Titan Cruel Moon

by Kate Rauner

  Drew grinned. "I'm your only claim to being a normal Kin."

  "There's a scary thought."

  ***

  Despite their defiance yesterday, the furnace crew dispersed through the mess hall the next morning. But as Fynn walked to the greenhouse, the others caught up with him. The greenhouse was warm and humid, and the crew splashed through puddles trickling across the aisle. Several of the greenhouse crew, dressed in blue, were fussing with pumps or dragging hoses.

  Seedlings sprouted in the first frame. Now that plants were growing, Fynn's job was vital. His father had enough on his mind without worrying about the furnaces.

  They passed squash, onions, and spinach. Rica stopped to admire lotus sprouts floating in a cargo bin lid that was now a shallow pool. "I love lotus roots. But they grow in mud at the bottom of a pond. There's no soil of any sort on Titan, so how's this gonna work?"

  "Ask Mister Bauer," Casper said. He hadn't gotten used to calling their old teacher Max.

  "I hope they survive. Lotus roots are crunchy and I'd love the eat something I need to chew. Reconstituted food is nothing but mush. Even a carrot would be great."

  While Rica puzzled over the lotus, Fynn gazed along the hydroponic tubes. A shoot of green decorated each clip and names were scrawled on the pipes. "Pinto beans," he said.

  Rica stood up. "What?"

  Fynn waved at the tubes. "Max's farming crew will harvest the first pinto beans in three months. Squash sooner than that, and spinach in a few weeks. But pinto beans are supposed to mean we can feed ourselves. That's when the next group of Kin are scheduled to be awakened, and when Max plants seeds in more of the frames." He ran a hand through his hair. Fynn had expected his father to fix the malfunctioning pods, and now three months didn't seem like much time to figure out what was wrong.

  "Hey, guys." Rica's eyes focused on the tunnel to the furnace dome. "I left our dome connected to the furnace's power generator, so why's the tunnel so dark?" She bounded away from them and everyone hurried to follow.

  They stopped in the shaft of light slanting in from the greenhouse behind them. The power beyond was definitely off. Rica reconnected the furnace dome cable to the main power line by the arch and lights blinked on. "I better put a string of lights on an automatic switch in case this happens again."

  At the furnace controls, she shook her head. "This happened before and I thought - hoped - it was a one-time thing. Sensors sent a signal to the console that shut down the entire system. Worse than that, it reset the computers too. Wiped the memories. I can't tell if the furnace was really in trouble or if it's just a sensor problem."

  Casper frowned at the blank display. "You must have some idea of what's going on."

  Rica plopped down on the floor right there in front of the console and covered her face with her hands. "It could be an electrical fault or a feedback loop. Without data, there's nothing I can do."

  Fynn twisted a hand through his hair. He wanted to call his father, but he should be able to figure this out himself. His eyes wandered up the dome wall.

  "Rica," he said. "You can leave the data scrolling by on the screen, can't you? So what we need is a way to record that's not connected to the console. Like an independent camera."

  "That could work. Maybe leave a pad here, aimed at the screen?"

  "Or something designed for the task." Fynn pointed part way up the dome. In addition to the ribs of light ropes and power cables, each dome came with cameras spaced evenly through the quadrants. "Half our dome is empty, so there's nothing to see. No one should care if we take a camera."

  Casper frowned. "Think we should ask permission?"

  Fynn smiled. This would work. "Not in our own dome."

  Soon they were huddled around Rica as she examined the unit. "It has a panoramic lens, which is more than we need, but shouldn't hurt anything if I can set the focus."

  "That's fine for studying what goes wrong," Ben said. "But how do we recover from a shutdown?"

  Fynn tapped his pad. "I'll highlight the sequence for restart. As long as the burners are still warm, any one of us can get the furnaces running by ourselves."

  Rica frowned at the console. "I don't have a way to save the feed. The camera's link to the cybernet is still up there." She pointed to the empty socket high above them.

  Fynn continued to smile. "No problem. I have a memory cube. We can use some of its wafers."

  ***

  Fynn stooped to read the label on the evening's bucket of dehydrated supper. Beef stroganoff. When he stood up, Maliah was at his side.

  He smiled. "Lucky bumping into you."

  "Not luck." She tapped her sleeve display and pointed to a square, gray symbol in the row of icons. "I put the dome cameras on the open cybernet. I've been watching for you."

  Fynn glanced up, searching for the closest camera. There was a dimple in the wall above the greenhouse tunnel, and another above the end of the women's barracks. Each was at least sixty meters away, but with clear views of the mess hall.

  Maliah tilted her head toward the tower. "Have supper with me?"

  Her ground floor cybernet room had become an apartment. It was still mostly filled with the tall, shiny racks of equipment, but in the corner, by the ladder leading up to the adjuncts' apartment, a cabinet with a small microwave had been added. A tiny table with two chairs stood next to the bed and desk.

  Maliah lifted a meal pouch from the counter. "Chili with beans for you?"

  "Oh, yeah, please." Fynn smiled. "I thought the individual meals were all gone."

  He watched Maliah set his chili and her meatballs in the microwave, and set crackers and peanut butter on the table while they heated.

  "What about Tanaka's edict against private conversation?" Fynn asked.

  Maliah glanced up, as if she could see Tanaka's top floor apartment through the plastic decks. "Loyalty is rewarded. That's why I want to talk to you. You've been away and that's not good."

  Fynn bit into a dry cracker slathered with peanut butter. He'd been about to accuse her of hypocrisy over her private room, and maybe over the meals too, but his mouth watered for that bowl of chili. Even this sticky peanut butter tasted great. So he was a hypocrite too, and ducked his head in case his dark skin didn't hide the warmth creeping into his face. Better to focus on the last thing she said. The peanut butter gave him time to think of a response.

  Maliah passed him a cup of tea and two sugar packets.

  When his mouth was empty, Fynn asked, "Whaddya mean, I've been away?"

  "At university."

  "But the Kin sent me."

  "Dad sent you, which isn't the same thing. Oh, I wish he could see Doctor Tanaka's wisdom. And then you took those summer intern jobs, which also kept you away. You were barely home for years. You and Drew, both. No one knows you anymore."

  Fynn's throat tightened as he watched Maliah fetch the meal pouches. Being trapped inside these domes focused everyone inward, made them pick at each other. He didn't like being cast as an outsider. "Someone knew me well enough to bring me to Titan."

  Worry washed out of Maliah's golden face. She leaned forward, her amber eyes glowing. "Doctor Tanaka says our family has wonderful genetics. That's why both of us are here."

  Fynn clamped his hands together. "Then trust me and Dad. Titan's our challenge. There's a dozen ways this moon can kill us if our technology fails."

  "You're missing the point - you and Dad both. Technology's always kept humans alive and raised us above the animals. Even mongrels make technology. What we brought to Titan is nothing but the latest version of plows and clay pots. It's being Kin that makes us special. Something inside that sends us out exploring, striving to build a new world for ourselves, and an inheritance for our children. You need to conform to be part of that."

  Fynn had never heard her talk like this. "You never minded breaking a barrack chief's rules when we were kids."

  Maliah waved a hand, dismissing what he said. "On Earth, we were all children playing with toys
in our parents' cottage. Now we've truly joined the Kin and Tanaka is like..." She paused for a moment. "Like the ultimate barrack chief. Allegiance to him will lead us to greatness."

  "He's just a man. He isn't going to live forever."

  "Then someone will rise out of his shadow to lead us on."

  "No one's going to lead us anywhere if we start fighting among ourselves. We've got to work together to survive."

  Maliah spooned up a meatball with a smile. "You're right. It's not equipment, it's unity that keeps us alive. I knew you'd understand."

  No, he didn't understand. Fynn stirred his chili, looking down to hide a frown. It was Maliah who didn't understand. She spent too much time in the tower. Titan's deadly surface was reality. Maybe that would snap her out of this unity thing. "I'm going outside to check the methane pumps. Why don't you come with me?"

  ***

  Suction from the submerged pump didn't create waves, but methane lapped gently against the ice-sand shore at Fynn's feet. He turned his gaze away from the sky's dark reflection in the lake.

  Half a kilometer away, the nuclear reactor sent up a boiling plume of heat. White where the column emerged, the hot atmosphere lofted high overhead and ran through a rainbow of colors on the helmet display as it spread and sank in a bubble engulfing the shielding wall. Deep purple waves rolled slowly along the ground. The nearby vent from the furnace was puny in comparison.

  Maliah stood at the end of the dock ramp, holding two fliers. "You gonna stare at the sky all day?" A suit-to-suit channel indicator glowed yellow at Fynn's jawline.

  He bent his knees for a big two-footed leap. It didn't take him as far as his first jumps on Titan. The low gravity was leaching away his muscles. But his distance was still better than any broad jump on Earth. "I want to show you my little bay."

  They soared along the shore, hugging the machines between their legs like witches on fat broomsticks. Maliah shouted and pumped a fist, and Fynn laughed with her. It was exhilarating to be out of the domes on a wide-open world, away from troubles for a while.

  Maliah veered over the lake. The sky reflected in the methane surface and the shore melted away. It was like flying through space. Fynn could crash into the methane surface if he drifted low, so he checked his altimeter frequently and angled them toward Spiral Bay.

  Fynn pulled his flier upright and dropped to the shore. Maliah drifted down in a wide arc, straightened out with a short puff, and landed next to him.

  She kicked at a white spiral sticking through the sand. "These are the corkscrew things you brought inside?"

  "Yeah, but watch the surface of the lake." He'd clipped a tool from the greenhouse to his flier, a mesh basket on a pole. Fynn carried it to the methane's edge ad thrashed it in the liquid.

  After a few minutes, Maliah pointed to a bluish glow. "Hey, I see something."

  Several glows surfaced, flecks on the ripples, and Fynn shifted his grip on the pole. His muscles burned but he kept splatting the surface.

  Maliah hopped to her flier. "Let's scoop them up with your basket."

  Fynn skimmed over the lake's surface as slowly as he could above the handful of glows and dragged the basket along the surface. "Got 'em."

  But as he lifted the basket, the glows dribbled out with the methane and sank from sight. "That's funny. I was sure this net's fine enough to capture them."

  Back on shore, splashing didn't bring the lights back.

  "Strange," Maliah said. "What do you call those things?"

  "Drew said I can't call them sea lice. Said I'd start to treat them like jelly fish if I did, and they may not be alive."

  "Ghosts, then. Ghosts aren't alive, or even real. Tiny Titan ghosts."

  It was like being kids again, exploring a mountain lake back home.

  Chapter 16

  Y ash sat at a mess hall table with his large pad laid flat in front of him. Sixty sets of data from sixty awakened pods stared back. He switched among graphs and charts, rearranging, searching for patterns, and finding none.

  Over the days, every time he thought of a potential correlation, he pulled out the data again. Liam had set Orpheus to the task also, exhaustively comparing thousands of sets of variables. Probably the AI had already examined the graphs Yash stared at, but he examined them anyway. A human mind might see something different. Human beings were good at finding patterns. Of course, it could be that the Cohorts' pod failures were random, in which case there'd be no pattern. In which case, he might fool himself.

  A text box popped up on the screen with a message from Liam. The Herschel continued to search for a frequency to piggyback a message to Earth, but nothing yet. Waiting for the planets to align could take months.

  Greta arrived for the status meeting early, so they could talk. She sat close to Yash and laid a hand on his arm. "I know what those hunched shoulders mean," she said. "You're discouraged."

  He sighed and stretched. "I hoped, if Liam could contact Earth, there'd be a reason to bring this up again with Tanaka. But contact isn't likely before the next scheduled awakening, and I've got no reason to deviate from the schedule."

  "Maybe that's just as well," Greta said.

  Emily hopped out from behind the women's barracks and headed toward them. Yash closed Liam's text message and opened the cybernet link instead.

  Fynn came through the greenhouse tunnel with Max. They followed the curve of the dome, around the last row of tables, to reach Yash's meeting.

  Max had good news. "Our plants are growing as well as predicted. Vines grow spindly in this gravity, but don't have to support as much weight either, so things seem to even out. With a little help from fabric ties, we haven't lost a squash all week. The potato seedlings are this tall..." He spread the fingers of one hand. "And we'll transfer them to aeroponics tomorrow. Plenty of room to develop tubers in those columns."

  "What about the beans?" Yash asked. The pinto beans that, in a decision that seemed ages old, Max had designated as a trigger for more awakenings.

  "Maturing right on schedule. Hey, where are the adjuncts? I want them to tell Tanaka that I'm harvesting baby spinach and green onions today to liven up our meal with something fresh."

  Liam's wide face popped onto Yash's screen. He aimed one blue eye at his camera. "Tilt your pad, Yash. I want to congratulate Max and say, I hope some of those greenhouse freshies find their way to the Herschel. I'll send a shuttle."

  Fynn's furnace had run without a glitch for the second day in a row. "I'm sending slugs of carbon dioxide into the greenhouse, then monitoring levels up and down the frames to see how well the air's mixing. The work's a bit tedious, but we'll be able to reposition fans and optimize concentrations in the future."

  Max rapped his fingers on the table and nodded. "Which will optimize production."

  Greta smiled. "Fresh food will be good for morale, even if it's just chopped onions to sprinkle on a bowl of rehydrated stew."

  Yash's pad blinked to blue and a voice message played. "Kin will assemble on the playing field in ten minutes."

  "Now what?" Yash picked up his pad. "Talk to you later, Liam. Gotta shut down. I'll drop my pad off in the clinic, in case we'll be doing calisthenics or something."

  By the time they got to the playing field, Kin stood in a half dozen rows facing the tower. Yash and Greta slipped in at one end next to Max.

  Above them, wide orange banners emblazoned with spidery glyphs from the ancient Indus Valley swayed in ventilation currents. Tanaka's banner with the curved vee and sprouting seed hung from the tower's top balcony.

  The top floor door opened and Tanaka stepped out to stand centered behind his banner. He grabbed the rail and stood stiffly with two adjuncts flanking him. Magnus and Maj were missing. Yash glanced along his row and farther to the barracks but couldn't spot them.

  The Kin cheered and Tanaka raised one hand to wave. "My Kin, you are the hope of humanity. But within our midst is selfishness and dishonor. Those who would betray the Kin would also betray me. They must
be punished."

  Yash's back tightened painfully. He kept his arms loose at his side, but his toes curled in his boots. Tanaka hadn't said anything quite like this before. At his side, Greta's fingers slipped into his hand.

  Tanaka swept one arm out, pointing down at the Kin. "Mikele Sigmond! Oda Neel! Step away from the others."

  Yash turned to see the Kin that Tanaka had called out. In the second row, two bewildered women cowered together. People shrunk away from them, confused and hesitant.

  Tanaka's voice deepened. "These women stole from the Kin. They were seen eating spinach in the greenhouse."

  Max Bauer crossed half the distance to the tower with one leap and shouted up. "No. I told them to pick spinach. Someone misunderstood what they were doing."

  "Our dear Farming Cohort is a good man," Tanaka said. "He does not see evil growing. That is my sad duty." His voice boomed in Yash's ear. "These two women were seen. To eat outside of the mess hall is forbidden."

  Magnus and Maj shot into view on fliers. They crisscrossed above the crowd and dived at the two crouched women. Shrieks erupted as more Kin broke from their neat rows. Max tried to push through the crowd, but many hands held him back.

  "These two miscreants are confined to barracks until tomorrow night, to repent. Remember my words. No food may be carried to them. To disobey me is to betray the Kin."

  The adjuncts each grabbed a woman by one arm and hoisted them into the air. Confused and uncertain, a few people nearby grabbed for their legs, but in an instant, the captives were high overhead. The adjuncts flew them between rows of orange banners before streaking to the women's barracks.

  By the time Yash looked back to the balcony, Tanaka had disappeared. Adjunct Shun pumped his fist and began to chant. Gradually, people joined in. "Kin, Kin, Kin."

  Yash froze, but Greta gripped his hand tightly and raised it with hers to pump the air.

  ***

  Yash paced in Greta's office. It didn't relax him much because, in a small room in Titan's gravity, he kept pushing off too hard and had to catch himself against a wall.