Heaven's Fall (28 page)

He slowed long enough to glance behind him, but saw nothing, no one. Heard nothing.

Yet . . . he knew. But what choice did he have? It wasn’t as though he could turn and ambush his pursuer. Keep walking—

There, in his peripheral vision—a shadow, meaning there was light behind it.

He began to walk faster, a desire complicated by his instinct to look back. Yes, something bright was behind him in the passageway, and getting closer.

The passageway curved, which allowed him to feel as though he was putting space between himself and the pursuer.

Not far ahead he could see a second branch, too. Which presented him with a decision . . . go right or go left. Or follow the twin rails and pipes straight ahead, to their terminus.

He assumed he would learn nothing by merely escaping. There was also this: Of all the humans living on Keanu, Dale Scott was the closest thing to a master of the NEO that could be found.

Why the hell should he be running away? What was there on Keanu that was a real threat? Even the Skyphoi, while indifferent and uncooperative, were never hostile. He’d never felt unsafe in his few encounters with them.

Suddenly he was at the end of the line . . . the rail and tube structures made a curving turn to the left into a large entrance.

And now Dale could hear his pursuer. He could smell something unusual but also somehow familiar. It was the acid tang of the Skyphoi atmosphere.

Which mean that he was about to be caught or at least met by one of the gasbag aliens.

But first—

The entries to habitats were deep, wide at times, and always complicated, usually involving several membranes and, once you penetrated past the initial opening, branching side passages. The membranes played the role that hatches did in spacecraft airlocks, since the atmospheres inside habitats were rarely the same as that in the tunnel system.

Dale slipped through the larger opening and saw immediately that the whole unit had been further rearranged to accommodate the human and Skyphoi pipes. Rather than press on through the obvious central entry, he chose to climb on top of the railcar track and squeeze through a series of membranes that way.

He emerged into a habitat, and immediately had to stop.

First reason . . . there was almost no floor. He was standing on a platform of sorts that jutted into a spherical chamber perhaps a fifth the size of the human or Factory habitats. The platform extended around the perimeter, broken only by the railcar and pipe system. From where Dale stood, he saw that the Skyphoi pipe brought material into the chamber, and the railcars took it away. In the center was a giant filmy balloonlike thing at least thirty meters across that Dale recognized from twenty years past.

A vesicle, the same type of object that had carried the HBs from Houston and Bangalore . . . and had delivered the Reivers to Earth, apparently.

Dale had no idea that anyone knew how to make another one.

This one didn’t seem complete . . . the top seemed to be open. Nor was it solid; the entire shell quivered as if made of gelatin—

Shit, he’d let himself get distracted. The Skyphoi had managed to invade this habitat! This one was less than half the size of those he’d known . . . but here it was.

Dale was torn between sudden, unreasoning, but definite fear for his safety and amazement that the large alien gasbags had learned to change their size.

His sense of wonder and curiosity had gotten him into trouble before. Now it had led him into a trap. Well, he had had no choice.

He turned to face his pursuer. Too bad the map in his head and his linkage, however tenuous, with Keanu had failed him.

Seen closer now, this particular Skyphoi seemed odd . . . it wasn’t just smaller than those Dale remembered meeting, it was the wrong color and filled with what appeared to be a human shape.

As if, Jonah’s whale–style, a Skyphoi had swallowed a man whole.

Which boded ill for Dale’s immediate future. Having nowhere to run, he decided to stand his ground. “What do you want?” he said.

To his amazement, the Skyphoi answered! “Fuck you, Scott!”

Then the Skyphoi collapsed, the filmy yellowish bag falling to the surface of the platform and turning to powder . . . leaving an actual human wearing a Sentry-style environment suit.

The human removed the mask. It was Zhao, the Chinese agent who had become one of the HB leaders, the one Dale had asked Harley Drake about.

“So that’s where you were?” Dale said. “In the Skyphoi habitat?”

“What are you doing here?”

Dale gestured at the piping. “Following the not-so-yellow-brick road.”

“Are you happy you did?”

“I don’t know yet. What’s it for?”

“Why do you care? You opted out of our activities a long time ago.”

“Maybe I’m opting back in.” Zhao continued to stare at him. “What?”

“I was merely wondering how long it has been since I’ve seen you.”

“Ten years at least. Why?”

Zhao’s face was impassive, unreadable, as always. “I had hoped that your isolation would lead to some kind of personal evolution. Apparently not. You are the same clueless fool I remember.”

Zhao was wrong, however. The old Dale would have taken a swing at Zhao for a statement like that. But new Dale, Keanu-attuned Dale, just laughed. “And you are the same arrogant asshole. Depressing, isn’t it?

“Now . . . forget trying to prove how superior you are, and tell me what the hell this thing is.”

THEY’RE GONE!

Sources in ISRO report that the crew of the Keanu-based spaceship
Adventure
, supposedly on their way to Delhi two days ago, were, in fact, diverted to an undisclosed location and may have left the country.

HEADLINE AND LEAD IN
NEW DELHI TIMES
,
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2040

Rachel barely noticed the landing, which was smoother than she expected, given the bumpy nature of the last half hour.

It was still night in Darwin, and apparently overcast, so her one glance out the window failed to give her any sense of the size of the city, which seemed to extend to the south of whatever airport they flew into. And their path was east off the ocean.

Besides, she was too busy comforting Yahvi, who had gotten hysterical at the news of Sanjay’s death. Even Zeds seemed shocked, retreating into his suit.

Rachel knew that Yahvi had never warmed to Sanjay—that she barely knew him. But deaths were a big deal for the HBs, and death here, now, when the girl was feeling so vulnerable—it had to be shocking.

So she curled up in the seat next to Rachel and sobbed all through the touchdown and the brief taxiing to a stop at what appeared to be a small executive terminal.

Pav sat still and, to unfamiliar eyes, unmoved. But Rachel knew her husband; he was stunned, too.

Xavier and Tea were behind them, not easily seen. Rachel would describe Tea’s response as stoic, though with some tears in her eyes.

Xavier looked as though he’d been hit with a hammer. And, in many ways, he had, because without Sanjay,
Adventure
’s success now depended on him.

The plane rolled to a stop. Edgely was first out of his seat as Steve, the male pilot, emerged from the cockpit with the manner of a man in a hurry. “Welcome to Darwin, everyone. And please accept my condolences. Very sad news.”

The hatchway opened and Edgely and Steve exited. Chang, Tea, and Xavier started to follow. Tea gestured for Yahvi to join them. The girl sniffed, whether from her lingering cold or sadness it was impossible to tell, and got out.

Rachel lingered, not out of love for the aircraft, but just to give herself some emotional space.

Pav waited, too. Then he took her arm and led her down the stairs.

It was only once they were on the ground that he said, “We have a long list of practical matters to discuss—so long I don’t even know where to start.”

“Sanjay,” she said. “There’s a body . . . what do we do?”

“Well, several possibilities: have it frozen and stored; have it shipped to us; have it buried in Bangalore, or cremated there. I think that covers it.”

Rachel pondered this unhappy decision as she took in her surroundings. The plane had pulled up to a hangar, one of several in what was obviously the cargo terminal of a large airport.

The sky was moonless, dark—cloudy, night, the smell of rain in the air. She knew it was late, middle of the night, likely three or four
A.M.

Yet there were armed guards within sight.

“Are they for us?”

Edgar Chang happened to pass close enough to hear. “Sadly, no. This is the world we live in.”

“So, machine guns against the Aggregates?” Pav said.

Chang shrugged. “Useless, of course. It just makes nervous people feel safer.”

He smiled and shuffled off. Rachel was amazed at how tired and elderly the man seemed.

“What will it be?” Pav said. “Sanjay?”

“I suppose I have to decide now.”

Pav gestured with his phone. “I can reach my father now. Don’t know that I’ll be able to do that for another ten hours.”

“What would you do?”

Pav closed his eyes. Even thinking about this was obviously painful for him, too. “He’s Hindu . . .”

“Then have him cremated,” Rachel said, surprised that her voice even functioned.

Pav nodded and was about to step away, but she caught his arm. “The rest of it,” she said. “What is the plan? Or what was it?”

“Refuel, reload.”

“Then?”

“Onward.”

“Where? Can this thing fly as far as North America?”

“No.”

“Then . . .”

“We stop at Guam, then Hawaii.”

Rachel felt sick at the thought, though she wasn’t sure if it was the number of stops or just the sheer danger and complexity of the job facing her.

“And this is all arranged and paid for?”

“So far.” Pav could see the fear and fatigue. He wrapped his arms around her. “We’ve got to trust these people. And look, they got us this far.”

“How do we know there aren’t Reiver soldiers waiting right outside?” She nodded toward the guards at the perimeter. “They seem to think so. . . .”

Pav smiled. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

Darwin was a full-sized city, which meant that its airport was fairly large, with a glittering tower and main terminal . . . and a distant, bustling cargo terminal where the
Adventure
crew’s plane had pulled in. Fortunately, it was the middle of the night. Nevertheless, there were still aircraft pulling into the terminal and crews preparing to load or unload them.

Seeing the activity, Rachel said to Pav, “We can’t let Zeds out.”

“He knows.”

“Does he need anything—?”

Pav was smiling. “You forget who you’re dealing with, lady. I assigned Yahvi to get water and whatever else he needs for the moment. Right now he’s operating on his suit, and we got it tanked up before we left Yelahanka.”

“Poor thing. It’s like he’s a prisoner.”

“Are we that much better off?”

Rachel laughed. They weren’t. Edgely had asked them to remain within one hangar in Darwin’s cargo terminal. “There are bathrooms,” he said, “and a bit of a buffet upstairs.”

Sanitary facilities and food—that was what Rachel’s life was reduced to. It reminded her of the things her father had told her about the realities of spaceflight. “Boredom and repetitious tasks,” he said. “And an hour of exercise every day, whether you think you need it or not. What you wind up thinking about is what’s next on your meal schedule, and how long is it going to take you to operate the zero-g toilet.”

Well, in a way, this trip to Earth was a form of space exploration.

“Speaking of which,” Rachel said. She didn’t need a bathroom as much as she needed a moment of privacy.

“Go,” Pav said.

“What about you?”

He tapped the side of his head. “Going to try to raise Keanu. They need to know about Sanjay.”

“From here?” One of the reasons Rachel had resisted leaving
Adventure
was the likely loss of communications with Keanu. Not that they’d been great or even good.

“You never know. It’s worth a try.”