“I’m back.”
“To stay?”
Dale shrugged. “To help.”
Makali had her arms crossed, a clear nonverbal sign that she was uneasy with him. Which was an unexpected posture for her—she had been so confident, in your face. Well, Dale had not only changed physically, he was a different person, too.
“In that case,” she said, glancing toward Zhao, who merely nodded his approval of the exchange, “if you’re going to help, you ought to have the answers.
“No hatches, no windows. The whole vesicle expands or contracts. The skin becomes so thin and permeable, you can push through it. Then it closes up again.”
Dale remembered seeing the Bangalore vesicle rotating slowly after it thumped down . . . then expanding to gather in a hundred human beings along with a considerable amount of soil and even a couple of automobiles.
“I always wondered what propelled it.”
“Well, it gets expelled from Keanu—”
“Like a bullet, I know,” Dale said. “But both of those things took off from Earth—”
“We think it’s the skin itself,” Makali said. “As the whole thing spins, some of the material on the bottom begins to boil, using boil in a very crude sense. It turns into some kind of propellant.” She smiled. “Why? Planning to take a hop to Earth and come back?”
Dale shrugged. It was just the engineering side of his mind.
But Makali’s statement made him think: He could go with the invading force. He could return to Earth!
Before he could ponder those possibilities, there was some disturbance in the group surrounding Zhao.
It was Jaidev himself. He barely registered Dale’s anomalous presence. “You need to see something,” he told Zhao. “We all do, back in the habitat.”
“But I’m busy here! I have a lot to do before we can launch.”
“This may change everything,” Jaidev said. “The Beehive is active again.”
Day Seven
THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2040
NIGHT SKY REPORT
The Moon is waxing, Venus getting closer to the Sun each passing night as is Mars, though in different parts of the sky.
Do I include Keanu in this? Tonight it’s as close to the Moon as it’s likely to be, and ought to be spectacular. (The shadows will be weird, I tell you that.)
But it all feels so temporary. Anybody have any idea whether Keanu is GOING TO STAY?
POSTER GILLAM, KETTERING GROUP,
APRIL 19, 2040
TAJ
“We’ve got a serious problem.”
Taj was awakened by his phone, which was lying on his bed next to his pillow. This was not its usual overnight resting place, but given the threats facing Tea, Pav, Rachel, Yahvi, and the others, it was an obvious choice. Taj had lain down in an agitated state, fearing that he faced a restless night. But the clock proved that he had slept; being sixty-six and operating on perhaps four hours of rest in the past five days might have been a factor.
But he was asleep no longer. Short of breath, confused, he had forced himself to answer the phone and found Remilla on the line. It was just past five in the morning. Though Taj could sense that there was some light through the windows, it felt like three A.M. “Radhakrishnan,” he said, military fashion.
“It’s Melani,” Remilla said, sounding just as exhausted as Taj felt, though she had enough energy to say, quickly, “This is not about Pav and his crew.”
“Thank you.” The ring tone alone had almost given him a heart attack. Taj had had no word from his son since their conversation about Sanjay a day and a half earlier. He had remained at the Yelahanka Air Base hospital long enough to oversee the transfer of Sanjay’s body to Hebbai Electric Crematorium, which had been located by Melani Remilla—it happened to be the closest civilian facility.
Upon leaving Yelahanka, he was subject to a strange set of emotions—an odd and unearned nostalgia combined with a firm desire to never trod its grounds again.
Sanjay and the crematorium were the subjects of Remilla’s call, which continued: “He is about to be taken out of our hands,” she said.
“I didn’t realize that ISRO managed dead bodies from outer space.”
“The military has taken over.”
“I’m military and no one has told me.”
“That’s my job. The army wants this whole matter resolved. With the crew out of the country, Bhat’s remains are the only . . .”
“Loose end?” Of course. “What are they planning?”
“I think they plan to take the body.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Word is that someone, somewhere, wants it.”
“The family is having a cremation later this morning.”
“Even that isn’t three days!”
Taj was not as religious as many of his colleagues—even though the events of twenty years ago had opened his eyes to the unknown mysteries of human existence—and certainly not devout Hindu.
But he knew the rites, and it was too soon for a cremation! “Why are you telling me?” he said. “Do you expect me to stop it?”
“I have no power,” Remilla said. “I only discovered it by accident and thought you ought to know.”
He thanked her, then painfully rolled out of bed and splashed some water on his face. He was famished, so he made a quick breakfast as he considered his options.
Attending to lifestyle matters in these strained circumstances reminded him of a typical morning aboard the International Space Station, where daily rituals were so important to an astronaut’s mental as well as physical health. Today it gave him a moment to plan, even though, compared to a day in space, he was forced to improvise.
He and Tea had been renting an apartment not far from ISRO headquarters for the past six months, and had never truly moved in. Neither of them was a cook, either, so there was little food on hand. Taj would have preferred some idli cake, for example, or tea. Failing that, eggs and beans for an English breakfast.
What he found was coffee and some kind of granola cereal—Tea’s usual fare. Given the circumstances, this would suffice.
His operational choices were equally limited. He had no military command, not even any subordinates. No power or might.
He had few allies. So much of his recent life had centered around Tea that he had neglected his contacts in the defense ministry . . . not that he had any role to play in their covert and often overt war against the Aggregates. He considered telephoning Kaushal but rejected that: The Yelahanka commander was either working for the plotters—or likely to be ineffectual anywhere outside the base.
And even if he had possessed a team that could be called upon, what was the takeaway, to use a phrase from his time with NASA? In success, did he end up with Sanjay’s body in a hearse . . . with himself behind the wheel?
What he wanted, he concluded, was respect, for Sanjay Bhat, for the Adventure crew and his son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter.
He did have one weapon, however: his phone. Melani Remilla did have some information he did not. He glanced at the clock—5:20.
Taj reached the two-story Hebbai Electric Crematorium at 6:40, parking on a street a block behind the facility. He felt a bit foolish slinking past the loading dock at the rear of the building (with its curious smell of smoke and what he could only think of as cooked meat) while wearing his full dress uniform. But the need for precautions overrode his sense of dignity.