Analog SFF, December 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Colette nodded. “The pile of dirt across the pool—it's not lava. It looks like it came this way, inward from the face, not down the tube.” She waded through the pool and climbed up it, toward the cave roof. Suddenly she thrust her arm into the wall and brought it back holding a large white flower. “We have a window!"

  They built “Eagle's Nest” over the next week, enlarging the silted-up window and leveling the floor behind it until they had an opening ten meters long and a meter high toward the east. For in the morning, the rising sun, if visible, would fill the cave with light back to the skylight fall. They built a rough stone wall at the edge of that, for defense and to keep from falling off; the terrace edge was slightly undercut, and the drop to the next level must have been a kilometer.

  On the second day, Soob and Jacques were hunting. The hirachnoids were larger at this altitude, with thicker legs, though Helen thought they weren't as sweet as on the island. Jacques had a couple of sets of legs in his bag when he noticed the smell.

  "Jacques, something's dead,” Soob said.

  "I'd say so."

  "Hirachnoids are scavengers,” Soob added.

  "I was afraid you would mention that."

  Following their noses, they found a megabat carcass, maybe three days old. Hirachnoids were going in and out of its cloacal opening, now somewhat enlarged, covered with little bits of what had been inside.

  "I'm going to be sick,” Jacques said, and turned to retch. When he was over it, he turned back to see Soob busy slicing away the webbing of the carcass's right wing.

  "Fur coats,” Soob said. “I don't think it's been above ten Celsius since we got here."

  Disgust aside, Jacques realized that fate had handed them a treasure trove. He quickly went to help. Soon, they had all the wing web pelt they could carry. Just as well, he thought, with a glance at one of the large, glistening hirachnoids.

  They dug an outlet for the pond and rigged a floodgate for it. All that nice, smooth silt had come from somewhere, and they didn't want to be washed away by the next rainy season. They found a “bottomless” crack near the cave mouth across the pond from their camp. With a short stone wall for privacy, it would now have its share of bottoms.

  It snowed on the morning of the third day, in huge flakes as big as their hands. Almost ten centimeters of soft white snow built up in about no time, but it quickly melted. The storm did show them that the cave was too drafty, so they wove a barrier out of yellowbark branches that they could use to cover the entrance at night.

  The long days were full of unending labor; every fallen log from several kilometers around found its way down the skylight. Everything edible they could find went into the hole, too. Jacques figured they had about fifteen days of supplies when winter hit in earnest.

  It snowed heavily on the fourth day of occupying Eagle's Nest, gusts of wind bringing flakes through the cave. Despite their barrier, the freezing wind found its way to them and they huddled close in their blankets. They fed the fire frugally and waited, then finally arranged a fire watch, using a crude water clock as a timer—it let a stone fall when the cup became too light—and slept.

  Jacques had the first shift and spent much of it in wonder at how he'd gone from a reasonably prosperous childhood on Cislunar L5 Grissom to his present circumstances. He wondered about his mother and father: Where were they now? They'd certainly have given him up for dead and had likely passed on one way or another themselves.

  Did they keep their religion to the end, he wondered. Did they ever regret the beatings? How could one profess love one minute, then scream and hit the next? He had never married; what happened to him ran in families and he had vowed it would end with him. He was going to have to have an honest talk with Collette.

  The rock dropped, surprising him. He put another piece of wood on the fire and blew the embers until it caught, then went to wake Soob for the next shift. He snuggled under his blankets and thought about humankind expanding through the galaxy, wondering how long it would take for them to get this far.

  Jacques felt a gentle shaking, opened his eyes, and saw Collette, who planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

  "It's morning,” she said, nodding to the pale light from the cliff face window. “The wind's stopped."

  Jacques yawned and pushed himself up. She reached for his hand and he found himself in her arms, naturally, unbidden. Their embrace lasted as long as it needed to—no urgency to it, but a bond renewed. They had become special to each other. Not intentionally, but it had happened. He felt comfortable, warm, and at peace in her arms. The conversation could wait, he thought.

  "Let's check the entrance,” she said.

  Jacques smiled, wondering if it was an excuse to get away from the others.

  "There's hardly a breeze,” she said. “It might be blocked."

  Situation awareness, Jacques thought, getting his head back to reality. They were in a survival situation on an alien world. He nodded. “Yeah. We should check."

  The vertical entrance was, indeed, completely blocked, a pillar of compressed snow like a white trumpet, bell down, rising from the gnarly cave floor to its ceiling. Only the cliff-face window remained open. They were in for the season, it seemed.

  * * * *

  They settled into a routine of sleeping by the fire, eating, and working on small projects. They found a large piece of obsidian, with an edge of about ten centimeters width, that they could use to shave bitterwood logs. They could write on the shavings with wet charcoal, not very finely, but good enough for some haiku and other short poems.

  They peeled apart the megabat web skin pelts, scraped away the small amount of flesh between the skin layers, soaked them in water and ash, rinsed them in the pool, then suspended them over the fire until they steamed, hopefully killing any decay-causing bacteria and preserving them for use. They smelled better, anyway.

  Cut and folded, with a hole in the center for someone's head and a strip of skin for a belt, the megabat skins made passable ponchos. They were almost impermeable, and the short fur, turned inside, made them comfortable to wear.

  They made plans for the next summer's exploration, learned each other's personal histories, and spun many untestable, unobservable theories about Cube World's origins. Doc carved a passable model of the world, complete with the slight bulges for oceans on each face.

  Soob made a chess set and became their local grand master, though Jacques wondered if he would have succeeded so well if Helen had participated in his tournaments. She claimed to not know how to play, but Jacques thought she watched the board with more than casual interest.

  Helen spent her time making a wooden necklace of interlaced rings, carved from a single piece of bitterwood branch. It was a topological marvel they all admired.

  Many years ago, Jacques had taught himself how to play a Peruvian flute: a simple tube with a slanted notch and holes for an octave's worth of notes. He'd had that in the back of his mind when he named the “flute plant.” It was a project, with some cut-and-try to get the intervals right, but finally they had four passable flutes, two bass and two tenor. Helen, Soob, and Collette learned to play, and they eventually managed a truncated, ersatz performance of the New World Symphony, with Doc playing a batskin drum and singing “going home."

  They gossiped about their days in training and various couplings imagined and real.

  "Evgenie told me he had a hard time making up his mind about Ascendant,” Helen said.

  "I thought he was soft on Arroya,” Doc said. “And he was dating you too?"

  Helen laughed. “I was his safety valve! I'm a good listener and was obviously not looking for an exclusive relationship."

  "When we split,” Jacques said, “she was looking at you—almost fearfully, I thought. Any history there?"

  Collette shook her head. “Maybe she doesn't like cops. What about Leo?” she asked. “Was he involved with anyone?"

  Helen shrugged. “He didn't seem interested in anyone, that I could see."

&
nbsp; "Not even you?” Collette smiled when she said that.

  Helen laughed. “The lack of interest was mutual. There's something about him ... maybe it's stature compensation."

  "A Napoleon complex?” Doc offered. “He seems content to let Eddie take the lead. Anyway, I saw him on a Chesapeake Bay cruise with Maria Lopes. She touched him in a pretty friendly fashion. Eddie was there, too, if I recall."

  Jacques looked over at Collette, who looked back and frowned. They'd been thinking in terms of one saboteur and murderer; they hadn't considered more than one.

  * * * *

  Ten days from becoming snowbound, Jacques, trailing a tether, squeezed through the narrow horizontal crack of the window, stuck his head out into a freezing wind and looked up fifty meters at an overhang of ice-covered rock, and down to the snow-covered terrace, a kilometer below. To his right there was the bare hint of a ledge, covered with snow—which probably covered ice—that slanted down and then up in the distance toward a notch in the ledge.

  It was, he realized, less dangerous than his Earth-gravity-trained intuition told him. But without an ax, crampons or pitons, it was still a suicidal traverse. He wiggled himself back in, and for a moment, the erstwhile cold damp air of the cave felt warm and inviting.

  "I think,” he told the assembled group, “we're better off attacking the snow pillar."

  Three hours later, using the light of improvised torches, they stared up at the barely visible mountain of snow that had drifted down into, and eventually sealed off, the “skylight” entrance to Eagle's Nest. Somewhere in there was the rope they had used to come in and out.

  Soob attempted climbing up the snow hill and sank up to his crotch. As he attempted to extricate himself, he triggered a small avalanche that picked him up and flung him against a rock headfirst. Helen tried to move to him and was overwhelmed herself and buried.

  "Hang on,” Jacques yelled to everyone left. “Let it play out!"

  When the snow stopped sliding down, he began moving toward Helen, half wading, half swimming through the snow. The footing was treacherous—he found he made the best progress by lying down on the snow and pushing against the rocks with his feet while doing something like a butterfly stroke with his hands until he got to where he thought Helen lay.

  Meanwhile, Collette mimicked him in an effort to reach Soob from the other side of the avalanche.

  Helen was nowhere to be seen, so Jacques felt around with his feet.

  Something or someone grabbed his leg and started climbing up him. Jacques cried out in startlement before he realized it had to be Helen. He reached down into the snow, found a hand, and pulled her up. Her face was ashen white, and she coughed in great hacking spasms that gradually decreased in frequency and harshness.

  "Don't try breathing snow,” she choked out as the coughs subsided.

  "Can you make it out?” Jacques asked.

  "What about Soob?” Helen asked, followed by another fit of coughing.

  "We're looking. I'm not sure when this will let go again.” Jacques tossed his head in the direction of the snow pile. “I don't want to lose all of us."

  "Yeah. Okay."

  "Watch your step."

  She nodded and began to pick her way out of the avalanche area.

  Jacques resumed “swimming” toward where he thought Soob's last position was. Despite the cold of the snow, he was sweating with effort. Soon, he and Collette met in the middle without having found Soob.

  "It may have carried him downhill a ways,” Collette said. “Let's stay in contact so we don't miss anything."

  They did, slowly feeling their way through the snow shoulder-to-shoulder, foothold by foothold, steadying each other when the other slipped.

  "Jacques!” Collette said at last. “I don't think this is a rock."

  Quickly, they dug down with their hands and found the still form of their comrade. They brushed the snow away from his head with their bare hands. He had bled from a scalp wound, but not, it seemed, profusely. Collette tried to take his pulse and shook her head.

  "Get him free first,” Doc called. “The cold may reduce his life signs. We're trying to make a smooth area for him to lie down, clear of the avalanche danger."

  "Yes,” Jacques said, and bent to the task of extricating Soob's limp, motionless body.

  In one gravity, it would have been impossible, but the gentle pull of Cube World made them supermen and superwomen. Jacques and Collette finally freed him and built a ramp of compressed snow to pull him up to the surface. There, they dragged him as if he were a toboggan toward the edge of the avalanche. Doc and an apparently recovered Helen took over then as Jacques and Collette collapsed in the snow in exhaustion.

  "The good news,” Doc proclaimed at length, “is that he isn't dead. Unfortunately, that may be the bad news as well. I wish I had the resources of a hospital..."

  * * * *

  Two days later, they were near the end of their food. Soob was still unconscious, and though they'd managed to get some water into him, they had no IV or liquid nourishment. He could, Jacques realized, be the first to starve to death.

  "It's got to be apastron,” Helen said. “The weather should start to moderate. Half rations may give us four days. We could just go hungry for another five or six. Spring should come quickly."

  "Not quickly enough for Soob, I fear,” Doc replied.

  "I think we need to try again,” Collette said. “Try smarter."

  Jacques reviewed events in his mind. “I could try to trigger another avalanche."

  "Risky.” Doc said.

  "Yeah. I'll need some kind of headgear and a long tether. If I get buried, pull me out."

  That was greeted with silence. Everyone realized the risk involved. But they were not going to sacrifice one of their own. One for all, all for one, Jacques thought. The beau geste. The stuff of legends. He looked around and everyone nodded.

  They had one log left—in a small blessing, they'd needed less fire to keep warm than initially anticipated. Jacques planned to use it to put some distance between himself and what he thought would be the most unstable snow.

  They planned it like a military campaign, beating a packed snow path between rocks to the target area. With a rope around his waist, Jacques advanced. As he approached the center, however, the path gave way, and he found his boot in water. Apparently, a melt creek was forming beneath the snow.

  He extricated himself, made a “dry” snow path around the hole, and trudged on.

  Then he was there. He made his way up the snow as high as he could, then used the log to bludgeon the snow above him. Nothing. He whacked it again with similar results, then he pushed the log into the snow and tried to lever some out of the pile. He was doing this again when Colette shouted.

  "Jacques, above you! Look out!"

  He glanced up the snow hill and saw the avalanche coming. He backed off as quickly as he could without abandoning the log—they would need it for fuel—and avoided the worst of the oncoming snow. The tether, pulled by all his companions, moved him out of the deluge.

  When things settled down, there was a gap above the snow hill and the skylight, filled only by the rope they had left a couple of weeks earlier. And above that was daylight.

  They tested the rope with their total weight and found it had not gone rotten. Climbing it in the low local gravity was no problem and soon Jacques and Doc reached the snowy surface. Doc, whose voice carried farther, yelled down the hole to let them know they were out. Then they put on improvised snowshoes and headed for the forest.

  The landscape had been transformed; snow weighed much less here than on an Earth-gravity world and compressed much less under its own weight. Drifts towered around them, and the lava tube had been a ridge to start with.

  As they neared the forest, they noticed the snow under the trees pockmarked with holes about a hand's width wide.

  "Somebody's out of hibernation, I think,” Doc said.

  "Somebody edible, I hope,” Jacques answer
ed. He had put hunger out of his mind, but with the prospect of food nearby, he felt almost irrationally famished.

  With a whoosh, the something fell by Jacques, nearly hitting him on the head, punched a hole deep in the soft snow, and stopped with a sort of distant plopping sound. He looked up just in time to avoid getting hit by the next one.

  "Bitterwood fruit, high-altitude version,” Doc said, looking up.

  "Hard to find down there,” Jacques said, looking down the hole, hungry.

  "Keep looking up,” Doc said. “Come on now..."

  He didn't have to wait long. A faint crack and rustle and he shuffled under the next one before it completed its 300-meter fall. With the expertise of an American-rules football receiver he plucked it out of the sky before it hit the snow. Wordlessly, they split it, cleaned it, and ate it immediately.

  "Not too much more, right away,” Doc said.

  Jacques nodded. They caught a dozen more and headed back to the cave, somewhat lightheaded. They had survived the apastron winter and could get back to the business of finding the shuttle, or establishing a settlement.

  Doc rigged a tube from the shells of hirachnoid legs and some of their precious tape to get soup into Soob's stomach. They took turns watching him, feeding him, cleaning him, and finally, a week after the accident, he began to regain consciousness. But he wasn't really lucid and couldn't care for himself.

  The snow melted and their sun was approaching its maximum size.

  Temperatures climbed above freezing all day, snow melted, and the forest filled with bizarre critters and alien fragrances, as their sun approached.

  Three days before periastron, they experienced a small earthquake, a thud followed by rumbling and groaning for about twenty seconds. Stones rocked around them, but nothing fell from the ceiling.

  The next day, it hit 15 Celsius, and Helen went for a short swim in a small lake near the terrace edge. There were no other takers, but her joy in being bare and wet again, temperature be damned, made them all feel a bit warmer. They had a picnic in front of a low concave ridge of bare red rock by the lakeshore that sheltered them from the breeze and reflected the feeble sunlight on them. It was pleasant—even warm—there.