Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (19 page)

“We’d
need someone to monitor the radio for distress calls that could wake the
sleepers at a moment’s notice,” Lou said.

“Prince
Charming protocols,” Zeiss said.

“I’m
not kissing a groundhog on the lips,” joked Sojiro.

“No,
you’d be the Wicked Queen,” Lou countered.

“Boys,”
Red said in a threatening tone. “If you don’t stop heckling, no dessert.”

“Probably
apple strudel,” mumbled Lou.

Grinning,
Zeiss said, “Now Yuki is going to sum up her gravity scans.”

Park
stood to film her presentation. He still watched Yuki’s tour video and thought
a travel video of an inhabited planet would make a nice sequel. At his signal,
she began.

“First
of all, we’re dealing with an extremely small data sample, given that it takes
Daedalus twenty-five of our years to circle the sun once. There’s no way to
predict all the cycles and variations from such a tiny slice. A serious
uplifter would probably observe for a century before deciding an approach. To
complicate matters, we get so close to Labyrinth with the lens that we can’t
see the entire range pole to pole.”

“So
we’re going with the singles’ bar technique of first contact. Got it,” Lou
summarized. “We won’t hold it against you if something changes.”

The
Japanese woman smiled at the analogy but didn’t continue until Yvette
encouraged her nonverbally with a wave of peace through the Collective
Unconscious. A picture of a globe appeared with color-coded, thermal graphs.
“Right. We’ll give you the centerfold data sheet.
At the north pole,
gravity is 1.2 times Earth standard, and about 10 percent less at the equator.
And this girl likes it hot. Over the span of the globe, temperatures are about
seventeen degrees Celsius warmer than Earth counterparts, that’s thirty degrees
Fahrenheit to you Americans. Water only gets to the freezing point in extreme
areas, while everywhere else is hotter than hell—up to 140 Fahrenheit in the
desert. Worse, we can see areas that have been blasted by violent radiation. We
theorize that everything between these two latitudes eventually gets punished
by these surges from Daedalus.”

Auckland gasped. “Nothing could
live there.”

Lou shrugged. “You’d be surprised
how much you find in a desert: bugs, night snakes, some cacti. No mammals in
the daylight, though.”

Yuki said, “Toby theorized that
there may be some radiation-resistant bacteria or underground life, but we
filmed an interesting adaptation this morning on our first high-resolution
sweep.” She changed the picture to an aerial close-up. “We decided to zoom in
on this area first because these rock formations have a sensor signature
similar to coral reefs. We thought it might be evidence of a former ocean. On
time-lapse comparisons, we actually detected movement in these formations.”

The picture resembled a cluster of
giant termite mounds with fronds undulating at the upper rims. Leaning closer
to the screen, Park said, “So the plants sheath themselves in enough rock to
guard against the radiation storms?”

“No clue. I’m not a xenobiologist.
Maybe they just use the radiation and high winds to spread seeds like certain
conifers after a forest fire. All we know for certain is that these coral
plants accrete into mounds over several cycles, and we suspect other life
shelters beneath them.”

“What’s the ground temperature?”
Red asked. “At home it’s 53 Fahrenheit even in winter.”

“Our models and thermal imaging
predict cave interiors would be about room temperature. We won’t know for sure
until we send down our probe.”

The scientists chatted among
themselves, ignoring the lecturer in their excitement. When Zeiss restored
order, Yuki said, “If you’ll excuse the thermal malapropism, this is just the
tip of the iceberg.

“Because of the extreme heat,
Labyrinth has very little exposed water. We’ve seen a few great lakes, but
nothing we’d call a true ocean. We estimate under 20 percent of the surface is
liquid water. We might locate more underground. Sensors pick up a lot of
seismic activity, from tremors to active volcanoes. Daedalus is trying to slow
Labyrinth’s rotation over time as it elongates more. The tidal forces cause
cracks in the crust and frequent eruptions, as well as strong winds and dust
devils. All this violence actually works in our favor. The ash blows into
cracks and adds fertilizer. In some cases, lava pouring into water in these
seams has made jagged land formations similar to Hawaii.”

She shifted slides to a close-up of
the maze-like cracks. The others could see white mist with the occasional fleck
of green. “We’ve barely scratched the surface. Cracks may start as tectonic
activity, but water shapes them. This thermal overlay is the size of the Amazon River Basin and ideal for life. True night is the coldest it gets on Labyrinth, and
we could get by with a long-sleeved shirt. At peak season, the canyons in this
area should only get as hot as an Arizona summer.”

“Atmosphere?” asked Zeiss.

“The cracks are so deep they
sometimes have their own weather. Those white puffs there are actually clouds.”
She zoomed the image so they could see the proof. She dazzled the camera with
her best tour-guide smile. “The green here is chlorophyll.”

“Find the area with the highest
density of green and concentrate our next flyby there,” Zeiss ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

****

Yvette buried herself in nursing
duties, gradually desensitizing herself to traumatic memories of Olympus because people who were worse off needed her. She only screamed once, when Auckland shook her awake in a sick-bay chair.

Since Mercy and Yuki couldn’t walk
to the chapel the next Sunday afternoon, Yvette arranged a commemorative
ceremony for the whole crew on the Olympus patio. Zeiss asked the nurse to open
the event with a brief speech. Surrounded by her peers, including Toby, Yvette
kept the keynote brief. “We’ve come together this morning to celebrate our
discovery of life on another world. Our last gathering on this patio was to
honor our dead and their sacrifices. Now, through our windows, we can see the
fruit of many lifetimes worth of labor—the promised land.”

“The promised land,” the others
repeated as they toasted with apple juice. Even Rachael, the only Jewish crew
member, echoed the words with a smile.

A well-groomed Lou handed Yvette a
basket of tiny flowers. Confined to bed, Mercy had missed the ceremony due to
vomiting caused by a gallbladder attack. The doctor ordered her to eat more
rice and scheduled her for weekly endocrine tests. They had left the doors open
in Olympus so she could hear the speeches. “I picked these for Mercy as a
symbol of renewal after the winter. Hope always returns. She’d like you to
place them in the chapel.”

Auckland nudged his wife, Mayor
Pratibha, to make her own toast. “Actually, I came to see Lou act like an
adult.” Others laughed, but Auckland glared.

Pratibha took a breath and
swallowed her pride. She, too, laid a bouquet in Yvette’s basket. “We’re
grateful for Stewart and the promise of new life he represents for all Actives.
I owe Mercy a debt for her bravery in this matter.” For the first time in
Yvette’s memory, the mayor began to cry. “You all don’t know this, but I’ve
miscarried on this voyage. If Mercy is able to deliver, my husband tells me
that I should be able to carry to term as well.”

Auckland raised his glass and
choked out, “To life.”

Several people, including Rachael,
wrote private messages to stick in the cracks of the chapel walls. After a
wonderful brunch worthy of the Ritz (if the Ritz still used wooden spoons),
Yvette carried her brimming basket back to the well-decorated barn.

Offering a brief prayer of her own,
she began arranging the offerings on the altar. One folded paper caught her eye
because the name ‘Yvette’ had been glued on in multiple sizes and fonts. It
looked like a ransom note made of shredded paper from the recycle bin. Anyone
other than Lou could have slipped the document into her basket. Whoever it was
didn’t want to be identified—by the humans or the aliens? She pocketed the
missive so she could open it somewhere safe from any observation.

Her next chore was in Nadia’s
chicken coop. The birds refused to lay near the places that had been stained by
Yuki’s blood, and the predators seemed attracted by the scent. Yvette pulled
the tainted boards up with a crowbar so that Herk could cut the replacements
needed. The blood-soaked boards would be burned beneath the kitchen oven. Risa
refused to perform any carpentry duty until Nadia used the word ‘please.’ Once
Yvette knew she was alone, she opened the mysterious letter. Inside, most of
the message was pasted together from whole words that had been cut from various
documents.

Ask
yourself: if Mercy’s freezer idea could work for our command crew, what about
the Magi? While we observe the aborigines, are living Magi in a secret room
sleeping? Do they watch a summary of our lives once a week like a soap opera? Is
this the superior society we strive to attain? I cannot declare this publicly,
but I wonder: who is watching the watchers?

Plato

Her new ally was a coward with a
disturbing imagination. It was suddenly very chilly in the shadows, and Yvette
fed the note to the kitchen fires herself in an effort to keep warm.

“I have the best job in
the world,” Yuki said with excitement as she strolled the boardwalk behind
Mercy’s floating wheelchair. Yuki could push her friend around the perimeter
and lean on the chair for support when necessary. “Every day, we find another
small clue.
In the green zone, we discovered the upper canopy of a
multitiered rain forest. It’s so thick, we won’t know what’s in there until the
rover explores.”

Frustrated
by her bed-rest restrictions, Mercy had designed the hovering wheelchair out of
the excess antigravity tiles. The conveyance seemed to work well anywhere in
the main saucer or elevator area, but failed about fifty meters from the base
of the saucer’s umbilical. She could see the trees in the distance, but not
touch them; see the flowers, but not smell their fragrance. She referred to the
chair as her leash. Mercy smiled at the enthusiasm. “Is it really work you love
or something else? You’ve never gushed like this about scanning before. Could
it be the new intimacy you’re sharing with Park via the Collective?”

“I
don’t see people at a distance like you all, but I can feel Woo Jin’s emotions
anywhere in the saucer. Whenever he thinks about me, it gives me this lift. At
night, his concern is like an extra blanket that keeps me warm. I’m . . .”

“Not
alone anymore?” Mercy suggested.

“Happier
than any person has a right to be.”

“It
must be therapeutic because your limp is improving.”

Yuki
grumbled, “I still don’t remember getting these injuries.”

“Rehabilitation
is progressing to Auckland’s satisfaction.”

“It
feels too damn slow to me. I can’t wait for my next trip through the pod when
all this damage can be erased. Park can see me the way I used to be.”

Mercy
placed a hand on Yuki’s. “He already does.”

“Yeah,
well I want to get this fixed before he loses his beer goggles and comes to his
senses.”

“That’s
why you’re so excited about the new discoveries. It means you’ll be launching
the first probe sooner,” Mercy deduced. “You haven’t found any radio signals or
evidence of cities yet?”

“Last
night, we spotted a thin trail of smoke rising from the forest.” Yuki paused,
remembering something her fiancé had muttered in his sleep. “Does the name
Jessica mean anything to you?”

Mercy
burst out laughing. “Lou happened to mention what a bad girl she was. I think
Sojiro called her an insatiable nymph. Every time the guys mention that name,
Park blushes.”

“Oh
dear. So she’s an old fling of his from the Academy that he’s been too ashamed
to tell me about?”

Turning
to stare at her friend, Mercy said, “Honey, she’s
you
, one of your
role-playing characters from just before your accident.”

Yuki
coughed. “Well, I guess I have no right to be jealous.”

Straining
to avoid a smirk, Mercy suggested, “Maybe if he reenacts the session with you,
it might help trigger some of your other memories from that period. You might
even call it medically beneficial. He’d be helping you out, which would be the
gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Well,
a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste!”

****

The
decision for the orbit of the first probe was easy. They called the vessel
Aetos
,
after the giant eagle that served Zeus. Instead of a geosynchronous position
like most satellites, the team opted for a polar orbit. Flying over both the
north and south poles would give them a view of any water trapped there as ice.
Since the moon rotated much slower than the probe would circle, each pass would
view a different, narrow swath on the globe. On a flat map, the paths looked
diagonal and regularly spaced. After the eighth pass, the bands appeared to
crisscross earlier passes. As Labyrinth turned, they would build up a complete
picture of the world.

As
Yuki pushed her friend around the boardwalk, Lou trailed nervously behind. They
voted, and no one thought having a blind man navigate near the 120 meter drop
to the habitat surface would be the best idea. However, Mercy had experienced
false contractions that morning, and Lou refused to be more than a meter from
her side. Mercy sighed. “I have nine weeks left in my chair prison. How long
will you be confined to the landing bay on this mission?”

“An
L day to perform the launch, five L days to collect the data, and however long
it takes you big brains to analyze the data for a decent landing zone. Then
Herk and I will have to wait until we’re in the best position to eject the
second probe.”

“I’ll
lend you my deck of cards to pass the time,” Mercy said. “Who’s going with
you?”

“Risa.
Nadia has been busy analyzing the shimmer armor—that’s what they’re calling the
pyramidal artifact. The new team stole Sojiro from us.”

“What’s
happening with the shimmer team?”

Lou
said, “For about three seconds, they succeeded in making their captured panel
appear clear by projecting the image of the rock wall.”

“Rock
wall?” asked Yuki.

“We
decided outdoor experiments were best,” Lou confided. “The first time we
connected one of our power supplies to the Magi device, we generated a lot of
smoke and Olympus took hours to scrub the air. It still spits and fumes in the
Hollow, but everyone is safer there.”

Mercy
said, “Of course, the moment we proved we could make it work on our own,
Snowflake showed us a new interface. We can project any image from our
computers onto any of the golden airlocks in Olympus using the crystal ball
they gave us to control the lens.”

“Kind
of like getting a bank loan: they’ll only give it to you if you can prove you
don’t really need it,” Yuki complained. Something in what Mercy said resonated—
crystal
and smoke
.

Wincing
at the mention of finances, Lou said, “Did she complain to you about my
spending too much? I bought baby supplies and beer for the party we’ve going to
throw.”

“I
thought we agreed not to spend another month’s allotment before we earned it,”
Mercy said under her breath.

“We’re
going to need a crib and diapers any time now,” he explained.

“And
beer
?” Mercy asked, raising her arms theatrically.

Yuki
sank to her knees, struggling to recall something important. “Crystals. Magi
projectors need crystals inside them.” She inadvertently let go of the wheelchair,
which drifted straight instead of curving with the boardwalk.

Stopping
her forward motion with a sticky strap on the saucer exterior, Mercy asked,
“Why?”

White
clouded Yuki’s vision. “Their electricity is different—liquid circuits and
gemstones. The jewels are the power or the brains.”

Lou
bumped into Yuki’s feet and clumsily felt her forehead. “Are you okay?”

She
whimpered in reply. Smoke and ghosts reminded her of the pain and loss. This
wasn’t the first time Yuki had visited the dark places.

“We’ll
tell Nadia for you.” To shift the topic away from her friend’s embarrassment,
Mercy asked, “What are you naming probe two? Did Zeus have a pet squirrel?”

“Because
the ground is Hades’ domain, and the rover has three camera lenses, we named it
Cerberus
,” Yuki explained.

Lou
said, “In the original form, Cerberus literally means spotted. So even the god
of the underworld named his dog ‘Spot.’ I think a mythological version of
‘Rover’ would have been more appropriate.”

Mercy
chuckled and told Yuki, “When you’re in the landing bay, Z said I can chat with
you up to two hours a day, and we can broadcast the book-of-the-day reading
along the cable so everyone there can listen to it.”

The
Japanese woman said, “You’re probably the best friend I ever had—who didn’t ask
me to do kinky things in the shower.”

Mercy
said, “I want you to come back so you can hold this beautiful baby of mine in
your arms—both of them.”

“That
. . . would be heaven,” Yuki replied.

Later,
during Yuki’s pre-flight exam in the Hollow, the nurse prodded her about
memories before she woke holding the shimmer armor. “Still nothing.”

“It’s
safe to talk here,” Yvette assured her. “The Magi won’t be able to watch under
this roof.”

“Sorry.
I wish I had more.”

“Have
you been reading any
Plato
lately?” The nurse stressed the author’s
name.

“No.
Why? Was I reading that before the accident?”

Timidly,
Yvette said, “Someone contacted me anonymously with a warning about the Magi.
They signed with a quote from Plato.”

“I’d
join that club,” Yuki admitted, “but I don’t have any new information.”

“Please
don’t tell anybody. Whoever sent the message is afraid of being discovered.”

Considering
for a moment, Yuki said, “When Toby was checking my stitches, I saw him reading
something by that author.”

“
The
Republic
?”

“I
couldn’t tell.”

“Why
would he use a pen name?” Yvette asked.

“Maybe
he’s worried you wouldn’t read a note if it came from him.”

“I
wouldn’t.”

Yuki
mused. “Could the information save a life?”

“Possibly.”

“Then
he’d find some way to get the message to you.”

****

The
launch of the
Aetos
probe went without a hitch. However, Mercy had
trouble finding two hours to talk to Yuki where she wasn’t working or on the
comm with Park. For the technical details about Labyrinth garnered from the
probe, she had to wait for the official presentation a few L weeks later in
front of a crowd in the Olympus storage room. The group used the gold door of
the large room to display the video feed from the hangar bay. Mercy pinned a
paper turkey to her chest in honor of American Thanksgiving. She scribbled ‘T
minus 8 weeks’ in the center so people would quit asking her the same question
about her due date.

The
Aetos
report opened with Yuki posed in front of a striking vista of the
Labyrinth surface with all three of the inner moons arcing across the face of
Daedalus. “Sorry about the view. We were hoping to capture all four brother
moons in the sky at once, but Talus is behind the lens.”

“Never
apologize for beauty,” Park said.

This
flustered Yuki a little, and Herk had to announce the date and personnel for
the recording.

Yuki
recovered her anchorwoman persona for the main presentation. “The heart of our
research was the longest and greenest river basin on the world, about the size
of the Amazon. We’ve nicknamed it the Lamazon because we’ve just been slapping
an L in front of every other term to make it apply to Labyrinth.”

The
wall projection changed to a series of green and white cracks in the
orange-tinted desert, ending in a great lake.

“Our
first major discovery is that the atmosphere of the deeper canyons is human
breathable. It’s more like warm soup than air, but we could do it for brief
periods without permanent harm. Due to the intense volcanic activity, the
carbon dioxide and arsenic levels are a little steep for our biochemistry, so
we recommend a filter of some sort for every member of the landing team.
Humidity is high in the cracks, so any shelter we build should be able to cope
with that.

“Some
of the deserts have vast mineral flats reminiscent of Chile that we can tap for our own use as necessary. However, the planners have decided to aim the
rover at a habitable region first to scout for a few potential campsites. We
can tackle the wastes later because we’ve seen no evidence of animal life in
the high desert. Landing on the surface is likely to go unnoticed, but even if
we find a mule trail down the steep canyon walls, it’s not recommended.”

She
shifted to the second week’s film of a small oasis of stunted conifers on the
edge of a canyon. With shallow roots, a furious windstorm snapped them free of
the rocky rim and sent them rolling like tumbleweeds.

Nadia
muttered, “That precludes large-scale wind turbines. At best, we can use some
small ones that can flip into shelter on short notice.”

“Whatever
we build needs to blend into the background so the natives can’t detect it from
afar,” Rachael said. “The hand must not be seen. Remember?”

Yuki
continued as if the others hadn’t spoken. “The rover’s entry vehicle looks like
a soccer ball made of airbags. Dropping that into a jungle blind would be like
a very short pinball game. Even if the rover survived, it might attract
attention. That leaves three methods of access to a canyon—the mountainsides
where the water comes from, the lake where it ends up, or a dead zone with no
trees. Optimum launch window for each is two L days from now.”

She
advanced to a night photograph with several orange dots in a crescent. “Our
favorite lake has a large population of some kind. We know that they burn
fires, but we haven’t seen them. The natives seem to keep to caves or mud homes
with stone roofs. We can’t pinpoint where they are precisely because several of
the caves and buildings in this area have a kind of shielding to the sensors.
We’re not sure why, but the prevailing theory is dust from a meteor shower.”
She focused on a section of the round lake with a series of craters and scars
radiating toward the village. “We call this Meteoropolis. Our best guess is
that metals from the meteors dispersed naturally on impact or that the natives
collected them. Regardless, if we splashed down at night, the natives might see
the landing and investigate. Reflected light from Daedalus and the other moons
is enough to see by. During true night, the thermal signature of the probe may
give us away if natives can sense in that band. When the sun is up, evaporation
from the lake generates a great deal of fog in this region. In the first plan,
we could land during the fog time, if we can adapt the rover to travel
upstream.”