by Mike Moscoe
For a moment, everyone stood in shocked silence. Then San Paulo and Chu descended on Ray. “Are you hurt?” “Where did he come from?” “We’ve never had anything like that.” “No, nothing at all.”
All Ray saw was a crowd moving closer, giving another assailant a shorter run.
Mary grabbed his elbow. “Out of the car,” she ordered Rose and the nurse. “Into the front seat.”
Rose scrambled over the seat, eyes wide and locked on the knife. “What’s cook’s knife doing here?”
“Not now, Rose,” Mary snapped. Rose frowned, accepting the answer as a familiar one. Mary shoved Ray into the backseat just as Jeff rode up on some kind of motorcycle.
“You!” Mary shouted. “Can you drive this mule?”
“Always wanted to try,” Jeff grinned, taking in the scene and not sure what to make of it.
“You’re driving,” Mary shot at Jeff, and pushed Ray across the backseat to make room for her. Ray moved, using more hip motion than he had since Mary nailed him. If he’d had the time, he would have marveled at it. At the moment, he just scooted.
“Drive, Jeff,” Mary ordered.
Under Mary’s instruction, Jeff put the mule in gear and hit the accelerator; the mule took off with a leap. Mary kept her eyes roving right; Ray covered the left. No one trailed them. “What was that all about?” Jeff asked.
“Somebody tried to knife me. That happen often?”
The nurse shook her head dumbly. “Never,” Jeff said. Ray had a hard time believing that.
“Where we going?” Jeff asked.
“The blimpfield,” Ray answered.
“Be there in no time,” Jeff assured them. However, Rose’s brave front began to crack around the edges. Without lowering her vigilance, Mary got Rose chattering about the farms near their base with chickens and ducks. The promise of a donkey to ride caught Rose’s young attention and didn’t let go, leaving Ray wondering where his marine officer learned so much about distracting children. He suspected it was a gal thing that he’d never master.
The news of an impending shuttle landing apparently had passed through Lander’s Refuge at the speed of light. As the mule approached the field, it seemed like half the city’s million inhabitants were somewhere in the crowd around the port. Mary checked in with Second Chance.
“Yeah, we spotted the crowd last orbit and did a check on the marked-out area. It’s plenty long, and we’ve added that runway to the lander’s navigation map. Trust us, Ray, we won’t fry anybody. Any problems?” Mary raised an eyebrow to Ray. He shook his head. She punched off.
Jeff caught up with the shuttle as it finished its landing roll, driving right up its open ramp. Even as they dismounted, the crew chief and loadmaster were tying down the mule.
Jeff stood, hands shoved in his pockets. “Mind if I hitch a ride? I’ve had about as much of my sis as I can take for a year or ten. I’d like to get back to some field prospecting, and you look like the fastest way there.”
Ray glanced in Mary’s direction. She studied the local as she might an asteroid that could be solid gold but might be total dross. “No problem, sir,” Mary said slowly. “He came out with us. Might as well go back with us.”
As Ray and Mary settled into seats, she chewed on her lower lip. “Wonder who that knife guy was.”
“We might know if you’d let him finish what he was shouting,” Ray said dryly.
“At the moment, sir, it looked like he was ready to drill you a new belly button, but next time,” she assured him, “I’ll let the guy finish his manifesto.”
An hour later, Ray surveyed the base from the shuttle’s top step. A long swath of field had been sprayed with emulsifier, giving the lander a solid temporary runway. The same technique had created roads that were now lined with buildings. Though prefab balloons, once blown up and sprayed with epoxy, the structures were as permanent as stone. By their shapes, as much as by the signs in front, Ray could name them.
The chip fabricator was long and low. The equipment factory was wide and tall. Around them squatted housing and office buildings, including one that proudly proclaimed itself the “Santa Maria Center for Research and Delight.”
“I won the contest for naming that one,” Kat Zappa proudly crowed. She seemed to have appointed herself Ray’s tour guide, meeting him at the stairs when he paused, blinking, for his eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight. One by one, she pointed them out. To the right of the manufacturing center a number of sealed containers sat where they’d been dumped. Kat said nothing about them; she didn’t have to. Ray’d been too many years in uniform not to recognize his bomb farm and weapons factory. With luck, that gear would stay packed.
“Where’s the hospital?” he interrupted Kat. Rose was peeking shyly around the door of the lander, the only one behind Ray except for the crew.
“Hi. What’s your name?” Kat asked, hurrying to the little girl’s side and giving Ray a chance to start down the stairs, Mary two steps ahead of him.
“Rose,” came in a trembling whisper.
“Is that your bag? It’s pretty. Do you have a kitten? I had one when I was your age. Can I carry your bag?”
Ray left Kat to prattle as he worked from one step to the next. What was it with estrogen that turned every female into a mother to every child? When his own son or daughter arrived, would he be rattling on like a twittering bird? After years of barking orders, Ray could not picture himself cooing and aahing over some tiny fragment of humanity. But, God, I want to be home with Rita to find out.
A mule waited at the bottom of the stairs for Ray. Jeff loitered near it. As Ray stepped off from the last step, his commlink buzzed. “Matt here. You all set?”
“Looks like it. How do things look on your end?”
“Couldn’t be better. We’re breaking orbit this trip around. See you when we’ve found a way home.”
“Outstanding. Ray out,” he said to Jeff’s raised eyebrows. “You hang around me long enough and you’re bound to find out something you shouldn’t.”
“I had a hunch you were holding back. Call me a suspicious bastard. It runs in my family. So, you’re as lost as we are.”
“Nope. The skipper of that ship made a bad jump last year. Took them six weeks, but they came home.”
Jeff pulled thoughtfully at his eyebrow for a moment. “But you’re not sure.”
“There was sabotage involved in this jump. Matt’s got a tougher problem this time around.”
“Sounds like humanity hasn’t changed much.” Jeff paused. “But then, living on Santa Maria hasn’t made us saints either. Here’s my deal. You cut me in on your mineral extraction technology and I won’t breathe a word about your problems to anyone until you’re ready to announce it.” He ended grinning like a thief with a permanent pardon.
Mary slipped up silently beside him. “I could just break your neck. Tell your sister you fell down the lander’s stairs in a rush to meet a nice local girl. What’s her name?”
“Ah, yes. I suspect Vicky would grieve all of two seconds.” Jeff took a quick step back from Mary. “However, if it served her, she could turn my death into quite a cause célèbre. You still haven’t told me how that really neat knife ended up on the backseat.”
“And what do you know about that?” Mary closed the distance to Jeff again. The only threat was in her closeness…and the death in her eyes.
Jeff didn’t retreat this time. “I don’t know anything more than you do. But I have sources here you don’t. I can get answers you can’t. You can work with me, or you can keep playing the Lone Ranger. Do they still have stories about him?”
“Yes,” Ray scowled and settled himself into the backseat of the mule. “Mary, I think we ought to let him live. At least for a while.”
“If you say so, Colonel,” Mary said doubtfully.
Ray turned in his seat to face Jeff. “As you’ve probably noted, until recently, I was a colonel, commanding infantry. Mary was a marine officer in our most recent war. You can take t
he uniform off, but old habits die hard. You strike me as a very smart businessman. Don’t outsmart yourself.”
Jeff slowly nodded as Ray spoke. The pause at the end grew long. Finally, licking his lips, Jeff said, “All my life, I’ve been the baby. The kid. Vicky knew she’d inherit. Mark was out hustling before I even knew the rules of the game. He found the bauxite deposits up among the Bible thumpers and managed to get the aluminum mill going. Pissed Vicky off big time. Me, I’m the spare, the nothing, the one everybody tells what to do. You’re my one chance to be something. Please, give me that chance.”
Ray studied the man. Were his eyes actually misting up? Was this for real or just show? Ray had no idea. Surely this planet had a need for everyone. Then again, growing up in the shadow of the woman who had the whole place by the throat might be pretty hard on a kid. Maybe Jeff was desperate to get out of that shadow. Then again, maybe he’d learned enough from Victoria and just wanted his own place in the sun to do to her and others what he’d seen her do. Tough call. Ray turned to Mary, “You need an extra hand in your mining operations?”
“Don’t look like the factories are up,” she said.
“No,” Kat cut in, now down the stairs with Rose in hand. “No mineral feed stock. Couple of marines said they’d start things up as soon as you got back.”
“Nice of them to wait,” Mary snorted, then turned on Jeff. “You’re welcome to work for the Ours, by Damn, Mining Consortium. You may save our start-up a few wrong turns. But”—Mary made the word explosive as she rested a pointing finger on Jeff’s chest—“you swindle us, we’ll get you. We worked the asteroids before the war. We worked our butts off surviving that damn war. You help us, you’re our buddy. You get crosswise with us, and so help me, your sister won’t find enough pieces of you to know you’re dead. Understood?”
The man returned Mary’s hard stare, head nodding. “Yes, Captain. I understand. Maybe better than you know. I suspect I’ve just met someone as desperate as me.”
“Where’s the doctor?” Rose interjected. “The sun is hurting my eyes.”
Mary metamorphosed from line beast to mother in the time it took her to kneel next to Rose. “Then we’ll pop the top on this mule and get you some shade. Kat, where’s the hospital?”
“Over there,” she pointed, “but it’s not set up yet.”
Ray sighed for the good old days when he gave an order and it happened. “I’ll just have to ask the doctor why.”
Kat looked ready to go elsewhere, but Ray signaled her into the backseat with Rose. Mary took the driver’s seat, and Jeff settled into the front seat as far from her as he could and still get the door closed. Ray tried not to grin. By all rights, he ought to be ready to explode with anger. Three hot potatoes dropped in his lap. Jeff, who might or might not stab him or someone else in the back over sibling rivalry. Rose and her headaches and now gear that wasn’t up for some reason Kat was not eager to explain. Instead of mad, he found it funny. Keep your sense of humor and you might survive this mess.
The hospital was a short drive. Matt had sent down the younger of the ship’s two doctors, Dr. Jerry Isaacs. Ray found him at the end of a long line of locals, apparently doing a public relations sick call.
“I brought you another child with headaches,” Ray said by way of introduction. The next woman in line held a coughing seven-year-old. Still, she took two quick steps back. Ray had yet to figure out the local attitude toward the albino children. It seemed to be one part fear, another part awe.
Dr. Jerry smiled at Rose, who was suddenly so attached to Kat that surgery seemed required to separate them. Kat came forward and held Rose while Jerry did the usual medical once-over. Rose took it stoically, except for one exclamation of pain when he shined a bright light in her eyes.
“They look healthy enough. I can’t tell you more until I get my diagnostic center back.”
“When’s that?” Ray asked, puzzled.
“You’ll have to ask Kat and company,” the doctor growled.
“We started using it for specimen analysis, sir.” Kat eyed the floor, as if hunting for a crack to fall through.
“Doctor, you haven’t started working on these children’s problems?”
“I’ve only been down two days. I will not use diagnostic gear someone just used to dissect the latest stray something these midshipmen”—his nod indicated Kat—“dragged in.”
“Colonel, it’s really important, what we’re finding out.”
“More important than helping these kids?” Ray made it clear that would be hard to do.
“Sir, there’s something weird with the evolution on this planet. We’ve been chasing it the week you’ve been gone, sir, and we still can’t figure it out.” Kat ran out of words in the face of Ray’s scowl.
“Please, Colonel, Doc, we can’t stop now. Come and see.”
“Show me,” Ray said.
FIVE
MATT HAD LAUGHED at how excitable the middies were when they had a new bone to gnaw on…and just about anything qualified as new to them. It had been funny on Wardhaven. Here, with all the other problems Ray had, he didn’t need an out-of-control bunch of boffins freelancing on him. He followed Kat’s parade down the hall to a large room where a dozen middies huddled over equipment or around lab tables lit by glaring lamps. Jars of specimens reeking of preservatives half-filled a wall of shelves.
“Kat, good!” a young man shouted from one dissection table. “This thing has a heart in every segment. At least I think this muscle pumps what it uses for blood. Come take a look. Oh, hi, Colonel, you might want to see this, too.” The good doctor’s scowl at the mess they had made of his medical unit was ignored; nothing but enthusiasm and excitement came from the youngsters.
Ray kept his face unreadable. When he came down on the doc’s side he didn’t wait the kids screaming he hadn’t given them a fair hearing.
“You’ve cut up a woolly leg-legs!” Rose cried in nine-year-old outrage.
“We put it to sleep first,” the young man defended himself against the accusation of innocence. “And we have to study it.”
Ray caught Mary’s eye, nodded her toward the door with the little girl. Mary declined the order with a quick shake of her head. Rose clung to Kat, and Ray’s Chief of Security’s curiosity was clearly piqued.
So for the next hour Kat did her best to update Ray’s academy biology course; most of what he heard went over his head.
Not all. The computer image of three skeletons side by side was impossible to forget. One was ours, skull perched on a backbone of vertebrates, rib cage dangling from our shoulders. Next to it was one with vertebrates, too, but long bones hung vertically from the shoulder, intersperced With four arms. The third skeleton featured three backbones, all long and looking like our leg bone. Studying the sockets of the hip and shoulder bone that allowed this version to twist gave Ray a headache; still, the middies insisted it was as flexible as ours, and its spinal column just as protected. The last of Kat’s three evolutionary lines was the woolly leg-legs. Rose’s terminology had been adopted and scientifically sanctified.
When the middies grew silent, Ray turned to Doc Isaacs. “Could all these have evolved here?”
The young medical professional rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Colonel. I’ve never heard of anything like this. A small number of exotics in a biota usually are imports. But three totally mixed. Is this sun unstable? Could these all be mutations? I’m no geologist, but until someone digs up a fossil record, I’d be reluctant to say they couldn’t all be native to this planet. After all, it is a big universe.”
Kat frowned, but nodded. “We don’t know enough to draw a conclusion,” she said, pained to admit such a limit.
“And it’s only going to get worse,” Ray sighed, and took over. “Doc, we’ve got three kids who need thorough examinations. If we can solve their problems, we’ll be well on our way to winning a lot of credit with the locals. As much as I hate to restrict you middies’ play privileges, Do
c’s got first call on his diagnostic gear for Rose and her friends.”
“And you, Colonel,” the doc cut in.
“Me?”
“The meds that saved your backbone have side effects. I checked your records. You’re several weeks overdue for a full workup. I’m putting you in line ahead of the kids. Middies, I want my diagnostic center back, and I want it back now.”
“All of it?” one squeaked.
Jerry took a deep breath, surveyed his appropriated domain like a monarch reclaiming his throne room, then let the air out through a quirky grin. He pointed to one corner. “Clean up Bay One and I’ll share the rest. For now. But if I need it, you’re out of here, fast.”
“Yes,” “Thanks,” and an argument from someone evicted from Bay One that they should have priority in Bay Three broke out immediately. Ray turned to leave, but Jerry nabbed his elbow.
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re my number one patient.”
Ray surrendered with as much grace as he could muster. At least this medical exam would not be invasive. He turned to Mary. “Leave Rose with me. Go corral David and the other one.”
“You promised me my own telephone for my arm so I could call Mommy,” Rose reminded him as she sat down beside him. Kat surrendered her wrist unit. Ray showed the girl how to use it and helped her place her first call. Ms. San Paulo came on the line at the tenth buzz. Ray spent the next ten minutes smiling through a nine-year-old’s perspective on the day, with few comments from Mom, while the doc and middies cleared the wreckage of several dissections. Ray put an end to the call only when Mary dragged David and a seven-year-old in from wherever they’d been playing. The dirty clothes and faces attested that they’d been having fun.
“Thank you for caring for Rose,” Henrietta finished.
“Everything’s fine here,” Ray assured her. “How are things at your end?”
“We had a fire at the archives this afternoon. Initial reports says it was a faulty electric wire.”