Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  “How soon before the mutation is noticeable?”

  Onizaka shrugged. “I don’t know that. It all depends on how efficient her body is.”

  “When can she go outside?”

  Onizaka’s eyes grew wide. “Outside? You mean, outside the Dome?”

  “Yes.”

  Onizaka could not answer immediately—not because she did not know the answer but because the very idea of sending her only test subject outside the controlled environment of the Dome unsettled her.

  Tann added, “For testing, I mean.”

  Onizaka paused before answering. “We wouldn’t need to do that. We would just do it in the lab.” She watched him intently, her unease fading.

  Tann nodded. “Of course. What was I thinking? Is the little girl all right at this moment? Do you think she is experiencing any discomfort?”

  “I doubt it. The incident at the school was almost certainly the trigger that activated the gene, sort of like puberty activates certain functions in the body. She might have odd cravings or tastes, but she ought to be fine.” Onizaka shrugged off the last remnants of unease when she heard Tann’s sincerity. “Part of the mutation involves adaptations—improvements, really—to the organism’s electrochemical system. Once the chlorine is liberated from the salts in which it exists as a solid, it would ordinarily place a high demand on the body for electrons. That would do serious damage to an unaltered metabolism, but the mutation allows the organism to form complex compounds using the H+ atom, which it then either metabolizes or expels. If she survived the exposure to such a high concentration of chlorine, that means the mutation is working perfectly.”

  “Good. I’m already ashamed enough that we had to do it this way—I’d hate to think some sweet child is suffering as well.” Tann smiled and said, “You did it, Doctor. Your name will be remembered forever now. You’ve created the first new humans who will one day live and work on this planet outside the protection of the Domes.”

  Elated at the thought, Onizaka looked away from Tann to indulge in fantasy. When she looked back some moments later, he had gone.

  * * *

  Jene was able, with surprisingly little difficulty, to clear her schedule for the next few days and return with her daughter to New Chicago. She had wanted to contact Commissar-General Newfield from her office, but Kuarta had seemed…reluctant.

  Jene looked at her daughter as they rode the wirebus back home. The fire that had burned in Jene when she had been younger wasn’t as bright in her daughter. Perhaps that was not the right analogy—Kuarta was dedicated to her job as fiercely as Jene had been to hers, and by all accounts, loved Yallia as much as Jene had loved Kuarta as a child. But there was more of Renold in Kuarta than Jene cared to admit. It was easy to forget him. Looking at Kuarta sitting stoically in her seat on the wirebus, Jene realized that he was very much a part of her.

  “I should tell Dolen as soon as we get back,” Kuarta said, her eyes still turned toward the scenery outside the tunnel.

  “Kuarta, I know you sealed the medical data, but you don’t really think this will stay quiet, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I found out about it rather easily.”

  “But you’re her grandmother and a Commissar.”

  Jene snorted. “So? You don’t think the girl who did this to her will keep quiet, do you? Or the school personnel? If it hasn’t already, news will leak out.”

  Kuarta appeared to think before answering. “I—I haven’t thought about that yet. I’ve been thinking about Yallia.”

  “People in New Chicago will talk.”

  “You’re right,” Kuarta sighed. “But you don’t think people will suspect what we suspect, do you? Most people who hear the story will think Yallia was very lucky to be alive and unhurt, but that’s all.”

  “Yes, but we can do our part to encourage that view. Tell people that she didn’t really eat that much and that what she did eat she threw up. That’ll help keep things calm.” Jene was already thinking about the public fallout. In a sectioned-off corner of her mind, she worried about Yallia’s health, but her training as, first, a doctor, and now a political leader, had given her the ability to compartmentalize such thoughts, to be dealt with as appropriate. Kuarta did not have Jene’s experience nor her ability.

  “But, Ma, we’re not going to keep this a secret forever,” Kuarta said suddenly. Jene looked at her daughter quizzically.

  “What?”

  “This business of the genedata investigation. How did Newfield know about the incident so quickly? And why would he want the genedata if there were no reports of colony-wide problems? No, Ma. Someone was watching all this, and someone has done something to our family. Someone has to answer for it.”

  “Now, Kuarta, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m sure that—”

  Kuarta cut her off. “I can’t believe you are going to step in to defend the government! You, of all people!”

  “Government is not always a bad thing, dear,” Jene said softly. “If you think I’m some kind of anarchist, you must have me confused with someone else.”

  “Why did you start the war on Ship then?” Kuarta said bitterly.

  Jene felt herself rock backwards mentally. Kuarta had never asked that question before. When she had finished asking it, Jene knew that there was an unasked question behind it that Kuarta did not trust herself to pose. But it screamed loudly in her mind: “Why did you kill my father?”

  Jene didn’t answer for a long moment. She had been asked that question, in many different forms, throughout the twelve years. It had been the only armed conflict her society had known in over one hundred years. The question had been the central one at her largely ceremonial “trial” held just before planetfall while Ship was still a sovereign body.

  Perrault had been the adjudicator and had been overtly friendly to Jene. No one seemed to mind, though—there were few friends of the old Council regime left, and those quickly renounced and reversed their views when Jene told them all what Eduard Costellan had told her. She told them of the already-established colony on Epsilon Eridani III and of Arnson’s knowledge of it. She told them that Arnson’s plan to slowly cut away at the weaker, more dependent members of the colony had been put forward while he himself knew how unnecessary it was—the colony on EE3 was a well-established one and had been in place for sixty Ship years and would be more than able to care for the Class D children.

  She had been officially absolved for any possible wrongdoing in the affair, but nothing the newly elected and very temporary provisional government on board Ship could do would bring back her husband.

  And now Kuarta asked her the same question she had asked herself, unconsciously, every day of her life since. She had not needed to start the war—Arnson’s plan could not possibly have succeeded with the colony in place. The dozens of deaths she had caused weighed heavily on her in ways Kuarta would never understand.

  “I thought I had to,” she whispered to her daughter.

  “You knew he and I were hostages. You knew what could happen,” Kuarta said. “I’ve been told the story many times and read about it extensively in the colony library. It was filed under ‘Ship History.’”

  “Yes. Kuarta, you have to understand—I was fighting a larger fight. I had more to think about than just myself. Ship had been my entire world—I couldn’t just watch while innocent children were left to die.”

  “So you sacrificed my father for them?” Kuarta fairly shouted this, half rising from her seat.

  Jene glanced at the other passengers only to find them watching the exchange carefully. Dozens of argie eyes were on her and her daughter, and their expressions indicated they had been watching and listening for quite some time.

  Jene kept her voice low as she said, “Yes.” The word shocked both of them. Jene knew it was the truth—she had known what she was doing when she made that terrible speech over the comweb. She knew what she was setting in motion for her world and family. “I don’t expe
ct you to understand because I don’t fully understand. Maybe I felt guilty for you—for your having escaped genetic damage while scores of children of your generation were born horribly deformed. I don’t know. I miss your father, even though I never speak of him. He was a good man.”

  Kuarta could not hold on to her bitterness. “I…can’t remember him.”

  “I can.”

  The argie eyes turned away as the two women talked in soft tones about Renold Halfner.

  * * *

  Mr. Rice raised his ordinarily calm voice when he saw Yallia sneaking into the kitchenette again. “Yallia! Come back here!” She disappeared behind a cupboard, and Mr. Rice excused himself from the play of the suddenly giggling argie children to pursue her. He entered the kitchenette, wondering what had possessed Yallia to try to eat salt straight out of the container so many times. She was doing it again when he entered—she had upended the salt canister and was frantically pouring the granuals into her mouth.

  “Stop that!” Mr. Rice said, making a grab for the salt canister. Yallia dodged him, spilling some of the salt on the floor but quickly adjusting her position to continue eating. Mr. Rice made another grab for the canister and got it this time.

  For a moment, he forgot himself. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he said, noting how little salt was left in the two-kilo container.

  Yallia did not answer. She darted to the floor and started to lick up the small amount of salt that had spilled from Rice’s first attempt on the container.

  Rice watched, feeling sick. Yallia’s behavior had become bizarre to the point of serious concern. He bent down to pick her up and heard laughing coming from the entry to the kitchenette. Six or seven argie children were watching, pointing and laughing at Yallia as she lapped at the salt like an animal.

  “Come on, dear. Get up now.” Rice said, recovering his calm. He wanted to protect Yallia’s dignity as well as her body. “You kids go back to the playroom. I’ll be there soon,” he said over his shoulder. He managed to pick Yallia up and took her into the staff room beyond the kitchenette.

  “Yallia, why don’t you lie down here on the sofa. I don’t want you to move from here. I’m going to call your daddy,” he said. Yallia nodded mutely, her eyes glazed.

  It took Rice an agonizingly long time to reach Dolen, who was in class, lecturing. Presently, Dolen answered the call on his headphone.

  “Yes?”

  “Professor, this is Langis Rice at Emerald City Crèche. Uh, Yallia has eaten an awful lot of salt just now and I’m worried about her. I was going to call medical services but I thought I’d call you first.”

  “Salt?” was Dolen’s only question.

  “Yes. She had the container upside down and was literally pouring it into her mouth. Earlier, she drank salt water and even though I tried to keep her out of it. I’ve got more children to—”

  “No, no, I understand. I’ll be right there.”

  “Should I call medical services?”

  “No,” Dolen said with enough conviction as to cause Rice to frown in surprise. “I’ll handle it. Thank you so much.” Rice heard the connection break and blinked. He looked at Yallia—despite Dolen’s wishes, if she looked to be in distress, he would call medserv on his own. But the girl seemed all right, if a bit listless. She had risen from the couch and was standing calmly next to him.

  “Yallia, honey, how are you feeling?”

  Yallia was a moment before answering. “I feel okay. My stomach is rumbling a little.”

  “I guess so.” Rice had no idea what that much salt would do to a child, aside from making him or her ill. But Yallia was not complaining of anything serious.

  “Can I go back and play?” she asked brightly.

  “Well, why don’t you stay here until your daddy gets here. He’s coming now to pick you up.”

  “Why?”

  “Honey, you ate so much salt I’m afraid you’ll get sick.”

  “No I won’t. I’m fine,” she said, with enough girlish enthusiasm as to make Rice doubt his own common sense. She couldn’t be covering any kind of distress—she wasn’t guarding her stomach, wincing, or acting in any way like a child in pain. Still, he suspected that the salt would effect her suddenly and that he would have to clean it up. He wanted to localize the problem.

  “I need you to stay back here, dear. I’ll go get you something to play with while you wait.”

  Yallia looked dejected, but Rice assured her it would not be for long and she seemed to accept the situation. He went back into the main playroom where the other children were playing. One of them, a pudgy argie boy named Pem, looked up at Rice.

  “Where’s Yallia?” Pem asked. Rice frowned inwardly. Pem was an aggressive boy who was really too old for the Crèche—his parents coddled him too much. While Rice treated all his charges fairly and with love, he did not like Pem.

  “She’s in the back. I’m going to take her a puzzle,”

  “I’ll take it to her,” Pem offered. Rice’s inward frown intensified. Pem was uncomfortable with Yallia in the Crèche—attention he might have had from Rice was diverted to her and Pem resented it. Pem was also a troublemaker—Rice’s instincts were to tell him ‘thank you, no.’ As he opened his mouth to say just that, he heard a child’s shout of anger in another corner of the Crèche. Two youngsters had begun a rough-and-tumble over a toy, a commonplace event but one that demanded his instant attention. He dropped the puzzle and headed off to end the skirmish and adjudicate.

  Pem quietly sneaked out of the main room to deliver the puzzle to the weird shippie girl.

  Yallia was waiting in the room, sitting on the couch and kicking her feet against the cushions. She got up when Pem entered with the holopuzzle.

  “You brought it,” she said in a half statement, half question.

  “Yeah. Are you coming back tomorrow?” Pem asked as pointedly as only a child could.

  “I don’t know,” Yallia said, reaching for the puzzle.

  Pem held it out of her reach. “You can only have this if you promise not to come back. You smell funny,” he added, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

  “That’s not nice,” Yallia said quietly. She stopped reaching for the puzzle and a curious expression came over her face. She felt a slight swelling in her stomach.

  Pem pressed the attack. “So? You’re weird. You have funny hair. I hope you get lost outside and never come back to the Dome.”

  Yallia felt the strangeness inside her growing. It was as if a bubble of fire were rapidly erupting in volume inside her lungs. She spoke to Pem in a whisper. “You should stop talking,” she said, looking at him with barely concealed hate.

  “You stop. I hate you. I hate all you stupid shippies. I hope you die!” He punctuated his wishes with a violent shove that almost knocked Yallia down.

  It was, of course, a child’s threat, but in that moment, Pem Wenakasaki meant what he said, even if he did not fully understand the nature of death. It was enough to know that he wished her out of his life entirely, and if that meant death, so be it. In that, his desires were not too incompatible with those of the adult argies around him, even if his expression of them was more direct.

  The shove shattered the delicate equilibrium Yallia had been trying to maintain in her midsection. The fire inside her grew quickly, and she instinctively opened her mouth as it rose through her throat. She had no choice in the matter—she could no longer contain the pressure.

  She expelled a green-yellow jet of gas at the older boy, heaving her body grotesquely to do so. The jet of gas ignited brilliantly a few inches away from her mouth and covered Pem in a wash of lime-colored flame. He dropped to the floor and screamed in agony as Yallia turned the fire on his writhing body. Pem rolled helplessly on the carpet, which was also aflame by now, and abruptly stopped screaming as the superheated gas choked off his breath.

  Yallia ran out of breath, and the flame stopped. As if waiting for her wrath to end, the building’s heat-sensitive sprinkler system b
egan dousing the room with water. An urgent computer voice spoke loudly in the Crèche: “Fire! Evacuate the building! Fire! Evacuate the building! Fire! Evac—”

  Another computer voice added to the first one. “Atmosphere warning! Chlorine detected in toxic amounts. Evacuate the area!” The low hum of blowers added to the noise.

  Rice burst into the staff room and hesitated a fraction of a second, trying to put together what he saw through the rain. His eyes stung when the chlorine and smoke assaulted them. Pem was still ablaze on the ground, silently rolling on the carpet. Yallia seemed all right, so Rice jumped on top of Pem and tried to smother the flames with his body. It was all he could do to stay in contact with the boy and fight off the agonizing pain of the fire as it burned his own flesh. It seemed to take hours to put the fire out, but Rice, coughing and choking in the stinging air, extinguished most of the flames and patted away the pockets that still smoldered. Pem lay motionless in his arms, and Rice started CPR, knowing emergency services had been alerted by the Crèche computer. He was only able to complete three cycles when his own breath gave out, and he collapsed on the floor, coughing and holding his tearing eyes.

  Yallia watched him as if in a dream—her child mind was putting the events of the past few seconds together. She was not aware of the chlorine in the room, nor was she affected by the smoke that obscured the upper half of the office. She saw Pem’s body, curled in the mantis-like fighting stance all burn victims assumed, and felt…nothing. She knew, intellectually, that she had burned him, but at that moment, her sympathy was reserved for Mr. Rice. She bent down and shook him.

  “Mr. Rice! Get up, Mr. Rice!” she shouted above the din of the computer warnings and sprinklers. Rice coughed and screamed at the same time, pressing his palms into his eye sockets. “I’m burning!” he managed to shout between coughs.

  “You have to get out of the room! There’s bad air in here,” Yallia said, trying to lift him from the floor. Rice fought her off, insane with the pain of his melting eyeballs. Yallia continued to tug at his arm but she could not budge him. Rice buried his head in the now-soaking carpet and tried to hide his eyes from the air.