Shivering World

by Kathy Tyers

  “Never underestimate a hungry herbivore.”

  Sure enough, more yabuts swarmed the remaining sack. They looked bigger, with brighter eyes, than the ones in Varberg’s experimental-­animal cages.

  Naturally. They were free.

  Both other bags lay almost consumed. “Is that cloth good for them?” Trev asked.

  “Not particularly. But it’ll go right through.”

  Out popped the male’s little head. Trev snickered. One small he-­cat, with three mates and plenty to eat, wouldn’t have such a bad life. Its short black tail stood sassily straight up as it pounced on easy prey. “Get ’em, big guy!” Trev yelled, then he glanced back into the cargo compartment. His own cat bag wriggled.

  “You’re going silly,” said Yukio. “Must be those painkillers. We’d better get back and show you to the HMF.”

  ―――

  If the quiet mail alarm in Graysha’s bedroom had sounded five minutes later, she would have fallen asleep and missed it.

  She rolled off the bed and stepped over to squint at the keyboard on her little desk, under the gathered wall hanging.

  +If you’re awake, may I talk to you? Lindon DL+

  Graysha blinked. What could he want at this hour? Standing, she typed, +I’m awake. Certainly.+

  +Would you meet me at Wastewater?+

  This was a surprise. And she had news for him. +I’ll be there,+ she answered. +Ten minutes.+

  She dressed hastily, ran a brush through her hair, reached for a hair tie, and hesitated. Most men liked loose hair.

  And all the Lwuite women braided theirs. With one smooth motion, she rewrapped the tie.

  He had already arrived when she reached Wastewater. The air smelled musty after the evening influx of baths taken and toilets flushed. Planetary daylight gleamed on, though by her body clock it was time for sleep. Lindon waited at one end of a raceway, a gleam of sunlight reflecting almost blue in his black hair. Standing with both hands thrust into his pockets, he looked tired.

  “Hello,” she said, stopping several meters away.

  “Graysha. Thank you for coming. I wanted to speak with you privately.”

  “What can I do for you?” she asked. It was useless to wish they could simply talk frankly, one person to another, representing no one but themselves . . . but she wished it anyway.

  Lindon pulled one hand out of a pocket. “You wanted to know about my faith, I think.”

  “Oh.” She caught her mental balance. Was he really saying what she thought he was saying? “Oh, well, I don’t want to trespass on the RL Act. Your group’s privacy is your right.”

  He looked down, then from side to side. “Ah, there’s nowhere to sit, except on the gravel.”

  “I’ve sat on gravel before.” She matched action to her words and lowered herself onto the walkway.

  He made a seat out of the gravel beside her, clasped his hands, and then rested them against his lips.

  She held a breath.

  “We are not a homogeneously religious people,” he said, then paused again.

  Her groping hand found a pebbly area smooth enough to lean on. “And you’ve done something to your genes,” she stated. “Please don’t tell me about it, because I can’t pass on what I don’t know, even accidentally. But I am curious as to why—at this point in time, with all science has discovered and proven—some people maintain belief systems. I think there’s more to the universe than an accidental spray of atoms, but a lot of my colleagues don’t.”

  “If that were all this world is about,” he said, “I don’t know how I could live.” He reached for the breast pocket of his muslin shirt. “The deeper that science—real science, not assumptions—delves, the more mysteries it finds. Or so I’m told. You’d know better than I, I think.”

  She recalled her family’s interminable discussions of unified field theory. “I think you’re right.”

  “Here, take this.” He drew out a black text capsule. “The gist of it is that a human born on Earth spoke with all the authority of the universe’s creator. This is one of several records of his life, death, and teachings.”

  This sounded sickeningly familiar. “You’re what, a Christian?”

  His expression blanked. “Yes.”

  He couldn’t have known she was raised CUF. Boldly, she asked, “All of you?

  “No.”

  At last a crack appeared in that wall of secrecy, but of all the horrible things, she’d never expected . . . She frowned, inhaling the room’s heavy green scent. “Novia is, too.”

  He seemed just as shocked, staring back with huge black eyes. “What denomination?”

  “Universal Father.”

  Slowly his head drooped, and he leaned back on both hands. “Oh.” His voice sounded sad. “That makes sense. Are you?”

  “Once.”

  “Not any longer?”

  “I have to admit, Lindon, that I despise that church.”

  His eyes regained a bit of their gleam. “Does the word apostate mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Never mind, then. Let’s just say that I’ve never considered CUF a Christian denomination.”

  “They do.”

  “I know. Would you be willing to take a fresh look at old data for my sake, without bringing any of the CUF’s commentaries into consideration? Could you just read the unadulterated text?”

  “I work with raw data. I could do that.”

  “It’s John’s gospel.” As he passed the capsule, their hands touched. “It must’ve taken courage to leave Novia’s church.”

  “It didn’t feel like courage. I simply stopped showing up.”

  “Breaking faith with your mother—professionally, too—would be a difficult step.”

  Plainly, he was fishing for information. “Do you really believe I’ve broken away from her?”

  He stared into the cattail marsh. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “You have too much at stake to trust someone like me, casually.”

  “You put that well, Graysha.”

  She sighed. “I reported to her four times,” she said, deciding honesty might win him where subterfuge would fail. “There aren’t many cases of genuine homogenegineering.”

  “Did you follow those reports?”

  “The only one that looked serious was the Endedi case.”

  He sat up straight, crossed his legs, and eyed her. “You gave information on Rebecca Endedi?”

  She didn’t like the hard, alert set to his eyes. “One of her former students enrolled in my lab. The girl drove off half the class with her crazy stories, but some of them were too wild to be fabricated. So I mentioned her to Novia.”

  He shut his eyes for several seconds. “Endedi was convicted,” he said. “It was merely enhancement, trying to breed superior athletes. Six boys had been altered genetically, eight little girls. They were all between the ages of two months and three years. The EB subjected all fourteen of them to full-­body irradiation so no clones could ever be made, then isolated them for the rest of their lives from contact with any humans other than their guards. When we left Einstein, one had already died of leukemia. Three others were dying.”

  Horrified, Graysha tried to moisten her dry mouth. Toddlers . . . mere babies.

  “Endedi can’t practice medicine again, of course,” he added. “She’s now a programming assistant at the women’s prison in Graham’s Reach.”

  It was hard to care about that, compared with the horrible fate imposed on fourteen innocent children. The only crimes were committed by their parents and a lawbreaking doctor.

  “Novia’s your mother,” he said, staring straight at her with narrowed eyes. “She can pressure you in all kinds of ways. And you must still have some loyalty. I’m sure you love her.”

  Graysha shook her head, feeling filthy inside. “I didn’t have to do it because of her. I was . . . I still am trying to pay off a lawsuit my ex-­husband slapped me with. And no, I don’t love Novia.
Not with any kind of affection, anyway. If only there were some way I could make amends to those children.” She fought down a choking sensation and pocketed his text capsule.

  He kept staring at the raceway. “You need to know,” he said dispassionately, “that Ari MaiJidda wasn’t convinced by your gamma-­vertol testimony. I can’t go into reasons, but there’s still a chance you’ll be arrested. If you are, though . . .” He reached toward her shoulder but didn’t come close to touching it. “It will not be because of what you just told me. I asked her to wait until you can finish your atmospheric research, if she decides to pursue the case. I won’t mention Rebecca Endedi—if you don’t try to contact your mother.”

  Graysha felt shattered inside. So much for trying to level with him! “You can’t tell me why she thinks I was lying? You gave me gamma-­vertol.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  If they thought she was an EB nettech . . .

  She didn’t want to even use the word, in the faint hope they didn’t already suspect it. She looked hard at his face. To her surprise, she saw genuine regret in the softly raised set of his eyebrows, something she’d never seen in Ellard. Maybe she was seeing Lindon’s keen sense of responsibility, to his people and his faith.

  Or was it sympathy? “On that account,” she said, “if I’m going to be arrested as soon as I finish, I would take my time with the CFC study. But I think there’s something serious going on in the atmosphere, and I want to see it resolved, and I need to hurry. Whoever’s doing this doesn’t want to be caught.”

  Lindon’s head turned, and once again, his dark eyes focused on her face. “I appreciate your dedication.”

  “Good.” Graysha drew a deep breath, steadying herself to plunge into even deeper water. “Because I have a solid theory about what’s going on.”

  Published

  “You said you would tell me as soon as you—”

  “It’s only the barest bit of evidence,” Graysha explained, “but it’s something concrete at last. Dr. Varberg ordered a quantity of chlorofluorocarbons for laboratory use. On the Micro floor, what we use chemicals for is growing organisms that will use them for food.”

  “Exactly what you suggested before.” He crossed his arms. “What do we do?”

  “If there’s an—” The term that crossed her mind sounded ridiculous, but she decided to use it. It was something a layman would understand. “If there’s an atmospheric infection, we have to bring in some of the organisms.”

  “How?”

  “As soon as I can get a proposal through, I hope I’ll be able to use a Gaea plane for atmospheric sampling.”

  He reached over, and this time he rested a hand on her shoulder. “I won’t report this to Ari until you tell me to go ahead. The fewer people who know what you’re doing, particularly people who plainly don’t like you, the less risk you run of this getting back to Varberg and Lee.”

  To her embarrassment, she wasn’t thinking about Ari MaiJidda at all but rather the warmth of that hand on her shoulder. What if the Lwuites weren’t gene healers but gene modifiers, after all? In that case, Lindon was more—or less—than human in every cell of that hand. For an instant, she had the eerie sensation of touching an alien.

  Then more immediate concerns crowded her mind. Whether or not Ari MaiJidda arrested her, her own D-­group comrades might lynch her if Lindon spread the word that she had reported Rebecca Endedi.

  Information flow could be deadly. Both she and Lindon now held the power of life and death over each other. She shivered.

  “It’s late.” He rocked onto his feet and stood. “I don’t need the book capsule back anytime soon. Give it a chance. Even as literature, it’s a masterpiece. Your mother,” he added, “did she encourage you to participate in church activities?”

  Please, not Sunday school. Not from him. “Always.”

  “You resent her.”

  “Bitterly.”

  “She stands in need of forgiveness, the same as you or I.”

  “Not to hear her talk about it.”

  “I’m sure,” he said, glancing skyward, “but she does, whether or not the CUF would agree. Good night, Graysha.”

  Back at her apartment, Graysha didn’t feel like sleeping and didn’t want to try. Behind all the mystery surrounding the Lwuites, this. How could Lindon DalLierx share a faith with his mortal enemy, Novia Brady-­Phillips? His people denied the perfection of God’s creation.

  Unless . . . were they healers?

  Confused, she shut her eyes, remembering a soft touch on her palm and a hand lying on her shoulder. It had been so long, so long.

  And it was so late, and she was being so stupid. In Lindon’s eyes, Graysha was the worst kind of traitor. Did this chain of accusation and suspicion have no end?

  Rubbing down with her warm rough washcloth relaxed her muscles, and then she brushed Emmer. The gribien squirmed, trying to escape. “Stop that,” Graysha chided her. “You need this.” Her pet’s long, nearly flat body contorted once more, and then, to Graysha’s surprise, the gribien rolled over and offered her belly.

  “Oh, old girl,” Graysha murmured, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She had learned one vital thing in her conversation with Lindon. There was no Lwuite religion. It was a sham after all, a show for the sake of the RL Act. Lindon had volunteered information that might doom them all, showing her that his faith mattered more than any possible charge of wrongdoing.

  And in almost the next breath, she’d told him how deep her treachery ran . . . by his standards. Lindon would never trust her with anything now, no matter what the Lwuites could really offer. What a stupid mistake she’d made, thinking honesty might dispose him to accept her.

  She decided she would inquire no further. What she didn’t know, the Eugenics Board couldn’t learn from her.

  She twisted tension out of her back, then clutched her prickly feather pillow. She’d like to read that text capsule, but if God existed, she had a bone to pick with Him.

  He didn’t play fairly.

  ―――

  She went through the motions of work the next morning without producing much new data and finally retreated to her computer station. The research proposal was basically finished. She’d started deleting and reinserting the same words and phrases. All she lacked was the nerve to send it down to Melantha Lee. “What do you think?” she asked Trev, who slipped in for his morning instructions. Then she got a good look at him and exclaimed, “What did you do to your face?”

  He touched a new mask of bandages that covered his nose and both cheeks, “Cat scratches. I’m okay. Let’s see what you wrote.” He read a few lines, then shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong guy. I—”

  Someone rapped on the door behind her. Before she could fully turn around, Will Varberg stood at her other shoulder. “What are you working on?” The big man wore a new fragrance today, something musky with an off-­acid contrast.

  She might as well get this over with. She let him finish reading.

  Atmospheric task force proposal. Submitter: Graysha Brady-­Phillips, Ph.D.

  Abstract: It is proposed that current atmospheric cooling experienced on the planet Goddard is due, at least in part, to a thin-­air ultraviolet mutation of some organism used in terraforming, a mutation critically dangerous to the future of the Goddard project in that it utilizes chlorofluorocarbons, either C-­11 or C-­12, as a carbon source. Such an organism might survive suspended in polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs).

  Proposal: A high-­atmospheric survey shall be undertaken, and all organisms obtained will be inoculated in a chlorine-­rich medium. Any organism demonstrating survivability in that environment will then be inoculated into a medium consisting chiefly of chlorofluorocarbons, to see if the suspect organism exists in fact . . .

  The screen ran on with suggested procedures. Graysha watched them scroll past with mixed feelings of professional satisfaction and personal dread. She’d drafted a solid proposal, but her relat
ionship with Will Varberg was about to change radically. Starting today, she would either work progressively closer to Varberg or establish a professional rivalry.

  Or follow Jon Mahera into the soil.

  Varberg pushed away and leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “Going for the reward, are you?”

  Now was the moment. She had to try and enlist his help. “Well, certainly. But the whole floor could work on this. We could share the reward. There would be plenty to go around.”

  “I don’t think I’d publish that.” He stared down his nose, shaking his head.

  Dread danced in the pit of her stomach. “Why not?”

  “I tried something like that once,” he said. “My computer picked up a virus that took the techs a week to cure. I’m almost surprised you got this far. Don’t forget how long that Gaea reward has stood. It’s not going to be easy.”

  She almost mentioned the gibberish that had been made of her files. Her next thought was of Jon Mahera. It silenced her.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Goddard’s atmosphere, Graysha.”

  What could she say to answer that?

  Trev spared her. “Hey. Leave her alone.” Trev stood, feet wide apart, ready this time for Varberg’s temper. “She knows a lot about this planet.”

  “I’m only playing with ideas,” Graysha put in hastily. She saved the proposal back onto the Ellard file, then realized too late she’d just shown Varberg where to find it. “As I understand it, Chairman DalLierx is deeply concerned about the notion of cooling. It’s almost an obsession on his part,” she added, guessing Varberg’s preoccupation with overwarming on Messier might make Lindon’s concern seem ridiculous. Humorous, even, if she gave it the right tone of voice.

  Varberg didn’t laugh, but he backed off a step. “Mmm. And since he’s been on our butts all G-­year about the cooling, he has suddenly adopted you as his Gaea favorite. Lovely. Keep your nose clean. If you’re that short on work, come up to my office. I have all sorts of projects that need attention.”

  His back disappeared around the hallway corner. “Thanks,” she called with a sinking sensation.

  It would take him a minute, more or less, to reach his lab, and if he was the culprit, she could kiss the Ellard file good-­bye.