by Nancy Kress
“All people are capable of moral choices, Enli, they are, they are. But most people don’t make them. They live their pathetic little lives from habit, or for convenience, or to impress others, or for immediate pleasure—it’s true! They’re like the story of the farm boy who enlists in a passing army—do you know this story? No, of course not, it’s a human story and you don’t have armies on World or war or—he enlists in a passing army because the crops have failed and the army offers hot food and a bedroll and a place to go, and he doesn’t even know who the army is fighting or why—he doesn’t even know, Enli! And he doesn’t care! He may fight well, and develop admirable loyalty to his comrades, and even become a hero, but none of it is a moral choice, he’s not on the side of ‘good’ or the side of ‘evil,’ he’s in a no-man’s land in between, a sort of spiritual limbo, it’s an old story on Earth and on Mars, too, but it never ends, Enli, it never ends, to do anything different takes not only courage-the farm boy may have that—but vision, too, it takes …”
Enli didn’t understand many of the Terran words. She stumbled on behind Pek Allen, noting in the light of his torch how many times the tunnels branched, then branched again. They would never find. their way back. Here she would die, and decay, and release her soul to join her ancestors. And so would Pek Allen, too, if the First Flower so chose.
“ … savior of both races, no not such ridiculous idea or maybe it is but from such ridiculous ideas grow greatness and …”
How long had they been in the tunnels? A day and night? They had stopped so that Enli could sleep, but she hadn’t eaten anything. Did Pek Allen sleep? She didn’t think so. Nor eat, either. He seemed unable to do either, nor to sit still, nor to stop long enough to let them both die. And he wouldn’t let Enli die, either. He pulled her along, talking and talking, and she stumbled behind in weariness and hunger until all sense of time and direction were lost.
Somewhere in this gray unending confusion, Enli’s suit started to speak. She shrieked, and then recognized the words. Pek Bazargan’s suit had spoken them once before.
“Stop. This area registers sixty rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop. You have taken …”
“Put on your helmet, Enli!” Pek Allen said.
She stared at him, not understanding. He had spoken in Terran. He reached toward her and grabbed something soft and shapeless from a pocket she didn’t know her suit had. He pressed it and it became a rigid clear bowl that he turned upside down and jammed on her head. Enli stood passive; might as well die of suffocation as by murder. He sealed gloves on her hands, did something to the place where her boots joined the legs of her suit.
“There! You’re safe now.”
“But”—to her surprise, the words emerged through the clear bowl on her head—“what is the danger? And you …”
Pek Allen smiled. In the upcast light from his torch, standing with bleeding face and arms in the rags of his shirt, he looked like nothing Enli had ever seen or could imagine. His hands twitched, making the torch throw shifting shadows from the cave walls.
“The danger, Enli, is radiation. The special sickness of the Neury Mountains—you know about it?”
“Yes.” She understood now. “But then you—without a suit …” She was being stupid again. They were both going to die here, anyway.
Pek Allen laughed, a horrible sound that echoed down the tunnel. “Oh, no, not me! Don’t you understand? I’m immune! All saviors are above disease and sickness, even when we look like we’re succumbing. It’s the reward, and the glory, of doing what no one else will do, for the good of humanity. Yours, mine—come on!”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her, stumbling, deeper into the tunnel. Her suit continued to speak. “Stop. This area registers one hundred eighty rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop. This area registers two hundred thirty rads. Leave …”
“Come on!” Pek Allen shouted. The tunnel, widening now, echoed back: On on on on.
They were running. Enli felt herself grow warm—wasn’t the suit supposed to stop that? It must be very hot here. The torch, carried by Pek Allen, wavered wildly as he ran, the beam of light hitting now the wall, now the rocky ceiling, now Pek Allen’s bare bloody back. Sweat poured off him, a waterfall.
“Stop. This area registers seven hundred sixty rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop. You have taken …”
“Come on, Enli!” Li li li li.
She fell. He jerked her upright, almost tearing her arm from its socket, and kept on running.
“Almost there!” There there there.
Where?
“Stop. This area registers one thousand four hundred rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop. You have taken …”
A final steep incline. They both fell down it, landing in a heap on a bed of rocks. Instantly Pek Allen clambered to his feet, grinning. One arm hung limply at his side: broken. He didn’t appear to notice.
“Look! The cleansing fire!”
Enli got up slowly. Her suit still lectured her about the sickness of the sacred mountains. Inside it, she sweated so much she thought she might pass out. They stood in a small chamber ankle-deep with water. The heat was enormous, stifling. And the walls glowed.
“Stop. This area registers three thousand six hundred rads. Leave this area …”
Pek Allen switched off his torch. The walls still glowed, with an eerie cold light that made Enli suddenly shudder. She sat down and prepared to die.
“No, no, not you,” Pek Allen said, switching his torch back on. “You’re not the savior, poor child. And you certainly don’t need cleansing—not a Worlder! You aren’t farm boys who enlist! Come on!”
Running again, splashing across the hot small cave, out another tunnel, another, another, twisting and turning through rock grayer and denser than before. And not glowing.
“Stop. This area registers one thousand sixty rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop. You have taken …”
She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs shrieked, a solid mass of pain.
“Stop. This area registers nine hundred rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop …”
Her vision blurred. It must be that, because she thought she saw something else streak past them in the widening tunnel, some animal. A freb. But that would mean they were close to the outside …
“Stop. This area registers one hundred ten rads. Leave this area now. You are in danger. Stop …”
More running. Finally, Enli fell and could not get up.
“This area is not radioactive.” The suit fell silent.
She gasped in great painful whoops, unable to catch wind, unable to see. Pain burned along each muscle, inside each bone. Slowly it receded, a long ebbing tide, and her vision cleared.
Light. She saw dim gray light, unlike the bright yellow shadow-making light of the torch.
Pek Allen must have pulled the clear bowl from off her head. She lay on an uneven stone floor, rock at her head and feet. And somewhere ahead, daylight.
Her vision cleared more, and Enli saw Pek Allen standing above her, straddling her limp body with his long legs, in protection. Or something. He gazed straight at the end of the tunnel.
“We’re out, Enli.” His voice had changed again. Now it was quiet, not raving. And yet there was a tone in it that made her think that Pek Allen’s mind was even more twisted than before.
“We’re out, and there’s a village out there. A World village. Now I can do the work I must do, and that you must help me with.”
And Enli was engulfed in pain again. Not muscles this time, not bone, not lungs. The familiar pain was in her head, between her eyes, looking up at Pek Allen. For a while in the Neury Mountains it had gone, but now it was back: the headpain of unshared reality. Of being with someone who was unreal.
It was back.
“Let’s go,” Pek Allen said, in World, and pulled Enli to her feet.
TWENTY-TW0
EN ROUTE TO SPACE TUNNEL #438
The Faller warship remained stationary, hanging in space two hundred clicks from the tunnel, ninety degrees lateral to the trajectory of the Zeus. “A spider, waiting for the fly,” Major Ombatu muttered. Syree ignored him.
The Zeus, a heavily laboring fly, continued to shove its burden forward. Orbital Object #7 accelerated serenely. The Zeus officers and Special Project team, less serenely, stayed on the bridge, talking little, sleeping less. Syree knew her gray fog of fatigue was dangerous. It slowed her thinking, her reaction times. But each time she slept, dreams awoke her.
She was four, in her grandmother’s kitchen, listening to Emily James Johnson recite the family soldiers who had died honorably in combat. Corporal James L. Johnson, in Bosnia. Catherine Syree Johnson, in Argentina. Tam Wells Johnson, on Mars. A Johnson masters herself, Syree. Remember that.
She was on Bolivar, losing her leg. Medbot! Medbot here! someone yelled, and she realized dimly, gladly, that it wasn’t herself.
She was inside Orbital Object #7, learning its secrets, relishing every moment, when it announced that it was going to blow up. No, you have to accelerate more! Syree cried in panic. We haven’t reached grandmother’s house yet!
“Acceleration one gee, speed 4,732 clicks per hour.”
“Continue acceleration.”
“Acceleration continuing.”
The helmsman and Peres. Syree shook herself fully awake. How long had she been dozing this time? How close were they? She checked the displays, rubbing sleep-crust from her eyes.
She’d been asleep in her chair for four hours. The Zeus had carried the artifact over a billion clicks away from its planetary orbit. In another six hours, they’d reach Space Tunnel #438.
Lee said, “Commander, change in enemy position. Faller warship is moving toward the space tunnel. Twenty clicks … thirty … forty …”
“It’s decided on engagement,” Puchalla said. “Whether or not we hold the artifact.”
“No,” Syree answered swiftly. “They won’t do that. They have every reason to want that artifact to sail on through the space tunnel into their space. They won’t fire on us until after we detach.”
“ … fifty clicks … sixty …”
Peres swiveled to stare at Syree. “You can’t know that for sure, Dr. Johnson. The enemy may well anticipate our flyer maneuver and make sure the space tunnel opens on their space. We discussed this. Under no conditions can this vessel allow the Fallers to fire on us without any attempt at evasive maneuvers, first fire, or retaliatory fire. That is unacceptable. This is, first and foremost, a war.”
“Yes, sir,” Syree said. “But consider, sir, that our second flyer is going to come through the tunnel at the very last moment. Assume we don’t detach until then. We can detach and fire simultaneously.”
“ … eighty clicks … ninety …”
“That won’t work now,” Peres said. “The Faller ship is maneuvering to position herself between us and the tunnel. As soon as the enemy sees our first flyer emerge and then dart back, the Fallers will fire on the artifact—with us still attached—to prevent it from going through. Or, if they’re still close enough, they’ll just go through themselves ahead of the artifact to reconfigure the space tunnel. We can’t fire on them if the artifact is in the way. And then the artifact will emerge in their space after them.”
“That warship can’t move that fast,” Syree said. “They could beat the first flyer back through the tunnel, maybe, but not the second. Look … they’ve stopped moving now. The warship is stationary again … Mr. Lee, how far away is the enemy vessel from the tunnel entrance?”
“Still two hundred clicks, ma’am, but now on our direct trajectory.”
“Look, the numbers work,” Syree insisted. “Our first flyer comes through today at fourteen thirty-two hours. It darts right back again. At that time—if we don’t detach now—we’re five minutes from impact and traveling at … just a minute … at four thousand eight hundred sixty clicks per second.” No mention of fudge factors or loopholes now. “We detach then, Commander, and remember that the Zeus is also traveling at four thousand eight hundred sixty clicks. That’s fast, Commander.”
“We have evidence that Faller weapons can track at that velocity. And we’d be in their range.”
“Yes. But that high speed isn’t as easy to track. And they’ll be disoriented for some brief interval, deciding whether to fire on us, fire on the artifact, or try to beat it to the space tunnel. We gain at least a few seconds by surprise, to fire first.”
Peres frowned. “Can the enemy beat the artifact through the tunnel? The enemy could see the first flyer come through and try to get to the tunnel before the artifact, without firing at all. Can it do that, in five minutes, from two hundred clicks out?”
Syree said reluctantly, “Unfortunately, yes. To cross two hundred clicks in five minutes—yes, the warship can do that easily. But—our second flyer comes through four minutes later from Caligula space. If the warship goes through after the first flyer appears, it will never even realize that the second one changed the tunnel destination yet again. If the warship doesn’t go through after our first flyer because it’s engaged with us, even if it wins the engagement it wouldn’t have time to beat the second flyer back through the tunnel. It would have to cross two hundred clicks in sixty seconds, plus losing a few seconds to making the decision. It can’t do that.”
“Not even as a kamikaze run? What gee would they need to get to the tunnel in sixty seconds?”
“Eleven point three. It would be a kamikaze run. But I don’t think they’d make it. It would take a few seconds to engage their drive. And we’d be firing on them anyway. As soon as we detach, we could swerve sharply to give us a clear shot at them without hitting the artifact. They’ll have to either take evasive action or maneuver to return fire.”
“True,” Peres said. “And, of course, we can always detonate the artifact and use that as a weapon to get the Fallies, if we have to.”
Syree nodded. Detonation was a last resort. She hoped that Peres thought so, too. She said, “If we detach at five minutes, we also have time to get farther away from the detonation blast ourselves. We’ll be moving really fast, Commander. But I have to say this: I mean we’ll be a safe distance away from the shock wave from our own blasters. I don’t know what kind of wave an explosion of the artifact itself could generate.”
So don’t blow it up, she meant. Peres heard her meaning. All he said, however, was, “Understood. Ms. Puchalla?”
The executive officer said, “I see no problem with waiting until t-minus-five-minutes to detach. We’re not in their firing range until then anyway, so its not like we’re avoiding engagement”
“Agreed,” Peres said. “All right. Helmsman, continue acceleration.”
“Continuing acceleration.”
“Mr. Lee, keep your eyes glued—and I mean glued—to that enemy position.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Zeus sped forward, gaining velocity every second, toward whatever the enemy or the artifact or the space tunnel chose to do next.
TWENTY-THREE
IN THE NEURY MOUNTAINS
Ann and Bazargan listened as the dirt-encrusted Gruber excitedly, with much arm-waving, explained what he had found deep under the Neury Mountains. Bazargan knew this was important: perhaps the most important explanation he’d heard since landing on World. But he couldn’t concentrate. He hadn’t been exposed to that many rads, and his radiation sickness wasn’t bad enough to kill a person. But it could make a person feel pretty sick, especially a person who hadn’t eaten much, hadn’t slept much, had pushed his terrified way through miles of dank unhealthy underground tunnels in some strange force field that only Gruber was utterly convinced existed.
“I tried several tunnels until I found one with a deep chimney, no more than five hundred meters from here. Still in the dead eye of the field, according to my handheld. I had pitons and ropes, and—”
“You took a terrible chance,” A
nn said. “You might have been killed.” In her filthy face her blue eyes were fascinated, reproachful, admiring, all at once. You had to still be young, Bazargan thought, to manage that combination. His bones ached from the marrow outward.
“Ja,” Gruber agreed cheerfully. “But I wasn’t. The chimney terminated in another set of lava tunnels, smooth, supported by much older granite plinths … an unusual structure. I tried all the tunnels, carefully marking my way, until I found it. Came to it. Discovered it!”
“What?” Ann said. “What?”
“A small cave. No more than four meters’ diameter, if it had been regularly shaped enough for a diameter, which it wasn’t. A pockmark in the rock. And on the floor, the projecting curve of a metal sphere. Only a small part of it—a very small part. Most is encased in rock. I did what quick tests I could. The age of the rock melt close around it matches the age of the clay layer deposited when something crashed into the prehistoric ocean basin and formed these tunnels. Before the land all rose again into the mountains.”
“The original asteroid,” Ann breathed.
“Not an asteroid! This is an artifact, manufactured. Perhaps twenty-five-meter radius, judging from the curvature. The surface seems to be some allotropic form of carbon, something like fullerenes. I couldn’t tell more than that, with the equipment I had. Except for one crucial thing-Ahmed, are you awake?”
“Yes,” Bazargan said.
Ann turned from her rapt fascination with Gruber to look at Bazargan. He saw the moment she registered how awful he looked. Comprehension swept her dirty features. “You’re sick, Ahmed. The radiation sickness.”
“Yes. But I … didn’t take too many … rads. I’ll recover.” He turned his head barely in time to vomit on the ground and not on her.
