Rosalind said, “Either I try it at the real site now, or I give up. I’ve practiced as much as I can.”
They voted in her favor, six to two, with only Kate and Frida unconvinced. Joanna would accompany her, since she knew the terrain already.
As they left the tent, Sigrid touched her shoulder and whispered, “Good news. Your brother should be happy.”
Rosalind said, “We should all be happy.”
“We will be,” Sigrid assured her, “when we see the child born.”
When they set out for the geyser for the second time, Joanna was uncharacteristically subdued. Rosalind wasn’t sure what was troubling her, but after a day walking in near silence, she tried to break the mood.
“Are you annoyed that no one went for your ice shoes?” she teased her.
“Not at all,” Joanna replied. “I’m sure the glider’s a better idea.”
“I’ll be careful,” Rosalind promised. “I know how important this is.”
They were halfway through raising the tent when Rosalind felt a cramp in her abdomen. She excused herself and walked away across the ice, getting as far as she could before the pain stopped her, then arranging her clothes to conceal as much as possible and hoping that it looked like she was defecating. She’d thought her body would expel the dead tissue swiftly, and when it didn’t happen within a day or two she’d wondered if she’d somehow resorbed it. But now all three of the shrivelled roots came out, in a rapid succession of bloody convulsions.
She squatted on the ice, shivering, trying to compose herself. Whatever happened at the geyser, at least one child was coming. She’d have a niece to survive her; she had to take solace from that.
By the time she got back, Joanna had finished with the tent and was lying inside, feigning sleep. Maybe she knew about Sigrid, and Anya, and Sophie, and was hurt that Rosalind hadn’t confided in her. But if they started talking about the subject at all, it might be impossible to stop.
“Sleep well,” Rosalind whispered. She laced up the entrance and lay down on the blanket, hoping they wouldn’t be disturbed by the cats.
They veered north as they approached the geyser, following a gently sloping route to the top of the cliffs. Rosalind kept seeing lizards circling the chasm, and if that in itself promised nothing, at least it was more encouraging than their absence would have been.
“Someone took an awful lot of ink from the stores, just before we left,” Joanna said, apropos of nothing.
“Really?”
“You know how much I use, myself. So I couldn’t help noticing what was missing.”
Rosalind said, “We’ll find a good substitute eventually. The right kind of plant resins, the right kind of minerals… people have just been busy with other things.”
Ahead of them, the geyser erupted into the sky. Joanna stopped. “Do you want me beside you on the cliff, or do you want me to hang back?”
Rosalind didn’t know how to answer that. Joanna walked up and embraced her. “You know it might not work?” she said. “I’ve tried to estimate the velocity, and I think it might be close, but it’s hard to make the measurements precise.”
“I know. But I need to try.”
“Yeah.”
Rosalind tightened her hold on her friend and imagined retreating, the two of them walking back to the village together. Then she released Joanna and stepped away. “You should stay here,” she decided. “Just tell the others I got the cuttings in.”
“All right.”
Rosalind turned and walked up the slope toward the cliff. A dozen or so strides from the edge, she took off her pack and began assembling the glider. When it came to the runners she hesitated, trying to decide between the disadvantage of their weight and the protection they offered. She should have made a judgment on that before she even left the village. But she didn’t have time to agonize; habit took over, and she snapped them into place. The ritual, completed, felt right now.
“Don’t look back,” she muttered. She’d lost track of how far away Joanna was, but if she turned for a last farewell it would only be harder for both of them. She put the cuttings in a pouch tied to her belt, strapped the glider onto her back, then ran toward the edge of the cliff as fast she could.
The wind was already behind her, drawn inward and upward by the geyser’s flow. Her feet were barely touching the ground, and as she stepped off the cliff she ascended. Below her, she saw the fractured cone of uncrossable ice spread out in all its glittering, glorious irrelevance; she hooted down at it with delight and derision.
She looked up into a wall of white haze, and twisted the glider, sending it swerving right. This close, the geyser itself was too wide and diffuse to navigate by; she turned back to the ground, taking her cues from what she could still see of the cone through the ice-dust. She was rising faster than she’d expected; all the rehearsals in her head had played out far more slowly.
The cone disappeared, leaving her engulfed in whiteness everywhere she looked. She sent the glider left, and pictured it ascending in an ever-narrower helix. Was she over the chasm? It was impossible to tell. But if she waited any longer, and rose any higher, it would only increase the chance that anything she dropped would be blown aside on its way down.
She opened the pouch and watched the cuttings tumble away; as strong as the updraft was, they were dense and compact enough for their weight to overcome it. Ice was forming on her hands and face; she wanted to grimace, but she was afraid the fragments would cut her, even blind her.
All that mattered now was gaining speed. The whole flow of the geyser couldn’t escape Tvíburi’s gravity, or there would be no cone of fallen ice around it, and no soil added to any of the plateaus. But that didn’t prove that every last particle the geyser emitted fell back to the ground. She just had to find the fastest portion, emerging from the very center of the chasm where friction with the walls had taken the least toll.
She turned the glider cautiously farther to the left, and felt an unmistakable tug as the air and ice-dust pushed harder against the panels. She settled into the flow, leaving her body almost weightless, then tried again, feeling her way into a faster current. There was nothing to see, nothing to guide her, but she found the right direction, over and over, until there was nowhere left to go.
The haze darkened; the sun had gone behind Tvíbura. The ocean below was being forced up into the chasm with as much pressure as it ever would be. Rosalind took a moment to inhale the sweet, rich air. On the ocean floor, the tiniest living creatures fed on an entirely different gas, created by nothing but water and hot minerals, and then exhaled this beautiful waste. If they hadn’t existed, living out their strange lives in that hidden realm, nor would she.
The air grew thinner, and the haze dispersed. Rosalind watched the shadow of her home world racing across the ground. As far as she could tell, she was still ascending; the geyser had given her all it had to offer, and the only question now was whether that had been enough.
She thought about her mother, waiting for news of the first hint of Tvíburian crops. What would she think, when she learned of a very different discovery, closer to home? It might not be apparent who the messenger had been, but there were people who would recognize the smallest quirks in the style of any glider. Then again, that much of the structure didn’t need to survive the landing; only the message itself had to arrive intact.
By the time the shadow sped away below her, the whole of Tvíburi had shrunk to the kind of disk she’d seen from the top of the tower. Inasmuch as she could discern her own motion at all, she was traveling west far faster than she was ascending; though she’d shared the speed of the rotating ground when she’d departed, this high up she would have needed a much greater eastward velocity to remain above the same spot. But fleeing to the west also meant fleeing Tvíbura. She might have crossed the line where it would still capture her; it might be slowing her escape at an imperceptible rate that would still be sufficient in the end. Or she might be destined to return to Tvíburi, far from the geyser, with nothing to do but start the long walk back to the village.