Heaven's Fall (40 page)

She could feel the plane diving now . . . quite steeply. If she tried she could almost hear the pilots talking on the other side of the cockpit door. No words, just evidence of communication—squawks, grunts, sounds that had the potential to be words.

Their voices were no longer calm.

That was understandable, right? They were executing a tricky maneuver, diving toward the Pacific, preparing to fly toward land at an altitude of less than five hundred meters. Rachel was not a pilot, but she had grown up with an astronaut for a father, and Zack Stewart had been required to fly in supersonic jets as an “operator.” She had heard the grim jokes and sardonic phrases about how “air is easier to fly through than mountain” and “don’t turn your plane into a boat.”

Looking out the window, she could see nothing but sea and sky—a beautiful sunny afternoon, with a few clouds way off to the north suggesting an approaching storm front. At this height, individual waves were visible . . . long broad rollers heading for the beaches of Mexico.

There were beeps from the cockpit.

Yahvi heard them, too. “Mom . . .”

Rachel had never been one to offer unthinking blanket reassurance. She hated the phrase
It’s going to be all right
with a passion, because she had ample evidence that very often things didn’t turn out all right.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said.

She glanced at Pav, who would have said the same thing—and who was incapable of hiding his alarm.

The plane began to maneuver. . . . “We’re making S turns,” Edgely said, as if he were a newly appointed aeronautical expert.

“Can you see land from your side?” Rachel said. Whatever the type of turns, she was still seeing only sea and sky.

The plane rolled to its right suddenly, making Rachel feel as though she were on a carnival ride. Every occupant of the cabin uttered a “whoa!” or the equivalent.

Then it felt as though they were diving, which could not be good, given that they were only a few hundred meters above the water to begin with.

Yahvi was paralyzed with fear. She clutched Rachel’s hand like a potential drowning victim.

The plane began to rise now, its motion pressing Rachel and the others into their seats.
Like a rocket launch,
she thought. As this went on and on, as the plane continued to climb steeply, the rocket-launch analogy seemed even more apt. The whine of the engines grew louder. Rachel thought she heard and felt the airframe shuddering.

“Are we heading back to Keanu?” Pav said, triggering nervous laughter from Chang and, behind them, Xavier.

That two seconds of grim humor quickly gave way to even grimmer fear. This wasn’t right—!

As she looked out the window to the north, Rachel saw a fireball.

Yahvi saw it, too. “Mommy, what was that?”

“Our decoy,” Xavier said.

Rachel had known that, though it took Xavier’s words to supply confirmation. She gasped and uttered, “Oh, no!” Benvides and Quentin!

As their plane leveled out, the light brown coast of Mexico visible on the horizon, Rachel saw two other aircraft in the sky, heading toward them from the left.

From the cockpit came the clear sounds of Steve and Jo in a grim struggle, overlaid with alarming beeps.

They were alone in the sky now, targets for the Aggregates.

THINGS WE DON’T HAVE ON KEANU

Sports teams or most sports, except for cricket and some basketball

Churches

Books on shit like diets, investing, pets, or etiquette. Books, period

Electronics stores

ATMs

Kentucky Fried Chicken or other restaurants

THINGS WE DO HAVE ON KEANU

Music

Markets

Free time

XAVIER TOUTANT, AS QUOTED BY EDGAR CHANG
FOR THE NEWSKY NEWS SERVICE

His memories were completely confused.

Sanjay Bhat remembered the tension of
Adventure
’s final approach to Bangalore and Yelahanka . . . the barely suppressed pride and even glee that a hostile missile had come close to destroying them, but failed.

Then he had watched the last few meters of the descent, his eyes unable to look away from the figures on the control panel, as if rapt, unblinking attention could somehow slow the rates, change them to the numbers he wanted—

Then? The shattering impact, cushioned by couch and belts, the sound of something smashing, the panel flying toward him, blinding, crippling pain—

Followed, seemingly a few moments later, by a cough, a feeling of suffocation, an opening of the eyes to see a brownish-yellow film in front of them.

Clawing, feeling relief that the covering was coming away, terror that he was confined. Had he been buried? Was he in the wreckage of
Adventure
?

Then he was shaken by a series of violent spasms. Fortunately, they passed quickly, leaving him shivering, twitching, but alive . . . and lying on his back inside a golden coffin-sized cell, like a honeycomb.

Along his left side was a wall made of a thin, translucent substance that felt like wax. There were shadows outside! Maybe someone who could get him out!

He turned on his side and reached with his right hand—

And poked a hole through the wall.

The whole thing broke into soft pieces, some falling, some peeled away by the entities outside.

Even though his ears were still covered by the clinging second skin, Sanjay could hear a human female voice calling, “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Then arms reached for him, pulling him free.

As he slid out of the cell, he realized that he knew where he was. Like most HBs, he had sneaked into the Beehive at one time—or, in Sanjay’s case, several times. And that was where he was, in the Beehive, in the arms of a woman he knew very well . . . Sasha Blaine.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

There was the choking sob at the realization that he must have died, followed by the instant elation that he had somehow survived, or rather come back.

“It’s okay, Sanj,” Sasha Blaine said. “We’re here.”

Another woman held him, too, this one dark-haired, dark-eyed, not familiar. Sanjay let himself collapse into their arms.

They cleaned him up as well as they could, helping him peel the second skin off his head and face, shoulders, chest and arms, legs. “We ought to leave it around your middle,” Sasha said, “until we get you some pants.”

Sanjay’s response was a spasm of laughter. Yes, his
nudity
was the concern. Not his condition, not the fact that he had been killed on Earth and reborn on Keanu. “What about Rachel?” he said, horrified at the way his throat felt and his voice sounded, like that of a man of a hundred. “Is she still on Earth? What happened? How did I get here?”

“Rachel is still good, as far as we know,” Sasha said. She nodded to the woman with her—Sanjay remembered her name now: Jordana, agro sector. “Do you have any memory of what happened?”

It didn’t take long to tell her—the approach, the missile, the crash. “That’s pretty much what we heard,” Sasha said. “And now here you are.”

“Having been killed.”

“Uh, apparently.”

“So I’m a fucking Revenant.”

“Well, yes.”

“Any idea how?” He looked up at the Beehive. “This hasn’t functioned for twenty years.” He thought of Jaidev and Zhao, who had devoted hours to the problem, with no success. “Did someone figure out how to turn it back on?”

“No,” Sasha said. “I’m kind of hoping you could tell us what happened.”

“I told you everything I know.” He croaked again. “So far.”

“Well, welcome back. Which sounds really stupid, like you’ve just been away on a trip.”

“Well, I have.”

Sasha turned to Jordana. “Let’s get him out of here. He needs water and God knows what else.”

Among the two gigantic mental adjustments Sanjay Bhat was making—realizing he had died, and that he had been reborn as a Revenant back on Keanu—there was a new one, perhaps more important:

No Revenant had lived more than a few days.

He emerged from the Beehive to a crowd larger than any he had seen in his life in the habitat. The HB population of Keanu had no celebrations or events that required such gatherings. “Is this all for me?”

“Everyone heard about the Beehive,” Sasha said.

Sanjay found that he could stand . . . that breathing was easier . . . that he seemed to be gaining strength. Aside from the emotional whiplash of going from dead to alive again—not inconsiderable—and the lingering discomfort of wearing strips of second skin and moving with muscles that seemed untested, he felt good. Even great.

He knew that he had been killed by a blow to his face and head. He carefully raised his hand and felt the same set of bones he had always known.

Allowing for the uncertainty of his new, second life span, Sanjay thought,
Keanu brought me back good as new
.

He spotted Jaidev and Harley Drake and Zhao and then, to his amazement, the legendary Dale Scott, looking as old and confused as Sanjay had felt fifteen minutes earlier.

Sanjay raised his hand. “Hi, everyone,” he said.

Then he heard a woman scream.

Oh my God,
he thought,
Maren
.

Maren Houtman had been Sanjay’s lover for the past five years. And had the
Adventure
mission not intervened, likely for years to come, possibly for life. She had become that important to him in that time, though not, he realized with some embarrassment and worry, so important that she had a place in his thoughts until now.

He couldn’t possibly tell her that, either. Maren had many virtues, from intelligence and artistry (she had managed the trick of marrying pottery and sculpture to Substance K engineering) to classic Nordic beauty . . . but a sense of humor was not among them. Nor was she truly confident of Sanjay’s affections; when they argued, it always seemed to be about the likelihood that he would find someone he preferred to her—

It was probably in her nature. When scooped up by the object at Bangalore back in August 2019, Maren had been a clerical assistant with the European Space Agency supporting her boss during the
Brahma
mission. ESA had no representatives in the
Brahma
crew but was providing tracking and communication data.

She had endured the flight to Keanu and the years of adjustment, loss, and recovery without ever interacting with Sanjay Bhat in a significant way. Maren had just been a thin blond woman who spoke little and busied herself with food preparation and distribution . . . two things Sanjay Bhat avoided.

It was only when she began installing fascinating objects on various HB structures, from representational or abstract pieces to a misguided bust of Zack Stewart, that Sanjay began to notice her. (In fact, their first real conversation had been an argument over what Sanjay thought was the silliness of creating likenesses of deceased humans.)