Grail

21 for the descent

Nothing could have prepared Perceval for the descent.

The shuttle-pod—a lighter, Captain Amanda said—that would bring them into Grail’s gravity well and (at last) its atmosphere was a dart-shaped creature like a bird, and she stared at it for long moments before she realized that, of course, it was streamlined—aerodynamic. Because they were going into an atmosphere, and that was this vessel’s primary purpose.

An atmosphere.

The world was too brittle and unwieldy to bring in close to anything that generated the tidal stresses that wracked the Fortune-Favor system. Two planets of comparable size in an endless falling ballet around each other and their sun made for challenging close orbits, and Perceval was all too aware of the fragility of her old and battered world.

So now she was seeing Grail with her own eyes, for the first time, from the habitation deck of a ship named Metasequoia, in honor of a tree genus from old Earth. The so-called dawn redwood was a living fossil species, native to the continent of Asia. According to Nova, there were a number of Metasequoia clones aboard the Jacob’s Ladder. Perceval recognized the tree easily when her Angel provided maps and images.

It was not so easy to reconcile the maps and images of Grail—of Fortune and Favor—with the reality. The orbital simulations showed two worlds, one twenty percent smaller than the other, circling a common center of gravity in an elegant dance. It showed the moment when Favor whipped between Fortune and the sun, and the more leisurely transit behind. It showed the beautiful, braided pattern of the two orbits sliding over and under one another.

It could not show what she witnessed now—the dark worlds, side by side, the smaller sidelit in the narrowest possible band of crescent, the larger just a silhouette rimmed with liquid, evanescent electrum until the Metasequoia slid in a wide elliptical turn around the broad hip of the planet and into sunlight.

Sunlight that stroked the lighter as the primary star bulged, refracting through atmosphere and flaring like a diamond in a band of light. Perceval raised a hand to cover her eyes until the polarizing filters and her own pupils adjusted—a brief moment, until her colony dropped compensating veils across her irises. Then her palm dropped to press the port, as if she could touch the jeweled thing revealed before her.

“Most people who live here,” Danilaw said, “have never seen it this way.”

Perceval started and half turned, overbalancing herself. She didn’t fall because Danilaw steadied her, one hand on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not used to people being able to sneak up on me,” she said. “Usually, there’s an Angel on my shoulder.” Nova was still within range of her thought, but it wasn’t the same as being surrounded constantly by the invisible fog of her colonies.

Danilaw caught Perceval’s eye, and seemed about to say something. Perceval, however, turned back quickly. She wasn’t going to miss any more of her first sunrise.

The star was already free of the atmosphere’s clinging brilliance, burning clear, pale yellow against the blackness beyond and she sighed. “It’s over so fast.”

“We’re moving at a pretty good clip,” Danilaw said. He came up beside her so she wouldn’t have to turn to speak with him, or maybe he wanted to watch as well.

Fortune swelled in the forward port, dayside illuminated, and Perceval gasped as the Metasequoia went nose-down and offered her a lingering view of dark violet and sand gold continents and glittering seas veiled under gauzy drapes of water vapor. Images and simulations had not prepared her for the depth of it, the dewy three-dimensionality. It looked real—of course it was real—but it also looked close and solid, as if it were a blown-glass bauble, superhumanly detailed, that she could put her hand out and pick up, hold, experience the cool solidity of its weight in her hand if only the viewport were not in the way.

A chime warned them to return to their seats. Amanda’s voice followed. “Attention, passengers. We are commencing our atmospheric entry approach at this time. Please assume a seat and confirm that you are properly restrained so we can begin our preliminary trajectory corrections.”

“This way,” Danilaw said, standing aside to permit Perceval to precede him.

She moved toward the control capsule in the nose of the lighter, passing through the open hatchway to find Tristen already seated beside Amanda in the forward row of chairs. Perceval dropped into her seat as Danilaw secured the hatch behind them. The webbing required a certain amount of guidance to fasten properly, leaving her wondering if these strangers would accept nanodrape technology as a potential trade good, or if their cultural opposition to excess energy expenditures and nanotech extended that far.

Fastening the straps was rendered more challenging because she could not stop glancing away from what she was doing to stare out the lighter’s broad horseshoe of windows. She felt the inertia as the craft began to rotate and craned her head back hopefully. Above—a term with meaning, suddenly, beyond “overhead”—the cloud-smeared orb of Favor drifted into view as if suspended in time and space. Perceval lifted her hand to occlude it with her palm, and realized that, as it was both smaller and more distant than Fortune, she could have covered it with her thumb. Her heart made savage with her ribs; her eyes welled up with unaccustomed wetness.

A world. A whole world up there.

She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until Tristen spoke over his shoulder, through the curtain of his hair. “A living world.”

“If you don’t mind birds that crap hydrosulfuric acid. Strapped in, Amanda,” Danilaw said, reminding Perceval to confirm out loud as well.

“Perfect,” Amanda said. “Contact in ninety.”

Perceval’s hands closed reflexively on the arms of her acceleration chair. It reclined, the restraints contracting comfortably but firmly to snug her into place. She breathed deep, a little giddy on the over-oxygenated air, and adjusted her oxygen uptake and respiration reflex to compensate. Wouldn’t it be something if she passed out from forgetting to respire because the air was too rich?

She’d expected a worse bump when they hit the atmosphere, but it was more of a skipping sensation, and then a heavy drag like water over skin. Rays of dull glow flowed up the windscreen, red shading to orange and then gold, brighter, brighter, until Perceval adjusted her eyesight to compensate as the sky overhead began shading from obsidian to indigo. Heaviness kept her from raising a hand to shade her eyes, but in the front seat Tristen leaned forward, stronger than she. Resisting the acceleration. He let himself slump back a moment later when Amanda gave him a shocked glance, and he tucked his arms conscientiously at his sides. Each bump of the descending lighter swayed him slightly as he settled back into the acceleration couch.

A moment later, the inertial dampers kicked in and Perceval found herself back to something like normal gravity. On the heavy side, but not unbearable.

After that, the ride went smoothly. They sank through the layers of atmosphere like a flat stone slipping sideways into the depths of some ancient tank, the fluid air curling around them, sensor lights green and cheerful on the boards. Something flashed orange for a second. Amanda touched a control and it righted. Or Perceval assumed the emerald glow meant it had righted. It didn’t seem like an opportune time to ask.

The glow receded across the ports. The sound and sensation of air dragging along the skin of the craft dropped to a roar. “That was the tough part,” Amanda said. “Nothing tricky left but the landing.”

They dropped for some time, Amanda reporting what continent or sea they passed over as the minutes went by. A cloud layer crawled beneath them like a wrinkled sea; they passed through its upper layers and dropped into calm air below. Now the sky overhead was a deep transparent cerulean—a color so bright and clear that Perceval felt like she should be able to see through it to the shape of the Jacob’s Ladder up there somewhere in the dark on the other side.

She could see Fortune’s sister planet, heavy on the horizon like a ripe fruit on Mallory’s tree, reflecting sunshine from its blue-violet surface, wearing wispy stratus clouds like a wind-whipped beard.

Below, a band of darker clouds loomed—a towering topography with its highlights picked across in brushed silver by the angled sun. Vast updrafts, kilometers high, whipped the cloud tops to frothy peaks smeared flat at the top by a shearing wind.

“Thunderstorm,” Tristen said, like a Benedickion. “I’ve never imagined …”

“Me either,” Perceval said, and reached forward to touch his shoulder.

“We’ll be going through it,” Amanda said, “so you’ll get to appreciate it up close.”

A blue-white arc of searing brightness flickered between the clouds they fell toward like a snake’s tongue. A bright reverse shadow seemed to follow it, an expanding ripple of fox fire racing along the cloud tops. The boom that followed seconds after shook the little craft like the fragile rice-paper cylinder it wasn’t. Perceval’s dignity alone kept her from squeaking and clutching the armrests.

A half kilometer or so above the cloud tops, the Metasequoia dropped as abruptly as if someone had pushed it off a tabletop. Another arc lit the inside of the cockpit in black-paper cuts and sharp silhouettes, edges without compromise. This time, the rattling, growling rumble followed much faster, and much longer.

The craft pitched up again. Amanda’s hands rested lightly on the controls, though, concentration smoothing her face. Her expression revealed no sign of discomfort or worry. Occasionally she said something brief and cryptic into her mouthpiece; Perceval came to understand that she was speaking to a traffic manager.

They dropped into a sea of gray cotton candy, which opened up and swallowed them entire.

Perceval expected a sound, a shushing, shirring noise as the clouds wrapped them. But there was nothing, a curious hush, the thrumming of the engines and the life-support systems controlling the cabin climate. Tristen sneezed, quite suddenly, and Perceval sniffled as the scent of burning electronics filled the cabin. “Is something on fire?” she asked.

“That’s the smell of the storm,” Amanda said. “We’ve started filtering in some outside air. You’re smelling ozone from the lightning discharge.”

Lightning. She said the word over to herself to memorize it. “It smells like burning.”

“The air is burning,” Amanda said. “And being ionized.”

The smoke gray outside the windows gave way to charcoal, and lashings of rain. Then steady drumming, like a hundred thousand fingertips palpating the aircraft’s skin.

Perceval giggled. She bit her lip, glanced at Danilaw, and forced herself not to giggle again. Or tried, but it slipped out anyway.

He turned to her, dark face curving around a grin. How strange, that these alien humans grinned just like anybody.

Tristen craned his neck to look back at them, eyebrows rising.

“Rain,” Perceval said. “Rain on a real live planet.”

Whatever he was about to say was arrested when they broke through the underside of the clouds. Favorlight—Planetrise or planetset? Perceval had no idea. Did they look different? How did you tell?—slanted up from the edge of the world and smeared across the underside of the clouds.

The rain still hammered down, blurring the port. The windshield, Amanda had called it. A thing that shields one from the impact force of an onrushing atmosphere.

What weird things planets were.

Something about the quality of the rush of air along the skin of the lighter changed, a new note brightening the white noise toward pink. “Landing gear,” Danilaw said, when Perceval turned her head against the crushing strength of gravity to glance her question at him. His voice showed strain—the discomfort of a Mean under physical duress. What was uncomfortable for a Conn was acute distress for Danilaw and Amanda. And yet they bore it well, functioning and cheerful, Amanda in particular intent on her work.

Means. Their courage and resourcefulness. They would never quite cease to amaze her.

A moment passed before she realized that she’d just thought of Rien without pain, and that realization brought the pain instead. A few short decades, and was she already forgetting?

“Healing,” said Nova inside her. And had the sense not to say further.

When the landing gear—wheels, Perceval guessed—touched the landing strip, there was a hard uncomfortable bounce and a harder, more uncomfortable whirr. Almost a whine, the sound of machinery straining against intense natural forces. Rain still sheeted the windows—a dimpled, transparent glaze that nevertheless distorted the world outside so heavily Perceval could make no sense of what she saw. Only a jumble of objects dark and bright, each alternately illuminated and shadowed by the lightning and the storm.

Lightning cracked again as they rolled to a stop, this time without an accompanying rumble of thunder. That came moments later, and Perceval found herself calculating in her head. “That was a mile and a half off,” she said.

“Difference in flash and bang?” Amanda asked, turning in her seat to unhook the shoulder belts.

Perceval nodded, suddenly shy. “Is the storm moving away from us?”

“This wave,” Amanda said. “There might be more. The rain is a friend, though. It’ll cool our shell faster so we can disembark.”

“And drench us on the runway,” Danilaw said, but Perceval thought he was performing his crabbiness more than experiencing it. He was stretching in his seat, looking around, an air of excitement hovering over him.

Perceval decided to find it contagious. Maybe it would put an end to the apprehension and anxiety that wanted to rise up her throat like an anaconda and throw ropes of unease around her airway and lungs. When Danilaw rose, she rose beside him.

At that moment, she thought indeed she might do anything to stay. Even let them perform brain surgery on you? And take away your colony?

Tristen was already picking his way, hunchbacked, around the copilot’s chair and toward the rear of the lighter. Some few minutes later, the doors opened and a stairway rolled up outside.

With Tristen at her shoulder, Perceval clutched the handrail. Woozy under heavy gravity, she stepped out into the rain. “Doesn’t this conduct electricity?” she asked, head craned back to the clouds so that falling water—magical, explicable, incomprehensible water falling from miles above her in the sky—could wash her face.

“The stair is insulated,” Amanda said, as Danilaw pulled up behind her, “as is the lighter. Still, it can’t hurt to get down it quickly. And out of the rain. Our greeters are waiting under that awning.”

When she pointed it out, Perceval noticed it. She’d registered it before, but having no knowledge of what an airfield—a spaceport?—looked like, she hadn’t realized the red-and-white-striped tent was unusual for this place and time.

“Oh, boy,” she said. “A reception committee.”

Hair plastered to his face and neck, drops of beaded water running across the high cantilevered planes of his cheekbones, Tristen laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I can already see how this is going to get cold.”

They squeaked down the stairs in wet shoes, carefully, and stepped out a moment later onto puddle-dressed something-black. Behind them, Amanda’s and Danilaw’s footwear clicked and slapped and splashed. Now that they were lower, no longer obscured by the tent, Perceval could see the dark shapes of greeters through the slanting rain. She turned to make sure Amanda and Danilaw were at her heels—Danilaw offered a comforting nod—and, squaring her shoulders, started forward.

The puddles splashed underfoot; the black substance she walked over was hard and inabsorbent—and rippleless in its smoothness, because the puddles joined and flowed into one perfect, shallow sheet of water rather than collecting in the low spots.

Water stung Perceval’s eyes, plastered her hair across her face, and trickled into the corners of her mouth.

People were walking out from under the tents now. Perceval saw a woman and a man in the forefront, and behind them two sets of others. A little more than half of the group—six, exactly—were obviously security. Self-effacing, arranged around the border, watching in opposite directions in pairs. The other five were mixed men and women.

The whole crew wore coats of some tight-woven cloth the rain beaded up on. They had hats and tiny portable fabric tents on sticks, and the thing that fascinated Perceval most was the earthen rainbow of colors their faces came in, from ivory-gold to one almost as dark as Danilaw.

Danilaw, who leaned over and whispered “Gonna make it?” as two of the security types detached themselves from the advance and came to flank him. The other four, it seemed, were tasked with keeping the first man and the woman safe, and possibly Tristen and Perceval, based on the way they enforced a perimeter and took up positions.

The woman came forward. She angled her tent-on-a-stick so the rain drummed against it rather than against Perceval’s skull and extended the opposite hand. “I’m Gain Kangjeon,” she said. “Welcome to Fortune, Captain Perceval.”

Perceval read her stance, her expectations, and stepped forward to return the clasp. But whatever Perceval might have said next was lost in the flash of lightning, and the punch of something against her ribs that at first she thought was thunder.