Drowned Worlds

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Are we done yet?”

  “I believe that is sufficient.”

  I stagger back in relief as the hatch slides closed and seals. The hangar looks pretty empty now, like a stage waiting for the set to be built. But I’m not an actor. I’m the audience, and I didn’t ask for this fully immersive theater experience. I didn’t choose it.

  Mind you, who has ever seen anything like this? When my log uploads I’m going to be popping like nobody’s business.

  And then there’s Grandpa. How he would have coped without me I don’t know. Not just clearing the hangar. Clearing his head. Sometimes I catch him staring out the window and I know he’s absorbing everything while he can, before it’s gone forever.

  How would I feel if someone walked into my home of twenty-two years and shat all over it?

  Yeah, yeah. Lesson learned. Consider me older—minus the eleven minutes d-mat still owes me—and immeasurably wiser.

  All I have to do is avoid dying so my parents can say “I told you so.”

  “ARE YOU PERMITTED to drink?” Grandpa asks as the clouds slowly lighten around us. It’s dawn, and we’ve reached the absolute upper limit of the aerostat’s buoyancy, barely clinging to fifty-one klicks above the planet’s surface. On Earth, that would put us halfway into space. Here, it’s positively tropical.

  We both know it’s not going to stay that way for long.

  “If I say ‘yes, totally’, will you believe me?”

  “Good enough.” Grandpa fabs a bottle of fancy-looking champagne and two crystal flutes. He pops the cork on the upper deck, pours, and we clink a toast without words. The bubbles tickling my nose are transient, bittersweet, and pure gold. A last hurrah before the end.

  “Grandma Sixsmith should be here with you,” I say. “Big moment like this. What happened to her, anyway?”

  “Who, Alice?” The question seems to take him off guard. His face works for a moment, as though testing unfamiliar expressions for best fit. “Alice and I did not see eye to eye... on anything, it turns out.”

  “Oh, I see! Is she your enemy?”

  “No, no. This is not some lovers’ tiff writ large. Our tiffs were small, numerous, and eventually too tiring. We parted well.”

  “That you hid out at—around? near?—the Planet of Love suggests otherwise, Grandpa.”

  “Honestly, it does not. You will understand when you’re older. Look!”

  He points out through a non-virtual window, and I crane to see what has caught his attention.

  It’s the sky. The clouds have parted for the first time in... how long?

  The sky is orange, like blowtorched sugar.

  This is happening much faster than I thought possible.

  “It’s dangerous to know things too well, or to think that you do,” Grandpa says, raising his glass to the tatty sliver of light that is widening as we speak. He could be talking about Grandma or his home or something else entirely. “You grow bored. It changes. Maybe you discover that you were wrong all along.”

  Hieronymus dips beneath us. I feel the nose angle downward, dragging the deck with it. The bottle of champagne overbalances and froth spills everywhere.

  I drain my glass in one compulsive motion, even though I feel sick to the stomach.

  “We have passed the tipping point,” Grandpa says, waving me to a seat. I have no role to play in what’s to come, except to cling tight as the atmosphere implodes and look on the bright side. What’s the worst that could happen?

  There are so many answers to that question I don’t even know where to begin.

  “Grandpa?”

  “Yes, Natasha.” He is standing at the wheel, gripping it with both knobbly hands.

  “Don’t tell Mom about the champagne. You’ll get us both in trouble.”

  “That is the least of our concerns at this moment.”

  “I needed to tell you anyway, looking ahead.” Really I want to ask him if we’re going to die, but feel as though voicing the possibility would make it real. He keeps promising that I’ll be all right. Let’s leave it at that. “What’s your plan, exactly?”

  “I am going to aim for Mount Sixsmith,” he says, pointing at the first and biggest of the Eyes. “Don’t worry. We won’t smash into it. I have chosen this destination because that is where the reactors have been drawing energy out of the atmosphere for the longest. There will still be turbulence, but my calculations suggest that the ocean forming at the base of the mountain will be tepid at most. It would be terrible to ditch in a boiling sea.”

  It sure would be. I hadn’t considered that particular outcome before and now wish I could get it out of my mind.

  “I mean for after. What are you going to do about the guy who did this?”

  “That’s surely up to the Peacekeepers. Has he broken any laws? It’s not as if Venus belonged to anyone, except, in the most diffuse way, the entire human race. If his actions result in a net benefit, maybe he should be rewarded, not punished.”

  Hieronymus judders as its rate of descent increases. The clouds close around us again.

  “Seriously?” I ask him, trying not to grip the sides of my chair too hard too early. Save it for later, for when things get really rough. “You’d be happy if he got off scot-free?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He spins the wheel, guiding the aerostat around a gushing column of thick, black cloud. Beneath the skull and crossbones I painted earlier, he does look a little like a pirate, with scrappy white beard and shirt (remnant of the tux) rolled up to his elbows, revealing an honest-to-god tattoo of the Venus de Milo. “I merely acknowledge that people will have different perspectives to me. We have never seen eye to eye before. Why change now?”

  Faster and faster we fall. I have to keep talking or go crazy with impotent fear.

  “Why doesn’t anyone believe you about what you found here? Surely you sent back patterns of your bugs...”

  “Oh, the discovery of life is not the issue. My survey was the most thorough possible, and my samples the most complete, confirming the theory that life evolved here as it did on Earth and elsewhere. It was what I found next that caused the controversy.”

  When I close my eyes I can still see the window onto Mount Sixsmith, gaping hungrily like a lamprey’s mouth. A churning stain surrounds it, the first ocean on Venus in a geological age. It’s spreading like blood across uneven lava plains, hissing and bubbling at the edges.

  “Would you tell me about that, Grandpa, in great detail? Please?”

  His silence stretches so long I fear he’s not going to oblige me—and then how am I going to drive out my anxiety? By babbling about my nonexistent love life?

  Finally he says, “I’m not sure what I fear most: that you would fail to understand, or that you would not.”

  I wrestle gratefully with the double negative as our descent becomes ever more precipitous.

  “Try me.”

  “Very well. You need to understand, Natasha, that no one fully knows how Venus came to be this way. ‘Greenhouse effect gone wild’ be damned. The universe does not obediently bend to fit our best theories, even for a convenient narrative that helps us put what we did on Earth behind us.

  “Climate change had a profound effect on all the world, not just Tuvalu. Millions died. But we avoided the grand catastrophe of our sister planet by being clever and building powerful machines. Bravo for us. We know better now.”

  “Sibling planet,” I correct him automatically.

  “Complacency is a dangerous thing,” he says, ignoring me. “What I discovered in rock and gas samples were anomalous chiral and isotopic signatures that suggest an entirely different explanation for Venus’ present condition. Once I fully comprehended their import, I knew that we were far from safe—from ourselves, and from our machines.”

  “I’ll be frank with you, Grandpa. Not understanding much so far.”

  “To put it simply, I do not believe that conditions on Venus are an accident—or at least not a natural one. It is the end resul
t of a technological process—a war maybe, or a contaminant that destroyed an entire biosphere, sending what life remained here to the very fringes, where it clung on against all odds in a much reduced form.”

  “You mean your bugs... they did this to themselves?”

  “That is what I believe.”

  I picture the fuzzy fronds in Grandpa’s tanks. “Ouch.”

  “Precisely, if something of an understatement.”

  There’s a hearty boom from outside. I open my eyes a crack to see that we’re dropping through a forest of lightning strikes, which dance around us like the bars of an electric cage.

  I slam my eyes shut again and fold my legs and arms around me. Much safer in here my lizard brain advises me.

  “So... wait... let me get this straight. If Venus wasn’t always this way, what does that mean for the bad guy in this scenario? Is he still a bad guy for turning the world back to the way it was?”

  “What do you think, Natasha?”

  “I don’t know. I’m confused.”

  “I do not blame you. If someone destroys your house, and you discover in the process that it was in fact built on the ruin of another house, doesn’t that fundamentally changes your perspective?”

  “But Venus is no one’s house any more, not really.”

  “All right, then. Look at it another way. What if a man has dedicated his life to standing outside nature, preserving everything he found—only to discover that it was never natural at all?”

  That’s Grandpa, I assume. “He’d be pretty pissed off, I expect.”

  GRANDPA SAYS NOTHING.

  Which gives me time to think. And make some connections. And approach a conclusion that seems inescapable and maddening.

  “Grandpa, tell me you didn’t.”

  “I cannot until you tell me what you think I did.”

  Smart-ass. “You built the reactors? You destroyed Venus? Why?”

  “To send a message to those fools who wouldn’t listen! Thanks to d-mat and fabricators, we have the power to subvert, even destroy nature. What’s more, we can’t assume that we won’t, because it happened right here. Whoever’s hand pulled the trigger the first time, and it might have been very much like yours, perhaps they too thought themselves outside the law: All things transform.”

  What else did he say my first day on Venus? Life cannot harm life. “I don’t think that’s going to hold up in court.”

  “I don’t care. They can’t ignore me now!”

  Hieronymus jolts violently. For a moment I had completely forgotten where we were, but my ignorance had not been blissful.

  “If you knew all along that this was going to happen,” I say, unable to prevent a hurt tone, “why did you let me aboard?”

  “Birdie wanted to give you a shock. I believe you have received one.”

  “You know she’s not going to buy that. Particularly if we die here.”

  He sighs. “It was not my intention to subject you to this... I mean it sincerely, Natasha... I was going to wait until you left. But then I saw your lenses and I knew why I had been holding off, the one thing my plan lacked...”

  Lenses. Life-logging.

  “A witness,” I say. “For your confession?”

  “For Venus. For this poor world and all that intelligent beings have wrought upon it, as their natures dictated. For all those whose lives might be lost if we blunder on unchecked.”

  Dammit. I have been an audience for a madman after all: my grandfather, his own worst enemy, who would destroy a world to make a moral point and might kill us on the way.

  “Open your eyes, Natasha.”

  I am angry with him in a way that transcends any irritation I’ve ever felt for my parents.

  “No. I’m not going to! I don’t care if you think that makes me like everyone else, sticking my head in the sand because the world scares us sometimes. I’m scared right now, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Why shouldn’t I be? I’m trapped in here with you and your mad scheme. And what’s worse, nothing I can do will make a difference. I could try to fight you for control of the wheel—and probably win, by the way—but would that help bring Venus back? Or Tuvalu? Or anywhere else?”

  “Please, Natasha. You have to see this.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

  His tone saps the fight out of me. Grandpa sounds old and sad, not foolish or monstrous or any of the other things he called himself earlier. Maybe the real reason he kept me around was so he wouldn’t be alone.

  I steel myself to do as he says, and when my eyelids separate I see him at the wheel, first, then the skies beyond him, second. We are falling down a vast chimney lit by sunlight from far above. The view is neither of Earth nor of Venus. There are colors and shapes here that never existed before, except maybe on Jupiter and even then no human has ever seen anything like them, not with naked eyes. This is real, and at the same time palpably transient. The reactors are still working. The entire atmosphere is collapsing in on itself, dragging us down with it. In time everything will reach a new equilibrium, and long before then all this will be gone.

  It’s astonishingly beautiful.

  Trailing tattered clouds in our wake, we fall headlong towards the face of Venus.

  An ocean the color of tears rises up to meet us.

  WITH A SPLASH that sends water dozens of yards into the air, Hieronymus comes to the end of its journey and, to my amazement, doesn’t immediately sink. It bobs on restless waves in the shadow of Mount Sixsmith, which is just as black and menacing as it looked from above. The lightning has passed now the Bosch reactors in our vicinity have run out of ready fuel. Elsewhere, twenty-three others are still working hard.

  The air sac deflates, detaches, and drifts away in the grip of a powerful current. A loud gurgle comes from the deck below, and I make haste to see what’s going on, still wearing my pressure suit just in case. Going down with the ship is not on my agenda.

  The sample tanks are emptying.

  “Is this supposed to be happening?” I call up to Grandpa.

  He appears behind me on the ladder, but doesn’t linger.

  “Yes. They will drown or adapt, like us.”

  He’s heading below, and I follow him, at least until he starts taking off his clothes.

  “Woah, Grandpa. Don’t you think I’ve seen enough scary shit for one day?”

  “You are perfectly safe, Natasha.” I don’t think he’s talking about his nudity. Behind my turned back, I hear him rummaging through the mostly empty hangar. “The controls of Hieronymus are locked, but they will release in an hour. It is programmed to follow the tide away from the mountain. I suggest you stick to this course. When the flanks collapse, there will be tsunamis.”

  I risk a glance over my shoulder. He’s pulling on a pressure suit with bright pink highlights.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “It is time for all good Venusians to return home. And Earthlings too. The d-mat booth and the channel to Earth will also unlock shortly.”

  Naturally, I already suspect that he is behind the blockade. What’s the point of having a witness if she flees at the first opportunity?

  Any anger I feel, though, is swamped by concern as he opens the hatch. We both pull on our masks, even though air pressure keeps the seething water at bay. The atmosphere is a ferocious mix of chemicals that smells very bad. I look down into the water, seeking the fuzzy fronds, but there’s no sign of them.

  “You’re not a Venusian, Grandpa.”

  “Not yet.”

  He jumps into the water so suddenly I’m taken by surprise. I thought I’d have longer to make him see reason. “Grandpa! What are you doing? Don’t you know it’s bad manners to leave without saying goodbye? Grandpa!”

  I find myself jumping in after him. The water is thick and full of bubbles, like warm soda. My mad ancestor is a shadow receding along the underside of Hieronymus, swimming with slow but steady strokes. He doesn’t look ba
ck. The current is strong. I cling to the edge of the hatch with one hand, torn between security and letting him go.

  Then he’s disappeared into the murk, and it’s too late to do anything.

  I pull myself inside and hurry back up top. There’s no sign of him in the water, anywhere I look. The boat won’t turn so I can search for him, and I have a little frustrated cry, feeling alone and betrayed by everyone. Then the Air reconnects and my ears fill with voices. There’s a world of people eleven minutes away and they all want to know what just happened.

  I don’t need to say anything to them yet. My log is already uploading, and they’ll work it out when they watch it. What Grandpa did. No doubt they’ll argue about it forever. Was he deluded or a visionary? Did he make his case, and if so, what was that case, exactly?

  Mom and Dad are in the mix, fairly babbling with fear and relief. “Tash Sixsmith, tell me you had nothing to do with this!” Blah blah. I should go home and face the music, but I hesitate. It doesn’t seem right to leave just yet, not until I have an opinion, at least. Yes, I was a victim of Grandpa’s mad plan, but that doesn’t mean I’m powerless. As the one and only temporary Venusian left, probably, it would be helpful to have something to say. Something more meaningful, or at least useful, than Sorry.

  As Hieronymus glides away from the black cone of Mount Sixsmith, I send a message to Afi Tekena.

  “Hey, I found you some new islands.”

  INSELBERG

  – NALO HOPKINSON –

  Yam, feed me now.

  Yam, when I am dead,

  I shall feed you.

  —A Nigerian grace

  EVERYBODY GATHER ROUND the bus, now! Thank you please. Sir, beg you, don’t try to pick the trumpet flowers. You might cause damage. Yes, sir; me know say you paid for an all-inclusive tropical vacation here on the little nipple of mountain top that is all left of my country, but trust me. Some things you don’t want all-included. Not since the sea uprise and change everything. Things like trumpet flower bushes.