Planetfall (18 page)

“SO, ARE YOU
going to tell me how you did this now?”

Kay is standing with her arms folded, giving me her best impression of a disappointed mother.

Whatever she gave me for the pain has made me relaxed and dozy too. Perhaps that's just the post-panic comedown. I close my eyes, lying on the same bed she scanned Sung-Soo's intestinal guest from, my left arm snugly held in a sling and the shoulder joint back in the correct position. There's an ice pack over it.

“I told you, I fell.”

“In your house?”

“No, outside.”

“You fell off a path?”

“No, outside the colony.” Shit, I shouldn't have said that. “Can I go to sleep here?”

“Ren, what have you been doing? Your body looks like it's
been put through some pretty intense exertion. By the look of your muscles, I'd say you've been trying to climb Diamond Peak if I didn't know better. Your knees are ropy as hell and you've been sedating yourself. You know that's not recommended without advice.”

I sit up, knowing she won't let me sleep yet. “I went for a climb; I got back later than I should have. I tripped and tried to grab something and it wrenched my shoulder. I'm fine.”

“You buggered your knees up a couple of days ago, judging by—”

“I went climbing twice.”

“At night. Alone.”

I offer an uncertain smile. “I didn't go very high up. I like to look at the stars. I haven't been sleeping . . . It helps if I go for a long walk out of the colony.”

She pulls a chair over and sits in front of me. “I could tell something was up. You've looked strung out the last few days.”

I wonder if others have thought the same. No, she's the only one, apart from Mack, who would take any notice.

“It's Sung-Soo, isn't it?”

What to say? My thoughts are sluggish and I struggle to think of a way to deflect her concern.

“It's perfectly natural,” she continues. “It's shaken everyone up. You're not the first person I've spoken to about it and you're certainly not the only person who's been losing sleep since he arrived.”

“I'm not?”

She takes my right hand and cups hers over it protectively. It's hard to see where the concerned doctor ends and the ex-lover begins. “He's reminded us of the people we lost, people we'd lived with for years. It stirs up guilt too. It has for me.”

“Why would you feel guilty?” There are only two people in this colony who can rightfully shoulder that and she isn't one of them.

“Winston and I got drunk the night before Planetfall. I never told you that, did I?”

I shake my head. Of course, she and Winston were close. He was nervous about the trip, having drawn lots with her and Lincoln for the privilege of coming with us on that first trip down here. They were all equally qualified and equally keen.

“He was angry about Hak-Kun making the pick. He said the Pathfinder had a blind spot when it came to her son and that he didn't deserve a place. They really didn't get along.”

“They didn't?”

“No. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Hak-Kun was a bit of an asshole, let's face it. Winston asked me to swap places with him in his pod for main Planetfall. I was supposed to meet with him once you guys got back, but there was just so much to do, so much excitement and people freaking out that I was too busy and forgot what we'd agreed. There wasn't time to meet up and swap. I should have been in his pod with Hak-Kun. He should be here now. And I haven't stopped thinking about that since Sung-Soo came.”

All I can do is stare at her. She's sitting there, thinking that a forgotten rendezvous saved her from death in a terrible accident, whereas I'm filled with the awful thought that Mack and I almost murdered her.

“I feel sick,” I say and she grabs a bowl positioned nearby in readiness.

She rubs my back as I vomit. “It's just a bit of shock,” she says after checking her interface, now linked with my chip and its physiological software. “Some people sleep, some people laugh
too much, some people throw up. Want me to give you something for it?”

I shake my head. I deserve to feel this wretched. There's a bit of dry heaving and then it passes, leaving a heavy lump of guilt in my stomach instead. I have to tell her. I can't keep this all inside a moment longer. I take a breath to confess our crimes and then just as swiftly the instinct to preserve what I have resumes its dominance. I can't tell her that Mack and I killed her friend. I can't bear the thought of her hating me. Hating myself, alone, is preferable to that.

“Do you want to stay at my place tonight?” she asks and then adds, “I can sleep on the sofa. You've had a tough evening and I'd worry about you less.”

I nod. I can't go back home and sleep in that nook with my shoulder like this. “Thanks,” I whisper.

•   •   •

WAKING
alone in her bed disorients me briefly before the pain in my shoulder pushes all of that away. She hears me swear and comes in with her medkit and soothing words. I doze as she makes me breakfast and she leaves soon after, saying I can stay as long as I want.

I drift off again and dream of God's city trying to eat me. Mack is in the room, among the rubbish, and I'm swept in there with him. “I got it wrong,” I say to him as it fills with stomach acid. “All of this place is God. This is his body. I cut God open and now we're going to die.”

It's impossible to go back to sleep after that, so I get up and strip off for a shower. The only times I shower are after I play squash in the court beneath the Dome, my own bathroom being a tiny bit too cluttered to use this way.

Before stepping behind the screen, I ease the sling off, keeping my arm in the position but unsupported. I examine the bruising that's flourishing in a lurid burst of purple. Even after treatment I need to take care not to move it too much. At least I got the seed planted before this happened.

The shower feels so good I moan with pleasure until I forget to keep the pummeled spray away from my shoulder. Then I finish up as quick as I can, keen to get it back in the sling before I do more damage.

Kay has printed me a clean set of clothes, knowing my size and taste well. I record a thank-you message for the house to play to her when she gets home and leave for Sung-Soo's house. I'd rather start analyzing the footage of the room I discovered past the cilia, but I slept too late and Sung-Soo is expecting me.

I hurry, hoping I won't have to explain it to anyone. Fortunately the only other people I see are engrossed in conversation and don't even notice me pass.

I have my story ready for Sung-Soo, who is predictably shocked when he answers the door. But he doesn't accept it as readily as Kay did. He can probably tell I'm lying and thinks I did it at home, but I don't let his doubt and blatant mistrust bother me.

“There's work to do,” I say to break the silence after he asks me to explain exactly how I did it.

“Before we start,” he says when he realizes I'm not going to be drawn into a discussion, “I want you to stay with me while you're healing.”

“Oh, I couldn't possibly—”

“No, please. I want you to stay. You gave me a home. You're teaching me so much. It's the least I can do. And you won't be able to . . . get in with that sling on. It would mean a lot to me to be able to repay your kindness.”

I can understand his desire to rebalance things between us. I don't like feeling indebted to people either. “Okay,” I say.

“You can have my bedroom. I can't sleep on the bed anyway.”

“We can change how hard or soft it is pretty easily, you know.”

He shakes his head. “It's not that. It's sleeping so high up. I kept worrying I'd fall off when I dreamed. Anyway, I like the moss.”

“We can work on a redesign of your room and change it once I'm better,” I suggest, thinking of a sunken bed design that would make the room seem even more spacious. “It'll only be a week or so.”

“No, a few weeks, surely?”

I smile. “Kay is very, very good at treating this sort of injury. She injected some of my stem cells into the area last night. They'll repair it ten times faster than if it were just left to heal by itself.”

“Kay can do that?” He looks distant for a moment. I wonder if he's thinking back to injuries he or the others suffered and had to recover from without anything more than basic medical assistance. How terrifying to live without these things we take for granted. If I lived a life like he's had to, I'd be a drain upon the group for weeks, unable to hunt or look after myself properly and in terrible pain. Here, I'll have a week of discomfort, then a month of specialized exercises to make sure I don't lose any strength or mobility in the long term. I wonder what he makes of it all but I don't want to ask. I don't want to focus on all the things his people were denied, thanks to my actions. And my inaction too.

We work throughout the day and I nap in the afternoon, the strain and patchy sleep of the last few days catching up with me. I let Kay know I'm staying with Sung-Soo, adding an explanation for fear she'll be offended, and she pops over to check on me in the early evening.

After she leaves Sung-Soo builds a fire with a few sticks of clean fuel he's printed, some dried grass and a couple of stones he strikes to create the spark. It couldn't be more different from Mack's approach of dousing a pile of fuel sticks in accelerant and then chucking a piece of lit paper onto it.

There's a beauty in Sung-Soo's technique. Each stick is positioned artfully to ensure the right amount of contact between them and a clear airflow beneath and through them. He lies on his stomach to strike the stones next to a clump of grass, nurturing the first tendril of smoke that appears with cupped hands and gentle puffs of air until a flame flickers into life.

He brushes the edge of the arranged grass with the new flame until there are several licking the bases of fuel sticks.

Even then, he doesn't move away from it until he's blown on it a few times, treating the fuel sticks like those made of wood. I stop myself from telling him there's no need, that they're designed to light much more easily than anything he would have found out in the wild. I don't want to steal the sense of achievement the fire gives him, a primal satisfaction that dances across his features as he pulls himself up and away from the fire.

I look up to check that the ceiling above the fire pit has detected the heat and that the protocells are making the plasglass panel shift into its permeable state. The clean fuel gives off only a tiny fraction of carbon dioxide compared to wood, but it's still important to vent it. When it turns a deep black, I know it's working and I relax, even though I tested it in my final build checks.

“My father taught me how to do that,” he says, flopping onto the sofa.

I wonder where Hak-Kun learned it. Maybe from Lois, who
was into all that survival stuff. Then I notice Sung-Soo frowning at me.

“Did you like my father?”

I fidget. Trying to get comfortable with the sling is not easy. “I didn't know him very well.”

“But it sounded like he knew you well. He talked about you a lot.”

“What did he say?”

“That you were Grandmother's best friend. That you were very clever and did a lot for the project.”

I wonder if that was all he said about me. I can't ask for more though. At best I'd seem narcissistic and at worst I'd seem too concerned about it. Then I think about what Sung-Soo said. Anyone on Atlas would know those things about me; they're hardly personal. Does he just want to talk about his dad with someone who knew him before it happened?

“Your dad and I worked in different disciplines,” I begin, working hard to think ahead as I speak so I don't paint myself into a corner. “He was very serious and I think he saw me as your grandmother's friend, not really his. I watched him grow up too . . . That can make things weird. You know—knew—him better than I did. How would you describe him?”

Sung-Soo stares into the flames. “Angry,” he says in a low voice that makes me shudder. He looks at me. “I suppose it was because of Grandmother. But he said she lied and God's city wasn't here. He was wrong. So why be angry all the time?”

I shake my head, pretending not to know. I don't trust myself to come up with another reason without giving something away. I have no idea why he lied to his son. But then I realize there's an easy answer. “He was probably angry because he was supposed to be here with us.”

Sung-Soo nods, accepting that. “He would have known what it would be like here, I suppose,” he replies. He sinks into silence and I make no effort to break it with clumsy small talk. “He should have had a house like this,” he says after a while.

I remain silent. He's right. All of them should have had this life.

Sung-Soo looks away from the fire and straight at me, a sudden passion in his eyes. “That's why I can't stand you living the way you do. We all lived in the dirt, not knowing where our next meal would come from, and you're wasting that place, being so unhappy and—”

I stand and he jumps up too, holding his hands out toward me as if he's trying to calm a snarling dog.

“I'm sorry—I'm sorry! I just want you to have this too, don't you see? Dad couldn't have it, but you can!”

I feel like I've been punched in the chest. The air flies out of me and I sit back down.

He comes around to sit next to me.

“Have you always lived like that?”

I don't speak, looking at the fire instead, hoping this will just pass. But the pressure of him staring at me is too much. I should talk or leave. “Only since Planetfall.” I'm surprised to hear my own voice and feel detached from myself, uncertain of what I'll do next. I should go to Kay's house instead, but I'm not moving. I'm just staring at the fire.