Authors: Niko Perren
Pandemonium. A dozen people leapt to their feet, their panicked cries drowning out the remaining words. “I’m Senator Friezen. I want immunity in exchange for my testimony.”
“Me too! I also have evidence. I’ll testify for immunity.”
Juarez looked at the Terillium President, her face twisted with betrayal. “Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this Eduardo? We would have made you rich.”
“I signed up to profit from a catastrophe I felt was inevitable, Isabel,” he said. “I didn’t sign up to create that catastrophe. When I saw what people are willing to sacrifice – people like Tian Jie and Tania Black – I couldn’t look my children in the eyes anymore.”
‹JIE, WE’LL BE HONEST. Your situation is not good. You don’t have enough fuel to get into an orbital trajectory. And we don’t have a vehicle that can intercept you in time. You’re moving too fast. But we do have one possible solution.›
Hope? Jie tried not to let it shine too brightly. Of course they have something. They always have something. Like the doctors dealing with his grandfather. Always presenting one more option, so that everyone could cling to the shared illusion that there was still a reason to fight.
‹What’s your plan for cheating physics?› asked Jie.
‹The main engine is mounted on a metal plate outside of the heat shield,› said the controller. ‹Instead of detaching the engine mount and going straight to reentry, we’re going to do an aggressive aerobraking pass through the upper atmosphere with it still attached. With luck, it’ll act as a second, temporary heat shield, absorbing 25% of your velocity as it melts away. When you exit the atmosphere at the end of the aerobraking, we’ll detach what’s left of it. And then, when Earth’s gravity pulls you back in, the real heat shield should be able to slow the rest of your descent.›
Jie peered out the window at the welded metal platform. That’s my heat shield? ‹There’s no better plan?›
‹There’s not even a worse plan,› said the controller.
‹Let’s do it then,› said Jie.
The freefall descent continued. Every few hours a warning sounded, followed by a few seconds of thrust as the controllers tried to milk every newton of braking force out of the Earth-moon system’s gravity fields. But overall, Jie’s trajectory continued unchanged, an accelerating plunge. He passed the hours talking: to Cheng and Zhenzhen. To Sally.
He streaked through the moon’s orbit, but the cratered ball was on the other side of Earth, a tiny white marble in the distance. It would have been nice to use the moon’s gravity for braking. It would have been nice to see it up close one last time. But it was not to be.
And as fast as his descent now was, it seemed that on Earth events were developing with ever more rapidity. The Chinese government, realizing that President Juarez was a toxin they could ill afford to be associated with in the next election, announced that they were putting their support behind Pax Gaia. They even offered to provide technical expertise to Tania’s team to help them operate the shield initially. In Delhi, a million marched, wearing masks against the radioactive dust. In London, banner-wielding 350-protesters shut down the city for two days. In the United States, tanks roamed the streets of Washington as the last of the Juarez loyalists were arrested in what had nearly become a civil war.
Tania called him two hours before reentry.
“Our final obstacles just fell,” she said. “The US Congress has agreed to a Pax Gaia referen-dum, Jie! Chinese style. Everyone can vote, but people who pass issue awareness tests get an extra ballot.” Her voice bubbled with enthusiasm. “Even the skeptics now say that Pax Gaia is what they wanted all along. We did it! You did it.”
Earth filled the window now, a multi-colored patchwork of extraordinary depth and texture. The whole planet seemed alive, from the drifting clouds to the hundred shades of green vegetation. “What will happen tomorrow?” Jie asked. “When excitement wears off, and people realize we have to do hard work?”
“It’s going to be painful,” said Tania. “Sulfuring was our last good path to stability, and we were too short-sighted to take advantage of it. And there’s a lot of ugly politics behind our victory. I did things I’m not proud of. The system does that. Sucks you in.” She smiled. “But I think we have a chance. If we keep Pax Gaia pure. Keep money away from the decision making.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Jie. “But I may not be around to see it. Will you keep in touch with Cheng? If I do not come home?”
Tania’s smile became forced. “What are you talking about? You’ll be celebrating with us in a few hours.”
“Rajit explained the odds to me,” said Jie. “Please. Just promise. Zhenzhen is amazing, but she’ll be raising him alone.”
Tania nodded. “I’ll help him any way I can,” she said solemnly. “Even if he gives up on insects.”
***
‹Jie, you are twenty minutes from first contact with the atmosphere. Check for loose equipment and strap yourself in. This will get rough.›
Jie cinched the food boxes to the floor, then lay back on his couch and tightened the harnesses. Helmet on. Gloves. His heart pounded the minutes away.
‹We’re starting your final deceleration burn in five, four, three, two, one.›
Gravity returned, a steady 1.3 Gs for several minutes as the spacecraft burned its remaining fuel to stay on the razor line between destruction and freedom. With a sputter, the engines died and weightlessness returned.
Minutes passed. The spacecraft’s blunt end tapped the atmosphere. A tremor. So small he might have imagined it. Then another. And a third, bigger. The spacecraft started vibrating. The deceleration’s force rattled Jie in his seat, a growing violence. His head banged inside his helmet as if some angry giant were shaking him. Bang! Something smashed off the window. Red sparks of molten metal streaked past as the impromptu heat shield melted and twisted away. Jie’s senses blurred into an incoherent overload.
BANG!
A violent shockwave blasted through the fragile spacecraft. The vehicle started spinning, careening through the atmosphere. Jie closed his eyes, bracing for the flames. It’ll be over in seconds. And then the shaking wasn’t as bad any more. Earth strobed outside the windows as orientation thrusters popped out synchronized bursts to stabilize the tumbling vehicle. Jie fought back his stomach bile. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. The vibrations ceased.
I’m alive! I’m through the atmosphere!
‹Jie, are you still there?›
‹Yes!› His whole body was shaking. ‹Did I make it? How does my trajectory look?›
‹We're running it through the computer. Can you do a visual inspection?›
Jie closed his eyes, letting the adrenaline settle. Maybe I will see Cheng again. He undid his safety belt. His eyes landed on the window. A deep gouge radiated hairline cracks which extended to the edges of the diamond-coated glass.
What sort of impact could do this much damage? ‹Earth, I experience a hard impact on the ERV just before exiting the atmosphere. It seems to have damaged the glass.› Jie pointed his suit camera at it.
‹We see it. Can you get us a visual on the heat shield?›
Jie glided to the porthole. The lunar departure stage and meteorite foil were gone, leaving only streaks of blackened metal on the capsule’s shell. The primary heat shield hung in splintered ruins. He pointed his camera through the glass. Not that it was necessary.
‹How long do I have?› Jie asked numbly.
‹You’ll reach your apogee in ten minutes,› said Earth. ‹You’ll hit the atmosphere in twenty-two.›
***
‹Jie?›
‹Sally, good to hear your voice one last time. Tell Rajit his calculations were correct. You can’t cheat physics.›
A sob. ‹I just kept hoping – that maybe somehow…›
‹Thank you for being so kind to me…› said Jie. ‹You helped me through this all.›
‹It wasn’t hard,› said Sally. ‹I love you, Jie.›
‹We’d have made an interesting couple,› said Jie. ‹I would have planted a garden for you. Bought house plants. Danced at the Yuri’s night parties. I…› His tongue caught on the words. Don’t be a coward now. Not after all this. I’m never going to get another chance to tell her. ‹I love you too, Sally. And now I’ve got to go. I want to spend my final moments with Cheng.›
‹I understand,› said Sally.
Jie checked his helmet, out of habit more than necessity, then pressed the depressurization button next to the hatch. The suit tightened around him as air hissed out of the cabin. He switched to the Earth channel.
‹Hi, Cheng.›
‹Daddy?› Tears choked Cheng’s voice.
The hissing stopped, and Jie pulled the hatch loose and let it drift behind him. No need to secure it. The low air light on his suit blinked. Also irrelevant.
‹I wish I could see the great man you’ll become,› said Jie.
‹I’ll study really hard,› said Cheng. ‹I promise. I’ll become an engineer, just like you.›
Jie laughed, even as his eyes moistened. ‹I’d be much happier if you do what you love,› he said.
He leaned out of the hatch, catching his breath. Funny. I’m going to die in minutes. Yet I’m still scared of heights. The earth was not a globe anymore, but a huge expanse that filled the sky, curved only at its edges. A desert stretched below him, endless rows of parallel dunes catching the morning sunlight. White cloud puffs cast long shadows across the land, and in the distance, ranges of snow-capped mountains formed a wall around the sand. Eastern China? The Taklamakan? The sun rose as he plunged onward.
‹Are you all seeing my suit camera?›
‹It’s beautiful,› said Zhenzhen.
‹Best seat in the house,› said Jie. With a gentle push, he let go of the spacecraft.
On the horizon the Chinese coast spun magnificently into view, a patchwork of cities broken by clumps of agricultural land. Are the leaves turning yet? Are there birds? All those years, and he’d never taken the time to admire the beauty around him. He’d never even been to the Great Wall. If I could have one more day. Smell real air again. See another shark.
‹You’ll have to finish the adventure without me, Elf. This is your planet now.› The blue world blurred, tears for the beauty, as well as the sadness. The first fingers of the atmosphere tugged at his suit. Welcome home, Jie. Welcome home.
Fifty years later
CHENG, TANIA, AND Ruth raced west along a dirt road lined with crop-heavy fields. A glowing orange ball of sunshine rose out of the humid African morning, chasing a full moon behind the lush green mountains on the horizon. Five years ago Tania might still have avoided the early departure by spending a night on the bunk beds in the park, but stem-cell joint replacement and telomere extenders could only fight back time so far. I’m old. The hotel in Kasindi had a swimming pool. And a good restaurant.
Has it really been fifty years since we signed Pax Gaia? The faded memories scarcely belonged to Tania anymore. The story had become legend, the messy battles transformed to 90-minute movies played by fresh-faced software avatars. And Tania’s involvement in the politics had ended decades ago.
All that remained were the friendships.
As if reading Tania’s mind, Ruth glanced over, her sparkling eyes the last flame of youth in an otherwise ancient face. Is this truly the same woman I met in New York so long ago? My oldest friend. She outlasted my husband by a decade.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” asked Ruth. “Can you believe we’re here?”
The car flew over a low rise, tires almost leaving the ground, and abruptly the landscape changed. Gone were the neat houses and shiny schools, replaced by a tangle of vegetation.
“This is the edge of the third preserve expansion,” said Cheng. “Portugal needed shield credits to fill a dam, so they paid for homes and schools further down the valley. The last villagers moved out a year ago.”
“Have you started species balancing yet?” asked Tania.
“Three months ago,” said Cheng. “We’re only planting the larger trees this time. Ones that need help to rise above this scrub. The first two expansion zones are doing so well that we think the rest of the vegetation will fill in by itself.”
“My first preserve triage was here,” said Tania. “It changed my life, freezing all those specimens. Watching the gorillas being caged – I guess I’ve told you that, haven’t I?”
“Once or twice,” laughed Cheng. “But the staff will want to hear about it firsthand. You’re a bit of a legend around here. Your name is on a lot of the insects we pull out of storage.” He laughed again. “You had terrible handwriting.”
Tania reached over for Ruth’s hand. “I’ve been so lucky, with what I’ve seen. With my friends.”
They passed through two more buffer zones. At each boundary the forest grew thicker, the trees taller, the vegetation more varied. By the time they reached the park’s core a canopy of vines and branches had swallowed the sky. Cheng ordered the car to the side of the road and retracted the roof. Moist air flooded in with a clap of heat.
“Listen. Look.”
The songs of a myriad of bird species rang through the forest, a lilting soprano over the roaring baseline of a million insects. The air buzzed with winged creatures that immediately honed in on the car, keen for a taste of human blood. “Holy shit!” Ruth swatted at a black and yellow monstrosity the size of her thumb.
“Don't make it angry,” Cheng warned. “You really wouldn’t like it when it’s angry. Besides, it might be one of Tania’s.”
“That’s why I wasn’t a biologist,” said Ruth. “I would’ve gooshed this if I’d found it in my net.” The insect circled like an identity drone. Ruth held out her hand. “Come here, you big ugly thing. Let’s get a closer look at you.”
“It lays eggs under your skin,” said Cheng.
Ruth snatched back her hand.
“What’s your reintroduction percentage?” asked Tania.
“Seventy percent of what you froze,” said Cheng. “It’s slow going sometimes. It’s all so interconnected. Like putting together smashed windows. A lot of our plants are adapted to single pollinators; anything from a fly to a bat. And see those trees with the scaly yellow bark? They kept dying, until we figured out that they’re symbiotic with a fungus-eating ant.” He turned towards the forest. “Wanna walk?”
“Of course,” said Tania and Ruth together.
Cheng hoisted his machete. “Come with me.”
The canopy above choked off most of the forest floor’s light, leaving an open carpet of damp leaves in the gloom below. Thorns and vines dangled from above, ready to snag the unwary traveler. From time to time they passed a window into the sky where a fallen giant had set off a frenzied race for sunlight. Tania stayed a few steps back, out of reach of Cheng’s flicking blade. Cheng’s at home here. The outdoor living had been kind to him; he was a leaner, more tanned version of his dad. He’d been in the park eleven years now, and he’d headed the insect synthesis group for four.
Cheng froze and pointed at the trunk of a nearby tree. Tania needed a moment, but then she spotted it: a tiny moth, speckled so that it blended into the bark.
“I released these two weeks ago, at the other end of the park,” said Cheng. “We engineered it as a food source for one of our frog species. I can’t believe they spread this far already.”
“That’s synthetic?” asked Ruth in wonder.
Cheng nodded. “We hope to get every natural species we saved back into the wild one day. But it could take generations. So we engineer new organisms to fill the gaps in the ecosystem.” Cheng reached for the moth, and it flapped away, the insides of its wings flashing brilliant colors.
“How do you know what it should look like?” asked Ruth.
“We don’t,” said Cheng. “That’s what we need artists for. To make it beautiful.”
“And what stops your beautiful new creations from accidentally overrunning the ecosystem?” asked Tania.
“Redundant terminator genes,” said Cheng. “This one can reproduce for twenty generations. If twenty generations works out, we’ll increase to fifty or one hundred.” He noticed Tania panting. “Are you OK to continue?”
“I think this is as far as my legs will take me,” said Tania. I want to grab a backpack. I want to walk for days. “Can we sit for a while?”
They sat, and with their silence the forest awoke, a joyous cacophony of birds and insects. Somewhere in the distance a creature moved through the vegetation, snapping branches.
“Your dad would have been proud of you,” said Tania.
“I wish I remembered him better,” said Cheng. “Tell me a story.”
***
Silverback peered through the bars. The hairless monkeys had been gathering for some time now, crowding behind a fence not far away. They were excited about something. Chattering. With a slapping of paws, and much whooping and hooting, three of the monkeys broke away from their troop.
Two of them were white with age, bent and frail. They hobbled towards his cage, staying low, avoiding eye contact. Respectful. They stopped an arm length away, watching him from under their flat brows.
Maybe they have a treat! A sweet treat wrapped in crinkly! Or a crispy treat, so salty and good! He reached his hand through the bars. Want treat. He made the sad face that had worked so well at the other place.
One of the white-headed females stepped forward and touched his fingertips with her tiny wrinkled paw. The male monkey chattered at her, and she pulled her paw back. Silverback checked. No treat. The hairless monkeys had become unreliable recently. He had to search for his food now, and often it was mixed with strange leaves, even insects. Juicy, crawly things.
Feed me! He held out his paw again, but the monkeys backed away. Feed me! He shook the bars in frustration. One of his females grunted behind him, picking up on his agitation. So many new smells. So many new sounds.
And then, the bars of the cage dropped.
Silverback shuffled out. Careful. A gentle rain fell, so warm that it scarcely bothered him. Not with this new place to explore. One of the youngsters bounded after him, and a female followed, nervous. He hooted, and the rest of troop came out of their cages. A juvenile rolled on the grass.
The hairless monkeys watched from behind a fence, only a few bounds away. The old one who had touched his fingers crouched with her companion. Their heads were lowered, and they had their arms around each other, as if grooming. Almost as if they were mates.
Silverback turned, and bounded into the bushes. The forest was calling him, a droning insect melody that echoed deep inside his heart.