Shortly, it started to rain—at first, just dampness on Kali’s cheek, then the rocks became slick. Her flashlight picked out raindrops in the air, backlit by the sparkle of minerals in the basalt. The gravel crunched monotonously under her boots as she followed the red direction bug in her glasses. She arrived at the edge of a fissure and aimed the flashlight across the gap. It was just far enough to jump, and she pushed off in one motion.
Her boot slipped off the rock as she landed. Her left side hit a curved surface as she fell, knocking the breath out of her. She skidded until her boots got a grip on the rubble in the bottom of the crack.
Kali rolled over and breathed for a moment, leaning on her backpack. The side of her hand was cut and bleeding, but not seriously, and her chest hurt. The ribs on that side were the ones she’d broken in Haffay—they still had the diacom rods the field hospital put in. But she doubted they were broken again; they were a lot tougher now.
Toran caught up and aimed his flashlight from above. “Are you going to hop or crawl the rest of the way?” he said, leaning over her.
Kali sighed and lay stretched out. “What was she like?” she asked. “Your wife?” The pain in her side gave her voice an edge.
Toran straightened up and thought for a moment. “Quiet, didn’t say much, but kind…”
“No. I mean, what did she look like?”
Toran shifted and pointed his flashlight away. “Tall, for someone from the East, but not as tall as you. Thin; long, wavy hair; high cheekbones.”
It’s not her, Kali thought. “I never met her,” she said firmly. “What was her name?”
“Fadia.”
Kali stood and turned to continue. The timer in her glasses read 16:00. They still had a long way to go. At least the inertial navigation hadn’t tumbled; the bug pointed the same way it had before she fell.
“But you were there,” Toran said from behind.
Kali shook her head in the darkness. “It was the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t right for everyone.”
“You talk like a Shinigami.”
“How?”
“‘Every kind of end justifies its own level of means,’” he quoted.
“They don’t say that. The fakers in the wallvids say that, but they don’t.”
Kali started moving again, skirting the first mound and circling a deep hole in the lava skin. She realized, ironically, she could be farther from Toran on The Child than on Keto. On the planet, she would always be within sight of him, but on The Child, she could be on the other side of the ring, a dozen pressure doors away.
She didn’t hate him; he just reminded her of things she wanted to forget.
Kali fell into a rhythm, forgetting the pain in her hand and her chest. The beam of her flashlight swept between her feet and the ridges a few meters ahead, lighting up a mist of raindrops. She learned to distrust the slippery upward curves of each ridge and jump to the flatter surfaces above, and to tell which edges would hold up under the soles of her boots and which would tilt and break away.
One step follows another. Think two or three ahead, but no more. Keep on moving. Don’t worry about Toran, as long as he’s making noise behind. Only worry about silence.
She remembered sitting in a bar in Newton, a month after returning from Haffay, a day after the stabilizing brace had come out of her spine. She’d sat at the counter, fighting off anyone who came close and saving an empty barstool on either side for defense. She spent enough for the bartender to leave her alone, buying one glass after another of expensive whiskeys distilled in copper pots on the coast near Sagan, each one more salty, bitter, and astringent than the last.
A man had appeared beside her, and she knew at once he wasn’t there to flirt with her. He was older and more grizzled than anyone else in the bar—his blond hair graying and tan skin wrinkled—but also more confident. He leaned toward her without introducing himself; she noticed his right hand was missing several fingers he hadn’t bothered to regrow.
“Kali, you’re young, you’re talented—you’re bound for great things,” he’d said. “There’s important work to do. You’ve already done us a small favor, but you could do much more. Athena needs you.” He sipped whatever he was drinking and added, “You don’t have to apply. In fact, you can’t.”
“I’ve always been interested in the Astrocorps,” Kali replied, without taking her eyes off the bottles at the back of the bar.
The man smiled as if he’d anticipated that answer, and he circled a finger in the air above his glass. “They go up, they go around, they come down. But what does the corps do for Athena? You can do better than that.”
In the days before The Child, the old man had been right. The Astrocorps looked good in the news vids and kept government contractors happy, but all it did was make circles in the vacuum around Athena. It was a cushy job for someone with a clean image, minimal social skills, and the right connections.
“I know who you’re talking about, and I don’t want to work for her.”
“The Astrocorps and my friends are both part of the Ministry of Unification. They both work for Kaera. You know that.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t give a shit about the corps.” Kali swallowed the last of her drink in one gulp. “I’ll think about it over another one.”
The old man left as quietly as he came. The next day, she found a copy of the application form for the Astrocorps open on the paper in her pocket, already filled out and signed with her allegedly secure biometric signature.
The Shinigami and the Astrocorps both reported to the Minister of Unification—to Kaera. But Kaera cared deeply about the Shinigami. The Astrocorps ran itself; the laws of gravity and bureaucratic inertia pretty much took care of it. Kaera was all over the Shinigami on a daily basis. Kali punched submit on the form.
That was the short version of how she ended up on Keto.
The lava plain rose and fell ahead of her like an ocean of tar solidified in a storm. Kali imagined she was walking on stepping stones appearing one after the other ahead of her feet. She jumped easily between them, finding physical joy in the exertion for a while. She moved over the surface of Keto toward the lander the way The Child moved through space—in a series of small jumps, some forwards, some backwards, many sideways, only the aggregate movement along the flight path.
She tried to follow the high ground but couldn’t jump the gaps in the ridges, and was forced to circle empty pits and crags that sucked up the beam of her flashlight. The rise up and down, although only a few meters at a time, would add up to large altitude change. By dawn, they’d have climbed the equivalent of a small mountain in order to rise only two or three hundred meters above the sea.
It didn’t matter if she left her eyes open or closed—the darkness was the same either way, and it was welcoming. It was like making night approaches in a Vertel—the darkness around the lights of the landing pad was inviting and it was easy to let the Vertel sink into it, as if the pad could be approached from below. But that was a deadly illusion; it had to be resisted.
She remembered flying over the plain in the helicopter in bright sunlight, under a blue sky. Was it three or four days ago? She couldn’t recall, but it hadn’t been that long. At dawn, they’d had a mission, but by noon they were covering their asses. What was the point of coming if the mission objectives went out the window and the only goal was getting out? She hoped Ai and Alon were doing some actual science in Helicopter Valley.
The same thing had happened on Haffay—a mission at dawn, force protection by noon. Kali had gotten a medal out of that one. She’d shipped it to her father with instructions to store it unopened. Someday in the future, when she’d glossed over the memory enough, she’d open that box and look at it.
The citation that came with it was a work of art—every word was true but the whole thing a lie. She’d burned that paper, signature end first, hoping its photonics would die before the contents could replicate to the next piece of paper in the house. The acrid smell had s
tayed in her hair for days, even after repeated washing.
Those things—the box, the medal in it, and the citation—had all come from Kaera.
Twenty hundred hours, the glasses said; midnight on Keto. Later than she’d thought. The time had passed quickly, but at a cost. Six more hours. If she stopped, she could feel her legs shaking. So don’t stop, she told herself.
For a moment, her mind spun and she thought she saw the silver metal figure of Eresh rising from the ridge in front, glittering in the beam of her flashlight. She remembered Eresh coating the deck of the hab module of The Child in liquid metal, and rising out of it to form a robed avatar—a smiling face encircled by notional silver hair, a moving chrome statue of an archetypal grandmother.
Eresh—Kali had never known whether to love her or hate her, or just wonder, the way Zansai did, about the things she left unsaid. But the maternal act was a sham; it made the hairs on the back of Kali’s neck stick up.
A blink and the vision was gone. Fuck Eresh, she thought. The ghostly slime-bot should stick to haunting the drive-head and otherwise butt out of the mission. It was in orbit where it belonged.
She pressed on, trying to skirt a debris-filled sinkhole. The jump was too far—the gap impassable. She doubled-back to find a way around the other side. The ridge beyond was high, and she scrambled up it on her hands and feet. The glassy surface under her hands shimmered with color like oil on water. The distance ahead swallowed her flashlight as the ridge dipped away, and she scanned the plain without finding the horizon. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Toran’s flashlight flickering back and forth as he followed.
Which way did Eresh go? Then she caught herself—there was no Eresh. It was an illusion.
She stepped forward, pointing her flashlight down a moment too late. Her foot went out into empty space—there was nothing beneath it.
Instinctively, rather than fall face first, she pushed off with the other foot.
The fall could be thirty centimeters, or it could be thirty meters.
Falling
Kali was in free fall for only a fraction of a second before her hands struck rock, skidding painfully over the boiled glass surface. The opposite edge of the hole hit her in the stomach and lower ribs, knocking her breath out. She struggled to hold on, grabbing at ridges in the stone with her fingers as her legs swung in the air. There was no way to know how much farther she would fall if she let go.
Toran scrambled around, blinding her with his flashlight. He leaned forward and reached out a hand.
“Wait! Go back!” she shouted. “Get the—”
The sheet of rock Kali was holding on to gave way with a crack. She fell backwards for what was less than a second but felt like an age. Then she slapped hard into water. It stung her arms and legs through her flight suit, and blew the last of the air out of her lungs. Her ears were filled with turbulent crackling as freezing water closed over her.
Instinctively, she righted herself to swim to the surface but her feet hit dirt. She stood and waded in what seemed to be the shallowest direction to reach a bank of silt. Falling to her knees, she tried to catch her breath. Damn, that water was cold! She was soaked and shivering. The water was shedding off her backpack but soaking into the cotton of her uniform; it would take hours to dry out.
Kali held her hands up, trying to keep them out of the dirt. They hurt like hell and must have been shredded by the rock—she didn’t want to see what they looked like. She pressed them into her armpits to warm them and absorb the blood.
Damn! Why had Eresh shown up in her glasses, and why’d she paid any attention anyway? Was that image something hidden in the glasses or was it just a figment of her imagination? And why hadn’t Toran had the sense to stay back from the edge? He should have taken his bedroll and lain out on it before trying to grab her, the way you get to someone who’s fallen into ice on a lake. Wasn’t that obvious?
Her whole body hurt—her hands, the backs of her arms and legs, and her ribs where she’d struck the edge. Maybe she wouldn’t take her shirt off for a week so as not to look at all the bruises and cuts.
Her breath was coming back but she was starting to shiver uncontrollably. There was no way she could dry out in this hole—it was too cold and damp. Her uniform would be as wet tomorrow as it was now. She slipped her backpack off and found the heater pack for the sleeping bag by feel. It was hard to locate the pull-tab in the dark, but eventually she found it. The pack warmed up as she curled around it; at least she wouldn’t die of hypothermia right away.
Toran was shouting down from above. She raised the strength to shout back, “Just wait, dammit!” His concern was touching but couldn’t he just leave her alone? The heater pack was getting hot and it felt good.
“I found your flashlight.” That’s what Toran was saying. Kali saw his face as he briefly lit himself with the flashlight. He must have gotten the idea of crawling out over the ceiling.
Toran dropped the flashlight; it dug into the silt end-first. The light hurt her eyes, but watching it fall told her a couple things—it was five or six meters to the ceiling, and there was no easy way to walk out.
She’d hurt herself enough in the fall to make it impossible to rappel straight up with the thread gun. Maybe she should stay here. Toran could climb down, or find some other hole of his own. The cave would keep the wind out. Manus and Galia could boost off with the lander on auto. Sure, there were some failure modes, but it was unlikely the capsule would end up floating in the ocean in the path of the cyclone.
Ai and Alon? If there was a place to shelter, Alon would find it. Otherwise—well, they knew what they were getting into from the start. There was a limit to what Kali could do. Perhaps she’d been trying too hard to fix problems beyond her control. By the time she got out of the hole, it would be nearly impossible to make it to the lander in time.
Overhead, the stars had come out, except for a small patch in the center. She hugged the heater pack and watched them twinkle gently before starting to wonder about the black hole in the middle. It’s rim flickered blue-white with what she imagined to be some kind of Hawking radiation. But why was she seeing stars where there should be rock, and a black hole where there should be clouds?
Kali pulled the flashlight out of the mud and pointed it up. The “stars” on the ceiling pulsed, as if shocked by the beam. The light rippled in circular waves, like splashes made by rain in a puddle. In the middle of the beam, she could see tendrils of something growing down. The tendrils were luminescent—some kind of weird local life. There wasn’t anything like it on Athena; maybe she should get a sample.
Perhaps it was a good sign. Probably the tendrils weren’t edible, but at least there would be some light if she needed to save power during the storm.
She waved the flashlight around the cave to get a better idea of its layout. It was obviously some kind of lava tunnel, going back a dozen meters on the other side of the water. At her end was a bank of silt, then the tunnel ended in a pile of rocks—probably the ones that had fallen from overhead and left only a thin skin on top. At first sight, there wasn’t much else.
Kali put the end of the flashlight in her mouth and set about cleaning her hands. Her palms were badly shredded, the cuts bleeding where they weren’t packed with dirt. She pulled out the larger glass needles and dipped her hands in the water. So much for not polluting the planet, but she doubted her blood and skin cells would take on a life of their own. She found some wipes in her backpack and sprayed on a layer of skin-over from the medkit. It didn’t stick properly and leaked blood, so she pulled her sleeves down and gripped the cuffs.
The glasses had come off in the fall and she needed to find them. Hoping they were on land instead of in the water, she aimed the flashlight around in circles.
Something was gleaming in the dirt piled up on the rocks at the end of the tunnel.
∞
It was an insignia pin in silver diacom—an arrow in the shape of The Child, knocked to a bow and the string pul
led back. It must have fallen off her uniform. Kali wiped the dirt off it with her fingertip; it shone like new.
It was a perfectly ordinary object. There was only one thing wrong with it: she’d never seen it before. The logo for the Athenian program used an arrow, but never a bow. The Astrocorps believed the combination was too martial; the arrow alone wasn’t as threatening. Kali didn’t see the difference, but no one wanted the program to look military even if it was run by the Ministry of Unification and staffed with veterans.
She glanced up at the hole in the ceiling. Had the pin fallen off Toran’s clothing? He’d hung over the edge to check on her and drop the flashlight. But she’d never seen him wear it and doubted it was his—he had a general aversion to symbols of any kind and wasn’t likely to wear the image of a weapon.
The pin had to have gotten here somehow. Kali could feel it with her fingers; it wasn’t her imagination. She tugged on it to get a closer look, but it was attached to something—a piece of fabric.
Toran shouted to her again from outside the hole but she couldn’t make out what he said.
“Wait! I’m doing some first aid!” she shouted back.
She’d left the knife with Toran; now she wished she hadn’t. The fabric looked pretty tough—like the nanofiber insulating layer of her sleeping bag without the other layers that made it cushy and safe to get into. It would be hard to cut. That might be why it was still here—it was nearly indestructible. Kali put the end of the flashlight in her mouth and pulled with both hands, and the material lifted free of the dirt at one end. Slipping a hand inside, she could feel the clasp of the pin on the other side. With another tug, she had enough material free to turn the pin over and see what kind of clasp it was.
The flashlight picked out something white in between the black mud and dark nanofiber. Kali realized she was staring into the empty eye sockets of a human skull.
“Fuck!” she said, dropping the flashlight and backing away. Water soaked into the legs of her uniform and she couldn’t go much farther. This wasn’t good. The pin was bad enough, but there was no way there should have been a skeleton in the cave. Her heart was racing
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