An Atmosphere Of Angels

by H C Turk

  He wanted to be distracted, but had no time. No time to suss the alien architecture. No time to enjoy the inhabitants’ decor. At that moment, the vessel’s core might be disintegrating as influenced by a dead alien active again in a human suit.

  Parno would become active in an alien suit. After removing the environ abettor with thoughtless flicks of the wrist, he stepped to the nearest function retainer, not concerned with their manner of attachment to the wall, not concerned that the wall was not a separator between chambers, but a storage device.

  Prior to wrapping on the work suit, he would not work on his mind-set. He did not know what to think, and was uncertain of what he felt. Parno was not concerned about entering the function retainer only to find himself unable to leave. Hoping to learn, thoughtless Parno stepped backward against the nearest work suit, and forgot.

  Alien translation filled his thinking. He did not see devices, but did receive ideas. Though soundless, the data came as though someone spoke rapidly. Exchange air volumes, allow traversal between interior and uninhabitable exterior. Individual passage and massive technol transports and implements. Activate via authority. During untenable situations, activate by local discharge of release electre or manual persuasion.

  He felt the vessel’s two airlocks open, close, void themselves of air. He saw a personnel transporter that resembled a merry-go-round pass through the greater lock after exiting a storage facility between drive bay and process margin. He saw people who resembled himself, Kathlynn, and the Stellar Service staff languidly pass through the smaller airlock’s doors. He saw a man reach out with both hands and yank, his knee lifted from the ground, and the large airlock cycled. To Parno, only this man felt alien. The difference here was not biological, but occupational.

  Staring, finally seeing, Parno found himself standing in the process margin, bereft of the function retainer. His alien education had been poor, for Parno had learned only old information. He was too human to open the airlock by himself.

  Parno had learned one new fact: anxiety was no aid to alien education. When next wrapping on a function retainer, Parno would be certain to relax in his mind, and his feelings.

  His opportunity soon arrived. Before Parno could wrap on a work suit, hoping to move while wearing it, the two great supervisors in his world spoke. The disaster overseer spoke with its actions, for Parno felt another shudder throughout the vessel. The supervisor fem reacted with panic.

  “Parno, are you all right!”

  “Yes, are you? What was that?”

  “Another part of the vessel dissolved. An entire ‘hill’ section just…collapsed, and objects are flying out. They are, they are…black, boxy in shape, with dangling trails like, like roots ripped from the soil. And they are drifting…they are drifting away from me. The steel wool tree passed by almost near enough to touch.”

  “Well, we better not get sick,” Parno said, “because the ghost just melted the hospital. Hold on.”

  “Affirmed,” she replied with scant strength. “…I wonder how much air is in this suit.”

  The last question drove Parno from the process margin. He imagined Kathlynn suffocating. He imagined her dying, not peaceably, but with her heart full of terror, dying alone with no loved one to observe her torment.

  Being too damned modern, the vessel’s tools were inherent to its structure, not unlike Earth technols. One did not insert a key and turn to open an airlock. One did not add instruments to a space-spec technol infirmary, because the doc box itself was a collection of conjoined instruments. Approaching that open suit with ashes near the airlock door, Parno had no stick for poking. Surely, he could have found a separate device in the closet, but the smoke ghost had sent that chamber to a peaceful, amorphous rest.

  He threw his shoe at it and missed, striking the adjacent function retainer. For a moment, Parno only stared in surprise because the suit had not exploded into flames. Of course. No living thing had touched it, just a piece of plasleather. To be a genuine test, the shoe would have to contain a human foot.

  Limping between work suits, Parno retrieved his shoe, then retrieved his environ abettor and donned it. Then, wincing from discomfort, he stood near the suit with ashes, extending his leg, planning on just barely touching the alien fab with his toe.

  He recalled Kathlynn’s harmlessly bursting into flames. Just as his foot reached the alien suit, Parno closed his eyes.

  Intense illumination did not penetrate his lids. Parno sensed no heat. Opening his eyes, he saw his foot against the suit. He pressed harder. The material was rigid, and the greater suit did not move. Stepping closer, Parno applied a secondary test: he stuck his foot into the ashes. His suit came away dirty, but unburned.

  He wondered if Kathlynn had enough breath left to allow her to speak.

  As he flicked away the ashes with one hand, supporting some of his weight with the other to reduce strain on his injured knee, Parno thought of disturbing the dead. He thought of scattering ashes not through respect, but in the sense of cleaning a fireplace. After removing most of the coarser particles from the suit, Parno considered removing the environ abettor and leaning near in order to blow away the remaining dust. After all, he didn’t want to soil his coveralls. Since any moment the ghost would likely destroy the loo, how would he get clean?

  As though placing himself in his own grave, Parno lay supine on the function retainer. As the material closed around his torso and limbs and head, Parno nearly felt relief from not having to see Kathlynn suffocate.

  She had not seen him raped by the sex ghost.

  Grazio tried to scratch his head while wearing a function retainer. His hair was so straight it seemed an ink drawing done with a ruler, and his skin coloration was a healthy grey. Grazio’s other arm was draped across his wife’s shoulders. Vera stood in the process margin, preparing to open the interchange domain.

  “I can’t ever figure out how to do that,” Grazio told Parno. “That’s why I’m just a pilot. I can do the emergency bit, but they dock your pay twenty light years if it’s not really an emergency. You know, dead in three seconds if you don’t get out.”

  Parno studied Vera’s actions. He had to remember the procedure. He did not know why. In this staff, Vera had the authority. Besides, being an inhabitant, Parno would be allowed temporary process authority in the event of a disaster, dead in three seconds if you don’t get out.

  Parno had to ask a question that seemed to come from a dream, another world, a different time.

  “How do I exit via the small airlock?”

  “The foyer?” Grazio replied. “Forget it, chum. When the natives opened it with their voodoo puke and piss party, they ruined it.”

  “They are aliens,” Vera muttered.

  “Nah, trying so hard you mess something up ain’t alien,” her husband retorted. “That’s as common as dirt. As common as pink sand.”

  Parno studied Vera’s every action as Grazio spoke to him.

  “So, Parno, when you died, did you leave anyone behind?”

  The answer startled Parno.

  “I left behind three children, my concubine, my wife, three parents, and too many friends like you.”

  “Hey, that’s sad,” Grazio said. “When I kick out of orbit, I’m taking my loved ones with me.”

  Vera had concluded. The process only required a moment. Parno was not certain that he had seen enough, learned enough.

  Exiting the vessel, Parno proceeded to his duty. Soon stepping across the sand in an environ abettor, he approached a primitive shelter. Inside, he found an indigene. They were all the same: all human, but none of them friends.

  “My people are going to remove the material we want from your land,” Parno explained.

  “We have no need for the rock,” the indigene replied, speaking for his race. “But you must leave soon, for your presence is wrong. This is not your home, but ours, and you do not need another home. You must leave us in peace, which means leave us alone, for we have no culture without peace, on
ly our living.”

  “We plan on remaining,” Parno admitted. “We enjoy this area and will stay, leaving your people only a tiny part of your island. Since you find this immoral, how will you respond?”

  “Using all of our effort in passion, we will try to drive you away.”

  “I doubt the effectiveness of your passion,” Parno replied. “You will find success in killing my vessel’s master. I will then take her place, and will leave with only the rock. None of my people will live here, I vow.”

  “We do not kill, but we can allow death. Generations ago, the fire mountain took every life on this island. That is how we learned to die. Learning how to live after dying improperly is not possible. Make certain when you die not to take torment with you.”

  When Ward caught fire standing near the interchange domain, Grazio rushed to the entry border, yanking with authority in order to cycle the airlock. Ward ran out, but was too far from the water, and burned dead. With his last breath, Ward had not reached for rest, but screamed for salvation. Parno was not certain if he had learned the technique for opening the door, though he would remember to die without torment.

  Parno passed into an abyss of ignorance, only aware that he had been aware.

  In the transition that followed, Parno listened while a spirit of righteousness called his name. Having lost too much of his learning, Parno did not know his own identity. Feeling that his very anima had fled his feeling, Parno nearly panicked, then understood that he required no names, only his sense of self. When the spirit next spoke, he listened.

  “Parno? Parno, can you hear me? Am I speaking alien?”

  He sat, not truly seeing until upright again. That function retainer with ashes. He sat on it. Standing slowly, feeling some discomfort from his ghost thrashing, Parno tried to think, to recall.

  “Parno?”

  “Wait.”

  “Oh, that’s better. I was so frightened, again. And again and again.”

  He intended no further words. He did not feel himself. Retaining this proper disposition, he entered the process margin, wrapping on a function retainer not internally burdened with the residue of a different life.

  Having learned from his peers, Parno knew to step toward the suit, not against it. After the function retainer wrapped around him from face to back, Parno walked away, proceeding to the interchange domain. At the entry border, where inner door merged with the hull’s interior surface, Parno applied emergency authority. Thinking and feeling of his need to open the airlock, he pressed his hands into the wall until finding the activators. Applying fierce pressure from his mind to his muscles, Parno caused the cycling compounds to connect.

  After the interchange domain cycled, the inner door opened. Parno entered and the door closed behind. As the artificial gravity field rescinded, he floated in free fall. With no more effort than walking, he instructed the function retainer to move him to the outer door. The airlock cycled again, and Parno—in technol flight—floated into space, proceeding toward an alien.

  “Parno?”

  He did not wonder why she spoke his language. He continued, not bothering to capture her environ abettor with an adhere strip in his function suit. Moving behind her, he simply pressed her toward the vessel. He did not look toward her face, but felt correctness in using his hands on this fem.

  He did not speak until after they approached the airlock entry. Until after the vessel began shrinking. Until after the alien spoke harshly.

  “Parno, the ghost is disintegrating the entire vessel!”

  Parno saw false appearance. The alien ship was not shrinking, but receding in his sight due to its movement away. Far away in seconds, too far too see.

  The vessel had not been obscuring Kapnos 3. Parno and Kathlynn saw only stars.

  Parno’s hands began shaking. He had to speak of his wrongness to the spirit.

  “I don’t know who I am. I feel alien.”

  The emotion in Parno’s voice was so striking it seemed alien to Kathlynn. In that moment, her greatest desire was not for the vessel’s return, but that she would never again hear that sound.

  She turned to wrap both arms around him as though to smother his distress or crush her own dismay. They embraced, so insulated by foreign materials that they felt no flesh, no caress. But they felt each other’s spirit, connected not by passion, but the anima of empathy.

  Chapter 15

  Function Murder

  “Can you breathe?”

  They had been floating for alien minutes, a sidereal hour. Looking in all directions, they found no planet, no vessel.

  “The environ abettor is still providing good air, Parno. You’re not asking because you are—”

  “I think this function retainer can provide breathable air for a very long time. It’s a more durable piece of equipment than an environ abettor.”

  Parno had not intended to provoke a passionate response, but Kathlynn’s face twisted as she spoke.

  “Good, that means you’ll outlive me,” Kathlynn choked. “I don’t want to see you die, you bastard!”

  Kathlynn shoved the heels of her hands against Parno’s shoulder, the two human masses separating in equal and opposite directions.

  He turned to receding Kathlynn. Unlike the vessel, she would not get far.

  “Why am I a bastard?” he had to ask.

  Appropriate for the locale, Kathlynn’s voice had the sound of a lost spirit.

  “Because I couldn’t bear to see you die.”

  Upon dying, Parno would leave behind both parents, one brother, several friends, and his beloved.

  “I’ll explain why I’m not a bastard,” he said, unable to contemplate any further dying.

  “Shut up!” she yelped.

  “I am not a bastard because I succeeded with the indigenes of Kapnos 3, at least the indigenes on that tiny island. I don’t care about the other bastards. Abetted by the ENU superfem, I succeeded by sealing the deal we agreed upon. You recall, of course.”

  “Of course not,” she said, her voice stronger, her distance from Parno increasing.

  He saw her through that filmy suit, like space lingerie. No finer star floated in his universe.

  “Upon substituting contemplation for self-pity, you will recall that Ward hammered out a contractual understanding with the community of voodoo-worshiping humanoids whereby we Earthers and Earthettes would be allowed to take all the bloody ether ore we wanted if only we removed the big thing on their island. Well, we removed it.”

  “Yes, I recall,” Kathlynn said. “That’s why we entered the big thing in the first place.”

  “Yes, because we are heroes. One hero and one heroette.”

  “No, we entered because we are con artists, and wanted to further our careers. ‘Hero’ translated into alien is ‘fool.’”

  “But our careers as space explorers are assured,” Parno insisted.

  “Exactly. When we get to Earth, in about three hundred centuries at this rate, we’ll have bonuses waiting for us.”

  “Yes. ‘Bonus’ translated into alien is ‘bone in the anus.’”

  Kathlynn guffawed, needlessly placing one hand over her mouth. The space lady rotated away.

  “I see you got over my death,” Parno told her.

  “That proves you’re a bastard!” she blurted, twisting to face him again.

  “Something I learned from the ghost is this,” Parno told her, “feel good at your death, or you’ll feel bad forever.”

  “I learned that from the zombies who ran me out the door,” Kathlynn said. “I was not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me feel bad just because they were murdering me.”

  “I’ll die of anxiety if I remain in this suit much longer. Did you feel jittery while in yours?”

  “I know what you mean, Parno. The feeling was…abstract anxiety. It made me itch in my brain. I just wanted to get out. I’m sorry you’re trapped in there, you bastard. I’d trade with you if I could.”

  Parno noticed a larger s
tar. He did not recognize the constellation, but imagined that the stellar light transmitted was pink and yellow.

  “If I sidle over there, superfem, will you let me hold your hand?”

  “Only if you promise to stop your name calling.”

  “You’re a darlin’. Does that count?”

  “I will count to three, and you better have your paw in mine.”

  Parno complied, tardy by only a moment. Their contact, however, lacked intimacy. Despite wearing only space undies, Kathlynn could not sense Parno’s hands through his armor. Their contact did not lack alienness.

  They held hands as the next crisis came.

  Parno began seeking help, not with his voice, but with his emotions and mind. “Please, we need aid. I want to communicate with my vessel, with my kind. We are here, learn of us, find us, come for us, please.”

  “Parno, someone is shining a light at us!”

  Kathlynn pointed to that enlarged star Parno had noticed.

  “It must be the vessel returning,” he remarked.

  “I have a better fantasy,” Kathlynn said. “Our space boat in orbit has sensed us, and the whole staff is coming out to take us home.”

  “Maybe it’s an alien-seeking howitzer shell sent along by the ghost.”

  After her hand began cramping, Kathlynn released Parno.

  “We’re looking at a star,” Parno surmised. “I’d rather burn and die than remain in this suit another parsec.”

  The light source increased in size. After another alien extension of time, the Earthers noted its variegated colors. Green and white and blue.

  “Parno, if that’s a planet, you and I are moving toward it. I hope it’s Earth.”

  “If it’s not a planet, but a pattern on the nose of an alien rocket ship, it’s heading for us. Get ready to duck, Kathlynn.”

  “A relative of a friend of mine was a rescue worker on the plasphalt lanes, so I know what to do.”