by Larry Niven
Justin started to protest, but Joe waved him off. “You may know who they are, and you may not. That doesn’t concern me at the moment. What does concern me is that this has gone far enough.”
“Something goes wrong, and the first thing you do is blame it on us Star Born. We’re not the only ones on this planet, Joe. If this was caused by a human being—”
“What else would you suggest?”
“Don’t know. Some kind of natural phenomenon.”
“Underground explosions aren’t very natural,” Joe said. “Edgar has been saying the same thing. Got an answer?”
Edgar shook his head. “Not me. Time to go relieve Toshiro.” He strode off quickly.
“Right. Edgar can’t explain it and neither can you.”
Justin spread his hands helplessly. “All right, I don’t think of anything, but—Suppose it was caused by a human being, why think it was one of us? You Firsts have a lot higher wacko factor.”
“I remember. ‘Ice On My Mind.’ Someone spelled that out in alfalfa, two years ago. HI drops functional IQ. It doesn’t cause emotional damage.”
“Carolyn McAndrews,” Justin said. And Mom’s been getting harder to live with . . .
“All right, I’ll give you that one,” Joe said. “But I don’t believe it was a First, and neither do you.”
Justin felt his fingers knot into fists. “Double-talk. All of you came to this planet coasting on your freezing intellectual egos. Thought you were the smartest things in the known universe. Then most of you lost a few points—some more than that. Add the Grendel Wars. Pretty high fear factor there, you know? Hey, sis—does Joe still wake up screaming? Still scaring Cadzie at two in the morning . . . ?”
“Stop it,” Linda said. Her voice was coldly serious. “And stop it now.”
“You’re crossing the line, Justin,” Joe said.
“You, too,” Linda said, but it didn’t sound the same.
She’s made her choice, Justin thought. And it’s not any of the Second. To hell with that. “Just remember that. There is a line—”
“Justin—”
“No, Sis, let me finish. There is a line, and we’d better both remember it. You can say Surf’s Up did this as a prank—but it’s your side doesn’t want anyone going to the mainland. We all want to go.”
“So do I,” Joe reminded him. “No quarrel there. Now, let me give you something to think about. How do you suppose we were chosen to come on this expedition?”
“I’ve read all about it,” Justin said. “Cassandra has the records.”
“Like hell she does,” Sikes said. “Cassandra has the official records, but they’re dry as dust. Laddie, some of us worked to get here. Did you ever think who chose the colonists?”
“Well, it was a board appointed by the directors of the Geographic Society,” Justin said. “So?”
“A board of shrinks,” Sikes said. “Psychiatrists and social workers. Ruth Moskowitz was one of them. And they picked just the kind of people you’d expect them to.”
Justin frowned. “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“No, I suppose, you wouldn’t,” Sikes said. “Let me put it this way. Damn near all the colonists were exactly the sort of people the shrinks wanted them to be. Colonel Weyland was an exception, a military man picked for his profession. Then there was Carlos. He qualified on brains, but the shrinks would never have picked him, so his father bribed the selection board. He wanted Carlos as far from the family as possible. As for the rest—” Joe shrugged. “Some were people the shrinks approved of, and some, a few, maybe more than a few, wanted to go so bad they worked at it, found out what the shrinks were looking for, and played head games.”
“And you were one of those?”
“Maybe it’s time—” Whatever Linda had been about to say was drowned out by the sudden wails of the baby. Linda glared at both of them. She swept her child into her arms, holding him close. “There . . . there.” She kissed his wrinkly forehead. “Just stop it, both of you. I don’t know who the Merry Pranksters are, but I can’t believe that anyone, First or Second, would do something like this deliberately. It’s not funny, it’s dangerous.”
“So what is it?” Joe demanded.
“I don’t know. I think it’s the planet surprising us again. And that damned eel has got everyone upset.”
Justin searched his heart, searching for the voice that would say that she was right, or wrong. She was right.
“All right,” he said finally.
Linda grinned. “Now, I can’t have two of my four favorite men mad at each other . . . ”
“Four?” Joe forced his mouth into a neutral position.
“Sure, now that Cadzie is here . . . ”
“And your brother, I guess . . . and Cadmann?”
“Sure.”
And whoever was the father of the baby would make five, Justin thought. He could see that Joe Sikes was thinking the same thing. There was a long and awkward pause. “Linda, isn’t there some way to find Dad?”
She shrugged. “Edgar might be able to. He’s smarter than I am.”
Justin kissed Cadzie good-bye, and went back out to the main room. Edgar had taken Toshiro’s place at the main console and was splitting his attention; watching some kind of holoplay through his goggles. Toshiro had another set. Whatever they were doing it was together, and not visible to anyone not wearing the head-mounted displays. Justin thumped him on the back of the head. “Edgar?”
“Yeah?”
“About that favor you owe me. I know that my dad doesn’t have his tracer turned on, but can you locate him?”
Edgar flipped the lid of his lenses up. He stood up to stretch, elaborately, fingers linked over his head. His pudgy body was an upright spear, its tip twisting in a slow circle. Edgar had hurt his back, long ago, and it had never quite healed.
“Go straight into Sun Salutation,” Toshiro said. “Head loose as you come down. Hands farther back, take your weight with just your arms as you jump straight back . . . hold it . . . elbows back, down slowly. Now inhale, chest forward—”
Edgar was puffing a little as his head and shoulders came up, but he was way improved since the last time Justin had seen him. Toshiro’s training was having its effect. Short of breath, but he wasn’t complaining. Edgar finished the sequence, grinned at Justin while he emptied and refilled his lungs, and said, “Cadmann’s not wearing a personal tracer. He disabled the tracer on the skeeter.”
“Dad likes his privacy.”
“You bet. I don’t know exactly where his lodge is.”
“Nobody does, except it’s south of Isenstine Glacier.”
Edgar grinned at him wickedly. “Well . . . what’s in it for me?”
“First pick, next catch.”
“Even stringfish?”
“No problem.”
“Well, okay. Take over the watch, Toshiro-san?”
“Certainly. I relieve you, Edgar-san.”
“Thanks. Okay, Justin, let’s see what I’ve got.” Edgar led him over to another console away from where Toshiro sat. “Geographic has images of the fuel dumps he uses. Here—” Edgar’s fingers tapped silently at a virtual keyboard display. The wall in front of them turned into a vast field of ice and rock: the wasted expanse of Isenstine Glacier that fed both the Amazon and Miskatonic. Three tiny dots glowed redly. “There. About eight hundred miles apart.”
“Spare fuel cells. Each cell takes him about five hundred miles. So he carries two backups, and has emergency dumps as well. That’s Dad.”
“Note that they’re roughly in a straight line—”
“And the last one ends about three hundred miles north of the end of the glacier. Dad and Mom are collecting plants. The nearest cacti are probably six hundred miles from the south tip of the glacier.”
“So the lodge is probably in this area somewhere—”
“Assuming that the straight line holds true,” Justin said.
“Yeah. Well, additional evidence�
��”
Edgar spoke softly to Cassandra. “Cassie, I want to look at previous dates when Colonel Weyland took his tracers offline.”
“Weyland data is restricted,” Cassandra said.
“Pretty please,” Edgar said, and muttered something else Justin couldn’t hear.
“Wilco,” Cassandra said.
Edgar grinned. “Search Geographic satellite watch for unusual infrared spots during just those periods.” He looked at Justin, face screwed up in speculation. “Ha. Has he ever made an emergency landing?”
“Last year. A rotor almost went. He was down overnight.” Justin searched his memory. “And three years ago. Got caught in a bad storm. Put down overnight.”
“The rotor should be on the maintenance records.” Edgar muttered to Cassandra. Thermal maps of the glacier flashed by, held for the dates that Cadmann Weyland was known to be on one of his jaunts, and then rolled on. Justin watched in fascination as Edgar searched until two map images came into focus. They looked as if they had been taken from about two miles up, and on each of them, tiny heat pulses flared.
“Campfires.” Edgar was utterly smug. “The dates probably match. Your dad put down overnight. First one matches the maintenance record. Second . . . ah. It was one of those nasty little solar-flare storms. Must have gotten hairy up on Isenstine.”
“And?”
“Your dad took a hard left turn here. Tricky. Then . . . Skeeter range is five hundred miles. Your father carries at least one spare, and doesn’t like to space his fuel dumps further than eight hundred miles apart. That probably puts him about here—”
“Give me a vegetation map,” Justin said.
Cassandra displayed some of the vegetation to be found in the area. “He brought back some Avalon succulents last time. Does that narrow things?”
Cassandra searched, and came up with a twenty-square-mile sprawl that met all of the conditions.
“Not bad,” Justin said. “Look for heat sources.” Four little pulses of red appeared. “Volcanic, on a cycle?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Edgar replied. “Cassandra—when was the last routine scan?”
Her familiar voice was warm and cool. “Eighteen hours ago, at the present level of magnification.”
“Nighttime. Give me a thermal scan. Compare it to the chart we just made . . . and compare it again to . . . say, anything before three days ago, back to a month.”
Edgar turned to Justin. “Does that about cover it? When was the last time your dad was out?”
“About two months.”
“Good enough. So all we should have out there are some geysers, and maybe another hunter. Not likely in that little area, but maybe. Exclude all of that, and we’ll have his campfire . . . ”
“He likes wood-burning stoves,” Justin said suddenly. “He’s got a cabin, but it’ll have a chimney.”
“And . . . bingo.”
They were looking directly down at a mass of trees near the eastern edge of Isenstine Glacier. “Camouflaged,” Edgar mused. “You could skeeter right over and never see it. That fire is stone dead now.”
“Dad would put the fire out. He’s very serious about that kind of thing.”
“So. Time for the stove to cool. Figure he left five hours ago . . . ”
Edgar rolled his eyes up, and thought. “With refueling . . . the skeeters make about a hundred and eighty kilometers tops . . . he should be right about . . . ” He poked his finger at the map. “Here. Give or take fifty kilometers or so.”
He grinned up at Justin. “Betcha,” he said, and went for magnification. Geographic wasn’t in position, but he diverted one of the weather satellites to optical mode. Cassandra kept cleaning up the image, searching for something moving against a white background . . .
They went in through the mountains, and past the savage crevasses of Isenstine Glacier. Justin could almost feel the cold.
And there it was, a flickering shadow. A red circle enclosed it and Cassandra zoomed in to show something that looked like a brine shrimp larva skittering across a pond. It was there one moment, gone the next. But Cassandra was on its track now, locked on, and Cadmann was caught.
It was Skeeter II, its silver-blue length magnified by satellite optics. The view was from not quite overhead. It was a tiny bit of metal and plastic, a thing of Man flying across an impersonal wasteland. It carried plant samples and three of the human beings Justin Faulkner loved most in all the world.
“He’ll need to make one more fuel stop,” Edgar said. He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his seat. His round face wore a smile of enormous self-satisfaction. “But that won’t take fifteen minutes. This close to home he’ll probably want to push it. I’d set ETA at about three hours.”
“Edgar . . . ” Justin grinned. “Sometimes . . . ”
“I know,” Edgar said. “Sometimes I amaze even me.”
“Three hours before he shows . . . ” Justin glanced at his watch. “I want to get at him with a full report before anyone else can tell him what’s happened.” He squeezed Edgar’s shoulder. “Thanks a lot, Edgar.”
“First choice. Stringfish.”
“You got it.” Justin ran out of the communications room, ideas and thoughts of saltwater eels swimming dizzily in his head.
♦ ChaptEr 4 ♦
mount tushmore
To compare
Great things with small . . .
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
The eastern wind turned unexpectedly fierce, burning right through the furs surrounding Cadmann Weyland’s face, numbing him to the bone. It had swept across two hundred miles of Isenstine Glacier, picking up speed and dropping in temperature as it came. He shaded his face and cursed as he hauled the replacement battery across the intervening few meters between the fuel dump and Skeeter II.
Mary Ann remained in the cockpit, her cowled face visible through the powdered flurries. She would wait there until the last minute before jumping out to lend a hand. She had always hated the cold.
Sylvia, on the other hand, loved it. She was locking up the foamed plastic dump shed, motions brisk and merry. “That was the last one!” she called over the wind. “We’ll have to restock before we take our next run!” Then she crunched across the ice to help with the pushing.
Mary Ann climbed out of the skeeter when they were about ten feet away, and opened the battery bay. She was reluctant, but deft, and had the old trunk-sized cartridge out in about fifteen seconds. It didn’t require three of them to lock the new battery into place, but it was good to have the extra hands: unsnap the used-up power cell, swing it to the side, swing new unit into place, snap on connections, slide in, lock down.
Mary Ann shut the unit, puffed a breath of condensation, and said, “Let’s get out of here!”
They piled into the autogyro’s passenger cab. Cadmann was on pilot’s position on the right, Mary Ann in the middle. Sylvia on the extreme left was last in, and slammed the door behind her. Mary Ann cranked the air blower up to a toasty pitch.
Cadmann watched the wind gauge to get a feel for the gusts. He couldn’t take off if they continued to build. The gusts punched at the little gyro, rocking it, but not so hard now. Curtains of powdered snow danced across the glacier in front of them in a somberly beautiful winter ballet.
Mary Ann interrupted his thoughts with a plaintive, “Can we get out of here? Please?” She hated that little-girl petulance quality in her voice, but it was there too often. She closed her eyes and hunched forward to catch a little more of the hot air. Cadmann caught Sylvia’s eye. She winked at him, and put an arm around Mary Ann to help warm her. Even with the thirty pounds she’d gained since their second child, Mary Ann possessed little tolerance for cold weather; but despite her discomfort, she rarely let Cadmann and Sylvia go on these trips without her.
There were times when Mary Ann couldn’t accept comforting from Sylvia, when any gesture of kindness or warmth triggered a burst of resentment. This wasn’t one of them. They
pushed tight against each other. Sylvia tucked a thermal blanket around them both. Sylvia’s teeth were chattering, but she still managed to smile.
“Cad?” she said. “If you don’t get this thing into the air, we may walk home.”
He nodded without speaking, still trying to read the gusts. He patched into Cassandra on a secure line, and got a quick weather feed: no sign of the quick, violent storms that made traversing Isenstine so hazardous. This was just bad wind, not likely to get much worse. Carefully, he engaged the engines, satisfied with the steady hum as the new fuel cell sparked to life. Nose and top and tail rotors spun into blurred motion one at a time, whipping more snow from the ground. He engaged the de-icers and the wiper blades.
“All right. Buckle in,” he said unnecessarily. He was almost embarrassed to say that to adults. It was just a habit he had gotten into, three kids ago. The kids were pretty much grown now, but the reflex remained.
The skeeter leaned toward against the wind and began to scoot along the ice. Then, nose-heavy, it lifted from the ground, spun a quarter-turn as a gust punched them, and rose into the sky.
Mary Ann poked her head out from under the blanket and breathed a sigh of relief. “Bet it’s calmer up about two thousand feet,” she said.
“Bet you’re right,” he said. His hands were locked surely on the controls how. At eighteen hundred feet they hit low cloud cover, rocked for fifteen seconds, and then climbed up into relative stillness.
Tau Ceti transmuted the clouds into banks of gold-white fluff. The air was crisp and clear. The window didn’t quite seal on his side, and a bright, Arctic thread of air whistled through, stinging and invigorating.
This was good, one of those moments that made the rest of it all worthwhile. He felt the calm descend upon Sylvia and Mary Ann as well. Here, floating above the clouds, there seemed to be no troubles. Tau Ceti IV was a world of wonders, a calm and nurturing land which would feed and shelter their grandchildren as graciously as it served them. This was a time when he could forget the internecine conflicts within the colony, and the occasional friction between Mary Ann and Sylvia.
There had been less of that for the past year. He thought . . . he hoped . . . they had weathered the last true storm in their triad. There were too few Western precedents for three-way relationships.