Whatever his dying mind had wanted her to see, it didn’t matter. Even if she wanted to, there was no way for her to access his fone. He would’ve had to—
Hmm …
Minnie sat up the rest of the way, shaking out her head and elbowing away the thickening white blanket. She dropped his fone into a zippered inside pocket, freeing her hands to wipe off the edge of the skimmer. After reaching an ice coat, a moment of scratching and striking chipped it away, revealing a few jagged scratches. A numeral 1 or lowercase L. A lightning bolt … maybe a 3 or Z, or the start of an S. A backslash. And that was it. He’d tried to give her his passcode, but failed.
Or maybe he’d realized the carving approach wasn’t working out. Minnie looked for his multitool and found its hot pink outline deep beneath the snow between him and the skimmer. Now on her knees, one hand on John’s back, she jammed her other hand down, returning with the tool. She noticed it at once. The blade had been folded back in, and the marker tip protruded from the other end. He’d written the passcode somewhere.
The question of whether she even wanted to know John’s final thoughts had yielded to the primal impulse to solve a puzzle, the deciphering of clues, and this new quest was an energizing—if cheerless—prolongation of their relationship.
She wiped more snow from the edge of the skimmer, digging out the underside, and dipped her head beneath for a look. Nothing. Flipping through optics, she searched around him for some buried fragment. Still no … maybe his suit …
Despite a dogged new resolve, her raw emotions refused to be buried as clumps of snow flew aside, exposing his contorted body. She climbed out of the pocket, shuffled around over his head, and banged a knee into a hidden boulder—the rock against which John’s face lay tilted. Numb to any new pain, she clutch his suit behind the shoulders, and threw her weight back. His upper half slid out above the snow. She averted her eyes from the impossible twist at his waist, rolling him onto his back. Her hands swiped across his chest, dusting the snow from around pockets and seams, intentionally disregarding the pack on his face.
She examined the front of his suit and sighed. He’d only had the one hand free to write. Maybe it’d been too late. Maybe he’d only managed to slide out the marker tip before succumbing.
Or …
She lifted the arm that had held the fone, grabbed the gloved hand, and turned the palm to her face. There it was in the most logical location, scrawled but legible enough, from pinky to thumb: 1SVr+33
Wind howled across the skimmer and an enormous mound of snow crashed a few meters away, startling her. Through the whirling air she spotted a recently relieved epsequoia pad bobbing up and down.
Sensing anew the vise-like crush on her skull and joints, Minnie realized how utterly done she was with cold.
An incomplete plan coalesced.
She ripped the glove release line from his wrist, separating it from the suit, slid the glove off, and took the other as well. Her hands fit well despite the size, owing to her existing gloves. She clipped his multitool inside her collar, regretting it at once. The icy clip found a better home on her waist.
A hand on his chest, she closed her eyes.
You’ve never been interested in apologies, so just thank you. We’ll chat soon, I guess. I love you.
Her runners plowed through the loose pack, finding her skimmer pad completely buried. She stepped up, kicked off enough for traction, and set out toward the pin she’d dropped on her suit’s location.
* * *
Bunny jerky tore between her teeth as the heater thawed her legs. Some skin patches burned, others relished the warmth, while a few concerning spots felt nothing, even when poked with a knife. She didn’t want to think about that right now. She was doing everything she could for herself, given the snap decision to leave behind the medkit and its strewn contents. Her suit’s regulators would do a more thorough, uniform job thawing her, but it was still soaked, hanging on the skimmer, just outside her new shelter.
She aimed a wary eye through the gap in the ice. The visible strip of skimmer had her second guessing herself. If it somehow fell, she’d be utterly done for.
Maybe some kind of tether. There were certainly enough solid anchor points in the vast undercutting behind the frozen waterfall. But unless its residual warmth melted away its parking ledge, the thing wasn’t going anywhere. Or was that just her desire to stay by the heater talking?
She rose with a moan, tiptoed down the chilly, sloped, granite floor, and poked her head outside. Only a couple-hundred-meter drop to the rock-hard plunge pool below. She set her optics to kinetic—a setting rarely used outside a lab—and knelt down on the ice sheet. Focusing beneath the skimmer, kinetic drew a zoned surface map with color-coded highlights for active quadrants. The ice shelf under the skimmer wasn’t melting at all, nor had any slippage occurred since landing. The only detected motion was inside the skimmer’s battery, and to be expected.
Ducking below the side of the console, she grabbed a water bottle from a bin. Its contents were solid, of course, so she scurried back to the heater, set the container down beside it, and retreated into her still-warm survival bag.
She pressed a hand to her chest—a motion repeated no less than twenty times over the past several hours. John’s fone obviously hadn’t gone anywhere since she zipped it into the pocket. It certainly hadn’t gone into her housing. She was too afraid to see what he’d left for her. Afraid he hadn’t left anything at all, other than whatever data he considered important for any future human visitors.
Legacy.
It’d be classic John to use up the last bits of oxygen in his brain to think about the mission.
Minnie rolled onto her feet and grabbed the water bottle, slurping a few melted drops. She returned it to the heater’s side and ripped off another string of jerky. By now, her arsenic levels would probably be concerning to a doctor. No lesions or hyperpigmentation, as far as she knew. Her swollen ankles could certainly be a symptom.
Oh, well. Slow poisoning death or fast starvation?
Her fingers traced the lump in her pocket—the second time in under a minute.
Maybe it was time.
It was time.
Once everything was moved into the tent, and John’s fone installed, Minnie curled up on her side, with John’s glove lying before her resting head. She watched the fone preboot give way to the passcode prompt.
There were a few different ambiguous characters on the glove—1 or l or |, + or t—but she got it right on the second attempt.
His home screen shook her.
She blinked and swallowed and pinched her bottom lip between her fingers.
Minerva Anyone else
She stared at her name, concentrating on not accidentally selecting it, unable to fathom why she was so thoroughly terrified to follow the link.
With the survival bag pulled tight over her head, she closed her eyes and forced herself to proceed.
A pic filled her view, eclipsing the tent’s warm glow. It was so unexpected that it took a moment to understand what she was looking at. It’d clearly been grabbed from some recent fone vid. She recognized the screen bezel as the PCU she’d snatched from Ish’s EV. Above the screen, a tiny sliver view of two orange-suited legs, stretching out from under the PCU. And on the glowing screen, this was what John had wanted her to see. The supply pod network homepage.
For an instant, scanning without truly reading, she thought John had overwritten her message with one of his own, an update on their situation, a list of those lost. With disbelieving eyes she read each surreal word in order.
Her message had been received.
The rally camp had been established.
Survivors. All but Angela. Something had happened to Angela.
First contact with the Threck.
Friendly relationship established.
Rescue team on
the way: Aether, Pablo, Threck.
If their ETA was accurate, they’d have arrived yesterday.
The ground tilted beneath Minnie’s body, her mind overflowing with invasive new data attempting to overwrite fixed, read-only memory. She didn’t need to read it again, the entire message was now branded into her brain. It repeated in her head, read aloud in Aether’s official voice—not her shrink voice, or her personal chat voice, or her real voice.
Wait.
It couldn’t be real. This was absolute BS. They were all dead. She’d already come to terms with that incontrovertible fact. If everything over in Threckville was all cake and coffee, why would they have waited so long to post a message? Sheer fabrication. A cruel, heartless lie.
Rage boiling up her neck, fizzing beneath her skin, Minnie rolled onto her back and shoved finger and thumb into her eye socket, dug filthy nails into the fone, and yanked it from her face. She hurled it away, blindly aiming for the breached ice wall and a terminal plunge. It bounced off the sealed tent door with a contemptible theh, dropping somewhere near her feet.
Fuming chaos. Why? Cursing John. No escape from these thoughts; this despair, renewed with insult; half-mended wounds torn open and acid vomit blasted in; a new call for the sweet respite of death, the only true escape from evil tormenters.
She scrambled to her feet, attacked the tent zipper—curses streaming out and echoing through the stone cavity—and marched downslope, through the ice gap, to the side of the skimmer. Wind struck her face and blew her hair behind her, 200 meters of unobstructed freefall flashing by like she was soaring on great eagle wings. Sans depth perception, the 30m-thick ice basin seemed to hurtle closer, sink deeper, zoom near.
With only her bare heels teetering on the glassy ledge, her hand slipped off the side of the ice wall, and her other hand caught her weight on the slick skimmer arm, woozy body tilting out over the sheer face, eye staring down at an increasingly real, petrifying abyss.
Why, John?
She pushed herself back, stumbled from ice to granite, and allowed her legs to give. Sitting, she hugged her knees to her chest and rocked. He’d written it to inspire her on, figuring the promise of returning to Earth wouldn’t be enough to keep her going on her own for a full year and a half. He’d made that up, too—that much was now clear. A good liar drilled in the detail; a great liar inspired with grace. He surely rationalized the heartless tale. The ends justified the means. Get her to the coast. Alarmed after days of no-shows, she’d fall back to the boat plan, get herself seaworthy, head to Threck Country. Even after finding the rally point empty, she’d still hold out hope. Head to the city, make first contact, discover the truth—the lie—but then she wouldn’t be alone anymore, would she? It was her absolute best chance of survival, so reasoned a desperate, dying John.
How could she hate him for that? It wasn’t a heartless scheme; it came straight from his heart. Knowing full well she’d despise him for it, he’d ranked her survival over his memory. And she hated him for it. And she loved him for it.
She missed being robotic. Emotions were exhausting.
A resigned breath, a flicked-away tear, she groaned as she stood. Her feet slapped up the rise, tent door thwacked aside, and she stepped in, stooping to find the chucked sphere. It was nestled at the foot of her survival bag.
Once more ensconced in warmth, she delved back into John’s fone to see what he’d left for “Anyone else.” Predictably, the link simply opened an extensive file catalogue. With an indifferent scroll, Minnie recognized familiar data from Ish’s fone intermingling with much of Minnie’s own work.
She closed the catalogue and considered the “Minerva” link, her mental image of the pic returning to her consciousness. What additional harm could the real image inflict? She selected the link.
The message hadn’t changed, of course, still glowing on the PCU, still transparent in its aims. It was strange, the omission of Angela. What was the thinking behind that? An insinuation of tragedy to lend credence to the rest of the message? And why Angela? Why was she the sacrificial lamb? Had he actually measured each crewmember’s “worth” or maybe his perception of their relationship with Minnie, settling on Angela to instill a specific measure of loss, dinging the too-perfect, potentially doubtable perfection of zero losses? Ugh, it seemed almost too manipulative for John. In his haste, he’d probably just missed her name. A simple flub.
She closed the pic and found a big scratchnote floating behind it, tacked in the air.
Oh crap, not more …
Hi Minerva, I guess my busted body proved less capable than my deluded mind. I blame the drugs (a bunch of drugs). Maybe a tinge of swollen ego. So don’t get all down on yourself as if this is your fault. I’ve been trying to skedaddle from this crapfest for a while, just didn’t want you losing the will to go on. Figured you’d need something to keep you motivated after I said farewell. Guilty confession: there’s no return module coming. Completely fabricated. I’m awfully sorry for lying to you about that. If Earth were to send anything (which I doubt), it’d be after our silence was noticed a few years from now, and then it’d show up 20+ years later. Don’t hold your breath there. Colonization-ready planets have always had priority. That aside, as you saw from the pic there, my dumb lies were unnecessary. You’ve got an epic hug waiting for you on the coast. A hug I wish I could’ve felt one last time. Please, as awkweird as it is, could you give her one for me? And tell her it’s from me? And tell her I never stopped loving her? She knows, and I know she knows, and coming from you it’ll be embarrassing, but it’s my dying wish so you have no choice. Ha ha. My only fear is that you don’t get this message. Please get this message. Pull through whatever you’re going through out there. Keep putting that vaunted SP rating of yours to work. Go lead the team. Build a colony for the long term, with no illusions about help coming. I love you, too.
PS: Don’t bother searching for those files you were worried about. I just deleted all vids. Wink.
Once more, Minnie sank into a drowning pool.
Aether was alive. Aether was looking for her, waiting for her. The revelation ripped through Minnie’s head. Panic slipped in behind it. Aether was alive, and too far, and a million different things could take her away again.
She wanted to pack up and leave right that second. Brave the weather, push the skimmer to its limits, flout the dwindling power meter.
Unable to be still, she exited the tent and paced circles around the cavern. She cried with desperation, with elation, with pessimistic what-ifs. She cried for John, for Angela—what had happened to Angela? And then she tightened her fists.
“Get a grip!” she barked.
Now was a time for practicality, for logic, for planning, organization, sharp focus. Assume Aether would stay and wait in place, or conduct a search before turning back. No less than three days. Assume Aether would be out of harm’s way. What were the fewest, safest steps to reuniting? Because nothing after that mattered, and only good could follow.
3.7
In the icy canyon below, one of the riverbears paused, sniffing the frosty ground bordering a plant’s trunk.
Minnie tracked their movements from high above.
Whatcha lookin’ for, cuties?
Nothing of interest there, evidently. Both animals moved on to the next.
Long ago, Threck explorers visited this expansive coastline, encountering creatures somewhat less unnerving than those they’d discovered in the South. They tagged these creatures with the highly creative title, stoopock (snow animal). A lone Hynka clan residing in the northwestern-most village had encountered these same snow animals—distant cousins of Hynka, in fact—enough times to give them a name: grarlar. The word shared no root or correlating sounds with the local dialect, so it was presumed the beasts had been named for the sounds they made, perhaps while being chased or devoured by their larger relatives. Early in the mission, attempting to catalog hundreds of newfound species each day, Zisa had chosen the rather generic silver riverb
ear.
Upon arriving here, Minnie had spotted from a distance a riverbear mating pair, believing them to be more damned inescapable effing Hynka. Yet again, the mission’s scrupulous research had been wrong. Why not inaccurate Hynka environmental tolerances, too?
Dear old Mama had ventured a whole 20K north of the Hynka comfort zone. Minnie was now 1800K from Hynka-hospitable latitudes, the distance from New York City to Greenland. There were no Hynka present after all, but it didn’t mean there was nothing to fear. Silver riverbears were a bit larger than an adult grizzly, with each hand boasting two 20cm claws protruding from short nubs, and a long opposable thumb. Unlike the toothy Hynka, riverbears had no teeth in their independent jaw bones. Instead, the mandibles themselves jutted from gums, sharp-edged and powerful, chomping food like a giant nail clipper. In their aesthetic favor: a thick silver-white fur coat and big black circles for eyes. The faces reminded Minnie of a baby seal.
With her white environment shirt, pants, and gloves wrapped tightly over her suit, only the bright orange back of her helmet stood out among this colorless world. Lying prone atop a high glacier ridge, Minnie surveyed the canyon that lay southeast of her isolated new camp. Dense deposits of iron and gold filled the hills beneath the glacier, limiting her ground-level visibility to under 1K.
She closed her bio eye and zoomed in. One of the riverbears, large rump in the air, was digging out the frost beneath a megabulb. Megabulb or frostbulb? She couldn’t tell the difference. Wistful, Minnie knew how thrilled Angela would’ve been to see Minnie’s vids of her temporary camp, surrounded by the strange organisms.
Vids.
A fleeting smirk as John’s cheeky postscript popped back in her head.
Perv. I knew you had goddamn vids.
Exigency Page 35
