Frontera
Page 23
He slammed his helmet into the side of the ship, waking himself up. Somewhere in the back of his skull the biological circuit whispered to him in neural languages that his conscious mind could not hear; sweet, irresistible voices that told him to take the panel, to lift the ship.
Yamato-Takeru knew, Kane thought; he’d felt his spirit stolen away from him, just like this.
Every separate human life, the boy had said. A moment of the life of some great being which lives in us.
The membrane parted again, and Kane saw them all, Jason and Percival and the hundreds of other human lives and the single Pattern they formed, the single act they performed again and again, outside time, each of them with a unique moment, a contribution.
Kane knew what his had to be.
Molly was still sitting on the cliffside when Kane found her. He had remembered to turn his radio on again, but he couldn’t find the words that he needed.
Takahashi stood next to her, with three or four others. In the aftermath of the shockwave, the dust had settled and the night was turning clear.
“It was the Russian ship,” Takahashi said. Kane looked at him with incomprehension. “Mayakenska. She crashed the Salyut in the Solis Planum. That was the explosion.”
“The oasis,” Kane said.
“The beginning of one, anyway. If the crater’s not deep enough, some of Verb’s antimatter can finish it up. I guess it was her way of trying to settle up.”
“Not much…not much of a trade,” Kane said, looking back at the ruins of Frontera, cooled now to within a few degrees of the plain around it.
“No,” Takahashi said. “But it’s a start.”
Kane knelt in the dirt in front of Molly. “Take this,” he said, and he put the panel in her hands. “Build ships.”
“Kane…”
“Shut up, Takahashi,” he said. There was more, but this was not the time for it. Later he would tell her about the rest of his plans, a full-fledged relief mission with food and medicine and whatever else they needed. A treaty with Aeroflot to keep them safe. But he would tell her later, by radio, once he was on his way back to Earth.
“Where’s Lena?” he asked.
“Inside,” Takahashi said. “She’s staying. There’s a lot of work for her here. They’re all staying, even Hanai. That doesn’t matter—the two of us can run the ship. But we have to have that panel. That’s what we came for.”
“Is it?” Kane said. “I don’t think so.”
“Kane…”
“We’ve got time,” Kane said. “We need these people, they need us. We’ll work it out.” Even without eye contact Kane could feel Takahashi’s will bending to the new order. “Go on ahead,” he said. “Get the ship ready. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Takahashi turned and walked away.
“Curtis?” Molly said.
Kane leaned toward her, put both his hands on her helmet and held it facing his own.
“He’s dead,” Kane said.
Her hands closed around the panel, and she seemed to nod; she got up and carried it toward the airlock.
Kane had a vision of her, standing under a green Martian sky, hair blowing in the wind, dressed in a heavy jacket and mask, but standing in the open air, thick, green shrubbery at her feet.
The vision was his own, not a product of the implant; his voices were silent. He wondered if Molly would hear them when her time came, if she would see the ghost of Odysseus in the video screens of the ships that would take her to Io and Titan and on to the stars.
The colors of the night began to shimmer and bleed until the Martian landscape glowed like Reese’s gateway. Only a force of will held Kane’s perceptions together as he walked down the hillside that would lead him back to his ship, back to the Earth, back to his kingdom.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
KANE’S PATTERN is the Pattern of the Hero, detailed in Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen, 1968). Quotations from the I Ching are from the Wilhelm/Baynes version (Bollingen, 1967); quotations from Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum are from the Bessaraboffl/Bragdon translation (Vintage, 1970).
I would like to particularly acknowledge the superb nonfiction books of James E. Oberg, which were indispensible in the writing of this novel: Red Star in Orbit (Random House, 1981), New Earths (Stackpole, 1981), and Mission to Mars (Stackpole, 1982). I also made extensive use of Hedrick Smith’s The Russians (Ballantine, 1978).
I am deeply grateful to William Gibson, Edith Shiner, and Bruce Sterling for making me see what it was I really wanted to do. Thanks also to my editor, Betsy Mitchell, and to the many other friends who contributed time and suggestions, including Ellen Datlow and the Turkey Citizens.
For this new edition, thanks must go first to Bill Schafer, my publisher and tireless advocate of my work, and to my partner, Orla Swift. A big tip of the hat to Jenny Crisp, my dedicated copy editor, and to Georgene Russell for fixing my Russian transliterations. Dr. Birgit Krummheuer at the Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung was most generous in getting me permission to use the gorgeous Mars photo on the cover.
By Lewis Shiner
NOVELS
Outside the Gates of Eden
Dark Tangos
Black & White
Say Goodbye
Glimpses
Slam
Deserted Cities of the Heart
Frontera
COLLECTIONS
Heroes and Villains
Collected Stories
Love in Vain
The Edges of Things
Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe
About the Author
Born in Texas, Lewis Shiner is a musician, rock music journalist and award-winning author, writing across genres. He has published six short stories collections and eight novels, including Glimpses, winner of the World Fantasy Best Novel Award.
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