Castaway Planet (14 page)

Chapter 21

Laura tried to comfort Hitomi, but the dull ache in her own heart, the exhaustion in her own mind, echoed that of her little girl entirely. She saw Sakura come down and collapse. Caroline, trying to organize their assembly of homemade tools and utensils, just stopped in the middle and dropped a handful on the ground, sinking to her knees. Melody had her back turned, but Laura could see the shaking of sobs from behind. Even Akira’s hand on her shoulder felt perfunctory, a matter of form. There was no strength flowing from it, nothing telling her
this will be all right
, and that was terrifying. They’d been each other’s support since they were married. If she couldn’t support him, and he couldn’t support her . . .

She’d known this was coming. They’d discussed it, she and Akira, what . . . only a week, no, two weeks ago, Earth measure? When they visited Blue Hole Lake and the Great Column. Now that it had happened, though, she had no idea what to do. She could see Whips, dangling so dull and limp that he was nothing but a faded shadow of himself.

Then she saw Sakura glance at her best friend, and her jaw set, and she straightened. Her face was still devastated, frightened and lost and tired, but she still straightened up and looked, with those fear-stricken yet determined eyes, straight at Laura.

These are my children. I’m not going to let them down.

Slowly, Laura reached out and hugged Hitomi to her tighter. “I know it’s hard, sweetheart.” She raised her voice. “It’s hard for all of us. Even us.”

Hitomi looked up for just a moment, uncertainly.

“Yes, honey, even us. I know that sometimes Mommy and Daddy have you do things you don’t want to do because they think it’s a good thing, but that’s not what we’re doing here. If we could call the ship back, we would. You all know that. Hitomi, I’m sorry, but you have to accept it.”

Hitomi sobbed harder.

“Hitomi,” Akira said softly, and after he repeated it a few times, the little eight-year-old looked up uncertainly. “Hitomi, do you want Daddy and Mommy to lie to you? Tell you things that aren’t true?”

Hitomi blinked away tears, then looked at both of them for a long minute. Finally, she shook her head.

“Good. Because we don’t want to tell you lies, either. But that means that when the truth isn’t the one we want, we still have to hear it. We
all
would like to be back on the ship, or even at our colony, or back on Earth. And if there is any way to do that we will, Hitomi, I promise. But right now, there isn’t. And that means we’re stuck here, doing everything we can to live.”

“I’m just so tired of it all!” Melody burst out, kicking the shelter in a sudden rage. “I don’t have a room, and I can’t access
anything
that I don’t already have, and . . . and . . . and . . .” She started crying loudly, unable to hide it anymore, obviously not even able to say exactly what she felt but knowing it hurt.

Hitomi was blinking around with big, teary eyes, and the new heartwracking sobs from Melody threatened to break Laura’s new resolve. She saw tears starting again from Sakura’s face, and Caroline’s head sag down.

But then Hitomi suddenly pulled away and ran over to Melody, and put her arms around her sister. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Melody’s sobs caught, and she blinked, looking down at Hitomi. “You . . . you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“I’m sorry you’re sad. I didn’t want to make you sad!”

For once Melody’s usual sarcasm deserted her. She just reached down and hugged Hitomi fiercely. “Not . . . your fault.” Melody mumbled.

“No, it’s not your fault,” Laura said emphatically. “We all feel the same way. We’re alone, we’ve got so little that we
want
to do that we can do, and so much we have to do to stay alive. It’s . . . very wearing. And we still are just learning about the world, so we’re still worried just about taking walks, or sleeping out in the open. We know how hard it is.”

She felt her resolve firming up again, and Akira’s arm was strong around her as she stood. She looked at him and though there were a few tears on his face too, she saw him nod.
We are two rocks, and we will support our family
.

“That said, I think we’ve got to take some time to make things better for us all. We’ve found food. We’ve got water. We’ve got shelter. We’ve got clothes—even if they’re scratchier than we’d like, we can pad them with driftseed fluff. We’re working on a house that—if we can build it—will give us all our own rooms, a chance to at least have a real
home
.

“But we need something to help us feel like our old selves, and that means something fun that isn’t just part of survival.”

She saw with relief and pride that all of them were drying their tears and coming towards her and Akira; even Whips’ color started to ripple more brightly, and he finished coming down into camp.

“But what can we do, Mom?” Melody asked.

“Well, first . . . we can set times for each of us—or the group of us—to spend doing things we want to do. We should sit down and make a schedule so we know when that is, and then keep that schedule. Caroline, once we work it out, I’m going to leave it to you to track.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Organization was her favorite thing. Giving her the chance to help with that as part of her organization should work. “Now . . . for entertainment, we still have our omnis. Together we can make our own little network, and do some cooperative games—and single ones.” She looked at Hitomi, then over at Sakura. “Sakura, Whips, do you think that you and Melody could make some new Jewelbug add-ons for Hitomi’s favorite app?”

“Why, I . . .” Whips was obviously caught off-guard by the question, but paused. “Hmm. Well, I see the package came with add-on specs . . . I can certainly code it, but—”

Melody stood up and nodded. “I’ll script some of the best Jewelbug adventures
ever
. I promise!”

Hitomi looked up at Melody with surprise. “Really? You
will?
”

Her voice was still thick with tears, but Melody gave a grin that was much closer to her old self, and Laura felt the strange pain that accompanies pride that nearly makes you cry. “I will. You’ll see. If Whips and Saki can help with figuring out how—”

“I’ll do it!” Sakura said emphatically. “And . . . you know, Dad, didn’t you used to play a lot of games when you were younger? Could you help make something for all of us?”

“I did, yes,” Akira said slowly. “And . . . well, it won’t be as immersive as we’d get with the shipboard nets, but there are certainly adventures I remember that none of you will have seen. I could write those up—with some technical help—easily enough. And there are other games that we can play with the same help, and that won’t strain our resources. Everything from ancient board-games to more modern ones. Maybe your mother could read us all some stories some nights, too?”

“Yes!” all four of her children said quickly.

Laura blushed. “Really?”

“Mom, you’re like the
best
reader,” Caroline said emphatically. “You do all the voices, the accents, even mime the movements. It’s almost like having the autoperformance on, but it’s better because it’s
you
.”

“She’s right, you know,” Akira murmured softly. “You read to all of them when they were young, but after we crashed you’ve hardly read to even Mel or Hitomi.”

“All right,” she said, with the knot in her chest slowly dissolving. “Story night sometimes, too. We’ll do that tonight. I’ll have to pick out something for all of us, but I’d be happy to do it. Other than that, we will work out this schedule today, and get the network set up. Caroline’s omni can still be part of it, can’t it?” She looked at the glittering device which they’d placed high up as a security monitor.

“No problem, Laura,” Whips said, looking almost back to normal. “The security functions only take up about five percent of its operational capacity. Caroline’s can serve as our central node and direct network operations.”

“That’s good.” She looked over at Hitomi. “Are you all right now, Hitomi?”

The little girl nodded, then ran over and hugged Laura, almost making her cry again with relief. “Okay, Mommy,” she said, mumbling into Laura’s barkcloth dress. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, honey.” She bent down and picked up her smallest daughter and hugged her close; Hitomi’s arms went around her neck and hugged back, one of the most wonderful and comforting sensations any parent ever gets. “Not your fault. And we’ll be okay now.”

She wasn’t fooling herself into believing there wouldn’t be other outbursts like this; they’d lost their entire world, after all. But having gotten past this, she was pretty sure she could handle them now . . . and the later ones, she hoped, wouldn’t be as bad.

“Now, let’s get things set up and have dinner. No more work today that we don’t have to do.”

“Um . . . Mom, can we talk about our work?”

She and Akira looked at each other and started laughing. She quickly damped it down when she realized that, with the unstable sea of emotions still washing through her, it could easily turn into a much more unsettling and uncontrolled laugh. “Of course you can, honey. I didn’t say we were going to pretend we weren’t here, after all.”

“Oh, good. Because Whips and me—”

“Whips and
I
,” corrected Caroline reflexively. “Remember, it should be said the same way you’d say it if you didn’t include Whips.”

“Oh, yeah. Whatever. Anyway, Whips and I came up with a couple ways of making holes that might work . . .”

They discussed the new ideas during dinner. Both of them would be harder to work out than it seemed, Laura was sure, especially getting the right kind and amount of fire, but there were possibilities there. It was certainly worth exploring.

“Um . . . Dr. Kimei?”

Whips’ nervous, formal address came as she was scrubbing off some of the plates with sand in preparation for a rinse. She looked up, startled. “What is it, Whips?”

“Um,” he said again, and hesitated. “Could I . . . I know I’m not one of your children, but—”

“Do
not
say that,” she said emphatically. “You’re part of the family, which means that as far as I’m concerned, you’re one of my children—no matter how strange that may look.”

He gave a rippling laugh, sparkling colors over his skin. “Okay, Mom.”

She reached out and gripped the base of one of his arms in the best analogy she could manage to what a real Bemmie adult would do. “Now what is it?”

The colors and patterns were those of nervous embarrassment. “Well . . . I was wondering . . . could
I
request a particular story?”

“Of course you could—as long as it’s something I can read to Hitomi, too.”

“Oh, it is! Um . . . I’d like you to read the translation of
The Skyspark
.”

She smiled suddenly. “The story of the first human-Bemmie contact as written by Blushspark herself?”

“Well, yes . . . It’s like a piece of home.”

“Then I will happily read it.”

And so, a couple of hours later, she began: “. . . It started so long ago, when the Vents sang louder and the Sky was a perfect, impenetrable shield above the world . . .

Chapter 22

“Are we in position, Whips?”

He looked from his perch, clinging tightly to the side of the great column with his two side arms. Drifting from below he could detect the smell of the borefire that had been slowly eating its way into the column. The smell varied between simple wood-burning and a sharper chemical stench as the carbon-based components of the column—and trapped organics of the things that had built them—yielded to the primitive power of flame.

After multiple tests on the downed column near the crash site, they’d come up with a multiple-method approach that seemed to work: first, point heat and weak acids to allow them to put pins or spikes into the column. The pins held curved holders—made from some of the largest pieces of metal left from the crash—in which were built borefires that the holder kept pressed against the column.

Once the fires had eaten in and weakened the column enough, then a pointed log could be rammed against the weakened area to actually make a hole all the way through. It was painstaking, difficult work, and it was going to take a
lot
of work over the next month or so, but they’d knocked six successive holes in the test column, and the last three had been exactly the size and rough shape needed—good enough that hand tools hammering and chipping away could finish the job.

It was probably going to be made much easier by the fact that there were small holes spaced around the columns fairly regularly—Sakura had found one of those on her first climb—and while the spacing wasn’t quite up to engineering precision, it was good enough that you could use a lot of them as starter holes. Akira suspected that the holes were for water circulation, to keep the things that built the columns alive.

He wished the idea of a drill head had worked out, but the problem was how to embed the hard pieces well enough to not just pop out. No one had a solution, at least not yet.

Now they were about to knock the first hole in the real column, the giant that Sakura had found near Blue Hole Lake. Whips focused all three eyes on the pointed log, directed his omni to follow the gaze and triangulate.

Not quite aligned.
The log would have to strike dead-center, several times, to bash its way through, if their test experience was any guide; hitting the unburned area of the column would blunt even the fire-hardened point in a single blow. The pointed battering ram was held up by cable from the winch, with guidelines held by Sakura and Laura, and Akira, Caroline, Melody, and Hitomi holding it pulled back for a strike. “Saki, we need to raise it by about . . . thirty centimeters.”

“On it.” Sakura and Laura pulled slowly on the lines, and the whole rig rose up. “Tell me when.”

“Now!”

“Okay, are we aligned?”

“Pull it a little to the left, Laura . . . sorry, no, your right. Little more . . . okay, that’s good.” He checked the alignment once more. “Right. I think we’re ready. Bring it in slowly . . . slowly . . . Oh, perfect.” He saw the black point of the ram hitting dead-center on the fire-scar on the column. “Pull it back to full ramming position!”

“Are you braced, Whips?”

“Holding on tight, Akira,” he said, making sure his hooks were firm. “Let it go!”

With a slow, majestic curve, the fire-blackened log swung and slammed with a mighty impact into the column. A spray of black and gray shards and dust exploded from the impact location and a shudder went through the entire structure. As the log rebounded, Whips could see a deep, deep indentation exactly where the firebox had eaten into the column. “Bullseye! Pull it back and we’ll go for another strike!”

“Great!”

“Do you think we’ll get all the way through?”

He would have liked to say yes, but . . . “Probably not. I think we’ll have to build another borefire inside. These things are thick—which is good!—but it’ll take time.”

Still, the progress was impressive, and with the prior work aligning the log ram, the people on the ground were able to get repositioned much faster. In came the log again,
WHAM!
and more debris fountained out.

Something screeched from overhead.

Whips’ gaze snapped upward, to see something—no,
three
somethings—crouched on the top of the column, tentacular legs balancing them, two other tendrils coiled back, armored bodies and working, sharp-edged mouthparts. He instantly recognized them as canopy krakens—the same things that had nearly killed Sakura when she tried to defend a pair of capys.

Then the creatures were descending, screeching again.
Lair!
They were protecting their lair!

There was nowhere to run and he didn’t dare try to just leap for a nearby tree. He wasn’t, after all, built for that kind of thing, and he was too high up to afford a fall. So he gathered himself and waited as the things dropped towards him at terrifying speed.

At the last moment he struck with his upper arm, hooks extended, and
bellowed
, an attack pulse as intense as he had ever generated, one he’d never have dared use if the Kimeis were any closer to him.

Underwater, such a sonic pulse could severely injure. In air, it could not hurt directly so easily, but it was a shock tactic second to none. Combined with the slashing impact of his arm and gripping hooks, it startled and intimidated the canopy kraken that had come directly for him, unbalanced it, and let him rip it free. He cast the creature away from the column to plummet uncontrollably below.

But that left two more, which backed slightly but came down on either side of him, using the tactics of practiced hunters. He fended off two blows by the hunting tentacles, but was forced to drop down, lower . . . .

Lower?

He had no breath to speak, but he still had his link to Sakura’s omni.
Sakura! See!

For a moment she didn’t respond, but then:
Yes! Got it!

He dropped again, sidling out of the way. One tentacle slammed his body, but his tail holdfasts kept that from knocking him off of the column. Almost there, almost . . .

“NOW!”
came a shout from below.

As the second canopy kraken scuttled towards him, its body crossed a fire-blackened hole—and at that moment, a huge log suspended on cable
impaled
the hard-shelled creature, stabbing through it like a fork through a shrimp.

Now there was only one, and it and Whips were about the same size. The kraken had two striking tentacles, but Whips had an arm that flowered into multiple branches, covered with black griphooks. The kraken’s edge-filled mouth, insectoid in appearance, was also no more dangerous looking than Whips’ black and yellow beak with its ripping, tearing tongue.

Still, this was its home territory and not his. The kraken battered at him, successive powerful blows of the striking tentacles trying to dislodge or kill by sheer impact. The others were shouting from below, and he realized that the kraken was too close for Laura to dare shoot.

Another hammering impact came, but that finally crystallized a thought.
It can hit harder . . . but not so accurately.

He let go with one arm and swung around sideways. Such a maneuver wasn’t very surprising to the canopy kraken—it probably did similar ones all the time—but that did force it to reposition and gave Whips a vital fraction of a second to focus closely on the thing’s head, its construction . . .

His central arm whipped out, the fingertips with claw-hooks fully extended—

—to rip straight across the thing’s upper two eyes.

The canopy kraken’s shriek was ear-piercing. It convulsively tore away, fleeing into the neighboring trees, disappearing finally in a diminishing wail of pain and rattle of branches.

“Whips! Are you okay?” Sakura shouted up, and her mother called at the same time, “Harratrer!”

“I . . . think so.” His body ached all over.

“Get down here so I can check you over.”

That wasn’t a hard order to obey. He really wanted something solid under his belly pad right now.

Laura was waiting at the bottom, and immediately engaged full diagnostics. After a few moments, she nodded. “You’ll be okay. Some very deep bruises, I think. A few strains, too, but nothing really serious.”

“Why did the monsters attack Whips, Daddy?” Hitomi’s voice was frightened.

“Don’t call them ‘monsters,’” her father admonished calmly. “They’re simply predators, and we were bashing in their home, I think.” His simple, matter-of-fact approach quieted Hitomi, and everyone else began to relax. Laura might be the more dynamic one, but he was often the rock the family leaned on.

“They probably like to use the top of the columns as a roost or lair,” Whips agreed, still trying to get his body to slow down from panic mode. “I guess we’ll need to put a cap over the top of the column when we’re done, to keep things from getting in that way.”

Akira nodded. “We’d want to, anyway. We don’t need rainwater pouring into our house from above, at least without directing it into something that can hold it.”

“We can’t go through that again,” Laura said, worried. “Whips got off without serious injury this time, but that was partly just luck.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that now,” Akira said. “Two of the three are dead, one is injured. The top of this column is, I would suspect, marked with scent or other markers showing there are or were krakens lairing in it, which will tend to discourage other things from moving in right away. We’re going to be burning and pounding on this column fairly continuously for the next few weeks, I think, so I really doubt anything else is going to try to move in. At most we’ll have some cleanup of dung or other detritus to do, depending.”

“Actually, Dad,” Caroline spoke up, “I don’t think we’ll even have to do that. Well, there’s probably some stuff on the insides of the column, but this one probably doesn’t
have
a bottom to collect stuff.”

“What? Everything has to have a bottom, Caroline.”

“Well, okay, but not one we can reach. Saki mentioned feeling the air coming out of the one, and Whips has mentioned the breeze he gets coming from the holes, or sometimes seeming to go in, right?” The others nodded. “Well, in a cave, that’s called ‘breathing,’ but it only happens because there’s a really big volume of air inside that’s reacting to atmospheric pressure outside.”

Sakura blinked. “So you’re saying . . . what?”

“I think the bottom of the column—the bottom we can see, down here—isn’t actually the bottom. I think it opens up into the inside of the continent. Into a big chamber, or network of chambers, like caves—probably there’s a bunch of different ones across the whole floating continent system, and they provide buoyancy and adjustment to pressure regimes.”

Whips found himself shimmering in agreement. “That makes sense. Maybe when these things are underwater, they exchange water through the columns, build more of the island. Who knows?”

“So you think that there’s a lot of empty space below our chosen home?” Akira frowned. “Something could crawl up, couldn’t it?”

Caroline shrugged. “Maybe, but the canopy krakens were nesting up there. If I’m right, our column’s a hole in a big,
big
roof, so anything that wanted to come up would have to crawl for a long time along a ceiling over a tens-of-meters drop to rock or maybe water. I wouldn’t expect big things to be crawling up. We’ll just want to put a really solid bottom floor in that things can’t come through.”

“I’d want to do that in any case,” admitted Laura. “Suspended over even a twenty-meter drop, we need floors that can’t break.”

Whips shook himself. “Well, all this talk is good, and we’ll need to finish that part of the design—which fits, by the way, with what we were already working on—but right now, we’ve still got a hole to finish punching.”

Ignoring the pain in his body, he began to clamber back up the column.
Not going to let a little thing like being attacked by three predators stop me!