Dark Secret (2016)

by Edward M. Lerner

  “You’re a youngest child, correct?” Li said. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never told me you’re the baby of the family, because you’re their freaking poster child: uncomplicated, attention-seeking, and transparently manipulative. “I can’t believe your older—well, I’ll say, sister—never baby-sat you.”

  Blake blinked. “Oh, Lynette did, and the experience does nothing to bolster your argument.”

  “Marvin,” Li called, “how many diapers has Eve changed this evening since I left the center for dinner?”

  “Six, Li.”

  “How many babies have Castor and Pollux fed?”

  “Eighteen, so far. They gave bottles to fourteen and fed four directly.”

  “While you supervised. Thank you.” To the peasants, Li added, “A dozen in the next cohort are eager to do like the big kids.”

  “And…us?” Antonio asked.

  “You will contribute more in the ways you already do,” Li said. “How much more progress will you make studying local geology”—you and your stupid rocks—“when you’re not changing diapers every few nights? How much sooner, Rikki, will you understand the climate trends?”

  How much more farming and chicken tending will you four get done? How many more cattle can you raise because you won’t be with the children, and how many more cows can you milk? How much more mining of phosphates, and raising of barns, and a thousand other menial chores? But chores weren’t selling points.

  “And as…the colony…grows?”

  Li said, “As children become old enough of course you’ll teach them the many skills with which to maintain the colony.” After I’ve made them dependably mine.

  She could feel the others wavering. “Then we’re in agreement?”

  Dana’s chair scraped back as she stood. “No.”

  “Excuse me?” Li said.

  “No,” Dana repeated. “No way. Uh-uh. Forget it. If I lack some skill, teach me. If I am a stranger to the children, I’ll spend more time with them. The mission is to raise a family, a culture, a civilization—and I do not abandon my mission.”

  “No…nor I,” Rikki squeaked. “Nor I,” she repeated, the second time firmly.

  Blake and Antonio nodded.

  “We get more involved,” Rikki said. “Once the harvest is in, we’ll have more time. And any child old enough to baby-sit is old enough to start school. I’ll help with that. I’d like that.”

  “Me, too,” Antonio said.

  “This is how you want it?” Li asked.

  “Yes!” they chorused.

  “Remember that I offered,” Li said. Remember who made me do things the hard way.

  33

  “A needle in a haystack,” Blake grumbled.

  “I wish.” Antonio didn’t take his eyes off the sensor console. “Give me an electromagnet and I’ll have your needle in no time.”

  “Heh,” Blake said. “I bow to your superior physics.”

  “Don’t forget it.”

  Blake shut his eyes. “Wake me when you find something.”

  He lolled bonelessly in the loose grasp of a seat harness. Deep inside the asteroid belt, sans Marvin, they wanted a human pilot on the bridge at all times. Dana was bunking in, which left him. Antonio, no matter the superiority of his physics, had terrible reflexes and a disturbing tendency to confuse left with right. At least the dumb-as-a-stump computer that remained aboard after moving Marvin in his servers into the bunker could spot incoming rocks on its own.

  Rikki could have handled a shift. Especially after the arduous harvest, she would have welcomed a change of scenery. Not to mention the spells in zero gee, while Antonio surveyed all the nearby rocks.

  But Rikki was suffering from, well, Li had yet to figure that out. Nothing serious, Li assured them. Whatever it was, Rikki wasn’t keeping down much of what she ate. Might be some intestinal flora gone bad in a way her nanites had yet to learn to handle. Might be, though Li had insisted that the possibility was remote, a Dark-native bacterium that had jumped to humans. Might be food poisoning. Might be a nutritional deficiency. Ironic, that last scenario: that a need for some trace element might have kept Rikki from prospecting for a trace element.

  “And we’re back,” Blake declared, opening his eyes. “Have you found any big nuggets?”

  “Not yet.” Antonio squirmed in his couch, readjusting the straps. “Vanadium isn’t common, you know.”

  He knew—or, rather, Marvin had told them. A couple hundred parts per million in Earth’s crust. Undetected to date anywhere in the Dark system. But in Sol system vanadium was common, comparatively speaking, in meteoroids and asteroids.

  Why else would they be out here, probing rock after rock?

  Blake studied his console. “Looks like another two are coming into range.”

  “Yes. Do you want…to do the honors?”

  “Sure.” Because it was something to do. Blake tagged the closer of the radar blips and dragged its trajectory data to the comm controls. (As he did, he checked for messages pending. Rikki hadn’t answered his last few emails. He hoped that meant she was getting some sleep.) The long-range comm laser reached out, invisible, for empty space provided nothing to scatter the light. Within seconds, as the spectrometer examined the miniscule bit of glowing vapor boiled off the rock’s surface, they would know a little about the rock’s composition.

  “No vanadium,” Antonio said. And a minute later, after the laser hit the second target, he reported, “None there, either.”

  Logically speaking, they would end up surveying hundreds, maybe thousands, of rocks before encountering one with vanadium compounds on its surface. They would have flown around much of the belt to find it. That Li hadn’t balked at four of them being gone, possibly, for weeks spoke volumes. Though slow to develop, this dietary deficiency must be serious.

  Radar showed they had a while until more asteroids came within probing range. “Feel like a game of chess?” Blake asked.

  “No thanks.” Antonio waved vaguely at the datasheet draped across his lap. “Aristophanes data. This is fascinating. On the ground…I never had the time to look at it. The surface temperature readings…”

  Evidently, definitions of fascination varied. “Do you see signs there of vanadium?”

  “None. But—”

  “Enjoy,” Blake said. He began a new email to Rikki. Wish you were here.

  *

  “Another shift,” Blake announced, yawning. “Much nothing accomplished.”

  “I recommend a snack and sleep,” Dana said. “For you, too, Antonio. Whatever there is to be seen will be in the comp when you come back.”

  “In a while,” Antonio said absently. Scatter plots and bar charts cluttered his datasheet.

  Much ado about asteroids.

  Rikki had yet to answer emails, which Blake took to mean she’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Back at the settlement it was almost time for breakfast. He would rest easier once he heard how she was feeling.

  Only as he dawdled in the galley over a sandwich and salad, no emails came to him.

  He went back to the bridge. “Do we have contact with home?”

  “Euripides is in position to relay,” Antonio mumbled. “Before it sets in…an hour, Aeschylus will serve.”

  “You know moonrise and set times?” Blake asked.

  The corners of Antonio’s mouth, one at a time, twitched upward. “You don’t?”

  “More useful than old Paris subway schedules,” Dana said. “But as for contact with home, here’s a simpler demonstration. An email came in from Carlos a few minutes ago, inquiring about our progress.”

  Blake asked, “Anything in the message about Rikki?”

  “No, sorry. But it was a short note. A one-liner.”

  No news means only no news, Blake told himself.

  “This is very…interesting.”

  On Antonio’s lap, the datasheet’s graphics were denser than Blake remembered. Orbital parameters. Sizes. Rotation rates. One scatter plot bore the
cryptic label Albedo Variability.

  Blake asked, “What’s albedo?”

  “The fraction of the incident…light reflected.”

  Antonio had collected plenty of rocks on Dark. He’d collected rocks from Dark’s moons when the opportunity had presented itself. It wasn’t a big surprise that he would collect stats about these rocks now.

  “And Li?” Blake asked. “What does she have to say?”

  “No word,” Dana said, “but that doesn’t surprise me. We left them shorthanded.”

  “Especially if she’s got a sick patient to deal with.”

  “Go,” Dana said. “Sleep. I’ll email Li and ask what’s going on.”

  *

  “Rikki’s fine,” Dana greeted Blake on his reappearance eight hours later.

  He saw she had the bridge to herself. On the radar display, the only nearby objects were receding. An aux display cycled through an album of kid holos.

  “Freshly synthed.” He had three drink bulbs of coffee; he handed her one. “And I’m glad to hear it, because Rikki has yet to answer me. What did Li say?”

  “Not much. Rikki’s better, and keeping down light meals. She’s home, resting. Li and Carlos are busy with the kids, but one of them checks on Rikki every few hours.”

  “Any diagnosis yet?”

  “Li’s leaning toward a nutritional deficiency. Vanadium, in fact.”

  “Leaning.”

  “Here.” Dana pulled up the message. “You now know what I know.”

  It wasn’t much. Blake sent Li a reply asking her to have Rikki contact him.

  Dana, reading over his shoulder, said, “You worry too much. And confident that you won’t listen, here’s my free advice. Let the poor woman sleep. And leave Li and Carlos alone.”

  “We’ll see.” Which they both knew meant “no.”

  “Between you and Antonio, I will go nuts.”

  Blake dropped into the copilot’s seat, content to change the subject. “Asteroid albedo?”

  “In part. They’re too splotchy for his taste, and he wants to drop down and visit a few. Mostly he’s worked up that too few asteroids dip within Dark’s orbit.”

  Blake stiffened. “This isn’t a science project. I hope you told him he can collect rocks where we find vanadium.”

  “I told him I loved him dearly, but that the absence of threatening asteroids is a good thing. I said the fewer rocks we landed on, the fewer we risked nudging the wrong way.”

  “Good answer.”

  “And after that rare vote of approval, I hand over the bridge to you. Vaporize wisely.”

  “Will do,” Blake said. “Sleep tight. I’ll wake you if I find anything.”

  She stopped in the hatchway. “Back home they’re busier than we are. When they have news, they’ll let us know.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Blake said.

  That didn’t keep him, as soon as Dana had vacated the bridge, from emailing Marvin for an update.

  Blake was beginning to smell a rat.

  34

  The measure of just how lousy Rikki felt was that, lifting her head at the sudden tapping on her window, she felt relief at seeing Li.

  “Door’s open,” Rikki croaked. She let her head flop back onto the sofa arm.

  “I see you’re better,” Li chirped coming into the house. “I expected to find you in bed.”

  “I was going for some dry crackers. Halfway to the kitchen I reconsidered.” When I remembered they were made from sea slime.

  Li set down her med kit. “I’d like to take a scan.” Whatever Rikki’s nanites had to report or the scanner found on its own must not have merited specific comment. “You’ll live, though from the looks of you, at the moment that isn’t a selling point.”

  The woman had no bedside manner.

  “When will I be over this? Whatever this is?” Rikki hesitated—fearful, almost superstitiously so—of evoking a nightmare from an era before med nanites. “Am I contagious?”

  “Don’t know, don’t know, and do you see me wearing a mask?”

  Then came the repeat lecture about keeping hydrated and foods that might stay down, followed by megadoses of vitamins and anti-nausea meds. It all wore Rikki out. “What have you heard from Endeavour?” she asked as Li helped her back to bed.

  “Only that they’re still searching.”

  “And Blake?”

  “He’s busy. Now get some rest.”

  Fitfully, disappointed that Blake hadn’t written, or even acknowledged any of her brief notes, Rikki drifted in and out of sleep.

  *

  A few more seconds, Li told herself. And, don’t look bored.

  Finally, it stopped.

  Wearing his customary smug and oblivious smile, Carlos rolled off her onto his side of the bed. He pulled up the sheet. His breathing slowed. In a minute or two, he would be snoring.

  They needed to talk, and the best time for that was after sex. When he was relaxed. When even more than usual, the little head did most of his thinking.

  Propping herself up on an elbow, resting her hand lightly on his chest, Li said, “You awake?”

  “Mmm?”

  “The sun’s still high and there’s just us. We can’t sleep now.”

  “Watch me.”

  “I’m serious,” Li said. “And this is important.”

  “Marvin is watching the kids.”

  “Eyes-open important. And sit up.”

  Carlos sat. Li spoke. And he, once she had finished, as she had known he must, had agreed to everything. She had Carlos well-conditioned. Like Pavlov’s salivating dog. If only just saliva were involved….

  On the verge of triumph, she felt pangs of disappointment. The grandeur of her vision was wasted on Carlos. The meticulous beauty of her planning—as much of it as she had shared—interested him only as it assured their success. All that he responded to was the expectation of future coupling.

  She could live with that. She needed his help, and what mattered to her was the outcome.

  As for the other four, she had given them their chance.

  *

  Shuffling more often than walking, but feeling human for the first time in days, Rikki made her way down Main Street. She tried to forget the uphill trip that she faced to return home. As she passed the garage, its door began to rise. Carlos had hitched a trailer to the back of their dump truck; he sat on the backhoe-loader, revving the motor, evidently about to drive the contraption up the ramp onto the trailer.

  Her voice was as feeble as a kitten’s; he must not have heard her over the growl of the engine, asking what he was doing. Whatever, she could find out later. Or not: curiosity seemed too much like work. She waved, he waved back, and she shuffled on.

  Between fence slats, Rikki watched children ramming around, climbing, swinging. Marvin had unlocked the gate at her approach, but she could hardly make it budge. “Marvin,” she called. With a squeal of grit-clogged hinges, the gates swung inward.

  Activity in the yard all but ceased.

  Children fell silent, some staring, others sidling away. A few of the littlest took shelter behind Eve and the twins. Despite assurances that she wasn’t contagious, Rikki was just as happy this one time that the kids were shy around her.

  “Hi!” she called. “Who can tell me where I can find Ms. Li?”

  It fell to Marvin to answer. “At her office in the childcare center.”

  Inside the center, Rikki paused at the glass wall that opened into the toddlers’ room. All those little ones, unhugged. Untouched. Alone for most of the day, every day, apart from the insubstantial company of an AI. It broke her heart. She reached for the door, and hesitated.

  “You’re not contagious,” Li said. “Go ahead.”

  Rikki jumped. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “I heard you. I’m glad you’re up and strong enough for an outing. As it happens, there was something I wanted to talk about with you. We can talk inside.”

  “Is it Endeavour?” />
  “Nothing like that.” Li gestured at the door. “Inside.”

  At Rikki’s entrance, several of the children froze. More shied away. Chubby-cheeked Carla (with the mass of black curls that so reminded Rikki of her sister Janna at that age) began to whimper.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Rikki said, reaching to brush a tear from Carla’s cheek.

  Carla lurched, screaming, to cower behind a crib.

  “Why do they hate me?” Rikki whispered. And why do they adore you?

  “Let’s go next door,” Li said.

  Next door meant the newborn unit. Li gestured Rikki ahead through this door, too. Empty cribs waited, row upon row, facing the one-way glass wall. In a few weeks, all the cribs would be occupied.

  Li said, “You’re a beautiful woman.”

  Well, I did wash my face and change into clothes without puke spatters. “Is that your big problem with me? That Blake finds me attractive?”

  “Just an observation. You are more than welcome to Blake.” Li changed tone. “Marvin, play kid-vid zero.”

  On the display integral with the low end panel of every crib, pastels morphed into the image of an old oak tree. From crib speakers came a soothing rustle of leaves. Let the vid play long enough, and it would cycle through clear skies, both sunny and starry, toddlers gleefully splashing in a wading pool, a time-lapse view of roses flowering, and other delights.

  “I hadn’t realized the vid had a name,” Rikki said. “It’s just what we play.”

  “It’s what you and your friends play. There are others, vids that Marvin hasn’t been at liberty to divulge.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rikki said.

  “Perhaps a demonstration. Marvin, kid-vid one, please.” The oak tree vanished, replaced by a close-up of Li’s smiling face. The aural accompaniment was a deep rhythmic throb: the same heartbeat recording that pulsed in the artificial wombs. “Marvin is only permitted to play that at my direction, or when no adult is present.”

  Unctuous, smiling Li faces everywhere, and Rikki wanted to smash them—the flesh-and-blood face most of all. “You programmed the children to love you?”

  Li smirked. “The proper term is imprinting. And yes, I did.”

  “No, the proper term is child abuse.”