An Atmosphere Of Angels

by H C Turk

  “What do you do?”

  “Duck.”

  “You are a genius.”

  “You’re a hero.”

  “We’re both nearly dead.”

  “Bastard.”

  No more holding hands until they saw the truth. Clouds floated above continents and oceans.

  “We might be approaching too quickly,” Parno determined.

  “Too quickly for what? Are we going so fast that we’ll hurt the poor dear when we hit?”

  “Our velocity is too great for us to have been attracted by this planet’s gravity. Either we were artificially pushed, or we are being drawn.”

  “Look, Parno, the planet is now as wide as we are tall. I recognize it, but it’s crooked.”

  “Kathlynn, in space, only people have up and down, not planets.”

  “Parno, this is no coincidence. Not our exact locale.”

  They floated toward nature’s art, an island that seemed a painting, one dark margin accented with shades of pink and yellow. Soon they would enter this artwork’s atmosphere.

  “Parno, something wonderful will soon happen. Full of wonder, if not exactly desirable. Do you have any input here?”

  “I’ve been inputting for the last ten zillion miles,” he reported. “I have been thinking and feeling communication. If there’s any way I can instruct this suit to tell the universe that we are here, I have done so.”

  “An SOS: Save Our Suits. Parno, now that we’re dying, I am determined to feel happy,” she smiled, then sobbed.

  Not extended weeping, but one miserable sigh.

  “Parno, I don’t want to die,” she added softly.

  “I knew you were a chicken-shit lemming pussy, following a bastard to his doom.”

  “You’ll never screw me now,” she moaned. “I am the best.”

  They held hands while passing a great, plasmetal claw. An artificial exoskeleton with no matter hold revolved in low orbit around the planet.

  “Parno, that’s the space boat’s hull!”

  Kathlynn became so excited she released Parno’s hand.

  With all of his intent and idea, Parno tried to move to the hull, but his alien suit refused any change in motion.

  “They have to read our position,” he determined.

  “Then what will Vera and Grazio do?” enthused Kathlynn asked.

  Thinking completely now, Parno reported doom.

  “Nothing, it’s too late.”

  “Parno, why?” Kathlynn whined.

  “You and I are sufficiently massive that the boat’s sensers would have read us from, I don’t know, at least a 100,000 miles away. If the staff had sensered us, Ward would have ordered the boat out of orbit to meet us. Grazio could match our velocity and snare us with his eyes closed. He wouldn’t even have to leave the planet’s surface.”

  They continued falling. Though unable to judge their velocity, both Parno and Kathlynn expected to sense air pressure any moment. That moment never arrived.

  “Parno, the staff must be dead,” Kathlynn groaned. “The indigenes murdered them exactly as they murdered the aliens.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case,” Parno insisted, unable to state any supporting rationale.

  Kathlynn had not heard such a positive sound from him since some previous doom approached, and passed. She almost allowed weeping to come to her again, weeping from joy.

  If the emotion were unfounded, it would last her for eternity.

  “Kathlynn, we have slowed. We must have been traveling at several thousand miles per hour, but now we’re drifting down.”

  “Yes, we’re not going to burn up!” she cried in joy. “Oh, Parno, are we going to crash into the island instead?”

  Approaching heaven, they passed. Clouds. They passed through clouds, the mist surrounding them suggesting an atmosphere of angels, not the smoke of ghosts.

  “No,” he stated firmly. “We must be under the influence of an art grav field.”

  “I knew you weren’t a bastard!”

  Below them, ocean and island filled their vision. Waves surrounded a dark green shape accented with creams and brighter yellow. Parno and Kathlynn could see individual whitecaps. A strip of pink actively painted with rough green water beckoned them. Parno would not argue.

  “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, Kathlynn, but an alien technol is directing us.”

  They had achieved an altitude where trees seemed the size of their fingers. By then, Parno and Kathlynn should have felt the terror of falling, falling at a terrifying velocity to an inescapable collision. The Earthers, however, drifted. Like smoke.

  Parno saw that curve in the shore where he and Kathlynn had first approached the indigenes. Kathlynn noticed a more compelling sight.

  “Parno—there’s the matter hold—our shack!’

  From above, it seemed unspectacular, not a metatechnol structure staining the natural world with the glare of synthetic textures, but a regular lump of paler lahar. Though static, this structure displayed movement at its periphery. Animal movement. Upright animals stepped along the landscape. Upright animals wearing clothes, fabric identical to that worn by the falling pseudo-aliens. The ground-level animals showed activity in their limbs.

  “They’re waving to us,” Parno said.

  “I’m waving back,” Kathlynn said, and flapped both arms as though attempting to fly.

  She and Parno were flying, semi-successfully. Parno did not bother to wave back. He recognized Grazio from his girth, but all the Earth staff stood outside the matter hold. Parno heard Kathlynn blubbering some sort of needless verbal response. Parno no longer felt and thought “communication, location, aid.” Too late for that. This fact was proven by the humans’ waving. Had Ward’s staff been able to assist or retrieve Parno and Kathlynn, they would not be doing so with gestures.

  Perhaps Parno should wave, for he might never see them again.

  Floating unimpeded by machine, attached only to the air, came as a neutral passage to Parno and Kathlynn. The joy of purest travel was mitigated by fear, fear of collision with their traveling home, their peers, fear of finding themselves living but lost again.

  Finally, Parno and Kathlynn approached near enough to see the mouth. A black mouth awaited them, a rectangular hole in a structure that seemed part of the land, again disguised by internal technols. Alien technols.

  The last moment of their journey terrified both Parno and Kathlynn, for they swooped down to the lahar too rapidly. They felt the exhilaration of being controlled by a force that flew them like kites, living bodies influenced by a spirit, perhaps that of space, for the Earthers lost their breathing as unknown technols pulled them down, curving toward the ground. Their eyes went wide to see a collision averted by a force so alien it pulled them into the vessel’s airlock.

  They stood, feeling common gravity secure them to the great airlock’s floor. Their journey had not ended with abrupt acceleration, but just another step from space. Still, their senses wavered between the sensation of exhilarating movement and the restfulness of utter stasis. Parno’s eyes were so wide he felt he could not close them, seeing that dull floor again, that tall inner door with a depiction of space.

  Recently he had been rejected by the genuine entity.

  Kathlynn moved first, turning rapidly and running to the outer airlock door, which had closed immediately behind them, after their transition from approaching home to entering hell.

  Not terrified, but furious, Kathlynn blurted:

  “We must be dead, because obviously we’re haunting this ship!”

  “This isn’t magic,” Parno seethed. “It’s just good function. The vessel brought the wayfarers home and ushered them inside.”

  Parno moved to the inner door’s border, finding no difficulty in stepping while wrapped in the function suit. He found pain in moving his battered skeleton. He could not avoid limping on one knee, which pained him less than the knot between his shoulders.

  “Parno, why are you limping? Are yo
u injured, or is it the work suit?”

  With his back to Kathlynn, he did not reply. She was not the foremost idea in his mind.

  “Parno, you opened the doors before, all by yourself. Can you do it again?”

  He waited for the cycle to complete. An alien impression suggested that the inner door should open without coercion.

  “Kathlynn, I don’t know how to cycle the airlock from in here. I can only repeat what I did before. As soon as we enter the warehouse, I’ll initiate a complete cycle. Then we’ll simply step outside.”

  “That’s too easy,” Kathlynn moaned, now standing beside Parno. “I remember the first time the lock cycled. I’m waiting for the floating to begin any moment.”

  “I’m waiting for this damn door to open.”

  “Parno, we couldn’t see the vessel from outside—it was disguised again.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if the ghost succeeded in disintegrating the rest of the vessel, and the door won’t open because beyond is a fused mass?”

  Parno wanted to rub his forehead, but the damn alien suit interfered. It interfered with his thinking.

  “I can’t feel or recall any type of emergency procedure for opening only the outer door,” he admitted. “I haven’t learned a damned thing since I’ve been in this function retainer. I only learned from the suit filled with ashes.”

  “Parno, I haven’t heard that story,” Kathlynn said quietly. “Please wait and tell me when we’re strolling barefoot on the beach.”

  “It’s not the only story you haven’t heard.”

  “Parno, I have a few of my own. The one I’m waiting for is entitled, ‘Kathlynn And The Hero Step Peacefully Across The Lahar.’”

  Parno had approached the border between outer door and hull proper. He stepped along its length, then proceeded to the opposite border. Though intending to apply that process of “emergency authority” wherein he had last cycled the airlock, Parno did not sense any emergency or any authority. He lifted his hands to grasp or move or pull or twist, but his waiting was akin to a ball sport where the ball is never thrown.

  “You better find another hero. I guess I’m a bastard again.”

  Kathlynn agreed, spectacularly. Behind him, she screamed out a condemnation.

  “You bastards!’

  Parno whirled to find that the inner door had opened. Petrified Kathlynn stood staring at the interior. Beyond, the warehouse showed no damage, and no improvement from that returned population of zombies, ghosts in the guise of work suits, their function murder.

  Chapter 16

  Unsettled Spirits

  Unending hatred filled lifeless suits with the idea of vengeance. Kathlynn saw black through their headpieces, the eternal night of death. Animated chimney lamps, their interiors coated with soot, careened as though tenuously connected to their bases. Directed by their maker, these sources of darkness stepped awkwardly toward the alien pair intruding in their vessel. The fem came first.

  Not so tempestuous as to shout further anger instead of fleeing, Kathlynn ran, not toward the dead-end at her back, but deeper into the vessel. She could not pass that first zombie, the original spook. He could have been a peer, or a thief, for the creature wore Kathlynn’s own ground suit. They could not be peers, however, as long as only one remained alive.

  She did not know which emotion drove her to run with utter strength and certainty: either anger at having been trapped by aliens, though none of her adversaries lived, or fear at the thought of seeing her own ashes in the face of the smoke ghost. Kathlynn only knew that she failed.

  All in a moment, the door opened, Kathlynn saw the phalanx of active suits, shrieked, and ran. Nearest the smoke ghost in her suit, Kathlynn tried to duck below that sweeping plasfab-covered arm, but felt a blow against her back that took her breath and sent her tumbling to the floor. Seeing knees at eye level, Kathlynn tried to crawl in order to find room to run, but a creature sliding beside her grasped her and flowed along the floor, as though a portable ribbon rug in the shape of a man.

  Unlike the other murderers, whose headpieces showed dead black, this alien had a face, including a beard with a streak of grey. A hero’s visage.

  Parno took one running stride to find himself sliding along the floor, upright. The floor and function retainer had combined to transport him rapidly, in accord with his idea and his desire. But the movement was not so rapid that he could avoid alien combat. The blow to Kathlynn’s back came from a swing that seemed perturbation more than violence, but Kathlynn collapsed as though crippled. Moving near, Parno bent for her as a suited arm struck him with even less precision, and even greater force. Only Parno’s function retainer saved him.

  Encouraged by his dead brethren’s success, the adjacent suit swung an arm toward Parno with such ferocity that the alien’s entire form contracted as though a single muscle. Though Parno received no contact, his suit transmitted the feel of wind whipped by that explosively moving arm. The contact came to a function retainer filled with darkness, a strike across the head that ripped away the headpiece. As though pumped by a giant heart, black fluid spurted from the ragged neck, shooting against the nearby work suits, including Parno’s.

  As he fell, Parno saw the viscous liquid on his arms. Not humanoid blood, but the blood of ashes.

  Parno could not understand how the blow he had received could appear so minor yet feel like a float car wreck. The pain across his back took his breath, but not his thinking. Falling to the floor, Parno began sliding again, now grabbing Kathlynn around her waist. Holding her tightly against his torso, Parno slid rapidly on his side. The incompetent zombies followed, but slowly. The function suits would have worked better had they contained bodies instead of bad wishes.

  The Earthers did not speak. They only heard each other’s pain, uncertain of the source of that wheezing, that whine. Did Parno hear himself groan, or was that Kathlynn’s discomfort? Parno did not release Kathlynn until arriving at his goal, which he had specified only through intent: those work suits must be destroyed. Sliding across the floor at running speed, neither Parno nor Kathlynn felt friction. Their passage took them to the massive drive bay’s far end. In the greater technol body, nucleonics embedded in thick, etheric fluid rested from having transported the alien vessel away from the planet, then back, returning to previous place after following alien instructions.

  The Earthers halted at a lower chamber separated from the process margin by the drive bay’s fifty-pace length. The wall material could have been sheets of fluid stone cast with plas. Wincing from old wounds and new injuries, Parno rose, tapping low on the wall with his foot in order to enter. He had no translated name for this chamber of dense, unmarked equipment. Unable to place the source of his awareness, he knew to grasp an atommetal nozzle that terminated a cornucopia of energy.

  Kathlynn stood slowly, having difficulty straightening her back. She first noticed an ugly dark fluid on Parno’s suit, then saw the same material smeared across her torso. Kathlynn did not look to Parno, but toward the approaching army. They moved with no great speed, but with irrefutable intent, murderous emotion. That suit with no head…. Kathlynn had not witnessed this decapitation, but saw a hideous fount spurt black spit from the neck.

  She had to look away. Though feeling no bodily pain in that moment, Kathlynn suffered so pervasive a sense of dread that mere broken bones seemed irrelevant. She knew that a broken spirit surpassed a broken spine. The latter could only kill, but the former rejects death’s natural end.

  Anxiously turning to the nearby chamber entry, Kathlynn wondered why Parno had stopped at this site. Why not continue fleeing? But she knew the answer to that puerile notion. Where could they run that the zombies would not follow—deep space?

  Space had returned them to the demons’ home.

  Seconds later, Parno passed Kathlynn, still not walking. He seemed almost alien, from the abstracted set of his eyes, to his sliding movement, to the implement he carried. An alien hose, Kathlynn thought. Par
no held a blunt nozzle connected to a squarish spiral as wide as a person’s head. Resembling a deck of connected cards, the device stretched behind Parno without its elements separating. Glimpsing into the chamber, Kathlynn saw the source of that elongated instrument. A helical bin, like a huge seashell, held bright forms in its hopper, fruit from a technol industry. The colored shapes twisted and dropped in the hopper as Parno fed energy to the dead.

  Kathlynn remained behind, waiting for instructions from the alien leader. Though stretched some fifty paces, the squarish “hose” did not sag, and Kathlynn did not consider supporting its center with both arms like a 20th-century fire fighter.

  Parno had arrived at the laggard zombies. They seemed no less deadly from moving like incompetent marionettes. Though Kathlynn remained still, every inhalation caused pain beneath her shoulders, all from a single love tap.

  The touch of love does not cause injury even to aliens.

  As Parno began spraying the aliens with light, Kathlynn ran closer. After two painful strides, she walked instead, unavoidably groaning as the sight ahead enthralled her, taking her attention. The work suits and the Terran ground suit shifted in her vision as though refracted by an alien, untranslatable light. The army had halted its march. Stepping nearer, Kathlynn did not sense that Parno held an implement transmitting tremendous pressure. He painted with light, not causing his subjects to change color, but focus. The haze extending from Parno’s nozzle unfocused all of the suits, the floor on which they stood, and the intervening air. The visible energy continued to a section of the vessel’s wall situated at an acute angle to Parno’s art.

  Kathlynn halted upon feeling a crackling along her alien suit, perhaps a static electre charge from pumping ether gear. Feeling her head spin, Kathlynn closed her eyes. She could not discern if this effect came from her sore spine or Parno’s machinations. If more running from devils would soon be required, Kathlynn would have to vomit first.

  Spacers knew never to vomit in a ground suit. “Get sick in big air,” was the rule.