by Kathy Tyers
Her circuit led past the grove of small fruit trees, where green apples made young branches droop. Nine fruits dangled on one tree, twelve on another. A woman sat on a bench nearby, guarding the national treasure.
Plums blushed purple on the next tree north. How had time passed so quickly? The trees were doubtless fed an optimal N-P-K mixture and transgened for a rapid bloom-to-fruit time.
Genegineering. She had arrived on Goddard thirty-eight days ago, with little else on her mind. Was that still her ultimate priority?
In one way, it was. She was desperate to locate and destroy one particular transgened organism. In just over a month she had become a crusader in her own right, the Novia Brady-Phillips of Axis Plantation.
Amused by the comparison, she smiled wryly and strode on. How cost-inefficient, and time-consuming too, to try isolating the organism from the wild, when it had to exist—if at all—in Will Varberg’s culture collection.
Before trying the long route, she might attempt a little judicious piracy. All she had to lose was her job, a triannum at triple pay, the chance to get out of debt, professional honor, and possibly her life.
―――
She reloaded Lindon’s book after bathing, this time curled up on her bed with a cup of alfalfa tea on the nightstand, the viewer on her pillow, and Emmer under one hand. It would take about an hour to read the text once more.
Universal Father swore by this book but rarely quoted it. In context, Jesua’s fruit and livestock metaphors fit an agricultural mentality, like ancient Palestine . . . or Goddard.
She skipped sickening medical notes on the process of crucifixion.
Emmer wriggled up onto her shoulder, and Graysha tilted her head, pushing her ear down into warm fur. If Lindon didn’t have to evacuate, she’d familiarized herself enough with the book to ask questions, such as how much of it he literally believed and how many of these I-am-God statements he thought the man actually made.
Her thoughts returned to Lindon. She believed she had put aside her desire for the colonists’ genetic healing, so why was he still so much on her mind? She only wanted the best for Goddard, but at some hopeful depth of her subconscious, did she still hope he might influence the colonists to help her? She hated to think she might be pursuing this friendship out of ulterior motives.
Discouraged, she shut off the room’s main light and changed into a nightdress by the dim glow of her monitor. Gently she lifted Emmer to one side, then lay down in the middle of the bed. Ellard had always lain on her left. She pulled her blanket to her chin, creating the cave effect Emmer liked best.
Amazing how they could all pretend nothing was wrong, when privately everyone admitted jumping for the ceiling with every microseism. With the storm still blowing, satellites couldn’t even record activity in the volcanic zone. Seismology continued to insist that all epicenters were northeast near the Trident and all these little “Goddard shakes” were to be expected.
The “microseism” that night nearly rolled her off the bed, and she dashed for her desktop monitor. Three seconds later, the standard message appeared. Epicenter 59 kilometers northeast. Crater floor stable. Graysha stumbled to the clean room, sure she wouldn’t sleep until morning. One more time, she checked in on the net.
For the first time in days, Melantha Lee’s terminal was down. The woman finally must have decided she needed to sleep.
The thought woke Graysha up like caffeine. Keying hastily, she brought up Varberg’s streptomycete inventory. Notations beneath some cultures gave her hope. She transferred their filing numbers onto her pocket memo. If only Lee had gone home—and slept through the quake—she might carry this off. Lab doors didn’t lock. She dressed quickly and slipped out into the hallway.
In her own lab, she seized a few sampling items. Diffuse daylight filtering through swirling, ash-laden snow made her feel as if someone could see her, though of course everyone was home. Quietly she opened Varberg’s door far enough to slip through, then took a moment to get her bearings.
His lab suite was laid out differently from hers, with the inner room directly behind the door. It was open and as dark as Freezeout. She walked farther in.
A heavy metal door interrupted the wall beyond his office. She tried its huge latch. It, too, opened easily, chilling her with rancid-smelling air. She waved on a light. Clusters of capped tubes sat in metal bins on wire shelves, each bin numbered. Hesitantly she lifted one tube. Opaque green broth half filled it, with a tiny glass tube inverted inside. A bubble of gas showed through the inner tube when she held it up to the light.
Hurrying now, she selected tubes from the appropriate bins, thumbed the flash switch on her loop dropper, and dipped it into the first tube, then into a tube of enriched broth from her own incubator. She labeled that tube #1. It wouldn’t do to have Varberg’s inventory numbers found on her pocket memo. Yesterday she’d saved a scrap of paper from a floor meeting. On the back, she recorded culture designations in minuscule numbers.
An hour later, she’d pirated the entire public streps inventory, 192 species. After all, the best place to hide a treasure was in plain sight. Stealthily, she returned Varberg’s tubes and let herself out. The cooler’s light winked off as she shut the metal door.
―――
It wasn’t what Trev wanted to do, but darkness was falling and he had to try something. After one last check to make sure Yukio’s wrapping hadn’t slipped and one last pause to be sure his friend was breathing, he sliced the plane’s auxiliary nonelectronic compass off the control board. That prospector ought to be three degrees west of south, just about half a klick away.
He pocketed the compass and started knotting sack-tying ropes together to tie to the rotor for a guide back. He wondered who he was trying to fool. They wouldn’t stretch half a kilometer. And it was still snowing. Once he let go of the rope, he’d lose it.
But he had to try to get Yukio help. If he didn’t come back, the rope would at least give searchers a direction to look for his body . . . come the next thaw.
―――
It did not comfort Graysha to learn that a rescue party was being sent out for Yukio and Trev. On her work terminal in early Dropoff darkness, the message gleamed coldly: Their last known location, before cabin electronics apparently failed, was being searched first.
Her stomach ached with dread as she depolarized the window and peered out. There were no stars—it must still be cloudy—but the wet spring snowstorm had passed, and she couldn’t hear any wind. Lights gleamed off white humps down at the AnProd range.
Well, then, her tubes from Varberg’s inventory ought to be clouding up with cell growth. She pulled one from the water bath. The broth looked suspiciously clear, but she might be checking too early. Carefully she sniffed one . . . then sniffed again.
Phenol!
Someone had disinfected the tubes. How was that possible? No one knew she’d been here last night, unless her lab was monitored twenty-four hours a day. Who could be doing this?
Someone, she concluded, who needed to protect Varberg’s lab. She bit her tongue in frustration. It was back to atmospheric sampling. That, at least, would be part of a registered research program. Before she secured a copter, she would need to rig up some kind of collecting device.
She stared out her window. Who? she demanded of the darkness, wishing it might answer.
―――
Hannes Chair Chenny HoNin slowed to a walk and nodded greeting to several people she recognized as Hannes residents, then started to trot again, short pigtails slapping her shoulders. It would help if somehow she could be in three places at once. Assuring evacuees, maintaining calm among her own residents, keeping the e-net warm with requisitions for foodstuffs and waste pickups—her life had become one single mad run. If Ari could see her today, she might withdraw from the challenge election.
Hannes’s strained corridors housed nearly two thousand Axis children, not to mention crèche parents and frightened Gaea personn
el. She slowed down again, approaching one such corridor. Her presence reassured refugees far better than visits from staff or personal messages.
Intended for storage, this corry had no skylights, but it was warm and dry, and far from seismic danger. A young woman crouched near the main doorway, taping a little girl’s bloodied knee. “You can’t stop here as quickly as you can at home,” the woman was saying. “This floor is slicker than Axis concrete.”
“When can we go back?” The small girl caught sight of Chenny, then widened her eyes in chagrin.
Laying one hand on the child’s shoulder, the young woman straightened. “Chair HoNin, good morning.”
“No offense taken. Home is always better,” Chenny assured the little girl. She thought she recognized the slant of the woman’s eyebrows. “Crystal DalDidier, isn’t it?”
Crystal looked pleased to be recognized. “Yes. Go play, Kristin.” The girl scooted off. “Good afternoon. Other than minor accidents putting on brakes while playing tag, everyone is doing well.”
“You’re coping wonderfully.” Chenny extended a hand and shook Crystal’s. “If anything comes up, please send word to my office.”
“Somehow I suspect you’re too much like my brother, Chair HoNin. You probably never sleep.”
“I see your brother in you, Ms. DalDidier. You govern compassionately.” Chenny offered a tired smile, then walked on.
Crystal DalDidier’s resemblance to her brother reminded Chenny of that painful incident with her insulin kit. There still was no word of Graysha Brady-Phillips’s arrest, which seemed odd. Ari usually kept her informed. It was good to know that a suspect in the DalLierx murder attempt had been found, though Chenny hated to see Dr. Brady-Phillips accused. She liked the woman.
Up the next corridor, eight to an apartment, evacuated Gaea staff waited out the crisis. Their fears gave Hannes a tone she didn’t like, a sensation that something was bound to go wrong. She wished she could separate them farther from the unruffled children. Her oldest son had recently asked when they’d have Hannes to themselves.
Chenny had invited several couples to dine at her apartment over the previous few circadays. Will and Edie Varberg had attended last night. That man was so jumpy he frightened her. She hoped Axis’s geologists took the problem in hand soon. She sensed trouble in Varberg. Might as well check on him while she was in the area.
She knocked on his door.
“No,” answered a Gaea man she recognized as Rik McNab, an AnProd specialist, “the Varbergs aren’t here. They left about an hour ago, flexcase and all.”
Chenny stood stock-still, confused. Where was there to go?
―――
Graysha shut off her computer with an open-palmed whap. The HMF had finally returned word on her request for medical clearance. Because of the altitude she’d have to reach in a sampling plane to sample polar stratospheric clouds, and because of the danger of oxygen failure to someone in her condition, the HMF said no.
She couldn’t go over their heads, either. Melantha Lee had routed the request.
And there was no word from the rescue team, six hours gone. They must not have found any wreckage at or near the location where Trev lost contact.
That lack of news heartened her. At least there was still hope.
His cat! Graysha realized she’d better go feed Dutchy. No one else knew about him.
Marigolds
The taller prospector’s name was Kevan. Not much older than Trev, he held an impressive handheld metal detector, and though he scowled at the scabs striping Trev’s face, he proved willing to march back through wind-driven drifts to search for the plane and Yukio. Kevan’s partner stayed in the dugout.
Gripping a high-beam light and squinting against a driving gray blizzard, Trev stamped through filthy, shin-deep snow behind Kevan. Ice stung his face and hung from his mustache. His earlier footprints had already filled. Kevan waved the metal detector from side to side. At a large gray hump, he slid the detector into a belt holster. “Dig,” he yelled against the wet wind.
Trev yanked the young prospector’s folding shovel from his own belt and thrust it into snow. It clanged. Several minutes later, they squeezed through into the plane’s cabin.
Trev bent over Yukio. “Still breathing,” he muttered thankfully. “Look at his forehead, though.” Blood had crusted over a swollen lump. “You know anything about first aid?”
“Only enough to be a danger to injured people. Let me take a look.”
Trev fell down into his own seat. Kevan pulled off thick gloves, did something to Yukio’s head, and ran a hand up his neck. “Concussion, I bet, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with his spine. Hypothermia’s the immediate danger. We’ll have to get him to the dugout.”
“I’ll carry him,” Trev offered, “if you’ll take the equipment.”
“We’ll both carry him. I’m going to unbolt the chair. Hold this.”
After slipping Yukio into a coat, they lifted him, chair and all, without letting his neck twist. After freeing him from the plane, carrying him the half kilometer to Kevan’s dugout was a lot easier. Eventually, Trev hunched close to a catalytic furnace, drinking hot water while Kevan adjusted blankets over Yukio on his own bed, a foam pad on the bare rock floor. “That’s about all I can do for now,” Kevan grunted. He stepped over to the fire and poured hot water into his only other cup. “I don’t have any of the right drugs. We’ll have to wait for him to wake up.”
“How long will that be?”
The other man, a dark figure who sat cross-legged on the stone floor, finally spoke. “Minutes, hours, days. Or maybe never.” He bent back down over a capsule viewer on his rock-slab table.
“Nick, my cheerful partner,” Kevan said.
Trev shivered. “Can you call Axis?” The HMF could probably help Yukio.
“When the storm’s over, sure. But this isn’t what you’d call a licensed establishment, and we’re not pleased to announce our location. What are you doing out here?”
He’d hoped to have Yukio along, conscious, to talk to the prospectors when he finally contacted them. “Uh, looking for you people, actually. We work for Gaea, and our business took us this way one day. I saw your smoke. I’m looking for a place to get away from Axis if I need to. You see . . .”
He explained his predicament without emphasizing the code-red threat his father posed. When he finished, Nick had swiveled around on the stone floor to sit staring. Kevan scratched his stubbled cheek. Black whiskers and eyebrows gave the husky young man’s fair skin an even whiter cast, but other than that, he had the features of another pretty Lwuite.
“We don’t want Gaea company,” Kevan said at last. “This is our claim, even if we haven’t registered it yet. I could run you off, but you’re probably going to report the locale anyway.”
“Mmm, no. I won’t report you.” Trev set down his borrowed cup and rubbed his hands close to the heater. “I know what it’s like to want to hide.”
Nick fingered his auburn beard. “Oh? How are you going to get your friend back to Axis without reporting where you are?”
“Get the plane flying again. Maybe.” Kludging a break in communications was one thing. Heavy repair was another.
Kevan snorted. “Sure you will. But maybe Axis will be busy enough worrying about those volcanoes not to bother with prospectors until we’re ready to register this strike.”
“Strike?” Trev thought he knew what that word meant.
Kevan leaned away from the heater. “If your father’s who you say he is, what’s the chance he could offer a little financial backing for a start-up mining operation? The colony would pay for extraction, but finding the best offworld markets can be tricky from out here.”
“Hey-ey,” said Nick. Finally, he smiled.
Terrified by the thought, Trev reconsidered. Blase liked power. Wealth bought it. Maybe he could buy the old man’s forgiveness—for himself and Goddard colony. “But . . . but then he’d have
to know where I am,” he protested anyway.
“Sounds fair to me,” Kevan said. “Axis is going to know where we are because of you.”
Nick nodded.
On the other hand . . . “Nobody changes your face if you get found,” Trev snarled, flooded by the old fear.
Kevan looked significantly at his bed. “Look, I’m not going to let your friend die from lack of attention. But someone’s going to have to pay for that attention. I’d just as soon it wasn’t me.”
Trev sucked the last cooled drops out of his cup. Nick and Kevan’s hideout, shelved with broken rock slabs and lit by one small lamp over the heater, didn’t look like much to give up.
But fair was fair.
Startled, he picked at a scab on his chin. Where did that thought come from . . . Graysha?
Buying off Blase might be his only chance—better than trying to hide from him, anyway. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “Call help. Show me your operation. Then, uh—” he bit his lip “—give me time, a month or so, to contact Blase.” Actually, he’d probably show up sooner than that.
Kevan raised one black eyebrow.
“But if Blase backs you, help me work on him. Grovel if you have to. It’ll be worth it. You’ve got to trust me on this.”
Nick picked up a shard of stone from the floor, tossed it spinning toward the ceiling, and caught it. “That’s doable.”
Was that daylight at the end of his long, long tunnel? “Deal?”
Kevan scrunched up his mouth, then said, “I’d buy it, if you’re really who you say you are. Nick?”
Nick shrugged. “We’ll write it up later. Call Axis for a medic, then take Trev LZalle on his tour. I’ll watch whatshisname.”
“Yukio,” Trev mumbled, glancing down at his Lwuite friend. If that guy died he’d never forgive himself.
Kevan lifted a dusty cover from a compact transmitter, made sure its leads were secure, then turned it on. No one answered his hails, neither at Axis nor at Center. Trev heard only steady chattering static.