Fig and Abdul were grinning as they took their draws.
Dan checked the time. He had four hours before he wanted to be back at Allison’s. At this stage, she needed to be coddled and guided with an expert hand. Not to mention that just through that door and down the hallway, his shipmates were fucking willing bodies. That kind of knowledge built up in a man’s subconscious, leading him to memories of Allison as she lay on her back, breasts pooled, one slim leg raised in invitation.
Concentrate.
He chided himself with a smile as he tossed in another two yuan. He’d be home to Allison soon enough. And in the meantime, Step Allenovich had a gold nugget hidden away in his belt pouch.
One way or another, I’m going home with that nugget.
And he’d do it in a way that didn’t piss off either Allenovich or Able. Given how things were lining out in his mind, he was going to need both of them. At least for the time being.
20
When a person went to the doctor’s, they expected to be poked and prodded, but the way Raya Turnienko was peering into Talina’s ear with her otoscope was absolutely annoying. The problem wasn’t in her ears.
Although her hearing really had grown more acute.
Raya had just run a cranial functioning magnetic resonance imaging scan of her head and found nothing abnormal. No evidence of damage, nothing out of the ordinary in thought process or brain activity. The only oddity had been unusual activity in the limbic system, visual, olfactory, and language centers.
Talina sat naked to the waist on the examining table, her old uniform unzipped and wadded around her hips. The familiar equipment, lights, and supply cabinets looked old and battered under the failing light panels. Hopefully Turalon carried replacements. That or Raya was going to have to fall back on flashlights and lanterns to conduct her exams after sunset.
Raya had checked Talina’s blood for heavy metal poisoning. That was protocol on Donovan. Always the prime suspect for any aberration in health. Talina’s analysis was only a little high.
“It’s weird to describe,” Talina added as Raya prodded the glands in her neck. “I call it my quetzal. Which is nuts, right? It’s a feeling that there’s something inside me. Down here.” She tapped her stomach just below her sternum and the V of her ribs. “It feels huge. Scary. Like the stories my mother used to tell about the old-time Maya shamans who had the souls of animal spirits inside them. They could shape-shift, turn themselves into owls, deer, and jaguars. But when they were human, they still had the spirit of the animal inside them.”
Raya stepped back and reached for the ultrasound. “We’ll find out. Lay back. Lift your arms. Take a deep breath and relax, okay?”
Talina settled onto her back. She clamped her teeth as the woman ran the sensor across her belly. The damn thing was cold and almost tickled.
“What do you see?”
Raya arched an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s a quetzal, all right. Flared collar, slashing velociraptor feet, snapping jaws.” She couldn’t keep her face straight, lips curling into a smile. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. I see a perfectly normal liver, large intestine, stomach, and the rest. Kidneys look fine. No sign of inflammation or masses. The diaphragm is normal. No abnormalities around the lower lobes of the lungs.”
She ran the sensor between Talina’s breasts and watched the screen. “Nothing around or beneath the heart. Beat looks normal, no sign of an abscess or mass. I wish all my patients looked as fit as you do.”
As Talina sat up, Raya replaced her sensor and turned. “Tal, I don’t think it’s anything physical. But listen to me: You’re lucky to be alive. First, you took a hell of a bump to the head. Second, you were badly injured. You’re still recovering from the physical trauma. But third—and perhaps most important—that thing came within a whisker of killing you in a horrible way. That kind of traumatic stress changes a person. I’d be surprised if you weren’t having nightmares.”
“Not nightmares. It’s like I’m running down chamois. Hunting. Seeing it like a quetzal would. I mean, I live it.”
“The things you think you are seeing, the colors, the sharpening and changing of images? We call those flashbacks. And they’re normal.”
Talina took a deep breath. “But people with flashbacks, they relive past events, right? I should be back in that canyon, falling or fighting. What’s going on with my vision? It’s like seeing through a night scope. Like overlaying infrared and ultraviolet over an everyday vision, and the backs of my eyes have been aching like crazy.”
“All I can detect is a swelling behind the retina and along the optic nerve. Maybe as a result of the bump you took. Best I can do without going in and taking a tissue sample.” She reached for a pill bottle, shook it. “Look. Real aspirin. Take two, morning, noon, and night. But listen, I’m not finding any decrease in your vision. If anything, it’s sharper than it should be.”
“You’re not helping, Raya.”
The woman crossed her arms, head cocked. The hum of the refrigeration unit and the overhead lights were the only sound. “Tal, there’s no creature in your stomach.”
Talina raised helpless hands. “It’s my body, right? There’s something in here with me. I get this rush at the notion of a fight. And it’s . . . it’s alien. Like the thing is seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling through me.”
“Upsetting, huh?”
“God, Raya, it’s like waking in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep. Like knowing you have cancer—knowing its growing inside you. Then comes the feeling of despair and the knowledge that it’s only a matter of time. And all you can do is lay there, and stare at the darkness, and feel the thing inside you.”
Raya nodded. “You’re in luck. Turalon showed up. I’ve got some meds that will allow you to sleep. Change the dopamine levels so that you can—”
“I don’t need an antipsychotic.” Talina snapped, then grinned in apology. “Not yet, anyway. Not that we aren’t all a little crazy on Donovan. I can’t take a chance on dulling my wits. Not now. Not with Aguila and Taggart scheming and plotting.”
Raya smiled at something she didn’t share with Talina. “All right. Listen. You’re lucid, with excellent cognition. For the time being, I’m sticking with my call that what you are experiencing is a reaction to trauma. You have a Mayan cultural predisposition to internalize a spirit as a means of coping. Hey, my ancestors aren’t that many generations removed from soul-flying shamans either.”
“So?”
“So, you tell me that you can still control your quetzal, right?”
“Yeah, I can shut the irritating little son of a bitch off when I concentrate. It’s only when I’m not thinking that I want to hiss or attack someone.” Talina slitted a challenging eye.
Raya didn’t go for the bait. “Sarcasm aside, how about when it gets to the point that you can’t control it? That’s when we’ll worry.”
“You sure about that?” Talina shrugged into her uniform sleeves and sealed the fasteners.
Raya tossed the aspirin to Talina, saying, “No abnormalities showed up on the scans except some accelerated brain activity and inflammation. Your lymph nodes are swollen. White blood cells and C-reactive proteins slightly elevated. Probably an allergic reaction. No tumors, no growths, no quetzal. I think that having that reassurance is going to make your life a whole lot better. Now, take your aspirin three times a day, and if things get worse, come see me.”
“All right, Raya. But if I start changing colors, I’m gonna come kick your ass like it’s never been kicked before.”
“I think I can take the risk. Now, get out of here.”
21
“I want you to know, I hate this fucking planet!” Kalico’s expression left no doubt of her sincerity. She stood before the window in her office, blue eyes glittering as though on the point of tears. Knotted so tight the knuckles stood out white, her fists shook impotently before
her.
Cap watched Kalico turn, stalk across to her desk, and drop into the chair. Propping her elbows, she ran nervous fingers through her thick wealth of black hair. “Damn them! I’ve never been so scared, so frustrated.” She swallowed hard. “So fucking humiliated! Not only did we come within a whisker of dying, they made us look like fools!”
She lifted her head, fixing him with a fiery blue stare. “Nobody does that to me!” She shivered in rage. “Nobody!”
Cap knew better than to interrupt.
“As God is my witness, I will break them!” She slammed a fist on her desk. “Who the fuck do these people think they are? Don’t they know who I am? Nobody treats me this way!”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I’m tempted to nuke this entire fucking hive. Burn it off the face of this foul piece of shit of a planet.”
She fixed her heated gaze on him. “If you ordered it, your people would carry it out, wouldn’t they? I mean, kill them all?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He struggled to keep his expression blank, but inside, his gut was churning.
Worse, he could see her considering it. A woman who’d never lost at anything. He could only imagine the psychic trauma she was feeling. Enough to murder a whole planet? Shit, it was Major Creamer all over again.
What the hell are you doing, Max? he asked himself. Who are you serving here?
He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax, adopt a nonchalant posture.
“Supervisor, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.” Cap—trying to appear casual—chewed on the callus padding his right thumb. “Perez’s got a point. You’ve seen the inventories. They were out of everything before Turalon arrived. Most of the equipment—crawlers, aircars, excavators, generators, you name it—was being cannibalized for parts. They were making their own meds, experimenting with pharmaceuticals, evolving their own form of agriculture. Battling to keep the damn wildlife out of their houses, for God’s sake!”
“So, what’s your point?” She flipped her raven hair back, giving him a narrow-eyed look that threatened death and dismemberment.
Careful, Cap.
“Something that Perez said. That they didn’t have to offer us a truce, didn’t have to lift a finger. That in the end, Donovan would beat us.”
“And you believe that?”
“Ma’am, until we can figure out what happened to all those ships, this is a dead end. You know it as well as I do.”
“So?” The word was like a lash.
He carefully said, “We don’t evacuate the colony. Instead we load up every crate of resource down here, take the one hundred and thirty-six returnees, and wave good-bye.”
“Just leave?”
“Yep. Sayonara.”
She considered, an eyebrow slightly lifted. “Raya Turnienko said survival here was fifty-fifty. So, what if they make it? We come back fifty years from now and there’s a thriving colony here? A world they claim as their own?”
“What of it?” Cap spread his hands. “The Corporation lands with a couple companies of marines, our tech, updated materiel, and builds a colony on the other side of the planet. This dump isn’t sitting on the only outcrop of minable clay and rare metals. We can ignore the Donovanians. They’ll be little better than Iron-Age farmers by that point in time.”
“Just leave them to their fates?” she mused, and he watched the rage and insanity dial back a notch or two. “I like that. God fucking damn, I do.”
Cap filled in the part she wouldn’t commit to words. “Supervisor, you go home, write your report, and declare Donovan to be economically unfeasible until such time as the mystery of the missing ships is solved. You know the politics; most of the Board was for abandoning Donovan. Turalon was the last shot at salvaging the project.
“And God alone knows if they’ll ever figure out what happened to those seven ships. Maybe it’s something changed in the astrogation? Some fluctuation in inverted space that we don’t understand? Or it’s a flaw in the design of the ships?”
She shot him a wary glance. “Doesn’t answer why all the ships up to Xian made it, why the next seven didn’t, and we did. Assuming we can even make it back. Mekong sure as hell didn’t. Now, that’s a nice thought, isn’t it? We’re leaving these bastards here to die, but the moment we invert symmetry, it could be us who disappear forever.”
“Your call, Supervisor.”
Frown lines deepened on her brow as she thought. “How long until Turalon’s loaded and we can space?”
“The last of the download should be finished tomorrow. They’ve been shuffling freight around the cargo bays, filling space as soon as they empty it. The shuttles should have the last load up and sealed in three days. Maybe four.”
She rose again, stepped back to the window. “As much as I’d like to just wash my hands of this damned place, we have legal responsibilities. If I’m going to abandon Donovan, I have to offer this load of transportees and those who’ve served out their contract the chance to return with us.”
“Do we have the space aboard ship?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. If everyone we brought wants to go back in addition to the hundred and thirty Donovanians, that’s five hundred and thirty some. Get with Chan and see what he says. Maybe we can make additional space in the pressurized cargo deck. Most of the cargo, the clay, the metals can ship in vacuum.”
She added, “Oh, and get an idea of the Port Authority food stocks. Figure out how much we can requisition, and if there’s a way of preserving it.”
Cap inspected his dentally manicured thumb. By God, he’d dodged the bullet. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Try and have your people do this as inconspicuously as possible. The less the triumvirate knows, the better.”
“Triumvirate?”
“It’s an old Latin term for a three-man ruling council. As in Perez, Mosadek, and Dushane.”
“I get your point.”
“Good, because I’m still wavering about what to do with them. Would it be kinder to just execute them, or leave them alive to watch their friends and hopes die one after another?”
22
“What do you think is going on?” Shig asked as he leaned up next to Talina and gripped the chain-link fence with his fingers.
They stood at the shuttle port perimeter, mere spectators as the first loads of dried vegetables were loaded onto one of the shuttle cargo decks.
The day was mostly sunny, the temperature balmy; the breeze blowing in from the Gulf was thick with dew. Damp enough to turn even Talina’s straight black hair slightly frizzy.
“They’re outfitting the Turalon. Paying in SDRs,” Talina told him. “Buying anything edible. Leaves and stems from things like carrots are being purchased at top dollar. Even the cactus pulp, if you can believe it.”
“The stuff we grind up for mucilage? That we put it in the water system because it absorbs metals and particulate matter? What do they need an organic water purifier for on Turalon?”
“Think back, Shig. Three years ago when the big storm took out an entire crop.”
“Okay, so we cooked the cactus pads in stew. I called it slimy shit. Tasted okay, but nobody wanted to eat it after we got through the thin times. Reminded people of starving.”
“Survival food,” Talina said thoughtfully.
Terrestrial cactus was one of the first plants to grow on Donovan; in addition to its benefits in water filtration and cleansing, the tunas, or fruits, and the blossoms were still collected and used for sweets.
She pointed. “Fifty sialon crates filled with clay. Still sitting. What do you want to bet? Aguila’s cutting and running.”
“You think she’s going to write off the colony?” Shig had a dreamy look on his face.
“At the last minute, the good Supervisor is going to announce that any transportee who wishes to renegotiate their contract and sh
ip for home can do so.” Talina guessed. “Probably based on some excuse like the fact that their jobs no longer exist.”
“She can’t take us all.”
“Nope. Not enough room on that boat.” Talina pointed. “You see that stack of tarped equipment? It’s grapples and such. For tying down cargo. Just about the amount you’d need to tie down those fifty crates of clay they aren’t in any hurry to load.”
“Which means? Come on, Talina. I’m not a space guy.”
“That’s where they’re getting the room for our one hundred and thirty-six returnees. They’re making living space in the pressurized hold. Socking in extra food. Probably freeze-drying it in vacuum and packing it in hopes that they can extend the hydroponics.”
“What about water?”
“That they can make with hydrogen and oxygen from the tanks.”
“What are we going to do about it?” Shig, for once, had a pinched look on his normally bland face.
“What can we?” Talina disentangled her fingers from the fence. “More to the point, Shig, what do we want to do about it? How many of us want to go back? To what?”
“But to be abandoned here? To know that after Turalon leaves, there won’t be another? No more resupply? That will have an effect. It’s one thing to muddle along, wondering where in hell they are and when they’re coming. Another to face the fact that we’re on our own here. Forever.”
“I’m not going back.” She shot him a glance. “You?”
Shig smiled wearily, as if amused at himself. “Too many people back there. Not enough quetzals. And what would I do? Go back to teaching? I fear that even the brightest of students couldn’t synthesize the lessons I would try to impart. The totality of experience from which they come—let alone the culture in which they live—has nothing in common with what I’ve experienced here.”
“No shit.” Talina turned. “But we need to get the word out. Our folks need a chance to make that decision on their own.”
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