by mikel evins
“We will enter the habitat here,” said Chief Verge.
“The survivor’s in the next one,” said Py.
“I am aware,” said the Chief. “We will enter here, the better to collect observations.”
Yarrow made a face.
Chief Verge floated half a meter from the hull on her manipulators. She glided over the curved end of the habitat module and down to a hexagonal opening in the end. The opening was a shallow vestibule. Inside it was a hatch. Catwalks connected to the vestibule ran along the sides of the module. To the left of the opening was the junction that led to the next module in that direction.
Chief Verge floated down to the opening and stopped next to it. After a moment she said, disapprovingly, “It appears we need actual fingers to operate this control surface.”
“I’ve got fingers,” said Yarrow brightly, and clumped down the end of the module to stand on it, projecting sideways from the hull near the Chief.
“Here,” said the Chief, shining a spotlight on the hull.
Yarrow went to eir knees and poked at the surface. After a moment the interior hatch slid back.
“Piece of cake,” said Yarrow.
Py walked down the hull and stood next to Yarrow. She bent and touched an angular discoloration on the hull’s surface. There were more of them, arranged in a long row.
“What are these?” Py said. She poked at a couple of them, but they didn’t respond.
“That’s writing,” I said.
“‘Writing?’” She said the word as if it were a profanity.
“An old form of data storage. Like glyphs, but static.”
“It doesn’t respond,” said Py, still poking at different letters.
“No,” I said. “As I said, it’s static. It isn’t interactive.”
She looked at me sidelong.
“You said it was like glyphs.”
“In form only,” I said. “It’s painted onto the surface with pigment. The shape of the pigment denotes its meaning. Information is displayed by arranging pigmented shapes in rows or columns.”
“Hunh,” said Py. “Weird. Why would you store data in a form that can’t change? What happens when the data changes?”
“I suppose you paint over it,” I said.
“Very interesting, I’m sure,” said Chief Verge coolly.
Py stood up. She looked and me and shrugged, then stepped away from the writing.
Beyond the open hatch was a large airlock. Chief Verge led us in. We detached our feet from the hull and floated after her.
“Yarrow, if you please,” said the Chief, illuminating another control surface with her spotlight.
Yarrow floated to the bulkhead and once again poked at the controls. The exterior hatch slid closed behind us. After a moment there was a pop as the airlock pressurized.. A wall of odor slammed into my olfactory receptors. I instantly shut them off.
“Agh,” said Yarrow, making a choking sound.
“What is it?” said Chief Verge.
“The smell,” choked out Yarrow. “Ye gods.”
“Turn off your sense of smell,” said Chief Verge.
We heard a woman’s voice, devoid of emotion. After half a second, Translation gave it to us as, “Welcome to Angel of Cygnus. Do I know you? Have you come to help?”
Chief Verge said, “Good day, Angel of Cygnus. I am Chief Officer Seventeen Actinium Converges of the Rayleigh Scientific vessel Kestrel. I and my colleagues are here in answer to a distress call from one of your crew, a man named Oleh Itzal. We are here to rescue him.”
“I see,” said the ship. “I see. Rescuers? You’re late. Or maybe not. One moment while I confirm your appointment.”
“Our appointment?” said Yarrow.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” said the ship after a moment. She sounded weary. “Oleh is waiting for you in his quarters in the next module. Please proceed along the footpath to the other end of this module, then follow the tunnel at the other end. I will guide you from there. Thank you again for coming. I really appreciate the help.”
The inner hatch slid open and droplets of water with bits of mud and dust in them drifted into the airlock. We floated together into the murk.
“Forward,” said Chief Verge.
“Ugh,” said Yarrow.
The habitat was worse from the inside. It was dark. There were no lamps anywhere and with the ship’s drives shut down the only light was from the stars.
“Lights up,” said Chief Verge. Angel of Cygnus didn’t respond but the Fabric amplified the little light we were given. The vista in front of us grew a little brighter and clearer, though no more colorful.
The drifting motes were everywhere in their millions, a kind of coarse fog. The long pond was mostly empty. In the zero-gravity environment its waters had rolled up into a lumpy leaden mass with clumps of dark stuff embedded in its surface. Much of it had wandered loose and was roaming the parkland, looking like a heavy rain that hung perpetually in the air, refusing to fall. As we moved forward, the droplets stuck to us, depositing mud on our skins and getting into our eyes.
The trees must have been lush and green once. Now they were black sentinels, forming phalanxes that extended beyond our sight. Their bare branches rose toward the distant hull, dead hands lifted in supplication. It was easy to imagine hostile eyes peering at us from their shadows.
There was grass at the feet of the trees, rolling away in a long lawn, but it was gray and dead. The banks of the pond, black and abandoned by their waters, traced one edge of the footpath. I saw a discarded bicycle on its side, embedded in the muddy bank. Dead leaves were stuck to the ground in heaps, and more floated around in wet clumps in the air.
Chief Verge floated steadily forward over the footpath. The black forest unfolded around us as we moved. I looked to the left and right, seeing dead leaves, broken branches, scraps of paper, a discarded shoe, empty containers, a deflated ball, all drifting weightless in the air.
“Kestrel, can you see this?” said the Chief.
“Yes, thank you,” said Kestrel. “Don’t worry about me.”
“We’re getting it, Verge,” said the Captain. “Looks gloomy in there.”
“It is that,” I said.
“No sign of living persons,” said the Chief, “As expected,”
I heard a faint whine over our Fabric channel. It sounded like Mai, restless as she watched our adventure.
“It must have been beautiful once,” said Yarrow. “It’s sad to see it so lifeless.”
“There is plenty of life,” said Chief Verge.
“Yes,” I said, “But it’s not nice life.”
“What does it smell like?” Mai said.
Yarrow said, “Bad. I turned off my nose. It smells like things rotting.”
“There’s a reason for that,” I said.
“Lev, I have a problem,” said Chief Verge.
“Chief?”
“I can’t see. This muck we’re floating through is coating my cameras.”
“Ah,” I said. “The same thing is happening to me, but my shutters are keeping my lenses clear.”
“I hoped as much,” said the Chief. “If you would oblige me by taking point, I’ll take the rear position for now.”
I jetted forward and touched her stern. She rose and dropped back behind me.
“Can you see well enough to keep formation?” I said.
“Radar,” she said. “I’ll be fine. But we should have higher-resolution eyes in front.”
“Understood,” I said.
I popped my jets and continued down the path.
Jaemon, back on Kestrel, said, “How are those observations coming, Verge?”
The Chief said, “I observe that it would have been better to travel outside the module.”
I led the group down the footpath, floating about two meters above it. Each module was a cylindrical lozenge about a kilometer long and about a quarter of a kilometer across. The ground level of the habitat was at the midpoint o
f the lozenge, making the distance from the ground to the transparent hull above a hundred twenty-five meters. That entire volume was filled with droplets of water and mud and dust and motes of humus from the forest floor and tiny bits of bark and twigs and dead insects of all kinds. All of them stuck to our carapaces a few at a time, building up a layer of wet, black sediment on our front sides as we moved forward. My shutters blinked the goop off my lenses and every so often I scraped the edges clear with my fingers.
The sameness of it was deadening. We drifted past tree after tree after tree in the darkness, each one dead, each one different, and all of them the same. They were mute black witnesses to whatever apocalypse had wiped out the crew of the Angel of Cygnus and turned this green parkland into a nightmare.
The far end of the path widened into an elliptical plaza. On the right side was a low building with a glass front. More pigment markings were traced on its windows. Translation rendered it as ‘Angel of Cygnus Department of Recreation.’ The windows looked blank and black. In front of us the hexagonal entrance to a tunnel waited. On its left was an airlock like the one we had used to enter the module.
“Maybe the next module is better than this one,” said Py.
“Couldn’t be much worse,” said Yarrow.
“Don’t believe it,” said Py. “Things can always get worse.”
“A little less frivolous chatter, if you please,” said Chief Verge.
I led our group into the hexagon. The tunnel curved around to the left. Although the entrance was a hexagon, the interior of the tunnel was a circle, flattened at the bottom for the path. There were pigment markings on the walls of the tunnel, darker at the bottom, lighter at the top, indistinct in the darkness. Halfway along the tunnel a nother hexagonal structure was embedded in the left wall, the inside of the curve.
“What’s that?” said Yarrow. I stopped, and the others stopped with me.
I said, “I believe that’s where the bridge to the ship’s spine joins the junction between modules. I think if we looked, we would find a hatch that would lead us to the spine.”
“Valuable information,” said the Chief, “But not a part of our present mission.”
“Right you are, Chief,” I said. “Let’s move on.”
We came out of another hexagonal opening into another gloomy habitat, but this one was much less cluttered by flying debris. The air was full of something, mainly dust and sand, but there was less water hanging in the air.
“Ugh,” said Yarrow. “My intakes are wet, and the dust in the air is sticking to them.”
Chief Verge said, “Is it a major hazard?”
I said, “Yarrow can go for a long time between breaths if e needs to. I think we’re all right. Yarrow, do you disagree?”
“No. It’s just annoying.”
“Very good,” said the Chief. “One more reason to complete our mission efficiently.”
The habitat was evidently a quasi-urban residential and shopping district. Rows of high-rise apartments dotted the landscape on either side of the footpath, which wound among them lazily. The lawn that stretched from one end of the habitat to the other rolled pleasantly over low hills, though it was as gray and dead as the grass in the park behind us. Stands of dead trees separated clusters of apartment buildings. Rings of detached houses surrounded circular plazas here and there. Footpaths ran at all angles around the edges of the habitat and we could see small arched bridges crossing what presumably had been creeks.
A few hundred meters ahead taller buildings stood en masse, the downtown of this habitat. The green dot identifying Oleh Itzal’s location shone from somewhere among them.
“Welcome to Angel of Cygnus,” said the familiar voice of the ship. “Have you come to help me?”
We exchanged glances.
Chief Verge glided forward and said, “We spoke with you in the other habitat.”
“Did you?” said the ship. “I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
She sounded distressed.
“I am Chief Officer Seventeen Actinium Converges of the Rayleigh Scientific vessel Kestrel,” said the Chief, sounding impatient. “I and my colleagues are here in answer to a distress call from one of your crew, a man named Oleh Itzal.”
“I see,” said the ship. “One moment while I confirm your appointment.”
“That’s exactly what she said last time,” said Yarrow.
“Angel of Cygnus, or Chief Verge?” said Py.
“Both,” said Yarrow, and chuckled.
“If you please,” said Verge a little severely.
“Sorry,” said Yarrow, but e smiled.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” said Angel, “If you will wait here, I have arranged for a guide to meet you. She will take you to where Oleh is waiting. Do I understand that you intend to take Oleh away from the ship with you?”
Chief Verge said, “We were asked to rescue him, yes.”
“I see.” The ship didn’t sound happy about it.
“Is there a problem?” said the Chief.
“No,” said the ship. I believe if she had been biological she would have sighed. “He should certainly be taken away from here. The environment is far from healthy. But I’ll miss him.”
“Can you tell us what happened to the ship?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” said Angel. “I can’t talk about that. It’s not allowed.”
I exchanged glances with Yarrow and Py.
“Not allowed by who?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” said Angel. “I can’t talk about that. It’s not allowed.”
We saw a squat shape moving toward us out of the shadows between buildings. It was floating in the air close to the ground. It moved awkwardly, rotating slowly this way and then that, periodically correcting its course with brief jets, occasionally bumping against the footpath.
“What is that?” said Py.
“I can’t tell,” said Yarrow. “Wait ’til it gets closer.”
“It is your guide,” said the ship. “Her name is Iris Wallace.”
“I thought there was just the one survivor,” said Jaemon on our private channel.
“I believe I will be able to see adequately going forward,” said Chief Verge. I felt the touch of her manipulators on my shoulder.
“Okay,” I said, and returned to tail position in our formation, swapping with the Chief.
The thing approaching us got to within about twenty meters, and I heard Able Spacer Zang swear.
“Oh, dear” said Yarrow.
The object was a simple arbeiter—a janitorial or gardening worker. Extra armatures had been attached to it somehow, and a set of attitude jets cobbled on. The armatures formed a framework that stood up from the arbeiter. A dead human being had been fastened to the armatures with cable ties. The neck was cabled to an armature that stuck straight up. Two armatures stuck out to either side, and the corpse’s arms were strapped to them. The armature didn’t stand high enough for the dead person’s full height, so the legs were tied together and folded to one side. The knees and ankles were cabled to another armature to keep the legs in place. The attitude jets fired spasmodically, barely keeping the thing upright.
The dead figure wore ruined trousers and a tunic, stained dark and of indeterminate color in the gloom. There was a rectangle of laminate pinned to the figure’s left breast with writing and a picture on it.
“Holy ned,” said Jaemon quietly.
“What the hell is that thing?” said Zang. “And why?”
“Hello,” said the arbeiter, “I’m Iris Wallace. I’m here to take you to Oleh Itzal.”
The thing spoke with the voice of Angel of Cygnus.
“Very well,” said Chief Verge calmly, “Lead the way.”
“Um,” said Yarrow nervously.
“Calm yourself,” said Verge. “We are close to our goal.”
The horror in front of us bumped and jerked its way around to face the other way, and then jetted away awkwardly. We followed it down the p
ath, our formation perhaps a little tighter than it had been before.
Within a hundred meters we were among the apartment buildings. There was enough housing in this one habitat to hold all of Angel’s twelve hundred crew and more. She had been designed as a generation ship. The builders meant for Angel of Cygnus to roam nearby stars in the direction of Cygnus and return at her leisure, thousands of years in our future, decades in her own. They had made her to accommodate an expanding population.
I couldn’t decide whether the new module was less creepy than the previous one or more. We were no longer in a dense dead forest whose atmosphere was as much mist as it was air. On the other hand, the signs of the missing and dead were everywhere. I saw a parcel that had been left on a doorstep decades ago. There were a couple more discarded bicycles at rest at crazy angles. A child’s doll was stuck to the ground in one yard. Open-topped hovercars had been parked here and there, a few of them at odd angles.
