Radiant

anthill. Antlike corpses everywhere.

So much for clean karma.

I allowed myself a shudder. Then I shook off my misgivings and hurried to collect my parachute before it blew away in the breeze.

As I ran, I tried to ignore my sixth sense. It insisted on telling how many insects I crushed with every step.

CHAPTER 10

Tanha [Pali]: Craving, in the sense of fixation. It’s natural to want food when you’re hungry, but it’s unskillful to fixate on food. One can fixate on fears, hopes, ideas, etc., just as easily as one fixates on physical cravings. The Buddha’s second truth is that fixation is the cause of all suffering.

Festina and Tut landed safely. Tut began gathering his parachute, but Festina just waved at me to take care of hers while she set up a Sperm-field anchor.

Captain Cohen would soon maneuver Pistachio to wag the ship’s tail toward us. He’d been tracking us up to the point we got EMP’d, so he could approximate when we’d be in position for a lock attempt. Festina therefore unstrapped one of the carrying cases from her chest and drew the mirror-sphere from inside. All three of us looked for mist nearby… but the EMP cloud was nowhere in sight. Since its last target had been Li’s shuttle, perhaps the cloud was staying with the craft. For some reason, I imagined the cloud hovering steamily just outside the cockpit, taking malicious delight in watching Li try to land without instruments or electricity.

Too bad for Li; but his troubles might make things easier for us. If Li and the shuttle kept the EMP cloud distracted, we could establish our lifeline back to Pistachio without interference. Festina set the mirror-sphere in the grass at her feet — the grass as yellow as saffron — then we waited for the Sperm-tail to arrive.

The waiting gave me time to look around again, not for hostile EMP clouds but for a sense of where we were. The Grindstone was thirty paces to my right — a slow-moving river almost a kilometer wide, filled with coffee brown water and wads of foliage floating or caught on reeds near the shoreline. We stood on the western floodplain, and I do mean flood: the Grindstone’s banks were so low, the area where I stood would be underwater almost every spring. Yellow grass grew at our feet, along with the sort of scrub brush that can sprout waist-high over a single summer; but nothing more permanent had seeded on these flats, because the yearly floods drowned any plants that tried to become perennial.

To my left, a hundred meters from the riverbank, rose a second bank that bounded the floodplain. This bank was two stories high, choked with multicolored vegetation but cut by a few scrabbly trails worn through the weeds — paths that animals had made when going to drink at the river.

On top of the higher bank, the Unity huts formed a single long line like a dozen river-watching sentinels. Some study had found that a survey team’s productivity improved by 0.8 percent if every member’s living quarters had a scenic view of water. Therefore, as per standing regulations, the huts lined across the top of the rise so that everyone could look out a window and see the river.

The huts themselves appeared primitive: wooden walls, thatched roofs. But the wood wasn’t wood and the thatch wasn’t thatch — both were flameproof, weatherproof synthetics with a high insulation factor and suffused with nontoxic repellents to discourage insects. Even so, the Unity did a superlative job of simulating natural materials. They even gave survey team huts a pleasant woody smell… because, of course, another study had found that performance improved by some fraction when team members could fill their nostrils with forestlike aromas. Everything inside the huts would be similarly optimized for efficiency, safety, and salutary psychological effect; but I had no more time for gawking around, because Pistachio’s Sperm-tail came sweeping across the valley.

Festina didn’t hesitate. Usually you open a stasis field with a special needle-nosed tool that pops the outer shell like a soap bubble… but Festina simply punched the silvery surface with her fist. The mirror-field burst with a gassy hiss, revealing its cache of contents: Bumbler, stun-pistol, comm unit, and anchor. The anchor was a small black box with four horseshoe-shaped gold inlays on its upper surface. Festina grabbed the anchor and moved it to a clear patch of grass. Then she pressed the ON switch.

The Sperm-tail reacted immediately. Up till now, it had simply been wagging at random, lazily swinging like a bell-ringer’s rope… but as soon as the anchor was activated, the tail’s behavior acquired a sense of purpose. It raced straight toward us, responding to the anchor device’s invisible pull.

Sperm-tails always reminded me of long, thin tornadoes: the bottom tip kissing the ground… the funnel cloud creamy but sparkling with glints of green and blue… the whole thing stretching far up out of sight, past the clouds, past the ozone, all the way to where Pistachio waited.

And once we’d locked onto the Sperm-tail, it would provide a nearly instantaneous route from Muta’s surface to our ship. For us as well as…

Uh-oh.

I closed my eyes, thinking, Balrog, help me. Then I did something I’d never done before: reached out with my sixth sense. Used it actively instead of passively receiving whatever came in. Spread my mind to the world, trying to listen rather than merely hear.

The busy life force of insects. The placid life force of plants. The ponderous life force of microorganisms, too simple to have any emotion — just the sense of presence, like the feel of stone when you’re in the mountains. The complicated auras of Festina and Tut. And beyond those known entities, what else? I expanded my senses, sank into them as I’d sink into meditation, noted anything that seemed out of place…

…and there it was. A spark of eagerness, hidden in the background. Burning anticipation. The spark was so faint, it must be trying to conceal itself… but it was too excited, too hungry, to be perfectly restrained.

The EMP cloud was waiting for us to connect with Pistachio. It wasn’t off chasing the shuttle; it had circled back in secret. And the Sperm-tail was now only meters away, speeding straight for the anchor.

Feeling sick at what I had to do, I lifted my heel and slammed it down on the little black box. The box’s casing shattered; internal circuit boards snapped under my foot.

The Sperm-tail, our one route off Muta, danced away like a fishing line that’s been deliberately cut.

Festina whirled toward me. Her life force erupted with fury, but with our comms dead, I couldn’t hear the curses she must have been spewing my way.

Then suddenly, we were enveloped in fog. It came from everywhere: from the ground, from the river, oozing from pores in the scrub brush, vomiting from the mouths of insects, distilling from the very air. The cloud had even been hiding on our own tightsuits, nestled into tucks of the fabric, lurking in our belt pouches and backpacks. Now it emerged in a roar of anger, beating so hard on my mental awareness I almost passed out… until in a flash my sixth sense vanished — either burned out from overload or shut down by the Balrog to protect my vulnerable brain from the howling din.

Fog surged and roiled around me, as if clawing my suit with vaporous talons. I couldn’t help thinking of pretas: the hungry ghosts of Bamar folktales, condemned to a realm near the lowest purgatory. They’re spirits of humans who based their lives on greed. In the afterlife, pretas are always ravenous, with huge stomachs but throats so tiny they can never swallow enough food to sate their appetites. Hungry, hungry forever… or at least until they learn something from their punishment and are ready to be born anew.

The pretas of Muta — the smoky cloud — swarmed furiously, just outside my suit. I could imagine dozens of ghosts in that cloud pressing their gaunt, starved faces against my visor, frenzied to devour me. By reflex, I began a protective chant — one I’d used to ward off demons when I was Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. But the fog-things, the pretas, whatever they were, refused to be dispelled. They continued to curl angrily around me, as if they would crush me to paste if only they had the strength.

Festina loomed out of the mist. She touched her helmet to mine so we could hear each other talk. Immediately I babbled excuses for what I’d done: 'I realized the cloud — it was out there — it wanted to board Pistachio, I don’t know why — but it was going to go right up the Sperm-tail and I — I’m sorry, but I had to…'

'Of course you did,' Festina said. 'I’m a fool not to think of it myself. I was just too busy trying to set up the link before we were EMP’d again. I never thought…' She turned her eyes skyward, though neither of us could see anything but fog. 'This fucking cloud would have EMP’d the ship dead. Then… I don’t know. Maybe the damned mist wants a way off planet. Maybe it could have taken over Pistachio and used the ship to spread to other systems.' She turned her gaze back to me. 'Glad one of us was thinking.'

'But now we’re marooned.'

'Didn’t you always assume that would happen?'

'Yes. Sooner or later.'

'Then we’re right where we expected,' Festina said. 'Mission unfolding according to plan: we land, we get screwed over, we try to survive.' She gave a rueful smile. 'The story of every Explorer’s life.'

'Did you see how the shuttle turned after we…'

'Yes. Li must have stowed away. Probably Ubatu too. And if they landed in one piece, they’re now in Drill-Press. We’ll have to go rescue them.'

She looked at me — eye to eye, our visors touching. Her voice came softly through. 'Didn’t you expect that too, Youn Suu? Didn’t you guess something would force us to visit the city? And we’ll have to press on till we’ve solved this planet’s problems. Isn’t that what you expected?'

I thought about the avalanche of karma surrounding the woman in front of me. 'Yes,' I said. 'I thought that’s how it would go.'

Festina flicked out her hand and slapped me on the side of the head — not hard, but not soft either. 'Idiot!' she yelled, loud enough for me to hear, though the slap had knocked my helmet away from hers. She leaned in again. 'You’re an Explorer, for God’s sake! Didn’t the Academy teach you life is messy? You don’t necessarily learn the answers. You never tie off all the loose ends. Damned near every time you walk away from a mission, you’re thinking, What the fuck did that mean? Why did it happen like that? And you’ll never know. You’ll never even come close.' She scowled at me through her visor. 'How can you think this will work out neatly?'

'It won’t work out neatly,' I said. 'Maybe it won’t work out at all. But we are here to solve Muta’s problems. That’s why I got bitten by the Balrog. That’s why you happened to be on Cashleen. That’s why Li and Ubatu stowed away on the shuttle. And the Academy taught me exactly what it taught you: that an Explorer’s life is messy except when your strings are being pulled by smart, powerful aliens. Then the going gets neat and tidy…