by Kathy Tyers
Wrinkling his nose again, he pursed his loose lips, then tilted back his head. “I know the systems pretty well. I’d say thirty minutes.”
“If you and Graysha work together and make it twenty, I can get you a plane. Tonight.” Daylight was strengthening outside the window.
He thrust his scabby chin forward. “What?”
Yes, she realized, a high-altitude flight might suit her better than a D-group tragedy. She would be absolutely elsewhere when it happened.
Ari stroked the desktop’s leather cover. “One of Urbansky’s planes is coming back to refuel. It should land in seventeen minutes.” She lifted a square of precious paper and waved it in his direction. “I have an order—forged, but who will know if Lee’s signature is genuine?—granting you priority requisition. Just don’t crash this one.”
He whooped.
“That’s the spirit.” She dropped the paper, then flattened her palms together and touched fingertips to her forehead. “Go sampling. Go now. You’ll have daylight for thirty hours. But be sure to take Dr. Brady-Phillips along. You know how badly she’s been wanting this.”
He seized the sheet of paper. “The HMF doesn’t want her to go—they’re afraid high altitude might worsen her disease—but she’s not going to let that stop her. Thanks!”
Worsen her? Absolutely. She would need extra oxygen and glucose to make it home this time. Lowering her hands, Ari smiled. “Hurry, then. My people will meet you two at the airfield in nineteen minutes.”
―――
Graysha dashed into the Gaea cafeteria just as the dinner lines closed. Jirina stood at the dump window. “Where’ve you been?” Jirina demanded. “Your little Trev bounced off both sides of the hall looking for you.”
“What did he want?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Where is he now?” Waking disoriented in the greenhouse after an unexpected two-hour nap, she’d clutched Emmer to her shoulder and run straight home.
“He went out. Said he’d leave you a message.”
Graysha cajoled soup and bread from a server wiping down her station, then hurried back to work. She couldn’t believe she’d done such a stupid thing. Sure enough, her monitor blinked. When she punched in her personal code, Trev’s message appeared.
+North polar area, stratospheric clouds—isn’t that what you said? I went out, since you aren’t around. Ari got us the plane by forging Lee’s sig. Know you wanted those organisms ASAP so didn’t wait. I’ve got your gear, and I know more about how to use it than you think I do.+
―――
Trev relaxed his hands on the steering yoke of the little plane, letting calm settle. He was tired in this eerily bright night-shift hour—exhausted was a better word—but two sleep replacers would get him through tomorrow.
He had no idea if the sampling he’d done over the last six hours yielded a viable specimen, but at least he had done it right. Gray’s proposal, published in well-outlined teacher talk, was easy to follow.
As for the stratospheric clouds . . .
Sparkling like fresh, iridescent pink ice, they conducted some kind of acid chemistry—if he understood references she’d made in the lab. It had been the most exhausting six hours he’d ever spent, and the loneliest, but also the most beautiful.
“Okay,” he said aloud. “A direct course home will take me more or less directly past the Trident. That ought to be wild.”
He still suspected Chair MaiJidda was only his ally because she wanted to meet his father, but she was eagerly cooperating with Gray’s research. It was a welcome change from DalLierx’s hesitancy.
Working to stay awake, he reran the memory of returning to Gray’s lab, fairly bursting with news about the glittering caves backing up to that boron deposit, however big it was. She’d been busy, though, like everyone else at Axis. He actually had an easy time keeping Nick and Kevan’s secret. He’d done nothing, in fact, but mention the carbon in passing . . . and drop a rock sample on Yukio’s lap in the Axis HMF for luck.
Nick and Kevan would prefer to put off official invasion of their claim, anyway.
About an hour later, he spotted the vents by their steam and ash clouds.
Already Etna, Fuji, and Lee were dark cones dribbling red-orange lava. Trev shook sleep from his head. What a wonderful world—a young world, where mountains and people could grow free.
If the people could learn to survive. And if other people let them stay, instead of yanking them offworld—
A wild pitch of the plane jerked him out of his reverie. Too close! Prevailing winds had pushed him almost to the vents. Like in the bad old vidis, Trev’s life flashed through his mind. This would not be a happy ending. Regaining control, he banked away from the hot updraft and steered back upwind onto course for Axis. The fate of a planet might be sloshing in his sample flasks.
―――
Though she’d been sleeping soundly when Trev buzzed her room, Graysha jumped into her work clothes at two-fifteen and beat him to the lab, leaving Emmer on the pillow. Undoubtedly Melantha Lee knew Chair MaiJidda had commandeered Urbansky’s plane by now. She would be hopping mad. Graysha wanted as much work done as possible before Lee interfered again.
The elevator door whined open. “Ho, Graysha,” Trev sang out, his baritone voice turned tenor with excitement and exhaustion, to the accompaniment of a cart’s rolling wheels.
She lunged off her stool and into the hall. They might be the only ones in the building, but she couldn’t count on it. She raised a finger to shush him.
Comically biting both lips, he wheeled the cart into her lab. She helped guide it.
“Okay, lift the metal door.” Carefully they unpacked the sampling rack. Graysha gasped softly. In three of Trev’s culture flasks filled with chlorine-enriched medium, murkiness betrayed bacterial growth.
“You did it, Trev,” she breathed. “You did it.”
She opened one flask and carefully sniffed. Both the chlorine stench and the streptomycete soil scent were unmistakable. This was a strep organism, all right, and it thrived in an environment that would kill most bacteria.
Working rapidly, she drew a sample from one cloudy flask, dropped it onto a slide, and inserted the slide into her stain fixer. She breathed a prayer before switching the slide to her scanning scope’s stage.
Filamentous rods, with chains of spores showing clearly at the end of long, thin mycelia: Streptomyces, confirmed.
Her back popped as she leaned away from the scope. Reaching for a marker, she paused. She’d been about to name the organism Sample One, but that described nothing. In her neatest print for posterity, she labeled the slide Streptomyces varbergii.
Trev hung close to her elbow, reeking of sweat. A day-glow grin lit his mustache from beneath. “Take a look,” she said, and she stepped back from the scope. “All right, we know this bug survives at cool room temp and in our chlorine medium. So our next job is to confirm that it uses CFCs as its carbon source.”
“Of course it does,” Trev insisted. “Look where it was growing.”
She smiled at her student. He’d learned so much! “Yes, but we have to confirm that. We have to try growing it in a medium that has no other carbon source—only CFC—and see if it survives. Would you inoculate—no,” she said, shaking her head, “you’ve been up all night. I’ll do it. Thanks so much, Trev. You’re a trooper.”
He raised both arms. “Hey, no problem.”
“Go get some sleep.”
“No problem with that, either.” He wove and wobbled out the door.
Graysha ducked into her private office, intending to fire a message to Lindon’s office, then remembered he didn’t work there anymore. It had happened so suddenly. On the public register, she found his home code. +We found the organism,+ she sent.
To her surprise, he came back instantly. +I’ll be down in the morning. Good luck.+
Now her mind leaped ahead. As soon as she could confirm S. varbergii’s viability in CFC medium and
find out what else it grew on, her next job would be to decide what would kill it. She would need something that would eradicate it on the clouds but wouldn’t destroy streps in the soil if rains fell. This had to be a mighty tough bacterium, since chlorine didn’t faze it—
Actually, she realized, her first job was to prepare multiple samples and hide them, in her lab and Jirina’s—and in Varberg’s, since he was gone. She would even hide some down in her apartment. She and Trev sweat blood and risked their lives to get these samples. Three 500-milliliter flasks were too vulnerable.
From the glassware rack, she pulled several small sterile capped tubes, and she rapidly pipetted 10 mls of the cloudiest solution into each, quickly replacing caps one-handed. Two tubes went into her lab-coat pocket, propped upright with her pocket memo, as surreptitiously as she could get them there. She felt silly about that, but somehow, someone had learned about her piracy of Will Varberg’s streps. Maybe each lab was watched electronically.
Then she pulled a handful of culture dishes from her refrigerated stock and inoculated those, too. She initialed each sample GBP, then tucked three into her lab refrigerator and carried two up the hall to Jirina’s. She needed to stash these in cool spots, because organisms that survived in polar clouds might not thrive at the temp of normal incubators.
It was 4:28 a.m., and still she’d seen no sign of Melantha Lee.
Home, then, quickly, with the other tube and one culture dish she palmed, and then one more trip back to work. She left Trev’s flasks chilling in a ten-degree water bath and waved off her office lights.
When she stumbled into her apartment, everything looked the way she had left it, except that the mail light on her monitor blinked rapidly. She cued up the message.
+Please contact me ASAP. LDL+
Didn’t he ever sleep? She punched his code and an alert. A few seconds later, she read, +I’ve gotten HMF permission for you to set up a safe lab over there. Medtech PalTion is an old friend. She’ll meet you downstairs at 7:30. I’ll wait at Wastewater to talk at 7:45.+
Giddy with exhaustion, she wanted to laugh out loud. +Bless you, Lindon.+ It was perfect! Surely no one would sabotage cultures she filed at the colonists’ HMF.
She punched up Gaea net and published the fact that she’d found her organisms, but before she typed in the name she’d given them, her courage faltered. She didn’t dare accuse Varberg this publicly, now that he’d turned violent. S. gaeaii, she pecked out. Too many vowels, almost unpronounceable, but it would do.
Lee would be furious.
She moved Emmer to the pillow’s edge and fell onto her bed fully clothed.
Communion
After four precious hours of sleep, Graysha met the medtech and took possession of a closetlike back lab burrowed under the HMF building. Then she hurried to Wastewater, where Lindon waited, stroking a young green willow leaf. She hurried up to him. “What have you heard about your daughter?”
He exhaled heavily, fingering the leaf. “No change,” he said. “They promised to contact me if anything happens. Have you been by the medical lab?”
She ached for him. “Yes,” she said. “It should work well. Thank you. I’ll keep careful track of materials and see the HMF is repaid.”
“If you give me a list, I’ll cover that.”
“Cover . . . ? You don’t mean pay for them personally? That wouldn’t be right.”
“I’ll see that it’s covered,” he said firmly. “I should have thought of this earlier.”
She hoped Axis had funds set aside for such purposes and he wasn’t absorbing the expenses for her benefit. “We didn’t have an organism isolated earlier, so giving me room to work on this would’ve been premature.”
He gave the leaf one last tug, then turned away. “You’re sure this is the one?”
“It looks right.”
“How soon will you know?” he asked. “Ari MaiJidda has been ten times the help to you that I ever was, just by commandeering that plane.”
She exulted. He actually wanted to help! Then as before, she wondered, Are my feelings toward Lindon true, or am I subconsciously using him? “You were trying to get along with Dr. Lee,” she said. “I’m starting to suspect that she simply can’t be humored.”
Finally, a wry smile appeared. “I’ll say nothing.”
It felt good to distract him from such horrible fears. “Anyway, my antimicrobial sensitivity tests should only take a day or so to run. I’ll go in over my lunch break and finish setting them up.”
“Have you had breakfast? You shouldn’t skip meals.” Two long creases furrowed his forehead, and dark circles ringed his eyes. With the surprising election defeat coming while his daughter still was a hostage, he must be resting terribly.
“No, and you’re not supposed to go without sleep. But this is important.”
“I’ll nap this afternoon. Please go eat, Graysha.”
Was that tenderness she heard in his voice? “Believe me,” she said, “I’ve tried to figure out how I could get through to Varberg and talk him into releasing the girls. But he doesn’t like me. He won’t listen.” She took a few steps away, studying the cattails. One head was starting to soften, releasing tiny feathered seeds to drift down into the raceways.
“Graysha.”
She looked over her shoulder. This time, there was no mistaking his gentle tone.
“There’s a church service tonight. Would you like to register an inquiry under the RL Act?”
Graysha gaped. He couldn’t do this, could he? “Would I be welcome? I don’t want your people to think . . . Well, Ari believes I’m spying for my mother.”
“That’s right. She does.” Stepping backward, he tangled himself in a massive fern whose fronds overhung the path. She watched as he extricated himself without tearing a single leaflet.
“Well?” she asked after a long silence. “Would I be welcome?”
“To those whose intentions are sincere, you would be.”
Even in her home church, where people loved to pass judgment on unexpected behavior, there were a dear few who didn’t. “I don’t want to make things complicated for you, Lindon.”
“You’ve complicated things since the day you arrived,” he said, and he reached for her hand. Hesitantly, she grasped his fingers. He pulled his arm in, drew her closer, and then dropped her hand so he could sweep both arms around her shoulders. “You’re cold,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”
His body gave off a warmth that made her want to stand closer yet. “I don’t mean to be difficult,” she whispered, disbelieving.
She felt his palms spread out on her back. Not daring to move or speak again, she locked her hands together, arms surrounding him. She could feel his heart beat a slow, steady rhythm. “Graysha,” he began—
Something clicked not too far away. Graysha let go of Lindon and turned to stare at the door, keenly aware that she still heard a heartbeat in her ears . . . her own racing pulse.
Paul Ilizarov backed into the treatment plant, dangling a towel over one arm. A short-haired young woman followed. As he turned, his shoulders squared with a sudden intake of breath and his demeanor became silk and oil. The woman’s eyes grew huge. She backed out and vanished.
“Graysha,” Paul greeted her. “DalLierx.”
“Good morning, Paul.” Embarrassed for no good reason, she brushed past him on her way out into the corridor. There she stood, waiting for angry voices.
Instead, the door clicked open again. Lindon slipped through. “I’ll meet you in the hub at seven-twenty tonight.” He ran his fingers through his dark hair. “Is that all right?”
Her only thought was how much she wanted to hold him again. It was probably a good thing Paul had burst in when he did. She must maintain her professional objectivity—but was that possible anymore? “Where do I go to register this inquiry?” she whispered. “I’ll do it before work.”
“Can you find Kenn VandenNeill’s office in the CA building?”
“I’m sure I can. I’ll do it.”
―――
Varberg’s continued absence meant she, Jirina, and Paul had to cover his duties, and she scrambled all morning simply to keep up with her third of the floor’s maintenance routine. She decided to save time by seeding S. gaeaii from the flasks right there in her Gaea water baths onto CFC-enriched plates so she could run antimicrobial sensitivity trials. It meant a frantic morning, but soon, two dozen plates lay upside down in her cooled wincubator, evenly inoculated with broth from the flasks and then dotted with tiny paper circles. Each color-coded dot was impregnated with a known antimicrobial or antibiotic. By tomorrow, she might know if her job was going to be impossible . . . or just difficult. She hated to think of trying to convince Gaea Consortium to pay for a huge pharmaceutical shipment that might require refrigeration.
But if it meant saving the Goddard project, plus discovering an organism that would help with all future terraforming experiments, they probably would pay. It would be in their best interests, certainly.
She looked out a northeast window on her way out for lunch. This morning, in still air, the ash cloud resembled a giant cauliflower.
I must be hungry, she decided.
After lunch, she hiked up to CA and registered her inquiry. Mr. VandenNeill’s secretary took down the information with a reassuringly nonchalant expression.
At one o’clock, her message alarm rang with a summons to Melantha Lee’s office.
She latched the wincubator, swabbed her counters, and squared her shoulders. This would be her moment of truth. As soon as Trev came back from lunch—five minutes late as usual—she told him, “I have to go downstairs. Make sure nobody bothers the wincubator or the water baths, and see if you can finish that entisol inventory while you stand guard.”
“Right, boss.” He slung his lab coat over his shoulders. Graysha thought they looked broader than before.
Downstairs, standing outside Melantha Lee’s closed door, she felt like a prisoner awaiting trial. The mottled floor tiles looked and felt chilly, even through her shoes. A dark-haired man typed rapidly at the reception area’s keyboard. He had to be Edie Varberg’s replacement.