Festina whirled toward me. Her life force erupted with fury, but with our comms dead, I couldn’t hear the curses she must have been spewing my way.
Then suddenly, we were enveloped in fog. It came from everywhere: from the ground, from the river, oozing from pores in the scrub brush, vomiting from the mouths of insects, distilling from the very air. The cloud had even been hiding on our own tightsuits, nestled into tucks of the fabric, lurking in our belt pouches and backpacks. Now it emerged in a roar of anger, beating so hard on my mental awareness I almost passed out… until in a flash my sixth sense vanished — either burned out from overload or shut down by the Balrog to protect my vulnerable brain from the howling din.
Fog surged and roiled around me, as if clawing my suit with vaporous talons. I couldn’t help thinking of pretas: the hungry ghosts of Bamar folktales, condemned to a realm near the lowest purgatory. They’re spirits of humans who based their lives on greed. In the afterlife, pretas are always ravenous, with huge stomachs but throats so tiny they can never swallow enough food to sate their appetites. Hungry, hungry forever… or at least until they learn something from their punishment and are ready to be born anew.
The pretas of Muta — the smoky cloud — swarmed furiously, just outside my suit. I could imagine dozens of ghosts in that cloud pressing their gaunt, starved faces against my visor, frenzied to devour me. By reflex, I began a protective chant — one I’d used to ward off demons when I was Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. But the fog-things, the pretas, whatever they were, refused to be dispelled. They continued to curl angrily around me, as if they would crush me to paste if only they had the strength.
Festina loomed out of the mist. She touched her helmet to mine so we could hear each other talk. Immediately I babbled excuses for what I’d done: "I realized the cloud — it was out there — it wanted to board Pistachio, I don’t know why — but it was going to go right up the Sperm-tail and I — I’m sorry, but I had to…"
"Of course you did," Festina said. "I’m a fool not to think of it myself. I was just too busy trying to set up the link before we were EMP’d again. I never thought…" She turned her eyes skyward, though neither of us could see anything but fog. "This fucking cloud would have EMP’d the ship dead. Then… I don’t know. Maybe the damned mist wants a way off planet. Maybe it could have taken over Pistachio and used the ship to spread to other systems." She turned her gaze back to me. "Glad one of us was thinking."
"But now we’re marooned."
"Didn’t you always assume that would happen?"
"Yes. Sooner or later."
"Then we’re right where we expected," Festina said. "Mission unfolding according to plan: we land, we get screwed over, we try to survive." She gave a rueful smile. "The story of every Explorer’s life."
"Did you see how the shuttle turned after we…"
"Yes. Li must have stowed away. Probably Ubatu too. And if they landed in one piece, they’re now in Drill-Press. We’ll have to go rescue them."
She looked at me — eye to eye, our visors touching. Her voice came softly through. "Didn’t you expect that too, Youn Suu? Didn’t you guess something would force us to visit the city? And we’ll have to press on till we’ve solved this planet’s problems. Isn’t that what you expected?"
I thought about the avalanche of karma surrounding the woman in front of me. "Yes," I said. "I thought that’s how it would go."
Festina flicked out her hand and slapped me on the side of the head — not hard, but not soft either. "Idiot!" she yelled, loud enough for me to hear, though the slap had knocked my helmet away from hers. She leaned in again. "You’re an Explorer, for God’s sake! Didn’t the Academy teach you life is messy? You don’t necessarily learn the answers. You never tie off all the loose ends. Damned near every time you walk away from a mission, you’re thinking, What the fuck did that mean? Why did it happen like that? And you’ll never know. You’ll never even come close." She scowled at me through her visor. "How can you think this will work out neatly?"
"It won’t work out neatly," I said. "Maybe it won’t work out at all. But we are here to solve Muta’s problems. That’s why I got bitten by the Balrog. That’s why you happened to be on Cashleen. That’s why Li and Ubatu stowed away on the shuttle. And the Academy taught me exactly what it taught you: that an Explorer’s life is messy except when your strings are being pulled by smart, powerful aliens. Then the going gets neat and tidy… doesn’t it, Admiral?"
Festina glared for another moment; then she sighed. "Yes. When the Big Boys choose you as a pawn, they put you onto their chessboard and move you straight into trouble. But only up to a point. I don’t know exactly how the League thinks, but in recent years, I’ve developed a hand-waving theory about the way they treat us lesser beings. They’ll manipulate the shit out of us, without a shred of guilt, to bring us to a crossroads and a life-or-death decision. Then they let the chips fall where they may. The League won’t save your ass if you choose wrong. And there’s no guarantee you’ll like your choices. You might find death the most attractive option. The League doesn’t care much about human lives, but it cares a lot about human decisions. Sometimes I wonder if they deliberately arrange crises to test us. As if what we do in emergencies can answer some question they can’t address on their own."
Silence. Then I rolled my eyes and groaned. "And people call Buddhists superstitious! If you actually believe that old wives’ tale — that humans are needed by semidivine aliens to solve some grand problem that’s too deep for anyone else — honestly, Festina, that’s archaic! Haven’t we outgrown such wishful thinking? ‘Ooo, Homo sapiens may seem insignificant compared to higher species, but we’re actually the only hope for the League’s intellectual completion.’ What’s next, believing in fairies?"
Festina laughed and shoved me away. She made some retort, but the words were inaudible, muffled by her helmet. I found myself laughing too, not because anything was funny, but just from release of tension… and suddenly, the gloom around us was gone, literally as well as emotionally. The EMP cloud shot toward Drill-Press, and we were left blinking in bright afternoon sunshine.
I looked around for Tut. He wasn’t immediately visible, but I finally caught sight of him lying on his back, half hidden by yellow grass. Not too surprisingly, he was naked again; though he’d (mostly) stayed in uniform while aboard Pistachio, Tut apparently had strong nudist leanings. This time, with his tightsuit dead, he hadn’t had the luxury of instant undressing by emergency evac. Instead, he’d wrestled his suit off piece by piece — a strenuous process bare-handed, since disrobing was usually done by robots — then he’d piled component parts into a pillow for his head. When I walked up to him, he smiled and waved but remained where he was.
"Lot cooler like this, Mom. Want to join me?"
I shook my head. Explorers — sane Explorers — have a horror of exposing themselves to the microbes of an unknown planet. Eventually (as I’d already realized), my suit would have to come off. Its near-perfect insulation held in almost every microjoule of heat my body produced; without cooling systems, the interior was already reaching sauna temperature. Thanks to my Bamar genes, I could tolerate equatorial conditions for a while. But not forever. I was steeped in sweat like tea in a pot, all trickles and salt in my eyes.