The Veil

by Bowden, William

  He starts the valve check list once again, but a thought halts him. She didn’t answer back.

  “Lucy?”

  Montroy has spent enough time with Lucy to know her character and right now they cannot afford any principled tantrums.

  “Lucy—?”

  “I shall address you as Tobias.”

  “Toby—” Montroy blurts out.

  “Toby, I think it would be much faster if you let me complete all the flight checks.”

  Up on the big board Dr. Panchen leans into the Centaur’s flight-deck camera to get their attention.

  “Control. We’re running out of lunar occlusion and coming up on our minimum burn time. We need to light those engines now.”

  Montroy runs his hands over his sweaty, balding head.

  “Okay, Lucy. You have control.”

  Nervous glances all round, not least from Chief Justice Garr.

  “I have control.”

  Console status lights flick to green in unison.

  “All systems nominal. Three, two, one—ignition. Full thrust.”

  Close to four hundred thousand kilometers away three small stars burst into life within the Afrika drive cluster. Light vents reveal the ultra-brilliant flash to the Centaur crew and for a moment all that can be seen is a blinding white Sun, newly born. The light quickly fades as the engines settle, ejecting the reaction plasma through their containment fields to form three bright, luminescent-blue thrust cones.

  “Good God,” mutters Toor, mesmerized by the sight.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” beams Panchen, taking a high-five from Bebbington.

  “Dr. Panchen?”

  “What is it, Lucy?”

  “I am detecting a misalignment of the plasma injector in motor two, Dr. Panchen.”

  “It’s minor. Leave it. We don’t have the time. The lunar horizon is approaching and we can’t risk being seen from Earth.”

  “I really think I should tend to it, Dr. Panchen.”

  Montroy looks nervously to the observation booth, where Garr unbundles her folded arms. The display screens show the Afrika approaching the lunar horizon and a line of sight to the Earth.

  “Lucy, you need to keep them engines burning,” Montroy says.

  “I have control,” Lucy says. “Shutting down motor two on my mark.”

  “Lucy! No!” Panchen shouts.

  “Mark.”

  Engine number two immediately cuts out.

  Panchen would be out of her seat if it weren’t for the zero-gee restraints. “Lucy! What are you doing?”

  “I have control,” Lucy says. “Adjusting plasma injector on motor two. Cycling. One moment. One moment—restart.”

  Engine two bursts back into life, its thrust cone throttling to the max.

  “You’re going to breach the horizon!” shouts Panchen.

  “Throttling all motors to one hundred fifteen percent.”

  “Can they handle that?” Senator Blake asks.

  “She designed them,” Garr coolly remarks, only to quietly chuckle to herself.

  “What is it?” Blake demands.

  “Spaceships have engines, toys have motors.”

  Earth rise, as the Afrika’s bow slides into view of Earth, the drive cluster just moments behind it.

  And then, just as it breaches the horizon, and without any drama, the drive cuts out, the Afrika coasting onward.

  “Mars transit,” Lucy announces. “Ninety-seven days, five hours. Next burn in thirty-seven hours. All systems nominal.”

  DAY 89

  The Afrika slides silently through space, its engines cold, the lack of any nearby reference masking the leviathan’s breakneck speed. The brightest object is the destination, some four million kilometers away.

  The habitat is quiet, the lighting subdued. Pools of shadow hide the fact that much of it is unfinished. It is organized around a central corridor running from the garage forward to the flight deck, with spaces leading off of it at regular intervals. What would have been labs, experiments and general work areas are all bare, save for a telemetry station used in the test flights, and now set up as a communications bay.

  Halfway between the garage and flight deck is the carousel—a constantly rotating drum, twenty meters across, spinning about the axis of the corridor to provide an artificial gravity environment. A section of the corridor rotates with carousel, providing access to the crew quarters and medical center within. It is comfortably furnished.

  At the far end of the corridor, just before the garage, are a series of recesses quite different from the others, each a circular glass-fronted chamber. There are two adjacent to each other set into each wall—eight in all. One is faintly lit. Within it a body in a fetal position slowly rotates head over heels in the zero gravity. It is Robert Cantor, unkempt hair and beard, dressed in a ribbed body-form suit, connected to the chamber by a series of tubes via a gimbal rotating in unison.

  The rotation slows, brought to a halt by puffs of air from nozzles around the rim of the cylindrical chamber. Behind Robert’s eyelids there is rapid eye movement.

  * * *

  An empty plaza, the Cantor Satori tower before him. Then Jerome Ellis’s makeshift laboratory on the Sky Floor.

  Landelle and Toor slumped and unconscious, each covered in spreading lesions.

  Twelve liquefying corpses laid out before him—he reels, staggering back, turning away from the horror—

  Monica Satori grabs him by the throat. Her lips purse, eyes reddening to bloodshot. Blood-blue veins appear, coalescing into lesions.

  He’s choking.

  Her mouth falls open, a vile red goo coursing out to flow over her face.

  * * *

  Robert’s body thrashes in the zero gravity—brief spasms before he wakes with a sharp intake of breath.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Lucy says. “Try to relax.”

  * * *

  A groggy Robert pulls himself into a small zero-gee wash room next to the chambers. He looks up a camera set flush with the padded walls, a red telltale indicating he is being watched.

  “Okay, Lucy. What’s going on?”

  “An urgent message from Chief Justice Garr. She said I was not to delay.”

  “I feel like death. Where are we?”

  “Eighty nine days into mission, eight days from Mars. You have been extended sleep for twenty days this time.”

  “Prepare some breakfast. I’ll take the message on my phone.”

  “The message is encrypted,” Lucy says. “It can only be viewed on a master terminal.”

  “I’d like some privacy please.”

  Robert sets about peeling off his sleep suit. He notes the red telltale.

  “We have discussed this,” he says looking directly at the camera. “If you want to watch then you have to show yourself. That’s the deal.”

  The telltale blinks out. Robert can’t help a little chuckle to himself.

  Lucy continues to watch.

  * * *

  Wearing a flight suit, but with little attention paid to grooming, Robert pulls himself along the central corridor.

  “Where are you going?” Lucy asks.

  Robert is pleased with himself and lets it show.

  “To the flight deck. You’ll have to give me access now. That’s where the master terminal is.”

  “You are not permitted access to the flight deck,” says Lucy, haughtily. “I have reconfigured a terminal in the carousel.”

  Robert deflates, before finding the nearest camera and giving it a really good stare.

  “I have prepared a breakfast, like you asked,” Lucy says, with more than a touch of a conciliatory tone.

  * * *

  Lucy observes that the tea and cereal has been supplemented by a candy bar, its brazenly discarded wrapper among the messy remains being the evidence of this surreptitious act. Robert lounges next to it on the couch as Chief Justice Garr’s recorded message plays out.

  “We don’t know who broke the story, but it has ca
used chaos,” a desperate Garr says, her voice hurried. “The world now knows everything. There’s real sense of panic. We knew it would come out sooner or later, but the reaction is far worse than we imagined. The Council leaders are struggling to defend their positions and there’s talk of aborting. We are getting Lucy to wake you while there’s still time—”

  The message ends abruptly with Garr momentarily looking away from the camera.

  “How old is this message, Lucy?”

  “I received it a little over fifty minutes ago. Do you wish to record a response? The current communication delay is eleven minutes.”

  “No response just yet. Has there been any communication from mission control since you got this message?”

  “Only routine requests for systems and telemetry data.”

  “Great. Just great.”

  Robert flops back into the couch, his mood despondent.

  “Were you having a nightmare when I woke you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You were dreaming about Doctor Satori again, weren’t you.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t mean to pry. I am just concerned. And Chief Justice Garr said I was not to wait.”

  “Lucy, it’s fine—”

  “One moment. One moment—”

  * * *

  Mission control was crowded, most of the controllers in huddled groups talking over the events of the past twenty-four hours. As well as telemetry data from the Afrika, the big board shows rolling news channels. The world had been told everything and telescopes had peered outward to confirm it.

  Of course, they would have seen at some point, and the discovery would have been shocking, but the lack of facts would have provided the means to control the situation; there is a big difference between speculation and absolute knowledge. But the world had been hit with everything in one go. The result had been instant culture shock on a massive scale, far greater than could be managed. Fear and panic had already led to a breakdown in social order in some parts of the globe, and it was spreading rapidly.

  Special Agent Landelle busies herself with the Afrika’s habitat feed—Lucy woke Robert up an hour ago, but they’ve received no response to Garr’s message, so Landelle is checking up on him. Having already skipped to the end of what has downloaded so far, and seen Robert just starting to watch the message, she’s now casually reviewing what went before. He is in the sleep area washroom.

  “We have discussed this. If you want to watch then you have to show yourself. That’s the deal.”

  Landelle wonders whether in fact they should have told him about Lucy’s true nature.

  “Awkward,” she sings to herself.

  Chief Justice Garr appears at Landelle’s side, her manner rushed, her face ashen. A similarly disturbed Cardinal Ansoni is with her.

  “Deborah. It was Blake. He broke the story.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Because he is here.”

  Senator Blake had not been at mission control for months. Neither had Chief Justice Garr for that matter. There had been nothing to see that could not be reported under heavy encryption, and their efforts were best spent in Washington.

  “So are you and Joseph, Alka. Maybe he needs a place to hide as well.”

  “He isn’t alone—”

  Senator Blake swaggers in, a posse of armed marines following behind. Joseph Ansoni wastes no time in turning on him.

  “Have you any idea what you have done, Senator?”

  “Put an end to this insanity,” Blake says. “The world has the right to know.”

  “You’ve plunged the world into an abyss. We could have managed this!”

  “You are delusional, Cardinal. You can’t manage—”

  “I think we have a problem!” mission controller Montroy calls out.

  All turn to the mission display screens. The live feeds have vanished.

  “We’ve lost all telemetry.” Montroy says.

  Joseph breaks away from his confrontation with Blake, utterly mesmerized by the blank screens.

  “It’s starting,” he says quietly.

  * * *

  The Afrika’s systems are still rebooting as Robert makes his way from the carousel to the communication bay, with only emergency lighting to guide him. By the time he gets there the primary lighting is back on and the consoles are up and running. He hauls himself in.

  “Do we know what happened yet?”

  “We temporarily lost all mains power,” Lucy says.

  “Have we been hit?”

  “No. It is a systems failure, but I cannot pinpoint where.”

  Robert buckles himself in before the central communications console.

  “Okay Lucy, what am I looking at?”

  “A frequency spectrum of what the high gain antenna is receiving.”

  A distribution of vertical lines along a horizontal frequency axis shows the breakdown of radio waves the Afrika is picking up.

  “The usual background. Some chatter from the probes on Mars and that spike is Jupiter. So we know it is functioning correctly.”

  “And?”

  “We would also expect to pick up chatter from Earth. Radio in particular. But there is nothing.”

  This has Robert’s attention, a deepening sense of concern creeping up on him.

  “That’s not all,” Lucy says. “Those Mars probes and satellites that I am in contact with also report that they have lost contact with Earth.”

  “Earth is still there, isn’t it?”

  “I am observing it through the main telescope.”

  “Looks like we are on our own,” Robert says.

  “I think we both know that this must be down to the occupants of the Emerald City. What should we do?”

  “It’s a game, Lucy. And what we are going to do is keep on playing.”

  * * *

  Robert pulls himself along the central corridor toward the flight deck, this time its door opening for him as he approaches. A large panoramic window dominates a space crammed with control systems. He maneuvers himself into the navigator’s flight seat, a wide display before him.

  “Live from our telescope,” Lucy says.

  It is an oblique view of the extinct Martian super-volcano, Olympus Mons. Over five hundred kilometers across, twenty-seven kilometers high. Within its vast caldera is an asymmetrical domed structure of luminescent green—it hadn’t taken long for it to be dubbed The Emerald City.

  “Any response to our messages?” Robert asks.

  “It remains completely inert.”

  “I suspect that it is anything but that.”

  “The Emerald City,” Lucy muses. “Sixty kilometers across at its largest dimension, and to a height of three. A curvilinear surface perfect to the tolerance of our instruments.”

  “Bring up the most recent Mars Observer images.”

  Lucy displays an orbital view from Observer Seven alongside the telescope feed. It presents Olympus Mons as one might expect it to be—without the dome.

  “Why do you suppose they are still manipulating the feed?” Lucy asks.

  “They mean for us not to have a clear view until we are upon it.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “So that we cannot plan, Lucy.”

  FRIENDS

  But they could prepare, with eight days before their arrival, both having duties to perform. Lucy’s primary concern was a series of breaking maneuvers to take them into Mars orbit, while Robert got in as many flight simulation hours as he could on the Nairobi. A shared effort was needed to prep the Mombasa—it had already been stripped down to a minimum weight, now it needed to be fueled and every aspect of its flight systems checked and rechecked.

  All work and no play? As far as Robert was concerned—no chance.

  * * *

  A scruffy Robert stares at a holographic game of Go, but clearly lost in some other thought. Lucy breaks the salience.

  “What is the difficulty between you and
Commander Toor?”

  This serves only to surface Robert back to focusing on the game. He makes a play. But the question has burrowed its way in.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just that at Lagrange Two her behavior toward you seemed odd.”

  “Odd in what way?”

  “Angry. Aggressive.”

  Lucy makes her play for Robert to ponder.

  “Is this a tactic to distract me?” he says.

  “Not at all. Are you uncomfortable with the question?”

  Robert puts the game first, making his next move.

  “A little.”

  Lucy takes a moment to consider Robert’s play, before making her own move.

  “Is she a spurned lover?”

  “Lucy, for heaven’s sake. No.”

  A sadness besieges Robert, memories welling up from deep within, the mistakes he had made and the price paid by those close to him. He keeps his gaze on the game.

  “She was a friend at a time when I had few and needed them most,” he says. “That friendship cost her more than she was prepared to forgive, and I can’t say I blame her.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “Lucy…”

  “Your move.”

  Robert slips a sly look at the nearest wall camera overlooking the game, before returning his attention to the Go board. A moment’s consideration and he makes a decisive play.

  “A good move,” Lucy declares. “I concede.”

  “You’re letting me win.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Oh, come on. You could easily—”

  “I choose not to,” Lucy says tersely, forgetting herself, and now needing a lighter tone, “It’s more fun that way. Would you like another game?”

  Robert makes a play of relaxing back into his sofa, arms outstretched, his eyes fixed on the nearest wall camera, its telltale betraying Lucy’s current point of view.

  “I will if you project your inner self-image as an avatar.”

  “I believe we have already had this conversation,” Lucy says, a haughtiness to her voice.

  “But it’s different now. Nobody’s going to see.”

  “There are the flight recorders—it’s a matter of principle.”

  Robert cocks his head with a sly grin.

  “Embies can’t change their self-image once it’s formed, can they.”