Killing Titan

  “Venn was high on the list,” Borden says.

  “Which pushed everything forward faster than they wanted,” Joe says. “Kumar was still playing faithful servant to the Gurus. And second fiddle to Mushran. Mushran gets around. It’s weird how he gets around.”

  “Why not wait until I got back to Mars, for Teal…?”

  “Elder de Groot wanted to breed a master race that would understand everything there was in the Drifter. He thought that would make him the ultimate power in our big old war. No good if the baby is fathered by a Skyrine, and besides, how would he know about you? Turned out none of his surviving sons were suitable, so he found another Voor who was.”

  “I don’t understand any of it,” I say.

  “Good. Clear out the bullshit and think fresh thoughts. Where we’re going…”

  We enter another wide room, with a ceiling only marginally higher than the last one. The natural gloom here is broken by chains of lamps drooping from the roof. Rows of folding tables are spaced between rock columns and plastic braces, and where possible laid end-to-end beneath the brightest lamps. A few of these are attended by scruffy Muskies, not as tall as Teal. Shorter folk. Uglier, I think, but I’m irritated the Voors married one of their own off to Teal. Joe’s right. What was I thinking? Joe’s always right. Nothing better.

  I look into a corner and see DJ working away madly at one of the farther tables, hands racing over sheets of gritty beige paper, covering them with crude pencil sketches. Scraps and wads litter the table and the floor. Where they got the paper, I have no idea—but what he’s doing is important enough that someone found it and gave it to him.

  As I walk over, DJ glances up, eyes crossed, face pink, feverish, looking even more of a dumbass than usual, like he’s on drugs—and I suppose, like me, that he is. “Hey, Vinnie!” he calls out. “It’s coming in a rush. I can’t get any of it right! Come help!”

  “Sure,” I say, lifting a page. The sketches he’s making are from the time of the old ice moon, and they’re not half-bad. DJ has drawn the gnarled outer shell of a big, regal-looking bug, rearing up to show its underbelly—which is uglier and more complicated than its upper parts. I recognize the triad of large eyes, and behind those, peering over curiously, another triad—the smaller passenger. Partners. Parasite-friends.

  “That’s the boss, but in my head, he’s not just one bug—he’s like a composite memory of a thousand or so, spread out over centuries, I don’t know which one he is, really. Recognize him?”

  I shake my head. “Sorry. Shouldn’t that be ‘it’?”

  “Definitely him,” DJ murmurs, returning to his drawing. “Do some more tea. Come back when you feel it stronger. Man, this sucks, this really sucks—who the fuck are these guys, and why are they all lumped together?”

  “Maybe it’s a dynasty,” I suggest. “You know, inherited rule.”

  DJ shakes his head. “No way,” he says. “These guys are way more Spock than that. They were better at running things than we’ve ever been. Good guys, inside—really.”

  “They’re dead, DJ. Extinct.”

  “Not in here,” DJ says, tapping his head.

  I back away, a little spark jogging up my back.

  “How many here like DJ?” I ask Joe.

  “Before the strikes, we had six, including Kazak,” Joe says.

  “Now we’re down to DJ,” Tak says. “And you. Maybe.”

  “He looks pretty strung out.”

  “Screw you,” DJ says, fingers dancing over the paper. “This is power. This is knowledge.”

  “I don’t feel that devoted,” I say.

  “Give it time,” DJ says.

  “What about the kids? The third-gen babies? Where are they?”

  “They’re not here,” Joe says. “Lifted off Mars forty sols ago. Moved to safety on Earth.”

  “Earth! What about the Gurus, what about Wait Staff who aren’t going along?”

  “They won’t know,” Kumar says.

  “Yeah, right. That’s insane!” I say.

  “Safest place for them,” Joe says. “Far safer than here. The only kids still with us are the Voor and Muskie children—those not affected.”

  I’m fuming at this bit of news when I hear and then feel someone on the opposite end of the workroom. A clear, throaty female voice followed by a soft padding of feet. “Who’s all t’ere?”

  Three tall women walk together, heads nearly bumping the lights. They look much alike: thin, worn, mousy fine brown hair cut short, skin pale, eyes wide. They all wear tunics that drape to their knobby knees. Green-stained tunics. They’ve come from the mine pit. We stare. None is the woman I saw earlier carrying her baby.

  Joe whispers, “Recognize anyone?”

  I don’t, at first. The two women on the outside of the group hold out their arms to guide the woman in the middle. She looks lost, out of place, as if focusing on things we can’t see, people not here. As she’s helped forward, I make out scars around her eyes. They outline the edges of a faceplate. Flash burns. She’s blind.

  “Say something,” Joe says.

  “Is t’at Michael? I feel him,” the woman says.

  Behind me, the Skyrines push up close, I don’t know why, instinct maybe, even now, even with my being such an asshole—we have to stick together. Or maybe they just want to see the tall women and figure out what this means.

  “She’s been asking after you for months,” Joe says. “Talk to her.”

  They’ve taken Teal’s child away and now she’s here, she’s trying to find me, and I barely even know her. “Why?” I ask. “What good am I?”

  Teal raises her head. “It is Michael!” she says. “He’s here!” She bumps into a table. The other women guide her. I want to run. God help me, we’ve made these poor people suffer so much.

  “Vinnie, if it’s you, come a here!” Teal says, her voice bright. She gives her most radiant smile and holds out her arms. I remember that smile. “Come a me. Talk a me! So long, so much a tell!”

  JOURNEYS NEVER END

  With no tact at all, Kumar and Borden and Joe separate me and Teal from our protective posses—Teal from her helpful tall friends, me from the Skyrines, who all of a sudden want to stick like glue. Borden tells them, and Joe confirms, that this is okay, no harm, we need our privacy, Teal and I, and then we’re shepherded across the workroom to a small side cubby with chairs and a small table—a single lamp. Isolated and quiet.

  The look on Kumar’s face is intense. Borden is trying to be discreet, but Kumar doesn’t give a damn—he might as well be watching porn and jerking off. This is why we’re here. This is why he assigned Borden to me and brought me here.

  Then, Joe and Borden and Kumar withdraw like matchmakers leaving on cue, but I know they’re just outside, listening. I get it. We’re big investments. Prize Thoroughbreds.

  I gingerly sit across from Teal. I have no claim. That passing spark of connection, that slap across my face, sharing her grief and fear at the appearance of the Voors—no right to think I did anything major to protect her or keep her from harm—did I? I imagined it all, right? Even so, I want to bathe in her presence. I could be a ghost and I’d still just want to be here and watch her.

  Teal stretches her hand across the table.

  “I am such a shithole,” is the first thing I say.

  “Hush t’at,” she says.

  I reach out. She hears flesh rub on plastic, grasps my fingers, then lays her palm over mine. Her touch is dry. Jeweler’s fingers, long and strong but delicate. I remember that fine strength. She pushes at the table, trying to get closer, so I move around the corner, kneel beside her.

  “Let me feel you!” she says. She brings her face close to my head, hands hovering beside my cheeks. Her nostrils flare. She’s smelling me. “Hasna’t been hard, hasna’t?” she says, eyes moving as if they can still see. I wonder if somebody will replace her eyes, like Tak’s, and I think it could happen—but not here. I want desperately to get her to Earth, to a hosp
ital, to fix her and make her whole again.

  Back to see her child.

  “So sorry a be this way,” she says, and touches the scars around her eyes. “Went hard for us.”

  “I know,” I say. “Not your fault, not ever.”

  She raises her chin. “You’re alive a-cause me, remember?” she says, teasing a little, but full of joy, of pride. “I saved you.”

  Tears drip down my cheeks. “You sure did,” I say.

  “I was sa glad a find ot’ers. Never touched you, dinna know your feel, just far looks,” she says, and her long fingers stroke my cheeks, my lips, the orbits around my eyes. I don’t remind her about that slap. “Dinna catch your smell, ’cept sweat, fear. You’re afraid now.” She touches the moisture on my cheeks. “Na tears. So much a learn!”

  She takes my hands and raises them to her own face. I touch her skin. It’s the first time I’ve actually felt her so intimately, flesh, bone beneath, warmth, and her scent comes at me from different angles.

  “They say you feel strong te tea,” she says. “You know te old moon’s life. What do you see, Michael?”

  I don’t know how to say it. The silence grows and she frowns. “It’s na wrong. Fat’er felt it. First gen gets it strong, second less. T’ree strongest of all, t’ey say. He use a give me stories. I t’ought t’ey were odd, but beautiful.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” I say.

  “Being in te Drifter weird enow,” Teal says. “What happened after you went back a Eart’?”

  “I need to know what happened to you,” I say.

  “Sure,” Teal says. “Te Voors took me back a te main cache, t’rough te fighting. Only five lived, Rafe and de Groot and Aram and me among ’em. T’ere wor ot’er Voors and settlers at te cache. De Groot took lead, organized, tried a open te second mine but dinna have te coin.… Still, t’ey took me in, made me one a t’eirs. Te women fit me, de Groot got his way—I wor married. I wor married—Michael.” Her eyes try to search me out, to see what I’m thinking. Her hands twitch. She wants to feel my expression, but she’s afraid.

  “Was he a good man?” I ask.

  “He wor chosen by de Groot, one a te Voors but not one o’ his sons,” she says. “None of his sons felt te old moon strong. De Groot chose a man wit’ a strong sense. Not cruel, not stupid.” She turns her head. One ear got nicked, I see under the short fringe of hair. My whole body aches. “Te babe came quick enow. T’en Joe and DJ and Tak returned wit survey team a open te second mine. Joe had te coin.”

  “The one I found,” I say.

  “We returned a digging, all a us, and t’en, good time, fine mont’s—t’en, Far Ot’ers came and hit us, we t’ink. Houses split open a dust and sky. Husband died. I nearly died. Alice and Joe send away te babies. After, we divide from t’ot’ers, live in te mine.”

  “Amazing work here,” I say.

  I hear a commotion outside the cubby. Kumar and Joe and Tak are arguing.

  DJ enters, breathless. “It’s gonna happen!” he says.

  Joe pulls him back. “We got hours yet,” he says, and drags DJ away. Harsh whispers out of our sight.

  “What’s that about?” I ask.

  Teal’s face firms. “Tell me about you,” she says.

  The little room feels close and dense. Everything feels fragile, temporary, I don’t know why. And then…

  I do know. The mine, the contents of the mine, senses time is getting short. I can picture it, maybe the same picture DJ has. The Drifter turned glass right to the central peak after it was hit.

  And that’s not a bad thing.

  Coyle didn’t die, not completely.

  Teal pats my hand. “We’re a get evacuated, some a new camp, some a Eart’. But tell me afore we ha’a go.” She grips my hand firmly, brooking no dissent. The people outside have fallen silent. Maybe they’ve gone away. Maybe they’re decent enough to give us privacy.

  I stumble through my story. My life has been empty compared to hers, and what’s the point? What are we expecting? Weren’t we supposed to get together and produce the third-gen child? Was that the plan or just my fantasy? What the hell happened? I don’t say this, but I think it as I speak, and maybe it paints over my words and makes her sad. She leans her head to one side, listening with that nicked ear, spidery hands moving slowly on the table, trying to find mine again, which I’ve put back in my lap.

  I describe the lockup room and Kumar and the window.

  She shakes her head as if that can’t be real. “Michael,” she interrupts, “tell me a te ot’er place. What’s it like? Living anot’er time, anot’er body? Make me see it. My husband couldna.”

  “What was his name?” I ask. It’s important. People connected to Teal are important. He didn’t hurt her, maybe he cared for her.

  “Olerud,” she says. “Olerud Miesler.”

  “How’d he die?”

  “Fighting along a te Russians, out on a dust,” she says.

  Jesus. Her husband died protecting her. I wasn’t here, I can’t resent him. I can even feel admiration, gratitude—Goddamn it to hell.

  “Enow,” she says. “Tell me what you see.”

  “Comes and goes,” I say. “Usually, it’s brief. Like a sharp kind of dream.” I study her face, feeling the coiling of a mighty force held back, wound up.…

  And then…

  Being with Teal, smelling and sucking in the tea, my God.

  It’s here.

  I start to describe to her the things I didn’t realize I’d been seeing and dreaming, spilling it all. She’s the perfect listener. She’ll believe. She’ll get it.

  “All our life came from them,” I say.

  “I know,” she says, nodding.

  “There are millions of them spread over vast time, hundreds of millions of years—all different sorts and shapes. In the time that comes through strongest, most of the powerful ones, the ones in charge, come in two parts: a smaller rider and a big, stronger partner. I don’t know who’s smarter. They blend together, except when they’re apart—which isn’t often. They have tough shells.”

  “I know. Like lice.” Her lips curl.

  “More like crabs or lobsters,” I say.

  “We ha na lobsters here. How big are te old ones?”

  “Maybe as big as this table,” I say. “Very smart. Their world is beautiful. Under the ice, under upside-down mountains of seeping minerals, there are all sorts of creatures—hundreds of kinds of smaller shelly creatures, scuttling through gardens of animal flowers like anemones—long chains of glowing bulbs, like jellyfish, that light the way through their cities—clouds of little wriggling things like fish, also glowing, everything equipped with lights.… Glowing bacteria? But here, under the ice, fish didn’t rise to the level of crustaceans.…” Am I babbling? Get to the point. I shift gears. “Inside, where they think, they feel cozy—cozy and familiar. Not like bugs at all. I don’t know what that means.”

  “T’ey wor kind?” she asks. “Not kill and be killed?”

  “Maybe. I can’t be sure. Seeing from inside—of course it feels familiar. A whole rich civilization, history going back millions of… whatever they used for time. Tidal surges, warm and cold spells. They could sense the rock getting colder. They could tell that radioactive decay was slowly fading in the moon’s core. But the tides kept the oceans warm. And when the moon was knocked out of orbit…”

  “Around Jupiter or Saturn?” Teal asks.

  “Maybe Saturn. But Saturn was different back then. And there was more than one inhabited moon,” I say. “Before the disaster, there were seven or eight.” Pretty specific. Which voice told me that?

  “Did te shelly t’ings break t’rough? Did t’ey travel?” Teal asks.

  I think this over. Good question! They must have traveled to know about the other moons—right? Did they colonize them, as well? “I guess they’d have to have dug out through the ice. But a long, long time passed from the time they first built cities until they saw the stars.”

&nb
sp; “DJ and Olerud speak it te same,” Teal says, lifting her face. Her eyes are pale, but she still tries to see. “Many ice-roof worlds. How far? How far back a time, do you t’ink?”

  “Hard to know. Several billion years, at least—but even so, like I said, their world is familiar to me! It’s as if I could know them, understand them, with just a little effort.”

  And a guide.

  “We’d be friends,” Teal says.

  “Huh! I don’t know about that. What if we told them we boil crabs alive in a kettle?”

  Teal’s disgust is precious. “Na me, na ever! Crush lice, maybe.”

  I move on. “And they’re pretty strange—parasite or partner on a bigger—”

  She interrupts. “Pairs. Olerud said t’at. But te ot’er moons… Wor all dead and smashed?”

  I look around the gray cubby, my tension slowly easing. Alice was right, Kumar was right—Teal’s my catalyst. Maybe it was Joe who told them, though how he’d know I have no idea. Maybe he could see it in us—but he’d have to have been clued in earlier. Joe’s bright but he’s no magician.

  Maybe Joe’s participation goes back to Kumar’s or Mushran’s first quest for the Drifter. Maybe Joe’s been in on it since just after training at Hawthorne. Joe has always been my polestar, my goad, even my flail—but I’ve never understood him.

  “No,” I say. “They were alive before Earth cooled and had seas. They were the first life in the solar system,” I add slowly, feeling part of myself, my human ego, wither under the implications. “Liquid water beneath deep ice. They were first.”

  “You get all t’at?” Teal asks.

  I nod.

  “My boy would a felt all t’at and more, as he got older. All their history.”

  “Maybe,” I murmur. “Third gen… Whatever that means.”

  Teal draws her blind gaze down from the ceiling. “Too valuable a leave wit me,” she whispers. “I lost Olerud, lost my sight, and t’en t’ey took my boy.” She presses two fingers between her small breasts, barely visible beneath the folds of the tunic. “Mushran and Joe say he’s going a Eart’ now. Much safer away from Mars. What will happen a t’em? Will te bogglers on Eart’ peer and study?”