“Like that thing in the chamber?”
So that was the problem! “Don’t be afraid of Zeds,” she said.
“It’s not just him. We wish all of you would just leave!”
And she tried to tug the others along.
But one of the girls in green wasn’t ready to leave and began arguing with the girl in blue. Yahvi could barely follow the exchange, especially since she couldn’t help noticing the way the girls had enhanced their looks. They all wore makeup and jewelry—glittery things in their earlobes, bracelets, necklaces.
And their fragrance! There was a bit of a cooking air about them (the girls in green must work in the cafeteria), but what was most prominent was a floral scent. She wanted to ask them—even the one who didn’t like her—why they did this and what were the rules, and where did one obtain these substances.
But just like that the argument was over. The two girls in blue marched out. “They’re nurse assistants,” the girl in green said. “Stuck-up.”
“I’m sorry.” Yahvi knew what stuck-up meant.
“And Surina is very religious.”
Yahvi had been hearing that all day, that “religious” humans were among those most troubled by Adventure’s mission. It baffled her. There were a few religious people among the HBs, probably evenly split between Christians and Hindus. But, as far as Yahvi knew, none of the yavaki had ever expressed a belief in a supreme being or whatever it was religions were supposed to have. Maybe that was the problem. “We’re not here to make trouble.”
“I don’t think it’s you, but where you came from.”
“And what you might do,” the other girl in green said. “With your magic powers.” She made a spooky sound, which made the first girl laugh.
“But you’re not afraid of me.”
“Well, no. I mean, you seem to be just like us—”
“Well, taller,” the second girl said. That was true: Yahvi was a head taller than any of the four girls.
“Where are you going?”
“Out! It’s Saturday night!”
Yahvi smiled. “So . . .” She had barely gotten used to “days.” Yes, the HBs used the calendar they had grown up with . . . but there was nothing special about Saturday night, or Sunday morning.
“We have dates,” the first girl said. “Well, I do.” She nudged her friend. “Her boyfriend was deployed last week—”
“Deployed?”
“Sent to the coast on alert,” the second girl said. From the expression on her face, this wasn’t a good thing.
“In case we’re invaded,” the first girl said. Her giggles suggested that she didn’t really see the danger.
“By the Reivers?” Yahvi said.
The girls looked confused. Yahvi tried to explain. “The Aggregates. The ones who control most of Earth.”
“Yes. Everyone’s sick of it,” the first girl said. Then: “Does your alien friend speak English?”
“Or Hindi?” the second girl said.
“Both,” Yahvi said. “Go by and talk to him. Tell him I said hello.” As she said it, she realized she could have allayed some of her loneliness and sense of dislocation by visiting Zeds—who was almost certainly feeling the same thing.
Then the hallway door opened again. It was the two nursing assistants, now accompanied by the guards from the lobby. “There she is.”
“You shouldn’t be out here like this,” one of the guards said.
“What, I should be in a different hallway?” She was getting angry. She looked to her two acquaintances in green; they seemed intimidated by the guards and the two nursing assistants.
“Never mind,” Yahvi said. “I’m leaving.”
She turned away and went through the doors, deeper into the hospital.
She would find Zeds and wish him a good night, even as she pondered the encounter with girls her age—how strange they were, how different their lives were.
All the while realizing that, as far as they were concerned, Yahvi was just as alien as Zeds.
QUESTION: For Rachel . . . Why did you turn Keanu around and bring it back to Earth?
RACHEL: Because I was going to be a bit too old to really enjoy the next closest destination.
QUESTION: Which was—?
RACHEL: At least forty light-years distant, or as we calculated it, based on our highest possible speed . . . really, really far off.
INTERVIEW AT YELAHANKA,
APRIL 14, 2040
RACHEL
Just as the meal was ending, moments after Yahvi had slipped out, Rachel began to feel dizzy and nauseated. It reminded her of morning sickness—and the sudden possibility that she might be pregnant added a whole new layer of stress to the moment. She and Pav were still making love—though, for a variety of good reasons, not since leaving Keanu. They weren’t using birth control, either, since everyone wanted the HB population to expand . . . but not right this minute!
Then she realized it was Keanu calling.
She glanced at Pav, who showed no sign that he was being contacted. So she excused herself and went out into the hallway.
Where the connection proved to be almost useless. She managed to learn that Sasha was calling, and heard mention of Dale Scott and a “warning.”
She managed to respond with a confirmation and a status update—which was status quo, Sanjay still critical and not seen.
Then it was gone, a most unsatisfying few moments.
Before she could return to the conference room, Taj joined her. “It turns out, the Aggregates did try to kill you,” he said.
Rachel smiled bitterly. “You mean, our tail section didn’t just fall off?”
Taj looked unhappy, whether with Rachel’s flippant response or the fact that his news wasn’t really news. “No, you were the target of a submarine-launched missile.”
“Well, we assumed we might be shot at. It was one of the reasons we came here rather than the U.S.”
“Didn’t you consider equipping yourself with defensive missiles?”
Was this the “danger” Sasha had just tried to warn her about? “Taj, we were lucky to get Adventure flying, period. We just didn’t have the time to invent and install an anti-missile system. Besides, we were just as likely to have been hit by a laser. Or conventional weapons.”
“I understand.” He got a curious smile on his face. “During the Keanu landings—I don’t know if you knew or remember this—your father’s team thought we had put a missile on Brahma.” He shook his head at the memory.
Rachel had indeed heard that: At the time of the Destiny and Brahma missions there had been tension between the United States and India in particular, so much that some NASA people believed that Brahma’s crew would do anything to beat Destiny to the Keanu landing—even shoot at them.
“Have you told Pav about the attack?”
“Yes.” A simple answer, but it annoyed her. She was the leader of the crew, yet Taj persisted in giving key information to Pav! Because he was his son? Or because he was male?
Maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t really enjoyed the meal, that Yahvi was worrying her, or that the poor communication session with Keanu reminded her of the burdens of being female, Rachel decided she’d had enough.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Since you two are talking, tell him that I’m going to see Sanjay, then Zeds.”
“But Kaushal—”
She was walking away before Taj could finish reminding her that Wing Commander Kaushal didn’t want her “bothering” the doctors or patient.
There must have been something in her manner—Rachel knew that in certain situations she had a lean-forward, purposeful stride that tended to enhance her power—but the moment she arrived at the ICU and announced that she was here to see Sanjay Bhat, Wing Commander Kaushal emerged from around a corner. He closed a cell phone and said, “Give me on
e moment to summon the surgeon.”
He walked away, leaving Rachel wondering what had changed his mind about allowing her access to Sanjay. She also wondered whom he had been talking to. And, while she waited, where was Pav?
Kaushal returned with not one but three doctors, all of them in white lab coats. “They will tell you everything they can,” Kaushal said. The five of them slipped into the team conference room.
No introductions were offered and, frankly, Rachel didn’t care. Her eye immediately went to the X-rays on the light board.
The obvious senior doctor, a tall, stooped Hindi with glasses and wavy gray hair, spoke. “The patient was unconscious upon arrival. Our initial diagnosis showed that his left frontal cranium had been struck by a heavy object.
“Fortunately, the object was largely flat—”
“Except for a few protruding switches,” the second doctor said. He was much younger and seemed to Rachel to be impatient.
“The flat surface resulted in a blunt-force injury that was spread over a considerable area. It was as if he had fallen onto a floor or street from a height of perhaps two meters.
“There was some lateralization; his left pupil was blown. The bones were fractured across the entire area.”
“Would I be right,” Rachel said, “in thinking that the front and left part of his head got mashed in?”
“Crudely.” The doctor seemed testy; obviously he was not used to interruptions. “But, yes, the skull was deformed. There was considerable brain swelling, which we alleviated by drilling these holes.” His pointer glided across three tiny dark spots.
“After twenty-four hours, the swelling has subsided, though the patient’s head still shows a great degree of trauma—“
Just listening to the cold, grim precision of the diagnosis made Rachel want to weep. Given what she had seen in the cockpit, she had suspected that Sanjay’s injury would be severe, but here was proof.
The senior surgeon continued, but Rachel could no longer understand his words. She finally blurted, “I want to see him.”
They took her around the corner to a hospital room, and there lay poor Sanjay, the left half of his head covered in thick bandages, the usual monitors recording a steady but slow heartbeat.
Rachel reached for his hand. To her dismay, it was cold and limp, like that of a corpse. Sanjay had been part of Jaidev’s group, spending his days constantly busy improving life in the habitat. Did he have a lover? He was old enough to have memories of Earth . . . were there family members or friends he wanted to see here? She remembered a brother—then cursed herself for her lack of knowledge. Some leader she was turning out to be! She finally asked, “What is the prognosis?”
“All we can say is that he’s stable.”
Stable! What a horrible state!
Rachel let go of Sanjay’s hand and walked out.
As a leader, as a wife, and especially as a mother, Rachel had developed several operating rules.
Rule number one: Face the bad news because it doesn’t get better with time.
She had accomplished that with the visit to Sanjay.
Now it was time to deal with Zeds. Focusing on the challenges of making the Sentry happy, or finding a way to give him useful work, kept her from wondering where Pav had gone and why he was leaving this to her. There was no one she could ask—as she slipped down the stairs from the second-floor ICU to the ground floor and its high-altitude chamber, she passed no one at all.
Once she was on the ground floor, she saw only a couple of medical people, and a single guard outside Zeds’s chamber. No Taj, no Tea, no Yahvi or Xavier.
Rachel almost regretted walking away from Kaushal and the surgeons so abruptly.
Of course, she could have diverted to the conference room to retrace her steps and find her missing husband and family members. But that would have forced her to ignore rule number one.
Sure enough, Zeds was chafing at the confinement. “We discussed this, did we not?” she said. She was working through Zeds’s mechanical translator, usually a smooth process, aided by the fact that Rachel knew some Sentry Sign, and Zeds had a lifetime of vocalized English and Hindi.
“Mental preparation is no substitute for the experience.”
“You hate it.” Here she used Sentry Sign.
“I don’t use that term,” her Sentry friend said, in his typically obtuse way. “I would simply prefer to be allowed out of this chamber.”
“You’ll have to wear an environment suit.”
“We discussed this, did we not?” Zeds was also fond of echoing human statements, usually with the exact tone and a pretty fair imitation of one’s voice. This made the Sentry fairly unpopular with most humans.
“And you said you would prefer to minimize those events, due to the discomfort—”
“My current feeling is that I would be more comfortable wrapped in the suit and walking around than unwrapped and confined here.” He was sitting, as Sentries do, in a kind of yoga posture, knees up, his arms wrapped around his body and legs, with zero eye contact. Which was understandable, since even sitting down he was as tall as Rachel.
“I will do what I can,” she said, “as soon as I can.” Then she added, “How are you finding the meals?” Zeds had spent enough time in the human habitat on Keanu to have sampled, and learned to like, certain human foods. His physiology allowed him to receive some nourishment from them, too.
But those foods were largely unique to Keanu; they were now in Bangalore, India, and while Pav had made heroic efforts to identify foods that were similar to those in the Sentry diet, it all seemed to have become seafood chowder. (The Yelahanka and ISRO authorities had insisted on equating “aquatic race” with a diet of shellfish.)
Based on the amount still left in the one bowl Rachel could see, the Indian shellfish remained untouched. No doubt this contributed to Zeds’s testiness.
“I have been subsisting on my emergency rations.”
“I will work on that, too. And promptly.”
Few Sentries, out of the hundreds in their Keanu population, wanted anything to do with humans. But Zeds not only tolerated humans, he sought them out, integrating himself into Rachel’s world to the extent he could. (He had to wear, at minimum, breathing support gear, and often more than that.) Rachel was never sure exactly why.
Zeds was a connate of DSA, herself a connate of Dash, the Sentry who had been part of Rachel’s father’s final “journey” across Keanu twenty years ago. Perhaps there was some genetic disposition to reaching out to “aliens” . . . maybe he was just curious.
For all that Rachel liked Zeds, she had resisted the idea of bringing him on this trip for exactly these reasons; he complicated everything.
But she knew, instinctively, that he would be useful.
And what the hell . . . Adventure belonged to his people. And it was one of Rachel’s other rules . . . when in doubt, be fair.
Pav met her before she reached the conference room, and he seemed upset. “I’ve been looking for you for an hour.”
“You couldn’t have looked very hard,” she said. “This is a big building, but how many places would I be?”
“Good point,” he said. One thing she loved about him was his ability—rare in men, in her experience—to accept correction or pushback without feeling wounded.
Or, at least, not showing it.
“Actually, I had contact.” That explained it; that throbbing in one’s head would make anyone look pale and shaken.
Pav’s conversation with Keanu turned out to be longer than Rachel’s. He had told them about the missile attack on Adventure and learned that there had been major progress on the backup plan led by Zhao.
She asked him if Harley or Sasha had discussed Dale Scott. “Yes!” Pav said. “Why the hell did he return to the living?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. �
��I can’t take that as a good sign.”
Pav smiled. “Good things rarely follow Dale.”
Then Rachel yawned. She realized that she wanted only to sit down, or better yet, lie down.
Pav saw this and took her into his arms. “We’ve got a huge day tomorrow—the agent meeting. . . .”
“And figuring out just what the hell our real next step is.”
“Let’s just go to bed.”
Kilroy was here
Kilroy was there
Kilroy was everywhere
GRAFFITO SCRIBBLED BY DALE SCOTT
AT MANY PLACES INSIDE KEANU’S FACTORY
DALE
They hadn’t had to drag him; the guards just casually marched Dale to a small hut—one of several occupying a patch of ground behind the Temple, halfway to the “north” wall. “Is this your jail?” he said.
“We don’t have a jail,” the young man snapped, clearly insulted. But the woman was more forthcoming. “Occasionally people need a time-out. Sometimes they just want to get some mental or physical space.”
“Ah, so these are meditation cells.”
That effectively ended the conversation.
The hut was exactly that: four walls with a cot. No entertainment devices, not that Dale had seen any such items in twenty years.
But also no sink, faucet, or toilet. As he stood in the dark space—it was probably three meters across in both directions, lit only by two slit windows near the top—he spread his hands and said, “Suppose I need to urinate.”
“Yell and you’ll be escorted,” the man said. Then he closed the door, locking it.
So much for meditation, Dale thought.
Within moments he was alone again . . . as he had been for most of the past two decades.
But now he was confined.
And hungry.
Food was one of the reasons he had had problems with the HBs.
On his earliest walkabouts, before he removed himself entirely from the human habitat, he had been able to take some food with him.
In his first months in the Factory, he had grown quite adept at theft. But that was ultimately unsatisfying; the fields and supplies most accessible to him were limited in their menu.
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