by Sarah Zettel
But finally the gauges all blinked green. Ben worked the levers on the outer hatch and swung it open.
“Good luck, Team Fourteen,” came Adrian’s voice.
One by one the governing board stepped out onto the glowing Venusian surface. Helen had never been so aware of being watched—monitored by her suit, overseen by Adrian and all Scarab Fourteen’s cameras, followed by her colleagues, tracked by Derek’s drones, which sat dormant on their own little treads, a short distance from the target object.
She took refuge in chatter. She activated the general intercom icon.
“Failia to Scarab Fourteen,” she said. “Are you receiving?”
“Receiving loud and clear, Dr. Failia,” answered Adrian. “Our readings say all suits green and go.”
“All green and go out here,” she returned. “Except Dr. Godwin forgot the marshmallows.”
“That was on your to-do list, Helen,” shot back Ben. Helen smiled. That had been an early experiment. The marshmallow exposed to the Venusian atmosphere had not roasted, however. It had scrunched up and vaporized. The egg they’d attempted to fry on the rock had exploded.
The memory spread a smile across Helen’s face and made it easier to concentrate on the way in front of her. The cracks in the crust could be wide enough to catch a toe in, sending a person tumbling down in a most undignified fashion and wasting time while they were helped back to their feet—if their suit held up to the fall. If it didn’t, there’d be nothing left to help up.
Helen dismissed that thought but held her pace in check with difficulty. She did not want to waste any more time. She wanted to sprint on ahead, but she had to settle for a slow march.
Still, they got steadily closer to the target. The closer they got, the more obvious it became that the object had to be artificial. It was indeed perfectly circular. The smooth sides rose about a half meter out of the rock. A series of smaller spheres protruded from it. For a moment, the three of them all lined up in front of the thing, examining it in reverent silence.
“Okay.” The word came out of Michael like a sigh. “What’s the procedure? Measure it first?”
“Measure it first,” said Helen.
Slowly, Helen, Michael, and Ben circled the target in a strange, clumsy dance, recording everything yet again and measuring all of it. Yes, the drones had technically done all of this, but that was the machine record. This was the human record, and they needed it to help prove that this object was not just the result of some computer graphics and hocus-pocus.
The shaft was exactly forty-four centimeters in height and one and a half meters in diameter. A second, apparently separate section rested on or was attached to the top. That section was also one and a half meters in diameter but was only ten centimeters thick. Small, spherical protrusions, each appearing to be ten centimeters across, were attached to the sides of the upper section (like somebody’d stuck a half-dozen oranges there, Ben noted), equally spaced at sixty-degree intervals and attached by some undetermined means. A small circle, eight point three centimeters in diameter, had been inscribed three point six-four centimeters from the outer edge of the top section.
“Well, you’re the expert, Ben,” said Helen. “Is it or is it not naturally occurring?”
Ben’s helmet turned toward her. “You’re kidding, right, Helen?”
“No, I’m not.” Helen remained immobile. “I want this all for the record.”
“Okay, then.” There came a brief shuffling noise that might have been Ben shrugging inside his suit. “In my opinion, based on the observations of the previous robotic investigation and my own two eyes, this is not a naturally occurring formation.”
“To my knowledge, no one on Venera Base has ever authorized construction of such an object,” added Helen.
“Are you going to open it, Helen, or can I go ahead?” Michael asked mildly.
Helen bit her lip. Part of her wanted to call down a whole team to swarm over the thing, analyzing every molecule before they did anything else. She told herself that was the good scientist part of herself. The truth was somewhat less flattering.
I’m afraid: of what we’re doing, of what might, or might not, happen next.
“If you want to try, Michael, be my guest.” Helen stepped back, hoping no one realized she was giving in to the private fear that bubbled, unwelcome, out of the back of her mind.
Michael walked around the hatch. He ran his fingers over the small circle set flush against the lid. He walked around the shaft again. Finally, he grasped two of the protrusions and leaned to the right.
The hatch slid slowly, unsteadily, sideways. A huge white cloud rushed out. Michael lurched backward.
“Steam?” said Ben incredulously. “There was water in there?” There was no water on the surface of Venus. Some particles in the clouds, but other than that, nothing.
“No analysis on that,” came back Adrian. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault,” murmured Helen.
The cloud evaporated, and they all bent over the dark shaft. A tunnel sank straight into the bedrock. Their helmet lights shone on the bottom about four, maybe five, meters down. The first ten centimeters or so of rock around the mouth glowed brightly, but after that, it darkened to a shiny black, shot through with charcoal-gray veins. Thick staples had been shoved into the rock just below the glow-line, making what appeared to be the widely spaced rungs of a ladder.
Five sets of eyes stared. Three cameras recorded the ladder. One recorded the doctors as they waited. Nothing happened. Well, nothing new happened.
Helen straightened up and looked at her colleagues. Ben and Michael returned her gaze. She saw the awe tinged with ashamed fear in their eyes and felt a little better.
“All right, gentlemen,” she said. “Let’s go meet the neighbors.”
One careful step at a time, she climbed down into the shaft.
What none of them saw, not with their cameras, not with their own eyes, was how one of the outcroppings on the side of Beta Regio crawled a little closer to the hatchway, as if to get a better look.
Chapter Two
THE CLOUDS OF HOME hung low overhead, pushing thick, yellow fingers deep into the clear. Harvest flies swarmed around them, feasting on spoiling algae or floater larvae. Here and there, a solitary shade darted into the swarm, skimmed off a few flies, and soared away.
There should be a thousand of them, thought T’sha as she watched the tiny bird. Where have they all gone? Why are the flies winning?
It was not just the absence of birds that disturbed the day. It was the smell, or the lack of it. The wind supporting her body blew light and sterile. It should have been heavy with salt, sweat, and rich, growing life. The dayside currents never blew empty from the living highlands. Except, today they did.
T’sha tilted her wings to slow her flight. This was not good. According to the reports, the winds had been reseeded with nutritive monocellulars not twelve miles from here. Had the seed been bad, or had the planting failed to take? Had they underestimated the imbalance on the microscopic layers here? If they had, what else had they underestimated?
It might be something else, whispered a treacherous voice in the back of her mind.
No, she chided herself. I will not believe blasphemous rumors.
People were not straining the winds right off the highlands to take fresh monocellulars for their homes. There had been patrols. They had found nothing. No one would be guilty of so much greed, so much sin. At least, not yet. Things had not gone so far yet.
At least, they shouldn’t have. But winds that were empty of algaes and krills and other nutritional elements were becoming more common. Worse, there was word from the Polars that some of their winds were becoming currents of poison. A permanent migration down to the Rough Northerns was being debated even now if the Northerners could be persuaded to accept such a move.
Below T’sha spread the canopy, bright with its mottled golds, blues, and reds. From this distance, it looked healthy, ready for a cas
ual single harvester or a concentrated reaping. But before too many more hours had passed, T’sha knew she was going to have to go down in there while the team confirmed what she suspected: that there would be too many flies down there too and not enough birds or puffs to clear them out. They would travel deep into the underside between the canopy and the crust and see the canopy’s roots withering.
It was just as well the area itself was lightly traveled. She scanned the horizon in all directions and, apart from her own team, saw only one distant sail cluster. Her headset told her that it was the Village Gaith. T’sha reflexively gave orders to send greetings to the city and its speakers.
The rest of her team worked less than a half mile away. Their bright-white kites and stabilizers billowed in the sterile wind. T’sha could almost feel the engineers glancing nervously toward her. She was not behaving as she should. She was not a private person anymore. She was an ambassador to the High Law Meet. Her duties, in addition to making promises on behalf of her city and representing her city to the legislature and courts, included making people nervous. She was supposed to be hovering around the edges of the team, waiting for them to give her the words to carry back to the Meet.
Come now; time to play your part. You want the truth; you need to go collect it. T’sha banked, curving her path back toward her team. You’re doing no good drifting out here sniffing and brooding.
A waver in the air currents over her shoulder made her glance back. A new orange kite sailed on the wind. T’sha turned in a tight circle to read the signal lights flashing on its frame. Her bones bunched briefly.
What does D’seun want here?
Like T’sha, D’seun served as an ambassador to the High Law Meet. She respected him as a close reasoner and an even-minded legislator. His birth village had died when he was still a child, but, against great odds, he had risen to become ambassador of his adopted city. She had wished many times they did not hover on opposite sides of every debate concerning the search for New Home. D’seun could only be here to check up on her team. The samples they were analyzing would help measure how critical the ecological breakdown here on Home was and so help determine how much time they had to make decisions regarding the new world.
She considered heading straight back to the survey team. But then she decided that keeping D’seun at a distance from her people might be advisable.
Let them get as much done as possible without him fluttering behind and making suggestions. The circumstances here might not be as bad as they seem.
T’sha fanned her wings, letting the wind proceed without her and waiting for D’seun’s kite to approach.
His kite was a pleasant hybrid with sails of orange skin and gold ligaments. Startling green scales dotted the shell-strip struts. Its engine was shut down, and it coasted on nothing more than the power of the wind. D’seun balanced half-inflated on the kite’s perches. He raised both forehands in greeting to her.
T’sha spread her forehands in return. As D’seun and his kite drew near her, T’sha stilled her wings and let the wind pull her along so she could keep level with him.
“Good luck, Ambassador T’sha,” he said pleasantly, shifting sideways to make room for her on the perches. “Will you join me?”
“Good luck, Ambassador D’seun. Certainly, I will.” There was no disagreement between them so great that courtesy could be disregarded. T’sha cupped her wings to lift herself up slightly and wrapped all twenty-four fingers around the kite’s perches. Then she deflated herself until her back and crest were level with D’seun’s. They touched forehands formally.
D’seun was even younger than T’sha was. The bright gold of his skin sparkled strong and clear in the daylight, leaving his heavy maze of tattoos, both official and personal, in dark relief. His white and blue crest, which marked him as an Equatorial, streamed all the way down to his shoulderblades. T’sha suspected both the crest and the skin were enhanced. Fully inflated, he was only slightly smaller than she was, something T’sha was ashamed to admit she found disconcerting. Even her birth father was only three-quarters of her size.
D’seun spoke to the kite in its command language, softly ordering it to change its drift so they angled away from the survey team’s distant sails. Disquiet gathered in the pockets between T’sha’s bones.
“What brings you out here?” T’sha asked, deliberately keeping the question conversational.
“I had to call into the High Law Meet to finish some reportings.” D’seun settled his weight back on his posthands, leaving his forehands free to stroke the kite’s ligaments. “So I was there when the Seventh Team returned.”
The Seventh? Oh, no. T’sha’s mother had still been a child when ten worlds had been selected as candidates for New Home. T’sha had heard the memories of the raging debate as to whether Number Seven, which had…complications…, should be included in the roster of test worlds. Ambassador Tr’ena, one of T’sha’s predecessors in the ambassadorship of Ca’aed, had lobbied hard against its inclusion. He had lost. T’sha had had to deal with the consequences of that loss.
D’seun, on the other hand, had risen to the rank of ambassador on the strength of what he and the Seventh Team had accomplished on that same world.
D’seun turned his gaze from the kite’s ligaments. “The seedings have taken on their candidate. The life base is spreading. We have found New Home.”
“They have taken on this candidate.” T’sha pushed her muzzle forward. “What about the others?”
D’seun swelled, as if he carried the best of news. “None of the other seedings were successful. It is Number Seven, or it is nothing.”
“There are other worlds out there. Millions of them.”
“We do not have the time to test those millions.”
T’sha strained the wind through her teeth. It held nothing, no taste, no texture, no scent. Empty air. Good for nothing but carrying flies and bad news.
“You came all this way to tell me this? You could have sent a message. I do wear a radio.” She tapped the fine neural mesh of her headset for emphasis.
T’sha searched D’seun’s stance and bearing, trying to get some feel for what he wanted. Despite his confident size, he was not at ease. He gripped and released the perches with each hand in turn so that he rocked unsteadily. His eyes darted about behind their lenses, looking for something other than her.
“There are things I wished to say to you directly,” said D’seun blandly.
T’sha’s posthands clenched the perch a little more tightly. “What are they? Do not speak against this candidate world? Do not say that if we must take this candidate, we must approach the New People and tell them plainly what we have come to New Home to do?”
D’seun inflated himself a little bit more. “The Seventh is the only planet where the life base has taken.” Light sparkled against his skin and his tattoos. He had several new patterns running down his shoulder—a kite with billowing sails, a pattern of interlinking diamonds, and an ancient pictorial symbol for movement.
T’sha turned her gaze from D’seun’s personal vanity. “Did the Seventh Team also report that the activities of the New People are increasing?” Her friend Pe’sen had monitor duty at the Conoi portal cluster. Now and then, he slipped her advance notice of team reports.
“That’s all to the good,” said D’seun calmly.
“Is it?” T’sha watched the cloud fingers in front of them with their haze of flies. Perhaps some hunter birds could be imported from the higher latitudes. They adapted well and needed little breeding supervision.
“What else could it be? Life must expand. Life helps life.” The intensity of his words rippled the air. She could feel them against the skin of her muzzle.
Is that what you believe? Or are you only saying that because you know it’s what I believe? With D’seun, this could be a question. She had seen him use partial truths to manipulate speakers and ambassadors before.
“Not all life views the world, perhaps I should say worlds,
in the same way.” T’sha pointed her muzzle toward the thick, sulfurous columns of haze and rot. “We see this abundance of flies as a danger signal. How do the flies see it?”
D’seun held up one forehand. “Intelligent life understands the void must be filled.” That was an old truism, one that had never been put to the test. D’seun knew that as well as T’sha did.
“But filled with what?” muttered T’sha.
D’seun deflated until he was level with her again. “It is a question, certainly.”
“No, it is the question,” said T’sha. “And it is the one we are not asking.”
She watched the bones under his skin expand and contract as he resisted the urge to swell up and tower over her. “You certainly are.”
“Because someone must.” She had carefully gone over all the available memories of the New People. They themselves were as hard to see as shellfish in their shells, but their creations were easily found. Their creations existed on three planets and one satellite of the Seventh World system, and one of those planets was Seventh World itself.
What did not seem to exist was any sign of life outside the shells, which was what breathed life into the debates. No good information had yet been acquired about their home world. They were obviously intelligent, but if they were not actively spreading life to New Home, were they making legitimate use of its resources? And if they were not making legitimate use of its resources, what stopped the People from doing so? There were those who argued that a system that already supported life was the best place to move themselves to. It would provide community, knowledge, and resources. D’seun was one of those, although he generally argued much more about knowledge and resources than he did about community.
Until now, of course.
D’seun deflated, becoming small, tight, and hard. “We need a new haven and new resources to ride out this imbalance.” He sounded like a recording, running over and over until the feel of his words overwhelmed his audience and they could draw in nothing else.