Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

She feels her suit rip about one of her rear legs, the sudden leap having been more than the stressed silk can take. The chill that now seizes the exposed limb is almost welcome. Then she is springing out and into the thin, thin air, out and arcing downwards towards the patient pull of the planet beneath them. With a spasmodic motion of six limbs she throws the satellite away from her.

Its rockets flare. The extreme edge of their fiery tail singes her as the satellite corkscrews madly away, under and out from the over-reaching canopy of the Star Nest. She has no idea if it will be able to correct its course enough to make the intended orbit.

In her mind arises the surprisingly rational thought: There must be an easier way than this.

Then she is falling, and falling, and although her legs go through the stuttering motions of spinning a parachute, she creates nothing.

Her descent comes to a sudden jolting stop, dangling beneath the Star Nest. Her safety line has caught her, but it doesn’t matter. The air in her suit is depleted, and she is too hot now to move or think. She gives herself up for lost.

Fabian is already at work by this time. He has followed very little of what has gone on, but the sudden pull on Portia’s line alerts him, and he follows it out, self-made airlock by airlock, until – his own suit puffed out and constricting – he can haul her up. With what feels like the last of his strength he is able to roll her inside, and then uses his fangs to tear open both their suits once the cabin is re-sealed.

He lies there on his back, limbs tangled with Portia’s. She is not moving save for a shallow pulsing of her abdomen.

Somehow he reaches the radio transmitter, sending a semi-incoherent report of their situation. He catches a faint confirmation that the satellite has been successfully deployed, but no indication that they have heard him.

He tries again, sends gibberish with shaking palps, and eventually manages: Can you receive me? Can anybody receive me?

Nothing from the ground. He does not even know if the radio is working now. He is desperately hungry, and Portia’s extra-vehicular excursions mean that they have very little air left. He has initiated venting of the hydrogen, as swift as is safe, but there is still a long way to go down. He and Portia do not have either the energy or the oxygen to reach hospitable altitudes.

Then the voice comes: Yes, I receive you.

The Messenger is listening. Fabian feels a religious awe. He is the first male ever to speak with God.

I understand your position , the Messenger tells him. I cannot help you. I am sorry.

Fabian explains that he has a plan. He spells his scheme out carefully. Can you explain to them all?

That I can do , the Messenger promises, and then, with a sudden access of old memory, When my ancestors reached for space, there were deaths among those pioneers too. It is worth it. The next phrase is alien to Fabian. He will never know what was meant by, I salute you.

He turns to Portia, who has nothing more left to give. She lies on her back, senseless, stripped of everything but her most basic reflexes.

With slow, difficult movements, Fabian begins to court her. He moves his palps before her eyes and touches her, as if he were seeking to mate, triggering slow instinct that has been built over by centuries of civilization but has never quite gone away. There is no food to restore her, save one source. There is not enough air for two, but perhaps sufficient for one.

He sees her fangs unclench and lift, shuddering. For a moment he contemplates them, and considers his regard for this crewmate and companion. She will never forgive him or herself, but perhaps she will live nonetheless.

He gives himself up to her automatic embrace.

Later, Portia returns to consciousness aboard the Sky Nest, feeling gorged, damaged, strangely sensual. She has lost one rear leg entirely, and two sections of another limb, and one of her secondary eyes is out. She lives, though.

When they tell her what Fabian did to secure her survival, she refuses to believe it for a long time. In the end, it is the Messenger Herself who brings her to an acceptance of what happened.

Portia will never fly again, but she will be instrumental in planning further flights: safer and more sophisticated methods of reaching orbit.

For now that the Messenger has found the patience and perspective to properly understand Her children, She can finally communicate Her warning in a way they can understand. At last the spiders appreciate that, even aside from their orbiting God, they are not alone in the universe, and that this is not a good thing.

They were packed into the briefing room. It was like déjà vu, but these days that seemed a good thing. Holsten was a citizen of a tiny world of cycles and repetitions, and where events failed to repeat themselves, it meant deterioration.

Some of the lights were out and that really brought it home to him. All the miracles of technology that had made the Gilgamesh possible, all the tricks they had stolen from the gods of the Old Empire… and right now they either couldn’t get all the lights working, or there were simply too many higher-priority things to be doing.

He recognized a surprising number of faces. This was clearly a Command meeting. These were Key Crew – or who was left of them. He saw the science team, a handful of Engineering, Command, Security, all people who had got on board when Earth was still a place where humans lived. These were people who had been granted custodianship over the rest of the human race.

With some notable omissions. The only department chief present – assuming you discounted Holsten himself and his department of one – was Vitas, orchestrating the bleary, recently awoken muster, ordering people according to some idiolectic system of her own. There were a handful of young faces in old shipsuits helping her – Lain’s legacy, Holsten guessed. They could have passed for the mob that he remembered from so recently, but he guessed they must be at least a generation further on from that. They had persevered, though. They had not turned into cannibals or anarchists or monkeys. Even that fragile appearance of stability gave him some hope.

‘Classicist Mason, there you are.’ It was hard to say what Vitas felt about seeing him present. Indeed it was hard to say what she felt about anything. She had aged, but gracefully and only a little it seemed. Holsten found himself indulging in the bizarre speculation that she was not human at all. Perhaps she was her own self-aware machine. Controlling the medical facilities, she would be able to hide her secret forever, after all…

He had seen a lot of mad things since setting foot on the Gilgamesh , but that would have been a step too far. Even the Old Empire… unless she was Old Empire, some anachronistic ten-thousand-year survival, fusion-driven and eternal.

Finding himself momentarily adrift from reason, he grasped for Vitas’s hand and snagged it, feeling the human warmth, willing himself to trust to his own perceptions. The scientist raised her eyebrows sardonically.

‘Yes, it’s really me,’ she remarked. ‘Amazing, I know. Can you use a gun?’

‘I very much doubt it,’ Holsten blurted out. ‘I… What?’

‘The commander wanted me to ask that of everyone. I had already guessed the answer in your case.’

Holsten became cold and still, all at once. The commander…

Vitas watched him with dry amusement, letting him hang in suspense for a few long seconds before explaining. ‘Lem Karst is the acting commander, for your information.’