The Dark Reaches (22 page)

“Everyone says that,” Mick said proudly. “I grew up here, till I was three thousand days. I can tell you a lot. That’s the park. Hundreds and hundreds of meters north to south, more’n two hundred across. Look at all the green. Those are real trees growing in there, did you know that? Real
Earth
trees. That stuff that looks like green smoke, those are leaves. Up close you can see. They’re all different, too. One of them grows apples, wild apples, free because it’s not a farm, we used to get into fights—”

“Mick,” Pilang said patiently, “it’s time we moved along. Did you get through to your oldfather?”

Mick’s thin face fell. “I forgot to say. He’s dead. Died about three hundred days ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” Linnea said, touching the girl’s shoulder in sympathy.

Hana was having none of it. “Dead?” she said sharply. “You talked Esayeh into giving you a jumpship lift all this way, and you knew there was no one here waiting for you?”

“I,” Mick said loftily, “take care of myself.” She turned upside down, the lengthening stubble of her black hair making an aureole around her head against the bright light from the habitat interior. “I got a job waiting for me, in the farms, in the culture rooms, pulling the calluses apart, putting up the seedlings in little bags. Takes little hands, I still got ’em. I used to do it when I was little, see, so they’ll take me back. It’s a start, and you get food, and there’s always someplace to sleep. So don’t go floating over
me
.”

Pilang joined them at the window. “Look, Mick,” she said, “you know how to find me—remember, it’s the Rosie and Jim Memorial Clinic at Ring Three. They can relay to me wherever I am, and they’ll know to help you if you need it. So if you fall into any trouble, you call.”

“Not me,” Mick said. “But I’ll remember.” She stuck out a hand at Hana, pulled her in close, and kissed her cheek, did the same for Pilang, then Linnea. And at that moment Esayeh, the ship’s pilot, emerged from the docking tube, thin and gray in his plain coveralls, smiling faintly as he looked around at what must be, for him, the sights of home.

Mick launched herself at him and kissed him as well, as he clutched at her in startlement. “Thank you,” she said. “Can I call you oldfather? Because you saved my life, that way station was going to kill me, nothing ever
happens
there, I was going
insane
. ’Bye!”

Linnea watched as the girl vanished around the curve of the docking bay. When she turned to Hana, the younger woman rolled her eyes at Linnea. “Coming?”

Linnea looked at Esayeh. “Not now. I think Esayeh and I need to have a talk.” He’d been evading her, evading her questions, long enough.

Hana blinked at Linnea, then looked doubtfully at Pilang, who said firmly, “I entirely agree with you, Lin.”

“And then,” Linnea said, “I’d like a ride back to Triton.”

There was a silence, no one looking at her; then Esayeh said, “I don’t know when that will be possible. When it will be safe.”

Her voice sharp with disappointment, Linnea said, “You go there all the time.”

“I go when Pilang has reason to,” he said mildly. “The Tritoners tolerate my ship because they need our doctors. But otherwise, I stay away from Triton. When I’m docked there, I can’t even leave my ship.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “They’d arrest me. Ancient history, but they don’t forget.”

Behind him, Pilang snorted derisively.

Esayeh glanced at her, then nodded at Linnea. “Look. In exchange for answering your questions, I want seven more days of your time and attention.”

“For what?”

“Learning. I think you’ll like it. And at the end of it—we’ll see. It depends on what both of us learn.”

Linnea eyed him. “Is this some kind of test?”

“An opportunity,” Esayeh said, his expression serious.

“May I send a message to Triton? To Iain?”

“No,” Esayeh said. “You must promise not to try that. You could endanger many innocent lives if Kimura Hiso chose to lead one of his daring expeditions to rescue you. Which he would be quite likely to do.”

“And
then
,” Linnea said patiently, “after seven days, you’ll take me back to Triton.”

“I promise you I will return you to Triton, if you choose to go, as long as it’s safe,” Esayeh said. “The Cold Minds stir in-system sometimes, you know.”

Linnea studied him. Her increasing worry about Iain was a constant itch in the back of her mind—but the opportunity to find out more about these people and their history, a different perspective on the situation here—that could be valuable in itself. And if there was, as Esayeh hinted, something more—well, if he wanted her to spend a week under his eye, if that might lead to more answers, then she would have to try. She nodded sharply. “All right. I agree.”

“Seven days,” Pilang said. “Mind my words, Esayeh! I’m overdue for the loop out to Miranda as it is. Patients are waiting.”

“I’ll be here and ready,” Esayeh said, sounding aggrieved. “When do I not come back when you need me?”

“The first time it happens,” Pilang said, “will be enough for me. Watch and take care, old man.” She took him by the shoulders, pulled herself to him, and kissed him on the mouth.

“I’ll still be here tomorrow,” Esayeh said with dignity as she floated back from him, “but I don’t mind the kiss.”

Pilang snorted, and she and Hana moved off, trailing their travel bags. Linnea turned back to Esayeh. “Where can we talk safely?”

He swept a wide gesture. “Anywhere.”

“Really?”

“This isn’t Triton. No monitors here, except for pressure and air quality and such. Well, people listen in if they can, but that’s just gossip, nobody pays attention to it. . . . Come. We’ll take a turn in the park. It would be a shame not to see such a wonder for yourself after coming all this way.”

“All this way,” Linnea said suspiciously, “means—from Triton?”

“From your home, of course,” Esayeh said. “Those worlds far away. I’d like to hear about them, too. . . . Here’s a lock.” He swung them both into a small, chilly cubby, cranked the door on the docking-port side shut, pulled a lever. There was a hiss, and the pressure dropped slightly. Then he cranked open the inner door.

Light blazed in out of emptiness. Linnea swallowed hard, found a handhold right outside the opening, and swung around into the vast open space. She found herself facing a spongy surface completely covered with mats of a tiny-leaved creeping herb with a rich, complicated smell. She knew she ought to turn around, that Esayeh would be expecting her to admire the view, but she knew, she knew that if she thought of it just wrong—

She peered carefully over her shoulder.

Endless depths yawned below her back, and her grip on the handhold tightened convulsively. She studied the dense green mat of herbs intently, her mind spinning. In this bright sunny light, some were silvery green, some yellow-green; and some of the tiny leaves were edged with—

“Linnea,” Esayeh said wearily, “just turn around.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep, shuddering breath. Then, cautiously, she turned, keeping a tight grip on the handhold. Light, space, a vast arch overhead—over there—down. But no weight, nothing holding her up—
No. Down. I am lying on a lawn. A flat lawn.
She felt Esayeh’s warm hand on her shoulder, anchoring her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve never been in zero gee in—so much space. It’s not like being in a ship.” She laughed a little wildly. “In a ship, there’s nowhere to
fall
.”

“Look across,” Esayeh’s gentle voice said. “Not at the big lights, they’re too bright. Past them. See the treetops?”

“Mick was talking about the trees,” Linnea said. Two men holding hands scudded past, twenty meters away, out,
down
—

“Don’t watch the people,” Esayeh said patiently. “You’ll get dizzy. I came from Triton, I know what this is like at first.” He tugged loose a sprig of the herb, bruised it between finger and thumb, passed it to Linnea. “This is thyme.”

Linnea looked at it in confusion, then made the connection. “Oh. We have that, too.”

“Close your eyes,” Esayeh said. “Focus on the scent. . . . There. Now, look out again. This is the park. This surface we’re on—it’s not dirt, it anchors and waters the plants, but it can’t float free. This central ring is all plants and trees. North and south, toward the ends of the cylinder, look there. Maybe you can see the houses. Live here long enough, your turn comes up, you can live in the park for a while.”

“Was this—” Linnea frowned. “The design’s wrong. But I read stories, weren’t there habitats that spun, gave some gravity?”

“Close to Earth there were,” Esayeh said. “Long lost, of course, all of them.”

“Destroyed?”

“Oh, yes,” Esayeh said. “Broken down for metal by the Cold Minds. . . . Deepsiders don’t bother with spin. Too much engineering, they say, and for what? So you can raise goats, maybe, like the Tritoners? Rabbits, chickens, they don’t mind zero gee, and they taste good enough. And who wants to stick to the ground all their lives?” He swung away from the lock of the hatch. “Look. We’ll pull ourselves along the surface. I promise we won’t get separated from it. But I want to show you more.”

Linnea let him tug her loose from her hold, and they began a slow drift along the green surface toward a distant clump of trees and buildings near one end of the huge cylinder. “What is this place? How did the deepsiders build anything so big, this far out?”

“They didn’t,” Esayeh said. “This was supposed to be a collection tank for helium-3 coming up from Neptune. It was never used; plans changed when the Cold Minds rose.”

“So the deepsiders improvised,” Linnea said. “Don’t waste, don’t want.”

“We have a saying like that, yes.” Esayeh smiled. “So deepsiders pushed this tank into a higher orbit around Neptune. The walls were double already, and we just built into them and then onto them, inside and out—workshops and sleep cubbies and food shops and machine shops and labs, everything we needed, bit by bit over the years. The docking ring was already there, we just repurposed it. When the last of us got booted off Triton, we made this our Triton, our center. The deepsider hearth. We go anywhere we want, but this is where everyone comes to live for a while, when they can. Whoops.” They had drifted a little too far from the surface, and Linnea gripped his hand tightly. “That’s a tree ahead,” she said nervously. A tree with a round green canopy of big leaves like hands, reaching toward them it seemed. She hoped it didn’t have spikes or something.

“Land with grace,” Esayeh announced, and caught a branch neatly with his free hand. Of course that made Linnea, attached to his other hand, spin on around the branch, leaves whipping in her face, until she could bring herself to a stop with a desperate grip on two big bunches of twigs. A couple of small children floating past giggled, then politely looked away.

“Sorry,” Esayeh said. He swept a gesture of welcome. “This, of course, is
Acer macrophyllum
. Dwarfed a bit, but the real thing.”

“The tree,” she said cautiously. “That’s the name of this tree? Or this kind of tree?”

“The species,” Esayeh said. He frowned at her. “Don’t they have trees in the Hidden Worlds?”

“Not where I grew up,” Linnea said.

“No trees at all!” He stared at her. “Where did you get your air?”

“The oceans,” she said. “Seaweed and little tiny things, plankton. We also had fish and mud. That was about it.”

Esayeh pursed his lips. “I can’t promise you any mud here. Fish and seaweed—we have some of those growing in tanks.”

“I don’t miss them that much,” Linnea said. She looked around—no one was in earshot. And there was no telling the next time that would happen, if it ever did. “Esayeh—”

She waited for him to cut her off, to put her off, but he only floated there, relaxed, looking at her with kindly patience.

So this is the time at last.
She took a breath. “Esayeh, are you the one who called me here? Here to Earth?”

He did not look away. “I think . . . I did. Did you have dreams? In otherspace?”

“I saw things,” she said. “Iain, the other pilot with me—” At the thought of Iain—his face, his voice, his touch—she felt a wave of longing and loss. She swallowed and went on. “Iain knew what the images were when I described them. Pictures of Earth.”

“Of Earth!” He caught her by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “Exactly! Exactly! The Memorials! I knew the Line would never let them be forgotten—I knew any pilot would know what they meant.”

“You were trying to reach out to other jump pilots? In otherspace?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes lit with eagerness. “I took long jumps in otherspace, out and back, for years. I reached out toward the Hidden Worlds, and I was sure,
sure
that I sensed other minds out there, other pilots transiting otherspace. Only in the Hidden Worlds would there be so many jump pilots spending so long in otherspace. Here the jumps are short, you see, just in-system. . . . But the minds I sensed were hard to touch, hard to hear—until you came. The others, they were masked, muted—but you!”

“I was different?”

“You stood out like a flame,” he said. “I
knew
you were there! I sensed you out there! I spent days, weeks listening for you—when I caught you I thought of those images, I tried to make them real—”

“I thought,” she said quietly, “that I was going mad. So did Iain.”

“But you weren’t, you see, so all is well.” He beamed at her. “I’m very pleased that the information came through so clearly! I’ve had theories about that for a long time, about how we perceive otherspace, about whether those perceptions can be modulated, manipulated, shared—And the jump point. I was waiting, but I couldn’t get near you, by bad luck Triton was in conjunction when you came through—”

“And so,” she said patiently, “you kidnapped me from Triton. To bring me here. Why?”