Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4)
Page 19
Chapter 20 – Zeus’ Giant Eagle
“I have the best job in the world,” Yuki said with excitement as she strolled the boardwalk behind Mercy’s floating wheelchair. Yuki could push her friend around the perimeter and lean on the chair for support when necessary. “Every day, we find another small clue. In the green zone, we discovered the upper canopy of a multitiered rain forest. It’s so thick, we won’t know what’s in there until the rover explores.”
Frustrated by her bed-rest restrictions, Mercy had designed the hovering wheelchair out of the excess antigravity tiles. The conveyance seemed to work well anywhere in the main saucer or elevator area, but failed about fifty meters from the base of the saucer’s umbilical. She could see the trees in the distance, but not touch them; see the flowers, but not smell their fragrance. She referred to the chair as her leash. Mercy smiled at the enthusiasm. “Is it really work you love or something else? You’ve never gushed like this about scanning before. Could it be the new intimacy you’re sharing with Park via the Collective?”
“I don’t see people at a distance like you all, but I can feel Woo Jin’s emotions anywhere in the saucer. Whenever he thinks about me, it gives me this lift. At night, his concern is like an extra blanket that keeps me warm. I’m . . .”
“Not alone anymore?” Mercy suggested.
“Happier than any person has a right to be.”
“It must be therapeutic because your limp is improving.”
Yuki grumbled, “I still don’t remember getting these injuries.”
“Rehabilitation is progressing to Auckland’s satisfaction.”
“It feels too damn slow to me. I can’t wait for my next trip through the pod when all this damage can be erased. Park can see me the way I used to be.”
Mercy placed a hand on Yuki’s. “He already does.”
“Yeah, well I want to get this fixed before he loses his beer goggles and comes to his senses.”
“That’s why you’re so excited about the new discoveries. It means you’ll be launching the first probe sooner,” Mercy deduced. “You haven’t found any radio signals or evidence of cities yet?”
“Last night, we spotted a thin trail of smoke rising from the forest.” Yuki paused, remembering something her fiancé had muttered in his sleep. “Does the name Jessica mean anything to you?”
Mercy burst out laughing. “Lou happened to mention what a bad girl she was. I think Sojiro called her an insatiable nymph. Every time the guys mention that name, Park blushes.”
“Oh dear. So she’s an old fling of his from the Academy that he’s been too ashamed to tell me about?”
Turning to stare at her friend, Mercy said, “Honey, she’s you, one of your role-playing characters from just before your accident.”
Yuki coughed. “Well, I guess I have no right to be jealous.”
Straining to avoid a smirk, Mercy suggested, “Maybe if he reenacts the session with you, it might help trigger some of your other memories from that period. You might even call it medically beneficial. He’d be helping you out, which would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“Well, a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste!”
****
The decision for the orbit of the first probe was easy. They called the vessel Aetos, after the giant eagle that served Zeus. Instead of a geosynchronous position like most satellites, the team opted for a polar orbit. Flying over both the north and south poles would give them a view of any water trapped there as ice. Since the moon rotated much slower than the probe would circle, each pass would view a different, narrow swath on the globe. On a flat map, the paths looked diagonal and regularly spaced. After the eighth pass, the bands appeared to crisscross earlier passes. As Labyrinth turned, they would build up a complete picture of the world.
As Yuki pushed her friend around the boardwalk, Lou trailed nervously behind. They voted, and no one thought having a blind man navigate near the 120 meter drop to the habitat surface would be the best idea. However, Mercy had experienced false contractions that morning, and Lou refused to be more than a meter from her side. Mercy sighed. “I have nine weeks left in my chair prison. How long will you be confined to the landing bay on this mission?”
“An L day to perform the launch, five L days to collect the data, and however long it takes you big brains to analyze the data for a decent landing zone. Then Herk and I will have to wait until we’re in the best position to eject the second probe.”
“I’ll lend you my deck of cards to pass the time,” Mercy said. “Who’s going with you?”
“Risa. Nadia has been busy analyzing the shimmer armor—that’s what they’re calling the pyramidal artifact. The new team stole Sojiro from us.”
“What’s happening with the shimmer team?”
Lou said, “For about three seconds, they succeeded in making their captured panel appear clear by projecting the image of the rock wall.”
“Rock wall?” asked Yuki.
“We decided outdoor experiments were best,” Lou confided. “The first time we connected one of our power supplies to the Magi device, we generated a lot of smoke and Olympus took hours to scrub the air. It still spits and fumes in the Hollow, but everyone is safer there.”
Mercy said, “Of course, the moment we proved we could make it work on our own, Snowflake showed us a new interface. We can project any image from our computers onto any of the golden airlocks in Olympus using the crystal ball they gave us to control the lens.”
“Kind of like getting a bank loan: they’ll only give it to you if you can prove you don’t really need it,” Yuki complained. Something in what Mercy said resonated—crystal and smoke.
Wincing at the mention of finances, Lou said, “Did she complain to you about my spending too much? I bought baby supplies and beer for the party we’ve going to throw.”
“I thought we agreed not to spend another month’s allotment before we earned it,” Mercy said under her breath.
“We’re going to need a crib and diapers any time now,” he explained.
“And beer?” Mercy asked, raising her arms theatrically.
Yuki sank to her knees, struggling to recall something important. “Crystals. Magi projectors need crystals inside them.” She inadvertently let go of the wheelchair, which drifted straight instead of curving with the boardwalk.
Stopping her forward motion with a sticky strap on the saucer exterior, Mercy asked, “Why?”
White clouded Yuki’s vision. “Their electricity is different—liquid circuits and gemstones. The jewels are the power or the brains.”
Lou bumped into Yuki’s feet and clumsily felt her forehead. “Are you okay?”
She whimpered in reply. Smoke and ghosts reminded her of the pain and loss. This wasn’t the first time Yuki had visited the dark places.
“We’ll tell Nadia for you.” To shift the topic away from her friend’s embarrassment, Mercy asked, “What are you naming probe two? Did Zeus have a pet squirrel?”
“Because the ground is Hades’ domain, and the rover has three camera lenses, we named it Cerberus,” Yuki explained.
Lou said, “In the original form, Cerberus literally means spotted. So even the god of the underworld named his dog ‘Spot.’ I think a mythological version of ‘Rover’ would have been more appropriate.”
Mercy chuckled and told Yuki, “When you’re in the landing bay, Z said I can chat with you up to two hours a day, and we can broadcast the book-of-the-day reading along the cable so everyone there can listen to it.”
The Japanese woman said, “You’re probably the best friend I ever had—who didn’t ask me to do kinky things in the shower.”
Mercy said, “I want you to come back so you can hold this beautiful baby of mine in your arms—both of them.”
“That . . . would be heaven,” Yuki replied.
Later, during Yuki’s pre-flight exam in the Hollow, the nurse prodded her about memories before she woke holding the shimmer armor. “Still nothing.”
“Sorry. I wish I had more.”
“Have you been reading any Plato lately?” The nurse stressed the author’s name.
“No. Why? Was I reading that before the accident?”
Timidly, Yvette said, “Someone contacted me anonymously with a warning about the Magi. They signed with a quote from Plato.”
“I’d join that club,” Yuki admitted, “but I don’t have any new information.”
“Please don’t tell anybody. Whoever sent the message is afraid of being discovered.”
Considering for a moment, Yuki said, “When Toby was checking my stitches, I saw him reading something by that author.”
“The Republic?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Why would he use a pen name?” Yvette asked.
“Maybe he’s worried you wouldn’t read a note if it came from him.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Yuki mused. “Could the information save a life?”
“Possibly.”
“Then he’d find some way to get the message to you.”
****
The launch of the Aetos probe went without a hitch. However, Mercy had trouble finding two hours to talk to Yuki where she wasn’t working or on the comm with Park. For the technical details about Labyrinth garnered from the probe, she had to wait for the official presentation a few L weeks later in front of a crowd in the Olympus storage room. The group used the gold door of the large room to display the video feed from the hangar bay. Mercy pinned a paper turkey to her chest in honor of American Thanksgiving. She scribbled ‘T minus 8 weeks’ in the center so people would quit asking her the same question about her due date.
The Aetos report opened with Yuki posed in front of a striking vista of the Labyrinth surface with all three of the inner moons arcing across the face of Daedalus. “Sorry about the view. We were hoping to capture all four brother moons in the sky at once, but Talus is behind the lens.”
“Never apologize for beauty,” Park said.
This flustered Yuki a little, and Herk had to announce the date and personnel for the recording.
Yuki recovered her anchorwoman persona for the main presentation. “The heart of our research was the longest and greenest river basin on the world, about the size of the Amazon. We’ve nicknamed it the Lamazon because we’ve just been slapping an L in front of every other term to make it apply to Labyrinth.”
The wall projection changed to a series of green and white cracks in the orange-tinted desert, ending in a great lake.
“Our first major discovery is that the atmosphere of the deeper canyons is human breathable. It’s more like warm soup than air, but we could do it for brief periods without permanent harm. Due to the intense volcanic activity, the carbon dioxide and arsenic levels are a little steep for our biochemistry, so we recommend a filter of some sort for every member of the landing team. Humidity is high in the cracks, so any shelter we build should be able to cope with that.
“Some of the deserts have vast mineral flats reminiscent of Chile that we can tap for our own use as necessary. However, the planners have decided to aim the rover at a habitable region first to scout for a few potential campsites. We can tackle the wastes later because we’ve seen no evidence of animal life in the high desert. Landing on the surface is likely to go unnoticed, but even if we find a mule trail down the steep canyon walls, it’s not recommended.”
She shifted to the second week’s film of a small oasis of stunted conifers on the edge of a canyon. With shallow roots, a furious windstorm snapped them free of the rocky rim and sent them rolling like tumbleweeds.
Nadia muttered, “That precludes large-scale wind turbines. At best, we can use some small ones that can flip into shelter on short notice.”
“Whatever we build needs to blend into the background so the natives can’t detect it from afar,” Rachael said. “The hand must not be seen. Remember?”
Yuki continued as if the others hadn’t spoken. “The rover’s entry vehicle looks like a soccer ball made of airbags. Dropping that into a jungle blind would be like a very short pinball game. Even if the rover survived, it might attract attention. That leaves three methods of access to a canyon—the mountainsides where the water comes from, the lake where it ends up, or a dead zone with no trees. Optimum launch window for each is two L days from now.”
She advanced to a night photograph with several orange dots in a crescent. “Our favorite lake has a large population of some kind. We know that they burn fires, but we haven’t seen them. The natives seem to keep to caves or mud homes with stone roofs. We can’t pinpoint where they are precisely because several of the caves and buildings in this area have a kind of shielding to the sensors. We’re not sure why, but the prevailing theory is dust from a meteor shower.” She focused on a section of the round lake with a series of craters and scars radiating toward the village. “We call this Meteoropolis. Our best guess is that metals from the meteors dispersed naturally on impact or that the natives collected them. Regardless, if we splashed down at night, the natives might see the landing and investigate. Reflected light from Daedalus and the other moons is enough to see by. During true night, the thermal signature of the probe may give us away if natives can sense in that band. When the sun is up, evaporation from the lake generates a great deal of fog in this region. In the first plan, we could land during the fog time, if we can adapt the rover to travel upstream.”
Nadia grunted. “Nyet. If we cloak the rover so they can’t see it, it will sink to the bottom of the river. Then, the solar panels will be useless.”
Red said, “I’ve been playing with the rover simulators. Mud is no good, especially with the banyan-style trees popular in this delta. We could get tangled too easily.”
Yuki said, “Two, there are numerous natural springs and shallow slopes that feed into the Lamazon. Unfortunately, the springs in this upper corner are a couple thousand kilometers from the only place we know is inhabited. We’ve labeled this plan Lewis and Clark. It has the advantage of a clear starting point and destination. However, it will be months before the data is interesting and possibly a year before it becomes pertinent to our primary goals.”
Switching to a diagram of sunlight entering a canyon at an angle, Yuki said, “To understand what we call Plan Rat, we have to give you some background. Canyons that run east to west are the greenest because sunlight pours into them directly. The ones that run straight north to south are sun starved and have meager growth.”
Rachael said, “We call this the wilderness. It’s barely a step up from desert, but with irrigation we can raise crops. This is how we grow oranges in the Negev.”
“Right. The point is, if sunlight gets in, radiation gets in. We want our campsites to be in these shadowy areas so we don’t cook. We’ll survive any X-ray surges. But as far as we can tell from overhead observation at all hours, not much lives in these areas. Food is just too easy to find in the jungle. That isolation is another plus. Plan Rat drops the balloon into the middle of the maze, in one of these barren areas close to a bend in the river. That way, no one sees it land, and Cerberus can roll around the river bend into jungle to explore westward. If battery power gets too low, the rover can run back to the rocks in the nearest north-south to hide and recharge. Using this technique from a starting point at the center of the region, we can thread most of the Lamazon maze using rule-based artificial intelligence.” She overlaid a projection in red showing three-quarters of the green zone reachable.
“Rat has the advantage of almost immediate feedback for our mission, both locating bases and searching for natives. It could continue mapping until the rover dies. This technique also carries the most risk of showing our hand and forcing the rover to self-destruct. The rest of you need to decide which of the two remaining plans to follow, or whether to adapt one. As moderator, I will abstain.”
Zeiss
favored the slow approach to give the crew time to absorb everything. Red voiced worries that the rover could stop working at any time and wanted to squeeze the most out of Cerberus while they could. Everyone tasked for the landing party clamored to find camp locations as soon as possible. In the end, the crew voted eleven to five for Plan Rat. Even though he could veto any decision, the commander decided to save his political capital for a battle that he had to win.
Red cheered the victory and told the people who had been trapped for three L weeks in the hangar bay, “Drop that Rat down its hole and come home.”
“Roger,” Herk confirmed. “We’ll need you to send us the insertion vectors: angle, altitude, velocity, and the microsecond our computer will need to fire. Risa already has the launch track assembled and ready for your instructions.”
Chapter 21 – Aliases to Protect the Innocent
Because the landing was past bedtime, Yvette watched the rover launch with Mercy. Most of Olympus gathered to observe the event. Casually, Yvette mentioned to Toby, “I hear you’ve been stretching your world and reading Plato.”
Eager to discuss anything with her, Toby stammered, “The Allegory of the Cave—to me it was about how a tragedy in your life can shift your viewpoint and open your eyes in ways you never dreamed of.”
“So, what have you done with this new perspective?”
“Nothing yet. I don’t have much free time. Lou recommended it to me.”
“Why Lou?”
“He majored in philosophy, and when he wants something from you, he’s easy to talk to.”
The philosopher in question shushed them so he could hear the radio chatter about the immanent landing. Although Skinner Gorge, the beginning of the rat maze, was almost twenty kilometers long, the angle was bad and the winds gusty. The giant soccer ball blew and bounced all the way to the far wall of the gorge before ricocheting back toward the river.