SUH GUIDES US over the top of the mountain range, above the place now called Diamond Peak. The rock drops away from its topmost point, sweeping down to the grassland plain below like the folds of a gray gown dragging against a green carpet.
I minimize the overlaid flight controls from my vision, knowing we’re on a stable flight path for a few minutes at least. I want to see it like my crewmates do.
Then I look up from staring at where the rock meets the plain and see God’s city ahead, rising from the grasslands a few kilometers away like a bizarre black flower from a giant lawn.
No one says a word. There is nothing to be said at the sight of so many answers and so many questions encapsulated in one structure. The fact that humanity debated whether life on other planets existed for so long has finally been proven ludicrous.
“That’s it.” Suh finally breaks the silence, as only she could. “That’s God’s city. That’s where we need to go.”
“Set down half a click away from it,” Mack says.
I reopen the shuttle interface and tap the appropriate places in my v-field, identifying the best place to set down. The flurry of activity caused by a manual landing distracts me enough to calm down again and roots me back in the practical.
(There’s a lull in the barrage of recorded emotions and I’m able to ready myself for the next part. I remind myself to see through rather than simply see again and to look closely once we land. I become aware of an ache in my hands, still clasped so tightly together, and try to separate out the movements of my hands in the recording and the desire to separate my palms from each other now. I’m not even sure I’ve done it when my attention is snapped back to the recording.)
It’s a good landing with no reported damage from either the craft or the crew. There are no congratulations, however; we’re all too fixated on the structure in front of us for it even to register.
I fumble with the straps, unable to see them very well through the curve of my helmet, and then call up the data gathered by the environmental equipment on the way down.
“It’s 21.5 degrees Celsius with 34 percent humidity and the atmosphere is near as dammit to Earth’s,” I report. “We could breathe out there.”
“But we’re not going to, remember,” says Winston. “I don’t care what the temperature is or how friendly the air is; no one takes off their helmet, gloves or exposes any of their skin to the native environment.”
We all agree. There’s no way I’d be tempted anyway, but it’s the kind of shit Lois would do for a dare. She’s been quiet though. Mack was worried she’d be bantering and being a jackass all the way through the mission, but she’s just as awed as the rest of us.
“Open the door, Ren,” Mack says and I do so.
I’m the last one to emerge and take my place with the rest of them, staring up at the alien structure.
“I can’t see anything that looks like guns or weapons or defenses,” Lois says. “But to be honest, I wouldn’t know what the fuck anything that thing uses to defend itself would look like.”
“Any signs of people?” Mack asks.
“Not yet,” she replies. “But they must know we’re here, right? I mean, they’re waiting for us, right? Right?”
Suh rests a hand on her arm. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’re expected.”
“Okay, let’s get ourselves sorted out and then we’ll go and take a closer look,” Mack says. “Ren, stay with the shuttle.”
“What!?”
He laughs. “I’m joking, I’m joking.”
I manage a smile before helping to open the compartment holding all the equipment.
(This is it, the part I’ve been waiting for. Did any of them bring something else along not listed on the flight manifest? Some lucky object or—)
The crate is heavy but not more so than on the ship. “It’s one G here, isn’t it?” Hak-Kun asks and I nod.
“It’s so similar to Earth,” Lois says. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“It might not be as meaningful as you might think,” I reply as Hak-Kun opens the crate and begins to pass out containers to the relevant people. “It might simply be that life of the kind we’re used to can only flourish within certain parameters, so the results are familiar without there being some sort of intelligent design behind it.”
“I thought you were a believer, Ren,” Mack says.
“I’m also a scientist,” I fire back, irritated with his mocking tone. “They’re not incompatible.”
(It’s easy to tune out an argument with Mack; I’ve had so many over the years, freeing my attention to look at what everyone is taking out of the containers. It’s mostly small boxes with sensor prongs sticking out of them, and in Lois’s case a small gun that leads to a brief argument between her and Mack, which she wins. But there’s nothing I can see that explains the metal artifact.)
“Is everyone ready?” Suh asks. “Okay, then. This is it.”
She walks off, striking out toward God’s city, and I stand there longer than the rest, watching her back as she walks away from me, tiny beneath the twisting black tendrils and pods, forging the last path of the journey.
(I know this is the best place to pause the footage, but it’s hard to shut it down and no longer see her. It’s like sticking a fingernail into an old cut that’s bleeding once more. But I know what happens soon afterward and I simply cannot relive that again.)
“Stop footage,” I say out loud and I’m back in my house, wedged in and aching. My throat is raw and the fabric over my chest is wet with tears that dripped unchecked. I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand and tackle the gunk in and below my nose with another T-shirt lying within reach. I realize it’s one of Kay’s tops. I never had any intention of returning it anyway, even though her scent left its fibers long ago.
Exhausted, I rest my head against the stack of fabric beside me and realize, with a sense of utter wretchedness, that suffering that day again has brought me no closer to a solution. I have to conclude that unless one of the crew smuggled something down to the surface (highly unlikely as it wouldn’t have been fully decontaminated), that bit of metal didn’t come from one of us.
There is a limited set of logical explanations, and none of them satisfy me.
One is that someone else from the colony has been visiting God’s city secretly, as I have. The only person I know who’s been back there since that first day is Mack, and I know for a fact that he hasn’t been back into that particular section again. I can’t imagine anyone else breaking the rules, but I do, on a regular basis, so I have to entertain the notion that someone else has too and that they left something behind.
There’s another possibility: someone else came to God’s city before us. For that to be true, it wouldn’t be someone else from Earth, as we were most definitely the first to achieve interstellar travel on that scale. The risk that someone could improve upon the technology Suh developed and beat us to our destination was a concern of mine right from the start of the project. When Mack came on board he fought with Suh over patents and her desire to help humanity as well as reach this planet. In the end they agreed to lock away secrets within a capsule, protected by several gov-corps, to be opened forty years after we left. Suh got to feel she had left something useful behind and Mack and I were satisfied no one could beat us here. Unless something went wrong with that capsule—unlikely considering the amount of international red tape Mack wrapped it up in—we are the only people to reach this place from Earth. If someone else was inside God’s city before us, it would have to be someone from another civilization.
I shiver. Were there others who, like us, came seeking God?