Call of Worlds

by K. D. Lovgren

  Demeter was bigger than Earth. Like Earth, it had large landmasses divided by huge oceans. Demeter was older than Earth and wore a different aspect. Her mountains were shaped by billions of years of erosion, their sharp cliffs and ridges worn smooth and round, though the mountains rose to elevations higher than Earth’s in places. The undulating shapes of her ranges, though on a scale Kal had never seen before, reminded her of the mysterious mountain ranges in parts of China, which looked painted as much as geologically formed. Where the Land had settled was near where the biohab builders had begun their work to create structure, the beginnings of a home. They had chosen one of the great rolling plains that characterized much of one of the planet’s landmasses. It ranged from the equator to far north of it. Demeter was cooler than Earth, overall, and they chose their landing spot accordingly, wanting to avoid the fastnesses to the north and south, draped in ice and snow. The wide middle range north and south of the equator left plenty of space to inhabit in more hospitable climes. Oxygen was less, nitrogen was higher, and gravity was lower. These things would take time to adjust to.

  The planet had an austere beauty that made Kal think of Sasha, as she was the most austere beauty in Kal’s life. Not giving much away about herself, but warm enough to give welcome, if you knew how to approach her. Kal and Priscilla watched Demeter drawing near together.

  “She’s a beauty,” Kal said.

  “What a big world.” Priscilla was close to the front window of the bridge, Kal a little behind her.

  “Can you believe I’m going to live there?” Kal said.

  “Will you have horses?”

  “I don’t know of any horses.”

  Priscilla made a noise of disappointment. “They make it easier to get around.”

  “That’s true.” Kal thought about this, what it would be like to explore Demeter on horseback. “It’s a good idea. We could put the horses in hypersleep. They would wake up in a new place. As long as they had other horses to keep them company, they’d be fine. I wonder why Aldortok didn’t think of that.”

  “You wouldn’t have to use fancy fuel for them,” Priscilla said, and sniffed.

  Kal grinned. “Horses make everything better, don’t they? We should check out the biome first, though.”

  “You check it out. Give them a report.”

  “Okay, Inà. Any other ideas for me?”

  “It looks like home, a little bit. Right there.” She pointed.

  Kal looked. It was where the Land was. They could already see the Land, but not the biohabs, yet. The Land was parked in what looked like an ocean, golden instead of blue.

  “The plains,” Kal whispered.

  “The plains. Maybe there are buffalo.”

  Kal wondered what she would see, what she would learn there that she couldn’t imagine now.

  Kal looked sidelong at Priscilla. “Do you think it’s all right for us to come here? We weren’t invited.”

  Priscilla, her long dark hair pricked with silver, shrugged. Her hair glittered with the movement. “A door opened for you. That’s what the portal is, right? A door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe that is the invitation. Study when you get there. Look for what this place wants. Not just what you want. That will be enough to make you different from all those incomers.”

  “I will, Iná. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Her aunt turned to face her. “Anytime you want to know what I think, you ask. I’m always here for you. If you can’t see my face or hear my words, ask anyway.”

  “I will.” Kal wished she could touch her Iná. She satisfied herself with stroking down the line of her aunt’s arm, where she would touch her if she were able. Priscilla was three-dimensional, but she had no substance. Nothing to touch.

  It was time to get ready. Before they got close to entering the atmosphere, Kal had some preparations to do. She went to her cabin and packed a small backpack. Inside it she put a change of clothes, some undergarments, the blanket her aunt made, the sage she’d brought from home, her comb, and a necklace she never wore but always kept in her things.

  Next was a less pleasant task, but necessary. Kal looked in Sasha’s cabin, to see if there was anything she should tidy up before someone from outside came in and poked around, like Captain Rev Cooley. Kal thought it was better she do it than leave anything to chance. Sasha would do the same for her.

  Now that she had captain’s clearance, she could get into any cabin, any room. She had taken her baths in Sasha’s suite since the pods left. The bedroom was sacrosanct, so she had passed through with blinders on, until now. Anything else would have been an invasion of privacy. The situation now was unique. Kal didn’t think Cooley could go through the ship, looking at anything she wanted to, but she wasn’t sure. It was better not to assume.

  Considering her more personal interest in Sasha, it felt a bit wrong, despite her intent. Still, she would do what had to be done and not dither over it.

  Sasha’s bed was made, her room neat. Kal did a quick search through her built-in drawers, which she used her captain’s hand scan to open. She was looking for anything Sasha might want to keep private from a rival or corporate eye.

  The drawers were also neat, with folded clothes, some more suitable for a planet than a ship. Kal packed these in a bag she found in the closet, so they would be ready for Sasha when she got off the pod. In one of the drawers Kal found a notebook, the kind with paper, a pen looped to it. She tucked it in the pack. Other than that there were no papers. No jewelry. No images of people. The most personal thing Kal found, other than the notebook, was a sweater that looked like it had been knitted by hand. This Kal put in last, so Sasha would see it first.

  Kal was ready. She ran up to the astrolab to get her drawing of the constellations, folded it carefully, and put it in her pack, between the clothes and the material of the pack, so it would crumple less. The ink pen and a bottle of ink she put inside a pouch and tucked into a pocket.

  One last time to look at the stars, displaying their best light for her.

  “I’m the child of you,” she said. It made this place seem more like somewhere that could be her home. That she belonged.

  With a wave of goodbye and one more spin to thread the stars around her in lines of light, she ran back down the spiral to the bridge.

  Wearing her most official suit, her patches on display, she dug out the pilots’ cap she’d shoved down into the pocket of her chair years before, put it on at a jaunty angle. It was almost time to put on her exosuit to disembark.

  Demeter was wide and disorienting, this close. In another couple of hours they would enter her atmosphere. A shiver of anticipation electrified Kal, from occiput to tailbone.

  She saw a call was coming in from Captain Cooley. When the holo snapped into place, Kal was ready.

  Captain Cooley smiled when she saw Kal. “You look very official, Captain Black Bear.”

  Kal sketched a salute. “As I am.”

  “Ready for this?”

  “Yes, captain.”

  “We’re sending you the coordinates of your landing zone. Plenty of space here. You’ll be two kilometers from the Land, so there shouldn’t be any squeezing necessary, as long as you’re not completely sloppy. Tell Rai to keep it within a hundred meters either way.”

  “We can handle it. What type of terrain is the landing zone?”

  “This part of the continent is a type of grassland. Wide, rolling terrain, with enough flat spots and large depressions to settle a starship down without trouble. Nothing like what you would have experienced on Sextant.”

  Kal blinked. “I look forward to discovering what that’s like, too. If necessary.”

  Cooley nodded slowly. She cleared her throat with a sort of emphasis Kal didn’t try to interpret. “You need to be prepared for the disembark. As you know, Demeter is .806 Gs compared to Earth. It sounds great in theory, but it’s strange at first. Makes your first couple of weeks to a month uncomfortable. We’ve had na
usea, intestinal upset, headaches. We call it low grav flu. The atmosphere is a jot less oxygen-wise, and that can leave you short of breath and without stamina. There’s a certain amount of euphoria upon arrival, to be expected after what it takes to get here, also from oxygen deficit, but we had seven out of eight of our crew overdo it. It cost us greatly in the first few months. Our work ethic is hard to beat down, the spacefarer type, but it will save time in the long run if you take debrief and quarantine very seriously. Don’t push it and we won’t have a problem. Understood?”

  “Understood.” Kal felt euphoric with anticipation already. She didn’t know how she’d keep herself in check, but now wasn’t the time to expand on that. The fact that Cooley had included Kal in the collective “our work ethic” was promising.

  Kal tucked sound protectors in her ears.

  She found the storage space, hidden in the wall of the bridge, where her second exosuit was kept. From when she started to put it on to when she was done the time evaporated. She found herself standing next to her pilot’s seat for one more look out the window before the burn, clad in the exosuit, not remembering having put it on. It was as if she’d thought about it and it clad her voluntarily. She clicked on the coolant for her body, the best she could do to protect herself from passing out during the heat of entry.

  The passage from space to atmosphere was always tense; the heat, pulling Gs like a nightmare of falling through fire, an infinite drop. No one went through it without thinking it could end in nothing other than flames. Once she knew she wasn’t going to die it was fun.

  Strapping herself in, Kal calmed her mind as much as she could. It was better to be accepting of what would happen. It had to be gone through to get down.

  The drop.

  Waves of visible heat, shocking and painful, the coolant no match for it. If she saw flames from her arms she would not be surprised. Everything turned pink-orange outside the ship as the oxygen molecules of the atmosphere collided with the force of the ship. The plasma outside the ship shifted through glowing colors, a brilliant, vivid red, then purple, finally white. Shaking and rumbling, an earthquake of change from the settled nothingness of space over the Rocky Mountains to atmosphere, the new molecular structure of Demeter’s breathing room. Kal gripped the arms of her seat, closing her eyes as the sweat streamed down her face and soaked her clothes, the thermoelectric cooler cooling her as the heat was produced. The spacesuit encasing her felt like lead as she pulled Gs. Her breath came in short, fast gasps. An elevator, out of control. Fire licking at her heels.

  Deceleration.

  She was through the plasma.

  Demeter, rushing at her. Too fast, too close.

  Her hands on the throttle, though it moved without her, under Rai’s control.

  Altitude thrusters positioned the ship. The reverse thrusters roared as they slowed the Ocean’s momentum to the velocity calculated for optimal landing.

  Demeter ate up more and more of the view, until it was all Kal could see. Her eyes darted around, taking it all in. Thousands of kilometers of golden grassy waves, rolling away from the huge flat depression where their coordinates guided them. Kal was buckled into her pilot’s seat, where she felt most comfortable during landing, though she left the maneuvers to Rai. Since the Land had successfully negotiated landing on Demeter, the calculations transmitted from Captain Cooley to Kal were precise and enough to ensure a smooth autopilot descent.

  The force of the slowdown pushed Kal back in her seat.

  What was Sif thinking? She was going through the same thing. The infirmary’s super-cooling system should keep her alive. The quarantine room had jumpseats. She’d be fine if she kept her head.

  A series of adjustments slid Kal around in her seat, despite the straps. She tightened them. As the landing gear engaged she took in a big breath, ready for ground.

  Shuddering carbon.

  Widest seas of grassland Kal had ever seen.

  The Land in the distance, the dull glint of its surface reflecting Mythos.

  What might be people, or little upright structures, positioned within view like chess pieces.

  Individual blades of grass.

  The graceful Ocean lowering herself, deigning to touch land.

  Arrival.

  The next motions were a blur. Unbuckling her chair straps, checking over readings on the ship’s status, examining the holo of the ship’s system. She didn’t need to ask Rai. She could see it all for herself.

  The Ocean was a champion.

  “Thank you, Rai,” she said aloud. “Thank you for taking care of us. Thank you for taking care of me.”

  “You’re welcome, Kal. I value our conversations. Your understanding of the evolution of consciousness within a machine framework is helpful. Not every human is as willing to consider non-human awareness. Thank you.”

  The tremble inside, in the center of Kal’s chest, was her realization what it would mean to be outside Rai for the first time in many months.

  “You’ve been my home.” It would be no good shorting out her helmet, so Kal locked down the feelings of separation bubbling up, the strange sensation that when she walked down the ramp and out of Rai she would be birthed again, by a machine mother. Rai knew her better than her biological mother ever did. Maybe better than the woman who had played that role, her aunt Priscilla.

  Rai was family. As she had been ever since Kal sat on her aunt’s blanket and opened her eyes to see Rai sitting opposite her, inhabiting the holographic form of Priscilla. Then Kal had really known what it was to look Rai in the eye, to see the light of awareness, accessible, because in the kind of shape Kal understood. When she recognized Rai as one of her own. As another self. As a member of her tribe. They would never be wholly separate now.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  “Goodbye, Kal.”

  With movement slowed by the exosuit, Kal picked up the two packs, Sasha’s and hers, and fixed them to her suit. It was time to make her way to the exit point.

  Every corridor, every level Kal looped down, was now poignant. She was part of this ship.

  In the aft of the lowest level, where Kal had seldom had reason to go, she put her hand over a sensor, the last time she would as part of this mission to Demeter.

  Once inside the airlock, she sealed herself in. Only this room between herself and Demeter. After a deep breath in and out, she hit the decontamination button.

  Her eyes closed as the room filled with clouds of vapor, killing everything it could on the surfaces of its contents. Once the vapor had drifted down and been sucked back into the filtration system, she held her breath for the temperature to drop. Even though she was in the temperature-controlled exosuit, when the temperature dropped and ice formed on her mask, she felt correspondingly cold inside. It was psychological, but she’d never been able to control it. “The psychological is physical,” Inger, the ship’s doctor, always said.

  She supposed she should be glad they didn’t superheat the airlock.

  The sound of a thousand straws heralded the sucking out of the remaining moisture.

  The airlock began regulating now to the outside temperature of the planet. It was the final stage.

  Kal put her hand on exit.

  The cargo door, which opened like the lower jaw of a snake from the rear of the Ocean, unsealed itself with a slow hiss.

  The light was blinding. Kal slid down the sun visor over the clear visor of her helmet, before she damaged her retinas.

  As the door sunk lower, wind blew up into the ship. The first blast of outside air. Kal couldn’t breathe it yet, taste the difference from Earth, because her unit was self-contained. She couldn’t wait to smell the scents of Demeter, but that would have to wait.

  With the maw opened fully, the edge of the door resting on Demetrian soil, Kal stepped forward, her first step down the ramp. She felt strange, but not sure why.

  A white tent self-inflated at the base of the ramp. She waited for it. It blocked her view of any people. A fi
gure in a hazmat suit pushed aside a flap on the tent and motioned her to come forward. Kal was glad she had her visor down, because her smile split her face in two.

  Her walk down to her new home was slow, awkward in the exosuit, but she held herself proudly and moved with all the formality she could.

  She couldn’t see who was in the suit. Their visor was shaded, the suit too bulky to reveal anything about the person within.

  Once inside the tent, the doors were sealed, and the tent pumped full of something that made the walls bulge. She was in a sealed, airtight bubble. She was decontaminated again, first with what seemed like a UV light, then with another vapor cast. The figure motioned for her to remove her suit.

  Pressing at the seals on her helmet, Kal was filled with wonder that she was about to be exposed to a new atmosphere, even if it was an atmosphere within an atmosphere. She gave the last permission her suit needed and removed her helmet.

  The air smelled toxic. She breathed shallowly. Section by section, she removed her exoskeleton.

  Now she was a very squishable bug in a strange place, inside a poisonous bubble with a stranger.

  The figure made another gesture with a hand. Keep going.

  She took off her cap. Slowly she removed her officer’s suit. Now she was in her undergarments. The figure nodded. Was it Roan?

  It didn’t matter.

  She took off her undersuit and stood bare inside a tent on Demeter.

  Taking her clothes and cap, the figure shoved them into a clear pouch, sealing it before pressing a button which made the pouch shrink and crackle as the air inside was sucked out. The same was done for the two packs and the exosuit, larger pouches being produced from seemingly nowhere to fit them.

  Kal stood shivering as the process was implemented.

  Now it was her turn. Would she go in a clear pouch too?

  The figure pointed at the ceiling and walls of the tent. Kal looked around cautiously. The spraying started.