by Scott Mackay
Cody said: I’m glad.
Lulu said: And Deirdre … Deirdre wonders … can you feel what she feels for you?
Cody said: I feel.
Lulu said: She needs comfort.
He still hadn’t sorted out his feelings for Deirdre. He glanced across the observatory. Deirdre’s usually amber hair had turned lighter, was now golden from her partial genetic rewrite. Her freckled face had just the barest trace of blue. She turned to him, surprised to find him staring at her, and grinned self-consciously. He grinned back, tried to reassure her, to give her … comfort. She looked troubled. He caught from her a faint emanation, realized she was thinking of home. She turned away, looked out the window down the side of Mount Pendulum, 2,000 meters into the dusty gray valley. Home. He thought of his own home. The condominium he now owned in downtown Vesta City. A place to sleep. Not a home at all.
He turned back to the refractor and keyed in a search command. The telescope swung eighteen degrees to the right, then sank toward the horizon. He put his eye back to the eyepiece.
He saw it. Carswell—big, round, 150,000 kilometers away, rising over the pocked terrain of Ceres, shining half full, with the terminator just beyond the meridian; a white planet, completely covered by cloud, as bright as Venus; a vision of wonder, a tenet of hope. He checked some of the readouts. Temperature at the equator was now 22 degrees Celsius. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius at the south pole. Four degrees Celsius at the north pole. With the south pole sinking sun-first along a perpendicular orbit above the solar system’s usual orbital plane, and the equator and north pole angled away from the sun at 33 degrees, these various temperatures made sense.
But eventually the temperatures would get hotter.
Too hot.
The seas would chum and the winds would roar.
Home. He wondered how Buster planned to turn that roving and unpredictable planet into a place the Meek might call home.
Buster, now consumed with the details of the exodus, delegated Rex to take Cody, Deirdre, Jerry, Ben, and Kevin Axworthy to the hangar.
To call it a hangar was to greatly understate its size and complexity. Nestled beneath what the Meek called the Crater of Good Fellowship, the hangar extended for 14 cubic kilometers underground, with 280 levels that housed 9,800 landers, 260 supply ships, and 826 satellites—satellites that would be put into orbit around Carswell for a number of purposes. All this, completely missed by the Conrad Wilson. Cody was again amazed by how the Meek had been able to hide it. They were currently standing in front of lander 4,731, on level 140.
Rex, a boyish-looking Meek with a particularly engaging smile, jumped to the wing of the lander and, using the silent language of the Meek, told Cody a bit about the lander program. Cody in turn communicated this information to Deirdre, Jerry, Ben, and Kevin Axworthy. His empathic link with the Meek was still strong, built upon the foundation of his early childhood psi talent; the others now had intermittent links at best.
“He says the spacecraft is designed for maneuverability in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere such as we’ll encounter on Carswell.” said Cody. “Hence the wings. Each lander’s 100 meters long. Construction materials are from a nearby class M metallic asteroid.”
“I trust they studied structural designs for the aircraft of Earth,” said Deirdre, resting her hand on the spacecraft’s fuselage. “Because I can’t help getting nervous about a space-based people, none of whom have ever visited a planet with a breathable atmosphere, trying to design an airplanelike spacecraft. I’d like to know what kind of tests they’ve run on these landers. Are they weather-rated? I’m the only one here who’s ever been to Earth. Earth is meteorologically unstable. You can’t control the rain or the wind. Some places had hurricanes and typhoons while I was there, with winds up to 250 kilometers per hour.”
Cody turned to Rex, who immediately flashed him an answer. The others waited for his translation. None of it was getting through to them.
“He says they’ve been studying Carswell’s meteorological systems for a long time. He says to a large extent the greenhouse-type atmosphere moderates wide temperature fluctuations. This means the weather is generally stable. For instance, winds in the western part of the main land-mass are gusting at about 15 kilometers right now. It’s raining over the inland sea, with 10 centimeters expected. And they have two tropical storms in the ocean, with winds gusting up to 90 kilometers per hour. Relatively calm compared to things on Earth.”
Deirdre stared at the lander, then motioned at the overhead sky-gate, where Carswell floated three-quarters full. “So where exactly are we going to land on Carswell?” she asked.
“The landers will parachute into the inland sea,” said Cody. “Weather patterns won’t be as severe there as in the ocean.”
She nodded, but still seemed anxious, nervous. “And then what do we do? What’s the plan?”
Cody gestured at the distended half-sphere of Carswell. “We migrate north,” he said. “We travel nearly to the north pole as Carswell approaches the sun.” He glanced at Rex, making sure he had this right, then continued. “Carswell will transit the sun rapidly. As it swings round, we migrate south.” He again looked up at the white planet, pondering it, speculating about it. “As it leaves the sun, we migrate north again. We always stay with the part of the axis that is shaded from the sun. We travel with winter. We trek with the winter solstice.”
But it was more than just a trek for Cody. Back in their conference room, he gave them the rest of the news.
“They plan to modify one of the landers,” he said. “They’re going to rig it to a crude thermonuclear thruster, like the ones they have out in the silos. As Carswell makes its outward journey past the Belt, they’ll send us back to Vesta in this modified lander. The thermonuclear thruster will put us in range. Then we use conventional thrusters to rendezvous with Bettina, and finally with Vesta.”
They had questions, of course. Would it be safe? What kind of shielding were the Meek going to install to protect them from the thermonuclear thruster’s radiation? How long would it take to travel the 90 million miles back to the solar system’s orbital plane from the elevated trajectory of Carswell? How long would it take for the conventional thrusters to push them into a rendezvous with Bettina? Would they refuel on Bettina? And then how long would it take them to get to Vesta? What kind of supplies would they take? How good was the life support?
He answered their questions as best he could.
“What kind of gee-force are we looking at when the thermonuclear thruster goes off?” asked Axworthy finally.
“Over ten,” said Cody.
“That will crush us,” said Axworthy.
“The Meek are working on that.”
Axworthy let it go. Cody sensed the man still had reservations about the Meek, couldn’t come to grips with the fact that far from killing his father they had conspired to fake his death in order to save his whole family. Over and above that, Cody could tell that Kevin Axworthy just wanted to go home. In fact, he could sense that they all wanted to go home.
And here’s where he differed from the rest of them.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to go home.
As the meeting broke up, he looked out the window across the spires and towers of the City of Resolved Differences to the river valley and the forest. The forest looked as if it had a million blue stars—glow-moss everywhere. Why should he go back to Vesta? Christine was dead. Investigators in Vesta City would eventually uncover his part in the interception of the neutron warheads and launch vehicles. And going back to Vesta would be like going back to the past. There were too many ghosts there.
What about Mars, then? So he could be close to his parents. He shook his head to himself, put his palms on the windowsill, and looked into the square below, where the collecting pool caught and reflected the light from the five holographic moons. He was estranged from his parents. They would make him feel like a working-class man—a man with a hammer—exiled among academics. What point to Ma
rs?
He turned around and saw Deirdre standing there.
Then there was Deirdre, he thought.
No matter how weak her empathic ability had become, he knew she still sensed his ambivalence. Home. What was the meaning of the word? It was more than just a place to live. It was an idea. A dream. A goal. She crossed the room and put her hand on his shoulder.
“You’re not coming with us, are you?” she said.
He turned around. Far to the north he saw a wide bend in the river. He saw some boats out there. He saw an airplane. She was close to him now. He could feel her heat. He put his arm around her, drew her near—didn’t know why, it just felt like the right thing to do. He had no answer for her. She smelled faintly of peaches, the soap the Meek had given her to use.
“You miss your family, don’t you?” he said.
She pressed her cheek against his chest, nodded. He caught a faint image from her, her mother, a woman with much the same coloring, tawny red hair, and freckles, sitting at a potter’s wheel, spinning a pot, a shelf filled with beautiful crockery behind her.
“But I’ll miss you too,” said Deirdre.
He was faced with a decision he couldn’t seem to make. Building things, engineering things, making changes in blueprints, selecting appropriate materials—professional decisions were always easy. But this was different. Lulu’s ambivalence and fear, her connection to Buster; Deirdre’s inner candle of hope—these made his decision difficult. A life on Mars? A return to Vesta with Deirdre? Or what promised to be a bleak pioneer struggle on Carswell with Lulu? He didn’t know. He leaned down and kissed Deirdre on the forehead. Her skin was smooth. Silken. Warm. He felt a deep regard for her. But his regard didn’t make the meaning of home any clearer, and he still couldn’t come to a decision.
CHAPTER 21
Cody found the Father in his hammock the next day singing weakly at a suspended sheet of blue cellophane. Complex mathematical equations appeared on the sheet as the Father sang, many of the symbols arcane but nonetheless recognizable to Cody, others completely original, relational and quantifying symbols that looked as if they had been invented by the Father for the purpose of describing the problems, solutions, and theorems of the Meek’s superscience. Even more startling was the human head on the table, eyes wide open, a grin on its face, alive, patient, amiable. Cody took a deep breath, realizing for the hundredth time that he should learn to expect anything from the Meek.
The Father smiled feebly at Cody, beckoned, but did not get out of his hammock. He looked frail today, frailer than usual. The head continued to stare at Cody, a friendly-looking man, with dark skin, lots of African blood.
“This is Comptroller Denneth Oldspice,” said the Father.
Cody, of course, had heard of Oldspice. Comptroller Oldspice was a man of great power on Earth, leader of the Federated States of Appalachia, the eastern half of what had once been the United States of America. The comptroller’s head was a transmitted projection; Cody was again astonished by the resolution and naturalness of the Meek’s holography.
“How do you do?” said Cody.
“Hello, Mr. Wisner,” said the comptroller after a pause commensurate with the interplanetary communications time lag that now separated Ceres from Earth.
“Comptroller Oldspice wants reassurance, Cody,” said the Father. “With our approach to Earth, Comptroller Oldspice has put his strategic forces on highest alert. I’ve told him he has nothing to fear, that we have no intention of attacking Earth, but he’s not yet ruled out a strike against us. Some of his aides have advised him that you and your four crew members are being held against your will.”
The head on the table swung round and faced the Father. Cody realized that, while before he might have been an inadvertent catalyst for war, he now had an opportunity to promote a new peace. He felt both relieved and excited by the prospect.
“See that garment on the chair?” the Father asked him.
The garment in question, a pullover shirt with short sleeves, was gossamer-thin, see-through, made of a fine silver material.
“Yes.”
“Could you remove your tunic and put that on?” said the Father. “It’s a body-wide biofeedback input. It will help the FSA decide whether you’re telling them the truth or not. They want reassurance, Cody. They want you to tell them that you and your crew are here through circumstance, not against your will. They want you to tell them that Ceres won’t attack Earth. Also, they’re planning a manned mission to Carswell of a scientific and exploratory nature with eight crew expected. The mission is going to rendezvous with Carswell before Carswell transits the sun and will use Venus as an orbital slingshot to get back to Earth once its mission is over. They want your assurance that all eight crew will be left unharmed. They asked for you specifically because you’re a neutral third party. They plan to broadcast whatever you say to the people of Earth, most of whom are nervous. The media have run that quote from Matthew 5:5, how the meek shall inherit the Earth. The comptroller wants you to tell him that this particular biblical prophecy isn’t about to come true.”
Cody pulled off his tunic and donned the biofeedback garment, filled with a restless determination. He wanted to do this. He wanted to tell the people of Earth that everything was going to be all right.
“Where shall I sit?” he asked.
“Right there’s fine,” said the comptroller.
Cody sat on a wrought-iron garden chair and stared up at the bright pink hibiscus blooms trailing over the edge of the atrium. He had never been to Earth. The cost of such a voyage, as Kevin Axworthy had pointed out, was prohibitive. He had met a few Earthlings on Mars once, when he and Christine had gone there to visit his parents, and what he remembered most about them was how they stumbled in the light gravity, bouncing about like they were in a swimming pool, exerting far more muscle power than they needed to. He was a seventh-generation Vestan. His great-great-great-great-grandfather, a man named Seine Smyth, had come to Vesta 200 years ago from New York City, developed a deep-space lubricating oil that wouldn’t freeze or gel up in the extreme cold or evaporate in extreme heat, an oil that was now used everywhere, even as far away as the outposts on Pluto. He smiled as he thought of the old photograph he had of Seine at home. He had to somehow connect with his ancestral past, to recognize the Earth he carried inside him, to remember Seine Smyth as a way to increase his empathy toward the people of Earth so they would be better able to understand what he had to tell them.
He stared at the camera, saw a Meek technician give him the signal to start.
“Greetings,” he said. “My name is Cody Wisner and I’m the Vestan Project Manager for the Ceresian Reconstruction.” He gave them the history of the reconstruction effort, even sketched in some of the more well-known facts about the Ceresian Civil Action, wanted to make sure everybody on Earth had their frame of reference right. “My survey crew and I attained orbit around the asteroid nine weeks ago. We of course expected to find no one there. But as you all know by now, we discovered a population of 620,000 genetically altered human beings.”
He then recounted the events leading up to the Conrad Wilson‘s attempted bioextermination of this genetically altered population.
“I had to stop them,” he said. He told them of the evening he had seen the five children fly down the river toward the City of Resolved Differences on pedal planes, how happy they were, how much fun they were having. “I couldn’t let the Conrad Wilson destroy that.” He told them how he had enlisted the aid of thousands of Meek to sweep the solar panels in Actinium and how he had used the microwave converter to down the incoming neutron warheads and launch vehicles. “Despite my efforts, the Meek lost a significant percentage of their population.” He then told them, all those billions of people on Earth, how the beast, the black hole, was alive and prowling in the center of the asteroid.
“The Meek wanted to give Ceres back to the Belt,” he said, “but because of the increasing mass in the grav-core they won’t be able to
do that now.” He explained how Ceres would be shaken apart by gravitational tides or otherwise catapulted millions of parsecs away or millions of years into either the past or future. “The Meek have to leave Ceres before Ceres falls victim to the grav-core. They must go to Carswell.”
He told the people of Earth that Carswell, better known as Highfield-Little, was more than a rogue planet—that it was also humankind’s first starship, and that the Meek were going to be humankind’s first star travelers.
“The Meek, through the years and centuries, will send back observations and information to Earth, Mars, and all the inhabited moons. They’ll do their best to locate other habitable planets among the stars, and to map them out for future colonizers. These people are your brothers and sisters, modified to survive in harsher conditions, brothers and sisters who can, and will, make the journey, not only for themselves but for all humankind.” He leaned forward. “And does this kind of opportunity warrant a strategic response? I don’t think it does. Would it not be better to give the Meek your blessing? They mean you no harm. Their intent is clear. To leave Ceres and make a home on Highfield-Little. You shouldn’t stand in their way. In fact, you should do everything you can to help them. All they wish is peace, and a place to live. And that’s something I’m sure we all can understand.”
Two-and-a-half weeks later, Cody watched Claire as she interpreted incoming data on the new computer the Meek had given her. His body hurt from the latest grav-flux, the window was covered with mud from the river’s violent surge and spray, and three pictures had fallen off the walls of the conference room and lay in shards on the floor. The firing of thrusters 7, 9, and 13 hadn’t been much fun, either.
“Was the firing sequence successful?” he asked Claire.
Claire studied the readouts one by one, written in the idiosyncratic telemetry language the Meek had devised for the shifting of planetary bodies.
“It was successful,” she reported. “The slingshot maneuver has put us well ahead of Earth.”
