The Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson

Author:Kim Stanley Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Chapter Six

OUT OF THE PLANE

A small spacecraft left the Grand Tour and arced up out of the plane of the planets, carrying Johannes, Margaret and Karna toward Icarus, the home of the Greys. During the voyage Johannes was withdrawn, and Margaret sensed in him an intense apprehension. Margaret spent her time piloting the craft, playing Go with Karna, and catching up on her sleep. And then a blue soap bubble swam into view, far away in the starry black. They stood before the broad bridge window and watched the bubble grow.

From just outside the sphere of air they saw that the surface of the asteroid was mountainous: ranges folded on ranges, split by canyons and watersheds that indicated a long history of weather and erosion. “That’s not how Holywelkin described it!” Johannes said.

“It’s been terraformed,” Karna said. “Pretty expensive job, too. Nothing left of the original surface, as far as I can see.”

“What did Holywelkin say?” Margaret asked Johannes. “Where did he ever write about Icarus? Why won’t you let me read it?”

“I don’t have it with me,” Johannes said. “He wrote it in one of his notebooks. He said it was a cratered asteroid, a large impact crater at one end.”

“Terraformed now.” Karna said. “Nice job, too.”

“Persia was mountainous,” Johannes said.

A shuttle popped through the discontinuity and floated up to them; it moved out of the window’s framing, and they felt the gentle bump of the coupling. Minutes later three Greys filed onto the bridge, chattering to each other in their own tongue. One of them had a face like a skull papered with skin, and his cheeks were scarred. They chattered at the three visitors and pointed and led them through the ship to the lock connecting it to the shuttle. Ducking their heads the three visitors pulled through, into the Greys’ world.

Descent. In the portholes the sky snapped from black to deep blue. They landed on a short white concrete runway, placed in what appeared to be a high U-shaped glacial valley. They walked through the open door and down a staircase onto the runway. Surrounding the white strip was a carefully manicured green lawn, flat and circular. Beyond the lawn the expanse of shattered, speckled white granite rose on both sides to steep, serrated ridges. The air was thin and cold, the whitsun directly overhead. Margaret shivered as the chill goosepimpled her skin. In the thin air the mountains seemed very close, and Margaret could distinguish with unnatural clarity boulders, cracks, ridge edges, and the jumbled surfaces of talus slopes. There was not a single sound; the air was so still that she became aware of the sound of her breathing, of Karna’s breathing. Absolute quiet. Then, off in the distance, down the glacial valley, from over the ribbing of a low moraine, came a floating thread of voices, tiny voweled warbling in echoes off the exfoliated valley walls. And over the moraine appeared a line of figures, trudging across the granite to the landing strip. Grey cotton pants, long grey coats; and on their heads bright, floppy red caps.

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