Shivering World

by Kathy Tyers

  “You did?” Stunned, he demanded, “Why didn’t you ask about that when you questioned her?”

  “No need,” she said coolly. “It will come out in her trial. It’s possible that she’s bait, just as you suggested—whether or not she volunteered. Whether she knows it or not, the EB could be watching to see what we’ll do for her. You wouldn’t put that past the high and mighty Novia, would you?”

  “No . . .”

  “Well, then. If we suspended eligibility rules and instigated experimental procedures, her mother could present her own daughter’s Strobel Probes as evidence against us.”

  Lindon lowered his head. “So the innocent must suffer along with the guilty.”

  “Spare me the theatrics.” Ari reached for a teacup. “She is not innocent.”

  “There has been . . . another new development, Ari.” Carefully choosing his words and hoping his growing attraction to the microbiologist hadn’t clouded his judgment, he explained Graysha’s offer to search the Gaea building for evidence of environmental sabotage. “I think,” he concluded, “that for the moment I would like you to hold off making your arrest. Give her a week, at least, to try.”

  “That only makes things worse. Don’t you see? She probably already knows what’s wrong.” Ari sipped from her cup. “Melantha Lee is demanding a minute-­by-­minute account of D-­group training, thanks to her. If you hadn’t gone to Lee again, accusing her of not doing enough about the cooling, we wouldn’t have a new pile of busywork.”

  “Is Lee on your suspect list?”

  “God, no. I’m not the only one displeased with the way Melantha Lee has gotten harder to work with. Can you imagine how nasty she’d turn if we tried to question her? Anyway,” she continued before Lindon could tell her that had nothing to do with Lee’s guilt or innocence, “we came here to talk about the election, not the affairs of my office.”

  Good idea. “We can at least agree to present issues to the colonists, not accusations or personality differences.”

  “Our people,” she said icily, “are quite aware of the differences between us, both chromosomally and behaviorally.”

  “I apologize if you thought that was an insult. Tell me how you think Goddard could be better run.”

  Lindon sipped tea—wasted on him, for he might never taste nuances again—and listened. Ari wanted more aggressive exporting of the heavier raw materials. She wanted to accelerate his schedule for bringing in additional asteroidal resources. She meant to suggest tighter work schedules.

  “All excellent points,” he said. “If Mars had moved more aggressively into export markets, it might not still be an economic backwater.”

  “I’m fully aware that history was your field of study. I know as much about space colonization as you do.”

  “I meant nothing of—”

  “And if you are going to let sexual and genetic politics enter into this discussion, I am going to leave.”

  What had he said to draw that barb? “I meant nothing of the sort.”

  “What platform do you intend to run on, then?”

  He’d thought this through carefully. “We have surplus food and energy stored against the chance of missing a supply ship or two. Somehow it has become vulgar to remind one another we all could starve waiting for assistance.”

  She raised one thin eyebrow. “You’re not going to bring religion into your campaign?”

  “People know our differences.”

  “I assume you’ve prayed about running for reelection?” She didn’t quite sneer.

  Lindon drained his tea and set down the cup. “You don’t need to ask.”

  “Since you haven’t withdrawn, I assume God told you you’re the man for the position.”

  No answer would satisfy Ari MaiJidda.

  “Good.” She smiled frigidly. “I think we have accomplished the purpose of this meeting.” She rocked forward to stand.

  “Just a minute.”

  Ari reached for her parka but did not slip it on.

  He had to ask. “There are fresh scars in the firing-­range floor. Dr. Brady-­Phillips says there was an accident . . . now. But she was going to say more as we started to question her. What happened?”

  “For once she’s telling the truth.” Ari pushed one arm down a coat sleeve. “There was an accident.”

  Who should he believe . . . Ari or his sister?

  “Don’t you want her locked up?” Ari dangled her parka over a lace table runner.

  Crys is only guessing. “We need her help at the Gaea station. Maybe Dr. Ilizarov might assist us? Do you trust him 100 percent—when it comes to planetary affairs?”

  Ari laughed coarsely, then poked her head around the corner into the kitchen. “Good day, Mrs. TollHeyer,” she called, then she lowered her voice and whispered, “Very well. Give her a week. But leave Paul Ilizarov out of this.” He gave her a long head start, draining one more cup of warm flavorless tea in his hostess’s company before slipping on his coat.

  Slowly, he walked back to the blockhouse. Though some snow had melted, darkening the ground, most had blown away. Plowed drifts remained packed beside the road. Raising his head, he looked beyond the settlement, between the tall textiles plant and the low, flat-­roofed heavy equipment garages. A dark track-­truck crawled up the Port Arbor highway.

  He had dreams for this colony, dreams of vast fertile tracts of land, dreams of free trade with Copernicus and other colonies, a university, cultural centers—everything he once enjoyed at Einstein.

  Everything he gave up to come here. How many of these dreams might he live to see?

  None of them, if the warming trend reversed. Goddard, for all its vastness, supported an unspeakably fragile net of open-­air life. We’re playing God, he reflected. Are we overstepping? When it came to terraforming, he didn’t think so. All they hoped to build here seemed like a logical next step of human civilization.

  Still, Goddard—even his people—must never take God’s place of priority in his heart. He felt obligated to respect Graysha’s spiritual curiosity. She had asked politely, making it easier to decline than to speak. Her life, too, was unspeakably fragile.

  Was she sincere? Was their single remaining dose of gamma-­vertol squandered on a person who would not be affected?

  He walked on, trying to convince himself Graysha was an EB plant. He couldn’t. Her manner was too sincere, her sympathy too genuine. Ari’s manner was another story entirely. The insulin kit could’ve been planted in Graysha’s locker. If Crys was correct, Ari was blaming someone to cover her own guilt.

  Ari was right about one thing, though. Trying to heal Commissioner Brady-­Phillips’s daughter could be a deadly act of charity.

  Yet the issue of faith would not lie quiet in his mind. Graysha ought to know that for some Lwuites, faith was no quasi-­legal camouflage.

  That knowledge might make her less hostile toward the colony, less likely to change her mind and report to her mother after all. Already they’d tipped their hand by questioning her.

  But he was not a private person. Here, too, he must use caution.

  He passed a wall clock. Five-­thirty: He was late for his Sunday appointment with Bee and Sarai. Plunging into the blockhouse, he hurried downside.

  ―――

  The brass desk plate read Flora Hauwk, Ph.D. System Supervisor. Gaea Terraforming Consortium.

  Novia eyed the woman. Flora Hauwk’s dark gray hair, severely pulled back from her face, accentuated high cheekbones and a strong, narrow nose. Though Hauwk had to be eighty, her manner was feisty and young. Novia had come this morning to Dr. Hauwk’s Copernicus office, formally requesting investigation privileges at Goddard.

  Through an open window drifted a weird petrochemical smell. Copernicus Habitat’s new-­hab industry made it heavy on construction sounds and smells. Pounding noises on the sidewalks and composite in the air had given her a headache before she even arrived at this field office. She would be glad to leave this place.

  “B
esides being a money drain,” Hauwk continued, “and a drag on Consortium resources, the terraforming itself is going poorly. I can’t imagine what System Supervisor Bennett did with his time. He was supposed to be world-­building.” She pointed over her shoulder toward a set of bound hard copies. “These transcripts show laissez-­faire on a grand scale.”

  Novia considered asking for copies of the transcripts, then changed her mind. Goddard’s troubles weren’t her concern. Its colonists were. Graysha hadn’t reported since arriving on Goddard, not even a quick note. She’d hoped Gray would earn her gene fix with better grace.

  Surely the girl suspected. She might be keeping a low profile, increasing her chances to connect with the colonists. “How long have you been at Copernicus, then?” she asked Supervisor Hauwk.

  “Less than a week. Melantha Lee, site supe over on the rock, requested a change in management when Bennett was ready to quit anyway. I transferred over, almost without a chance to pack. I’m telling you this because I think it will be out of the bag soon anyway, Commissioner, but Gaea is about to reorganize. Our hab offices are sick of bearing the brunt, constantly digging for outside corporate support. The investment value of terraforming is on an outslide. Many of us think it’s time to consolidate closer to home and wait out the slump, then move forward again when the maxims loosen up.”

  Novia didn’t like the sound of that. “What does this mean for Goddard?”

  Hauwk shrugged. “Evidently I get to decide.”

  Novia pursed her lips. She’d arrived just in time, then. “What about the rumors of planetary cooling? Graysha, my daughter, is doing on-­site work for Gaea, if you haven’t heard.”

  Hauwk nodded.

  “She has been researching a depletion in atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons.”

  “Yes, we monitor Goddard’s Gaea station. Has she turned up anything she hasn’t reported?”

  “I haven’t communicated with her yet.”

  “It’s all so complex.” Hauwk reclined her chair, dangling one arm over its edge. “We’ve known from the beginning that it would take generations to craft a living planet. We can’t be alarmist. But if we drain today’s company of resources, we can’t afford to be there in the next generation.”

  “I understand,” Novia said.

  Flora Hauwk slid a pocket memo from one corner of her desk toward its center. “You’re the second visitor I’ve had this morning, you know.”

  How, pray tell, was she supposed to know that?

  “That, you see, is why I rather have money on my mind.” Hauwk eyed the memo. “A new major stockholder is in the Eps Eri system, looking for his runaway son. It would be nice to have that kind of money. He found out the boy is on Goddard, so first he bought a fast private ship, then he bought into the Consortium. He could afford a private pilot to get him here. He has other motives, too, as I understand it. He lives on Venera.”

  “Oh?”

  Hauwk nodded. “He wants Gaea to ‘finish up’ over there. I tried explaining that we’ve done all we can to terraform Venera, but he doesn’t listen.”

  “He could be useful. What’s his name?”

  Hauwk eyed the memo again. “LZalle. Blase LZalle.”

  ―――

  Graysha stayed late in her laboratory, cleaning out the smelly wincubator. Charges and countercharges aside, she had to hold down a job. Tomorrow, she’d start wind-­testing another genus of altered microbes, Streptomyces strains. First, she ought to see what Will Varberg had already done to them. Once she’d sorted her discard tubes and plates onto Trev’s processing racks, she settled at her computer.

  Working down the Gaea net, she passed through upper levels to Varberg’s culture inventory. His records were personally coded with abbreviations, but they were common ones. She read them easily. He’d been gene-­splicing decomposer streps used in the middle stages of terraforming’s microbial phase, bacteria that would break down plant and animal matter and help build fertile soils. DNA maps told her nothing, but she was used to working in half-­light when it came to Varberg’s genetics. She cross-­referenced his soil streps with the media he’d used to grow them on.

  Halfway down the second screen, she felt her heart do a little flip. Besides conventional sugars and amino acids, he’d requisitioned several kilograms of reagent-­grade chlorofluorocarbons.

  CFCs . . . as bacterial media?

  Hardly daring to consider what that order might mean until she double-­checked it, she saved the entry to a personal file and then keyed over to Stores. Their records confirmed the order.

  She slumped over her keyboard.

  Oh, Lindon. Duncan. Crystal. Varberg wanted the Gaea reward, all right. He’d been trying to grow—or create—an organism that broke down CFCs for nutrients, one that could survive in the poisonous presence of the free chlorine this breakdown would liberate. This data all but proved it.

  Microbiologists didn’t order media chemicals unless they meant to grow bacteria on them.

  Still, it didn’t prove he’d released these bacteria into the wild.

  Her hands went limp in her lap.

  Gene-­spliced organisms were infamously delicate, she reflected. Few survived in natural ecosystems, even after several toughening generations in the laboratory.

  Still, as she’d hypothesized to Lindon, something appeared to have robbed Goddard of 20 percent of its CFCs. She already knew bacteria could flourish in the atmosphere, suspended in cloud droplets and using atmospheric substances as nutrients.

  But could Varberg have treated this planet as his private laboratory? What about Gaea’s investment and the colonists’ hopes to establish a new home?

  He could. He’d made it clear that he didn’t play by others’ rules. Everything he lost at Messier might have made him vow that humanity would never see a planet overheat again. Melantha Lee could be covering for him, maybe for a cut of the Gaea reward.

  She shook her head, half hoping she’d guessed wrong, half certain the seemingly disparate facts—cooling, depletion, and this otherwise irrational supply order—mandated only one answer. He must be monitoring the bacterium out there, waiting to claim it as a natural mutation he might “discover” and patent. But it had already destroyed 20 percent of the fluorocarbon shield. What was he waiting for?

  For Lindon’s death, maybe. Lindon insisted on asking tough questions. Varberg might be afraid Lindon would dog his trail out into the USSC’s academic community. She wished Jon Mahera’s files hadn’t been purged, but she guessed she’d have found similar inquiries on them.

  She must publish her proposal quickly, but not until she eliminated every hint of accusation. If the bug existed it probably was a streptomycete—since she’d found it in this subinventory—but the proposal mustn’t say so.

  She released her hair from the tie, slicked it back, and pulled the cloth band tight around it again. Varberg might have a perfectly logical explanation for all this.

  Jon Mahera had probably thought that, too. Cross-­correlating this data might have been his last professional act.

  “I don’t want to lose another soils person,” Varberg’s voice echoed down her memory. “Dr. Mahera was sampling a duricrust Streptomyces seeding up on the wild when he—”

  Something creaked outside her door. She froze and listened—to nothing but her own heart thumping. Was she starting to imagine footsteps in the hall?

  She stared at her screen again. If she couldn’t eliminate this mysterious organism out there on the clouds—soon—so many greenhouse CFCs might be destroyed that the cooling would enter the critical phase. Yet she mustn’t unbalance Goddard’s frail young ecosystem with broad-­spectrum antimicrobials. Those kill-­it-­all chemicals could eliminate beneficial soil bacteria as they rained down out of the sky.

  Furthermore, before she could discover how to field-­attenuate the mysterious strep, she must grow it in her own lab.

  She must do all that without help or approval from her supervisors and without one metabolizing bact
erium to work with, as yet.

  So. She sat up straight, stretching her arms and staring at her monitor. The effort called for another sampling trip, this one into Goddard’s open sky for airborne organisms. If her suspicions were correct, Varberg might sabotage that effort once he sniffed what she was up to. She must be extremely careful.

  So how do I bring in an atmospheric sample?

  She attacked the Gaea net with renewed energy. In a Transport file, she learned that Axis maintained three fixed-­wing planes for spraying regolith with bacterial cultures, processed organic waste, and the seeds of higher plants. For her purpose, the small hovercopter would serve just as well and be more economical to run. The contact person was a man named Tate, Bryan Tate.

  This, then, was the place to start. She gave her proposal a layer of polish, saved her evening’s work in the Ellard file, and stumbled back home to Emmer and her bed.

  Dutchy

  “So you have too many yabuts.” Trev leaned close to a darkened monitor in Zoology’s break room. “So why don’t we just fly up there and hunt them off? I hear they’re edible.”

  Yukio HoBrace, unlike the other male Lwuites Trev had met thus far, sported a tiny braid dangling along one sideburn. “The yabut population out in the wild isn’t a food crop,” he said, sounding disdainful. “What we need out there is a natural system of checks and balances so eventually the planet will take care of itself. The world itself lives. That’s what terraforming is all about.”

  Stinging from the scorn in Yukio’s voice—the tech was no older than he was—Trev swallowed his urge to retort. He had too much riding on this potential job. “Yeah, right,” he said.

  “Okay, then.” Yukio touched on the screen, then typed so quickly Trev didn’t catch his password. “This is what we’re looking for.” He painted a catlike figure in muted yellow.

  Yukio, an animal handler, claimed he had slipped on ice last Goddarday and broken an ankle. He couldn’t fly south alone, and his supervisor wanted a breeding nucleus of the vanishing predators—Van Dyk weasel-­crossed lynxes on the books, “Dutchers” on Yukio’s tongue—transported to a location up on the unsettled flatlands. Some place called Lower Infinity Crater.