by R. Lee Smith
“Tents?” Maria interrupted immediately upon hearing this. In her firm, furious tone, Amber heard again her threat to sue the Manifestors and their Director right down to the ground. “You said there weren’t enough tents! I was in a sleeping bag and you had more tents the whole time?”
“They’re for keeping the equipment dry,” Scott answered. “They aren’t for personal use.”
“Well they are now, bucko. It’s pouring! Where are they?”
“I haven’t decided how to assign them,” said Scott, and whenever Amber thought about it, she always came back to that as the only moment when someone might have been able to put a stop to things. But you can’t take out the guy in charge without replacing him. And she did not want that job.
So when people started arguing and those angry voices started climbing and Scott was holding up his hands in an ineffectual bid for silence, Amber said, “That was smart, Scott.”
He swung around to glare at her, holding up one hand against the storm—the miraculous storm which had probably saved their lives but which showed no sign of blowing off any time soon.
“I’m not being sarcastic,” she told him. “That was smart. If you hadn’t set that stuff aside, we wouldn’t have anything right now. How many did you save?”
And that was the word that did it. Save. Like he’d planned it. Like he’d pulled them out of the fire with his bare hands and carried them to his desperate people.
Scott squared his shoulders and gave his crewman’s jacket a brisk tug. “Six. Two command units and four bivies.”
“What the heck is a bivy?” Maria wanted to know.
“How big are they?” Amber asked.
“Not very,” someone else answered. Eric Lassiter, one of the soldiers Jonah had sent her. “What he’s calling a command unit is just your typical one-room dome tent. Allegedly, it could hold eight people.”
“If they were greased up,” Crandall added dubiously. “And drunk.”
“And a bivy is pretty much a sleeping tube.”
“More like a body-condom,” inserted Crandall.
“Two people could share one if they were really, really cozy, but even if you packed them all full, most of us are going to be out in the weather.”
“Well, that’s bullshit!” said Maria, doubtless ready to add a few new names to her list of impending lawsuits for her brother to receive back on Earth.
“No,” said Amber, as quietly as the driving wind and rain allowed. “That’s just the way it is. Getting mad won’t help.”
There were mutters, but that was all, and even Maria didn’t protest when Scot kept one of the command units for himself, because he was in command. He gave the bivies to the Fleetmen—Eric, Dag, Crandall and Mr. Yao. The last tent, he gave to the women at the end of a chivalrous and deeply concerned speech in which he referred to those women, not just once or twice but at least a dozen times, as resources. And Amber let him. So it was her fault too.
She didn’t even get a space in the tent. Despite Eric’s assertion that eight people could fit, only six of them actually did and there were eleven women. Amber didn’t try to bully her way in, because she knew she was fat and didn’t need to hear it again.
As for the rest of the equipment Scott had set aside, they had another solar generator, but nothing that really needed running except the water purifier, which was useless because they didn’t have any intake hoses. They also had six crates of irrigation pipes so they could run purified water all through the camp, but none of the joints or valves. They had everything they needed for the pump, except, of course, the motor and belts. They had a power mixer without a battery and enough bags of concrete to pour the floor for the pump house, currently being stored in all those one-man tents so the rain couldn’t turn them into sixty-pound bricks. The rest of their provisions were comprised of 1500 other-flavored ration bars packed together with emergency blankets, flashlights and fire-strikers in about thirty duffel bags in assorted neon colors with the Manifest Destiny logo on the side. And one medikit.
The medikit belonged to Mr. Yao and during the next morning’s debriefing, which Amber was not invited to but attended anyway, he opened it up and read out its contents: Six rolls of sterile gauze, one box of medium grade self-sticking bandages, a tube of burn relief gel, a tube of antibacterial ointment, a bottle of low-dose aspirin, a bottle of extra-strength aspirin, and a dermispray pen with twelve doses of nalfentypine.
“What’s that?” Scott wanted to know.
“A synthetic opiate used for pain management.”
“That’s part of the kit?” Eric asked, not quite smiling.
“Of course not,” said Mr. Yao. “It came with the surgical supplies you brought, but they were lost on the ridge. This was with my personal effects.”
“And how did that happen?”
Mr. Yao looked at him without emotion. “In my medical opinion, I required sedation.”
Eric held up his hands in surrender.
“I require sedation,” Crandall said hopefully.
Mr. Yao ignored him and looked instead at Scott. “I want you to know that I have this, and I want you all to know where to find it and how to use it, because this is now the only source of anything like anesthetic we possess. But I think it would be best not to let everyone know of its existence, because it would also make an extremely effective form of suicide.”
“So does that lake,” said Amber, the first remark she’d made at that meeting.
“Miss Bierce, if you’re going to eavesdrop, at least do it quietly. We’re trying to have a debriefing.”
Mr. Yao ignored Scott and turned to her. “Drowning oneself, like hanging oneself with one’s shirtsleeve or cutting one’s wrists with broken glass or any number of options presently available to us, requires a great deal more courage and determination than putting a dermisprayer against one’s arm and pressing a button. I would rather save it for our first broken leg than make it available to those seeking a quick, painless way out of our present circumstance.”
“Good point.” And because he was glaring at her, Amber looked at Scott and said, “I guess it should stay here, huh?”
They were all in Scott’s tent at the time, the command unit, the only place they could all squeeze together out of the drumming rain and wind. Scott blinked around all the same, as if he expected a bank vault to open up behind him. “Why here?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t the really important stuff be with the guy in charge?”
Mr. Yao waited, holding the medikit on his lap.
“Well, I…guess I have more room,” said Scott cautiously.
Mr. Yao passed it over.
“So…So I guess I’m in charge of the food and stuff too?”
That was a lot more unsettling than letting the man babysit the first aid supplies.
“Someone ought to be,” Amber said, hoping her hesitation hadn’t been too obvious. “And the rations do need to be kept dry.”
“And away from hoarders,” said Eric. “Because there will be hoarders.”
Amber started to nod her agreement, then noticed they were all looking at her. “You know, every now and then, I manage to go two, sometimes three whole minutes without eating,” she snapped, and they all looked away again. “I know the food is finite. I also think we need to start thinking now about what we’re going to eat when it’s gone.”
Scott frowned at her, but the severity of this effort only made him look younger and more uncertain. “You mean…” He eyed the other men in the tent and lowered his voice a little. “…people?”
Amber rocked back. “What?”
“We don’t have to talk about this until someone actually dies,” said Eric.
“Oh my God,” Amber said, staring at both of them. “No, I meant looking for fish or rabbits or whatever freak moose thing was shouting up the place last night! People? You thought I wanted to eat people?!”
“We’ll get to the native flora and fauna as soon as we’re able to arrange teams fo
r reconnaissance and study,” Scott told her, blushing. “And we were already looking into that, so please be quiet, Miss Bierce. I know you think you’re contributing, but you’re a civilian here and you’re distracting us from the real problems under discussion.”
She could have pressed the matter. None of the Fleetmen seemed eager to jump in, and other than making sure the public was kept under control, Scott himself seemed to have run out of steam. So she could have easily forced them all to face the food issue head-on. Instead, she sat back and let the whole thing drop.
Scott opened the medikit and studied the contents, then closed it again and looked around at them. “Then I guess the only other thing we need to talk about is the Pioneer’s salvage prospects. Do I have a volunteer to head that team?”
“Salvage?” Amber checked the others, but they seemed as stunned as she. “Are you serious?”
“The escape bays were designed to survive catastrophic failure of the ship. The beacons may still be recoverable.”
Amber stared at him, utterly unable to make those words make any kind of sense, given the situation. “Mr. Scott,” she said at last, making a real effort to speak softly, reasonably. “How far are we from the ship?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Mr. Lassiter, then? Mr. Crandall? What are we, about five miles?”
“Three, maybe,” said Eric, and Crandall shrugged and nodded.
“Okay. Three miles.” Amber pointed through the tent wall in the direction of the ridge, which was at that time just lighting up with the grey promise of another day through one hell of a roaring rainstorm. “We were three miles away from the explosion last night, Mr. Scott, and you said our solar generator melted.”
His jaw tightened. “The escape bays are heat-proof up to, I don’t know, thousands of degrees. The beacons are our only hope of rescue, Miss Bierce, and they could be all right.”
“Okay,” she said, although she personally thought this was horseshit. “Say the escape bays are intact. It could happen. But they’re going to be intact at the center of the melted pile of slag that used to be the rest of the ship. How are we going to get to them?”
The other men looked at Scott. He flushed and glared back at her.
“Jonah…Lieutenant Lamarc said that even if the beacons could be launched, they’d need the guidance system on the Pioneer to find Earth,” said Amber. “And we don’t have that anymore. Mr. Scott, I’m sorry, but I think we can cross rescue completely off the list.”
“I’m not prepared to do that, Miss Bierce,” Scott said stiffly.
“And then there’s the little matter of all this rain.”
“That you want to go hiking in,” Scott interrupted.
“Yes, I do. Before it floods the lake we’re camping next to.” Amber hesitated, unsure whether she really wanted to bring out the big guns yet, but in the end, she just couldn’t not say it. “And before all the toxic seepage from the Pioneer washes into the water we’re drinking. And before you ask, no, I don’t know for a fact there’s anything seeping out of it, but it seems like a pretty goddamn good bet this morning, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t need to hear the swearing,” said Scott.
“It could be happening, though.” Eric unfolded himself and stood up as straight as the tent allowed. “Okay, Bierce. If there’s a vote involved here, you just got mine. But we can’t just pack up and go, we’ve got to have a plan.” He paused, then glanced at Scott and said, “Right?” in the same careful way that Amber told him he could keep the food.
Scott scowled. “Sure, as far as that goes, which is why we need to prioritize our efforts. Organize teams. Investigate our options.”
Amber pressed a hand over her eyes and tried very hard not to either sigh out loud or shake her head. “We don’t have time for that.”
“I’d rather take a little extra time than charge stupidly out into the wilderness without any kind of plan.”
“And thanks to you,” Eric inserted gently, “we have at least the beginnings of that plan.”
Scott’s frown went crooked, distracted. “What? We do?”
“When we scouted this place out yesterday, we found several watersheds that emptied into the lake here,” Eric explained, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder at the tent wall. “I suggest we follow the biggest of them upstream and get to high ground.”
“I am not willing to abandon the ship,” said Scott, also standing up.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Eric argued. “But for the moment, it’s probably still burning on the inside and still very much a threat to us. I think we’d all feel better if we got some distance and got out of the imminent flood zone, but I agree that it’s important that we don’t go so far that we lose our water source, because I was looking yesterday, and the water we’re camping next to was the only water I could see.”
He turned to Amber, directing his next words only to her. “I know it must make you nervous to be here. I know you must be thinking of pretty much everything that might happen. I know. But if we get too far away from the water, we’re going to die. Not might. Will. We have a purifier—”
“But we don’t have water,” said Amber, thinking of Jonah, who had said the same thing. She nodded, sighed, and then shook her head, her shoulders slumping. “So just sit around and talk, is that all we’re going to do?”
“And this is why I didn’t want you in here,” Scott remarked.
“Just be patient,” said Eric. “Let us figure a few things out. I know you want to do something, but the day after we’ve all seen our ship blow up is the wrong time to expect everyone out there to pull it together and start marching in line.”
“I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” said Scott. “And I’ll tell you right now that I’d better not hear you running off your mouth out there about toxic seepage and floods, trying to scare people into doing what you want them to do.”
“Running my mouth?” Amber shook her head and then just had to laugh before she got pissed. “You’re in charge, for Christ’s sake! Want me to go out there and build a rooftop so I can shout it?”
The soldiers all looked at each other. Crandall snickered.
“I’ll let you know when I’ve made my decision,” said Scott, moving to unzip the tent for them. “This meeting is over and Miss Bierce?”
“I know, Everly,” she sighed, heaving herself up. “Don’t let the flap hit me in the ass on my way out. Let me tell you something.”
“Bierce,” said Eric warningly, but Crandall, grinning, said, “Let her talk, man.”
“Sooner or later, you are going to have to say something that people won’t want to hear,” Amber said. “And if you can’t handle that, you shouldn’t be in charge.”
Scott tried to stare her down, but she refused to look away. Eric watched them for a while and then heaved a loud sigh and said, “Don’t we have enough real problems here? Come on, you two, lighten up.” He pushed his way between them and walked out. The other Fleetmen followed. Soon, Amber and Scott were alone and for just a few seconds, she had the chance to either apologize and try to put things right between them or run after Eric and try to form some kind of future that didn’t include ‘Commander’ Everly Scott.
She did neither. She left. So if there was blame, and she knew there was, she shared it.
2
It rained for days. Amber lost track of how many. They had no computers anymore, no digireaders, no handhelds, not even wristwatches. They talked about hours or minutes, but in truth there was no time on this world—just one endless day cycling between grey and black, filled with wind and rain.
The lake started rising, and on the day the water first climbed over the mudbank and reached the grass, Scott did two things. He gave the order to pack up the camp and move upstream, and he cut Amber’s rations from two bars to one. This, when she knew that everyone else was getting three.
“What the hell did I
do?” she demanded.
“This isn’t personal, Miss Bierce,” he’d said, handing Nicci a ration.
“The hell it isn’t! What, it rains for six days so I go to bed without supper? What the fuck is that about?”
“I don’t need to hear the swearing, Miss Bierce.”
In spite of everything, Amber had managed to keep a pretty good grip on herself. She had neither turned into a shell-shocked sleepwalker nor a senseless hysteric. For days, she had slept without complaint in a raging downpour with nothing but a piece of tinfoil to wrap herself in. She’d made a point of supporting the man who was incapable of wiping his ass without calling a meeting or holding a meeting without calling it a debriefing, and now he was punishing her because she’d dared to suggest that rain could cause flooding.
She lost her temper. Not a lot, not at first, but just like the rain, once it started pouring out, there was no end in sight.
“Don’t you fucking walk away from me, Space-Scout,” she snapped. “I’ll tell you when we’re done talking.”
Scott stopped in his tracks and turned around. Nicci shuffled back, her eyes huge, clutching her ration so tightly that she’d pinched it in half through the wrapper.
“You don’t get to take away my food just because I was right about needing to get out of this valley.”
“First of all, moving this camp has always been under discussion. You had nothing to do with it.” Scott zipped up his duffel bag and slung it decisively over his shoulder. “And secondly, I’m not cutting your rations because of your attempts to sabotage my authority here, I’m cutting them—”
“Sabotage your authority?”
“I’m cutting them because—”
“You were supposed to hold the rations because you were hogging the biggest tent, that’s all! You were supposed to keep them dry, not use them as your own personal gold-star stickers for all the people who kiss your ass!”