Putting Up Roots

by Charles Sheffield

  He was in his best mood ever. "I felt sure that something was here," he said exultantly, "and by God I was right. But I thought that even if things went well, the search might take a long time. Now." He paused, thinking. "Well, now I think that one more day will be enough. After that, we can wrap it up here."

  "What about Topaz and Dawn?" asked Amethyst. "We can't leave without them."

  "Of course not." Brewster was in too good a mood to cut her down as usual. "We'll have to wait for them. But after tomorrow we can take things easy. In fact, I have a great idea. We'll work tomorrow during the day, but tomorrow night we'll have a party. A celebration, with special food and drink. How does that sound?"

  It sounded too bizarre for words, at least to Josh. Sol Brewster was the last man in the world you would want at a party—or expect to give one. But it was Amethyst who spoke.

  "Topaz is our best cook, sir, and she's not here. Unless she gets back, no one else is nearly as good."

  "That's where you're wrong." Brewster was grinning, for the first time since they had arrived. "You're forgetting me. You won't find a better cook this side of the Messina Dust Cloud. I'll do the cooking."

  "And I'll make a special appetizer," added Winnie Carlson. Brewster frowned at her. Before he could object she went on, "You'll love this, sir, I promise. I've made it a hundred times, and everyone says that my blini pancakes with synthecaviar and sour onion cream are the best thing they've ever tasted."

  Brewster was a greedy eater, and his expression showed that he was tempted. But still he hesitated, and Winnie hurried on, "I won't need the use of the kitchen, either. You will have that, and I'll make the blinis and onion cream using portable equipment."

  "We-e-ll." Brewster stared at his assistant, seeking a reason to say no but not finding one. "Are you sure of that? You won't interfere with me?"

  "Absolutely not, sir. And this won't interfere with my work day, either, because I'll do the preparation tonight. Just tell me what time you want it ready"

  Brewster finally produced a grudging nod. "Very well. There will be more field work tomorrow, so we should plan to eat at sundown. Understood?"

  There were nods all round, but Amethyst said, "Sir? I'm really glad we'll be having a party, and I'm looking forward to it. But can you tell us just what we found? I have no idea, and I don't think I'm the only one."

  Brewster frowned again, but at last he shrugged. "I don't see why not. This information is Foodlines proprietary, but I don't see how you could give away any secrets on Solferino—particularly since Carlson assures me that our off-planet message capability is still crippled.

  "A full analysis will have to be performed later with better equipment, but what was discovered today is a new variety of alkaloid. All alkaloids are crystalline solids, related to pyridine and found in a large number of plants on Earth. Some of them are poisonous, but they are often valuable. What was found on Solferino today is a whole new class of them. It's the first such discovery ever made on this planet. All right?"

  "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." But Amethyst didn't look enlightened—she seemed puzzled.

  "Very good. Now I have my own work to do." Brewster glanced around, nodded to Winnie Carlson, and added, "And I'll need the use of the kitchen an hour from now, to get ready for tomorrow. Make sure that everyone has eaten by then, and the place is clean."

  He swept out without waiting for her to agree. After a couple of minutes, Winnie followed. As she was leaving she said over her shoulder, almost as an afterthought, "Eat what you like, and be sure to clean up. I don't know when I'll be back."

  The group of trainees was left to stare at each other. "I hate him," Ruby complained. "And I don't want to be at any party that he gives. What's happening?"

  "The question of the hour," Sig said. "Would anybody like to answer it?"

  "Curiouser and curiouser," said Amethyst. "Like Alice in Wonderland, only worse. I'm as puzzled as Ruby."

  After another few seconds of uneasy standing, the seven of them settled down on the little chairs that folded out from the wall of the kitchen.

  "We're all confused," Sig said at last. "But it sounds like it's over different things. Maybe we can find answers if we put our heads together. Who wants to ask their question first?"

  Amethyst raised her hand. "I don't know about a question, but I'd like to make a statement. Sol Brewster said that alkaloids are crystalline solids—all of them. That's not true, some of them are liquids, or gums. And he said they are related to pyridine, when only some of them are."

  "So what's your point, Amy?" asked Sig. "Or are you just showing off?"

  "No. I'm telling you that either Brewster is lying to us on purpose, or else he doesn't know what he's talking about."

  "You haven't proposed a question," Rick objected. "You've just made a statement."

  Amethyst turned her nose up at him. "I'll bet you didn't understand it. So you give us a question, if you don't like what I say."

  Rick nodded. "I will. Brewster is interested in plants, he says. So why when we left him was he digging in the ground?"

  "And if it's plants he wants," Hag added, "why did he pick a place to explore where there's less plants than bare rock?"

  That would have been Josh's question, too, but he had plenty of others. "I want to know," he said, "what's a Unimine ship doing close to Solferino? Why wasn't it on Cauldron, where it's supposed to be? I really did see a ship, you know, even though Brewster doesn't believe me. And Dawn saw one, too."

  "We believe you," Sig said. "Sapphire? It's your turn. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

  He spoke gently. Sapphire had been unusually silent, letting Amethyst speak on her behalf. Everyone knew that she had a bad case of the shakes. She had struggled to hide it in front of Sol Brewster and Winnie Carlson, but now, in front of friends, she was quietly unraveling. The long day outside must have been hell for her.

  "I do have something." Sapphire spoke slowly, with her head bent forward. She would not meet anyone's eye. "What I'd like to know, right at this moment, is where Topaz and Dawn are. But I guess that's not the sort of question you mean. So I'm wondering, why does Brewster move us around so? He took us off to camp, then left us so he could fly back to the compound. Why did he do that? He said he'd had a message from the medical center, but when we returned to the compound the equipment to talk to the medical center wasn't working."

  "And where is the medical center?" Amethyst added. "None of us ever heard of it in our briefings back on Earth."

  "And we won't find out," Josh said, "as long as most of the data banks are out of action."

  "Any more?" asked Sig. He looked around the group. "If not, I'd like to have my turn. I'll tell you what's been on my mind more than anything. Do you remember the first night, when we heard from Brewster that Solferino has all these miraculous powers to heal people? Allergies disappear, scars fade, teeth grow back."

  The others nodded, and Sig crooked his forefinger into the left side of his mouth. He pulled sideways, to show a space in the top molars.

  "I'm missing a tooth, right here. I got it knocked out when we were on the streets. No sign of that growing back. As for allergies disappearing, go and ask Winnie Carlson. She's sneezing and sniffling all the time. And scars. Hag, show us your calf."

  Hag, reluctantly at first, bent down and rolled up his left pants leg. A long scar ran up the outside from ankle to knee.

  "Street fight, too, months ago," Sig said. "Do you see any sign of it fading?"

  Hag shook his head, and ran his finger lovingly along the white line of the scar. "Not a bit. As beautiful as ever."

  "Yeah. Some people would be proud if they had their brain knocked out." Sig turned to the others. "So we're seeing no sign of anything magic on Solferino, to cure anything. I really didn't believe it when I heard it, so I don't feel I lost much."

  "But maybe Brewster believes it," Amethyst said, "even if you don't."

  "Quite true. Which finally gets me to my
own question. Brewster told us, on our first night here, that there might be something on Solferino to let us live forever. Let's accept that Brewster believes it, exactly as he stated. Then he must be a candidate to live forever, too, because he has spent a lot of time on Solferino. So why isn't that the most important thing in the world to him?" Sig surveyed the little group, person by person. "So why, after that first night, has he never mentioned it to any of us ever again?"

  Chapter Seventeen

  MORNING brought a dull, oppressive heat unlike anything since the trainees' first arrival on Solferino. It had rained again in the night, and a veil of steam and yellow smoke stood above the Avernus Fissure. Josh dreaded the thought of going near it. Even within the camp, air drifting from the fissure was like a breath from the mouth of a furnace. The sound of dripping water meeting red-hot rock could be heard hundreds of yards away.

  In spite of the weather, Sol Brewster remained in an unusually good mood. The sight of a weary and hunched Winnie Carlson only seemed to add to his satisfaction. She was the last to rise, trailing miserably into the dining area yawning and rubbing her eyes as though it were the middle of the night.

  "Rise and shine, Carlson." Brewster clapped his hands together. "Breakfast has to be over and done within five minutes, because you have a full day ahead. Unless you propose to renege on last night's promise?"

  "No, sir." Winnie made an effort and stood up straight, but she stared at the breakfast trays as if she never intended to eat again. "I did a lot of preparation last night. I'll have the appetizers ready by sundown, provided the day's work doesn't run too late."

  "I don't see why it should. Yesterday we were engaged in a general search. Today we can be far more specific." Brewster moved over to the wall, where an image of the Avernus Fissure was divided into sections and marked with multicolored arrows radiating out from a central point. "I have noted the location of our first discovery. Now I want to explore around it, and determine the extent of the find. Each of you will be assigned your own test sector."

  The trainees exchanged glances. It was going to be yesterday all over again, with heat enough to stifle, and without the excitement of a possible new discovery. One question remained: Which unlucky person would be given the test area closest to the Avernus hellhole?

  "Let me end the whining before it begins." Brewster had been watching their reaction. "No one will be assigned the quadrant closest to the fissure. The heat there today will be extreme. However"—he cut through the murmurs of relief—"that area must be tested. So each of you will spend one hour at that site. I will define the rotation of duties. I will also be spending more time there, myself, than any one of you."

  "But there are no plants in that sector," Amethyst objected. "It's too close to the fissure and too hot for anything to grow."

  "Quite true, but not relevant." Brewster gestured to one of the tables, where a number of items of new equipment had been laid out. "Today you will not be testing plants. You will be testing soils. Let me show you how these instruments work."

  As they crowded closer to the table, it occurred to Josh that Rick and Hag's questions of the previous night had just been answered. Soil tests were an important part of plant biology. That was why they had seen Brewster digging the ground in the place where Josh had made his discovery.

  On the other hand, Brewster's explanation was no explanation at all. It made sense to test soils, if you wanted to determine how well plants of a certain type might grow in them; but if you knew that nothing could grow close to the smoldering heat of the Avernus Fissure, why go to the trouble of testing soil there?

  Josh pondered that question again later in the day, when his turn came to work close to the fissure. By noon, Solferino's sun had burned off the morning steam and fog. Grisel shone blazing hot on his back as he knelt to lift a soil sample and place it in his new test kit. This time there was no chance of a startling find. The instrument did not display its results, it merely stored them internally for later integration into a computer database. You might be dropping gold dust in there, but you would never know it.

  The soil analysis of each specimen took longer than a plant bioanalysis. Josh had to remain crouched in one place for more than two minutes in every test, until the unit finally informed him that he was free to move on. The air around him shimmered. Sweat dripped steadily from his chin and ran down his forehead into his eyes, and he could feel heat from the reddish soil burning through the padded knee-cloth of his trousers and warming the soles of his shoes.

  It was probably only one hour, but it felt like three before Sig Lasker finally arrived to relieve him.

  "Any sign of Topaz and Dawn?" Josh had to ask the important question quickly. Brewster might be watching, and he came down hard on anybody who stopped work to chat.

  "Not a sign, but I'm going to tell you what I told Saph: Topaz is smart, and they'll both be fine. If you can't do anything about a thing, stop worrying." Sig took Josh's test kit and pretended to be studying it. "Schiitz, it's hot down here."

  "Wait half an hour, then you'll know what hot is. Anything else happening?"

  "Rick and Hag aren't feeling good. They had to go back to camp. Brewster insisted at first that they were all right, just faking it. But they weren't."

  "He made them keep on working?"

  "Not after Rick threw up all over Brewster's boots. Then even Brewster had to admit there was something wrong."

  "How sick are they?"

  "Those two morons?" If Sig felt any sympathy for his brothers, he didn't show it. "Not as sick as they deserve to be. Put their brains together, you'd be lucky to get a half-wit. I've seen 'em do it before, but they never learn. They had another eating contest at breakfast today. Anybody would be sick, gobbling until there's no room for one more bite, then coming out into this heat. I'm not worried about them. But Brewster seems to be. I told him they'd be all right, and still he seemed totally bent out of shape."

  "Maybe he feels bad about the way he's been treating us."

  "Brewster? Yeah, sure. And maybe I'll grow wings and fly across the fissure. Get real, Josh."

  "So what's your explanation?"

  "I don't have one. I'm just reporting what happened." Sig knelt down and pushed the little spoon-shaped sampler into the hard soil. He lifted it and dropped a few grams of red dirt into his test kit, then reached down and touched the ground with his bare hand. "It's even hotter when you get down to ground level. Why are you hanging around, when you could be somewhere cooler?"

  "I'm not. I'm on my way."

  Josh trudged up the hill. He could feel the temperature drop with every step. By the time he was back to his original station, halfway to the camp, the soles of his feet had stopped burning. He didn't try to fool himself, though; the air was still too warm for comfort. He squinted up at the sun. Grisel was high in the sky. About four more hours before the signal came to quit for the day. What were the chances that Brewster would accept another trainee reporting sick?

  Not good, unless you were able to throw up on his boots. And if you did, there would surely be reprisals later. Rick and Hag Lasker weren't going to enjoy tomorrow.

  Josh sighed, and stooped to test another sample.

  Days had enough discomforts of their own to discourage thinking. Only when night approached did Josh begin to worry seriously about Dawn and Topaz.

  Tonight, fortunately, there were distractions. It was strange, but the very word "party" produced a lift in everyone's spirits. Even if it were Sol Brewster's party, with the man himself presiding; even if half the group was not there (Rick and Hag had yet to put in an appearance; Sig reported that they were almost back to normal, except that any mention of food made them feel ill all over again); even if the food itself was a major question mark, because no one had any experience of Sol Brewster's or Winnie Carlson's cooking. In spite of all those things, Josh could feel his mood becoming more cheerful, and he knew from the rising noise level that others felt the same.

  Certainly the t
wo cooks seemed to be taking their jobs seriously. They were at opposite ends of the crowded dining room. Brewster had a gigantic pot bubbling on a heating element, and next to it a container of rice enough to feed twice their number. Keeping one eye on the pot, he was carefully pouring pale yellow liquid into disposable glasses from a large iced flagon.

  Winnie Carlson, no less intent, hovered over two pans of her own and the portable autochef. She had made a great secret of its programming, refusing to allow anyone near while she was doing it.

  Brewster called Sig over to him. "Where are those two good-for-nothing brothers of yours?"

  "They don't feel like eating tonight, sir."

  Brewster didn't seem surprised. He nodded as though he had expected that answer, glared down at his newly washed boots, and said, "Very well. Go and tell Hagen and Alberich that they can be excused from dinner, but only if they come here now. They must take part in a celebratory toast to the success of our efforts at the Avernus Fissure."