Gaia Sings
by Gaie Sebold

She was one beautiful bird, that ship. I could see her on one of the monitors. I'd been in on the design from the ground up, of course, but there's a hell of a difference between schematics and the real thing. She looked as though she was floating even though she was still on the ground. Smooth as an egg and just as full of potential. The Phoenix. There were others, of course, all round the world, but I knew mine was the best. I just knew.

I couldn't wait to get on board. The air was as good as it got, scrubbed and recycled and just the right temperature, but it still felt hot and full of the smell of sweat. My uniform collar was pressing into my throat. Military uniforms. That's one thing that never changes. They still manage to rub you just enough to be annoying without really interfering with the function.

I was getting a little itchy, of course I was. We all were, by then. The plans had been roughed out years ago, but, again, there's a difference between theory and practice. I could see Mitchell checking his figures over and over and over. They were right, and he knew it, and everyone else knew it, and he still sat there with wires coming out of his head like something in an experiment.

The seismic alarms went off again, and I checked the monitors, but the shake was at least twenty miles away and not that bad.

"Captain Rogers, you're sure this isn't going to cause a problem with the takeoff?" The PM asked. His face was losing its smooth public gloss and going slightly crumpled round the edges.

"No, Sir," I said. "We've got so many stabilisers under those platforms we could get a full-on quake right under the port and the ship wouldn't so much as wobble." For all I knew it was true. Anyway there was nothing we could do about it, at this stage.

I saw the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed and he looked away, over to where his wife was smiling at the children with bright desperation. God, the man was a pratt. My Lana was already tucked up nice and neat on board - I wasn't risking any last-minute screw-ups that might keep her on the ground - but he was determined to keep his family-man image going long after the whole damn PR machine had ground to a halt.

They'd done a pretty good job, mind, for as long as they could. Once it was clear what had to be done, they'd set up a network that stretched across every major government, and kept people pretty quiet, on the whole. A nice mix of concern, the occasional apparent breakthrough to keep people's hopes up that something could still be done. A new International Accord every month or so.

What the hell, most people are hardly a major contribution to the gene-pool. They went on swallowing the dog-do the channels poured out for longer than those that mattered thought possible. The internet broke down and proved impossible to restart. Energy-saving measures limited all TV and radio transmissions to government channels. New international security laws clamped down on the crusties, the greenies, the pagans and every other trouble-making idiot they could think to cover. Journalists disappeared, had changes of heart, or unfortunate accidents. People died of asthma attacks in the street, the water went weird - it came out of the taps ruddy purple one day, and Lana freaked - the last few wild birds fell dead out of the brown air, and still they thought things could get better. Dumb, or what?

It wasn't until the earthquakes started that the cover stories began to crack along with the planet's crust. Maybe because the pollution was kind of slow, incremental. It had been so bad for so long that a little more didn't seem like much. The earthquakes were a different ballgame. There's something about nature just deciding to screw you like that that really gets people's hackles up.

I killed a couple of bottles with one of the government seismologists - some government, not ours, it hardly mattered by then - a couple of weeks before the end. He got drunk just about faster than anyone I'd seen in my life, but his English was pretty good, right up to the point when he collapsed through the door to the gents and fell asleep with his head in a urinal. We were just talking about stuff, the way you do, and he started on the earthquakes. Well, he was a seismologist, so I guess it was allowed, and although most of these geeks round here get on my wick, he'd done some military service, so he was marginally OK.

"Waves," he said, waving a damp finger in front of my eyes. "Round and round and round."

"Huh?" I wasn't sure if it was an alcohol thing or a language thing, but I said, "Sorry, mate, I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"These earthquake. She are not come where she is meant. Geology she is all screw up. The shake, she go round and round, like the earth is dance. And is radio waves, and all sorts other waves, come out too."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, you mean the stuff that's been screwing up radio transmissions."

"Radio transmissions," he said, grinning. I have to tell you I didn't like that grin. His eyes were so glazed you could have used them as pie-crust and his mouth was shaking at the corners, as though he were about to throw up, or cry. "Oh, maybe, yes, maybe is transmissions, sure." That's when he stumbled towards the gents.

I heard a rumour that he topped himself, but he wouldn't have been the only one. It got to be practically an epidemic, the last few weeks. Some people just wimp out. You make a decision, you stick with it, that's what I say. That's one of the things I like about the military. No wimping out.

So far as I'm concerned it's not my responsibility. The military gave me everything I've got, including the chance to pilot the most fabulous ship ever built. They said we could find somewhere else to go, if this place couldn't take it. We did, too. So, we'll have to be a little more careful next time - it's no big deal. And since half the trouble has been just too many people, we won't have the same problems.

I watched Mitchell go over his calculations for the sixth millionth time and felt like cracking him one but we needed Mitchell. He was the one who'd come up with the system that would get us off this dying mudball and on to a nice, clean new planet.

The alarms went off again, and he never even looked up. The shakes were moving away, anyway, so that was OK.

As soon as the earthquakes began to make people really nervous the PR machine went to the next level. They had a nice line in grave sorrow mixed with undeniable hope as they talked about the amazing scientific breakthrough, the ships that were being built, the chance for everyone to start again.

People really are incredibly dumb. They get shown all these pictures - when the earthquakes weren't interfering with transmissions - of scientists rushing solemnly about, of huge ships being constructed, of fleets of shuttles lined up like cars in a car park. They happily give up their garden railings, their pans, their cars, whatever. Hey, it's going to be a brave new world, what do we need all that for, let's melt it down and make it into ships! Spirit of the Blitz, bless 'em.

And how many of them stopped to do any calculations? How many of them thought - hang on. Exactly how many ships would it take to get everyone off the planet? And where's the fuel going to come from? And how can it all be ready in time? And a million other totally obvious questions.

One or two did, of course. But they couldn't do much damage - most of the few people they reached simply didn't want to hear it. It was so obvious by that point that the planet was dying - they were even calling the earthquakes death throes, though that's just taking the whole mother nature thing too far, if you ask me. I mean, it's just a rock, when all's said and done. What was really dying was just the outer stuff, the stuff that happened to produce us, and that we couldn't manage without.

I heard the click and the low hum that means the speakers are on but no-one's talking yet. Everyone in the room looked up then, even Mitchell. I think we all knew.

"Attention, please. All crew to departure stations. All crew to departure stations. All other passengers please make your way to your assigned seating areas. Thank you."

I didn't mean to look at that other monitor, but maybe something caught my eye. An explosion, perhaps. They'd tried a few of those, among other things. No chance - the place was damn near impregnable - but the monitors were a necessary precaution.

Mostly they'd stopped bothering with explosions, and bricks, and all that. They weren't even waving their arms and screaming and crying, like they'd been to start with. They just stood.

There were a lot of banners, of course. Since when did words change anything? I can't stand that kind of thing. The ones with the banners were usually the sort we were better off without, anyway. Weirdie-beardies and eco-freaks. Murderers. Not space ships but rat-ships. Save my Baby. Too Late. Repent. And one really annoying one that I'd been seeing more and more of over the last few weeks. Gaia Sings. Sounded like a crappy pub band to me.

Well, someone else would switch off the monitors and shut the place down. There had been a few volunteers for that - the sort of people I really regretted leaving behind.

I settled into the pilot's seat. Mitchell assured me that its weird shape would help stop my insides ending up on my outsides when we did the superscience bit, but it still felt damned uncomfortable. "All aboard for hyperspace," I said.

"Dammit, Captain. How often do I have to tell you�hyperspace is fiction."

"Keep your hair on," I said. Mitchell's bald as a baby's bum. I shouldn't have had a go at him really. This was where it all got serious. We'd sent test ships, and mice, and cats, and a trillion tons of equipment back and forth but hey, like I say, there's a difference between theory and practice.

The countdown started. I didn't have to do much once the bird was out of the gravity well and into Mitchell's theoretical space. I wouldn't even be conscious, or, so far as I could tell, exist in any comprehensible way until we came out the other end. That's when I'd be doing my job again, guiding us down to the surface of the new planet, and trying not to bump into one of the other ships, full of military and government people from all over the world, who would, with luck, make it through as well.

And if they didn't?

All the more room for us, I guess.

We had to check the monitors before lift-off, of course. I didn't want to look at all those people. It's not as if we had any choice in the matter, is it?

I could still see that bloody banner. Gaia Sings. Stupid damn thing. Some memory to take away with you.

We got away all right. Only just, mind, though we didn't let the passengers in on that little factette. One almighty bastard of an earthquake went through where we'd been just after lift-off. You could actually see the planet's surface ripple like an animal's skin. Weird.

Not as weird as the passage through Mitchellspace, though. Hey, don't blame me. He discovered it, I guess the geek deserves the credit. It really is a little like having your guts removed and wrapped around your head, but painlessly. The stuff you imagine is worse. It's as though when it gets free of physical space your mind gets overexcited. I kept seeing Lana all swollen up with pregnancy and splitting down the middle like rotten fruit, all these maggoty white things squirming out of her. That dead seismologist waving his finger at me, over and over, whispering drunkenly about transmissions while a television antenna grew out of the top of his head and spread over the whole world.

It was a relief to be back to normal, even if I did feel like my insides had been stuffed back in by someone who didn't know where they were supposed to go.

Mitchell was already plugged in, and glaring at the monitor. The wires coming out of his head gave me a flashback to the seismologist and I had to swallow the guts which were suddenly trying to crawl out of my throat.

But I'm good at my job. I pulled myself together and there she was, oh bliss and glory, a perfect little blue-green planet. I could see the flickers and flashes of other ships popping back into reality.

I flipped the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen. We have now exited Mitchellspace. You may be feeling a little disorientated. Please be assured that everything is under control. If you feel really uncomfortable, please press the button in your armrest and one of the medical staff will be with you shortly.

"And now I have an announcement to make." I flipped another switch, the one that turned on the screens in the cabins. "Our destination is in view. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to New Earth."

Maybe I should have saved that for landing. But I was still under orders, and that was what the psychologists told me to say.

We had right of first landing because we had Mitchell. America was just behind us, but someone obviously decided they were going to claim this planet for the good old US of Asshole because I saw the American ship - you couldn't miss it, it had a golden eagle roughly the size of a blue whale on the back - scoot ahead and plunge for the atmosphere.

Well, I wasn't going to let that happen. I said, "Here we go," and bent the nose down.

But something - maybe the remnant of a dream, maybe just the instinct built of thousands of hours of flight time - stopped me from pushing her to the limit, and it was just as well. Because that damned American leviathan just skimmed off the surface of the atmosphere, like God skipping a stone.

She hit another ship, I didn't see which one. I slapped the screens up without even thinking about it, which meant at least I was one of the pilots not blinded by the resulting explosion, and pulled up hard, out of the way of the tumbling debris and the other ships running like hell.

The Phoenix handled beautifully. I knew she would.

After the shouting and screaming died down we had an inter-ship conference. There was a lot of bluster and shouting and Mitchell got called some things even I wouldn't have called him. I didn't say much, except that when the call went out to find who was going to try next, I laid low and said nuttin.

So they sent some pbi - poor bloody infantry - guy in a shuttle. Same story, except he was going slow and easy and just couldn't get through. We lost communication with him just above the atmosphere, and for agonising hours watched him try and push that shuttle through the blue like someone trying to stick a blunt needle into a beach ball.

He tried too hard in the end. Don't know why, maybe he just got fed up. He could probably get glimpses of the planet through the clouds, and just seriously wanted to get there. So he put pedal to metal and the shuttle blew up.

The talking went on for days. I found Lana and a few bottles and retreated to my cabin, but I couldn't be with Lana. She just had too much hope in her face and I was afraid that if I looked at it too long I'd hit it just to make that look go away. And I kept staring at her stomach and thinking about the monsters that can be born of unknowing mothers.

So I sat in the pilot's chair, drinking, and thinking about drunken seismologists, and waves, and transmissions, and banners.

They sobered me up enough to explain that Mitchell was going to try and find another planet. I could see in a few of their eyes the knowledge that this was a pointless piece of PR, but I just nodded.

He did find one, eventually. We'd lost a few more people by then - natural wastage, you might say. Lana walked out an airlock, poor cow. I wish�.

I went along for the ride. But I knew what would happen, and it did. That planet, and the next. No Entry. No dogs no Irish no bastard planet-murdering earthlings, thank you very much, find another sucker. Only we can't, 'cos no-one will have us.

Gaia Sings. She only had to sing once, but she sang loud enough for a galaxy to hear.

We're going to have to go home. And I don't think anyone will be very pleased to see us.

First published in "Unhinged Online" #3 November 2001. © Gaie Sebold 2001