Searching for Sun Chapter Twelve

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Twelve

These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines of sportive wood run wild

—William Wordsworth

Cloey’s JPV

Gliese, Date: 2373

The sun was so hot and bright, Asami didn’t expect the fog. It was a thick, foamy sky expanding flatly from the line of hot horizon where the red dwarf crouched, glowing upon the edges of the world, fading only at its zenith, and gradating into shadows at the opposite horizon. Asami took a moment to revel in the knowledge that it was real. Heavy air settled across her face, rested in her lungs like a weight. She pulled the air into her body greedily, catching the scent of dust, bark, and crushed herbs. It had been so long since she smelled anything on the wind.

Stepping from the shelter of the hopper craft, a gust of air blasted over her. Sand stung her neck, her ears, as the wind bellowed over her in a physical wave. She’d forgotten how strong wind could be, and let it push her, edging her forwards toward the trees. She heard shrieks, as ghosts and freezys scattered, shouts of joy and terror muffled in the rushing air. Asami tried not to grin as sand sprayed up against her teeth, making them ache with cold. She closed her eyes till the gust faded into a lazy breath and rubbed grit from her cheeks. How long had it been since she’d gotten sand on her face?

While the boarding party scattered around her, Asami stood at the bottom of the hopper’s ramp and ached to memorize every sensation. She felt heat, real sun heat, toasting down to her soul. Bitter wind, whose breath seemed to sap the heat from her core, slicing through her very bones. She stared into the sun counting the seconds. A strange feeling twisted between her ribs sharp and hot—joy, reveling in the physicality of nature, and worry, at what would become of them. She’d forgotten how powerful nature was, how little the elements needed to survive. When they were dead, from disaster or old age, the wind would still blow; it would cover their bodies, their buildings, their memories—in smooth, unreadable sand.

Only that morning she’d felt a thrill at the sight of their planet from the hopper’s small windows. She’d marveled at the still visible sphere through a clouded strip of window, wanting to preserve that tiny moment of happiness. Gliese’s sunny side was baked and rocky, a frozen ocean of golden red crests.

From a distance, she assumed that gold was sand, splashed across the terrain like ocean mist. The Libra colony stuck out on the surface, the only green smear on a caramel, cat’s eye marble. It glittered there, on the rim of darkness, avoiding the hottest reach of the sun. It looked too beautiful to be deadly, but the thought nagged at her, were they all going to die, like the Libra colony before them?

It had been a strange ride planet-side: filled with wonder, excitement and unavoidable discomfort. The hopper could only carry forty passengers, and Asami didn’t envy the pilots who would be making rounds between the Resolute and Gliese. After so many years, freeze-dried like a vegetable, and then a year of prep, slowly waking passengers and organizing for this day, everyone wanted planet-side.

 Packed to capacity, the small back wing of the space shuttle hummed with talk about the missing Libra crew and if they had simply abandoned the planet, or if they were buried on it. Asami was smashed into a window bench beside Heidi. The woman smiled at her before retreating into the chip feed and then into the work on her holographic tablet.

Asami thought of all the different ways she might engage Heidi in some form of conversation. “Remember that time when I was five and you told me plants liked to be talked to? Remember when I cut my hand on a wire and you told me all about bacteria?” Then she thought about all the children Heidi had done the same thing for and returned to the view outside her window.

The one line of conversation Asami kept returning to was her parents. She remembered Heidi telling her she looked more like her father, except that she had inherited her mother’s coloring. Her flat wide nose and round face a mix of two people who, quite possibly, had never met one another.

Asami spotted a recent freezy. He blew hot air into his palms and pressed them to his forehead—everyone had an obsession with heat for a while after they woke. She marked him as a month out of the cold box, remembering her first weeks out of cryo, questioning every ache and erratic heartbeat as a symptom of a bad freeze. She closed her eyes and pushed the thoughts away.

Across from Heidi sat Maxi. She looked normal at first glance, dressed in the right uniform, brown boots, even an accessory scarf, but there was something off about her expression. Her long, brown hair was half up and pinned neatly behind her head, but her well-manicured eyes were wide-open as though she were staring into a void, a deep empty gulf. Her pupils skipped as though she were looking at something too close to see clearly.

Asami wondered if she had just received a treatment. If not, by now Maxi should have already picked a fight with Asami. Perhaps that was why Heidi had chosen to ride down in the overcrowded hopper instead of taking a reserved seat on a less crowded staff flight. Maxi glanced her way, wide eyes empty, and when she smiled, Asami felt frightened by that impenetrable gaze that both ignored and included her. No anger, no loss, it seemed that Maxi’s gaze was inverted, dwelling on things no one else could see.

“How are you doing dear?” Heidi leaned forward to pat the woman’s well-creased pant leg.

Maxi’s expression flickered, a hint of realization, of her usual manner, reemerging. “A skinned squirrel is more at peace,” she said flatly, her lips curling in a cruel, self-hating smile.

Asami looked away. Maxi’s smile stuck in her mind, her eyes still bugged out and emphasized by thick mascara. She looked like she could jump you with that smile, bash your head in with a pipe, and laugh. Was it Heidi’s treatment, or the bad freeze?

The hopper rocked as it fell through Gliese’s atmosphere. Clouds rushed past the windows in the hazy, hay-colored sky. They landed with a lurch, and then a sensation of solidness crept beneath Asami’s feet. As if gravity, real gravity, had come to rest in her bones. Looking out the window, Asami could see trees, real trees, and beyond the treetops, the heavy suspended ring of the Libra compound. She peered out and felt Heidi lean into her to get a sight of the green oasis. Her thin shoulder felt like a chicken bone.

When the engine cut, a fierce silence thickened the atmosphere, every muscle on board the ship contained, anticipating a breath of real air. Asami leaned into the tension, her eyes fixed on the shuttle door.

It opened.

“Watch out,” Heidi reached out after Maxi as the girl sprang up, colliding with another passenger.

Fresh air. Unfiltered, dusty, new air.

Asami waited as the crew pressed themselves into the single aisle. They blended in Asami’s mind, one elongated organ of arms and thighs and feet that shuffled forwards. Maxi threw herself into the center of this throng as though the mass of bodies pressing around her could stabilize something inside of her, swallowed by the crowd.

Heidi squeezed Asami’s shoulder as she stood to join the trickling tail of the group.

Asami peered outside the window until the sound of footsteps faded. The leaves of a grassy bush pressed close to the window swayed. Wind, Asami thought and reached out, her hand bumping into the glass.

Then she was outside. As much as she relished the air, the solid feeling of ground beneath her feet, and the sensation of the wind on her face and hands, what she had missed most was the warmth. She blinked, eyes smarting in the sunlight.

The sun looked sick, she thought, red-rimmed and angry. She closed her eyes until the bright splotches faded on the backs of her eyelids. The light brought with it an unforgettable heat that filled her with longing for more. How had she forgotten it? That warm sensation? She didn’t think she could lose it again, she didn’t ever want to go back aboard the Resolute.

Already she was left alone beside the hopper marveling at it all. Even the pilot had journeyed off, everyone drawn through the towering trees towards the compound, its tower sparkling like a silver spike in the sky. Asami rushed forward, her legs almost crumbling as she remembered what it felt like to run on uneven terrain.

The trees grew towards the sky like sharp arrows, a forest in the desert. The structure of the colony was a crescent-shaped series of domes with metal bars and thick, white panels of weather-resistant metal. Near the middle of the half-moon of domes rose the tower. A massive, metallic, cylinder painted white. It rose 300 feet high, overshadowing the trees. It was surrounded by a tripod structure of arched white support beams that pitched a tent over the tower and supported the suspended living quarters in a large hoop around the tower’s middle.

Asami watched as others rushed ahead. The ghost kids stumbled about. Their feet tripped over every uneven surface as they spooked at each bird cackle and screech. They jumped as one: their heads circling, looking up at the sky, as if they were fearful of falling up into it.

Asami, too, felt the foreignness of open space after the sterile ship. The land made her feel lost as if the world could tip and she would slip off of its surface and fall into the sun. But she and the freezys seemed to be acclimating faster, gaining their feet, and not shying away from shadows as if they might contain the dead bodies of the Libra crew.

Declan’s security team had already swept the compound and found no remains, but everyone sensed they had missed something. Erika was picking at a tree’s bark in search of bugs. Asami wanted to stop her, removing the bark was like peeling the skin off of an animal, leaving it open to predatory vessels, but the elders had gathered nearby. Her ears strained to get closer.

Heidi had been collected into a circle of peers, the higher ranking staff, the ones who looked like Earth, wrinkled and sun-spotted.

Asami drifted closer and crouched to look at a plant that covered a small animal den. The rocks were riddled with caverns and crevices.

“—keep them calm.”

“We have to continue colonization. The crew may be scared but unless we can target a direct threat, they will take their chances.”

 “They were born to take chances.” Heidi flicked at her tablet to show the others some figures. “They’ll perform. I suggest we give them something to do after they finish their first rotation. That will give us time to assess the situation further.”

Asami forced her legs to keep walking before Heidi or one of Declan’s security drones noticed her. Her ears ached to catch the last wisps of conversation, but their words were masked by the wind. If only Heidi had designed her with inhuman hearing, instead of playing around with her pigmentation. Asami pressed on towards the green rim of the colony.

 Clamps’ sharp voice gathered them. She was a black silhouette, the sun to her back, handing out itineraries, giving them a purpose. Asami only half-listened; her gaze busy soaking in the green, tall pines with bristling needles, shrubs of mint leaves all crisp, dandelion bunches that spotted the ground with yellow flowers. She bent and gathered a broken pine twig, touched the sap, and let it stick and mold to her fingerprint, dirt already collecting in its dark brown glue. She smelled the leaves, their bristles poked at her cheek and nose. The scent of them cleaned her lungs.

She spotted Alec. He’d come down on a separate hopper. He came to pace back and forth beside her at the edge of the crowd, nose wrinkling at the thick smell of pine as Asami crumbled the needles in her fingers.

“How can you stand the smell? It’s overwhelming.”Alec rubbed at his face.

“I love it,” Asami murmured, feeling the pine needles tickle her cheeks.

“It’s so musty, but also sharp, colder, and dusty, but cleaner. It twists my brain to think this is real. I mean, it’s nothing like the holo room.”

“You’ll adjust.”

“Was this how it was on Earth? All this . . . space?”

Asami shook her head. “It both is and isn’t.” She was savoring each sensation of this world, piece by piece; the ground felt like ground, and the air felt like air, but there was no scent of fumes, no smoke, and nothing looked manicured. The trees, the compound, the soil, it was all Earth, a piece of terraformed Earth, and yet different, overgrown, the trees taller than she would have expected.

She studied Alec. He looked strangely chalky in the sunlight, his eyes squinting, sweat on his forehead even though it was much cooler than aboard the Resolute.

His discomfort with being outside made her wonder what the high-ups saw in the forest that she couldn’t. Were they also more aware, more at home in this place than she was? The way she was more at home than Alec?

Clamps handed out their assignments.

“When you finish, meet me up in the main tower, a guard will show you to the habitat deck. Now off with you. I don’t want to see you for a good hour.” For once, Asami didn’t feel the urge to roll her eyes at the way Clamps condescended to them like they were still small, unruly children—which, she admitted grudgingly, glancing at a herd of ghost children, some of them still were.

Alec’s foot was digging into the dirt, submerging his toes. His eyes had that glassy look from browsing the chip in his head. “Why aren’t they talking about the Libras? I thought for sure they would update us.”

“They don’t know what’s going on,” Asami snatched her bag of test strips and tubes from Alec’s hand.

“I suppose. It’s been over fifty years since we had contact. Maybe the Libras hopped worlds.” He removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves even though it was wintry enough to see the mist of his breath. His hair looked slightly damp. She wondered if the high-ups knew the stress they were putting the ghosts through.

“Are you ok?”

“Fine.” Alec squinted past her shoulders, looking into the sun.

“You look a little freaked,” Asami pressed.

“Nope, totally fine.” Alec smiled tensely and nodded to their sample bag. “What’s the plan?”

“You’re gonna get burnt and frostbit like that.”

“Burnt?” Alec looked past her. He turned and gazed in the opposite direction where the shadow of space disappeared into blackness. Like many of the ghost kids he seemed both enchanted and fearful. Asami followed the line of his gaze. In the distance, above and between the tree line, where the sun’s reach failed, she could make out a shimmer of ice on the rocky hills. It seemed familiar, like a picture that one passed by often but never stopped to really look at.

Asami shivered. This place was so intact, so meticulously grown. Who put this much effort into creating a landscape and then abandoned it? She doubted that any expedition could have come so far, built and cultivated an entire city, and somehow been unable to survive after the fact.

 “Hey, it’s going to be alright.” Alec lightly shoved her with his shoulder.

“Right,” Asami’s foot crunched a peppermint leaf. It wouldn’t have been her first choice of plant to cultivate in this climate.

“What was Clamps on about?”

“Samples,” Asami peered in their bag, “Same drills as the holo lab, only these samples have a purpose.”

“Come on,” Alec took her hand gently. His fingers were dry and harder than hers. Asami didn’t know what it felt like to have a brother, but sometimes, when Alec spontaneously touched her, she felt the sweet simplicity of the gesture down to her core, and in those moments, she pretended to know. She pretended he was her brother, that they had lost their parents, but not one another. They would survive this together.

They chose a path winding through the trees behind the semi-circle of domes, not yet overrun with brush. Whatever had gone wrong had happened long ago from the look of nature’s revenge upon the structures. Tangles of ivy had sunken into the backend of the domes surrounding the central tower-like veins. Asami found herself smiling. She had daydreamed about this moment over the past year, imagining her and Alec exploring, discovering.

“Wherever the Libras went, by the looks of it, it happened some years ago,” Asami observed as they paused in a clearing.

“You’re always observing.” Alec looked at her with a small smile. “No wonder your mind is never on task.” His thumb rubbed over her own, a soft, searching touch.

Asami’s daydream dissolved with that caress, her heart sinking. She became aware that there was no one around but her and Alec in the trees. A bird trilled sweetly in the crisp air, the noise echoing. Alec’s eyes were too warm, he looked too happy, gripping her hand securely. What a perfectly romantic clearing I’ve wandered into with him, Asami chided herself, holding his hand like we are a couple.

“We should take those samples.” Asami pulled her hand away, opening the bag.

“Alright.” Alec was still smiling, taking his time to choose a vial. His head bowed over the bag beside her so that their breath mingled in a misty cloud.

“Dig up a weed for the soil sample.” Asami hugged herself, stepping back, chilled even though the trees blocked the blistering wind.

Alec crouched to scrape a weed out of the ground, shaking clumps of dirt into the vial.

Asami felt sick. Regeneration snarled at her from every angle, roots tunneling in concrete, plants overflowing their beds. She pressed her hand against her stomach, the slight bulge above her hip bones.

For some reason, Alec’s interest in her made her think of being a mother. Not the romance of love, or desire. Just the eventuality, the hope of such a relationship. She imagined something inside herself growing, a sprouting seed laying down roots, absorbing, becoming ugly and unformed, caring only about forcing its identity, a blind and panicked charge to life.

She saw her body riddled in roots until the soil absorbed her too. She felt removed, motherless. Could she even bear children, could any of the Growth kids? No one had ever gotten pregnant to her knowledge. Would all their children come from two samples? Perhaps, still, from two strangers? To keep their genetic pool wide and varied, to keep as many workers working as possible, would Gliese be a motherless planet?

Alec stood, dusting off his hands, and led the way out of the clearing.

A flash of movement disturbed the gently swaying bushes. Beneath a thick cedar tree, under a bushy stalk of peppermint, the leaves twitched again. Asami paused, letting Alec continue on ahead. He was mumbling about river water.

Asami crouched by the shrub that had twitched, lifted a pliable branch. Pale yellow eyes stared up at her. Three young foxes froze in their tracks. They looked as though they had crossbred with a mutt, their frames thin, underfed, and boney. Small, limp bundles of tan fur hung from their teeth. The closest one was black, its fangs showed as it darted away with its orange-tailed sibling. The third was smaller, dark brown. The animal in its jaws wriggled and fell from the fox’s mouth. Skittish, the fox edged away and as Asami stepped back, it darted, thick tail disappearing in the foliage.

Asami crouched, caught the scent of hot peppermint and something musky and tart. She lifted more leaves at the base of the plant aside. A large cat lay beneath. It had been thrashed about at the neck. Its fur was thick and long, its head sprinkled with black spots like a leopard, long whiskers tangled in the plants. Its belly was loose and stretched, shut eyes wet.

A soft mew caught Asami’s ear. A small ochre bundle of fur wormed in the dirt, nose up, smelling for its mother. The fox had dropped a kitten. Asami watched it, its eyes still unopened. Body a soft, weak worm. She wondered if her parents, her genetic donors, had seen her like this—helpless, ignorant—would they have wanted her?

A rustle in the mint leaves. Yellow eyes gleamed out at her, waiting for her to go away. She bent and cupped the infant cat’s warm body in her hands. Opening her coat, she gently pushed the kitten inside. It passed her mind to rub her coat on the mother’s fur and gather the scent, but it felt wrong to disturb the corpse. The kitten would just have to survive without.

She thought of her job and her empty samples kit, but the small creature squirmed under her chin. Asami studied its face and ran a finger gently from its pink nose over its wide head. Her hand tingled and the back of her neck felt hot. A fierce stab of hunger and longing flashed across her mind. A memory came to her, a comfort she wanted to get back to, a smell. There was a warm home for her, just inches away, she would crawl to it, and sleep.

“Sami?” a voice jarred her.

Color and shapes dissolved and she found herself once more crouched beside the tree.

“Sami? What did you find there?” Alec clapped her back.

Asami’s eyes cleared, her mouth still craving milk. She jerked her head back. It took her a moment to realize the desires weren’t hers. The kitten in her coat had wriggled up to her neck. She brushed her hand across its head again, experimentally. The same feelings rushed through her, but this time she kept herself apart, listening. The sensation reminded her of something, but she couldn’t place it.

“Leave it to the scavengers,” Alec glanced at the cat carcass beneath the bush, “The colonists have set up quite an ecosystem, left their creatures everywhere.”

“Some foxes were going to eat the kitten.” Asami pulled her coat up further to cover the small bundle squirming at the collar.

“Its eyes aren’t even open.” Alec sighed. “You should have let the foxes take it.”

Asami bristled at that. She wouldn’t leave it to die, though she knew, with its eyes still shut, it, he, probably would. The thought of death brought the scent of the mother cat to mind, a bitter taste clung to her tongue.

“What have you found?” Asami cleared her throat.

 “Not much. Plenty of bugs, the tech team says most of the equipment is here too.”

Asami wanted to spit out the fuzzy base taste on her tongue. Everything was set up for people to survive here, but where were the people? She could imagine even the more docile animals would thrive, feeding off one another. There was plenty of vermin for the cats. Asami checked Alec’s face for signs of his earlier warmth, but he presented her with a dull, careless shrug, his mind now focused on the task.

“Samples?” Asami pointed to his case. Perhaps if she was sensible and stopped taking his hand, he would stay sensible as well. It wasn’t just Sam, she just didn’t feel that way about Alec, he was too much like a little brother.

“Oh, yeah. Check out the river for me?”

Once Alec turned back, Asami snorted and blew her nose on a fistful of peppermint. She plucked a large leaf and wiped her tongue on it, mashing the thick smell of death from her mouth.

The man-made river ran around the half-circle of domes towards the darker side of the planet. Asami followed it to test the pH of the water. She hopped onto a flat rock in the shallow stream bed, clutching her collar to make sure the kitten didn’t squirm out the top and took a sample of the soil as well. The water cooled her fingertips and made her more aware of the hot spot on her torso where the kitten had wedged beside her ribs.

The kitten’s desires were still there, muffled by its comfort, lodged in a warm coat. Asami couldn’t remember experiencing such intimacy and it frightened her. Was this how the ghost children felt? Knowing one another's feelings? She rationalized, perhaps, Gliese did things to people and animals, altered them. Or had the humans altered the animals too? Made them different? Perhaps Erika would know. Perhaps Erika had done something like this with animals before.

The scent of peppermint was beginning to make Asami nauseous. Surely the colonists could have planted something else, but the thick leafy green shrubs were everywhere, cloistered by trees and along the river bank. She wondered at the botanists who had chosen peppermint. The weather was too cold for the plant, many of the top leaves should be brown and dead from the frost.

Perhaps they were a heartier hybrid version of spearmint than Earth peppermint plants were. Maybe they had been mixed with something else, but if they were, the smell was all mint. It was strongest by the river, an almost visible smell, a haze of green floating above the water and up the opposite bank. In the haze she thought she saw something large move. Almost as though pieces of air held a shape, a smoky form, three times her size. If she looked hard enough, it was almost as though she knew what it should look like, hair all over, and heavy forearms. But then the mist shifted—it was just a mirage.

Asami cataloged her samples. The water was drinkable, at least they wouldn’t die of thirst. The pH was perfectly base. Her job done, she returned to the compound with only a glance behind.

The domes were separated by fields: botany, engineering, and the one she was looking for, zoology. Most of the equipment had been stripped from the buildings, except the signage. That seemed a strong indicator that the Libras had left, but as Clamps and Heidi had pointed out, people were not her expertise. Asami entered the dome with several ghost kids who had captured mice from the neighboring domes or the central tower.

Asami found Erika studying a rat’s teeth, holding its mouth open with a small toothbrush. She had been holed up inside the colony chasing down rodents who had gotten inside the walls. So far, her team had caught five rats and three mice. Erika had been left to report on the rodent’s hygiene, to see what they could learn about the habitat. Asami wondered why the colonists had even bothered reproducing such pestilent creatures when they could literally build a utopia. Fleetingly, she was pleased by the frosty weather. At least mosquitoes wouldn’t be native to this climate.

The interior of the compound was stale and dusty. The colonists had fragrant plants potted at each entrance and corner. More peppermint, some lavender, a few shrubs of rosemary, thyme, and artemisia. It was as though the Libra crew needed herbs everywhere.

As Erika took the kitten from her, cuddling it beneath her chin, Asami watched to catch a sign of connection, a lapse of time, anything. Erika simply smiled, cooing. But perhaps she’d already experienced a connection, maybe with the rats, and with practice, Asami knew she could ignore the sensation.

“He’s a Pallas cat,” Erika cooed again. “Aren’t you sweetie? The Libras probably thought he was a good breed for the weather. All this fur will give him a great warm coat.”

“So he’s an Earth cat?” Asami watched as Erika held an eyedropper with milk in it to the kitten’s mouth. Its face scrunched.

“Yes and no. He’s an Asian breed, but he has probably been modified, given stronger immunities and other such genetic health. Here, you try. He’s probably more used to your scent than mine.”

Asami took the kitten back, steeling herself against its desires. She knew he was hungry. Achingly hungry.

 Erika caught her rat by the neck again and groomed its teeth as its tail thrashed in protest.

Asami held the kitten lightly and watched as it sucked the eyedropper, head craning back. The milk wasn’t warm enough. Asami held the bottle trying to warm it.

“So, you find anything out in the woods?” Erika looked fixedly at the rat as if to downplay her real question.

“You mean did I find any bodies? Just more peppermint than a city could use.”

“No bodies in the cabinets here either.” Erika pushed back an invisible curl. Her dark hair was forced away from her forehead and tangled down behind her shoulders.

“You would have loved that. I’m sure you’re dying inside to autopsy a dead body.”

Erika shoved her. “This mysterious disappearance has ruined date nights for sure. I thought we would at least find someone tanned and rugged.”

“So your corpses have to be handsome.”

“Shut up.”

Asami liked to leave a smile on Erika’s face, even if it made her envious of the result. Her skin, brown, with a golden sheen made Asami feel sallow. Sometimes Asami suspected others mistook her for one of the ghost batches, and she wished she had more freckles rather than the two close moles on her neck.

“Why don’t you leave him with me? I can smuggle him up to the habitation quarters more easily than you.”

“Just don’t go cutting him open to see what he’s eaten,” Asami warned. If the kitten died she wanted to bury him by his mother. Erika waved her words aside. They would only find milk in him anyways. Asami set the kitten down in an empty, padded basket. She had come here intent to find out about the strange connection she had made with the kitten, but now that Erika hadn’t seemed to make that same connection, she was hesitant. What if Erika told Heidi, out of excitement or duty? She was tired of needles, questions, and tests.

Asami hesitated. “Has anything weird happened with the other animals?” She watched Erika’s face, in case her friend hedged at the question. The strange connection to the kitten was still tingling through her mind and she hated to leave him to anyone else.

“I can’t even tell you all the weird things animals do.” Erika’s eyes laughed. Asami’s mind drifted as Erika prattled, waving the small toothbrush. She watched as a narrow trail of urine dripped from her friend’s elbow to the floor in thin yellow splashes.