by Astrid Amara
Tover adjusted the clip himself and looked away. Cruz started the engine, but it was silent. Combustion engines didn’t work on a planet that lacked oxygen and so the vehicle clearly worked on thermal-regenerative technology. Only the crackle of the massive, solid polyfoam tires made noise as they rolled over the red road of the Arcadio property.
The vehicle looked like some hybrid of an all-terrain, amphibious automobile and a boat. The large benchseat was wide but uncomfortable, suspended high above the tires, and the cabin was open, only a simple metal frame forming the structure. Cruz steered with a wheel and pedals, but the sound of electronic hydraulics revved quietly and the holo-panel flashed out information of their direction and the depth of the marshy ground they sank into.
Within moments of starting the vehicle, they were swallowed on either side by the insulin violets. Behind them, Tover heard the crackle of tires and saw the two guards who watched the house that morning follow in a similar vehicle.
The fields seemed to stretch for nearly a kilometer. When they broke through onto a main road, Tover finally saw a view of the verdant, swampy valley they were nestled in. Rich red soil lined the road but everything else was staggering shades of green. Individual fields of crops were delineated by the red soil roads, and an occasional house could be seen amongst the verdant plant life. There were few trees here, but up ahead toward the hills Tover saw what looked to be a jungle of variegated palms. Ivies crept across the road and were churned into mushy pulp by the silent vehicle. Orchid-like epiphytes clung to crops and trees alike, brilliant yellow barnacles in an ocean of vegetation. Even the sky was shockingly green, drifting patterns of blue shimmering in the distance.
Despite the sour weight of the atmosphere, it felt good to be outside. Living most of his life on stations and satellites gave Tover an appreciation for open space and fresh air, and when he visited colonial planets on his holidays, he always found the novelty of a breeze stirring to more than his hair. Even here, despite the alien atmosphere, he smelled differing scents, and sensed the wax and wane of a westerly wind, and the unevenness of natural heat from the nearby star. Unevenness defined planet life, and it seemed like something his body craved, a natural sensation of warmth and the flush of cold which exhilarated his spirit and renewed him.
They drove for nearly an hour, the landscape varying as they passed through small settlements, leaving the marshy, flat agricultural lands. The road was often uneven, occasionally disappearing entirely as the nave sank deep into marshy water. The vehicle handled liquid, mud and dry rock with equal ability, and it carried them steadily into higher terrain, where the stones seeped water, and moss and plant life carpeted everything.
They passed a few other naves, and one where three women waved at Cruz and he smiled and waved back. Tover noted that the nave followed them.
“Who’s behind us?” he asked.
Cruz glanced at a rearview holo screen then back at the road. “Peres and Chucho.”
“Pulmon Verde?” Tover asked.
Cruz nodded. “I told them my mother recommended some fresh air and a walk to restore your health.”
“And yet they’re still tailing you.”
The corner of Cruz’s mouth curled up. “I don’t think Peres believed me.”
Tover said nothing more as they wound farther up a hill. There were more residences here, and the fields disappeared. But even as the man-made structures increased, Tover saw the evidence of a constant battle with the wild. The jungle reclaimed every inch, and vines crept over rooftops and thick-stalked weeds burst through concrete. Tover knew that most of the plant life here was not native—they had come from earth and flourished in the carbon-dioxide atmosphere—but much of the plant life had altered over the centuries, mutating into weird mouthy flowers and brambles with shoots as thick as an arm. Unusual, Carida-unique fruits drooped from willowy branches over the road and splattered on the road in a cacophony of colors, and Tover smiled at the image of a digital road sign, darkened and overtaken by something that looked mockingly delicate, with tiny white flowers bursting off hundreds of stalks.
All at once the road bumped severely, and they were on pavement, and buildings began to outnumber plants and the traffic increased. Here, the strangled signage had spaces of foliage chopped back so that they could be read.
It had been a long time since Tover passed through a proper town, and he had never visited one so impoverished and yet so vibrant. He had enough money to avoid such places on his travels, and when he did glimpse how “the other half” lived, it was only in passing, on his way to some magnificent Harmony-owned resort complex.
But here, the little town of Villazul was both in shambles and also teeming with life. Crumbling buildings were painted brightly, and rotofans cranked from every open balcony. A gaggle of school children walked down a busy sidewalk, and Tover watched them navigate through the crowds behind two adults.
They passed a shopping market and what looked to be a more modern complex under an ion dome, but they didn’t stop. Instead Cruz followed the main road and turned up a steep incline that led them to the top of a hill. They parked at the peak, next to a paved overlook, surrounded by a low fence.
“Can you walk as far as that ledge there?” Cruz asked.
“Why, you going to push me over?”
Cruz scowled and got out of the car.
Tover moved slowly. The Pulmon Verde that had followed parked at a small distance. Tover didn’t look back at his captors.
Cruz walked beside him, despite Tover’s slow pace. He didn’t touch Tover but he did move to his left side, between Tover and the other Pulmon Verde.
When they got to the ledge, Tover leaned against a handrail and looked over a breathtaking visage.
The planet was stunning.
A canopy of vibrant life flourished beneath them. In the valleys and cliffs of the landscape, foliage burst uncontrolled, but in the distance he could make out the regular green fields of farms. Directly below them, the town of Villazul sprawled at the edges of the swampy, untamed wilderness, noisy and colorful. Even from this height he could hear music and clanking machinery.
Off to the east Tover saw the vast dome protecting a complex shuttle system, clean, sleek modern buildings, and what looked to be expanses of manicured lawns. It had to be the Harmony base. It had the tidy, technical professionalism of a Harmony outpost.
It looked so close, his freedom.
“I can’t take you there yet,” Cruz said, as if reading his mind. He leaned his elbows on the handrail and spoke quietly. “Every move you make is monitored. If they catch us, you’ll be imprisoned again.”
“I’m imprisoned now,” Tover reminded him. “I haven’t been free since I helped you all those weeks ago on DK Station.”
Cruz winced and looked away. “I’m going to get you there, Tover. I know you don’t trust me, but I will do whatever it takes to make it right between us.”
Rage filled Tover. “Right between us? Cruz, fucking look at me!” Tover pointed to the scar around his neck. “I was fucking tortured! I can barely walk, my life is in constant danger, and I can’t even jump anymore because—” Tover choked on the words.
Cruz waited for him to finish, but Tover didn’t.
After a while Cruz gestured to the landscape beneath them. “I wanted to take you here so you could see this. This town, all of these people, children and old ladies and plants and wildlife. And this is only one city on the planet. We have a dozen urban centers, and dozens more small settlements. Almost a million of us, living on this planet, breathing this atmosphere like we have for over five hundred years, making our living off of this land. This is a whole world, Tover.” Cruz swallowed. “And it is all going to die next year.”
“I’m not stupid,” Tover told him. “I know that isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is.” Cruz turned to face him. His eyes searched Tover’s expression. “I wasn�
�t sure myself until I saw the Harmony plans for Carida. They have forecasted their development investments for the next fifty years. Phase One is the terraforming we all know about. They will bring their machines down here, crank on the oxygen, and kill off all the life on this planet.”
“I remember hearing about a reservation on a newscast,” Tover said. “They aren’t terraforming everything, there is a part of the planet saved for your people.”
“Part of the planet?” Cruz glared. “Try one island. They’ll build an ion dome to provide a CO2 atmos over a total of 150 square kilometers. That’s for a million people, agricultural land, and also a natural reserve for native flora and fauna.”
Tover agreed it was small, but the offer itself couldn’t be ignored. “Harmony owned the original colonization rights. They own this planet. They could legally provide you nothing.”
“And that’s exactly what they’re doing. Offering nothing but a lie.”
“They’re building a costly reservation.”
Cruz shook his head. “Only because they know the repercussions of not providing such a refuge. Remember the political fallout from terraforming Xiang? All those aquatic-modified humans, forced to have either severe and life-threatening surgery or die? That left a bad taste in the mouths of CTASA politicians. So the reservation is being marketed as the alternative to the Xiang controversy. But it’s a ruse, nothing more.”
Cruz ran his fingertips over his wristpad and activated the holoscreen. He glanced over his shoulder at the Pulmon Verde lounging against their nave, but the two seemed to be engrossed in conversation and were ignoring Cruz and Tover.
Tover leaned closer as Cruz navigated through files to pull up a three-dimensional schematic that resembled the Harmony base ion dome.
“This is their solution,” Cruz explained. He pointed to the schematic. “To compensate the Caridan native residents for the loss of their homes and land, they will be given rent-free residences within the dome.”
Cruz flipped through architectural blueprints, and although little of it made sense to Tover, they looked impressive enough. Cruz zoomed in on one section of the schematic and focused the image. Generated renditions of tastefully laid-out suburban neighborhoods could be seen.
“Looks great,” Tover commented.
Cruz raised an eyebrow. “How are we going to eat?”
Tover shrugged. “I don’t know. It isn’t like money or commerce will disappear.”
“Ninety percent of Caridans make their living in agricultural or mining pursuits. And tourism is only a sustainable industry here because of the unusual native plant and animal life we have. We live off natural resources. But with Harmony’s solution, we have no farms, no access to the mines, no ability to make a living. There is no economy in this dome.”
Cruz zoomed in on another section of the reservation layout. Tover could see a cluster of buildings marked as a school. “They even promise infrastructure,” Cruz said. “Schools, clinics, transit. Everything we could want, except for a means to take care of ourselves. There are few jobs. We don’t own these buildings. We don’t own property. All of this is loaned to us. We’re caged.”
“You can still breathe with respirators outside the dome,” Tover pointed out. “Or undertake that surgery Lourdes mentioned.”
Cruz narrowed his eyes. “That surgery is killing more Caridans than it’s saving. And a respirator is a pain. All it takes is one wrong brush against your face and you can’t breathe.”
“What about cell therapy?” Tover asked. “Clearly you’ve done it before.”
Cruz shook his head. “Suppressive cell therapy is prohibitively expensive. It cost the Pulmon Verde a small fortune to keep me supplied with enough cell suppressants to breath oxygen. And it took its toll on my health. I was sick all the time and often struggled to breathe.”
“You always looked healthy to me,” Tover said before he could sensor himself.
Cruz smiled. “I shot myself with immuno boosters before I landed on DK station, so I’d be healthy enough to spend time with you.”
Tover looked away from him, feeling his face flush. He wouldn’t discuss the past, he promised himself.
Luckily, Cruz didn’t dwell on the topic either. He swiped his finger over the pad to turn off the projection. “Let’s walk. You’re supposed to be getting exercise.”
He strolled beside the path railing. Tover struggled after him, careful to avoid the spreading creepers and weeds which burst through the pavement and created obstructions perfect for Tover to trip and fall over. Cruz slowed his pace to match Tover’s and continued to talk in a low voice.
“All of the documentation I found looked legitimate from a structural perspective. But the lack of long-term plans for maintaining or funding these services bothered me. What was the annual projected budget of running this reservation? Were residents going to be ‘taxed’ by the company to live there? Who would pay for the amenities?”
Tover noticed the Pulmon Verde guards kept a close eye on him and Cruz.
“When I found these designs and the documentation which proved that the reservation build-life maxed out at ten years, I knew that Harmony had no intention of sustaining native Caridan life,” Cruz said. “They were only postponing our exile. I even found a document outlining their long-term strategy. Five years in, as the cheaply built structures start to fail, people are encouraged to get cell therapy and surgery. Seven years in, there’ll be a complete shutdown of Harmony-sponsored services. And ten years after the original opening? They will officially close the reservation. Those who are not able to afford their own medical treatments will be given government-issue respirators and kicked out onto the streets of their new city. Their homes and livelihoods are gone. No compensation. No air. Do you realize how damning this evidence is?”
Cruz was pleading with him, Tover could tell. Tover turned away from his searching gaze and stared at the town below. The thick air swirled around him, smelling faintly of lemons. He saw a massive lemon tree to his right, larger than he thought possible for such a bush.
But it wasn’t native, he reminded himself. Lemons would grow on the oxygen-based planet too. Only the few completely native species and these people would suffer.
Cruz stared at the overlook as well. His glance flickered to the guards before he continued. “The plans are secret, obviously. It took years to access them, and copying the files required months of slow file manipulation to avoid tripping the security system. And I was only able to secure one copy, which I sent to the data repository on Jarrow.” Cruz sighed loudly. “I’d worked for over five years to find that evidence, to prove that my people are going to be forced off their planet. Do you understand? If Caridans can’t afford genetic therapy or survive surgery, they’ll die. The only thing to stop this is that evidence. And when those bastards stole it, I had to do whatever I could to get it back.”
Tover’s stomach lurched. “It means nothing to me,” Tover said, his uneven voice giving away the lie in his words. “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
“I’m trying to explain why I did what I did.” Cruz looked sick. “You have to understand why that data are so important. I acted to save a million lives.”
“It doesn’t matter why you did it!” Tover said, his voice shaking. “What matters is you took the trust of someone who fucking loved you and destroyed them for your own purpose!”
Cruz went pale.
Tover, realizing what he’d admitted, shoved Cruz and walked away from the ledge. He needed space. His breathing felt ragged—part of his light-headedness undoubtedly resulted from his respirator, which had gotten crooked again. As he adjusted it he stumbled and pain shot through his right knee. “Fuck!” he cried, feeling miserable.
He looked up and both Pulmon Verde surrounded him, their rudimentary bolt guns pointed at Tover. Shoving Cruz must have looked bad. He held up his hands.
Tover refused to look at Cruz. Instead he wandered down the path, giving in to the sensation of fleeing. He kept moving despite his labored breathing and the ache in his legs. It felt good to get away, from the guards, from Cruz, from everything.
The pathway continued flat but then dropped to wind down the leafy hillside toward Villazul. Tover took a few of the steps down before he sat on a step. He sat for a long time, thinking. He was going to have to jump to get himself out of this situation. And if he was too psychologically fucked up to do so now, it was all right. He’d keep trying. Eventually he would break through his psychological barrier and get home.
Just hold on a little bit longer, Tover told himself. He closed his eyes. He felt foolish, having to give himself a pep talk, but then he remembered those scary, isolated first years as a navigational candidate. He got through those. He got through the implant surgeries and the sensitivity training. He had been through rough periods and survived. And he had survived the Jarrow pirates. He had to hold on.
He heard a muffled curse and turned slightly. The two Pulmon Verde guards were arguing with Cruz. He looked pissed off, hands on his hips. At one point he glanced over to Tover but quickly looked away, although clearly the argument was about him.
But they did not disturb Tover, and so he remained a while longer, enjoying the view, and processing what Cruz had told him.
Tover didn’t believe it all. There were certainly two sides to the story, there always were. The real truth most likely lay somewhere in the middle.
The real question was, if he had believed it true, and had been in Cruz’s shoes, would he have been willing to risk Cruz’s safety to a group of unscrupulous thieves to preserve his life’s work?
Chapter Ten
Given proper care, Tover’s body responded quickly to therapy, and he healed faster than he had expected.