Heaven Chronicles

dropped past him. Her body wrenched, and together they went on falling through the crest of the avalanching metal and concrete, to a collision with the bottom of the pit. Her feet struck cement with an impact that ground her teeth, and bones grated on cartilege.

“Move! Move—” She didn't need Chaim's garbled shout of warning to go on collapsing over her feet, to push herself off again across the floor of the pit in a blind leap. He followed her through it, and together they came up against the far wall in another jarring impact, as behind them the falling rubble made inexorable silent thunder. She settled at the wall's foot, sank down in pain and exhaustion, not letting herself turn back to watch.

“Thank you,” Chaim said thickly, crouching strengthless beside her. “Thank God you didn't run.” He laughed, with shaken irony.

She looked up at him, and suddenly her own body was trembling uncontrollably. “You fool! You damned fool! What did you do that for? You threw yourself right at him, it's a miracle he didn't fry you! What the hell were you trying to prove?”

More laughter seeped into her helmet, thin and gray; she listened in disbelief. “I can't do anything that suits you.” He pushed himself up, rested a hand on her shoulder. “I guess I was trying to prove that—that what happened on Planet Two would never happen again.”

She drew him toward her, felt their bodies touch, suit to suit. Their faces met, glass to glass, in silence.

They buried Fitch in the abandoned city below the factory: the only inhabitant in a City of the Dead. She listened with uncertain emotion as Chaim spoke a benediction, calling Fitch a symbol of all Heaven's humanity and the thing that had killed him a symbol of how it had destroyed itself—not through technology, but through misguided greed.

And then with the ship's salvaging equipment, they cut loose the waldoes of the ruined factory and lifted them away. Clutching the prize in spidery arms, the Mother began a homeward course, tracking back through lifeless wastes toward the Demarchy's still-beating heart. Chaim did not try to force the closeness between them, although she felt his longing, and she was grateful. She felt no need either to pull away or to draw close before she was ready, and yet her gratitude at his understanding drew her closer in spite of herself. And while the journey outward had seemed endless in its solitude, their shared return slipped by her like a soft afternoon, as the past fell further and further behind.

They made radio contact long before they reached Demarchy space, reporting their find, anticipating their reception and not disappointed by the eagerness of the response. But as they neared Calcutta planetoid Mythili felt her tension rising again, without a clear reason.

“Mythili … what's bothering you?” Chaim studied her earnestly across the trays of food on the metal tabletop. The chameleon perched on his shoulder, looking at her too, with one of its independently roving eyes. His own appetite had grown cautiously hearty, while she sat picking at her sticky mixed beans and rice like an unhappy child. “What's wrong?”

She looked away from the droning entertainment tape on the salvaged player they had installed beside the table. “Nothing,” she murmured, unable to say anything substantial.

“Don't give me that. Tell me what it is—something I've done?”

The dismay on his face surprised her so much that she laughed without meaning to. “No. No, it's not you, Chaim. It's just … I don't know. I just—hate having this end, I think.” The laughter flinched. “It's ironic; I hated this trip, this ship,” you, but she didn't say it, “so much on the way out; and now I hate the thought of it ending.”

“Do you?” The absurdness of the emotion on his face didn't change, although the emotion itself did. “But this isn't the end—it's just the beginning. We've got the ship now and forever. We're free—”

“Free to end up like Fitch?” The words burst out of her, and hearing them she recognized at last the source of her unhappiness.

He sat back, grimacing; as though the idea had only just struck him. But he shook his head. “No. It won't be like that. Because …” he hesitated, “because it's not so much the money, or the lack of it, that made this trip better, more, than the trip out. It's the fact that we're sharing this one.” His fingers pressed the table edge. “Hell, if we have to, we can haul gases with this ship to make a living. But I figure we'll always be able to get by on prospecting, if we want to. And I want to: A find like the one we made this time—it means something. Not just to us, but to the Demarchy. It gives everybody a little more time.” His eyes grew distant. “If that damned reactor had only been there!”

She felt a shadow fall across her own mind, realized that after what she had seen in the Main Belt, she was beginning to believe him. “You think it would have saved the Demarchy?”

“No … I don't know … it would have helped. And with the money we got out of it, I could've done what Sekka-Olefin wanted me to do: sold the Demarchy on moving its people to Planet Two.”

“You still believe in that crazy old man's crazy ideas?” Her voice rose slightly.

“It makes a lot of sense!” His sharpness answered her own. “He told me it's no worse than part of Old Earth—no worse than Antarctica, and people live there.”

“Antarctica!” She shook her head. “Antarctica's an icecap; don't you know that? He was right … Planet Two's just as bad.”

“But it's a world, like Earth—” He leaned forward; the chameleon tilted precariously on his shirt collar, and blinked. “You don't need the same sort of artificial environment we need in space—you don't need the technology, you don't have to make everything. Air, water… you have all you need. It's a natural environment.”

“All the food? The heat?” she said, unable to keep the words neutral. “Do you really think it would be any easier to survive on Planet Two than out here? It's too cold. The only reason people could live in Antarctica was because the rest of Earth had a better climate to support them—no one lived there before Earth had a high tech level.”

“How do you know so damn much about Earth, anyway?” His exasperation prickled.

“My books. You've seen them—” She was able to say that, at least, without rancor now. “Remember that ecology book I gave you; didn't you get anything about ‘natural environments’ out of it?”

“Not much.” He looked down uncomfortably. “I had other things on my mind.… You really think it's impossible? You think I'd be leading the Demarchy from one bad end to another one? You really think Sekka-Olefin was crazy, he didn't know what he was talking about?”

She nodded. “It was a fool's dream, Chaim. Something to keep him from going mad, stranded there all alone.…” She gentled her voice at the sight of his face. “Read the books yourself, if you want to be sure.”

His head moved from side to side. “But he wasn't wrong about what's happening to Heaven, to the Demarchy—to us. That we'll all die, in the end. If we can't start a colony on Planet Two, there's nowhere left to run. There's nothing anyone can do to stop it … only try to hold back the night as long as we can. Doing what you and I are doing: at least that's something.…” He turned a can slowly on the surface of the tray, staring down at his hand, at the futile motion.

“Yes.” She nodded, feeling a great heaviness settle inside her, knowing that it would never lift again as long as she lived. “I guess—maybe it is worthwhile to go on with prospecting. I guess we can manage together. We do make a pretty good team.” Forcing a smile, she found that suddenly it felt real.

An insistent chiming fell like coins down through the well from the control room, signaling their final approach to Calcutta. She unsealed a pocket on her jumpsuit and reached into it, pulling out the jewelry she had found in the nameless planetoid that had turned their lives around. Separating the ring from the necklace, she held it out to him. “Here,” she said, speaking with a cheerfulness she barely felt. “A memento. We might as well look like rich SOBs for once in our lives. Even if it is junk, this may be the only time we'll be able to carry it off.”

He laughed, grateful for the change of subject. Taking the heavy ring without reluctance, he turned it between his fingers. “Whoever owned this must have massed a ton.” He poked a finger through the hole, with room to spare.

“Maybe they wore it over a suit glove.” She untangled the necklace's gaudy, jeweled pendants, shaking her head. “Anyone whose taste ran to this sort of thing would be tasteless enough to wear it outside.”

“Maybe it's an antique. The Old Worlders were a lot heavier-set.” Chaim squinted at the inside of the ring hole. She saw him straighten and shift suddenly, bringing the ring up closer to his eyes. “Myth … tell me what you see inside here.” He passed her the ring, so intently that she wondered whether he was playing a joke on her.

But she took the ring, holding it up into the light. Her own hands froze as she made out the small, worn