The Seeds of Time (30 page)

Clio beat on the hatch door, crying. Then swearing: Jesus God, no! She was turning the crank the
wrong way
, it was counterclockwise to open, God, not clockwise! She yanked it counterclockwise with all her strength. Then again. It turned. She spun the crank, threw open the hatch and hauled herself onto crew deck. Sprinted down the longest corridor in the universe. Slammed into the aft hatchway to the launch bay, cranked the hatch, as the ship quaked and rolled. “FORTY-FOUR, FORTY-THREE, FORTY-TWO …”

She grasped the hatch holds to pull herself through when she felt herself jerked back, thrown back into crew deck, slammed against the bulkhead. Facing Shaw. His face contorted as he screamed at her, she couldn’t hear what. The ship’s voice was deafening, the deck rumbling under their feet. Spittle flew from his mouth as his hands closed around her throat.

Clio brought her knee up to his groin. His hands loosened their grip, and he bent forward at the waist as Clio brought her clasped hands down hard on the back of his neck, sending him crashing to the deck. She spun around, clambered through the hatch, then felt Shaw yanking her foot, clinging to her from the other side of the hatch.

“ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP. TWENTY SECONDS TO HULL BREACH.”

Clio screamed in rage, screamed to drown out the ship’s voice, the horns, screamed to yank her foot across that hatchway. Did it. Bringing Shaw’s arm with her, just as
the ship slammed the hatch shut, locking it. The arm compressed into the juncture, pinched off in a slow, soundless amputation.

Then Zee was pulling her into
Babyhawk
, half dragging, half carrying her into the lander, and the ship was patiently droning, “THIRTEEN, TWELVE, ELEVEN …” And he threw her to the deck, covering her body with his own, and Russo was screaming something at him, something about closing the hatch. And he was off of Clio and, a moment later, back holding her as
Babyhawk
separated from
Starhawk
with a jolt and the blaring of the ship cut off. They were thrown into the lander bulkhead as Russo hit the thrusters.

Babyhawk
rolled as the first wave hit them—probably the launch bay exploding—and Clio and Zee hit another bulkhead. Clio saw Russo punching up full power, held on as
Babyhawk
accelerated to the max.

“Take it easy!” Clio shouted at Russo.
She’s gonna break up the lander, by God, just can’t punch this crate up to speed so fast.…

Russo shouted back: “Ship’s going to blow any second!”

Clio looked at the viewscreen. As if on cue,
Starhawk
’s lower decks flew apart, then upper decks, in a one-two explosion that roiled toward them, took the lander, and tossed it like a leaf in a hurricane.

Below
Babyhawk
, in the south Indian Ocean, lightning flared in bright patches against the clouds. Clio watched from the viewport as the lightning pulsed in sequence over thousands of kilometers, like neurons firing across a vast cerebral cortex.

She pushed away from the viewport, floating in zero g, and turned to survey the lander’s cabin. The usual metallic tidiness of grids, panels, and switches was disrupted by an array of escaped Niang organisms: seeds roaming in schools, and tiny seedlings moving with air currents through the cabin like jellyfish, their roots floating beneath them. The smell of oil and warm electronics mixed with the deep, sweet smell of decay and life. Clio grasped at a seed as it floated by her face. Thrust it into her breast pocket, but it rose up and free as she tried to button the flap down.

Russo was at the controls, Zee asleep in a crew chair. They were preparing for atmospheric entry and a landing half a world away in the jungles of Brazil. Keeping to the southern hemisphere would lessen their chances of arousing defensive military systems. Soon they would cross into night over western Africa. Fifty-five minutes to touchdown.

The peace of the moment surrounded her like a warm bath: the silent Earth turning below them, the noiseless lander, Zee asleep, Russo piloting, and Clio at rest. Dive had shifted them smack into Earth orbit, the first stroke of amazing good luck Clio could remember in her short life—if luck was what it was. Zee said something about the relation of mass and Dive and the action of gravity on the Dive parameters. Which was why he’d been worried about
coming out of Dive in a hard reentry burn. But no such thing. The Dive was exactly forty-eight hours back. Back just far enough to sneak up on a slumbering Earth. Easy enough, with military defense systems focused on low-tech third-world revolts, and clueless that Niang was about to pay a visit—a permanent visit.

They’d done it. Brought the seeds home, escaped the
Eisenhower
, Dived back a brief two days and lived to tell about it.

How could it be, though, she’d once asked Zee. How can we be in orbit and back out in space, all at once, repeating these two days … Zee grabbed his notebook and started sketching, quick, arcane diagrams that soon became math, as easily as ice cubes melting in water. Finally he’d said: It’s a function of distance. We live these three days over again, but outside of our prior time stream. No one completely understands how it works; but every time we Dive, we’re Diving past our own lives, we’re two places at once.

She tried hard to concentrate. So there are two Clios? One back on the
Starhawk
, one in orbit?

He took his pencil up again. Then laid it down. Yes, he said.

So if I met the other Clio, we’d get a beaucoup paradox.

But you’re not going to meet her.

She nodded. It’s a function of distance.

He smiled. It’s math.

Turning away from the viewport, she gently touched Zee’s shoulder to waken him. He jerked upright, startled. Clio pressed him gently back into the chair. “We’re here.”

“Where’s here?”

“Earth, three hundred twenty kilometers above the Indian Ocean.”

“One of my favorite spots.” He pulled her down toward him, kissed her.

As he unbuckled his seat belt, the clasp separated at the hinge, and the belt floated away into the cabin, clunking against other bits of hardware chewed loose by the
Niang growths and slammed out of place by the
Starhawk
explosion.

“Come look at the lightning,” Clio said.

They pulled themselves over to the viewport, grabbing on to the bulkhead struts. Zee looked out. “Nothing but the African Waste,” he said.

Clio pushed past him to see. They had left the ocean and its lightnings behind, and were coming over the savannahs of Kenya and the Masai Steppe, into the shadow of night, but even so Clio could see the vast stretch of brown marking the ruin of central Africa that stretched through the Congo Basin, Nigeria, and Ghana, devouring the tropical forests and abundant plains in one, great, overarching Sahara.

The craft lurched.

“Strap in,” Russo said. “I’m going for deorbit burn.” Russo had insisted on piloting the lander. Clio was exhausted from Dive, and Russo was eager to fly. Landing in the tropical forest was a tough maneuver for a woman who hadn’t flown in a long time, Clio argued. But Russo stared her down, so Clio relented, figuring it was going to take more luck than skill anyhow to land
Babyhawk
in her present condition.

Before Clio was secured in her chair, the lander began shaking again, as it had off and on over the last four hours, then subsided. A swarm of Niang seeds drifted past Clio’s face.
Whole damn lander is leaky
, Clio thought.
Reentry’s gonna be hell on us
.

In a few minutes it was.

“I’m on descent trajectory; beginning descent,” Russo said. “Heat building on exterior. Five hundred degrees centigrade.”

Clio found a chair with seat belt intact, cinched in, and held her breath.
Just a few more kilometers, baby, just a few more
. She patted the armrest, reassuring
Babyhawk
, reassuring herself, as g force kicked in and the lander began to rattle and groan.

Within thirty minutes Babyhawk had descended to 120 kilometers, blazing down over the south Atlantic, coming in
hard, the roar of their swath through the atmosphere filling their ears.

Perspiration streamed down Clio’s face as the exterior climbed to sixteen hundred degrees centigrade. She looked at Zee in the chair next to her, saw him gripping the chair, eyes squeezed shut, then he opened them, managed a kind of smile, reached for her hand. Clio met his grasp and they rode the descent together in the shaking, screaming lander, like being in the throat of a roaring animal.

“Damn it to hell!” Russo shouted.

Clio saw Russo struggling with the controls.

“We’re losing control!” Russo said. “Can’t get response from her. She’s freezing up, freezing up.”

Clio pressed forward against the 1.5 g’s. “What’s freezing up?”

“The control stick,” Russo shouted above the din. “I’m barely controlling this ship!”

“Jesus, Captain, switch to auxiliary.”

“I tried. We’re off course. Off course. Coming in too fast. I’m going for a water landing.”

Clio unclipped her harness, struggling forward. “No! No water landing!”

“No choice. We’re going to crash.”

Trying to heave herself out of her chair, Clio failed and fell back into it, pinned down by the crushing gravity. Heard Zee shouting at her, heard her own despair: “My plants,” she said. “My plants.”

“Buckle in!” Russo was shouting. “We’re going down fast.”

Clio grabbed for the harness, her arms in slow motion, fighting, fighting to snap the buckle, finally sliding it into place, and letting herself give in to the insupportable weight of g and fate.

She turned to Zee, mouthing the words, “My plants …”

His face mirrored her own distress. “Hold on. I love you,” she thought he said, though holding on could not possibly matter anymore, and love couldn’t matter, not if the ocean took the seeds and drowned all their hopes.

All the while g was increasing, bearing down hard. And then her body was coming apart, her bones, her skull, pressing through her skin, and all around her the thundering of the hull.

Then the hull screamed, as impact concussed the lander. Clio’s body dug hard against the restraints, until she thought she’d slice in two.
We hit water, we hit water, we’re plunging
 … The thundering went on and on. They were diving deep, deep into the ocean, and
Babyhawk
was reeling from the impact, while outside the awful rumble of the ocean boiled against the hull.
Babyhawk
was shuddering hard, rivets flew across the cabin, white-hot bullets of steel, and Clio closed her eyes, hoping for one in the head, to get it over with fast. She didn’t want to drown, had never planned to die in water. A bad way to die, she figured, not that there were any good ways. There seemed no end to their dive; they plunged on and on, until it seemed they’d be so deep the ocean would crush them in her jaws. But at last Clio felt a different sensation, a surcease of noise, and a return of normal g force, and the feeling of riding an elevator up, up. And water trickled in through the seams of the craft, and Clio spiraled down into blackness.

Zee was bending over her, holding her face between his hands.

She looked up at him, seeing double. Closed her eyes. “Hell of a landing,” she said. “Never did like water landings.” She opened her eyes, seeing two of him still. They smiled at her.

“Clio, we made it, we really made it. We’re down. We’re home.” He helped her unbuckle. Then the consoles blanked out, leaving them in darkness.

Zee fumbled in the bulkhead lockers for a flashlight, found one, switched it on. Wincing hard, Clio pushed herself out of her chair and went to Russo’s side, putting her hand on Russo’s shoulder. “It’s OK, we’re down. We’re OK.”

Russo didn’t answer, didn’t move.

“Captain?” Clio asked. Still no movement. “You did good, Captain,” Clio said. “You got us down, and we’re
alive. Floating just perfect, right about where we planned to be. You did good.”

“We’re taking on water pretty fast,” Zee said from behind her.

Russo said, “It’s what we all decided on, right?” She looked up at Clio, her eyes childlike. “We drew straws so one person could live. We decided together, and no matter who won, that person had to keep the air. No matter what.” She kept looking at Clio, waiting for an answer.

Clio took a deep breath. “I know,” she said. “It was fair. You all decided, fair and square. Otherwise, everyone would have died. It was the right decision.”

“So you don’t mind being dead?” Russo looked at her hopefully.

Clio paused. “No,” she said. “I don’t mind. It was fair.”

Russo nodded slowly, released the control stick.

Zee gripped Clio’s shoulder. “Clio, we got water coming in from every …”

One of the hatches blew. The ocean pulsed in.

“The raft!” Zee shouted.

Zee and Clio ripped open the panel housing the raft and struggled to haul it out.

“Grab the seeds,” Clio shouted. She bolted over to the stowage hatch, yanking at it.

Zee pulled her around. “No time! Help me get this raft up the ladder! Russo’s useless. Hurry!”