Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Each time I remember that I’m past our lives’ previous horizon, my skin draws tight and my heart races. OS and I are three days out to the west, so I get that feeling a lot.

Here , I think. Here is finally something new.

Well, “new.” So far this hyped-up expedition of mine has all been flat muckland. Pond scum.

Because our dads crashed on Minerva instead of properly landing, we don’t know where we are on the planet. Based on the constancy of the weather, without any real seasons, there’s either little tilt to Minerva’s axis or—more likely—we’re living at one of the poles.

If we’re at a pole, all directions are pretty equal, which is why Father and I planned for me to just pick one and go straight. We chose north because it’s the far side of the settlement from the malevors, and it’s easy to orient myself using each sunset and sunrise of the Sisters. Rover can do that with far more accuracy than I, but Father and I both like that I’ve got an offline backup plan.

Today OS and I have decided to rest through the Scorch. It’s not so hot that I couldn’t hike through it, but the skin on my face turns red and irritated if I don’t get under shade for the hour. And the spot on my backside where I got gored has been giving me pins and needles. I’m relaxing against my pack, sunshade unfurled, while Rover makes slow rotations. Guarding us. We’re far from the malevor herd, but an AI doesn’t need to nap and it’s better safe than sorry.

“So, OS,” I say. “How would a comet strike actually go down? I’m going to assume the dads gave us a sanitized version.”

“Having access to the information you request will be suboptimal for your morale,” OS responds through Rover.

I snort. “Yeah, I can imagine. I’d still like to know.”

“I could shield you from the worst reality of it, so you will feel only moderately desperate afterward. Would you like me to do this?”

I shake my head. “Lay it all on me,” I say.

“The Scorch is almost over,” OS says. “If you start getting ready for the afternoon’s trek now, I’ll tell you over the course of the seven-point-one minutes it usually takes you to pack up.”

I’ve been eating concentrated algal chews, so there’s no meal debris to clean up. I’m surprised to find out it usually takes me that long. Rover has been towing a floating platform with polycarb bags of water; I guess getting myself hydrated is part of the seven minutes? I take slow sips from one of them and stretch my hamstrings while OS fills me in on our imminent doom.

“The first thing you would see is a faint new star in the sky. You might not even notice it for the first day or two. Then it would get as luminous as Eagle, then Cuckoo.”

I look up at Cuckoo, the nearest planet in our solar system. It’s bright enough to see even during the Scorch. We watch its orbit end-on, and its tiny bright circle in the sky seems to flit crazily between the two suns. I blink against the purple image it sears into my eyeballs.

“So then what, everything turns into a great fireball?”

“No. You will wake up one day to notice that there is another body in the solar system with as much light as the Sisters. Then even more light. Hours later, it will strike the surface of Minerva with one hundred million times the energy of the largest nuclear bomb that ever went off on Earth, at least up until the departure of the Coordinated Endeavor .”

“Oh.”

“If you were anywhere on that half of the planet, there would be no hope of survival, no matter what precautions you had taken. Struck at that speed, the air in Minerva’s atmosphere has nowhere to go, and so it heats up thousands of degrees under the pressure. All surface liquids would vaporize. Wherever the comet strikes, the physics of the planet’s surface would change to fluid dynamics, and it would splash. The impact would send out a wave of soil thirty-five kilometers high, and might even expose the planet’s molten core in the trough. Though only briefly, the impact site would reach the same heat level as the surface of the Sisters.”

I can feel my algal chew swimming on top of my stomach acid. “So, OS, I’m going to assume that that heat is far too high for any known life to survive?”

“Yes.”

“Dead town.”

“Vaporized town is closer to it. You probably wouldn’t even feel a thing. This would all be in the first ten minutes of impact. If we’re all lucky enough to be on the far side of the planet, we’ll soon be dealing with earthquakes. If there are seas on Minerva, like you and I predict there are, they’ll produce waves between two hundred and three hundred meters high.”

“So we should hope for no seas.”

“Unclear. Boiling seas absorb heat. Without them, the heat might be too great even on the far side of the planet. But yes, a two-hundred-meter wave would be very hard to survive. By the time the waves subside, the debris from the planet’s surface would begin raining back down. Some would have been going at such tremendous speeds that it would now be traveling through space, forming its own asteroids and comets—but the rest would fall at lethally high speed. We will need to be far underground if we hope to survive.”

I’m pretending to be tough about this, but it’s making me feel a little weak in the knees. “Okay, avoid the raining superhot glass. Got it.”

“The heat would set fire to all the mats of microscopic life on Minerva’s surface. This would be followed by long periods of acidic rain, and a persistent cloud of soot in the atmosphere that would cut out ninety percent of the light from the Sisters. Our planet’s temperatures would go very, very cold. With the drop in evaporation, we’d have real problems getting water. After a period of time, we might be able to venture out again. But that period of time would be at least three years. In the meantime the planetary tilt might have changed, introducing new seasons.”

I’m having trouble even keeping up with this new information, and there’s this weakness in my knees that I have to muscle through. Suppressed panic. “Three years in a bunker,” I manage to say.

“There’s a reason that the only mammal to survive the impact that killed the dinosaurs was a shrewlike burrower with thick hair. It likely dug down to escape the initial heat, and ate tubers underground during Earth’s extended winter until it was safe to emerge.”

I pat my head. “My hair is thick, but not shrew thick.”

“I am afraid not. Unfortunately.”

I hitch my pack and pick up my pace across the muckland. It’s hard to imagine anything happening here, much less something as dramatic as what OS just described. “Thanks for the honesty, OS. I really do appreciate it.”

Rover is nearly soundless as we proceed, just making occasional little gasps as it adjusts its traveling height whenever the ground shifts. “The way I figure it, OS, we should build a bunker where we are, and hope for now that any comet doesn’t strike nearby. Eventually, we’ll want to explore the planet, and build a bunker on the opposite side, and look into building a transport that could get us there quickly.”

“And astronomical equipment that could predict a comet’s strike site with precision. We have the schematics to create such devices, and emergency transport vehicles, if we want to prioritize those. But we’d still soon face the problem of our lack of sufficient metals. We really need metal, even to start mapping Minerva.”

“A significant oversight in choosing a planet to settle,” I say, “this whole lack of metals.”

“There are many variables mission control had to consider, and quantities of metal is only one of them,” OS says. “But you’re right—it would be a significant oversight. I find that hopeful, actually—I think that degree of mistake is unlikely, which means I would assume mission control knew that there were metals to be found here.”

“That’s a good point, OS. And I believe it all the more because of your honesty about the comet. The dads could take a note from you.”

“Having access to the stories of millions of human parents from the partial image of the internet that was on the Coordinated Endeavor , I will say you have above-average parents. They have produced high resilience outcomes in their two surviving offspring, and surprisingly high feelings of well-being, considering these exoplanetary circumstances.”

“You would say that, OS. I mean, you have some making up to do after you killed off all their copies.”

“I don’t see it that way. I made the choices necessary to ensure the survival of this Ambrose and Kodiak, and to produce the conditions that led to your birth and survival, and to my eventually becoming your tutor, having this conversation with you right now.”

“Sure, OS. I get it.”

We continue forward, and I amuse myself by predicting and mimicking Rover’s little gasps. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s starting to exaggerate them for my benefit.

“Shall we do a mini-lesson?” OS asks after a few minutes of trudging.

“Stop trying to make me understand trigonometry. Yarrow will have to be our mathematician.”

“Why do you think the ethylamine pond disappeared?”

I huff. “Can’t you just tell me some bad puns instead?”

“It’s lesson time. I think you’ll enjoy this one. Why do you think the ethylamine pond disappeared?”

“Um, it boiled off. Probably because the climate is getting warmer.”

“And why is the climate getting warmer?”

“We haven’t explored. We know so little about the climate here. There could be a constant typhoon on the other side of the globe. There could be, I don’t know, aliens with thermostats, altering levels of lava flows so their living rooms are comfortable.”

“Given the recency of a comet strike, however? What’s most probable in that case?”

I grip my spear. OS has a few educational modes, and this one is my least favorite. Yarrow and I call it “I’m smarter than you.”

I think for a moment, then I shiver. I literally shiver. “It’s not really warming away from what’s normal. It’s recovering from being cold.”

“Explain your reasoning.”

I roll my eyes. But then the realization of it all takes over, and I can’t help but be excited. “We’re seeing the return of Minerva to its natural climate. It was unusually cold when my fathers arrived, because the debris from the last comet strike was still clouding the atmosphere.”

“Very good,” OS says. “This is a reasonable conclusion.”

I look up into the sky. “We might think we’ve been on normal Minerva, but we’ve actually been on cloudy recovering Minerva this whole time.”

“We can expect change.”

I nod. “We can expect change.”

“And we can expect another comet to strike.”

“And we can expect another comet to strike.”

This is the morning of day five, which means wherever I camp tonight is my turnaround point. For this mission to be a success I have to find something, and soon.

OS wakes me the moment Big Sister’s rays hit Minerva. Rover’s already brewed my tea. Well, “tea”—from what I’ve read about it, real tea didn’t taste like mud. But, on this chilly morning when I roll out from under my insulating shield and immediately stamp my legs for heat, the hot liquid coming out of Rover’s spigot is welcome. Whatever it tastes like.

Is it only chilly because lingering debris from a comet strike years ago is shading the Sisters? I stare out at the morning sky, wondering. I look for bright points in the atmosphere.

Despite my asking it to give me a half hour of morning peace while my brain wakes up, OS launches into the day’s itinerary. “Though we will continue our northerly route, I suggest that on this last day we jag west-northwest first, to avoid an unnecessary rise and fall in elevation a kilometer from here.”

I hold up my hand, squinting at Big Sister. “I can’t get my brain around this just yet, OS.”

“My apologies.” A pause. “If you agree to this plan now, I will have no need to keep talking to you until you’ve gotten your belongings ready.”

I close my eyes. If I were either of the dads, OS would be compelled to follow my directions. Since I’m still fifteen, OS treats my inputs as mere suggestions. I have only the illusion of choice here. “Sure, OS, sure. West-northwest.”

Meanwhile, I’m menstruating. We brought plenty of cloths, I just have to change to a new one and belt it on. Not a big deal, but each time I do it I’m reminded that I’m the only human in existence who can carry a child. It’s my least favorite feeling.

As I change my cloth, I look out at the unchanging landscape of Minerva and force myself to think about it instead of my own worries. The closest it looks to any pictures I’ve seen of Earth is a desolate tide pool, ponds of hydrocarbons and simple unicellular life emerging from it. It’s reasonable that this is what we’d find on Minerva. Over the 3.5 billion years Earth had any life, only half a billion had anything multicellular. Throw a dart somewhere on that timeline, and if you found any life at all, you’d most likely find what we did—pond scum.

Unless all of Minerva’s complex life is in its seas. Minerva, where are your seas?

“All right, Rover,” I say, standing and shaking warmth into my limbs. “Let’s go.”

An hour before the Scorch, Rover and I skirt the edge of a murky pond. Rover tests the fluid inside—mostly water. High amounts of deuterium, but perfectly safe to drink. It begins to slurp some up, to filter for my consumption, and we make a note of the location. We have enough water sources at the moment, but if we start getting low, we could move here. The plasticine walls of our structures are all hollow—we could change the gas inside to something light enough to float them.

We pause at the edge of the pond and peer in. There are silvery flashes inside, but I’ve been fooled by those before in ethylamine—they aren’t rudimentary fishes, but mats of organic material that rise and fall with the shifts in the pond’s heat over the course of the day.

I crumble the sharp rocky edges of the pond, bring the crystals to my mouth, and tentatively touch them with the tip of my tongue. “A little salty,” I report to OS. “Which means there’s some metal here.”

OS sighs. “You should let me test novel materials the proper way: with a mechanical probe. Not with your tongue.”

“Where’s the fun in that? And what if someday you don’t have enough energy left to power you? What would we do then? Maybe my dirt-tasting skills will suddenly be crucial.”

“Luckily I run on a microreactor that still has at least a hundred thousand years left. You would all be doomed if I ran out of a power source, no matter what your tongue can do. I could list the reasons, if you like.”

I open my hand, letting the minerals sprinkle onto the murky surface of the pond. “I would not like.”

“I assumed that would be the case,” OS says. “But I know you like to be presented with what appear to be options.”

“Awesome. I sure do like that appearance of options, OS. I really love it.”

Without a further word, Rover whirs into motion, continuing around the edge of the pond. I watch it for a few seconds. Over my whole life I’ve only seen it misstep (mis-float?) once, landing on its side in a silty puddle. It made an adorable set of squeaks before righting itself at the edge, spinning to fling away all the sludge.

Much as I wish it to, that doesn’t happen today. Rover is as perfectly capable as ever. I square my shoulders against my pack and rise to my feet, my wound briefly screaming, then I start after Rover.

For a moment Rover is silhouetted by Little Sister. I stop to enjoy it for a moment, this primitive big-sky landscape, pale sun filling part of that sky, a perfectly round, human-produced sphere blotting out another circle. Rover, of course, has paid no attention to the aesthetics of the moment, and passes over the crest as soon as it can.

“Thanks for the memories,” I grumble as I trek after it.

Rover emits a set of high-pitched screams from the far side of the ridge.

I’ve never heard Rover make such sounds. I break into a run, pack bouncing against my sore muscles, and scramble up the ridge on all fours, gray-green scree tumbling all around.

Turns out Rover stopped just on the other side. I find this out because I fall right over it and land on my belly, the extra weight of my pack aggravating my fall, driving my cheek into the unforgiving terrain. I push myself up with blood-laced palms. “Damn, Rover.”

“Owl, look!” OS says.

I peer down the rise. All the same Minerva landscape, until...

From out of nowhere, a jungle.

It’s not green; it’s the color of rust. But here are, well, what are sort of trees. About twice my height, and covered in felty crimson leaves. Tendrils and vines run in between them. It’s a small and dense grove—the usual muckland begins again on the other side.

“Is it safe to approach, do you think?” I ask Rover.

“I don’t detect any danger signs,” OS says. Rover has already started floating down the slope.

The plants grow densely at the center of the clot, swirling out in runners. It looks like a spiral galaxy, only this galaxy is made of vegetation. Like the first moment when I swirl algal syrup into my porridge, the darker green laying its threads into the lighter green.

I whoop.

“We ought to be quiet,” OS says as we creep toward the plants.

“You beeped your head off just a few seconds ago!” I protest.

“That was different,” OS says. “And I don’t even have a head.”

“How is that possibly your response—oh, the color !” I say, soon out of breath as I increase my pace to a jog. The growth is a profusion of rusty reds. The first new colors I’ve ever seen, outside of projections.

“It is quite similar in shade to the extraterrestrial plant life that arrived with us on the Coordinated Endeavor. ” OS responds.

“Yarrow will be so mad. We’re not just bringing invasive Earth species, we’ve brought one from a whole other part of the galaxy, too.”

“You are not upset by this possibility?” OS asks as I jog alongside Rover.

I consider it. “I guess I’m not. This muck could use something more interesting growing in it. Come on!”

I’m practically skipping along now. For the last six meters or so before the jungle starts, there’s what looks like rusty clover on the ground. As I get closer I can confirm it’s the alien weed, the very one the dads found on an asteroid they harvested mid-galaxy. I’ve seen the reels from their early days on Minerva, when the weed flourished around the ship’s wreckage. As the Endeavor and Aurora sank into the soft soil, though, the alien weed started subsiding. Maybe it’s because of the rising temperatures on Minerva. Maybe it was getting something it needed out of the exposed hulls. Maybe it just didn’t like our company.

Or maybe it was relocating out here.

Maybe it’s not a plant at all.

Rover scans the alien moss, then speeds up to catch me as I wait by the jungle line.

“Think it’s safe to go in?” I ask.

“I’m not detecting any invisible life-forms beyond those that are native to Minerva. Given that these visible growths appear to have the physiology of plants, I think it’s reasonably safe to enter.”

The alien moss turns from rusty clover to tree trunks after I take a few steps in. No slow transition here.

I’m not sure if trees is even the right word for these growths; I’ve seen terrestrial trees in my training reels, and OS ran Yarrow and me through botany basics as part of our Earth history coursework, but of course I’ve never seen any live. The mossy tendrils twist into a woody texture, which continues to spiral into tight trunks that reach four meters or so overhead. The trunks spray out more tendrils of wood, which aren’t covered in big leaves, like Earth trees, but by more of the moss. We know from our studies that the alien moss takes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen, like plants on Earth, but without need for chlorophyll or even sunlight. Yarrow and OS have been experimenting to figure out its mechanisms, but haven’t managed it yet.

Maybe we ought to have focused more on researching the alien moss. None of us expected it to go and turn itself into a grove. “If this organism doesn’t need sunlight,” I say, “then why would it have a trunk-and-leaf structure? Or I guess it’s more like trunk-and-moss.”

“Sea coral created similar formations, even down at deep-sea vents. In those cases it was to catch nutrients or prey organisms floating in the water. This extraminervan organism might be catching something it needs from the air. Or perhaps preying on any single-celled Minervans that are airborne.”

“Any thoughts about why it would be growing so densely here and nowhere else?”

“Growth of vegetation on Earth was generally limited by the quantity of the scarcest necessary element. It’s reasonable to think that the alien moss would be inhibited by similar factors, and found more of that scarcest element here. A suggested course of action would be to harvest some of the soil here, and perhaps a piece of the treelike extensions that were called ‘branches’ on Earth trees. We can also test the soil for trace elements, and cross those with the elements present in the trunks and branches.”

“You’ll get some of the soil?” I ask as I test one of the trunks under my fingers. It’s soft on the very surface, but hard beneath. Like feeling someone’s elbow.

“I’ve already started,” OS reports from behind me.

“Okay,” I say, checking my palms. There’s no irritation from the woody growths.

I give one of the trunks a push. It springs back. It won’t be easy to rip away part of one of these. “Do you have a saw in that Rover body of yours?” I ask OS.

“I do, but it is only five centimeters long. Not an ideal tool for this circumstance, but it could give you an initial cut.”

I look at this thriving alien form. I have no idea what’s going on beneath its surface. I don’t relish the idea of cutting into it, both for my own safety and because it feels brutal to hack into some organism that hasn’t done anything to me. Just because it looks like trees doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have alien feelings. It could exist more on the model of a fungus, and all these trunks could be appendages of some giant creature growing beneath the surface of the world. I could be waking it up by chopping into its toe.

I bite my lip. I really managed to creep myself out with that one. “I don’t think harvesting any of this growth is a good idea,” I tell OS.

“Can you find some that’s already unattached? That might have fallen away?”

“Hmm,” I say. “Maybe in the center.” There, the trunks are knotted so tightly that I can’t slip between them anymore. I’ll have to climb up and over, wedging myself between.

I don’t much want to do that, especially after my imagination offered up that lovely giant-organism-waiting-to-eat-me theory. But science calls. I toss my spear and pack to the ground behind us. They land with a hush in the rusty clover. “You can do this, Owl,” I say out loud as I lift myself between the trunks. “There’s nothing to be scared of here. You always claimed you were the brave one.”

It feels like the organism’s appendages are moving beneath me, pushing against my body, either passing me along or investigating the feeling of my skin against theirs. That must just be my imagination, though.

No, it’s not. As I’m slipping between two tight trunks, they press into my ribs. “OS,” I gasp, “it’s—”

As if startled by my voice, the trunks release me. I can pass through.

“This stuff can move!” I call to OS.

“That is unexpected. Come back out now, Owl,” OS calls back.

“I’m almost there,” I say. “And it didn’t mean to hurt me.” At least I don’t think so. It did shrink away, after all.

In the very center is a trunk that’s taller and thicker than the others. I give it a wide berth, passing around the edges of the grove. Finally, at the far side, I find a grayed branch. It’s split down the middle, like a dead Earth tree. When I pull at one of the splintery pieces, it comes free. “Got one!” I call to OS.

I look at the stick. “Are you alive?”

The stick doesn’t answer.

“Come along!” OS says. “Hurry.”

I look at the dead piece of alien organism, considering what it means. It’s broad but not too thick, which makes its weight manageable. All the same, I’ll have to rig some way to string it against my back. Whatever happens, however I have to transport it, I’ll have something new to show for my expedition. Proof it was worth it. Everyone will be so excited.