Eclipse 4: New Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Jonathan Strahan

  What have you learned? There’s still something of a bod-level economy on Hengist Etoile? That we’re a spinning ring with variable gravity divided into twelve sectors named for the months with weather to match? That bods work in one sector and live in another and play in the ones that have the best weather for bods? That the hub is a hockey stadium? All this is on the public record. All this is pretty well known, even in E-O, so what are you doing here?

  Not talking? Not up to talking? No, you’re not, are you, behind your empty demands for a language protocol you’re just a blind device that has to get home to deliver. Well, still a little interesting, but nothing like so clever. I’ll download your memory for analysis, in case you happened to stumble on something I don’t know, and I’ll drop you right back into the stream, with a little watcher of my own that will keep streaming right back. Let’s make it nice and easy for your E-O owners and drop you back into the hand of a nice E-O tourist down in August. I’ll even see if I can spot one who’s about to go home, and thereafter I’ll give you one shred of my vast attention while I get on with the important business of running the universe.

  Plock, little coin.

  TOURISTS

  JAMES PATRICK KELLY

  Mariska woke in a panic. In the instant before she came to herself, while her bed seemed to spin and the sheets tried to strangle her, she believed that she was coming out of hibernation. Not again, she thought. Please, never again.

  The hospital’s air was wrong; it smelled like the inside of a plastic bucket. An alarm was chirping in the gloom and she felt the tickle of a mindfeed at the back of her neck. =Power failure. Please follow emergency lights to exit. This mod will seal in thirty minutes.=

  As she propped herself on an elbow, she could hear voices, low and urgent, through the open door of her room. “Hello?” she called. A light strip blinking on the deck in the hallway showed the way out. It illuminated the legs of people hurrying to safety: a barefooted Martian, spacers in griptites, a nurse in sensible shoes. “Hello!”

  And then Mariska was caught up by two strong arms. “Welcome to Mars.” Gasp. It was a man, out of breath. “Here we go.”

  He toted her toward the mod’s airlock, one arm under her shoulders, the other around her knees, pressing her against him. Despite his odd breathing, he did not seem to be exerting himself much. The muscles of his arms locked her against him but his hands rested easily against her body, almost like a caress. His gait was steady and unhurried.

  “Are we in trouble?” she said.

  “No.” Gasp. “Happens sometimes.”

  The flow of evacuees bumped through a darkened office mod which was a maze of empty workstations and conference tables and broad-leafed plants. She offered him a mindfeed, =You can put me down any time now.= but his head was closed to her.

  “I can walk, you know,” she said. Actually, the best she could manage was a totter, but her nurse said Mariska was making great progress.

  He squeezed her arm. “A minute.”

  The illuminated path led them past dormitories into a cavernous utility mod. She had yet to leave her room since coming to the hospital and she was amazed at its size. The scattering of emergency lights on the ceiling cast odd shadows as about fifty people milled among the boxy air exchangers and filters, squat waste processors, and the tangle of plumbing around the electrolysis plant. Mariska craned her neck and spotted a rack of pneumatic EV suits next to a crawler which was having its track repaired, although nobody else seemed particularly interested in them. She hoped that meant that this mod at least wasn’t about to depressurize. She’d already had enough hypoxia to last her a lifetime.

  “No worry.” The man put her down. “The air is fine here.” He must have noticed her looking.

  Her hand flew up to the neck of her pajamas as she turned to face him, but her top was sealed up tight. “Thanks.” She had guessed he was Martian from the gasping and the way her mindfeed had bounced off him. His skin was glossy and pale, the color of green tea, and he was shirtless. Photoreceptor nodules were arrayed down his neck and across his bare shoulders. He wore standard-issue spacer uniform pants and no shoes.

  “You’re Mariska,” he said. “Volochkova.”

  She thought he was too tall; he looked as if he’d been stretched on a torture rack. Now his lips pulled back from identical flat teeth. Mariska decided this must be his smile, reminding herself that everyone said that Martians took some getting used to. She was going to ask him what was going on, but then she noticed something odd about her fellow evacuees. There were a lot of spacers and just a few medical types. Where were the other patients?

  “This isn’t a hospital.” The dizziness she felt had nothing to do with her regenerating cerebellum. “I thought this was a hospital.”

  “Hospital?” He peered at her with his slitted eyes. “This is Natividad base.”

  “Natividad? You mean the starship?”

  “Yes, your mom said…”But then Mariska spotted her mother across the mod with Shengyi. Data shimmered in the air between them. Mariska pushed past the Martian. “Natalya,” she called.

  Her mother waved the files closed when she saw Mariska wobbling toward them. “Privet sólnishko moyó.” There was a tightness at her eyes that belied the unruffled greeting; she looked as though she wanted to run over and catch Mariska before she fell. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “I’m not your sunshine,” said Mariska, “and this isn’t a hospital.”

  Natalya nudged Shengyi behind her as if to shield the nurse from Mariska’s anger. “I never said it was.”

  “I was in a coma. When I woke up you said I had cerebral hypoxia. Brain damage.” Mariska was trying not to shout but she could feel her voice screeching out of control. “What was I supposed to think?”

  “You’re upset.”

  “You brought me to your starship base. Do you think that I’m going off with you to… to….”

  “18 Scorpii.” Shengyi looked hurt that she had been thrown out of Mariska’s head.

  Mariska, for her part, couldn’t believe she had trusted the nurse. “Is that what this is about?”

  “No, it’s not.” Her mother was using one of those tricks she hated: when Mariska yelled, Natalya started to whisper. She was trying to make her feel like a foolish kid. It was working.

  “Then why am I here?”

  The Martian joined them. He seemed about to say something but Natalya silenced him. That was another thing Mariska hated about her mother—everybody did what she wanted.

  “I’m just trying to protect you,” Natalya said.

  “From what.” Mariska’s laugh was harsh. “From having a life?”

  =It was because you’re a hero.= Shengyi sent her a mindfeed, trying to calm her down. Of course, the nurse would take her mother’s side; Natalya Volochkova was the Chief Medical Officer of the Natividad. =Everybody knows about the Shining Legend and your rescue.= She offered Mariska a menu of newsfeeds. =That’s why…=

  Mariska closed her head, cutting the feed off.

  “I brought you here so I could take care of you,” said her mother. “And because if you were in a public hospital there would be buzzies jumping out of closets and crawling from under beds trying to get an interview.”

  “I’m no hero.”Mariska shrank into herself. “The only one I rescued was myself.”

  “A celebrity, then. I’m sorry but it’s true.”

  “But that’s not fair.” She hated the words as soon as they came screeching out of her mouth. “I can’t….” The crew of the Shining Legend—Glint, Didit, and Richard, even poor Beep—they were the heroes. But they were dead and here she was whining in front of her mother and this nurse and this Martian. People were staring, which made Mariska want to crawl behind a fuel cell and curl up in a ball. She glanced around, looking for some way out.

  The Martian scooped her up again. “Time for more walking.” Gasp. “Yes?”

  “Put her down, Elan.” Natalya made it sound like an order
. “She’s just confused.”

  When he hesitated, Mariska pumped her legs impatiently. She was confused, but she certainly didn’t want her mother sorting things out for her. And she was so deeply embarrassed that all she could think of was escape. “Don’t listen to her,” she hissed. “Go, go.”

  He obeyed without another word, turning and trotting toward the EV suits.

  “No, wait.” Mariska was amazed at how small her mother sounded. “Mariska, you’re still sick!” She was surprised that Natalya wasn’t chasing them. “Be careful,” she called. Was it beneath her dignity as a starship officer?

  The crawler was parked in front of the sliding cargo door of the airlock. Next to the rack of EV suits was a smaller door. The Martian tipped forward without putting her down and bent to bring himself to eye reader level. She slipped a little in his arms before it flashed him through.

  “Where are you taking me?” she said.

  “You said to go.” Gasp. “So we go.” He straightened as the door slid aside. “Ready?”

  The airlock was freezing; Mariska could see her breath billow. The exterior service hatch was open, not to the surface, but to a poly tunnel that lit up when it sensed their presence. The Martian flew down its length with low compact bounds, so fast that she could feel her exposed skin tighten with wind chill. Although less than a minute had passed, she was shivering by the time they came to the end of the tunnel. Another open service hatch led into a smaller airlock. It looked like they were entering some kind of ship, although she was sure that it couldn’t be the Natividad. He unsealed the interior door by tapping at an access panel. They stepped into a semicircular storage space packed with bales wrapped in poly, neatly fitted into slots climbing the walls. The Martian set her down next to a ladder built between slots. “You’re okay.” It was an announcement rather than a question. “Wait here.” He scrambled up and disappeared through a hatch in the ceiling.

  Wait. Mariska wrapped her arms around herself. Couldn’t he see that she was about to freeze to death? The storage space was a little warmer than the tunnel, but not much. She stomped her feet to keep her toes from going numb and read the labels on the bales. Ag X3 47000. Ra C4 65500. Ex R4, 81000. Did Ag stand for Agriculture? Ra meant rations on the Shining Legend. So where was she? A starship would need a lander, something to ferry back and forth from orbit. And this thing had a clear up-and-down orientation, unlike the Shining Legend, which had been designed for zero gravity.

  She heard the whirr of fans, and seconds later felt deck vents breathing warm air. There was a rustle above and she glanced up to see something fluttering down toward her. She stepped aside as a spacer uniform settled at the bottom of the ladder.

  “You can change.” The Martian had crouched to peek through the hatch. “Warm up.”

  “Not into this.” She kicked at the uniform with her frozen toes. “Thanks, but you know what? I think I should be going back to the hospital now.”

  “Power’s still out.” He leaned out and gestured toward the tunnel. “And Natvee’s waiting.” She wondered how he could stand the cold half-naked. “You’ll have to get by her.”

  Mariska guessed that Natvee was her mother’s callname. “There’s no other way?”

  “One tunnel.” He rapped once on the deck for emphasis. “One airlock.”

  Her face flushed with embarrassment at the thought of a repeat encounter with her mother in front of the crew of the Natividad.

  “Won’t look.” He gave her a skinny smile. “Shout when you’re ready.”

  “Wait, what’s your name?”

  “Elan.”

  “Just Elan? That’s it?”

  “Elan… of Mars.” He was standing at the edge of the hatch now. “Is all you need to know.’

  At least, that’s what she thought he said: there was a gasp in there somewhere. She decided that he must be making fun of her. “I don’t want to change, Elan.”

  He waved and turned away from the hatch.

  “Wait, Elan!”

  There was no answer.

  She snatched the uniform from the deck in frustration and retreated to a corner where the bales would hide her. She held it at arm’s length, glaring. Putting it on meant nothing. Even though it was warming up, the lander was cold, frigid, so she didn’t really have much choice. She decided to pull it on over her pajamas, even though she knew that was a mistake. Did wearing a spacer uniform mean she was zooming off to 18 Scorpii? Not at all. She was going to keep her independence. And her pajamas. As soon as she was done with her therapy, she was walking from here. She was on Mars, so she’d find work on Mars. And if she couldn’t, she’d go home to the Moon. Or get a job on Sweetspot Station. When she had fitted her feet into the slippers and sealed all seams, the flex uniform tightened against her body and then relaxed into what would have been a perfect fit—except for the pajamas. They crinkled uncomfortably beneath it; cuffs of hospital green stuck out at both wrists and one ankle. She knew how it would look to Elan of Mars, but then she was brain-damaged. She had a good excuse.

  She lurched back to the ladder and had another bad idea. She started to climb. She had suffered severe oxygen deprivation while hibernating on the Shining Legend and the motor coordination in her legs was shaky. But she had confidence in her arms and shoulders—until she got a couple of meters off the deck. Then the vertigo hit. It felt like the rungs of the ladder went slack as rope. She stopped; it was all she could do to hang on.

  “Don’t move.” Gasp. “Just stay there.”

  Mariska was too dizzy to look up, so she didn’t see Elan jump. He whooshed just past her and landed with a clatter and a grunt on the deck below. Then she felt him clambering up the ladder beneath her.

  “You’re okay.”

  She took a deep breath. “Keep saying that. Maybe I’ll believe it.”

  “You want help?”

  What was he going to do? Put his hands on her butt and push? “I’ve got it.” And she did. Somehow having him below to spot her changed everything. The ladder solidified and she started to climb again.

  It wasn’t until she dragged herself up through the hatch that she dared look down. The deck was almost five meters below. She wouldn’t have hesitated to make a jump like that on the Moon, but on Mars there was a whole planet tugging at you. Elan was either very brave or a little crazy. Or a Martian.

  She glanced around: this level was different from the one below. There were still bales in slots, but part of the circular wall was given over to instrument racks that made up the command cluster. She recognized the communications and engineering and environmental screens; they were similar to the ones on her last ship. The nav rack, though, made no sense at all. Next to the cluster was a line of what looked like lockers. Elan rapped on the door of one and it folded out lengthwise into a bunk.

  “No, really, I don’t need to lie down.” Mariska held up a hand to stop him. “I’m fine.”

  He glanced at her then leaned onto the middle of the bunk. It folded. He punched at the end and it bent to the deck. Before long he had reshaped it into a chair.

  He opened the next locker, unfolded a chair for himself and sat. Then smiled at her. Now that he was still, the photoreceptors on his shoulders began to swell. She tried not to stare as they stretched like flatworms towards the overhead lights.

  “Natalya is going to be mad.” Mariska was mad at herself for being so stubborn. She wanted to sit, but didn’t want him to think she needed to. “Probably more at you than me. I should thank you.”

  “She’s medical. I’m exploration.” He shrugged. “Different teams.”

  “But you’ll get in trouble?”

  “I am trouble.”

  She came alongside the empty chair and absently kneaded the cushion. “So, power failures?” It was heated and soft and very inviting. “That can’t be good news for the mission.”

  “Budget cuts and nervous engineers.” He dismissed them with a wave. “Pull the alarm if they see their shadows.”

 
“You have something against playing it safe?”

  “Not playing.”

  She wondered if this show-off attitude was for her sake. Was this Martian flirting? No, probably one of her perceptual slips, detecting signals that weren’t there. Still, she hadn’t realized how lonely she had been. “You know, it’s kind of strange that you were there at just the right time to carry me off.”

  “I was hanging around.”

  “Were you now?”

  “I wanted to meet you. They made it hard.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Four hundred and twelve spacers on the Natividad.” He aimed a finger toward the base. “Crew and colonists.” He pointed at himself. “One Martian.”

  “What are you saying, that they’re prejudiced? Elan, nobody got to meet me. I was in intensive care.”

  “I’m made for Mars. That causes them trouble.”

  Mariska perched at the edge of the chair beside him, but still her pride kept her from sitting. “I don’t understand.”

  “I like the air thin.” He gasped and made a face. “This is like breathing soup. And cold.” When he held up a foot and wiggled his three thick toes, she realized that he had run through the tunnel barefooted. “Makes problems for the spacers.”

  “Are you a spacer?”

  He shrugged. “Spacer from Mars.” The photoreceptor nubs were fully spread toward the light now, fleshy ribbons some thirty centimeters long, dark with engorged blood.

  She told herself that she had homework to do on Martians. “Why did you bring me here anyway?” She gave in finally and slid onto the chair. “I’m guessing this is some kind of lander.” She snuggled into its warm embrace.

  “Called Padre,” he said. “We have two. Other is Madre.”

  “Cute. Must be brand new—I don’t recognize those nav screens.” She sniffed. “And it doesn’t smell like it’s been in space.”

  He had a staccato laugh, like someone hitting a snare drum. “How will it smell?”