Solaris Rising 2 (29 page)

My stomach convulses as I see that it’s not a person at all. It’s a phage bag. Big and bloated, it can barely squeeze through. Another one is right behind it.

That’s when we realize that Deepspire has been down for a while.

“Stations, stations,” the captain keeps shouting, and finally people are rushing away, leaving me alone at the window.

Jonn
, I whisper.
Jonn
.

Several huge, ancient hemlocks block our view of the crash. Highspire rocks alarmingly as the captain attempts to stay close while navigating the gullies and steep slope. Far below a river froths, looking like the crack to hell. I am in hell already.

I rush away and climb the spiral staircase, one just like Jonn must have won his marathon on, and reach the very top, the Nav Deck. Here it’s a storm of shouting, with inputs coming in on the screens, and Captain Harliss swearing and shouting coordinates to the pilot. I ignore this and move to the circular window wrapping the room.

There must be survivors. We were in contact only a day ago. But no one is stirring around the dead spire. How would we even effect a rescue if we found someone alive?

Then, far down the slope, I see a woman sliding and stumbling down the hillside. Behind her, a burly man picking his way down toward the river on a separate trajectory. He stops, bent over, coughing as though the forest is already defending against him.

And behind both of
them
, an antibody surge, rolling downward. It had been leaning against Deepspire, and I’d thought it was solid ground, but now it’s moving down the hill. Others on the bridge have already seen this and we rise higher as Captain Harliss moves Highspire out of clumping distance. The surges normally stay on the ground, but they can theoretically mass up into peaks.

Noticing me, Harliss barks at someone to get me out of here, but I don’t need prompting. I flee the scene, my thoughts like shattered ice.

I am on the spiral staircase, heading down. What is my station? What do you do when your plans topple down like a massive tree in the forest? Someone rushes past me carrying a self-contained breathing apparatus and bio suit. I squeeze off to the side, wishing that the walls would absorb me, the forest would take me. By the time I wander onto the science deck, I am nearly blind with tears.

Everyone is on the starboard side, staring out the windows, but Crow is sitting at his console. He swivels around to face me, his hair looking matted and wild, but his expression calm.

“It’s figured out the web path lines,” he says. “We’ve been getting emergency calls from all over. It was a coordinated attack.”

“Other spires are down?”

He nods blackly. Then the most horrifying statement of all: “We’ve all been breaking the rules about communication. Little snippets here and there, from all of us, between all of us. For seven hundred years, Greme has been charting our paths.”

I contributed to this.
What are you like?
I asked my would-be lover. I am sick at myself.

Crow stares at the computer screen. “I think it was counting on getting us, too. At the rendezvous.”

I move to the window, but I can’t see the fallen spire from here. I whisper, “Why does it hate us so much?”

“Sark. That’s unscientific. It doesn’t hate us, it’s just developing more efficient defenses.”

“We haven’t hurt it for hundreds of years, can’t it ever forgive?”

Crow sighs. “It sees us calving new spires. We were dominant once. Maybe it’s taking the long view.”

Then I see him. A young man racing
up
the hill. A good, strong runner. Dark hair.
Jonn
.

T
HE NEXT MINUTES
will change my life forever. I am scared to death and pumped so full of adrenaline, I think my touch is electrified.

Nevertheless, I manage to reach Dry Storeroom Number Three to count to a hundred. Then, I rush down to the science deck and throw open the cabin door.

I shout breathlessly: “The captain is calling an all-hands meeting on the dining deck. Everybody out! Everybody!” I start waving furiously and people make for the door, everybody except Goose who is starting to make a call on his headset. I need to prevent this.

I rush up to him. “Captain Harliss needs you on the flight deck, right now!” I yank his headset off and push him toward the door. “He needs you, Goose. Run!” He is skeptical, but finally the notion that the captain specifically needs
him
, exerts its appeal. He moves through the door.

Crow pounces. Standing in the doorway facing Goose, he says, “Sucker.” Then he slams the door, locking it.

Dashing back to the console, he blows a line of charges at the nutrient station, and the wall shudders and sags. Then, standing on the instrument panel, we are both pulling away the broken pieces, furiously yanking them and throwing them down. Behind the wall, Littlespire’s door is revealed. There’s a thing nagging at me, but I’m so frantic, I can’t pinpoint it.

Crow, standing on the console, reaches through the hole. “Say a prayer, Sark.”

Um, I don’t know a prayer. But it’s just an expression, I realize, as Crow turns the wheel and it gives, moving counter-clockwise. The door in Littlespire’s hull swings wide into the gap left in Highspire’s wall.

We clamber through. Crow will drive the spire, and my job is to throw the rope to Jonn. It’s tied to the beginnings of the spiral staircase.

I don’t have time for more than a glimpse of Littlespire: yellowish walls, exposed circuitry, a wrap-around window. Crow has carried in his mobile computer and is jacking it in. He says, with amazing calm, “Shut the door, Sark.”

Reaching out for the handhold, I slam the door with such force the spire rocks. I spin the inside wheel, locking it.

The charges go off – little puffs like a distant landslide. Simultaneously Littlespire’s small grav annihilators kick in.

We are floating free.

The spire is just a flight deck right now. Down the spiral staircase, I can see a shadowy cave, the beginnings of crew quarters. But I have to focus on my next job: spotting Jonn on the hillside. Crow is intent on the ship systems, none of which have been tested other than virtually.

“There he is!” I exclaim. “Port side, up the hill.” Jonn is still climbing fast, scrambling over logs and darting around boulders. That’s when the thing that’s been nagging at me comes clear. There’s only room for two.

Littlespire starts to move, a thrilling sensation. We are under power.

Crow says, still intent on his computer keyboard, “When we open the door, we’re going to inhale the outside air. It might make you sick. Over the next few days, don’t give up if that happens.” He gives a lopsided smile. “
We’ve
got antibodies, too.” He glances up at me. “Time to open the door.”

I crank it open. In streams all the musky, humid, cold green air of Greme. Despite the warnings, I take a huge gulp. As we slowly move closer to our target, I say, “There’s room for three, Crow.”

“Littlespire can’t take the extra weight.” Then he says, as calmly as ever, “When Jonn climbs aboard, I’m climbing down.”

Jonn has seen us. He’s stopped, but oddly, he’s pointing down the hill.

Crow mutters, “The antibody surge is heading uphill.”

My stomach lurches in panic.

“Throw out the rope,” Crow commands.

Oh God, I forgot the most important part! I throw down the coil.

I can see the hillside and the hemlocks and Jonn with fierce clarity. I could reach out and touch Greme. Touch Jonn. This is the real world, I have time to think as Crow maneuvers the spire until the rope and Jonn’s hands make their connection.

As Jonn climbs – he’s as good on a rope climb as he is at running – the thought occurs: “We’re
already
handling Jonn’s weight and yours.” Littlespire isn’t even listing in the direction of the rope climb.

“Can’t sustain it,” Crow says. “You don’t have the fuel yet. When you get to the grasslands, your first job will be just like mine, extracting resources. The prairie might not have thought to clear deadfall.” It all sounds so clinical and proper. It’s how Crow is keeping me focused, of course.

I lean close to the opposite window, seeing that the surge is now past Deepspire and continuing uphill. Jonn is fifteen feet off the ground, but a crest could easily take him. He’s got another twenty feet to go.

Now, the wave has arrived underneath us. Time has run out. “Hurry,” I scream down at Jonn who accelerates his awful climb.

A little cone appears on the surge just below us. Then Crow is beside me, and he’s hauling up the rope, bearing Jonn’s weight as he braces his feet against the lip of the door, while I’m wrapping the excess rope around the spiral railing.

“Help him in!” Crow shouts. To my relief, Jonn has thrown his arms and shoulders over the threshold. Crow jams himself into the navigation chair and Littlespire chugs upward, away from the crest.

I haul Jonn through the door, sparing a glance down at the trembling hill that is reaching for us an arm’s-span below.

F
OR TWO DAYS
now we have been sailing across the prairie. It is late afternoon and the wind lays the golden grasses over, an inverse wave. On all sides the horizon is far away, defining a sublime emptiness except for the stacked cumulus clouds and little spikes of lightning in the distance. This new land is overwhelming and calming.

Jonn puts his hand on my knee as I work next to him. We’ve hardly spoken, there’s been so much to do. We cannot falter or ever forget that Littlespire depends on us as much as we on her. (Jonn and I call it a
her
.) After two sleepless days and nights, I occasionally nod off, and Jonn doesn’t wake me. We’ve already taken on board our first branches, grinding them in the nutrient pod that hangs off the port side.

I wonder what the mountains will look like when we first see them. I wonder if the buffalo ever came back in their endless brown herds, as in the stories. And I wonder if we’ll see remnant cities, since grass won’t cover them as Greme did.

Oddly, I think I’m going to miss Highspire. I can’t believe such a magnificent thing will not endure. And I know I’m going to miss Greme. We had our differences, but there was blame on both sides. In time... but I can’t look backward.

I’m hoping that when we get to the mountains we’ll find a welcome and the place will have a good, solid name, as a home should.

I will never forget my last view of Crow, standing on this side of the Long River, as was his request. He was walking into the tall grasses, shading his eyes from the setting sun, watching us depart. I could see him for the longest time, facing west, his dark hair blowing gently over his face.

MANMADE

MERCURIO D. RIVERA

Mercurio D. Rivera was nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for his short fiction. His stories have appeared in
The Year’s Best SF 17
, edited by David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer,
Other Worlds Than These
, edited by John Joseph Adams,
Unplugged: The Web’s Best SF and Fantasy for 2008
, edited by Rich Horton, and markets such as
Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nature
, and
Black Static
. His work has been translated and published in China, Poland and the Czech Republic. His first collection,
Across the Event Horizon
, edited by Ian Whates, is out now from Newcon Press.

O
N HIS THIRD
birthday, Alex Belfour showed up unannounced at my South Cannon beach house. I’d been curled up on the sofa at the time, dazed by the blue glow of afternoon infomercials, when the doorbell rang. I heard Tilly glide from the kitchen to the front entrance and a minute later she poked her sleek steel head into the living room.

“It’s a former patient, ma’am,” she said. “A convert.”

It took a moment for the words to register. A patient. Visiting me here?

Not having dressed or showered, I wasn’t prepared – or in the right frame of mind – to deal with a guest. “Have him make an appointment,” I said.

“I tried, ma’am, but the young man insists it’s an emergency,” Tilly said. “He says he’s willing to wait.”

I sighed and stood up, pushing aside the wool blanket and the scattered clothes that draped the sofa.

“Fine then. Have him wait.”

T
HIRTY MINUTES LATER
, as I approached the den in the rear of the house, I overheard Tilly’s soothing voice peppering the patient with diagnostic intake questions. I entered the room to find an adolescent sitting slouched in the cushioned chair, his arms crossed over his rumpled plaid shirt. Before I could even greet him, he reached into the pocket of his jeans and handed me a bright blue card, the access code for his medical history written on it. As he introduced himself and explained what he wanted, I fiddled with my smartreader, punching in the code numbers, and skimmed the pages of his med-report, which flickered across the screen.

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said, although I understood his request well enough. I suppose part of me just hoped I’d heard wrong.

“Reversed.” He repeated the word softly but emphatically. “I want the procedure reversed, Dr. DeLisse. I don’t want to be human anymore.”

“I see,” was all I could muster. I’d encountered many AIs over the years who’d had some initial difficulties adjusting to their humanity. Reactions ran the gamut from minor emotional hiccups to serious psychological disorders that sometimes warranted intervention by psyche experts – but I’d never seen a three-year-old react this way. Most AIs resigned themselves to their conversion within a matter of days or, at most, weeks.

“I’m from ManMade. Don’t you remember me, Dr. DeLisse?” He leaned forward. “You converted me.”

The boy did seem vaguely familiar. “I’m sorry, but I’ve performed so many.”

“You can change me back, right?”

I walked around a stack of unpacked boxes and sat behind my desk. “It isn’t a question of whether I can do it.” I had access to Krell TechLabs, just a hundred miles down the coast. “It’s more a question of why. Why would you possibly want to do such a thing?”