Songs of Seduction - Fire and Ice

Fleming ran her hand over her naked skull, feeling the shape of her head. She touched two fingers to her lips, in a silent kiss of thanks. She would see what looked upon her, soon.

Athena logged a tiny heat, and recorded the delicacy of the touch. She didn't think her sensors could emulate that, it was so very, very light.

Fleming breathed in the cool cabin air, sucking it deep into her lungs. She could smell a faint trace of dust, like the skin of an excited child on a hot summer's day before rain. Is that what Titan smells like? She'd never given it any thought.

Fleming wiped the helmet over with a sample cloth, removing a fine sheen of dust and making the glass glint golden. She would test the helmet fully for any fracture and stress before using it again, but her being alive suggested it was sound. Athena logged the second sample bag - Fleming, helmet, dust.

And so the slow, methodical process went on. Fleming disassembled the suit, emerging from it like a pale chrysalis, one limb at a time. First the left hand glove, and Fleming stretched the fingers of that hand, tendons stretching pain up her arm. She wasn't sure if two fingers would stay numb, but wouldn't be surprised if they did.

Then the left arm's outer layer, with its wrenched and broken armour. Fleming's blood, thick and clotted, stuck to the sub-layers of the suit.

"This is going to hurt. Athena, dispense me a pain-killer for the time being. I'll clean it up and med scan the wound before we decide on treatment." Fleming was practical. "Hurting is good, means I didn't cut nerves."

Athena lost a major interface node in the suit's damaged elbow joint. "I can't feel your hand, Fleming, it's a zero. I can't feel anything at all. Is that what nothing feels like, do you think?"

"Could be, Athena, could be."

"I don't like it, Fleming. It's not right, not to feel."

Athena's QMR remained stable, her processors finding a completely logical set of cause and conclusion mapping.

"Fleming?"

"Yes, Athena?"

"Death wouldn't be a ten, would it, Fleming? Death would be a zero."

"Dying's the ten, Athena, sometimes. But don't worry, we can fix your hand. My hand. It feels okay, so we just need to replace your sensor layer. It'll be good as new."

Athena's QMR cycled high in response, a vast range of moral contemplation triggered by this exchange. Her deep layer processors suppressed their analysis though, prioritising Fleming's immediate problem, to treat her injury. Contemplation could wait for a safer time, after Fleming was cared for. Athena opened multiple mission files, storing many data sets for later analysis.

Removing the outer layer of her good right arm was agonising. Fleming had to contort herself so she could release the connection seals with her injured left hand, then find a way, with a minimum of pain, to extract her right arm from the suit, using only her left hand for leverage. Sweat shone on Fleming's skin, and she hurt. "Ah, fuck, fuck, fuck." The pain lessened with each expletive.

Athena compiled a pain library based on Fleming's reactions, but didn't understand how the thresholds could change so quickly, nor how 'fuck' could change them.

Now that Fleming had free use of her right hand, the work on her injured left arm moved faster. There were several protective layers to be removed, some designed to fit as a sleeve, able to be easily separated; other layers part of a whole body covering, needing to be cut away.

Finally, Fleming was down to the last layer on her injured arm, the skin tight sleeve that Ballard had fitted over Fleming's naked body, after shaving her smooth and cupping her core.

"You're going to lose sensors on the whole limb, Athena. I have to get down to bare skin to treat the wound, so I'll cut away the first thermal from the shoulder." Fleming inspected her arm. "What a fucking mess. I sure did a good job on myself."

Fleming carefully cut away the final layer from her skin, and studied the wound. The cut was torn and ragged, but seemed clean. The suit's internal pressure was higher than Titan's atmospheric pressure, so the contamination was more likely Fleming's blood and the suit's coolant escaping than anything getting in. The threat, then, was Fleming infecting the moon, more than the moon infecting Fleming.

Athena lost all sensation from the arm, and she shifted data intensity elsewhere on Fleming's body, to compensate.

Fleming carefully cleaned the wound, numb now from the local pain killer, and applied seven sutures. Seven's good, I like seven. It's a good number. Seven. She bandaged her upper arm, laying in a band of biomed sensors so that Athena could closely monitor the healing. Athena tracked in on the numbness, and set a baseline to measure Fleming's pain when the meds wore off.

"I need to get the rest of this suit off. I'm hungry, I need sleep, and I want to see the thing that saved me. Then we need to get the comms balloon launched, and report this in. Whatever 'this' is."

She looked at the cabin's vid lens. "Turn it off, Athena. Show's over." Fleming waved goodbye to her future audience. "Nothing else to see, folks. Next bit's just a girl sleeping."

Ten minutes later Fleming had stripped down to the first layer against her skin, and was lying peacefully in the med bay under a light cover, waiting for the med imager to complete its scan. Athena opened another mission file, and correlated data from the earlier baseline profile she had taken during the night. Fleming's key indicators remained unchanged. So far the Event had not affected the revised primary mission.

Half an hour later, Fleming was asleep. Athena descended to her deep layers to fully assess the Event.

Two hours later Athena recorded Fleming's REM flickering, flickering.

The light above her pulsating, light, dark, light, dark, and the rhythmic sound of powerful wings beating, beating, lifting her up in strong arms.

* * * *

"What was it, Athena? Have you reconstructed the image? Any sound?"

"Sound first, here's the raw file."

Athena played the vox picked up from Fleming's suit mic. The dominant sound was the steady, even measure of Fleming's breathing, her calming breath; a background hiss of the suit's scrubbers, and the occasional low thunk, Fleming's movements transmitted through the structure of the suit. Then, Fleming's voice.

"Right, let's do this."

Two seconds later, Fleming heard herself gasp, followed by a loud thump, presumably her body twisting and bumping hard against the capsule. The prelude to the Event.

Fleming listened intently, her eyes closed so she could properly establish the elapsed time, to get that clear in her head first, before she looked at any imagery.

The thump against the capsule was repeated, followed this time by a rapid sequence of incomprehensible sounds, then a fast, multi-frequency rush of air, turbulent around the mic. Fleming's breathing accelerated, quick breaths, each one with a harsh sound, glottal in her throat, before the next intake of breath.

Her scream.

Fleming jumped as she heard her own high pitched shriek, the point where the blade entered her skin and the pain registered, a long cry that emptied her lungs and ended with a breathless sob. Fleming's heart pounded as she heard herself scream, then take a massive breath. Her yell came next.

"Breach, suit breach!"

Fleming heard more rapid and incoherent sounds, followed by two seconds of silence between breaths, then a soft thud as her body hit the ground. She took a breath as she listened, the same harsh rattle in the back of her throat. Fleming brushed the front of her neck with her finger and thumb, assuring herself of her throat and the air down into her lungs.

I thought it would be louder.

The whole falling sequence took no more than ten seconds.

Her breathing, she counted three shallow breaths, continued for the five seconds of her unconsciousness; the steady rush of the venting suit the only other sound. Fleming heard her breath change, slowing, as the asphyxia took hold and she grew cold. Listening, Fleming shivered, and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. She opened her eyes once, to see the familiar sight of the capsule's instrument panels, the black circles of its viewing ports.

"Exterior cameras, Athena. Are they running?" Her voice was barely a whisper, not wanting to interrupt what she heard next, but not wanting to hear it either.

"Affirmative, Fleming." Athena's voice was adjusted soft, as if she too were listening and holding Fleming's hand.

Fleming heard a long sequence of her own breathing getting fainter, the background rush of the exhaling suit softening too, or maybe she was getting used to the sound of her life fading away. Fleming strained her ears but could make no sense of it.

I thought being carried away in an angel's arms would be louder. All I can hear is my own breath. Does an angel make no sound as it lays me down to rest?

She jumped again, as she heard the sound of the hatch shutting above her head.

"Fleming, can you hear me?

She heard nothing on the playback, just her steady breathing, and Athena's calm, unhurried voice.

"Fleming, can you hear me?

"Fleming, can you hear me?

"Fleming, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Respond, Fleming. Can you hear me?"

She heard a quick intake of her own breath, as she stirred in the little cocoon of the entry lock.

"Athena, is that you? I was dreaming, Athena, dreaming of an angel, an angel came for me." Fleming heard herself speak, sounding like she was still inside a dream, her voice small and full of wonder, as if she were a child.

"You weren't dreaming, Fleming. I've been monitoring you. You were unconscious for five seconds, when you first hit the ground, but you've been wide awake ever since." Athena's voice was her usual, quietly modulated tone.

"Athena, I don't remember climbing back into the capsule. How did I get back inside?"

"It saved you, Fleming."

"What saved me, Athena?"

"An angel."

As if it was a perfectly normal, predictable event; with an elapsed time of thirty seconds. An angel. What did Athena know of angels?

"Athena, I can't hear anything. Why can't I hear anything?" Fleming sounded small and lost, a little girl in a big place, frightened and alone. "Why can't I hear anything?"

"The suit vox is dominated by the interior sounds. I can enhance the exterior audio, suppress what we've just heard."

"Do it, Athena, enhance exterior. I don't want to hear myself scream again, can you silence my scream?"

"Affirmative, Fleming. Just give me a moment to process...okay...okay. Playback two. Event, exterior, Fleming suit mic, enhanced."

This time, Fleming heard her own sounds as if she were far, far away; and the sounds of Titan were much louder now. She heard a low wash of noise, which she assumed to be Titan's wind, blowing steadily. She heard the clatter and bang of the ladder and the thump of her body as she hit the hull of the capsule; and a strange black silence where Athena had removed her scream.

Then nothing, a silent falling; followed by a sickening hollow thump as she hit the ground. The five seconds of her unconsciousness passed, then Fleming heard something new. Something so utterly different. Goosebumps chilled her entire body, as Fleming heard...

...a massive beat, and even through small speakers in the cabin walls, Fleming knew that the real sound would be visceral, solid, a thickness beating the air.

Fleming listened, awed by the power of the beating sound. Whop, whop, beat. Whop, whop, beat.

"It's wings, huge wings. It must be wings."

Fleming looked up to the blackness of the viewing ports. "My god, how big is this thing, if its wings make that sound?"

"Big enough to lift you up," said Athena.

"Don't tell me that. Not yet." Fleming fell silent, as the sound of the massive beat stopped. "It picked me up?"

"Yes, Fleming. And placed you back inside the hatch."

Once again, Fleming heard the sound of the hatch closing over her head.

She sat motionless, her eyes huge with fear and wonder. She swallowed.

"Show me. I'm ready to see. I'm fucking terrified, what I'm going to see, but show me."

Fleming opened her eyes to see. "Take away the sound, Athena, please. It's too much all at once, I can't take it all in. Fuck. I've never been so scared in all my life, I'm..."

"Do you want to wait, Fleming, until you're ready?"

"I'll never be ready, Athena, not for this." Fleming struggled for control, taking deep breaths to steady herself. She heard whimpering, and realised it was in her throat, her own little noises she was making.

"Oh, fuuck, I don't want to see this, I really don't."

Fleming took one huge breath, sat up straight, and spoke, a slight waver still in her voice, but holding on to sanity.

"Fleming. Mission Log. Event video. First viewing...oh..."

The screen in front of her displayed a 3D image, re-reconstructed from parallax corrected feeds from Fleming's helmet and shoulder cams. The point of view, therefore, was almost exactly as Fleming saw it, but from a vantage point outside the helmet. Fleming had trained in replaying mission vid, and her mind quickly adjusted to the strange disembodying effect, as if her eyes were floating in space. The playback vid system tracked Fleming's watching eyes - if she looked down, the image cleverly shifted to give her the same view, as if she were really there, looking down.

The video replay system was disturbingly real, which was why Fleming needed to prepare herself first. The audio first, then video, technique worked for her, but even so, she wasn't prepared for what she saw...

A wide, distant view of Titan, a silvery-white corrugated landscape, rocks and stones worn smooth by the constant wind and the thick methane/ethane rain which shimmered and fell in veils. Great gusting sheets of rain, billowing across the plain, were visible beyond the top of the capsule.

"Athena, was it raining the whole time I was out there?"

"Affirmative, Fleming. It always rains on Titan."

"I didn't see how beautiful it was up there."

"You had a job to do, Fleming, you saw what you needed to see."

"I should have looked around, first."

Fleming saw the capsule lay in a low valley, hills soft in the distance, shadows swiftly moving with the bands of rain. The whole place was lit by a silvery sheen, Saturn's reflected planet light the main illumination. Fleming could see the planet high in the sky, a huge half arc, cut into two halves by the black horizontal stripe of Saturn's rings, edge on to her view.

Come all the way to Saturn, but never see its rings. Celestial orbits without the glamour, just like me, thought Fleming.

She looked away from the planet and there, on the other side of the sky, was the small orange light of the sun. Fleming held her breath, It's so small and far away. Is that all it is, the Sun? I never knew it would be so small and far away. Fleming felt tiny in this cold and desolate place.

All of this registered in a few moments, then the vision changed. Fleming could see only the ladder and the capsule's blackened hull, as she looked down at what she was doing. She looked down to the ground, and it didn't seem that far away.

Suddenly the image jumped and rapidly turned, and the long twisting blade...

...but the blade was never seen. The image rotated from the capsule's black streaked hull to show another view of Titan, the shadows different, the background blurred with the speed of Fleming's twisting turn. She couldn't make out any details at all. There was a single, fast blur, a bounce in the playback, then sky.

The image could have been painted, it was so still. The sky, a high band of cloud, and the falling rain. On the periphery, the black and grey of the capsule, not much to be seen in that line of sight.

The sky and falling rain.

In the cabin, Fleming blinked, and wiped a drop of sweat from her cheek; or was it rain, or was it a tear? She didn't know.

Even though there was no sound in the cabin, a complete silence there, Fleming could hear in her head the heavy, powerful force of the beating sound outside as she lay there, looking up at the sky.

Fearful, but fascinated, she stared at the screen, not believing what she was seeing.

Above her, coming in from the right hand side of the screen, Fleming saw a huge flying thing, wings like an eagle's, with a huge span and surging with a powerful, even beat. It was the upwards, downwards sweep of the wings that caused the light to flicker, as the creature descended from the sky, completely filling her vision. Inside the main span of the wings, close to the creature's chest and torso, Fleming could see a smaller set of wings, moving in opposition to the primary beat.

The creature's body was powerfully muscled, a silvery sheen on its skin, or a tight fitting garment - Fleming could not say what she saw. It was humanoid, with four limbs; two long legs with what looked to be prehensile feet, and arms with long, fine hands and slender fingers. Its head was like a man's in shape, with two huge eyes. She couldn't make out a nose or a mouth, but she assumed the creature needed to eat and breathe.

Fleming would later freeze the best image, and imprint the vision of the creature in her mind's eye. But for now, she sat silently watching, both arms wrapped tight around her torso, holding herself close against fear. And awe.

It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. My sweet God, what creation is this?

"Athena, stop playback. How do you know of angels? What's in your database, that you know angels?"

"When I saw the first clear image, Fleming, I searched for comparative data in my library. I found William Blake's painting of 'Satan,' who is a winged man burning yellow and red. Satan was God's first fallen Angel, and lives in mythical hell, which is a burning place. But Titan is cold and ice and does not burn. The creature looks like Blake's fallen Angel, but lives in a frozen place, so 'angel' is a comparative data match."

Fleming pondered the perfect machine logic of Athena's conclusion, and could not fault it.

"Run the rest please, Athena."

The creature landed, standing above her. Its massive wings folded, arched high above its shoulders, leaving its arms and hands free. It stood motionless, with no sign of exertion, impossibly still. Except for its head, which it slowly moved from side to side. It's parallax correcting, Fleming realised, verifying its depth perception in the low light.

She watched it bend low, close enough now to make out features, and she saw that indeed there was the shape of lips, and nostrils behind some closing flap. It must seal itself from the intense cold, she thought.

Fleming wondered how the creature saw her, a small thing lying motionless in its world, fallen from the sky. She saw sentience, curiosity in its still gaze, and sensed immediately that intelligence had brought it to her.

"I wonder how long it was watching, Athena? It must have been close, to see me fall and to respond so fast."

"No immediate data, Fleming. Scanning exterior vid...yes, there. I see it now."

"Play the vid, Athena."

The display changed to show a one-eighty degree panorama, taken from a cam mounted high on the capsule. The centre of the image was obscured by the golden orb of Fleming's helmet, but there, to one side and on a raised patch of ground, Fleming saw a dim shape, it must be the creature. On first sight it looked like a great boulder, but knowing now the creature had wings, Fleming could see how it camouflaged itself, holding its wings close all around. She could just make out its fingers, splayed and pressed tense to the ground.