“Come on, Harls! Are people saying I killed the others? Wouldn’t that be kind of suicidal?”
“People are saying,” Harley said, “that you might not have tried very hard to save them.”
“I didn’t want to save Zack Stewart?”
“You mean the guy who kicked you off ISS and ruined your life?”
Dale closed his eyes. This conversation had taken place near the interior wall of the human habitat . . . the one opposite the Beehive. Looking back toward the Temple, three kilometers distant, Dale had been able to see evidence of progress and industry . . . fields under cultivation, small structures built, people moving with purpose.
They had all done well in the first year . . . avoiding starvation and plagues and the sort of conflicts that frequently—automatically?—afflicted small human groups in isolation.
Dale had tried to be part of it. He had wanted to work with the Bangalore magicians Jaidev and Daksha, the geniuses who devised the “poison pill” that killed the Reivers, who then turned their considerable skills to learning and operating Keanu’s proteus printing and fabrication system, turning out everything from T-shirts to coffee cups, from penicillin to sweet corn. He possessed a degree in engineering, didn’t he?
So, it turned out, did most of the HBs. It wasn’t really a surprise, given that the Bangalore Object scooped up staffers from ISRO mission control.
“There’s a huge delta between thinking a guy did you wrong, and killing him.”
“Letting him die,” Harley had said. “But I take your point.”
Accompanied by Camilla, the child Revenant, Zack Stewart had died a hero’s death, carrying a thermonuclear trigger into the deadly core of Keanu in order to reboot its power system. Dale had been so impressed that for several moments, perhaps hours afterward, he had forgotten what a smug, arrogant, entitled prick Stewart was. “I can’t believe that’s the reason no one is talking to me.”
“Some people are talking to you, Dale. I am.” Which was true, but irrelevant. Dale Scott and Harley Drake had too much history to overcome. They would always talk, even if it meant arguing.
“You’re not enough, Harls.”
Harley Drake shook his head, then said, “Okay, it’s more than that.”
“So you acknowledge that I do have a problem.”
“You are no one’s idea of a team player. You are all too willing to let other people work so you don’t have to. You will screw any woman who gives you a moment’s opportunity.
“And, worst of all, I think, you can’t be throwing around terms like haji and camel jockey and expect people of Hindu extraction to like and trust you. I don’t even know what the fuck you were thinking—I mean, camel jockey?”
Dale opened his mouth to protest that he hadn’t used such terms, or wouldn’t if he thought about it, but the camel jockey confirmed it. The automatic use of derogatory terms just came easily to him by nature—nature reinforced by two unpleasant tours of duty in Iraq thirty-five years earlier.
“Can I apologize?”
“I’d recommend it,” Harley said. “I wouldn’t put much hope in a reprieve.”
“So this is some kind of life sentence.”
“It’s a small group with a long memory. All you can do is give it time.”
Giving things time was never one of Dale Scott’s talents. If the HBs were going to isolate him, he would simply withdraw.
And he had . . . ultimately to his great benefit.
Thinking of long-dead Zack Stewart, Dale felt a bit smug and entitled himself as he accompanied Harley and Sasha deeper into the human habitat. As he met the eyes of original HBs and the first generation—yavaki was what they called each other: “young ones”—Dale sensed their defensive pride in their tidy fields and residences, in the cute little walkways and gardens.
Yes, it was nice, but it was also suffocating.
He never understood everyone’s doglike attachment to the human habitat. Yes, it was where they all arrived—and the place that the Architect/Keanu had modified for them. But Keanu was around a hundred kilometers in diameter, and mostly hollow. It could have held twenty equally useful habitats.
Harley had tried to find as many as he could. It had not been easy; up to the week after his arrival on the NEO, to the moment of core reignition, Keanu had possessed a series of subway car–like pods that zipped through the same web of tunnels that allowed nano-goo to flow.
The cars still existed, and still looked as though they were functional, but the control system had ceased to operate. It was as if Zack Stewart’s brave, self-sacrificing reboot had brought Keanu back online in safe mode . . . basic systems like propulsion and life support working, but none of the extras.
So Dale had been limited to the habitats he could reach on foot, which turned out to be four: the Sentry space, which was aquatic and filled with what he considered giant lily pads. And Sentries. Dale had not enjoyed his first visit to the Sentry habitat, when he was in flight and Sentries were the enemy. And while hostilities had ceased by the time of his second visit, it was an oppressive place: wet, damp, smelly.
Adjacent to the Sentries was a dead habitat, one that he and Zack Stewart and crew had crossed in their inner space trek. Poking around in that ruined landscape was fascinating and also bittersweet, because it reminded Dale of his dreams of exploring the Moon—dreams that had largely been killed by Stewart.
Dale had also ventured into the realm of the Skyphoi—that was the way he thought of it—the air-based creatures who communicated by changing colors and seemed blissfully unaware of such mundane matters as buildings or vehicles or, as Dale had proved, visitors.
The Skyphoi habitat was cylindrical in cross section, like the others Dale knew, but was filled with a thick atmosphere and clouds of living things, like airborne algae, and lacked a proper floor. Entering it, Dale had had to descend to the lower hemisphere, an incredibly disconcerting voyage that reminded him of a hike he had taken to the bottom of the Grand Canyon . . . without the charming scenery or the Colorado River.
No alien entity had landscaped the lower half of the Skyphoi cylinder, either, so it was filled with boulders and fissures (even in Keanu’s relatively benign internal climates, weathering still left its mark, especially over a few thousand years) and tons of debris, garbage, and what surely had to be Skyphoi guano.
The smell alone had been enough to cause the intrepid explorer to turn back. Then there was the suffocating, potentially toxic Skyphoi atmosphere.
No, Dale had probably spent more time in the Skyphoi habitat than any human, but the competition was non-existent.
And the Skyphoi remained a mystery, the darkest of the three bad habitats.
Dale didn’t really want to criticize his fellow HBs for their lack of curiosity, but he was pretty sure that he was the only one who had seen them all, who would know much of anything about them, firsthand. At least on purpose.
Not that he was an explorer at heart. His wanderings had been forced. So now he lurked, he skulked. He had—no doubt about it—spent far too much time alone.
But now, today, this moment, he was back among . . . people.
And their unique environment.
They’re here! The outbound Keanu vessel we’ve been expecting entered Earth’s atmosphere early this morning, Perth time, and appears to have landed in southern India . . . likely Bangalore.
We, which is to say Colin, were actually able to track them on approach—a bright streak across the sky, like a meteoroid.
We were unable to intercept any useful telemetry (they may not have been transmitting it or, if so, only in a direct beam to Keanu) or voice, only bursts of what was clearly communication, but likely scrambled.
Of course, this means other parties were surely able to track them, too. And there are indications that someone—guess who?—took a shot at them during final approach.