Heaven's War (18 page)

As her lost boyfriend Cedric would say, “You’ve got that covered.”

(“Thank you, darling!”)

She reached the trees and, fully aware of the lack of food, immediately began searching for these vege-fruits.

The first problem was that others had been here first; the branches showed clear signs of having been stripped, eagerly, swiftly, and violently. She made a mental note to do some calculations relating the amount of available food to the daily needs of the population. She suspected the two lines would intersect rather soon, and they would run out…of course, why be pessimistic? Hadn’t she just insisted to Nayar that the Keanu habitat was designed for humans? She had no data on how quickly the habitat would produce more food.

Right now, however, it was looking grim…she had worked her way along the habitat walls, through the “orchard,” for several meters, perhaps ten, without seeing anything larger than an acorn.

And then she found something that disturbed her as much as the flickering sky-snakes had.

As far as she could see down-habitat, toward the far “southern” end, the trees were now covered with a black mold.

She touched it—what the hell, maybe it was Keanu packaging of some kind, like wax on an apple—and quickly regretted the gesture. Her fingers burned as if she’d dipped them in battery acid.

(“Cedric, baby, this isn’t good!”)

Turn around, then. Go the other way.

She had not completed the maneuver when a shape appeared in front of her—

—and struck her!

For an instant, as terrified as she had ever been in her life, she shouted and lashed out…before realizing her assailant was a dog! It was a Lab that had been scooped up with the Texans…certainly the animal had not been aboard the Bangalore Object. Makali had seen it earlier in the day, running freely.

Now it kept leaping on her, licking her. She had never been a dog person—no pets of any kind. Her experience with dogs, in fact, was this: They always jumped on you.

Normally it made her want to shove the creatures away, but circumstances had changed. In this environment, Earth beings needed to stick together. Wishing she knew the dog’s name, Makali nevertheless made what she hoped were soothing sounds.

“You bad boy,” she said.

The dog seemed to calm down. “You’re probably hungry, too,” she said.

Her human-canine communication skills were lacking—how arrogant she was, to think she could crack the codes of exobeings!—but she got the clear impression that the dog wanted to return to the Temple. He kept turning toward it, looking back, as if waiting.

Disturbed by the strange light and the Dead Zone, Makali decided it would be wise to pay attention to the dog.

As she came within sight of the Temple and the horde of refugees, she was suddenly sad. She missed Cedric, of course. But she also missed her father. She found herself blinking back tears.

It didn’t help that she saw the same emotion on the faces of those she passed. Now in a state of collapse, fed but looking into the great unknown,
each was probably thinking about a husband or wife, about missing parents or children, friends, co-workers, everyday Earth life now gone, likely never to be regained.

“Cedric,” she said aloud, “help me get a grip.” She had developed a bad habit of talking to him as if he were present…their whole relationship, in fact, was based on her telling him things. Making excuses, at first. The one part of Makali Pillay’s existence that she had never been able to manage was money. Cedric Houghton had been the counselor she had been sent to when her credit card bills became a problem.

He had not cured her, of course. But he had stabilized her—and won her heart, at least for now.

Thinking about Cedric allowed her to put the sadness behind her, for this reason: On the day that the Object struck Bangalore Control Center, Makali Pillay still owed forty-three thousand dollars U.S. on five different credit cards.

And while she might never see Cedric or her father again, there was one bright side: She would never have to pay them off.

It was catching up with him. The strangeness, the loss, the endless strain.

Zack had collapsed inside the Temple, his back against one of its too-tall walls—in the same chamber where he and Megan had confronted the Architect or its avatar—and found himself unable to move.

Or even think.

Even now, two meters away, Vikram Nayar, Shane Weldon, and Harley Drake were carefully quizzing Makali Pillay about her journey into the Keanu twilight. He was hearing words like
blight
and
Dead Zone
and understanding none of it.

And, if possible, caring even less. He only had energy for Rachel…and she was presently out of sight. He knew, as a father, as a leader, that he should know where she was, who she was with.

Unlike, say, a typical Friday night in Houston.

That was how Zack knew he was at his redline, into a danger zone, beyond exhausted, beyond endurance.

He was paralyzed.

The only thing capable of drawing his notice was the dog wandering through the crowd, searching for food or water or a pat—or its master. Zack was not a dog person, but at the moment, he was happy the creature was around. It was a Revenant, too. And apparently immune to whatever caused human Revenants to wear out in a few days. Why? Because it didn’t have to withstand the stress of communicating on behalf of the Architects?

“Hey, Zack, you listening?”

Harley Drake slowly wheeled his chair closer and leaned down. Zack couldn’t help grunting in appreciation—once. Again, all he had energy for. “Yeah,” he croaked.

“You need water.”

“I need,” he said, exhausted by the expenditure of energy required to utter three words more or less in a row, “everything.”

Harley offered him a bottle of water. He had to hold it so Zack could drink from it. When Zack seemed full, he said, “Did you hear what Pillay was saying?”

“No.”

Harley looked at him with resignation. “I don’t want to have to go through it all again.” But he did, or at least the highlights, talking about the blight, the Dead Zone, the flickering lights. “Is that right?” Harley said, when he was finished, speaking to the others, who stood off to one side like a jury.

“Yes,” Nayar said.

The water had helped revive Zack. “It seems anomalous, maybe even troubling,” he said. “But I don’t have—”

“No one’s expecting a solution or an insight,” Weldon said. “But if this is anomalous and therefore troubling…well, I think it affects our next steps.”

“Which are?”

“Sorry,” Weldon said, “I don’t have them. Or even one. Let me say, ‘our next steps, whatever they might be.’”

Zack turned to the others. “If this habitat is changing or breaking down, we may have to move.”

“Where to?” Weldon said.

“Another habitat.”

“Is there another one?” Nayar asked. “Do you know this?”

“I don’t. But Megan hinted that there was. And just do the math: Keanu’s internal volume could hold a couple of dozen habitats this size…”

Pillay spoke up. “The last mass calculations we did would suggest that.” To the others, she said, “Keanu is not solid.”

“Good to know,” Weldon said. “Our first order of business tomorrow, after electing Zack as mayor, might be to send out scouting parties.”

“How do we get out of here?” That was Nayar. Zack had always suspected the man was an Eeyore; now it was confirmed.

“As I said, I was in another chamber…there was one passage. There might be others.”

“And there are other access vents,” Makali said.

All heads turned toward her. “Of course there are other vents,” Weldon said, not bothering to disguise his impatience. “The surface is riddled with them.”

“They were firing like RCS jets, too,” Harley said.

“I’m not talking about those,” Makali said. “We detected more vents like Vesuvius, where it appears you can actually reach Keanu’s interior.”

Finally Zack lost patience. “Everybody shut up! How many did you find, and where are they?”

“We never had a complete revolution of Keanu to observe,” Makali said, happy to be an analyst rather than a combatant. “It was only once Keanu performed its venting-capture maneuver that we were able to detect differences in some of the vents.

“But we identified four where the spectra indicated outgassing of atmosphere rather than propulsive material. Vesuvius was one of these.”

Shane Weldon wasn’t ready to let the matter drop. “It would have been nice to know before Zack and his crew—and the
Brahma
crew—found out the hard way.”

“I’m going to guess,” Zack said, “that Makali’s team didn’t know until we were already on EVA.”

“Even later,” she said. She turned to Weldon and gestured to Nayar, including him. “Or we surely would have shared that information.”

“Fine,” Harley said, “we’re all going to sing campfire songs now. What the hell does it mean?”

“One thing’s obvious,” Zack said. “Keanu is large enough to contain several habitats the size of this.”

“We agreed on that some time ago,” Weldon said.

“Okay, then, Shane, if our habitat could be reached through Vesuvius Vent, then it makes sense to assume that these other habitats might also be reached by these—what did you call them, Makali? Access vents.”

“Of course,” Nayar said. “And while all knowledge is helpful, what use is this?”

Now Zack knew what he wanted to say. He could feel his spirits lifting even before he said the words: “It means we might be able to reach these other habitats. We aren’t trapped in this one. And Keanu has some
amazing capabilities—we might find the control center for the whole operation.”

He could see them all—each in his or her fashion—imagining the possibilities. Weldon was the first to reset to skepticism. “I don’t see how we reach these other vents, even if they happen to be within walking distance. We don’t have EVA suits, or maybe you forgot.”

Weldon’s tone infuriated him, but Zack remained calm. These people were just as tired and fried as he was. “I’m not saying we have the entire solution in our hands. I’m just saying…we have a literal
opening
.”

Now Makali Pillay was nodding enthusiastically. “We should not only search for a way out and to the other habitats, we should go back to the vesicles.”

“The what?” Weldon said.

“Vesicles,”
Makali said patiently. “It’s a term from biology and means
a bubble
, which is sort of what brought us here—”

“The term isn’t important, Makali,” Nayar said, “but this is: Our…vesicle was literally dissolving as we disembarked. What do you suppose is left of it?”

“Ours, too,” Weldon said.

“Probably not much,” Makali said. “But we have all these people, and while keeping us fed and watered will occupy most of us…some should take the time and go back, find out what’s there, what can be used…whether or not those landing chambers give access elsewhere.” She smiled. “Sorry, I’m babbling. It’s probably the hunger.”

“Haven’t you gotten anything to eat yet?” Zack said. He searched for Xavier, who was just a few meters away. “Hey,” he said.

“Way ahead of you, boss,” Xavier said. He held out a vege-fruit to Makali. “One of the leftovers, ma’am. Sorry we didn’t have one earlier.”

“Not a problem!” Makali said, biting into the item without delay and with considerable relish. With her mouth full, she said, “I just hope the blight doesn’t destroy these…vege-things.”

Weldon was like a gardener intent on killing a weed. “Even assuming we can get out of this…tin can,” he said, “I don’t think there’s a high probability—by which I mean over one percent—that we’ll be able to take control of this vehicle.”

“We don’t have to take
control
,” Zack said, seeing another possibility that he had failed to present. And beginning to resent the fact that he was doing all the heavy conceptual lifting here. “We just have to be able to send a signal to Earth.”

“You’re thinking of, what, a giant signal fire? Maybe in the shape of an SOS?” Nayar said, joining the fun.

The group’s manner had changed, from serious skepticism to outright mockery. It was a defense mechanism Zack recognized; he was prone to it himself. The only response was to play it straight and not get angry. It made you look like the dull kid on the playground, but sometimes you had to do it. “I don’t think rescue is out of the question,” Zack said.

“Let’s run those numbers, then,” Weldon said, moving from mockery to outright hostility.
He must be tired out of his mind,
Zack thought, trying to be charitable—and functional. “The world’s entire near-term—by which I mean for the next couple of years—capability for sending manned vehicles to Keanu is three. Two
Destiny-Ventures
, one
Brahma
.” He turned to Nayar. “Unless you guys have a secret stash somewhere.”