They ran back to the vault. Chauncie threw the list down just outside the door; then they started climbing the slope beside the blade. The oncoming blimps were on the other side; if there were men watching, it would look like Chauncie and River had gone back into the vault. He hoped they were too confident to be that attentive. After all, the vault was supposedly unguarded.
“Over there!” River dragged him away from the concrete blade, toward a flat shelf fronted by a low pile of black rocks. The slope rose above it at about thirty degrees, a loose tumble of dark gravel and fist-sized stone where a few hardy grasses clung.
“Okay, get down.” She hunkered down, and he wrapped her in a silvery survival blanket, then began clawing at the scree with his bare hands, heaping it up around her. The act was a kind of horrible parody of the many times he’d buried his sister in the sand back home.
Awkwardly, he made a second pile around himself, until he and River were two gravel cones partially shielded by rock. “You picked a good spot,” he commented; they had a great view of the parking lot and the ground just in front of the entrance. He’d wedged the briefcase under the shielding stones; his eyes kept returning to it as the mercenary force came into view over the flat roof of the vault.
The blare of the blimps’ turboprops shattered the valley’s serene silence. They swiveled into position just below the parking lot, lowered down, touched, and men in combat fatigues began pouring out. Chauncie and River ducked as they scanned the hillside with binoculars and heat-sensing equipment.
“I’m cold,” said River.
“Just wait. If this doesn’t work we’ll give up.”
After a few minutes Chauncie raised his head so he could peer between two stones. The mercenaries had pulled the security guards out of the vault and had them on their knees. Someone was talking to them. The rest of them seemed satisfied with their perimeter, and now a man in a greatcoat strode up the hillside. The coat flew out behind him in black wings as one of the soldiers ran up holding something small and white. “Jackpot!” muttered Chauncie. It was Maksim’s list.
“What’s happening?”
“Moment of truth.” He watched as the commander flipped through the list. Then he went to talk to the security guards, who looked terrified. The commander looked skeptical and kept shaking his head as they spoke. It wasn’t working!
Then there was a shout from the doorway. Two soldiers came down to the commander, one carrying Chauncie’s sequencer, the other a double handful of open foil packets.
Chauncie could see the commander’s mouth working: cursing, no doubt. He threw down the list and pulled a sat phone out of his coat.
“He thinks we got the data out,” said Chauncie. “There’s nothing left for them to steal.” The commander put away the sat phone and waved to his men. Shaking his head in disgust, he walked away from the vault. The bewildered soldiers followed, knotting up into little groups to mutter amongst themselves.
“I don’t believe it. It worked.”
“I can’t see anything!”
“They think Maksim’s got the data on the unique seeds. It’s pretty obvious that we destroyed those in processing them. So these guys have exactly nothing now, and they know it. If they stay here they’ll just get rounded up by the UN or the Norwegian navy.”
“So you’ve won?”
“We win.” The blimps were taking off. One of the guards was climbing into a car as the other ran back into the vault. Doubtless the airwaves were still jammed, and would be for an hour or so; the only way to alert the army camp at Svalbard would be to drive there.
“It’s still plunder, Chauncie.” Stones rattled as River shook them off. “Theft of something that belongs to all of us. Besides, there’s one big problem you hadn’t thought of.”
He frowned at her. “What?”
“It’s just that those guys are now Maksim’s best customers. And the deal they’ll be looking for is still the same: the unique gene sequences, not the whole plant DNA. Plausible deniability, remember? And Maksim would be a fool to keep the whole set after he’s sold the genes. It would be incriminating.”
He stood up, joints aching, to find his toes and ears were numb. Little rockfalls tumbled down the slope below him. “Listen,” River continued, “I don’t think you ever wanted to do this in the first place. The closer we got to Svalbard the unhappier you looked. You know it was wrong to steal this stuff to begin with. And look at the firepower they sent to get it! It was always a bad deal, and it’s a hot potato and you’d best be rid of it.”
“How?” He shook his head, scowling. “We’ve already scanned the damned things. Maksim . . .”
“Maksim will know the mercenaries got here while we were here. We just tell him they got here before us. That they got the material.”
“And this?” He hefted the Exabyte storage block.
“We give it to that last guard; hey, he’ll be a hero, he might as well get something for his trouble. So the DNA goes back into the vault—virtually, at least, after they back it up to a dozen or so off-site locations.”
He thought about it as they trudged down the hillside. Truth to tell, he had no idea what he’d do if he retired now anyway. Probably buy a boat and come back to plink CarbonJohnnies. He wanted the emerald sea; he wanted those waters back. But now they were battered with hurricanes, the islands themselves depopulated and poor now that tourism had left, and the beaches had been destroyed by rising tides and storms.
From behind him she said, “It’s an honorable solution, Chauncie, and you know it.” They reached the level of the parking lot and she stopped, holding out her hand. “Here. I’ll take it in. I’ve got my pepper spray if he tries to keep me there. And you know, now that the Russians have tried this they’ll put real security on this place. Keep it safe for everybody. The way it was meant to be.”
He thought about the money, about Maksim’s wrath; but he was tired, and damn it, when during this whole fiasco had he been free to make his own choice on anything? If not now . . .
He handed her the data block. “Just be quick. The whole Norwegian navy is going to descend on this place in about an hour.”
She laughed, and disappeared into the dark fortress with the treasure of millennia in her hand.
Night was falling at last. Chauncie stood on the trawler’s deck watching the last sliver of sun disappear. Vast purple wings of cloud rolled up and away, like brushes painting the sky in delicate hues of mauve, pale peach, silver. There were no primary colors in the Arctic, and he had to admit that after all this time, he’d fallen in love with that visual delicacy.
The stars began to come out, but he remained at the railing. The trawler’s lights slanted out, fans of yellow crossing the deck, the mist of radiance from portholes silhouetting the vessel’s shape. The air was fresh and smelled clean—scrubbed free of humanity.
He wondered if River Balleny was watching the fall’s first sunset from wherever she was. They had parted ways in Svalbard—not exactly on friendly terms, he’d thought, but not enemies either. He figured she was satisfied that he’d done the right thing, but disappointed that he’d gotten them into the situation in the first place. Fair enough; but he wished he’d had a chance to make it up to her in some way. He’d probably never see her again.
Kulitak’s voice cut through his reverie. “Sat phone for you!” Chauncie shot one last look at the fading colors, then went inside.
“St. Christie here.”
“Chauncie, my old friend.” It was Maksim. Well, he’d been expecting this call.
“I can’t believe you sent us into that meat grinder,” Chauncie began. He’d rehearsed his version of events and decided to act the injured party, having barely escaped with his life when the mercenaries came down on the vault just as he was arriving. “I’m lucky to be here to talk to you at—”
“Oh, such sour grapes from a conquering hero!” That was odd. Maksim actually sounded pleased.
“Conquering? They—”
“Ha
ve conceded defeat. You uploaded the finest material, Chauncie; our pet scientists are in ecstasy. So, as I’m a man of my word, I’ve wired the rest of your payment to the new account number you requested.”
“New acc—” Chauncie stopped himself just in time. “Ah. Uh, well thank you, Maksim. It was good, uh, doing—”
“Business, yes! You see how business turns out well in the end, my friend? If you have a little faith and a little courage? Certainly I had faith in you, and justly so! I’d like to say we must do it again someday, but I know you’ll vanish back to your beloved Caribbean now to lounge in the sunlight—and I’d even join you if I didn’t love my work so much.” Maksim prattled happily on for a minute or two, then rang off to deal with some of his other hundreds of distractions. Chauncie laid down the sat phone and collapsed heavily onto the bench beside the galley table.
“Something wrong?” Kulitak was staring at him in concern.
“Nothing, nothing.” Kulitak shot him a skeptical look and Chauncie said, “Go on. Go find us some CarbonJohnnies to bomb or something. I need a moment.”
After Kulitak had left, Chauncie went to his cabin and woke up his laptop. An email waited from one of the online payment services he’d tied to his Polar Consulting Services Web site.
Twenty-five thousand dollars had just been transferred to him, according to the email, from an email address he didn’t recognize—a tiny fraction of the number Maksim had promised him. Chauncie had no doubt that it was a tiny fraction of the amount Maksim had actually paid out.
His inbox pinged. A strange sense of fated certainty settled on Chauncie as he opened the mail program and saw a videogram waiting. He clicked on it.
River Balleny’s windburnt face appeared on the screen. Behind her was bright sunlight, a sky not touched in pastels. She was wearing a T-shirt, and appeared relaxed and happy.
“Hi, Chauncie,” she said. “I swore to myself I wouldn’t contact you—in case they got to you somehow—but it just seemed wrong to leave you in the lurch. I had to do something. So . . . well, check your email. A little gift from me to you.
“You know . . . I really wasn’t lying when I told you I think the seed data belongs to all of mankind. I walked back into the vault seriously intending to leave it there. But then I realized that it wouldn’t solve anything. We’d still have all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. As long as the seed data was in one place, stored in only one medium—whether it was as seeds or bits on a data chip—it would be scarce. And anything that’s scarce can be bought, and sold, and hoarded, and killed for.
“The guard wasn’t around; he’d run down to the vault. So I just put the data core in an inner pocket and hung around for a minute. After we parted, I uploaded the data to Maksim; it wasn’t hard to get an ftp address from the guy who’d introduced me to him in the first place. And, yeah, I gave Maksim my own bank account number.” She chuckled. “Sorry—but I was never the naïve farmgirl you and Kulitak seemed to think I was.”
Chauncie swore under his breath—but he couldn’t help smiling too.
“As long as the genetic code of those seeds was kept in one place, it remained scarce,” she said again. “That gave it value but also made it vulnerable. Now Maksim has it; but so do I. I made copies. I backed it up. And someday—when Maksim and the Russians have gotten what they want out of it and it’s ceasing to be scarce anyway—someday I’ll upload it all onto the net. For everyone to use.
“We all have to make hard choices these days, Chauncie—about what can be saved, and what we have to leave behind. Svalbard will always be there, but its rarest treasure is out now, and with luck, it won’t be rare for long. So everybody wins this time.
“As to me personally, I’m retiring—and no, I’m not going to tell you where. And I’ve left you enough for a really good vacation. Enjoy it on me. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
She smiled, and there was that naïve farmgirl look, for just a second. “Good-bye, Chauncie. I hope you don’t think less of me for taking the money.”
The clip ended. Chauncie sat back, shaking his head and grinning. He walked out onto the deck of the trawler and looked out over the sea. The sun had just slightly dipped below the horizon, bringing a sort of short twilight. It would reemerge soon, bringing back the perpetual glare of the long days.
Stars twinkled far overhead.
No, not stars, Chauncie realized. There were far too many to be stars, and the density of them increased. Far overhead a heavy blimp was dumping tiny bits of chaff glued to little balloons. Judging by the haze, they’d dumped the cloud into a vast patch of sulfur particulates. Both parties would be in court soon to fight over who would get the credit for blocking the sun’s rays as it climbed back over the horizon.
The sulfur haze had caused the remaining sun’s rays to flare in a full hue of purples and shimmering reds, and the chaff glittered and sparkled overhead.
It was so beautiful.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
TOBIAS S. BUCKELL is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has written several novels, including the New York Times bestseller Halo: The Cole Protocol, the Xenowealth series, and Arctic Rising and Hurricane Fever. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Analog, Clarkesworld, and Subterranean, and in anthologies such as Armored, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, Under the Moons of Mars, Operation Arcana, and The End Is Nigh. He currently lives in Ohio with a pair of dogs, a pair of cats, twin daughters, and his wife.
KARL SCHROEDER (kschroeder.com) was born into a Mennonite community in Manitoba, Canada, in 1962. He started writing at age fourteen, following in the footsteps of A. E. van Vogt, who came from the same Mennonite community. He moved to Toronto in 1986, and became a founding member of SF Canada (he was president from 1996–97). He sold early stories to Canadian magazines, and his first novel, The Claus Effect (with David Nickle) appeared in 1997. His first solo novel, Ventus, was published in 2000, and was followed by Permanence and Lady of Mazes. His most recent work includes the Virga series of science fiction novels (Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, Pirate Sun, and The Sunless Countries) and hard SF space opera Lockstep. He also collaborated with Cory Doctorow on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Science Fiction. Schroeder lives in East Toronto with his wife and daughter.
TIME CAPSULE FOUND ON THE DEAD PLANET
MARGARET ATWOOD
1. In the first age, we created gods. We carved them out of wood; there was still such a thing as wood then. We forged them from shining metals and painted them on temple walls. They were gods of many kinds, and goddesses as well. Sometimes they were cruel and drank our blood, but also they gave us rain and sunshine, favourable winds, good harvests, fertile animals, many children. A million birds flew over us then, a million fish swam in our seas.
Our gods had horns on their heads, or moons, or sealy fins, or the beaks of eagles. We called them All-Knowing, we called them Shining One. We knew we were not orphans. We smelled the earth and rolled in it; its juices ran down our chins.
2. In the second age, we created money. This money was also made of shining metals. It had two faces: on one side was a severed head, that of a king or some other noteworthy person, on the other face was something else, something that would give us comfort: a bird, a fish, a fur-bearing animal. This was all that remained of our former gods. The money was small in size, and each of us would carry some of it with him every day, as close to the skin as possible. We could not eat this money, wear it, or burn it for warmth; but as if by magic, it could be changed into such things. The money was mysterious, and we were in awe of it. If you had enough of it, it was said, you would be able to fly.
3. In the third age, money became a god. It was all-powerful, and out of control. It began to talk. It began to create on its own. It created feasts and famines, songs of joy, lamentations. It created greed and hunger, which were its two faces. Towers of gla
ss rose at its name, were destroyed, and rose again. It began to eat things. It ate whole forests, croplands, and the lives of children. It ate armies, ships, and cities. No one could stop it. To have it was a sign of grace.
4. In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues, and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last, all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.
Some of our wise men turned to the contemplation of deserts. A stone in the sand in the setting sun could be very beautiful, they said. Deserts were tidy, because there were no weeds in them, nothing that crawled. Stay in the desert long enough, and you could apprehend the absolute. The number zero was holy.
5. You who have come here from some distant world, to this dry lakeshore and this cairn, and to this cylinder of brass, in which on the last day of all our recorded days I place our final words:
Pray for us, who once, too, thought we could fly.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARGARET ATWOOD was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and in Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College. She is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction, but is best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Her latest work is a book of short stories called Stone Mattress: Nine Tales. Her newest novel, MaddAddam, is the final volume in a three-book series that began with the Man-Booker Prize–nominated Oryx and Crake and continued with The Year of the Flood. She is also the author of In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, a collection of non-fiction essays, and the non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, which was adapted for the screen in 2012. Ms. Atwood’s work has been published in more than forty languages.
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