Heaven's Fall (9 page)

The answer was, first night in the base hospital—which triggered grumbling from Xavier Toutant. “Relax,” Pav told him. “We need time to regroup, check our luggage, and get some answers.”

They had been talking in the conference room—Taj had not left it for two hours by that time. When Xavier left, Pav turned to his father. “When did you and Tea get married?”

“Fourteen years ago,” he said. “We grew close in the aftermath of the mission.” It was an inadequate way to describe years of mutual isolation and desolation, their desperate couplings and eventual realization of their mutual affection and need.

“I can imagine. Don’t worry; I have no objection. I was just . . . surprised.”

Pav walked to the window, which showed only a portion of the base under a hot Bangalore afternoon. “We don’t know anything, really, about what’s going on here.” He looked back. “That’s what we came to find out. Is Earth still Earth?”

“Some of it,” Taj said. To Rachel, it sounded like an honest answer—if not overly helpful.

“That’s what we need to know, as soon as possible. And who better to brief us than my own father?”

QUESTION:
Girls your age are often obsessed with music and fashion. Do you miss those things?

YAHVI:
How would I know?

QUESTION:
Didn’t your mother tell you about them? Or other women on Keanu?

YAHVI:
Apparently not.

QUESTION:
Well, do you have any curiosity about—boys?

YAHVI:
I’m sexually active, if that’s what you’re asking.

QUESTION:
Well, no . . .

ADVENTURE
CREW PRESS CONFERENCE,
APRIL 14, 2040

Before the briefing, there was lunch, served in the same conference room. “Does anybody want to lie down or rest?” Rachel said. No one wanted to, though Yahvi would have enjoyed getting out of this building altogether and seeing some of India and Earth.

Even if it meant she had to deal with lots of other human beings. But her parents had warned her, the first day was going to be boring meetings and lots of logistical crap. So far they’d been right.

One of the few times.

Xavier asked, “Where are we staying tonight?”

“Right here,” Taj said. “They had a few unoccupied rooms, so they converted them.”

“Which means they took out the IV units and added an extra lamp,” Tea said. Pav laughed.

A couple of Indian Air Force enlisted men brought in trays of covered dishes as well as cartons. “We didn’t know what you’d be hungry for,” Wing Commander Kaushal said, “so we brought a variety of lunch fixings.”

Which turned out to be sandwiches—something Yahvi had seen exactly once in her life—as well as bowls of various vegetables and fruits, along with more exotic items she could not place. And some very strange breaded objects inside the cartons.

Xavier went after the material in the cartons as if it would make him immortal. Taj and Tea as well. Even her parents were digging into the other food.

Yahvi hesitated. None of it looked appealing. And she still wasn’t feeling hungry. “Is Zeds getting food?”

“Our specialists are with him now,” Mrs. Remilla said. “And I have something for you.”

Yahvi glanced at Rachel, who, mouth full, nodded in approval.

The gift turned out to be an electronic device, a small rectangle no bigger than the palm of Yahvi’s hand, with frail-looking tendrils attached to it. “It’s called a Beta,” Remilla said. “It holds hundreds of thousands of popular recordings—everything that hit the top twenty for the past one hundred years.” She looked at Rachel. “I couldn’t live without mine.”

“Are people still making music?” Pav said. “Are there still bands?”

“Yes,” Taj said, “though not necessarily where they used to be. We’ll be talking about that shortly.”

Remilla spent several moments showing Yahvi how the Beta worked; the tendrils had tiny weighted units at their ends that fit into one’s ears.

There were only three controls: play/stop, up/down for title/artist, right/left for keyword. “The battery is good for two years,” she said. “If you’re still on Earth at that time, call me and I’ll give you a replacement.”

Two years on Earth! The thought terrified Yahvi. But she managed to utter, “Thank you.” She had that much social sense.

Shunning the food, she took the Beta to a corner of the room and sat down.

Yahvi Radhakrishnan was a proud yavak.

It was a sensible reaction, since many of the original Bangalores made fun of them as a group, these two-hundred-plus who had been born on Keanu since 2020. Yahvi knew there was something about the word itself—
yavaki
and its comically savage sound—which seemed to tickle the older HB generation. It was especially true when some adults said her name, which meant both “heaven” and “Earth,” since it sounded so similar.
Let them have their fun,
she and her friends said at times.
They’ll be gone soon and we’ll be in charge.

It wasn’t as though Yahvi or anyone her age had invented the term. As nearly as she had been able to determine, sixteen or seventeen years ago, one of the Bangalores, while in full pick-on-the-kids mode, had come up with it.

Yahvi the yavak was taller than her mother and even her father. Slim, even (she had overheard Rachel using this term once) “gawky,” though that was when she was eleven and grew seven centimeters in a year. She had her father’s coloring and her mother’s blue eyes and hair that was, most of the time, an unfortunate blend of the Stewart-Doyle coloring (reddish blond) and the Radhakrishnan curls.

She had spent a lot of time hating the way she looked, something her mother assured her was “normal,” which was what HBs continued to use instead of “Earth-like.” It was especially obvious when Yahvi pressed Rachel on that point once. Why, for example, was it normal for someone to hate the way she looked?

“Because you might just feel bad. Have zits, for example, or blotchy skin. Or other girls might tease you.”

“Why would they tease me?”

“Because they’re girls. Or just human beings.”

“Won’t they hate themselves, too?”

“Some, or all of them at one time or another. But for some people, making others feel bad makes them feel better.”

Yahvi had seen evidence of that, so she was still listening. “Why do any of us care what we look like?”

“Well, because of boys, I guess.”

And this was where Rachel Stewart-Radhakrishnan’s idea of “normal” conflicted with her daughter’s: Yahvi never gave any thought to what the boys her age thought of her
looks
.

After all . . . there were only a couple dozen her age. (It could have been worse: The oldest yavaki were nineteen, and there were only four of those.) They had been raised together, taught in the same classrooms. They had worked at the same jobs. They had eaten the same food and, more to the point, dressed the same in T-shirts and shorts.

Nevertheless, the boys often acted like boys, all clumsy muscle and embarrassment. The girls ranged from a couple of tee-hee types that Yahvi couldn’t stand to tomboys, which was what Yahvi would have called herself most days.

Though that hadn’t stopped her from having sex with Nick Barton-Menon, because he seemed to be the first port of call for girl yavaki on their maiden sexual voyage, and with dear sweet Rook, because she liked him and he seemed to need some encouragement.

(Yavaki weren’t exactly encouraged to be sexually active, but no one forbade it, either. Babies were a welcome addition to the population . . . so far.)

The trouble was . . . Yahvi hadn’t yet told Rachel about this.

But this moment was to be shared, too. It made it something other than the furtive naughtiness that Rachel had told Yahvi about, even as she recounted her own sexual history, which was entirely Keanu-based and Pav-centric.

The fact that Yahvi had kept it a secret—well, that was a problem. The more time that passed between action and revelation, the worse it got.

Yahvi had actually sat down with her mother and planned to tell her on the very night Rachel told her, instead, about the trip to Earth.

And that wasn’t even the biggest secret Yahvi had kept from Rachel.

There was one thing even worse.

And she would never ever tell.

At least, not while they were on Earth.

“I’m going to keep this brief and objective,” Taj said.

An hour later they were all back in their chairs in the conference room again—Taj at the lectern, the screen behind him lit up. In the corner of the screen, picture-in-picture, was an image of Zeds in his chamber.

In addition to Yahvi’s grandfather—it was still strange to think of this older man as a relative—and Mrs. Remilla and Wing Commander Kaushal, there were two new arrivals: two men who said nothing but watched everything.

“Planet Earth has undergone a number of changes in the past twenty years,” Taj said, as the screen displayed two hemispheres: Earth west, showing the Americas, and Earth east, showing Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. (Yahvi recognized them from lessons.) The images were typical satellite maps, showing brown or green terrain and far, far too much ocean for her comfort. “In ascending order of likely concern to you, there has been continued global climate change, resulting in higher sea levels and diminished Arctic ice—”

“Interesting use of
diminished
,” Pav said. “Why not just say
disappeared
?”

Taj acknowledged his son’s interruption with a raised eyebrow and nothing else. “The global economy has been stalled and stagnant for the better part of a decade. There are the usual wars and conflicts—none of them nuclear or critical, but all troubling, naturally.” The twin hemispheres blossomed with gross domestic produce numbers, rates of growth or decline—Yahvi saw that most of the figures were red, which she took to be bad. (She’d learned that much about Earth symbology.)

A series of small fire images appeared over parts of Africa, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and the Korean Peninsula. Those must be conflicts.

“Obviously we were unable to communicate much of this to you during your approach. We have the ability to encrypt signals, but we couldn’t assume you could decrypt them.”

“Smart assumption,” Pav said. “We have the capability, of course, but it would still have required you to upload keys and codes—”

“—which would have been intercepted, yes, yes, yes,” Rachel said, showing uncharacteristic impatience. (At least with Pav. She was frequently impatient with Yahvi.) “Obviously there is a more important update you’re holding back.”

All of the indicators on the screens vanished, leaving the satellite images as they were originally. “Bottom line,” Taj said, “as my Houston friends used to say . . . fully one third of the Earth’s population and habitable surface is under control of—infected by—the beings we call the Aggregates and you call the Reivers.”

He clicked on the computer pad and the Western Hemisphere changed color. All of North America and South America were overlaid with a nasty yellow. So were much of Europe and parts of Africa.

Only the far northern or southern regions seemed immune. China, India, and Australia were the only areas clear of this yellow.

“We knew this,” Xavier said, “or we could guess it. But what does it mean? What’s happening there?

“Well,” Taj said, “that’s a good question.”

Rectangular video images appeared around the border of the giant map. As Taj spoke, he highlighted each one so that it filled half the screen for a moment. (The images had superimposed identification, which was helpful: Yahvi could recognize most major Earth landmarks and a lot of terrain, but only that.)

What she saw:

A field in Kansas . . . the blue bowl of the sky, golden wheat and a giant tractor-combine rolling past, a human farmer visible in the cab . . . with an angular Reiver “mantis” type riding outside the cab behind him.