Cracking the Sky (20 page)

“Huh?”

“Creepers are growing down, right? Almost a klick a day. We’ll be the first humans to live off broth for two hundred days.”

Henry shook his head. “Never make it. The habitat won’t survive that long.”

“We all have suits. Little Siberia can send us supplies. There’s no more Adventure suits, but maybe they can modify something else to tap the vines.”

“Go get Lark. Lemme sleep.”

Kyle picked his own helmet back up, jammed the stinking thing back on. “Yeah, okay.” He didn’t have any choices. “Sleep well.” He fed the stim-pack into his suit’s auto-med reservoir, asked for and received a dose. He watched Henry put his helmet back on, made sure he was secure, and then breached the hab and stepped back into the cold river Styx.

“Calvin—where’s Lark’s suit?”

“Snagged. Down. Kyle—it went two klicks down.”

Time was against him. He cursed the basket, cursed the damn vines, cursed Henry, cursed his back. “Show me.”

“You can’t get there from here by yourself. Not unless you trust the winds to send you after the suit if you dive for it. We don’t recommend that.”

What Lark didn’t have was the modified siphons. There wouldn’t be any way to get broth or water or anything into her. All he had to do was get her to the habitat.

He started out fast. Henry’s early words about running a marathon came back to him, and he slowed down. But he needed to make over two klicks an hour to have any time to spare. “Lark be safe . . . Lark be safe.” He thought about Henry. “All be safe . . . All be safe.

“Play music for me.”

“Huh?” Calvin sounded sleepy.

“Calvin—don’t you sleep?”

“Not until you get to Lark.”

“Thanks. Play me some music. I need some rhythm to keep going.”

“What do you want?”

“Hell I don’t care. Something with a beat.” He looked around. “Got some African drums?”

“I’ll find some.”

Every two hours he stopped for fifteen minutes rest and more stims, doing the equivalent of vine-sprinting in between. The drum beats helped. His back still hurt. It became a familiar pain, something that kept him awake and aware, gave him a tie to his aching body. Every step was hard.

Lark wasn’t answering. The team said she was asleep, exhausted. So many days of living in one place, in a pressure suit, were taking their toll. Four hours passed.

Calvin started peppering him with questions about Henry. A thought crossed Kyle’s mind.

“How is Henry? I haven’t seen his med-reads for hours.”

“We cut you off from everything but you and Lark and us. Don’t want to distract you.”

“Damn it.” Surely Henry was all right. All he had to do was stay in the habitat. Had he checked Henry’s water supply? But he’d plugged the habitat into the vine.

The networks had no control over the suit-to-suit-radio. He called to him. No answer. “Calvin, show me Henry’s med readings!”

“You don’t need the distraction. Talk. You need to talk so we know you’re still with us.
Your
med feeds could be showing better, buddy.”

Kyle babbled about the time the feeder jammed completely just after the Styx got to Pluto, when a river of vines threatened to overrun Little Siberia. Henry and others had clambered out onto the surface. They’d fed vines back to the Hoytether™ trellis and set them climbing back toward Charon. Suriyah had stayed out there with him the whole time. Everyone else took turns. The story didn’t seem to be coming out quite in order. Thinking about Henry wasn’t right; he should be thinking about Lark. Why was she still silent?

“She’s not in great shape,” Calvin said. “She’s alive. We’ve been waking her up but she isn’t staying awake long. She’s been taking pain meds too.”

“Like father like daughter, huh?”

“You imagine the sores you’d get sitting in the same place in a p-suit for ten days.”

“Yeah, well, I know what mine smells like after ten days.”

Calvin laughed. “I bet you do.”

You don’t have smell sensors built into these yet?”

“On the newer models.”

“It’s a bad idea. Calvin?”

“Still here.”

How had he forgotten? “Wake up Lark
now
. I don’t care how. Get her to fire the main motor for a few seconds.”

“Oh, right, we discussed that—”

“Check my position first and see if I’m out of the way. Henry too.”

“You’re okay. You’re almost underneath
Shooter
, but
Shooter
’s tilted. I’ll get her to fire the motor, then guide you around to the channel. Hey, Lark!”

He kept climbing. Lark and Calvin negotiated. She spoke too low for his hearing, but she sounded angry.

He didn’t see the exhaust itself. He saw a line of pale plants glow brilliantly, dissolve into colors, then explode in flame as heat reached the air veins. It ran for twenty seconds, and when it went off, vines still burned.

“Thanks, Calvin, I can see it myself,” he said, and angled around.

He had to pull himself into the forest to reach the channel. The vines were growing back . . . but the going was suddenly much easier.

Kyle pulled up and over a half-charred leaf and stem-knot at an intersection. From here he could see a much bigger knot—and a darkly corroded metal claw, like a skeletal hand straining to break free.
Shooter
. The little ship was even more overgrown and tangled than when he’d seen it from the observatory. Flowers had sprouted everywhere, decorating it, making it look like a party bauble. He stopped a second and just looked, his heart flooding with the knowledge that he was going to make it. Calvin babbled in his ear—talk for the audience about how emotional the moment was.

“I’m afraid to go and look,” he said. Lark still wasn’t responding to him.

He didn’t feel his back or his body at all the last kilometer, just the soft give of the creepers in his hands and feet, the balance of his torso as he struggled to keep his center of gravity over the center of the stem. “Lark be safe . . . Lark be safe.”

He was within thirty meters of the marble when the vines tangled around it shuddered and jerked up and down. What? Was the knot unraveling?

“Hi, Daddy.” Her voice was weak. She was using one of
Shooter
’s arms to wave at him. He breathed out, and then screamed triumph.

Calvin and his crew had spent hours trying to figure out what he should do. He had a belt knife—thin and insubstantial. It easily cut the edges of leaves, and wouldn’t even dent a stem. He had a few hours, maybe more, maybe less. He was too tired to make sense of time.

Trying to untangle the ship appeared useless. Nevertheless, incident command had commandeered nearby computers and run thousands of simulations. They led him through the vines, one by one.
Pull this part out of under—there. Yes. And then go around to the other side. Tug. Sure you can. Good. Now—see the one with the longest bell of flowers? Break that off. Pull here. Tie that down.

In the background, Calvin was talking Lark through a series of checks. He heard her talking back to Calvin, telling him to quit being so pushy, and Kyle laughed.

Kyle had made a new knot of vines, feeding the vines he was liberating from around
Shooter
into it to keep them from simply re-engulfing the bubble. His back was to
Shooter
. He heard a ripping sound.

He turned just in time to see
Shooter
lurch a few meters lower in the thinned-out net of stems that surrounded it. The ends of an arm dangled from above. Kyle had a rope tied to the marble. He pulled himself along it, fast, letting the vine he had been working on swing back towards Lark. It flapped out above the marble, safely out of the way. The door was free. By the time he got there it was swinging open.

His hand took his daughter’s hand.

She was almost dead weight. Her boots flopped against the side door as he pulled, but her hands were gripping. He held her under one arm and looked inside. A backpack sat by her chair.

“Bring the backpack?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Weak.”

“It’s going to take her a little while to learn how to move normally,” Calvin said.

“How long?”

“We don’t know. Some experts say not until she gets out of the suit. She’s feisty enough to recover faster.”

Kyle talked to Lark. “Can you put your legs around me?”

She used to do that when she was a kid. He tucked his arm under her butt so she was sitting against his waist at the side, and she put her arms around his neck.

Well, he had one hand free. Now what? He shifted Lark to the front of him, sat on the stem he had climbed up, and slid. It was slower than walking—the suit material dragged wrong against the stem. The risk was real—if he wore out the suit material there was no fixing it up here. He stopped them, trying to think of a better way. Henry would think his own way out of a problem.

“Sit on a leaf, Daddy.”

It worked. He cut off a long thin piece of leaf, and tied it between his legs and up around his waist. He felt like he was wearing a diaper. The surface was slicker on the creeper stem. It held up until just before they got down to the first big knot, when the leaf shredded under him and he carried Lark to the knot, walking carefully, afraid that he’d launch them into space. Lark switched around to his back and he climbed carefully over the tangle of stems and vines. Cramps were making her whimper.

On the other side, he cut another leaf. He said, “The leaves are a good idea, honey.”

“I know the Styx.”

It took five hours to get back to the habitat. Lark gained more ability to move, and her hold on him was less tenuous. She still couldn’t stand or climb on her own.

When they reached the habitat, it was empty. Kyle had been afraid he’d find Henry dead in the habitat. Or that Henry had left his suit for Lark and jettisoned himself into vacuum and death. The empty habitat was unnerving. He stuffed Lark into the habitat without re-pressurizing it, leaving her in her suit. He went out and refilled his suit’s reservoirs, and sloshing full of sweet broth and water, he ducked back into the tent. Now he pressurized it and peeled Lark’s suit off of her. It actually stuck to her calves, ripping layers of skin off so they looked raw. He took his own suit off, and fed Lark on broth and water. She drank more than he expected.

“Where’s Henry?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Calvin, will you tell me yet?”

“Nope. Sleep.”

Kyle barely got the words “damn you” out before he was, in fact, asleep.

The next thing he noticed was the habitat shaking. Lark was able to help him get her suited. She only screamed twice, once for each raw leg. They depressurized, and Henry tumbled in the door, carrying the suit he’d modified for Lark.

“You went all the way down there?” Kyle asked.

Henry sounded weak. “Someone had to do each thing. I knew you had the brains to get her safely.”

Kyle grinned. They re-pressurized and stripped out of their suits. Lark poured herself into Henry’s arms, finally looking energetic. Henry looked very proud of himself. His smile was bigger than usual. Kyle stole a peek at Henry’s vitals. His blood pressure was way too high, his respiration was shallow and fast. “Sleep, Henry.”

Eight full hours later Kyle opened his eyes. Lark was crying, looking down at Henry.

“He’s not moving,” she sobbed.

“Calvin, what have we got for Henry?”

“Sleeping. Maybe in a coma. He might have had a stroke. We can’t tell from here. Doesn’t matter—the verdict is he can’t possibly make it. Down will be at least half as hard as up.”

Lark crawled over to Kyle and cried in his lap. Kyle patted her head and found he was crying too. Ideas and condolences and tributes started coming in. Kyle turned off his radio; Henry would prefer silence. Besides—he wasn’t dead. But how were they going to get him down?

“Remember when you sat on the leaves?” Lark said.

“Sure.”

“Do we have rope?”

Kyle winced, thinking of the supply basket. “Calvin, do we have rope?”

Calvin’s voice. “They refilled the basket.”

Lark’s backpack had a better knife in it. She led Kyle out to cut off whole leaves. “These are bigger than I needed to get down the stem,” Kyle said.

“They’re not for you. They’re for Henry. They’ll cushion him,” Lark explained. “We’re going to use the spaces, not the stems.”

“Huh?”

“To climb up, you had to use the stems. To climb down, we can do better. We’re almost weightless, right? We tie Henry between us. We wrap him in leaves to cushion him if we screw up.”

“Hell with leaves, let’s use the probes. They didn’t have the strength to carry us up, but they could carry Henry down. Then we can use your idea, but we won’t have to worry about carrying Henry.”

He was rewarded with a rare touch from Lark. “I want to come back,” she said.

“Both marbles are busted.”

“Climb back.”

“You want to do this
on purpose
?”

“There’s things I need to know about what’s happening here. Besides, the real tourists will need guides.”

“What real tourists?”

“There are ten climbers on the next ship. Hundreds wanted to come—they had to do a lottery.”

“We’re leaving.”

“Justine Jackson is coming here.”

“I’m content to watch her.”

“They’re paying a premium.” She named a figure.

She could pay for her own school! “Do I have to climb these things again?”

“You’re being requested.”

Kyle grumbled. Calvin laughed at him. He and Lark rigged Henry carefully in place of the supply basket. They charged his suit with water, oxygen, broth. Kyle tied the med-kit to his back and tied the basket and its other contents to the vine. It would grow home.

Shooter
would grow home too, to be stripped for salvage. It wouldn’t do to leave its diminished fleck of antimatter loose in the sky.

*

Henry beat them down by two days. He was at the table when Lark came in for her party wearing the yellow dress. Suriyah must have fussed over the table for hours; everything was perfect.

“Henry, couldn’t they find you a wheelchair?”

“This place isn’t outfitted for cripples, Lark. Suriyah, you know I can move around. You don’t have to keep lifting me.”