by Sarah Zettel
Vee took a step forward, holding her hand out. The other’s wings twitched minutely, its body swelled, and it drifted forward.
Vee’s breath caught in her throat.
A second creature, this one more heavily lined, or wired, came up next to the first one. They hovered close together, their beaks, maybe they were really more like muzzles, almost touching. Then, together they turned and flew back into the gondola under the silver and white balloon.
The moment was gone so abruptly that Vee was a little surprised to find she herself was still there.
And Angela still has no air tank. Vee cursed herself for standing and staring. She turned and lumbered back across the ragged plain.
Last time, last time. You can do this. She held tightly to the thought. Her plate warnings were now more orange than yellow. Her muscles felt stretched out and limp. Sweat trickled down her face, pooling for a moment in her collar before the cloth wicked it away. Her back itched. Her hands had swollen until her gloves felt too tight.
“You all right?” asked Josh.
“Barely,” she admitted. “But I’ll made it.”
From here she could see Scarab Five’s open airlock and the glass-encased bodies lying on the floor.
If they can make it, I sure as hell can. She glanced back to make sure the others were keeping up. They limped and stumbled their way back, just as she did. The aliens had vanished.
We’ll all make it because we have to back each other’s stories up.
They bundled back into the airlock, trying to cram onto the benches. Except Adrian. He squatted down next to Charlotte and laid a hand on her wrist, as if his gloved fingers could feel her pulse through that alien crystal.
“Shut it down, Kevin, depressurize,” said Josh as he dogged the hatch. He was panting hard, and Vee saw the rivers of sweat running down his face.
“Doing it now.” Kevin’s voice had relaxed, weirdly enough, and he sounded more like the pilot who had shepherded them all down than the terrified man she’d last seen on the corridor floor.
The pump began struggling to take them back to human conditions. Relief surged through Vee. She slumped against the inside of her hardsuit. Angela Cleary lay right at her feet, like a corpse that had been dipped in plastic. Vee closed her eyes. Angela was breathing under there. They all were. No one was dead yet. Except that person the aliens took away.
Why did they take the dead one away?
“It’s a fake, huh?” Josh’s voice interrupted her thoughts and she was grateful, even when she interpreted his tone. “If the Discovery is a fake, what the hell were those? Holographs?”
“You thought the Discovery was a fake?” said Troy. “When we’ve just seen the builders—”
“The Discovery is a fake,” snapped Vee. She started shaking. A thousand different emotions churned inside her and she couldn’t put a name to any of them. “Those creatures did not build the Discovery. Did those things look like they could fit through the tunnel? Those were birds, not moles.”
“So there are two sets of aliens?” said Troy, sounding dazed.
“Yes,” said Vee. “Us and them.”
Adrian hadn’t moved from his crouch next to Charlotte. He ran his gloves over the solid, crystal casing. Vee had no doubt he was thinking, How are we going to get them out of there? Vee sure was.
A sound like a shot split the air. Vee jerked backward. A crack swept down Charlotte’s case. It branched out, sending a network of fractures all along the crystal. Another shot, and another and another. The cases shattered.
Well, that answers that.
“Charlotte!” Adrian brushed away flakes of crystal that turned to dust as soon as he touched them. Vee, then Josh, fell clumsily to their knees, following his example. Vee brushed off Angela’s face, trying to get the stuff clear before she inhaled it.
Angela gasped, then choked. Her body convulsed under Vee’s hand and her face contorted horribly.
“Shit! Kevin! Kill the pump!” cried Adrian. “They’re getting the bends! Kill the pump!”
“No! They can’t live under this pressure!” Vee yelled. The gauge wasn’t even up to three atmospheres. That much pressure was not something an unsheltered body could tolerate. They were going to be crushed. Right in here. Right in front of them.
“The bends will kill them!” shot back Adrian. He was right. If they were brought up too fast, the gases in their blood would turn into bubbles in their veins, and those bubbles would float into their hearts.
But if they remained under this intense pressure, they’d simply be squeezed to death by the air.
No-win situation, thought Vee, almost hysterically.
“Keep us down, Kevin!” shouted Adrian. “Where’s the rescue drop?”
“An hour away, tops,” came the answer.
“Make sure they know we’re under pressure.”
They were all on their knees now, trying to hold the contorting bodies down, trying to speak soothing words that could not possibly be heard. The rescued team might as well have been naked to the heat and the pressure. Vee could see Angela’s neck muscles swell. A thin ribbon of blood ran from her ear. Vee tried to hold Angela as she curled in on herself, but Vee couldn’t tell whether the gesture was helping or hurting. Vee couldn’t hear her, couldn’t feel her. Angela was outside her. Vee couldn’t check Angela’s breathing or her pulse. Vee’s thick, gloved fingers couldn’t even hold Angela’s hand.
“Charlotte, Charlotte,” murmured Adrian. “I’m so sorry. Just hang on, please hang on.”
Please hang on. I’m sorry. The first-aid kit was on the other side of the airlock. Who’d put a first-aid kit in here? No one would be in here without a suit on when the door was closed. That was nuts.
Nuts as it was, these people had no suits. There was no way to reach them. Angela was beginning to shake. Tears ran from her closed eyes.
Let her be unconscious. Let her not know this is happening to her.
Seconds crawled by. Vee’s gaze kept darting from her faceplate clock to Angela. Seconds, minutes, passing. Angela going from tremors, to jerks, to convulsions that kicked and battered Isaac Walters, who lay beside her, as well as Vee’s hardsuit. She faded back to jerks and then to tremors, leaving Vee drowning in fear that the next thing to happen would be that Angela’s muscles would go completely limp and her dead eyes would roll open.
But it didn’t happen. It should have. It should have happened moments after their casings cracked. It should have happened when their scarab crashed, but it didn’t. Angela, Isaac, Lindi, Charlotte, Dave the mission specialist, Chen the geologist, Arva the meteorologist, all held on for one more second, and one more, and one more after that.
After an eternity of one more second, Kevin’s voice echoed inside Vee’s helmet.
“Scarabs Eight and Ten are on the ground! They’re on their way. What’s your pressure and temp back there? Exactly.”
“We’re at the three point three atmospheres and fifty-two degrees Celsius,” answered Adrian. “Tell them to step on it!”
More waiting. Hang on Angela, oh, please, hang on.
Angela was barely even twitching now. Her fingers curled and opened slightly, almost as if they were being blown by a wind. Not much to indicate life. Not nearly enough. Vee laid her hand on Angela’s chest and tried to feel its rise and fall. Nothing. Nothing at all.
No. Please. You can’t die. You can’t die! Help’s on the way!
The scarab shuddered. Vee’s gaze jerked automatically to the door.
“We’ve got a docking seal with Scarab Eight,” said Kevin. “Just another second, they’ll have the door open.”
Vee’s heart hammered hard. Angela’s hand went still.
“No, no, no.” She grasped the woman’s forearm. “Come on! One more second! One more!”
The outer door hissed open and they faced an identical airlock and a pair of strangers in hardsuits surrounded by stretcher capsules.
“Mother Creation,” whispered one, even as he s
wung a capsule forward and lifted its lid.
They got Charlotte in, strapped her down, closed the lid, swung the capsule into the airlock, where another person waited to read her vital signs and give the capsule orders for treatment and maintenance. They swung down another capsule, this one for Lindi. Another for Dave.
Angela still wasn’t moving.
“They’re here, help’s here,” breathed Vee. She felt tears running down her cheeks. She barely knew this woman who was dying under her hand and Vee couldn’t even feel it and help was inches away and she couldn’t beg them to hurry because everyone else was as bad or worse and they were already moving as fast as they possible could.
A capsule shut Another swung into place.
“Okay, Dr. Hatch. We got her.”
The med techs lifted Angela away and slotted her into the stretcher capsule, strapped her down, slapped the monitor patches on her, and closed the lid. The capsule’s screens lit up instantly.
“Is she alive?” she croaked.
“Oh yeah,” said the med tech. “Mother Creation alone knows how, but they’re all still with us.”
Vee fell backwards and sideways and found herself leaning against Josh. He laid an arm around her shoulder. She couldn’t feel it, but she knew it was there.
Thank God, she thought, for the lives in the stretchers and the life next to her now. Thank God.
Chapter Eleven
THE MOORING HOOK TOOK the ligaments the dirigible let down for it. As soon as the gondola opened its door, T’sha gathered up the cortex boxes they’d used to cope with the New People’s shelter and flew straight for the base’s main portal. She wanted to get into D’seun’s way before he could take his anger out on any of the engineers.
As she had guessed, D’seun was there in the main analysis chamber, quivering with rage. T’sha glided past him into the chamber, making him turn away from the door and its view of the corridor beyond.
“I’ve heard what you did,” he said.
“I am not surprised.” She set each of the cortex boxes into their caretaker unit, which would determine whether they needed soothing, debriefing, or reprogramming.
“Why would you do such a thing?” demanded D’seun. “Why would you come into contact with them? It is not in your commission!”
T’sha wrapped her posthands around a perch and settled down to face him. She had to remain calm now. His anger was justified. She had completely ignored the presence of another ambassador while taking an action that could affect all the People. She had deliberately overflown her commission, and there was no going back.
“They were dying, D’seun,” she said softly. “What should I have done?”
D’seun swelled. T’sha held her own bones in tight control. She could not rise to this. Not now. “We had our mandate. We were not yet ready to greet them properly.”
“This was not a greeting. This was an emergency.” It had been too. Even knowing as much about them as she did, T’sha had been stunned when the cortices reported on the frigid temperatures the New People maintained for themselves and how deeply sheltered they were from the press of the air around them. Their own kind only limped to their aid. They showed all the soul of family members, surely, but they would have been far too late. There would not even have been raw materials to recover, so much would have boiled away.
“You may have jeopardized everything,” D’seun shouted. “How can we show we have proper claim to New Home at this stage? They could legitimately call question to what we are doing.”
T’sha clacked her teeth, “I could legitimately question what we’re doing.” Her body tried to swell, but she held herself rigid. “D’seun, you are making assumptions for which you have no evidence. We have no idea how they see us. We haven’t asked them. We may not even have a way to ask them.” There had been the one who’d stood so still under her stare. What was going on in that one’s mind? What was passing between it and the others? Had they known the People were there to help? Had it feared they would take the raw materials of their companions’ bodies before they were ready to be used?
D’seun leaned as far forward as he could without releasing his perch. He swelled up so huge he looked as if he was about to burst. “You did this deliberately. You did not get your way in the High Law Meet and so you are forcing the issue.”
Despite all her self-control, T’sha’s wings beat the air in simple frustration. “Did I cause the New People’s equipment to fail? Did I make sure you were away from the base when it did?”
D’seun towered over her, rude and showy with his tattoos and his dyed crest, and did not answer. Not one of the other team members had come into the chamber, T’sha noted. Intelligent.
“I will take this back to the Law Meet,” said D’seun, deflating only slightly.
T’sha dipped her muzzle. “I’ve already done so, D’seun. I sent D’han back through the portal with my complete report of the events.”
“Your interpretation of events,” said D’seun. “I’m sure, once I’ve spoken to them the engineers will have their own stories to tell.”
That was enough, more than enough. T’sha inflated, swift and sudden. She spread her wings out until she was all D’seun could see.
“If I find you’ve intimidated even the lowest engineer on this team, I will take you before the Law Meet and I will bring up the question of your sanity!”
D’seun shriveled. “You wouldn’t.”
She cupped her wings to surround him. “Feel my words, Ambassador; feel my life. You know I have cause.”
D’seun was so small and tight he would have sunk like a stone had he not been sitting on a perch. It was then T’sha knew. She had not been certain until that moment, but now she was. D’seun had not taken raw materials from the New People. He had taken a life.
Realization rocked T’sha back on her perch.
“I will not forget this,” D’seun said.
“You should not.” T’sha let go of her perch and flew into the corridor. She was aware of the Seventh Team strung out along the corridor like lanterns around a nightside room. She did not speak to them. Instead, she took herself straight into the refresher and ordered the door to close tightly behind her.
The air in the refresher was rich, thick, and heavy. T’sha took it in gratefully, relaxing her skin, drawing the life-giving air in through her loosened muzzle and feeling her internal poisons release from her pores. It was so hard to feel full here, in this beautiful, empty world. Back home she needed to refresh perhaps once every dodec-hour. Here, every four or five hours that passed left her drained. She relaxed skin, muscle, and bone in the room’s gentle breeze and let herself drift.
She’d done it. Oh, she had done it. She’d spent so much effort controlling her body, she’d obviously forgotten to control her mind. Did she really mean she’d call D’seun’s sanity into question?
She did. Her skin rippled with small fear. She’d do it. This was too huge. It meant too much. If D’seun would have her sacrifice the New People needlessly, if he had taken one of their lives, he might really be insane. The sane spread life, served it, nurtured it, and in return were served and spread and nurtured by life. The insane were greedy. They killed. They stunted and confined and hoarded life. The sane and the insane could not live together.
T’sha remembered when her family had met on a question of insanity. She’d only just been declared adult, able to fly with the others and add her voice to the consensus. T’thran, a second cousin to her birth family, had deliberately destroyed an entire square mile of canopy. He offered no reason, however closely questioned. He had only wanted to do this thing. It was bad, he said. It was rotted, and the rot would spread.
But there was no evidence. No one else in the entire latitude had witnessed this corruption. Not even Ca’aed could say it had existed. The family asked; they asked everyone they could reach. The wind blew them from day through night and back into day again while they turned the question over. But in the end, every voice pol
led had called him insane.
Insane. Nothing left to contribute to life but his own raw material. So that raw material had been taken and used to help re-create what had been destroyed.
As would D’seun’s be, if she did this and the Law Meet found she was right.
The problem was, of course, that D’seun could make his own case against her. He had already convinced the Seventh Team she was greedy and careless. What if he or some ally took that to a court or the Fitness Review Committee in the High Law Meet? There existed the very real possibility that she would be removed from her special position here, and then who would speak for the New People? D’seun would not, his bullied team would not, and back in the High Law Meet, Ambassador Z’eth most certainly would not.
T’sha floated between disasters and did not know which way to dodge. She only knew that as long as the New People were alive and sane they could not be dismissed, could not be flown over without regard to their needs and their claims. That was right. That was the first Right and the final Right and it would not change, no matter how closely D’seun argued his case and no matter what Z’eth had asked her to do.
“I cannot choose which life to serve,” she murmured, calling back the words the living highland spoke to Ca’doth.
T’sha floated, blown by the room’s gentle, random breeze, taking in its nutrition and its calm. She had made her move. All that she could do now was wait and see how D’seun would respond.
The Veneran doctors agreed Vee could sleep in her own room if she wore the monitor belt and patches under her shirt and swore to drink two liters of water before she went to bed.
So there she stood in her spacious, comfortable living room, with its autoform furniture and its walls set to a static pattern of mountains and clouds based on Japanese watercolors, and the purple rag rug on the soft-tile floor, completely at a loss about what to do. Angela, Lindi, Isaac, and the Venerans were all going to live, thanks to the intervention of the aliens. She drew a large glass of water from the tap at the sink in the kitchenette and drank some absently. What were they doing down there now? What were they doing there at all? Who were they? Why had they decided to help?