Radiant (22 page)

Sperm-tails always reminded me of long, thin tornadoes: the bottom tip kissing the ground... the funnel cloud creamy but sparkling with glints of green and blue... the whole thing stretching far up out of sight, past the clouds, past the ozone, all the way to where
Pistachio
waited.

And once we'd locked onto the Sperm-tail, it would provide a nearly instantaneous route from Muta's surface to our ship. For us as well as...

Uh-oh.

I closed my eyes, thinking,
Balrog, help me.
Then I did something I'd never done before: reached out with my sixth sense. Used it actively instead of passively receiving whatever came in. Spread my mind to the world, trying to listen rather than merely hear.

The busy life force of insects. The placid life force of plants. The ponderous life force of microorganisms, too simple to have any emotion—just the sense of presence, like the feel of stone when you're in the mountains. The complicated auras of Festina and Tut. And beyond those known entities, what else? I expanded my senses, sank into them as I'd sink into meditation, noted anything that seemed out of place...

...and there it was. A spark of eagerness, hidden in the background. Burning anticipation. The spark was so faint, it must be trying to conceal itself... but it was too excited, too
hungry,
to be perfectly restrained.

The EMP cloud was waiting for us to connect with
Pistachio.
It wasn't off chasing the shuttle; it had circled back in secret. And the Sperm-tail was now only meters away, speeding straight for the anchor.

Feeling sick at what I had to do, I lifted my heel and slammed it down on the little black box. The box's casing shattered; internal circuit boards snapped under my foot.

The Sperm-tail, our one route off Muta, danced away like a fishing line that's been deliberately cut.

Festina whirled toward me. Her life force erupted with fury, but with our comms dead, I couldn't hear the curses she must have been spewing my way.

Then suddenly, we were enveloped in fog. It came from everywhere: from the ground, from the river, oozing from pores in the scrub brush, vomiting from the mouths of insects, distilling from the very air. The cloud had even been hiding on our own tightsuits, nestled into tucks of the fabric, lurking in our belt pouches and backpacks. Now it emerged in a roar of anger, beating so hard on my mental awareness I almost passed out... until in a flash my sixth sense vanished—either burned out from overload or shut down by the Balrog to protect my vulnerable brain from the howling din.

Fog surged and roiled around me, as if clawing my suit with vaporous talons. I couldn't help thinking of
pretas:
the hungry ghosts of Bamar folktales, condemned to a realm near the lowest purgatory. They're spirits of humans who based their lives on greed. In the afterlife,
pretas
are always ravenous, with huge stomachs but throats so tiny they can never swallow enough food to sate their appetites. Hungry, hungry forever... or at least until they learn something from their punishment and are ready to be born anew.

The
pretas
of Muta—the smoky cloud—swarmed furiously, just outside my suit. I could imagine dozens of ghosts in that cloud pressing their gaunt, starved faces against my visor, frenzied to devour me. By reflex, I began a protective chant—one I'd used to ward off demons when I was Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. But the fog-things, the
pretas,
whatever they were, refused to be dispelled. They continued to curl angrily around me, as if they would crush me to paste if only they had the strength.

Festina loomed out of the mist. She touched her helmet to mine so we could hear each other talk. Immediately I babbled excuses for what I'd done: "I realized the cloud—it was out there—it wanted to board
Pistachio,
I don't know why—but it was going to go right up the Sperm-tail and I—I'm sorry, but I had to..."

"Of course you did," Festina said. "I'm a fool not to think of it myself. I was just too busy trying to set up the link before we were EMP'd again. I never thought..." She turned her eyes skyward, though neither of us could see anything but fog. "This fucking cloud would have EMP'd the ship dead. Then... I don't know. Maybe the damned mist wants a way off planet. Maybe it could have taken over
Pistachio
and used the ship to spread to other systems." She turned her gaze back to me. "Glad one of us was thinking."

"But now we're marooned."

"Didn't you always assume that would happen?"

"Yes. Sooner or later."

"Then we're right where we expected," Festina said. "Mission unfolding according to plan: we land, we get screwed over, we try to survive." She gave a rueful smile. "The story of every Explorer's life."

"Did you see how the shuttle turned after we..."

"Yes. Li must have stowed away. Probably Ubatu too. And if they landed in one piece, they're now in Drill-Press. We'll have to go rescue them."

She looked at me—eye to eye, our visors touching. Her voice came softly through. "Didn't you expect that too, Youn Suu? Didn't you guess something would force us to visit the city? And we'll have to press on till we've solved this planet's problems. Isn't that what you expected?"

I thought about the avalanche of karma surrounding the woman in front of me. "Yes," I said. "I thought that's how it would go."

Festina flicked out her hand and slapped me on the side of the head—not hard, but not soft either. "Idiot!" she yelled, loud enough for me to hear, though the slap had knocked my helmet away from hers. She leaned in again. "You're an Explorer, for God's sake! Didn't the Academy teach you life is messy? You
don't
necessarily learn the answers. You
never
tie off all the loose ends. Damned near every time you walk away from a mission, you're thinking,
What the fuck did that mean? Why did it happen like that?
And you'll never know. You'll never even come close." She scowled at me through her visor. "How can you think this will work out neatly?"

"It won't work out neatly," I said. "Maybe it won't work out at all. But we
are
here to solve Muta's problems. That's why I got bitten by the Balrog. That's why you happened to be on Cashleen. That's why Li and Ubatu stowed away on the shuttle. And the Academy taught me exactly what it taught you: that an Explorer's life is messy
except
when your strings are being pulled by smart, powerful aliens. Then the going gets neat and tidy... doesn't it, Admiral?"

Festina glared for another moment; then she sighed. "Yes. When the Big Boys choose you as a pawn, they put you onto their chessboard and move you straight into trouble. But only up to a point. I don't know exactly how the League thinks, but in recent years, I've developed a hand-waving theory about the way they treat us lesser beings. They'll manipulate the shit out of us, without a shred of guilt, to bring us to a crossroads and a life-or-death decision. Then they let the chips fall where they may. The League won't save your ass if you choose wrong. And there's no guarantee you'll
like
your choices. You might find death the most attractive option. The League doesn't care much about human lives, but it cares a
lot
about human decisions. Sometimes I wonder if they deliberately arrange crises to test us. As if what we do in emergencies can answer some question they can't address on their own."

Silence. Then I rolled my eyes and groaned. "And people call Buddhists superstitious! If you actually believe that old wives' tale—that humans are needed by semidivine aliens to solve some grand problem that's too deep for anyone else—honestly, Festina, that's archaic! Haven't we outgrown such wishful thinking? 'Ooo,
Homo sapiens
may seem insignificant compared to higher species, but we're actually the only hope for the League's intellectual completion.' What's next, believing in fairies?"

Festina laughed and shoved me away. She made some retort, but the words were inaudible, muffled by her helmet. I found myself laughing too, not because anything was funny, but just from release of tension... and suddenly, the gloom around us was gone, literally as well as emotionally. The EMP cloud shot toward Drill-Press, and we were left blinking in bright afternoon sunshine.

I looked around for Tut. He wasn't immediately visible, but I finally caught sight of him lying on his back, half hidden by yellow grass. Not too surprisingly, he was naked again; though he'd (mostly) stayed in uniform while aboard
Pistachio,
Tut apparently had strong nudist leanings. This time, with his tightsuit dead, he hadn't had the luxury of instant undressing by emergency evac. Instead, he'd wrestled his suit off piece by piece—a strenuous process bare-handed, since disrobing was usually done by robots—then he'd piled component parts into a pillow for his head. When I walked up to him, he smiled and waved but remained where he was.

"Lot cooler like this, Mom. Want to join me?"

I shook my head. Explorers—
sane
Explorers—have a horror of exposing themselves to the microbes of an unknown planet. Eventually (as I'd already realized), my suit would have to come off. Its near-perfect insulation held in almost every microjoule of heat my body produced; without cooling systems, the interior was already reaching sauna temperature. Thanks to my Bamar genes, I could tolerate equatorial conditions for a while. But not forever. I was steeped in sweat like tea in a pot, all trickles and salt in my eyes.

Still, I could hold out till we got to the Unity camp. Then I'd rummage through the huts for clothing that fit me. Tut would have to do the same—nudist or not, he'd need clothes. It was autumn in this part of the world; come nightfall, the air would turn cool. And who knew how long we'd be here? In days or weeks, winter would come. Even though we were close to the tropics, there'd be frigid snaps that no one could survive naked.

Odd to think about freezing when I was verging on heatstroke. Welcome to the Explorer Corps.

When I turned back to look at Festina, she'd already removed her helmet. She hadn't taken it off purely because she was hot (though the hair framing her face was sodden with perspiration); she'd been forced to open up because she wanted to talk to
Pistachio.
In her hand was the comm from the first stasis field she'd cracked... but the unit had apparently been EMP'd by the fog. Festina poked the ON button a few times without any effect. Then she tossed the device aside and opened another mirror-sphere. Another anchor, stun-pistol, Bumbler, and comm. I looked, but didn't see the EMP cloud anywhere. Either it was truly gone, or it was playing possum in the hope we'd try to set up a Sperm-link again.

Festina turned on the new comm unit. It responded immediately: "Admiral Ramos, come in. Admiral Ramos, come in..."
Pistachio's
ship-soul was once more on autorepeat.

"Ramos here," Festina said. Her voice barely reached my ears because of the muffling effect of my own helmet. I was annoyed to hear her so poorly... and annoyed that I immediately thought,
Oh, I'll take the helmet off,
when only a few seconds earlier, I'd told myself I'd keep my suit sealed despite the threat of heat prostration. What a vac-head I was! Stubborn in the face of possible death, but buckling immediately if it meant being left out of other people's conversation.

Still, I wanted to hear and to talk without my head trapped in a fishbowl. I flipped up the latches and unscrewed the helmet from its throat seal. The instant my suit was open, heat poured out through the neckhole, propelled by the high pressure that had inflated the suit's skin. The subsequent rush of coolness was bliss.

"Admiral!" Cohen's voice came through Festina's handheld comm. Now I could hear it clearly. "What's your status, Admiral? We thought the tail had locked, but then—"

"There's an entity down here," Festina interrupted. "A cloud that can EMP things. Its behavior appears intelligent... or at least purposeful. Setting up a link would have given it a free ride to
Pistachio."

"Oy. That would have been bad." The captain paused. "So what now?"

"We're close to Camp Esteem. We'll take a look around. But first, can you check the whereabouts of Li and Ubatu?"

A brief pause. Then: "The ship-soul says they aren't aboard."

"Damn." Festina made a face. "Anyone else missing?"

Another pause. "No, Admiral. Just those two."

"Then they're down here with us. Stowed away on the shuttle. Fuckwits. If they survived the landing, they're in Drill-Press; we'll have to go there after Camp Esteem." Festina took an angry breath. "While we're doing that, Captain, why don't you draw up a list of charges to put those shitheads in jail? It'll help pass the time."

"Anything else we can do, Admiral?"

"No. Do
not
under any circumstances send another rescue team. That's a Class One order. Stay in orbit and monitor the situation."

"I hate to ask this, Admiral, but how long do you want us to stay?"

"Last I heard, the Unity were sending one of their luna-ships. ETA three days. So stay till it gets here. After that, use your judgment; but given how little the Unity likes us, they'll probably order you out of the system once you've given them a report."

"So they order me," Cohen said. "Doesn't mean I have to go."

Festina suppressed a smile. "Captain, there's no need to set off a diplomatic incident. The Unity may be humorless, but they're not evil or incompetent. They'll do what they can to rescue everyone—us as well as their own people. And a luna-ship has a lot more resources than a small Technocracy frigate. If it's possible to get us back safely, the Unity will do it."

"And if it isn't possible?"

"That's what 'expendable' means, Captain. Ramos out."

The three of us started for the rise edging the floodplain. Tut took a few steps, then ouch-footed back to his pile of discarded suit parts. "Stepped on something," he said in a pained voice.

"An insect?" Festina asked. "A plant thorn? If it was something that might be poisonous to humans..."

"Nah, Auntie, it was just a sharp stone." Tut fished out his tightsuit's boots and put them on. They fit snugly, coming up to his knees. I made a mental note that when I abandoned my tightsuit, I too would keep the boots; they were tough, well cushioned, and precisely fitted to my feet. I'd never find shoes half so perfect in the Unity camp.