Tangled Planet

by Kate Blair

  Copyright © 2017 Kate Blair

  This edition copyright © 2017 Dancing Cat Books,

  an imprint of Cormorant Books Inc.

  First published in Canada in 2017

  First published in the United States of America in 2018

  This is a first edition.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright).

  For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca

  or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (cbf) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.

  library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

  Blair, Kate, author

  Tangled planet / Kate Blair.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  isbn 978-1-77086-504-4 (softcover). — isbn 978-1-77086-505-1 (html)

  1. Title.

  ps8603.l3153t36 2017 jc813’.6 c2017-904445-1

  c2017-904446-X

  United States Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945945

  Cover design: Angel Guerra / Archetype

  Interior text design: Tannice Goddard, bookstopress.com

  Manufactured by Friesens in Altona, Manitoba, Canada, in August 2017

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  dancing cat books

  an imprint of Cormorant Books Inc.

  10 st. mary street, suite 615, toronto, ontario, m4y 1p9

  www.dancingcatbooks.com

  www.cormorantbooks.com

  This book grew out of my often misplaced fears for my family, and my desire to protect them from the world.

  Matt, Amelia and Rowan, I love you so much.

  Be safe, but be brave, and I will try to be brave too.

  We’re never going to survive on this planet if we can’t start a fire.

  Astra stands in the center of the crowded circle holding a lit stick against a cluster of kindling at the bottom of the heap of wood. But it doesn’t catch. The flame stays daintily perched on its twig. The wind tugs at it, and it quivers, almost disappears.

  About two hundred crew members, almost half the ship, are gathered in a wide circle around the fire on log benches, huddled together, murmuring words that are snatched by the unpredictable breeze. All around us the world is dark. Dark mud. Dark figures. Dark bonfire. The only light is Astra’s weak flame and the bioluminescence of the glowferns in the forest around us.

  It looks magical in there. Glittering. Enticing. Like something out of a fairy tale. I shiver. Bad things happen to girls in fairy tales.

  Come on, Astra. Stop trying to light the bonfire the pre-industrial way. Use your blowtorch. I get that she’s going for atmosphere, but it’s ridiculously ineffective. The tiny flame twists as if it’s considering the jump to the twigs, but decides against it.

  Almost all the planet-side crew are here. Most of them have been at bonfires before. This isn’t new to them. They’re not thinking about all the fire warnings on board the Venture. I realize I’m holding my breath, like I’m expecting an explosion.

  Get over yourself, Ursa. It’s wood, not chlorine trifluoride. Focus on the job.

  I look down at my jacket, laid out on the mud in front of me, pieces of a broken landbike scattered over it. As soon as I’ve fixed it, I’ll make an excuse. Head back to the shuttle, spend the night there. I’ll sleep in a bucket seat or on the floor, I don’t care. I’m craving the solidity of metal over the damp mush of mud.

  I need to take baby steps on Beta. Get comfortable with it. I’ve done well for my first time back down here since Maia’s death. I can get used to the planet. I’m sure I can.

  I’m lucky to be here, I know. Lucky to be alive now. Lucky I’m part of the generation that gets to colonize Beta. Four hundred years of ancestors stretch out behind me. People who lived and died on the Venture so I could be here, on a new world.

  It’s great. It really is. It’s just a lot to get used to. And that’s okay. We still have the Venture to go home to. She’s safely in orbit above us.

  For now.

  I concentrate on the pieces of the landbike in front of me, the comforting logic of engineering. The motherboard is fine. It’s just a blown connector. I dig in the gear bag on my hip and grab a spare and some solder wire.

  “Look!” My ex-boyfriend Sabik’s voice comes from a nearby bench. He’s still embarrassingly keen, I see. I follow his gaze back to Astra.

  Her flame finally has a twin growing below the logs. There’s a snap. We all jump, then laugh. But the scattered giggles soon fade, replaced by the sinister rustle of the trees, as if they object to their fellows being burned.

  Astra tosses her stick into the kindling and dusts off her hands. The fire licks over the log from underneath, disappearing and reappearing, curling around, seizing the wood in its grasp. The bark blackens. The flames slither to the next log and begin to consume that, too.

  A gentle warmth grows with the fire, touching my face, lighting my hands as they work on the landbike. Under the ship’s lights, my skin is a deep brown, like the earth here on the rare occasions that it’s dry. But the flames bring out the undertones in my fingers, burnishing them bronze.

  Astra coughs, and I look up. She runs a hand over her gray hair. It’s nearly as curly as mine, but hers is long and she pulls it back into a tight bun. “It was traditional, on Alpha Earth, to tell stories around the campfire.” The flames cast light on her chin, shadows stretching up to her eyes. Her face changes and flickers with the fire, sharpening her friendly features. “Ghost stories. Tales of the deep, dark woods.”

  Smoke blows in my face. I blink, eyes stinging. But the smell is warm and earthy. Not what I’d expect from the toxic by-products of combustion: carbon dioxide and monoxide, I know, and a chemical cocktail dependent on various elements in the wood.

  I breathe it in. Try to relax. Try not to think about carcinogens.

  Astra continues. “In the darkness, it’s easy to imagine creatures stalking the forest.” She creeps around the fire, the crooked fingers of her shadow leaping in the firelight, grasping at us. “Witches, vampires, and the big bad wolf.”

  A shiver tickles up my spine. I guess she thinks it’s fun, but I wish she’d stop. We don’t need fantasy to make Beta Earth frightening. There are a hundred ways to die down here: heatstroke, hypo-thermia, exposure, lightning. A construction accident, like Seginus. Slipping through the fragile ice, like Maia.

  Astra smiles, warm as the fire. She straightens up. “But like our own tales of the hollow knocks on the outside of the airlock, they’re nonsense, told to scare children. We’re safe here.” She addresses that last line to me.

  Yeah, right. I glance around and realize I’m not the only one who’s uncomfortable. A few others hug their arms around themselves, eyes darting to the sky, to the woods, to the flames.

  I turn back to work on the landbike. Even with the bonfire, it’s pretty dark, but I could solder a connector to a motherboard with my eyes closed. I position the wires. Place the bead of liquid metal. Hold it up to check the link in the unpredictable glimmer of the firelight.

  Pe
rfect.

  There’s whispering from the log bench behind me. My sister, Celeste, and her husband, Orion, fighting in hushed tones, again. I peer back at them. He’s gesturing away from the fire, to the path through the woods to the shuttle camp. I guess that’s where his other wife, Vega, is tonight. I swallow down the heat that rises in my stomach at the thought of Vega. It still hurts that she chose to marry him rather than stay friends with me.

  I don’t want Celeste and Orion to catch me staring, so I look at the sky. There, one star among many, is the sun of Alpha Earth, where our ancestors came from. I can’t see the Venture. I’m not even sure when she’ll be passing overhead next. I should be up there, working on the maintenance backlog.

  Mealpacks are passed around. As they reach me, I take one and hand two to Celeste, but Orion stands. “I promised Vega I’d be there,” he says.

  My jaw clenches. He should stay with Celeste: she’s the pregnant one. But that’s Orion’s way. He’s never there when you need him. Like he wasn’t for Maia on the day she died.

  “It’s dark,” Celeste points out.

  “I’ll take a landbike.”

  “I don’t think there are any spares,” Celeste says.

  “There’s that one.” Orion nods at mine. “Is it almost fixed?”

  I keep working, lining up the pieces.

  “Ursa? Is it nearly ready?” he asks.

  I lift up a wire, check it by the firelight’s glimmer.

  “Ursa.” Celeste’s voice this time. “Is the landbike almost fixed?”

  I look up at my sister and smile. “No, sorry,” I lie.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to walk.” Orion strides off, passing Astra by the fire. She’s obviously heard the whole thing, so she tries to stop him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. But Orion shrugs her off and strides into the forest.

  I turn back to Celeste. She’s staring after Orion. I stand, move back, and sit down on the bench next to her. She’s still holding the two mealpacks.

  “More for us, eh?” I say.

  Celeste laughs. A laugh too close to a sob. “I could use the extra.” I give an exaggerated sigh. “You’re going to use that old ‘eating for two’ excuse?”

  Celeste places a hand on her landsuit, stretched over her bump. It’s funny how easy she is to cheer up, sometimes. Her pregnancy calms her. But then she’s always been excited about our feminine duty to squeeze out as many bawling babies as possible to populate this planet.

  Can’t say I feel the same.

  “Why do you put up with him, Celeste?”

  She shakes her head.

  “He’s such an —”

  “Leave it, Ursa.”

  A lone tenor begins on the other side of the fire. It’s Yuri, Head of Agricology, his voice rising and falling with a familiar melody that wraps over us all like a blanket. More voices join in. But it’s not the song I know. It’s an old tune with new words.

  The wide-open skies, the fast-running streams,

  The light in the air, the land of our dreams.

  Celeste starts singing too. She nudges me, obviously wanting me to join in. But I’m in no mood for it, and I don’t know the words, so I shrug and lift the lid from my mealpack. I peer in at the sandwich. Limp lettuce and kelp spread. I don’t think I’ll be fighting Celeste for the extra meal after all. Still, food is food.

  I lean back as I eat. There’s real warmth from the fire now. Smiles in the half-light, the song rising and falling with the flames. I try to focus on the melody, try to let its familiarity soothe me. Relax, Ursa. Shoulders down. Hands unclenched. You can’t fall through ice at a bonfire. And winter is over. Be rational.

  Two children run between the log benches, giggling. The youngest of Captain Cassius’s brood, their faces lit by the flames and their own laughter. A spark flies out from the bonfire, propelled by an updraft, twisting, shining. A temporary star that fades into the night sky.

  Then the song is done, the crew lapses into silence, and the wind reasserts itself. I wait for someone else to start singing, but I guess they’re too busy eating. I lean a hand on the log bench, and the rough bark digs into my palm.

  “I’ve an idea.” Sabik’s voice, from the other side of the circle. He jumps to his feet, his messy hair bouncing with him. He jabs a slice of bread on his fork and squats by the fire, holding it out and grinning.

  To think I used to love his over-the-top enthusiasm. Beta is still the promised land to people like him. Perhaps it’s because he’s never been one to over-think things. Perhaps I’d love it too, if I could turn part of my brain off.

  Sabik peers at his bread. It dangles on the end of his fork. I guess he’s toasting it. But it’s such an inefficient way to cook. He can’t get close to the fire because of the heat. He needs a longer fork, or a metal cage on a stick that could warm both sides at once. We really need some kind of structure around the bonfire to harness the full thermal output of the combustion within a contained system. All that heat energy, billowing out into the night, wasted.

  Eventually, Sabik lifts his bread up triumphantly. One side is slightly browned. Wow. How exciting.

  “My back is aching. I’m going to bed,” Celeste says.

  I turn to her. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I’d like to be alone, if that’s okay, Ursa.”

  I nod at the bump. “Not possible for a few weeks. But Astra can babysit once she’s out.”

  Celeste smiles, then stands and waddles toward the huts.

  The loneliness presses in on me.

  I was never alone before we came to Beta. Maia volunteered for the same shifts I did. If she were here now, she’d have been helping with the landbike. Passing me the soldering iron or digging in her own gear bag for screws. And of course, there was Sabik.

  “Ursa!” Sabik’s voice. He’s looking over, pushing his messy hair from his face. For a moment, I wonder if I spoke my thoughts out loud. I’ve gotten in the habit of talking to myself. Well, to Maia, but it’s the same thing.

  “Why don’t you join us?” His fellow agricologists are clustered around the flames, goofing around. From the shrieks and laughter you’d think toasting bread was the most thrilling activity in the world.

  But they’re too close to the fire, especially Sabik. My throat is tight. He’s paying attention to me, not to the flames looming behind him. Doesn’t he see the sparks? Doesn’t he know it’s dangerous?

  “No, thanks,” I say, hiding the fear in my voice. “I’m heading to the shuttle camp in a bit.”

  “Why?”

  Other people glance over, putting me on the spot. Captain Cassius. Astra. I’m not about to tell the truth: that I’d be more comfortable sleeping in the metal bulk of the shuttle than in the flimsy wooden huts of the forest camp. So words tumble out before I’ve thought them through.

  “There are some improvements to the boosters I’ve been thinking about.”

  Astra hurries over, wiping her hands on a cloth. Great. As if this wasn’t awkward enough.

  “Aren’t you going to stay at the forest camp with us?” I wrinkle my nose as she comes close. I guess it’s sweat from the fire’s heat, or maybe it’s because the showers aren’t working here yet. “Your mother and I would like that. It’s not often we’re all together anymore.”

  She’s right. And I’m still not used to it being just the three of us. I grew up in a full cabin with my dad, his two wives — Astra, his prima; my mother, his secunda — and my sister, Celeste, Astra’s daughter. But Dad got frail and faced the Exit, then Celeste got married, leaving two empty bunks.

  I glance at Mom, on the other side of the campfire, sitting in the middle of the tight clique of medics. She looks up, smiles. She can’t hear us. Just as well; I don’t want her coming to argue with me.

  “I have work to do,” I say.

  Astra s
hakes her head. “You’re just like your dad. Can’t it wait? It’s dark.”

  “I’ll take a landbike.”

  “That?” Astra asks, pointing at the broken one.

  “Yup.” I flip open the casing, shove in the motherboard, and link up the new wire to the engine. I slam the casing closed and screw it shut. The display screen lights as it hums into life. The battery display is low, but I do a quick mental calculation. There’s enough zap to get me to the shuttle camp if I drive slowly. I pick up my red jacket and shrug it on.

  Astra frowns. “Ping me when you get to the camp. Please.”

  “I can ping you the whole way, if you like.”

  She looks at me, face long and sad in the firelight.

  “I love you, Little Bear. So much. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I love you too.” I feel bad enough to give her a quick hug before I grab my gear bag, throw my leg over the landbike, gun the engine, and speed away toward the forest path.

  It’s important to make an exit, Maia used to say. The hum of the machine reverberates through my body. My hood blows back, off my cropped hair. Once I’m out of sight I slow to a walking pace to save the battery.

  I have to save enough power to zoom past Orion without offering him a ride.

  The forest presses in on either side of me. The glowferns glitter between the tangled trees. The swing of my light casts movement at the edge of my vision, but when I peer into the darkness there’s nothing there. Obviously. It’s the wind blowing the branches. These woods are uninhabited apart from the bugs and bacteria sent ahead by the seeding ships.

  I pull my hood back up for warmth, and I check behind the bike before I start talking. I don’t want to look crazy.

  “You wouldn’t be afraid,” I say to my memory of Maia. It’s reassuring, hearing my own voice. “You’d think this was an adventure.”

  The noises here are strange, so it’s good to talk over them. The howl of the wind, and a sharp single note that echoes through the woods, like the twist of metal under pressure or a human scream. It sends shivers down my back.