Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (20 page)

Nadia
grunted. “
Nyet
. If we cloak the rover so they can’t see it, it will sink
to the bottom of the river. Then, the solar panels will be useless.”

Red
said, “I’ve been playing with the rover simulators. Mud is no good, especially
with the banyan-style trees popular in this delta. We could get tangled too
easily.”

Yuki
said, “Two, there are numerous natural springs and shallow slopes that feed
into the Lamazon. Unfortunately, the springs in this upper corner are a couple
thousand kilometers from the only place we know is inhabited. We’ve labeled this
plan Lewis and Clark. It has the advantage of a clear starting point and
destination. However, it will be months before the data is interesting and
possibly a year before it becomes pertinent to our primary goals.”

Switching
to a diagram of sunlight entering a canyon at an angle, Yuki said, “To
understand what we call Plan Rat, we have to give you some background. Canyons
that run east to west are the greenest because sunlight pours into them
directly. The ones that run straight north to south are sun starved and have
meager growth.”

Rachael
said, “We call this the wilderness. It’s barely a step up from desert, but with
irrigation we can raise crops. This is how we grow oranges in the Negev.”

“Right.
The point is, if sunlight gets in, radiation gets in. We want our campsites to
be in these shadowy areas so we don’t cook. We’ll survive any X-ray surges. But
as far as we can tell from overhead observation at all hours, not much lives in
these areas. Food is just too easy to find in the jungle. That isolation is
another plus. Plan Rat drops the balloon into the middle of the maze, in one of
these barren areas close to a bend in the river. That way, no one sees it land,
and
Cerberus
can roll around the river bend into jungle to explore
westward. If battery power gets too low, the rover can run back to the rocks in
the nearest north-south to hide and recharge. Using this technique from a
starting point at the center of the region, we can thread most of the Lamazon
maze using rule-based artificial intelligence.” She overlaid a projection in
red showing three-quarters of the green zone reachable.

“Rat
has the advantage of almost immediate feedback for our mission, both locating
bases and searching for natives. It could continue mapping until the rover
dies. This technique also carries the most risk of showing our hand and forcing
the rover to self-destruct. The rest of you need to decide which of the two
remaining plans to follow, or whether to adapt one. As moderator, I will
abstain.”

Zeiss
favored the slow approach to give the crew time to absorb everything. Red
voiced worries that the rover could stop working at any time and wanted to
squeeze the most out of
Cerberus
while they could. Everyone tasked for
the landing party clamored to find camp locations as soon as possible. In the
end, the crew voted eleven to five for Plan Rat. Even though he could veto any
decision, the commander decided to save his political capital for a battle that
he had to win.

Red
cheered the victory and told the people who had been trapped for three L weeks
in the hangar bay, “Drop that Rat down its hole and come home.”

“Roger,”
Herk confirmed. “We’ll need you to send us the insertion vectors: angle,
altitude, velocity, and the microsecond our computer will need to fire. Risa
already has the launch track assembled and ready for your instructions.”

Because the landing was
past bedtime, Yvette watched the rover launch with Mercy. Most of Olympus gathered to observe the event. Casually, Yvette mentioned to Toby, “I hear you’ve
been stretching your world and reading Plato.”

Eager
to discuss anything with her, Toby stammered, “
The Allegory of the Cave
—to
me it was about how a tragedy in your life can shift your viewpoint and open
your eyes in ways you never dreamed of.”

“So,
what have you done with this new perspective?”

“Nothing
yet. I don’t have much free time. Lou recommended it to me.”

“Why
Lou?”

“He
majored in philosophy, and when he wants something from you, he’s easy to talk
to.”

The
philosopher in question shushed them so he could hear the radio chatter about
the immanent landing. Although Skinner Gorge, the beginning of the rat maze,
was almost twenty kilometers long, the angle was bad and the winds gusty. The
giant soccer ball blew and bounced all the way to the far wall of the gorge
before ricocheting back toward the river.

Red
mumbled, “Great, for the next century, people will be watching this clip like
that wipeout at the beginning of Wide World of Sports.”

Lou
was philosophical. “Hey, any crash you can roll away from is a good one.”

Herk
climbed into his pod first in regeneration mode. When there were no ill effects
on the monitors, Risa programmed Yuki’s pod and climbed in her own. Once
everyone was en route except Yuki, the nurse forced Mercy into bed. “Yuki will
be returning tomorrow if Herk makes it through okay. Z didn’t want to risk more
than one person in the experiment.”

“Yuki
volunteered to go first,” Mercy said.

“Don’t
make me tie you down, woman.”

“That’s
my line,” Lou said with a grin.

“Then
do your job, you lazy Englishman. A Frenchman would’ve had her in bed after
dinner.”

“Bah,
the French cheat with wine,” he countered, chasing the nurse out and turning
off the bedroom light.

“I
suppose no woman has ever been seduced by British cuisine.”

He
paused for a moment, floating in the control room next to her. “I’ve done
wonders with Tandoori Chicken.”

“That’s
Indian, not British.”

“We
conquered them.”

Sitting
next to her husband in the receiving area to await the decontaminees, Pratibha
said, “Tell that to Gandhi!”

Lou
held up his hands in surrender. “Even I can’t argue sex, food, politics, and
religion at the same time.” Escorting Yvette to her guest room, he whispered,
“Someone’s in a good mood.”

“If
the pod heals Herk, Auckland wants to go on the next mission to cure his
hemoglobin condition. Besides, with the doctor and mayor both on call so much,
they usually don’t get to spend this much time together. I’ll be behind the
plate tomorrow to catch Yuki.”

Lou
said, “I hope it works. Mercy’s been praying and bugging the daylights out of
Snowflake for hints.”

Running
his hand through his hair, the man looked like an underwear ad. Yvette had to
shake herself to stop staring. Mercy was probably staring at his ass from the
other side and thinking lustful thoughts. Empathy around women in love could be
a dangerous thing. Auckland might even get lucky if Mercy kept broadcasting
like this. Clearing her throat, Yvette asked, “Any new information?”

Lou
said, “Be sure to check Yuki’s memory when she gets back. Regeneration may
bring more of it back.”

Irrationally,
Yvette glanced around looking for ways Snowflake could be spying. “Why?”

“There’s
weird things about her behavior we can’t explain. The other day, I took Mercy
down to the orchard path to see the apple blossoms. We laid down some more
tiles so her wheelchair could reach. It was the damnedest thing. The ladies saw
this massive bumblebee, and Yuki went out of her gourd with panic. Mercy held
the bee like one of her birds, pet it, and even gave it a kiss to reassure the
woman. Yuki hyperventilated. She wouldn’t stop shouting about how the bees were
out to get her. Auckland had to sedate her.”

“Right.
I’ll ask a few discreet questions,” Yvette promised.

“You’re
a dear,” he said, giving her a peck on the cheek before leaving.

The
nurse sighed at the thought of never having sex again, while her friend had a
Norse god. For weeks, she had channeled her frustration into the hunt for the
hidden Magi aboard the ship—with no luck there either. She’d checked every
centimeter of Olympus and the tunnels. As a blind man, Lou couldn’t possibly
have assembled the cutout warning. On a whim, she stopped him a few steps away.
“Lou, you discuss philosophy with the others on the ship. Is anyone other than
you a fan of Plato?”

Lou
answered on the bounce back to his room. “Just Z.”

The
answer staggered her.

It
fit. The commander was always quoting Sun Tzu and other classics to his
students. Her secret ally was the husband of the biggest Magi proponent in the
world. That explained the alias. If Red ever found out, she’d kick his butt.

Excited
in more than one way, Yvette couldn’t sleep. She refused to be a third wheel on
Auckland’s date, so passing time with him was out. Yuki had switched her comm
to ‘do not disturb’ in order to sleep. On duty, Park was a bundle of nerves as
he waited for Yuki to come back to him. He radiated suppressed sexuality as
well. Talking to him would make Yvette lonelier. Now that she knew Zeiss’
secret doubts, she had to steer clear of him too while Red was around. That
left only Toby. She could sense his ache through the storage-room door. She
couldn’t face him in that place, but she finally felt able to say some things
to him.

On
the computer pad in her bed, Yvette wrote a letter to Toby—after all he had
done. Even more bizarre was her inability to maintain the hate in the face of
his daily penance. Damn that hormonal patient of hers. When it was complete,
four pages and two hours later, she granted him permission to reply in writing,
so long as he didn’t disclose their messages to anyone else. She signed the
letter Persephone.

****

Performing
routine maintenance on the shuttle’s fuel distillery, Yuki was surprised to see
the privacy light go on in her helmet. “Guys, I have a malfunction. I didn’t—”

Snowflake
spoke over her earpiece. “We needed to speak to you.”

Flipping
a latch to secure the airlock, she said, “You promised you wouldn’t touch us.”

“We
have an offer.”

That’s never good
, thought
Yuki. These aliens were like the Yakuza—refusing was bad for the health. “Go
ahead.”

“Look
on top of the launcher outside. Don’t take your helmet, or the others will
see.”

Paranoid,
she faced the helmet away from her so that the computer didn’t see her
movements. On the way into the cockpit, she grabbed the one-time pad cipher
book and the special marker she would need to break a code. If there were more
robots, she would write a message to the others. Above the shuttle, on the
track to be hurled at Labyrinth, was a tea-colored cylinder about half a meter
long. When she leaned forward to squint at the frills on one end, her breath
caught. “Oh God, that’s an arm.”

“That’s
your
arm, Yuki-Mercy-friend.” She could hear the computer over the
cockpit speakers.

She
sat in the pilot’s chair to avoid hyperventilating. “How?”

“You
buried it. We used agrobots to retrieve and refreeze it within the hour.”

“Why
is it here?”

“You
need it if you wish to be fully restored. Without this appendage, your bone
will grow as far as the elbow and stop. Even our tools have limits.”

Become our tool, and we won’t destroy your only hope
, thought Yuki. “What do you want in return?”

“A
few small things. First, pretend to forget everything about your encounter with
the drones, and discourage others from pursuing them. Hiding the breadcrumbs
you leave takes too much of my resources. Second, to prove you’re keeping your
word, your new arm will have chips imbedded in the fingernails like Mother
Mercy.”

“I
won’t betray my friends,” Yuki insisted, returning to the cargo section. On one
side of the thin paper, not much bigger than a Post-It note, she wrote, ‘Yuki
and Mercy bugged by Snowflake.’ To cover the sound, she said, “I’m not that
person anymore.”

“Silence
is not treason. Third, you have not fully analyzed or explored the impact
markings in the great lake.”

“I
can’t delete the data,” she protested, flipping the small sheet. On the other
side, she scribbled, ‘Magi secrets in Meteoropolis.’ If she affixed her own
name, no one would trust it. Remembering Yvette’s secret helper, she decided to
sign the message Plato. “I can’t crack Sojiro’s encryption system to erase the
puzzle either.”

“Do
not try. Merely avoid examining the data. Procrastinate and dissuade others
from looking.”

If
she left the note visible to helmet or ship’s cameras,
Ascension
might
mysteriously crash. Stuffing the entire code book and pen inside a switch box,
she used a power tool to screw the box shut again. The switch wouldn’t work
when they tried to power the device on, and whoever repaired it should find her
warning.

“If
I turn down your offer, you’ll throw my arm into space?”

“It
would be necessary to hide evidence of our discussion.”

“You
don’t think people would believe me?”

“If
we reset you completely to your baseline sample, you would theoretically have
no memories after entering
Sanctuary
. We would try to be selective, but
humans have never undergone this operation before. You would likely return to
the traitor you once were, with pieces missing. Would your friend Park like
that? Would you even speak to him . . . if you could still speak?”

Yuki
pushed the emergency transmission button on the wall. Feedback filled the room
until she was forced to deactivate the channel back to Olympus.

“We
need you to choose,” said Snowflake.

“I’ll
do it,” said Yuki.
Then I’ll hunt down your core so I can burn it out with
this laser. You just threatened the wrong woman.

As
she retrieved her arm from outside, Yuki mourned the damage, dirt, and blood
splatters. Her flesh had been ill-cared-for, and she could see fresh incisions
where the tracking devices had probably been inserted.

As
she walked toward the waiting pod, Snowflake cautioned her, “Place it in its
former position against your shoulder. Tell no one of our discussion.”