Meru, page 12
First comes desire, born of the mind.
Next comes will, to carry the self.
Last comes peace, the fulfillment of purpose.
Vaha found their destination and reached for it with every part of zir being. Zie felt the pull of a reality where zie existed two hundred light-years away, just outside the heliopause of Meru’s system. Zie embraced it as truth.
Close off the shashtam. Let awareness return to the physical body. Move the tips of the fingers. Stretch the length of the body from crown to tail. At last, slowly open the eyes.
Vaha gazed upon a new pattern of stars. At its center burned the yellow-white glow of Pamir, Meru’s sun.
UPAKRAMA—ARRIVAL
“Jaya, open your eyes.”
Her lids didn’t want to move. Whose voice was that? It didn’t sound like either of her parents . . . oh! Vaha. Her eyes snapped open as remembrance flooded in. She blinked and shook her head to clear the cobwebs left by the sleeping agent, then stretched.
“I’m awake,” she said and yawned. “Are we through?”
“Yes, we’re half a day out from the transit point, heading toward Meru.”
She released herself from the sleep sack and floated to the viewing window. One brighter star, a little yellowish, shone against the field of the Milky Way.
“It looks the same as before.” She couldn’t help the note of disappointment.
“If you compare the stars, they’re different, I promise. I’ll push a little harder now that we’re here. You’ll get a full Earth’s gravity on my deceleration days. In twenty-four days, we’ll arrive at Meru, though you won’t see much detail until close to the end.”
“It sounds like such a long time.”
“Are all humans as impatient as you?”
“We’re short-lived, not impatient.”
Vaha laughed, a first. She had no idea where zie’d found the sound sample, but she could picture Vaha with zir head thrown back in full-throated amusement. She grinned.
The womb blocked her view for a second, then moved out of sight.
“What are you doing with your womb?”
“I had to reattach the umbilical to myself. It’ll finish growing my incarn over the next two weeks, in time for our arrival at Meru.”
“Are you going to show me what zie—you?—will look like?”
“Similar to the image you have. The incarn will be an extension of me, like your parents on Earth, until I merge that body back into myself. I’ll be able to interface with it sensorially as long as I’m within electromagnetic line of sight.”
“So that’s why my parents kept their true bodies in geosynchronous orbit. Huh. I assumed it was because they wanted to be able to look up and see themselves.”
“According to what I’ve learned, it’s a two-way communication. I receive the sensory experience—what my incarn sees or smells or touches—and my willpower influences the incarn’s actions. I’ll keep myself asleep while in orbit so I can focus on the incarn rather than myself, and vice versa when I need to exercise my true body. Our consciousnesses will remain linked until I’ve reabsorbed the incarn’s body.”
“Do you have to? Reabsorb it, I mean.”
Vaha stayed silent long enough for Jayanthi to wonder if she’d offended zir.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, I’m struggling to find a way to explain it to you,” Vaha said. “It’s like trying to describe thamity fields or reality transits. You don’t have the sensory perception for those to make sense, and you can’t divest your matter the way I can.”
Jayanthi wanted to kick herself. You should know this better than other humans. What good is being raised by alloys if you don’t even understand how incarns work?
“I’m sorry. My parents never explained any of this to me. They always tried so hard to act human that I had to beg them to talk about anything in the alloy experience. We don’t get access to much alloy literature or entertainment on Earth, either. It’s not very popular, since so much of it relies on phoric and emtalk. I didn’t mean to say something so thoughtless.”
“It’s all right. I’m not offended, truly. I forget sometimes that you aren’t like me.”
“That might be the nicest compliment I’ve ever received.”
Vaha laughed again but softer.
“Where did you find all these sound samples of laughs?”
“Do you like them?”
Jayanthi nodded, knowing zie could see her through the cameras. “I like hearing you laugh.”
A flush crept into her cheeks. The quality of zir voice combined with the image of zir incarn warmed her more than it should have. She blamed her loneliness. The more human Vaha sounded, the more she missed having another person around. She’d gone a month without physical human contact. The conversations with her parents and Mina had become more sporadic as the time lag increased. Now, hundreds of light-years away, the only way to communicate was through couriers who could reality transit. She wouldn’t have a live conversation with anyone except Vaha for the next seventeen months. Her chest went tight against an upswelling of depression.
Your moods are swinging like a monkey through the trees. She couldn’t let Vaha see her like this. Zie’d wonder why she was so upset, and what answer did she have? That she had no self-control? That she was a pathetic little mammal who needed a warm body to snuggle up to, who’d never been alone in her life? But you’re not alone! You have Vaha, and if zie hears you say any of that out loud, zie will feel insulted.
So she mumbled an excuse about needing the bathroom and shut off the cameras and microphone. Then she let herself wallow and shed some tears.
After a few minutes, she rubbed her sleeve against the globs of liquid over her eyes. Self-pitying idiot! You’ve entered a new star system, something you never thought you’d do in your entire life. Appreciate it, and appreciate the person who brought you here! She grabbed a handhold and pulled herself close to the entry valve of the room, then laid her cheek against its warmth.
“What are you doing?” Vaha asked, zir tone carrying only curiosity.
Startled, Jaya pulled back. She enabled the microphone. “You could feel that?”
“Yes. That part is fairly sensitive, but I could sense your touch throughout the chamber, if you pressed hard enough.”
“I thought the shell had no nerve endings?”
“There’s living tissue beneath the calcium.”
“So all this time, when I’ve been pushing off the walls . . . I’ve been kicking you?”
“Don’t sound so appalled. You’re so light, I can’t feel it.”
“Oh, thank the stars for that.”
“Are you going to turn the cameras back on?”
“I need to wash up first.” It was the truth. The sleep sack always made her sweat, and the sedative had knocked her out for longer than usual.
She undressed and extended the bathing tube, pulling it over herself and sealing the far end. The process was easier on days when Vaha accelerated, creating a false gravity, but she’d done it enough times in zero gravity that it had become second nature. Vaha talked her through it the first few times. No one had taught her the basics of Vaha’s anatomy, life in low gravity, or how to survive two months without seeing another person. Zie couldn’t advise her through that last one—zie seemed fine entertaining zirself and talking to her. Another way that alloys are superior.
The washing and some food helped pick up her spirits. After she dressed, she enabled the cameras and thought-projected her drawing of Vaha’s face onto the viewing wall, then tagged it as a sticky feature. An image of another human was better than nothing.
“I never thought I’d get tired of seeing the stars,” she confessed.
“I find them comforting, but I suppose it’s strange for you.”
“As strange as you’d feel under blue skies and gravity, I imagine.”
“I’ll find out soon enough. I can’t wait for my incarn to experience what life is like for you.”
Jayanthi sighed. “I wish I could do that, too—live like an alloy, I mean. Understand what it’s really like. The archives on Earth don’t have much information about it because why would we need to know? My parents discouraged my curiosity because they didn’t want me to get frustrated. They chose life on Earth because they loved it and thought human beings have as much value as alloys. Ha! As if we could ever be your equals.”
“Why not? You can be different and still have equal value in life. Without humans, there wouldn’t be any alloys.”
“But we’re so limited! Unless we enhance our environment with destructive methods, we can only withstand a narrow set of living conditions. We don’t have extended memory or augmented senses. We can’t live in vacuum. We can’t absorb solar energy. We need solid food and produce far more waste matter.”
“If you think so poorly of your kind, why did you join this project?”
The question pulled Jayanthi up short. Because I wanted to experience space travel and adventure and get my name in the Nivid and maybe prove my worth as a tarawan. As the words came to mind, she realized how selfish they sounded. She didn’t want to admit that to Vaha. Zie had formed a good opinion of her, or maybe zie was complimentary out of politeness, but either way, she didn’t want to disappoint zir. Neither did she want to lie to zir.
“Our worth isn’t limited to our ability,” she acknowledged. “A small part of me hopes that human beings can make a fresh start on Meru and do better than our ancestors did. Maybe . . . maybe we’ve learned our lesson.”
“Wouldn’t the compact apply to Meru like it does for Earth?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t apply to Mars or any of the other Solar System planets. Alloys are allowed to mine Earth for its resources, within limits. I don’t know if we should subject Meru to the same treatment. Even if it only has single-celled organisms, the principles say that all forms of consciousness have equal value. After stars, planets are the largest nonliving conscious entities in the universe. They’re complicated systems, just like our bodies, and they deserve respect. We treat Earth better than we used to, but we still don’t live according to the principles. If we settle on Meru, I’d want a different way of life, an even better one.” As she spoke the words, she felt the truth of them, as if they’d always existed somewhere deep in her thoughts. “By going on this mission, by proving my fitness—or not—for life on Meru, I can discover if that dream is possible.”
“That’s beautiful. I wish my friend Kaliyu could hear you. Maybe you’d convince zir of the worth of humankind.”
Jayanthi bit her lip against a flush of pleasure. If she didn’t know better, she’d think someone had coached Vaha to say what she longed to hear. She gazed at zir image and almost reached out a hand to touch it. It had watched over her for weeks. I want to make sure you find my incarn pleasing. Zie had done the job too well.
In her moments of privacy, she’d imagined running a hand down the contour of those cheekbones, of tangling her fingers in zir dark curls. Of kissing the generous lips. It’s all hormones and harmless fantasy. You’re a sad, lonely human. So desperate for contact that you’re lusting after an image. That’s what she told herself, repeatedly.
Alloys and humans didn’t have romantic or sexual relationships, not since centuries earlier, before alloys had evolved into a different species. That would cause no end of conflicts with the strictures of the compact. That’s why incarns on Earth couldn’t legally resemble humans. Her parents had received an exemption to better raise a human child, and even they had features, like chromatophores, that set them apart. She didn’t delude herself into thinking anything would come of her fantasies. Meeting Vaha in person would cure her of them, she was sure. An incarn represented a fragment of a pilot like Vaha. It would be like falling in love with someone’s big toe: preposterous and impossible.
She pushed the idea from her mind and focused on Meru. In just over three weeks, they’d land. Vaha had shared maps of the area along with live video from orbit. She could learn a lot from those. She might have an alloy looking after her, but she didn’t have to leave everything in zir hands.
Vaha spent most of the journey from the transit point to Meru worrying. Zie had never successfully landed on a planet as a child, and though falling into a gravity well was less effort than lifting out of one, the maneuvering to arrive at their intended site would be tricky. Zie could think of ten ways zie might fail. Zie had the womb to help heal zirself, but crash-landing would be potentially dangerous . . . and embarrassing.
Then there was Jayanthi to worry about. Since the transit, she’d withdrawn, spending more time poring through local data bursts from the alloys and constructs around Meru and less time on her genetics project. Zie had expected her to open up more after losing communications with Earth, but the opposite had happened. Clearly zie had a lot more to learn about humans.
Still, when they were close enough to start seeing the colors of Meru, she’d shared in zir wonder, spending hours with her face pressed against the clear patch of zir underbelly that she called her window.
“It looks kind of like Earth!” she’d exclaimed.
“It does, though with far less landmass and none of Earth’s greenery.”
Meru was only half of Earth’s age, as was its sun, Pamir, but it had 50 percent more mass and was 22 percent larger, giving it slightly more gravity at its surface. Its sun was a bit cooler and less bright than Sol but otherwise similar. Meru compensated by orbiting a little closer to Pamir, making its year only 279 Earth days. The Meruvin day, however, was two hours and eighteen minutes longer.
The average surface temperature—287 Kelvin—sounded comfortable to Vaha, though Jayanthi claimed that it was cooler than she liked. She’d packed insulating clothes and solar heaters for the tent to compensate. Other than the scorching atmosphere of Venus, Vaha had spent zir life subject to the blistering light of the Sun and the absolute void of space. Alloys were the ultimate warm-blooded creatures, with tightly regulated physiology for homeostasis. No doubt zir incarn, which would have a more human metabolism, would agree with Jayanthi’s assessment of the planet’s climate.
As Vaha felt Meru’s gravitational pull increase, zir most pressing concern was entry and landing. Zie had slowed to a nonorbital speed as zie approached. The plan was to allow atmospheric drag to slow zir down even further, then glide to the surface. While Meru’s atmosphere didn’t have Venus’s density, zie could still get burned if zie didn’t control zir descent. During the microgravity flight, zie had hardened zir entire body, extruding iron and calcium scales to repair zir skin damage from Venus and coating zir wings with clear silicate.
Zie had secured the womb against zir torso, with the incarn safely inside. Its outer shell would withstand the heat of entry and had self-healing properties as well. And zie had notified the construct near their landing site of zir intentions to touch down without assistance, but zie wanted them ready in case zie needed backup. Had any other alloy accepted Hamsa’s offer, they would have relied on a construct to get Jayanthi to and from the planet’s surface, but Vaha had been built for this very purpose. Zie hadn’t tried a surface landing since zir youth, but zie had come so far and learned so much at Nishadas. Surely zie could do better?
While Jayanthi exclaimed over the land features, Vaha triple-checked the state of zir body. All was well. Zie had plenty of water and hydrogen for zir vents. The air supply to Jayanthi’s chamber was good. Zie couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“We are landing today, right?” Jayanthi asked.
Vaha’s attention snapped back to the cameras in her chamber. Zir human passenger had secured herself in her sleep sack, though her eyes were alert and fixed on her window.
“It’s today,” zie confirmed.
Zie wondered if zir nervousness came through in zir tone. Zie almost switched to emtalk to avoid showing weakness to Jayanthi but decided to stay with speech. She wouldn’t judge zir the way other people did. Other alloys, zie corrected zirself. Humans might all be as kind as she is. Kaliyu was wrong about so many things, zie might have had everything backward.
“Are you waiting for a particular time?”
“No, my descent will be active, more like a bird than a spacecraft.”
“Will you leave the window open?”
“No, sorry. It can withstand a great deal of pressure but not heat. I’m going to turn off the cameras in your chamber as well. I need to minimize distractions.”
“I understand. I’ll stay quiet.”
Vaha could sense the disappointment in Jayanthi’s tone. Zie wondered if zie could grow a different matrix over the window that would be heat-resistant. Stop stalling and get this over with!
Zie gazed down at the planet. The flight path overlaid zir vision, and zir vent muscles constricted with nervous tension. If zie could accomplish this, if zie could land on Meru’s surface without injury, zie could face zir maker’s return with part of zir pride restored.
Here goes everything.
Vaha used zir dorsal vents to push zirself lower, keeping zir wings flexed up and back, feathering zir fall to maximize air resistance. Meru’s atmosphere was a lot thinner than Venus’s, but experiencing it firsthand and flying through it were different from knowing the facts.
As zir downward speed picked up, zir shoulders and back strained against the drag on zir wings. Zie fought the instinctive urge to push them downward, to counteract the pull of Meru’s gravity. Not only did zie have to conserve muscle power for later, zie needed to keep zir wings pointed up. Zie watched zir speed—airspeed—on zir visual overlay. When it got too high, zie thrust downward with the vent at the base of zir tail. Zie overcorrected and shot up. Damn!
Zir next correction went slightly better, but still not smoothly. Zie stutter-stepped through the descent, dropping too fast, then rising a little too high. Zie could feel the heat on zir skin without looking at the temperature indicator. The more water zie consumed and vented, the faster zie would shed heat, but zie had to pace zir usage to avoid dehydration. The adrenaline coursing through zir didn’t help. Bits of skin flaked away and formed a trail of glowing specks in the rearview camera on zir pack.
