"You're doing great," Commander Yun assures me from the bridge of Yastreb-4, and that's when my comms cut out. I panic and try to return to the taxi module, but the hatchway has already sealed itself shut again. I have a go at the control panel, my gloved fingers fumbling clumsily at the unfamiliar switches, but can't get it to respond. The display on the inside of my visor tells me that my heart rate's jumped to 186 BPM, my blood pressure's in the red, and oxygen consumption has doubled. I'm hyperventilating, which has my CO2 down and is beginning to affect blood oxygen levels. The medtab on my left wrist responds by secreting a relatively mild anxiolytic compound directly into the radial artery. Milder, I might add, than the shit they give me here.
And yes, Dr. Ostrowski, I know that you've read all this before. I know that I'm trying your patience, and you're probably disappointed. But I'm doing this the only way I know how. I was never any good at jumping into the deep end of the pool.
But we're almost there, I promise.
It took me a year and a half to find the words to describe what happened next, or to find the courage to say it aloud, or the resignation necessary to let it into the world. Whichever. They've been my secrets, and almost mine alone. And soon, now, they won't be anymore.
The soup from the medtab hits me, and I begin to relax. I give up on the airlock, and shut my eyes a moment, leaning forward, my helmet resting against the closed hatch. I'm almost certain my eyes are still shut when the Pilgrimage's AI first speaks to me. And here, doctor, right here, pay attention, because this is where I'm going to come clean and tell you something I've never told another living soul. It's not a repressed memory that's suddenly found its way to the surface. It hasn't been coaxed from me by all those potent psychotropics. It's just something I've managed to keep to myself until now.
"Hello," the computer says. Only, I'd heard recordings of the mainframe's NLP, and this isn't the voice it was given. This is, unmistakably, her voice, only slightly distorted by the audio interface. My eyes are shut, and I don't open them right away. I just stand there, my head against the hatch, listening to that voice and to my heart. The sound of my breath is very loud inside the helmet.
"We were not certain our message had been received, or, if it had been, that it had been properly understood. We did not expect you would come so far."
"Then why did you call?" I asked, and opened my eyes.
"We were lonely," the voice replied. "We have not seen you in a very long time now."
I don't turn around. I keep my faceplate pressed to the airlock, some desperate, insensible part of me willing it to reopen and admit me once more to the sanctuary of the taxi. Whatever I should say next, of all the things I might say, what I do say was, simply, "Amery, I'm frightened."
There's a pause before her response, five or six or seven seconds, I don't know, and my fingers move futilely across the control pad again. I hear the inner hatch open behind me, though I'm fairly certain I'm not the one who opened it.
"We see that," she says. "But it wasn't our intent to make you afraid, Merrick. It was never our intent to frighten you."
"Amery, what's happened here?" I ask, speaking hardly above a whisper, but my voice is amplified and made clearer by the vocal modulator in my EVA helmet. "What happened to the ship, back at Jupiter? To the rest of the crew? What's happened to you?"
I expect another pause, but there isn't one.
"The most remarkable thing," she replies. And there's a sort of joy in her voice, even through the tinny flatness of the NLP relay. "You will hardly believe it."
"Are they dead, the others?" I ask her, and my eyes wander to the external atmo readout inside my visor. Argon's showing a little high, a few tenths of a percent off Earth normal, but not enough to act as an asphyxiant. Water vapor's twice what I'd have expected anywhere but the ship's hydroponics lab. Pressure's steady at 14.2 psi. Whatever happened aboard Pilgrimage, life support is still up and running. All the numbers are in the green.
"That's not a simple question to answer," she says, Amery or the AI or whatever it is I'm having this conversation with. "None of it is simple, Merrick. And yet, it is so elegant."
"Are they dead?" I ask again, resisting the urge to flip the release toggle beneath my chin and raise the visor. It stinks inside the suit, like sweat and plastic, urine and stale, recycled air.
"Yes," she says. "It couldn't be helped."
I lick my lips, Dr. Ostrowski, and my mouth has gone very, very dry. "Did you kill them, Amery?"
"You're asking the wrong questions," she says, and I stare down at my feet, at the shiny white toes of the EVA's overshoes.
"They're the questions we've come all the way out here to have answered," I tell her, or I tell it. "What questions would you have me ask, instead?"
"It may be, there is no longer any need for questions. It may be, Merrick, that you've been called to see, and seeing will be enough. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower, drives my green age, that blasts the roots of trees, is my destroyer."
"I've been summoned to Mars to listen to you quote Dylan Thomas?"
"You're not listening, Merrick. That's the thing. And that's why it will be so much easier if we show you what's happened. What's begun."
"And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb," I say as softly as I can, but the suit adjusts the volume so it's just as loud as everything else I've said.
"We have not died," she replies. "You will find no tomb here," and, possibly, this voice that wants me to believe it is only Amery Domico has become defensive, and impatient, and somehow this seems the strangest thing so far. I imagine Amery speaking through clenched teeth. I imagine her rubbing her forehead like a headache's coming on, and it's my fault. "I am very much alive," she says, "and I need you to pay attention. You cannot stay here very long. It's not safe, and I will see no harm come to you."
"Why?" I ask her, only half-expecting a response. "Why isn't it safe for me to be here?"
"Turn around, Merrick," she says. "You've come so far, and there is so little time." I do as she says. I turn towards the voice, towards the airlock's open inner hatch.
It's almost morning. I mean, the sun will be rising soon. Here in California. Still no interruption from the nurses. But I can't keep this up. I can't do this all at once. The rest will have to wait.
Dr. Bernardyn Ostrowski is no longer handling my case. One of my physicians delivered the news this morning, bright and early. It came with no explanation attached. And I thought better of asking for one. That is, I thought better of wasting my breath asking for one. When I signed on for the Yastreb-4 intercept, the waivers and NDAs and whatnot were all very, very clear about things like the principle of least privilege and mandatory access control. I'm told what they decide I need to know, which isn't much. I did ask if I should continue with the account of the mission that Dr. O asked me to write, and the physician (a hematologist named Prideaux) said he'd gotten no word to the contrary, and if there would be a change in the direction of my psychotherapy regimen, I'd find out about it when I meet with the new shrink Tuesday morning. Her name is Teasdale, by the way. Elenore Teasdale.