Science (is greater than) Magic

 

update.....

I actually love magic.  I love little girls with the unicorn shaped bubble wands running around  and body glitter scattered on the floor of the stadium after a Stevie nicks concert, but I don't like magic out of its context.  I don't want magic trying to tell me the whys of my cancer.  Then I get mad at magic and tell it to get back in the fairytale book where it belongs.  I was raised to believe that science is greater than magic and I believe that.

Speaking of which, my little science experiment with low dose fungus did not yield much.

But I've been working with my therapist, Maggie, with a therapudic technique called  EMDR  doing lots of work on integration of certain mind states and certain coping skills.  After a few weeks of hard work I've ended up where I was hoping to end up to begin with.  I no longer wake up feeling like it's a funeral day. I wake up feeling like I'm happy to be here and like it's my day to take to  do with what I choose.  I feel much more buoyant and powerful and............ well............ happy.  I was longing for this and I ended up here by doing the hard work ,which is what people need to do even if they've had a"good trip"like the lady in the video had.  It's the integration that gets you there anyway, , ending up here without having the "unicorn ride".

Something about this reminds me of Brownies(even though I got kicked out for using foul language) or of Dorothy's gaudy shoes.  But in this case my shoes would be scuffed up,  muddy hiking boots.

What the heck.  Maybe I'll throw a little glitter on 'em.....

Wind Spinddle Chapter 7

 Kallo looked in the mirror of the level three sluff and sleep pod and scowled at the sight. It was hours past her sluff time; she looked like a 50-year-old child.

She released the fasteners on her wing suit; it crumpled to the floor. She kicked the suit into the sonic launder unit and pressed her palm on the wall panel. The triple hydro-shielded door slid open as the base of the pod filled with the mixture of water and salicylic acid. She slipped into the hot liquid, reveling in the itch-and-tingle of the sluffing solution as the day's skin slid off.  It had been such a long day that her skin practically sluffed in one piece, along with the silk anchor patches for her flight suit, which now clung only for a moment before gliding away from her arms, neck, legs and back. She stood. The change in her posture triggered the drain at the far end of the pod to open, sucking away the old skin, and the day's radiation with it, in a high, sharp wsssht! Warm water pulsed from dozens of nozzles as she turned in the spray, sighing in relief. The jets went still, then sprayed her with slip, the solution of aloe and refined sheep fat. Kallo rubbed her tender, new skin with the slip, stepped out of the pod and wrapped a hooded ironsilk robe around herself. She pressed her palm on the opposite wall, opening the sheepskin-padded, triple-shielded sleeping pod. As she curled up under the warm layers her mind was buzzing with the terrible things Del had said.

He had been so angry! And now that Kallo thought back, he had been angry for a while. In fact, he seemed to grow more sarcastic and bitter every year, dropping mean remarks here and there. Why? What was wrong with him? Daddy had said that Del was just jealous of her and she knew practically everyone was, but Del was still important to her, and still important to her Daddy. 

He seemed far away now. And it occurred to Kallo that not many other people liked her.

Tassie had never liked her, and although Anso was always helpful, he wasn't really close. She didn't even know much about him. Beyond that, Kallo had no friends at all. She had no one else to turn to. Kallo turned on her side under the sheepskins. What could make Del act like this?

Was it possible that he didn't love her like he used to?

 Then she rolled to the other side. She couldn’t sleep, though she was shivering with fatigue.

She worried on Del in her mind, like a tongue worrying a cavity. Then she worried on her poor, injured Daddy, hurt even more again while he was just trying to make things right. It was so unfair. Why were things so unfair for him?

Kallo was on her own now and for the very first time,  and she didn't know what to do.

Sleep settled on her, but it was a blustering sleep like the first gusts of a storm.  She was at the edge of a dream mesa. The wind was too warm; it was carrying energy from the ground and the funk of moist air sucked up from the cisterns; that meant a dust storm.  She had to tell everyone. She had to hurry.

An old woman was now standing on the edge of the mesa, spinning that stupid yarn and staring up at the huge roiling, looming claw of a haboob that darkened the sky above them.  Kallo stared up, her heart hammering. She yelled to the old woman, but her voice was lost in screaming winds. The old woman stared at Kallo and said, into sudden silence,

"My name is Dohna." 

Tassy drifted idly in the wind tunnel, staring off into space.  The rhythmic buffeting jets of air rocked her peacefully.  Her practice suit undulated gently against her skin, her helmet creating a safe space of deep, deep quiet.  She was grateful for the shielded backup power in  the lab, and also for the quiet.  With all the world comm systems down, she really had time alone.  She could really think.

She thought about gravity, and the old laboratory Hertz experiment, considering the interaction of electro-magnetic and gravitational waves into a strong magnetic field.  

If flyers didn't need air molecules or currents for lift, flight could be a very different thing.   Energy packs had never been efficient enough.  Chutes couldn't do much on short notice because of the thin air.  But really, any air was too thin for the hazards that busy fliers might have to face.

She was not kallo's biggest fan, but watching the girl nearly crash and die had ruined Tassy's sleep for several nights.  Every time sleep started to pull her under she saw Kallo tumbling and coming much too close to crashing before Del had caught her in mid-flight..For one thing, the whole idea of overriding manual had been a terrible mistake.  Tassy wouldn't have blamed Kallo or Mano for raging at her about that, although they hadn't said a word, probably more from preoccupation than anything.  It had been a terrible day.  If Del hadn't rescued Kallo-the thought chilled Tassy to the bone.  She had to do something to protect her fliers.  She needed to do something new, something great that would truly help them. 

When Tassy had been in school she'd been fascinated by gravity generators, those quantum magnification systems installed in the floors of space stations, lunar installations and other off -world manned vehicles and habitatats.  She had wanted to create a  mechanism using the same ambient gravitational waves, but in reverse.  For a few months she was mocked for it. "It's antigravity girl!" they'd say, and because there was no such thing and would never be any such thing, it was the same as being called stupid. “Why not just run the specs?”her friends would ask. But no machines, quantum or beyond, would ever be as creative as the mind. And the mind had its organic needs: to attempt, to fail, to find solutions, to see beyond solutions, to create. One of her greatest champions in those days had bdeen Mano.  "Real creatives and real  scientists don't hv th luxury of lisstenin o mundane minds," he said, "'They'll sap your drive," but she had let the problem go, for the time being.  She always knew she would come back to gravity as a source for drive power.  

Now, it was more important than ever that fliers could be free of reliance on the environment.  Or on outdated, inefficient systems. 

Tassy spun in the jets of air.  What if a flier could activate gravity resistors (reversed grav generators)and use them for lift?  You wouldn't want complete grav reversal, because you'd fall up into space.  But if you could control gravity that would be all you needed.  Tassy's heart began to pound.  That would be all you needed.  Some of the best technologies were simply commonly used technologies adapted in size and reapplied to other common uses; reapplication had been done hundreds of times in other industries; now it was time for grav resistors to find their way into personal flight technology.  Blueprints sprang into Tassy's brain.  She wrestled out of her wind tunnel practice suit and tore a seam in her hurry as she stumbled out of the wind tunnel and into the lab; she stubbed her toe, tripping and nearly falling on her face getting to her desk.  A  holopanel scrolled in the air above the desk as she sat.  She began tracing a design before her butt hit the chair.  

The hardware would be basic: a quantum AI unit managing gravitational magnification units, other AI units reacting to the flier's commands coming through the neural patches, and simple circuits embedded in the suit connected to resistors, which would give the flier control.  The hardware would be tiny but easy to maintain, supported by a network of passive ambient radiation harvesters, like generations of suits before, a proven reliable system..But what about lateral movement?  it would work like a system of thrusters, like allerone, pitch and yaw, basic rocket mechanics of flight.  It would take some skill to operate, of courae, but, Tassy thought with some pride, no corps of fliers was more skilled than the Mars Central Comm Corps. Kallo was the undisputed star, but they could all hold their own, including her twin brother Anso.

 Tassy finally took off her helmet, releasing her glinting silver pigtails, her face glazed lightly with sweat. The same thought always came to her at this stage of developing an idea: what would Mano think?   

Mano had given her this lab, had invested in her as if she were his own child. He had paid for her advanced education, had told her saw creativity in her when others at the shabby school in Arturos only saw her test scores. She had been pressured into asteroid engineering, but Mano was the one who supported her in her independent projects, the only one who told her she was an innovator worth the investment. And she had proven that true, several times; she had been the flight suit designer for Mars Central Comm Corps for over ten years now, and they were known for having the very best technology in flight suits.  It was one thing Del loved to brag about. Mixed with the recall of Mano’s help in those early days were her sweet memories of getting to know Del. He had never led her on, though he could have; she had followed him around like a devotee’. He hadn’t loved her back. And why should he? He was a star athlete and an Interworld broadcaster, too. But he was always kind, and had always trusted her designs. He would flash that dazzling grin, his dark hematite eyes glinting at her, and her insides would melt. Still she felt that deep thrill for him and still she kept her secret hopes that maybe...one day...

Wind Spindle Chapter 6

 

The surface of Mars was raked by dust storms and baked by radiation. Pewter-eyed ravens circled the bristlecone and yucca-studded mesas, hunting tiny desert rats and double-skinned snakes. Rugged insects flew through the razor grasses, thrumming as they laid eggs, killed each other and died; for them the world had not changed.

Mirror canyons scattered across the deserts continued to reflect concentrated light onto the salt towers and the salt towers continued to build heat, but the circuits were fried; the mirrors had no power to follow the sun. They were as dying silver flowers, petals frozen crookedly and gathering dust. Some heat from the salt towers still made it underground but most of it, blocked off by the ruined circuits, wafted away through the night in streaming tendrils of hot air.

Drones lay in fragments, half-buried in sand. Blimps gaped and flopped over the rocks in breeze-driven distress. The CAPS were still and dry, with no moisture or nitrogen pouring down on the villages in New Khan and Kinlani. No white plumes rode the sky above the Ny Hofsjökull glacier; the ice workers were quiet, like the silk lab technicians and the astrominers in the Firestar plants. These communities sat in their deepest, wool-cozied common room caves playing music together and rationing tea, and hoping for news.

The cisterns and aqueducts grew colder underground. Ice crystals crept around the edges of the water supply, but the subground automated greenhouses and mulberry groves sustained themselves, warming their own soil, composting their own waste, filtering water through the fish tanks, rotating the rows of  lamps. In the greenhouses life was humid, rich, sweet, rotten and fresh.  The vents still pulled fresh 02 from the greenhouses through the underground cities and released it through the basalt flues into the atmo. The people could breathe underground, but they were growing colder.

Eight kilometers down in Hellas canyon, the wealthiest citizens of Mars gathered by community clusters, each of approximately one hundred fifty, in the carved basalt halls awaiting Lady Naserian Isikirari. She met with the entire Bowl population by the end of the third day, making her speeches of courage and hope in her finest ironsilk robes, her hair done up high and covered in a mesh of opals, a form of dress normally reserved for Interworld counsels. The people of the Bowl stood in close crowds to hear her quiet voice, stretching their hands to her so she could touch her trembling fingertips to theirs more easily. She said the name of each person, then touched her heart after each meeting of fingers. They touched their hearts as they bid her farewell, knowing it might be the final time; the Lady was so old now, and who knew when the next Lady would come to them? Many wept as they turned to go to back to their homes. After her official addresses the Lady, being an elder of enormous years and knowledge, sat down to dictate her last journals. The finest scribers of the Bowl came with rolls of vellum and vials of mineral ink to take her dictations. Bowl dramatists and poets began to write thrillers about the coming of the Third Die Off.

Other citizens of the Bowl scrambled to consolidate water, food and other supplies. Rescue teams made bundles for the Tube communities, and set out to deliver them.

The Tube communities surrounding Hellas canyon, their yurts protected only by patched layers of hydro-shields crookedly strapped down by basalt nets, awaited supplies from the Bowl. They complained that they had been forsaken and that they were disposable as they plowed through their stashes of mescal and milk vodka. Many cursed the Bowl and each other. Some worried that they should have stayed in the Bowl, should have tried harder to comply with the Bowl's strict laws, but Stark Freedom was the way of the Tubes. So they got drunk, held martial tournaments and waited, resentfully, for supplies.

The engineers of Nova Petra on Olympus Mons met with Bowl engineers and set out together to begin the rebuild. While Olympus engineers sat and pointed, ordering their laborers about, Bowl engineers heaved coils of wire, loaded themselves with packs of components, and trudged alongside their workers.

The monks of Stormhorse Temple arrived at Kinlani and New Khan in their dusty sheepskins, towing handcarts of hydro-shielding blankets, water tanks and bundles of pemmican cakes made of dried mutton, cactus figs and pinion nuts. They were welcomed into yurts and hogans, fed, and stayed several days with the families. Elders also made their rounds. The arguments between monks and elders were unavoidable but, all said, quite minor.

And from a medpod in the Central Grid Tower, Mano had bypassed the central drives and had reached his mind into the fried grid circuits. He created thought loops by continually running dialogue through his mind, “What must be built here?” and translating the thought loops into codes, making vigorous worms. He sent them out on all the circuits he could access. The worms hopped over circuit breaks, recorded more codes, and returned with more data.

Hundreds of bots, responding to Mano’s commands, began routing fiber optic cables, sleeves and panconduit pipelines.

While Mars rebuilt its power infrastructure, Mano began to build the first shielded independent Mars communication grid.

.

Wind Spindle Chapter 5

 

Eighteen-year-old Lady Jewel Isikirari unlocked her helmet and lifted it; the air in the abandoned underground station was breathable, but stunk like an unbalanced 02 mix and the familiar gunpowder smell of space dust. They had made it to Phobos, at least. After three anxious weeks as stowaways, and now hiding on this crumbling little moon, their trip was nearly over. They were only six thousand kilometers from the surface of Mars, her new home.

Her adviser Hank, a towering Kinlanian with broad shoulders, set his ow own helmet on the edge of an operation console coated in gray, powdery grime as his long, thick jet black braid snaked down his back. “I've seen this little moon in orbit my entire life,” he said. “Never thought I'd set foot on it.”He began to check the panel on the back of the Lady's suit.  

“I'm fine, Hank,” the Lady smiled.

“Just checking your panels. Begging your pardon,”  Hank had the most persuasive of masculine voices, a velvet baritone with a breathy edge. The Lady found it reassuring just now.

“You never have to beg my pardon, Hank. Thank you."

"Open the comm,” she said to her communications supervisor, Jomo, “I want to send a final thank you to the barge crew. They took great risks for us."

"I'm checking the encryption settings, My Lady," said Jomo, who had plugged his glass book into the old console and was typing away, "But...it looks like something ha-"

Light blasted open the world. The screens transmitted the blinding burst and then went black. The Lady dropped with a liquid grace to the floor and then sprang up, calling out the names of her crew.

“Hank! Akina! Jomo! Kotori! Jennifer!” They groped across the cramped room, breathless. “Answer if you are all right!” said the Lady, reaching out her hands. They each answered in affirmative, touching the tips of their trembling fingers to hers. They all half-expected the 34-kilometer-wide moon they had landed on, really no more than a ball of loosely consolidated rock, to be pulling apart beneath them.

“We're far enough under the surface to escape electronics damage,” Jennifer Tran was the first to speculate on their situation, “But we only have backup life support now for a few hours. If this was a gamma burst. I can't read the metrics," she shook her head, trying to clear her vision. "How did we not see this coming?”

“We can't know the Universe in Her entirety,” said young Lady Jewel, with the composure of a seasoned royal. She blinked rapidly, asking, “Can we make a drop on backup power?”

Jennifer then furtively punched a code on her wrist unit as she held it under the control board; she brought both hands up, glancing behind her.  The crew were all still half-blinded.

Jennifer's throbbing eyes raced back and forth beneath her eyelids as she pictured the math, the forces, the formulas. She squinted at her screens, finally able, just barely, to read. “No one will have found us anyway, My Lady. It looks like this was big enough to wipe out comm systems on both worlds.”

“Dumb luck.” Hank marveled.

"I've lost contact with the barge." Jomo took his seat once again. "It was headed back to the Earth path. "But-" he looked down at his glass, somber.

"Jomo?" said the Lady.

"Looks like an explosion on the barge. Just outside of orbit," he said, "There's debris in the final readouts, just before the burst. But it's already made the transition to bot pilot. It's on the industrial flight path."

"If this was a gamma burst-could that have triggered an explosion somehow?" said Hank.

"They were a security risk." said Jennifer.

The rest of the crew stared at her through a long, shimmering silence.

Hank said, "Explain yourself. Now."

"I wanted to help Her Ladyship-"

They waited. Jennifer turned in her chair to face them.

"You know about the surge in the shame trade. Child wives-"

"We were led to think," said Hank, "That you believed in the Bowl and the Three Sisters' vision. That never includes putting innocents in harm's way. Under Bowl law that is abuse of power. The most serious charge."

"They weren't innocents," said Jennifer. "The innocents, the expendable cargo, have jettisoned. They will make it to Luna for rehabilitation and retraining."

"There were-others?" said the Lady. “Was there abuse?  You knew and did not-“

Hank stepped between the Lady and Jennifer. Jennifer had to crane her neck back to look him in the eye. She swallowed.

"I-I," this was the first time they had seen Jennifer's confidence slip, "I thought it necessary action to protect the Lady."

"I bind you under Bowl law." said Hank. "Upon landing you will face charges. Until that time you will comply with Her Ladyship in every and all ways."

"I'm afraid you can't," Jennifer flashed her wrist screen displaying her true passport  to Hank. "I'm sorry. Interworld has granted me complete immunity. But I won't be any trouble for you. We have helped each other. When we land, we will part company. You will never see me again."

"You helped us get this far. And we could have helped them. We could have given them asylum in the Bowl. Why?" said the Lady.

"I do believe in the Bowl, My Lady," said Jennifer. "And I would protect you. But you could not help the cause I live for.”  

"Which you will not tell us about," said Hank, glowering.

"It's best." Jennifer said. "But, I do want you to know. I never suspected a gamma burst. They were destined for elimination anyway. The timing of it…seems to be karma." She smiled at them.

Lady Jewel stood quietly for a few moments, then said, “How long till we're closest to Hellas?”

“Five hours,” said Jomo. "But we will still be at least ten kilometers out, my Lady. I hadn't planned for this kind of anomaly."

"None of us could have, Jomo. So..." the Lady smiled, as if she were inviting them all for tea in a palace garden, "We will be walking through the desert, like spirit questers. Ought to appeal to the monks. And I am feeling quite spiritually grateful at this very moment.” She gave each of them a long look. “Prepare for the drop. I don't need to tell you, Jennifer, what would happen if-"

Jennifer looked at Hank, her eyes somber. "Correct, My Lady."

 

Wind Spindle Chapter 4

 

Mano was lost in joy.

He tried again and again to wake his left hemisphere, the side of his brain that could isolate and differentiate.  He tried to analyze the situation. He tried, in effect, to get his mind's feet on the ground.

He felt the assistant bots lifting him from the chair (The bots were triggered?  Of course. Backups, triggered by the damaged circits.), stretching his fragile body onto the gliding table. He saw, as though through fogged glass, the dark monitors and ceilings slide by overhead, then felt the tiny cold slap of a med patch.  

He was now slipping into a temperature controlled pod.  Yes, he thought, hypothermia treatment while they do the neural scans, to control the damage.  

How much functional gray matter will I have left?  He wondered, but there was no fear - only the relentless euphoria of universal connection pouring in from his right cortex. This was what the monks in Storm Horse Temple and the shamans in Kinlani talked about, but he also felt-no, knew- it was truly of the spirit.  He finally surrendered to it.

His happiest memories rolled through his mind, in brilliant color and dimension.  He was singing science songs and history rhymes to Kallo as he rocked her. He had been whole, then.  He had had two arms to hold her and swing her, a throat that could sing, legs to chase her, to support him while he swung her through the air. How she wailed when he stopped, when he put her down.

“No, Daddy, no Daddy!”  She screamed, her arms reaching up voraciously for more time in the air.  

“First came the curious bots and then came geologists,” they would chant together as he danced through the tower with her on his shoulders, “Then cave-carvers, astro-miners, hydro-builders and biologists.

“United Earth made a world but the whole world died,” At this point in the rhyme he would hold her upside-down as she giggled, then continued.

“China made another but then the whole world died,” He flipped her upside down once more, which made her giggle harder.  Then he bounced upright her for the rest.

“And then came the gene shakers, Dine’ and Hopi, and silk makers.

“Three Masaai Sisters made the Bowl.

“And now our world of Mars is whole!”

It was a clumsy rhyme at best, one of many he composed.  He preferred she learn truths before wetbrain religious lore.  And he had taught her why.

“Elecro-magnetic fields rule over Earth brains,” he told her when she was seven years old, old enough to understand that even Mars was not populated only with scientists, “So Earthers can be made to believe almost anything,”

“But what about the temples?”

“Religion on our world is not the same.  It's more discipline than delusion,” It was not entirely true, but Mano hoped for a world free of the old lies.  His daughter could help to create that.

“But what about the sweats and sings?”

“The spirit is not religion. It isn’t affected by EMFs. The spirit is all that we are.  It’s the way we are connected to everything. They’re not the same, Puffin. Religion can bind your mind from learning.  The spirit, Maasaw's Way, knows everything and teaches everything.”

“Daddy?”

His body's reactions told him this was not part of his euphoric twilight state.  She was really here.

“I'm alright, Puffin,” he said.

  

Del had never seen the Central Grid tower dark.  It made his heart beat faster.  But the door was already open.  

The sight of Kallo weeping in a chair, with Mano in an emergency pod covered with crow-sized nursebots padding softly over him on polymer feet, stopped him cold.  Kallo saw Del, leaped from the chair and threw herself on him.  Anso and Tassie moved in, looking at the med panels.

"Left cortex bleed," said Tassie.  "I don't know brain stuff.  How do you feel, Mano?  Is there pain?"

“He can't even talk anymore,” said Kallo.

The main med panel went dark.  Then a green screen opened, scrolling:  PLAN.  POWER GRID FIRST.

Tassie gave a little breath of awe.  "If he can't talk, then he's already figured out how to bypass his speech center and merge with the med panel.  That's incredible."  

She looked up at Del, who shrugged in agreement.  At the moment Delwas  thrown off-center.  He was remembering the accident years ago, feeling helpless and so alone.  Before Kalleyno's birth Mano and his wife Ang had been Del's refuge, caring for him like a son. Del didn’t often think of his birth family; he had escaped from their coldness and belligerence.  Mano was the closest thing he had to a father, and Del would only have been surprised at a lack of brilliance on Mano's part.

Del hugged Kallo and set her down.  He stepped up to the med panel. “We need the Red Star companies on Olympus to back us,” he said.

AND THE BOWL. Mano's readout scrolled.  ENGINEERS TO UPGRADE GRID. NEED COMMS TO SURFACE.  WEATHER. STATUS.  EARTH SIGNALS.

"Until the network is back up," said Del.  

"Through the tubes?" said Anso. "That will take too long."

POWER NETWORK FIRST.

"So, how do we deliver communications without...power?" said Anso, but even as he said it, he turned and looked at Kallo. 

Kallo nodded.  

SHE KNOWS.

Kallo ran to an equipment closet, grabbing the edge of a storage tube.  Del helped her unroll the blanket-sized vellum map painted in brilliant colors.  They stood looking down at it.

“From Olympus we can get enough starting elevation to cover most of the world,” said Kallo.  “If we fly out from there we can deliver the important news in the mornings.  We can get back through the tubes.  It will take all day, but we can get news to Kinlani, the Glaciers and the Bowl.”

"It'll be like the pony express," said Anso. 

He was met with blank looks.

"The pony express? In the mid century after the European invasion. It was how they got the paper mail across the prairies and plains.  Riders on horseback."

There was a brief silence while this thought ran the room.

JUST UNTIL NEW GRID IS UP.  OUR GRID.

“Yes,” Del had been thinking the same thing.  

“What?” said Tassie, “Our own..?”

MARS.  INDEPENDENT. COMMUNICATIONS. GRID.

“Yes!” laughed Del.  

PAST TIME. said Mano.

“What about Interworld?  Company 1?” said Tassie.

ALL RADIO FREQUENCIES TO FIBER OPTICS RUN THROUGH TUBES. EARTH CAN BUY A SIGNAL.

Del laughed again.  It was one of the things he admired most about Mano. Nobody told the man what to do, or at least, not for long.

KALLO NEW HEAD OF GRID.

There was a long silence.  Tassie and Anso turned to stare at Del, sensing what was coming.

"She'll be flying," laughed Del, "She won't have time. And, Mano, she does not have the skill to manage!"

"I do too!"  Kallo stood next to Mano's readout panel.  "I can do it.  I'll take care of it, Daddy.  I won't let you down."

"She's 12 years old!" said Del.

TWENTY FOUR IN EXPERIENCE.

"She has a child's brain!"  
MUST THINK FUTURE.  SHE UNDERSTANDS.  

There was a long pause.  

The room was filled with Del's breathing.  He was the only one who knew how utterly stupid this was.  He was the only one losing.

GRID MUST BE FREE.  OPEN. BELONG TO MARS.

"You think I don't understand that?  I helped you build the whole thing!"

AND KALLO WILL NEED YOUR HELP.

There was another silence.

COULD NOT HAVE BUILT GRID WITHOUT YOU.

“You couldn't have built her without me!" Del hated that he was shouting, and that everyone else was staring at him as though he was some kind of a problem.  

CAREFUL.  

DEL.

"This is dung."  He turned to Kallo, "I built your future!  Let's see you do it without me!"

NOT. WITHOUT.  

YOU ARE

There was another silence; it seemed that Mano was trying even harder to put words together more persuasively, 

PART OF THIS  

“Which part?  The anus?” Del stomped out.

Wind Spindle Chapter 3

  

Kallo 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.  Suddenly she was weak and nauseous.

Now the familiar sensation of her internal organs shoving up and back told her that she was losing altitude.

Falling! she yelled at herself, Falling, idiot! Check instruments!

Even blinking rapidly she couldn't see the readout in her mask, although her vision seemed to be on its way back. She was seeing sparks in the black. She went to audio with a tick of her head. Nothing. Radio silence. Had she gone deaf, too?  

She tweaked her head, again attempting to wake up her comm. Nothing.  

Her brain seemed full of wool, and her eyes weren't focusing.  She cussed, putting all her concentration on her trajectory. She was tumbling, gaining velocity with no visual.  She corrected, stretching into layout position. At least with her wings extended she might buy altitude.

She triggered her chute manually.  It didn't deploy. She tried her second chute, her ballute, nothing.

"Daddy?  Kallo heard the quaver in her own shriek as she tried again to wake her instruments.  Had she knocked them out with the altitude? A pounding ache stabbed behind her eyes. Her stomach revolted, but she pushed the sensation down.  She could see light now, but everything was cloudy.  She blinked several times in case her third eyelids were spasming.

She could be 3 kilometers up, or 3 meters.  By now she had hit terminal velocity. She arched her back, trying to climb, hoping desperately not to smash into the cliff side of the Overlook, or a dance blimp, or even the ground.

She drew rapidly on the air in the mask, trying to catch a scent of anything, any clue that could give her an altitude but her mouth was full of panic-a taste like copper and bile. Vomiting would be the worst thing right now; she kept swallowing.  Her own panting was deafening, pounding in her ears.  No choice. She would have to brake and risk spinning out.

Kallo stalled with every bit of her strength, bringing her wings into a bowl shape, her legs forward.  But she had decelerated too quickly. She slipped into a tumble. She was cartwheeling down.

Then she was slammed from behind.

Del pulled her to his chest and wrapped his auxiliary harness around her, clicking it tight. The overhead thump of his deployed chute jerked them up, up.  Now she could make out, through the blur, rock and sand rushing away beneath them only about 100 meters down. Kallo gasped to see how close she had come.

Del caught a downdraft and made a turn back toward the Overlook.  Relaxing in the harness, Kallo laughed with relief. Of course Del would come and save her.  She should have known that. He had always taken care of her. He always would. Kallo laughed, too, at how long it took Del to make the turn.  Even without the addition of her own weight he was much bigger and therefore more ponderous in flight. He could go faster, but she would always be better at maneuvers. She would always be more graceful.

They landed in a run, harder than Kallo was used to.  Her ankles complained. Del popped the harness, releasing her, and made for the Overlook. Kallo minced along behind him, stopping to finally empty her stomach onto the sand.

Anso ran out of the tower and through the crowd on the Overlook, herding them into the viewing lounge as he shouted for medics. He'd left his helmet off and his shock of spiky black hair was buffeted in the winds as he ran. The crowd were crouching and leaning on each other, holding their masks, and moved as slowly as sheep into the base level room.

Finally Anso jumped and slid down the handrails of the long stairway to ground level.

“Everything's down!” he yelled to Kallo and Del.  

“What in all hells do you mean?” said Del, still charging toward him.

"It's all down.  The grid, all our instruments, everything.  Holy hells, I went blind for a minute!" Anso caught up to them and was looking them up and down. “Are you alright?”

"I felt something," said Kallo.

"For once, huh?" said Del, leaving her puzzling.  Why was he angry at her? But he was shouting at Anso again.  "What happened?"

Anso's lips thinned over his teeth.  "How would I know that?"

"You're the producer!"said Del , "You're the Overlook operator! You ought to know something!"

"Gamma event!" Anso's twin, Tassy, had followed him down from the Overlook, her glass book in one hand.  She raced across the sand to them, her sparkling silver pigtails bouncing. "It's on my shielded backup!"

They gathered, looking at Tassy's glassbook. Though it had gone to blackscreen, the last readouts before shutdown had been recorded. The reads were in a different numerical zone than Del had ever seen.

"Only gamma rays could blow it like this," said Tassy.

"Then we should all be dead," said Del.

"Or blind," said Kallo, looking up at Del wonderingly. Her own vision was still patchy, and Ian and Tassy's tarnished pewter eyes both had the blurred-over look as well. "But your eyes are fine!"  Del darted a glance at her, then away.

"There are many kinds of gamma emissions," Tassy reminded Del, sidling up to him. "Look," she urged softly, pointing, "We just got stupid lucky." Now they all stared at her.  "It couldn't have been anything else," she said. "Everybody needs to go and have a good sluff and a nap.  We got quazed."

Anso let loose a colorful run of Dine’ profanity.

"Daddy." said Kallo.

 

Del ran up the Overlook steps, glancing behind him to make sure they were all keeping up.  They would have to get to the central grid tower through the tunnels; circuits must be fried on all the above ground trans units.

“Del, wait!” Kallo shouted at him, limping along.  

“We've got to check on Mano,” Del said.  “It's going to take us at least two hours subground.  If the tubes are running,”

“Hope they aren't fried,” said Anso. “Likely the whole radiation harvesting network got cooked, so it will have gone to green power,”

"We'll be lucky to make it a week on that without shutdowns." said Tassy. “Kallo, let me look at that suit.  I’ll never build in auto overrides again.  You should have had the option to go to manual up there.“

Kallo shrugged away from Tassy, who was checking the back panel of the suit. Del opened the subentrance door.

“No,” Kallo said, “I'm going to fly it.”

“Are you wetbrained?” said Anso.

“Tassy,” said Kallo, “Do you still have my old training suits stashed down on sublevel two?”

“Nothing is maintained or up to date,” said Tassy.  “A seam could tear. You won't have any instruments.  I need to-”

“Forget it,” said Del.

Kallo put her hands on her hips. “You forget it!”

“Listen,” Del pinned her with his glare. “The prevailing winds won't get you there.  You'll have to fly a series of circuit routes to even get to the grid tower, taking off from this low elevation – if you can even gain enough at all.   And what happened to your manual overrides just a minute ago? What if you don't have chutes?”

“My old suits were all manual, Del,”  said Kallo , “No safety circuits to fry.  No overrides.”

“Don't be stupid, Kallo.” He said. “We have to go subground.  Now.”

She blinked at him, biting her lip.  Then she shrugged.

“Good.” Del said.

He opened the iron door and ran down the stone steps; they followed, descending into the tube station.  The overhead screens were all black, which made the familiar space now feel too close, stifling. The transpods were on backup lighting, just visible by thin green strips of light outlining their translucent oval shapes.  

Along the walls the greenhouse windows were still bright; it was a constant reminder of where the power was now coming from.  Mars civilization had limitless power when the radiation harvesters on the surface were working. Plant power would only supply them for a number of days before system shutdowns were unavoidable.  

Del poked the touch pad on the closest transpod; green script read:

Warning.  Backup power only available.  Enter destination.

Del punched the icon, Central Grid Tower.

The tube station went black.  Del heard the others take in a sharp breath.

The greenhouse window lights flickered on again first, then the rest of the eerie backup lighting.  They all breathed out together.

The panel scrolled:  Adequate power to complete transport.  Board for Central Grid Tower.

They climbed into the pod.  Del looked up at Ian and Tassy, then past them.

“Where the hell is she?”

He climbed out of the pod, running back up the steps to the Overlook Tower.  He ran out onto the landing platform in time to see her tiny, bird-like form swoop over the west mesa, followed by a line of dot-sized crows.  Well, there were plenty of updrafts today. She would probably make it. But his stomach was sour.

“Why do you bother?” Tassy asked him as he maneuvered his long legs around the interior of the pod.  “She just does what she wants.”

Del frowned at her.  “What else can I do?” He finally settled in his seat and tapped the Go button on inner wall.  The pod lifted, then accelerated with a jerk.

Tassy shrugged and sighed, silently watching the blur of brilliant greenhouse lights through the wall of the pod as they zipped along the underground rail. 

“They’re not brilliant like you, in every way,’Dell said, and watched Tassy blush.  It was an old game of poking her with praise and watching the predictable result; it alwas gave him satisfaction.

When Dell embarrassed her like this it always reminded Tassy of when her father had bragged on her.  As a child she had lingered in the back of her father’silversmith shop and she always knew by the way the customer’s voices changed, from buisneslike to whimsical, and her father’s from serious to bragadocious, that he had taken one of her air sculpturs from its hanger and was swooping it around from his hand so the gears spun and the mechanisms locked, causing the wings to undulate and flap.  The customers whispered “Nizoni,”  and her father would correct them,”This is more than Nizoni!”  This is not just beauty!  This is more than art.  This is beauty and function!  This is engineering!”  And Tassy would throw herself on her little wool couch and bury her face in her sheepskin pillow, trying not to giggle.  

When Tassy had drawn her first designs for the sculptures, her father had suggested using owl bones, being hollow and therefore lighter, and had shown Tassy how to stalk an owl so that she would know when it died and could harvest the bones more easily.  After watching the owl fight for her life against an enormous hawk and then raise a nest of owlets before finally dying and falling to the floor of a cave, Tassy was ready to leave her gratitude offering of tobacco, corn pollen and braided sweetgrass.  She was then ready to tenderly tug the delicate bones from the carcass while softly singing her prayers of gratitude.  But she was not prepared for the waves of grief that would crash through her for weeks afterward, nor how precious and sacred the addition of the bones would make each of her sculptures. Tassy's father had  failed to mention that Tassy would learn to love the owl as a friend and teacher, and would grieve her fiercely.  Tassy’s father always seemed to leave the most important things for her to find out for herself.  That, Tassy thought, was why she had become an engineer.She always had to discover the most important answers for herself.