Meru, p.5
Meru, page 5
Hamsa sent over a draft proposal after a week. The duration of stay would be fourteen months. With nearly two months of travel time in either direction, that put her return a few weeks before the general vote in eighteen months. He’d listed the required supplies, ecological risks, health risks, and personnel. He’d also requested a pilot for interstellar transportation and the use of a womb to generate the pilot’s incarn, which would stay with her on the surface.
“We’ll need to find someone young enough to carry you there,” Kundhina commented. “The older pilots’ human-compatible chambers will have atrophied.”
“What about a megaconstruct?” Vidhar said. “That would be more comfortable, especially for such a long journey.”
“Could we trust them?” Kundhina said. “The ones who can support humans were all built more than a hundred years ago, which means they’ll be emancipated. As sovereign entities, they aren’t subject to CDS jurisdiction.”
“I see your point,” Vidhar conceded. “We’ll need to look carefully at pilots. They should have human medical capabilities, not just basic life support.”
“I’ll add the blood exchange machine to the equipment list,” Kundhina said. She made a note in the shared version of the document.
Jayanthi traced the rings on the table surface. “I should go, right? This is a historic opportunity.”
Her mother put down her tea. “It’s not a matter of should. Do you want to go? This is not a venture to take half-heartedly.”
Hamsa often said that alloy politics required playing a long game. Proving her physical fitness for Meru would not only bring her attention, it would gain her favor in Hamsa’s eyes. He had influence with the Tarawan Ethics and Standards Council. His proposed second stage would require made children rather than naturally produced ones, and that could happen only with tarawan support. They’d also need people to raise those children. TESC favored having humans raise their own kind. Surely they’d want her on Meru for that, and if she was already there and had the necessary skills, they might allow her to design some of the planet’s population. A lot of steps would have to go right along the way, and she had only one human lifetime to accomplish them, but she wasn’t typical of her species. She could set her sights afar.
She returned her mother’s gaze. “Yes, I want to go.”
Vaha’s principal instructor at Nishadas was a 320-year-old alloy who believed in the adage, “Do as I say, not as I do.” She couldn’t perform atmospheric maneuvers or transits—they had other teachers for those—but Ahilavathi could beat every one of them at microgravity flight and well-based slingshots.
The alloys arrayed in front of her kept their phores neutral. Vaha made sure not to allow the Neptune blue of zir embarrassment to show. During the final exam, zie had followed Kaliyu’s moves as best as zie could, and zir maneuver had scraped past the passing threshold.
Next to Vaha, Kaliyu winced at the human-centric term. Angry red spotted zir arms before subsiding back into neutral blue-gray. Kaliyu had never shown much affection for humans, and lately, zie had become increasingly militant about shedding any reminders of them. Zie had tried to get Vaha interested in some of the political movements to codify this behavior. Vaha couldn’t muster the same level of outrage, but zie tried to keep the peace with zir friend by accommodating the linguistic changes.
Svah for tomorrow, hyas for yesterday. One kaal in place of one hundred thousand seconds, about 15 percent longer than an Earth day. One hundred kaals made a masan, and a thousand defined a varsha. Vaha had to admit that the system made more sense than using the arbitrary motions of one planet, but the language of their forebears permeated everything from entertainment to entries in the Nivid. Many alloys still used the terminology of their human ancestors, making it easy to slip.
Three generations of students remained at Nishadas. After that, per the laws of the Constructed Democracy of Sol, the padhran would get disbanded whether they all graduated or not. The CDS mandated that alloys could not gather in the same location for longer than ten varshas. Permanent human structures—farms, villages, cities—had created most of Earth’s problems. The CDS refused to perpetrate the same tragedy as they expanded civilization into the Solar System and beyond.
Kaliyu turned to Vaha and the others.
Shantham spun with laughter.
The others concurred, glowing with amusement, tolerance, and disbelief at Kaliyu’s challenge. Vaha was still too overwhelmed with relief at passing zir final exam to join the others in their banter. They’d all finished the previous day or even earlier. Vaha had been rushed straight from Venus to their small graduation ceremony. Zie trailed behind zir cohort as they flew back to the padhran.
Kaliyu dropped back to Vaha’s side.
Vaha suffused zir phores with indigo.
Kaliyu laughed. Zir phores turned serious.
Vaha flashed.
Kaliyu had idolized microgravity racing and the sport’s top pilots for as long as Vaha had known zir. Unlike the bare frames of Vaha’s berth, Kaliyu’s were painted in purple and gold, the skin and wing colors of zir hero, The Royal. Zir friend had no interest in the Nivid or the pursuit of knowledge, and zie was far too restless to live in stasis. As much as it broke Vaha’s heart to think they’d go their separate ways soon, zie could never ask Kaliyu to give up zir dreams.
Kaliyu flew ahead to join the other new graduates. They crowded around a spherical bhojya dispenser that glowed with festive bioluminescence. Every one of them had grand ambitions.
Vaha wanted to be the first four-mode hybrid pilot in the universe, the destiny that zir maker had designed for zir. Veera had spent a long time on Vaha’s DNA with the help of multiple tarawans. When it became clear that Vaha might never live up to zir potential, Veera had sought better opportunities. Zie chose a long-haul expedition, the one guaranteed way for a pilot to make a novel discovery. Reality transits allowed beings to cross vast distances in an instant, but only after someone took the slow, physical way to a new destination. It was risky, but Veera’s goal had always been to get zir name into the Nivid. If zie made it to a new system, zie would guarantee that legacy. Zie had given Vaha ten years to prove zir worth before leaving. Vaha had no idea if Veera still lived or whether zie would ever return to Sol, but if that day came, Vaha imagined greeting zir maker with the news that Veera’s name had already made it into the Nivid—as the cocreator of a novel alloy design.
Graduating from Nishadas had become Vaha’s only goal after Veera’s departure. Zie hadn’t yet fulfilled the promise of zir DNA, but at least zie could call zirself a pilot. Zie needed more opportunities to practice the atmospheric flight modes as well as landing and launch. Earth had too much precious life to risk massive pilots crashing to its surface. A planet like Meru would be ideal, but Vaha didn’t expect to get any assignments there. Zie hadn’t wanted to deflate Kaliyu’s enthusiasm, but a pilot with no record usually went on asteroid supply runs within the Solar System, flying to prove that they were skilled and reliable, until someone with a greater purpose requested them for a task of importance. Vaha knew what zie was fit for, and that wasn’t the exploration of the most Earthlike planet ever discovered. With zir abysmal test scores, zie would be lucky to get tasked with anything.
Kaliyu glowed with excitement as zie ordered a round of celebratory drinks for their fellow graduates. Zie waved a hand at Vaha and flashed,
Vaha pushed zir negative thoughts aside and puffed forward. Leave the worries for tomorrow and enjoy the moment. At least I accomplished this much, and I didn’t have to cheat to do it. My maker might not feel proud of me, but my instructors do, and my friends love me. So what if they all go on to achieve more, and I end up in stasis? Like Ahilavathi said, what I’ve done here should be enough.
Vaha took a bulb of blue liquid from Kaliyu’s extended hand and raised it for a toast. As the bittersweet concoction trickled into zir stomach, zie imagined that it tasted like success.
VRITHA—CHOSEN
Jayanthi perused a list of qualified pilots, sorted by experience. After receiving her affirmative for Meru, Hamsa had submitted the project proposal to the Exploration Committee. The reaction from alloy society had been muted, with most people opining that one human couldn’t do much damage to a planet and that Jayanthi would most likely sicken and possibly die. Pushkara’s faction, however, made as much negative noise as they could. The pilots in the top half of the list had all declined as soon as they’d received her message. She could tell by the round-trip time delays. They had work they enjoyed and no incentive to do a favor for her parents or Hamsa. Even many of the pilots in the lower half of the list had turned down the offer to carry her to Meru. Some had considered it, but they had never flown a human, and they claimed that they didn’t trust their skills to get her there safely.
She walked slow circles around their banyan tree and examined her remaining options: six recent graduates of pilot training, all of them young enough to—in theory—have a functional, human-habitable cavity in their bodies and to have trained in using it. She tried to imagine someone large enough to have a chamber the size of a bedroom inside themselves. That would make the pilots as large as Laghu, the local granary. Constructs could have almost any size, since they were built and not born, but alloys had evolved from human beings. The wombs that gestated them would have to be enormous.
Over time, alloys had expanded their genetic code to include instructions for all kinds of nonhuman features. They carried a third chromosome, dubbed Z, which included the building blocks for their not-so-organic functions like solar-power-generating wings, electrolyzing lungs, emtalk organs, and thamity-sensing organelles. The latter allowed alloys to sense the underlying energy field of the universe and harness it to traverse interplanetary distances. Pilots had an additional special ability, derived in part from their large mass, and that was to sense the quantum probabilistic nature of reality.
In the precompact and early postcompact years, alloy pilots had carried humans from Earth to the Moon and beyond, to the more populous padhrans in orbit between Venus and Earth. Some had ventured farther to study the Sun or the outer planets. That kind of exploration had waned as alloys became more capable and humans less ambitious.
Jayanthi didn’t know of anyone—who wasn’t an alloy—who had traveled beyond the orbital stations. Plenty of entertainment showed alloys flying through space, but none depicted the experience from the point of view of someone like her. She had no idea what it would feel like to surf a thamity gradient or transit reality. Part of her thrilled at the possibility of finding out, but another, buried deep, would be relieved if the MEC denied her the permission to visit Meru. She couldn’t live on water and bhojya. She had no vents to move herself around. In space, she’d be utterly dependent on someone else.
A raindrop landed on her forehead. She gazed up. The sky had clouded over, and thunder rumbled faintly in the distance. A breeze shook the leaves overhead, carrying with it the scent of moisture.
Jayanthi moved inside and stared at the list of her remaining choices for pilots. Top ranked was a recent graduate named Kaliyu. Zir profile showed an image next to statistics about zir flight, towing, and carrying capacities, as well as zir exam scores. Zie looked like a cross between a human, a dolphin, and a fairy, with dark blue-gray skin and silver-black solar wings shaped like leaves. Zie had arms that resembled hers, but without rigid bones, and a nearly human face with stunning hazel eyes. Only the nose differed, being a slit rather than a protrusion. Kaliyu had a confident but friendly expression that attracted Jayanthi. In the abstract, she knew that zir mouth must be larger than her entire body—how else could she enter it?—but the image of zir face scaled in her head to someone who could live next door. Zie was slightly younger than her, easily of an age to be considered a friend.
Might as well start with the best of the rest, she thought. She composed a message and sent her choice to her parents and Hamsa, who would forward it to Kaliyu. She’d tried querying the pilots directly at first, but they hadn’t responded to her messages.
Please let this one say yes.
With that done, she slow-blinked and cleared her vision. Rain dripped along the roots that spread through the exterior walls, dark traces against the lighter clay. Jayanthi shrugged on a shawl, grabbed an umbrella, and set out for her daily walk to Mina’s house.
She stayed on stone surfaces to avoid damaging the wet soil. Lightning traced the rounded peak of Mount Lakash. Soggy vines dangled from the walls of the homes she passed, and rivulets of reddish-brown water ran between the gaps in the flagstone road. Thunder roared above, and an alert flashed unbidden in her vision: Flash-flood danger in your area; please return to your home.
With a sigh, Jayanthi turned back. The rains hadn’t let up for two days, and she missed seeing Mina in person. Her friend had cheered upon hearing Jayanthi’s decision, but Jayanthi knew them well enough to sense their envy, too. Mina had tried valiantly to hide it. Both of them had expected that Mina would leave Earth at some point, but they never dreamed Jayanthi would, especially to such a distant location.
“I wish you could come with me,” Jayanthi had told Mina in full sincerity.
“Do your job well enough, and one day, we’ll get to see Meru together,” Mina had replied. “If you succeed, then Hamsa’s amendment might actually win in the general vote, and then, if the later stages go well, Sahaya Amritsavar will get her way, and humanity will live on a second planet. Besides, I still intend to become a Voice and at least get into orbit. I will see space, one way or another.”
A brilliant flash illuminated the world around Jayanthi as she returned home. The air rent with a vicious crack, and she hurried past the damp privacy curtain. She shook out the umbrella and hung it from a peg.
Kundhina peered around from the kitchen. “I told you not to bother going out in this weather. Come in here and have some tea.”
Jayanthi perched on a squat, three-legged stool and took the warm ceramic mug from her mother. The refreshing aroma of tulsi and ginger rose with the steam.
Jayanthi stared into the amber liquid. “What if all the pilots turn me down?”
Her mother patted her hand. “I’m sure one of the new graduates will say yes. You should have listened to my advice and started at the bottom. Their placement doesn’t mean they’re unskilled, only less experienced.”
“But what if?” she persisted, ignoring her mother’s I-told-you-so.
“Then we’ll find a construct who’s willing and able and hope for the best,” Kundhina said. She spread her hands, palms facing up in a gesture of ambivalence common to humans and alloys. “The MEC is still reviewing Hamsa’s application to let you go. Even if a pilot says yes, the committee could say no.”
Jayanthi grimaced. “Now that I’ve decided that I want to go to Meru, it kills me to think I might not be able to.”
“This is a good, healthy place for you to call home. You can’t measure yourself by the standards of alloys. You don’t see your father or me doing that, right? And we’re happy. Life has as much meaning as you give it.”
And that was the crux of the problem. Her parents had chosen to live on Earth. She hadn’t.
“Perhaps it’s our fault,” Kundhina said. “We thought we could raise a human child, but maybe we weren’t capable enough.”
Jayanthi placed a tea-warmed hand over her mother’s. “Oh, Ma, it’s not that. You’re the best parents—the only ones I could ever want.”
