by Greg Mellor
Go on.
I will. Maybe you hadn’t checked out the secret radiation assessments from the first Mars mission when we first met. Maybe you didn’t want to know. But once I was your wife, I did. Let me read the executive summary to you. “Exposure to radiation during the mission has had significant short and long impacts on the central nervous systems of all crew members. Despite best mitigation practices, whole body effective doses ranged from .4 to .7 sieverts. Galactic cosmic radiation in the form of high-mass, energetic ions destroyed an average of 4% of the crew’s cells, while 13% of critical brain regions have likely been compromised. Reports of short term impairments of behavior and cognition were widely noted throughout the three year mission. Longitudinal studies of the astronaut corps point to a significant increase in risk of degenerative brain diseases. In particular, there appears to have been an acceleration of plaque pathology associated with Alzheimer ’s disease.” Let’s do the math, Andy. You get an estimated dose of between .4 to .7 sieverts during your first mission and you go to Mars twice. So call it a sievert and change. Which is why you were one grounded astronaut.
All that’s on the record.
What’s EPA’s maximum yearly dose for a radiation worker here on earth?
I don’t have immediate access to that data. I can look it up.
Yes, you can—it’s on the record. Fifty millisieverts. How about for emergency workers involved in a lifesaving operation?
Zoe, I . . . .
Two hundred and fifty millisieverts.
There are always risks.
For which you make tradeoffs, I get that. So the tradeoff here is X number of years of your life for two tickets to Mars. Which you decided before you met me, so I’ll give you a pass on that. Once you walked me through it, I sort of got how that was the price you paid to become who you wanted to be. Although you waited long enough to let me in on your little secret. But that wasn’t your last tradeoff. Because Spaceways fell down on their project management during the outfitting of Orbital Seven. They didn’t lift enough solar flare shelters to house everybody on the construction crew. So when Professor Vincente predicted an X2 class flare that would cook half the people onboard in a storm of hot protons, management turned to sixty-year old Captain Kirk, even though he’d been grounded. They pointed out that since he didn’t have all that much time before the Alzheimer’s plaques chewed what was left of his memory, maybe he might consider riding the torch one last time to ferry an emergency shelter up to save their corporate asses. Or maybe our Space Hero checked in all on his own and volunteered for their fucking suicide mission.
It wasn’t a suicide mission , Zoe. I came back.
And here you are, Andy. And here I am. But it’s not working.
Capture 06/30/2051, Kerwin Hospital ICU, 11:02:53
. . . or are you too busy with your life review? Ten thousand hours of captures is a lot to digest, even on fast-forward.
The record is eleven thousand two hundred and eighty-four hours long, not including the current capture.
Noted. Find anything worth bookmarking?
It would be a dull movie if it wasn’t all about me.
I heard about your ex yesterday on Newsmelt. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she’d emigrated to Mars.
Apparently she wanted to get to space as much as I did. I don’t know why I didn’t know that. It’s odd, but none of the pix and vids I have look like her.
You remember her then?
Just flashes, but they’re very vivid. Like she was lit up by a lightning strike.
They’re talking about bringing the rest of the colonists back home.
Maybe. But they’ll have to handcuff them and drag them kicking and screaming onto the relief ships—I know those people. And why bother? Many of them won’t survive the trip back.
Space will kill you any which way it can. You told me that on our third date.
I try not to pay attention. It’s been a long time since there’s been any good news from outer space. I think we need to start over on Mars. The thing to do is capture a comet, hollow it out and use it as a colony ship. The ice shields you from cosmic rays on the outbound. Send the colonists down in landers and then crash the comet. Solves both the water and the radiation problem.
Capture a comet? And how the hell do we do that? With a tractor beam? A magic lasso?
Get your science fiction friends working on it. If it’s crazy enough, the engineers will come sniffing around.
I’ll see what I can do. I met the Zhangs on the way in today. I thought I was your only visitor. We had a nice chat. And the baby was cute. What’s her name again?
Andee. A-N-D double E
That’s what I thought they said. After you.
Kristen was lucky. They pushed her to the front of the line so she was one of the first into the shelter. The last three in got a significant dose. One of them died on the way back down.
Drew Bantry.
They were his people. He waited until they were all safe.
You and he saved a lot of lives that day, Captain Kirk. It’s on the record for all to see.
Enough, Zoe. What do you have for me today?
Apologies.
Go on.
I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you last time. That’s why I missed the last few visits. I don’t trust myself to say the right thing anymore. I can’t filter out my feelings when I see you like this. I just blurt. Spew. It’s not good.
Noted.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think I’ll be accessing your augment after you’re . . . gone. Dead. You know, now I can visit the hospital here, and see you. Your face, your body, arms, hands. But some avatar, no. It’s too hard. There have been times the last few weeks when I felt like you’re here with me, but that’s only because I want you back. But mostly I don’t think this thing that talks to me is you. I’m sorry.
Why not?
There’s still too much missing, even if the augment can review your captures and all that input from before you started wearing the caps. Yes, we can talk about our lives together, but I still have to tell you things you should know. And now you’re cracking jokes, so it’s even harder. How can I tell whether what’s sad or happy or angry is you or clever algorithms? I don’t know, Andy. When are you going to say I love you? How will I know whether you really do, or if it’s just something else you needed to be reminded of?
I do, Zoe. Here, I’ll turn the augment off, so you can hear it from me. From this body, as you say. These lips.
No, honey, you don’t need to . . . .
Capture 06/30/2051, Kerwin Hospital ICU, 11:15:18, Augment disengaged by request
Okay? Here I am. And I know who you are. I do. You’re my famous wife, the writer. Nackey Martinez. You want to go. I don’t want you to go. Give me your hand.
Aye, Captain.
Stay with me. Will you do that?
For a while.
And write more books. You know, about your adventures in space. That’s important. And maybe . . . could get me my snacks? The food here is horrible. You know the ones. Mom always used to make banana slices with a smear of peanut butter when I got home from school. My snacks. Are you crying, Nackey? You’re crying.
Yes.
About the Author
James Patrick Kelly is pleased to have another story in Clarkesworld. If all goes according to his ingenious master plan, it won’t be his last. Jim has published over a hundred stories, five novels and four short story collections. He has won several awards, all of which need dusting. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and teaches at the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. He lives on a lake in New Hampshire where he enjoys gardening, kayaking, snowshoeing and listening to stories read aloud by Kate Baker.
One Flesh
Mark Bourne and Elizabeth Bourne
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman
Jupiter’s im
mense horizon appears flat as a flitter, stretching beyond the reach of vision. Cloud banks the size of continents drift in what might be sky. Organic molecules paint them in autumn colors: oranges and browns and peach and gold. Behind the clouds, the rising sun shines like a silver coin.
Lightning flashes.
Jen’s eight eyes close reflexively. The purple afterimage glows against her eye lids. She feels nine again, with that same gut-clenching mix of elation and fear she always had watching a storm approach. She hasn’t been nine in a long time.
One one-thousand, two one-thousand . . . Jen counts to herself. At twenty-three, thunder booms and the air tastes metallic.
She keeps her upper eyes closed as she reopens the four on her underside, where she senses phantom breasts. Her real breasts wait back at the station on her bipedal body. For the next few days Jen is the first human to skate the winds of Jupiter’s biosphere, the thin (by Jupiter’s standards) concentric shell nested between the freezing upper and hellish lower domains.
No. Not the first. The body she inhabits is proof of that, even if nothing like it ever existed among the thunderheads of Earth.
Kilometers below, burnt orange clouds stretch to infinity. For over an hour she’s observed a yawning vortex opening in the mottled cloudsea. Now it’s wide enough to swallow Arkansas, and Kansas for good measure. Deeper down, it’s fifty-seven thousand kilometers to a pressure of forty-five million Earth atmospheres, a temp of twenty thousand K, and a realm where hydrogen becomes monatomic.
For the hundredth time in the seventy-two hours since she left Callisto station, Jen thinks of her husband. How the curl of his black hair falls into his dark brown eyes. The dimple in his chin that he keeps because she likes it. The beak of a nose he refuses to fix, clinging to a vestige of ethnicity. She also thinks he wouldn’t want her out here.
This was our only chance, Ras. I wish we could’ve talked. But I’ll be back soon.
Clusters of colored beads rise from the Stygian depths. The creatures ride the updraft from the growing storm system. Eventually, they level off at an altitude just above hers, then float toward a finger of salmon-hued vapor budding from a cloud deck a hundred kilometers away.
Excitement flutters Jen’s hearts. This is it. She stretches into the cool hydrogen wind.
Pumping a gust of hydrogen from her anus, she jets toward the swarm. The looming cloud mass reminds Jen of the Tower of Babel. It was a seminal tale for the girl who’d grow up to become the premiere authority on interspecies communication. But these aren’t primates and cetaceans floating among the clouds.
Ras paced outside the office door. A wall plaque bore the ubiquitous tree-and-stars logo of NanCon, Inc. Beyond the door, some desk-bound cog was taking plenty of time before acknowledging him.
Every muscle ached. Ras’s neck cracked as he twisted it to ease the soreness. He wondered if he’d slept wrong. He dimly remembered a nightmare about suffocating and an urgent desire for home. Home was where Jen was, and she was away on vacation. Perhaps that was the answer.
Hurry back. He repeated the thought, wishing that it could travel the cold distances to Io. I don’t like sleeping alone.
He squared his shoulders and rubbed his bristly chin. His reflection glared back at him in the door’s shiny red surface, like an old Earth devil. Then the door chimed and his image shimmered as the permeable membrane allowed him entrance. Ras set his face in a grim frown, the one Jen called his “bad daddy” face. After years with university faculties on two worlds, Ras knew exactly how pissed to look.
The office inside included one mahogany desk, one Louis Quinze chair, a variety of irises growing from the carpet—in bloom no less, and a wall-sized window featuring a framed view of Callisto’s stark, rover-tracked landscape. Jupiter was rising over Valhalla Basin.
Ras confronted the assistant. “Well? You kept me waiting long enough.” He tried to control his irritation. Jen said it turned him into an asshole, and he knew she was right, dammit. She should be here to stop him acting like an idiot.
The assistant retorted, “Dr. Bodogom, you can’t demand to see Dr. Douglas!”
Anton Douglas’s assistant was either genuinely young, or else an old-timer tripping the faddie parade: illusory three-dee stars freckled his shiny indigo skin; his eyes—golden cat eyes—took up half his face. Shimmering lumiafields accentuated the assistant’s smooth blue groin. He—the male voice was probably original—stroked his bare crotch seductively.
Ras ignored the attempt at provocation. He liked being an old-style human. It gave him the right to be cranky. And at least the boy wasn’t a herm. The current trend of displaying a double set of massively enhanced, neon-colored genitalia was tiresome.
Young, Ras decided. We’ve created a lost generation. The irony of the thought was obvious.
The assistant’s golden eyes closed. “He knows you’re here.” When the young man opened them again, they were bright blue. “Dr. Douglas appreciates your patience. He’s waiting for you inside.” The green outline of a door appeared on a far wall.
Few people saw Anton Douglas. Ras and Jen hadn’t met him even when Douglas recruited them. The old man hadn’t netted in since he quarantined the Jupiter system for his own private purposes three years ago. Ras ignored the rumors that NanCon was run by an impostor. Or an AI. Or Douglas’s clone. Or gray-skinned aliens. You heard all sorts of things.
The other flyers haven’t noticed her. Yet. Jen studies them. They’re still heading for the cloud-mountain rising dozens of kilometers from far below. The scenery is achingly beautiful. Even though everything she sees, thinks, and feels is being recorded within a crystalline chip embedded in her skull, she won’t need sensemem playback to recall this. Jupiter will be part of her forever.
A powerful gust sends her reeling. She fights to maintain stability. Her wings are not at all like arms and legs. Pain tears through her flesh—flesh that now feels like what it is: nonhuman, and not meant for girls from Arkansas.
She falls, and between one second and the next remembers:
Rags of mist streaked the fjord’s cobalt water. If she walked off the cliff’s edge, she could touch them as she fell. The view from Preikestolen was spectacular, no doubt about it. Ras had taught her gliding, both in virt and in short-distance sessions. Still, the fear was surprisingly primal.
“You’ll love it,” he said, a huge grin illuminating his face. “It’s the closest you can get to heaven.”
“What does an atheist know about heaven?” she replied. “That water looks like it’d hurt.”
“Only if you hit it. Which you won’t.” Ras examined Jen’s straps and harnesses again. His touch reassured her.
She hesitated, then blew him a kiss as she launched herself into the wind, and then she was flying. She spotted Ras behind her, a silver hawk in pursuit. Laughter bubbled up as she dove to frighten him, before turning, as he’d taught her, to rise into the clouds.
That night, at home in the Canadian Rockies, they made love until they were exhausted, waking hours later in a bright patch of morning sunlight feeling as if they were gods.
Now Jen struggles to wrestle control away from the largest planet in the solar system. She drops like a rock. The cloud tops are no more substantial than fog, and she rips through them. If she doesn’t stop falling, the pressure and heat will crush the life from her. Her eyes, top and bottom, clench shut.
A voice rises from a place she can’t identify. Home. Remembering.
It speaks in images that touch her mind the way a child touches a butterfly: delicate, trying to be gentle. The creature, for all their care to remove its cognition, flows through her—seeing, feeling, and tasting what it finds. Jen trembles at the unexpected intimacy.
Carefully, it presses her aside and fills her body, their body. Home. Its longing is so strong Jen cries out, or tries to. Its thoughts are ill-fitting, yet unbound by language, she understands. Free. Released.
Impressions intrude into her mind. Jen stops struggling. Sp
read yourself on the Breath of the World. Feel the Winds. Allow them into you as your Old Ones allowed you into them at the Remembering.
Her wings change angle and the air pushes her up. She is flying, fast, faster than she’s ever flown on Earth. This colossal world lifts Jen higher with each stroke. Someone else—someone both blood-close and completely strange—shares her flesh. Together they rise, toward the other flyers.
Hormones flood her system sparking a physical reaction, orgasmic in its intensity, that she doesn’t understand. Something that was closed has been opened. Her body is readying itself for a Remembering.
Terror overwhelms her. A chittering noise clacks from her vocal cords. A sign of nerves? The consciousness tries to soothe her. Jen realizes she can’t manage, so she releases control, taking on the familiar role of observer. The green indicators hovering in her vision announce that data is being recorded and analyzed.
You taught me to glide, Jen pictures for Ras. Now let me teach you to fly. Just be alive when I get back.
Ras was alone in a suite that could have been a showroom for the Nostalgianet. Chairs and a fireplace built for an English country manor stood solidly on real wood floors; an Ormolu clock ticked on the mantel; ornately framed neo-impressionist paintings brightened the walls.
The largest painting was a portrait of a dark-eyed woman and four children, toddler to teenager. The artist had captured a haunted look in her eyes, even among her children, even surrounded by the accouterments of vast wealth. It was a study of loneliness.
Forty years ago, Tessa Douglas, wife to the most powerful man both on and off Earth, underwent a private suicide ceremony for reasons her biographers still couldn’t agree upon and her husband never spoke about.
Painting was Jen’s obsession, and Ras wondered what she would think. He strolled across the hardwood floor to pull drapes away from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Callisto’s panorama contrasted sharply with the room’s quaintness. Jupiter loomed, flanked by Ganymede’s and Io’s bright points.
