The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  “Adel, what’s going on?”

  “Is something going on?”

  “I’m afraid there is and I don’t want you mixed up in it. What does Kamilah want with you?”

  Adel felt a chill that had nothing to do with his isotherm.

  —don’t say anything—buzzed plus —we don’t know anything—

  “I don’t know that she wants anything.” He pulled his arms out of the hardsuit’s sleeves and folded them across his chest. “I just thought she was being nice.”

  “All right, Adel,” said Kamilah over the comm. “Take a stroll around the room. I want to see how you do in here where it’s flat. Speedy will compensate if you have any trouble. I’m sure she’s already in your ear.”

  The Godspeed held a forefinger to her lips. “Kamilah is going to ask you to turn off your comm. That’s when you must be especially careful, Adel.” With that, she faded away and Adel was staring, slack-jawed, at the HUD.

  “Adel?” said Kamilah. “Are you napping in there?”

  Adel took a couple of tentative steps. Moving the hardsuit was a little like walking on stilts. He was high off the floor and couldn’t really see or feel what was beneath his feet. When he twisted around, he caught sight of the tail whipping frantically behind him. But after walking for a few minutes, he decided that he could manage the suit. He lumbered behind Kamilah through the inner hatch of the airlock, which slid shut.

  Adel listened to the muted chatter of pumps evacuating the lock until finally there wasn’t enough air to carry sound. Moments later, the outer hatch opened.

  “Ready?” Kamilah said. “Remember that we’re leaving the artificial gravity field. No leaps or bounds—you don’t watch to achieve escape velocity.”

  Adel nodded.

  —she can’t see us—buzzed minus—we have to talk to her—

  Adel cleared his throat. “I’ve always wanted to see the stars from space.”

  “Actually, you won’t have much of a view until later,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  As they passed through the hatch, the Godspeed announced, “Suit lights are on. I’m deploying fireflies.”

  Adel saw the silver ball lift from the top of Kamilah’s suit and float directly above her. The bottom half of it was now incandescent, lighting the surface of the Godspeed against the swarming darkness. At the same time the ground around him lit up. He looked and saw his firefly hovering about a meter over the suit.

  —amazing—buzzed plus—we’re out, we’re out in space—

  They crossed the flat staging pad just outside the airlock and stepped off onto the regolith. The rock had been pounded to gray dust by centuries of foot traffic. Whenever he took a step the dust puffed underfoot and drifted slowly back to the ground like smoke. It was twenty centimeters deep in some places but offered little resistance to his footplates. Adel’s excitement leached slowly away as Kamilah led him away from the airlock. He had to take mincing steps to keep from launching himself free of the Godspeed’s tenuous gravitational pull. It was frustrating; he felt as if he were walking with a pillow between his legs. The sky was a huge disappointment as well. The fireflies washed out the light from all but the brightest stars. He’d seen better skies camping on Harvest.

  “So where are we going?”

  “Just around.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Not that long.”

  —hiding something?—buzzed plus.

  —definitely—

  “And what exactly are we going to do?”

  “A little bit of everything. One of her robotic arms gave him a playful wave. “You’ll see.”

  They marched in silence for a while. Adel began to chafe at following Kamilah’s lead. He picked up his pace and drew alongside of her. The regolith here was not quite so trampled and much less regular, although a clearly defined trail showed that they were not the first to make this trek. They passed stones and rubble piles and boulders the size of houses and the occasional impact crater that the path circumnavigated.

  —impact crater?—buzzed minus.

  “Uh, Kamilah,” he said. “How often does Speedy get hit by meteors?”

  “Never,” said Kamilah. “The craters you see are all pre-launch. Interstellar space is pretty much empty so it’s not that much of a problem.”

  “I sweep the sky for incoming debris,” said the Godspeed, “up to five million meters away.”

  “And that works?”

  “So far,” said Kamilah. “We wouldn’t want to slam into anything traveling at a third the speed of light.”

  They walked on for another ten minutes before Kamilah stopped. “There.” She pointed. “That’s where we came from. Somewhere out there is home.”

  Adel squinted. There was pretty much meaningless. Was she pointing at some particular star or a space between stars?”

  “This is the backside. If Speedy had a rear bumper,” she said, “we’d be standing on it right here. I want to show you something interesting. Pull your arms out of the sleeves.”

  “Done.”

  “The comm toggle is under the right arm keypad. Switch it off.”

  The Godspeed broke into their conversation. “Kamilah and Adel, you are about to disable a key safety feature of your hardsuits. I strongly urge you to reconsider.”

  “I see the switch.” Adel’s throat was tight. “You know, Speedy warned me about this back in the airlock.”

  “I’m sure she did. We go through this every time.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Many times,” she said. “It’s a tradition we’ve started to bring the new arrival out here to see the sights. It’s actually a spiritual thing, which is why Speedy doesn’t really get it.”

  “I have to turn off the comm why?”

  “Because she’s watching, Adel,” said Kamilah impatiently. “She’s always with us. She can’t help herself.”

  “Young Adel,” murmured the Godspeed. “Remember what I said.”

  —trust Kamilah—

  —or trust Speedy—

  —we were warned—

  Adel flicked the toggle. “Now what?” he said to himself. His voice sounded very small in the suit.

  He was startled when Kamilah leaned her suit against his so that the tops of the eggs were touching. It was strangely intimate maneuver, almost like a kiss. Her face was an electric green shadow in the glow of the HUD.

  He was startled again when she spoke. “Turn. The. Comm. Off.” He could hear her through the suit. She paused between each word, her voice reedy and metallic.

  “I did,” he said.

  He could see her shake her head and tap fingers to her ears. “You. Have. To. Shout.”

  “I. Did!” Adel shouted.

  “Good.” She picked up a rock the size of a fist and held it at arm’s length. “Drop. Rock.” She paused. “Count. How. Long. To. Surface.”

  —science experiments?—buzzed plus.

  —she’s gone crazy—

  Adel was inclined to agree with his minus but what Kamilah was asking seemed harmless enough.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  She let go. Adel counted.

  One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five . . .

  And it was down.

  “Yes?” said Kamilah.

  “Five.”

  “Good. Keep. Secret.” She paused. “Comm. On.”

  As he flicked the switch he heard her saying. “ . . . you feel it? My first time it was too subtle but if you concentrate, you’ll get it.”

  “Are you all right, Adel?” murmured the Godspeed. “What just happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said Adel, mystified.

  “Well, we can try again on the frontside,” said Kamilah. “Sometimes it’s better there. Let’s go.”

  —what is she talking about?—minus buzzed.

  For twenty minutes he trudged in perplexed silence past big rocks, little rocks and powdered
rocks in all the colors of gray. In some places the surface of the trail was grainy like sand, in others it was dust, and in yet others it was bare ledge. Adel just didn’t understand what he was supposed to have gotten from watching the rocks drop. Something to do with gravity? What he didn’t know about gravity would fill a barn. Eventually he gave up trying to figure it out. Kamilah was right about one thing: it was real work walking in a hardsuit. If it hadn’t been for the isotherm, he would have long since broken a sweat.

  —this has to get better—buzzed plus.

  “How much longer?” said Adel at last.

  “A while yet.” Kamilah chuckled. “What are you, a little kid?”

  “Remember the day I got here?” he said. “You told me that you were sentenced to spend time on Speedy. But you never said why.”

  “Not that interesting, really.”

  “Better than counting rocks.” He stomped on a flat stone the size of his hand, breaking it into three pieces. “Or I suppose I could sing.” He gave her the first few bars of “Do As We Don’t” in his finest atonal yodel.

  “Gods, Adel, but you’re a pest today.” Kamilah sighed. “All right, so there’s a religion on Suncast . . .”

  “Suncast? That’s where you’re from?”

  “That’s where I was from. If I ever get off this rock, that’s the last place I’m going to stay.”

  —if?—buzzed minus—why did she say if?—

  Anyway, there’s a sect that call themselves God’s Own Poor. They’re very proud of themselves for having deliberately chosen not to own very much. They spout these endless lectures about how living simply is the way to true spirituality. It’s all over the worldnet. And they have this tradition that once a year they leave their houses and put their belongings into a cart, supposedly everything they own but not really. Each of them drags the cart to a park or a campground—this takes place in the warm weather, naturally—and they spend two weeks congratulating themselves on how poor they are and how God loves them especially.”

  “What god do they worship?”

  “A few pray to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the galaxy, but most are some flavor of Eternal Centerers. When it was founded, the Poor might actually have been a legitimate religion. I mean, I see their point that owning too much can get in the way. Except that now almost all of them have houses and furniture and every kind of vehicle. None of them tries to fit the living room couch on their carts. And you should see some of these carts. They cost more than I make in a year.”

  “From shocking people,” Adel said. “As a professional eyejack.”

  The comm was silent for a moment. “Are you teasing me, young Adel?”

  “No, no.” Adel bit back his grin. “Not at all.” Even though he knew she couldn’t see it, she could apparently hear it inflected in his voice. “So you were annoyed at them?”

  “I was. Lots of us were. It wasn’t only that they were self-righteous hypocrites. I didn’t like the way they commandeered the parks just when the rest of us wanted to use them. So I asked myself, how can I shock the Poor and what kind of purse can I make from doing it?”

  A new trail diverged from the one they had been following, Kamilah considered for a moment and then took it. She fell silent for a few moments.

  Adel prompted her. “And you came up with a plan.”

  —why are we interested in this?—buzzed plus.

  —because we want to get her into bed—

  “I did. First I took out a loan; I had to put my house up as collateral. I split two hundred thousand barries across eight hundred cash cards, so each one was worth two hundred and fifty. Next I set up my tent at the annual Poverty Revival at Point Kingsley on the Prithee Sea, which you’ve never heard of but which is one of the most beautiful places in the Continuum. I passed as one of the Poor, mingling with about ten thousand true believers. I parked a wheelbarrow outside the tent that had nothing in it but a suitcase and a shovel. That got a megagram of disapproval, which told me I was onto something. Just before dawn on the tenth day of the encampment, I tossed the suitcase and shoveled in the eight hundred cash cards. I parked my wheelbarrow at the Tabernacle of the Center and waited with a spycam. I’d painted, ‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’ on the side; I thought that was a nice touch. I was there when people started to discover my little monetary miracle. I shot vids of several hundred of the Poor dipping their hot hands into the cards. Some of them just grabbed a handful and ran, but quite a few tried to sneak up on the wheelbarrow when nobody was looking. But of course, everyone was. The wheelbarrow was empty in about an hour and a half, but people kept coming to look all morning.”

  Adel was puzzled. “But your sign said they were supposed to help themselves,” he said. “Why would they be ashamed?”

  “Well, they were supposed to be celebrating their devotion to poverty, not padding their personal assets. But the vids were just documentation, they weren’t the sting. Understand that the cards were mine. Yes, I authorized all expenditures, but I also collected detailed reports on everything they bought. Everything, as in possessions, Adel. Material goods. All kinds of stuff, and lots of it. I posted the complete record. For six days my website was one of the most active on the worldnet. Then the local Law Exchange shut me down. Still, even after legal expenses and paying off the loan, I cleared almost three thousand barries.”

  —brilliant—buzzed minus.

  —she got caught—plus buzzed.

  “But this was against the law on Suncast?” said Adel.

  “Actually, no.” Kamilah kicked at a stone and sent it skittering across the regolith. She trudged on in silence for a few moments. “But I used a wheelbarrow,” she said finally, “which LEX ruled was too much like one of their carts—a cultural symbol. According to LEX, I had committed Intolerant Speech. If I had just set the cards out in a basket, the Poor couldn’t have touched me. But I didn’t and they did. In the remedy phase of my trial, the Poor asked LEX to ship me here. I guess they thought I’d get religion.”

  “And did you?”

  “You don’t get to ask all the questions.” The tail of her hardsuit darted and the footplate tapped the rear of Adel’s suit. “Your turn. Tell me something interesting about yourself. Something that nobody knows.”

  He considered. “Well, I was a virgin when I got here.”

  “Something interesting, Adel.”

  “And I’m not anymore.”

  “That nobody knows,” she said.

  —just trying to shock you—buzzed plus.

  —bitch—minus buzzed.

  “All right,” he said, at last. “I’m a delibertarian.”

  Kamilah paused, then turned completely around once, as if to get her bearings. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “I have an implant that makes me hear voices. Sometimes they argue with each other.”

  “Oh?” Kamilah headed off the trail. “About what?”

  Adel picked his way after her. “Mostly about what I should do.” He sensed that he didn’t really have her complete attention. “Say I’m coming out of church and I see a wheelbarrow filled with cash cards. One voice might tell me to grab as many as I can, the other says no.”

  “I’d get tired of that soon enough.”

  “Or say someone insults me, hurts my feelings. One voice wants to understand her and the other wants to kick her teeth in. But the thing is, the voices are all me.”

  “All right then,” Kamilah paused, glanced left and then right as if lining up landmarks. “We’re here.”

  —too bad we can’t kick her teeth in—buzzed minus. “Where’s here?”

  “This is the frontside, exactly opposite from where we just were. We should try shutting down again. This might be your lucky spot.”

  “I don’t know if I want to,” said Adel. “What am I doing here, Kamilah?”

  “Look, Adel, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I forget you’re just a kid. Come over here, let me give
you a hug.”

  “Oh.” Adel was at once mollified by Kamilah’s apology and stung that she thought of him as a kid.

  —we are a kid—plus buzzed.

  And what kind of hug was he going to get in a hardsuit?

  —shut up—

  “You’re only nine standard older than I am,” he said as he brought his suit within robotic arm’s reach.

  “I know.” Her two arms snaked around him. “Turn off your comm, Adel.”

  This time the Godspeed made no objection. When the comm was off, Kamilah didn’t bother to speak. She picked up a rock and held it out. Adel waved for her to drop it.

  One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand six one thousand, seven one . . .

  Seven? Adel was confused.

  —we messed up the count—buzzed minus.

  —did not—

  He leaned into her and touched her top. “Seven.”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Turn. Off. Lights.”

  Adel found the control and heard a soft clunk as the firefly docked with his hardsuit. He waved the suit lights off and blacked out the HUD, although he was not in a particularly spiritual mood. The blackness of space closed around them and the sky filled with the shyest of stars. Adel craned in the suit to see them all. Deep space was much more busy than he’d imagined. The stars were all different sizes and many burned in colors: blues, yellows, oranges and reds—a lot more reds than he would have thought. There were dense patches and sparse patches and an elongated wispy cloud the stretched across his field of vision that he assumed was the rest of the Milky Way.

  —amazing—

  —but what’s going on?—

  “Questions?” said Kamilah.

  “Questions?” he said under his breath. “Damn right I have questions.” When he shouted, he could hear the anger in his voice. “Rocks. Mean. What?”