Planetfall (7 page)

“Have you considered that you might be running away?” He turned and pointed at the bronze cast. “There's nothing better to distract ourselves from grief than a new project big enough to consume every moment. Have you stopped since she died? Have you let yourself—”

“That's got nothing to do with this. Have you thought that your being so upset about this might have everything to do with your choice instead of mine? Now that we've only got a year or so, are you regretting all the years you put everything else before me?”

I expected him to be angry and defensive or to cut the conversation dead and leave. Instead, he just stood there, looking so much older than I'd appreciated before. “I do regret that. But I don't regret what I've done with my life, Renata. If Atlas is real, if you go with those people, will you be able to say the same?”

THE COMPRESSION OF
the esophageal entrance is enough to ground me in my body again. I keep my eyes closed like a child who's been told to, on pain of having a surprise present spoiled—desperate to look but obeying the rule. I'm not only prolonging the moment of purest anticipation; I'm also preparing myself for transition between the outside and the citadel interior. I've found that if I take this part slowly, I tend not to vomit. At least, not immediately.

I fumble for the climbing rope and grip it tightly. Its surface is roughened and I'm certain now that the interior is attacking the fibers. Now I want to open my eyes even more; I want to see if my experiment has yielded any results.

Only after counting to sixty (and then ten more to be certain) do I slowly open my eyes. The tunnel is a dark reddish brown, larger than the one I've just been sucked through, and the mucus covers everything here too. The valve is trying to close on one of my ankles and I hurriedly pull it free, even
though I know it would just open again as soon as it detected an obstruction.

The glowing light that was pulsating up the tube I've just been spat out of is rippling up and down the tunnel. One moment the movement makes it look like the space is contracting, and then it changes, tricking my brain into thinking it's twisting counterclockwise. I kneel down with closed eyes and squeeze the rope between my knees. After a swift voice command, the goggles filter out the particular part of the spectrum that the phosphorescence inhabits and trick my eyes into thinking the tunnel is uniformly lit. It takes a few seconds for the software to smooth out the image, but it works well enough. If only we'd known to do that the first time we came here.

Once it's done, I look around for my experiment. I last came here about two months ago and it was the first time I left something behind. I didn't leave the experiment in plain sight, in case someone else in the colony is doing the same as me, so it takes a minute or so to locate the fold of membrane I chose as a marker. Once I see it, I pull myself along on the rope, still on my knees, feeling like I'm moving up a slope of about fifteen degrees or so. I know that can change in an instant though, so even though I don't really need the rope to progress, I keep my grip strong.

I hear the first of the noises as I reach the pellets and it takes me a moment to steady myself. It begins as a low moan and in seconds develops into a high pitch like an eagle's cry. So many times I've panicked, thinking that an inhabitant has found me and is alerting others to my intrusion, but no one ever comes. No one lives here. At least, I don't think they do.

There are only two of the four pellets left, the ones made of stainless steel and glass. They seem unchanged. The two others I left with them were made of bone carved from a
creature I'd found dead and the other a ball of dried mud. I spend a little while hunting for them, thinking they might have rolled somewhere else, but I can't find them. Have they dissolved? Has this place digested them?

Another screech makes me shudder. Is it trying to tell me I shouldn't be here or am I simply trying to assign some kind of meaning to a random sound? When I listen intently, I can hear distant rumbles like my empty stomach. Nothing that sounds synthetic—or rather . . . manufactured. They seem just as organic as this slightly sticky intestine-like interior.

I leave the pellets where they are, curious to see what happens over time. Even though there's a part of me that wants to leave and go home to curl up and try to forget the day, I can't leave until I've found something to take with me. So I pull myself onward, getting occasional flashes from the tunnel as the frequency of the light shifts and the goggles have to adjust the incoming data processing to keep the image smooth and protect the visual centers in my brain. Without them I'd be in the throes of a migraine by now.

After the second time I came here, I didn't return for a few years. I had to focus on the colony. No, that's what I told myself, but it was as much about not focusing on what happened at the top of this city. For a long time I couldn't even look at the place without feeling distressed. Walking around the colony without looking up when facing certain directions became normal. At least I can look at it now—and enter it—without being afraid I'll give something away.

I can't remember why I came back. Perhaps it was simply a matter of having formed enough emotional scar tissue to cope. Perhaps my curiosity steadily built up its own pressure until it became more powerful than the avoidance.

The first few times I tried to map it out, first with memory
alone, then with the help of my chip when I lost faith in my ability to understand the place. All the chip did was confirm that, once I move away from the initial tunnel attached to the valve I came in through, everything changes. I don't know if there's a pattern; I can't make it here regularly enough within controlled parameters to measure that, but either way, I never know where I'm going to end up. The only thing I can be certain of is that I won't be able to reach the top room again.

Only this rope and this part of the tunnel seem to be a constant. I've followed it as far as I can to a place where the rope disappears into a slimy wall, as if a new one has grown around it, trapping the rope in place but not severing it. Eventually it will rot, and would have already, had it not been made of the most resilient artificial fibers and coated to resist extreme conditions.

Being inside God's city feels like walking through the intestines of a gigantic creature, the way the tunnel twists and turns like a section of digestive tract and the mucus too, all creating a sense of being inside something alive. Even though our homes are grown from organic materials, this place feels closer to the interior of a living thing, a creature perhaps, something that straddles both plant and animal and impossible to classify in any Earth-based system of knowledge.

Not for the first time, I imagine God's city as an animal, squatted deep in the Earth, unconcerned by lowly creatures like me crawling through it occasionally. I've seen nothing to suggest it's anything but organic and suspect it's simply a wonder of synthetic biological construction, like our homes but on a bigger scale and designed by an alien mind.

The tunnel suddenly tilts in the opposite direction, as if an invisible hand has grasped the section of intestine I'm clambering about in and lifted it into the air. My knees go out from under me and I'm on my stomach, pressed against the rope
that I'm now gripping with both hands. All I can do is hang on and try to get some purchase with my boots, but the floor that is now wall is too slippery and spongy. The pellets roll past me and I doubt I'll ever see them again. There's nothing to stand on, nothing to dig into, and I know I'll fall soon.

It's never changed orientation so sharply before and I try to keep my breathing steady. The closed valve that forms the way back out again is now a meter away, set into the wall above my head. I'm not strong enough to pull myself up by the strength of my arms alone. I try anyway. I manage to pull my chin a few centimeters up the rope, knowing that if I let go with one hand to move it to a higher hold, I'll lose my grip. I try to wrap my legs around the rope, but can't feel where it is through my protective clothing. If I can just hang on until it changes back, I won't be trapped inside.

The muscles in my hands start to burn and I have time to swear before they give out completely and I half slide, half fall downward. My fingers gouge tracks into the tunnel, the gloopy residue collecting beneath my fingertips, and the goggles are soon coated with the stuff too. A warning flashes up from the air filter mask's software; it's getting clogged and I'm not carrying an air supply. It can't filter through such a thick layer of mucus and I panic, abandon the useless attempt to stop my slide with my hands, and instead try to wipe off the gunk covering the mouthpiece with frantic inefficiency. I twist as I do so, managing to get the tunnel against my back so nothing more accumulates over my headgear.

My feet hit something and the impact jars through my body, making my knees buckle. As I pitch forward, somehow one of my hands finds the rope again and I cling on to it, my panicked breaths making the filter mask pull in tighter with each intake. Whatever broke my fall is solid beneath my boots and seems
stable enough to support me as I shiver and struggle to put the mess of primal reactions back in their place.

Once the worst is over, I try to wipe a glove on a patch below my left armpit that is relatively free of the slime and then clean off the goggles, leaving a thin smear the coated plasglass can cope with. Soon they are clear and I get the filter mask functioning well enough for me to take stock and work out what to do next.

I'm on some sort of ledge that forms a circle in the tunnel and I realize it's the rim of an open valve. I've been through several of these here before, but when the tunnel is horizontal and they form doorways instead of things to land upon precariously. They remind me of heart valves, clashing with my simplistic sense of being inside a creature's gut. Usually these valves retract fully into the wall, but this one is different, thankfully.

The tunnel starts to tip again, back into the orientation it was before, so all I need to do is press my back against the wall and then relax as it gradually returns to being the floor again. I sit up when it's still and there's nothing to suggest it will move again anytime soon. The ledge has returned to being a door frame again and I spot the glass marble as it rolls down the side toward where I am, tracking slowly through the gloop to stop near my right leg. The steel one is still missing, but now I don't care about either of them. I'm just glad to be able to walk back to the exit valve—once I'm confident my noodle-like legs will cooperate.

My gaze wanders as I recover, and I spot something thin and metallic about thirty degrees up the edge of the interior valve, sticking out from where the former ledge meets the tunnel. I've never seen anything else metallic in here before, but I don't know its every detail. I usually strike out to find the nearest room, moving quickly before the way back to the rope
changes so I don't get trapped. At the thought of that, I glance behind myself, just to check that the way back out of God's city is still where I think it should be. Once I'm reassured, I shuffle over to the object and give it a cautious tug.

It comes free with a quiet squelch. In moments the valve closes and I realize this bit of detritus has kept it open and prevented the valve from fully retracting into the wall. If this strange little thing hadn't been there, messing with the mechanism, I could be anywhere by now.

It's made from two bits of metal, only a few millimeters in diameter, each one about ten centimeters long and hinged together in the center. It's hard to make out the detail with such high filters on the goggles, but the edges of two prongs seem to have been snapped off, or at least aren't finished in a way I'd associate with something made.

I jolt. This has been made—it's hinged—it isn't something that could have grown and isn't something that fits with any of the other artifacts I've previously recovered from the city. I've found things like pots and a variety of other objects that I haven't been able to fathom an original function for, but none of them metal. They're made of either wood or ceramics and look handmade.

From what I've seen of this place and the things contained within it, I have to conclude that whatever this thing used to be part of, it must have been brought into God's city by someone else. I try to think of our first group and the equipment we carried, but nothing comes to mind that would explain this.

I move the two lengths of metal, testing the hinge. It's only slightly corroded. I have a good memory for most things, but I don't have a huge amount of confidence in my recollection of what we brought in with us that day. The only way to be sure is to look at the footage we took before leaving Atlas for
the first time. I can't bear the thought of it. I don't want to see Suh's face, not now. It will only make things harder again.

It's time to leave. I've got something to take home and I don't want to be here the next time the tunnel decides it wants to move again, but the mystery of it won't let me go. How did it get here? What was it part of? By the time I reach the exit valve, the hinged metal pieces held tightly in my hand, I resolve to call up the footage as soon as I'm outside.

I take a few deep breaths before stepping onto the valve's center. It opens and I drop a meter or so before hitting the side of the tube. I hold the last breath I took as it closes above me. I'm expelled in a horribly biological fashion and dumped on the ground like a lump of shit.

I sit beneath the twisted tendril buttress and pull off the goggles and filter with relief. The smell of the mucus is sharp in my nostrils, reminding me of fried mushrooms, but soon enough it passes. I'm covered in the stuff, so I peel the protective suit and gloves off, rolling it into a tight bundle mucus side in, ready to be stuffed into the chute for the Masher as soon as I get home. I'll brush off the boots once the mucus has dried and give them a good clean. I've worn them in now; if I print a new pair they won't be nearly as comfortable. I'm glad I wore light trousers underneath this time, and a T-shirt. The cool night air is pleasant on my skin, but I need to shower before I can feel free of the evening's adventure.

Not yet ready to go back to the colony, I retrieve the mystery object from the place I left it to undress and wipe it clean as best as I can. I feel its edges in the darkness, making a mental note to wash my hands as soon as I'm able and not to touch my face or lips before then. I access my archive on my personal server, but when it comes to actually opening the file, I can't do it. I
haven't looked at that footage from first Planetfall for over twenty years. Perhaps I never will.