Del slumped out of the transpod door and mounted the underground steps
three at a time to the exit, emerging into the blowing dust
above ground. He trudged the three kilometers to the lava tube city
of New Kandovan, past familiar half-buried wrecks of old vehicles and equipment, without
seeing any of it go by. His stomach was churning the whole way.
The cave entrance was ringed with carved stone and adobe
pueblo-style dwellings; the surrounding, sprawling livestock pens were
roofed with hydroshielding tarps held down crookedly with polymer
chains. The crooked angles hadn't changed. Even the dwarf Bactrian camels,
goats and chickens looked like the same ones. Nothing ever changed
here.
His mother’s Tibetan mastffs took long leaps from the doorway,
their billowing black manes and snarling jaws bearing down on
him. The dogs ran around him, kicking up clouds of vermillion
dust. After circling they began whining and leaping to lick his
hands. He ruffled their manes, looking up as his mother stepped out,
hands on her hips. She jerked her chin at him, pointing her lips
back to the doorway framed by flapping curtains of translucent
polymer, smeared with rusty clay. He followed.
"Hey yeah!" Sani, his mother's third husband, looked up from
chopping the head off a chicken. "Time to celebrate,
huh?" He slammed the ax into the block, stood and wrapped his arms
around Del as the headless bird stopped running and died, shuddering and
spurting on the ground. Del nodded and hugged back, thinking about Bowl's
plant cuisine and their blue corn frybread, which contained every nutrient
and had such depth of flavor it seemed to shimmer in the mouth. He
would never taste it again.
"You moving back?" his mother said, wiping her hands on her
clay-smeared leather apron. She slammed the door to her potting pod three
times before it sealed.
"That door track needs to be cleaned out again," said
Del, "Maybe one of your lazy husbands could get a move on."
"One more jab and you're sleeping with the goats." she said.
"I'm not having. Get me?" Her hematite eyes were
only half joking. Del was flooded with that familiar sinking feeling, and
lowered his gaze.
"I get you." he grumbled. He wanted a drink.
Bahlul, lanky and somehow always dancing, smiled at Del as he set the
tray of bread and mutton kabobs on the long stone table. Sani, compact
and calm, reached past him to put the earthen pitcher of milk vodka and cups on
the table, just in time to pin the other man in place. They both laughed
and exchanged a kiss, walking behind Del's mother; Bahlul stroked her
neck and Sani kissed the top of her head. The two men sat on either
side of Del and patted his shoulders, smiling warmly at him, passing him a full
cup and heaping plate. It was a happy house and his mother's
husbands always tried to make Del feel included and cared for.
But they couldn't change his mother. He sometimes wondered what they saw
in her.
"So you're back," said his mother, "And
whupped."
Del bit down on the answer he wanted to give, his face growing
hot. Bahlul and Sani exchanged a look of concern, but they both stayed
quiet.
"You selling a lot of weavings?" Del asked Sani, studying the
hangings that ringed smooth adobe walls of the round room. He pointed to
a vivid piece that had to be a mix of silk and wool, by the texture.
"That's a new style for you, yeah?"
Sani smiled and took a breath to reply, but Del's mother
interrupted.
"Can't imagine it," she said, "Everything was gonna be
perfect, wasn't it? You were gonna be on top of this world. Above all of
it."
"It was never that."
"No? I thought you were gonna-"
"Yes, mother. It all fell apart."
She poured him another shot of milk vodka, sliding the earthen
cup across the table. His mother's pottery was some of the
plainest in Arturos, designed for the hand, not the eye. It was
pleasing to hold and use but stubbornly plain. Fancy-dancy decoration wasn't
for the table.
"He used you. He uses everyone. Him and that freak.
All of them anyway, they just use us up," She said. “Part of
their big plan to wipe us out so they can take over the whole gene pool.” Bahlul
reached out and put a hand over hers, as if to calm her.
"Yeah?" Del snapped, for one moment the memory of his
loyalty to Mano kicked in, then the sting of Kallo's slap, and the
flame died quickly . He laughed; his mother had no end of crazy
ideas about people in the Bowl and how they were out to take over Mars as a whole,
erasing the First Nations genes forever. "Well, the freak may be
done with. I won't say more." Even as he said the words,
there was a cold drop in his gut.
Suddenly his mother's sparkling dark eyes were fixed on his. They
looked at each other for a long moment. For an instant his love
for his mother flared. He saw the fierce beauty of her, was washed
in the memory of love from her. Then the sentiment slipped away. To make her
proud, he had to be hard. Especially now. He had failed. He had
failed completely.
"Well, then," she said, tossing back the vodka as if it was water.
Both her husbands laughed, hopefully. Their eager smiles told Del they
were going to try to create a warm family supper tonight. He silently wished them luck.
Del rolled the elegantly shaped, plain his cup in his fingers. His
brain buzzed warmly with milk vodka even as his heart sat apart,
chilled.
"Somebody's gotta take the goats on to market," his mother
announced, the next morning. "You want to earn your meat or what?"
"Can't." Said Del. He was fastening his flight suit, "I'm
off."
"Somebody want you somewhere?"
"Yeah. Yeah, somebody does want me."
"Imagine that."
Del turned away. His mother grabbed him by the elbow; he had
forgotten how strong she was. "Just come back to real life, won't
ya?"
Del spun on his heel to face her. "I made a life. I earned a life. Not
gonna let it be stolen out from under me. I worked my guts out.
Get me?"
She threw her hands up. "Not my problem then."
Del looked at her for a long moment. "Never was, was it?"
His mother laughed. "No, I guess not." Then she laughed. “Have a nice flight in this storm blowing in.”
Del started walking toward the tube station; he knew better than to
take the bait. His mother called out after him.
"Don't be fooled by them again. And don't be fooled by your own self
either. You belong back here. Don't act so sore all the time." Her voice
got louder, rougher, gaining a querelous edge, "What got into you anyway?
How come we weren't good enough?"
He called back over his shoulder, without turning to look at her, without
slowing his pace.
"Because you wouldn't let me be good enough."
Kallo was still stuffing down blue corn frybread and gulping
butter tea as Mano's organic voice came through the bedside panel.
"Kallo, they're going to tell you something. And I know
you don't always trust people you don't know. But you will need to listen
to them."
"OK, Daddy," she heard the wheedle in her own voice
but couldn't stop.
There was a long silence.
"Daddy, what-"
"Kallo, I'm sorry. It wasn't your mother's fault.
She was a brilliant geneticist, you know that."
"Yeah. I know..." Kallo was puzzled.
"And I did the best I could. Even Del, for his part,
did the best he could, at the time. He did what I told him."
"He punched me off the cliff."
"I told you to stay away from him. Don't go near him
again."
"Daddy," Kallo was becoming impatient, "What-"
"Just listen to them. They're going to tell you what’s
going on. Remember who you are, Puffin.
You are head of the grid now. You are the Mars grid. I love you. Never forget who you are."
Then he was gone. The line was dead.
He had never dropped out on her before.
Kallo stood and paced the room, limping, her heart pounding. Something was wrong. Aiko watched her
from the bed.
"He never does that," said Kallo.
"I called the doctor."
"Thank you Aiko." Kallo limped to the bed.
The bot looked up at her and reached a paw to touch her wrist. The doctor
glided into the room, followed by two others, also in white.
"Kalleano, this is Dr. Nsonowa and Dr. Abeni.
They're specialists in bone diseases. And they will help me explain what
I need to tell you."
"I need my flight suit."
"In a few minutes we will get it for you. But this is
important information."
Kallo held out her hands to the bot, instinctively. It
crawled into her lap.
"You are very unique, as you know."
"Just get to it."
Dr. Abeni, who had beautiful dark skin like the lady Kallo had
seen yesterday, spoke now. "You have a degenerative bone disease, one
we've never seen before although these kinds of degenerative responses aren't
unusual in independent edits. It's dissolving the tissues in your ankles
and it will progress quickly soon unless we change certain gene
signatures."
"How long will that...change take?"
"The procedure itself will take less than an hour. First
you need to know, even after we change those signatures, the damage has been
done. We can do ankle replacements of course. But the disease is
incurable, unless..."
"Get to it."
Dr. Nsonowa spoke now. "Unless we alter
the metabolic centers in your brain, and you grow up the way you were
meant to grow up, this disease will progress at an accelerated rate."
"I've been fine for twelve years!"
"You've had significant ankle damage for some time.”
"Wait. Grow up? You mean-"
"You will, if we are successful, complete adulthood in
several weeks. We should warn you, this will be painful. And
emotionally difficult," said Dr. Abeni.
"But I won't be a perfect flyer anymore if I grow."
They stared at her in silence.
Kallo groaned. "Just tell me!"
Dr. Haseya leaned forward, voice soft. "If we don't act
now, the progression will eventually affect your internal organs, and it
could kill you."
Kallo swallowed.
"Even if we manage to make the correct alterations and you
complete growth to adulthood, you will need ankle replacements. Possibly
several, over a lifetime. And we don't know if the disease will progress
even further after that. We need to do this procedure immediately to stop
the progression."
Kallo stared at them. The silence was long, flat, grey.
"Get out."
Aiko repositioned her paws softly on Kallo's knee.
"Sorry," said Kallo, "I mean-" but the
tears exploded and she couldn't say more.
Each doctor put a gentle hand on Kallo’s shoulders.
The dust storm churned over Mars. Stacks of roiling
sand stirred up static electricity; lightning crackled as clouds
of particles plowed through each other. Sand particles fell away from
lighter clouds of dust that rose, lofting from the electrical field that
activated even more dust.
Insects crawled under several layers of sand and went into a form of
hibernation. Other fauna, from snakes to moles, did the same, or found
shelter under rocks. Crows and other birds, having DNA merged with that of
desert grouse, had soaked their belly feathers in the edges of nearby quicksand
lagoons when they first sensed the oncoming storm, then wedged themselves deep
into the crevasses of cacti, snapping up the occasional wandering termite or
ant, nibbling on cactus flesh, and sipping on small stores of water
in their own feathers to keep themselves alive.
The people of Mars, 90% of whom were adapted by the merging of
human and tardigrade DNA, felt their metabolisms slowing. They sluffed
less often and slept more. Industry on Mars slowed in turn.
Salt tower sensors kicked off energy-saving settings, driving down interior
temperatures. Filtering systems prevented sand and dust from billowing
into the air shafts, but also slowed the air flow. Water was in higher
use, cleaning filtering systems much more frequently than usual and being
consumed in greater amounts. The greenhouses and cisterns were
sanctuaries, providing the luxury of humidity.
For several weeks no one went above ground. Yurt and hogan
communities nestled under basalt polymer dust covers. Kinlani and New Khan residents had
moved into emergency quarters in the cliff citie,, their sheep carried by carts
into the biome levels to munch on crops grown underground.
Fourteen kilometers deep in the Bowl, closer to geothermal temperatures and
beneath layers of sand protection, life continued at a more normal pace.
Kallo had been in many training installations, from the simple felt mats in
Kinlani gyms as a small child for gymnastics competitions to the gymnastic
academy in Arturos. She had performed in
the Bowl, but never trained here. She
was unprepared for the size of the Sto’ Lat Hospital therapy floor. Dozens of exercise machines and platforms
stacked with white towels gleamed in the clear light from the hospital
windows. Padded ropes of various lengths
hung from the walls, dangling over fabric bolts and stacks of blankets. A faint scent of aromatic herbs drifted
through from the aqua therapy rooms.
She had trained with instructors before, but only one at a time. Here, every day she was accompanied by three
therapists in white, all kind and soft-spoken, who eased her into exercises.
most of which hurt terribly. They all
spoke to her about breathing and focus.
At first Kallo sassed them. She
knew how to breathe, thank you. But as
the exercises became more difficult she found their advice important, and she
felt ashamed of how she’d acted. They
clearly were just trying to help her.
She apologized and was rewarded with warm smiles and hugs, which at
first felt strange. Her daddy hadn’t
even been able to hug her for a long time, and aside from her mother he was the
only one who had ever touched her. She
soon found that she liked the hugs, very much.
As her bones grew, so did her
hunger. She was used to simple hearty
mutton stew and good bread. But in the Bowl they grew an enormous variety of
foods. She was brought drinks made from
fruits and vegetables with herbs and honey and sheep’s milk yogurt, little
plates of nuts and seasoned dishes with delicacies like fresh tank shrimp, fish and
eggs, and even water tubers and leaves, all rich in nutrition. Kallo grew.
Tassy paced. Her mouth was dry. What would she say to him? What
could she say, now?
"Hey," there he stood. Tall, broad-shouldered, his fine
hematite eyes shadowed with trouble. He shuffled with uncertainty, and her
heart made a little jump.
"Have a sit," she said. She moved aside on the couch. He
hesitated, then sat.
"Oh, um, tea." Tassy said. "Sorry, I forgot
tea." She jumped up, but Del took her wrist and gently pulled her
back down onto the couch.
"It's all right," he said. "I just needed to…be
somewhere. Or something. I don't know."
"It's not my business, what happened."
"So, you don't want to know?"
For the first time her eyes met his. She nearly whispered it. "I don't
want to know. Del, I do not want to know."
"You are divided, I understand."
Now she looked at the floor. "Yes."
"But you know what they are."
Tassie moaned. "Oh Del, don't start."
"You know they just use us, all of us. And I don't blame Mano and I don't
blame Kallo. After her mother died, those two just cold-welded together,
like metal in space. And no one can ever get between them anyway or anyhow. But
then they don't see the rest of us. We mean nothing to them."
Tassie sighed. "Del, what is it you want?"
"I want what I worked for. I want my grid. I should be running that
grid."
"I can't help you do that."
"All right then. What can you help me with?"
Tassie stood up again. "Tea," she said.
Del said, "so that's really all?"
"The grid is Mano's. He’s going
to give it to Kallo. What you need is
real business, real trade. That's what he should give you. He could have given
you that. Some kind of science, some kind of trade, something real."
"Something real? You mean like what you do?"
"Well, yeah. Not like just being a flyer and an announcer. There's nothing
to that anyway."
"Nothing to that?" Del felt numb suddenly. "It seemed
to mean something to you when I was doing it."
"Well I mean of course. It's exciting to see airshows. And when you
were on the inter-world grid, that was exciting to see. But I mean,
anybody can do that. What Mano should have given you was a real
trade." Tassy padded out of the lab. Del sat on the couch, very
still, his heart pounding.
Nothing. So everything he had done was nothing.
What Del missed, in his heart, in his guts, was the audience. With no
audience he felt hollow and groundless. A part of him knew, and
had always known, how to connect with many minds at once. It wasn't
scientific, it was viscerally intuitive. Without that reach into the
collective mind he felt almost claustrophobic and yet empty, chased
by a creeping blank spot, a slippery vacancy, a loneliness that
snuggled up to him in odd moments like a patch of cold.
And Tassy, even Tassy. The one person he thought held the torch
for him all this time, even she thought that he was nothing.
When Tassie returned with the tea tray, Dell scooped a bowl of tea off the
tray, drank it in one gulp, and left.
