by Merry Farmer
It was too much to hope for. He shook his head and continued his march across the room. “Carrie was delirious. She didn’t know what she was saying.”
That didn’t stop a kernel of hope from quivering in his chest. The smoke signals. They were coming from the north, from the direction of Kutrosky’s old camp. He desperately wanted it to be Grace who had sent them, but if it wasn’t, it could have been Kutrosky. The coward could be showing himself at last.
“What’s going on?” Beth jumped up from the table where she’d been eating her breakfast, cradling her huge belly as she waddled to catch up to Danny and Stacey. More eyes were on them now. “Is Carrie all right? What’s this about smoke signals?”
“Carrie might be dying.” Stacey swallowed her fear in an effort to appear tough. “It was a shitty delivery. The baby girl seems to be okay though.”
“Oh no!” Beth gasped, holding her own stomach tighter. “Do they need help?”
“Sean doesn’t want any help. He’s in shock. If Carrie….” She swallowed before going on. “But you know Carrie. She’s a fighter. She might make it still.”
Danny left it to Stacey to tell the news to the rest of the people filling the pavilion. He reached his lab and tossed his herb box on the desk beside the fat wilderness survival book with a clatter. He threw off his parka and sank into his chair, burying his face in his hands. Endless winter without Grace, her best friend on the verge of death, and now a lie that could save or damn them all. If only he knew where Kutrosky was.
The hamsters in their cages hopped and scurried around, as agitated as he felt. He knew that agitation all too well—trapped and helpless in an unfamiliar place, wondering when death would come. He had more sympathy for them than half of the people around him, people who continued on in the blissful ignorance of colony-building, unaware how close to the edge they all were, thanks to a missing psychopath.
A soft knock sounded at the entrance to his space. “Um…Danny?”
Danny lifted his head and opened his eyes to find Gil shuffling in the entryway, Jasper in one arm, wax tablet in the other hand.
He let out an irritated sigh. “What, Gil? I don’t feel like company.”
Gil tilted his head and glanced sideways, nodding like that was nothing new. He adjusted Jasper in his arms. “It’s about these calculations?” he said, turning a solid statement into a question as usual.
Danny sighed and twisted to face him.
Gil took it as his cue to go on. “The days have been getting longer for a while, but I thought you should know that the barometric pressure just rose? But not the way it does on Earth, as far as I can tell. I don’t have the right equipment. I have been able to observe some sort of activity in the upper atmosphere that I can’t measure but that I think is significant.”
“Bottom line?” Danny asked. He could imagine Grace smacking his arm for being so curt with Gil. The image tied his gut in knots. Where was she when he needed her?
“The bottom line is that the seasons are changing,” Gil announced with a smile. That smile faltered. “Which, of course, means the river will probably flood. And our fields will turn to mud. But everyone will be able to travel again. Um…everyone. Kinn, Kutrosky.”
The smoke. Someone was already traveling. Adrenaline hit him like a fist. Whoever it was, they were sending a message: come and get me.
“Thanks.” He nodded once, turning to his desk and opening the survival book. He pretended to look through it, searching for information about flooding until Gil shuffled away. As soon as silence filled in behind him, Danny sat back, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles went white. How soon could he settle things in his camp and gather supplies for a journey? What would he need out there in the snow?
The whisper of a memory, of sitting with Grace in his original laboratory, working through problems, settled over him. Her fire-red hair shining in the summer sun. The freckles brought out by the sunshine on her cheeks and nose, across her shoulders. The soft curves of her body beneath her dress. He missed her like he missed his soul.
His thoughts shifted back to Carrie, replaying the carnage he had had a part in. Helpless guilt washed over him. She probably would die. Even if she made it through the delivery itself, he’d had no way to sterilize his hands when he pulled her baby out. Infection would take her even if the initial hemorrhaging didn’t.
What if that had been Grace? He wasn’t naïve enough to think that Kinn would leave her alone over there on his side of the river. He’d wanted her from the start and now he had her. Grace was probably growing round with that bastard’s child while he sat here, alone and impotent, doing nothing to right the wrong he’d caused. She could be dying right now as Kinn’s child ripped her body apart.
The thought propelled him out of his chair. He spun to his desk, throwing open the lid of his herb box and pulling his worn backpack off a shelf. He couldn’t sit still, licking his bitter wounds, for another second. If there was any possibility, no matter how remote, that Kutrosky was wrong in some way about the beacon and Vengeance, if there was so much as a whisper of hope that death wouldn’t come from the skies and destroy the world they were making, the world Grace dreamed of, then he had to know. Someone was already out there calling to him. He had to find out who was moving and why.
He had to find Grace.
Chapter Two – Remnants
Responsibility kept Danny pinned to the pavilion for the rest of the day. Once, his job had involved sitting for hours at a computer, analyzing genetic data and code and making choices about who should live or die because of it. Now it was constant motion, a never-ending string of decisions with far more mundane implications. Who could be spared to fix Dave and Lois’s roof? Had the hunting party brought back enough game or should they be sent out for more? Could they afford to start in on the last barrel of wild oats?
Grace was far better at these kinds of decisions than he could ever hope to be. She had been trained for them. Her instinct for people and what they needed was second to none. No matter what she thought of him assuming leadership, no matter how certain she was that he had manipulated his way into the position behind her back, he hated every moment of it. He wasn’t worthy of her job. He would give it back to her in a heartbeat.
When the sun rose after a night that had seen no snowfall and little sleep for him, he was itching to leave. The settlement was silent but for the song of winter birds and a light breeze in the treetops as coral hues of sunrise flooded across the clearing. He tucked his snowshoes under his arm and jogged from his cabin to the pavilion. The air was heavy with expectation.
A few people on breakfast duty were working around the fire pit at the center of the pavilion when he entered. Pots steamed over the open fire on trivets built of stone. The pots—along with seeds, tools, and tents—had been in the treasure chests he had secured on the emergency ship when he learned of the plot to blow up the Argo. Packing those supplies was the best thing he’d ever done, but until they found substantial deposits of ore and learned how to form it into metal, they were still in the Stone Age.
He pushed those worries aside and headed straight for his lab without pulling the scarf off of the lower half of his face. If Vengeance came, none of it would matter. If somehow Kutrosky had been wrong about his ship, there would be time to deal with it later. Right now, he had a mission.
The supplies he’d gathered the day before were waiting, carefully concealed under his desk. Food to last a few days, a couple pairs of dry socks knit from the wool of the sheep creatures they had domesticated, a handful of matches from their dwindling supply, and packets of the herbs he’d been working with were tucked in his backpack. The last thing he needed to do was leave a note for Sean and herbs with instructions for treating Carrie when she woke up. If she woke up. He reached for his wax tablet, but hesitated, stylus poised over the malleable surface. What could he say about where he was going?
“Hey.”
Stacey startled him as he bent over his desk
. He jumped to face her, goring the wax tablet with the stylus.
“What’re you doin’?” She leaned against one of the shelves that held his lab animals, baby Jasper sleeping in one arm and her other hand planted on her hip.
Without more than a cursory glance he said, “I need you to make a tea to give to Carrie using these herbs.” He picked up a packet marked “fever blend” to show her, then tossed it on the desk again. “I’m not sure how much good it will do her, but it might help. Brew it until it’s dark and put a little bit of honey in it, if we have any left.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Stacey tilted her head to the snowshoes thrown in his chair. “What are you up to?”
He brushed her off, snatching the snowshoes and sitting in the chair to strap them to his feet. They were a basic design, crudely constructed out of branches that had been soaked and molded into long teardrops with a lattice and leather straps. Carrie had made them. Five long months of winter had proven that they worked.
“What Carrie said got to you, didn’t it?” Stacey straightened, shifting Jasper in her arms. Danny didn’t reply so she went on. “About Kutrosky being wrong. You think it’s something about his rescue ship or the beacon, don’t you? Or is it some other scheme the two of you have cooked up that you haven’t told the rest of us?”
“Go away, Stacey.” He focused on tightening the straps on the first shoe, scowling behind his glasses.
“Nah.” She dismissed him, stepping further into his space even though he didn’t acknowledge her. “What are you going to do out there? Look for Kutrosky? Venture out across the snow? Over the river? Investigate the smoke signals?”
He jerked his head up.
A wry grin tweaked her lips. “Smoke signals it is, then.”
“The scouts reported that they stopped,” he told her, going back to tightening the straps of the snowshoes, face flushed. “They were coming from farther away than we first thought.”
“Yeah, I get it. Like the area where Kutrosky’s camp used to be, just like Heather said. I see what you’re planning.”
“No, you don’t. We don’t know where the signals were coming from and it isn’t likely that we’ll find out.” He scowled and fastened the second snowshoe over his other boot.
“But that’s still where you’re going.”
He grunted and stomped his foot down, standing and reaching for his backpack. He glanced to her, only his large eyes visible behind his glasses above the scarf, and pushed past her.
“You are going to look for Kutrosky, aren’t you?” She followed him, practically stepping on his heels. “I saw the look in your eyes when Carrie said he was wrong. It was the same look you’ve had every time anyone’s mentioned his name since summer. You won’t let it drop. You wanna know what she meant bad enough to risk your neck out there to find him. You wanna make him pay for what happened with Grace.”
A flush of fury heated him from the inside out.
Stacey must have caught his reaction. She narrowed her eyes. “Hold on, this isn’t about Kutrosky. It’s about Grace, isn’t it?”
“Get out of my way.” He pushed past her. Stacey didn’t know the half of it. Let her think what she wanted. It didn’t matter to him.
“You don’t think she could be the one who sent the signals, do you?”
“Now, why would she do a thing like that?” His heart asked the same question. If it was her, why? What did she need? Was she calling him?
“Right. I’m coming with you.” Stacey caught up to his side near the far end of the pavilion.
“Stay here and take care of your baby,” he ordered without stopping. If the snowshoes weren’t so awkward, he would have run to get away from her.
“Like hell!” Stacey dogged him. “Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll give Jasper to Gil and tell him you need me. I’ll be ready.”
He gave her no reply as she dashed off to snatch her parka from the table where she’d left it. She cut out of the pavilion through a side entrance that led to her and Gil’s cabin.
Without a backward glance, Danny pushed on in his own direction. He swung the backpack over his shoulders and adjusted it into place. He left the pavilion through the far flap, climbing up the ramp to walk on top of feet of packed snow. Several sets of snowshoe prints marked where groups of scouts had come and gone in the last day. With any luck Stacey wouldn’t be able to tell which prints were his.
He glanced to Sean and Carrie’s house as he picked up his pace and headed north. Nobody could die. Grace’s mantra echoed in his mind as if she were beside him repeating it ad nauseum. If they were going to create a viable long-term civilization no one could die. Each and every one of them was needed. No matter how much simpler it would have been to get rid of the bad influences.
He shook his head. Grace was wrong. Some people needed to die in order for others to live in peace. The truth had been staring him in the face all winter. Carrie’s dying confession was merely the last push he needed. There were plenty of people who could stay and fight Grace’s fight to build a permanent society. He had a new mission. And to accomplish that there was something he needed first.
Data had flashed across his computer screen so fast it had started to give him a headache. Names, faces, statistics, genotypes, alleles, genomic sequences. The Project had poured through his mind in an ever-shifting tapestry of possibilities and problems. They’d given him all the tools he could ever hope for to create exactly what they needed for the job ahead of them: tough, smart individuals with the strength to endure Earth’s worst conditions. The entire continent of North America had been put at his disposal. Finding couples who could generate top-grade soldiers without sacrificing his own desires should have been easier than this. It would have been easier if he hadn’t been trying so hard not to get caught stacking the deck in his favor.
With a frustrated growl, Danny pushed away from his desk, rubbing his eyes. He should have finished constructing and modeling the Secondary Protocol weeks ago. In truth, he had finished it, but not the way he wanted to. Three months into the journey to Terra and he still couldn’t manipulate the data to keep Grace from being sucked into The Terra Project’s black hole.
Grace. Her name brought a bittersweet smile to his lips. Twenty-three years of carefully guided training out the window because a woman in a skirt standing in line in the Florida sun had spoken to him instead of shrinking from him.
He sighed and got up, walking away from his work in disgust to get a cup of tea from the kitchen unit. The tap hissed as pressurized water poured into the electric kettle. He had to get a grip, let his libido go. Losing focus was unacceptable. A thousand other geneticists would have killed their mothers to take his place. He was millimeters away from all the respect and recognition a man with his background could ever hope to have, and one mighty fist was waiting to squash him to dust if he dropped a single thread of the experiment for a second.
The squealing, girlish laughter in the hall outside his door was the only warning he had before the hurried knock.
“Com—”
Before he could finish one word, the door swished open and Grace rushed in, pulling Carrie behind her. She slapped the pad beside the door. As soon as it hissed shut, both she and Carrie collapsed against it. The two of them were in fits of hysterics, out of breath and red-faced. They wore work-out clothes, Grace in the skirt variation she’d made for herself, her hair tied back in braids. She radiated life and beauty. Who could care about the secrets of the Project once that beauty got under their skin?
His kettle hissed ready. Danny pushed straight from where he had leaned against the doorway to his kitchen. He sidestepped to the counter and poured boiling water into the waiting tea cup. A wistful grin tilted his mouth. Grace Hargrove would be the end of him…if he could find a way to prevent the end of her.
“Up to no good?” He raised an eyebrow at the mischief by his door.
Grace turned first—her smile making his heart skip a beat, his body hum with longing, and hi
s brain cry out a warning—but it was Carrie who spoke.
“You will never guess what she just did,” she snorted, coming away from the door and wiping her sweating forehead on the back of her sleeve.
Danny watched her. If Grace was beauty personified, then Carrie was trouble incarnate.
Grace pressed a hand over her mouth, her face red with the effort not to laugh.
“No good?” he repeated. He shook his head in imitation of a stern headmaster and carried his tea cup out into his main room. “Tea?”
“No, no.” Grace moved her hand from her mouth to her stomach.
“She dropped Sean like a ton of bricks,” Carrie announced. The two of them dissolved into another round of laughter, reliving the event in their eyes. “It was the best thing I’ve seen since we launched.”
“It wasn’t just me,” Grace defended herself. She shook her head and came away from the door and across the room to him. She moved with a fluid grace that swished her skirts as if they were puffs of smoke instead of solid fabric. “Carrie picked a fight with Dave because he snapped at me.”
“He did?” Danny’s protective instincts flared into a scowl.
The emotion wasn’t lost on Grace. She laughed, sliding close to him and touching his arm. “It was nothing. Really. But thank you for caring. I was beginning to think no one ever would.” A wistful flash pinched her face before softening to a smile.
He glanced down at her hand on his sleeve. His heart thundered against his ribs, chasing logic to the far end of the galaxy. This was how empires were felled, with a feather-light touch and a smile.
“Hey, I care about you too, you know,” Carrie called after Grace as she crossed the room to the long sofa. Her amusement suddenly seemed forced. “She was my friend first,” she murmured to Danny.