Hella

by David Gerrold

  The farm inspectors barely looked at anything though. Mostly, they sat in the kitchen with Jeremy, sipping tea from big self-heating mugs, and talking to him for what felt like a very long time.

  They wanted to talk privately, so I went into the office and logged on to answer my mail. There was a note from J’mee saying how much she and Chigger had enjoyed the morning, and they’d like to come visit Jeremy and me at the farm. Tonight would be good. Maybe we could all have dinner together? I didn’t think Jeremy would object, but I told her I couldn’t say yes until I talked to him. I’d let her know in a little bit.

  There were a few other emails from the Cascade. And there were some notes from people at Summerland, mostly telling me how sad they were about what happened to Jamie and Emily-Faith and Captain Skyler. They said they knew how bad I must feel. I thought that was an odd thing to say. How could they know what I felt? But then I thought about what HARLIE had said this morning, and I realized that this was their conversation, they were trying to be nice. I should appreciate the effort.

  There was also a note from HARLIE. It made no sense at all. He asked, “Do you like monkeys?”

  I didn’t understand the question, so I just wrote back, “I don’t know any.”

  I tried to check in with Mom, but she was caught up in meetings again. She was having more meetings than usual. That was odd. I had the feeling it had something to do with Coordinator Layton. He was announcing more and more changes every day and I wondered if he was planning on replacing Mom as captain of her bio-medical research team.

  I browsed around the network for a while, looking at the lists of new music and shows and documentaries that the Cascade had brought. I wondered if Jeremy would like to go to the theater sometime. We’d never talked about that. But maybe that was something we could do some night.

  Jeremy came in then and sat down next to me. I swiveled in my chair to face him. “J’mee and Charles want to come to dinner tonight. I told her that I had to check with you first.”

  He put his hand on mine. “I have to talk to you about something else first.”

  “Okay.”

  “Those men who were here—”

  “The farm inspectors?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you pass? The inspection?”

  “They weren’t here to inspect anything.”

  “Oh.”

  “They came down to tell me that it wasn’t a good thing for you and me to be together.”

  I felt a rush of anger—I stopped myself before it turned into a tantrum. “They can’t tell you that!”

  “Um, actually, they kind of can.” He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. “They could transfer me out of this farm and off to some of the caverns that aren’t ready for crops yet. Probably some of the really stinky ones.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s stupid. They said my father wouldn’t like it if we kept seeing each other. They said he could make trouble for all the farm teams. Not just me, but everybody. They said he’s already planning to make changes, and—”

  “Okay, then. I guess I’ll go.” I started to get up, but he pushed me back down into the chair.

  “No, kiddo. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You called me kiddo.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you said I could. And because it’s special. Now shut up and listen. They told me to send you home. They were very insistent about it. They said there would be consequences if I didn’t.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “You really want to know?” He smiled.

  “Yes.”

  “I told them to fold it so it was all corners, and stick it where the sun don’t shine. If my father has anything to say to me, he can say it to my face. Otherwise, there are only two people who get to vote on whether or not you and I keep seeing each other. I get one vote, you get the other. I like having you here, so I vote you get to stay.”

  “I like being here too.”

  “Then the election is over and it’s unanimous.”

  I leaned over and hugged him. It felt like the right thing to do.

  When we finally broke apart, “But aren’t you afraid of what they might do?”

  “I’m not going to let my father or any of those people who work for him tell me who I can be with. And yes, I am afraid that they’ll transfer me to some out-station or cancel my research or I don’t know what. But—” He stopped. He lowered his voice. “A lot of people don’t like the changes that my dad wants to make. And a lot of people want to challenge him in the Council. Your mom, for one. So . . . if it’s time to choose sides, then I choose this side. I have to. Because if I cave in to my dad, then that sends a message which side I’m on and which side I think is going to win. I can’t do that. Besides, we promised ourselves, we’re going to figure it out one day at a time. Right?” He looked at me intensely. “Right?”

  I thought about it. “Okay. Then if that’s your conversation, that’s your conversation.”

  “That’s another joke? Right? Two in one day? Next thing, you’ll be doing standup in the caf on Friday night?”

  “Don’t forget to tip your waiter. I’ll be here all week.” Jamie used to say that sometimes, but I didn’t need to explain that.

  “That’s three. Keep it up, kiddo. I like it. Now, what time are Charles and J’mee coming?”

  “Hey!” I followed him back to the test kitchen. We began washing out the tea mugs. “HARLIE asked me if I like monkeys? What’s that about?”

  “Dunno. We’ll find out when they get here.”

  They arrived early, while Jeremy and I were still in the shower. They called hello, and I half-expected them to strip off their clothes and join us, but they waited politely while we air-blasted dry and pulled on shirts and shorts. They both had backpacks. J’mee wore hers properly, but Charles had his slung over one shoulder.

  “We thought we’d take you on a nighttime picnic.” She hefted the bag to suggest it was full of goodies. “Where’s a good place to go?”

  “Anyplace,” said Jeremy. “I mean, anyplace in the caverns. There are lots of nice gardens everywhere.”

  “We were thinking of someplace a little more private,” Charles said. “Maybe someplace . . . really quiet. Someplace where nobody goes?”

  “Um, yeah,” said Jeremy. He scratched his head. “I can think of a few places.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Let me think. Do you want deep and dark? Or dark and mysterious? Or strange and dark? Or dark and empty? Or how about just dark? Wait a minute—” He went rummaging in a drawer. “We’ll need some light-sticks. I know a place nobody knows.”

  “Perfect,” said Charles. “After all those months on the Cascade, we’re ready for something a little wild.”

  Jeremy led us westward through one of the industrial tunnels. Occasional vehicles trundled past us, but none of them had drivers. Overhead, bright-colored plastic tubes branched and curved off into side passages. Some of them hummed softly, vibrating with the pressure of pumps moving liquid. Occasionally we heard the whoosh of a canister racing through a magnetic pipe. Emories and other containers could be delivered all over Winterland in a matter of minutes.

  We hiked almost to the end of the developments. There weren’t any overhead pipes here, and even the light panels were spaced farther apart. “This area is mostly storage,” Jeremy explained. “Unused storage.” He led us into a wide passage, shining his light-stick around to reveal the naked rock walls of a long dark hall. Part of the hall was lined with upright cylindrical tanks, huge and looming, but mostly it was empty racks where no tanks had ever been installed. The light faded away in the far distance, so we couldn’t tell how far the space reached into the mountain.

  “What is this place?” asked J’mee.

  “It was supposed
to be a secure storage facility.”

  “I know!” I said, “A technological civilization needs resources, raw materials. So this was going to be a place for storing necessary supplies of whatever—water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, helium, hydrogen, all that stuff. You don’t want to put it all in one place. You want to spread your supplies around. Let me guess, this was supposed to be a backup facility. How come they didn’t finish it?”

  “My father,” said Jeremy, as if that was explanation enough. He led us behind the tanks. Instead of a rocky wall, there was a large open door leading to another long hall. “There are six of these empty halls, all side by side. Maybe more. I never went all the way to the end. If you look up the history of the colony, you’ll find there were a lot of projects started by one administration and shut down by the next. Very bad planning, if you ask me. Some of these places—like this one—they’re not even on the maintenance maps. Once a cavern is shut down, it’s like it’s been officially forgotten. I mean, it’s on some map somewhere and maybe someday someone will remember we dug it out, but right now it doesn’t exist.”

  Charles waved his light-stick around. “I don’t see any installations here . . .” His voice echoed. His light seemed small in the larger gloom of the long hall.

  “There aren’t any,” said Jeremy. “They never even got around to installing safety doors.”

  “No monitors?”

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  “Wow.” Charles walked a ways down the empty hall. “Nothing to do here but throw rocks at cans. And you gotta bring your own cans.” He muttered something I couldn’t hear. It looked like he was talking to his backpack. After a bit, he came trudging back. “But it’d be a great place for a still—”

  “There are better places for a still,” said Jeremy. “If you really wanted to build one, you’d build it behind the farms. But why build your own, when we’ve got better fermentation bays and distilleries already working?”

  Charles shook his head. “I don’t like alcohol that much. I don’t like the taste. But my brother and his husband like beer and my mom likes wine. Bev uses it to cook sometimes.”

  “When you boys are all through talking,” J’mee said, “I’d like to eat.”

  “Okay,” said Charles. He opened his backpack and pulled out a slightly battered toy monkey. The monkey’s eyes lit up as it peered around. It scampered off into the gloom of the cave, exploring the darkness. Sometimes it made monkey sounds. And sometimes, bat-sounds.

  “Echo-testing,” said Charles.

  Finally the monkey came back to our island of light and made a raspberry sound. “Thpffft.”

  “Okay, thank you.” Charles looked to Jeremy. “No. Not here.”

  Jeremy pointed ahead. Holding our lights high, we went deeper into the ranks of the long halls. It was strange to be in a cavern that wasn’t braced against quakes. Not that we had many quakes, but we were inside a dormant volcano, and this continent was still geologically active. Belt and suspenders, as Captain Skyler would have said. I had to look up suspenders.

  Past the last hall, there was a half-dug chamber which looked like it would have been the start of another hall, but was now abandoned. The tracks of the last digging bots were still visible in the dirt and rubble. There was nothing else here. Everything useful had been removed by the maintenance bots when the site had been shut down.

  Charles took the monkey out of his backpack again and turned it loose. It scampered off into the darkness, repeating its previous performance of exploration. It looked like it was searching for something. It cocked its head and listened for a moment—we all held still, listening to the darkness too. The silence was so thick you could almost touch it. We could hear each other’s breathing. I could even hear my own heartbeat.

  Then the monkey came back, chittering with monkey noises and Charles said, “This is a good place.”

  “What was he looking for?”

  “For something that isn’t here.”

  “Huh?”

  “Snoopies.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sure.”

  Nobody had ever seen a snoopy, but everybody goes hunting for their eggs on spring equinox day. They leave bright-colored eggs in the oddest places. Sometimes we find candy eggs too, but we know that Mom and other people put those out so we won’t be disappointed if we don’t find any snoopy eggs.

  When I was little, Jamie used to send me on snoopy hunts all the time, looking for the snoopies who’d left their eggs in my boots or under my bed or sitting on the tea shelf. And once, just before the equinox, he’d sent me all over Summerland looking for a left-handed snoopy-basket for carrying snoopy eggs.

  Snoopies were either very fast, or they were invisible. But if they were invisible, then wouldn’t they lay invisible eggs? So they had to be very fast.

  Even after Jamie told me there was no such thing as snoopies, that Mom and the other grownups put out the eggs, I was still certain that there were some kind of little Hellan creatures that had infiltrated the station, that moved around in shadows and darkness, stealing socks and other little things, or just moving them around from where you know you left them. Sometimes at night, I was sure I could hear them scurrying around, but Jamie said it was just the noises of plumbing and ventilators.

  J’mee started unloading things from her backpack, including several bright-red bottles. “I snuck these out of Daddy’s cabinet. I know I’m going to get yelled at, but you have to try this.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see.” She spread a large blanket across the rocky floor and laid out plates of rice balls and pickles. Cucumber salad. Fruit paste and stiff-bread. Several kinds of sausage and sauces. Three kinds of cheese. A bowl of fresh green-berries in cream. It seemed as if her backpack was bottomless. “The sausages are from the Cascade,” she explained. “The sauces too. And the cheese. The rest is from the executive caf.” She looked to Jeremy as if sharing a secret. “I think they serve better food up there.”

  “I know they do,” said Jeremy. “I grow it for them, remember?”

  “Isn’t that a little . . . I dunno . . . elitist?” asked Charles.

  “Well, yeah—” Jeremy admitted. “I guess it could be. But can you keep a secret?” They nodded. “Sometimes I use the executive caf as a test lab. Any new strain, any interesting recipe—they get it first. We wouldn’t do that to the work crews. They prefer consistency in their menus.”

  Charles was emptying his backpack too. Plates, cups, napkins, chopsticks, glasses, and serving tools. He put a circumference of several glow-balls around the area which brightened up the immediate area, but made the darkness around seem even darker. Then we were all on our knees for a bit, arranging the food and the plates and the cups and everything else, sorting and passing and giggling.

  The monkey watched all this politely, waiting for us to finish setting up. After we had sorted ourselves out and taken our places around the sides of the blanket, the monkey plopped itself down between me and Charles, sitting with its stubby legs spread apart like a small obedient child. It waited patiently.

  “Um,” I said. “Is that thing yours?”

  “Kind of,” said Charles.

  “Aren’t you a little old for kiddy-toys?”

  “Yep,” he agreed. “I am. Let’s eat first.”

  I looked at Jeremy. He looked at me and shrugged. I shrugged back. Okay. We turned our attention to the food. The sausage was different than I was used to, but it was good. It had a mellow nutty flavor. J’mee handed around the red bottles. “Be careful,” was the only warning she gave.

  I passed. Jeremy didn’t. When he could speak again, he asked, “What was that?”

  “Scovilles,” she said. “Habaneros. Jalapenos. And a few other things that should have a skull and crossbones on them.”

  “And your dad brought them here? Why?”

 
“Nacho business,” said J’mee. Then she had to explain the pun—and what nachos were. “He brought seeds. You’ll see. He’ll want you to grow them.”

  Jeremy was still brushing his tongue with a roll. “I’ll be charged with eco-sabotage if I do. You could have warned me, you know.”

  “I did tell you to be careful.”

  Next, J’mee passed the cheese plate around. One of the cheeses was sharp and tangy, the second was subtle and tasted of sage, the third was speckled with fruit and surprisingly sweet.

  “We brought cultures,” said J’mee. “We’ll be able to make more cheese like this. And lots of other kinds. And recipes for all different kinds of sausages too.”

  Jeremy nodded and said, “We’ve been experimenting with various Hellan cultures for cheese and beer and bread. Some of it is very good. Some of it isn’t. But we haven’t incorporated any of it into our regular diet yet. The Council is concerned about long-term effects, what it might do to our bodies to have alien protein in our systems. Would we get new kinds of cancer, for instance? Or new allergies? We have vaccinations for most Earth allergies, but some Hella proteins are folded differently, so we’re not sure what they’ll do. What if there are even worse things we can’t predict and wouldn’t have a chance to understand before they started changing us in a way that we wouldn’t be human anymore? There are proteins on Earth that infect mammalian brains and change the animal’s behavior. We can’t afford to take the risk. One bad mistake and the colony dies.”

  He shook his head. “It’s scary. It’s risky. We’ve been lucky so far. But that’s because we’ve been so careful. But look how long it took for scientists on Earth to decode Gaia—and it still wasn’t enough to stop the polycrisis. It’ll take generations to decode Hella. And we can’t simply translate Earth experience to Hella, because that’s a dangerous assumption. But . . . we’re learning.” Jeremy looked around at all of us, shrugged and pushed his rumpled hair backward. It immediately fell right back into place. “Some of the proteins are safe, some are weird. And sometimes we get combinations that don’t make sense.”