The Sunborn (23 page)

“They come from the Oort cloud. That much I’m sure of—the one onboard with us sent a strange, warped—well, I guess you’d call it a map. In three dimensions, in warped perspectives, with weird signifiers we can’t figure out yet. The sun’s at the far left and down, and whatever made all this happen, it’s a lot farther out than Pluto.”

Another rustle of disbelief. Eyes cast sideways, eyebrows raised.

She went on, not knowing how her words would be received. From her tone she obviously didn’t care. “And it’s clear from all the vector displays and orbits that this has been going on for a long time. It picked up when they started getting our radio signals, I guess, judging from the timeline—if we’ve read it right. Thing is, Pluto, for them, is a great experiment. By deliberately infusing greater energy than the planet’s own low-level ecology had available, they have evolved a sentient native Plutonian life-form—the zand.”

The reporters were muttering, agitated.

“Yeah, I know—evolution doesn’t work that way. Well, this is
driven.
Forced change.”

More murmurs and grumbles greeted this.

“What I’m saying here is that I’ve recognized what Pluto reminded me of. Grad school! Y’know, when you do those set-piece experiments? Testing simple biospheres-in-a-box, to see how they respond to higher salinity, or heat, or chemical drivers?
Pluto is a big lab experiment.
”

An uproar. Scientists and reporters alike jumped out of their seats and shouted. Some shook fists.

This is going to look great on vid,
Axelrod thought.
Maybe we should put these press conferences only on the pay channels.

Shanna went on, unperturbed, hours away at light speed. “You tech guys are gonna love this next part! Simple ohmic heating from currents wasn’t enough. They’re trying to run it all that way, the whole planet, including the borers and flappers—which I haven’t even had time to study yet. So much to do!”

A famous biologist stood and started to make a speech to the audience, his face red, eyes bulging. Axelrod gathered that Shanna’s views insulted not only the man’s entire professional career but his culture. Luckily the audience shushed him.

“They had to apply the planet’s electrodynamically derived currents directly to the ‘foodrocks’ the native animals consume—and their interference with Charon’s orbit has messed up that process a bit. These beautiful auroras are the wastage of the experiment…which may well be failing.”

Axelrod blinked. This was far more than he could ever have imagined, but already his mind spun with a way to play it.

“Centuries ago the Darksiders culled the zand colony of unwanted genetic traits. The zand remember it as a battle, we figure. Remember it with terror and pride—a big event in their folklore. A cold-blooded Darwinian pruning operation, and yes—I’m having real trouble with the ethics of that. For sure. Maybe this whole damned place is a…well, a luxury. An experiment by beings we haven’t even seen yet.”

Her voice was tight, controlled…and Axelrod could tell she was on the ragged edge of fatigue. Not sleeping; the ship monitors said so. And from the psychers’ feed line, they knew that the crew was worried about her. Sure, they said, she was abrasive and intense, and yet they tried to support her, the captain. Also their only field biologist, who was trying to put the whole jigsaw picture together. But there were limits. Her voice was thin, stretched.

Axelrod grimaced. He couldn’t do a damn thing to help her. He got to his feet, steaming with energy that had no place to go.

“The Darksiders themselves—or Oort clouders, whoever
that
might be—they’ve…well,
developed
the zand. I’m unclear what’s really behind this whole…project. Their idea seems to be to understand how life can exist on worlds. ‘Warmlife,’ the Darksider said—but I think it’s speaking for something else. That something has tried to bridge the gap. Figuring out life on worlds. Running a big circuit, far larger than planets. Somewhere there’s a voltage source, and Pluto’s at the other end, the resistor. Ohm’s law, big-time. Using electrically generated
chemical
energy for the ultimate purpose of exploring inward. Toward the sun. Toward us.
We
are
their
frontier. And they are ours.”

This rush of information stilled the room. But only for a moment. A storm of disbelief stirred, faces contorted. Shouts. The noted biologist was on his feet again.

“So we can’t come back. Not yet, anyhow. That big nuke you’re sending out to relieve us—we’ll meet them.”

“What!” Axelrod paced, hands behind back. “She can’t just—” And he knew she could.

“What happened to us on the surface was first contact, and a very strange one. DIS got us through it. So on impulse—I admit it!—I zapped them, the Darksiders. Then they saved my fool neck, and Jordin’s, too. Figure that one out. And now—now, as the only humans in these parts, we’re sort of elected as ambassador to Outside. Somehow we’ve got to open negotiations with them. Or would you like the next contact to take the form of a rip-roaring interplanetary war? With beings we don’t know anything about.”

Axelrod blinked again. In an instant he saw destiny wrapping itself around his daughter like a dark shroud. “Shanna, don’t take any more risks. It…it’s not worth it,” he said softly.

Beside him Dr. Jensen spat back, “Shut up. You know it is.”

For the first time the young, confident voice wavered. “I’m making this decision sound easy. It’s not; I’m not that heartless. It’s going to be lonely out here. But my crew agrees, and we’re staying. Beyond nominal mission duration. Beyond nominal systems lifetime even, if we have to. There are plenty of backups onboard that big ol’ nuke you’re flying out to us. Extra supplies, tech, crew. We can make it!”

Astonished silence in the room.

“And there were other things I’d hoped to do. We’ll keep on making our schedules, check in regularly. Lots more to do out here!”

A long pause, then: “Good-bye, signing off for the crew of the
Proserpina
,” a quickly choked-off breath, and then only the rumble of interstellar noise.

C
OLD DIM SUNSET STAINED
Rendezvous in a gray glow. A hard black sea seethed on the far horizon, awaiting the sun’s banishment. Icy mountainsides lay clean-picked of any food, save for the fine dusting of brown spores that had settled when the afternoon air began to cool. Out at sea the massed zand, thousands strong, sang the long, lacy Hymn of Day’s Departure. The music soared through the dimming air—a multipart canon. As each small group of zand singing its part came to the song’s end, it broke away from the larger choir, its members dispersing over the lapping violet sea.

The Ark-zand swam steadily toward the setting sun. Lightgiver’s rays now streamed through a gauzy veil of storm clouds, and the sea rose steaming with a rising wind. They had lingered too long, the zand feared, their chorus freighted with skittering anxiety. To be caught afloat, when the falling temperature irreversibly triggered its night-change, could well be fatal. Already, the borers had vanished into the freezing deep and the flappers were gone from the sobering sky.

And the zand had much to live for now, they knew. The young were quick, eager to learn, zestful. Nearly all of them had survived, thanks to the huge loud vessel from the sky, a miracle. It had killed many Darksiders, leaving their carcasses littering the plains. From these the zand had fed. Even Old One had shed its customary gloom and seemed determined now to live into another day, and many more.

Clouds rolled up, towering redly into the sky, obscuring Lightgiver. A freezing blast from Darkside brought the first whirling, spiky crystals of snow. Time was running out. The sea stiffened, readying to turn hard.

Lift! Lift!
Together, singing, the zand decided to gamble some of their precious fuel reserves. Lifegas flared in orange plumes. They soared steeply up from the freezing ocean. Far off, looming against the oncoming storm, rose the peaks where they had spent their early morning recovery time. Arcing into deft parabolas, the zand swarm drove on hard through the fast-cooling air.

Snow came in fiercely, blowing in bitter, blinding gusts. The zand reached their steepled retreat from the long, hard night, some veering, crashing into the ramparts of a crag. Sea level dropped precipitously as the surface fluid froze, shrank in volume, and sank. The groans and shuddering spasms of the daily cycle reverberated low and strong through the sharpening air.

Late! We are late!
Zand slammed into slopes, tumbled from the gathering air, died in their dozens. But most landed and found shelter. Quickly now the surviving zand drew in masses of the new, loose snow and blew it over the foodrock that would again, as last night, serve as its cache. The foodrock brimmed with fresh energy, gathered from the crackling soil itself. Sparks still jumped when the zand tumbled rocks into place. The foodrock darkened in color beneath a blanket of freshly formed borer spores.

The Ark-zand stopped in its calls to the working ranks. Something here was different. The field of black, night-ready spores was broken down the slope by an irregularly shaped mass not made of ice.

Lightgiver be praised! The heavenly Provider from the far dark had sent the zand a skystone.

And Old One had taught it how needful the skystones were for life. A touch and they carried fresh knowledge into all who would listen. Voices from the Great Dark.

Carefully the Ark-zand moved the rough stone up to the edge of the cache and covered it with snow. In the snow blur it did not see through the blizzard’s dancing curtains the small, smooth sphere which had guided that skystone down so that it would land on the world gently, without the usual ice-shattering explosion of hot vapor.

Nor did it know that the Earther it had met that day was at that moment alertly monitoring the little probe, drawing it away from Pluto’s weak, icy grip.

Sighing, the Ark-zand settled into the grateful embrace of sleep. It felt a last crackling surge of energy as a current ran down from the sky and found waiting conductivity in the nearby rock. So it would be through the long night. Currents flowed, storing energy within intricate chemical balances. Though this voltage spike came from immensely far away, in thin trickles of electrons streaming across magnetic fields, to the Ark-zand it simply came from the sky in a prickly, delightful gust.

All such gifts were from Lightgiver, it thought. Or else from the Far Dark, where legend said greater entities lurked. So much to understand! The two rulers of the sky, a point of fierce light and the opposite realm of vast dark, were the twin poles of a world that did not need explanation. Creation simply…was.

As it ebbed into restful calm, it issued one last humble prayer of thanks. Creation simply was.

J
ORDlN GOT RIGHT TO
the point. He rapped on the door of her cabin and sat in the only other chair. Crisp, efficient. His mouth not canted at that odd friendly angle anymore. Looking determined.

“Mary Kay and I have been talking.”

“Yes?”

“You nearly got us both killed down there.”

“You got us out, though. I’m recommending you for special recognition by—”

He shook his head, two quick jerks. “We can’t be taking risks like that.”

“Just being out here is risky—”

“I’m here to notify you that as per ship’s regs, and contractual constraints, I’m filing a complaint with ISA.” He said this in a flat monotone, memorized. He had probably written it out.

“Oh?”

Clearly he had planned to leave it at that, but he was tempted to say more, tongue darting over his lips. “The whole idea was just plain asking for trouble.”

“I’m not going to debate my decisions, especially post facto.”

“Earthside says you told them we crew had all agreed.”

“As I recall, I said you
would
agree. When you had thought it over.”

He slammed a palm on her desk. “
That’s
what I mean.”

“Jordin, I wasn’t trained to be captain. I’m just making do.”

“Not doing too well, either,” he said sullenly.

“A captain isn’t always right.”

“And crew always has a right to their own opinions.”

“True—but they don’t have a right to their own facts.”

“We don’t think all these ideas hold up.”

She shrugged—an effort, because her whole body had gone rigid.
Tired.
“Maybe they won’t. That’s research.”

“Okay, fine, your privilege. Just thought I’d tell you. It’s Earthside’s matter now.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

His eyes darted around the room, not looking at her, acutely uncomfortable. “You bet.” Then he was gone.

She barely had time to think about that when a beep told her an incoming vid was ready, defragged. She called it up on her cabin screen, and it was from Dad. No tag title, just Axelrod the Great popping up on the screen, wearing slacks, blue shirt, auburn sweater. From the moon, in his personal study, fake digital fireplace crackling with flame in the background for the homey touch.
Personal message,
the sub tracker said.

Uh-oh…
She paused it, got a glass of wine to brace herself, and watched.

“Hey, honey, you’ve got the whole world agog down here. What discoveries! As incredible as the zand vids are, the Darksiders are simply mind-blowing! Some kind of superrobots, they look like. I’ve—the Consortium has—gotta get some. Just think of what their tech will mean down here. Miles ahead of anything on Earth. Asteroid mining will be a cinch with those babies.
Proserpina
may be ISA, but
High Flyer
is ours, and there’s plenty of room to bring back interesting cargo. I’ll tell their crew to get ready.”

Shanna suppressed a retort—
no sense talking back to a recorded message.

“Sorry, got so excited about all your great work, I forgot to say how
really
worried I was about you. Don’t take more chances than you have to; you’re still my little girl. Pretty dangerous stuff.” He paused and nervously shifted in his seat, eyebrows lifting. “And, ah, rumor is, your crew may be thinking the same.”