Loftus had made the journey to Karenia three times over the past hundred and fifty years – visits always hedged with trepidation – but this trip would be the last.
“Ed? You ‘kay?” Softly, the question came from the woman at his side.
He turned from the viewscreens.
The body-couch swaddled all but her tanned face, making Elana look like a baby in a papoose.
“I’m fine.” He tried to keep the weariness from his tone and returned his contemplation to the view below. Seen from this altitude, as the shuttle sliced through the troposphere, the planet appeared wrapped in chiffon clouds of mauve, with glimpses of purple and blue land between the strands.
Minutes later, he glanced at Elana and saw that her eyes were closed, her face serene. She was one hundred and seventy years his junior. Sometimes this charmed him, her youthful enthusiasm, her often startling naiveté, spilling over, filling him with a renewed zest for life; sometimes it irked.
Now, he looked at his lover’s peaceful, innocent features and he felt physically sick, assailed by guilt again.
Why had he asked her to accompany him to Karenia? Simply because it was easier to have her here, an emotional crutch, a distraction from other, more intense guilt?
One hour later they made touchdown.
“This might be a little uncomfortable,” Loftus murmured.
Elana nodded, her dark eyes tracking the movements of the medic in the sealed terminal obelisk as he withdrew the slug from its wrap and approached her.
“Open up.”
She opened her mouth and accepted the clear bolus of gel. She swallowed hard, and pulled a face. “God…” she gagged. “It tastes awful. And…” She shook her head as the bolus coated her trachea and climbed her nasal passages, creating a seal which would act as a barrier against the poisonous spores of Karenia.
Loftus swallowed his own slug and closed his eyes. He would never get used to the sensation of the bolus at work in his head. It felt as if a mouthful of food had come to life and was trying to escape through his nostrils. He felt the membrane coating his eyeballs, and his vision temporarily blurred.
The medic passed them each a blister-pack containing two small pills. “Take the first when you’re safely back aboard the shuttle, the second an hour later. They’ll have dissolved the membrane by the time you reach the ship.” Finally, the medic added, “And remember: the barrier will only last for four weeks max; after that it becomes too loaded with spore debris and you...”
“We suffocate,” Loftus finished for him. He slipped the pills into his breast pocket. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get out there.”
The airlock doors hissed open and Loftus heard Elana gasp.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Loftus nodded, and blamed the lump in his throat on the protective membrane.
The landing strip was a gash carved through jungle that twisted and tangled in gaudy purple knots as high as a Tokyo skyscraper. Whistles and buzzes filled the air, shifting in pitch and volume so that Loftus felt as if his ears were continually blocking and clearing. Looking to his right along the landing strip, he could see through the jungle to rolling hills, cultivated land, fields with grooved rows of kreen, all of it shading from blue-green through blue to purple.
A fine haze overlay everything, like gauze held up before the eyes. The pale lavender mist was the effect of the ubiquitous spores, a constant reminder that this planet, despite its idyllic first impression, was deadly.
It was, as Elana had said, quite beautiful, and Loftus was here to destroy the place.
He rolled his aching shoulders. Karenia was a planet like a dozen others, just another backwater colony world. He was here to do a job, no more.
His musing was disturbed by a gentle touch on his arm. “Can I go first?” asked Elana. “I need an establishing shot.”
She stepped from the airlock and walked across the apron. At its lip she stood and swung her head in a wide arc, sweeping from the tangled wall of jungle to the nicely framed view of fields at the far end of the landing strip, the first buildings of Turballe.
Loftus left the airlock and came up behind her, listening to her commentary.
“Karenia, the world to which everyone in the Expansion owes so much. For it was here, three hundred years ago, that Omega-Gen researchers made the discovery that would change the destiny of our species...”
He wandered out of earshot of her clichés. Three other shuttles were parked to one side of the landing strip. Their cargo bays gaped wide as workers transferred hessian-swaddled bales of processed kreen from drays pulled by native draft animals resembling eight-legged rhinoceroses.
Work paused as the men and women caught sight of him. They stared, with something like wonder in their eyes. Even here at the port, off-worlders were an infrequent sight; despite Karenia’s inherent beauty and historic significance, not many were willing to endure the protective bolus in order to visit. Everything about him, he knew, would appear strange to these workers, from his tight, bright apparel to his attenuated thinness. The colonists were short, dumpy, and garbed in loose dun jackets and pantaloons. Like something from Brueghel, he thought.
He raised a hand in a brief salute, and they smiled and waved in return, then resumed their work.
“Ed?” Elana called.
He turned. She was striding towards him, beaming. This was the start of an adventure, to her. She could think no further than her reports. Footage from this visit would be netted widely, used and re-used by anyone with an interest in the reclusive world that had allowed humankind to battle the tyranny of time. This trip would make her name.
“You’re not still...?” he began.
“No. I caught you here, silhouetted against the sky. I’m glad you waved. It was a gesture both of greeting and almost of farewell.” He stared at her and wondered if her radiant youth and beauty disguised an insight he had failed to apprehend, or if, perhaps, he was finally succumbing to her banalities.
Just then, a wheeled vehicle drew up in a cloud of dust. A short figure jumped out, flustered by his late arrival. He was grey-haired, rubicund in healthy old age.
“Mr Loftus!” the man called, approaching with his hands spread wide. “Mr Loftus, Ms Kryadies... Welcome to Karenia. We’re honoured. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you…” The man gestured at his vehicle. “I had a breakdown.” He spoke a formal bureaucrat’s English and his accent was muddy, words running together in a thick rush of consonants. Loftus managed to follow, but he could see that Elana was struggling.
The man held out a stubby hand. “I’m Christopher. Christopher Dupré.”
Loftus accepted the archaic gesture of the handshake, anticipating Christopher’s grip and trying not to wince.
“Christopher.” Loftus smiled. “You were...”
“I was five,” Christopher said. “But I remember you. I still have the plastic horse you gave me back then.”
Loftus recalled the tubby, red-faced boy from his last visit, and fought back the sadness that welled within him.
Christopher smiled. “Sixty years ago… who would believe it?” He looked Loftus up and down, taking in the visitor’s unchanged appearance. “Come, I’ll show you to the manse. I’ve already picked up your luggage.”
“Everything is in place for the board meeting?” Loftus asked.
Christopher paused, and Loftus felt a moment’s guilt for steering his host back to the business of his visit. The man nodded, said, “Yes, Mr Loftus, it’s all prepared. We meet tomorrow.”
They descended the steps and eased themselves into the car in testy silence.
Sixty years ago Loftus had been greeted by Alain Dupré, Christopher’s father, then in his late thirties... He had last heard from Alain eighteen years ago, a brief message to say that his sister Helen had passed away. It would be too much to hope that the wry, philosophically-minded patriarch would still be alive.
“Alain...?” said Loftus, cursing Karenia’s inwardness, the la
ck of information at his disposal.
Christopher smiled over his shoulder as he took a track through abruptly thinning jungle. “My father is looking forward to meeting you again,” he said.
His initial surprise and delight that Alain was alive was soon followed, inevitably, by despair. What he had to tell the people of Karenia would be hard enough, but he had assumed he would be telling it to a world of strangers... In the few days he had spent on Karenia sixty years ago, Alain had become a friend.
“He’s one hundred in a month,” Christopher continued. “He wasn’t up to making the journey, though he wanted to. He’s been wheelchair-bound for a few years now. But,” Christopher tapped his head, “he still has it up here.”
They passed through fields of native herbs. Loftus stared at the tangled rows of kreen, the turquoise vegetation towering metres high.
To Elana, Christopher said, “We’re honoured to have you here, Ms Kryadies. I hope you appreciate that you will have unprecedented access to Karenia. We are an insular people... We do not welcome the scrutiny of others. If it were not for Mr Loftus...” He paused, then went on, “We would hope that you do not take this access lightly, and that you will ask at all times before recording. My people are not all as outward-looking as I am.”
“Of course,” said Elana disingenuously. Loftus knew she would be filming this exchange already. “I am honoured by your welcome.”
Loftus turned away and stared through the side window. He just wanted this to be over.
“Wood...” Elana said, in awe. She fingered the warped timbers of the balcony as if they were gold. To her future audience, she said, “Far from being proscribed as it is on Earth, here on Karenia timber is the staple building material. The manse is almost three hundred years old.”
Loftus watched her. So young, with hundreds of years ahead of her. Could she truly apprehend the fact that she would still be alive, barring accidents, in a thousand years? What did that mean to her?
Could he, for that matter? At a hundred and seventy he felt old, weary, dragged down by the anomie of virtual immortality.
She swung to face him, bearing down with her invisible retinal-cams. “Edward Loftus, what’s it like to be back on Karenia after so long?”
He raised a forbearing hand. “Please, Elana. Not now, okay?”
She touched her temple, stilled the cams, murmured, “Sorry, Ed.”
He pulled her to him and they kissed, and again he felt a pang of guilt that he should so easily dismiss her and find comfort in her within a single breath. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m tired. It was a long trip.”
They stood side by side at the balcony rail and gazed out over the hazed land. Crops of kreen swept away across the rolling terrain. The two great suns hung in the sky, grossly swollen in comparison to Sol; the first, burnt orange, was going down over a range of mountains to the east. The second, smaller and redder, sat at its zenith. Midday at this latitude was hot on Karenia, eased only by the stiff southerly breeze.
In the distance, smudged, were the kiln houses where the crops were dried and the drug extracted. From there it would begin the long journey back to Earth, starting on a dray cart and finishing on a faster-than-light ship.
“Edward!” Loftus turned. “Edward, it’s great to see you again!” The voice was strong, in contrast to the shrunken man who sat, wedged by cushions, in the wheelchair pushed by Christopher.
Alain Dupré smiled out of a sunken, lined face.
Loftus felt something constrict in his throat.
“Alain,” he said, advancing and taking the man’s frail hand. “It’s good to be back. This is Elana. Elana Kryadies.”
Elana was visibly shocked by the manifest ill-health of the man before her. Such physical infirmities were beyond her experience.
She rallied, smiled, and took his thin hand in a brief shake. “May I film?” she asked.
Alain gestured with a frail hand and nodded. “Come. Lunch is prepared. We’ll eat downstairs on the veranda.”
The patriarch descended the timber staircase on a stairlift, the others following slowly. Dupré grinned up at them. “Bet you thought you’d never see me again, eh, Edward?”
“Well, to be honest...”
Dupré laughed. “I’m surprised I’m here myself. I’m a hundred in just over four weeks. The medics give me another month, so I might just hit the century if I’m lucky.”
Beside him, Loftus heard Elana draw a sharp breath.
Dupré went on, “Cancer. Brought on by the genetic engineering. How ironic! A two edged sword, eh, Edward?”
“Can’t anything be done...?” Loftus began lamely, then cursed himself.
“What? Here on Karenia, at my age? Now maybe on Earth...” Dupré said, and winked.
Loftus felt a well of despair open within him.
“But I’ve had a hell of a long life, I’ll take my destiny,” the patriarch was saying as he rolled his chair from the stairlift and trundled across the polished timber floor to a sun-flooded veranda overlooking the fields.
A table was loaded with fresh food.
“Please, be seated.” Dupré gestured to a cluster of chairs.
A woman came onto the veranda, bearing a jug of juice. Christopher Dupré made the introductions. “This is Catherine, my daughter-in-law. My son Jack – Catherine’s husband – is busy with the kilns.”
Catherine was tiny and dark, and could scarcely bring herself to meet the eyes of these long-lived strangers from Earth. When she did look at Loftus, he experienced a sudden shock and the memories flooded back, bitter-sweet.
Only when she bent, carefully, to place the jug on the table, did Loftus notice the bulge of her belly. He couldn’t help but stare.
Elana touched her temple and looked at Loftus, recording his reaction.
Dupré pulled himself up to the table. “My great granddaughter is due in six weeks, Edward. It’s my ambition to see her before I go.”
Steeling himself, Loftus smiled and said, “And I’m sure you will, Alain. I’m sure you will.”
They took their seats and ate a simple meal of bread, cheese and salad, and Loftus tried to banish all thoughts of Catherine and her child.
Loftus wondered if Alain Dupré had picked up, from his manner, that all was not right on this visit. The old man possessed an intelligence that Loftus found daunting, as well as a keen insight into the workings of the human heart.
“Life here is simple,” he had told Loftus sixty years ago. “The rest of the Expansion might think us backward peasants, Edward, but the slow, rural way of life gives us time to dwell, to consider the way of things... We prefer to turn inwards. We are at one with our world in ways that more... modern societies have lost.”
Elana spoke up, “Mr Dupré, I wonder if I might ask you a few questions? I would be interested in knowing more about your life.”
The old man smiled. “A museum piece, eh? And don’t call me Mr Dupré, okay? I’m Alain.”
“I’m sorry. Alain. I was wondering...”
Loftus busied himself spreading soft cheese on a piece of coarsely grained bread, mentally wincing at the thought of what crass inanity Elana might consider a legitimate question.
“I must admit, Alain, that I was expecting... I don’t know – not so much hostility, but perhaps suspicion from the people of Karenia, despite the assurances Edward gave me. Could you say something about how you regard us... the people of the Expansion?”
“Other than that you have lost touch with the universe, you mean?” Dupré laughed and waved a chunk of bread. “You know, we don’t have long-lifers along that often–” He winked at Loftus. “So it’s good to have the opportunity to talk.”
“You don’t resent us?”
Beside Dupré, his son smiled and shook his head. The patriarch matched the gesture. “Of course not, Elana,” the old man said. “So we live eighty, ninety, a hundred years if we’re lucky. While the rest of you out there – if you can afford the treatment! – live a thousand yea
rs and more... but you’ve got to understand that this is our choice. We live peaceful, quiet lives. We expect no more. In fact, I’m filled with horror at the thought of possibly living a thousand years.”
“But you’re not angered by the irony that it is the drug that you harvest which grants the rest of us...?”
“Angered? But our forefathers knew the deal when they chose to stay on here. And we’re paid well in return for the drug – how would we be able to afford the genetic treatment for our children which makes them immune to the effects of the spores–?”
“Some critics of Omega-Gen accuse them of having it both ways,” Elana went on. “They say that Omega-Gen is getting the anti-ageing drug, and you’re paying for the genetic treatment that allows you to harvest it for them.”
Dupré shook his head, almost sadly. “They pay us well, and that allows us to live here, in paradise. We are a part of this world, Ms Kryadies, just as it is a part of us.”
Jesus Christ, Loftus thought, hanging his head. What will they think of Omega-Gen after what I have to say at the board meeting tomorrow? He glanced across at Catherine, the curve of her belly just visible over the table. What will they think?
“Edward?” It was Dupré, his tone solicitous.
Loftus quickly lifted his head. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. A little tired, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t stand on ceremony, Edward. Why not go take a siesta?” The patriarch smiled. “We have plenty of time to do the tour this afternoon.”
“That’s kind of you.” Loftus rose from the table and left the veranda. At the foot of the stairs, Elana caught up with him. “Ed?”
“I really am tired, Elana. Give me an hour alone and I’ll be fine, okay?”
Smiling uncertainly, she nodded and returned to the veranda – no doubt, Loftus thought, to continue her damned interrogation.
He found the bedroom, lay down and attempted unsuccessfully to sleep.
Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction Page 31