Heaven's Shadow (26 page)

“Fine. Let’s consider Keanu and the membrane and the Sentry and the Revenants as proprietary. Publish your papers and claim priority. At what point do you start giving me, and by extension, the folks in there”—he aimed a thumb in the direction of mission control—“and the White House and the world some goddamn concrete data? Everything you’ve
named
could be a potential threat to our existence! Keanu maneuvers and seems to be inhabited. Fine, but by what? Is your Sentry a machine or a life-form? Either way, how can we communicate with it—or things like it—so no one else gets killed? What about the environment? Why is it changing so fast? How long does that go on? And there’s the big one. How the hell can there be people inside that thing? Formerly dead people the crew knows. That may be the freakiest question in human history.

“You’ve got some facts. Start giving me explanations that fit, or you might as well go home.”

Within moments, the dozen members of the team had broken into smaller groups . . . except for Williams, who was left by himself, busy pushing his glasses back up his nose.

Which gave Harley a terrible, wonderful idea. If there was one thing he hated more than having to answer reporters, it was having nothing to say!

Why not send members of the Home Team out to brief the world, one by one?

Better yet, why not send Wade Williams out there . . . he could soothe or baffle the press as needed, with the added bonus that work inside the Home Team would go faster and be more productive.

And Harley could worry about Rachel Stewart.

CROCKETT: So you’ve heard about what’s going on with the
Destiny
mission.

BOONE: You mean the alien stuff?

CROCKETT: Don’t you think it’s cool that our astronauts may have discovered intelligent life on another world?

BOONE: I’d be more impressed if they discovered intelligent life on this one. (WAH-WAH SFX)

CROCKETT: Seriously . . . there’s also this rumor going around that they’ve discovered souls . . . that these aliens are smart enough to bring dead people back to life.

BOONE: All I can say is, if they revive my uncle Eduardo, I’m not giving the money back.

KPRC RADIO “ALL-AMERICAN” GUYS, AUGUST 23, 2019

She was late again. She was supposed to be meeting with a producer, but something had gone wrong—goddamn Houston traffic, maybe—and she was half an hour behind schedule.

And then she didn’t have her Slate! How the hell was she supposed to make her pitch without it?

And where were her
pants
? What was she thinking, going out naked from the waist down?

It made Megan Stewart feel cold.

She shifted on her bed. Ouch. That didn’t feel right—

She opened her eyes. Why was she in the backyard? And where was Rachel—?

Then she sat up and began to tremble. The dream was already returning to the place dreams go. Here was the reality . . . she had been sleeping in the open air next to a rock, said air and rock being part of the environment of the Near-Earth Object Keanu.

Another figure lay next to her . . . the girl Camilla. Across from her, her husband, Zack. Beyond him, the white cylindrical vehicle known as rover
Buzz
.

It was morning, at least as far as her biological clock was concerned.

Oh, yes, she was alive again after being dead for the past two years. She had been resurrected somehow, on another planet.

Among other sensations—rather far down the list, but still worth noting—her throat hurt. For that matter, she ached everywhere.

“Hey,” Zack said, waking up and trying to stretch in his EVA underwear—never a flattering look. “Good morning.”

“You don’t look very comfortable.”

“You don’t, either.” That much was obvious as Zack slowly rose to his feet. “How did you sleep?”

“What was it I used to say? ‘Like the dead.’ Now I know what that means.”

He got that cautious look on his face, one she had learned to recognize. “So what does it mean?”

“Well, I misspoke. I’m alive, right?”

“But you must remember . . .”

“Being dead?” How did she answer that? She wasn’t entirely sure herself. She had fragmentary memories of the accident. Her frustration with the weather, with Rachel, with Harley’s attitude. The truck suddenly filling the view. She hadn’t had time to feel fear. Just a moment of—surprise. “Some of it. It’s like the dream you can’t quite bring back. I know part of me was floating. Flying, actually.”

“Or just disembodied.”

“I like my word better. But, fine. And I was bombarded with images and memories and . . . stuff.”

“No visits with dead relatives? No Uncle Marty or Nana Becky?”

“Yes and no.” She really didn’t want to be debriefed—she was hungry and needed to urinate, not necessarily in that order. But, like therapy, this was helping her remember. “I knew they were out there. That everyone was out there, if I would only reach out.”

“Only the deceased?”

“No! Every
one
. Every
thing
. People, animals, rivers, even planets! The Sun! I was . . . connected. Which is why disembodied is the wrong word, so there. Your fire’s out,” she told Zack, pointing to the pathetic pile of coals. “And I’m going to find . . .”

Zack pointed directly away from the rover, which was at his back. “There are some tall trees that way.”

“You’re such a dang Boy Scout.”

Like any human, from time to time, Megan had wondered about her own death. Would it be some long, slow fade-out with cancer or pneumonia—or perhaps worst of all, dementia? Or a violent lurch from this world to the next?

The real issue had always been,
Would you want to know it was coming?
She had had mixed feelings about that. The long, slow fade-out, dying in bed in the fullness of years, great-grandchildren gathered around . . . knowing you were slipping away, feeling, if not exactly eager, then at least accepting of the inevitable . . . that had its attractions.

Well, now she had some hard data. She knew that a person didn’t just switch off. That old line about not knowing what hit you? Total bullshit. She felt the impact of her face on the window of the car. The sounds! Metal. The snap of bone—her neck? God! It made her sick to think about it.

Camilla was up now, too, chattering in Portuguese. Lucas and Natalia must have heard her, because they suddenly appeared from the rover with water and food.

As the two
Brahma
astronauts tended to their charge, Megan asked again about Rachel. “You have to tell me everything, baby. If you ever want to hear about the Architects, that is.”

So, as they ate what appeared to be oatmeal from a bag and sipped orange juice from drink boxes, Zack spoke about Rachel, her struggles after Megan’s death . . . her smile, the joy he took in rediscovering his favorite movies with her . . . her moodiness . . . her refusal to play the piano; it all bubbled out of him almost too easily, without censorship or structure. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“What?”

“You let her give up the piano! I’d have screamed at her to stick with it.”

“You mean, screamed more.” Zack smiled. Megan liked that. It meant that he was relaxing. “So, what happened to my video?”

“Oh, it was aired on GoogleSpace, won a posthumous Peabody, and is now required viewing for every spouse in the space program.”

“Good!” She picked up the camera from its spot atop Zack’s discarded space suit and handed it to him. “Make sure you record the sequel.”

Zack aimed the camera at her. “Any time you’re ready . . . why not tell the world about the Architects?”

She realized that she did know something about them—as if she’d learned it in her sleep. “Well, they’re millions of years older than we are . . . the human race, I mean. Even their sense of time is totally different. A day for them is like a whole week for us.”

“Compared to the Architects, we’re mayflies?”

“Something like that.”

He thought. “They’re powerful enough to raise the dead.”

“So it would seem, but don’t ask me how.” She nodded to Camilla. “Maybe she’ll know. Maybe each of us has a different piece of the puzzle.”

“Where are they from? How far away? How did Keanu get here?”

“I don’t know where they’re from—obviously a star system at least ten light-years away, maybe more. But that’s just me, Megan, doing the math. As for Keanu, all I can say is they don’t have any faster-than-light warp drive. The Keanu trip took thousands of years.”

“What do the Architects look like?”

Megan tried to picture them, but failed. But—“
Post-organic
is the phrase or image that comes into my head. They used to have bodies, but over time, as they made genetic improvements, they became more and more like machines.”

It was like reading a book. Every one of Zack’s questions triggered some kind of response—either an image and a set of terms, or a blank page. “Something happened a few tens of thousands of years ago and they realized they needed to devolve, to be organic again. Which is what they were looking for with Keanu. They found other races, including the . . . the Sentries. But none of them seems to have worked out.” She could feel herself getting excited, speaking too fast, as always.

“‘Worked out’ how?”

“I don’t know. I just get images of other beings and a feeling of failure.” In fact, it made her uncomfortable. “You asked about the resurrectees. Keanu isn’t just a ship or a transport, it’s also a space probe. It gathers data wherever it goes. It gathered us as soon as it came within range. . . .”

“Two years ago?” She was nodding. “So it has some kind of . . . soul catcher. Which means humans do have souls and consciousness does go on after death . . .”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Megan said, holding up her hand. “I have to stop.”

“Is something wrong?”

She had a terrific headache. “I think I may have overdone it,” she said, forcing a smile. “Not enough bandwidth.”

It was a good moment to break: Taj and Tea were returning, and after scattered greetings, the talk turned to the discovery of the Temple. Taj held up his camera. “Let me find the footage and I’ll play it for you.”

Zack turned to Megan. “Do you know anything about a Temple?”

Her headache had subsided the instant she stopped trying to answer questions. “Not sure. The word
temple
doesn’t mean anything to me—”

She stopped in midsentence because she saw Tea Nowinski shuffling past Zack and sliding her hand across his shoulder. She might as well have kissed him, because that brief tell was enough to convince Megan that her former husband and Tea were lovers.

Zack knew Megan had seen it. The instant Tea was around the rover and momentarily out of sight and earshot, he came to her. “I’m sorry.”

Megan was surprised at how annoyed she was at the thought of Zack and Tea together. “Feel free to tell me this didn’t start until after I was dead.”

“You know me better than that.”

Fortunately the burst of jealousy was as short-lived as it was bizarre. She had been dead, right? Was this second chance at life—thank you to the Almighty or these Architects or some combination of the two—a
real
second chance?

Was she still married? Her Mormon friend Robin had believed that she and her husband were “sealed for eternity” . . . right up to the time they got divorced. By her own much looser standards, Megan had no claim on Zack, legal or moral.

She had to ask herself, was she still in love with him? But she would also have to ask, what difference did that make? What possible life could they share? What could she expect from her own, under the circumstances?

Was Zack convinced he had discovered the real Megan Doyle Stewart? His actions and words gave that impression, though Megan felt he wasn’t fully committed to the idea. (For that matter, was
she
sure? How would she know?)

One thing Megan felt with great certainty was that she was still a mother. “Zack,” she said. “I want to talk to Rachel.”

Zack got that worried look on his face, one she had come to know. “Wish we both could, but we don’t have real-time communication here.”

Taj said, “I can do it.”

Zack seemed surprised. “You can do what? We’re in LOS for hours yet.”

“I can communicate with Earth in real time as soon as I can get close enough to punch a signal through the membrane.” He held up the Zeiss unit. “This will transmit to
Brahma
and then to a relay satellite.”

Zack considered this. “Being able to do it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea—”

Megan knew that voice; Zack was about to dig in. “Look,” she said, “I realize you aren’t quite ready to accept me. Fine. So let’s put it in terms everyone can understand.

“Unless I talk to my daughter, I’m not telling you another damn thing.”

. . . The
Destiny
flight director is the operations agent for the NASA Launch Package Manager and Mission Manager. He or she is a member of the board responsible for assuring that the mission-specific operations document meets the defined requirements, and that associated operational risks have been adequately addressed. He or she is also responsible for arranging necessary Mission Operations Directorate expertise and support. . . .

FLIGHT DIRECTOR TASKS, JSC MOD, JANUARY 2019, REV. G (EXCERPT)

“If her father says it’s okay, then it’s okay.” Josh Kennedy delivered his judgment, then turned away.

After returning Rachel to the family room, Harley had headed directly for mission control. Wanting to avoid any immediate contact with the great minds of the Home Team, he made sure to go around the building, rolling up to Josh Kennedy, who was preparing to hand flight director duties to the Stay-3 leader, Lee Shimora. “Got a sec?” Harley had said.