Heaven's War Page 2

  If only he could reach it.

  So, as one of the vaguely defined Keanu days ended (the light in the habitat did not change much), Zack had simply slipped away and headed back toward the tunnel to the Factory...a distance surely less than a couple of kilometers.

  And now here he was, as alone as any human being in history, and as vulnerable...painfully and slowly working his way along one wall of the habitat...its farthest reach almost misty in the distance, surely ten or more kilometers away, at the end of the chamber.

  In best Boy Scout fashion, Zack had managed to find traces of his earlier passage, when carrying Camilla in that frantic escape. The ground surface was a nanotech-based regolith, but it acted like hard-packed dirt.

  And, in places, not so hard-packed. Here were their tracks, unmistakable.

  But as far as he could determine, the tunnel he had used to reach the Factory was simply gone! It was like a scene from some episode of the Arabian Nights—as if a giant stone door now blocked his escape.

  Had there actually been a door, Zack might have been able to locate the spot where the passage used to be...some fine crack or edge.

  One thing he had been able to do with his spare time was to create a three-dimensional image of Keanu in his head...the Near-Earth Object was a sphere more than a hundred kilometers in diameter. Zack’s crew and the competing Coalition Brahma team had landed near Vesuvius Vent, one of many craters on Keanu’s icy-rocky surface. Vesuvius had been located near Keanu’s equator; both teams had descended through the vent, then traversed subterranean tunnels that had given them access to this habitat.

  Zack pictured a fat cylinder running from surface to core...but that could be wrong: The habitat might just as easily lie at angles to the core.

  No matter. He and the others were inside it, until they figured some way out. They couldn’t go back the way they had come—Zack’s team had entered through a passage that was exposed to the vacuum of Keanu’s surface. And while the information from the 187 new arrivals was still jumbled, it appeared that they, too, had come to the habitat via a one-way system.

  Well, Keanu’s environment had changed twice in the week Zack had been part of it. Plant growth, sky, temperatures, everything seemed variable, as if programmed by a machine somewhere (likely the case) or, a more horrible thought, entirely at random.

  There was no reason to think Keanu’s environment would stay the same. A passage that had been open five days ago was now closed, as if the habitat were some kind of Rubik’s Cube. Bad news for Zack.

  But who was to say it might not open again?

  Besides, Zack was so unsure of his directional abilities and perceptions that he made a second, broader sweep of the area near the wall. With his back to it, he ranged a couple of hundred meters to his left, back toward the Temple and the other humans...and found no opening or, indeed, anything but more wall.

  So he retraced his steps and marched forward, deeper into the habitat. It was as if his mood sank with every ten meters. It wasn’t distance from the other survivors that caused it...it was the realization that his moment of freedom, adventure, and exploration was about to end.

  He was going to have to go back, to resume his unwanted post as titular “leader.”

  And father.

  And he felt completely unequipped for either role—

  He stopped. The light inside the Keanu habitat was never as bright as noon on Earth; at its best, it was equivalent to a cloudy morning.

  So Zack couldn’t be sure what he was seeing...some kind of object not far ahead, up against the wall, that was not a plant or tree, and not shaped like the rocks here, either.

  He began to run, the tubes in his long johns making clicking and zipping sounds, like corduroy pants—

  Then he stopped, because he suddenly knew what he was seeing less than five meters away.

  It was the body of a human female so mangled it appeared to have almost been torn in two. It reminded Zack of some classic crime photo—California again, the Blue...or was it the Black Dahlia?

  Only this wasn’t some stranger unlucky enough to be the victim of a crime.

  This was Megan, his reborn wife...killed a second time by a Sentry. She had sacrificed herself so that Zack and Camilla could live.

  He knelt, noting with some relief—the only relief he could summon—that her eyes were closed and her features seemed peaceful.

  Zack had already gone through the horror of seeing Megan dead once before, after the auto accident in Florida. That time she—her body—had been intact. But her expression had been different; colder, deader somehow.

  This face was more...resigned? Accepting? Knowing?

  Stop it. He was projecting. He needed to be practical. He couldn’t leave her like this—

  Not far from the wall he found a stand of trees with giant, fanlike leaves. There were similar trees near the Temple, and one of the survivors had already dubbed them “ginkgos.”

  Zack stripped off several leaves and several lengths of vine.

  He returned to Megan’s body and set about the heartbreaking task of rearranging the remains...then gently wrapping them for transport.

  Zack might not have found the passage, but he’d found closure.

  RACHEL

  Shortly after dawn, the rain stopped.

  At least, that was how Rachel Stewart would have described it: “Dawn” inside the Keanu human habitat meant that after nine or so hours of low light, the squiggly shaped glowtubes in the ceiling warmed up and grew somewhat brighter. A day? It was a lot like one of the few phrases Rachel remembered from the Bible—“the light followed the dark,” something like that. There was no sunrise or noon...only the glowtubes coming on, then fourteen hours later, fading out to twilight.

  The rain wasn’t much like the precipitation Rachel had known growing up in Texas, either. It was more like a heavy mist that rolled out of hidden crevices in the habitat walls, filling in the lower areas first, then expanding to a dense wet cloud that coated vegetation, buildings, and people with enough moisture to cause discomfort and even leave puddles.

  After two “days” of “rain,” three days after her arrival on Keanu, Rachel finally discovered something to do. Something, that is, besides feel dirty and hungry and so constantly terrified she was numb.

  “We’re going to bury your mother,” Zack told her.

  He had found Rachel before she’d even rubbed the sleep out of her eyes—before she’d had any breakfast—not that any of the almost two hundred humans huddled in or around this weird Temple structure were eating much.

  Her father had simply touched her on the shoulder, where she lay atop a bed of leaves, not far from the strange Brazilian girl, Camilla—nine years old, and a reborn human, also known as a Revenant—who had attached herself to Rachel.

  Camilla woke up, too, and made it clear she was coming along, whether Rachel wanted her or not.

  “How did you find Mom, Daddy?” Even as she said it, Rachel knew it was a stupid question. How else but by wandering around in this big stupid tube? And, really, what difference did it make?

  Fortunately, her father recognized her question for what it was: nervous chatter. He simply took Rachel by the hand and—with Camilla following several steps behind—led her away from the Temple to the nearest rocks, to a bundle of ginkgo leaves that looked more like a giant seed pod than a human being.

  This was the body of Megan Stewart? Her mother? In Rachel’s mind, she had knelt by her mother’s Texas grave as recently as a week ago...the same day she had had the terrifying and bizarre experience of talking with her via NASA television.

  Rachel’s back had been aching the moment she woke up. Last year she’d gotten what should have been a cute tattoo on her lower back. Now that yellow butterfly felt swollen and sore.

  “I found her this morning,” her father said.

  “Where?”

  “Back that way,” he said, pointing farther down the habitat...which in Rachel’s mind was the northern
or lower end, not that direction had any meaning.

  The habitat was roughly cylindrical, or half-cylindrical. There was a floor, and a ceiling that, at its greatest, was at least a few hundred meters high. The floor was rolling, actual earth and rocklike terrain covered with various kinds of plant life, including some good-sized trees. The sloping walls looked like cliff faces. Rachel and those who had been scooped from Earth and shipped across four hundred thousand kilometers of space had emerged into the habitat at one end...what she now thought of as “south.”

  The Temple building, a good-sized pile of material that stood three stories tall and covered as much area as a baseball diamond, sat near that southern end. Although Rachel hadn’t explored more than a few hundred meters beyond the Temple, she had already decided that the Temple rested on high ground...everything further north was “lower.”

  Around them people were stirring. It reminded Rachel of the ragged wake-up at the only Girl Scout camp she’d attended, when she was twelve. No one had seemed happy or healthy then, and this morning on Keanu was no different.

  Rachel had gone through the insane emotional roller coaster of seeing her mother killed in a car crash in Florida two years ago, then alive again via television here on Keanu...only to learn upon arrival that she had died a second time.

  “How did she die again?” Zack had told her, but it was that first hour, a very confusing time.

  “A Sentry killed her.”

  “A Sentry?” Rachel hadn’t spent nearly as much time with her father as she wanted—of course, given their situation and her mental state, the right amount of contact would have been constant. She had wanted to cling to her father and not let go.

  “One of the other inhabitants,” he said, clearly too tired to offer much more.

  “You mean, like, alien inhabitant.” Zack nodded. “Is it still around?” If this Sentry killed her mother, clearly it was a creature to be avoided.

  “I don’t think so. I stabbed it,” Zack said. “Camilla helped.” Rachel noticed that the littler girl was still lurking a few meters away. Hearing her name, she smiled and moved closer, to Rachel’s intense annoyance.

  “Was that the only one?” Rachel asked.

  Zack shrugged. “Can’t say. There was a passageway between here and the Factory. But I think it’s closed now.”

  Rachel had no idea what that meant, and no chance to ask, because Harley Drake and Sasha Blaine were approaching. Harley was going slowly, using his arms to power his wheelchair across the bumpy ground.

  Rachel felt a rush of pity for the man. God, it was so easy to forget what he was like before the accident...a pilot, a jock, a total womanizer—or so her mother, Megan, had said once. Now look at him.

  Then there was Sasha Blaine, the Valkyrie astronomer and math whiz, eternally perky. Even she looked pale and worn out.

  Rachel realized that her father had told the couple about her mother’s body—before he’d told her! She didn’t much like that.

  They exchanged grim good mornings, and equally uncomfortable hugs. Sasha said a hello to the Brazilian girl in German—one of Camilla’s two languages—earning a smile for her efforts. Then she produced a small shovel. “I rescued this from one of the other teams,” Sasha said.

  “It’ll have to do,” Zack said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Even though Zack had discouraged Rachel from a final “viewing,” he needed her to carry the body. Seeing Zack struggle to lift the bundle—which probably weighed forty kilograms, since gravity in the habitat was close to that of Earth—and stagger with it, Sasha had offered to help. But Rachel moved quickly. This was her mother—or so it seemed. And her poor father.

  It was her job.

  They made their way slowly to the south, a little uphill, into the deep dark recesses of a corner of the habitat Rachel had not visited. She quickly grew tired and then frustrated by the distance. “Why are we going all this way?” she snapped. “Didn’t we bury the others—” Two people had died during the awful first arrival day.

  “We don’t have a cemetery, kiddo,” Harley Drake said. “Your dad has his reasons.”

  “We’re here,” Zack said.

  They had reached a cavernous opening inside which Rachel could see strange cell-like structures lining the walls. “We called this the Beehive,” Zack said, gesturing with alarming weakness. “It’s where we came through from the vent. It’s where...Megan...your mother...came from.”

  Camilla stepped forward, as if eager to explore. Sasha held her back.

  Harley jabbed the shovel into the ground. “Got any particular place in mind?” he asked Zack.

  Zack looked around, then stepped out into the open. “Right here, I think.” He turned to Rachel and offered the first smile she had seen from her father in days. “This is a little like St. Bernadette’s, right?” That was the name of Megan Stewart’s earthly resting place, a cemetery near the space center.

  Harley rolled his wheelchair toward the spot, but Sasha took the shovel. “Let me.”

  Harley began to protest, but Zack said, “Hey, Harls, why don’t you grab some of those melons?” He pointed to a nearby tree laden with large red fruit of some kind.

  Rachel knew Harley’s expressions, and what flashed across his face was fury—less at Zack or Sasha than his situation. But he accepted the assignment, though not without a final grumble: “Maybe I should volunteer to taste-test them, too.”

  Sasha quickly and efficiently scratched out the borders of a grave, then dug the shovel into the earth. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “It’s loose. I was afraid it would be hard.”

  The tall woman from Yale worked methodically as Zack simply watched, hands folded over his chest. Camilla wandered all around them, careful never to go any closer to the Beehive. Eventually she joined Harley, helping to carry a handful of the red melons back to the gravesite.

  After several minutes, Sasha stopped, clearly exhausted. “Uh, how deep?” she said.

  “Tradition suggests two meters,” Harley said.

  “This is hardly a traditional environment,” Zack said. “Keanu will...absorb her, I think.” He took the shovel from Sasha then, jumped into the grave, which by then was close to a meter deep, and furiously continued the digging.

  Emerging, hands and arms trembling from effort, Sasha patted Rachel on the shoulder. “Almost over,” she said.

  As promised, moments later Zack slid the shovel toward Harley. “That’s it,” he said.

  Sasha reached the bundle that held Megan’s body before Zack did. Rachel did, too. It seemed to her that Zack hesitated...as if relishing this last moment of contact, no matter how bizarre.

  Finally, moving carefully, the three gently lowered the remains into the grave. Zack stepped back. Sasha looked so drained that Rachel picked up the shovel and began covering the body.

  Zack took over, and then it was all done.

  Except for the words. “Do you want to say something?” Harley said. His voice was so gentle he didn’t sound like Harley Drake.

  Zack took a big breath, his chest swelling, and said, “I don’t think I can.” And then he simply broke down.

  Which triggered unstoppable tears in Rachel, too. In her head, she was hearing Megan’s voice again...not the weird way it had sounded during their last exchange via NASA TV, or the sharp tones of a mother-to-teen-daughter, but the voice Rachel had heard as a child, being rocked to sleep or comforted after a nightmare. “There, there, baby girl.”

  Zack pulled her to him, and there they stood...two sobbing wrecks.

  “I’ll say something.” It was Harley Drake. “‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’...it’s not just words, it’s a commandment. Rest in peace, Megan Doyle Stewart. You’ve earned it.”

  Almost on command, the group of five turned and began walking or rolling away. Only Camilla lingered, staring at the grave, making a sad little gesture with her hands.

  Rachel shook her head, trying to stop weeping. And found herself laughing.

&nb
sp; “What’s that?” Zack said, his eyes red.

  “Don’t you think it’s funny, Daddy?”

  “Funny?”

  “You’ve buried Mom twice now, on two different planets.”

  Her father stared at her. His eyes went wide, an expression Rachel had rarely seen, and always feared. But in an instant the scary face was gone, replaced by something more benign. He simply hugged her—

  Suddenly they heard a terrifying sound—a raspy screech, like the cry of a demented eagle. Only there couldn’t be eagles here...certainly nothing was flying. “Jesus Christ!” Harley said. “What was that?”

  Sasha pointed, just as, quicker than any human had ever moved, a creature shot out of the trees and snatched one of the red melons from Camilla’s hands. It ran toward the Beehive.

  “Come on,” Zack said. He was going to follow it.

  Harley snapped, “Why do we care? Let it eat the thing!”

  “I want to know what that animal is,” Zack said. “And whether or not that melon is poisonous.” He headed off, showing more energy than Rachel had yet seen. She and the others followed, an increasing distance behind.

  “Not to be argumentative,” Sasha said, “but that animal might be able to eat all kinds of things that would kill us.”

  “Not if it’s a monkey,” Rachel said. She had spotted it again...the creature was perched atop a good-sized boulder near the Beehive entrance, banging the melon until it broke open.

  “I don’t know if that’s a monkey,” Zack said. “Its skin looked too smooth...oh.”

  Now they all had a good view of the creature on the rock, which was greedily stuffing melon guts into its monkey face.

  “It’s a vervet monkey,” Sasha said. She turned to Rachel. “Good eyes.”

  Rachel couldn’t have named the creature, but something about its head shape, hands, tail, and running posture had just said “monkey.”

  “Don’t they have fur?” Harley said.

  “It’s probably got fur under that harder second skin,” Zack said. “When things come out of the Beehive, that’s what they wear...at least a couple of layers, like diving suits.”