Project Enterprise

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Joe considered this and shook his head. If all the spots had rendered cold—but they hadn’t. “Unlikely.”

  She muttered something that could have been a curse. “Can you get me co-ords? We’ll have to check it out.”

  “Should we not perform our primary mission first?”

  “Our cold spot is in the old city. If the feeder bands keep dumping water like they have been, it’s more likely to be under water before we can get back. It fills up fast in a normal rain, now that no one is pumping the water out. And we’re assuming our dirt-siders will cooperate with their rescue.”

  It made sense to secure the body, if it was a body, that lacked the ability to be uncooperative. “Should I report our course change?” He asked because he was supposed to, not because he believed she’d agree.

  “That will take longer than checking it out.”

  Vi often stated that forgiveness was easier to receive than permission. She was most skilled at getting forgiven.

  She adjusted course and speed, then eased the skimmer lower. The fact that Resources Management hadn’t upgraded their regular craft to a more adept emergency transport told him all he needed to know about the priority of this assignment. Or the risk assessment. Vi had seemed annoyed about it, but had shrugged it off pretty fast.

  With so many relatives in positions of authority, I suspect the detective has learned to be pragmatic about her assignments, Lurch noted.

  The venerable nanite often hovered between wry and pragmatic, and this thought was no exception. It was, perhaps, a function of living longer than human memory, not to mention its dependence on humans for survival.

  We all depend on something for survival.

  “Let’s buzz the spot first,” she said, “maybe we won’t have to stop.”

  Joe attempted to activate their lower vid recorder, but it did not cooperate, even with the application of multiple love taps. Vi muttered something unflattering about its progenitors.

  “Side vids are working,” he said.

  “Okay, I’m going to make a low pass with a high bank angle and see if can get something on those side vids for you to look at.”

  It was a move with some risk. The big storm was pushing a strong wind ahead of it. The trees were dense in the area and the wind created turbulence over the trees. He saw a break and realized it was one of the little cities of the dead. Their cold spot must be in or near it. There was less plant congestion around it, which might help.

  “Let’s see if this piece of excrement has anything left,” she muttered, adjusting her bank angle. “Let me know if you see it on the vid. I’m only going to try this once.”

  He watched the vid as they flashed past. He stopped the recording, zoomed in on the object.

  “Well?”

  “It is a body,” he said reluctantly. It could not be alive and be that cold, so the conclusion was acceptable, despite lack of confirmation. “Inside the cemetery enclosure.”

  “Dead in a dead space. Someone has a sense of humor.” Vi keyed in a query on possible landing sites, while the skimmer made a wide, slow turn to bring them back over the area. “Looks like we don’t have a good place to land inside. It’s against regs anyway. Only unrestricted access through the walls is on this side here.” She tapped the screen. “Like furthest from frosty that we can get. Great. I’ll go for that lawn in front of our gate. At least I hope that’s a lawn and not a ship sucking swamp.”

  She finished her turn, reducing altitude as she brought the skimmer down as gently as was possible with an aging, in-atmosphere craft descending through a turbulent atmosphere. Which was to say, a most bumpy ride, concluding abruptly when a down draft thumped them against the spongy ground.

  “Sorry about that,” she flashed him a wry grin, then looked out the front viewer. “Let’s hope it didn’t shake loose something that we’ll need later.”

  It was a legitimate concern. The craft seemed to shed functionality almost daily.

  She pulled up weather data and studied it. “WTF is still stalled. That’s odd. I don’t remember Nash predicting the storm to stall this long.”

  Nash Roberts V was a weather-caster with a cult-like following that Joe found inexplicable. He had not been around long enough to verify Roberts’ accuracy, but the locals swore he could do more with something called a white board and a marker than all the fancy tech currently available. Joe didn’t comment on her comment because he’d learned one didn’t. You could mess with many things in NON, but you didn’t mess with Nash.

  “A stall is good for us. We should be able to what we gotta well before things get dicey here.”

  Joe opened the hatch and looked out. The lawn—was that the correct word for the narrow expanse of dense grasses severely outnumbered by weeds?—was very wet. He lowered one booted foot, hoping it would eventually find solid ground down there. His foot sank to the ankle before it did.

  This used to be a street or you might have sunk up to your armpits.

  He brought his other foot down. When it also encountered support, he stood. From this vantage, he noted water flowing sluggishly through the weeds and grass. According to their weather data, it was too early for the storm surge. Had the rainfall caused this? It was difficult for him to process that much water falling from the sky. On the other hand, NOO was a steadily subsiding bowl, and as Vi had noted, no one tried to drain it anymore. As uncomfortable as their emergency gear was in the dense heat, he was glad for it. The flooding had most likely displaced the predatory animals that existed down here, though some were amphibious in nature, so perhaps they were emboldened more than displaced.

  I believe poisonous snakes can swim, Lurch confirmed with specious innocence. And the fire ant problem has exploded since humans moved up.

  But wouldn’t the water disperse the ants?

  They form into balls to survive. It paused. You do not want to accidentally penetrate one. Even your suit will not provide adequate protection.

  Joe look uneasily around, wondering if the nanite was playing with him. Would his Glock 3000 stun them or anger them?

  Vi had also clambered out. She tested the ground with her boots. “There’s a kind of drop off here. Watch your step. And for fire ant balls. You do not want to set them loose in the water while we’re in it.”

  Joe felt a glow of virtue from the nanite. Why did it always have to be right?

  She scowled at the chest-high wall of the cemetery. “Looks like that’s our access point over there.” She pointed at a breech in the wall. Moving with care, she headed for the rear of the skimmer and pounded the hatch control with her fist. It opened with its customary reluctance.

  “Sure hope the body bag has recharged.”

  Like the rest of the skimmer, the charging mechanism had an uncertain functionality. He helped her extract the bag and then secured their CSI kit. Vi—he realized he’d forgotten to keep it formal, but gave it up because it was too hot—locked it down and input the cords into the body bag’s guidance system. He tossed the CSI kit on top, then she sent it on ahead of them.

  “Hope it makes it,” she said, philosophically, watching it rise over the wall, then cut across the top of the crypts. “Can you imagine what a pain it must have been to carry bodies out of, or into, places like this?”

  He made a noncommittal sound. He did not have to imagine. He knew. “I hope we do not find out.”

  “No kidding.” She bounced on her toes a bit, looking around with a dubious expression. “Who on earth would want to live on dirt? It’s so dirty.”

  “Not all dirt is so moisture laden,” he pointed out, amused. The upper city was not what he would deem clean, though its clock was about to cleaned—yet another Vi phrase that he found to be obscurely apt.

  “I suppose not.” She turned back to the hatch and extracted two dark bags with loose straps attached to them. He arched an inquiring brow. “Our 72r kits,” she said, showing him how to slide the straps over his shoulders so that it rested uncomfortably on his back.
<
br />   “What is a 72r kit?”

  “No clue,” she said, “but we have to carry them when we are not in official transport and are at emergency status. Regs.”

  Regs was the end to any and all arguments, he’d learned. It trumped understanding and logic.

  According to historical records, Lurch told him, it contains emergency supplies designed to sustain a single human for seventy-two hours. It also has additional emergency materials. I can provide a list of what is supposed to be contained in them….

  Unnecessary. Joe tried shifting it to a less uncomfortable position. And failed.

  “Has anyone opened one?” Joe asked. “Looked inside?”

  “Not in my memory.”

  Since she was well into her 20s, possibly closing on her 30s, this was a bit disturbing. How sustainable would the supplies actually be? On the positive side, if they hadn’t been opened or used in her memory, they were unlikely to require them.

  Vi made a disgusted sound, tugged at the neck of her emergency rig. “Could it get any hotter?”

  The first time she’d asked this he’d attempted to answer it. Now he knew better. Though in his experience so far, the answer was always yes.

  “If Captain Uncle thinks this is going to freak me out, he can think again.”

  “You suspect this is what you call a prank?”

  “With my relatives, I always assume it’s a possibility.” She checked her portable unit, gave it a love tap. “We’d better get moving or our body bag will crapeau out without us.”

  Getting moving, they quickly learned, was easier said than accomplished. A couple of feet from the skimmer, the hard surface ended. Each step was a journey down into knee high water, then a tug-of-war with the sucking mud created by that water to extract their boots. Even the heavy grasses did not assist their progress as much as they should have. Their bulky storm gear added to their navigation difficulties, though he was not ungrateful for the protection it afforded as Lurch indicated plant forms that stung and others that caused painful itching and skin disruptions. He conceded that Vi had a point. Dirt side, while attractive, was unappealing as a place to live. Amazing that humans had endured it as long as they had.

  Ahead of them, the cemetery looked even more like a miniature city. Stone walls made a sort of beachhead against a sea of glistening green. When the gate was reached, they found more hard surface beneath the grass, though it was not even in its disposition, lending itself to the additional concern of face-planting.

  Old sidewalks, I would postulate. Even when they were widely used, they were somewhat inconsistent to navigate.

  Inconsistent?

  The city tended to sink in an uneven manner. It was built on a swamp and continues to sink even now.

  Oh. What was it about this spot that had attracted their attention in the first instance?

  The river. The water was their transit.

  This dead city, in its way, was as interesting as the floating one. The cemetery had once been surrounded by something somewhat similar to the city above, so it would have had pedestrian paths, these uneven sidewalks.

  “Are there vids of when the city was here?” he asked, surprised to realize he’d voiced the question aloud.

  “Yeah” She half frowned. “My Paw Paw likes watching old vids, prefers something called spaghetti westerns, but he also likes seeing the city how it used to be, too. I can ask him for a list, if you’d like.”

  “I would like,” he said, surprised that he meant it. It would have made this trip more interesting if he could imagine how it had been, had been able to “see” that old city here as they moved around.

  Once through the narrow gate, the height of the grass diminished some, Joe noticed, and the ratio of grass to weeds modified to a ratio better for the grasses.

  “The Catholic Church tries to maintain the cemeteries,” Vi said, as if he’d asked. “They still own them, you know. Looks like they mow the grass every now and again.”

  Lurch could have provided much information on the NOO cemeteries, but it did not seem necessary to circumstances and Joe found info dumps distracting when not need-to-know. In any case, Vi provide more than sufficient distraction. He noticed she looked from right to left as she walked along the narrow row between the crypts, her walk lacking its usual determined grace, though that was the fault of the mud and heavy boots. He would not have minded the distraction she provided if she did not also boost the heat factor. He tugged at the neck of his gear. The intense humidity compounded his discomfort, and their gear provided no way for natural cooling to occur.

  “Do you seek something…” The cold spot had to be some distance off.

  “We have some family history here, or I think it was here. Just wondered if I’d see the crypt but the carvings are so faded, there’s no way to tell. If I’d known I was coming here, I’d have downloaded a map.” She paused and looked back at him.

  “The crypt?” Joe asked.

  “Oh, this ancestor of ours wasn’t buried here.”

  Joe blinked. “So the crypt is where this ancestor wasn’t buried?”

  “Yeah.”

  He considered asking for additional clarification, but his last attempt had not gone well. There were many things, he’d learned, that failed to bridge his alien divide.

  She looked around her. “Weird ass place. Our Voodoo Queen is supposed to be buried here, you know. Wish we had time to put some gri gri on her tomb.”

  Her grin almost knocked him back a step. He had to smile back. It would have been rude not to, but he felt uncomfortable when she didn’t immediately resume her progress toward the cold spot.

  “You have a nice smile, Joe.” She tipped her head to one side. “You should let it out to play more often.”

  A nice smile? Was that a good thing? Nice felt lukewarm. Though there was little luke about his present warmth.

  Lurch seemed to sigh. Yes, my friend, it is a good thing.

  “I will endeavor to do so,” he said, wishing he could match her casual tone. Something in her expression changed though he could not isolate and identify what. His smile faltered. She distracted him when he didn’t look at her. Looking increased her distraction factor exponentially and tended to cause a rise in internal temperature, one easily noted by Lurch. Though it tried to respect Joe’s privacy, it could not help but notice physiological reactions to outside stimuli. Or be amused by them, which tended to increase the effect. It was unprofessional of Joe to be distracted by her.

  As Baker had said to a crime scene tech recently, “Eyes forward, Stigson. We’re not here to get hot and bothered.”

  Stigson had kept his eyes forward, but heat and bother were inevitable with or without the personal aspect, thanks to the climate in this place. The heat index should have been sufficient excuse to the nanite when Joe experienced his temperature variations, but Lurch seemed able to parse which variation was caused by heat and what was caused by heated.

  He glanced—casually he hoped, though feared he failed—to one side, then the other. “It is most quiet here.”

  And then it became more than a distraction from looking at Vi. It was quiet. Too quiet? The hairs on the back of his neck lifted. Or tried to. Sweat and the heavy suit kept them down, but it felt as if they lifted. The feeling of something ominous was most marked. And easily explained by the approaching storm.

  “Even nature is getting out ahead of WTF.” She grinned once more.

  This grin was different, more like the ones others used when using the storm’s acronym. He had wondered, but not asked. According to Lurch, explained jokes were no longer humorous.

  Perhaps she sensed his confusion for she added, “The Hurricane Naming Board got so caught up in being politically correct, they forgot to check the initials before they released the name into the wild. Once it was out, there was no taking it back.”

  This did not help as much as she’d perhaps hoped, so Lurch supplied the translation and further explanation, enough that Joe found that not all
jokes lost humor upon explanation. He smiled involuntarily and got caught in her intent gaze once more. The air shifted and the wind picked up, reminding them that WTF was incoming and it was no joke.

  Vi started a bit. “We should hurry.” She yanked a booted foot out of the mud. “Try to hurry.”

  Did she look regretful? Or did he hope she did? It was not as if they had a future together. He was not sure he would have a future. Even his past had become murky, since Lurch moved into his head and launched him on this crazy quest.

  Their progress resumed, it seemed harder to walk in the lanes than it had in the tall grasses, possibly because their boots sank deeper into the mud. These paths must have degraded more than those outside the walls, or had been constructed differently. Some crypts were bordered by low fences almost obscured by weeds or grasses, others bumped up against the path. All were covered in green moss and black mildew, some were also covered in heavy vines. On many he could see outlines of names, but most were obscured despite the attempted upkeep. There was no question that their surroundings added to the growing sense of incoming trouble.

  “Shouldn’t be far now—” Vi stopped abruptly. “What the—”

  Joe had a feeling she meant this in the actual meaning of WTF, not the storm name, despite the cutoff at the end. It didn’t take the sight of the hovering body bag for Joe to know they had arrived at their crime scene. All he had to do was watch Vi switch to detective mode. She rolled her shoulders and he knew her gaze would narrow and turn laser sharp. She had the best technology that the NONPD could afford, but her eyes, her brain were, in Joe’s opinion worth more than all the tech.

  Except me.

  Of course, Joe agreed, though he wondered. Was it possible to know too much? So much one lost the ability to follow intuition?

  That is why I have you.

  I lack Vi’s flair.

  You lack experience. The ability to go with your gut. But you are learning.

  Would he learn in time? Joe grabbed the kit off the body bag and initiated deployment to secure their scene. The electronic grid would protect the integrity of the scene, though “integrity” did not seem indicated in their present circumstances. The bag launched, tracking toward the body. Once centered over it, it “taped” their scene, the name a relic of a different time, according to Lurch. Then it released a variety of collection probes, including a vid module that would create the 3D scan of the crime scene. Within a minute, all possible portable non-naturally occurring materials had been collected by tiny drones, tagged and secured to the underside of the body bag. The red electronic tape turned gold, an indication that they could now enter their scene. He activated protective hand and face gear. As though it was not already hot enough.