A single light had been twisted to shine there and three characters had been scrawled across the beige surface, “R4U.” The “R” and “4” had been mated together, but the blocky letter “U” didn’t flow properly. Though Jaron could see many sketches across the wall, none of them worked.
“Make it fly.”
“What!” A marker flew from the bartender’s hand as he turned and it landed near Jaron’s feet.
Jaron jumped back and almost turned for the jungle, but then, he had drunk the man’s beer the prior evening.
The man moseyed over to retrieve the marker from beneath a table. He straightened up and looked at Jaron. He was tall and quiet, leaving space for Jaron to regather his thoughts. But his original point eluded him.
“Make it fly?” the man prompted gently.
Jaron swallowed hard to clear his throat, he’d already talked more in this afternoon’s meeting than he typically did in any single day. Except when he was talking to his assistant Robbie about the jungle.
“Have you watched the parrots fly?”
When he shook his head, Jaron couldn’t help himself.
“Haven’t you been in my jungle?”
Again the silent negative. What did he have to say to this man? One who hadn’t even bothered to cross through an airlock only a few hundred meters away. He was turning to leave when the man mused quietly.
“Make it fly.” He turned back to the wall and erased his latest attempt at the final letter. With quick, bold strokes, he turned the upstroke of the U into a sweeping parrot’s wing. Poised at the top of the downstroke for launch, feathers formed quickly, cupped downward to catch the most air. The pinfeathers spread wide. He painted in the first letters with a bold red and was working his way up the majestic wing before Jaron found his voice again.
“Yellow band across the middle, blue out to the ends.”
With barely a nod of acknowledgement, the bartender continued, switching colors at just the right moments. Climbing on a chair to reach the high end of the wing. When it was done he moved to stand beside Jaron. For a long time they observed his handiwork in silence. The winged “U,” twice the height of the “R4” rose nearly to the ceiling to catch the air. There was a liftoff and hope.
“Thanks, that was making me a bit crazy. I meant it as a joke. But seeing it there, it might be something else. C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer.” As he moved to the bar, Jaron heard him as if whispering to himself. “Hope. Now there’s a new idea.”
It was late afternoon, the meeting in R1 had taken forever, and he was eager to get back to the jungle. But his throat was dry. Another species had died aboard, gone forever. He’d almost managed to forget that.
Jaron followed the man to the bar. He slid a cool mug across the plas.
“I’m Bryce.”
“Jaron.” He sipped the cool liquid which soothed his parched throat like an afternoon rain pattering into the thirsty jungle soil.
Bryce kicked a keg into place and leaned back against the wall behind the bar.
“Tell me about your jungle.”
# # #
The bar throbbed with humanity by the time Jaron left. Bryce had tried to continue their conversation about the variations of the jungle trees’ reproductive cycles, but the calls for beer finally overwhelmed him.
As Jaron departed, the bartender waved and Jaron was a bit surprised to find himself waving back. He was the only one headed away from R4U, he’d forgotten to ask what it meant. Another time.
Singles, couples, small groups all streamed toward the bar as he headed for the jungle. He thumbed through the double airlock.
At the head of the ramp he stopped to breathe in the rich scent of the vegetation. The healthy jungle. He could tell just by the smell that they’d succeeded in creating a stable environment in the unlikely place of a giant plas room in space. A hundred meters wide, half that tall, and four hundred long. Four-and-a-half hectares.
The jungle reached up with the curve of the ring until the green canopy seemed to flow onward forever. Except for the discontinuity where the upward curving jungle was cut off by the artificial sky of the inner hub, they could have been standing in the Venezuelan wilderness he had left just six months before.
This jungle averaged only six percent less biomass per hectare than mother nature’s finest. And they’d only lost four species during The End that had killed the Arctic and damaged the Ocean. Regrettably, he’d lost his bats. But increasing the parrot population and the night-time moths had replaced the pollination niche his bats had carried out. The change troubled him, but it appeared to be working.
He reached for a commpad from the rack and glanced quickly down the reports. Robbie was meticulous about keeping the daily logs and he could see at a glance that she’d kept the crew right on top of the work despite his absence. The team researching pollination viability showed a high success rate, still a few percent below what the bats might have achieved, but well within tolerances.
He slid the pad down into a thigh pocket. His machete hung alongside the lock, instantly identifiable from the others by the immense wear on the leather harness and the wooden handle. Everyone else had plas blades, he was the only one who still swung metal. His feet echoed strangely on the ramp until he reached the jungle floor and moved out onto the yellowed soil and the muffling carpet of decomposing leaves. Before he moved under the edge of the trees, a shot of blue and red fell upon him from the sky.
Harold backwinged to brake his plummet, his wings arcing so like the bartender’s drawing that it was uncanny.
“Har-on! Har-on!” The scarlet macaw shuffled foot-to-foot across his shoulder and attempted to preen Jaron’s hair but actually was hurting a bit in his excitement. He hated it when Jaron was gone during the day. The night too for that matter, he often slept in their old tree from the true jungle to keep the bird company.
After he’d rubbed Harold’s belly and calmed him down, Jaron waved him aloft. Harold protested until Jaron pulled his machete out of its sheath. The parrot knew better than to hang about when there was clearing to be done.
Robbie always left the outer loop trail for him. A colony of Rosalia scattered up the nearest tree chattering the whole way. The golden tamarins were thriving aboard ship; they made incredible leaps in the lighter gravity of the jungle’s upper stories. They had adapted well from their Sumatran jungle.
It had been a delicate task blending the Earth’s various jungles into a single biome as Robbie had insisted, but it was working. He stopped and watched the ballet, more graceful than any mere human dancer, until the tamarins were out of sight.
He swung the machete free and moved toward the trailhead. Had to keep after this jungle or the trails disappeared in a fortnight, just like its Earthly predecessor. Yet another mark he’d designed this biome well.
His blade caught the evening sun as he swung it aloft. Harold called from somewhere far above as Jaron slashed down through mango leaves encroaching on the biome’s path. They dropped to the trail and rustled underfoot as he chopped at an overzealous liana vine. For Robbie, he avoided the ones with epiphytic orchids. She was partial to them. The rest of the crew, even the best ones, were not as careful. He preferred to clear as much of the trail himself as possible.
The sweat began running down his face and he let the flash of the rising and falling blade take him. All of the other biomes had to worry about composting properly. Here, in the dark of the jungle, he just let the cutoff drop to the ground. It would rot quickly enough there releasing its rich, rotting scent. Not the smell of dead flesh, but rather plants; biomass composting to feed other plants with new life. It used up a great deal of oxygen for the composting, but his thriving jungle produced over twenty percent of the ship’s oxygen supply despite that.
He ignored the readouts along the route. They told him far less than the tangy scent of sap flowing from fresh cuts alo
ng the trail. His towering trees and their wildlife had survived another day. He knew the other biome leaders always walked their environment as well. The meters and vid-relays never told you what you needed to know. The best way to monitor was standing amidst the wildlife, wrapped in its smells and the moisture of the air.
Jaron was sweating heavily by the time he reached the center of the biome. A huge spray of yellow flowers each the size of his head bordered one side of the small clearing. He cast his blade, point first, into the ground and plunged his head into the small river to drink deeply. Purified to almost tasteless with each passage around the jungle, here at the center, it had leached enough minerals to taste a little of rivers he had followed for his years alone tramping through the Venezuelan and Brazilian jungles.
Sated, he dropped onto one of the arching tree roots. Eighty-six meters tall, this proud Berthalletia was the pinnacle of the highest sub-biome aboard Stellar One. This emergent was the king of the skylite superstory of the tropical jungle.
Despite the engineer’s protests, it had been necessary to convince them moving this and other full-grown monsters was crucial to the entire skylite ecosystem. Unlike the Cebia in the first load, this one alone had required an entire trip of the shuttle to move it. But they’d done well despite their griping, it had grown over a meter since planting.
A rustle sounded nearby pulling Jaron’s attention sharply back to the jungle. He couldn’t identify the species; something like a wild pig though he knew there were none aboard. Then he heard the string of curses growing steadily louder along with the crashing sounds.
Samnal, the bioengineer, stumbled out of a thicket laying about ineffectually with a machete. Jaron rose to leave as the man, drenched with sweat, dropped down on a fallen log across the small clearing.
“How can you stand this place, jungle man? I can’t even breathe in here it’s so damn humid.”
Jaron looked at the opening Samnal had slashed through the heavy undergrowth and then at the open trail he’d just finished clearing a few meters to its left.
“There are easier ways if one has patience.”
Samnal mopped at his dripping brow. “What’s that?”
Jaron shook his head. “Never mind. What are you doing here?”
“Can we be monitored?”
He allowed the sounds of the jungle to be his answer. The cicadas’ chirrup and a screeching argument among the parrots, his Amazona autumnalis colony by the call, made enough noise that a whispered conversation was not even possible.
Samnal scowled at him with his dark eyes as he pushed a hand through his curly hair. “Okay, have it your way.” He glanced around the clearing before continuing.
“I made a strike at Conrad.” He suddenly grinned broadly.
“To what end?”
“Give me a break, jungle man. You don’t like her any more than I do. You don’t like her ignoring your plants and I’m sick to death of being stuck in a tin box circling a dead planet. C’mon. Admit it. She couldn’t care less about the biomes as long as she gets to breathe the air. We need someone in charge who pays heed to what we’re doing here. ‘Let’s dream of peace and the stars, Ad Astra.’ What a crock. We need to get moving. Tons of people are so unhappy that they’ll flock to any side that is not ‘Captain Devra Conrad commanding’.”
Jaron leaned forward. “Your last idea was to kill her. Tell me you have conceived a wiser plan this time.”
“Plan? Hell. Designed and done.”
“Designed?” Jaron tried to think of what he was missing. He’d never understood how Samnal’s mind worked. He always seemed to have so little basis in fact.
“The dogs.”
“What?”
Samnal ignored his scowl and laughed at him. “Time to come down from your trees, jungle man. Check your commpad.”
Jaron pulled it from his thigh pouch and tapped a query for current ship news. A chill ran up his spine as a single headline flashed across the screen.
“All dogs dying.”
He scrolled down the article. An unknown disease had slayed every member of the family Canidae over the last two hours. Actually the article just said “dogs and foxes.” Autopsies were in progress.
Samnal rose to his feet and strutted across the clearing to Jaron. “Don’t you see? Everyone’s beloved pet suddenly dies in one night. Who are they going to blame? ‘Captain Devra Conrad Commanding,’ that’s who. Her power is undermined. Now, with her position weakened, in we go to save the day.”
He slapped Jaron hard enough on the shoulder to make him stumble forward. “Pretty good one, wouldn’t you say?”
“How did you do it?” Jaron fought to keep his voice steady, to not spit in the man’s face.
“Simple virus. Waterborne, so it got them all at once throughout Stellar One. My first plan was to induce massive production of free radicals inducing exictotoxicity leading to cell suffocation. But then I stumbled upon a method of inducing apoptosis by altering the checkpoint gene to…”
“Apoptosis. I don’t care about programmed cell death. What did you do?”
“My virus checks for the canine luteinizing hormone gene and if it finds it, bang, triggers organism-wide apoptosis and the dog falls over dead. Very efficient. Elegant, if I say so myself. And no, it can’t mutate. I engineered in a checksum. If there’s any variation in the virus it turns inert and dissolves into harmless bits of nucleotide. Slicker’n parrot snot.”
Jaron staggered away to avoid being sick. He faced into the jungle and tried to let the sounds of his parrots wash over him to warm the cold chill in his heart. But there was no future for the canines. None.
“No more dogs. Ever.” He spun to face the man. “You idiot. You know that Stellar One is a closed environment. No great Mother Earth to purge the bad bugs. Why do you think Yerke didn’t use chemicals to fix the diseases that killed fifteen percent of her ocean? Did you think about that?”
“Jesus, Jungle Man, what sort of an idiot do you think I am? I know that toxins bioaccumulate in the food chain. We use the chemicals anywhere and we’d eat them way too soon. No dissipation. No dilution. But not this time. I engineered this bug to clock itself out of existence in two days.”
Samnal grunted. “Never liked the damn things anyway. But there’s no problem. We have plenty of their genes in the storage banks, all breeds. I checked them just this morning. We just cook us up a batch of puppies when we take over and we’ll be god damn heroes. Hit people close to the heart. Win their minds through their love for their pets.”
“The stockpiles were infected as well. You idiot.” Jaron tried to swallow. Tried to make his mind work. There must be some way he could fix it.
Samnal ceased his damn one-man march and stared at him, clearly angry that his miracle had not received a joyous welcome.
“What do you mean?”
“No dogs. You checked the freezer bay after you released the disease, didn’t you? Were your hands wet? Did you sneeze on the tube stoppers?”
The large man shrugged but kept his peace. Jaron pointed to the bottom of the article on his commpad which noted the non-viability reading on all the dog ova in storage.
He felt some satisfaction as Samnal’s face went white and he wiped his hands on his pants. “Damn. I should have watched for that. Every time they test a tube, they’re pushing in the virus that kills it.”
“Was there anything else you miss—” Jaron was cut off by a loud beep, first from the pad and then from the ship’s announcement speakers buried somewhere in the jungle sky.
“Medical Warning!” flashed on the screen.
“May I have your attention!” As the command rang out, the parrots screamed in alarm which set off the monkeys and then every other animal with a voice in the jungle. They continued their harangue against the voice from the sky. He would have missed the entire announcement had it not been repeate
d on the commpad screen.
“This is Captain Devra Conrad, commanding. Warning! Do not, I repeat, not touch the deceased dogs. Whatever has happened to them is causing violent miscarriages of human fetuses in all women who have touched the corpses. Thirty-four have already been reported, including five deaths to late-term mothers.
“If you have an animal corpse to be removed, Security Chief Ri Jeffers has mobilized her crews in isolation suits. Wait for them. Do not, I repeat, not touch the dogs’ corpses. Captain Devra Conrad, commanding. Out.”
Jaron spun on Samnal who stumbled backwards over the log. “I don’t understand how…”
The parrots were still screaming and wheeling through the sky. Jaron had to yell to be heard.
“It jumped species. It jumped to humans through your waterborne vector and attacked the human LH.”
“No, I watched for that. Couldn’t happen.” Samnal was sweating heavily as he concentrated.
“Well, something did.”
Samnal’s face went white and his eyes opened wide. Jaron felt sick. There had been another error.
“I forgot to block for cross-reactions with CG. There’s a similar DNA sequence in the human chorionic gondadotropin gene which specifically maintains pregnancy. Damn.”
“No. Dogs. Ever.” Jaron had to spit to clear the bile from his throat. “And people are dying. It did not need to mutate, it kills fetuses exactly as it is. They’ll all be dead before your precious two-day clock runs out. Samnal. Your name will go down in infamy as the first mass murderer of the new age.”
An Amazona autumnalis dove into the clearing still screaming. Samnal stumbled into its path. Another cry and it pulled sharply upward. A talon left a bloody stripe on the bioengineer’s cheek. Its screeching, unmelodic call echoed like a siren about them.
“Why did you come to me, Samnal? You had to log in the door to enter here. We’re the only two in the whole biome. Why did you lead them to me? I had nothing to do with it. The troops could be here any minute. They’ll kill me. Just like my parents. My sister. They’re coming!”
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