Heaven's War (34 page)

Dale got a sick feeling in his stomach. “Zack,” he said, “I think the suits are trying to tell us they’re running down.”

It was impossible to read expressions, difficult even to read body language. Dale had to give it to Zack; he revealed nothing of what had to be real concern. “That’s a good thought, and a good reminder that we should pick up the pace,” he said. “Everyone! Off we go again!”

Instead of leading, however, he stayed back like a Marine drill instructor, as Makali, Valya, and Williams passed by.

Zack grabbed Dale and moved with him, pointing directly at Williams’s back without saying anything. The message was obvious:
Help him.

“Any thoughts on what we do when we get to the next vent? The process of getting into these things was…unique. Do they have a machine that cuts us out of them?”

Makali said, “Remember the vesicles? They just dissolved.”

Williams stopped. “I’m sorry, folks. Dodger blue has given way to indigo…”

He swayed visibly, then pitched forward onto his face.

Zack and Dale reached him at the same time, rolling him onto his back. “Is he breathing?” Zack asked.

“Hard to tell—” In fact, it was impossible to tell. Wait! He managed to see Williams’s face through the skinsuit mesh. His eyes were open. “Hey, Wade, stick with us, friend! We’re within sight of the vent,” Dale lied. “We’ll carry you.”

With Zack’s help, they got Williams upright, then onto Dale’s shoulders in an awkward fireman’s carry. “Can you manage this?”

“Zack, he weighs about five kilograms.” While he had to remind himself not to turn too sharply, it wasn’t difficult carrying Wade Williams.

It was just frightening. With every step Dale took, he wondered if the next one would see Williams’s suit dissolving into dust…and Williams suffering an agonizing death-by-vacuum in his arms.

There was also the matter of his own skinsuit status. “I’m darker than blue sky right now,” he said.

“Substantially darker here,” Valya said. Christ, someone was going to have to carry her next.

He really wished they hadn’t stopped at the alien lander.

“All right then, how long has it been?”

“I make it eight hours,” Weldon said. “Not a word from Zack since what, according to my watch, was about nine
A.M.
”

“And nothing from Rachel, either.”

“Or Zhao?”

“No.”

Harley was in front of the Temple, under the gauzy, eternally twilit sky, out of his wheelchair and sitting on a bench, which was a fresh furnishing, thanks to the Jaidev team of Temple Operators and Reconstructors, his newly favorite human beings. He had drunk some Temple coffee and eaten some Temple energy bars. He couldn’t honestly say that this made him feel great, or even good.

He just felt a lot better than he had this morning. Tired, yes, but workout tired, not depressed tired.

That was the physical side. Mentally? Quite the opposite.

He had a college buddy named Kirk Dearborn who had become a television director. Fifteen years ago, Harley had visited Kirk in Los Angeles on the set of some crime procedural drama. He had done the whole day in the life, showing up with Kirk and the crew and staying until wrap. (Kirk had insisted, because he hoped to do a project set at the Johnson Space Center and was setting Harley up for a reciprocal day.)

The one memory Harley took away from that day—beyond the efficiency of the crew, the constant availability of food, and the notable physical attractions, even when wearing lab coats, of the female cast members—was the constant barrage of questions aimed at Kirk. Lighting. Lenses. Lines. Times. Clothing. Makeup. At one point, he asked his friend, “Are all these things up to you?”

“Hell, no! I’m just a hired hand. Every real decision is made by the show runner.” He had smiled. “But I’m the director on the set, so everyone asks me over and over, just to be sure.”

That was what Harley Drake felt like after his first two-thirds of a day as mayor. As if dozens of people were constantly approaching him for decisions that either they could have made themselves or were not makeable by Harley Drake. He rubbed his eyes.

“And what about our investigation?”

Weldon shrugged. “Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt; someone broke that gal’s neck.”

“Who?”

“Jones is working that. First cut is, it could have been something basic and stupid—an argument over water or food.”

“And what’s the second cut?”

Weldon hesitated.

“Shane?”

“My sense, it’s some hostile force inherent in the environment, likely some entity we don’t understand.”

“Hostile? You mean like, alien murderer? Are we ready to go there, Shane?”

“Remember what Zack said about this Sentry. This habitat only
looks
empty. Things could be hiding anywhere, or moving in and out of here at will.”

Harley held up his hand, as if by gesture he could change Weldon’s whole worldview. “We’re just refugees, Shane! We’re not at war.”

“Our planet was attacked, we were kidnapped and dumped…with all due respect, Mr. Mayor, that feels like war to me.”

“‘Poland first?’” Harley couldn’t help remembering an old comedy routine.

“More like Pearl Harbor.” Shane Weldon, however, had not risen in the cutthroat world of NASA and the Johnson Space Center by being openly confrontational. His tone immediately changed. “Remember, of course, that my default setting is paranoid.”

“So noted.”

“I came out here to see how you were holding up.”

“Fine,” he lied. “What about you? What about…everyone else?”

“I’m great, Harls,” Weldon said. “There’s nothing better than
not
having responsibility.”

“How did you manage to get out of the mayor’s job again?”

“Fast feet, I guess.” He put his hand on Harley’s shoulder. “Look, I have some idea what you’re going through. But my impression? Most folks are happier now than since they got scooped up. This has been a good day for the Houston-Bangalores.”

Harley had to laugh. “Every time I hear that, I think you’re talking about a minor league baseball team.”

“Another few days like we had with the Temple today, we’ll be ready for the bigs.”

“You think so?”

“Stability looms. Water’s a question, of course. But, given that we’ve been able to pull drinkable liquid out of the Temple system already, I can’t believe potable water is a problem.” Weldon smiled. “Before long, we’ll be able to start manipulating this environment.”

“We’ll probably have to create our own EPA to keep us from polluting the place.”

“Not if I can help it,” he said.

Harley knew that Weldon was a passionate hater of most government regulations. “Where did Sasha get to?”

“She’s off with the baby.”

“Of course. Hi, Xavier.” The young garbage collector had approached and was waiting patiently. Back to Weldon: “How is the new food turning out?

Weldon smiled. “More of it all the time, and more variety—”

“—and better.” To Xavier, Harley said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, kid, but I’m pretty sure I’m never going to eat a fucking pawpaw again.”

“They aren’t number one on my hit parade, Mr. Drake. I just want the Indians to make some utensils.”

Harley turned to Weldon. “There’s an order from the mayor for life: utensils, plates, cups.”

“And food to fill them. Got it.”

“Did you need something from me?” Harley asked Xavier.

“I was supposed to tell you this: It’s not from India.”

“What isn’t?”

“Your Woggle-Bug.”

“Really?”

“One of Mr. Nayar’s guys says so. He has a degree in etymology.”

“Entomology, you mean.” Harley turned to Weldon, then back to Xavier. “How can he be sure? I mean, even if I knew a lot about bugs, I don’t think I could say for certain that a specific one
couldn’t
be found in North America.” Harley thought back to what Zack had said about this Revenant process. “Maybe it’s a prehistoric bug, from some floating racial memory.”

“I was there, too,” Weldon said. “Nayar says it is not a terrestrial insect. It has none of the required features.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?” Harley frowned. Another mystery. “Well, thanks—”

“They want you to come see it,” Xavier said.

Harley sighed. “Shane, can you help me into my chair?”

In a corner of the ground floor of the Temple, Nayar and Jaidev’s team had created a habitat within a habitat for the Woggle-Bug: a flat, hemispherical glass jar resting on the floor.

“What was this supposed to be?” Harley said. “This little glass cage?”

“A serving dish, we think,” Jaidev said. “It’s not really glass, any more than anything else we’ve replicated is plastic or ceramic or metal. But we have found a sort of menu in the commands….”

“When you get back to it, we need more things like this. Real dishes.”

“We want to replicate a table next,” the Indian mission director said. “I don’t like this on the floor.”

“I don’t think furniture for the Woggle-Bug terrarium is a priority,” Harley said. “I’m surprised you bothered with this…upside-down dish. Won’t it suffocate?”

“We were prepared to drill some tiny holes,” Nayar said. “But we did a little test; being without oxygen doesn’t seem to bother it.”

“What bothers me, a little, is that you tried,” Harley said. “It’s a bug, so what? Don’t we have bigger problems? Don’t we need other goods?”

“I think,” Weldon said, seeing that Nayar was stiffening at the idea of having to defend his decision, “that the position here is, we really don’t know what this critter is. Let’s keep it isolated and under control.”

Harley was happy to express his objections through Weldon. It was becoming a familiar method. “In theory, fine. But I’m not convinced it’s alien, or dangerous, or either way, that sticking it under glass is going to make any difference. We don’t know what any of this stuff really is! It’s not as though we were handed the directions when we showed up!” He turned to Nayar. “Vikram, your guys have done a fantastic job unlocking the secrets of the Temple. I think it would be better for all of us if that’s what they kept doing. We’ll get our exospecialists looking at Woggle-Bug here.”

“And where
is
our exospecialist?” Nayar said in his most quiet voice.

“Expected back any minute.”

Nayar pointed at the bug. “Mr. Drake, have you
looked
at this creature?”

Mr. Drake?
“I saw it in Camilla’s hand—” Harley said, then stopped. Well, no, he hadn’t examined it. The Woggle-Bug, to him, had looked like a cartoon version of an insect, all bright colors and edges. “Okay, I’m looking now.”

Nayar knelt down so his finger touched the glass. “The more closely you observe it, the more strange it seems. It doesn’t seem organic, not as I recognize such things. It’s almost…fractal.” He straightened up. “And it’s bigger.”

“Bigger than what?”

“Bigger than it was when we first put it in the jar,” Jaidev said.

“How can you tell? Did you replicate a ruler, too?” Harley was getting frustrated.

Jaidev pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and was about to give Harley a demonstration, but Nayar stopped him.

“Three of us examined it and three of us came to the same conclusion.”

“Okay, fine,” Harley said. “It’s weird and it’s growing. Where’s the entomologist? Let’s ask him.”

“I’m the entomologist,” Nayar said. “It was my undergraduate field of study before I joined ISRO.”

Harley was not a card player, but he knew when he held a weak hand and should consider folding. “My apologies. What do you suggest we do, once we have the bug properly isolated and under observation?”

“By default, we’re starving it,” Nayar said. “We don’t know what it uses for nourishment, anyway.”

“What if the critter takes being starved as a hostile act?”

“Yeah, like me with the Objects,” Weldon said. One of the Indian engineers laughed, but only for the time it took Nayar to shoot him a cold look.

“Tomorrow we try adding different substances to its environment. Water, for example, to see whether it reacts.”

“That would be fine,” Harley said. He couldn’t imagine what good or bad it would do. But he needed Nayar and his team happy, and if playing Mr. Wizard with an alien bug would help—

“Thank you,” Nayar said. He signaled to Jaidev and the others, and they all headed for the ramp and the upstairs.

Watching them go, Harley noticed Camilla sitting quietly in a corner, apparently having watched the whole exchange.