by Kathy Tyers
In MaiJidda’s pause, murmurs broke out in several spots. Graysha scrambled to keep pace with her own speculations. “Forced evacuation” snaked through her mind again, followed by “if we found it necessary to scatter our population.” These people—some of them, anyway—were definitely afraid. If she had meant to report to Novia, she would’ve had to warn her mother these people could fight back. From what she knew of Eugenics Board history, that would be a first.
But she meant to tell Novia nothing, especially now.
“Basic handling,” MaiJidda said, pointing at her holster as the racket of women’s voices faded. “Never, never aim a weapon at something you aren’t willing to destroy. That means you. Right now. Where’s it pointed?”
Up and down the line, women adjusted their stance. To Graysha’s relief, she’d been holding hers two-handed, aimed at a crack in the concrete floor.
She lay on her belly a few minutes later, rotating to the right each time targets were set back up, then trying again to hit little pyramids of yellow-tan clay cubes. She found herself enjoying the game, and surreptitiously she celebrated each near-miss by slipping another hard candy into her mouth. The heavy pistol’s firing chamber was fed by inserting coiled spirals of dart-shaped pellets against its side and by replacing two chemical charges up through its grip. Even after her arms started to shake, she had no trouble loading the thing, but evidently marksmanship would not be her forte.
Just before the range clock changed over to twelve noon, she lay next to the wall stacked ceiling-high with crates, beside Crystal.
Someone behind her shouted, “Hey! Look out—”
Graysha rolled sideways, glancing back and up. The near end of the pile tottered. The top crates tipped dangerously. Three squad leaders dashed for the wall.
Graysha sprang to her feet, shouting, “Crystal!” She seized Crystal’s right elbow and dragged her half a meter.
From behind came a crash. All down the line, guns clattered to the floor and heads whipped to stare in her direction.
Crystal’s weight pulled Graysha down. She crouched, waiting for the terrible cramping from sudden hard movement. One calf contracted in a painful charley horse, but that was all.
It had taken maybe five seconds. Panting, she spun around. Behind roiling dust, women scrambled to get away. Ari MaiJidda’s voice rang out over the firing range’s speakers. “Clear the range, please. Clear the range while we make sure no one has been injured. Leave your pistol with a squadron leader at the door. Drill will resume in one hour. Get some lunch while we clear the room.”
Graysha kneaded her painful calf and rejoiced that she didn’t hurt all over. “Thanks,” Crystal said softly. “I couldn’t get my balance. Are you all right?”
“Give me a minute,” she grunted. She hesitated, wanting to step on her sore leg but not wanting to put weight on it before the muscle relaxed. Thanks to all that candy, she hadn’t—
Good Lord. As the dust cleared, she saw that a huge metal crate had spilled broken bags of concrete exactly where she’d lain seconds before. Her senses should have been dulled by the morning’s exertion, her blood sugar at a pre-lunch low. She should have been . . . might have been killed, along with her new friend.
Beside the fallen crates, Ari MaiJidda straightened out of a crouch and covered a sneeze with both hands. She gazed out into the room, and Graysha guessed she knew who Ari was looking for.
A flush of anger warmed her cheeks, and she knew she’d better leave the scene. “Let’s get lunch, Crystal,” she muttered. “Give me a hand up, if you would.”
Crystal pulled, and Graysha slowly straightened the aching leg. She couldn’t guess how Ari MaiJidda got those crates to tip over, but any police investigation under MaiJidda’s leadership would certainly declare it accidental.
Would MaiJidda have willingly sacrificed one of her own people to make sure nobody suspected the act was deliberate?
Leaning on Crystal’s arm, Graysha limped out into the corridor. It didn’t seem appropriate to mention her suspicions to the young Lwuite woman.
“Is the co-op all right for lunch?” Crystal asked. “It’s close. It’s bound to be noisy this time of day, but I’d like to visit my children. I’m a crèche mother when I’m not in the D-group.”
“Fine,” Graysha said shortly, conserving energy to hobble faster. She just wanted to get away. She didn’t dare say any of the things she was thinking. She wanted to build bridges, not burn them.
Crystal shook her head. “If you hadn’t grabbed me, I’d still be there. Thank you.”
“I’m just glad that I . . . well . . .” Tempted to say too much, she bit back the urge. “You’re welcome. I’m glad it worked out.”
Besides, shared danger tended to bond people. She liked Crystal already. It would be nice to count her as a friend.
A careless cacophony of high-pitched voices filled a huge concrete room at the north end of the main corridor. Graysha hadn’t seen the colonists’ food co-op before. Unsmoothed concrete walls and matching yellow-tan tile flooring, beneath rows of long tables, made it plain no one had bothered to dress it up like the Gaea cafeteria. Still, warm smiles and animated conversations made it feel homey, and a long linear skylight—dark now—probably warmed it on Bdays and Cdays. Over a stew of mingled food smells, Graysha caught soapy astringency and the pervasive musty-wet concrete odor. In a few years, after these walls finished curing, that scent might remind settlers of their early days here.
“You’re sure you don’t mind eating in the sound chamber?” Crystal asked. She carried a loaded tray to a spot amid one table lined with giggling primaries. Two of them hugged her as she sat down, one circling her waist and the other clinging to her leg. Grinning, she shook them off. “I find it comforting, but I know lots of folks who don’t.”
Children. Sweet-faced or irritated, dirty or clean, pigtailed or barbered with a buzz-razor, they jostled and elbowed and shouted at one another. Graysha took a spot facing Crystal and next to a black-haired boy, who reached up to stroke her blond pigtail before fishing his spoon out of a soup bowl where it had fallen, handle and all.
“I like noise.” Graysha had to raise her own voice. “I like children.” What safer person to admit that to? It wasn’t as if she were coming right out and telling Crystal, “I’m risking everything here for the sake of having normal children of my own.” Her leg no longer hurt. Maybe soon her hands would stop shaking. “Do they all live with you, or are you their teacher?”
“Both.” Crystal reached out to remove another soup spoon from its spot of contention inside two grabbing chubby hands. “They’re my crèche, all ten of them—bless every runny nose—and these three are my own.” She bounced the flat of her hand along two pigtailed heads at her right side while indicating the boy next to Graysha with a quick nod. “Ages three through seven—we try to keep sibs together. It would’ve been nice to have left cold viruses behind on Einstein, but . . .” Shrugging, Crystal flipped a thick braid back over her shoulder.
Graysha agreed. It might’ve been nice if they’d left Ari MaiJidda behind, too. Maybe if she offered MaiJidda a pledge of secrecy—if she openly, bluntly gave the vice-chair power over her as token of her sincerity—she might be allowed to live unharmed inside the Lwuites’ mysterious veil.
Maybe. But if thousands of lives had depended on her keeping secrets, she would tell no one, no matter how sincerely they appealed to her.
“So it was Will Varberg after all,” Crystal observed aloud, out of the blue. “I’m awfully glad it wasn’t one of us. Things have been tense enough.”
Graysha pushed back her fears. She’d only been threatened. Jon Mahera had died. “I’m sorry the Gaea station hasn’t made better efforts to get along, to join in your activities and so forth,” she said. She tore off a chunk of coarse bread, dipped it in soup, and chewed the juicy mouthful. Something occurred to her, something utterly nonessential. Something that might make light, easy conversation. “May
I ask a ridiculous question?”
“You think I don’t get ridiculous questions all day, every day?” Crystal asked, grinning.
Graysha liked the young woman more every minute. “The Gaea people call your particular, um, lifestyle . . . occupation ‘baby farming.’ What do you call it?”
“Baby farming,” Crystal answered promptly. “During our relief week, there’s a pair of rovers who take care of our—oh,” she exclaimed. A curly-haired man laid a hand on her shoulder, hoisted his leg over the bench, and slid into place next to her. “Duncan EnDidier,” Crystal said firmly, “meet Dr. Brady-Phillips.”
“It’s Graysha,” she insisted, shaking the man’s hand. He had a broad, pleasant face. “You’re Crystal’s husband?”
A bowl hit the floor, creating crockery shards and bean islands in a lake of broth. Duncan and Crystal scooted off the bench, Duncan comforting the child while Crystal dashed for cleanup gear.
Graysha slid down to help them mop spilled soup, unreasonably delighted by events. Ari MaiJidda had accidentally done her more good than harm.
She definitely had a Lwuite friend.
After lunch, the group divided into specialties without re-entering the firing range. Graysha and three other women followed a young black-haired man out into the tunnel and then up to a first-floor room arranged like a computer classroom.
“Each station is programmed for laser-radar, or ‘lidar,’ simulation,” he announced. His name tag read VanDam, and he paced with a limp. “You have been selected for lidar training because of your familiarity with e-systems. Access your tutorial now, and begin. I am here if you have questions, but it’s my advice to try all options yourself before asking for outside help. What you learn on your own, you’ll remember longer.”
Graysha called up the tute, relaxing. At last, here was something she felt comfortable with. This layout had controls she wasn’t used to seeing, but by the end of a fast-paced hour, she knew which one keyed in tracking, which amplified signal strength, and which alerted other lidar trackers to a threat. The tutorial program indicated she would now be allowed her first simulation. She pressed the appropriate tab. To her surprise, the console beeped.
VanDam limped over. “On to phase two?”
“I think so. I’m enjoying this.”
“Good. But you have to pass a little test before you go on.” He pressed another tab, and the screen gave directions. The man stood at her shoulder, watching while she worked through them. Only one problem, concerning three-dimensional tracking, made her hesitate.
By then her instructor was leaning two-handed against her desktop and nodding. “Not bad, Brady-Phillips.” He touched the board’s S key, and the promised simulation appeared.
Another student’s station beeped at that moment, and Graysha realized she’d just gone to the head of the class.
―――
The second day’s exercise and handgun sessions—this time, no one was assigned to lie closer than five meters from the restacked crates—left her quivering and weary, and tiny sore spots blossomed on her gums from chewing sour candy . . . but Ari MaiJidda appeared to have granted her a respite. As they showered, Graysha passed Crystal a slick chunk of sour-smelling soap. “I haven’t felt this wobbly in ages.”
“Nor me,” Crystal admitted, “but you’re doing better than I expected. Coordinator MaiJidda passed word to us about your condition before the first meeting. Did you know that? We were supposed to watch for anything like muscle cramps and report them right away.”
Surprise, surprise. Graysha reached for her scratchy brown towel. “Don’t tell me the coordinator is paranoid.”
Crystal laughed merrily. “Why else would she be in charge of this operation?”
That afternoon on the sim, she learned ground and air tracking. Lieutenant VanDam pulled her aside after midafternoon break, separating their conversation from others’ eyes and ears behind a bend in the concrete wall. “Graysha, we are glad to train you, and you certainly seem to be getting along. I’m pleasantly surprised.”
“Thanks,” she murmured.
He leaned against the wall. “But in a crisis, can we count on you not to turn tail and hide in the Gaea building? If we call you up, will you come?”
“Of course I’ll come,” she said firmly. “I wouldn’t have volunteered if I didn’t mean to honor my commitment. If the attackers on these sims ever show up, you have my solemn word I’ll be on Goddard’s side.”
He nodded and limped away. Graysha examined the room. Bare except for the ceramic-topped desks and computer installations, it did have the ambience she imagined for a wartime setup.
She couldn’t beg healing from the Lwuites, then abandon them. If they were capable of helping her, then they had reason to fear the EB . . . and she would become her own mother’s enemy.
―――
Lindon DalLierx rested one elbow on his desk. His monthly policy meeting with Gaea’s three bio-floor supervisors—Microbiology, Botany, and Zoology—had been little more than a waste of two hours. Nothing had changed, they claimed, nothing needed revising, and his hints about global cooling were unanimously ignored. Feeling weary, he asked, “Anything else, Dr. Varberg, gentlewomen?”
“I don’t think so.” Varberg reached over DalLierx’s desk, scooting aside the glass of marigolds he’d brought, saying, “This building is too colorless, Chairman.” He enfolded DalLierx’s hand in a firm clasp that showed off the big man’s emerald ring. The jewelry didn’t impress Lindon. His father’s sapphire thumb ring was larger, clearer, and better cut.
It was also a natural stone. Varberg’s had the look of a synthetic. “I’ll see you all in another month,” DalLierx said blandly. Either me or Ari MaiJidda.
“Certainly,” said Varberg. “By the way, be sure to save those seed heads for me.”
Lindon escorted them to the CA building’s stairwell, paused, then clumped down after them, resting his hands in his pockets. Antonia Fong of Botany had seemed sympathetic last month, but today she had apparently gone deaf. Evidently during the interim, Melantha Lee had convinced her.
Did Lee have a blind spot—or a hidden agenda? he wondered.
It was time, he decided, to make an official visit to the Defense Group training session. He guessed Ari was using her defense position to improve her chances in the challenge election. She would see every woman she trained as a potential vote in her favor, someone who decided she liked looking to Ari for leadership.
He could not stop that; in fact, he had no right to try stopping it. They had all become possessive of their world, himself included. Sometimes he felt like Moses in the wilderness. With his people separated out of “Egypt” and relatively safe here, making a nation of them would take at least forty years.
And, like the Israelites in the wilderness, most of them would die before milk and honey ran freely.
He plodded downstairs, distracted by his thoughts. I can live with that, Father, he said silently. I have known luxury, but it didn’t bring contentment. I can be content anywhere you are. His family’s wealthy hab peers, in fact, had been some of the most discontented people he knew.
At the foot of the CA building’s stairwell, he turned right. A group of men passed. One bade him good afternoon, and he responded, but he felt distracted. Did the notion of elections bother him? he wondered for the hundredth time. Ari played other people’s emotions freely. People often followed a charismatic—even violent—leader in difficult times.
Violence might even be a survival factor here, and that contradiction of a concept he’d been raised to revere shocked him. Goddard had shocked them all with its survival demands. Their long life-spans had to be risked daily for one another’s sake. All types of people had come to Henri and Palila Lwu, wanting long life for their descendants. Some saw Goddard’s harsh environment as a testing ground. Those families who survived would earn the right to pass down longevity genes—so said Ari and others whose parents and grandparents were
recruited for ability, not money.
In other words, she hoped Lindon and the other sons of wealth would die out, and the sooner the better.
Goddard’s colonists, he observed, were no different in nature from the Einsteinians they had been. Everyone tended, without guidance, toward depravity. Since there were unstable Lwuites, as in any other sample of humanity, one of his daughters might be attacked by a depraved person carrying a knife or a rock. Therefore, allowing handgun production on Goddard had been emotionally difficult but logical. The combined CA committees, only four months after making planetfall, overcame their hab-ingrained fear of projectiles to make the vote unanimous. Producing weapons seemed a natural part of self-sufficiency.
He took another right into the new training building and walked straight into the underground firing range. The smell of gunpowder made his nose itch and reminded him of his first efforts to shoot straight. To his surprise, he’d proved steady-handed. Lwuites might not be aggressive, but if circumstances ever took him where he did not want to go, he might survive.
In a culture without bodyguards, this skill was imperative for someone in leadership.
About twenty women stood along the range, backs turned toward him, bright blue ear protectors squashing their pigtails. Pressing both hands over his ears, he peered through a gap in their backs at a line of clay cubes. A few were unscathed, but most lay in pieces. Some older crèche children, he’d been told, had been given new work creating those targets.
“Chairman DalLierx.” A young man wearing a hip holster strode along the back wall, smiling. The women kept firing in their rotations. “Good of you to come by. What about conducting an inspection?”