In the end, we took on thirty-eight bodybags. We were still distributing them throughout the sinuses when Ricci reported the rescue was over.
That’s it. The cargo ships have forty-five bodybags. They’re making the run to the beanstalk now.
Is that all? If the ships are full, we could prune some feedstock.
Everyone else is staying. They’re still betting their whales will move.
When the last bodybag was secured so it wouldn’t pitch through a bladder, I might have noticed we were drifting toward the mesa. But I was too busy making sure the new cargo was secure and accounted for.
I pinged each unit, loaded their signatures into the maintenance dashboard, mapped their locations, checked the data in the mass budget, created a new dashboard for monitoring the new cargo’s power consumption, consumables, and useful life. Finally, I cross-checked our manifest against the records the supply ships had given us.
That was when I realized we were carrying two members of my original crew.
When Ricci found me, I was pacing the dorsal sinus, up and down, arguing with myself. Mostly silently.
“If you’re having some kind of emotional crisis, I’m sure Jane would love to help,” she said.
I spun on my heel and stomped away, bouncing off the walls.
She yelled after me. “Not me though. I don’t actually care about your emotional problems.”
I bounced off a wall once more and stopped, both hands gripping its clear ridged surface.
“No?” I asked. “Why don’t you care?”
“Because I’m too self-involved.”
I laughed. Ricci reached out and ruffled her fingers through the short hair on the back of my neck. Her touch sent an electric jolt through my nerves.
“Maybe that’s why we get along so well,” she said softly. “We’re a lot alike.”
Kissing while wearing goggles and a breather is awkward and unsatisfying. I pulled her close and pressed my palms to the soft pad of flesh at the base of her spine. I held her until she got restless, then she took my hand and led me to the rumpus room.
Bouche lounged in the netting, eyes closed.
“Bouchie is giving a media interview,” Ricci whispered. “An agent is booking her appearances and negotiating fees. If we get enough, we can upgrade the extruder and subscribe to a new recipe bank.”
I pulled a bulb out of the extruder. “She’ll be hero of the hab.”
“You could wake them up, you know.”
“Wake up who?” I asked, and took a deep swig of sweet caffeine.
“Your old buddies. In the bodybags. Wake them up. Have it out.”
I managed to swallow without choking. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Maybe they’ll apologize.”
I laughed, a little too hard, a little too long, and only stopped when Ricci began to looked offended.
“We can’t wake them,” I said. “Where would they sleep until we got to the beanstalk?”
“They can have my hammock.” She sidled close. “I’ll bunk with you.”
We kissed then, and properly. Thoroughly. Until I met Ricci, I’d been a shrunken bladder; nobody knew my possible dimensions. Ricci filled me up. I expanded, large enough to contain whole universes.
“No. They’re old news.” I kissed her again and ran my finger along the edge of her jaw. “It was another life. They don’t matter anymore.”
Strange thing was, saying those words made it true. All I cared about was Ricci, and all I could see was the glowing possibility of a future together, rising over a broad horizon.
Twilight began to move over us. We only had a little time to spare before we recalled the media drones, wiped off the appetite suppressant, and left the other crews to freeze in the dark.
We gathered in the rumpus room, all watching the same feed. Whales circulated above the mesa. Slanting sunlight cast deep orange reflections across their skins, their windward surfaces creamy with blowing snow. Inside, dark spots bounced around the sinuses. If I held my breath, I could almost hear their words, follow their arguments. When I bit my lip, I tasted their tears.
“More than a hundred people,” Jane said. “I still don’t understand why they’d decide to commit suicide. A few maybe, but not so many.”
“Some will evac before it’s too late.” Vula shrugged. “And as for the rest, it’s their own decision. I can’t say I would do anything different. And I hope I never find out.”
I shivered. “Agreed.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Jane said. “Someone must be exercising duress.”
“Nobody forces anyone to do anything out here, any more than they do down belowground,” said Treasure.
“Yeah,” said Chara. “We’re not crechies, Jane. We do what we want.”
Jane sputtered, trying to apologize.
“It’s okay,” Eddy told her. “We’re all upset. None of us really understand.”
“The whales still might move,” said Bouche. “They can spend a little time in the dark, right Doc?”
I set a timer with a generous margin for error and fired it into the middle of the room. “Eight minutes, then we have to leave. The other whales will have a little more than thirty minutes before they freeze at full dark. Then their bladders burst.”
Chara and Treasure pulled themselves out of the netting.
“We’re not watching this,” Chara said. “If you want to hang overhead and root for them to evac, go ahead.”
We all waved goodnight. The two of them stumped away to their hammock, and silence settled over the rumpus room. Just the whoosh and murmur of the bladders, and the faint skiff of wind over the skin. A few early stars winked through the clouds. They seemed compassionate, somehow. Understanding. Looking at those bright pinpoints, I understood how on ancient Earth, people might use the stars to conjure gods.
I put my arm around Ricci’s shoulders and drew her close. She let me hold her for two minutes, no more, and then she pulled away.
“I can’t watch this either,” she said. “I have to do something.”
“I know.” I drew her hand back just for a moment and planted a kiss on the palm. “It’s hard.”
Vula nodded, and Jane, too. Eddy and Bouche both got up and hugged her. Eleanora kept her head down, hiding her tears. The electrostatic membrane crackled as Ricci left.
“Do you know some of the people down there, Doc?” asked Jane.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Not for a long time.”
We fell quiet again, watching the numbers on the countdown. Ricci had left her shadow beside me. I felt her cold absence; something missing that should be whole. I could have spied on her, see where she’d gone, but no. She deserved her privacy.
The first little quake shuddering through the sinuses told me exactly where she was.
I checked our location, blinked, and then checked it again. We were right over the mesa, above the other whales, all seventeen of them. Wind, bad luck, or instinct had had brought us there—but did it matter? Ricci—her location mattered. She was in the caudal stump, with the waste pellets, and the secondary valve.
No. Ricci, no. I slapped my breather on and launched myself out of the rumpus room, running aft as fast as I could. Don’t do that. Stop.
I lost my footing and bounced hard. You might hit them. You might…