"Radiant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)CHAPTER 9Dukkha [Pali]: Literally "out of kilter" like an unbalanced wheel, but used symbolically to describe "out of kilter" emotions: anything from acute suffering to persistent dissatisfaction to a vague but gnawing sense that things aren’t right. The Buddha’s first truth is that our lives are filled with dukkha. Even if we are sometimes happy, the state is only temporary — no one dodges dukkha forever. I could say that getting into a tightsuit is a complicated process: the heavy fabric must be pulled into place, the seams must be sealed perfectly, the interior must be inflated to an exact pressure, seventeen tests must be performed on air supply, temperature regulation, comm units, heads-up displays… Or I could say that getting into a tightsuit is a simple process: you stand on two raised foot blocks in a robing chamber while eight robotic limbs assemble the suit around you and perform diagnostics as they go along. Once that’s finished (including triple checks on known points of vulnerability), you get bombarded with selected wavelengths of radiation aimed at exterminating all terrestrial microbes on the suit’s exterior. This mass kill is important when visiting unexplored worlds, to avoid contaminating the biosphere with Earth-born bacteria. For landing on Muta, however, the sanitizing rad bath was superfluous — Unity humans had lived on the planet for years, and throughout that time they’d lived in direct contact with the environment. Muta was already irreparably tainted with whatever microorganisms the survey teams had carried on their skins, in their lungs, and along their digestive tracts. So our suits would do nothing to keep Muta pristine — that was already a lost cause. The suits wouldn’t help Then again, if losing our electronics was the only thing that went wrong, we’d be getting off lucky. As a matter of fact I did — I’d stuffed my belt pouches with every emergency supply I could think of. But I just said, "Get suited up, Tut." "Yes’m, Mom." He slid off his shorts, laid them carefully on the seat of the chair, and walked naked into the robing chamber. Festina watched him go. After he disappeared, she murmured, "It’s gold." "Yes," I said. "I noticed in Zoonau." "I made a point of not looking." Festina took a breath. "Gold is an excellent electrical conductor." "True." "If he goes down to Muta and gets hit with a big electromagnetic pulse… do you think…" "Ooo. That’s a thought I didn’t need inside my head." For some reason I added, "I’m a virgin. I don’t think about such things." "Oh. Sorry." Festina’s life force colored like a blush — the first time I’d seen anything in her aura except strength and composure. "Well, no point standing around. Let’s get ready." She left the room almost at a run. Usually, sperm-tail landings start in a ship’s rear transport bay. This time, however, Festina escorted me to the shuttle bay, where Li’s shuttlecraft had been rolled into takeoff position. A crew member was putting away a power cord she must have used to top up the shuttle’s batteries. "We’re going down in this?" I asked Festina. "That’s the plan," she said. "What happens if the shuttle gets EMP’d?" "You mean "Gliding is one thing," I said. "Landing is another. Without power, a shuttle can’t VTOL. We’ll need a landing strip — long, straight, and flat." "Or else we’ll need parachutes." Festina grinned. "We’ll jump when we’re over the camp. The shuttle will keep going at least another ten kilometers before it crashes." She patted the craft’s hull affectionately. "It’ll make one hell of an impact, but we don’t have to worry about explosions. These things just crash without burning — another nice safety feature." "Have you told Ambassador Li you’re going to sacrifice his pride and joy?" "I’ve informed him that pursuant to regulations covering Class One missions, I can commandeer any resources I consider essential for the mission’s success… including civilian shuttlecraft." "When he heard that, Li must have hemorrhaged." "Actually, he took it pretty well. He just gaped for a second, then said, ‘Very well, if you think it’s necessary.’ " Festina rolled her eyes. "When we get home, the greedy bastard will bill the navy twice what the shuttle’s worth. Then the navy will charge the Unity three times more. Rescue missions for alien governments are big moneymakers for the fleet." "I don’t suppose we Explorers see any of that money." Festina laid her hand on my arm. "Glad you’re keeping your sense of humor. Let’s go inside." The shuttle’s interior was still large and luxurious, with seating for twelve and what I assumed was a gourmet galley at the back (though the door to that area was closed). Each of the twelve seats now held a shimmering mirror-sphere the size of a soccer ball. I recognized the spheres as stasis fields: pocket universes like the Sperm-field surrounding the ship, except that the mirror-sphere universes only had three macrodimensions instead of four. Time didn’t exist in a stasis field. The outer universe might age a billion years, but anything in stasis would remain as it was, caught in an instant that never advanced so much as a nanosecond. Stasis fields couldn’t take much physical damage; a strong sharp blow from the outside would pop them like a soap bubble. But they I picked up the mirror-sphere closest to me. If I’d done that with bare hands, I’d be risking serious frostbite — the outside of a stasis field is dangerously cold, though not as cold as the Absolute Zero inside — but with my tightsuit gloves, I was perfectly safe. Ice had begun to condense from the air near the sphere’s reflective surface. If not kept clear, the surface would develop a solid frozen crust… which wasn’t a bad thing, since the hardening frost would provide protection against accidental bumping. "What’s inside?" I asked Festina. "Sperm-tail anchors?" She nodded. "An anchor in each. We’ll have twelve chances to establish a Sperm-link… and I don’t think an automated defense system will EMP us that often. EMPs take a lot of energy, especially when fired at range. An automated system isn’t likely to keep pulsing targets it’s already shot. So it EMPs us once, maybe twice; but we’ll have plenty of reserve anchors left. Once we’ve anchored Her aura showed she wasn’t as confident as she pretended — she knew there were never any guarantees. But with a supply of twelve anchors, each one protected from EMPs until we needed it, we really did have the odds on our side. "Anything else we should put in the spheres?" I asked. "Maybe a handheld comm or two?" "Already done," Festina said. "Each stasis sphere has an anchor, a comm, a stunner, and a Bumbler. An extremely tight fit, but just barely possible." "I didn’t think "It didn’t. Last night I ordered the ship-soul to fabricate a bunch. You can never have too many Bumblers." I agreed. Explorers could go through Bumblers as fast as eating peanuts. In Zoonau, we’d lost two on a mission that lasted only fifteen minutes. Usually, though, we didn’t have the luxury of whipping up a dozen in advance. The navy labeled surplus production as "extravagant waste" rather than "sensible precaution." Apparently an admiral on a Class One mission could disregard standard fleet policies… and I got the impression Lieutenant Admiral Festina Ramos thumbed her nose at regulations whenever she had the chance. Festina began familiarizing herself with the shuttle’s controls. I was about to take an idle-curiosity tour of the craft when three ensigns arrived with our parachutes. Naturally, I had to make sure the chutes had been packed properly and were set for manual operation. (By default, parachutes were usually set for automatic deployment at an altitude considered optimal by the Engineering Corps… which was all very well if the chutes’ laser altimeters were functional, but not so good if you expected every wire to be drips of molten copper.) Tut arrived just as I was finishing with the chutes. We’d decided in advance we should wear our standard colors — Tut yellow and me orange, while Festina said she liked white — but when Tut appeared, he’d programmed his suit’s skin to a lustrous metallic gold with all the markings of King Tutankhamen’s ceremonial casket. Horizontal stripes of black and gold ran along the sides of his helmet and down the front of his chest; bits of lapis lazuli blue were layered down his front in a sort of striped bib that ended at a broad U-shaped collar halfway down his chest. Below that, the gold/black/blue stripes resumed and extended all the way to his boots. He looked like a bumblebee with a few sky-blue inlays. "So what do you think, Mom?" He turned so I could see the back. More stripes. "Aren’t I like the king’s sarcophagus?" "You are." Festina came to the door of the cockpit and gave Tut a long cool look. "I like it," she said. "There’s something refreshingly efficient about an Explorer already wearing a coffin." We took off without ceremony — nothing but the usual "permission requesteds" and "permission granteds" that always mark a shuttle departure. No one came to watch us leave… not even Ubatu, who I thought might show up to give me some words of Ifa-Vodun wisdom. ("Don’t endanger the spores. We haven’t had a chance yet to kill something in their honor.") Festina noticed the absence of well-wishers too; just before takeoff, she murmured, "Li must have decided he couldn’t bear to see his baby go." I said, "He and Ubatu are probably up on the bridge getting in the captain’s way." "Probably," Festina agreed. "If the three of us don’t come back, everybody will want to say they had a front-row seat when Festina Ramos met her doom." "Fame’s a bitch, isn’t it?" Tut said. "Bugs the crap out of me." We both looked at him, wondering what he thought he was famous for. I could have looked into his aura, but decided I didn’t want to know. Li might have been a bullying, self-absorbed man, but he had excellent taste in shuttles. He’d chosen a model whose cockpit was almost entirely transparent: a clear plastic bubble bulging from the front of the craft and providing a panoramic view of our surroundings. Overhead was "Starting descent now," Festina said into her comm. "Acknowledging your descent," Cohen answered. "Good luck, Admiral." His voice came through my tightsuit’s radio as well as my comm implant; then it was replaced by a faint regular beep produced by Beep. Beep. Beep. As we angled down toward Muta, Or so we hoped. "What do you think is Festina said, "I’m afraid we’ll soon find out." Down and down. A digital display on the shuttle’s console showed our altitude in kilometers: 900… 850… 800… descending through the ionosphere, a constantly surging bath of electrically charged particles. Cumulatively, the electric fury outside had much more energy than the EMPs we worried about; but it was thinned over time and distance, rather than striking the shuttle in a single disruptive pulse. Our shielding could protect us without difficulty. I hoped. 500… 450… 400… 350… We rounded back into sunlight and my helmet visor darkened to protect my eyes. I wanted to ask the others when they thought we’d get EMP’d, but they didn’t know any more than I did; perhaps the Balrog had better information, but I avoided asking, for fear the spores might actually answer. As for my newly acquired sixth sense, its range was far too limited to tell me anything — it didn’t even reach to the back of the shuttle’s passenger cabin, let alone several hundred kilometers to the ground. My alien awareness could feel the hypersonic rush of thin atmosphere just outside the cockpit, but my perception stopped well short of the shuttle’s own galley. Beep. Beep. Beep. Our comms were still alive. Beep. Beep. The computerized signal was soft but unnerving in the otherwise silent cockpit. To break the tension, I opened my mouth to make some inane remark… but Festina must have heard me getting ready to speak because she quickly cut in. "Nobody say anything. Not a word." Tut looked at her in surprise, obviously wondering what she was worried about. I had the advantage of being able to read her life force: Festina exuded a superstitious dread that if anyone said, "So far so good," the words themselves would make all hell break loose. She was probably right. Beep. Beep. Beep. 300… 250… 200… things would get bumpy soon. The shuttle’s wings were set to full extension; as the atmosphere thickened, they’d drag against the air, leading to random skips and flutters. Festina had said our course would pass directly over Camp Esteem, but that was only the computer’s best-guess scenario. If we got EMP’d and lost control while bumping/jumping/thumping high in the atmosphere, we might veer hundreds of kilometers off course. The shuttle allowed for manual steering — wrestling the yoke without powered assistance — but it wouldn’t be enough to get us back on track if we deviated too far too early. Beep. 150… 100… 80… then a Brahma-bull buck as we hit the mesopause, the line of demarcation between the outer atmosphere and the lower layers. Festina kept her grip on the yoke, pressing our nose into the dive. We could see nothing but planet now: a great wide plain filled our view, grasslands veined with wandering rivers that occasionally wandered too far and diffused into Mesozoic bogs. Those bogs would be full of reptiles and amphibians… not exactly like terrestrial species, but with points of similarity. Evolution was like weather — chaotic in specific details, but falling into large-scale patterns with a limited repertoire of effects. Muta’s development would approximately echo Earth’s. Its swamps would have quasi-crocodilian predators dining on quasi-frog amphibians and quasi-minnow fish… Another bump — 50 klicks on the altimeter. We’d entered the stratosphere. Within seconds, the cockpit bubble was surrounded by heat glow as we rammed into air particles and crushed them together. My sixth sense could feel the hull temperature soaring — still within safety limits, but higher than a normal entry. Festina had based our course on the possibility we’d get EMP’d much earlier than this; though the shuttle still had power, we were following the same path as if we’d been in an uncontrolled dive. Fast and hot. Blazing through the sky. Beep. Beep. Beep. "You know," Tut said, "I thought-" "Shut up!" Festina and I yelled in unison. 40… 30… going through Muta’s ozone layer, and still no EMP. I was sure that’s what Tut had intended to say: Twenty kilometers up. Festina turned from the controls. "It’s time. Get ready to jump." I got to my feet reluctantly. It seemed a pity to bail out of the shuttle while it was still working… but if we didn’t jump when we were over Camp Esteem, the shuttle’s momentum would take us far past our target. Then if we got EMP’d, we’d have a long walk back to where we wanted to go. Better to follow the original plan. So I went back into the passenger cabin and strapped four iced-up mirror-spheres to my tightsuit, using specially padded carrying cases. Tut and Festina did the same. The cases hung from our necks like oversized pendants; I adjusted the straps until all four spheres rested evenly on my chest, then I secured them with a holding harness. The completed rig wasn’t heavy… but with four soccer-ball-sized containers on my front and a full parachute on my back (over top of the tightsuit’s backpack), I felt like a pagoda with legs. My only consolation was that Festina and Tut looked just as ridiculous. "Skydiving like this should be fun," Tut said. "Is there anything else I can carry? Hey, I bet these seats detach! Ever seen someone parachute while holding a chair?" The passenger seats Tut straightened up. "Sure," he said. "Immortality awaits." Festina slapped him lightly on the arm. "Bastard. Don’t you know the admiral gets to say that?" "Grab something solid," I told them. Beep. Beep. Beep. I pulled the lever, and the door slid open. Wind whipped through the cabin. If I hadn’t been holding the lever, I might have been swept off my feet… but after a moment, the gale lessened as the pressure inside the shuttle equalized to the pressure outside. Neither pressure was high; fortunately, my tightsuit protected me against burst eardrums and subzero cold. Far below, the ground seemed to drift past slowly, though we were actually going faster than the speed of sound. "Not long now," Festina said over her comm unit. We were using the Fuentes city as a landmark. When Drill-Press appeared beneath us, we’d hit the silk. Our momentum would carry us on toward Camp Esteem, and we could easily steer the chutes toward our destination. We’d already agreed on a rendezvous point just east of the huts. Beep. Beep. Land slipped beneath us. The lower the shuttle dropped, the more our speed became apparent — racing through scattered clouds, rushing above small river valleys and copses where ferns rose as tall as trees. Beep. Beep. The broad river Grindstone appeared, a few low buildings, then suddenly the central skyscrapers of Drill-Press, towering like giants. The city streets were dirty but intact, and so were a score of bridges spanning the river, glimmering white in the sun. We waited till the last bridge was directly beneath us… but nobody had to say a word when the time came. Tut, Festina, and I threw ourselves forward, out the hatch, and into open air. Skydiving in a tightsuit is different from being exposed to the elements. I’d practiced both ways at the Academy, and much preferred fully closed jumps. When you’re not completely sealed in a suit, the wind burns unprotected skin. My cheek was too tender for that kind of buffeting: the gusts felt like daggers of ice stabbing through my face over and over. By the time I reached ground on an open dive, the entire left half of my head — my skin, my hair, my ear — would be streaked with wind-dried blood. But inside a tightsuit was safe. No wind, no cold, no roaring in the ears. It was peaceful. Like floating in zero gee. That afternoon on Muta, the sun was shining, the view was superb, and for just a few seconds, I was empty. Free of the clamor of myself. Falling in silence. Except for the beep… beep… beep… Momentum and the angle of my dive carried me quickly past Drill-Press city. The heads-up display in my helmet said I was traveling due north. Not far in the distance, I could see Camp Esteem, built on a rise above the river valley. What looked like a cloud of smoke still drifted outside the cookhouse… until, as I watched, the cloud whirled away from the building and sped in our direction. At first, I thought the cloud had been caught in a puff of wind; but no wind blew so direct and fast on such a mild day. The cloud shot straight for us, like steam propelled from a high-pressure hose. I didn’t know what it was, but reflex kicked in immediately. Tut and Festina were saying similar things, all of us speaking at the same time. With the three of us talking simultaneously, people on The cloud washed over me while I was still telling Then the feeling was gone. The cloud had moved past me, out of sight and out of my sixth sense’s range, almost as if nothing had happened. I said, The sound of my voice was muffled — just me talking inside my suit, no echo from my radio receivers. I closed my mouth and listened… to So that was what it felt like to be EMP’d. I thought back to what we’d seen as our probe jammed its nose into the cookhouse. The "smoke" had been drifting placidly through the mess hall… but as soon as the missile intruded, the cloud had shot forward, and the probe went dead. Stupid, stupid, stupid — I wanted to smack my head with my hand. We’d all thought the smoke had been disturbed by breeze through the broken window… but the smoke was what carried the EMP. It might even be the ultimate danger that lurked on Muta: some airborne entity, perhaps a swarm of nanites left over from Las Fuentes… or a hive mind like the Balrog, but with spores as light as dust. The smoke might float its way around Muta, EMPing machines and… and… But at least I was still alive. My suit was defunct. The heads-up displays had vanished, and no other systems responded. My personal comm implant was also scrap — through my sixth sense I saw the fused subcutaneous circuits in my ears and soft palate, fine wires flash-melted by the energy surge. Good thing the navy’s equipment designers had provided enough insulation to keep me safe when the implant got slagged; otherwise, it might have been unpleasant to have my sinuses full of molten electronics. As it was, I felt no ill effects. I looked back at my fellow Explorers, and both seemed healthy too. They were out of range of my sixth sense, but they held their arms tight to their sides in a good airfoil position rather than just dangling limp. That meant they were still conscious, controlling their dives. Looking up, I saw something else: the shuttle. Which should have been a long distance past us now. Its uncontrolled terminal velocity was much faster than three humans in tightsuits — we were lighter and dragged more on the air. The shuttle should have continued to spear forward at high speed, while we skydivers slowed down. But the shuttle had slowed down too. And although I was too far away to be sure, I thought the side hatch was now closed. We’d left that side hatch open when we jumped. At times, I regretted that swearing had never come naturally to me. I just yelled, "Li!" and left it at that. He’d stowed away on the shuttle. I was sure of it. That’s why he hadn’t come to see us off; he was already on board. Ubatu was likely with him — following me to Muta on behalf of Ifa-Vodun. The two diplomats must have concealed themselves in the shuttlecraft’s galley, and lucky for them, they’d been far enough back that my sixth sense didn’t pick them up. Once we Explorers had jumped, the two diplomats came out of hiding, closed the side hatch, and took the controls. I had no idea why they’d do something so stupid… but as I watched, the shuttle began a slow turn toward the Fuentes city. "Li!" I shouted again. "Li!" I wasn’t the only one to notice the shuttle’s action. Festina had turned to watch them too. Without a working comm I couldn’t hear her reaction; but she was probably swearing enough for both of us. The smoke/steam/EMP-monster noticed the shuttle too. The cloud shot straight at the craft, a wispy misty stream as fast as a bullet. Moments later, the shuttle’s engines went silent. All this time, I’d been dropping in freefall. With tightsuits on, Explorers can jump from considerable altitude, and Festina had wanted us out of the shuttle as soon as practical — no sense hanging around a ship we knew was doomed to crash. (Would it still crash with Li at the controls? An unpowered "dead-stick" landing was a tricky exercise, even with a first-rate airstrip beneath you. Muta had no airstrips. Li’s best chance was to aim for a long straight street back in Drill-Press and hope there was nothing dangerous in the middle of the pavement. If he hit a stone deposited by some recent river flood… or a basking crocodilian the size of a small dinosaur…) But whatever problems Li might face, there was no way I could help him. Nothing to do now but open my parachute. One tug on the cord, and I was jolted as hard as smashing into a wall. The tightsuit helped cushion the shock, but the sudden snap still made something spurt from my cheek like slop from a wet sponge. By luck, the fluid didn’t hit my helmet visor; otherwise, I’d have been forced to look at it until it dried and turned into a crusty spot on the otherwise clear plastic. The chute splayed wide above me: a huge rectangular parasol against the afternoon sun. Its winglike shape made it easy to steer; I aimed in the direction of the rendezvous point, and floated serenely downward. No birds took notice as I fell — birds wouldn’t evolve on Muta for another hundred million years. Even pterosaurs were far in the future. Only insects had mastered the mechanics of flight, and they stayed close to the ground, near their nests and food sources. I could hear their communal buzz in the last few seconds before landing, the sound so loud it pierced the muffling cavity of my helmet. Then I struck down, rolled (very awkwardly, given the mirror-spheres strapped to my suit), hit the chute release straps, and got to my feet on my first untamed planet. Muta. Instinct made me stop… look around… take a deep breath. But the breath only gave me the smell of my own sweat. I’d have to get used to the scent — my tightsuit would soon become hot as an oven. A tightsuit is wonderfully comfortable as long as the temperature-control systems remain operational; now that they’d been EMP’d, however, I was walking around on a mild day in an airtight outfit insulated better than a goose-down parka. An hour or two, and I’d be risking heatstroke. As for my surroundings, I couldn’t see anything except a hodgepodge of multicolored ferns. My eyes weren’t adept at extracting information from the motley chaos. I could hear the drone of insects and sense their exact locations with my mental awareness — a horde of them flying near the plants, crawling through the foliage, scuttling under the soil — but even knowing where to look, my sight was too dazzled by leafy reds, blues, yellows, greens, to make out slow-moving flies or beetles. And most of the insects weren’t small. Camp Esteem lay close to the tropics; according to my sixth sense, some of the bugs were as fat as my thumb and twice as long. But their coloration blended so well with the rainbow of plants, they were practically invisible. It would be difficult not to tread on creepy-crawlies as I walked. I found that idea upsetting — not because I was squeamish about bugs, but because I’d been brought up in the tradition of I looked at the patch of flattened grass where I’d landed from the parachute drop. In the very first instant of my arrival, I’d squashed the local version of an anthill. Antlike corpses everywhere. So much for clean karma. I allowed myself a shudder. Then I shook off my misgivings and hurried to collect my parachute before it blew away in the breeze. As I ran, I tried to ignore my sixth sense. It insisted on telling how many insects I crushed with every step. |
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