by Libba Bray
It was dark and knobby, shiny with moisture, flat as a skate; and it went on forever—thirty feet long perhaps, or forty, twisting as it rose to expose its underside, or what he thought might be its underside. As Kit watched, the mist curled back from a flexing scaled wing of sorts, and then a patch that might have been a single eye or a field of eyes or something altogether different, and then a mouth like the arc of the suspension chains. The mouth gaped open to show another arc, a curve of gum or cartilage. The creature rolled and then sank and became a shadow and then nothing as the mist closed over it and settled.
Kit had stopped walking when he saw it. He forced himself to move forward again. A Big One, or perhaps just a Medium-Large One; at this height it hadn’t seemed so big or so frightening. Kit was surprised at the sadness he felt.
Farside was crammed with color and fairings as well, but Kit could not find Rasali anywhere. He bought a tankard of rye beer and went to find some place alone.
Once it became dark and the imperial representatives were safely tucked away for the night, the guards relaxed the rules and let their friends (and then any of the locals) on the bridge to look around them. People who had worked on the bridge had papers to cross without charge for the rest of their lives, but many others had watched it grow, and now they charmed or bribed or begged their way onto their bridge. Torches were forbidden because of the oil that protected the fishskin ropes but covered lamps were permitted. From his place on the levee, Kit watched the lights move along the bridge, there and then hidden by the support ropes and deck, dim and inconstant as fireflies.
“Kit Meinem of Atyar.”
Kit stood and turned to the voice behind him. “Rasali Ferry of Farside.” She wore blue and white, and her feet were bare. She had pulled back her dark hair with a ribbon and her pale shoulders gleamed. She glowed under the moonlight like mist. He thought of touching her, kissing her; but they had not spoken since just after Valo’s death.
She stepped forward and took the mug from his hand, drank the lukewarm beer, and just like that, the world righted itself. He closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him.
He took her hand, and they sat on the cold grass and looked out across the river. The bridge was a black net of arcs and lines. Behind it was the mist glowing blue-white in the light of the moons. After a moment, he asked, “Are you still Rasali Ferry, or will you take a new name?”
“I expect I’ll take a new one.” She half-turned in his arms so that he could see her face, her pale eyes. “And you? Are you still Kit Meinem, or do you become someone else? Kit Who Bridged the Mist? Kit Who Changed the World?”
“Names in the city do not mean the same thing,” Kit said absently, aware that he had said this before and not caring. “Did I change the world?” He knew the answer already.
She looked at him for a moment as though trying to gauge his feelings. “Yes,” she said slowly after a moment. She turned her face up toward the loose strand of bobbing lights: “There’s your proof, as permanent as stone and sky.”
“ ‘Permanent as stone and sky,’ ” Kit repeated. “This afternoon—it flexes a lot, the bridge. There has to be a way to control it, but it’s not engineered for that yet. Or lightning could strike it. There are a thousand things that could destroy it. It’s going to come down, Rasali. This year, next year, a hundred years from now, five hundred.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “All these people, they think it’s forever.”
“No, we don’t,” Rasali said. “Maybe Atyar does, but we know better here. Do you need to tell a Ferry that nothing will last? These stones will fall eventually, these cables—but the dream of crossing the mist, the dream of connection. Now that we know it can happen, it will always be here. My mother died, my grandfather. Valo.” She stopped, swallowed. “Ferrys die, but there is always a Ferry to cross the mist. Bridges and ferryfolk, they are not so different, Kit.” She leaned forward, across the space between them, and they kissed.
“Are you off soon?”
Rasali and Kit had made love on the levee against the cold grass. They had crossed the bridge together under the sinking moons, walked back to the Deer’s Hart and bought more beer, the crowds thinner now, people gone home with their families or friends or lovers: the strangers from out of town bedding down in spare rooms, tents, anywhere they could. But Kit was too restless to sleep, and he and Rasali ended up back by the mist, down on the dock. Morning was only a few hours away, and the smaller moon had set. It was darker now and the mist had dimmed.
“In a few days,” Kit said, thinking of the trunks and bags packed tight and gathered in his room at The Fish: the portfolio, fatter now, and stained with water, mist, dirt, and sweat. Maybe it was time for a new one. “Back to the capital.”
There were lights on the opposite bank, fisherfolk preparing for the night’s work despite the fair, the bridge. Some things don’t change.
“Ah,” she said. They both had known this. It was no surprise. “What will you do there?”
Kit rubbed his face, feeling stubble under his fingers, happy to skip that small ritual for a few days. “Sleep for a hundred years. Then there’s another bridge they want, down at the mouth of the river, a place called Ulei. The mist’s nearly a mile wide there. I’ll start midwinter.”
“A mile,” Rasali said. “Can you do it?”
“I think so. I bridged this, didn’t I?” His gesture took in the berms, the slim stone tower overhead, the woman beside him. She smelled sweet and salty. “There are islands by Ulei, I’m told. Low ones. That’s the only reason it would be possible. So maybe a series of flat stone arches, one to the next. You? You’ll keep building boats?”
“No.” She leaned her head back and he felt her face against his ear. “I don’t need to. I have a lot of money. The rest of the family can build boats but for me that was just what I did while I waited to cross the mist again.”
“You’ll miss it,” Kit said. It was not a question.
Her strong hand laid over his. “Mmm,” she said, a sound without implication.
“But it was the crossing that mattered to you, wasn’t it?” Kit said, realizing it. “Just as with me, but in a different way.”
“Yes,” she said and after a pause: “So now I’m wondering: how big do the Big Ones get in the Mist Ocean? And lives there?”
“Nothing’s on the other side,” Kit said. “There’s no crossing something without an end.”
“Everything can be crossed. Me, I think there is an end. There’s a river of water deep under the Mist River, yes? And that water runs somewhere. And all the other rivers, all the lakes—they all drain somewhere. There’s a water ocean under the Mist Ocean, and I wonder whether the mist ends somewhere out there, if it spreads out and vanishes and you find you are floating on water.”
“It’s a different element,” Kit said, turning the problem over. “So you would need a boat that works through mist, light enough with that broad belly and fishskin sheathing; but it would have to be deep-keeled enough for water.”
She nodded. “I want to take a coast-skimmer and refit it, find out what’s out there. Islands, Kit. Big Ones. Huge Ones. Another whole world maybe. I think I would like to be Rasali Ocean.”
“You will come to Ulei with me?” he said but he knew already. She would come, for a month or a season or a year. They would sleep tumbled together in an inn very like The Fish or The Bitch, and when her boat was finished, she would sail across Ocean, and he would move on to the next bridge or road. Or he might return to the capital and a position at University. Or he might rest at last.
“I will come,” she said. “For a bit.”
Suddenly he felt a deep and powerful emotion in his chest: overwhelmed by everything that had happened or would happen in their lives, the changes to Nearside and Farside, the ferry’s ending, Valo’s death, the fact that she would leave him eventually, or that he would leave her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said and leaned across to kiss him, her mouth
warm with sunlight and life. “It is worth it, all of it.”
All those losses, but this one at least he could prevent.
“When the time comes,” he said: “When you sail. I will come with you,”
A fo ben, bid bont. To be a leader, be a bridge.
Welsh proverb
Goodnight Moons
Ellen Klages
Ellen Klages is the author of two acclaimed YA novels: The Green Glass Sea, which won the Scott O’Dell Award, the New Mexico Book Award, and the Lopez Award; and White Sands, Red Menace, which won the California and New Mexico Book Awards. Her short stories have been have been translated into Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Swedish and have been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Campbell awards. Her story, “Basement Magic,” won a Nebula in 2005. She lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.
This is her Heinlein story.
I’d always dreamed of living on Mars. From the first time I went to the library in Omaha and found the books with rocket ships on their spines, discovered Bradbury and Heinlein and Robinson. Later, I heard real scientists on the news saying it could happen—would happen—in my lifetime.
I didn’t want to stay behind and watch.
A big dream, but I was disciplined, focused. I took physics and chemistry, ran track after school, spent my evenings stargazing from the garage roof—and my nights reading science fiction under the covers. I graduated valedictorian, with a full scholarship to MIT, and got a doctorate in mechanical engineering, then stayed on for a second degree in astrobotany. We’d need to grow food, once we arrived.
My husband was an electronics genius, but a small flaw in Pete Morrisons’s left eardrum grounded him early in the NASA program. We lived outside of Houston while I trained: endurance, microgravity, EVA simulations. I even survived the “vomit comet” with flying colors.
When they announced the team for the Mars mission, I made the list. Four men and two women: Archie, Paolo, Rajuk, Tom, Chandra and I were overnight celebrities. Interviews, photos, talk shows—everyone wanted to know how it felt to be the first humans to go to another planet.
Our last public appearance was at the launch of the Sacagawea with her payload of hydrogen and the gas extractor that would fuel our trip back. She would be waiting for us when we landed, in another thirty months. Once she was up, we disappeared for two years of training and maneuvers in Antarctica and the Gobi Desert, the most extreme conditions Earth could offer.
Pete and I said our farewells the night before the launch team was sequestered for the final countdown week. Champagne (for him), filet mignon, red roses, and a king-size bed. Then I was isolated with the others at the base, given so many last-minute shots, tests, and dry runs that I felt like a check mark on an endless to-do list.
But I made it. On a sunny Tuesday morning, the Conestoga roared up into a bright blue sky. Billions of people watched us set out for a new world.
Free fall was a relief after the crush of the launch. We’d be floating in zero-g for seven months. Archie and Paolo were a little green around the gills at first, but they got their sea legs soon enough. For me, it was as easy as swimming.
The tedium of a long voyage set in once we established our routine. Cramped quarters, precious little privacy, and not much to do once we were past the moon. I checked my instruments, sent data packets back to Mission Control, took my turn in the galley. Then on day 37, I tossed my cookies so suddenly there wasn’t even time to grab a barf bag. Everyone laughed, no one harder than Paolo and Archie.
For three days, nothing wanted to stay down. Didn’t feel like zero-g effects. More like a bug. Chandra, the medical officer, took my vitals. No fever, blood pressure normal—for these conditions. When she took an EPT stick from the supply closet, I laughed. “No way. Brand-new implant when we got back from the desert.”
“Just a precaution,” she said. “By the book. Anything abdominal I can rule out is a plus.”
The only plus was the symbol on the stick. The second one as well.
“Jeez.” Chandra whistled through her teeth. “Protocol says --”
“I know.” Pregnant personnel are restricted to ground duty. Pregnant personnel assigned to flight missions are immediately reassigned. That was why we both had the implants. A one-in-a-million chance, but mine was defective.
Human error? Technical glitch? For two years, we’d gone over every phase of the mission, tens of thousands of parts, maneuvers, systems—anything could go wrong at any time. We had reams of contingency plans. Every snafu had some kind of back-up. Except this.
I zipped up my flight suit. “You have to tell Tom,” I said. Another protocol. Information that might affect the crew or the mission had to be relayed to the captain.
“Yeah.”
“Wait till tomorrow? I need to tell Pete first.”
She put her hand on my arm. “OK.” She hesitated. “There’s only one option. You know that.”
I nodded. If one crew member becomes unfit to serve, the mission is aborted. It had happened once on the space station. Appendicitis. The whole crew had to evacuate back to Earth. And that wasn’t possible for us, not in an orbital transit. Earth wouldn’t be in the same position as when we’d left, and we didn’t have enough fuel to realign. I had to be fit for duty.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
My bunk was the only private place. I pulled the curtain across and leaned against the bulkhead, my hand on my still-flat belly. Chandra was right. And, in theory, that was a choice I’d always supported. So why did I feel like I had to pick—my dreams or my future?
This was an exploration mission. Seventeen months on the surface. We didn’t have the supplies or the technology or the infrastructure to start colonizing. That was decades down the road, and only if we succeeded.
When the communication window opened, I sent a message to my husband. I told him what had happened and what I had to do. The fourteen-minute delay for his reply seemed endless. And when it arrived, the words on the screen surprised me. “Can’t let you do that, Zoë,” it said.
Before I could type my reply, the next message arrived. That one was from CNN, asking for confirmation.
Then all hell broke loose.
Tom and the rest of the crew stared at me as the queue backed up with message after message. Mission Control was furious. Two different generals sent conflicting orders from millions of miles away.
But the public response was instant and overwhelming. News sites headlined, welcome first martian baby! Within an hour, I was the hot topic of blogs, newscasts, and water cooler discussions all over the globe. A contest offered a million dollars for the person who named “The First Citizen of Space.” It was a circus—and NASA had never been so popular.
The furor showed no signs of dying down, but at least Earth continued to rotate, and we lost the comm signal after a few hours. I went to my bunk, but didn’t sleep much. When I got up, the screen held a terse communiqué from Mission Control: “Seventh crew member authorized.”
I was relieved. I was scared. The rest of the crew did their best to hide their feelings. An order was an order.
The Surgeon General issued a statement. Barring any complications, the likelihood of transit-oriented problems in the next six months was low. The fetus was in a water-filled sac, exactly the sort of environment the crew had trained in for zero-g. As long as radiation levels were closely monitored, she believed a full-term pregnancy was entirely possible. Deceleration and landing, however, would require further consideration.
Would I still fit in my landing couch? What about my pressure suit—it wasn’t designed to stretch. I’d never paid much attention in home economics, but the suit was just engineering, and I was able to make some alterations.
A few days shy of my eighth month, we began the descent to the surface. The baby kicked the whole way down. Fortunately, the landing was textbook: no system failures, no injuries, no unexpected terrain. And out the porthole,
we could see the Sacagawea a hundred meters away, plumes of vapor wafting from its lower vents. Our ride home.
That first night, Rajuk broke out the bottle of whiskey he’d smuggled on board, and we toasted our places in history. I drank my share; all the medical texts said it wouldn’t make much difference, not at that stage. Of course, no one knew what difference cosmic radiation and zero-g had already made.
The baby and the planet were both terrae incognitae.
I had studied Mars for more than twenty years. I wasn’t prepared for how eerily beautiful and utterly alien it was. Everything was shades of reddish brown, no greens or blues. The horizon was too close, the sky too uniform, the lighting flat. Daylight was butterscotch, as if it were always afternoon, half an hour before dusk. At night, the two small, lumpy moons rose into the starry blackness, Phobos slowly in the west, tiny Deimos in the east.
I was, of course, restricted to the ship. For two weeks I had to watch as the others took turns out on the dusty metallic surface, kicking up puffs of iron oxide with every step. I could feel the floor vibrate as they opened the cargo bay, unloaded the rover, began to set up a base. It took a full day to anchor the Conestoga, turning her from a spaceship into a permanent habitat, for us, for future crews.
We had all cross-trained in each others’ fields, so I was busy checking schematics, logging soil samples, monitoring pressure levels and hatch seals. I gave hand signals through the porthole as Tom and Paolo unrolled my inflatable greenhouse and moved the equipment in. As soon as they connected it to the Hab and its atmosphere, I started my own work.
The first seedlings were unfurling in the hydroponic tank when my water broke.
Chandra had set up the medical facility as soon as we landed; everything was ready. Like the Russians’ rats, which gestated in zero-g, my labor was long and slow. The gravity of Mars—only one third Earth’s—meant less strain, but less pull when I pushed. Finally, on day 266 of the mission, Mars day 52, I heard a loud, strong cry.