Iris

by William Barton

  He smiled thinly. "You'll see. . . ."

  A voice from behind brought them about. " Arhn-he kuraai ! Welcome back, my lord. Your absence has been felt." A man with black and silver hair, beautiful in a hawkish sort of way, was hurrying toward them.

  Demogorgon put his hand on the man's shoulder. "Good to be back, Savvrenash! What has befallen the realm?"

  Before the Arhosian could answer, Vana stepped toward him, waving a hand before his face. "Will he react to me?"

  Savvrenash looked at her strangely, a frown deepening the delicate lines of his face. "And who is this, my lord?"

  "A noble visitor from far Exqrai. She is my guest." Demogorgon was smiling and the other man bowed deeply to her.

  Vana was suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't know . . ." Turning to his master again, Savvrenash said, "It is as it always has been. All the borders are . . . manifest. The world runs in its cycles of savagery." He shrugged, glancing out across the near featureless plain, then looked back at them. "I have word that the gala in Hraas is starting this sevenhour, if you'd care to attend."

  "Perhaps. These decisions need not always be made. . . . In any case, summon my flyer." The man bowed and went to do his bidding.

  Vana sat in a plush swing that hung near her and shook her head. "This is really something!" He nodded and said, "We'll visit the Kaimodrang Empire and my good friend Ci te Tovolku . . . ." In due course a great silvery disk came to hover before the balcony, and a place in the side of the craft transmuted to a fenced gangway that was merged with the floor of the balcony. They climbed into the velour-upholstered circular well in the middle of the machine and took seats. Demogorgon seized the controls, pressing several of the semiprecious stones that dotted his armrest, and they flashed away, high in the air, heading into the west.

  Vana looked over the side at the faraway landscape and, for the first time, noticed that the gravity here seemed Earth-normal. It felt strange but nice. "What if I jump?" she asked. Demogorgon frowned. "Don't," he said. "This world is designed to enhance and reinforce our perceptions of it as a reality. There are levels where that's not the case, where flying, transubstantiation, and the like are possible, but . . . I like this best. It's simple and believable." He touched another control and the floor of the ship suddenly became transparent, not like glass or the walls of aspacecraft, but as if it had ceased to exist. Their chairs floated magically, frightening above the abyss.

  Watching the squares of an agricultural land pass beneath them, Vana said, "Yeah . . ." The wind whipping through her hair was the temperature of a comfortable autumn and the red suns were warm on her skin. She wanted to drink it all in, as if these moments might somehow get away. It seemed more real, now, than Deepstar and Ocypete.

  "Are you a king here?" she asked.

  "King?" Demogorgon was amused. "Dear Vana: I'm God." She thought about that for a while, then said, "This is wonderful. I never want to leave."

  On the evening of the third day the 60vet expedition was approaching the edge of the ocellus. The ground grew rougher and more uneven, and the regolith grew deeper, more persistent. There were cracks in the ice filled with what turned out to be methane clathrate , a volatile admixture of water and methane. They steered well clear of these and the horizon began to bulge ominously. Suddenly they came upon a huge crevice that barred any further progress. The terrain had become a vast wasteland of jumbled, fretted ice with a relief of about a hundred meters. The massive forces and tensions working on the littoral of the freezing sea had spent their energies on the ab initio ice. In the distance, mountains were pushed up, jagged white teeth from broken white gums. The three explorers got out and stared.

  "This is water geology, pure and straightforward," said Tem, gesturing. "As the ocellus melted, it overtopped the collapsing shores and spread beyond. When it froze again, it expanded and pushed everything back. If it weren't for glaciation moderating these processes, allowing the warm ice to be malleable, it'd be worse. Too bad Jana can't see this."

  "Shall we go farther?" asked Harmon.

  "On foot? Nah. If there's any NH3eutectic out there, I wouldn't want to step in it. Not in these suits. It's time we started back, anyway."

  They returned to the car and got in. Harmon activated theair cleaner and they waited while the stray gases they'd brought in with them were filtered out. After a few minutes it was safe to remove their helmets, which deflated and collapsed. There was just the barest hint of ammonia left in the cabin, but it was very noticeable. If there were any HCN, and they certainly would hope not, it would be present in too small a quantity to do any harm.

  Krzakwa was munching on a thin turkey sandwich, mayonnaise on white bread. "Hey, you know what?" A little of the food was accumulating in his beard.

  Biting daintily at a brioche, Sealock said, "Tell me."

  "Well, a lot of this trip has been pretty damned boring, but it's been worth it. I think it made me realize something I used to know but kind of forgot. It all reminds of me of when I was a kid, when I used to sneak up to the outer surface of Luna and wander around. I kind of like exploring in places I've never been before." He swallowed an unchewed mouthful of the sandwich and said, "Too bad this is it. . . ." Sealock looked at him silently. For some reason, he found himself really liking the pudgy Selenite, thinking of him as a friend. "Tell you what," he said, "when we get back, let's scrounge around the leftovers from Deepstar. Fuck everything else. I bet we can find enough parts to put together that little moonship we discussed on Earth. It'd give us a chance to really check the neighborhood out. Hell, there's got to be something worth looking at!"

  Krzakwa's blue eyes brightened perceptibly. "Hey! That's a great idea!" Sealock nodded, almost talking to himself now. "We can recharge the Hyloxso matrices easily, build a small CM out of bubbleplastic . . ."

  Tem cracked open a carton of grape soda, took a sip, and started in on another sandwich, this one roast beef. "You know, despite the fact that you're such a weird fucker, sometimes I think you and I might be two of a kind. . . ."

  Sealock tapped at the horn button which, of course, made no sound. "Yeah," he said.

  The seven colonists were seated at uneven intervals around a large oval table in a clear space on the Irisward side of the dome that surrounded the CM. Packets of mandarines d'ortolans , a dish adapted from Escoffier , were passed around in silence except for the slithering arpeggios of a Beethoven string quartet. They began to eat, sparingly. It was delicious. The tiny, simulated buntings, barely more than morsels of meat, were nestled in an aspic delicately flavored by the essence of tangerine. The meal had been prepared to coincide with the return of the absent trio. They were now more than two hours overdue. After considerable discussion, in which it was pointed out that, if anything serious had gone wrong, it was too late for a rescue, they had decided to continue with the meal. Beth sat back uncomfortably in her chair. In the last few days the colony had fallen into a state of disorganized apathy. With the absence of Sealock and Krzakwa, a vacuum had come to fill that place in their hearts where some optimism for the future should have been. John had totally abdicated from any pretense at leadership and the changes that she thought she'd seen begun at the orgy had dwindled into lethargy. She tasted a delicately flavored bunting and sighed.

  "Shall we listen to some more stuff from the second millennium?" asked Cornwell.

  "Sure," said Demogorgon, raising a goblet of white burgundy. "What next?" He didn't feel any of this in his soul, but . . . why cry now? The time would come, on its own.

  "I'd rather we didn't," said Beth. "I think the time has come to start discussing a few things. John, you know, I remember how eloquent you were about starting this colony . . . back on Earth. Now that we're here, and the time for a real start has come, you sit back and watch. When you do talk, it's all generalities. What's happening to you?"

  The man looked at her and at the others in turn. His face flushed. "I'm sorry," he said, looking at the table. "It's true— I had great h
opes for this colony. But it's not going to work out that way. We're a failure already, barely two weeks along. All that's here is what we brought. I was wrong to think that something else could be created. I am responsible." He paused, then went on: "We have our chance to fail, now. When the USEC ship comes in a few months, those of us who must go back separately will be able to do so. Maybe we should call it quits." Somehow, he couldn't look at their faces anymore. Ariane reached across the table suddenly and put her hand on John's. "Come on," she said, "give us a chance."

  Beth could almost see the strength draining out of the musician. She felt sick, watching him fade so fast. She looked at the others and saw that they seemed to be straightening up, as if awakening. It was as if John's admission, his self-condemnation, were giving them some kind of strength. What was it: some kind of contrariness? Angrily, she looked at John, saw him raise his eyes . . . She waited for him to look at her, expected it, but his gaze locked with Methol's.

  Cornwell took the woman's hand and stroked it. "What do you suggest?" Ariane stared at him for a long moment, dark eyes impenetrable, then she said, "No one's questioning the technical feasibility of this colony. We have what we need to live here, and we have a lot left to do; a lot to keep us busy. . . ."

  "But what about you?" he demanded. "Will you be content to spend the rest of your life stuck out here with people like us? Have you thought about what that means?"

  "We all thought about that. Thoroughly," she said. She looked around at the others. "The responsibility for our emotions lies within each of us. We knew what we were getting into. . . . God damn it, John, you seem to think that the rest of us are powerless! We know we're going to have to cope with this, somehow. That's how human societies survive, and it's a kind of love, maybe the only kind!" She let go of his hand and sat back.

  "Ariane's right," said Vana.

  John stared at them all, his brow pinched. He nodded slowly.

  Beth felt relief flooding her. "What about the things that you talked about?" she asked. "What happened to thosenotions about group consciousness that seemed so important?" It wasn't pushing. She really wanted to know.

  "I don't know. Lately, I've come to think that Downlink Rapport would have only bad effects. It represents a sort of total vulnerability, and in the presence of anything but total good will ..."

  "You're talking about Brendan, aren't you?" Ariane had a trace of masked anger in her voice.

  "Well . . . yes. You keep saying that I don't understand him. Maybe so. But, until I do, I think I'm right to be suspicious. I think he might use it to his own ends."

  Demogorgon looked away from them, not wanting to listen any longer. The worst of it, he thought, is the damned fool is probably right. Just because I love Brendan, I don't have to be blind to his faults. I know how he'd act. . . . He knows that his laughter hurts people, and that makes him laugh even more. Jana suddenly looked up from her contemplative silence and said, "Speaking of the Devil . . . If I read the data from my local seismic monitors correctly, there's something rolling toward us across the ice. I guess they're back."

  In his turn, the Arab felt a flood of relief.

  As they pulled up to the entrance to the habitat dome, Brendan braked the car to a halt. He shook Krzakwa and said, "Hey! We're here." He turned off the engine and stretched. It was great to be back in touch with Shipnet again. There was a moment of reintegration, and then Sealock performed some quick computational housekeeping to make certain that his work-buffers and program systems were functioning correctly. When they'd pressurized their suits and were ready to face the outside, they left the car. 60vet was no worse for the wear—though there were a few nodules of ice lodged in the grille from an unfortunate collision that had occurred on the way back when, bored by the ruler-flat terrain, they had all fallen asleep. Predictably, they had crashed into the only impediment in a hundred square kilometers, an ice boulder thrown from some large impact on the farside. It had taken a startled moment to determine that the sharp lurch and grinding wheels were not some dire mechanical failure.

  They entered the access module between the domes, waited for the small enclosure to fill with nitrogen, empty, and then refill with air. Going through the airlock, they passed through the p-curtain leading into the transparent CM dome.

  Brendan's depressurized suit fell from him like an old skin. Ridged, beltlike pressure marks embossed his flesh, distorting the muscle lines. Krzakwa followed his example, but Prynne kept his suit tight, a heroic costume. They went around to the other side of the CM, where the rest of the colonists were standing around a table, as though impatiently waiting.

  Beth had noticed an immediate change in John, the moment he knew that the others were back, manifested by a tightening in his manner, a closing down. Perhaps they'd been on the verge of a breakthrough, perhaps not, but he'd been about to verbalize his fears, at least. Now she could see that it was Sealock who was bedeviling him. Sealock alone. She'd had some inkling that this might be the case, but now it was plain.

  Demogorgon spoke first: "How was the trip?"

  Sealock grimaced. "Good ride. Bad scenery. The edge of the mare is no big deal." Hu looked up sharply. "The edge? I thought it was agreed that you would stay clear of the volatile regions until a complete survey could be taken. The ocellus-highland interface is . . ." Tem held up a hand. "Don't worry, Jana. We didn't do any, ah—what did you call it?— wheelies in the fucking neon."

  Prynne, smiling, was saying, "We all slept through the last hundred kilometers yesterday. We would've been back sooner if Tem's foot hadn't fallen off the gas pedal."

  "Come on, you three," said Ariane, "grab a plate and join us. The buntings are perfect!"

  "What's a bunting?" asked Prynne.

  "It's a bite-sized bird," said the Selenite. "You mean you made the ortolans thing? I always wondered how that would taste." A smile broke through the tangled undergrowth of his beard. "I was getting pretty tired of that low-eel stuff."

  "Wait for me," said Prynne. "I have to go put on some real clothes." He hopped rather clumsily up the ladder, back into the CM, and reappeared a minute later in shorts and a T-shirt. Sealock and Krzakwa were already seated, nude.

  "Here's a toast," said Vana, brushing a curl of springy hair back where it belonged and raising her goblet. "To us."

  Everyone drank. Beth noticed that John was keeping his eyes on his plate. Sealock had finished his ortolans but showed no inclination to get seconds. His face was dark, and there was an angular lumpiness to it, as if the light were unflattering. Finally he looked up and spoke.

  "OK. I've been stewing about how to say this. I can't think of any gentler way, so, if this upsets any of you . . . tough shit." He grinned, momentarily, then shook his head slowly. "Um . . . Tem and I will be leaving you shortly. Going on another little trip." Demogorgonstirred, a look of dismay on his face, but the man went on: "We've decided that we're going to put the moonship together a little ahead of schedule and go have a quick look at the rest of this frozen merry-go-round. . . ." Jana pounded a hand on the table in front of her, smashing her food paquette with a loud crack.

  "What?" She rose to her feet, leaned her small weight forward onto her hands, and looked at him intently. "I am going with you! There's no way you're going to leave me out of this! I promised the IAAU

  I'd get samples from I and II as soon as it was possible, and I'm going to get them." Her face was reddening, turning a sallow brick color. "If you land on either of those moons I will not be responsible for the consequences."

  Tem said, "We'll get them for you, Jana. You can guide us just as well from here as from the ship. Any instrumentation you want, we'll take."

  Hu's voice was steady and flat now, emotionless, but her eyes were wild. "I will stop you if I can. Those moons are under my jurisdiction. You will regret this."

  Sealock laughed. "I'll try to keep all that in mind."

  Cornwell stood up. "I don't like this. By just what processdid you arrive at this 'decision'? It seem
s to me that Jana is certainly the most qualified to go. If you two are going to force something like this down all of our throats, an injustice is being done."

  Sealock smiled gently. "Well ... try and stop us, then." He turned and stalked toward the CM, a rather delicate, balletlike maneuver in the low gravity.

  Demogorgon said, "But, Brendan!" and hurried after him.

  Jana rose to her feet, swept the lot of them with a contemptuous glare, stared at John for a long moment, then walked away, also toward the CM. Ariane stood and began walking slowly toward the CM, seeming downcast. Vana stared after her for a second, then got up to follow.

  "Oh, Christ . . ." Cornwell turned and looked at Krzakwa. "What the hell is going on here?"

  "This is important, John. It's important to him, and to me. Please don't interfere."

  "I don't understand."

  "Well . . . shit. I don't know. . . . Think about all the daydreams you ever had. How much did they ever mean to you?"

  Cornwell looked puzzled. "Daydreams? You mean fantasies?" He thought about it. In his teens there had been many, covering an enormous field. "A lot, I guess. But what does that have to do with anything?"

  Scratching at his beard, meditative and distant, Tem said, "I don't know. A few days ago I would've said that too. Now . . . I've been thinking. . . ." He yawned and turned back to look at his food, then began eating, obviously having tuned out John and the rest of the universe.

  Brendan sat in his room, cross-legged on a floor mat, facing Demogorgon. "Come on, Achmet ," he said. "It's not going to happen right now, and it's not going to take forever. We'll be gone for a few weeks, total. No more than a month."

  The Arab nodded. "I know. You keep saying that. It doesn't make me any happier. What if something happens to you?"

  "What if? We're not fucking immortal, you know."

  "Please don't be mad at me, Bren."

  "I'm not. I just wish you weren't so dependent on me for whatever it is that you want."