Heaven's Shadow (34 page)

With that news, the group—Bynum included—reacted like hangover victims given a dose of vitamin E.

“Okay, everyone,” Weldon said. “Let’s see what kind of shape our bird is in. At least we’ve still got
something
out there we can use.”

He turned to Harley, who was already in motion. “I’ll see what the great minds can do with this.”

Harley knew that his Home Team was getting the feed from mission control. They knew what he knew. There was no reason for him to trundle right in there.

Or so he told himself. He really needed a moment to think. He wanted to strangle Brent Bynum—not in a personal sense, since the man was clearly just a messenger—but just to strike a blow against what his father would have called “institutional fuckheadedness,” the kind of arrogant blindness that believed you could put a nuke on a risky mission, then be surprised when it went off.

It was dawn in Houston, the air already thick, the buzzing and flapping of bugs and birds already audible, the sky to the east thick with rosy clouds.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

Harley flinched. Wade Williams was lurking in the shadows, sitting on a concrete bench, a bottle in his hand. “I’m afraid I don’t have any orange juice, but . . .” He had a six-pack at his feet and offered a bottle to Harley.

Who took it.
What the hell,
he thought, twisting off the top. “How’d you manage to get this in here?”

“I may be a pompous ass—don’t argue with me—”

“Oh, I wasn’t.” But he smiled to take the edge off the remark.

“I know what I am and how I come across. All I can say is, I come from a long line of pompous asses. It’s what happens when you’re smarter than most people you meet, and louder, and unable to keep from making that clear.” He smiled and took a sip. “Anyway, I have a few fans squirreled away at JSC.”

“Cheers to your fans,” Harley said, taking a drink, and only then looking at the bottle: near beer. “O’Doul’s? Damn, Wade, I thought we were going to commemorate the serious shit we were in by getting loaded!”

“Not since 2012 for me, unfortunately.” He got a faraway look in his eye. “Still, just holding the bottle—the weight of it—helps me think.”

“And what are you thinking? I presume you and the team heard—”

“—All of it, the whole sorry mess.” The old man rubbed a hand across the stubble on his face. “I’ll say this for you, Drake. You and NASA sure know how to pack a thousand years of thrills into a few days.”

“It’s all kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? Last week we were thinking we were just damn lucky to have a chance to do a NEO landing without sending a crew on a nine-month mission, and now . . .”

“You’ve had First Encounter, Re-Encounter, Close Encounter—”

“—And Stupid, Senseless, What-Else-Can-I-Do-Wrong Encounter. That would be today’s.”

Williams actually shook with amusement. “I won’t ask you to believe that I’m in any way eager to stop living, but my gratitude at my continued existence has been seriously enhanced by this week . . . even allowing for the, uh . . .” He waved his hand at Harley. “What-Else-Can-Go-Wrong aspects?” He chuckled. “I lived through 9/ 11, but always thought that Pearl Harbor might have been more shocking. With this . . . now I have some idea.”

“This,” Harley said, “is like living through the week of the Crucifixion . . . or when that big asteroid killed off the dinosaurs.”

“True. Either way, it’s sort of a privilege to bear witness.”

“What was it Mark Twain said? About a man being tarred, feathered, then ridden out of town on a rail?”

“‘If not for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk.’ Actually, it was Abraham Lincoln.”

“You’re the writer.” Harley looked at his bottle. “Are you sure this is nonalcoholic?”

“Fatigue and terror do strange things to the mind. Speaking of which,” Williams said, shifting to the lecture mode Harley knew so well, and hated, “I’ve been thinking. Thinking about what those fine folks you gathered have come up with.”

“Given that, so far, all I’ve gotten are some cute names—”

“Oh, we’ve got a model for your Revenants and such. The idea is, just as there is no true physical separation between your body and the universe—even when your core organism ceases to function, there are still atoms of moisture and skin and exhalation that linger, float off, whatever—the same thing applies to your mind, your soul, your life force. There is also some kind of physical connection between the electrical field that is you, Harley Drake, and the universe.

“Your carrier might be shut off. That is, you die. But the information lingers . . . like cloud computing, it’s all around us . . . accessible.”

“So our souls are some new kind of matter, is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s one way to look at it. I mean, hell, the universe is largely made up of dark matter and energy, and we still don’t have a terrific handle on what that is or does. Why not some other kind of energy or information? It’s probably affected by gravity, too. The cloud of souls travels with the Sun.”

“Sounds like the opening line of your next novel.”

“Those days are gone, my friend. But the image is elegant, is it not?” He let the contents of the bottle slosh. “Everything that ever lived on Earth—or in the solar system—is still with us, in some fashion. It’s all information . . . the folks who built Keanu just know how to access it and repackage it.”

“They must have a pretty impressive search engine to pull Zack Stewart’s wife out of a library like that.”

“We suspect they got some clues or information from the arriving astronauts. We think the, ah, markers help. Scanned them, I think. Then they’re retrieved the same way the National Security Agency plucks a single cell phone conversation out of an entire city’s signals. Random frequency tracking, amped up a bit.”

“Yeah, a bit,” Harley said. “Then, of course, there’s the whole business of growing new bodies.”

“That’s just twenty-second-century Earth biotech, don’t you think? If we live long enough, we could have new carcasses, too.” Williams wheezed, tipped his bottle toward Harley. “We both could certainly use one.”

In shadow, another person came around the corner—female, tall, and, from the lingering odor, just off a cigarette. “Oh!” Sasha Blaine said. “There you are.”

“Caught,” Harley said. “We were about to head back in. . . .”

“Before you do,” Sasha said. “I’ve just had this mad cool idea and you should hear it in case it’s more mad than cool.”

“Hit me with it.” Harley was no longer convinced that the O’Doul’s was actually near beer; either that, or in his fatigued, stressed-out state, he was all raw emotion . . . because he suddenly, instantly wanted to hold Sasha Blaine. Gawky, too tall, too jumpy, it didn’t matter. He was in love with her . . . and there was a testament to the persistence of human emotions in the face of crisis.

Blaine blinked. “We heard that even though
Venture
and
Brahma
are gone,
Destiny
is still in orbit.”

“Yes.”

“And that five of the astronauts might still be alive.”

“Still good.”

“Which doesn’t mean much, because without
Venture
and
Brahma
, they’re trapped, and nobody has a vehicle that could be prepped and launched on a rescue for at least six months.”

“That would sum it up.” Harley had been so focused on the horror of this nuke that he had not gotten his head around the real collateral damage . . . the fact that the survivors were
stranded
with no hope of rescue.

Eyes closed, Blaine hugged herself, a set of gestures Harley always associated with brilliant, socially awkward types who were about to tell you something insane. Williams saw it, too, nudging Harley.

“Sasha,” Harley said, realizing he would have to drag it out of her. “What’s on your mind?”

“Why don’t we land
Destiny
on Keanu?”

What does it mean when you see the director of the Johnson Space
Center collapsed in a corner? :( [ Wish I had a stronger emoticon]

POSTER JSC GUY AT NEOMISSION.COM

Tea’s run to rendezvous, even though she was barefoot and wearing nothing more than panties and a tank top, was quick and exhilarating. Maybe part of that was due to her near-naked state. She felt primal. Eve in Eden, maybe.

The only techie part of the experience was the Zeiss unit slapping at her back. (She had looped its strap over her chest, bandolier style.)

It was also helpful to find smooth running surfaces inside the chamber. Nothing would kill the runner’s high, amplified by danger and novelty, more quickly than bloodied feet.

The danger and novelty were enhanced by the apparent change in conditions. The interior seemed to be growing dark—it was difficult for Tea to see the glowworms through the overhanging vegetation, but it seemed redder and, though this could have been an illusion, briefly black, switched off or in some kind of Keanu eclipse.

The temperature seemed to be dropping, too, though that could have been due to her lack of clothing. And the oxygen content was changing—or was she feeling that because she was running hard while horribly fatigued, dehydrated, and out of shape?

Either way, though Tea wasn’t in love with the Keanu environment, given the unattractive options at the moment, she really wanted it to stay human-friendly.

After emerging from the Beehive, she made a quick pass through the campsite, where she stopped long enough to reorient herself. There was no high ground that would allow for a broader view . . . the best she could do was plunge back into the jungle on the same path she and Taj had used in returning from the Temple.

As she ran, she felt occasional flutters on her skin. . . . Keanu insects? Or just vegetative debris being blown by what was now a steady wind? None of it stuck to her long enough for her to tell, and she sure wasn’t going to stop to conduct a biotic study. Aside from the Zeiss, the only other piece of technical equipment she carried was her watch, and she had already been gone from the membrane for twenty minutes.

There it was, up ahead, the stony top of the Temple, still maybe a mile or more away—

—And here was Zack Stewart, no more than twenty meters in front of her, standing in a clearing with Lucas and Natalia.

“Zack!” She couldn’t believe how weak her voice sounded, how tired she felt! She had to stop, panting, watching helplessly as the other three reacted with what appeared to be confusion.

It was Zack who reached her first. “What’s wrong? Where’s your suit?”

“That’s what you’ve got to ask? ‘Where’s your suit?’”

In their time together, Zack Stewart had shown Tea that he would see humor any time, under any circumstances.

Until now. “It wasn’t what I asked, goddammit!” he snapped. “Why are you
here
? And what the hell is going on?”

She told him about the strange event. “We felt something, too.” By then Natalia and Lucas had joined them. All three seemed subdued and lost . . . Tea wanted to ask about the Revenants but knew that she needed to stay on message.

Once she’d told them all about conditions on the other side of the membrane—and the lack of contact with either
Venture
or
Brahma
—she wished she hadn’t. Zack accepted the loss of the trip home stoically, the way he accepted most bad news. Well, he’d had practice.

But Natalia sank to the ground, as if to say,
Kill me now
. She was completely spent, emotionally and physically.

Lucas was a different case, flailing between disbelief and open hysteria. “What do you mean, gone? What about Dennis? Did you even try to contact him? Where is Taj?” He seemed incapable of comprehending the situation—even though he was still speaking English, it was as if he were suffering temporary aphasia.

It was understandable, but hardly worthy, in Tea’s view, of the world’s greatest astronaut. Or any astronaut.

But then Zack told her what had happened to Megan and Camilla, rolled up and swept away by Sentries. And she wanted to join Natalia in an exhausted, Daddy-make-it-go-away crouch. Or start babbling like Lucas.

Zack saw it, too. He slipped his arm around her, offering (and likely taking) comfort while providing actual support.

Then, calmly, rationally, he examined the situation—and the options going forward. “Assume the worst: Both spacecraft are gone. What would you do? Natalia?”

She only shook her head. “Lucas?”

Lucas was still struggling. “Are we sure they’re gone?”

Zack turned to Tea, his whole manner pleading for her to give him something. “I think we all go to the membrane.”

He actually smiled. God help him, he liked a debate. “That’s the logical step. But if both landers are gone, what’s the point?”

“Eventually someone from Earth will come after us.” Tea turned to Natalia and Lucas. “There’s another
Brahma
that could be ready, right?”

Natalia nodded. Lucas was slower to react, and even then, Tea wouldn’t have called it a response.

“Come on, Tea, that’s bullshit,” Zack said. “NASA couldn’t have another
Des tiny- Venture
ready for launch within six months. A second
Brahma
is at least a year away.”

But Tea liked an argument, too. She had been waiting to have one with Zack ever since entering Keanu’s environment, and this subject was as good as any. “NASA could push
Destiny-8
forward to maybe a hundred days, darling.”

“So we’ll be, what, only ninety-five days dead as opposed to a hundred and eighty?”

“This environment might support us. There’s air, there’s water.”

“Which is why I gave us five days. A, we’ve found no food. B, how long is the environment going to stay ‘human-friendly’?”

“Don’t be such a pessimist.”

Tea saw the expression on Zack’s face—the pre-shock to the quake to come. But he suppressed it, smiling, even though it must have almost killed him. “You’re right. Let’s be positive.”

He pointed at Natalia and Lucas. “You two, go with Tea. Grab your suits and stage with Taj and the rover at the membrane.”