by Coy, David
Oh, thank God!
Donna had the door open and was pulling them through almost before they had time to react.
“Donna Applegate?” Rachel said.
“I think so,” Donna said.
“You’re alive!” Rachel said.
“You bet I am. This . . . this entire project is bullshit.”
“I know,” Rachel added in the same voice. “This is bullshit.”
“They tried to kill me . . .”
“I figured they’d try that. Wouldn’t play ball, right?”
“Exactly.”
“I told you,” Rachel said to John. “Didn’t I tell you?” She turned to Donna. “We have to talk."
* * *
They’d gathered around the large lab bench in the clinic. Sitting up on the bench, legs and arms crossed, Rachel told Donna about the problem with the inventories and the life forms she had discovered—and in particular the singularly unique one John had stumbled upon and was almost killed by. She outlined why the organism was so important and her suspicion that Smith knew about its presence.
Donna listened, then, arms propped mechanically on the bench and her head barely moving, started in with the details of her adventure in the green, courtesy of Smith and his boys. John could feel the hostility and resentment about what they’d done to her coming from Donna like heat from an overworked motor. As she spoke, John paced back and forth, hands on his hips, listening to her every word. From time to time, Donna would stop and stare up into space or at the bench top, grim-faced and angry, before starting up again. John swore that in those pauses the bright blue half of her half-blue, half-brown eye glowed with a light if its own as if fueled by her hatred from within.
When Donna finished telling her story, Rachel was staring at her sympathetically, not quite sure what to say, or how to console her. “They threw you right out of the shuttle?” she finally said.
Donna lowered her head, her eyes closed tight as if trying to shut the memory out. “They did,” she replied flatly.
“So they think you’re dead,” Rachel surmised.
“That’s a logical but stupid fucking conclusion,” Donna said, head coming up and eye flaring defiantly. “I’m not dead yet.”
Donna’s anger had rubbed off on John. He rubbed his hands together carelessly as if the anger was right there on his palms. “What now?” he asked. He’d heard enough and was ready to move on to a strategy for survival.
“The first thing,” Rachel said, “is to get a message to Health and Safety—tell them what’s going on.”
“Fuck that,” Donna said.” I say we go right to the police first, then the franchise board. Richthaus has to know about this. The bastards tried to kill me. Ed Smith should die and lose his franchise, too.”
“It doesn’t matter who we send it to,” John said angrily. “You can bet he’s filtering every goddamned message that's sent. I’d do the same. The orbiter is the link to the Commonwealth. All communications, food, medicine, law enforcement—what there is of it—comes through the orbiter. And Smith controls the orbiter.”
“Right,” Donna said. “So how do we do it?”
“Code a text-only message,” Rachel said. “And send it to someone we trust.”
“In what? Pig Latin?” John quipped.
“No, not Pig Latin,” Rachel said impatiently. “But we can think of something, like an embedded code—I don’t know— something.”
“We can encrypt the message—scramble it,” Donna suggested.
“No we can’t,” John said. “It’s illegal.”
“But I’ve heard of those things that can do it.”
“Outlawed,” he said. “It’s a serious offense to encrypt a message. Besides, they’d come down on the sender like a hammer as soon as they detected it.”
“We can send it anonymously,” Donna said.
“That’s impossible,” John said.
They thought it over in silence, each buried in their own thoughts. John had moved a dozen feet away and studied the ceiling in thought, trying to pull all the pieces together. Rachel fiddled with piece of scrap paper.
“I know how,” Rachel said finally.
“How?”
“I’ll send a bogus message to my friend Vic. I’ll talk about things we never did and things we never said.”
“Why?” John asked. “I don’t get it.”
“He’ll just think you’re nuts, won’t he?” Donna asked.
“Maybe. But it should make him maybe read the message closer, and we can—I don’t know—spell out the problem in the first letter of each sentence or some shit like that—it might work. If it’s bizarre enough, he might put two and two together.”
“I don’t know . . .” Donna said. “Sounds like magical thinking to me.”
“It’s leaving a lot to chance,” John said. “He might never get it.”
“But he might,” Rachel came back. “It’s a shot.”
“Any message we send will take thirty Earth days to arrive,” John said. “And anything coming back this way will take thirty more days. Even if he gets the message and figures it out, we can’t expect help for at least sixty days.”
That sent them back into thought, more frustrated than ever.
“Look, this is bullshit,” John said. “We have to find another way.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Rachel asked. “Take the orbiter by force?”
The look on John’s face was unmistakable. Taking the orbiter by force was exactly what he meant.
“No,” Rachel said. “You’re not serious.”
“Why not? If we stumble around without being decisive, he could very easily kill us all. He’s got all the resources—all the power. It’s not like he’s some . . . some dock worker gone off his head. He’s in control of a multi-trillion dollar operation. He’s glued to the highest officials in the Commonwealth. He’s probably got half of them in his pocket. From where he sits, he owns the planet and everything on it. But he’s not God. He has limits. If we act as one, we could take the orbiter, hold Smith and his crew and make our report without worrying about it. It’s a better option.”
“Like a mutiny?” Donna asked.
“Just like a mutiny,” he said.
“I’m for it—hell I'm with ‘im!” she said with the same resolute strength that helped her survive the jungle. Her eye seemed to light the room.
“We don’t have the people or the weapons to . . . to do a mutiny,” Rachel said. “It would take more than the three of us to do it.”
“Then we’ll have to find people to help us," John persisted, seeing no other way to beat Ed Smith or to save their own lives.
The color was draining from Rachel’s face. She hadn’t bargained for any of this. It was one thing to tell on somebody. It was quite another to go to war with them.
“I don’t know a thing about this kind of thing. This is just . . . just better left to the police,” she said. “We have to . . . to find someone from the outside to help us, that’s all.”
John saw the fear in her eyes. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“There’s no one to help us. We have to get access to the transmitters and send our own message to the right people—a clear and unmistakable message with all the right signatures. Look, the sonofabitch can kill us at any time. He can starve us, poison us, cut us to ribbons with his defoliators or just shoot us outright. He can make up any story he likes; accidents, murder, some . . . some set-up of some kind . . . anything. If he thinks we’re standing in his way, he’ll do it. If he finds out Donna is alive, he’ll do it. If he finds out that you and I know Donna is alive, he’ll do it. He’ll kill the three of us. If we’re to survive this, we have to do it ourselves. That means getting control of the orbiter, at least until we can send our message.”
Rachel couldn’t face up to the idea of violence; of having to engage in it, of possibly shooting or hurting another person. “But how?” she asked.
“Force is how,” Donna put in.
Rachel snorted then rolled her eyes. “Sure. Just storm the orbiter and shoot everybody. That works! We don’t have guns or a plan or anything like that.”
“We don’t need a lot of weapons. All we have to do is be smart and have the will,” John said.
Rachel took a deep breath and put her head down on her arms, burying her face. She let out a deep, low groan of pure angst, barely audible.
Sure. That’s all. Just those two things.
“I’m scared,” she said into the table.
“We’re all scared,” Donna said. “But we have to do it.”
“I don’t have the will,” Rachel groaned.
It was Donna’s turn to put her hand on Rachel’s back. She patted it gently. “I’ve got enough will for all of us,” she said.
Rachel believed her, but it didn’t make Rachel feel any better. She rose up finally as if coming out of a nap, the print of her wrist red on her forehead. She squinted against the light.
“Okay. So what’s the plan?”
John inhaled deeply through his nose. “The first thing is to hide Donna. She can move in with me. I don’t have a roommate at the moment, and there’s no connection at all between me and her, so it should be pretty safe. You’ll have to hide. Hide good,” he said to Donna.
“You bet,” she said.
“Next we need to make some inquiries, Rachel and me.”
“What kind of inquiries?” Rachel asked, growing more and more unnerved.
“We have to get a layout of the orbiter for one thing . . .” Rachel had turned toward the door that was out of sight for Donna and John. She wore a startled, worried look. John leaned out and traced her line of sight. Standing in the doorway was a young man. He was within easy earshot of the entire conversation.
“Hi, Joe,” Rachel said stiffly.
“Hi,” he said back.
John clammed up visibly, his hands went to his hips, and he turned away.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked a little too loud.
“Not much,” Joe said.
“Ummm . . . how long have you been standing there?”
“Just got here,” he said easily.
Rachel folded her hands tight in front of her as if she were some kind of consultant. “How can I help you?”
“Uh, I was just wondering if you wanted me to continue to run the profiles on the soil samples or stop. I’ve done about a hundred with no hazard matches so far.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, yes; or yeah, no?”
“Yeah, yes. Continue. We wanna do ‘em all.”
“Okay,” he said and started to leave.
“Hey, hold on,” John said like a cop.
Devonshire started toward them. John, brushed past him, then closed and locked the door. Devonshire turned his head to follow John's movements. His head appeared to be rotating on a pole. John came back and escorted him by the elbow back to the bench. Devonshire tried to get away.
“Hey . . .”
“Just relax. I’m not gonna hurt ya.”
“Yeah, just cool it,” Donna said with an amused look, “or I’ll give you a sedative the hard way.”
Rachel swallowed. This was getting serious. Their lives were at stake it was true, but until this very moment only in some distant, abstract sense. It wasn’t supposed to get real now—not this soon. John was still holding Devonshire by the elbow. Donna was staring at Devonshire’s face like some predatory bird ready to swoop and tear, and Rachel felt an unsettling dread in the space around her. It was as if they’d suddenly stepped into some dark and evil place whose walls were etched with the memories of innocence lost and the damp floor steeped in blood and pain. This was a clinic with cold steel tools and cutting machinery in every drawer; Donna knew how to use all of them. Damn! Rachel thought. What are they going to do?
“Hi,” John said to Devonshire.
“Hi,” he said back nervously.
“You didn’t hear a thing did you?”
“Hear what?”
“Just now. You know, while we were talking.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“You must have heard something,” Donna said as if to a small child.
“Nope.”
“You’re sure?” John asked.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
“You work with Rachel?” John asked.
“Yeah.”
“Biologist?”
“Yeah. Biologist.”
“Biologist what?”
“Apprentice, no grade. Why?”
“Just curious,” John said.
“What is this?” Joe asked with a frown.
“We just want to know what you heard, that’s all,” Donna said. “We were having a very secret conversation, you see.”
“Well, I didn’t hear any of your damned secrets. I don’t even care about your damned secrets.”
“Okay, okay,” Rachel said. “This is nuts. Get back to work Joe, and forget whatever it was you heard. It doesn’t concern you. Git.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” he complained.
“Good. Forget it,” Rachel repeated. “Go.”
“Fine,” he said with a huff. “I can’t get out of here fast enough. You people are crazy.”
“Okay, just go,” Donna said.
He strutted out, closing the clinic door behind him. They sat immobile until the door was closed. John walked over and locked it again.
“I guess we’re just a little paranoid,” Rachel said.
“Do you trust him?” John asked Rachel.
“Not much. Enough, I suppose. He’s harmless.”
“Nothing and nobody’s harmless on this planet,” John said knowingly.
“Innocuous, then. He’s innocuous. How’s that?” Rachel said, a little miffed.
“Same thing,” John said with a steely tone.
Rachel just sighed. This was getting ridiculous.
“Let’s forget it,” Donna said.
“Fine,” Rachel said.
“Fine,” John said.
They sat silently, fiddling, tapping and staring. No one had to say it; it was just too obvious. What were they but a shuttle pilot, a nurse, and a biologist? Commonwealth contractors who started and ended their lives in debt and who flourished or perished at the pleasure of those who held their contracts. They were so knowledgeable in their respective fields that there was no more to teach them. They were the end product, the final result, of a training process that used up their lives from childhood far into adulthood—just so they might have value to the ones in power. It had always been so. Collectively, they could fly most light and medium weight aircraft and repair them if need be, or diagnose and treat nearly any physical malady that didn’t require major surgery. They could even classify the life forms of an entire planet.
But, in the area of revolt, insurrection or mutiny, they had no idea what to do. So they sat, and stared and tapped and worried.
“Rachel’s goofy apprentice has already eyeballed me. No telling who he’ll tell,” Donna finally said. “We’d better get me hidden.”
“That’s a good place to start,” John said.
21
Joan flopped and turned, resting her face finally an inch or two from Bill’s back. The heat from it radiated onto her face. It was hotter than usual; too hot to sleep in the same bed with another body. She got up and took her pillow with her. The spare bedroom would be a little cooler. Mike was back in his own shelter, and all that cool space was going to waste.
She flopped down on the bed and sprawled. An hour later she was still tossing and turning, wide awake.
I shouldn’t have hit him. Goddamn it.
She was making breakfast when Bill came into the kitchen, his hair wet and skin shiny from the shower and razor. “What happened to you last night?” he asked.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Too hot, huh?”
She poure
d him a cup of coffee. “That’s part of it,” she said.
“What’s the other part?”
“You know.”
“The kid?”
“The kid. Eddie Silk, Bill. His name is Eddie Silk.”
“His name’s bug food now,” he said and ducked into his coffee.
She looked daggers at him and drew a deep breath. “That’s ugly. That was an ugly, ugly thing to say.”
“He was a bad egg, Joan—a little crook. He got what’s coming to him. Stop worrying about him. We’ve got enough to worry about. If you have to worry about somebody, worry about the nurse. Any word on her?”
What was the use? It was Bill she was talking to. “No. Not yet. Somebody said they were going shelter to shelter asking about her. Then I heard she’d been shipped back and that there was another one on the way. I thought I’d call security and see if they had any information. I’d like to get this rash looked at.”
“She’s probably dead. Took a hike and got bitten by something.” ”That’s optimistic.”
“Well, you know me.”
She put his breakfast down in front of him and handed him a fork.
“Eddie could still be alive, you know.”
“Not likely.”
“They didn’t find his body.”
“They won’t either. There’s nothing left to find. He’s dead. He died. No one can survive in the green, you know that.”
“They didn’t try very hard to find him.”
“They did what they could.”
“Yeah, sure. Bunch of incompetent assholes.”
He swallowed quickly so he could talk.
“Will you let it go?” he glared.
“That’s easy for you. You didn’t drive him away.”
“He drove himself away, dammit!”
Bill got up and dumped his coffee into the sink. Joan planted her chin in her hand and half watched him. She knew that look on his face, all tight and steely. She didn’t want it to end like this, but she knew the pattern.
“Don’t you want breakfast?” she asked.
“No. I’ll grab something on the shuttle. Sometimes they have donuts.”
That was a lie, and she knew it. But if he didn’t want to stay, she had no way to change his mind. It didn’t matter what the reason was. Bill was Bill.