Descending Road - NO PLACE FOR TEARS TO FALL by Dana W. Paxson

NO PLACE FOR TEARS TO FALL

1560 4D

The smell penetrated him. Color without name, food without taste, touch without texture or temperature, it dripped into him like hot blood falling through sunshine on fresh yellow chrysanthemums.

Drip. Drip. Drops left brilliant trajectories falling slantwise; he stared, his body floating, stared with eyes glued shut, the glue gripping him all over. Drip. The ship. Ship. He stared through glued eyes into memory’s murk. Patches of light flashed; a face vanished before he knew it was there. She’d packed him in and kissed him before the.

Before. The ship. He tried to move, and the dream held him paralyzed, unbreathing, a gasp frozen in his gut. Ah. That was the feeling. He knew that feeling from coming out of cold sleep the last time, while the bullet-arcs of meteor iron slammed through the ship, and he suited and raced to repair damage, the ship’s bots clawing after him, reciting numbers and words. And she — some She, he didn’t know what or who — had put him back in the closet, and kissed him the long kiss, and the fluid had covered him once more.

He was waking up again. The knowledge forced aside the suffocating panic, and made him try again to move. A millimeter at a time, his body began to work. Breathing wasn’t needed yet, he knew; the fluid filling his body’s cavities would give him oxygen for long enough to get him out and suited and into the ship’s corridor. The ship had to be at its destination now; no alarms rang. At last. His work must have saved the ship, his work and Akiko’s. Maybe she was alive now too. Akiko and. His own name was what? He waited; warmth kindled explosions of pain in newly-rediscovered parts of him. Waking up from two degrees Kelvin was a long journey of torment, while inlaid and interlaced layers of chemistry, virology and bacteriology triggered on the incoming warmth, kicking programmed microbes into work, converting preservatives back into functioning human biochemicals.

Finally the fluid began to ebb, not downward, but off away from his body in clumps, chilling patches of skin. The ship was not in gravity, then. Worry rose: another emergency, or were they truly at their destination? He had expected the ship to be under axial spin after the arrival at Zeta Tucanae, or Pué, some divinity name or other, as they were supposed to call it now. Arrival after ten thousand years. Until he knew more, he’d have to suit for vacuum. Shit.

Jeffrey Harkness — that was his name. Akiko called him Jeff, or Jeppo when she laughed at him. He liked to be called Jeff. He shrugged his body, twisted slowly back and forth, pressed knees together, curled and straightened arms and torso. His gut clenched, and both ends of his digestive tract emptied themselves into the tubes attached to him. His kidneys and bladder stabbed him with hot knives; he flushed them out, and groped for the suit in his tiny closet. His eyes would not work yet for another half hour.

At last, freed from the umbilicals, purged and cleaned and fully dressed for vacuum, he cracked open the closet door and peered outside, his eyes still thick with glaucous bioantifreeze. The heavy steel door hissed sharply, the hiss fading — yes, no pressure out there — and he pushed it aside and stared into blackness.

The slow bonging of his heart, the rush of blood in his ears, and nothing else. The ship still slept. His spirits sank. If this was no emergency, and no arrival, what was it? Was this a false call, so he’d have to go back into the closet for another five thousand years or so?

Anger came up in him. This was worse than unfair. Most of the sleepers hadn’t drawn repair duty, so they’d had regular cribs that only opened at the end of the trip. No terrifying awakenings to gongs and explosions, bots arrowing through the ship, screams of other workers burning in their suits from aftercollisions with tiny missiles, deadly pain and chill and panic. He’d survived all that, twice, and now here he was, awake with no one to greet him, no one to touch him, no voice, no eyes for his eyes, no place for tears to fall.

This dark, silent moment staring into emptiness: hunger and isolation. He floated out into the corridor, flicking on his helmet lamp with a finger at his temple, and listened again, turning his head slowly to look back and forth.

The corridor was two meters wide by two meters high. Gleams of light shining back at him sketched the outlines and shiny spots on various bots and droids hanging damaged and inanimate in the gloom. These were the ship’s simplest line of defense, maintenance and repair; by now they had spent their last bits of mechanical spirit.

Jeff moved out along the corridor. He couldn’t remember whether he was headed forward or aft, but it didn’t yet matter. His suit would keep him going for a full cycle of 24 hours, and he would find some sources of replenishment. The markings on the corridor walls and floors meant nothing to him, not yet; the patchwork dyslexia of cold sleep would fade just the way it had the last time.

He wanted to know where everyone was; maybe they were in another active part of the ship, maybe in the bays where the lander was to be built. That made sense. One of the symbols he saw on the wall raised a meaning: aft. He was headed aft. That’s where the bays were.

If only everything wasn’t so silent. Jeff stopped every few minutes to listen, to feel the walls for vibration, but no sound came except the echoes from within his own body. His suit comm carried only the ancient hiss of space. As he moved, his apprehension increased. This just didn’t make sense.

He passed a gaping rent in the corridor wall, where a tiny ball of iron traveling at many kilometers per second had crashed through several layers of the ship. The bots had fixed the ship’s armored outer skin but had left the corridor unrepaired, letting him see now the blackened shell of a sleep chamber where several bodies were now nothing but char on the walls.

“Jeffrey Harkness? I’m glad to find you awake.” The voice stabbed into the quiet darkness, and Jeff‘s body jerked in surprise. It was a female voice, a clear alto, with tones of delight in its words. Jeff wanted to believe it was Akiko, but her voice was much softer and higher, with a Sinese cadence. This woman’s rhythms rang very Western, even Old American. When Jeff had left Earth, back in 2417, American accents and speech patterns had for the most part been combined with a varied flood of Latin, Russian, and African styles.

“Who are you?” Jeff asked. “What’s happening now?”

“Call me Dree. You’ve been asleep for a long time. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

“How long a time? Is the trip over? Where are you?”

“One thing at a time. If you want to meet me, keep coming aft and find a cross corridor with zero two seven at the end of its number. Follow the red arrows. You’ll find me there.”

Jeff kicked a wall rung and caromed down the corridor, getting his coordination back with each missed rung and each bruise when he hit the walls. He was grateful for the lack of gravity; walking while trying to regain strength would be harder than this.

The red arrows ended at a large circular door with a long lever handle across its center. He braced himself and drew the lever aside; the door opened into a catacomb of narrow lanes among many objects sticking out from crazy angles. A few lights gleamed fitful color pinpoints; his helmet lamp cast twisting shadows as he moved cautiously into the confining maze.

“Where are you?” Jeff‘s lamp reflected blazes and sparkles from polished steel trunks and limbs; the shapes snapped into focus as parts of humanoid metal bodies. A male face stared emptily past him. These had been sentines.

“A little further. Good. Now look to your left and find the blue light.”

A tiny pinprick of deep blue-violet drew Jeff.

“That’s it. Now move that bot aside. Good. Here I am.”

A pale woman’s face smiled gently at Jeff, and he pushed himself close to her, shoving aside inanimate droid limbs, letting their bodies cartwheel, bounce and clash against each other, fetch up farther off. He wanted to throw his arms around her and hug her, ask her a thousand questions, sit beside her…

“You’re Dree?” He kept his helmet close to her face. Her hair was blond, tied back in a soft bun. Her eyes were a deep brown. She wasn’t wearing a vacuum suit, but she was moving: a sentine or a halfdroid.

“Yes, Jeffrey.”

“Why are you in here? Why is everything else dark? Wait, are you a droid?” His questions tripped over each other.

“Jeffrey–“

“Call me Jeff. What is going on here?”

“Jeff, I’m here to take you home.”

“Home? You mean Earth? Or what?” His head was spinning.

“No. I mean Tarnus. You know it as Opo Bira Lima.”

Opo Bira Lima! That was the name of the planet they were supposed to find circling Zeta Tucanae. So they’d arrived. Jeff asked, “Where is everybody? Did they forget me and leave the ship?”

Dree was silent for a moment. Then she said, her face serious, “We are in orbit around Tarnus. The ship has been in orbit here for over ten thousand years. You have been in cold sleep here for fifteen thousand years, ever since you completed your last repair mission, when the ship passed through Baba Yaga’s Field.” She frowned.

Fear and anger boiled up in Jeff‘s belly. “They left me here and took the lander? How am I supposed to get off this ship now? Why in hell would they leave me?” He wrenched himself free and stared around, his lamp sending shattered rays of light ricocheting back and forth.

“They thought you were among the dead. Your sleep module reported you dead, and they couldn’t take the time and energy to investigate further.”

“Oh? Why not? There was time! There had to be!”

“No. There was no time. Most of them had died in cold sleep. The few survivors were fighting for their lives. Out of thousands, only six hundred actually woke up.” A look of pain crossed Dree‘s face. The rest are still here, in the sleep that killed them.”

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	NO PLACE FOR TEARS TO FALL 1560 4D The smell penetrated him. Color without name, food without taste, touch without texture or temperature, it dripped into him like hot blood falling through sunshine on fresh yellow chrysanthemums. Drip. Drip. Drops left brilliant trajectories falling slantwise; he stared, his body floating, stared with eyes glued shut, the glue gripping him all over. Drip. The ship. Ship. He stared through glued eyes into memory’s murk. Patches of light flashed; a face vanished before he knew it was there. She’d packed him in and kissed him before the. Before. The ship. He tried to move, and the dream held him paralyzed, unbreathing, a gasp frozen in his gut. Ah. That was the feeling. He knew that feeling from coming out of cold sleep the last time, while the bullet-arcs of meteor iron slammed through the ship, and he suited and raced to repair damage, the ship’s bots clawing after him, reciting numbers and words. And she — some She, he didn’t know what or who — had put him back in the closet, and kissed him the long kiss, and the fluid had covered him once more. He was waking up again. The knowledge forced aside the suffocating panic, and made him try again to move. A millimeter at a time, his body began to work. Breathing wasn’t needed yet, he knew; the fluid filling his body’s cavities would give him oxygen for long enough to get him out and suited and into the ship’s corridor. The ship had to be at its destination now; no alarms rang. At last. His work must have saved the ship, his work and Akiko’s. Maybe she was alive now too. Akiko and. His own name was what? He waited; warmth kindled explosions of pain in newly-rediscovered parts of him. Waking up from two degrees Kelvin was a long journey of torment, while inlaid and interlaced layers of chemistry, virology and bacteriology triggered on the incoming warmth, kicking programmed microbes into work, converting preservatives back into functioning human biochemicals. Finally the fluid began to ebb, not downward, but off away from his body in clumps, chilling patches of skin. The ship was not in gravity, then. Worry rose: another emergency, or were they truly at their destination? He had expected the ship to be under axial spin after the arrival at Zeta Tucanae, or Pué, some divinity name or other, as they were supposed to call it now. Arrival after ten thousand years. Until he knew more, he’d have to suit for vacuum. Shit. Jeffrey Harkness — that was his name. Akiko called him Jeff, or Jeppo when she laughed at him. He liked to be called Jeff. He shrugged his body, twisted slowly back and forth, pressed knees together, curled and straightened arms and torso. His gut clenched, and both ends of his digestive tract emptied themselves into the tubes attached to him. His kidneys and bladder stabbed him with hot knives; he flushed them out, and groped for the suit in his tiny closet. His eyes would not work yet for another half hour. At last, freed from the umbilicals, purged and cleaned and fully dressed for vacuum, he cracked open the closet door and peered outside, his eyes still thick with glaucous bioantifreeze. The heavy steel door hissed sharply, the hiss fading — yes, no pressure out there — and he pushed it aside and stared into blackness. The slow bonging of his heart, the rush of blood in his ears, and nothing else. The ship still slept. His spirits sank. If this was no emergency, and no arrival, what was it? Was this a false call, so he’d have to go back into the closet for another five thousand years or so? Anger came up in him. This was worse than unfair. Most of the sleepers hadn’t drawn repair duty, so they’d had regular cribs that only opened at the end of the trip. No terrifying awakenings to gongs and explosions, bots arrowing through the ship, screams of other workers burning in their suits from aftercollisions with tiny missiles, deadly pain and chill and panic. He’d survived all that, twice, and now here he was, awake with no one to greet him, no one to touch him, no voice, no eyes for his eyes, no place for tears to fall. This dark, silent moment staring into emptiness: hunger and isolation. He floated out into the corridor, flicking on his helmet lamp with a finger at his temple, and listened again, turning his head slowly to look back and forth. The corridor was two meters wide by two meters high. Gleams of light shining back at him sketched the outlines and shiny spots on various bots and droids hanging damaged and inanimate in the gloom. These were the ship’s simplest line of defense, maintenance and repair; by now they had spent their last bits of mechanical spirit. Jeff moved out along the corridor. He couldn’t remember whether he was headed forward or aft, but it didn’t yet matter. His suit would keep him going for a full cycle of 24 hours, and he would find some sources of replenishment. The markings on the corridor walls and floors meant nothing to him, not yet; the patchwork dyslexia of cold sleep would fade just the way it had the last time. He wanted to know where everyone was; maybe they were in another active part of the ship, maybe in the bays where the lander was to be built. That made sense. One of the symbols he saw on the wall raised a meaning: aft. He was headed aft. That’s where the bays were. If only everything wasn’t so silent. Jeff stopped every few minutes to listen, to feel the walls for vibration, but no sound came except the echoes from within his own body. His suit comm carried only the ancient hiss of space. As he moved, his apprehension increased. This just didn’t make sense. He passed a gaping rent in the corridor wall, where a tiny ball of iron traveling at many kilometers per second had crashed through several layers of the ship. The bots had fixed the ship’s armored outer skin but had left the corridor unrepaired, letting him see now the blackened shell of a sleep chamber where several bodies were now nothing but char on the walls. “Jeffrey Harkness? I’m glad to find you awake.” The voice stabbed into the quiet darkness, and Jeff‘s body jerked in surprise. It was a female voice, a clear alto, with tones of delight in its words. Jeff wanted to believe it was Akiko, but her voice was much softer and higher, with a Sinese cadence. This woman’s rhythms rang very Western, even Old American. When Jeff had left Earth, back in 2417, American accents and speech patterns had for the most part been combined with a varied flood of Latin, Russian, and African styles. “Who are you?” Jeff asked. “What’s happening now?” “Call me Dree. You’ve been asleep for a long time. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.” “How long a time? Is the trip over? Where are you?” “One thing at a time. If you want to meet me, keep coming aft and find a cross corridor with zero two seven at the end of its number. Follow the red arrows. You’ll find me there.” Jeff kicked a wall rung and caromed down the corridor, getting his coordination back with each missed rung and each bruise when he hit the walls. He was grateful for the lack of gravity; walking while trying to regain strength would be harder than this. The red arrows ended at a large circular door with a long lever handle across its center. He braced himself and drew the lever aside; the door opened into a catacomb of narrow lanes among many objects sticking out from crazy angles. A few lights gleamed fitful color pinpoints; his helmet lamp cast twisting shadows as he moved cautiously into the confining maze. “Where are you?” Jeff‘s lamp reflected blazes and sparkles from polished steel trunks and limbs; the shapes snapped into focus as parts of humanoid metal bodies. A male face stared emptily past him. These had been sentines. “A little further. Good. Now look to your left and find the blue light.” A tiny pinprick of deep blue-violet drew Jeff. “That’s it. Now move that bot aside. Good. Here I am.” A pale woman’s face smiled gently at Jeff, and he pushed himself close to her, shoving aside inanimate droid limbs, letting their bodies cartwheel, bounce and clash against each other, fetch up farther off. He wanted to throw his arms around her and hug her, ask her a thousand questions, sit beside her… “You’re Dree?” He kept his helmet close to her face. Her hair was blond, tied back in a soft bun. Her eyes were a deep brown. She wasn’t wearing a vacuum suit, but she was moving: a sentine or a halfdroid. “Yes, Jeffrey.” “Why are you in here? Why is everything else dark? Wait, are you a droid?” His questions tripped over each other. “Jeffrey–“ “Call me Jeff. What is going on here?” “Jeff, I’m here to take you home.” “Home? You mean Earth? Or what?” His head was spinning. “No. I mean Tarnus. You know it as Opo Bira Lima.” Opo Bira Lima! That was the name of the planet they were supposed to find circling Zeta Tucanae. So they’d arrived. Jeff asked, “Where is everybody? Did they forget me and leave the ship?” Dree was silent for a moment. Then she said, her face serious, “We are in orbit around Tarnus. The ship has been in orbit here for over ten thousand years. You have been in cold sleep here for fifteen thousand years, ever since you completed your last repair mission, when the ship passed through Baba Yaga’s Field.” She frowned. Fear and anger boiled up in Jeff‘s belly. “They left me here and took the lander? How am I supposed to get off this ship now? Why in hell would they leave me?” He wrenched himself free and stared around, his lamp sending shattered rays of light ricocheting back and forth. “They thought you were among the dead. Your sleep module reported you dead, and they couldn’t take the time and energy to investigate further.” “Oh? Why not? There was time! There had to be!” “No. There was no time. Most of them had died in cold sleep. The few survivors were fighting for their lives. Out of thousands, only six hundred actually woke up.” A look of pain crossed Dree‘s face. The rest are still here, in the sleep that killed them.”