by Josi Russell
With Ethan out of the city for the day, Aria had the perfect opportunity to go check out the farms northwest of Coriol. He wouldn’t be using his Colony Office badge on the dresser, and it would get her into the farm much easier than any story she could concoct. As she reached for it she paused, looking at it for a long moment, weighing the ethics of using it to gain entry into the farm.
She was just going to look around. Anyway, she would have a badge of her own if Saras had hired her when she asked. Maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess if they had. She had offered her help to the Saras company years ago, just after Polara was born, when she was frustrated and jittery from attending to the needs of her newborn all day. She had barely admitted to herself how much she wanted to be back in a lab, to have a test crop to attend to, to use for a few hours a week the knowledge she had worked so hard to earn back on Earth. But all the positions in Coriol were filled, she’d been told, by people hand-picked to fill them. Saras had brought their own crop specialists years before and said they had no need of her help. But Aria knew that they needed her. Their specialists knew nothing of the advances that had taken place in the fifty earth years that it had taken them to get here, and they didn’t care to learn.
Aria called it “knowledge dilation,” the telescoping of new ideas and discoveries that happened when great minds spent fifty-three years in stasis while their colleagues continued to advance in their field back on Earth. Though RTC was available and the specialists here had some access to the new knowledge, many of the advances couldn’t be implemented without new equipment, and the equipment in Coriol was still decades behind what Aria had left on Earth. Also the specialists here were defensive of their knowledge and resistant to change the way they did things every time a new ship came in. She understood it on some level. It bothered her, too, that her own knowledge, so groundbreaking here, would probably be found only on dusty bookshelves back on Earth today.
Either way, Saras should have brought her on board. If they wouldn’t allow her to help, she’d have to find another way to do so. She pulled on a formal-looking jumpsuit and slipped Ethan’s entry badge into her pocket. Pinning her red hair up, she looked in the mirror. Pretty convincing.
She dropped the children at Kaia’s, thanking her profusely and promising to be back after lunch, then caught the Water District line on the sol train.
Aria loved the near-silence of the train. She laid her head against the cool glass of the window. It wouldn’t be cool much longer. Bright new growth had taken over every tree outside and shoots were pushing themselves through the drying mud. Minean summer, with its sticky heat, was on its way.
Glancing up, Aria was surprised to see the same tiny plants that had invaded her house clinging to the window and roof over her head. She looked around the train and saw them everywhere.
How could they spread like this? Why didn’t they grow out in the soil? Where were they coming from?
When the train pulled silently into the station, all she heard was the “click” of the rail stop and the hiss of the doors opening. She stepped out to see the street full of Saras workers, red vests pulled over their clothes.
She followed the flow of them towards the water plant, glancing at the map as she went. She found herself eavesdropping on two men walking in front of her.
“Four stations shut down yesterday,” one of them said. “Guys just standing around for three hours while they cleaned all of the little plants out.”
“Wonder how much longer they’ll have to fight it,” the other man said. “I didn’t even get paid the day my station went down.” They veered off to enter the Water Treatment Plant on the left, and Aria kept going straight down the street and out of town.
The city fell away behind her as the wide urban street tapered and the sidewalks ended. The narrow road was fringed on either side by broad grasses that grew taller than she was. Trees pushed their way through above the grasses, and the tangled mass of living things pressed in all around her. Soon she came to the gates of the Saras Company’s Food Production Division.
The gateman seemed bored. He gave her badge a cursory check, then ushered her in with a sweep of his hand. Taking in the scene quickly, Aria determined that the big building to the right was probably the main office. She walked confidently into the front lobby, where she was met by a harried-looking man rushing out of his office. The plate on his door read “Neko Nasani, Director of Operations.”
“I’m sorry,” he said nervously, “we don’t have anyone from the Colony Offices scheduled for a visit today. I have none of the proper paperwork in order.” She half-expected to be summarily tossed out, but again she was pleasantly surprised by how many doors the Colony Offices badge opened. Under the law, the Colony Offices were charged with keeping the corporations in check and making sure that nothing interrupted the flow of Yynium or even threatened to interrupt it. Their ability to sanction a corporation or shut an operation down altogether made them people to be appeased, not antagonized, and this man apparently was used to it.
“It’s not official,” Aria said calmly. “I’m just here to visit with you a moment about some—” she searched for the right word, “anomalies we’re seeing in production.”
Nasani’s eyes widened. “We’re doing everything we can, I assure you. Everything is completely under control.”
From the way he was sweating, Aria doubted it. “But you are having some trouble with your deliveries?” she asked pointedly.
“No, no, the deliveries are fine.” His shoulders slumped and he waved her into the office. “Won’t you please join me in here?” As he closed the door behind them he said, “You can understand that this is a rather delicate issue. Many people’s jobs depend on this facility.”
“Many people’s lives depend on this facility, Mr. Nasani.”
He sat heavily behind the desk, which was covered with papers, used cups, and, Aria fought the urge to wrinkle her nose, the ubiquitous green plants. He saw her looking at them and rose heavily, digging in a cabinet drawer and procuring a bottle of Zam cleaner, which he used to spray the plants and wipe them off with a used paper towel. He tossed it in the garbage, laughing nervously.
“You can see we don’t have any trouble growing things here!” His voice was thick with a forced cheerfulness, but his eyes darted away from hers as he said it.
So there was a problem with the crops then. That was something Aria could help with, if they’d give her the chance.
Nasani had swept most of the garbage and a few of the papers into the trash with the little plants, so when he sat back down Aria found herself less distracted by the desk and more able to focus on what he was saying.
“Look, I’ll level with you,” he said. “I don’t know what this thing is. It’s unlike anything I saw back on Earth, and it breaks all the rules I know about growing things here on Minea.”
“Can you explain to me what’s happening, Mr. Nasani? What is wrong with the plants?”
“How about I show you?”
Saras operated both a traditional and a clean room operation out here. The clean rooms were huge sterile warehouses where everything was controlled, including lighting, temperature, nutrients, and airflow. They were protected from outside toxins by decontamination rooms which all personnel passed through before entering them. While clean rooms were useful for growing leafy greens, tomatoes, beans, and other staples, some plants still didn’t produce as well in that environment. The rangkor tubers, corn, Minean squash called zilen, and melons, along with other substantial bearers, were grown out in the vast traditional farm fields behind the clean room building.
Nasani led her to the decontamination room, where she walked slowly under the glow of the lamps that were meant to eradicate any trace bacteria that may be harmful to the plants. She slipped a paper suit over her clothes and paper booties over her shoes and followed the director into the first clean room.
It was massive. Big enough to house three Minean cottages, the clean room was filled wit
h shining metal shelving. Each shelf unit had seven levels, and each level was full of plants. Strawberry plants lined the aisles in trays stacked on the high shelves with under-mounted lighting. Lettuce, peas, and beans grew farther down the row. Each shelf had a bank of grow lights above it and on the bottom of the next shelf, and root trays below the plants where water and nutrients were made available. To Aria the rows upon rows of plants should have been beautiful.
But they weren’t healthy plants. She stepped over to check out the strawberry plants on the shelf to her left. They were brown and limp.
Aria examined the leaves—those that hadn’t died were covered with brown lesions. The stems were wilted, wasted away below what appeared to have once been healthy strawberries. The berries themselves were shriveled and black.
It seemed indicative of a pesticide or herbicide poisoning, but here in the clean rooms they didn’t use either one. There was no reason to. The plants were grown in a sterile environment without exposure to disease, bugs, or even dirt that could introduce toxins. What could be causing this?
The story was the same on every shelf. Fast-moving blight of some kind was sweeping the crops. Aria herself had never trusted these indoor farms. She much preferred the open fields and the soil. Perhaps something in the outdoor portion of the facility would give her a clue.
“Can you take me to the outdoor crops?” she asked Nasani. He nodded, leading her through another decontamination room, where they discarded their old suits and put on new ones before walking through another bright blue light.
But Aria’s hopes were wrecked when she saw the condition of the outdoor plants. They had the same symptoms but had contracted the disease in greater numbers. There were whole swaths of dead rangkors, zilen, corn, and melons. The dead corn stalks pointed skyward like accusing fingers. The sight of so much wasted life made Aria sick. She knelt down and ran her hands through the soil. There was nothing obvious that could be causing this.
“I assume you’ve run soil tests?” she asked.
“Time and again,” he assured her. “There is nothing here that wasn’t here two months ago. Nothing that would cause—” Aria heard how his voice caught, “this.” He gestured widely with his hand.
She looked at the sky. The light from Minea’s sun was just right for these crops. She crumbled the soil in her hands. It was loose and rich, obviously well-mixed. She plucked a zilen leaf, turning it over and over, searching along its hairy veins for eggs or jagged holes that would show the presence of insects.
“You’ve had these under a microscope?” she asked Nasani.
He nodded. “There’s no pests that we can see.”
“Are you using pesticides out here? Herbicides for weed control?”
Nasani nodded. “Only HG9 to keep the krech off the crops, and Bronicide for the weeds.”
Both were perfectly safe for these crops. She had seen them used for years without a problem. But things could change.
“Have you tried not using them?” Aria asked. “A test patch?”
He nodded, gesturing to an area separated by steel panels. Walking over she could see that the damage was just as extensive. It wasn’t the herbicides or pesticides.
The dead leaves rustled against Aria’s covered shoes as she followed Nasani back toward the building. The patch around them looked like a waning late-autumn field, not the tumble of spring vibrancy that they should be seeing. They entered and went through the decontamination room, leaving their suits and booties behind as they entered the main lobby.
Aria was so busy turning the puzzle over in her mind that she barely glanced up in time to see Theo Talbot enter the lobby and stop at the front desk.
Theo was well known for his a perfect memory for faces and names. There was no chance he wouldn’t recognize her. She turned abruptly to Nasani.
“I’ve got to be going. Thank you for your help.” She tried not to sound panicky.
“Please tell the Colony Offices that we are doing everything we can. We will figure it out as soon as possible.”
Aria felt for the man. He’d be unlikely to keep his job if the blight went on much longer. She thanked him and slipped into the restroom as he walked to meet Theo.
When the sound of their voices faded from the lobby, Aria left the building and headed for Kaia’s cottage.
***
Kaia liked watching the children. They had become part of her, now, as well as their parents. With her father off evaluating defenses in the southern cities of Minea for the last several months, it grew too quiet around her cottage. She kept busy tinkering with the basic house systems, improving the heat and the cooling and, of course, visiting Coriol Scrap to gather robot materials to entertain the children when they came.
They were playing now with the latest creation. Well, specifically, Polara was playing with it. It was a go-bot, an invention of which Kaia was particularly proud. The whole purpose of the go-bot was to evade capture. Once programmed and turned on, it would careen endlessly around a predefined space and simultaneously entertain and tire out its pursuer. She made the first one when she, herself, became too tired to entertain Polara effectively.
She was slowing down. There was no doubting it and no denying it.
She had visited the doctors about it and finally, after the hundredth time she’d donated her blood to further medical knowledge and save lives, she’d asked the question none of the doctors had ever addressed: “Why have I aged?”
The doctor smiled. “Everyone ages, Ms. Reagan.”
Kaia looked away, following the lines of the window blinds with her eyes as she blinked back tears. She reformulated the question. “When I was on Beta Alora, and even afterwards, in the ship, I healed impossibly fast. I thought I would stay . . . young, somehow.”
The doctor took off his glasses, cleaning them on his lab coat. “Many people don’t realize that healing and aging are two different processes in the body. When we receive wounds and our bodies heal, it is the result of cells rushing to the wound and multiplying rapidly to repair it. Your genetic modifications seem to have made that rapid multiplication remarkably fast. However, unchecked multiplication can cause other problems,” he searched for an example, “diseases like cancer, that blight of the twenty-first century. So human cells have natural mechanisms to avoid endless cell division. Each cell can divide well about fifty to seventy times, but then the cell becomes inactive or dies. That is actually what is happening during aging. It’s not a wound, an accident that happens and can be repaired, though there is some promising research. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that your modifications have changed the amount of times your cells can divide. In fact, while your ability to repair your wounds is enhanced, your aging process is actually slightly increased, because each time you heal, you’re using up your supply of cells more quickly than the rest of us.”
That was three weeks ago, and Kaia was at least glad to have an answer. That changed how she would spend her days. Who wanted to be immortal anyway?
Kaia’s body ached as she settled into a chair next to Rigel. Her trip to the junkyard yesterday, and her early-morning tinkering with the go-bot, had left her sapped of energy.
The baby reached for his shoe, which he’d knocked just out of his own reach, and she looked down and tried to speak his name.
But it wasn’t there. She started again, “Sweet—” She waited for his name to leap to her tongue, but it was as if she had opened a drawer in her mental filing cabinet and suddenly found it empty. His name was gone. He looked at her quizzically, sensing, she supposed, her distress.
“Sweet baby,” she finished, fighting an edge of frustration that was slowly pulling through her chest. She hunted for the name again and found nothing.
The go-bot chimed as Polara finally caught it. Kaia looked up, searching her mind. Polara squealed triumphantly and then dropped to the floor to disassemble and reassemble the bot with the little wrench set strapped to its back.
The baby looked dismayed that th
e chaos was over. Watching Polara’s chaos seemed to be one of his favorite pastimes.
Kaia reached behind her ear and pulled off her thought blocker, rubbing the callus where it belonged. Even it was sore today.
Suddenly, forcefully, a memory of Polara chasing the go-bot a moment ago flared inside Kaia’s mind, unbidden. Kaia looked around, confused. Was this some new trick her memory was playing? Boomerang memories?
Another image, of the baby’s shoe, laced with a feeling of frustration and intensity, entered her mind. She glanced down. The child was looking up at her.
His name came to her just as the realization dawned. Suddenly, Rigel’s struggles made sense. Kaia gazed at the little boy and nodded.
“Ahh,” she said softly. “I know now. I know your secret.” She looked into his eyes and thought carefully of a little treasure box, imagining it opening. Inside was a bright stuffed bear like she had as a child back on Earth.
Ri squealed with delight. His longing for the bear washed over Kaia and she felt guilty for showing him something she didn’t actually have to give him. She sent him a picture of a cup of milk, and his attention shifted to that. That she could provide. She lifted him, crossing into the kitchen and pouring a cup of sweetbean milk. She twisted a lid on and handed it to him.
“How does your father not know this?” she asked the little boy as he drank.
“Not know what?” Polara asked, tipping her head to one side.
“Rigel has a gift,” Kaia said.
“I want a gift!” Polara was up and across the room to the table in a flash.
Kaia gathered the little girl onto her lap. “You have a lot of gifts, too, Polara,” she said, and she began to name them.
When Aria arrived that afternoon, Kaia asked her in. Aria was brimming with news of a crop blight. She had used Ethan’s badge to inspect the crops at the Saras Food Production Division.
Where did grit like that come from? Kaia wondered. She couldn’t imagine the mother of two making the decision, sometime that morning, to knowingly enter a restricted area while pretending to be on official business. Kaia hadn’t seen any deception in her eyes when Aria had dropped the kids off this morning.