Planetfall (11 page)

SUNG-SOO'S HOUSE IS
complete by the end of the day. We finish just after sunset and an impromptu housewarming party takes place in his empty house. He must think that's all we do here, but before he arrived, there weren't many celebrations in the colony on this scale.

When it's over, I help him clean up and then we end up sitting beneath the central dome's ceiling, looking up at the stars. The design works well.

“Come on,” he says, jumping to his feet.

“Where are you going?” I ask, unwilling to get back up. I'm tired.

“I want to find something that's outside the colony. Now is the perfect time.”

“It'll be easier in daylight.”

“No, it won't. Come on.”

I follow him out of his house and then out of the colony. He's heading away from God's city, back toward the mountains
in the direction he came from. It's after midnight and very few lights are on in the houses we pass.

I'm used to sneaking out after dark, but doing so with someone else lends it an edge of excitement. It feels strange to be heading in the opposite direction of God's city.

Sung-Soo moves with grace and confidence through the tall grasses. He's sure-footed in a way that I'm not; he's naturally poised whereas I have to pay attention to where I'm going. I stumble a couple of times on rocks hidden among the tall stalks and it makes me irritable.

“Where are we going?”

“I saw one on the way here. I'm sure of it.”

I haven't told anyone that I'm striking out into the wilderness with him. Then I wonder why that thought bothers me. He won't hurt me or lead me to my death. I put it down to the unfamiliarity of being with someone else on an excursion and decide to go down to the Masher in the morning, no matter what time I get to bed. The decision calms me.

“Yes, over there—look!” I can barely make out his pointing finger in the pale starlight. “Come on.”

I do my best to look where he pointed but can see nothing except shades of black. I follow and he's moving faster now. The stalks of the grasses snap on my shoes and I lose my footing. Thankfully he doesn't notice. Just as I'm about to ask what the hell we're doing again, I catch sight of something ahead, a shift in the gray and black fabric of the landscape. I speed up in my eagerness to see what it is.

As I get closer, the shimmer I detected farther back resolves into the shape of leaves clustered tight together. They're reflecting the starlight, like the leaves are dusted with glitter. It's too soft to see from a distance but up close it looks quite magical.

“This is it,” Sung-Soo says with delight. “They're easier to see at night.”

I pluck one of the leaves and put it in a pocket to study at another time. Then I remember the botanists and pick leaves for them too. I turn back to the colony in an effort to get a bearing so that I might be able to lead them back to the bush later. It makes me wonder at his ability to have spotted this small plant, mostly obscured by the grasses, while dehydrated and exhausted, and remember it well enough to find it again.

He's scrabbling about in the dirt below the bush and I wonder if he's hidden something there.

“I want to carve again,” he says. “This is the best stuff for it.”

“The roots?”

“No.” He grunts with effort but I can't see clearly enough to know why. I can hear the dirt landing on the grasses nearby as he excavates. “This.”

He stands and holds out his prize: a large lump of . . . something. A natural deposit by the look of it, with the same iridescence of the pendant he wears around his neck. There isn't enough light to make out the colors properly, but I can see they range from light to dark, swirling through the material.

“It's hard, but still soft enough to work with the knife,” he says. “You can always find it underneath this kind of bush. I don't know why. It doesn't kill the plant. If we leave it alone for a few months, another one will grow.”

“Perhaps the root system attracts a mineral . . . or perhaps it's a by-product of some kind of exchange between the roots and the soil,” I suggest. I know ten different people who will want to study it.

“We can go back now,” he says and I see his teeth glint as he smiles.

We return to the colony and say good-bye. Even though my body is so tired, I have no desire to sleep. Perhaps the thrill of discovery has made me too wired or perhaps the mysterious deposit has reminded me of my own mystery left to solve.

Seeing as it seems to be the evening to go excavating, I return to the space beneath the tendril buttress and dig out my coveralls and the hinged metal artifact. I resist a moment of temptation to go on another excursion into the city and instead return home. The clothes no longer smell of the gunk they were covered in, thankfully, and are dry to the touch. I can't be bothered to tidy away the things in front of the Masher chute, so I stuff the coveralls away beneath the pile of stuff waiting to be thrown out when I've got a minute.

Once I'm as comfortable as I can get, I twist the object over and over, working the hinge and feeling the smoothness of the metal pieces. I know it's not part of something printed here or on Atlas, nor a relic left from any of the equipment we took with us on that first expedition. But it was made for some purpose and used by someone who went into that place and left it behind. Was it discarded because it broke? Was it a piece of wreckage left behind after someone else succumbed to that hellish place unprotected?

I call up the virtual replica I created and play around with some additions, but it's like pissing into the dark. Nothing feels right and I don't even know what I'm heading toward with each variation of the design.

Then I decide to go hunting. I access the cloud and start searching in the archives taken from Earth, stashed away like a Noah's ark of data before we left. I create a search algorithm, take a portion of Atlas's processing capacity that's barely used now, and work with the AI to refine the parameters. Then I leave it to scour photos and film for anything that might resemble the
artifact. I instruct it to shortlist candidates and create a 3-D model of each one that I can manipulate in my visengineering software, sending me a daily digest of results, knowing that I'll only get distracted if it pings me throughout the day.

That done, I tuck the metal artifact under my makeshift pillow (I've no idea where my usual one has got to) and invite sleep in.

“WHERE IS GOD
in all this?”

I rest my head against the plasglass as the memory of my mother's disapproval comes to its natural end. Why do I have to think about that every fucking time I come down in the Masher room?

Sometimes I barely notice it, but today my mother's words seem horribly loud. She's probably dead now. I'll never know how or where or when she died and the thought of that makes my throat tight. Was she alone? Was it sudden or slow? Was she even herself at the time or had dementia taken her like so many others?

I pull back from the plasglass and look at the reflected red mark on my forehead before spotting something on the other side of the door. A bundle of wool attached by a length to a half-knitted doll seizes my attention. I knew someone was planning to create something like wool with a plant fiber of the same consistency, but I didn't realize they'd achieved it.

I open the door, retrieve the doll and the unused thread, and untangle them from the rest of the rubbish. The maker must have treated it in such a way to stop it being processed as an organic material, and I'm so glad they did.

The doll is bald and has eyes that are slightly different sizes made of a few tiny stitches. Judging by the blue dress, I assume it's a girl, with brown woolen skin and black shoes. She has only one arm and the second one is nothing more than a few rows of knitting that seem uneven. She was abandoned, unfinished.

“I'll finish you,” I say to her even though I don't have a clue how to knit. But I can learn; no doubt there are thousands of instructional recordings on the cloud. I'll print some needles and finish her arm and make her some hair.

I clutch the doll to my chest with one hand and rummage through the rest of the discarded items with the other. There's another vase with that same printer defect running through it, only worse than it was before. Surely the owner can see it? Why not ping me to come and sort it out?

Perhaps he or she doesn't like me.

I dig deeper and pull out a hair comb with two broken teeth. I could use that. I put it on top of the Masher. And there's a cracked bioplastic wallet that could still hold all sorts of things. That comes out too, along with a mug with a broken handle that could easily have a new one printed and attached. It's not one of the standard patterns. Why throw away something that's clearly been visengineered? Do these people not know how to fix things?

Nothing else appeals to me, so I close the door and try to pick up the collection on top of the Masher with my free hand as I don't want to let the doll go. Just when I think I have a grip on it all, the mug slips from my hand and smashes on the floor.

I stare at the tiny chips and the white chunks, the curved
slivers rolling back and forth. I made it worse. I could have fixed that, but all I've done is destroy it.

For a while I'm just tears and self-hatred. Then there's nothing to do but gather up the pieces—not caring about the stabs and tiny cuts they cause—and dump them in the Masher again. I activate the machine, scoop up the things I've rescued and go home, sniffling.

•   •   •

I'VE
barely had time to find somewhere to stash my new finds and untangle the spare wool when I get a private encrypted message from Mack.

Carmen is at Sung-Soo's house.

I look up at a crack in the ceiling—has that got bigger?—and groan.
Everyone in the colony has been in that house over the last two days.

She's there with the ones who're supporting her in this seed business.

Look, I don't agree with her reasoning, but is it such a big deal if they get the colony to vote on this? It's within their rights. You're not a dictator, are you, Mack?

I sound horrible. I feel horrible. I can't be his emotional Masher chute right now.

I read Kay's report on that thing in his gut. I have no idea if the seed would work properly on him. I don't have time to
test it—I've barely had enough time to build in a mention of his arrival. And I don't have a profile for Sung-Soo; he's not chipped and his life has been too different for me to just make guesses on which messages he'll pick up from environmental cues. If it doesn't work on him at all, we're even more fucked.

He's panicking. The seed ceremony is the central pole that keeps the circus tent up. If Mack's manipulation doesn't work on Sung-Soo, it could all come crashing down. He's perfected the technique over many years, a frighteningly powerful combination of alien chemicals and the exploitation of human neediness, designed to shore up the lies he's been telling since Planetfall. I see his point, but don't share his terror. Should I? Do I just have nothing left in me right now?

I don't know how to respond. It's uncomfortable using the v-keyboard in here and I just want him to go away—I want all of it to go away! I just want to learn how to knit so I can fix this poor—

So you need to go over there and get Sung-Soo away from them. If they convince him he should be the one, there's no way I can go against that. You need to make sure he understands that it has to be Marco.

Is there no other person on this fucking planet who can be your bitch today?

No.

A pause.

And I'm sorry I keep dragging you into this, Ren, but you're the only person I can trust.

I tip my head back and let a guttural cry burst out in the hope it will release some of the pressure inside. I see an image of him on that day, with Lois's gun in his hand and Suh's blood on his helmet, staring at me. “Are you with me, Ren?”

“Oh for fuck's sake!” I yell at that crack and I get up and I leave the house and I know I'm just shoveling another pile of shit for Mack. For decades I've been keeping it all shut away and there's a part of me that just wants to grab him and stand up in front of the colony and say, “This is what we did, and we're sorry and now you know the truth,” but I'm a coward and a failure and there's no way I could do anything that—

I'm at Sung-Soo's door. I slap my hand against the sensor and then realize I have no idea what to say.

The valve opens and Sung-Soo beams at me. Behind him, Carmen peers around to see who it is, and there are a handful of others there, all sitting on the new moss floor.

“Ren! I forgot—I'm so sorry!”

His words throw me. “Um . . .”

He winks. “I'm coming, right now.” He turns around to his guests. “I'm sorry, everyone; I was supposed to go to Ren's house and I totally forgot. How about we see each other another time?”

My God, he's actually using me as an excuse to get away from them! Not the most plausible excuse in the world, but they're not going to call him out on it.

“See you soon,” Carmen says. “And please, do think about what we talked over this morning.”

“Yes, I will,” he says and I walk away a few paces, not wanting to interact with more people than I need to. I give Carmen
a smile and she returns it. I can't tell if it's genuine or not. As long as she doesn't come over and talk to me, I don't care.

When the last guest leaves, Sung-Soo closes up his home and strolls over, waving the group off. He heads toward my house and I rush to his side.

“You don't mind me saying that, do you?” he asks, moving relentlessly closer to my front door.

“No. But you're acting as if it was true instead of a way to get away from them.”

“They're watching us,” he says and waves in their direction. Several wave back. Fuck.

“Once we go around to the front door, we'll be out of sight,” I say. “You don't have to follow through.” When he says nothing, I carry on, fear squeezing words from me. “They were trying to persuade you to take the seed, weren't they?”

“Yes. They really want it to happen.” He shrugs. “They look at me very strangely. Like I'm more special than I am.”

“Carmen can be a bit . . . full-on. Do you agree with her?”

His face crumples with concentration. “I don't know. She says me arriving when I did is a sign. But I decided to come here because of the storm. Does that mean God killed everyone I knew to make me do that?”

The proximity alarm activates and I look away from him so I can select the icon and cancel it.

“Carmen doesn't think things through,” I say. I don't want to bad-mouth her; it doesn't seem right. “And she's not thinking about Marco and what it would mean for him.”

“Do you think I should take the seed?”

“No,” I say. Don't ask me why, I think.

“You don't trust her,” he says as we circle my house to get to the front door.

“Not on this, no.”

And then we're there, right in front of my door, and the conversation halts. “You don't trust me,” he says. “That's why you don't want me to go inside your house.”

Not this, not today, not now. “Mack told you, I'm very private.”

“Everyone else here lets other people into their homes. Why don't you?”

Can he see the sweat on my forehead? I can feel it on my palms.

His eyes—Suh's eyes—watch me, and I can't speak. This is the first time that I've been in this situation. Everyone else learned to be respectful of boundaries on Atlas, when there was so little private space and the need not to kill one another. He hasn't had to embed that in his thinking like we did.

“You want me to trust you more than Carmen,” he says. His voice is gentle and soft, barely louder than the grasses behind us being swished by the wind. “And yet you won't trust me. Where I grew up, if you kept someone out of your home, you were telling everyone they must be a bad person.”

Is that true or is he just saying it to make me feel guilty? Either way, I can't respond. No sensible answer is presenting itself to me.

“I'll tell Carmen that Marco should take the seed, if you let me into your house.”

“What the fuck have those two things got to do with each other?”

“I'll trust your judgment if you trust me.”

I shake my head. He's more manipulative than I'd credited him for. “That's emotional blackmail.”

The look of confusion seems genuine enough. “What does that mean?”

“Making someone do something they don't want to by making them feel bad . . . threatening them if they don't do it.”

The confusion lingers. “I haven't threatened you. And I don't want you to feel bad. I just want you to feel you can trust me. I don't want to hurt you.”

“Then back off.”

“But . . . you being like this . . . it isn't . . .” He looks up as he struggles to express himself. “If you're my friend, like I feel you are, then something must be wrong for you to be like this. You look scared. Why be scared of letting me into your house?”

The impulse to run out into the grasses seizes me and I actually take a step backward before I realize that I can't do that. I can't run away from this, or the colony. There have been so many times that I've wanted to and it always comes down to the fact that there's nowhere else to go. No new town to settle in, no other culture to go and lose myself within. There is only this place and these people and this man standing outside my house.

If I say no, he could turn on me, go to Carmen and pander to her wishes, just to spite me. Would he? I don't know! I don't really know this man!

“Ren—” Now his hand is reaching toward me. “It's okay. Nothing bad will happen. Just open the door. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Just open it and you'll see it isn't as bad as you think.”

If I don't, he'll go to Mack and tell him. Or Kay. He'll tell them how much I freaked out and then they'll come and ask to come inside and I won't let them and then they'll override the lock with the emergency code and go in and they'll see they'll see they'll see—

His hand catches mine. “Please. You've helped me. I want to help you.”

This isn't—he isn't—going to go away.

“Just promise me you won't talk to anyone else about this.”

“I promise.”

It feels like it takes an age to move again and then it seems like I cover the distance between myself and the house in an instant. My hand is over the sensor, like my body is moving in rebellion against my wishes.

The valve opens.

I know what's in there. I'm expecting it and still it feels like a part of me is seeing it for the first time and oh sweet Lord I want to die.