Anne looked up to see Farhad rubbing his beard and looking at Moon.
The physicist shook his head. “It will take too long.”
“I’m serious,” Anne pressed. “We can’t drive through that forest. We’d have to cut a whole road into it.”
“And how long will that take?” Moon demanded.
“Don’t worry,” said Farhad. “We’ll have time. We’ll make it to the mountain one way or another. You never know what opportunities will come up.”
“Maybe,” Anne said, “but the prudent thing to do is to assume the worst.” She met Farhad’s eyes. “If it comes down to keeping your timetable and protecting the integrity of the ecosystem in front of us, will you let the timetable go?”
Farhad held her gaze. “Yes,” he said.
Anne had no idea how to tell if he was lying. She glanced at Daisuke. He was smiling now, but that didn’t mean anything either. Aimi had a similarly uninformative expression, and Turtle was whispering something to Boss Rudi, probably a running translation. Moon looked like he was doing vector equations in his head.
Ugh. Humans. Give Anne a bird of paradise and she could tell you whether it was angry or horny or what. She could even make a decent stab at predicting an alien organism’s reactions and get it right more often than mere chance. Humans, though. Humans lied. Does he know that I know that he knows? It was tedious as hell.
“Let’s fast-forward to the main event.” Farhad flicked ahead on his tablet and Daisuke gasped.
Anne squinted. The image showed a silvery object, roughly square in outline, blotched here and there with brown, green, orange, and purple. It looked like a lichen-covered rock. Except those dark patches were the shadows of clouds. A very large rock, then, photographed from very high up. Further shadows darkened two triangular faces of the rock. The image reminded Anne of something, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“That’s a pyramid,” Daisuke said.
Farhad’s voice was very smug. “That, my friends, is the Howling Mountain.”
***
“The Howling Mountain!” Daisuke said, trying to cheer Anne up.
They were stretched out in their bunk, which was only about a meter high, but as wide as the caravan. Windows on both sides gave generous views of the moving scenery.
“We’ve set off on our adventure,” he tried again.
Anne growled like a bear and rolled over. “Sleeping.”
“We’ll be at the Nun encampment soon.” Daisuke rubbed her shoulder. “We’ll see Sing. And Misha and the baby.”
“Yeah. That’ll be nice.” Although she didn’t sound happy.
Daisuke thought. He couldn’t ask ‘What’s wrong?’ That would be tantamount to a demand for Anne to be happy. It was his job to figure out why she was unhappy. Find the problem and fix it.
“I’ll massage you,” he decided.
“Okay.”
He smiled, even though there was nobody to see his expression, and climbed up on top of her.
“Oh, this extra gravity.” She moaned. “No, stay there. I like it.”
So did Daisuke. He put his thumbs between her shoulder blades.
“Yeah, I’m feeling a little b— Ohh! That’s good.”
She was worried about Junction’s environmental degradation. There wasn’t anything Daisuke could do about that, but he could change the focus of her attention, couldn’t he?
“Turn your head,” he said. “Look out the window.”
The Deep Sky valley rolled past them. Silver-tan grass rippled up the slopes of the western mountains, dotted with dark islands of wind-tossed tree-ferns. From her perspective, Anne would be able to see all the way up to the peaks, fuzzy and brown against a powdery lavender sky.
Daisuke scooped out the hollows on each side of her spine, and Anne groaned. She would be saddened by the development in the valley. The destruction of the terraforming pools and the felling of the trees by the river. She didn’t know how to appreciate what she had. How to stop reaching for more.
“Do you see the trees on the mountain?” he asked.
“Hmm. Rhododendrons,” she murmured. “The bushes are probably Coprosoma.” She raised herself on her elbows and her voice took on some animation. Daisuke loved how her back felt when she moved.
“The big trees with crowns shaped like toilet plungers have got to be podocarps of some sort. Lots of stumps.”
Daisuke understood her anguish. That ache between the way things should be and the way they are. His own ambition had carried him far before it burned up his first marriage. No, he shouldn’t say that to Anne. She wouldn’t understand how good that destruction had been. Daisuke’s life had fallen apart, and then he’d found Anne. If only he could do the same for her. Shoot her out into the wilderness where she could find out who she really was.
“Don’t wait for things to be perfect,” he said. “Focus. Focus on what’s good.”
Like Anne. If Daisuke searched for imperfections with her, he’d find them. She could do the same with him. A hairy mole here, a flabby pouch there. All that proved was that they were real and alive.
Could he tell her that? It would be best to leave out mention of moles and flab.
The caravan passed jogging soldiers in uniform, Nun tribesmen leaning against their three-meter spears, a pair of civilians playing with a dog.
“Ha,” Daisuke said. “A dog on an alien planet! It’s good, right?”
“It’s bad, Dice!” Anne said. “I can’t lie to myself! Invasive species, clear-cutting, the looming total collapse of this ecosystem, not to mention what will happen on Earth if someone chances upon the wrong alien microbe.” Her back tightened up right under Daisuke’s hands. “I can’t just bury my head in the sand and pretend this world isn’t falling apart around me. I’ve got to do something!”
Daisuke’s hands hovered over Anne’s re-tightening back. He considered the job in front of him. No, don’t be clever. Just go back to the top of her spine and start again.
“We will do something,” he said.
“What, Dice? What will we do?”
“I don’t know yet.” This was hard to say even in Japanese. How would he make it work in English? “‘What should we do?’ We ask that question until we understand the answer. If we don’t have the answer, we keep asking. After we have the answer, we stop asking.”
“Well, obviously,” said Anne. “That’s like saying things are always in the last place you look.”
A flock of birds flew up past the window. Little dark wings flashed. Daisuke kept massaging.
“We’re explorers, right?” he said. “Our job is discovering new things. Maybe one of the new things we will discover….” Daisuke lost track of his sentence. Anne’s hips were so wide and her waist was so narrow. “I mean that we can discover the answer.”
Daisuke’s hands rose and fell with Anne’s deep inhalation.
“I hope so,” she said.
“I hope so too.”
“I’m sorry,” Anne said after a while. “I’m not properly enjoying this romantic trip you planned for me. I’ll try to be happier.”
His chest tightened, but Daisuke focused on the feel of her skin on his. “Don’t worry. I am a patient man.”
She snickered into her pillow. “Is that a hint? Maybe you should slide up me a little more so I can feel how patient you’re being.”
Daisuke did so with great relish. This would be a very romantic trip.
Chapter Five
Ladder to Orbit
The Sweet Blood portal shone blue and green above a mound of raised ground, almost the only color on this denuded hillside. Standing at the base of the plinth, Moon felt the pull of the Sweet Blood planet’s gravity like a hook through his chest.
“Oh, that’s better.” Misha grunted. “I often come here. Helps with my back.” The enorm
ous man stretched like a sleepy bear, all muscle and facial hair in army surplus fatigues. Moon wondered whether those enormous round shoulders and bowlegs were the result of extended living in Junction’s 1.3 gees or if the man was simply a mutant.
Perhaps the latter, since none of the natives looked so mountainous. The Nun people tended more toward short and wiry, with curly black hair and heavy features. They walked between the army tents that dotted this muddy hillside, tending to their pet aliens.
Toymakers, they were called, and Moon could see why. The little wooden constructs trundled about the camp or bobbed in the air like balloons. The wheeled versions ranged in size from hundred-centimeter tubes to one-fifty-centimeter cubes, usually with smaller ones pulling the larger like clockwork draft animals. Humans also did this chore, especially where the mud got thick enough for legs to work better than wheels.
Daisuke must have been watching Moon’s face, because he said, “Toymaker users,” as if he were providing voiceover to Moon’s thoughts. “Witches. It seems like there are more of them than before.”
“The proper word is wrangler,” said Misha. “And yes, there are more than before. We’ve adopted most of the toymakers from the forest on the ridge.”
According to the materials Farhad had given Moon, this Misha person had once been a pilot, smuggler, and spy for either the Americans or the Russians, Moon wasn’t sure which. Now he was a sort of fixer and unofficial liaison between the Nun and everyone else. Supposedly, he was Anne’s friend, although she didn’t seem very happy with him now. Maybe the biologist just treated everyone like that.
The biologist had worn a scowl since she’d disembarked from the caravan, but now her expression deepened further. “What is it exactly that you need those toymakers for? What the hell has happened to the Nun, Misha? And what the bloody hell has happened to the Sweet Blood biome?”
Moon hadn’t studied the ecology of this place in any great detail, but he had the vague impression that it had once been rather lush. Something Earthlike, hadn’t it been? Giant bugs and lettuces or something like that. Mostly mud, now.
“It’s been hard.” Misha looked out over the encampment and Moon followed his gaze.
Rainwater had carved runnels into the hill’s thick black mud, which stretched from the riverbank up to the bulbous brown trees that crowned the mountain. Here and there, pale blobs that might have been dead alien plants lolled flabbily down the slope like bleached air mattresses. Only on the top of the portal’s mound was there any sign of life.
Yes. Right. The portal. What, if anything, could Moon do with it?
“I can’t believe they’ve pushed you off your land,” Anne said.
“It’s more like the Nun can’t stand living next to the soldiers,” Misha rumbled. “Most of the land in Imsame is legally tribal property, but we’re still working on convincing anybody to pay us rent.”
“Haven’t you been able to get the Nun to somewhere safe on Earth?” Daisuke said.
“Like Sing and the other mothers, you mean?”
Sing was Misha’s wife. A woman of unusual taste, but gone now, along with most of the Nun women, to enjoy the comforts and medicine of civilization on Earth.
“Our job is to make this place fit for our wives when they come back.”
Moon was dubious about that. So was Anne.
“Some job!” said Anne. “You can’t live in the Sweet Blood biome, Misha.”
“We do live in the Sweet Blood biome.”
“Killing every non-Earth organism on this hillside in the process!”
“Better them than us.”
“Yeah, and what’ll you do now that you’ve eaten all the tortoise-hogs and all that’s left is mud?”
Misha cleared his throat. “There’s talk now of moving through the wormhole. At least the Nun can still hunt there.”
“You hunt there?” Anne sounded horrified.
“Come on, Anne.”
Moon rolled his eyes. He had better things to do than listen to this spat. He walked up the mound toward the portal.
He was afraid someone would try to stop him. Some native with a taboo. But everyone on the hill ignored him as he climbed. The pull of the Sweet Blood planet grew stronger.
Behind him rose Anne’s voice. “Why does this keep happening? I’m here.” Mud splashed. “I’m standing in the middle of a blasted fucking hellscape! But I say, ‘This is bad,’ and everyone acts like I’ve used the tablecloth as toilet paper!”
“Anne is very afraid,” said Daisuke.
“Way to leap to my defense, Daisuke. I’m not afraid. What I am is angry!”
And look how little good that emotion did her. Moon tried to ignore his ears and use his eyes.
There was no ladder running through this portal, no government facility planted on top of it. The result was an object that looked utterly impossible. An optical illusion hanging over Moon’s head. The browns and blacks of the hillside warped, twisted around into a rim that then untwisted into a view of pulpy green plants under a blue sky.
“It’s all right,” came Misha’s rumble. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’m just an angry ex-spy who hasn’t smoked weed in over a year and I’m trying to be a good brother-in-law, but nobody listens to me.”
“Yes, Anne has the same problem,” Daisuke said, oily facilitator that he was. “We will work together. We’ll do it.”
Moon paced out a circle around the portal. As he did so, the clouds, the pale blue sky, the yellow hills across the valley, seemed to twist. Colors smeared as if viewed through rippling glass, or maybe a more apt comparison would be images seen through the edges of a whirlpool.
Objects seemed to shrink, compressed into an infinitesimally thin ring. The ring expanded out again toward the center of the portal, decompressing into an image of the Sweet Blood planet. This view too, shifted as Moon circumnavigated the portal. It was like rotating a periscope. Or walking around a sphere that contained an entire world.
Within that world, something moved.
Moon stopped. His feet slipped on the mud, his weight a fraction of what it should be. He suddenly felt as if he was being drawn into a trap. What had they said about predatory aliens living in the Sweet Blood biome?
The thing in the portal stretched spindly legs toward Moon, its hide camouflaged, the pads of its feet oddly regular.
Moon exhaled. Boots. He was looking at a distorted, fish-eye view of someone lowering himself through the other face of the portal. A native, it appeared, short and dark-skinned, wearing military boots and pants but no shirt. A long yellow wand protruded from his unzipped fly. The decorative penis-sheath was of the same material, though thankfully not as long, as the yellow spear that the native clutched in one hand.
He slid to a stop in front of Moon, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Gu danya?” he barked, then switched from the Nun language to Indonesian and English. “Siapa! Who!”
“Yunubey-o! Ibu Anne yak-lem-bak.”
Moon looked over his shoulder to see Misha waving.
“Er ara Moon bikanya,” the Russian said.
“Moon,” the native repeated, and bared his teeth. “Good. Hello.” He put his hand to his chest. “Chief Yunubey.”
Ah, the Russian’s brother-in-law. Maybe he could be useful. “Hello,” said Moon. “I have questions about the portal.”
“Dan?”
Moon turned and shouted back down at Misha. “Tell him I have questions about the portal.”
The big man was apparently as happy to abandon Anne and climb the mound as Moon had been. He exchanged a few words with Yunubey, who poked his spear at the portal.
“He asks if you want to go through it. He says it’s allowed.”
“Yak-lum,” Yunubey said, and turned to lead the way back up the mound.
Moon quashed his frustration. If people would just listen to him, eve
rything would be easier. “No. I actually have questions. I want to know about the edges of the portal.”
“Edges?”
“Ask him if I can borrow his spear.”
Yunubey stopped at the translation and looked around, smirking like he couldn’t believe how stupid Moon was. He said something that made Misha snicker as well, but tossed the spear down to Moon.
It was very smooth, more like ivory or plastic than wood. Moon walked up the mound past Yunubey and stuck the spear into the portal.
It went in the same way Yunubey had come out. On the Sweet Blood planet, a hole in the ground would now have a sharpened yellow pole sticking out of it.
Moon moved the spear laterally. It approached the edge of the wormhole, seeming to bend as if seen through a lens. The farther toward the edge of the portal he swung it, the more the spear warped, until….
Thump. The spear hit the soil of Planet Sweet Blood and rebounded. The same thing happened when Moon swung the spear in the other way.
He imagined the perspective from the other side: a pit in the ground on Planet Sweet Blood with a portal at the bottom. A spear sticks up out of the portal and waves around, hitting the sides of the pit, just like any normal object would.
“Oh,” Misha said. “Edges.”
“The edges of a pit in the dirt! That’s not what I meant.” Moon hissed through his teeth. Why was there always something in the way? If he could just grab a portal and move it out into empty air….
Yunubey said something, and Misha translated: “He says the wormholes have no edges. They are not holes like the ones you find in the ground or in skin. They are not holes at all. They are… uh…just a second.”
Misha asked Yunubey something in his language. The Nun chief made a cage of his fingers, as if holding a ball, and spoke.
“They are like the hydrogen envelope of the toymaker blimp,” translated Misha.
“They’re a volume,” Moon said, nodding. So the native knew what he was talking about, even if Misha didn’t. Good. Now for a question the answer of which he hadn’t already predicted. “Can anything bigger than a person go through a portal?”
Interchange Page 7
