White Seed

by Kenneth Marshall

  She turned to Toran and grinned. “Is that good enough for you?”

  Toran looked past her at the lander and raised his hat from his head in mock congratulation. “How much pride did you have to swallow for that?”

  Kali laughed. “You’ll never know. But really, you doubted me?”

  “No more than anyone else.” Toran patted his hat back on his head. “I’m surprised we’re not fried already. Should I check my skin to see if it’s peeling off?” He held up his dosimeter card. “What do you think this says?”

  “You spend all day in a fusion exhaust, what’s a little more at night?”

  Toran snorted and slipped the card back in his pocket.

  “Tell me,” Kali said, “did you ever have that moment when you knew someone was a liar an nobody else saw it? And you were the only one that knew this person was full of shit?”

  “Yeah, two days ago.”

  Kali laughed. He had a point, just not one that mattered.

  Toran turned to her, his expression serious. “How long do you think you’re going to get away with this? Fixing your mistakes on the run? Because when you don’t, people are going to die.”

  “Long enough to get to the next mission,” she said. “Maybe I’ll learn better by then. What do you think?”

  There were only a few kilometers to go. Walking on the plain had become an automatic rhythm now, skipping left and right between slopes, jumping from one small peak to another, avoiding sharp and unstable surfaces. She’d dream of it tonight in orbit, caught in a half-awake, half-asleep state, still trudging across the lava. She knew Keto much better than she wanted to.

  “You know what bothers me?” Kali said to Toran.

  “No.”

  “That now you and everyone else thinks we can trust Eresh. She got us out of it this time. Why not another?”

  Toran looked puzzled. “Why not?”

  “Maybe I’m not the one that got us in trouble. Maybe I’m not the only one who gets to be a hero fixing what she screwed-up.”

  Toran looked sideways at Kali. “I don’t follow.”

  Kali shook her head. If he wanted to play scientist instead of Syncretist, he’d need evidence, and she didn’t have it. Better to keep quiet until she did.

  Approaching the lander a half-hour later, Kali could see thick bands of frost wrapped around its LOX and methane tanks. Both cargo containers—the one with HV-202 packed inside and the empty one for the stranded Hummingbird—had been lifted back up to the cargo stage and rolled into their bays. These were good signs for launch. The gantry at the base of the crew module was still extended, and it had a gap for the lift platform, meaning somebody was still on the ground. The floodlights pointing out of the crew module hatches lit up the clouds as they skimmed by.

  It would be a near zero-zero takeoff, Kali realized. They would punch into the clouds an instant after ignition, and drop out of them a moment before touchdown in Helicopter Valley.

  Manus and Galia were sitting at the base of the lander in folding chairs—Manus slumped, Galia upright, her legs tucked under and ankles crossed. They were looking out to the sea to the northwest, away from Kali and Toran as the two walked up from the south.

  “I saw how you looked at her,” Galia said in hushed voice. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t.”

  “What?” Manus protested. “She’s not invisible. If I never looked at her, it would be kind of odd or rude even, no?”

  “You know what I mean,” Galia warned.

  Manus sighed. He started at the sound of Kali’s boots and turned to look over the back of his chair.

  “Ah, shit,” he said, with a shocked look.

  Kali stopped and drew herself up a little. She pushed away a tangle of hair stuck to the side of her face. The salty air had matted her hair, knotting its waves into a thick blanket that looked like the carbon tube insulation stuffed into the lander’s tail. Blood had dried on her forehead where she’d brushed the rain off with a badly grazed hand. A layer of sweat-streaked black dust coated her face and neck, and the sleeves and knees of her flight suit were torn and bloody.

  Galia looked horrified. Kali realized she must look even worse than she felt.

  “I’ll get the big kit,” Galia said, tapping paper and spinning out of her chair toward the crew lift. She hoisted her lengthy dress with both hands as she walked. Toran followed.

  Kali sighed. She didn’t expect much from homecomings—Haffay had taught her that. She dropped her backpack at Manus’s feet.

  “Have to pre-flight,” she said, waving at the lander. There were at least a dozen pins—mostly for the gear pyros—in the bottom of the lander. Their red “remove before flight” ribbons were fluttering in the wind.

  Manus reached out and took her hand. “You’re fit for that?” he said.

  “Small med kit in the pack, if you want to try.”

  Manus slowly peeled her fingers open, clotted blood pulling away from cotton and skin. He smiled up at her, a pleasant grin spreading on his round face. “I don’t think you can get infected here, if that’s any help,” he said.

  On the other side of the lander, waiting for the lift to arrive, Galia shot Kali a withering look. Kali watched her climb aboard and ascend with Toran.

  She looked down at Manus. “Check my left hip pocket.”

  Manus slipped his hand in with an apologetic smile and lifted out the pin. He studied it, spinning it in his fingers by the stem. “What is it?”

  “I found it in a hole somewhere between here and there. One I fell in.”

  “It’s not ours?”

  “Have you seen one like it?”

  “Toran’s?”

  “He doesn’t even wear our insignia.” Toran had a wedding ring and a locket around his neck, but both were plain designs. The Syncretists didn’t put much faith in symbols. “Have you ever seen a bow in any of ours?” she added.

  “No, just the arrow.”

  “There was another crew here. Tell me—how long do bones last?”

  “Buried? Wet or dry? Aerobic or anaerobic environment? Basic or acidic soil?”

  Kali shrugged. “A hole out there.”

  “Fifty to five million years—I can’t say.”

  “That doesn’t help. My guess was one to three thousand.”

  “Good as mine. Why are you telling me?”

  “In case I die. I’m going to give it to Setona; it’s in her hands. But I want you to put it in your secure notes so it doesn’t get buried forever if I don’t make it back.”

  “You showed it to Toran?”

  “No. He’d have stayed; we’d still be out there. I don’t know what’s worse—if he finds out or he never finds out. But I can’t show it to him until we’re out of orbit. Then I don’t think Setona will let me.”

  Manus dropped the pin back in Kali’s pocket. “I won’t tell, then.”

  “Just put it in your diary—that’s enough.”

  She offered him the other hand, and he started to peel the blue cloth away from her palm. She ignored the pain—it was too trivial in the scheme of things to be worth reacting—and turned to look over the plain. The plateau stretched for kilometers to the sea, the water gray and boiling with surf, the color of its algae lost in the dim storm-filtered light.

  She’d always know the Athenians weren’t the first on Keto, but now she was certain they weren’t even the second.

  ∞

  Alon lay still in the dark womb of the cave and gazed down on Ai’s face. Wrapped in her jacket and her sleeping bag, she slept, breathing softly and regularly. Curves of black hair framed her face, her lips were apart, and her eyes moved slightly under her eyelids. He studied the curve of her chin and the folds of her ear; she was beautiful in her own way. With his fingertip, he brushed a strand of hair away from her mouth.

  A straight set—he couldn’t get that thought out of his mind. Keto, Aestas, Shinju, Avia, Mineral, Tannhäuser; Ai was assigned to every mission on the schedule. Did she have enough lives for a
ll of them? He couldn’t be there to protect her every time, as much as he wanted to.

  She was awake. Her eyes were closed but her breathing had changed—she was only pretending to be asleep. He let his hand hang in the air until he was certain. He hadn’t meant to wake her until the lander arrived; perhaps, if he was very still, she would fall asleep again.

  Her eyes opened and he looked into them. She held his gaze, then smiled, the little triangles of her upper cuspids showing between her lips.

  “I can hear them,” she said.

  Alon sat up and turned his head. A faint hiss. Something more than the wind outside the mouth of the cave—a sound with an edge, at its center a scrape, not a rumble. It was the lander.

  He stuck his head out the mouth of the cave and looked down the valley, toward its final serpentine turn to the sea. A thick layer of cloud rushed overhead, flowing inland like an upturned river of dirty water vapor. Farther down the valley, the undersurface of the clouds shook with a disturbance, circular waves radiating from a boiling center like water rippling from a stone dropped in a lake.

  A pillar of blue-violet rocket exhaust emerged from the cloud, sucking down the mist and vaporizing it. The hiss grew to a roar and a scraping sound like the tip of a knife scoring a sheet of slate. The black needle of the lander descended from the clouds on the shock diamonds of its engines.

  The wind of the exhaust tore at Alon's face and blew his breath back down his throat. It swept the grit from the valley in an instant, and blasted the water out of the river in sheets. Alon laughed into the gale as the sound of the engines shuddered in his chest. Then, in an instant, the force was gone as the lander’s gear shot out and touched the valley floor. The lander sat still, the descending howl of its high-pressure turbo-pumps echoing up and down the valley.

  Exhilarated, Alon brushed his hands through his hair to shake out the dust, and turned to Ai. She was still wrapped in her jacket and sleeping bag.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  He had the climbing ropes already prepped and anchored. This time he made Ai go first so he could be sure of her rigging. On the ground, they left the ropes behind and hiked toward the lander as fast as they could. There wasn’t much time to spare. The gusts were approaching the lander’s crosswind limit already, and Alon wasn’t sure how long the valley floor would hold up under the vehicle. It had burned a lot of fuel in the hop, but still weighed several hundred tonnes. He’d picked the best place for it in the valley, but there was no way to be sure the ground wouldn’t crumble and topple the vehicle.

  The lander’s fuel regen vents snapped open and its crew platforms extended. Someone in a red pressure suit descended on the lift and headed for the stranded Hummingbird. Alon waved Ai ahead to the lander and veered off in the direction of the helicopter.

  He caught up with Kali in the plateau near the camp. Her hair flowed over the neck ring of her suit as she walked purposely toward the helicopter. She turned toward him as he tapped her shoulder. He could see cuts and scrapes on her forehead, and her hands were clenched around bandages. He looked at her for a moment before stepping forward to grip her shoulders tightly, the force of his emotion in his hands.

  “Wasn’t sure we’d see you again,” he said.

  “Didn’t think you’d miss me that much,” she replied.

  “We did. What happened to you?”

  “I fell,” she said. “More than once.”

  “Toran?”

  Kali glanced at the lander. “He’s on top.”

  “Then it's good—we’re all going back.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “No regrets. Not what I did—maybe some things I didn’t do.”

  Alon let go of her shoulders. "You’ve gotten out of worse.”

  Kali nodded. “Do you have your cores?”

  “Yeah—I dumped them in a hole near where you landed. Do we have enough fuel to get to orbit?”

  “They’ll have to recover us out of low equatorial; we can’t do polar.” Kali pointed to the helicopter. “We’re dumping the Hummingbird—that helps. But I want the engine. It’s important; I’ll tell you why later.”

  “We don’t have time for that. The wind is picking up. We need to go.” Already, the gusts were making it hard to talk and he had to shout over them.

  “Trust me,” Kali said, “you need to see what’s in it as much as I do.”

  “Don’t get sidetracked—stay focused.”

  Kali’s face showed a burst of anger. “I know what the fuck you’re saying, but I’m not going off half-armed this time. Did you break that engine?”

  “No.”

  “Some think you did.”

  Alon stared at her for a moment. Who? She had to mean Toran. “Alright, we’ll get it. But you’ll need help.” He took her hand, holding it and straightening her fingers to look at the bandage. The new cloth was already stained. He brushed the edge of the bandage and felt wetness; his fingertips came away red.

  “You have blood on your hands.”

  Kali looked at him, her eyes narrowing.

  “So do you,” she said, and turned quickly for the helicopter.

  Alon followed her, the gusts up the valley pushing him on. Working quickly, she pulled a toolkit from the cargo drawers and popped open the service door over the engine. In seconds, she had the safety wire clipped off all three bolts and applied the wrench to the first bolt. It came off easily, followed by the second. The third however, seemed to be jammed.

  “Let me try,” Alon said.

  Kali fended him off. “I got it.”

  Alon heard Galia’s voice over the intercom in Kali’s suit. “Kali, the gusts are hitting sixty to seventy kilometers now. We don’t have long.”

  Kali stepped back from the helicopter and kicked the handle of the wrench with her heel. It clattered into the back of the engine compartment, but the bolt was loose. She spun it free with her fingers, then unlatched the pin holding the main rotor mast to the output shaft of the motor. That was the only thing holding it on—a single diacom pin.

  Kali shouted over the wind, “I need you to lift the rotor off the drive shaft. Then I can pull the engine out.”

  Alon climbed up on the deck of the helicopter and used the footholds in its side to get on top of the cabin. He knelt under the rotor, put his shoulder under its hub, and pushed.

  As he strained, he felt a blast of wind in his face. The gust pushed him back, and the helicopter with it. It teetered on its skid and then fell backwards. He had time to spin around and push off, rolling away on the gravel on the other side.

  He stood up to see Kali bending over the open compartment, tugging at the engine. Her suit was an red patch in a sea of black dust blowing in his face.

  “Shit, it’s stuck!” she said. “Get some rocks under the cabin.” The rotor hub was jammed against the plain, ramming the main shaft back into the compartment and trapping the engine. The wind was blowing the helicopter up the valley, digging the rotor hub into the ground and pushing the shafts together even tighter.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Alon said. If they waited too long, not only would they be stuck on Keto, but the lander would be a ticking time bomb in the valley. Even if they climbed to the cave in the valley wall, it wouldn’t protect them from the blast when the lander tipped over, and there wasn’t time to find another shelter. “We need to go.”

  “Get this shaft lose and then you can get your damn cores!”

  Alon grabbed Kali’s arm. The wind roared around his head and he had to shout in her ear. “You’re going to get us all killed. I don’t care what Toran thinks. This isn’t worth it—leave it and let’s go.”

  “I don’t care what Toran thinks, either. But if you didn’t rig this engine, who did?”

  “I don’t know”

  “Who can we trust? That’s what we need to know.”

  Alon leaned over the engine compartment. The rotor shaft was pressing the engine into the bottom deck of the helicopter—it was as immovable as if the bolt
s were still in.

  “Fuck it,” he said. He pulled his knife from his side and manipulated its handle. The edge of its blade shimmered as it turned into a nanoscale diamond chainsaw. There was a reason Shinigami blades were illegal on Athena—one man could cut down a suspension bridge in five minutes. It had been done, by a Shinigami in Senta.

  He shoved the blade into the engine compartment. It went through the diacom shaft like butter.

  Kali swept the engine into her arms like some ugly mechanical baby. The wind blasted them with volcanic dust. Alon shoved Kali toward the lander.

  “Go!” he shouted. “We’re done!”

  Judging

  “…And that’s why we need to go back to Keto,” Toran said.

  He stood on the bridge of The Child of Ambition, in front of the images of his presentation on the wall. The bridge was a half-cylindrical room on the top floor of Module One of the hab ring. Its walls blended into its ceiling, the only distinction the change from illuminated paper displays to the glow panels overhead. On the other side of that curve was the empty vacuum of space, the outer shield of the module between minus 160 and plus 120 Celsius, depending on the position of the ship relative to Keto and Keto Prime.

  Alon tapped his fingers on the black diacom table running down the center of the room. He didn’t relish this discussion—the sooner it was over, the sooner they could leave orbit. “No, we don’t,” he said. “Self-termination is disproven on Keto. This mission is over.”

  “That hypothesis is by no means settled,” Toran replied.

  Alon leaned back in his chair. “There’s no isotope evidence in the core samples for nuclear termination.”

  “If it happened in a storm, the fallout would have blown away.”

  “The shockwave from a nuclear blast starts supersonic and slows to the speed of sound. Even on Keto, storms aren’t that fast. We’d find evidence all over the island.”