Higher Ground

by Becky Black

  “Zach,” Adam sighed out. He pulled away from the kiss and pushed Zach’s shoulder, moving his head down. Zach didn’t resist, kissed his way down Adam’s neck and onto his chest. He flicked each nipple in turn with his tongue, and Adam groaned and shifted his hips, pushing up against Zach’s hand.

  That felt like permission. And he’d gladly have taken Adam up on the permission but he heard his Link. A message. The sound he’d specified for notifications about his tests being completed. He pulled away from Adam with a gasp.

  What the hell was he doing? He should be halfway to his lab, ready to analyze the results, not fooling around in Adam’s bed. An understandable desire, to take what might be the only chance he had to do this, but inexcusable all the same. The whole colony was in danger, and he was too busy to do the work to confirm how long they had to escape.

  Adam tried to draw him close again, but Zach pulled out of his arms.

  “I have to go.”

  “What?” Adam leaned up on his elbows, disbelief on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have the final test results to analyze.” He scrambled to his feet. His shoes lay on the floor at the bottom of the bed. He didn’t dare sit on the bed to put them on, in case Adam put his arms around him to bring him back, because he didn’t know if he could resist. His cock throbbed in his pants, demanding immediate attention. His whole body felt as if it was screaming in protest at the abrupt end to activities.

  “Are you kidding? What the hell is wrong with you, Zach? You wind me up and then just bail out? Are you trying to piss me off?”

  “No. I’m sorry.” He looked down at Adam’s perfect and near-naked body. His shorts were tented by the erection Zach feared he’d never get another chance to touch. “Believe me, I’m so very sorry. But I have to go.”

  Knowing he’d weaken if he stayed a moment longer, he strode out of the bedroom. As he closed the door, a thump from the other side told him Adam had tossed what Zach guessed was a shoe at the door.

  * * * *

  Zach sat at his desk, putting a mug of coffee he’d snatched on his way through the building down beside him, and started to analyze the results waiting for him. They’d been ready for thirty minutes, and he berated himself again for fooling around with Adam when he should have been here, working on them.

  An hour later, the still-full mug of coffee retained only the tiny amount of warmth that would keep someone from declaring it “stone cold.” Zach sat up, barely noticing the pain in his back from hunching in his chair or the stinging of his eyes. The analyses came out the same every time, but he still held out a tiny hope he’d made a mistake interpreting them. He set to work double-checking his analysis. He’d never before in his life hoped so hard he’d got it wrong.

  Two hours and two more analyses later, he knew he hadn’t.

  He pulled out his Link and started a voice call to Phillips’s office. A voice that must be Phillips’s secretary came on the line.

  “Professor Phillips’s office. How can I…?”

  “I need to speak to the professor right away. It’s Dr. Benesh.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Benesh, the professor is in a meeting.”

  “You need to interrupt him. I’m coming over now.”

  “The meeting is with the senior staff,” the secretary said, his voice chilly, clearly not appreciating Zach’s demanding tone.

  Which meant it wasn’t happening in Phillips’s office. Zach ended the call and brought up the Institute’s calendar. He quickly found where the senior scientists and managers were holding their weekly staff meeting. All the senior staff in one place—an intimidating thought to a junior staffer like Zach. But it might also be a perfect opportunity.

  THE DOOR TO the largest conference room in the Institute’s Admin building had a DO NOT DISTURB sign on it, but in his current frame of mind, it didn’t even slow Zach down. He knocked once on the door and walked in without waiting for a reply. Dr. Morrison, the head of the Terraforming Institute looked up, perhaps expecting a delivery of fresh coffee, and frowned at the sight of Zach. The other men and women around the table looked startled and annoyed at the interruption.

  “Dr. Benesh?” Morrison said. “We’re busy here.”

  “Sir, I need to speak to all of you. It’s very urgent.”

  “Benesh,” Phillips snapped. “What are you doing, man? Get out of here. I’ll see you after the meeting.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Zach nodded briefly at Phillips but turned back to Morrison. “I’ve been running scans on the divide between the upper and lower magma chambers of the supervolcano. A breakthrough is imminent and will result in the upper chamber emptying fast enough to cause catastrophic subsidence of the caldera and inundation by the sea, possibly even complete submergence.”

  Most of them stared at him as if he’d started speaking in a foreign language. Zach realized he might have been too technical for those who weren’t geologists. He took a deep breath and made it plain.

  “Zahara Island is going to sink into the ocean, and it’s going to happen now.”

  The table erupted, everyone arguing at once. Phillips jumped to his feet. “Have you gone mad? What is this nonsense?”

  “Sir, I’ve cross-checked the data, I’ve run the analysis three times. There’s a fault in the divide between the chambers, and all the data indicates it’s about to give way.”

  “You said the island is going to sink?” Morrison said.

  “Yes. It’s been sinking slowly for hundreds of thousands of years as the magma in the upper chamber drains away slowly into the lower. But this will be catastrophic. It may only take days.”

  “Roy, ignore him,” Phillips said. “He’s wrong in the head; I thought it from the day he arrived.”

  “I have the data right here,” Zach snapped, waving his Link. “Dr. Phillips, you must look at the results. You’ll see I’m right.”

  “I’ve been studying this planet’s geology since before you were born, young man.”

  Zach raked a hand through his hair. What the hell did Phillips think that proved? “Of…of course, sir,” he managed diplomatically. “But you must listen to me.”

  “Benesh,” Morrison snapped. “Calm down. Give me the data.” He gestured at the Link, and Zach at once sent the data into the conference room’s computer system. His numbers began to show up on screen. He took a breath to steady himself.

  “I’ve been investigating the earthquake that happened a few months ago,” Zach explained. “Just for personal interest. I believe that event created a new fault line, and the pressures have built to breaking point.”

  Morrison turned from the results scrolling up on screen. Results he probably couldn’t understand, since he was a climatologist, not a geologist.

  “Dr. Benesh, I appreciate you’re excited and alarmed by your results, but I suggest you go back to your lab while we examine the data ourselves.”

  “There’s no time. I’ve run multiple scans and analyzed the results multiple ways; there’s simply no doubt.”

  “But you haven’t had a colleague review the results yet.”

  “I’ve tried! I’ve asked all of them, including Professor Phillips, but everyone is too busy with their damn quarterly reports!” His voice rose, and he took a breath, trying to regain control. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. The results are definitely correct.” This caused another stir around the table. Someone muttered the words “arrogant young pup,” and others murmured in agreement. They had a point. The ink had barely dried yet on Zach’s doctorate. Phillips had been studying the island while Zach was in diapers. Still, it didn’t matter. He knew the results were right. Every way he ran the analysis, it came out the same.

  “The results are correct,” he repeated. “We have to go to the colony council.”

  The Institute might be the local arm of the all-powerful Terraforming Authority, but the colony’s elected council ran everything else. And there was one thing in particular Zach needed them to do.


  “They have to order an evacuation of the island.”

  This time, Morrison had to shout to make himself heard over the reaction. “Dr. Benesh, that’s quite enough. We will look at your results and decide if we need to alert the council. In the meantime, go back to your lab. Now.”

  Zach glanced at Phillips, who was sitting reading the data, the only one in the room not protesting. He could see it, couldn’t he? See what it meant. He should back Zach up. Instead, he looked up and nodded in confirmation of what Morrison had said.

  “Go back to your lab, Benesh. Finish your quarterly report.”

  The chill in his tone implied Zach might not be able to call it his lab much longer, but this implied threat had no effect. In a few days, nobody here would have a lab or an office either. He wanted to tell Phillips to stick his quarterly reports where the sun never shone but managed to at least keep from doing that. Without another word, he spun and ran from the building.

  He found his bike still lying on the ground where he’d left it. If he wanted to keep his job, he would go back to the Physical Sciences building as ordered and wait for his respected superiors—he snorted—to check the data. But he feared he already knew what would happen. They’d argue about the results and decide they needed to run more tests. Zach couldn’t wait around for that, whatever it meant for his job. His job had ceased to have any meaning the moment the full implications of the results became clear to him.

  Zach rode off.

  He didn’t go back to his lab.

  * * * *

  Adam saw him. He’d come out to the test fields to check the growth of a batch of plants and saw Zach riding fast down the road. He’d have to pass Adam, who was working near the road. Surely he’d stop to explain himself and apologize for his behavior last night and this morning.

  Zach didn’t stop. He rode past Adam without so much as a glance. Rode like his ass was on fire and a hellhound was snapping at his back wheel.

  Well, shit.

  Adam began to use his trowel in an aggressive manner as he created a new hole for an uprooted plant. Looks like that was dead in the water, then. They’d been doing so well, but then it all suddenly went to hell. He hated feeling this annoyed about it. Zach shouldn’t be able to get to him like this. Adam barely knew him, and he wasn’t all that cute anyway. His nose was definitely too big. And the big-nosed bastard might at least have had the class to come and talk to him and end it face-to-face.

  He stomped into the botany lab half an hour later and went over to the sink. As he scrubbed the dirt from under his fingernails, Jan strolled in, carrying a mug of coffee.

  “Oh, there you are. Have you heard about the excitement over at the Admin building? Your new boyfriend’s gone crazy.”

  “What?”

  “Benesh. Burst into a meeting of the senior staff and started raving about the volcano exploding and throwing us all into the sea. Bill said they could hear the row all across the second floor.”

  “The volcano?” Adam knew Zahara Island sat atop what had been a gigantic ancient supervolcano, but it had been extinct for millions of years. “That’s crazy. And he’s not my boyfriend.” Good thing too, if the guy was insane enough to burst into senior staff meetings. By God, most of those people had tenure. “Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  She shrugged. “Hayley said he said the island was going to sink, not that the volcano will explode, but hey, pretty crazy stuff, right?”

  “Erupt,” Adam said. “Volcanoes erupt, not explode.” He wiped his hands dry. “How could the island sink?”

  “He’s the crazy geologist, not me.”

  “He’s a geophysicist.”

  “Aren’t you Captain Pedantic today? Anyway, if he’s as smart as they say, he’ll be hiding under a bench in his lab. Can you imagine what Phillips will do to him? Guy will be flinching at sudden noises for a month.”

  Adam could believe it. You didn’t do an end run around your head of department. There were channels. He frowned, thinking about Zach passing him earlier—not even a glance—and the route he’d been taking. He hadn’t gone to hide in his lab; he’d been heading into town. Maybe he should go see what Zach was doing. Keep him from getting into any more trouble. He had no reason to, after the way Zach had jerked him around, but Adam had second thoughts about just ending things with him. Zach was too interesting to do that. Despite the nose. Actually, Adam liked the nose. Patrician, you might call it.

  “I’ve got some errands to run,” he said. “I’ll be a couple of hours.”

  “Okay. Are you taking the truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember what Dr. Wilson said about treating it like it’s your own.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s for department business only.”

  “I know. I’m going to…check out some of the test crops out of town.”

  He was a liar. A few moments later, he maneuvered the botany department’s truck onto the same road Zach had taken.

  Chapter Seven

  “I’m sorry, but Ms. Johnson can’t be disturbed. She’s in a meeting.”

  Zach had to wonder if everyone but him spent their entire time having meetings. How did they ever get any work done?

  “But I must speak to her at once. It’s a matter of life and death!”

  The secretary had no reaction to his dramatic statement. She must have heard all this before from people trying to get in to see her boss.

  “If you’d like to wait, sir, it should only be another half an hour, and then she may be able to spare you a few minutes.”

  Would half an hour make much difference? When she heard what he had to say, Johnson would spare him more than a few minutes. Should he wait? No. If she would listen, then the sooner she started listening, the better. He turned away from the secretary’s desk and headed toward the comfortable-looking armchairs provided for visitors. Apparently pleased with his cooperation, the secretary spoke in a warmer tone.

  “Would you like some coffee—hey, stop!”

  Zach dodged past her and grabbed the handle of the door into Johnson’s office. If it had been locked, he’d have crashed into it nose first, but it opened, and he burst into the room. Johnson sat behind a desk, a man and woman sitting on the other side of it. All of them stared at Zach as he stumbled over an unexpected rug. He heard the secretary scurry in behind him.

  “Ms. Johnson, I must speak to you. The colony is in terrible danger. You must issue a distress call and start an evacuation immediately.”

  “I’ll call security.” The secretary ran back out.

  Johnson rose from her desk. “First, please tell me who you are. Then tell me what you’re talking about.”

  Damn, he hadn’t identified himself. “Dr. Zach Benesh, ma’am, Physical Sciences Department. I’ve got some very disturbing results from scans of the geology of the island.”

  “Dr. Benesh, this is rather irregular. Surely Dr. Morrison—”

  “I know, I’m sorry. They’re examining the data, but you need to know about this immediately.” He heard sounds, heavy footsteps, and knew the security men were behind him. Johnson remained as calm as if he’d brought her news of a problem with the colony’s supply of marshmallows. As a politician, she must be used to dealing with unreasonably excited people. But she needed to listen to him. She needed to understand the urgency of the situation.

  “Ms. Johnson, this island is about to sink into the ocean.”

  “He’s crazy,” one of the other people sitting by her desk said.

  “What are you talking about?” demanded the other. “Are you trying to spread panic?”

  Zach groaned. Dammit, why wouldn’t people listen? Panic? Maybe they did need a little panic here. It would be too late to panic about it when the water was up to their knees and rising. He sprang forward and shoved his Link into Johnson’s hands. This proved to be a mistake, as the security men at once grabbed his arms. He struggled against them to no effect.

  “You have to listen to
me! If we don’t leave right away, every man, woman, and child of the colony will die!”

  “Throw him out,” one of the other people at the desk said. “You’d better call Morrison and see if he knows anything about this lunatic.”

  “Yes…” Johnson said, looking at the Link in her hand. Look at it, Zach thought. Just look at it. But she wouldn’t understand the data; it was too specialized. She was thinking about it, he knew; she had to keep an open mind, in case he was right. But, like Morrison, she had few reasons to listen to Zach. She didn’t know him. She’d want to think about it and take advice and decide if she was ready to risk taking a chance on the word of a young, unproven, and junior scientist. She wouldn’t make a decision affecting so many people—so many voters—lightly, if it could come back and bite her in the next election. She’d consult and spread the responsibility around. But that would all take too long.

  Johnson passed the Link back to Zach.

  “I will speak to Dr. Morrison. Good-bye, Dr. Benesh.”

  She nodded at the security men, and they hustled Zach from the office. A moment later, they manhandled him through the main entrance to the colony’s central admin building and pushed him back out onto the street. He stood panting, thinking. He needed to calm down and find someone who could understand this and who wouldn’t reject the idea on principle. He knew only one person who fit that description.

  His bike lay on the ground where he’d left it. He lifted it up and started the motor, but it only gave a brief whir and then died. The battery warning showed red on the handlebar display. Hell.

  “Zach?”

  He looked up to see a familiar vehicle pulling in to park beside him. Taking a deep breath, he ran a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to tidy it up and smiled at the driver.

  “Hello, Adam.”

  “Are you okay?” Adam asked, getting out of the truck.

  “Fine,” Zach said, though he feared there might be much evidence to the contrary; his cheeks burned, and his hair, unruly at the best of times, was a disaster. Running his hand through it again only made it worse.