Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

This shouldn’t be such an agony; this isn’t the first time she’s been here. It should get easier. This should have an answer, by now.

“All right,” she manages, “pull out and circle back on a one-way trip. This is the go/no go. Vote.”

She waits without turning for them to weigh in. She has a new respect for Mission Control, forty-one years ago; this is a silence that’s hard to allow.

At last, Walters says, “No go. We’ll take our chances in the water.”

Marika doesn’t say anything. Konstantinova frowns at the comm, wonders if she missed it; if Marika answered while Konstantinova was still talking.

(Marika has that habit, and her answer is always Go.)

But she waits for an answer a long time, until there is the sound of something sealing; Konstantinova sees the warning light go red under her fingers before she registers that Marika is opening the outer hatch.

Click.

(The transit is over; they are parting.)

The hairline crack is in the hydraulics panel. As Marika approaches it, moving hand over hand along the side rails, one bead of gasoline pushes through it and away.

“You won’t get home,” she says into her mic. “You’ve lost too much already.”

She doesn’t know if the connection is still live; she forgets if she turned it on or not, and her heart is pounding too loudly for her to hear a thing.

She grips the screwdriver in her free hand and gets to work. It’s familiar by now, and the screws come apart one by one, cling gently to the magnets in the fingertips of her glove.

The suit warms up with her work; her visor fogs. She tries not to panic. There’s not enough air to panic. (She disconnected—there wasn’t time for anything else.)

If she lets go of the handrail, she’ll vanish.

She imagines a darkness like the darkness of the boat on calm water, imagines stretching out a hand as she falls.

The screwdriver shakes; she clamps down with numb fingers to keep it from escaping, drags off another screw.

But it’s useless. Her helmet is fogging up from the inside now—she can’t see, she can’t see , and there’s not enough time left to hold her breath and wait for equalization, not enough oxygen left to hyperventilate and turn it into droplets big enough to see around.

She shoves the pick in at an angle, to avoid her eyes.

Three stabs before the visor cracks; another three before she can wedge the pick inside and wrench it out.

The shield winks once and spins gently out of sight, knocks away a scattering of gold where the coating has flaked off under the chisel.

She exhales, so her lungs don’t explode from the decompression, and turns to the bulkhead with shaking hands. She has to work fast—she forgets how long you can last before the darkness swallows you.

(You have fifteen seconds. Go.)

The last screw opens; the panel opens.

She slices the fuel line where it’s torn, shoves the healthy end of the hose back into the joint, throws the clamp shut. Stray gasoline floats past her in black pearls.

(She’s freezing; her lips are numb; when she blinks her eyelids crack, snap off, go flying.)

The panel begins to vibrate as the system kicks in.

(Seven seconds.)

She slams the bulkhead shut, fumbles three of the screws back into place. It’s all she manages before her fingers freeze.

Far away, Konstantinova is saying something about re-entry, about being out of time, she’s panicked, she’s screaming—but the last of the air escapes the suit, and then there’s silence.

(Marika breathes in; her lungs collapse.)

The ship is accelerating now, dragging her.

She pulls free.

The motion spins her slightly, away from the planet towards the sky. For a moment, the full view stuns her.

She thinks, It’s beautiful .

It’s the first time in her life she’s ever thought it.

(This is why: there is no seeing.

Now there is only the sky; she’s looking, for an instant, straight to the stars. This is the true geography.)

The Milky Way rips through the black at a different angle; this sky is a stranger, a ceaseless riot, sharp and steady-bright.

It’s a lovely war.

(Two seconds.

One second.)

After it’s over, Konstantinova will emerge from the sea.

She will stand on the deck of the Alkonost; pull off her helmet; breathe.

The night will be deep. When she turns her face to the sky, to search for a place to begin with her numbers, the ghosts of the stars will flicker and shine.

An (pronounce it “On”) Owomoyela is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Lightspeed , and a handful of Year’s Bests. An’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in-between. An can be found online at an.owomoyela.net.

She was offered the comfort of a drug-induced apathy. She refused.

The cell where she waited to die was, in true Erhat fashion, humane. Really, it was no worse than the room she had rented when she’d first arrived on the station, except for the hard lock on the door. She still had the same music at her fingertips, the same narrative media, the same computerized games of skill or strategy or wit or pure abnegation. All she lacked was freedom.

And a future.

Fuck .

She’d taken to pacing. Four steps wide, seven deep, over and over again until the door chimed—ahead of schedule—and her body seized up in panic, her breath vanished, and her hands fisted of their own accord.

But the voice which came through was… curiously non-final. “Kiu Alee. Do you consent to receive a visitor?”

She hesitated a moment, staring at the door. As her heartrate slowed, she said, “Yes”—more from morbid curiosity than anything else. After a moment, she added, “I didn’t know I was allowed visitors.”

The door slid open.

The man on the other side, flanked by a guard whose presence seemed almost cursory, was much taller than anyone in the local Erhat population—much taller than her, as well. Over two meters, at an estimate; he looked taller, with the long black robes that fell in a line down his body. His limbs were long and thin, like articulator arms on a dock, and his movements were fluid, but still hesitant. He had to duck his head to come in, and when he did, he stood there like an abstract statue, head tilted, eyes unfocused, ear turned her way.

Blind. Kiu blinked, moving slightly; true to her suspicion, his head turned to keep his ear angled toward her. Why someone would choose—with the number of augments and prosthetics available—to remain deprived of such a primary sense—

Of course, though, the same could be said about her, and everyone like her. She had no augments to increase her awareness of electromagnetic fields; no augments to expand her visual spectrum. That was her choice. It was every bit as much a choice as this man’s probably was.

And the network of filaments laced through her brain like capillaries didn’t even tie into the social web of the station, the system, the entire Erhat cultural organization. That had made her suspect here, long before she’d murdered someone.

“Kiu Alee,” he said. His accent was strange, all rounded vowels and soft consonants, with an undertone of resignation. “I am Tarsul. You are a long way from home. Do you really intend to die here? I can give you a chance to live.”

Kiu jerked back. “Me?” she said. “Why? For what?”