Emissaries from the Dead

17. DESCENT

Its funeral was not much to speak of.

My first thought had been that we could just flip the skimmer again and let it fall, but that was just stupid, as our local gravity naturally included its cargo deck. Lassiter had to scramble onto the cargo deck and shove the corpse over the edge. Free of our interference, it tumbled into the distance, becoming a speck and then a memory long before it was swallowed by the clouds. By the time Lassiter came back, her coveralls were glossy with pink gore, and her attitude toward me had chilled another ten degrees I couldn’t afford.

Nobody provided a eulogy. There would have been no point. What could we have said? That it had been brave? Noble? A fine upstanding representative of its species? We didn’t know it. It could have been hero or villain or anything in between. To us, its only notable attribute was that it had been alive and was now dead, better off by far than it had been during the few fleeting seconds it had spent in our company. Maybe the best possible eulogy was spoken by Lassiter, when she wiped the pink from her cheeks and grumbled that single, eloquent, “Shit.”

Before deciding what to do next I called the hangar, to see if I’d heard from Bringen. He’d sent a reply with random-inverse coding, keyed to a phrase only used for matters of extreme secrecy. I don’t think we’d used it more than once or twice outside of drills, and though it slowed translation by less than thirty seconds I still found the gesture a serious pain in the ass. After all, there was nobody around to inconvenience except for me and the AIsource, and expecting any code to successfully hide anything from the AIsource was an exercise in self-delusion.

Once the signal was descrambled, it revealed an image of Bringen slumped at this desk in a manner that suggested either extreme depression or extreme sleep deprivation. I guessed the latter, as his cheeks were stubbled and random strands of hair formed swooping helixes at odds with all the others. I not only felt some satisfaction over his bad day but also wasted a few seconds contemplating the existence of an algorithm that would take the sleep cycles on different planets, factor them through the cosmic distances that usually separated me from the man, and provide me with the most advantageous times to burden him with urgent messages capable of disturbing his circadian rhythms. Were there a place to buy such a glorious thing, I’d have been first in line.

Except that—I remembered now—I’d misjudged him.

“Andrea. Good morning, or whatever the hell you’re having. I hope you’re seeing some progress. Regarding your questions: first, your involvement was requested by both Ambassador Gibb and the AIsource consensus aboard that station. Gibb made the request personally, in a second transmission that followed the original sent by Lastogne. I’ve seen the holo; he was quite insistent on it. If he won’t admit to it now, then maybe he’s changed his mind. The AIsource also recommended you, claiming that they respected your gifts and knew that you’d bring a, quote, ‘unique personal perspective,’ to the problem. If they won’t own up to it now, then I’m as confused as you are.

“Lastogne’s another issue. He does have a listing on the mission specs, confirming his position as Mr. Gibb’s second-in-command, but it doesn’t offer any other information of any kind. If there’s a bio or résumé, I’m not cleared to look at it. Neither are any of my superiors. I tried to press the matter and was told, by people whose names you’d recognize, to back off.” His shoulders sagged. “I’m telling you, Andrea. The last time I saw anything even remotely like this, the individual in question pretty much qualified as a sovereign nation all by himself, and that guy’s name didn’t slam doors nearly as hard as your guy’s does. Whoever Lastogne is, he’s well outside the Constitution, and if you’ve been warned off, then maybe you should listen. He shouldn’t be the main focus of your investigation.”

I hate being told where not to look, or for that matter what the main focus of an investigation should or should not be.

Bringen hesitated again. “We need somebody to blame, Andrea. Somebody other than the AIsource, and somebody other than Peyrin Lastogne. And we need it soon. I trust you’ve been introduced to the local malcontents? Can’t you—”

I blanked the message mid-sentence. Why not? The relevant part was already over.

Getting in touch with Gibb took a minute, but once he was patched in and informed that my superiors had named him as the party who had requested my presence, he provided the answer I already expected. “That’s ridiculous, Counselor. I never even heard of you before the other day. And if I’d known your background ahead of time, I would have requested anybody but you. Are you sure you didn’t garble the message?”

“I don’t garble.”

“Then somebody’s lying to you.”

Gibb had lied to me about any number of things, but there was no reason to suspect him, here. He had nothing to gain by misleading me on this one small point. Nor could I come up with a motive for Lastogne. And too much had been made of them being the only two humans with direct access to the lines of communication for me to want to point fingers at anybody else. That left several possibilities, all unsatisfactory: one, that Bringen had lied in order to dump a dangerous and politically sensitive crisis in my lap; two, that Gibb and Lastogne had lied for reasons too subtle for me to fathom; and three, that Gibb and Lastogne weren’t as much in control of their own outgoing messages as they both liked to think.

The third possibility was by far the most likely.

But on this station, that could only bring me back to the AIsource.

The untouchables among my suspects.

I felt that maddening tingle, familiar by now, of an impulse denied. Something I wanted to do but could not identify.

I dropped the hiss screen, prompting Lassiter to ask, “What’s next?”

I said, “Down.”

We descended. Soon the wormy surface of the Uppergrowth lost the rich detail revealed in closeup and became an undifferentiated field of gray, shining here and there wherever the suns caught concentrations of moisture on the vines. By comparison, the clouds looked fluffier, darker, extruding swirls of mist and heavy weather that from here looked like tentacles too blind to realize that we were still far out of their reach. Every few seconds a new dragon rose out of the muck, disturbed the clouds with a single beat of its wings, and then plunged back below the surface, as if content with being seen.

Lassiter said, “We should stop here. Much farther down and the air gets so choppy the skimmer might not be able to climb out again.”

I discovered I’d dug my fingers into the seat. “But where we are is safe?”

“Could we drop another thousand meters? Possibly. We could even enter the cloud cover. There’s no line of clear demarcation. But the farther down we go, the less safe we are, and this is as low as I feel comfortable.”

I said, “Then make yourself a little more uncomfortable.”

She looked doubtful, but told the skimmer to descend.

It was hard to gauge the rate of our descent. Little wisps of vapor passed us from time to time, but the clouds below didn’t seem to get any larger.

After a minute or two, Lassiter leveled off. “This is as low as I’ve ever gone.”

My fingers hurt. “Is this as low as anybody’s ever gone?”

“We’ve had some daredevils. Went down a thousand meters lower. One or two had trouble climbing out.”

“Any actual fatalities?”

“Not from skimmer failure, no.”

“What, then?”

“I should have said none at any point during our two years on-station, before Santiago. Considering our work conditions, we’ve been very lucky.”

“Or very capably led,” I said.

Lassiter’s lips went tight. “Yeah, well, Mr. Gibb’s very good at running the machine. He doesn’t let people take pointless risks.”

Another compliment damned by how much it galled the speaker. They seemed abundant, in conversations regarding Mr. Gibb. “Can you go as low as those daredevils did?”

“I didn’t sign up for that,” Godel said, the first time she’d opened her mouth since the Brachiator’s death.

“Neither did I,” said Lassiter.

I glanced at the Porrinyards. “And you?”

“For once,” they said, their shared voice rich with forced merriment, “I’m of two minds on a subject.”

I fought off a spasm of dizziness with multiple inner chants of Unseen Demons, gripped the seat tighter, and said, “Descend those thousand meters.”

“There’s no possible reason—”

“So I’m insane,” I said. “I issue dangerous orders for the most whimsical of reasons. Nevertheless, they are orders. Descend.”

Grumbling resentful odes to bureaucrats who think they know what they’re doing, Lassiter complied. The skimmer descended. Wisps of vapor fluttered past us like butterflies, rising toward an Uppergrowth now granted the indistinct texture of sky. Some irregularity in the local airflow shook our undercarriage. The skimmer’s local gravity prevented us from feeling any actual turbulence, but the nearest of the two suns seemed to shake, and a light in the instrument panel blinked red, assuring everybody who cared to heed it that Lassiter was right and the witch from New London was indeed putting everybody in danger.

“This is as far as anybody’s ever descended.”

My throat was so dry, by now, that I had to concentrate on making spit before attempting speech. “How are we doing?”

“The stabilization systems are working overtime, holding us against the winds here. We’re using about four times as much power, just idling, as we do up near the Uppergrowth. I wouldn’t want to stay here for long, but we’re handling it.”

“Can we handle more?”

Lassiter made a face. “I expected you to ask that.”

“Then you should have an answer ready. A few minutes ago you told me that we could, conceivably, descend as far as the clouds. You also said that it had never been attempted. I would like you to do so now. Can we handle it?”

“I’m not sure it’d be safe to get too close to those dragons.”

“Safety wasn’t part of the question.”

Godel thumped the back of my seat. “It sure as hell is part of my question!”

The Porrinyards spoke in a voice mostly Skye, deepened by only a little of Oscin’s masculine grit. “Are you sure about this, Counselor?”

“Yes.”

The Porrinyards didn’t sound happy. “All right.”

Lassiter was far from mollified. “I’m not going to kill us all, Counselor. I’ll descend, if you really think it’s so important, but I’ll also stop every hundred meters or so to assess local conditions, and our own—”

“No,” I said.

She stopped in mid-sentence. “What do you mean no?”

“I mean that I need to test something, and I can’t do that if you insist on taking baby steps. I need you to descend, regardless of local conditions or signs of vehicle failure, until I tell you to stop.”

Lassiter’s eyes had gone very wide and very round. “Then you can go back and get yourself some willing volunteers.”

“I don’t want volunteers. I want the crew I have here.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Counselor, but you don’t have them!”

“Are you refusing a direct order?”

“Tell me to die for no good reason and I’ll do more than refuse, I’ll shove the order up your ass.”

Godel said, “It’s not safe, Counselor.”

I turned to the Porrinyards. “Do you concur?”

They looked unwell. “I’ll take control if you need me to. If it’s important.”

“It is.”

They eyed Lassiter. “Descend or you’re relieved.”

She couldn’t believe them. “You’re crazy! She’s not competent to—”

“I’ve seen her file,” the Porrinyards said. “She’s competent to do whatever she wants. She has a reason. Do it.”

Lassiter accused me of a perversion unsuspected by even the most graphically imaginative minds who’d cursed me before. It made the charge Li-Tsan had flung at Gibb downright mild by comparison. But she obeyed, directing the skimmer to disregard all of its built-in safety monitors in favor of a crazy, suicidal descent farther into the lower regions.

The skimmer’s local grav still compensated for everything. But the view outside the world, outside the skimmer’s fields, became more and more chaotic, more blurred by violent motion as the vehicle bucked and rolled and lurched its way into a layer of enraged winds. The suns became not spheres but streaks of light, like comets dragging tails. The cloud layer that was supposed to be underneath us rose and crashed like an angry sea, one second filling the sky to our right and the next becoming a fortress wall to our immediate left. Once or twice we rolled over completely. The sight alone was going to make my sensitive stomach rebel again. I tasted bile and swallowed it back down, determined not to panic before anybody else did.

Godel said, “You’re out of your mind!”

I didn’t answer her.

Maybe I was.

The skimmer continued to descend.

The cloud layer now appeared to be only a couple of hundred meters below us. This close, it no longer seemed a vista of calm but a roiling, angry stormscape, bubbling with the forces at play. A dragon, flying by not far below, was not just giant but leviathan, taking several minutes of sheer hell to pass from nose to tail. We couldn’t quite tell because by then the skimmer bucked so violently that we caught the dragon only in glimpses as our perspective lurched from cloudscape to Uppergrowth to the distant, broiling suns. I noted that it was almost identical to the dragons of terrestrial myth, complete with long serpentine neck and leathery bat-wings; its tail even ended with a bone ridge that resembled a spade. Were it not as engineered as everything else around here, I would have said, Oh, give me a break.

As it is, I came very close to screaming, Okay, that’s enough, get us the hell out of here.

We sank into the clouds.

Now we had no view at all. We should have had been blessed with at least the illusion of smoother flight, but even with the view obstructed by mist, we could still see the eddies and currents of the vapor stirred up by our passage.

The walls of the skimmer vibrated so hard they were painful to touch. We had maybe seconds before the pressure and the conditions tore us apart.

I’d made a mistake. Called one bluff too many.

It didn’t matter if I died. I’d greet the end as a relief. But I’d had no right to drag these people down with me.

Then Godel said, “Holy shit.”

I opened my eyes, without ever registering that I’d closed them.

The turbulence had stopped. The clouds had retreated from us on all sides, becoming a vast egg-shaped chamber of absolute calm, its shell a barrier of concentrated vapor hiding anything else the storm system might have hidden behind it. Shadows moved across the surface, cast by weather, dragons, or stranger things. Light, refracted through the vapor, cut the gloom around us in beams so coherent that they might have shone from hidden lamps.

It was impossible to tell any longer where the suns were, or where the Uppergrowth was, or how far we’d plunged. Our local gravity made us the center of all worlds, including this one. The only thing clear was that we weren’t moving.

A mirrored AIsource remote, thin as a blade, wide as an old-fashioned door, slipped through the clouds, spun twice, and tumbled toward us. As it drew close, it telescoped until it reflected us bow to stern, stunning us with a mural of our own dazed and terrified faces. I wish I could say mine looked vindicated. It did not. It looked more like the expression of a woman who had fully expected to die and wasn’t certain that the deliverance before her was deserved.

Lassiter’s face was drenched with sweat. “We’re getting a signal.”

“Patch it through,” I said. “No need for a privacy shield. What it has to say to me it can say to all of us.”

Lassiter obliged.

An AIsource voice said, Andrea Cort.

“Yes.”

We put this off as much as we dared. But without our interference, you would now be dead.

“I know.”

You had no reason to expect a rescue. Your actions of the last few minutes have been so reckless that you may not deserve one. We should admonish you for your stupidity and then go away, leaving you and your companions to the fate you seemed so determined to arrange for yourselves.

My throat had gone so dry that my first attempt at speech failed. “I don’t know how you feel about a couple of these others, but you weren’t about to let me die.”

Do you think you’re special?

“Yes. I’m not sure why, but that’s exactly what I think. I think you’ve made a point of protecting me.”

It was still a stupid risk. There are still other entities aboard this station, not within our control, who want you dead.

“Not like this. I don’t think they want to take advantage of a happy accident. I think they want to put on a bigger show than that. And I think you won’t let it happen until you tell me why.”

It is not that simple, Counselor.

“It very much is that simple. Just last night I told you I was sick of your bullshit, and I see no reason to change my position now. Either answer my questions to my satisfaction or I’ll resign from this case. I’ll take my transport out of here, the Dip Corps will send somebody else, and you’ll start this rigmarole all over again. That person might find a solution. But that person also won’t be me. And I’ve just bet the lives of five people on knowing what you find more important.”

The silence that followed was all of one second long; an eternity to us, and what must have been the equivalent of eons to the AIsource. During that second, the others gave me the kind of look they might have reserved for a human being whose skin had peeled away, revealing a second face not quite human.

The AIsource remote flashed a brilliant white light.

Return with us. There is much we need to discuss.