Adelpho stood on the highest turret of the Devil Valley Overlook tower, scanning the clouds. He looked down at the crowd of about two hundred fans waiting on the viewing platform, milling around the manicured creosote and yucca landscaping of the Overlook.
Just two kilometers below the Overlook platform Devil Valley was a stretch of rust-red sand enclosed by 5,000 meter-high cliffs on either side, 20 kilometers apart. The wind shoved its way down the valley, blasting the Overlook audience; they clung to the iron railings as it whipped their very best quilted silk and mohair coats and hoods and dusted their clear silk polymer masks with sand. These were not people who came above ground often.
Small dust devils rose and fell in the distance. The atmo was picking up energy with the increasing heat of the day. Adelpho ran gracefully down, planting his large feet sideways on the small stone steps. He was accustomed to maneuvering his unusually large frame though a world constructed for a much smaller majority. He ducked into the ice glass broadcast pod, which was built into the base of the Overlook tower, and released his mask. He cleared his throat, waiting for the ping in the pod speakers. It sounded, and he grinned at the internal pod cameras.
“Thanks for joining us at the Company 1 Interworld flight exhibition, live from Devil Valley in Eastern Valles Marineris on Mars! The best flyer on both worlds is with us today. As always.” Del anticipated the grins of the faces on the monitor; they would react the same way they always did. It would all come together ten minutes from now after the message made it to Earth, was processed, and came back to Mars. Years of anticipating reactions had honed Adelpho's instincts, and no delay from three minutes to twenty could derail his timing. “We love Kalleyno, don't we?” Adelpho laughed, “Well, she's hunting for the perfect devil today!”
Del waited through the satellite anchor's lines in the script, reacting to them as if he were listening to them. “For our audience on Earth, please remind us about the differences in conditions between the worlds - Mars has only one third of Earth's gravity, correct? And air density is almost one quarter of Earth's by now? Also, would you describe how those flight suits work, Del?”
“Of course,” he said. With the right mixture of warmth and cheer he went on to explain baby science to an audience who had heard it hundreds of times. Again. But that was Interworld Media. Earth owned the grids and the signals and always had, so all broadcasts had to be geared to the wetbrain audience.
Mano pinged his ear comm. Del continued to plow through the speech he could have recited in his sleep, wrapping it up with, “And just now I'm being hailed by Kalleyno's father Mano, award-winning gene editor and head of programming for Interworld Mars.”
We'll come right back to you, Del," were the next lines in the script.
"OK, Interworld. We'll come back in a minute." he grinned again, then nodded to the wing-suited MC who had been watching him through the translucent wall of the pod, awaiting his signal.
The MC waved two tall red, blue and green silk Mars Planet flags at the silvery-pink blimps overhead. The pylon and drone cameras all spun away from the valley floor, focusing on the blimps and the upcoming spectacle. Music burst over the crowd.
Del tucked his chin to bring his mask back over his face and punched the panel of the pod, taking firm steps into the blasting wind as the door slipped shut behind him. Mano pinged him again. Del opened the channel.
"Where is she?" said Mano.
"How would I know that?" Del shouted it, and not just because of the blaring music behind him.
Mano sighed, his voice crackling with comm distortion. "You might have to start. OK?"
This happened more and more often. Kallo was the daughter and the real child, so Mano was blind to the changes in her attitude and tried to blame Del whenever things went wrong.
“OK,” said Del, keeping his frustration hidden as he always did.
"And." said Mano.
"Yes."
"I have a bad feeling about her riding a devil today."
"Another feeling?" Del kept his voice neutral. After spending most of his life with Mano he could almost hear the man's thoughts in moments like this. Del waited a beat, then finally said,
"That's why Interworld bought the broadcast. That's what everyone wants to see-"
"I know that. I just have a bad feeling. I think you should start with a stunt jump.” Mano clicked off.
The crowd began to shout; the monitor feeds from the drone cameras swerved, blurred and now focused on Kallo, coming in fast. Too fast. As always.
This was a tense moment for Del. Although she had grown no older in the last ten years Kallo's personality was changing; she was increasingly unpredictable. She never repeated an entrance and refused to choreograph anything. But it was good show, and the worlds ate it up.
She began tumbling end-over-end, too late on descent. Then she pulled up, predicting thermals the way no other flier could.
It was a gift of her design, and one of her late mother's most brilliant gene edits. Kallo had an extremely enhanced sense of smell (the addition of a canine gene) and could predict changes in air currents before anyone else. That, in combination with her athletic instincts and the perfect muscle strength-to-weight ratio of a child's body that never changed, made her the most intuitive flier on both worlds - and her mother Ang's masterpiece. In many ways Kallo would always be unbeatable. Beneath the bitterness of the last few years, Del was still wonder struck by her. He still admired her. He even still loved her.
She rolled into a bank, throwing her arms back and legs forward and apart in the denser rush of air, stalling in mid-flight like an owl. Then she fell into a series of back somersaults, stretched flat, and deployed her largest chute. She turned and glided in sideways, bypassing the landing platform. She landed on the edge of the Overlook, barreling through the middle of the screaming crowd and forcing them to duck out of the way of her recollapsing chute, until she finally threw herself on top of Del.
He caught her and swung her around. He wanted to toss her on the ground like a sack, but instead he offered her to the pylon cameras with an overhead twirl like a dance partner. She laughed. He lowered his head to speak into her ear.
"He doesn't want you to spin today," said Del.
Kallo gaped at him, then laughed again. "Well, he can jump off. This is a perfect day!"
"He says-"
Kallo slipped under his arm and into the broadcast pod, locking the door. She popped her mask and faced the cameras.
Without hearing a word, Del knew how the scripting would go; Kallo would go off-book, truncate the points and leave early with barely a smile, creating an editing nightmare for the Interworld staff on Earth. Despite all of his coaching she was as awkward and unlikeable on camera as she was magical in flight. Del marveled that she still got away with so much rudeness, but Interworld would just make jokes about it. When you're a champion, Del thought, all is forgiven. Well make your own rules, then, champ.
Del's private (and illegal) channel pinged. He glanced past the broadcast pod, past the crowd, down the valley. Conditions were nearly perfect for devils. He shouldn't go underground at this moment. But when he looked at the private channel readout inside his mask, he recognized the one sender he had been waiting for.
He stepped quickly through the subentry door and into the underground hallway, running down and stopping mid-stairway, away from the brilliant light of the greenhouse windows that ran along the tunnel walls. He glanced up at the ceiling screens, which constantly shimmered and blinked with real-time images from the camera feeds above ground monitors. It was quiet in the sublevels right now – most people were watching the exhibition at home. He was alone, and safely in a blind spot.
He opened the channel. Jennifer Tran smiled on his mask screen. Her delicate features were bent slightly by the satellite relay transmission, coming all the way from Earth three minutes ago.
"Adelpho, it's Jennifer from Company One. Is this a good time?"
It was always best to start negotiations with the upper hand, Del reminded himself.
He said, “I'm busy today. Make your pitch.” Then he waited the three minutes.
Mano pushed his gliding chair with his single foot, sending it to the center of the Grid Tower observation room. He bit his lower half-lip as Kallo's image tumbled across the stack of screens that ringed the room, just above his data screens. She knew what she was doing. Still, his single eye lingered; he watched her stretch in a horizontal pose and pull her chute. He laughed out loud. She was a remarkable child, the most remarkable child on both worlds. He and her mother had made sure of that.
One data screen blinked and scrolled a new set of deep space reads fed from the Luna and Phobos arrays and from the comet stations, in columns of racing numbers. He watched every bit of data as his daughter made her spectacular, shocking landing on the Overlook, right into the crowd.
He looked at the readouts again for a few moments, while she interviewed for Interworld. Still, he couldn't find data to confirm what he was feeling.
He pinged Kallo on the main channel; he wanted the whole crew to hear the exchange.
"What, Daddy? We're getting good winds out here with real potential. I gotta go!"
"Something feels wrong today, Puffin," he used the nickname affectionately, but it also worked to get her attention when she was distracted.
"What feels wrong?" Then he overheard someone talking to his daughter in gushing, enthusiastic tones. She would shrug them off and walk away. Del complained about Kallo's lack of social grease, but why did she need any? She was a smart girl, and knew what was important.
"Just shut it, why don't you?" he heard her shout at someone (this always made him laugh) then, to him, "Well, what do you want me to do, Daddy?" then she gasped, "Oh!"
Mano looked up at the live screens; the drone cameras were focusing on a row of dust devils.
"Bye, Daddy!" the end of the word cut off, which meant she had muted him again.
He wanted to tell her to stay down, but he didn't have data to justify it. They had already spent the money from this exhibition on equipment. And it went against nearly all of his instincts to keep her on the ground.
A ping from the Overlook broadcast tower sounded. Mano's one eye looked at the comm panel, and the channel opened.
"Everything alright?" It was Anso, Overlook operator and producer of the broadcast, calling him from the control room in the Overlook tower. Mano had left the main communication channel open for this reason. At the very least, everyone should be on the alert.
"So far," said Mano, "But keep your mask on. They don't want me, do they?"
"No, I made it clear this time. No interview,"
"Come back after she's done," said Mano, "I'm going to merge."
Anso hesitated, then said, "I thought you weren't doing that as often anymore. "Isn't it risky if-"
"Come back when she's done." said Mano, and clicked off.
Mano hated interviews. He especially hated being asked the same questions every time about the old scandal, about being dragged before the United Mars Science Council. Worse, he hated being asked if he would share the “secret”. He had been officially reprimanded for violating genetic ethics law, but that was a slap on the wrist. What truly ticked off his fellow scientists and Company 1 was his refusal to share the “off switch”. No one had yet hacked the code he had used to freeze Kallo's adult development. Someone would figure it out, probably soon, but that was not his problem.
He was indifferent to the opinions of anyone but his daughter, and all she had ever wanted was to be a flight champion.
"I want to be the greatest flyer of all time, Daddy. That's all I want.” Her big silver eyes had pleaded with him, open so wide that thin milky strips of her third eyelids were showing. “Right now I'm aerodynamically perfect. And when I grow up I'll lose it all!”
It was not a childhood whim. It was his daughter's longing to live to her full potential. So he and Del had set the surgical bots to alter her metabolic code, freezing her age forever at twelve years old;and he then ordered Del to delete the settings. It would have been irresponsible not to. Mano of course worried about misuse of the procedure.
She was an oddity on both worlds, but that just sold more tickets. Kallo, the freak who had not aged past twelve, was a star, a champion athlete, and an extreme wing suit pioneer. No one could match her, which had been the whole point. Kallo had never known her mother. And Mano hadn't been able to save his wife in the accident. He couldn't fix that. But he could make sure their daughter had a chance to live her dream.
Usually, Mano had a sense of power. His monitoring systems relayed deep space data at the highest speed available. He was able to upload supplemental data into his own cortex to collate with his intuition, then download it back into the central grid quantum porcessing data system for cross-checking. Still, nothing looked unusual..and yet.
Mano looked at the desk assistant bot; it reacted to his glance, marching across the tea-stained work surface. The cushioned arm of the skull support interface slid smoothly up out of the surface and locked into position. Mano nestled his one unruined cheek in the saddle. Through decades of practice he had mastered starting the interface with a thought. A window opened in his vision.
As data poured into his mind from the central processor his one eye zipped rapidly, his mind sieving anomalies that the program, being inorganic, was powerless to spot. He couldn't stay here long with his unsteady health; the interface could cause more neural injury if he stressed himself. But he needed to search deeper.
Most scientists were embarrassed by intuition – it came with that “wetbrain” Earth stigma. But Mano had been raised by his Hopi scientist grandmother to use both intuition and data in conjunction, and never one without the other.
Kallo managed to get away from the people who wanted to talk to her. Why don't they leave me alone? Do they think I can fly with them hanging on me? She fumed to herself, breaking away and running to the edge of the Overlook, pushing past people in the crowd who hung on the iron railings. She ran out onto the landing platform and stood shifting from foot to foot on her unsteady ankles, inhaling through her nose and open mouth, swaying, turning her face in the winds, snuffling, gauging.
The shimmering dance blimps, scrolling brilliantly colored cactus flower designs on their skins, had descended to performance elevation. Aerial dancers slid down tethers in formation, their red, yellow and pink costumes fluttering and streaming with ribbons as they bounced and whirled to the Tuvan chorus with soaring violins and pounding beat of powow drums. The crowd smiled and clapped politely. This was just the pre-show.
Cool prevailing winds were buffeting Kallo's face. More from south than north, warmer from the south, colder from above - good rotation conditions. She sucked in the slight funk from warming sand, still waiting for the ground to gather more energy. Then came a faint smattering of scent from a higher elevation as cold air was pulled down from the mesas, carrying the sting of bristle cone and a bite of frost.
Kallo leaped from the platform, spreading her wings. She huffed deeply and quickly to catch more scent of cold downdrafts, then barrel rolled right, following a dense run of chilled air down. The drop from the Overlook was only one and a half kilometers but she hit the ground at the fastest speed she could run, following the cold air onto the warmest spot and Yes!
She sprang off her hands and into a triple leap, landing exactly where she had wanted to, and exactly when. Her ankles crunched on impact; she cried out, but put the sensation out of her mind.
There was a kick under her feet as the first twist of the dust devil began and then she was at the pinnacle of the jump, all her muscles jamming tightly, spinning into an updraft.
She cupped her wings over her chest, adjusting with a series of minute, faster-than-thought instinctual shifts and turns, keeping herself in the plume until it began to fade out, catching another, climbing inside the spiraling air currents.
The energy was building as she ascended; the currents were denser and more powerful as she rode higher and higher, jets of sand slapping her suit. Her heart began to thud with more than the athletic effort. She began to imagine the curve of the world from high in the atmo, the milky orange of Mars capped in a crescent of black. The edge of space.
Now there was less power driving her up as the air began to thin. It was colder. But here came another strong, warm upward jet full of dust and sand, and Kallo rolled herself into it, cupping her wings and muttering, Come on, come on, as splatters of fine silica rattled against her hood.
Kallo's breath was frosty inside her mask. A weaker jet of warmer air was slipping by and she rolled onto that one now, hunching, poised in the most aerodynamic position possible, all her senses trained on going up, up.
Kallo was breathing even harder. The plume beneath her was weakening and there wasn't another. At the same time the edges of her vision began to shimmer as she searched above; the sky directly overhead was dark, but she couldn't see the black curve of space yet. She searched for the stray sparkle of a star.
Then she was blinded with blasting light.
She squeezed her eyes shut in reaction but the vicious brightness wasn't dimmed-her eyes throbbed with red and white and then her vision simply went black.
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