Heaven's War (15 page)

“You’re aborting my mission?”

“Not just us. All the international partners.”

“Fuck that, B.J. They don’t do anything without checking with Houston.”

“Dale, I’m sorry. Tell me…wouldn’t you rather button it up and come home now, rather than press on for another three months?”

“Shit, yes.”

“We’re in agreement, then.”

Dale Scott had been happy to come home early. But while they worked cordially and politely for the next two weeks, replacing Zack’s gear on
Soyuz
30S with Dale’s, the two never discussed the matter.

Even after Zack returned and they crossed paths in debriefs or Monday morning astronaut meetings, they never had a private conversation about what Dale had done wrong.

From one of his Russian colleagues, he heard what he had always suspected, that Zack Stewart had informed Houston about Dale Scott’s unwillingness to play with the others…that after three weeks of observation, it was Stewart who had made the call to send Dale home early—incidentally giving himself the U.S. record for time in space.

Fine. Whatever. Dale knew he had underperformed. Had circumstances been reversed, he would have dropped the hammer on Stewart, too.

But what was unforgivable was this: Zack Stewart had been too fucking cowardly to tell Dale face-to-face.

Besides, it was clear that Dale’s problems extended beyond Zack Stewart. Chief astronaut Handler was notably cool toward him…and when, after eight months, Dale realized he had no new assignment, not as an instructor or even as a loanee to one of the new commercial companies, he made plans to get out of Houston.

He was drinking too much. From his childhood experiences with an alcoholic father, he knew that was a bad sign—

His postflight public relations tour gave him the opportunity…he had learned that ISRO, the Indian space agency, was looking for people who knew the
Soyuz
to help with their version of the venerable Russian craft.

He had gotten a résumé to them, been hired at twice the money he could have expected in a comparable job in the United States (assuming any space-related company would hire a NASA dropout), and the rest, as Dale liked to say, was history.

Now, well, shit had happened, and here he was, once again dealing
with the same dynamics that had so frustrated him on earth. Not only Zack Stewart, but Shane Weldon, Gabriel Jones. Bad enough that Indian baggage like Vikram Nayar and Valentina Makarova had come along, but these guys from Houston! For Dale it was like being sent back to junior high school—

Things were going to be different now. He wasn’t going to smile and play the game…. There was no game. There were no rules.

If he wanted something, he was going to get it.

With Valya’s help.

Number one…punch that self-righteous fucker Zack Stewart in the face.

At the moment, however, his perpetual target was up, pushing Harley Drake and his chair toward him.

On the way, they were intercepted by Shane Weldon.

It was time for Dale Scott to declare himself.

“Hey, Shane,” he said, interrupting an intense conversation. “Just wanted to say good luck on the election tomorrow.” He offered his hand, too.

Weldon didn’t hesitate. “You, too,” he said, though it was clear that even saying that much was painful for him.

Then Dale turned to Zack. “Hey, Zack, we haven’t seen each other in a while. Strange to be here like this, huh?”

“
Strange
is a pretty weak word for it.”

“Sorry to hear about Megan and, well, all that.” Whatever that was; he’d had a tough time getting information on the “resurrection” from Vikram or his little pet, Makali, the so-called exospecialist. But he had the general outline.

“Thanks.”

“I’ve got to ask you one thing, though.” He put his arm around Zack’s shoulder, winking at Harley Drake, who looked as though he wanted to shoot him.

“Yeah?”

“Does
this
qualify as a spaceflight?”

Dead silence! Oh, it was wonderful! Neither Zack, Harley, nor Weldon had any idea what to say.

Finally Zack found his voice. “Why does it matter?”

“If it is, and you’re the commander…could you work your magic and get me sent home early again?”

He waited for the trio to react to that. Weldon got red in the face. Harley actually rolled his chair six inches closer.

But Zack just stared.

“Hey, I’m just kidding,” Dale said. “Just trying to…lighten the mood.” He backed away. “See you at the polls!”

He turned, feeling really good about himself.

Until he realized that Valya and Camilla were gone.

Fuck. Fucking alien.

“Where are you taking me?” Valya asked Camilla, as the pair left the Temple and the clustered humans from Bangalore and Houston.

“I want to show you something.”

“Should the others see it, too? Commander Stewart and Mr. Nayar?”

The girl smiled and shook her head. The gesture was rich with dismissal and contempt. “You’re the only one who understands me here.”

She glanced at the purse Valya had been clutching ever since their meeting. (Valya had the strap over her shoulder, and the purse itself tucked behind her right arm.) “Can I see what’s in your purse?”

“Maybe when we get back,” Valya said. “Sure.”

Charmingly, Camilla took Valya’s hand…and, for the first time in hours, seemed like a normal nine-year-old girl.

Valya Makarova had had many strange conversations in her life, seemingly with every trip out of Russia. Her gift for languages guaranteed that, of course; so did the fact that her jobs usually involved translating work, so she was often in situations where people didn’t understand each other. Strangers on buses or in restaurants would realize that this otherwise-grim-looking Russian woman could communicate with them, usually to their relief and pleasure.

For example, when working in Baghdad after the end of the American occupation, she had emerged from her hotel early one morning, hoping to get some exercise before the day’s barrage of broiling heat, to find a skinny older man wearing jeans, a tank top, and a cap from some American sports team doing exercises with recitations that he claimed
were the original human root language—her field of interest. They started in Arabic, and shifted to the mutual linguistic ground of American-style English, but were interrupted by the arrival of Iraqi commercial security, who put the run to this fascinating man before Valya could get a name or a cell phone number—

None of these had prepared her for Camilla Munaretto.

To begin with, and allowing for the fact that Portuguese was not in her top five languages, Camilla was the most articulate child Valya had ever met. It wasn’t just her vocabulary—which was better than Valya’s—it was her apparent self-possession and confidence.

The girl was also quite pretty…dark-haired, yet blue-eyed, one of those luscious South American hybrids who had come to dominate the fashion industry in the past generation. Had she remained on Earth and grown to the appropriate height, Camilla would undoubtedly have followed in her mother’s spike-heeled footsteps, onto some runway or into a catalog.

But even in Valya’s former “normal existence,” the fashion world was never high on her mental playlist. To think about such things here, in these particular circumstances, was quite silly to begin with. At present, Camilla wore a ludicrously large T-shirt proclaiming the virtues of a Ron Jon Surf Shop. Apparently, when first encountered, she had been nearly naked, saved from terminal immodesty only by some bizarre coating, flakes of which still covered her upper arms and thighs…at least those parts of her still visible around the edges of the billowing shirt.

She also had a nasty-looking scratch or bite on her upper left arm.

Their meeting had been arranged by Vikram Nayar, who had said, “She didn’t arrive with either group. She was already here.”

That had required some explanation, and with Zack Stewart assisting, Nayar had told Valya that Camilla Munaretto had been the niece of
Brahma
cosmonaut Lucas Munaretto.

“Had been?” None of that made sense to her.

Steward explained that Camilla had died of leukemia a year and a half before the
Brahma
and
Destiny
launches, and that she, like several other humans, had been revived here inside Keanu.

Valya knew something of this. She had heard that Zack Stewart’s wife
was one of these “Revenants,” the term that seemed to be catching on with the refugees. She wasn’t sure she believed any of it, of course.

“What do you want from me?”

“You’re the only one who speaks her language.”

“I’m barely fluent in Portuguese.”

“No one else seems to know a word of it, so you are, by default, our expert.” Apparently he felt he needed to make sure Valya understood. “She’s a child in very strange circumstances; she needs to be able to talk to someone.”

Valya had already felt uneasy around Camilla. Glimpsed earlier, the girl had been fidgety, moving quickly from group to group, like a beggar on speed. Then, given a candy bar by one of the Houston people, she had sat down in the shadows of the Temple to eat the treat.

Somehow, without Valya’s seeing her, Camilla had crept forward, into the lit part of the Temple, where for some reason she had fixed on Valya quite some time before Nayar came to her with his “offer.”

The girl’s gaze was disturbing, and for an instant, Valya felt angry; she did not want to be tethered to this strange girl!

But she recognized the inevitability, if not the wisdom, of Nayar’s plan. If Camilla had truly been “brought back,” then she held vital information that would be lost without Valya’s help.

She realized that she was happier knowing she had something to do. “What do you want me to ask her?” she said to Nayar.

“Whatever you want. I have no…guidance to offer, though obviously, anything you think important…” This was surprising; in the time she had worked with or around Vikram Nayar, he had
always
had a plan of some kind. Age and disruption were damaging him.

So she had introduced herself to Camilla and been rewarded with a genuine smile, though not one of surprise…it was closer to an acknowledgment, as if the girl were saying,
I’ve been waiting for you
.

Nevertheless, Valya stuck to the basics, asked if Camilla were hungry, how she felt, all good, all normal. Then, since she wanted to know…“How did you get here?”

The girl took a moment to organize her answer, or so it seemed. And then she delivered a narrative so precise that she might have been
reading it. “I died in a hospice in São Paolo on February 27, 2018. I had leukemia from the time I was six. It made me very sick and very sad.” And, yes, her eyes shone with tears at this point…Valya felt her defenses weakening.

As if a switch had been thrown, Camilla was suddenly upright and happy again. “Then I woke here, in one of the boxes. It was difficult to get out.” She made pawing gestures.

“You must have been…completely amazed, to be alive again.” Valya tried to imagine it but could not get past the inevitable preceding step, which was dying of cancer.

“I died in my sleep,” Camilla said matter-of-factly. “They gave me many drugs. It was just as if I woke from sleep…” And here she spread her hands, as if to say,
Look at me now
. “And I was well!”

Valya had to accept the story: the girl was here, after all. She had no clever way of confirming her story, only the information Nayar had passed along from what he knew about Lucas Munaretto, and about what unusual things had happened during the
Brahma
mission.

“Who brought you back? Who…made you well?”

“God did,” she said.

At last, Valya thought, an answer that made sense…not to Valya’s religious beliefs, which were non-existent, but for a young girl from Catholic Brazil.

“But he worked through the Builders,” Camilla said.

“Who are the Builders? The builders of this
place
?”

For the first time, Valya saw confusion or doubt in the girl. “Yes…” she said, though she seemed quite uncertain. Valya had heard Zack Stewart mention
Architects
and assumed Camilla meant the same thing. But she couldn’t be sure.

Valya looked around. Everyone was eating or sitting in an exhausted stupor…except for Zachary Stewart and his daughter and a few others, busily talking just far enough away that they could not be heard. Dale Scott was there, too.

They were watching her, of course, and especially watching Camilla.

“Have you told anyone about these Builders? Commander Stewart, perhaps?”

“Oh, he knows.” She seemed quite certain, though Valya noted that she did not actually answer the question.