Black Hole Sun

by David Macinnis Gill

  “Mimi, locate Vienne and Fuse.”

  “‘But, Och! I backward cast my e’e. On prospects drear!’”

  “I’m too sleepy for obscure literary references. Just locate them, please.”

  She gives me the bearings, and I set off to find my crew. Without a clear idea of where to go or where I’m going, I follow Mimi’s directions to the letter. I’m beginning to see how living in the mines disrupts your biorhythms. There’s no natural day and night here, so the signals that your body needs to regulate itself aren’t there. The miners try to simulate the natural passing of a day by raising and dimming the lights.

  But it doesn’t work that well. Because people had been living underground as long as there were people on Mars, the effects of life underground are well-known, including chronic insomnia, acute claustrophobia, and vitamin D deficiency due to the lack of exposure to sunlight. Gene therapy helps alleviate some of the problems. The simple truth, though, is that the human body needs sunlight to live. Here, there is none. Maybe that explains why miners are so ornery.

  “Mimi, switch my bionic eye to night vision lens.”

  “Cowboy,” she laughs. “Your ocular implant does not have a night vision function, and you know it.”

  “Switch to laser vision, then,” I tease her. Sometimes, though, it would be nice to have special powers.

  “The phrase if looks could kill is still just a saying.”

  “What good is a nanoprocessor visual prosthesis if I can’t see in the dark or shoot things with my eye?” I miss seeing a low-hanging cable and smack my forehead into it. “Ow!”

  “So that you can see objects with low clearance.” Mimi laughs. “And then duck.”

  Mimi isn’t the only one laughing. Áine, who is having a good giggle at my expense, appears in the corridor ahead. “That’s why you ort not walk around in the mine.”

  Oh no. Not her. I swear I hear Mimi laugh. Raising a glow light on a lanyard, Áine holds the light up to her face. Then shines it on mine.

  “You laughed at my pain,” I say. “That’s not very nice.”

  “I laughed because you were clumsy, and clumsy’s fair game.” Áine slips her arm in mine. “What brings you out at this hour? It’d officially be nighttime, and that means sleep time. Or is two days of constant work not enough for you?”

  I rub my forehead. Just a small goose egg. “I don’t sleep much.”

  “Because you miss the sun?” she asks, resting her hip against mine. The shape of her face is outlined in yellow light, giving her skin a soft glow. “Or is it because you’re lonely?”

  My mind flashes to Vienne and the hurt, angry look she gave me after I wouldn’t let her fight. “Lonely? No. In general, I don’t have much time to sleep. It’s difficult—”

  “To always be in charge? To never have time to rest your head?”

  To have another person’s nightmares in your head, I say to myself. “Right, to be in charge. Something like that. What about you? Why’re you out and about, since it’s sleep time?”

  “Sentry duty, silly. We all got to do it.” She pulls me by the good hand and doesn’t let go when I try subtly to shake loose. “Follow me. I’ll show you something that will help you relax.”

  Locking my heels, I say, “I should stay here. Keep an eye on things. Like you said, I’m the chief, and it’s been a hard day.”

  She gives me a tug. “Though they might be lousy soldiers, miners know how to keep watch on the tunnels. Your mean old Regulators are safe. Come along now.”

  Towing me along like a space barge, she heads down the corridor for several meters, then makes an abrupt right turn. It’s darker here. I have no choice but to follow the glow of her lanyard.

  How did I get myself into this? Wandering dark hallways with a suzy. If Jenkins and Fuse find out, they’ll never let me live it down. And Vienne. Though physical contact with females isn’t technically against the Tenets, being alone with one is. Vienne thinks Regulators should be above reproach. Especially the chief.

  “That armor,” Áine says. “It feels scaly. Don’t you ever take it off? Other than fighting, I mean.”

  “Mimi, get me out of this.”

  “Come again, cowboy,” she says. “Your signal is full of static.”

  “I, um, need to check the, ah, work on the corridor back there. Make sure we told the miners which of the secondary tunnels to use explosives on.”

  “The charge’s already been set. We miners know how to knock down tunnels quick as spit.”

  “Well, then there’s the barricade building out by the Zhao Zhou Bridge.”

  “Quit worrying about that, too.” She makes a turn, and the tunnel slopes downward. “I’m here to help you relax, no? So, tell me, how’d you got to learn how to fight like that? The miners all thought your face was too pretty. That you’d got that suzy to do your fighting for you.”

  I laugh. “That suzy taught me how to fight.”

  “Oh?” She tilts her chin up toward me. “She’s not the only suzy who knows how to teach a boy a few things.”

  “Mimi! How do I get out of this mess without offending her?”

  “Got yourself in, cowboy. Get yourself out.”

  “Look, Áine, you seem like a nice girl—”

  “I am a nice girl,” she says, and pulls a lever hidden by the darkness. “You ought to see how nice I can be.”

  There’s a rumbling sound, and an air lock in front of her begins to open. She turns to face me, her body now a silhouette, and I realize that she’s wearing a dress with leggings, not coveralls. “Welcome to the sun.”

  Bluish light pours into the tunnel. A rush of frigid air makes the downy hair on my temples rise. She pulls me through the lock and rolls it shut.

  “Hurry,” she says, her face bathed in blue light so strong, it overwhelms the glowing yellow of her lantern. “Before the cold leeches inside.”

  “Amazing,” I say. “Mimi, map this locat—”

  “Mapped, slowpoke.”

  I step over a high threshold and onto a sheet of ice. Before us, the tunnel opens into corkscrew-shaped ice cavern. Its ceiling towers a hundred meters above us, and its walls, made of ice like stained glass, stretch up like spires of a cathedral. Light from an unseen opening above whispers to me, beckoning me.

  “What is this place?” I ask, my head raised in awe.

  “It’s an ice cave. There’s a glacier above Hell’s Cross. When the terraforming melted the permafrost, the runoff created these.”

  The possibility that the harsh tundra could hide beauty like this lifts my spirits. “You mean there are more?”

  She shakes her head. “Not that we know about. When the old miners found the first few, they made the mistake of trying to walk on them. One miner hit the ice with a pick, and the crack ran the length of the walls, all the way to the surface. The cavern gave out, and two of them died.”

  I test my footing on the sheet of ice. “So I shouldn’t try sledding.”

  “Not if you want to live.” She tilts her head. Smiles. Touches her stomach.

  Lifting my head, I let the light and the chill wind sweep over my face. “Do all the miners know about this?”

  She squeezes my hand. “We don’t keep secrets from ourselves.”

  No, I think, just from outsiders. “It goes all the way to the surface?”

  “That’s where the light comes from, silly.”

  “Right,” I say, and then realize that I am silly. No, an idiot. Being in an ice cave with a girl who’s changed into a dress and—

  She pulls closer to me. “Want a lick?”

  “No thanks,” I say. Time to put the Áine express in reverse. “I really have to get back.”

  Áine reaches up. Breaks off an icicle. “Try one. This is where we get most of our fresh water.” She runs the tip of the icicle over her bottom lip. Then leans her head back and drops of frigid water fall onto her outstretched tongue.

  “Cowboy,” Mimi interrupts, “I am reading signs of distress,
but my external sensors indicate no proximal threat to you.”

  “Oh, there’s a threat,” I say aloud by mistake. A clear and present one.

  Áine cocks her head. “Threat?”

  “Sorry. I was, ah, talking to myself.”

  “You were telling yourself that there’s a threat here?”

  “More or less.”

  “Tch.” She puts the icicle into my free hand. “You think I’m threatening? I’m flattered.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I bite the tip of the icicle like it’s a carrot. Pulverize it with my molars. Hand it back to her half-eaten. “I notice you’re really good at twisting everything I say.”

  “You do that a lot.” She throws her arms around my neck. “Try to draw attention away from yourself. I’d noticed it when we met in New Eden. Why so humble, soldier boy?”

  I unclasp her arms. “Not humble. Just have a job to do. And I don’t want to insult you, but I do need to go.” Now. Before I get myself in deep trouble with my crew.

  “Okay, I’ll let you go.” Áine runs the tips of her fingers down the inside of my arm. “If you tell me how the symbiarmor works? Can you feel this?”

  “It tickles,” I say. “The fabric has a million microsensors woven into the fibers. It transmits electrical signals to my skin, and my brain sorts them out.”

  “Your brain?”

  “Nanobots in my nervous system sort the impulses and then send feedback to the bioadaptive cloth in the armor.”

  She puts her hands on my belly. “Mmm, warm. You’re better than a pair of mittens. We could use a big, strong, handsome young man like you around here. I’ve got ways to make it worth your while.”

  I push her hands back and step away. “That’s about enough.”

  Then she surprises me by pointing at the line that runs from the corner of my eye to the edge of my ear. “How’d you get that scar?”

  “I lost a fight with a Big Daddy.”

  I expect her to coo over the scar, but seeing it changes the look in her eye. She hikes the sleeve of her blouse to reveal a thick scar running up her forearm. “I got that from a live wire. The shock knocked me ten meters.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say, because two can play this game. I lift the back of my shirt, showing her a splatter pattern of thick, purple scars. “Before it split my skull open, the Big Daddy sprayed me with its acid.”

  “Tch,” she says. “That’s not so bad.” She pulls back her hair. Exposes a jagged line of scar tissue. “I jumped off a crane and landed on the treads. Almost scalped myself. And I didn’t have no high-priced sawbones to stitch me back up, either. Maeve had to do it.”

  Squinting hard, I reach up to my eye. Give it a hard twist. There’s a clicking sound, and I pluck the eyeball from its socket. “Synthetic eyeball. Beat that.” I smile triumphantly and reinsert the prosthetic.

  “Nothing but a flesh wound.” She rolls up a legging to show the wound that had made her limp. The skin is raised like the caldera of a volcano, with the inside a glossy mass of red and puce colored tissue. It’s still fresh, barely begun to heal. “The Draeu shot me right there. They killed the two girls I was with. Then left me on the ice to die.”

  A faraway look comes to her eyes, and she angrily rolls down the legging. Competition over.

  “I’m sorry,” I say because I can’t think of anything else.

  “Tch. Just look at me.” She moves into the mouth of the ice cavern. Her heavy breath freezes in the air. “Making a damned fool of myself. Over a boy. A Regulator, too.”

  “No,” I say.

  “Yes! A fool!” She breaks off an icicle and flings it at me. It shatters against my chest. “Better than a pair of mittens, I say. Look at my eyeball, he says.” She breaks off a handful of icicles and starts firing them, one after another. “Warm that up, Regulator. And that! And that!”

  I let the ice explode against my chest. What happened? One second, she’s trying to seduce me, and the next, she’s chucking icicles at my head.

  I move toward her. “Is this about the other girls who died?”

  “Don’t talk to me,” she barks. “Go!”

  For a moment I watch her breath freeze in the blue light. See her wipe her nose with her sleeve. Count the number of times her chest heaves. I’m torn between trying to comfort her and getting away as fast as my feet will carry me.

  “Take option b,” Mimi says.

  But I don’t listen. “Áine, I’m sorry for what I said. I—”

  “Get away from me!” she screams, her eyes blotchy and red. “Get out! Just leave!”

  Gladly, I think, ducking back through the air lock into the dark tunnel. Life would be so much simpler if all problems could be solved with an armalite.

  CHAPTER 20

  Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four

  ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00

  Once when I was still a kid, before battle school, I went with Father to a corporate function. The staff told me I was going to a party and they dressed me in a formal suit that matched his, down to the ties and patterned hose. For three hours I stood by his side greeting other executives, unable to have a drink, food, or even go to the latrine, wondering when the party was going to start and being befuddled that we left before it ever started. That’s how I feel about Áine’s tour of the ice cave. I expected to see a strategic area, and it turned out to be a setting for a romantic interlude.

  For hours afterward I walk the subterranean roads, learning the lay of the land and getting a good feel for our territory, while running the argument with Áine through my mind. Did I lead her on? I’m still asking myself hours after I return to quarters, when Maeve knocks on the door and calls out.

  “Breakfast!”

  “Breakfast!” It takes Jenkins less than three seconds to jump out of his cot, pull on his suit and boots, and make a mad, stumbling dash for the door. It takes him an additional six seconds and a flattened nose to realize that said door is closed and that the lock mechanism requires him to lift the handle, not pull on it. I know because he’s disturbing my morning prayer, and because I’m timing him.

  “Oy, Jenks!” groans Fuse, who rolls off his cot and hits the floor with a boney thump. “Give a jack a tinker’s minute to shimmy on his skivvies, no? What’s the rush?”

  “My belly’s empty, and this carking door’s fig-jammed.”

  “Lift,” Vienne says. She’s sitting in the lotus position next to me in the corner of the room, our backs to the room. An altar is open before us, and our quarters are full of the sharp odor of burning incense. Twice each day she has prayer and meditation. In the morning I join her for the meditation. It calms me. Clears my mind. Helps me focus.

  “Huh?” Jenkins says. I can hear him scratching his head.

  “Lift the handle,” Vienne says. Her voice is like still water.

  “Got it! Last one to the table’s a rotter!”

  “You lot coming along for breakfast?” Fuse says after he’s dressed.

  “Soon,” I answer.

  “Right, then.”

  He leaves. Air blows into the room, sending the incense swirling toward the ceiling. My eyes stay with it, watching as it dissipates. A sure sign that I have lost concentration.

  “You’re uneasy,” Vienne says, eyes closed, hands resting on her crossed legs, fingers forming an O.

  “Tired.”

  “But there’s something else?”

  How can I tell her, I woke up last night and you weren’t here, so I went to look for you and was shanghaied by a suzy who first tried to jump me, then wanted to slug me. And that now, as I feel you next to me, your head held just so, your eyes closed, your lips slightly parted, I have trouble holding my breath, much less holding my chi.

  “Just tired,” I say.

  “Ah.” She says, and lets my lie hang in the air, like burned incense.

  But the moment is interrupted by the feral sound coming from the mouth of Spiner, his eyes wide in stark terror as he bangs on our open door. “Chief! C
ome quick!”

  “What is it?” I call to him.

  He falls to his knees, gasping, his breath spent from running. “Draeu! In the tunnels. Scouting party. Headed for. Crazy Town.”

  Damn it! Too soon. The demolition crews haven’t closed those tunnels yet. “Mimi, do a scan. Fast.” I haul Spiner to his feet. “How many are there?”

  “Too many,” he says, gasping. “Chasing a tram.”

  “A tram? Who took out a tram?”

  Spiner shakes his head. “Don’t know.”

  “Lock down the Cross,” I tell him. “Keep everybody inside.”

  “But—” he says.

  “Don’t argue! Keep everybody inside and arm them with anything you’ve got. This might be just a scouting party, but we can’t take chances.”

  There’s a shout, and when I look over my shoulder, Áine is running toward me with a spanner wrench in hand.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I say.

  “Going with you,” she says, running past me. “I’ve got a score to settle, and now’s as good a time as any to do it.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four

  ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00

  The corridor from Bedlam is the longest of the four from Hell’s Cross. It leads to a rise, the same one we came down when we entered the Cross the first time. The miners have blocked the main route, strategically closing the tunnels and shafts using C-42. We pass through an open iron gate made of vertical shafts topped with sharp barbs. They look like spears. On the deck the wind picks up, blowing my hair in my face. I pull my cowling up and stuff my hair underneath.

  “Watch for rust!’ I call ahead because here, halfway across Bedlam, the steel beam supports and bare rebar of a crumbling viaduct are the only things to walk on. Who knows if the metal still has enough integrity to hold our weight? Vienne has point, but she’s not the one I’m worried about. It’s Jenkins, with his heavy boots and clumsy feet. “And watch your footing!”