He glanced out of his window. The tangled jungles of South America, laced by cloud, passed for the last time beneath the prow of the spaceship. He wondered if anybody would ever see such a sight again—and how soon it would be before even the existence of such a place as this remote continent was forgotten. But as the Soyuz passed over the Americas toward the Atlantic he saw a storm, a creamy-white spiral, that sat like an immense spider across the Gulf of Mexico. Minor storms spun off across the Caribbean islands, Florida, Texas and Mexico. These children of the monster in the Gulf were themselves devastatingly powerful, and had scratched deep gouges into the forest that covered central America. Worse, the central mother storm system was itself edging north, and surely little would be spared from Houston to New Orleans. This was the second superstorm system they had seen in the last few days—the remnants of the first were still coursing across the eastern United States and the western Atlantic. But there was nothing the cosmonauts could do for anybody on the ground, not even warn them.
Right on time there was a series of bangs from above and below. The craft shuddered, feeling subtly lighter. Explosive bolts had detonated, jettisoning the descent compartment from the other two sections of the Soyuz: the rocket engines and their garbage would now burn up like meteors, to baffle whoever was down there on the ground.
They endured the next few minutes in a silence broken only by the ticking of their instruments, the humming of the air supply. But the small noises of the various gadgets were almost cozy, like being in a home workshop, Kolya thought. He knew he was going to miss this environment.
As they fell across the sky, the resistance of the thickening air began to bite. Kolya watched the deceleration build up on the meter before him: 0.1 g, 0.2 g. Soon he began to feel it. Pushed back into his couch, his straps felt loose, and he tightened them. But the rise in pressure wasn't steady; the upper atmosphere was lumpy, and the compartment shuddered as it fell, like an airliner passing through turbulence. Kolya was aware, as he had been during no previous descent, of the smallness and fragility of the capsule within which he was falling to the ground.
Through his window now he could see only the blackness of space. But a deep color seeped into that blackness: first brown, like old, dried blood, but quickly lighter, climbing the spectrum through red, orange, yellow. As the air thickened the deceleration became savage, rising rapidly through a single gravity and climbing to two, three, four g's. The light outside, of atoms of air smashed to bits by their passage, climbed to white now, and a pearly glow shone through the windows, casting a pale, beautiful illumination over their suited laps. It was like being inside a fluorescent lightbulb, he thought. But the windows blackened as the outside of the capsule was scorched by the ionized air, and the angelic light was obscured.
And still the buffeting continued. The capsule shuddered, throwing them from side to side and against each other, despite the straps. It was a much more severe ride even than the launch had been, and after three months in space Kolya wasn't well equipped to cope with it. He found it hard even to breathe, and he knew that he could not have lifted a finger, no matter how urgent the task.
At last the ride smoothed out. There was another sharp bang from outside the wall, startling him. A window shield had blown off, taking the soot with it, to reveal a slab of startlingly clear blue sky. Not the sky of Earth: the sky of a new world, the sky of Mir.
The first parachute deployed, a drogue that snatched at the air. The descent compartment swung violently, through two, three, four swings, and then the main chute yanked at the capsule, making it rock again. Kolya could just make out the wide orange canopy of the main chute above him. It was hard to believe it was only ten minutes or so since they had jettisoned the other parts of the Soyuz, perhaps five since first entering the atmosphere. He could feel gravity's invisible fingers pulling at his internal organs: even his head was heavy, as if made of concrete, too heavy for his neck. But he felt only a huge relief; the most dangerous part of the descent was already over.
As touchdown approached compressed gas hissed. Kolya found his seat rising up as its base was pressurized to serve as a shock absorber, pushing him up against the instrument console and increasing his discomfort further.
"Christ," Sable growled, similarly squashed up, "I will be so damn glad to get out of this tractor cabin."
"It has served you well," was Musa's level reply. "Only a few minutes more."
But Kolya relished those minutes, uncomfortable as he was: the last minutes in which the ship's automated systems cushioned him, perhaps the last minutes of his old life.
"Proximity light," called Musa.
Kolya braced. There was a brief roar as rockets fired, just a couple of meters from the ground. And then there was a slam as they hit the ground—and bounced up again. After a breathless second the cabin came down again, scraped loudly, and leapt into the air once more with a shudder. Kolya knew what that meant: the Soyuz was being dragged over the ground by its parachute.
"Shit!" Sable shouted. "There must be a wind—"
"If we tip over," Musa said, his voice made uneven by the jarring, "we could have trouble extricating ourselves."
"Maybe you should have thought of that before!" Sable yelled.
Another slam, a scraping ride, a bounce. Though the padding of his suit protected his body, Kolya found his head rattling inside his helmet, his forehead slamming against the faceplate. There was nothing they could do but endure the ride, and pray that the capsule didn't tip.
But then, with a final bounce and scrape, the capsule was still—and it was upright. They sat there, scarcely breathing. Musa quickly punched a button to release the parachute.
Kolya was unbearably hot; he could feel sweat puddled under his back inside the suit. He reached out—his arm felt enormously heavy—and searched for Musa's gloved hand. For a moment they held each other, reassuring themselves of their continued existence.
"We are all right," panted Musa. "We are down."
"Yes," said Sable, her voice a gasp. "But down where?"
* * *
Even now there was some routine, as they worked to close down the spacecraft's remaining systems. Kolya turned off the ventilator, and took off his helmet and gloves. A valve to allow in air from outside had opened some minutes before the landing, and Kolya tasted air that was noticeably free of the dust that had plagued the Soyuz.
Musa grinned at him. "I can smell polin."
"Yes." It was a sweet, smoky aroma. Polin, a kind of wormwood, grew all over the steppe. The familiar scent seemed to invigorate Kolya. "Perhaps this Mir of yours won't be so strange after all!"
Musa grunted. "There's only one way to find out." He punched another button. Latches clicked. The hatch above their heads sprung open, and Kolya saw a circle of cloud-choked gray sky. More fresh air pushed into the cabin.
Musa released his straps and pushed at his couch. "This is the part I have been dreading." He had to be the first to move because of his central position. Slowly, moving like a very old man, he struggled to his feet. Normally a team of rescuers and medics would be on hand to help him out of the cabin, like lifting a china doll from its packaging; today there was nobody to help. Kolya and Sable both leaned over, pushing at his rump and legs, but Kolya felt weak as a kitten himself. Musa said, "This damn suit is so stiff, it fights against me."
At last he was upright, and he pushed his head outside the capsule. Kolya saw him squint in the light, and his thick thatch of hair was blown by the wind. Then his eyes widened. He got his hands on the hull—it was still hot from the reentry, and he had to be cautious—then, with what seemed a superhuman effort to Kolya, he lifted himself up until he was sitting on the lip of the hatch.
"Me next," Sable said. She was visibly weakened, but compared to Musa she seemed agile and eager. She swarmed up out of her couch, and allowed Musa to help pull her up until she was sitting beside him. "My, my," she said.
Kolya, left alone in the capsule, could see nothing but thei
r dangling legs. "What's happening? What's out there?"
Musa said to Sable, "Help me." He lifted his legs out of the hatch, turned ponderously on his belly, and held up his hands to her. Then he slid down the curving side of the Soyuz and out of Kolya's sight.
Sable peered down at Kolya, grinning. "Come see the show."
When Kolya forced himself to his feet, he felt as if all the blood was draining from his brain. He stood still until the feeling of fainting had dissipated a little. Then he reached up to the hatch, and let Sable help him haul himself up until he was sitting at the top of the hull.
Kolya was maybe two meters up from the ground. The descent compartment was a dome of metal sitting on the grass. From this elevation he saw the eternal steppe, flat and semi-infinite, stretching away under a great lid of cloud. It had been marked by their landing: a series of crude gouges and craters led up to the final position of the craft, and further away the discarded main chute lay on the ground, billowing forlornly, a startling orange against the yellow-green ground.
Directly ahead of him there was a kind of village. It was just a huddle of grubby, dome-shaped tents. People stood, men, women and children, all bundled up in furs. They were staring at him, open-mouthed. Beyond, horses grazed, loosely tethered, unperturbed.
A man walked out of the tent village. He had a broad face, deep-set black eyes that seemed very close together, and he wore a heavy full-length coat and a conical cap, both made of fur. He was holding a heavy sword of beaten iron.
"A Mongol warrior," Sable whispered.
Kolya glanced at her. "You expected this, didn't you?"
"I thought there was a good chance, based on what we saw from orbit..."
The breeze shifted, and a stench of cooked meat, unwashed flesh, and horse sweat hit Kolya. It was as if a veil had been torn away from his face, and suddenly he was confronted with the reality: this really was the past, or a fragment of it, and he was stranded in it.
Musa was managing to stand, with one hand on the hull of the spacecraft for support. "We have fallen from space," he said to the man, smiling. "Isn't that a marvelous thing? Please..." He held out his empty hands. "Can you help us?"
The warrior reacted so quickly Kolya could barely follow the move. That sword flashed through the air, blurring like a helicopter blade. Musa's head flipped into the air, cut off as easily as the head of a steppe daisy, and it rolled like a football in the dirt. Musa's body still stood, the arms still outstretched. But blood gushed in a sudden fountain from the stump of his neck, running down the scuffed orange of his spacesuit. Then the body fell, rigid.
Kolya stared down at Musa's severed head, scarcely able to believe what had happened.
The warrior raised his sword again. But with his free hand he beckoned the others to climb down to the ground.
"Welcome to Mir," Sable muttered. Kolya, horrified, thought he heard a note of triumph in her voice.
17. A Hard Rain
GRASPER WASN'T TROUBLED BY her confinement. She was so young, perhaps she had forgotten that any other way of life had ever existed. She would roam around the cage floor or climb up the netting; she would swing from the shining object that held it all up; she explored her own ears and nostrils with ruthless efficiency.
As the days wore on the men beyond the netting seemed to be growing more agitated, but they never failed to bring the man-apes their food and water. Grasper would come clambering up the net walls and try to reach out to them, and the men would reward her with extra bits of food. Seeker, though, grew withdrawn. She hated this prison, and the strange creatures who had trapped her. Nobody praised her, or gave her extra bits of fruit; there was nothing cute about Seeker's sullen hostility.
It got worse when the rains started.
The rains were sometimes so hard that the heavy drops pounded against your skin like a hundred tiny fists. The man-apes were always cold and sodden, and even Grasper's bright curiosity was subdued. Sometimes the rain stung when it hit your bare flesh, your hands or feet or lips, and if it got in your eyes it could be very painful indeed.
The rain was full of acid because of events half a world away.
The new world had been stitched together from fragments of the old—but those fragments had been plucked from many different eras, across two million years. The mixing of air masses had caused the unstable weather that plagued those first days after the Discontinuity. In the oceans, too, the invisible Amazons of the great currents sought a new equilibrium.
And the land had been rent apart. In the Atlantic, a belt of volcanic mountains, stretching south from Iceland, marked the position of a mid-ocean ridge, a place where seabed was born, molten material welling up from the planet's interior. This birthing zone had been ripped open by the Discontinuity. The Gulf Stream, which for millennia had delivered warm southern water to Europe, now faced a fresh obstacle, a new volcanic island that would eventually dwarf even Iceland, thrusting its way out of the ridge.
Meanwhile the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific, where great tectonic plates jostled each other, lived up to its name. There was turmoil all down the western seaboard of North America, from Alaska to Washington State: most of the twenty-seven volcanoes in the Cascades were triggered.
Mount Rainier's explosion was the worst. Its noise was a great shout that spread right around the planet. In India it sounded like distant artillery, and the survivors of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries stirred uneasily in their sleep. A vast mushroom cloud of ash and debris lifted high into the air's upper layers, spreading at hurricane-force speeds. Most of the debris washed out quickly, but the thin stuff lingered, blotting out the sun. Temperatures dropped. As the air cooled, it could hold less water.
All over the world it rained. And rained, and rained.
In a sense, all of this was beneficial. A Frankenstein's-monster of a world was trying to knit itself together, and a new equilibrium, in the air, the sea and the rocks, would eventually emerge. But the painful thrashing of that healing process was devastating for anything, plant or animal, struggling to survive.
Seeker had no long-term perspective. For her there was only the present, and her present was drenched in misery, confined in the humans' cruel cage, and by the acid rain that lanced down at her from the sky. When the rain was at its worst Grasper huddled under her mother, and Seeker curled over her baby, taking the scalding downpour on her own back.
Part Three: ENCOUNTERS AND ALLIANCES
18. Emissaries of Heaven
STILL WIELDING HIS SWORD, the Mongol yelled over his shoulder. More armed men came running out of the tents—no, Kolya thought, the yurts. Women and children followed. The children were little bundles in felt coats, wide-eyed with curiosity.
The men had classic Asiatic features, Kolya thought, with broad faces and small dark eyes, and jet-black hair that they wore tied back. Some had bands of cloth around their heads. They wore baggy dun-colored trousers, and went barefoot, or wore boots into which the trousers were tucked. If they weren't bare-chested they wore simple light tunics, heavily mended.
They looked mean, and strong. And they gathered threateningly around the gravity-laden cosmonauts. Kolya tried to hold his ground. He was shaking; Musa's headless corpse still lay against the side of the Soyuz, the last blood trickling from its neck.
Musa's killer walked up to Sable, who glared back at him. Uncompromisingly he grabbed her breast and compressed it.
Sable did not flinch. "Holy crap, but this guy stinks." Kolya could hear the brittleness in her voice, sense the fear under her resolve. But the warrior backed away.
The men talked rapidly, eyeing the cosmonauts and their spacecraft, and the parachute silk that lay sprawled across the dusty steppe.
"You know what I think they're saying?" Sable whispered. "That they're going to kill you. Me they'll rape, then kill."
"Try not to react," Kolya said.
The tension was broken by a squeal. A little girl of about five, with a face round as a button, had touched th
e wall of the Soyuz and had come away with a burned hand.
The men growled as one. Musa's killer pressed his sword against Kolya's neck. His mouth was open, his eyes small, and Kolya could smell meat and milk on his breath. Suddenly the world was very vivid: the animal stink of the man before him, the rusty scent of the steppe, even the surge of blood in his ears. Was this to be his last memory, before he followed Musa into the dark...?
"Darughachi," he said. "Tengri. Darughachi."
The man's eyes widened. He backed away, but he kept the sword raised, and the rapid conversation resumed, but now the men stared even harder.
Sable hissed, "What did you say?"
"Schoolboy memories." Kolya tried to keep his voice level. "I was guessing. It mightn't have been their language at all; we could have landed anywhere in time—"
"What language, Kolya?"
"Mongolian."
Sable snorted. "I knew it."
"I said we were emissaries. Emissaries of Eternal Heaven. If they believe it, they will have to treat us with respect. Hand us over to local officials, maybe. I'm bluffing—just bluffing—"
"Good thinking, Batman," Sable said. "After all these guys saw us fall from the sky. Take me to your leader. Always works in the movies." She actually laughed, a forced, ugly sound.
At last the circle around the cosmonauts began to break up, and nobody came to kill them. One man pulled on a jacket and felt hat, ran to a hobbled horse tied up beside a yurt, mounted it and rode briskly away.
The cosmonauts' hands were tied behind their backs and they were prodded in the direction of one of the yurts. It would have been difficult to walk even without tied hands; Kolya felt as if he was encased in lead, and his head sang. Staring children, picking their noses, formed a sort of honor guard as they passed. One nasty-looking brat threw a rock that bounced off Kolya's shoulder. It was hardly a dignified return to Earth, he thought. But at least they were alive; at least he had won them some time.
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