Sarnai said, “And that was three hundred kilometers, not three thousand.” And her leg braces had frozen and the intern had nearly died from mercury poisoning, but she didn’t want to remind anyone of that because she would need funding for the next round of testing. “Visibility out there is near zero. That, and the level of mercury in the air this time of year, makes flight impossible. It has to be the sleds, and that means we need more time to ensure the serum is stable across that distance. Wait the extra days and send in someone for the survivors.”
“Are you volunteering?” Otryad said. “I thought you would be the first, after what happened to your family.”
“Fuck you,” Sarnai said. Everyone went very still. It wasn’t just an inappropriate outburst; it was a serious breach of etiquette, to speak that way to a superior. “You want to send me because I’m expendable. An old man and a cripple. We’ll die out there, and the serum will go bad, but you’ll be able to tell the community you did all you could against the plague, against tumbledown, then you’ll quarantine them and cut off supplies and hoard it here in the core.”
“There is hope in us going,” Khulan said, firmly. “Think of those children who survived, like you. Even if the serum doesn’t survive, they should know we care for them. That’s the covenant we all made here, to care for one another. We can’t abandon them, even if—”
“Even if they end up like me,” Sarnai said, “but you know, except for all of you, my life isn’t that bad. It’s not a horror story. You all just keep making it one with your fear and your pity, holding me up like some kind of totem against what’s happening out there. It will come for you, too. It’s coming now. You can throw me at it, but—”
“No one will make you do anything,” Otryad said. “I’m sorry you feel this way about the mission, but we are not making you do anything. Batu, Temujin, stay here. As Sarnai pointed out, we’ll need to discuss quarantine procedures. There will be survivors making their way here, whether Khulan is successful or not. That’s all, thank you.”
Enkh shot Sarnai a long look as she hustled from the room. Sarnai pushed herself up, using the table for leverage, and grabbed her cane. When she limped out into the hall, Khulan was waiting for her by the oxygen bar.
Khulan fell into step beside her. “There is no shame in being afraid,” he said, “but you did not have to be rude.”
“I’m not fit to go on that journey,” Sarnai said, “and neither are you. And you know it.”
“What does that mean, fit?” Khulan said, spreading open his palms. “You think it means you have a perfect body, one that makes sense? We would be more effective creatures with bigger eyes, more hands, tougher skins. But we are what we are because that’s what was best suited to the place and time where we evolved. Out here, we need different things. Smarts, guts, tenacity, certainly.” He patted his belly. “Fat, absolutely. But most of all, yes, we need hope instead of despair. The first to go are those who despair. They cannot stand all this darkness, this madness.” He pressed her sternum with his finger. “But you are still here.” He tapped his chest. “I am still here.” Huffed a breath that smelled of tobacco and peppermint. “We are best suited to the task ahead.”
“I’m not as fat as you,” Sarnai said.
“We’re not all perfect,” he said, patting her tummy. She could not feel it.
“If the serum goes bad,” she said, “and it will, then . . .”
Khulan sighed. “If it goes bad, then there is only you, but I prefer hope over despair.”
Sarnai closed her eyes. She heard the coughing again. The death of ghosts. “We’re all going to die out there,” she said.
“If that plague reaches the core communities, we’re all going to die in here, too,” Khulan said.
Sarnai opened her eyes. “Shit,” she said.
“That’s my lead dog’s name,” Khulan said.
The sled was a smooth, rocket-shaped slab of metal, one of many parts of the old colonial ships that had been refitted for a more useful purpose. The dogs had been bred from various strains that had arrived in embryonic form on the ships and mixed with local creatures to create a hybrid capable of breathing the atmosphere unaided and scrabbling through ice laced with sharp volcanic rock and pools of frozen mercury. They had dual coats: fur and feathers, and giant beaks with forked tongues. Their ears were large and pointed; they could hear even the tiniest sound miles away, and it made them excellent for detecting approaching predators, of which there were many on the open tundra.
Sarnai rode in the right side of the sled’s tube with Khulan on the left. The tube was snug and warm inside and could be sealed against cold for the night, but not pressurized. Their environmental suits had to stay on. They were insulated by their supplies and the six cases of serum at their feet. Why Khulan insisted on them when Sarnai knew they would go bad was beyond her.
Sarnai didn’t look back until they were already fifty kilometers from the research station, the dogs squawking out a warning to passersby to clear the sled way for their passage. The core settlements were densely populated. The houses had all been made from prefabricated parts printed out by one of the many structural printers. On the horizon to the north, Sarnai saw the unfinished peak of the colony’s first major air purifier, still two years away from completion. It would effectively remove the mercury from the air and add oxygen, then remix that with the existing air to make it more palatable for humans. The mercury it collected was stored in great vats beneath it, ready for transport and sale off-world.
The wind was already bitter cold. Sarnai ducked back into the tube of the sled and out of the gale. She pushed her personal pack into her lap. She could feel nothing from her sternum down, so she had learned to check all of her movements by sight to ensure she didn’t injure herself.
Sarnai and Khulan did not speak until they broke for their first rest of the day after one hundred kilometers. The dogs could do about two hundred kilometers a day if pushed, which meant it would take fifteen days, at the very least, to get to Batbayer. If Sarnai didn’t die on the way there, she imagined dying of some infection on the way back from having to reuse her catheters.
They camped against a massive snowdrift hulked up behind a hill, circling the dogs for protection against the wind. Khulan volunteered to clean the dogs’ taloned feet of snow and ice. Sarnai clunked around in her leg braces, keeping her balance with a ski pole as she kicked out a place to set up the heat source. She and Khulan hunched over the heat-emitting blue orb and warmed their tea pouches. She sucked hers down without ceremony through a straw that clipped through her respirator.
Khulan reached into his environmental suit and handed her a bottle of whisky.
“Those best prepared survive out here,” he said, and chuckled.
A cawing sound came from the west, and the dogs’ ears perked up.
“Sounds like stinging lilies,” Sarnai said.
“Too close to the core settlements,” Khulan said, but he peered to the west.
“How long do you give us?” Sarnai said. “Two hundred kilometers?”
“A thousand, at least,” he said and held out his hand to get the whisky back. “If you won’t drink that, I will.”
She snorted and handed it over. “I prefer red wine,” she said. In truth, she didn’t want to drink any alcohol on this trip because the more she drank, the more she’d have to cath out through the stoma in her abdomen. But then, if she was going to die anyway, who cared if she had to cath out every three or four hours instead of every six? She very nearly snatched the whisky back.
The cawing sound crackled across the sky again. It was already dusk; days were about six hours long on Narantu during the long winter season. In the summer, the small red eye of the second sun would appear and give them a little more light for an additional six hours while they danced through one another’s orbits, but not much more heat. Already Sarnai could see the brightest stars peering down at them through the darkening sky.
After they ate, Khulan went off to urinat
e, and Sarnai changed her colonoscopy bag, then they were lining up the dogs again and mushing out across the tundra. Sarnai looked back, again, wondering if she would see the stinging lilies, but she saw only the low, round mounds of the last of the core settlements fading fast behind them, their glowing house markers sprinkled across the tundra like tough little diamonds.
They traveled like that for two days until they came to the end of the core settlements and reached the truly wild tundra. Sarnai already longed for a shower and cursed her greasy hair. Living inside of a suit for as long as she intended to was going to get itchy and uncomfortable. What a fool she’d been to come out here. She could have survived tumbledown if it hit the core settlements. What did she care about the people on the edges? They had been dumb like her parents, to live out there all alone. But did their children deserve to die for it? That’s what kept her up at night. That’s what she dreamed about under the brilliant stars. She dreamed of her dead parents, and her brother screaming that he had seen a man with a dog’s face while he tried to cut off his own hand.
The third day, they packed up the sled and Sarnai must have nodded off, because when the sled jerked to a halt, it woke her. The dogs were squawking and barking. Sarnai leaned over and saw the whole front end of the sled tangled in creeping black tendrils. As she hauled herself up out of the sled she saw Khulan forty paces away on the other side, taking great swings at the creepers with a machete.
Sarnai grabbed a flame pistol from the gear box in the back and sprayed at the black creepers. The creepers hissed at her, untangling their little hooked claws and swarming toward her. She jerked the pistol again, spraying more fire. This time the tendrils retreated.
Khulan yelled. Sarnai turned just in time to see him fall down, clutching at his arm.
Sarnai went around the sled, picking her way over to him as quickly as she could. Khulan lay in the snow. He convulsed. Sarnai tried to bend over. She didn’t want to sit because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get back up. Her braces were already getting clotted with ice here outside the sled.
“Khulan!” she said. “Khulan!”
He was motionless.
She gave in and shifted her weight, signaling to her braces that she wanted to kneel. They complied, plopping her onto the snowy ground beside Khulan. Sarnai ripped off her glove and checked for a pulse. Nothing. She removed his respirator and put her ear to his mouth. No breath. Not a sound. She knew this. She had seen this before, in older people in the settlement. Their hearts gave out, especially in the winter season when they picked up a shovel or a carcass as if they were fifteen again.
“Khulan!” she yelled again. Sarnai knew basic first aid, but it had been years since she had cause to use it. She checked to make sure his airway was clear and kept her respirator clear so she could breathe into his mouth. He was warm but so, so still, and with both their suits unsealed, that heat would not last long. Sarnai pumped his chest, counting off out loud as the dogs yowled behind her. Her fingers went numb, and she had to put her glove back on. Soon she was light-headed, winded. It was full dark now, and as she worked she took little breaks to shoot her fire pistol at the tangled creepers and seal herself and Khulan back into their suits. The temperature was dropping now, tumbling from forty to fifty below, and she knew there were bits of frozen mercury that had flitted into her suit. They couldn’t go on like this much longer.
How long she kept breathing and pumping, she didn’t know. But Khulan’s body was cooling, and she was breathless. Finally, Sarnai let herself fall beside him. Tears stung her eyes but froze before they could fall. She put on her respirator and resealed her suit. She listened to the rustling of the creepers. Her lips tasted of whisky; the last tipple Khulan had taken. Sarnai gritted her teeth. She took up the fire pistol again and used the ski pole to help herself up. She waded through the snow, spraying long lines of fire at the creepers until they retreated back into their burrows.
Sarnai pulled out a blanket from the gear box and rolled Khulan over it, then wrapped him up and secured him using chemical tape. She grabbed his body and pulled and pulled until sweat rolled down her face and her arms ached, but she managed to get him to the sled.
“I have to go back,” she said to Khulan’s body. “We are both going to die for nothing. The plague will come here and rip through all of them. And what do I care? I’ll live! I’m immune!” She yelled and swore until her voice was hoarse, then collapsed against the side of the sled.
She heaved in a breath. One breath, another, as she had done with Khulan. She let out a long, deep sob and pressed her gloved hands to her face. She could turn around. She was only three days out. She could go back. Sarnai stared long at Khulan’s body. If she went back, then Khulan had died out here for nothing. Khulan, who had been born on the ships and first set down his feet here when he was five years old, the last link they had to some other time, some other place. He believed in their survival here.
Did she? Sarnai struggled to her feet again. She rolled Khulan off to the side of the sled and tucked him into a snowbank. He wasn’t going to go anywhere, though a predator might take him—that was a possibility. She took a shovel out of the gear box and covered him as best she could, then planted a long red pole into the snow beside him, one of the emergency markers they kept. If any patrols ran out here, and they were few, they might find him. She left a recorded note on his pop-up display explaining who he was and where she was and where she was headed, then clunked her way into the sled.
Sarnai whistled to the dogs, and off they went, clucking and snarling toward the north, ever north.
“We are the chosen people,” Sarnai’s mother had told her while they huddled in the warmth of the blue globe that was the center of their home. “No other people have a world like ours, one so rich in resources. When the air is cleared we will trade with others, and we will sleep on piles of soft furs, and we will never be cold.”
But her fathers had told her a different story. They were both lean men, but what she remembered most was the rumble of their voices and the roughness of their hands. “We will survive here because we care for each other,” her older father had said, the one with the thick white beard. She had called him Baba, and the other, with the soft black beard, Papa. “We are all here for each other.”
Her Baba patted her head and squeezed her arm, and it was now, in this memory, this dream, that Sarnai realized why she had not minded Khulan patting her arm. “No matter how terrible,” her Baba said, and he smelled of lavender soap and sunshine in that moment, “we have one another. This world is harsh, but we have each other. You understand?”
She didn’t, then.
Sarnai woke with a start. She felt cold and stiff. She lay in the bed of the sled, tucked neatly in its comforting embrace. A little sunlight peeked through the seams of the door to the tube, which she had closed the night before. She opened it, releasing six inches of snow into her lap. The world outside was brilliant white, and she closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her face, reflexively. Her head throbbed. She sucked in a deep breath and started to work her arms and shift her braces. She chanced another look out across the creamy white expanse, and there, over the heaped forms of the dogs curled up together, she saw a dark shape moving at the base of a sea of mountains in the distance.
She crawled out of the sled and fed the dogs the protein pellets from the gear box, all the while keeping her eyes on the figure. It wasn’t human, and it was lumbering out in the far distance, but still looked huge. That meant it was likely one of the massive predators that stalked the settlements between the core and the rim.
Sarnai secured the fire pistol on her right leg brace and slipped back into the sled. She called to the dogs and off they went. In some ways, this journey was easier with one. There was no one to haggle with. No one to say when to stop or go. She and the dogs kept the pace. But it also meant that every hundred kilometers, she was the only one who could stop and feed the dogs and clean their feet—twelve dogs, forty-eight fe
et—all by herself. She was exhausted at the end of every day. The days began to blur and shift together. The migraines hit her hard on the sunny days, and she could barely raise her head to call to the dogs during those hours. She was exhausted, and she stank, and after six days on her own, she became convinced that she was lost.
Worse, she was lost and something was following her.
Sarnai fed the dogs and sighted her route using her spotty GPS. There were still a few satellites aloft that had been released by the first settlers, but there was often weather-related interference. She snarled up at the sky and tucked the GPS back into the gear box. How terrible must that other world have been, for her people to travel across the yawning maw of space to land here? Sarnai settled back into the sled and yelled at the dogs to embark. The sled lurched forward, then jerked to a halt. She yelled again, but the dogs were yipping and cawing.
She struggled up in her seat and saw what they had caught a whiff of—the big, hulking thing that she had seen days before, on the horizon. It was a five-ton bear, and the long line of spikes along its spine were rippling. It snarled at the dogs from its perch twenty feet up on a low rise.
Sarnai yelled, “Go on! Get!” like it was some domestic animal. Instead, it trundled forward, toward the dogs. She had a terrible memory of Erdene arriving in the hub of settlements with just half her dogs and one arm missing, and it invigorated her. Sarnai called for the dogs to race forward, and they did, despite the bear. Sarnai raised her fire pistol at the bear as it plowed toward them, and pulled the trigger.
The bear’s coat caught fire. It was so close she could smell the scent of burning hair and the stink of rotten meat that clung to its matted fur. The bear roared and broke off.
Sarnai called to the dogs, spurring them onward, ever onward, and they obeyed, kicking snow and dust behind them at the fastest pace she had seen them make on the wintry white terrain that made up the world between the core settlements and people on the edge, people like her.
Meet Me in the Future Page 21
