“I’m not arguing.” Ricci’s voice pitched low, thick with emotion as she gazed at the stars in that deep sky. “I love it here.”
Yeah, she wasn’t a mole anymore. She was one of us already.
One by one, the kegs filled and began flexing through their purification routine. We called in the crab-like water bots and ran them through a sterilization cycle.
Water work done, the next task was spot-checking the equipment nests. I let Ricci take the lead, stayed well back as she jounced through the cavities and sinuses. She was enthusiastic, confident. Motivated, even. Most newbies stay hunkered in their hammocks for a lot longer than her.
We circled back to the rumpus room, inventoried the nutritional feedstock, and began running tests on the hygiene bots. I settled into the netting and watched Ricci pull a crispy snack out of the extruder.
“You must know all the other crews. The ones who live in the…” Ricci struggled to frame the concept without offending me.
“You can call them whales if you want. I don’t like it, but I’ve never managed to find a better word.”
She passed me a bulb of cold caffeine.
“How often do you talk to the people who live in the other whales, Doc?”
“We don’t have anything to do with them. Not anymore.”
“How come?”
“The whole reason we came out here is so we don’t have to put up with anyone else’s crap.”
“You never see the other whales at all? Not even at a distance?”
I drained the bulb. “These organisms don’t have any social behavior.”
“But you must have to talk to them sometimes, don’t you? Share info or troubleshoot?”
I collapsed the bulb in my fist and threw it to a hygiene bot.
“You lonely already?”
Ricci tossed her head back and laughed, a full belly guffaw. “Come on, Doc. You have to admit that’s weird.”
She was relentless. “Go ahead and make friends with the others if you want,” I growled. “Just don’t believe everything they say. They’ve got their own ways of doing things, and so do we.”
We checked the internal data repeaters and then spent the rest of the shift calibrating and testing the sensor array—all the infrastructure that traps the data we sell to the atmospheric monitoring firms. I kept my mouth shut. Ricci maintained an aggressive cheerfulness even though I was about as responsive as a bot. But my glacier-like chilliness—more than ten years in the making—couldn’t resist her. My hermit heart was already starting to thaw.
If I’d been the one calling Jane every day, I would have told her the light is weird out here. We stay within the optimal thermal range, near the equator where the winds are comparatively warm and the solar radiation helps keep the temperature in our habitat relatively viable. That means we’re always in daylight, running a race against nightfall, which is good for Mama but not so good for us. Humans evolved to exist in a day-night cycle and something goes haywire in our brains when we mess with that. So our goggles simulate our chosen ratio of light and dark.
Me, I like to alternate fifty-fifty but I’ll fool with the mix every so often just to shake things up. Vula likes the night so she keeps things dimmer than most. Everyone’s different. That’s what the moles don’t realize, how different some of us are.
“I did a little digging, and what I found out scared me,” Jane said the next time Ricci checked in. “Turns out there’s huge gaps in atmospheric research. The only area that’s really well monitored is the equator, and only around the beanstalk. Everywhere else, analysis is done by hobbyists who donate a few billable hours here and there.”
Ricci nodded. “That’s what Doc said.”
Hearing my name perked me right up. I slapped down two of my open streams and gave their feed my whole attention.
“Nobody really knows that much about the organism you’re living inside. Even less about the climate out there, and nearly nothing about the geography, not in detail. I never would have supported this decision if I’d realized how…” Jane’s pretty face contorted as she searched for the word. “How willy-nilly the whole situation is. It’s not safe. I can’t believe it’s even allowed.”
“Allowed? Who can stop us? People go where they want.”
“Not if it’s dangerous. You can’t just walk into a sewage treatment facility or air purification plant. It’s unethical to allow people to endanger themselves.”
Ricci snorted, fouling the valves on her breather and forcing her to take a big gulp of helium through her mouth.
“Not all of us want to be safe, Jane.” The helium made her voice squeaky.
Jane’s expression darkened. “Don’t mock me. I’m worried about you.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Ricci squeaked. She exhaled to clear her lungs and took a deep slow breath through her nose. Her voice dropped to its normal register. “Listen, I’ve only been here a few days.”
“Six,” Jane said.
“If I see anything dangerous, you’ll be the first to know. Until then, don’t worry. I’m fine. Better than fine. I’m even sleeping. A lot.”
That was a lie. The air budget showed Ricci hadn’t seen much of the inside of her hammock. But I wasn’t worried. Exhaustion would catch up with her eventually.
“There’s something else,” Jane said. “I’ve been asking around about your hab-mates.”
“Vula’s okay. It’s just that lately none of her work has turned out the way she wants. You know artists. Their professional standards are always unreachable. Set themselves up to fail.”
“It’s not about Vula, it’s Doc.”
Ricci bounced in her netting. “Oh yeah? Tell me. Because I can’t get a wink out of that one. Totally impervious.”
I maximized the feed to fill my entire visual field. In the tiny screen in Ricci’s hand, Jane’s dark hair trailed strands across her face and into her mouth. She pushed them back with an impatient flick of her fingers. She was in an atrium, somewhere with stiff air circulation. I could just make out seven decks of catwalk arching behind her, swarming with pedestrians.
“Pull down a veil,” Jane said. “You might have lurkers.”
“I do,” Ricci answered. “Four at least. I’m the most entertaining thing inside Mama for quite a while. It doesn’t bother me. Let them lurk.”
But Jane insisted, so Ricci pulled down a privacy veil and the bug feed winked out.
I told myself whatever Jane had found out didn’t matter. It would bear no relation to reality. That’s how gossip works—especially gossip about ancient history. But even so, a little hole opened up under my breastbone, and it ached.
Only six days and I already cared what Ricci thought. I wanted her to like me. So I set about trying to give her a reason.
A few days later, we drifted into a massive storm system. Ricci’s first big one. I didn’t want her to miss it, so I bounced aft and hallooed to her at a polite distance from her hab. She was lounging in her netting, deep in multiple streams, twisting a lock of her short brown hair around her finger.
She looked happy enough to see me. No wariness behind her gaze, no chill.
We settled in to watch the light show. It was an eye-catcher. Bolts zagged to the peaks of the ice towers below, setting the fog alight with expanding patches of emerald green and acid magenta.
Two big bolts forked overhead with a mighty whump. Ricci didn’t even jump.
“What was that?” she asked.
I was going to stay silently mysterious, but then remembered I was trying to be friendly.