Heaven Chronicles

by Joan D. Vinge

  Her face eased into a mocking smile; he wondered who was being mocked. “There are the bins, pick out what you want. Remember to close the lids tightly. This is an infrared heater, there's the trash. Eat when you want to, clean up after yourself.” She turned back, fixed her containers with a clack onto the magnetized tray, and moved away to the table.

  He joined her with his own tray, half-sitting on air in the near-normal gravity of the ship's constant acceleration. She frowned faintly, went on eating, in silence. Uncomfortable, he began, “I'm impressed. This is a hell of a nice ship, I—”

  “Well it looks like the two of you are getting along even better than I imagined.” Siamang drifted down through the ceiling well. “Put in a good word for me, Red; if you get any further—”

  Dartagnan looked up, feeling the edge on Siamang's voice. He offered a grin. “I sure will, boss … if I get any further.”

  The pilot picked up her tray wordlessly, made a wide circuit upward to the entry well, and disappeared. Chaim heard the door of her cabin slam to, and, in the silence, the click of a lock. This time it was Siamang who laughed too loudly. Siamang glanced at the pantry, the empty table, the fork spearing a sticky lump of vegetable-in-sauce halfway to Dartagnan's mouth. Siamang raised his eyebrows, used his eyes.

  Dartagnan lowered the fork, noticed something new and peculiar about the eyes. “I just started, boss, if you want to take mine. I can heat up some more.” He offered with his hands, pushed himself away from the table.

  “You're sure you don't mind? thanks, Red.” Siamang moved complacently in toward the table as Chaim moved away. His voice slurred, barely noticeable. “One thing you must have that I don't is a way with women … if you could call that one a woman. Must come from all the lies you tell.” He picked up the fork. “You impress me, Red. How can you mediamen tell so many lies, so convincingly? Are you born that way?”

  Chaim focused on Siamang's eyes for half a second, trying to be certain of what he saw; Siamang's eyes probed the private darknesses of his mind like a spotlight. He looked away, unfocused. An aggressor … The disjointed word burned on his eyelids like an afterimage. But the eyes were too bright, glassy, the pupils dilated until he couldn't see an iris. Siamang was high on something; Dartagnan didn't know what, didn't want to know. He smiled inanely. “No, boss, nobody's born that way. It takes practice; a hell of a lot of practice.” He flipped the cover casually down over his camera lens, drifted toward the pantry. He had the sudden unhappy thought that there wouldn't be many scenes worth recording during their transit to Planet Two. He said a quick, silent prayer to no one in particular that Siamang would give him some decent footage when they got there.

  “Tell me something else, Red—” Siamang's voice went on, teasing, vaguely condescending.

  Dartagnan grinned, not seeing Siamang, or the room, or even the ship, but only the starry void beyond. It's going to be a long trip. It better be worth it.

  After the first few hundred kiloseconds, Dartagnan stopped carrying his camera, stopped doing almost everything that brought him into contact with the others. Siamang stayed closed in his room, passing the time in a world that Chaim was not interested in visiting; he came out only for meals, for an occasional, teasing attack on Dartagnan's scruples, or a casual pass at the pilot. The pilot stayed locked in her own cabin, doing what, Dartagnan didn't know, didn't care; she came out only to eat and check readings in the control room, avoiding them both.

  But he used the opportunity of her absence, eventually, to ignore her arbitrary restrictions and get into the control room himself. He filmed the view of stars that showed on the screen; stayed, watching the screen in the comfortable, clicking silence, escaping from the blank-walled boredom of his cluttered quarters below.

  His eyes began to drift from the central viewscreen, studying the projected strings of numbers, the intricate geometric filigrees that showed on the peripheral screens. He frowned absently at the angle of the sun, the position of the lightweight screen beyond the ship's hull that kept sunlight from striking directly on the landing module. He murmured an inquiry to the computer, watched as the string of figures changed on the screen, began to flash, on and off.

  “What do you think you're doing?”

  He jerked guiltily, caught hold of the panel as the pilot rose up into the room. “I think one of the propellant tanks on the landing module is heating up; you might want to adjust the sunshade—”

  “Get away from there. I told you the control room was off limits! What have you done.…” She pushed off from the rungs that circled the well's perimeter, came up to the panel. “Of all the stupid—” Her eyes went to the flashing figures on the screen, back down to the panel. She queried, got the same answer. “You're right.” She looked up at him again as if she'd never seen him before. “How could you know that?”

  “Mediamen know everything.” He saw her expression begin to change back. “Well—actually, I'm a qualified pilot.”

  “You?” She blinked. “I didn't think—”

  “Funny, I think the same things about women.”

  She turned back to the panel; he watched her reposition the sunshade. She said, very softly, defensively, “I don't usually make those mistakes. But I haven't been coming up here as much as I should … I shouldn't let him get to me!”

  “Siamang?”

  She nodded, not looking at him, the soft, shadowed curve of her mouth drawing tight.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Not exactly what you'd call easy to love, is he?” But believe me, I've known worse.

  “He's a sadist!” Her voice shook.

  Dartagnan felt his throat close, swallowed. “What do you mean? You mean he—”

  “No. No, he's too ‘civilized’ for that. He's a psychological sadist. When he's with his father, with the other corporation men, he's fine, charming, normal. But when it's someone he doesn't—respect—he …” she broke off, searching for the word, “… he …”

  “He ‘teases’. ” Chaim nodded. “I'll show you my scars, if you'll show me yours.” He hesitated. “Why do you put up with it?”

  “I like my job! He—doesn't travel much.”

  He heard a noise below; his slow smile widened with insincerity as he looked toward the well. “Heads up.”

  Siamang appeared, pinned them against the panel with his gaze as he pushed upward past the rim of the well. “So here you are,” he said, too congenially. He held a drink bulb in his hand, sucked at the straw.

  “Hello, boss.” Dartagnan bowed. “We were just talking about what a pleasure it is to work for Siamang and Sons.”

  Siamang laughed in disbelief. “I thought we were supposed to confine our socializing to the lower levels.”

  “I was just getting a little footage of the stars, a little arty effect: with the pilot's supervision.…” He raised his hands apologetically.

  “He was just leaving,” Mythili said, her voice brittle.

  “Good. Don't want to break the rules, do we, Red?” Siamang tossed his drink bulb out into the air. Chaim watched it arc slowly downward toward the cold metal of the floor. “Time for a refill.” He sank, like the bulb, disappeared below floor level. His door opened, closed.

  “You're always surrendering, aren't you, Dartagnan? Always lying—”

  Dartagnan looked back at the pilot's rigid face, feeling her distaste, and down at his hands, still palm-out in the air. He pulled them in against his sides, unexpectedly ashamed, covered the twinge of his stomach. “Yeah.” He wiped his hands on his jacket. “Always lying flat on my back, while the whole damned universe fucks my integrity.” He stepped into the well.

  Mythili Fukinuki caught at the ceiling, stopped herself from drifting on down into the dormitory. Dartagnan looked up, almost surprised.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Not if you don't.” He pushed aside his camera on the bunk. “Make yourself at home. I'm harmless.”

  She floated down. Her knees bent slightly as she reached the floor, stabilizing. H
er short, shining hair moved softly across her forehead; her skin was the color of antique gold in the strong light. Chaim glanced away uneasily.

  Her own dark eyes searched the emptiness, avoiding him. “Why do you do it, if it—”

  “What's a nice boy like me doing in a job like this?” He grinned, peering down at her, like the Cheshire Cat. She flushed. The grin disappeared, leaving him behind. “Somebody has to do it.”

  “But you don't.” She brushed back her hair. “Not if you really hate it so much.”

  “The voice of experience?” He baited her, smarting with the things she didn't say. “Goody Two-Shoes, female pilot, tell our viewers how you got where you are. And don't tell me it was clean living. It was connections—”

  Her mouth tightened. “That's right, it was. My uncle was a freighter pilot, my father got him to use his influence. But they did it because it was what I wanted.”

  “Well, good for them; good for you,” he said sourly. “We should all have it so good. If we did, maybe I'd be where you are, instead of where I am.”

  “There are other jobs. You don't need influence—”

  “—to dump fertilizer into a hydroponics tank for the rest of my life? To break up rocks in a refinery? Sure. All the dead-end jobs in the universe, back home on Delhi.… Being a mediaman, at least I've got a chance, at money, at making contacts … at maybe getting free, getting a ship of my own again, someday. If this's what I have to do to get it—whatever I have to do—I will.”

  She settled slowly onto a box. “Oh … What happened to your ship? What kind of ship was it?”

  “It wasn't my ship … my father's. He taught me all I know; like they say.” He laughed oddly. “He was a prospector, it was a flyin' piece of junk. I never saw it till I was eighteen. I hardly ever saw him. My mother was a contract mother.”

  “Oh.” Almost sorrow.

  He nodded. “When I was eighteen my father dropped in out of the black like a meteor and told me I was going prospecting. I spent fifty megasecs learning to pilot a ship, scouting artifacts on rocks with names I'd never even heard of; hardly ever seeing anybody but him … and a lot of corpses.” He laughed again, not hearing it. “I thought I'd go crazy. Finally he gave up and let me go home, instead. The next thing we heard from him, he claimed he'd made the strike of his life … and the next thing we heard, he was dead. He'd smashed up the ship, and smashed himself up, in a lousy docking accident. Some corporation picked up his salvage find, we never got a thing. I had to start doing something then, to support my mother … and here I am. I thought I'd enjoy being a mediaman, after fifty megaseconds of prospecting … Now, even solitary confinement sounds good.”

  “Why did your mother let you do it? Doesn't she know—?” Sympathy softened the clear, straight lines of her face.

  “What was she supposed to do? Dump fertilizer instead of me?” He shrugged. “She's nice looking, she got married, maybe a hundred megasecs ago. I don't hear from her much now; her husband doesn't appreciate me, for obvious reasons.… While my father was alive, she never even contracted to have anybody else's children. Funny—he stayed with us maybe seven times in six hundred megaseconds, never gave her a thing, except me; but she loved him, I think she always hoped he'd marry her someday.” He grunted. “Wouldn't that make a great human-interest filler.… Sorry, I haven't been filling my quota of compulsive conversation for the last megasecond.” And watching her, all at once he was overwhelmingly aware of another need that had not been fulfilled for too long. The fact that she made no effort at all at sensuality made her suddenly, unbearably sensual. He unbuttoned the high collar of his loose, gray-green jacket, shifted uncomfortably above the edge of the bunk, almost losing his balance.

  “My father,” she said, looking down, unaware, “wanted a son. But he couldn't have one … genetic damage. That's why he let me become a pilot; it was like having a son for him. But there's nothing wrong with that—” her voice rose slightly. “Because piloting is what I always wanted to do.”

  “Was it? Or was it really just that you wanted to please your father?” He wondered what had made him say that.

  She looked up sharply. “It was what I wanted. If a mediaman isn't satisfied to stay in his ‘place’, why should I have to be?”

  Something in her look cracked the barrier of his invulnerable public face. He nodded. “It's not easy, is it? They never make it easy.…”

  She smiled, very faintly. “No, Dartagnan … they never do. But maybe you've helped, a little.”

  “Call me Chaim?”

  “I thought your friends called you Red.”

  “I don't have any friends.”

  She shook her head, still smiling; pushed up from the box, and rose toward the entrywell. “Yes, you do.”

  Alone, he meditated on stars until his arousal subsided, leaving a warmth in his mind that had nothing to do with sex. He savored it as he listened to her heating food in the commons above his head; heard something else, Siamang's voice:

  “How about heating something up for me, Mythili?”

  “I'm a pilot, not a cook, Demarch Siamang. You'll have to do it yourself.”

  “That's not what I meant—”

  Dartagnan heard a magnetized tray clatter on the counter, a choked noise of indignation. “Do that for yourself, too!”

  More faintly, a door slammed shut. Chaim let her image back into his mind, grinned at it, rueful. Well, your friendship is better than nothing, poor Goody Two-Shoes.…

  But he saw little more of her, as a friend or in any other way, for the next four and a half megaseconds; their mutual dislike of Siamang, and fear of provoking him, still came between them, an impassable barrier.

  Until finally Planet Two filled the viewscreen: alien, immense, a painter's palette in sterile grays—gray-blue, gray-green, gray-brown. A castaway's grateful voice filled the speaker static; tracing his radio fix, Mythili put them into a polar orbit, breaking the hypnotic flow of grays with the blinding whiteness of ice caps. For the first time, Chaim saw clouds—pale, wispy streamers of frozen water vapor trapped high in the planet's atmospheric layer. He recorded it all, and was filled with a rare wonder at being one of the few human beings in Heaven system ever to have seen it firsthand. It occurred to him that the clouds seemed more numerous than he remembered from pictures: he managed to make intelligent conversation about it, standing at Mythili's side. And, as they made final preparations to enter the ungainly craft that would take them down out of orbit, she asked him quietly to assist her in the landing.

  He sat strapped into the heavily padded seat beside her own in the cabin that seemed cramped even to him. Siamang sat behind him, apparently sober, surprisingly silent. Chaim studied Mythili's movements, saw his own nervousness reflected in her face, but making her movements sharper, more certain, as though it only augmented her skill. She freed them from the grasp of the parent ship, executed the first rocket burn that broke them out of their orbit … and began the descent maneuver that neither she nor any living pilot in Heaven system had ever done, with the exception of the man stranded below.

  They entered the upper atmosphere; she began the second burn. She would have to maintain a crucial balance: too swift a rate of descent would result in their destruction … but too slow a one would exhaust the ship's fuel resources while they were still high above the surface. No ships had been constructed for over two billion seconds in the Heaven system that were capable of using a planet's atmosphere to slow their descent—because since the war there had never been a need for such a ship. Until now: No nuclear electric rocket could produce the acceleration necessary for a planetary landing. And so this ship, which could provide the necessary thrust to slow their descent, had been constructed of makeshift parts and with makeshift technology, in scarcely two megaseconds' time.

  Chaim read off their altitude and rate of descent from instruments that had never been calibrated for second-to-second precision at six hundred meters per second; clutched the instrument panel with sweati
ng hands, fighting against his own sudden, unaccustomed weight. Mythili dropped them down toward the signal of the radio beacon, the viewscreen virtually useless, blocked by the intermittent glare of their rockets and the angle of their descent. She bit off a gasp, or a curse, each time they were buffeted or swept from the line of their trajectory by the terrifying force of the unseen atmospheric turbulence.

  And at a thousand meters, she began the final burn. Chaim raised his voice as the sound of the rockets reached them, growing: “… six hundred meters, twenty meters per second, five hundred meters—” he felt thrust increase, “—four hundred meters, eighteen meters per second … three hundred meters … two hundred … one hundred meters, ten meters per second …” She cut thrust again, their rate of descent stabilized. “… fifty meters, ten meters per second … forty meters … thirty … twenty meters … Mythili, we're—” She increased thrust to full; ten meters per second squared crushed him down into his seat. The viewscreen was blind with dust. The ship lurched, noise drowned his words, vibration rattled his teeth, “—too fast!”

  Impact jarred through him, almost an anticlimax. Mythili cut power; seconds passed before the silence registered. He blinked at the screen, still swirling gray, and pushed up in his seat against gravity's unfamiliar hand. “Congratulations—” he laughed, finding himself breathless, “it's a planet … And I didn't get a single damned shot of the whole descent!”

  She drooped, triumphant, laughing with him. “If you'd been filming instead of being my copilot, I don't think we'd be here to worry about it.”

  He bobbed his head. “Too kind—” touched her with his eyes. She held his gaze, smiling.

  “Is it my imagination, or is it getting cold in here?” Dartagnan watched his breath frost as he spoke. He struggled with his spacesuit, feeling leaden and clumsy. He heard Siamang swear in irritation in the cramped space behind him.

  “It's not your imagination—the atmosphere acts like water, it's conducting all our heat away right through the hull.” Mythili massaged her arms as she studied the viewscreen. “Siamang's engineers predicted something like this.”