When the Dust Fell, page 10
The nest’s windows were covered now by layers of protective nanowool. When Donnelay had worn the gloves and provided the human link required by Plan Law to let the ship fly, his only actual job as pilot, the view from the nest would have given him an unfiltered three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the Correction. From his post, with no float haze to soften the horror’s edge, and without the clinical distance of Code reports, he would have seen all too clearly the full force and fury of the plasma strikes. He would have seen the merciless transformation.
Sarah’s heart broke in yet another place. And it surprised her to learn there were any pieces still whole enough for the breaking.
The nest was shaped in a V, with the pilot’s chair placed central at the point. She climbed into it and swiveled round so she had a view of the entry to the room. It was large and comfortable. She made a mental note for the future: clean this place up and it would be good for a secret nap. She took the Bridge Maker from her belt, found on its edge what she thought was an on switch, and pushed it. The maker instantly came to life, its polished metal surface turning translucent and glowing bright blue. She put it in her left ear and waited. She heard a soft hum, like the after-ring of a cymbal strike. A second later it screeched into a sharp, painful bolt of feedback. She yanked it out of her ear.
“Dammit,” she hissed, rubbing her ear.
She turned the piece over in her hand examining it for some clue to its proper use. There was nothing else to push or twist. But its blue glow had begun to pulse.
This thing is angry, she thought. That’s an error message.
Could the ear she chose matter? Did the two sides of the brain process sound differently? She had no clue. That was biologist stuff, not geologist stuff. Trin would know. The Code would know. She could know easily enough. She tried her right ear but kept her hand close just in case. The cymbal sound came again, this time without any feedback. It grew in volume. Or was it richer somehow, fuller, like other cymbals tuned to different octaves had joined the first? Then something extraordinary. The soft blonde hairs of her arms raised. Her spine heated. Without warning she was there. She didn’t know what “there” was. It was just the word that came to her. A feeling she’d transitioned somehow from one place to another. The surprise of it made her gulp for air. Her chest began to heave and she feared she’d soon be hyperventilating. She reached up to the maker to take it out again but was suddenly awash in an instruction. Not in words, in a knowing.
Relax, it ordered. You are in charge, it reminded her, and instantly she knew it was right. The agreement was simultaneous, a flash knowing like the stab of déjà vu. She slowed her breathing down, straightened her back, and placed her hands on her knees. She stared calmly toward the entry and the small, dim corridor just past the threshold.
At last, she spoke. In a language she’d never used before, a language that expressed itself in whole ideas, in pictures and in feelings. They gushed from her like a spigot flung open full. The Code’s responses, if that’s what they could be called, came even faster. Together, in a span of missing time, they came to an agreement. A woman and a machine, both in love with the same man, would do everything they could to keep him safe. As best they could, they would prevent him from doing what they both knew he would do—chase Sarah down at all costs, put himself out alone in an alien world, thinking he could study his way to understanding a world half a universe from his own.
Except, unlike Sarah, who was born on this planet and knew its shadows and masquerades, he could never hide here. His bizarre accent, his misunderstanding of idiom, and his lack of practice with the customs of Earth would conspire to give him away in minutes. They both knew he would not kill to protect himself. He would never harm the children he and his ship had failed so completely. Instead, his hunt for Sarah would kill him. On that they agreed. And on more.
Their plan was that Sarah’s visit to the supply vault would be scrubbed. The report from the electrician bot would never reach its destination. In fact, those adjustments were made on the fly, the instant they were conjured. Later, at Earth’s night, repair bot hatch 213 off Leaf Five would open for eleven seconds. Sarah would slide out the hatch arms first, and grab hold of a sensor rod the Code would extend to the side of the hatch. She’d bring the rest of her body out and hang from the rod while she felt for a foothold on the smaller bot hatch beneath. Once she was stable, she’d use her perch to find handholds among the network of protrusions along the nanowool and slowly free-solo her way down the side of the ship until she was at a height low enough to safely jump to the ground. Given her inexperience in climbing, and the weight of her clothes and pack, the Code predicted her descent would take ninety minutes. The logs of both the hatch and the sensor rod would be altered in real time. The cameras and electromagnetic sensors scouting the moat would not see or detect Sarah, and a cleaning bot would be dispatched to obscure her tracks while she trekked toward the rock ring through the soft, sad powder of Moscow’s pulverized remains.
The Code promised to leave nothing in her mind of Sarah’s escape for Trin to discover as he anguished for clues about the whereabouts of the mortal woman he loved. Nevertheless, they concurred without debate, at some time in the weeks to follow, he would surely detect the Code’s complicity. Suspect it at the least. How could he not? At this shared conclusion, the two women cried together in each their own ways over the pain they both knew he would feel. The pain of losing one love, and of another’s betrayal.
Five hours later, Sarah slid out of hatch 213.
13
Sarah walked the powder of Moscow’s destruction with a half crescent moon hanging low in the sky. The expanse of the impact crater went on uninterrupted for miles around her. Not a tree, rock, nor even the smallest remnant of the great city that once occupied the land she walked poked through the level, barren plain. There was a light wind that traveled from the east, blowing off the sterile dunes of black diamond desert the Correction had left in its wake. She buttoned the large collar of her security guard coat against the chill and looked back to mark her progress.
The ship lay hulking on the horizon in the night. A stand-in skyline for the one it crushed. There was no doubting its beauty. The ship’s Leaves, six distinct segments, arranged from smallest to largest, caught the moonlight at their edges and drew upon the night a gleaming outline of the colossal arrow shot to Earth from another world. Was it beautiful to her because she knew its secrets? Because she could speak its language? She turned back toward the west, toward the ring and the world still living beyond it. What must the Kalelah look like to eyes that were unable to see past the ship’s impenetrable skin? Eyes that were blind to the marvel of its arched ceilings stories high, its lake and farm, and the miracle of the Code. Eyes that would never see past the ship’s mistake. To those eyes, she imagined, the giant arrow sitting in the center of the city it took away was a monster from the end of the world. That the ship had come here to start the world probably mattered little. She hitched her pack up higher on her shoulders and trudged on.
She got to the rock ring by midmorning. The sky was clear, and while the air was still cool, the bright sun felt warm and good on her face. She’d seen the ring in floats a thousand times. Now, standing at its base, she was daunted by the scale of the thing. This was a small mountain. She hopped on the first rock and started an angled path upward. The first fifty yards were easy going. The rocks were large and heavy. They offered broad faces from which to jump and land. She did her best to keep a relatively straight line up the face of the rubble, but some jumps required a little switchbacking. The lower third of the ring was mostly broken slabs of concrete, asphalt, and twisted cords of rusted rebar. As she climbed higher up the pile the rubble began to change in constitution. Of course the heavier material would have stayed lower during the blast. Now, approaching the midpoint, like climbing up layers of sediment, the pieces were smaller and lighter, and the face of the city began to show through. Mixed into the abstract chunks of cement were bricks, broken lintels, and bits of carved limestone. Sarah couldn’t help imagining the buildings they once made, and the people that had once lived within them. She decided to pick up her pace, get away from the ghosts, and took a long step up. The brick she landed on didn’t hold and she slipped a good ten yards before she could stop herself.
She took a breath and waited for pain from somewhere. A banged knee, a busted elbow, an injury near the baby? Her heart felt like it might burst from her chest, but she seemed unhurt otherwise.
Metal clothes, she marveled. Worth every fucking ounce.
She looked back toward the ship while she caught her breath. She half expected to see a transport flying her way or a pack of surveillance bots hovering right there at eye level. There was nothing. Only the dark shape of the ship far on the horizon. She looked back up the pile and started her way again, this time testing each piece she chose as a foot or handhold for fastness to the pile. So much for escaping the ghosts. And these wouldn’t be the last or the worst of them.
The sun was high, and Sarah cast no shadow by the time she summited the ring. Not sure of what lay beyond the pile, she stayed low on the ridge, resting on her elbows, her feet still on the ship side, and took in the view of the other side. Far in the distance, the tiny black dot of a fighter jet silently moved across the sky. Just below her lay the Poklonnaya Hill and Victory Park, an enormous open-air tribute to the Soviet role in the outcome of World War II. It was a sprawling collection of Romanesque structures and public squares dotted by a series of freestanding columns and a central, towering obelisk with the triumphant Goddess of Victory at its top, her bronze robes flowing. In the open areas between the large museum buildings and the memorial columns was a tent city, crowded and unruly in appearance even from her relatively distant vantage point. She took in the scene thinking about the most recent war, the one without victory, the one whose only monuments were the rock ring she just climbed and the desperate ramshackle below her. Would the place she was going to look any different? Would she be any less desperate when she got there? Would her sister?
She decided to wait before starting her journey in earnest. Going over the side now, in broad daylight, seemed like suicide. Besides, she was hungry. It had been hours since she’d last eaten.
She lowered herself back off the ridge and dug a shallow bivouac, opened her kit, and unwrapped a square of what resembled a thin pane of white chocolate but tasted strangely like crunchy bacon grease. The first bite was okay, savory and slightly sweet at the same time. The rest were awful. She forced herself to eat until she felt full, then rewrapped what was left of the pane—nearly half of it. The water maker signaled there was plenty of humidity in the air and she gave it a try. Incredibly, she had half a cup of clean-tasting water in less than a minute.
The sun was still high. Sarah sat looking at the ship, sipping the cool water. The lids of her eyes grew heavy now that her stomach was full, and she fought the pull of sleep for fear she’d slide off her perch.
•
She woke with the sound of gunfire coming from the other side of the pile. It was dark now. The crescent moon of last night was thinner and low clouds shrouded its dim light. Another blast from the gun popped behind her. Three so far.
Shit. What am I about to walk into?
The only thing she knew for certain was she couldn’t stay on the pile forever. Trin could already be in freak-out mode. It was time to get beyond the ring.
She took a drink, stowed the water maker in her pack, and climbed back up to the summit. The plateau was only a few yards wide. She stayed low on her way across, using an awkward version of what she imagined to be an army crawl. The park was an even crazier looking place at night. There were electric lights in some places, and small fires in lots of places. She swung a leg over and began her way down.
This side of the ring pile was no less steep or treacherous than the way up had been. Her hopes of being able to walk down looking out toward her destination were quickly dashed. She had to keep her face toward the rock and blindly feel her way for footing. More than once she sent debris tumbling down the pile making all kinds of noise. Each time it happened she’d cling to the wall holding her breath waiting for a flurry of gun shots to start careening off the rocks around her. But the guns she’d heard earlier had quieted, and each time she was able to resume her descent without incident.
A good thirty minutes down the rubble the mixed smell of cooking, generator exhaust, and human shit reached her, something she hadn’t experienced in years. She took it in deeply, savoring and separating its unique components. There were odors on the ship, but none like the scent of roasting meat or stewing cabbage. Not the smell of automobiles and kerosene and coffee. Not the smell of life on Earth. Even the stench from the outhouses gave her an odd comfort.
At that point down the ring wall, not far from the base, the rocks began to offer more generous landings and she could turn away from the pile toward the park. She saw them instantly. Two men at the ring’s base, watching her descent, waiting. Each had a club in one hand. If they had other weapons, they kept them hidden. One looked in his forties, the other perhaps near seventy. They were less than twenty yards below her. She moved a few steps to her right. They moved a few steps to their left. The ring wall went on for miles in both directions. Given their advantage of flat ground, she’d never be able to outrun them. She could go back up, but there’d be no guarantee of making it over safely. And then what? She unbuckled a jacket pocket near her right hand and continued her way down. When she reached the ground, the older man shouted something at her in Russian. When she didn’t reply right away, he screamed at her again.
“I can’t speak Russian,” she said in English.
The men looked surprised, like she was a talking bear or some other magic trick.
The younger man switched to English, “What the fuck are you doing on his wall?”
“I didn’t know it was anybody’s wall.”
“Now you know,” he said. “So, again, what the fuck are you doing on his fucking wall?”
“I wanted to take a picture.”
He laughed. “Of this beautiful city?”
“Of the ship.”
He translated her answer to the old man. The old man said something in response.
“Let’s see the picture.”
“I chickened out.”
“What?”
“I lost my nerve. I got scared and never made it to the other side.”
The Russian translated again, though he talked for a long time, longer than he needed to simply translate. She used the time to climb down the few remaining feet of wall. The old man kept his eyes on her and then smiled crookedly, showing his yellowed and broken teeth.
“You’re an American,” the younger said.
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“Ohio.”
“I studied in Boston for a year. You’re a long way from Ohio.”
“I was here—I mean, overseas—when…you know.”
“When they killed us.”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yes, I guess.”
“Why haven’t I seen you before?”
“I didn’t want to be seen.”
“That’s a bullshit answer.”
“What do you want from me?”
He smirked. “What are you willing to give?”
“Sorry, no thanks.”
He laughed. “American girls. They are not as pretty as Russian girls. The whole world knows that, but they have a certain sense about them. What is the word?” He looked to the old man, who continued to stare dumbly at Sarah. “Entitlement? That’s it. Like the world owes you something. It’s very attractive. The girls were my favorite thing about Boston. Especially the rich girls. Were you rich?”
“No,” she said.
“I’ll bet you were a cunt anyway.” Another laugh.
“It depended.”
The young man laughed loudly at that and caught the old man up in Russian and then the two of them were laughing.
“I know everything that goes on in this camp. How come I didn’t know about you until you showed up on my wall?”
“I thought it was his wall.”
The young Russian smiled. “What is in your pocket there, girl from Ohio?”
“There’s nothing in my pocket.”
He aimed his club toward the pocket and pushed the piece of wood forward as if to test her claim. Sarah knocked it away. This brought about another peal of laughter. When they were done laughing, he moved closer toward her, his smile melting.
“Now I’m really curious,” he said.
She quickly sidestepped him, grabbed the old man by the arm that held the club, twisted it around to his back, yanked it up high toward his shoulder blades, and put the laser cutter from her pocket to the old man’s throat. He let out a noise like a dying horse.
