Planetfall (9 page)

I link my camera feed to the communal stream and ping each of them an invite to share. A hush descends as they all watch what I can see.

“That mountain on the right,” Suh says. “The highest peak. Head toward that.”

I check the data and it's the direction we need to go anyway. The shuttle changes course slightly and the peak swings into the center of the view.

“Switch to manual, Ren,” Suh says.

“Why?”

“Because it should be one of us who brings us in, not a machine.”

SUH GUIDES US
over the top of the mountain range, above the place now called Diamond Peak. The rock drops away from its topmost point, sweeping down to the grassland plain below like the folds of a gray gown dragging against a green carpet.

I minimize the overlaid flight controls from my vision, knowing we're on a stable flight path for a few minutes at least. I want to see it like my crewmates do.

Then I look up from staring at where the rock meets the plain and see God's city ahead, rising from the grasslands a few kilometers away like a bizarre black flower from a giant lawn.

No one says a word. There is nothing to be said at the sight of so many answers and so many questions encapsulated in one structure. The fact that humanity debated whether life on other planets existed for so long has finally been proven ludicrous.

“That's it.” Suh finally breaks the silence, as only she could. “That's God's city. That's where we need to go.”

“Set down half a click away from it,” Mack says.

I reopen the shuttle interface and tap the appropriate places in my v-field, identifying the best place to set down. The flurry of activity caused by a manual landing distracts me enough to calm down again and roots me back in the practical.

(There's a lull in the barrage of recorded emotions and I'm able to ready myself for the next part. I remind myself to see
through
rather than simply see again and to look closely once we land. I become aware of an ache in my hands, still clasped so tightly together, and try to separate out the movements of my hands in the recording and the desire to separate my palms from each other now. I'm not even sure I've done it when my attention is snapped back to the recording.)

It's a good landing with no reported damage from either the craft or the crew. There are no congratulations, however; we're all too fixated on the structure in front of us for it even to register.

I fumble with the straps, unable to see them very well through the curve of my helmet, and then call up the data gathered by the environmental equipment on the way down.

“It's 21.5 degrees Celsius with 34 percent humidity and the atmosphere is near as dammit to Earth's,” I report. “We could breathe out there.”

“But we're not going to, remember,” says Winston. “I don't care what the temperature is or how friendly the air is; no one takes off their helmet, gloves or exposes any of their skin to the native environment.”

We all agree. There's no way I'd be tempted anyway, but it's the kind of shit Lois would do for a dare. She's been quiet though. Mack was worried she'd be bantering and being a jackass all the way through the mission, but she's just as awed as the rest of us.

“Open the door, Ren,” Mack says and I do so.

I'm the last one to emerge and take my place with the rest of them, staring up at the alien structure.

“I can't see anything that looks like guns or weapons or defenses,” Lois says. “But to be honest, I wouldn't know what the fuck anything that thing uses to defend itself would look like.”

“Any signs of people?” Mack asks.

“Not yet,” she replies. “But they must know we're here, right? I mean, they're waiting for us, right? Right?”

Suh rests a hand on her arm. “Everything's going to be fine. We're expected.”

“Okay, let's get ourselves sorted out and then we'll go and take a closer look,” Mack says. “Ren, stay with the shuttle.”

“What!?”

He laughs. “I'm joking, I'm joking.”

I manage a smile before helping to open the compartment holding all the equipment.

(This is it, the part I've been waiting for. Did any of them bring something else along not listed on the flight manifest? Some lucky object or—)

The crate is heavy but not more so than on the ship. “It's one G here, isn't it?” Hak-Kun asks and I nod.

“It's so similar to Earth,” Lois says. “That can't be a coincidence.”

“It might not be as meaningful as you might think,” I reply as Hak-Kun opens the crate and begins to pass out containers to the relevant people. “It might simply be that life of the kind we're used to can only flourish within certain parameters, so the results are familiar without there being some sort of intelligent design behind it.”

“I thought you were a believer, Ren,” Mack says.

“I'm also a scientist,” I fire back, irritated with his mocking tone. “They're not incompatible.”

(It's easy to tune out an argument with Mack; I've had so many over the years, freeing my attention to look at what everyone is taking out of the containers. It's mostly small boxes with sensor prongs sticking out of them, and in Lois's case a small gun that leads to a brief argument between her and Mack, which she wins. But there's nothing I can see that explains the metal artifact.)

“Is everyone ready?” Suh asks. “Okay, then. This is it.”

She walks off, striking out toward God's city, and I stand there longer than the rest, watching her back as she walks away from me, tiny beneath the twisting black tendrils and pods, forging the last path of the journey.

(I know this is the best place to pause the footage, but it's hard to shut it down and no longer see her. It's like sticking a fingernail into an old cut that's bleeding once more. But I know what happens soon afterward and I simply cannot relive that again.)

“Stop footage,” I say out loud and I'm back in my house, wedged in and aching. My throat is raw and the fabric over my chest is wet with tears that dripped unchecked. I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand and tackle the gunk in and below my nose with another T-shirt lying within reach. I realize it's one of Kay's tops. I never had any intention of returning it anyway, even though her scent left its fibers long ago.

Exhausted, I rest my head against the stack of fabric beside me and realize, with a sense of utter wretchedness, that suffering that day again has brought me no closer to a solution. I have to conclude that unless one of the crew smuggled something down to the surface (highly unlikely as it wouldn't have been fully decontaminated), that bit of metal didn't come from one of us.

There is a limited set of logical explanations, and none of them satisfy me.

One is that someone else from the colony has been visiting God's city secretly, as I have. The only person I know who's been back there since that first day is Mack, and I know for a fact that he hasn't been back into that particular section again. I can't imagine anyone else breaking the rules, but I do, on a regular basis, so I have to entertain the notion that someone else has too and that they left something behind.

There's another possibility: someone else came to God's city before us. For that to be true, it wouldn't be someone else from Earth, as we were most definitely the first to achieve interstellar travel on that scale. The risk that someone could improve upon the technology Suh developed and beat us to our destination was a concern of mine right from the start of the project. When Mack came on board he fought with Suh over patents and her desire to help humanity as well as reach this planet. In the end they agreed to lock away secrets within a capsule, protected by several gov-corps, to be opened forty years after we left. Suh got to feel she had left something useful behind and Mack and I were satisfied no one could beat us here. Unless something went wrong with that capsule—unlikely considering the amount of international red tape Mack wrapped it up in—we are the only people to reach this place from Earth. If someone else was inside God's city before us, it would have to be someone from another civilization.

I shiver. Were there others who, like us, came seeking God?

THE QUESTION STALKS
me all the way to Mack's house. I can't mention it to anyone, not even Mack, which makes it feel even bigger. At least it's enough to distract me from the emotional aftershocks still rippling out from the footage. I just hope that my face isn't too puffy from the crying.

I press my palm to the sensor at the side of his door and it opens. The smell of omelets turns my stomach as I enter and Sung-Soo looks up from an almost empty plate, grinning at me. His clear delight at my arrival is jarring. Some part of me is still stuck over twenty years in the past. I should have given myself more time to recover.

“Want one?” Mack calls from the kitchen.

“I'll have a shake,” I call back.

“Can we start now?” Sung-Soo asks through a mouthful of egg.

Mack peers around the door into the living room. “Ren, please start—he's driving me mad.”

“Okay. Give me access to your projector.” I sit on the sofa as Sung-Soo gobbles down the remainder of his breakfast. I try not to think too much about the thing in his gut. “So, there's a much easier way for you to get an idea of people's houses,” I begin and call up the interface to Mack's projector. “All the plans for each house in the colony are stored on the public server. I'll bring up some 3-D reps here for you to take a look at. Then you won't have to ask anyone if you can look inside their house.”

Mack enters with my breakfast and sets it down next to me as I call up the files. “Though I'm sure people won't mind if you did want to do that.”

Sung-Soo looks at me pointedly and Mack laughs. “Ren isn't people.” He pats my arm affectionately. “She's very private.”

I keep quiet and the moment passes soon enough. “Okay, here we go.”

The plan of Mack's house appears in the air above the fire pit, rotating slowly in a translucent gray. Sung-Soo yelps and his plate and cutlery fly into the air as he leaps back, knocking his chair to the floor.

“Shit, I'm sorry.” I shut it down. “Sorry, I should have warned you.” I should have known it would frighten him; the pods weren't fitted with projectors. They were designed to reach the planet's surface and give people temporary shelter. There was no room for anything as frivolous as entertainment systems.

Sung-Soo picks up the remains of his breakfast, apologizing too, as Mack reassures him that no harm is done.

“That was a ‘projection'?” Sung-Soo asks, using the word carefully.

I nod.

“My father talked about them. I didn't know what they looked like.”

The image of Hak-Kun lifting the crate and asking about the gravity here returns with far too much clarity. Now I see him in Sung-Soo's face, instead of just Suh. I still don't see Lois though. I'd never have guessed she was his mother. He never mentions her and with a shiver I wonder if it's because she died when he was very young.

“Put it back on,” he says.

The image returns and he approaches it, this time with fascination and quiet delight. I sit back as Mack shows him how to use his hands to interact with the images. Sung-Soo laughs as he expands and contracts them, gasps as he selects sections and brings them out from the whole object to inspect more closely. He reacts with the purest joy when shown how to move from the plans of one house to the next, effectively gaining insight into the whole colony with just a sideways swipe of his hand. He's enchanted by the technology in a way I never could be again.

Mack steps back and gives him a few moments to see if he's got to grips with the interface. When he sees he has, Mack looks at me and inclines his head toward the kitchen. I pick up the shake and follow him in, making myself drink some of it on the way.

“It's Carmen,” Mack says, sotto voce.

“Is she stirring up trouble?”

He leans against the countertop, nudging the frying pan with his backside. He's a purist; he likes to cook with base ingredients rather than printing a complete meal. He's one of those people who says he can taste a difference and is happy to waste hours every week to achieve it.

“More than that. She's tracking my movements. Secretly. I only know because I ran a check on her activity.”

Mack is one of the handful of people on the colony with
the clearance to check that sort of information. Carmen should know that it's impossible to keep tabs on him without the chance of being found out.

“She can't be thinking straight,” I say. “Surely she knows you'd find out.”

“Maybe she doesn't care,” Mack replies, his arms folded and hands tucked into his armpits, drawn tight into himself. “Maybe she wants me to know that she's doing it.”

“But why?”

“Because she thinks I'm going to break the rule and go to see Marco. To warn him maybe, or coach him in what to say to her when the ceremony is about to start. I don't know.”

I shrug. “So what? You weren't planning on doing that, were you?”

He tuts. “Ren, think about it. There is somewhere I need to go in the next week and Carmen mustn't know about it.”

He stares at me, raising both eyebrows. I'm lost and shake my head to indicate that. He sighs. “I need to put the seed in place. If she sees me going into God's city . . .”

He doesn't need to finish the sentence. “Oh fuck,” I whisper.

“That's why you need to do it for me.”

I step away, holding my hands up. “Oh no—no way, Mack!”

“You have to!” he hisses, closing the distance between us until he's only inches from my face. “You're the only other person who knows and—”

“I won't do it.”

He grabs my shoulders. There's no aggression, just desperation, but it still upsets me. “So you're happy to let this happen, every year, as long as you don't have to touch it? You think you're less involved? That's bullshit! You can't just choose to stand and watch the whole of your life and let others do what you're not brave enough to do yourself!”

“I never wanted this!” It's hard to keep my anger confined in a whisper. “Just because you couldn't do it without confiding in me doesn't make me complicit!”

“You never stopped me.”

“How could I? You put it all into place before I had the chance to—”

“That's bullshit, Ren. You had the chance, several times, but you know how much the colony needs this. If that seed isn't there, they'll think they've been abandoned. Do you want them to feel that?”

I shove him away from me, wanting to push away the way he's making me feel as well as his physical presence. I cover my face with my hands, needing a moment with something between us, as if the skin and bones could shield me from his glare. “Perhaps we should tell them the truth.” I speak into my palms, but he can still hear me.

“Are you out of your fucking gourd?” I can feel his breath on the backs of my hands. “This place would collapse. We can't tell them anything, about the seed or about his”—he jerks a thumb toward the living room—“bloody father or any of it.”

“You're just afraid.”

“Of course I fucking am! They'd kill us, Ren.”

I lower my hands.

“Yes.
Us
. We just have to get through the ceremony, settle Sung-Soo in and it'll quiet down again. You have to help me keep all this together.”

He looks frightened. I wonder if I look the same. Would they kill us? I don't know; it's impossible to predict, but he's right about everything falling apart.

I sag. “You'll have to show me where to go and how to get there without going inside.”

He breathes out at the sound of my implicit agreement. “Of
course. I'll do everything I can.” He pulls me into a tight embrace and even though I didn't invite it, I accept it, resting my head against his shoulder.

“Is everything okay?”

Sung-Soo's voice at the doorway makes me jump and instinctively I move to break the embrace, but Mack keeps hold of me.

“Ren had a nightmare last night,” he says. “She was just telling me about it and needed a hug. We all do, sometimes.”

He kisses the top of my head and lets me go. Sung-Soo's sympathetic expression makes me feel sick with nerves and self-hate.

“I know what kind of house I want,” he says after a beat. “Can we start now?”

At last, something practical I can lose myself in! “Of course we can.” I smile. Perhaps building something real is the answer.