Chapter 1: On Call
Bean mostly liked his job. There were sad days, of course, but even those made his heart race. Rain, though, was not his favorite. Rain itself was fine, but he didn’t like having muddy feet. It wasn’t fair of Hadley to call for him on a rainy day.
Still, the rain did make an interesting sound in the elevator shaft. The deep, echoing hiss made Bean feel like he was rising, which, of course, he was.
The moist, cool air falling down to meet him carried interesting smells, too—soil, leaves, something rotting nicely. Petrichor, he thought, geosmin from Streptomyces, but he didn’t need the words right now. He let them go.
The ceiling gave way to a canopy of spreading oak and ash and the gray cloud layer far beyond. There was a chilly, steady breeze. Bean began to run.
He wasn’t really in a hurry, but there was no reason not to hurry. It felt good. His accelerating blood swept the lingering cobwebs from his muscles and unnecessary thoughts from his mind. He had been too asleep, then too awake. Now he grew more simply and comfortably present.
He leapt a fallen log, noting in passing that it had rooted too shallowly on the steep hillside down which he raced. Not important, in itself.
A shallow gorge divided the base of one hill from the rise of the next. Rain-pocked mud puddles slowly spread in the low ground. Bean leapt this, too, plunging through the low cherry laurel lining the far side. The torn leaves smelled like almonds, which he liked. He saw the racemes starting to form, sensed the metabolic effort that would soon bring forth flower buds. Sometimes he pretended he could hear buds ticking like clocks.
Bean wasn’t entirely sure where he was but he knew his elevation was too high. He followed his nose along the little gorge as it wound downward, sharing its travelog.
He found a wide, drooping spruce. Instead of going around, he squirmed under its sagging skirts. It was dark and pleasantly dry.
He jumped along a descending series of rocks. No muddy feet for Bean today! he thought. At least, not yet.
He enjoyed the exciting moment when he startled a covey of quail. He said hello to some fat fish lazing at the edge of a little, kidney-shaped pond. The surface was a mass of ripples, but he could see himself. His chin looked so much grayer than he remembered. The water seemed too turbid, too, and a little too warm. He would remember to check that.
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From the top of the next rise he spotted the neat, straight line of the elevated track. It pointed like an arrow, balanced on elegantly arched trestles that spanned the undulating hills. The woods parted above it just enough.
Bean trotted up wide, shallow stairs of brown brick, into a neat, open-sided building at the top of a sculpted hill. He shook away the rain.
He expected to find a car waiting but the track stood empty.
Hadley, what are you waiting for? he thought. I’m awake. I’m here.
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He went back out and made a quick circuit of the hill, ducking through the tunnel that pierced it like a doughnut hole. Nothing seemed obviously out of place. Nobody was there. It was likely nobody had ever been there.
A faint vibration traveled up from Bean’s feet, brushing at the underside of his contemplation. The car—white, oblong, clean to the point of being nearly featureless—quietly emerged from the forest and glided up the track, sending down twirls of falling leaves. It coasted to a halt in the station above. Bean bounded back up the stairs.
There was no one in it, of course, though there were seats for eight. He sat all the way at the front. From this side the walls were transparent and he watched all around with interest as the car gently accelerated. Raindrops burst against the curved nose and radiated back in ghostly trails along the walls. Tree trunks marched past, sometimes only a little faster than Bean could run, but in stretches where the woods were thinner and potential obstructions fewer, the speed made the view a blur.
The vibration was faint but soothing and the acceleration forces were like being gently rocked to sleep. Bean curled deeper in the cushions. He wasn’t really tired after his long sleep, but he was bored and comfortable. He dozed.
Instinct woke him, or perhaps there was a chime, but maybe not an audible one. He had slept for a while, at least long enough to need to stretch. He sprawled on the soft floor and looked up at a brighter sky. The rain had stopped and the clouds were now thick, white sausages hanging against a distant, luminous blue.
Bean wished he had some sausages.
The countryside was rolling green hills, flying past too quickly to show detail. There were occasional hints of buildings, or the construction sites of buildings, and twice the car howled through empty stations. Directly ahead at an uncertain distance a stark line rose. It passed the sausage clouds, touched the sky, and dissolved into the blue brightness. It seemed to curve toward him but never climbed overhead. Bean knew it went straight up for several kilometers and the apparent curve was a trick of optics, but it still made him want to duck.
The car crested a rise and then started a long, downward grade toward a cluster of large buildings of interesting shapes. Bean thought they looked like a jumble of toys tossed from a box, with the sky-scraper rising from among them. Train tracks went around, as well as through. Don’t go around, Bean thought. Go in, and stop for food.
The car slowed, turned through several junctions, and came to rest in a gallery. The ceiling arched far overhead, hung with rows of long, colorful tapestries. The broad court was paved in dark, glossy hexagons and ringed by bubbling fountains. It smelled fresh and very clean, but it wasn’t to Bean’s taste. It could accommodate a milling crowd of thousands but they weren’t here now.
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He found a lovely restaurant, with tables overhung by spreading trees and warm lamps, but it wasn’t finished yet. A variety of things Bean thought of as beep-beeps labored there, installing equipment. He considered chasing them around for a while, just for fun, but really beep-beeps were never much fun. They could be clever and evasive, but if you caught them, they just stopped. They were joyless. Another kind of beep-beep crawled by, eradicating dust. Bean stalked it for a while, until it stopped to clean the lobby of a theater. The big holos of ocean diving looked interesting, but he was hungry. He turned back to the mall.
He couldn’t find any sausages but he did eventually find burgers. They were the ready-made kind, from a dispenser, juicy and sloppy. He had eaten six of them when another railcar glided into the nearby mini-station.
Okay, Hadley, I’m coming. No need to hurry me.
The car sped away from the mall and the sky-scraper, and the track sank down into the ground. A tunnel howled around him for a few moments, but then the outside air was gone and the car was almost silent. The tunnel was pitch-black but the car interior was lit softly.
This would be a longer trip and Bean slept again. He was awakened this time by his queasy stomach. He burped faint burger fumes and his head swam. He felt like he was losing his grip on his seat. He shook off the feeling and jumped to his feet. He fell so slowly he had enough time to adjust his stance before he reached the floor. She’s in the highlands, he thought.
A few minutes later he arrived at a station outside a large, open-air sports arena. Plants with thick, succulent stalks and wide, waxy leaves stood big in pots and reached ten meters into the air. A fountain burped up fat globules of water that wobbled slowly back down and splashed as crown-like rings.
Bean bounded down the bleachers, enjoying the feeling of being so light. He took a few spills, but it was easy to roll out of them. Low gravity always took some getting used to and he was out of practice. He got to the bottom of the bleachers and was jumping along the edge of the playing field when he saw Hadley. Laying in the center of the field, her nose in the air.
This field was something of a sore spot for Bean. The shift in gravity made it difficult for grass roots to develop, and demanded the use of subsurface irrigation. As a result, the whole system was much more fragile and much more of a pain to fix. This alone is stressful; however, Bean also spent months cultivating a species of grass that would grow here, because an administrator insisted on live grass for the outdoor arenas. Why, Bean asked, when it would be largely ornamental, would require constant upkeep, and would be a monstrously difficult task only achievable with a few rare plants hand-picked from other planets? He never got an answer. He learned not to ask.
If Hadley wasn’t dead then Bean may be tempted to strangle her.
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But he had never seen her this still. Hadley's fanatic workflow could outpace any drone in the habitat-- often bouncing from screen to screen, punctuating bullet-point responses with long tangents into whatever aroused her curiosity that day.
He approached slowly, until he nearly towered above her. She remained uncharacteristically aloof, her eyes fixated on the clouds.
"...Hadley?" Bean whispered, with wavering uncertainty.
"My legs are broken." Her gaze was still towards the clouds. No hint of pain in her voice.
Bean froze. His mind retreated, until a jolt of panic awoke some memory of first aid training. He knelt down, carefully rolled up her utility pants, and assessed the damage. The bruised flesh shone through Hadley's white fur. The swelling was severe, possibly effusion. But there were no exposed bones, no excessive bleeding, and no signs of an infection. Lucky break, Bean thought.
Hadley continued. "I was investigating an abnormality in one of the weather routines-- specifically the drop in atmospheric pressure that initiates cyclogenesis, cyclogenesis being the processes that create cyclones-- and I got caught in a jetstream and was thrown away from the controls. I need to get back there and reset the program before things start to get… tricky." Bean briefly entertained the thought of Hadley rocketing across the sky, like a shooting star or (more aptly) a crashing ship. He shook the vision away. Immobilize the injured area. Limit swelling. Reduce pain. He retrieved the medical kit from his uniform pouch.
Hadley misinterpreted Bean’s silence for confusion. “So, I need to get back…"
"Where're your assistants?" Bean asked.
"Agnes and Denise are still up there, running predictive models. Paula is currently raiding pharmacies for painkillers." Bean shot Hadley a look, which she returned with a broad smile and the reveal of a small bottle. He tightened the splint around her left leg, and moved onto the right.
“I need you to take me to climate systems. We can use your ship to maneuver around the storm, then I can calm it down. Easy peasy.”
“You should rest. Can’t you get Bigby to fix it?”
“Bigby?” Hadley sneered, as if Bean himself had broken her legs. She gathered spit at the bottom of her throat, and purred out, “‘OPERATOR PERSIC, AT THIS MOMENT I AM DIVERTING 3.8 BILLION LITRES OF WATER TOWARDS THE REACTORS, WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANAGING 10,000 AUTOMATED MACHINES, AS WELL AS NEARLY 3,000 HECTARES OF FARMLAND, IN ADDITION TO MY COUNTLESS OTHER TASKS.’” It was a crude, albeit faithful impression. “Bigby won't fix this.”
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“Well, my ship’s at home. I don’t leave it by the freezer,” said Bean, unable to hide his disdain for The Freezer. Its slick, swallowing walls, its faint gurgling, its heavy atmosphere, and its many, many ribbed pipes would beckon him at the end of the season. The quills on his back tensed up.
“Well, then just call it over,” Hadley said, with equally cold indifference.
He finished the splint on her right leg, then stepped back to evaluate his handiwork. Hadley was playing with her wrist-arm-computer-thingy. “It’s not on. I don’t leave it on while I’m asleep. We’ll have to stop by my house first,” Bean replied.
They made their way out of the colosseum, with Hadley piggybacked over Bean’s shoulders. "Are you sure you can carry me the whole way," said Haldey. "I could lend you some salts, if that would help." Bean dismissed the concern, not wanting to validate it with a response. She wasn't particularly light, but he didn't mind the extra weight; he was unusually tall for a Kufrata, and often carried boulders, tree logs, branch cuttings, and other debris in his day-to-day. This felt no different. The train sped them out of the city and towards a large blanket of fog, freshwater, and wooded marsh. Lake Heibenfrata— ‘of second kin’. Bean knew that it mirrored a lake on their homeworld, but he’d never seen the original. Hadley, noticing the cloud formations, took the opportunity to talk about her work in great detail. She described the interaction between the energy and climate systems, and how she managed pressure differentials by maneuvering heat and water through a labyrinth of pipes. She described the use of various subsurface lights to mimic rainbows and auroras, which, she emphasized, was necessary to "complete the scene". She described how warm sunshine brought peace, how crisp air brought longing, how white clouds brought introspection.
It was already nightfall by the time the train stopped. They arrived at the valley town of Rhysinfarne, which followed a tributary from the woodland to the lake. Its cottages peaked out of the terraced hills, connected by a series of winding streets and artisan bridges. Each structure was a beautiful marriage of wood and brick and ashlar, with iridescent glazes that made their reflections dance in the wet streets. The buildings were still empty, but the intricate patterns, blooming lattices, and weeping allées created the illusion of a vibrant town. No smart-fabric, no easiup, and no concrete — nothing to remind residents of their wholly fabricated world. It was Bean's favorite location in the habitat.
The two agreed to rest for the night, finding a cafe with enough furniture for impromptu beds. Bean's home was only a few kilometers into the woods, but it was well-hidden. The path was treacherous to inexperienced hikers. As he lay there, curled up on a mound of chair pillows, he imagined the sorts of people who would live in Rhysinfarne. He envisioned a florist, who'd walk from the nursery each morning with baskets full of peonies and daffodils and lilacs. The owner of the cafe would pick up some arrangements, to fill the narrow, glass vases along the tables, and then begin their morning routine. Soon couples would enter, summoned by the aroma of spiced bread and fresh flowers, and sit in the same chairs that now cushioned Bean and Hadley. The rain tapped incessantly on the shingled roof, interrupting Bean's dream. Tomorrow, he thought, would have muddy feet.
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