Heaven's War (22 page)

“So, what, we just turn around and go back to the group?”

“We can’t simply do nothing,” Zack said. “We have no idea how long we can survive here. I want to know if we’ve got resources, and possibly a way out. I just have this feeling that there’s still a way to get everyone back home.”

“Why?” Valya said.

“Because someone
brought
us here. Someone built all this, adapted it for humans. Believe me, I saw it taking shape right in front of me. If there’s any order to the universe, this has to be some kind of test—we just have to figure out the rules.” His vehemence shocked him as much as it did his companions.

But Makali was saying, “Mr. Williams, what are you doing?”

“Feel that?” Williams said.

Zack realized he had grown aware of a pulsing hum. Troubling…Got it. “I remember now: I felt that same vibration in the Beehive.”

“The what?” Dale was looking at Valentina. Even Makali seemed confused.

“The place where Keanu seems to generate new life,” he said. He quickly explained about the cells and the second skins that covered the Revenants when they emerged.

Makali and Williams looked at each other. Scott and Valya, too. “What is it?” Zack said.

“To hell with the tunnel and the vesicles,” Williams said.

“Yes,” Makali said. “How far to this Beehive?”

“I suppose you were watching.”

Rachel Stewart found Pav Radhakrishnan fifty meters from Lake Ganges. He was hidden in the rocks, Slate in his lap, with his back to the water and the female bathers, but still: He was a boy, he could see naked women by turning his head. He would peek, count on it.

“What?” He pulled the buds out of his ears, startled by Rachel’s sudden vault into his field of view.

“All of us. The gir-ls,” she said, stretching the word to two syllables. “Without our clothes.”

He made a good show of acting surprised when he turned and saw that, yes, Lake Ganges and its current occupants were extremely visible. “Hey, you’re right. I could have seen all of you…the underage and the really old. In all your hotness, too.”

Rachel sat down next to him. She was hungry again. Breakfast had consisted of more crunchy vege-fruit, and not nearly enough. She had the feeling that wasn’t going to change any time soon. “What’s on your Slate?”

“The usual. Music, some school stuff—”

“Porn.”

Pav looked at her. For a moment, Rachel thought he was going to go all red-faced and defensive…but no. He blushed, yeah, but he also grinned. “Got my needs,” he said.

She took advantage of his momentary relaxation to snatch the Slate away. “Hey!”

She ran.

Her hair was still wet. In spite of total immersion in water, she felt greasy and dirty. Her flip-flops were not the ideal footwear for a race.

But bolting away from Pav and heading for the farthest wall of the
habitat…well, it was the most fun she’d had in days. Her father always told her she was healthier and happier when she worked out—or got any type of physical activity at all. Maybe he was right.

She left Pav far behind as she raced through a stand of reeds so tall they were over her head, but spaced in rows. Which was kind of odd, though not insanely odd by Keanu standards.

Off to her left there was a dead patch. She avoided that, partly because she didn’t want to be seen in the open, partly because it looked…brown and white and spoiled somehow, like mold.

Then it was into a newish forest, short green bushes and trees.

The only sound she heard was her own breathing…and then, far off, barking.

That stupid dog again. All during her “bath,” Cowboy had insisted on splashing into the lake and either sniffing her or the nearest woman. A couple of the bathers, especially those from Houston, seemed okay with the idea, but Rachel had been furious.

Eventually someone had lured the animal away. But now he was on the prowl again….

As Rachel emerged from the new forest, she felt her side beginning to ache. So she stopped. The far wall, the one that was opposite the Temple, still lay at least a kilometer or more away. Between the new forest and the wall was a series of gentle hills made of rounded rocks.

Rachel plopped down behind the nearest one and opened Pav’s Slate.

For a moment, she felt bad about that. Not for the invasion of privacy—anyone near Rachel’s age assumed that every computer or Tik-Talk or Slate was hackable, that any images, music, or data stored there was certain to be seen by someone else, eventually.

What bothered her was wasting energy. She promised to only peek for a minute…and started clicking on the desktop.

Which was an immediate disappointment. She realized it was all schoolwork or music—an amazing amount of music, and many of the names unknown to Rachel—and, yes, the predictable private folder under a stupid cover name. “‘Physics stuff,’ Pav? Really?”

“Actually, my porn is in the file labeled ‘Porn,’” Pav said.

It was her turn to be startled. “How long have you been there?”

“Five seconds.” He was still panting, in fact. “See anything you like?”

“Well, no, not in your ‘Hot Euro Bodies.’ None of them are real, by the way.”

“Okay, but not relevant.”

The dog barked again. “Is he coming after us?” Pav asked.

“He’s a Lab or a retriever,” Rachel said. She recognized only half a dozen dog breeds, but Labs and retrievers were among them. “They’re herders. Maybe he thinks we’re cows.”

Pav sat down next to her. “Let me,” he said. Rachel allowed him to take the Slate back. “Were you there for the launch?”

“What launch? Oh, my dad’s. Yeah.” Two years ago, the last time Rachel had gone to Florida and the Cape for Zack Stewart’s first attempt at a
Destiny
mission, her mother had been killed. This time, Zack had encouraged her, and had arranged for Amy Meyer and her family to go along. So, dutifully, she had stood at the press dome three miles from Pad 39A as Zack’s
Saturn
had lifted off. The launch excitement lasted ten minutes; the rest of the day had meant driving, parking, walking, unparking, and driving back to the motel in horrible heat and humidity. None of this had done anything to improve Rachel’s attitude toward Florida and rocket launches.

“I couldn’t go to my dad’s.”

“Why not?”

“It was in French Guiana. The European Space Agency owns it and they really aren’t set up for many visitors. And the Coalition was worried that if something went wrong, they’d have to deal with a few thousand witnesses.”

“Well, nothing went wrong—”

“
Then
, you mean.”

“Yeah.” Pav showed her the
Brahma
launch…the massive
Ariane 6
rocket rising on a fountain of steam, then arcing over the Atlantic.

“Wait!” Rachel said. “What was that?”

“What?”

She took the Slate and clicked on the pad, freezing the footage and opening another window, where Pav had called up another view of the
Brahma
event from MSNBC. She froze that image…which showed her mother Megan’s publicity portrait.

“Oh,” Pav said, seeing the same image. “I guess they were doing some kind of recap….”

Rachel resized the image so it filled the screen. There was Megan Doyle Stewart, probably from four years ago, when she finally broke down and got new images made. Brunette, brown-eyed, unable to appear serious even when it would be a good idea—

It was the same woman she had seen most recently on images downlinked to Houston from Keanu. The same woman whose horribly mutilated body she had just helped bury.

She couldn’t see it. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“Hey,” Pav said, “let’s just…save on the batteries.” He gently took the Slate back and closed the windows—

—just as Cowboy trotted past.

The dog veered away from his path, which seemed to be taking him toward the near wall, just long enough to pant and sniff them. Then he continued on his canine journey.

“Where do you suppose he’s going?” Pav said.

“We should probably get him…”

“Are we responsible now?”

“I think we’re responsible for everyone and everything now.” She got up. “Besides, if we don’t chase the dog, we’ll have to go back to the Temple, and they’ll put us to work at something crappy.”

“You make an excellent point.”

Cowboy was easy to follow…his tracks were visible on the smooth dirt surface. And whenever they lost sight of him in the rocks, they would hear him yap. “Do you suppose he’s chasing something?” Pav said.

“I hope not,” Rachel said.

Pav laughed. “Another excellent point.”

“Eventually he’s going to run out of room, though.” They were close to the wall now. It rose above her, like one of those giant office towers in downtown Houston, only rocky and sandy rather than shiny glass. Stopping, she let her head tilt back and saw that the wall began curving toward the ceiling, which made her feel light and dizzy—

Not far away, Cowboy started barking furiously.

Pav slipped one of his tattooed forearms around her. To her surprise, she rather liked it.

“It’s creepy to know that we’re living in a giant tube.”

“Hey, if you think about it, we were living on the surface of a big ball of rock. How was that better? Come on.”

Cowboy’s barking had grown irregular but was enough to let them know where he was…to their left, down-habitat, and right against the wall.

Here stood a collection of rocks and weirdly shaped structures that reminded Rachel of cave stalagmites. Their surface was studded with tiny crystals of some kind, like mica or fool’s gold. And they all seemed fresh, somehow. Moist.

The dog had gone silent.

“Where did he go?” Rachel said. Then she called, “Cowboy!”

“Who knows? He came out of nowhere, right? Maybe he went back.”

“No, he was chasing something. And if he went back, we would have seen him.”

Pav was in the lead, and suddenly he stopped. “What’s the matter now?” Rachel said.

“What if he’s found something we don’t want to find?”

“Like what? An alien?”

“High on my list.”

“I hope so. I have a lot of questions for the first alien I meet.” And she slipped past him.

Around the last cluster of rocks, almost hidden in shadows, they found Cowboy on his hind legs, pawing at the wall.

And the wall was pulsing and flowing.

“Holy shit.”

There was a slit of some kind, as if the wall were either creating an opening or closing one. Cowboy kept leaping into the slit. With every movement, the pulsing stopped for a few seconds. “Whatever’s going on,” Rachel said, “it looks as though he’s interrupting it.”

She stepped forward, but slowly and carefully. As she got closer to the dog, she began to smell something—an odor that blended swamp with
diesel exhaust. It wasn’t unpleasant, but she wouldn’t want a bottle of it, either.

“Here, Cowboy…come here…”

The dog stopped moving long enough to glance back at Rachel and Pav. Then he turned away and dove right through the opening.

“Well, shit,” Rachel said.

“What do we do now?”

Rachel wasn’t sure. “Look,” she said, “my father is all freaked out because there doesn’t seem to be a way out of the habitat….” She was already edging toward the opening.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Probably, but…it’s solidified.” The opening had developed edges that gave off wisps of steam, like a lava flow that hits cold seawater.

“Which is good for us how?”

She was within a meter.

“What do you see inside?”

“Not much,” she said. It appeared that the ground surface continued into the opening. “It’s dark.”

“Oh.” Suddenly Pav was past her, raising the Slate and clicking on its flashlight.

The light didn’t do much, but it showed a foggy tunnel that descended gently for a few meters, then seemed to turn to their left. “Cowboy!” Rachel called.

“I don’t see or hear him.” He turned to face her. “What do you want to do?”

“The dog is important, I think. And so is this tunnel thingie. Let’s just…”

“Okay.”

He took her hand, which Rachel found she liked, and both stepped and stepped again. Half a head taller, Pav had to stoop to get through. “How far do you want to go?” he asked.

“Two meters.”

“Why two meters.”

“I don’t know. ’Cause I can jump two meters, okay?” She was finding Pav a tad pedantic. “Cowboy!” she yelled.