Heaven's Shadow (36 page)

“Jealous?” Harley said.

Blaine blushed again. “Kind of, yeah. This has been . . . fun. And it just shows me that I’m thirty-two and I have no life. No boyfriend, no hobbies, no pets. I just do calculations and teach and every now and then I slip the leash and come someplace like this.”

Harley was in front of his used Dodge Caravan, modified for easy access and equipped with hand controls. “The one benefit, and it may be the only benefit, of being differently mobile is that I don’t have to park across the lot.”

Formerly mobile Harley Drake, driver of a Mustang, would have added, “And since we don’t need to be back at the Home Team for a couple of hours . . .” And likely driven off for an afternoon of sport with Sasha Blaine.

But this was wheelchair Harley, spinal-cord-injury Harley, unable-to-function Harley.

It was also Home Team and Alien Protocol chief Harley Drake.

He used his key to open the side door, then waited for the special lift to extend. “I’ll see you back in the center in an hour.”

Then Blaine said, “Oh, you’ve got someplace better to be?” Harley was forced to conclude that she hoped he might have something more distracting in mind.

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”

I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.

RICHARD FEYNMAN’S LAST WORDS

Rachel awoke in her own bedroom, confused and not terribly rested. The light was wrong—bright through the shades. Right, it was afternoon . . . she had slept a long time.

But the sound of the house was wrong. The drone of the air conditioner was audible. That was the problem: Rachel could actually hear the machine.

Which meant something was missing.

Over the past two years, she had gotten used to having the house to herself. Her father made it a point to be home whenever she was . . . he had rearranged his work schedule to allow for telecommuting in the after-school hours, either plopping himself at the kitchen table while Rachel pretended to do schoolwork, or sitting on the sidelines at soccer with his Slate right up to the time Rachel finally told him she hated soccer and was quitting . . . and generally found other things to do between three and six P.M.

But whenever Zack was home, he had music playing . . . country, classical, horrible early nineties pop; it didn’t seem to matter, as long as sound filled the house.

As if her father couldn’t stand the silence. Back when she had had actual conversations with Zack, as opposed to arguments, Rachel had thought about asking him about the music . . . but, feeling she knew the answer, never did.

And now . . . would she ever?

Her father was . . . somewhere on Keanu, out of touch and, according to everything NASA had been saying, out of oxygen, food, and water . . . somehow in contact with the late Megan Stewart.

Maybe she should have taken the sedative Jillianne Dwight had offered. If it hadn’t been so freaking horribly hot outside, she would have sneaked out to the porch and lit up a joint.

As it was, the trip home had been uncomfortable. Amy simply would not shut up about all the weird stuff she’d seen, and how she couldn’t wait to tell everyone how she and Rachel had almost gotten arrested by the FBI. The fact that Rachel had had a conversation with a being who seemed to be her dead mother, reincarnated . . . well, that never seemed to strike Amy as all that interesting.

It was a relief to see her go.

Inside the house, Rachel had walked right past the telescope in the living room that Zack had used to first show her Keanu. In the last few months, of course, no telescope had been necessary.

Rachel had wondered what she would see if she used it now. She hadn’t been online for twelve hours.

Before she checked her page, she glanced at the news feed.

It was all Keanu:
“Astronauts Out of Contact”
. . .
“Space Crews in Danger”
. . .
“NASA Hiding Zombie Planet”
. . .

Some of it seemed to match what Rachel had seen and heard, and some of it was crazy.

The phrase
zombie planet
made her sick. Keanu-Megan wasn’t a zombie. She knew things that only Rachel’s real mother would know!

She turned to her page and saw that the counter had maxed out on seven thousand messages. Glancing through the first hundred, she saw about seventy versions of,
So sorry to hear about your father!
The rest said things like,
What’d you expect?

There were, of course, the stupid smutty messages, too, boys and men from many nations offering to “comfort” her. Rachel had been online since the age of six; there was nothing new or notable in any of this. All it did was remind her of Ethan Landolt and the fact that he had not even
tried
to get in touch with her since the launch.

With brutal efficiency, she clicked through more of the messages. Same, same, same.
Condolence, your fault, send me a naked pic.

But then her eye saw something that didn’t fit the pattern.
This is the beginning of a new age,
it said.
How great for you to be the first to know that we live on after death. You’re like the women around Jesus at the Resurrection.

That really freaked her out, because she had been feeling something like that . . . and felt stupid for entertaining the idea for even a second. She was just a fourteen-year-old Texas girl whose father happened to be an astronaut. There were a hundred astronauts, so how did that make her special? Her mother had died, but there were hundreds of thousands of girls in the United States in the same situation, too.

She took her fingers off the Slate. At that moment, it looked and felt as alien as anything on Keanu. She wanted it out—

There was a gentle knock at the door. Jillianne. “Hungry?”

The NASA secretary had made turkey sandwiches and a salad and encouraged Rachel to drink water. “I’m guessing this is the first home-style food you’ve had in days.”

Rachel had to admit it was.

“How are you feeling?”

“How do you think?” Rachel caught herself in time, making that sound more plaintive than nasty.

“Well, I’m stunned and afraid and overwhelmed, and I’m just looking at this from the outside.”

“You work with my dad.”

“Yes. I was actually thinking more about . . .” She clearly didn’t know how to say
your mother
.

“Yeah. Me, too.” And just like that, Rachel began to cry, dissolving into a collapsing, sobbing crouch. It was as if she ceased to function.

Jillianne flew out of her chair and around the table to offer comfort, which only made it worse. Soon both of them were sobbing. Eventually Rachel was able to say, “I just don’t know what to do!”

“Neither do I, honey,” Jillianne said. “I don’t think anybody knows. Look, you’ve had a series of emotional shocks. You haven’t really slept. You might want to reconsider that Xanax.”

“No,” Rachel said. She got up, found a Kleenex, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. She thought about that message, about the women around Jesus. Not that she thought much about Jesus Christ, but she found the idea intriguing. “I can’t sleep through this. If my dad gets back in touch—”

“You want to be there, I know.” Jillianne looked around. “Well, then. I suppose we should go back to the center.”

“Yes. But I have a stop I want to make.”

“I’m your driver. At your service.”

In answer to queries, no, NASA has not “gone rogue,” no matter what
you’re hearing or think you’re hearing. There has been a White House/
National Security presence in MCC since day one. Which isn’t to say
that there isn’t bad stuff going on.

POSTER JSC GUY AT NEOMISSION.COM

Tea Nowinski was buttoned up in her EVA suit, within sight of the rearranged floor of Vesuvius Vent, when the tremor hit. There was no doubting it: Even through the thick fabric of the suit, with sound and sensation muffled by the helmet, she was jolted, as if she had missed two steps coming down a stairway.

It only lasted a second, however. The jolt, a moment of vertigo, then all was calm.

Taj was walking behind her. Behind him was rover
Buzz
, with Natalia and Lucas inside. “Good God, don’t tell me someone else has a bomb. . . .”

“That felt different,” Taj said. He pointed to his feet, then at the brightness ahead of them. “It seemed to come from deep within, not out there.”

After assuring herself that the occupants of the rover were okay, she resumed her trek.

She had led Lucas and Natalia back through the Beehive to the membrane, with the necessary stop at the campsite to pick up their suits.

Getting herself resuited took twice as long as it should have. She was operating on fumes, of course. She also recognized her own reluctance to go forward . . . emerging to Keanu’s exterior meant she would be one step closer to knowing the fate of what was now her vastly reduced team; would they be able to contact mission control and have some hope of rescue? (On a related note, would Taj ever forgive her for leaving his Zeiss radio/camera with Zack?)

Or were they doomed to death on Keanu? So far, she had to admit, the odds were not good.

At least Lucas and Natalia’s suits had proven to be sound. Even if they possessed tools for repairing leaks or valves, they were no longer capable of performing critical repairs with any confidence.

Taj, in fact, had asked, “What’s our fallback plan?”

“You mean, we go out there, find nothing left, no communication? Our options will be either to sit down and die, or go back through the membrane.”

As they had departed, the return-to-interior option began to look like a poor choice. The wind had grown stronger, the glowworms darker . . . and the vegetation was going through another transition, from “jungle” to something Tea could only describe as “crystal city.” Plants were disintegrating and angular structures were forming on the ground.

She had been happy to be inside her suit, tanks recharged and good for a few more hours. She wasn’t sure the atmosphere inside Keanu would remain breathable.

Taj must have thought the same, because all he said was, “I don’t think we’re welcome inside there any longer.”

At that moment the five of them felt a second jolt. This one was shorter, if possible, and oddly less jarring, though the rover rocked gently on its suspension for several seconds.

“Everyone still okay?” Tea got a “Fine” from Lucas. “Okay, saddle up!”

She actually began to trot, a ridiculous notion, given the high center of gravity and uncertain footing. But she felt that if she didn’t escape from the dark passage soon, she might just . . . sit down and die.

Step, slide, step, slide. Repeat. Taj was doing the same thing. The pair on foot were pulling ahead of the rover.

Finally they emerged into the vent itself . . . and beheld the changes. “It’s mostly bare rock,” Taj said.

“The snow and ice melted in the heat, sublimated away,” Tea said. She clicked her radio. “
Venture
, Tea.
Venture
for Yvonne.” As she kept walking, she repeated the call, listening for a response that never came.

In her earphones, she could hear Taj making similar calls to
Brahma
, with no better results.

Now that they were in the relatively open center of the vent floor, she thought it worth a shot to try contacting mission control directly. If
Venture
was gone, of course, she would be relying on a potential signal relay through
Destiny
. Where was the mother ship, anyway?

“Houston, this is Tea. I’m in Vesuvius Vent with Taj, Lucas, Natalia. Do you copy?”

Nothing. “Taj, I suppose you’re missing your radio.”

“No response,” he said.

It was clear that they needed to get out of the vent. A climb up the rocky sides wasn’t impossible—with most of the snow gone, Tea could see potential handholds.

But Zack had talked about a ramp . . . and there it was, curling up the inside of the far wall, a few hundred meters away. She pointed her team toward it.

Ten minutes later, somewhat out of breath, she was at its base, which was rubble-strewn. A suited astronaut on foot could get across it, but a path would have to be cleared for the rover.

“Lucas, Natalia, you two wait here. I don’t want you to depress that cabin until we have to. Taj and I will scout up top. We’ll come back and help clear this junk.” Then her tone changed. “Do Indians have any tradition of granting last requests? You know, if someone is going to die?”

“No more than any other culture. Why? Feeling pessimistic about our chances?”

“Well, somewhat. But I was just curious about how you guys came so prepared.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s see. The relay satellite. A terahertz radio. The set of scientific instruments.”

“Tea,
Venture
could just as easily have carried all of those. In fact, I think our guys got some of the ideas from NASA.”

“Oh, bullshit, Taj. Christ, the only First Contact tool you left out was the sign reading
Welcome to Earth
.”

Taj hesitated. Then he said, “A year ago an observatory in Crimea was looking at Keanu in the high radio frequencies. They saw something anomalous—not just unusual activity, but pulses and patterns that, in their judgment, could not be natural.”

“We should have been looking at those things, too.”

“Maybe you did, maybe you just happened to miss them. In any case, we were told there was a high probability we would be making contact.” They had to stop to let the rover negotiate the last turn. “Well, is that what you wanted to know? That we were ready?”