"The version of her on the ship was only an echo?" Gretchen tried not to lick her lips nervously. "Do you think she might have survived the experience? Maybe she woke up later and found her ultralight gone, taken by the copy?"
Hummingbird was nonplussed. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Have you seen something to indicate she survived?"
"I…no, no I haven't seen anything I could swear was real."
"But you saw Russovsky, or something which looked like her." The nauallis gave her a sharp look. "Last night? When the gray was upon you?"
"Afterward," she admitted. "When the gray – the visions – had passed. She helped me up. I felt her hand – a physical hand – in mine!"
"And then?" The nauallis rose and came to her side. His green eyes were tense and sharp. Gretchen could feel him looking at her. The sensation made her skin crawl and she backed away.
"Then – nothing. I was distracted for a second and when I looked back, she was gone. I looked all 'round, but…nothing. Vanished."
"An illusion?" Hummingbird sounded as if he were questioning himself. "The radiance of the gray grew stronger when the flechettes exploded – and then it weakened very quickly, as if being so strong, so solid, exhausted the energy. By the time it surrounded us, there was barely anything left."
Gretchen spread her hands. "Maybe. I have no idea, really. You're the one with the secret knowledge. But tell me this – you stopped, you sat down, you let the 'gray' wash over you. Why? What had you guessed about them?"
"I risked." The corners of the Mйxica's eyes crinkled up. "Such ephemeral things as these, they exist on a very narrow margin. They are parasites. They need to 'eat' with as little cost to themselves as possible. If there is a rich source of what they need, they will flock to it like bacteria growing in the outwash of a factory power plant." One hand moved to indicate the mountain above them. "This is not a rich paradise. This is a desert. Here we are food, not just our bodies, but the exhalation of our breath, the leakage from our recyclers, radiation from our power-packs. The explosion of the bullets from your gun."
Gretchen pressed a thumb against her left eyebrow. A too-familiar tickling was starting to brew behind her eye. Swallowing a trace of nausea, she punched a code on her medband. "So – you're saying our fear and panic were enough to keep them alive."
"Fear," Hummingbird said, giving her a piercing look, "is always the enemy."
Gretchen turned away again, waiting for the chill rush of meds to blanket her rising migraine. Talking to Hummingbird made her very tired. She peered out through the filament, seeing the daystorm had settled into a reddish haze, reducing visibility to almost nothing. She did not feel at all well.
By mid-afternoon, the storm dwindled away into a herd of dusty whirlwinds dancing on the plains east of the Escarpment. A singular hour arrived, wherein the eastern sky was fully light and the air had fallen still. Gretchen and Hummingbird emerged from the overhang to find the ultralights partially buried in blown sand. The east steadily darkened as they worked, clearing a coating of dark cadmium-colored dust from the wings and making sure the air intakes and engines were free of microflora.
The sun passed behind the peaks of the Escarpment and shadow swallowed the camp. Hummingbird and Gretchen were both busy inside the overhang, packing the last of their gear into rucksacks or carrybags, so they did not notice the upper wing of the Gagarin suddenly glow with a soft, diffuse light. The forward edge grew dark for a moment, then pulsed once, then twice. A brief interval of darkness followed, before the phosphor array resumed flickering in a series of bright, sharp pulses.
After a moment, the light dimmed down to nothing, though close examination would show the phosphor array shifting state with dizzying speed. Inside the aircraft, the main panel flickered awake and a number of gauges and dials registered commands passing through the control system. The in-flight data recorder switched on and, after a flicker of conversation between the appropriate subsystems, went into "quiet" mode.
Then everything went dark again, save for the local comm relay, which was now awake and listening for suit traffic.
The Cornuelle
Mitsuharu sat in his office, overhead lights dimmed down to rows of faint orange glowworms. A single hooded lamp cast a circle of sharp white light on the papers, storage crystals and pens covering the top of his desk. A comp panel on the bulkhead was filled with a navigational plot – a bright dot for the ship and five hundred thousand kilometers of asteroid, meteor debris, interstellar ice and dust in all directions. The image had been building for hours, data flowing in slowly from the ship's skin fabric and the newly tuned g-array.
In the dim light, the captain's face was mostly in shadow, head against the back of his chair, eyes closed, thin-fingered hands clasped on his breast. The rest of the room, the stacks of books, the ancient pottery bowls and rice-paper paintings were entirely dark.
A sound recording was playing. Children were singing, their careless voices echoing from the walls of an unseen building.
Kaeru no uta ga
Kikoete kuro yo
Guwa…guwa…guwa…guwa
In the background, the sound of trucks passing on a road mixed with the high, thin drone of a supersonic transport overhead. Dogs barked in the distance and a woman called out. The children splashed in water and sang another round, voices sweet in unconscious harmony.
Ge ge ge ge ge ge ge ge,
Guwa guwa guwa
In his memories, Mitsu knew the building had whitewashed wooden walls and a roof of green iron. Paper lanterns ornamented with pen drawings of birds and flowers hung from the eaves. Inside the house, the floors were glossy dark redwood, with tatami mats and rice-paper screens between the rooms. An old man would be sitting in his study, short white hair lying flat against a sun-bronzed scalp. He would be reading, a book turned into the cool light slanting down between the closely spaced buildings. The study smelled of mold and paper and dust and ink.
Guwa…guwa…guwa…guwa, sang the children in the yard. They were playing with frogs.
On the comp display, another level of detail slowly appeared, etching images of tumbling, shattered mountains of ice and stone and iron ever clearer.
In his memories, Mitsu knew the street in front of the little house was black macadam, potholed and crumbling at the edges. He heard a delivery truck putter past and saw an enameled red panel with the word ASAHI painted in black and yellow. Thick green grass sprouted from every crevice along the sidewalks. The walls of the houses were tinged with moss and tiny blue flowers.
On this day, as the children splashed in the mud, making frog pens of twigs and glass jars from the kitchen, the sun was shining through heavy gray clouds, making the air sparkle and shimmer. To the east, a line of mountains rose, white shoulders gleaming with ice and snow.
The recording ended. After a short pause, the scratchy, keening sound of a bow scraping across taunt gut string emerged from the quiet silence. The shamisen wailed up into the sound of falling leaves. A hand drum began to tap in counterpoint. Mitsu settled deeper into his chair, letting the warm fabric carry the weight of his head. The strings and the drum lifted into summer wind and a reedy bamboo flute joined them, carrying falling rain.
A man's voice – deep, hoarse, rich as the rivers and streams beneath the Golden Mountain, melancholy with longing for a homeland lost beyond the sea – began to sing. One of the musicians coughed, almost covering the sound with the hem of his kimono.