Planetfall (8 page)

Instead, I pull up my visengineering design window and approach the problem from another direction. I create a virtual replica of the artifact and ask the program to run comparisons with any print patterns stored on the cloud.

I wait as it runs the check, leaning against one of the thick tendrils. Starlight reaches in as a cloud breaks and I tilt my face to it with eyes closed. It was stupid to go into God's city alone. It always is. But I know I'll go back there again when the urge becomes too intense to ignore.

A ping notifies me that there are no exact matches but it provides several partials. I scroll through them and none seems right. The material would be wrong for most of them and the scale doesn't work for most of the others. I widen the parameters to match for custom patterns printed on Atlas before Planetfall, using my engineering security code to gain access. Another abuse of privileges; I'm not doing it to fix anything or at the request of the Ringmaster. I don't care. I already know that people print bizarre dildos and busts of the people they have crushes on and all sorts of other embarrassing personal designs. None of them, it seems, can explain the artifact.

It's possible it was part of something one of the initial landing team brought with them from Earth, something that hasn't ever been printed. I try to let my thoughts wander, hoping they'll stumble across some memory that will satisfy the question, but I end up dozing off.

The alarm that wakes me is silent, a signal sent directly into my brain from my chip, and it wakes me in an instant. It's a horrible mechanism, flooding the body with adrenaline and the sure knowledge that an immediate response is necessary. It's
the highest level neural alert—within safe parameters anyway—and I only have it in place for one eventuality: someone getting too close to my house.

I sit up, feeling the twinge in my back caused by slumping inside the twisted hollow. I'm cold and there's a pale gray light coming through the gap instead of starlight. Dawn. I rub my face and then access the sensor array implanted at twenty-centimeter intervals around my house, one ring of them set ten meters out, the second set five meters closer. They detect a sudden increase in pressure from above caused by anything over twenty kilograms. It's set to ignore me, thanks to an automatic ping from my chip whenever I get close.

The data suggests an adult has crossed both boundaries. The system has already matched it against the last known weights of the colonists and a list of about twenty names comes up, all at the slender end of the inhabitants. Then I get a ping from my house software saying someone has requested access who isn't entered into the colony record. I don't need to call up the camera feed from the door. It must be Sung-Soo.

“Fuck,” I whisper and then feel terrible for swearing so close to a holy place. The emotion fades quickly when I question feeling bad about saying a word while willing to go clambering about in there. Guilt sometimes comes from stupid places.

After digging a shallow pit in the soft soil accumulated in the hollow, I dump the filthy protective gear, including the goggles and mask and the piece of hinged metal, covering them up as best I can. I'll come back for them later.

The house pings me another entry request. I scramble out from under the buttress and run as fast as I can out into the wild grasses. I don't want to approach the colony from this direction. I don't want Sung-Soo to know I've been here. Almost as much as I want him to get the fuck away from my house.

I'M PANTING BY
the time I get to the edge of the colony and enter from the direction I want him to see me coming from. I can feel the sweat on my forehead and top lip. I wipe it from my face, feeling a blast of coolness in my armpits as the early-morning breeze brushes the damp patches of my T-shirt. My sweat is particularly sharp smelling and I wonder if it's because of the panic, both inside God's city and right now.

I slow to a brisk pace, caught between wanting to catch my breath and needing to get there as fast as I can. What could he want at this time of the morning, for God's sake?

I cut in to the boundary between the southern gate and Kay's house, half jogging past the obscured windows and the people still sleeping inside. There's no sound except the wildlife staking out territories and calling for a mate. The sounds are different here than on Earth, but the purpose seems the same. “This is my patch!” they scream. “I want sex! Come and shag me! I'll give you strong babies!” It's the same stuff humans say
most of the time. We just dress those needs up in fancier linguistic clothes.

When my house comes into view, Sung-Soo is leaning against one of the windows, hands cupped either side of his face to shield out the light as he peers in. Even though there's no way he can see inside, I'm still irritated. Why do people do that when there's no answer at a door? Do they expect to see the resident in there, feet up, oblivious? Are they checking they're not being snubbed, rather than whether the resident is at home?

Sung-Soo straightens his back as he steps away from the curve of the dome. My place was one of the first dome-shaped structures here; now about sixty percent of them have the same shape and basic design. None of the other houses—as far as I know, anyway—have the additional rooms and cubbies I've created beneath mine.

I hurry as he leans back in and smells one of the tiny plants growing from the soil covering most of its surface. As I watch, his head tilts and I know he's seen the patch that's dying.

“Sung-Soo!” I call and he turns, stepping away from my house quickly.

“I thought you would be in,” he says as he comes toward me.

“Just went for a jog.” The lie fits well with the sweat.

God's city looms behind him and I can't help but think of the things I've stashed away in their shallow grave. I force myself to focus on his eyes—on his grandmother's eyes. I look away again.

“I was worried I'd got up too early. Can we start right away?”

“Start what?”

“My house. Mack said we'd build it today and that you're the one who makes them.”

He looks like a child. His excitement and eagerness crash
against me like waves, and like the beach I steal the energy from them. “Right now?”

“Do you have something else planned? Mack said you'd be free.”

“Did he say that last night?” When he nods, I click my tongue. “Hang on a sec.”

I call up the v-keyboard and dash off a note to Mack. With a petty thrill, I tag it as “urgent, top priority,” and send it.
If I'm expected to build a house at dawn, you should bloody well be awake too.

“How about you give me a few minutes to get myself sorted out?” I suggest.

“Good, yes, I'd like to see what your place is like inside.”

“Why?” I asked that too quickly.

“Mack said you can make houses different inside. They can be whatever you want. I thought that, seeing as you make them, your house would be the best.”

A sharp, twisting cramp shoots through my gut. “It's not.” I force a smile. “It's like my grandma always used to say: the cobbler is the worst shod.”

His eyebrow rises and I realize he has no idea what a cobbler would be. Half of the people in the colony are probably just as clueless.

“The cobbler was the person who used to make shoes in the . . . a long time ago. The saying explains that the person who makes something for everyone else rarely has the time to make the good ones for themselves.”

“Oh! But that doesn't matter. I've only seen Mack's place and the Dome. Yours doesn't have to be the best to be useful.”

For what seems to be the longest moment I just stand there, unable to think of a way to dissuade him. Everyone is so used
to me, it's been a long time since I've been put on the spot like this and I'm out of practice. I engineer things to avoid this kind of situation coming up in the first place.

A ping from Mack gives me the chance I need. I read the message and feel my shoulders drop with relief. “Mack's waiting for you at his place. He's making breakfast for us both. I'll clean up and be right over. Then we'll start, okay?”

He glances back at my house and shrugs. “Okay.”

I don't move until he's gone past me, and after I take a couple of steps I pause to make a show of stretching my calf and thigh muscles out. Sneaking a peek from the corner of my eye, I see him look behind himself, no doubt hopeful for a glimpse into the house as I enter it. When he sees I'm nowhere near it yet, he picks up the pace and is soon out of sight.

I close my eyes and tip my head back, feeling the backwash of the adrenaline leaving my body ragged. The last thing I want to do today is create. Keeping everything where it is, tucked away and hidden from sight, demands all the creativity in me.

I go toward the house and think of Kay, of her kissing my neck at the end of a party in the Dome, years ago. “Let's go back to yours,” she whispered.

“No, your place is better.”

She pulled away from me. The position of her hand on my thigh shifted, just a tiny amount, enough to tell me she was changing her mind about where she wanted it to go next.

“I've never been inside your house, Ren, not once in over a year. I don't want us to go back to mine.”

“It's not tidy.”

“I don't care.”

“And it's not as comfortable as yours. Your bed is better.” I kissed her, trying to make her think of the original agenda
again, trying to make her primal desires work to my advantage. “And it's closer.”

“A whole two minutes closer.” She shifted along the moss seat, putting a distance between us so she could look at me properly. “Why won't you let me in?”

“Another time. It's a tip—I'm . . . I'm such a slob, really.”

“I'm not just talking about your house.”

Then I leaned back, the space between us stretching from the close intimacy of lovers to that of friends, and not happy ones at that. I could feel my walls coming up, almost a physical sensation of pulling back farther than my body had. A drawing inward.

“You never talk about before. You hardly talk about yourself at all.”

“I'm not that interesting.” I try to smile, but it's like adding a sprig of parsley to a mud pie.

“I've told you everything about me,” she pressed. “I can tell from your body that you've had a baby. Why won't you tell me about your child?”

I stood up before I realized I had. She'd caught the edge of an emotional scab and ripped the wound open again.

“I thought sharing time and love and my body would be enough,” I said, or something equally peevish. I can feel my lip curling in disgust at my younger self's taste for melodrama.

I'm glad she forgave me. She left me alone for a while and I avoided her as much as I could, embarrassed by my inability to maintain the only relationship I'd had in so many years that had satisfied my body as much as my heart. I wasn't in love with Kay, even though we both tried it on for size for a while. It was like dressing up, playing at being lovers because it was what we both wanted, and neither complained, until that night
at the Dome. Perhaps if I had trusted her more, let her in, we'd have become something more. But I can't do that. I can't take the risk. Once you let someone into the building, it's harder to keep them out of all the rooms. So I keep a moat around myself, like I'm some bizarre castle keep. I have to be careful to keep Sung-Soo out too.

As I reach the door, I get another message from Mack.

We need to talk, just the two of us. We need to sort something out to keep Sung-Soo busy today.

Okay.

It's serious, Ren.

I sigh. Isn't everything serious now? I don't reply, not wanting to let any more of his tension leach into me. I have enough of my own.

IT ALWAYS TAKES
longer for me to clean up than I would like. I get distracted and can never find the things I'm looking for when I need them. My buried find from God's city is stealing attention from these mundane matters too. I can't deal with Sung-Soo's enthusiasm and Mack's paranoia at the same time as constantly trying to identify those hinged pieces of metal. I need to watch that video and free up some of my own processing.

I squeeze myself between a stack of objects rescued from the Masher and the clothes I've moved to find the top I'm wearing now. I need the tightness around me, like being held, before I open the file.

The footage sits behind three layers of encryption algorithms on my personal server. I shut down any connections to the network and the cloud. It takes a few minutes to summon the courage to open the file, and it's only my irritation with
myself that makes me do it in the end. The worrying about how it will make me feel has finally been ousted by the desire to stop feeling the twisting tightness in my chest. I need to be able to think of something else.

With a look and quick blink at the relevant icon, the compulsory preplay questions begin.

At the time, it seemed a good idea to record us with full immersion. To think that I believed I'd want to relive that again and again! This is why there are warnings and several levels of opting in and confirmations of intent before you can record immersively; the people who made this technology know how well human beings can fuck themselves up. All the questions amount to the same thing: are you sure you want to preserve enough detail to trick your brain into reliving it again?

Now those same protocols are asking me if I really want to fully immerse myself in something that happened twenty-two years, fifty-five days ago.
Are you in a safe environment? Are you operating machinery? Are you in control of a vehicle?
Most of the questions are redundant: the chip knows I'm doing none of those things but the software forces them anyway. It wants me to really understand the risk. I do.

Would you like to prepare a message for your health care provider in the event of an adverse reaction?

That one is a hangover from several cases where people recorded their own heart attacks and other near-death experiences and then played them back to themselves in some sort of weird therapy craze and had heart attacks. Idiots. I give a negative response. I don't want Kay or anyone else to know I'm doing this. I've wedged myself in tight enough to not throw myself around by accident.

Are you aware that deep-immersion playback can cause depression, anxiety, dissociative disorders and increase the likelihood of addictive behaviors?

“Yes,” I reply.

Are you aware that deep-immersion playback can trigger PTSD?

“Yes, for fuck's sake.” That's what I'm afraid of.

You have tagged the selected footage as critical. You may pause but not delete during playback. Please check your environment for any potential risks. We recommend the use of a tongue block. Here is a list of patterns to download to your printer.

I skip that. I may end up a sobbing mess, but I'm unlikely to bite my own tongue.

Finally, the little arrow floats across my vision. I clasp my hands tight together, fill my lungs with as much air as I can and blink twice at the arrow.

I am no longer in my hallway.

I'm in the loading bay on Atlas, just outside the doors to the airlock and decontamination chamber. The bare metal struts curve either side of me like the ribs of a great whale, and crates of equipment and supplies are stacked in their hundreds only meters away from where I stand. My body is held tight in my flight suit, the gloves feeling thick and cumbersome after years with nothing on my hands. The metal rim upon which my helmet will be locked rests uncomfortably on my collarbone and I want to pee. It's just nerves.

“Who's recording?” Mack asks.

“I am,” I say, raising a hand.

“Me too,” says Hak-Kun. (A flitter of panic behind the re-experience, like a tiny bird taking off in a field behind me—I forgot that he was recording too.)

“Don't film my backside.” Suh twists to face me and I laugh at her, a little too loud. (Oh God above us, she is so beautiful. I want to touch her—did I touch her then? Can I feel that again?)

“Mum.” Hak-Kun sounds unimpressed by her lightness.

I can't help looking down, now that she's put the idea in my head, and I trace the outline of her buttocks through the flight suit, the way her hips flare out at the tops of her thighs, far wider than her waist and shoulders. She used to hate her short legs and pear-drop shape but since the coma she's been above such things. I look away when Mack clears his throat and looks up at the list he's just called up in his own vision.

“Okay, quick roll call to satisfy the ship's log and then we'll do our last equipment check before running through the landing protocols one last time. When I say your name, acknowledge verbally, state your official role in the party and confirm consent to make Planetfall.”

After we all nod, he begins. “Cillian Mackenzie, Captain, and I consent to travel. Lee Suh-Mi?”

Suh is tying her hair back, fiddling with wisps that keep slipping free like black silk. “Pathfinder, and fully consensual,” she says and grins at me. (A wrench in my chest behind the excitement and fear and love.)

“Lee Hak-Kun?”

“Linguistics and xeno-communication, and I consent to this trip.”

“Xeno-communication?” Lois, a tall woman whose arms
are thicker than my thighs, is snorting with laughter. “When did you make that up?”

Hak-Kun folds his arms. “I'm the one best qualified to make contact or interpret alien language, should the occasion arise.”

Lois shrugs. When he looks away, she makes eye contact with me and mouths “wanker” silently. I only hope Suh hasn't seen what we make of her son. It's hard being the child of one of the most important people in history.

“Lois Stephenson?”

“Yep.” There's a pause and Mack stares at her. “Oh, sorry; security and threat evaluation and I am so ready to get my ass off this ship.”

Mack smirks at that and then looks at me. “Renata Ghali?”

“Pilot. I give my consent to make Planetfall.” (I sound so formal, my voice so tight with nerves.)

“Winston Akembi?”

“Present, doctor, and with God's grace ready to meet him.”

“It won't be a he,” Suh says quietly. “Not like we conceive of it anyway.” All the nerves and joviality are shoved aside by a new sense of gravitas. We are in the presence of one chosen to lead us to our creator.

“Should we say a prayer?” I ask.

“Do we have to?” Mack sighs and everyone looks to Suh for adjudication.

“Let's take a moment,” she says. “You can all do whatever you need before we carry on.”

Ever the diplomat. I close my eyes and whisper the Lord's Prayer as I try to manage the fear. So many years and sacrifices and doubts all leading to this moment. I feel both huge and insignificant in the weave of history's cloth. Now we discover if we've followed a madwoman or a visionary. Perhaps even a messiah.

(Now, in the moment of black silence, I remember why I'm reliving this. After the prayer, I focus my attention on those in the group, forcing myself to look at the footage as if through a lens rather than my own eyes. Keeping a sense of self separate from that of the recording for anything longer than a few seconds at a time is hard, but I'm motivated enough to keep this mental distance while the last checks are made to the suits and helmets. I have to wait until I look—looked—at each person, all the while resisting the pull of immersion to examine what they're wearing and carrying. I see nothing that looks like the source of the hinged artifact.)

We step inside the airlock and when the door closes behind us, sealing us from the ship, I jump and almost drop my helmet.

Suh reaches across to touch my forearm. “It's all going to be fine, Ren,” she whispers. “Stay with me and you'll be fine.”

(There's a noise and a part of me realizes I've cried out at the feel of her hand on my arm. Even through the flight suit and the thin layer beneath it, even separated by all the years and the knowledge and the lies
I can feel her again
and yet I know I never will again.)

“You won't leave me behind, will you?” I whisper back and she smiles.

“Of course not. I need you to fly us back.”

(My cheeks are wet and my breath judders in and out with each sob and God I need her! I need her back!)

We put our helmets on and check our comms and air supply before and after the air is sucked out. We check one another for signs of stress, reassuring one another as best we can with nervous smiles and the occasional wink. Suh is the most calm of all of us even though she has the most to lose. If there is nothing down there, she'll be the focus of the rage and
disappointment. She acts as if she has no doubts though and I take solace in that.

We're sprayed and blasted with a full decontamination routine in the effort to remove any viruses or germs that may want to hitch a ride on us down to the planet. The shuttle has already been treated and anything that might be on its exterior will be destroyed upon entry into the planet's atmosphere. The plan is to keep the helmets on from now until we get back.

“I still think it needs a name,” I say as the doors open onto the short umbilical tunnel that connects the ship to the shuttle. “I've never been anywhere without a name before.”

“It isn't for us to name it,” Suh says, and I feel stupid, like a brash tourist complaining about a hotel breakfast on the way into a sacred temple.

(My chest is hurting. There's too much to contain. I will tear in two and my blackened, shriveled heart will tumble onto the brown moss between my feet.)

We enter the shuttle and I move to the front of the group, heading for the pilot's seat. I pause at the sight of the planet, its curve describing an arc of blue and white and green at the lower left of the window. Only I can see it. The others are strapping themselves into seats behind me, facing one another. I feel privileged and terrified and doubtful of my ability. There are ten other people on Atlas qualified to fly this thing, but Suh insisted I learn so I could go with her legitimately. I've flown more simulations in the last two months than had hot meals.

“Everyone secure?” Mack asks and I hurry to take my place. I tighten the straps over my shoulders, scanning the display in front of me and checking that everything matches the simulator.

“Starting preflight check,” I say and the routine takes over. It calms me in the same way that washing my hands does.

(My throat is burning and I fear I can't keep doing this, but I have to. I have to last until Planetfall and at least until we reach God's city. Otherwise I'll have ripped myself open again for nothing.)

“Ready to detach . . . Captain.” It feels unnatural, saying that, as if I'm playing an immersive military game with Mack.

“Understood, Pilot.” His reply only reinforces the sense of pretension. “Detach in five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

There's a clunk as the clamps release and a dreadful lurch in my stomach as we lose the gravity we stole from Atlas's rotation. My body pulls against the straps as my own weight no longer holds me in the chair. There's just enough time for everyone to comment on it before I angle the craft to begin descent. They fall silent when the light stretching back to them from the cockpit shifts as the planet fills my view.

I have to pull my attention from the clouds—clouds!—and colors of life to make sure the computer is calculating the trajectory and the numbers make sense. The data from the satellite we sent out from Atlas days before has already been examined and processed by both human and computer. I know what I'm aiming for and the shuttle's navigation software is directing me to the right place to enter the atmosphere.

I'm nothing more than a fail-safe really; the shuttle could fly itself, but by law a human pilot has to be fully trained, able to interpret the flight data and capable of manually controlling the craft if needed. That's when it hits me that we're so far from home; the law is nothing but an echo of civilization.

“We'll be entering the atmosphere in ninety-five seconds,” I broadcast to the communal channel. “The temperature in
here will rise, but that's totally normal and we won't cook. Does everyone remember the simulation?”

I listen to the affirmative replies. “Okay, then. Here we go.”

The colors so reminiscent of Earth are soon replaced by a searing red that I only glimpse as the exterior shielding completes its slide into place. The external temperature of the shuttle soars along with the tension within. I keep my attention on the display rather than the hellish black on the other side of the window. I sweat and I pray and then we're through the worst of it and my body becomes heavy again. Eventually the shielding withdraws and I can see outside once more.

The sky is blue and below is a pillowy landscape of clouds. We could be flying above anywhere on Earth and I'm overwhelmed by a sense of coming home, even though nothing could be less accurate.

“What does it look like, Ren?” Suh sounds breathless for the first time.

“Cloudy,” I reply, wishing I could find something poetic or romantic to say. “Blue sky,” I add. “Just like home.”

“This is home now,” she says, and then we hit the clouds and the shuttle shakes with turbulence.

“This is normal,” I say. “It'll probably smooth out when—”

We break through the cloud base and I see the mountains and grasslands below. I'm the first human being to see this in person, rather than a satellite image, the first to weep at the sight of its majesty.

“Ren?” Mack sounds frightened—the first time for that too.

“It's . . . it's okay. Let me show you.”