He looked at the gondola, with its crown lines hanging over the side, and shook his head. "You're quite mad, you know," he told the man climbing into it. "You'll freeze to death. Or crash."
Phillippe de Coutreau grinned at Montpelier as he made his preflight checks. "Gloomy talk from a descendant of a family renowned for its pioneering in ballooning."
"I keep telling you, those were the Montgolfiers, not Montpeliers."
"Yes, well, you know this has to be done. It's been two local years since we arrived, and we still don't have fast overland transport."
"That's because every light craft we've launched has failed to get more than a dozen kilometers before being forced down by weather. What makes you think a balloon will succeed where heavier craft failed?"
De Coutreau tested the tension on one of the load cables that attached the gondola to the envelope. "Call it a hunch, Gerard. All the survey craft we sent down before the colony ship landed were aerostatic devices. They seemed to have no trouble accomplishing their missions. I think Centauri's atmosphere magnifies turbulence somehow. Aerostats are less obstructive to wind flow, so there's less turbulence to magnify."
"Tell that to Langley."
De Coutreau paused, frowning. Langley had been his partner in this venture. They had worked together for nearly eight local months to prepare for the first flight, arguing nearly non-stop from the beginning. Langley refused to believe that anything but a powered flight vehicle would do, and had outfitted his balloon with propellers to speed its track. His closed-gondola balloon broke up in mid-air and crashed less than five kilometers from launch.
"The investigators said Langley didn't properly check his load tapes. It was a stupid mistake," de Coutreau reminded him.
"One that cost him his life," Montpelier pointed out.
"It was the only accident he ever had in over three thousand flights," de Coutreau bristled.
"It only takes one."
De Coutreau went back to his checks and tried to ignore that comment. "Gerard, I appreciate your concern, but I have a job to do. With all the arable land on Earth barren, they depend on us and colonies like us. Centauri has immense potential to be a rich agricultural resource, but we need a better way to transport the produce from the farms to the spaceport." He picked up the flight log and thumbed it on. "You would think after all these years we would have come up with a better way to preserve perishables than simple freezing," he said absently.
Montpelier watched as his friend finished the preflight and made entries into the flight log. He couldn't help thinking how similar Langley and de Coutreau were in their determination to die. "You sure you won't reconsider?"
"Let's get started, shall we?"
Montpelier waved helplessly. "Just be careful."
De Coutreau managed a smile. "I will. Thanks."
The balloon slipped from its moorings at Montpelier's signal and began its silent rise.
"Good luck," he whispered at the retreating globe.
"Spirit of the Winds" gained altitude rapidly in the cool spring air. Centauri's environment was nearly identical to Earth's, with four seasons of three local months each, though a local month was slightly longer than the standard thirty Earth days. Rainy seasons occurred in early spring and fall, giving two growing periods. Crops designed to take advantage of the nutrient-rich virgin soil flourished nearly the entire year. Great care was taken not to leach the soil too badly and crop rotation ensured extended lifetimes for the heavily planted farms.
When humans had landed on Centauri two local years earlier, they had been confident of their colony's success, using methods that had established dozens of other colonies in nearby systems. Almost immediately things had gone wrong, most significantly the weather. Conventional aircraft found the vagaries of Centauri skies too dangerous. Stiff winds turned back on themselves with frightening severity, causing heavy shear that had broken more than one light craft to bits. Turbulence generated by the uneven terrain and the erratic winds was enough to make the boldest pilot stop and think it might be best to walk.
None of the preliminary surveys had prepared them for the winds and storms, the earth movements and flash floods. Doggedly, they held on, lured by the lushness of the available lands and its promise of good farming. People on Earth were starving; the planet's arable land having long since played out. More than just Centauri colony's future could benefit from his flight.
"Spirit" was designed specifically by de Coutreau for the thick Centauri atmosphere. He had argued with Langley about the propellers on the other man's balloon, maintaining that the turbines on the small aircraft caused the turbulence that led to their doom. Langley had insisted that the props were necessary to control the course, saying that the vehicle would be useless if it were totally at the mercy of the wind currents. It wouldn't be dependable enough to be viable, and the colony needed a dependable method of moving material and supplies rapidly in order to survive. All he had to do was make it to the settlement sixty-five kilometers away. Even if he got within five kilometers, he could claim success.
He leaned over the edge of his open basket and looked down at the checkered landscape below. Farms ran hard against one another with tiny access roads and irrigation channels grudgingly given space. Several hundred light years away, many Terrans were eating Centauri-grown grain, legumes, and tubers imported at enormous expense across the emptiness of the void by obscenely wealthy food conglomerates. Those who could not afford fresh food were left with synthetics and home-grown vegetables, stunted and warped from trying to grow in nearly sterile soil. De Coutreau had read in a history account that over five hundred standard years ago Earth had been as lush as Centauri, perhaps even more so. It must have been marvelous to see these green fields against the deep blue of Earth's oceans.
The quiet was what struck him each time he flew. The balloon floated with the air currents, so there was little relative wind inside the gondola. The higher he went the less ground noise reached him. Soon, there was a calm peace, infrequently broken by the crackling of the load cables or the clicking of an instrument relay.
He checked the thermometer. Six degrees and falling. He reached into a basket and took out an insulated flight suit. Once he had donned it, he felt much better; warmer and more secure. He sat down in front of his computer station to take a bearing on his position. If his calculations were correct, "Spirit" should arrive at her target within an hour. Below him, the landscape, turned rugged and broken, sped by. Some day roads might cut through those hills, but for now he was alone in the sky and saw little below him to keep him company. He knew Montpelier was down there in a pursuit vehicle stocked with medical supplies and emergency equipment. Still, the emptiness of the panorama and the silence sent a chill of loneliness through him. He shook off the feeling and completed his bearings. Picking up the flight log, he glanced at his chronometer.
There was a groaning nearby. He stopped; stylus poised, and listened. When it didn't repeat, he passed it off as the rigging or the gondola's weight shifting in the wind and finished his log entry. He set the log back in its cradle by the navigation computer and turned to check his instruments.
The groan came again. He cast around, trying to locate it, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe it was the rigging, he thought. He set about testing the lines and examining their anchors.
A boom sounded right next to him and, startled, he shouted, slapping a hand to the ear. It rang painfully and his hand came away bloody.
"What the hell?" he said, his voice muted and oddly toned to his own ears. He spun about, but nothing seemed out of order. A deep ache began on the right side of his head. "Great," he thought, "my eardrum's busted." He absently regarded his bloody hand. Wiping it on his shirtsleeve, he reached for the first aid kit. He was vaguely aware he could be in shock, but decided against calling Montpelier. "Give me a couple of minutes to get my head together," he thought. "I'll be fine."
Something brushed across his back. He twirled, holding the first aid kit out like a shield.
Nothing.
"What the hell is going on?" he said aloud, then caught the note of rising panic in his voice. "Get a grip," he chastised himself. "It was just the wind."
He felt pressure across his forehead, more like a hand brushing it than the wind. Carefully, he lifted his own hand to touch the spot. The skin was clammy and cool.
"I must be in shock," he reasoned. "And hallucinating."
He noticed the rigging shivering in the wind and suddenly he was not alone.
It had no definite shape beyond that of a column of smoke that refused to be dispersed by the wind, suddenly tearing through the gondola. The smoke boiled and rolled within the column, a grayish mass hanging a few centimeters off the gondola floor. De Coutreau rubbed his eyes to be sure he wasn't seeing things. The column hung near the gondola's center. Cautiously, he approached it and peered into the smoke, trying to make out what might be inside.
The column abruptly swelled and he was engulfed.
Montpelier had momentarily lost sight of "Spirit" during a detour around a particularly large rock outcropping that had seemed to come out of nowhere. By the time he relocated the balloon, he could tell something was seriously wrong. "Spirit" was descending rapidly and would surely crash if de Coutreau didn't compensate soon. Cursing, he urged the pursuit vehicle faster, keeping one eye on the balloon and the other on the uneven ground.
"Spirit" dropped behind a line of rocks. A fireball blossomed followed in a second or so by the sound of an explosion. Montpelier's heart sank as he sped toward the site. He reached for the communicator and keyed in the emergency frequency. He finished the code as he reached the wreckage.
There wasn't much left of "Spirit". The globe was burned completely away, as was most of the rigging. The gondola lay shattered and flaming, its equipment sprayed haphazardly along the path of the crash. There was only one piece missing.
De Coutreau was gone.
Weightlessness.
He realized he must have been unconscious because he was just now becoming aware of who and where he was. De Coutreau tried to raise his hand to scratch his nose, but there was no response to his mental command. But then, come to think of it, he couldn't see his nose anyway, so trying to scratch it would have been useless. He tried to ignore the itch by turning his attention to figuring out where he was.
He was suspended in a gray nothingness. There were no landmarks, no land to mark. The sensation was odd but strangely not frightening. Part of his lack of concern could have been attributed to his aching head, but the major reason was that he realized there was little if nothing he could do to change the situation. He resigned himself to seeing this through and hoped the opportunity to make a little more sense out of it would come about soon.
A voice, soft and sibilant, came to him not through his ears but through his mind. He recognized it as a shadow of his own voice, similar but vaguely different.
"Listen," it said. "Listen."
He tilted his head, or at least would have if he had one. The voice was nearly inaudible, little more than a breath or a breeze.
"Listen."
"I hear you," he said, startling himself. His voice was a shout to its whisper.
There was a long pause, as if his answer had surprised the speaker just as much. Then a sequence of images flit across his mind's eye. There were pictures of the first colony ship landing, light aircraft flying, ground vehicles, and finally his own balloon. Behind these images was a confusion, a wondering feeling. He came to understand the images were a question, a way of asking, "What's this? And this? And this?"
De Coutreau stopped wondering how it was possible he should be talking to himself and how the pictures impressed themselves on him. He accepted someone or something was trying to communicate, and that was probably going to be the only way he could get home.
The scenes repeated and this time he made an effort to name each thing before the next one flashed by. The pictures slowed in their sequence and he tried to augment the labels with a brief description. The images slowed further, then restarted. They became sharper, more detailed and better defined as he kept up his monologue. How long this went on, he didn't know. He had no reference point on which to judge.
Finally, he was again alone in the gray, featureless ether. Unable to do otherwise, he waited. After a while, he lost all sense of time. He might have slept. In fact, the whole thing might have been a dream or an hallucination brought on by apoxia. Could there have been a fault in his suit? It would explain a great deal. If he was apoxic, the balloon could run out of control and crash. The thought made him uncomfortable but not afraid. He tried to awaken, but, never actually having tried to wake in the past, he found it difficult. And how would he know he was awake if it worked? Would he remember to note the fact once back in the waking world?
This time the voice was one he knew but never expected to hear.
"Hello, Phillippe."
"Langley?"
"That's right, Jules Langley."
"But you're dead. I went to your funeral."
"Did you see a body?"
"Well, no. They told us your body was destroyed in the fire."
"They were wrong."
De Coutreau chewed on that for a second. "Where are we?" he asked at last.
"Best I can tell, we're nowhere."
"You've been here since the accident?"
Langley's voice sounded amused. "Didn't know I'd had one until just now."
"What?"
"Until you showed up, I'd been in a kind of limbo. I can't see you, but I can hear you. I can't see anything, really. Just a gray nothing."
De Coutreau would have nodded. "Same here. What was the last thing you remember?"
"Heavy smoke in the gondola. Blocked my vision and got into the instruments."
"Fire?"
"No --- it wasn't thick and it filled the gondola but wasn't suffocating or noxious."
De Coutreau described the column he'd seen in his own balloon. "Was it like that?"
"Couldn't tell. I must have been inside it."
"Was there any sound associated with it? A booming noise?"
"Actually," Langley said after a short pause, "just before it appeared there was a sound like a thunderclap very close by. I didn't think much of it, as there was a storm going on at the time."
They were silent as each considered their situation. Frustration built in de Coutreau.
"How do we get out of here?" he asked.
"We'd have to know where `here' was first, wouldn't we?"
Again silence settled.
"Maybe we're dead."
Langley's words stunned him, perhaps more than they should have. It was hard to shrug off such an assertion while looking into that colorless void.
"You're supposed to laugh," Langley said.
"I don't feel like laughing."
"You don't really think we're dead, do you?"
"No. I don't think so," he replied uncertainly.
The silence was oppressive this time.
"Wait a minute, now," Langley began. "If we're dead, how can we talk to each other?"
"I don't know," de Coutreau blustered. "Why can't we see our bodies? And where the hell are we?"
"All very good questions," Langley said sensibly. "Let's look at what we know."
De Coutreau forced himself to calm down and listen to Langley's voice. In the nothingness around him, it was the only other thing that he was sure didn't originate within himself. As long as there was one thing external, there might be others. External things meant he had a location, and once he could establish that, he would have a reference from which to launch his escape from wherever that might be.
"We aren't in the balloons, that's for sure," Langley was saying. "And I'm pretty sure we're not dead. That means we're somewhere else than the balloons, but still on Centauri."
"Maybe we're unconscious, or in a coma, or something?"
"A coma? Didn't you say you went to my funeral?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Besides, why would I be talking to you if you were in a coma?"
"Maybe I'm in a coma, and you're just a figment of my imagination."
"Hang on, now," Langley growled. "I don't take kindly to being called unreal in any reality, especially my own. I'm having a hard enough time keeping a grip on my sanity without you shooting holes in it."
"Sorry."
They stopped to regroup.
"What do you remember after getting here --- before you heard me, that is?" de Coutreau asked.
"Bits and pieces, I'm afraid. Snatches of pictures, thoughts, nothing coherent. I was very glad to hear your voice. By the way, who were you talking to?"
"What do you mean?"
"I heard you talking," said Langley, "but nobody else."
De Coutreau considered that for a moment. "I heard what I thought might have been someone, but it could have been my imagination."
"When?"
"When, what?"
"When did you hear the other person?"
"I don't know," de Coutreau said. "A little after I woke up here, I guess."
Langley seemed to ponder that for a moment. "Was it a human voice?"
"Yeah. Actually, it sounded a lot like my own voice. I thought I was cracking up for a minute."
"Something like that happened to me, too," Langley said.
"What exactly do you remember?"
"Pictures, mostly."
"Mostly?"
"There was a feeling of, well, confusion associated with the images. I thought at the time that it was just a symptom of my disorientation. After a while, things got quiet and I guess I slept. Then I heard your voice."
"Why did you wait so long to speak up?"
"Did I? I didn't realize it. At first, I thought I was dreaming. I felt like I could wake up at any moment, but you went on talking until I realized I was awake. I called out as soon as it dawned on my you were real."
"Real."
"Pardon?" Langley said.
"I didn't say anything," de Coutreau replied.
"I am real."
"I know that now," Langley sighed.
"That wasn't me," de Coutreau said.
"It sounded like you."
"I am."
"Was that you?"
"No."
The men listened and waited.
"I am."
De Coutreau felt a presence, as of someone standing just outside his field of vision. He would have turned his head.
"I am."
The tone of the statement became stronger with each utterance; more forceful, sure, and certain.
"Who are you?" de Coutreau heard himself ask.
"I am," came the response after a slight hesitation.
"What are you called?" Langley cut in.
There was a silence that extended into several minutes.
"I think I confused it," Langley said.
"What or who do you think it was?"
"Isn't it obvious? Our warden."
"Warden?"
"Look," Langley began, and de Coutreau could almost see him ticking points off on non-existent fingers, the way he did when expounding what he thought should be obvious. "I didn't volunteer to be here, nor did you. I can see no way out --- or in, for that matter. Since we're here involuntarily without possibility of escape, I'd call that captivity."
"What possible motive could anyone have for holding us?"
"I don't know," Langley admitted. "It doesn't make much sense, but what else could it be?"
De Coutreau had to allow him the point. Nothing better described their situation. "All right, but what do we do about it? What can we do about it?"
"Listen."
"To what?" Langley asked.
"That wasn't me, Jules," de Coutreau said.
"Listen."
They waited.
"I am. I am real." There was a long pause, almost long enough for de Coutreau to start to ask Langley if he still heard the voice. "Who are you?" it asked.
"Phillippe de Coutreau."
"Are you real?"
De Coutreau couldn't keep the smile from his voice. "Of course."
"What are you?" the voice asked.
"Human."
"Human," the voice repeated.
"Yes, human. We are a race of sentient beings from another star system."
Again, time stretched, but the men kept quiet.
"Phillippe de Coutreau," came the voice, finally.
"Yes?"
"Human is Phillippe de Coutreau."
"Uh, Phillippe is human," Langley corrected.
"Are you human?"
"I guess you mean me," Langley said. "Yes, I am human. My name is Jules Langley."
"Name."
"What I am called. Who I am."
"I am called ---"
De Coutreau was sure he would have found himself leaning forward to hear the next bit, if he had a body to lean.
"I am called Centauri."
"You are a Centauri?" de Coutreau prompted. Although the planetary surveys hadn't discovered higher life forms, perhaps the Centauri weren't detectable by man-made devices. Perhaps they were too ephemeral or too dense or too something.
"No, I am called Centauri."
"How many of you are there?" Langley asked. "Why haven't we seen you in the last two years?"
"There is only one of me. I have been here forever."
"Only one? How is that possible?"
"I am real."
"Centauri," de Coutreau interrupted, "where are we?"
"In me."
They had to stop for a moment to consider that.
"In you?"
"Yes."
"I don't get this," Langley said, confused. "How can we be inside it? How big is the damn thing, anyway?"
"I am Centauri."
It began to slowly dawn on de Coutreau. "You are the planet Centauri?"
There was a short pause. "No, I am Centauri."
"Describe yourself to us, please."
"I am real. I have life. I think."
"Useful information," Langley said snidely.
"Quiet, Jules. Centauri, what do you look like?"
"Look like."
"Physically, what is your outer appearance?"
"Outer."
"I think we have a major language problem here," Langley said. "Let me try."
"Okay."
"Centauri, do you know what we look like?" Langley asked.
"Look like."
"We are humans. Each human has a body: a head and a torso with two arms above and two legs below. We see through eyes, hear through ears, smell through a nose, taste with a mouth, and feel with our outer covering of skin. When you took us from our flying vehicles, you must have noticed this."
"Yes. A body."
"We call that our outer appearance because it is what others see of us and identifies us to others."
"Identifies."
"Makes us different."
"Different."
"Not the same, other."
"Yes. Other."
"Now, what do you look like?" Langley went on.
Another extended period went by, which they had come to recognize as Centauri's hesitation as it considered and formulated an answer.
"My body is called 'atmosphere'," Centauri said at last.
"Then you are the planet Centauri," de Coutreau pressed.
"No, I am Centauri."
"I think it means it identifies with the awareness, the consciousness rather than the planet," Langley said slowly. "A subtle, but definite difference."
"Seems like nitpicking to me. What difference does it make?" de Coutreau sputtered. "It's the planet, Jules, the damned planet! Don't you get it?"
"Get what? That we're talking to an intelligent rock? Hell, for all I know, I'm dreaming this whole thing."
"Get a grip, man! You're not dreaming, and neither am I. This is real."
"I am real," Centauri agreed.
"It understands that much," Langley said in a smile.
"Centauri," de Coutreau said, "where are we?"
"In me."
"Yes, yes, but where in you?"
"The atmosphere," Langley said, a little exasperatedly. "Where else? We're suspended somewhere in its body, the atmosphere."
"Yes," Centauri agreed again.
"But, why can't we see our bodies?" de Coutreau countered.
"It's opaque," Langley said patiently. "It's like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. Until we starting talking, we had no other input."
"But shouldn't I feel it in my eyes, on my skin?"
"Maybe you do, but just don't notice it. How long were you out? Do you know? How long has it been since my funeral?"
De Coutreau mulled on that. "I don't really know. My flight left a little over a week after the funeral."
"A week," Langley said softly.
"But you had been missing for three days before they found the wreckage, and preparations for the ceremony took another three days."
"Two weeks," Langley corrected himself. "It doesn't seem that long."
"I has been fifteen days since I intercepted you," a voice unlike anything they'd heard before said. It echoed peculiarly, its volume muted but clear.
"Centauri?"
"Yes, I am Centauri."
"You sound different," de Coutreau said.
"My voice is the same. Your perception of it may differ."
"What the hell does that mean?" Langley muttered.
"Are you native to this planet?" de Coutreau overrode Langley's remark.
"I am."
"Our planetary surveys revealed no sentient life. If it had, we wouldn't have landed and set up a colony."
"You mean," Centauri shot back, "if you had discovered intelligent life by your precepts, you would have avoided contact."
"Yes. We don't intend to usurp the natural order of a living culture."
"Nonsense. You simply would not be able to morally justify doing so immediately," Centauri said, the voice dripping with disgust. "Time would cure that problem."
"Wait just a minute," Langley broke in. "We're not the ones who kidnapped and held captive two innocent people."
"No, because you could not. You hadn't the ability."
"Even if we did have the ability, we wouldn't do it," Langley parried.
De Coutreau listened as they bickered. It struck him that the alien sentience had mastered human speech, concepts, even moral and philosophical abstracts in a very short period. Of course, if Centauri was indeed who it claimed to be, it represented the intelligence of an entire planetary body. It would have been able to study the human colonists up close for years, observing everything, missing nothing ---
"It was you."
Langley and Centauri paused at de Coutreau's words.
"You caused the violent weather, the earthquakes. All the trouble the colony has endured since the beginning. It was you."
Centauri did not answer.
"Do you realize you've killed dozens of humans? Intelligent, dedicated people who meant you no harm."
Silence.
"Damn it, Centauri, you've murdered, and for what?"
There was a rumble from far off and de Coutreau thought he saw a flash of light.
"You attacked me," Centauri said in its oddly volumed voice. There was an emotion in it now; a shadow of the defensiveness Langley had shown. An imitation? "You sent rockets burning through me, things with blades cutting me. You poisoned me with chemicals and smokes. You ignored my cries and turnings to make you stop."
"Cries? Turnings? What are talking about?"
There was a definite flash now, followed by another, louder rumble.
"I howled in my winds for you to stop," Centauri said, a shadow of a need for them to understand distinct but not quite exact in the voice. "I cried in my rain. I shrugged at your vehicles that tore up my skin. But you ignored me, kept on." This time the flash and rumble were almost simultaneous. "I thought you were different. Where you went, I did not hurt. I thought you were different."
"The balloons are built to float with the wind," Langley explained.
"But you are the same as them," Centauri said, as if Langley hadn't spoken. "You made me think I could communicate to you my pain, get you to stop without ---"
The grayness thinned in de Coutreau's eyes and he found himself floating high above the surface encased in a silverish ball. The ball could have been made of vapor, so thin and fragile did it appear. About three meters away he saw Langley in a similar sphere, looking around in bewilderment.
He forced himself not to look down. He had no sensation of falling, but he trusted practically none of his senses now. It would be too easy to look down and see the surface rushing to meet him, helpless and alone.
"Do you see?" Centauri said. "I have kept you safe. I do not wish to kill. Please, stop."
"Centauri," Langley strained out, "could you put us down --- gently! --- on the ground? I would feel much more comfortable there."
For long seconds, they thought Centauri chose not to hear. Then, a gentle flutter in de Coutreau's gut let him know they were descending. No sound penetrated the bubble, and he couldn't bring himself to so much as move a muscle until he felt pressure on the soles of his feet. There was a soft breath of a sound and he felt a breeze hit his cheek.
He opened his eyes.
"Tell them to stop." It was an echo, fading from his mind almost too quickly to understand.
He looked at Langley, but saw the man's attention was on something behind him. He turned.
Montpelier's chase vehicle was making its way up the hill toward them, its tracks tearing up vegetation and gouging out soil as it came. De Coutreau caught the darkness of the vehicle's exhaust as it rose into the pure blue of the morning sky.
It was going to be tough.
David has been writing science fiction and fantasy for about twenty-five years now. In print since 1990 in various publications, his latest hard copy story is in the anthology "More Monsters from Memphis" (available from Amazon.com). He lives near Memphis, Tennessee, with his wife, daughter, and computer.
E-mail: jrlthran@ionictech.com
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