“More like crabs or lobsters,” I say.
“We ha na lobsters here. How big are te old ones?”
“Maybe as big as this table,” I say. “Very smart. Their world is beautiful. Under the ice, under upside-down mountains of seeping minerals, there are all sorts of creatures—hundreds of kinds of smaller shelly creatures, scuttling through gardens of animal flowers like anemones—long chains of glowing bulbs, like jellyfish, that light the way through their cities—clouds of little wriggling things like fish, also glowing, everything equipped with lights…. Glowing bacteria? But here, under the ice, fish didn’t rise to the level of crustaceans….” Am I babbling? Get to the point. I shift gears. “Inside, where they think, they feel cozy—cozy and familiar. Not like bugs at all. I don’t know what that means.”
“T’ey wor kind?” she asks. “Not kill and be killed?”
“Maybe. I can’t be sure. Seeing from inside—of course it feels familiar. A whole rich civilization, history going back millions of… whatever they used for time. Tidal surges, warm and cold spells. They could sense the rock getting colder. They could tell that radioactive decay was slowly fading in the moon’s core. But the tides kept the oceans warm. And when the moon was knocked out of orbit…”
“Around Jupiter or Saturn?” Teal asks.
“Maybe Saturn. But Saturn was different back then. And there was more than one inhabited moon,” I say. “Before the disaster, there were seven or eight.” Pretty specific. Which voice told me that?
“Did te shelly t’ings break t’rough? Did t’ey travel?” Teal asks.
I think this over. Good question! They must have traveled to know about the other moons—right? Did they colonize them, as well? “I guess they’d have to have dug out through the ice. But a long, long time passed from the time they first built cities until they saw the stars.”
“DJ and Olerud speak it te same,” Teal says, lifting her face. Her eyes are pale, but she still tries to see. “Many ice-roof worlds. How far? How far back a time, do you t’ink?”
“Hard to know. Several billion years, at least—but even so, like I said, their world is familiar to me! It’s as if I could know them, understand them, with just a little effort.”
And a guide.
“We’d be friends,” Teal says.
“Huh! I don’t know about that. What if we told them we boil crabs alive in a kettle?”
Teal’s disgust is precious. “Na me, na ever! Crush lice, maybe.”
I move on. “And they’re pretty strange—parasite or partner on a bigger—”
She interrupts. “Pairs. Olerud said t’at. But te ot’er moons… Wor all dead and smashed?”
I look around the gray cubby, my tension slowly easing. Alice was right, Kumar was right—Teal’s my catalyst. Maybe it was Joe who told them, though how he’d know I have no idea. Maybe he could see it in us—but he’d have to have been clued in earlier. Joe’s bright but he’s no magician.
Maybe Joe’s participation goes back to Kumar’s or Mushran’s first quest for the Drifter. Maybe Joe’s been in on it since just after training at Hawthorne. Joe has always been my polestar, my goad, even my flail—but I’ve never understood him.
“No,” I say. “They were alive before Earth cooled and had seas. They were the first life in the solar system,” I add slowly, feeling part of myself, my human ego, wither under the implications. “Liquid water beneath deep ice. They were first.”
“You get all t’at?” Teal asks.
I nod.
“My boy would a felt all t’at and more, as he got older. All their history.”
“Maybe,” I murmur. “Third gen… Whatever that means.”
Teal draws her blind gaze down from the ceiling. “Too valuable a leave wit me,” she whispers. “I lost Olerud, lost my sight, and t’en t’ey took my boy.” She presses two fingers between her small breasts, barely visible beneath the folds of the tunic. “Mushran and Joe say he’s going a Eart’ now. Much safer away from Mars. What will happen a t’em? Will te bogglers on Eart’ peer and study?”
“I don’t know,” I say. What in hell are bogglers? Scientists?
“Or… maybe t’ey’ll be raised a go out a te old moons beyond.”
“I don’t know anything about it. I wish I did, wish it would put you at ease.”
Then more sharply, reminding me of the old Teal, she says, “So many dead. Who wants what, who does a t’ing and why, nobody tells, nobody has the trut’ or will part it wit’ us.”
My throat is too tight to even attempt to apologize. Besides, how is any of this my fault?
Joe and Kumar and DJ enter. Mushran is talking outside, maybe to Borden. “Ready for a rest?” Joe asks.
My vision is swimming. I want to lay my head down on the table, but I’ve kept my eyes on Teal. We’re not going to be together much longer. I know that. I hate that.
“He is sa tired,” Teal says. “He has been wrung out.”
Joe helps me stand.
Teal is in the far light, tall, skinny, trying to look back, as her two tall friends lead her away. One has her own baby at her breast, and it’s sucking and cooing.
Then… Can’t see them at all. My whole body trembles.
“Good-bye, Michael!” I hear. “Get rest. See you soon.”
I shove against Joe, frantic, losing it all, but he holds me. I slowly work my way back, but hate them all.
BUG DREAMS AND OTHER ODYSSEYS
They take me to a side chamber, outside and away from the annex. I lie on a small cot: dim lights, cool air. Jacobi and Ishida and Borden stay with me, but Teal is gone. Joe shows up for a minute, then Tak. I don’t want any of them. So fucking tired.
“You did good,” Joe says. “Take a break.”
“Where’s Teal?” I can almost see her next to me, like an afterimage. Did she turn glass? Is she going to be in my head all the time now? “Where are we going next?” I ask.
Jacobi touches my forehead. “He’s got a fever,” she says. Alice blurs into view. Her face swims in the shadows. “It’s the tea, he’s feeling it strong,” she says. “Go to sleep, Venn. Sleep it off.”
“I want to stay with Teal,” I say.
“Not a choice,” Borden says. “She’s getting a rest, too.”
“I need to stay close….”
“No one who stays will survive,” Mushran says. He looks furtive, disappointed. I know that look. Chain of command. Bad orders.
I try to get up, but Jacobi and then Ishida hold me down. Ishida could hold down a gorilla. “You don’t know that!” I shout.
“Teal isn’t staying on Mars,” Kumar says. “There will be ships enough to carry them back to Earth.”
“All of them?” Jacobi asks, looking up at the others.
Kumar looks away.
“Why didn’t you send them back with their babies?” I ask.
“We could have planned better,” Kumar says. “But this is where we start again.”
“How can I believe any of you?” I ask, woozy, studying them, looking for pressure points, places to put a knife—I want to kill them all, honest to God, I want to fucking gut them. Kumar is aloof, oblivious. In a fight he’d go down squealing like a shoat. Or maybe life doesn’t mean anything to him, not if he can’t be in charge, play the political power game. Maybe that’s it—he’s just a political drone.
Joe pulls up a chair beside Borden. She looks at Joe. He folds his arms and lets Kumar fumble his way through. They’re arguing about something. I’ve missed part of it. In and out. I brush away Jacobi’s hand. Alice is firmer. She takes my temperature. “Same as DJ’s,” she says.
“There is no assurance,” Kumar is droning on. “To keep privilege and power, many on the division boards have deceived and been deceived.”