time when Joe and I were eighteen and crossed the border in Arizona, riding in a pickup down to Chihuahua with three other guys and a nineteen-year-old tomboy named Famke. That trip ended up kind of sweet and creepy. Guided by a crazy young Mexican kid, we crawled deep into a desert cave and found a curled-up mummy wearing a grass thong. Famke examined the body—she was studying premed—and said it was a girl and really old, maybe hundreds of years. The Mexican kid insisted she had been fifteen or younger when she died, probably in childbirth. Joe got a sick, guilty look and took a folded cardboard box from the back of the truck, taping it together and mumbling something about her being lonely all these years, and now, she was back with her kind, with young people; she needed to go home with us. He insisted on removing her from the cave and bringing her back. He didn’t want her to be lonely anymore. We’d drunk so much beer, he thought he was saving her from the dark and the dust.
He filled the top of the cardboard box with dried brush.
We made it back despite stupidity and too much beer, crossing the border with the cardboard box in the back of our van, saying to ICE it was filled with stuffed and mounted frogs we were planning to give as gifts when we got home. Two inspectors cracked the box’s crisscrossed lid, barely peered inside, and waved us through.