I CLIMB AND the focus required puts me right back in my body instead of in the past. Even though this is the last thing I wanted to do, it’s exactly what I needed.
Between the climbing software and Mack’s reminders, I manage each of the new obstacles without incident. I climb higher, over progressively larger nodules, all spherical in their nighttime state. They would be easier to climb in the day—assuming the spokes that emerge from them are solid—but I need the darkness to hide me.
When I reach the highest point of the climb and the colony first comes into view, it’s no longer about which handhold or foothold comes next. I feel exposed for the first time and the risk of discovery sharpens into a point pressing on my chest rather than being a nebulous thought at the back of my mind.
“How did you do this every year and not get caught?” I whisper to Mack.
“By being careful.”
“I can’t believe it works.”
“Well, it won’t if you don’t get a move on.”
It’s no easier to climb down than it is to go up. It just torments a different set of muscles. My knees are starting to ache and I make a note in my reminders to get the cartilage checked out. It might need a top-up. We’ve no idea how long we’ll live; no one dares to make a serious prediction when there’s practically zero data available and a pathetically small sample size, but I think I’ll be getting along fine for at least another fifty years or so. Maybe more. I might see two hundred and be one of the oldest human beings alive. Does that mean anything when we’re millions of miles away from the people who keep those kinds of records?
I slip and the rope goes taut, jerking me violently against the harness as I lose my center of gravity and end up flipping over. I gasp and grip the rope as I sway away from the pod I was trying to climb down from without sound. My skin flushes with heat against the coverall and the box containing the seed bangs the back of my neck as I scrabble to right myself.
“Would you like to resume the climb?” the climbing software asks. My heart is still pounding and all I can manage for a few moments is righting myself and clinging on, terrified the hex and carabiner supporting my weight will give out. Then I remember that it will be distributed across several of them and that the software would tell me if that were about to happen.
“Would you like to resume the climb?”
I’m closer to the pod below me than the one I fell from, so I lower myself down slowly by letting out the rope fed into my harness a few centimeters at a time. Once my feet touch the spongy surface I breathe out again.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“Would you like to—”
“Yes,” I snap.
“Keep your voice down,” Mack says. “The sound can travel farther than you think.”
I revoke the voice contact authorization and sit on top of the pod, shaking until the adrenaline surge subsides. I could abort now, damn this sordid business and let it all play out in the open for once.
Surely they suspect? Surely they know she’s never coming back?
Are you okay? Mack doesn’t understand I broke contact to shut him out, rather than just shift to text.
I don’t answer. I don’t want to say what’s on my mind.
Ren?
It’s ridiculous. All of it: from my clambering over the top of the bloody city to the way they believe Mack’s lies. These are intelligent, rational people and they just absorb all this shit without even thinking about it. Are they so desperate to hold on to something that they’ll ignore the facts? How long can they do that?
But if someone told me what I wanted to hear, I’d believe it too. What alternative is there? I’m envious of them and their comfort and their faith. I don’t have the right to look down on them for believing Mack when I’d rather be one of them.
Ren, are you hurt?
A movement below makes me duck my head down and then flatten myself out on top of the pod. I’m certain it was one of the people on duty; it was definitely inside the courtyard.
I could stand up and shout and give myself away. I could rappel down there in a matter of seconds and show them the contents of the box. And yet I remain pressed against the black sponge as if someone were holding me down.
I’d have to tell them I’ve known the truth all these years. It hasn’t just been Mack lying to them. It’s been me too. And I don’t have the right to be angry with him when I’ve been just as guilty.
I send him a simple ping, hoping he’ll realize what’s going on and stop freaking out. I wait a few minutes and check the network for any comments from the ones on duty. Nothing.
There’s a terrible self-awareness that creeps up on me in the dark. There are two people down there waiting. I have no idea if they really believe Suh could come out the doors at any moment. They could just be standing there because it’s their turn to and they don’t want to be the ones to question it. There may be only a thousand or so people here, but it’s easy enough to make the pressure of conformity irresistible. Hell, sometimes we only need one other person to make us fall into line.
And I’m up here, above them, waiting until I can go down there and break into a holy place and plant a lie. A lie that will make people happy to stand there over the next year, one shift each, hoping that when Suh comes back, they will be the one she sees first.
We’re locked in this lie’s orbit together, none of us able to break its gravitational pull.
So I check my gear and ping the next hex location that’s gone dormant while I’ve been waiting and I climb down. Mack remains silent. I suppose he can see I’m moving again and is letting me concentrate. But the closer I get, the less I can lose myself in the climb.
The last hex is right next to the point I need to cut in. Just the thought of it makes me feel nauseous. I’m not sure I can do it.
It’s only about ten meters from where the greeters stand guard, farther along the tendril that ends in the entrance to the city. It’s glowing in my enhanced vision, like a landing pad for a shuttle. To reach it, I need to lower myself down on the rope from the last pod above and land in the right place the first time. If I miss the spot and move about too much, it increases the risk that my movements will be detected at the end of the tendril.
Lowering myself down takes the last of the strength in my arms, but I manage to hit the right spot. It’s like landing on a giant tree root just large enough to enable me to stand on the top without falling off. I’m down to the last coil of rope now and it’s all a bit easier without having to carry the other lengths too.
Well done, Ren. Let me talk to you again—it’ll be easier. We can talk about what happened up there later.
I accept the request but I don’t say anything. I’m too close to the greeters now.
“Okay,” Mack says. I can hear a tremble in his voice. It sounds like this is just as stressful for him. “Remember, you’ll be able to feel the scar but not see it. It’s exactly fifty centimeters in front of your toes.”
I let out a bit more slack in the rope and tie it off carefully—I don’t want to be trapped down there—and crouch down to brush the surface of the tendril in the place I expect the scar to be. For a moment I doubt whether I can feel it through the gloves, even though they’re designed to minimize the loss of sensation at the fingertips. But then I feel something like a wrinkle in the smooth surface.
With the v-keyboard I tell him I’ve found it.
“Good. Get out the cutter and don’t touch the settings; I’ve already programmed it. Hold it five centimeters above the surface and move slowly.”
I clench my teeth. I know how to use a fucking cutter. I’ve used them more than he has! I pull it out from the pack along with the headlamp, which I slip into place over my forehead and tighten into a snug fit. It will give me a headache but at least it won’t come off.
“Wait!” he says as I’m about to start. “Put the filter on now, and make sure your skin is covered. It’s best to drop down and get it done as soon as you can so you don’t have to recut to get out.”
It heals that quickly? I type back.
“Yeah. I was sealed in after I planted the seed the first time. I nearly cut the rope when I had to reopen it. You don’t want to have to do that, trust me.”
I pull the filter mask down and check it’s working. I check the coverall opening at the neck and make sure the collar is rolled right up to cover my skin where it joins to the filter mask and the edges of my gloves. Then I cut.
The laser is silent and doesn’t emit enough light to be a problem; I’m between the laser and the greeters anyway. The black surface of the tendril splits below the red pinprick like the skin of a ripe plum and I can see deep purple tissue below. It’s disturbingly fleshy and my gullet burns as bile rises suddenly from my stomach. The way it parts and oozes a dark sap like blood makes me feel like I’m cutting into an animal.
Oh God, this is so wrong. If I believed in hell, I would be convinced I’d just earned my place there. Forgive me, I silently plead. Please forgive me.
“Done it?” Mack asks. I send a yes and he breathes out. “Drop the rope through first, then climb in. Once you’re a few paces from the cut, you can use the headlamp.”
I have to push the rope through and battle the nausea as I do so. The tendril trembles beneath my feet, so I push the rest in with greater care. Then I untie the knot and make sure it’s running smoothly enough through the clasps to enable me to rappel again.
It’s time to go in, but my foot hovers over the wound, and then I lower myself through it, wanting to get this over with as fast as possible. I try not to think too hard about the feeling of compression as I squeeze myself in, but then my hateful brain starts thinking about a reverse cesarean and I have to swallow down a sour mouthful that bursts up my throat for fear of vomiting into the filter.
There’s a disconcerting—yet horribly familiar—squelch when I land at the bottom of the tunnel formed by the tendril. A brief glance up at the rope and the stars not obscured by the pods above and then I’m trudging, feeding the rope through the clasp with neurotic control. As soon as it’s safe to do so, I switch on the headlamp and bathe the tunnel in light. It brings shadows with it and those bring memories.
Memories of hushed awe and speculation. The sight of Suh’s back as she strode ahead, fearless. This tunnel was stable and things didn’t go wrong until we were trying to get up to the first pod. How many times did we try to get up to that room from the inside? Ten? Twenty? I can remember only the exhaustion and the sinking despair. I felt like we were missing something, but Suh wouldn’t have it. “There’s a place at the top and we’re supposed to get to it,” she kept saying, every time I tried to suggest slowing down or at least reconsidering our approach.
She had to listen eventually. We resorted to using ropes and clips then, but the higher inside we got, the more violently the city affected us. I can still hear Winston screaming at Mack to keep his helmet on after he’d vomited the first time. We all threw up—some of us multiple times—most of us had migraines, and Lois had a seizure at one point, which could have been much worse if Winston hadn’t medicated her so fast.
It was like it was trying to kill us.
But Suh wouldn’t accept it. We ended up scaling most of the city on the outside after we’d been squeezed out like waste from one of the tubes and refused to go back in. Hak-Kun pleaded with his mother to reconsider, but it was like she didn’t hear us anymore. We’d already lost her by then.
I haven’t been in this tunnel since that day. In here, when we were walking in the other direction, we were clueless. Still innocent, then. In so many ways.
The light falls on the thick stalk growing a couple of meters behind the closed entrance. There are people on the other side, oblivious to my presence, and I feel a childish thrill at the prospect of getting away with this.
After tying off the rope in two places on my harness, I open the pack as quietly as possible and pull the box out. It’s made of thick bioplastic and locked with a simple combination keypad. Very old-school but I suppose Mack wants it to look as innocuous as possible. By putting something so precious inside something so easily hackable, it reduces the incentive to peep.
Mack’s been quiet for a while. He must know I’m about to plant it. I send a ping, unwilling to speak so close to the others even though we’re divided by a thick, living wall.
“I’m here. I didn’t want to interrupt you. I’m here if you need me.”
He’s backing off. It’s then that I appreciate how hard this must have been for him. He knows that I’m struggling because he has struggled every year. I need to be kinder to him. I don’t know a better way to handle this and I don’t like what he’s doing, but it doesn’t change the fact that it has a cost for him too.
His hands were shaking the day the lie was born, when he spoke to the crowd just after second Planetfall. Hundreds of people weeping with relief and shock, some staring up at the sky and some terrified to look up at it. We gathered at the rendezvous a kilometer from God’s city, halfway across the grasslands toward Diamond Peak. No one realized three pods were missing at that point, but it didn’t take long for them to notice Suh’s absence.
“Where’s the Pathfinder?” someone shouted at Mack as he stood on top of a crate he’d dragged out from his pod. The panic was visible, spreading across the crowd like a gust of wind upon water.
“She’s in God’s city,” he said once the crowd had fallen silent. “She’s . . . communing with the creator.”
“God is in there?” I think that was Carmen. It was a woman at least.
“Yes,” he said and the crowd’s silence was smashed upon the rocks of vindication and joyous rapture. But I was silent. I stared at the back of Mack’s head, thinking of the gun, of the blood, of her body. Abandoned. She was still in there, but there was no communion.
“Mack,” I said and tugged the back of his coverall to try to pull him down and think about what he was saying.
He covered his mouth by pretending to wipe away a speck from his helmet and subvocalized a private message to me. “Shut up, Ren, and go with it. I know what I’m doing.”
I looked out into the crowd of people cheering and weeping and praying. Helmets banging against one another as people tried to get as close as they could to loved ones. Each sealed in their own microenvironment, trying to connect. None of them were looking at me.
Gradually people looked back to Mack for more. And he gave it to them. Promises that Suh would contact us when she could, promises that she would get a message to us soon. The declaration of the city as a holy place, out of bounds until Suh’s work was done. Reassurance, comfort, support. All built with false scaffolding.
And they all believed him. He was the Ringmaster. I doubt it even occurred to them to question him. And by the time people realized the three pods were missing, the lie about Suh returning had become so firmly embedded, such a key part of the foundation upon which the new colony was being built, no one linked them.
I open the box, take out the seed and then look at the plant. When we saw it here that day we made first Planetfall, growing seedless inside the tunnel, Suh said it was a sign we were near the end of our journey. How else could there be the same plant growing in an alien structure on a distant planet that Suh found on Earth? And now I was about to twist that miracle into something base.
I cut into the stem at the top and wedge the seed into the sticky, oozing sap, desperate to get it over with. The growth stimulants coating the seed will force the plant to make a casing around it by the time Marco arrives. To him and anyone else who sees it, it will look like that was the way the plant had grown.
I’ve renewed the scaffolding that Mack built and his lies will endure at least another year. I don’t know if I can.