Solaris Rising 3 - The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction

by Ian Whates

  Chi’s head jerked up.

  “Piece by piece if they have to,” Thuy said. “Do you think they’d let you steal their own technology and use it against them?”

  “I’m no longer a Galactic ship,” The Frost on Jade Buds said.

  “You’re a deserter,” Thuy said, slowly – trying to remember that this was a mindship, one like any other – no different from The Dragons in the Peach Garden or The Sea and Mulberry, or any other of the ships she’d seen in the docks – and knowing, deep in her heart, that no mindship would have had that coiled aggressiveness, that general sharpness of metal shards. “And you know what they do to traitors.”

  “I’m no traitor,” the mindship said, as calmly as if he had been discussing the solar flares forecast. “As far as I’m concerned, the Galactics left me wounded in the Belt, and never bothered to come back for me or even to communicate with me. I don’t see how this makes me owe them any loyalty, if they won’t even extend a thought in my direction.”

  “You’re wrong,” Chi said. “They won’t catch us.”

  “Of course they will. You said it yourself – we just don’t have their level of technology, and they wrote the book on war weapons. There’s no place you can escape to where they won’t find you. I know you don’t mind dying” – and the thought was a shard of metal, lodged against Thuy’s heart – “but are you going to drag the ship down with you?”

  Chi didn’t speak for a while; and the ship had fallen mercifully silent, as if he had clean forgotten about arming his weapons systems. At last, Chi said, and her voice was much smaller and more subdued than it had been. “Ship?”

  “Yes, child?”

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  The whole room seemed to contract; the walls to become a little less bright for a fraction of a second. “Your elder sister is, technically, correct. I was made for war. Death is what happens to us all. Why should I mind dying?”

  Chi was silent, again.

  “Please,” Thuy said. “There’s no good way out of this, Lil’ Sis.”

  “You’re right.” Chi’s face was set. “Better take the honourable way. At least war is clean. Isn’t this what they say?”

  “You, of all people, should know that isn’t true,” Thuy said. War was messy and bloody; a mass of torn things, of torn connections that would never be repaired. It was absences at New Year’s Eve and the other festivals, holos on the ancestral altar of men and women who looked barely old enough to have children; all the myriad details that hurt like twisted knives. “You know what war is. You’ve grown up in the ruins of it.” She threw Chi’s own words back at her, more viciously than she thought she’d ever do; but fear seemed to give everything a shrunken, sharp edge.

  Chi’s face didn’t move. It seemed to be frozen with no expression, like the masks painted on theatre players.

  “Please. Come home, Lil’ Sis.”

  At last, at long last, Chi said, to the ship, “Stand down.” And, to Thuy, “Fine. You win. But The Frost on Jade Buds comes home with me.”

  The ship? Thuy silenced the first reply that came to her lips. “Of course,” she said, softly, smoothly. “That won’t be a problem.”

  Chi smiled; and they both knew she knew about the lie. “Come on. Let’s call Sixth Aunt, and go home.”

  Home. She wondered what place there would be, for the ship; for Chi – for the discarded weapons of war in a society that fought to cleanse the war from its history, that strove to rebuild itself into a peaceful, buoyant future.

  Thuy caught a glimpse of the twin screens, one showing the trajectory of the delegation’s shuttle moving away from them, towards the Apricot Blossom Ho orbital; the other the Galactics coming down the stairs with the smug, oblivious smile of the powerful. The scrolling text of the feed spoke of favoured trade agreement, of the re-establishment of factories and military bases in the Scattered Pearls Belt; the slow, inexorable re-encroachment of their former masters in their everyday life, with no apologies for the war, for the lives ruined, for the people irrevocably changed.

  War would have been a cleaner way out of this, Chi had said; and Thuy had told her, with the utter certainty of the desperate, that it was a lie.

  Except that now, in the cold light of reason, she wasn’t so sure if she’d been right; or even where – with her family’s home on the verge of the insidious, devastating upheaval Chi had foreseen – either of them could make a fitting stand.

  POPULAR IMAGES FROM THE FIRST MANNED MISSION TO ENCELADUS

  ALEX DALLY MACFARLANE

  (for Dr. Leah-Nani Alconcel)

  Alex Dally MacFarlane is a writer, editor and historian. When not researching narrative maps in the legendary traditions of Alexander III of Macedon, she writes stories, found in Clarkesworld, Interfictions Online, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Phantasm Japan, Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 and other anthologies. Poetry can be found in Stone Telling, The Moment of Change and Here, We Cross. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013) and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014).

  Be Proud, Scientists, You Will Be The First To See The Ice Plumes Of Enceladus! (2076)

  THIS, THE MISSION’S first poster, was issued by the China Space Administration five years before the launch, concurrent with the announcement of the team’s leaders. They stood together on the poster: Liu Gan, He Hongxia and Avapim Sannikorn, in dark blue spacesuits, helmet-less, gripping one another’s hands, high in the airless star-patterned space above icy-pale Enceladus. A small red silhouette of their research station – which the team leaders later gave the name of Liu Yang – hung beneath their feet. All three leaders were pictured smiling: proud, joyous, as on the day of the public announcement.

  The poster, displayed around the world in over five hundred languages, online and printed, remained one of the most iconic.

  To go to Enceladus! To be the first to see its ice plumes – and the ice rings of Saturn, and the great planet itself, its yellow body banded with storms! In one of many interviews, Liu Gan sat across from a Dainik Jagran journalist, her eyes as wide as moons, saying, “I’m so! I can’t believe! Enceladus!”

  To Saturn! (2081)

  PRODUCED BY THE European Space Agency in the year of the launch and painted on the side of the agency’s headquarters in Paris.

  The European Space Agency provided some key pieces of equipment for the mission: the analysis machines for samples taken from Enceladus’ sea, the primary life support system, and several sensors, including the magnetometers and far-infrared spectrometers, as well as the chips and primary materials to construct instruments in situ.

  This image showed all twelve members of the team, standing side-by-side. Each wore a dark blue spacesuit with the flag of their home nation on the left shoulder. At the bottom, a row of logos identified the main agencies funding and providing equipment for the project: the China Space Administration, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European Space Agency, the Space Technology Agency of Thailand, the Malaysian National Space Agency and the Philippine Space Agency.

  Seven Years, Seven Hundred Dreams! (2081 - 2088)

  A SERIES OF images created by the team.

  The journey to the Saturn System took seven years. The team’s dreams: arrival in 2088, deployment of the research station in Enceladus’ orbit, beginning to take readings remotely and through the autonomous exploration unit – and, eventually, manned exploration.

  Life In The Sea Of Enceladus! (2090)

  THE SEA OF Enceladus dominated the poster: pale blue, full of enlarged creatures, microbes the size of mammals. The first life beyond our world! Above the ice of Enceladus’ surface, the plumes – unceasing, essential – were cut off by the poster’s edge, no longer the focus. The life! The artist revelled in it, rendering it in a level of detail so faithful that He Hongxia was alleged to have cried out in joy upon rec
eiving a transmission of the poster. The thin black lines patterning the life forms’ pale spherical shells! The feelers like fine braids of hair! The artist depicted these features with a precision impractical for a poster: from afar, the patterned shells looked grey, the feelers simply could not be seen. Copies of the poster often omitted these details.

  What intricate life! Minutely complex! Each patterned shell unique!

  He Hongxia quickly realised, on examining the collected specimens, that ‘shell’ was an inaccuracy, an Earth-inspired assumption. The hollow sphere did not protect a soft inner-body. The sphere – and its long feelers – was the life form. The processes of life occurred in that rigid structure.

  On Earth, children in coastal countries imagined collecting one: a stray creature washed up from a distant world.

  The first poster rapidly fell out of date. Other life was found in Enceladus’ sea.

  A Vast Reserve, Just Beyond Our Grasp! (2091)

  SCRATCHED ONTO THE rock walls of asteroid interiors. Painted – at great expense – on the mining vessel Venture 16 with the caption: No One Mining The Moons Of Saturn Will Go Thirsty!

  There were many alternative captions. (Another, popular on several asteroid nets: So Good It’s Teeming With Life!) But the basic image remained the same: Enceladus the canister of water, a tap on its side.

  Planetary Resources sponsored the poster’s wide distribution.

  When it reached Liu Yang, He Hongxia denounced it in a statement sent in ten languages to the asteroids, the research station and young residential settlement on Mars, and across the countries of Earth: “Enceladus is not a sterile container of blue-painted metal, covered in Planetary Resources logos. This is a world, full of life, and we are so new to it; there is so much we do not yet understand. It is possible that we can use its water. It is possible that doing so would irreparably harm the life here – would kill it. We will not risk that. Our research is on-going. We will certainly consider how the water of Enceladus could support human industry and habitation of the Saturn System, but now is not the time to demand that we turn this sea over to anyone who wants to drink from it! It is far too soon!”

  Liu Gan and Avapim Sannikorn did not make independent statements at this time. Their names, along with those of everyone on the research team, were simply appended to the transmission. In all probability, Liu Gan did not begin to disagree with He Hongxia until later.

  Together We Will Understand The Lives of Enceladus’ Creatures! (2092)

  THE TEAM ON Liu Yang sent back a barrage of images. More details of the Shells. New images of the swilling sea. The single-celled organisms, primary producers in the sea’s food chain. The unspecialised multicellular organisms. The tubular creatures, each a hundred micrometres long, their sides marked with dark lines that so many likened to writing. The flat, round life forms like microscopic rays, uncoloured. And there were clips of the scientists at work, readying the autonomous exploration unit for launch, examining data – and, most famously of all, the clip that inspired a state-created artwork in Thailand, distributed globally and on Mars: the three team leaders bent over a microscope together, so close they were touching, Liu Gan and He Hongxia clasping hands, Avapim Sannikorn’s arm slung over their shoulders, all three women gazing down at a screen unseeable by anyone but them.

  The artist added a screen at the bottom of the image. It displayed one of the tubular creatures, its side covered with the black lines of the caption.

  Other, quieter news left Liu Yang. One of the modified species of rice was performing excellently in the lower gravity of the habitat. One of the species of onion had died out. One of the scientists had developed cancer – bad luck, not a sign that the radiation shielding was performing below expectation – and he was responding well to treatment. A storm had spread in a band around Saturn. Avapim Sannikorn and her wife, Cristina Tangco, an autonomous exploration unit technician, had decided to have a child. Following a successful implementation of the Kaguya parthenogenesis technique with the women’s cells, Avapim reported a healthy pregnancy, the habitat’s first: one of the mission’s goals, if any team members consented to try.

  Discoveries continued.

  He Hongxia reportedly avoided sleep wherever possible, so excited by the research into the life processes of the Enceladus life forms – their genetic construction, their life cycles, their reproductive methods and rates, their diversity – and afraid of the asteroid miners, who continued to send out their own images: mining stations in orbit around Saturn and Titan, miners drinking from Enceladus-water while life continued to swim under the ice, miners cracking open the surface of Europa for its ice and lifeless water.

  “We don’t know if the water of Europa is lifeless!” He Hongxia broadcast. “Finding life on Enceladus has shown that we cannot assume anything about our solar system. Any manned mission to the Jupiter System must take the same care when exploring Europa as we are taking here on Enceladus!”

  The images accumulated like a new ring around Saturn.

  Defend Enceladus! (2092)

  POPULAR OPINION ACROSS Earth cried out for action. We must send soldiers to defend the scientists from the miners! We must not let their work be wasted or lost! We must hurry!

  On Earth, online, an image was created: large red font on a starry black background, above an Enceladus and small Liu Yang threatened by an army of mining vessels with weapons protruding from their fronts like the Shells’ feelers. Fear rose. There were at least a hundred people living in the asteroid belt against Liu Yang’s twelve! Liu Yang had not been built to withstand continuous bombardment! Laser weaponry would slice it open like Enceladus’ surface!

  The team on Liu Yang and the asteroid miners worked, four years apart.

  Treachery! (2092)

  CONVERSATIONS CROSSED THE solar system slowly: an interruption for Liu Gan as she analysed visual light, infrared, radar and sample scoop data from the autonomous exploration unit. Such density of life throughout Enceladus’ ocean! Preliminary indications of genetic diversity across species populations! Another message from Mason Ng of Psyche Corporation on Psyche in the main belt: one of three companies mining that metal-rich asteroid. Liu Gan briefly set aside her work.

  Her reply took thirty minutes to reach Psyche.

  It took months for Liu Gan and Mason Ng’s conversation to be noticed among the busy signal traffic of the solar system.

  Even He Hongxia – betrayed by her own wife – decried the images labelling Liu Gan a traitor.

  “It is not treachery to have a different opinion!” He Hongxia said in her next update on the Liu Yang’s work. “I will not be confining Liu Gan, or restricting her research. Liu Gan is a valued member of the team.”

  Liu Gan, in her own update – her first – said, “I have been exploring – in words only – the possibility of using Enceladus’ ocean as a source of water, hydrogen and oxygen for future habitation of the Saturn System. There are so many factors to be taken into consideration: the question of the stability (or fragility) of the life on Enceladus, the ease of acquisition compared to other potential sources on the many icy bodies of the Saturn System, the other resources necessary for human habitation and where they will need to be acquired. One of our missions is to assess the role of Enceladus in human habitation. I do not agree with He Hongxia that Enceladus must be ruled out because of the life found here. My research into the extent of the Enceladus life will continue.”

  The sea, so full of life!

  Swimming In The Sea Of Enceladus! (2093)

  AVAPIM SANNIKORN WALKED through the sea of Enceladus as if across a street or a field, with her recently born daughter bound to her back. In her hands, Avapim held an unspecific scientific instrument. Around her, the life of Enceladus floated, disproportionally large in black-and-white. Avapim stood out: the red and blue of her environment-suit, the brown of her face, the yellow, black and red tree-patterning of the fabric securing her daughter. Her face was joyous.

  To be in Enceladus
’ ocean! To see its water, murky with life, pressed against her visor!

  Her life nearly ended there.

  Two weeks after the successful delivery of her daughter, Avapim and Module Technician and Pilot Ju Dimagiba embarked on the first manned mission into the sea of Enceladus in the Roshini Muniam exploration module. The first stages progressed successfully: the launch from the Liu Yang, the secure landing of the launcher at the edge of the designated fissure, the separation of the launcher and the module, the module’s entry through the fissure and its fine spray of ice, down into the ocean of water. The Roshini Muniam’s controls operated smoothly. Ju steered the module on its predetermined route, with the tether to the launcher unspooling behind. Avapim examined the collected data. The life, swimming around them!

  The ocean’s tidal currents, so powerful and unpredictable!

  Tidally pulled by the great mass of Saturn and the lesser masses of other moons, Enceladus’ H20 was made liquid: able to support life. It heaved under the crust of ice. It swilled with great currents, tentatively named by the Liu Yang team: the Great Polar, the Great Deep, the Song (for how it flowed up to the ice and made it creak and groan in a long, low voice), the Shell (for its shape, so like the Shells swimming within it). Mapping of the currents was ongoing, but the route of the Roshini Muniam went through well-charted water.