by Josi Russell
Kaia watched her father. She knew he was in a difficult position. He disagreed with slavery. The very word tortured him with thoughts of selling Ship 12-22 to the Others. But he also had intergalactic relations to consider. Slavery was commonly practiced among many alien races, and he wasn’t likely to change that on this Minean evening. Besides, not allowing them to search for their property could anger the Asgre, and as yet they had shown no aggression except toward Vigilant, which had fired on them first. But if they were to become disgruntled and open up their weaponry on the city, it could be disastrous.
“You will let us search for them, surely?” Galo pressed, his voice supplicating.
Reagan turned to his troops. “Stand down,” he said, and the soldiers stepped into their at-ease position. Reagan back to Galo. “You have one week,” Reagan said. “You can search on this planet for one week, and then you need to leave, whether you have located your—” Kaia heard the hesitation in his voice, “property—or not.”
Galo bowed repeatedly. “Thank you, thank you, so much,” he said. “We will begin our search this moment so as not to disrupt the lives of our new human friends for any longer than necessary.” He switched off his translator, and spoke to the other Asgre. Without the translator, the sound of his voice was grating.
And then Kaia saw them. More ships descending. Five more in all. The black-suited Asgre teams disembarked while the troops stood silently and watched them flow into Coriol.
Chapter 32
A light rain was falling as the family left their cottage and headed for the sol train. It was quiet and comfortable inside, and Ethan settled Rigel on the seat beside him, pulling the child close and glancing at Polara. Her eyes were half-closed. She hadn’t been herself lately.
They had taken her to the doctor, but he had been characteristically unconcerned and sent them home with instructions for more naps. Other than her fatigue, she had shown no signs of the dreaded Minean fever. Still, a somber mood permeated the train.
Bands of Asgre mercenaries were swarming the city. The defense bulletins assured that they were not dangerous to humans who didn’t get in their way, but their presence was unnerving. The black-suited figures traveled in packs of five or six, two of them running scanners and the rest of them jingling with the load of manacles and shackles they carried, made from the only metal their slaves could not move through. There was no forgetting that they were here hunting.
Ethan hoped that Theo would value the potential of the Vala partnership and keep quiet. The Asgre had spent three days of their allotted seven. If they could hold out for a few more, the Asgre would leave and the Vala would be safe.
When they arrived at the end of the Water District line, the rain had increased to a downpour. They pulled out their umbrellas and stood to walk to the farm. As Ethan moved to exit the train, he heard Aria’s frantic voice calling his name. Ethan saw Polara, usually so active, lying still and listless on the floor of the train. Her shirt was pulled up a bit, and Ethan saw the marks spreading in arching whorls up her stomach. He scooped her up and they caught a hovercab for the hospital.
A nervous young doctor admitted them into an exam room and looked over the bruises.
“It certainly seems to be Minean Fever,” the doctor said sadly.
“What can we do?”
The doctor shook his head. “Keep her hydrated, if you can. The vomiting will quickly remove the fluids from her body, then she’ll have dehydration as well as the bruising, the weakness, and the fever. You can keep her at home if no more bruises show up, but if they get worse you should bring her back here so we can make her comfortable until—” the man stopped just in time.
“What else?” Ethan knew there was no more to be done, but he pressed for answers anyway.
The young doctor shook his head, and Ethan felt a wave of hopelessness. “That’s really all. And I should probably tell you, Mr. Bryant, that your daughter may not make it through this.” He adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, and amended: “Probably won’t. We’ve been seeing the worst of it in kids and the elderly.”
Ethan stroked Polara’s hair softly. Over half the people he loved were kids and elderly. “I want to see your boss,” he said suddenly.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Zuma’s gone home for the day.”
Dr. Zuma. He should have known. Ethan picked Polara up from the table gently. She stirred slightly and turned into his shoulder as he left the office and caught a hovercab.
***
Dr. Zuma’s house was one of the stone and steel mansions up on Yynium Hill. Ethan had met her once, when she’d hunted him down at a restaurant near the housing district to sign a Colony Office certificate of clearance. When Ethan had seen her, she seemed distrusting of the blue Minean clay houses and the people who lived in them.
Ethan knocked on the door, expecting one of the Saras household employees to answer, but Dr. Zuma herself opened the door. Her face contorted in annoyance and shock when she saw Ethan and the blanket-wrapped bundle he carried.
“What are you doing here?”
“I need you to take a look at my little girl. She’s got Minean fever.”
Zuma sneered. “I don’t see patients at my house, Mr. Bryant. No matter how well connected their parents are.”
“And I don’t stamp approvals at dinner in a restaurant,” Ethan said pointedly, “but I did.” She owed him one, and she knew it.
“I want to know what we can do to stop this,” Ethan said. “I want to know what’s causing it.”
The tick of Zuma’s eyes to the right revealed that she was lying to him when she said, “I don’t know what’s causing it.”
“What do the lab reports suggest?” he pressed. “Even if you don’t know for sure, you have a guess or two. What could it be?”
Zuma looked at the child and he saw her soften slightly. “We think it’s a kind of gas poisoning,” she said, and closed the door.
Ethan bit back a curse, glancing down at the child, so limp in his arms. Zuma hadn’t told him everything, but at least he had something to go on. He got back in the cab and took Polara home.
Hours later, the little girl lay pale and wheezing, bright purple flowers on her cheeks. They had spread up from her stomach now and covered, in colorful layers, her neck and face. Ethan glanced at Aria. They knew what that meant. Catching another hovercab, they took her to the hospital.
***
Aria stared at her little girl, after two days still lying motionless in the hospital bed.
The doctors had treated her as they did all the patients, with Reagan cells and replenishment packs, but the bruising had spread and Polara had sunk deeper into unconsciousness. The chief pathologist had told Ethan that a gas was causing this. What gas would do this? It wasn’t unlike carbon monoxide poisoning, but the bruising and the long-term blockage of nutrient absorption didn’t fit. Besides, Minea ran on clean energy, and if someone did get carbon monoxide poisoning, they knew what to do about it.
She unzipped the plastic cover over Polara’s bed. It seemed to her that the sealed chamber had intensified the effects. Why?
As she walked the hall, she saw the hundreds of people stricken with it. She could find no pattern to the people who became ill and those who did not. Why was she fine and Polara was ill? She suspected Ethan’s genetic modifications were protecting him, but why was Rigel free of the marks? And would he stay that way?
***
That evening Ethan came for his shift at Polara’s bedside. Aria hugged him, clinging to his strength.
“No one is looking for this gas, that Dr. Zuma mentioned, Ethan,” she said. “I’m going to. But I need equipment.” She looked into his eyes. “Talk to your surveyor friends. Traore said their equipment is stored in the same warehouse as the equipment of the other agencies. Maybe they could get their hands on an air quality monitor.”
“What could we learn that the agencies don’t already know? How can we figure out what the experts can’t?”
“Etha
n, I think they already know what’s wrong. They’re choosing not to do anything about it.”
She could see by the shadow in his eyes that he knew she was right.
“Then let me go,” he said. “I don’t want you out in the streets tonight, especially not with all the Asgre packs roaming.”
Aria looked at him, trying to formulate why she had to go. Her voice was a quiet croak when she spoke again.
“I need to go. I—I can’t watch her. I need you to be here if she—” she turned away, tears falling on her shirt.
Behind her, she heard Ethan dialing his missive. He held a quick conversation, then spoke to her. “Traore will meet you at the house with the sensor,” he said softly.
An hour later, she crept along, running the sensor in front of her. It had led her across the city and out into the mining district. It glowed yellow, then orange, then, as she approached the mine, a deep blood red. The gas was, unmistakably, coming from the mine.
***
Early in the morning, Aria made her way back from the mine and set the sensor next to the front door while she turned the knob. Aria felt resistance when she pushed open the door to her little cottage. Muscling past it, she gasped. The door frame, the walls, the table, were covered with Taim plants. As tall as her fingers, supported by a central stem and spreading into a crown of shining, waxy leaves at the top, they were growing across the cabinets and over the windows. Morning sunshine lit the curtain of plants from behind, turning the living room bright, rich green. Soft surfaces, like the rug and sofa, were clear, but most of the hard surfaces were covered.
She couldn’t even fathom the work that lay ahead to clean out all of these plants. They were a mess.
And yet, she thought as she swept some onto the floor to sit on kitchen chair, they were the closest to life she’d felt in weeks. Since the day she had seen Daniel’s neighbor covered in bruises, since the day of Marise’s funeral, since the day Polara had first begun to act sick, Aria had been surrounded by death and the threat of it. Aria ran a gentle finger over the top of the soft seedlings on the table. They were living, growing, thriving in spite of all the Zam cleaner in Coriol.
She would let them grow for now. She walked into her lab and reached for the microscope. Maybe she should study them, to see what made them grow so well. Perhaps they held a solution to the crippling food shortage that continued to plague Coriol.
On the desk, Aria saw the little silver object she had stolen from Gaynes. Over the last few weeks, she’d thought about trying to return it, but the thought filled her with dread. Instead she’d stashed it here.
She abandoned the idea of the microscope and picked up the little silver object instead. It looked familiar to her. She felt she had seen one before. Perhaps at the Food Production Division? Or the kids’ play yard? She couldn’t believe she had stolen it. Maybe walking out with that apple weeks ago had started her on a bad path. Polara had enjoyed that apple, though, and every moment of her daughter’s joy seemed precious now.
She sat heavily in the chair, and pulled out her missive to check in with Ethan at the hospital. He showed her Polara on the bed, unchanged, and the baby in a playpen nearby.
“Are you all right?” Ethan asked, a hint of fear in his voice. “Your cheeks look a little red.”
She made an excuse, not wanting him to know she had only just returned.
“I know where the gas is coming from. And it explains why no one is doing anything about it,” she said, looking at Ethan on the screen of the missive. “The mine.”
He nodded, as if he had already suspected that. They talked a few more minutes, then he asked her to get a little more rest before she came back to the hospital.
They signed off, and she stayed sitting at the desk. She pushed back the tray of Taim plants she had started what felt like a lifetime ago and pushed the spindly broccoli tray back beside it to give her more room as she examined the little capsule.
It was smooth and small, no longer than her little finger. Upon inspection, the top had a ring and a smooth black band printed with a series of numbers and letters. Carefully, she twisted the top, which came off easily. Out slid a long glass vial filled with a swirling opaque gas. One end of the vial was tapered, the other was topped with three needles in the shape of a triangle.
It was one second’s carelessness, as she turned to reach for a flashlight to shine through the gas to get a better view of it, that caused her to drop the vial. She grasped for it, but missed and winced as it hit the desktop and shattered. Instinctively, Aria threw a hand over her mouth and nose and stood back as the tendrils of gas snaked out of the vial and began to rise. It washed over both trays of plants on the desk and she took a step back, but before it could spread and dissipate into the air near her, Aria watched in wonder as it was pulled toward the flat of Taim as if by magnetism. The gas disappeared and she watched the little plants swaying as their leaves absorbed the gas right in front of her eyes.
Aria stood unmoving as an idea began to form in her mind. The sterile hospital room flashed in her mind. There was no Taim there, and no Taim at the school where Polara had been spending her days. What if this gas was making people sick, and the plants, somehow, had the power to attract it?
She glanced at the common broccoli plants she had been growing next to the Taim tray and drew in a breath. Black lesions that were not there seconds ago covered the leaves. They were exactly like the ones she had seen at the farm. The gas was causing the crop blight as well.
***
Galo walked more quickly, striding toward the dark arch of the mine entrance. He watched the humans sidestep, moving out of his way. They were sweating in the morning sun, which was unfathomable to Galo. How could they be uncomfortable in such a temperate climate? Back on Ondyne II they would roast and freeze in a single day. Such fragile creatures.
Six days the Asgre had been on the ground, and only the barest indications of the Vala had been discovered. But now one of the mercenary teams had found signs that the Vala may have been, at one time, in the humans’ mines. That made sense, because there were materials that the Vala could not move through, and those materials could also possibly shield them from detection. Perhaps those materials were found naturally underground on this planet. Galo tapped the control panel on his forearm.
“Uumbor!” he summoned his first assistant, who was still on the Cliprig. “Bring the ships to the mouth of the mines, and fill them with mercenaries.”
“Yes, sir,” Uumbor replied.
As he walked into the dark of the cave and felt his eyes dilating, Galo used his control panel to beam his voice directly to his mercenaries. “Do whatever you have to do to find my Vala.”
***
When Aria appeared at the hospital carrying the Taim tray, she was stopped at the door.
“You can’t bring that in here,” the nurse in charge barked. “We spend all day trying to get rid of the stuff.”
“Please,” Aria pleaded, “my little girl is on the third floor with Minean Fever. I think these plants may help her get well.”
The nurse, Aria could tell, had seen a lot of desperate people. Especially, Aria guessed, lately.
“Aw, all right. I guess it’s nothin’ we haven’t had in here before. Just don’t take it out of her room.”
Aria smiled gratefully and made her way to Polara’s room.
Ethan looked surprised when he saw her enter with the tray. “What is that for?” he asked.
Aria didn’t feel like explaining. She only wanted to see if it worked. “Help me pull this thing open,” she said, struggling one-handed with the thick plastic cover over Polara’s bed. Ethan unzipped it and held it open for her. The child was so still. Aria laid the tray next to her pillow, taking a moment to arrange it so that it was solidly positioned. She leaned down and kissed Polara, then pulled herself out of the cover and re-closed it.
She watched, but nothing happened. Polara turned slightly, tipping her head toward the Taim tray. Her breath stirre
d the Taim on one end, setting them swaying, gently at first. As each heartbeat ticked by, more Taim in the tray began to move. The long filaments on the tops of the little plants spread out and swept the air in front of Polara’s porcelain face.
But that was all. Nothing else changed. The child still lay unaware, her beautiful eyes covered in sleep.
“You can cry, honey.” Ethan said softly. She felt her frustration flare again. He slipped an arm around her waist, but she stiffened and stepped out of the curve of his arm. Aria had no more tears. She had no more words, and she was afraid that even her ability to love may have been burned out by the fever of her daughter’s illness.
She didn’t look at him, but she sensed that it hurt him.
“You go home,” she said, trying to make her voice soft. “Get some rest. I’ll stay here with them both.”
Ethan started to protest, but she saw that the sting of her rejection had wounded him, and he squeezed her hand quickly, then left without speaking.
Aria felt a sting of guilt. She didn’t want to lose Ethan, too. She didn’t know what she would or could ever do without him. He didn’t know what to do, either, and he was scared.
They weren’t doctors. They weren’t qualified to face this alien illness. All their efforts ended in nothing, and their resolve to try new things was waning. She felt foolish that she had thought plants could solve something so terrible.
Aria picked up Rigel and held him close. He wrapped his thick hands in her hair and laid his head against her chest. She sat with him at Polara’s bedside, watching the Taim sway.
For the first time, Aria faced the possibility that Polara may not wake up. The doctors had been saying it since the beginning, but every time they had begun, Aria had mentally blocked their words, refusing to believe that the child she had carried through the stars would not grow up.
But the blooming bruises covered her everywhere now, and she hadn’t awakened for days. Not only was she going, she was going soon. Aria felt Rigel’s even breathing. He was asleep. She let the tears come, hot and slick, down her cheeks.