Shivering World

by Kathy Tyers

  At last, he lifted his leaden hands to the keyboard. +Chair HoNin: Permission granted. LDL+ He hesitated another minute, covering the message with prayer.

  Then he sent it.

  ―――

  Edie Varberg woke, panicked. Voices, lights, people rushing one way and another. Someone waved on the brilliant overhead lamp.

  Will stood rigid in the corner, dangling Merria HoBrace by her shoulders. A beefy man in black aimed some kind of weapon at them.

  “Let her go, let her go!” Edie shrieked at Will. She spun around. Someone carried tiny Sarai DalLierx from the room. “Wait,” she called, “let me—stop, let me give you my medicine vial! She isn’t hurt, she’s only asleep.”

  The rescuer paused. “Mighty sound sleep.”

  Edie seized the kit bag.

  “Edie,” Will shouted angrily.

  The staph-­doctored inhaler—they would charge him with trying to kill DalLierx if they saw it! He was guilty and sick, desperately sick. She whirled back to face her husband. “Let the girl go!”

  Will hesitated, fury flaring his nostrils.

  “Please, Will.” Her voice caught.

  He threw Merria to the floor. Instantly, the burly man sprang. Someone else caught Edie’s hands from behind and cuffed them. She relaxed, sobbing.

  A voice behind her clipped, “All clear, Chair HoNin.”

  The door flew open. Chenny HoNin strode in, short pigtails wagging as she surveyed the room. She knelt beside Merria HoBrace, who lay slumped on the floor, and extended a hand.

  “Wait,” said the burly man. “Don’t move her. She might be injured.”

  “We didn’t mean to hurt them.” Edie forced words through her tears. “Please, we . . . we . . . it’s only . . . oh . . .”

  “Spit it out, woman!” Will shouted.

  She couldn’t look at him but mumbled toward the floor. “We only want to go away. Back to a hab. Back where it’s safe.”

  Chenny HoNin was a short woman, but authority heightened her. “That has been arranged,” she said. “First, however, Dr. Varberg . . .” She stared up at Will with hate-­filled eyes. “We have concrete evidence of a CFC-­eating organism over Goddard’s north pole, and rumor has it you created that organism. If you did release it, you’ll be thankful you’re in custody. Otherwise, I would not guarantee your safety when word reaches the rest of my people.”

  Instantly, Will seemed to come back to life. He pulled his shoulders back and his head came up.

  “On the other hand,” Chenny went on, “there’s a possibility of the kidnapping charges being dropped if you will cooperate with an attempt to contain that organism.”

  “I see.” Will smiled widely. To Edie, he still looked so handsome. So wise. “That, too, can be arranged.”

  “You’ll cooperate?”

  “They can put the trank guns away.”

  Edie slumped in relief.

  ―――

  Melantha Lee hunched over the keyboard in her apartment. She lived at the innermost end of the Gaea wing, separated by as much concrete as possible from hub and cafeteria noises. +Cooperate with them, Will,+ she typed, certain the exchange would be monitored by colonists—as well as Flora Hauwk at the Gaea System office.

  +You’ll need to get help for Brady-­Phillips’s research.+

  Yes, help: help making sure it failed. Lee understood the hint. +Paul still owes me for past services,+ she returned. +I’ll put him on it.+

  ―――

  Graysha slept like a corpse, without dreaming or moving. Emmer lay across her neck, clicking softly, when the alarm rang at seven.

  She sponged off hurriedly while her memory replayed last night’s conversation with Lindon, down to every touch. So much had changed, so suddenly, that she didn’t know what to do. All she knew was that she must never ever see her mother again. Please, she prayed, trying out the new-­old habit. If she felt different at all, it was only the confidence of having done the right thing.

  Before eating, she spent twenty minutes in her tiny HMF lab. Two meters by three and windowless, it had a concrete countertop and a small incubator, and that was about all. She carried her loop dropper in her pocket. If she needed a sink, she had to go out into the medtech’s domain; still, she inoculated two dozen more plates for antibiotic trials, then peered out into the larger lab. “Fresia?” she called, but the medtech had let her in and then vanished. Feeling guilty for snooping, she started searching cupboards for the small glass vials that normally contained antibiotic test disks.

  She’d worked her way down one countertop when the medtech returned. “Antibiotics?” Graysha asked.

  “Here’s what I have.” Fresia had broad shoulders that made her tiny waist seem even more pronounced. She pulled down an overhead rack, and Graysha felt her empty stomach lurch. At the Gaea building, she’d lain samples of 150 antibiotics on culture plates. Here were maybe 30.

  She still might find something that was environmentally safe. “Thanks,” she said, “I’ll bring them right back out.”

  Inside her lab, she used a pair of sterile tweezers to drop five tiny drug-­saturated dots onto each of six plates. Gingerly she flipped them, making sure the disks adhered.

  Back in her Gaea lab, after downing cereal and cream, she hurried to the wincubator. Any antibiotic inhibiting gaeaii would create a clear no-­growth zone around it. The rest of the plate would have clouded up by now.

  She held the first plate up to the brilliance of her own laboratory light quickly, before condensation could cloud its cold surface.

  Totally clear, with no bacterial growth anywhere.

  Sabotage. Again. Shutting her eyes, she slumped forward long enough to swallow bile, then straightened. If anyone did monitor this lab, they would see defeat.

  Maybe she’d have better news tomorrow, at the HMF.

  She pulled her lab coat off a stool and slipped it on. As soon as Trev arrived, there were soil samples to run from Axis’s protoforest.

  “Graysha?”

  She turned around. Paul stood gently knocking against the door frame.

  Was he the saboteur? “Come in.”

  “I apologize for interrupting yesterday, at Wastewater.” He tucked his chin and gave her a knowing look.

  “We were talking,” she said firmly.

  “Talking. Yes.” Clasping her shoulder, he lowered his voice. “After this I’ll mind my own business, but I think you should know DalLierx’s family made its fortune running illegal drugs.”

  Drugs? Lindon’s family? Her vision went muddy. “I never heard anything so preposterous.”

  “They were never caught. Ask him sometime where the money came from.”

  “Is he wealthy?” she asked, curious in spite of herself. Was that why he’d offered to reimburse the HMF for whatever materials she used?

  “Probably not anymore. Ask him,” he repeated. “But don’t trust his answer.”

  “Thank you, Paul.” She tried to sound sincere.

  He winked, squeezed her shoulder, and left.

  Poison, she thought at him, that’s poison you’re spreading. If he wasn’t sabotaging her experiments, he was certainly trying to ruin her relationship with Lindon.

  She couldn’t ask Lindon such a thing. Even if it were true, he might not know. How, then, would Paul?

  ―――

  +Dr. Varberg has returned. We need to set up parameters for completion of your research. M. Lee+

  Graysha pushed back her desk chair and braced for a long elevator ride into battle. It was later that same morning—Dropoff, and Orion hung overhead. She walked cautiously into Melantha Lee’s office.

  At the near corner of Lee’s desk sat the ever-­present glass of marigolds. She wondered if Lee guessed what use Varberg had made of them.

  Several extra chairs had been pulled into the room. Varberg sat between two Lwuite men wearing D-­group name tapes, whose attention swung in her direction before returning to their charge. They looked out of place in a room flagged
with stone tiles and watched by an elegant mural.

  “Dr. Varberg,” Lee began, “Dr. Brady-­Phillips has isolated a cloud-­dwelling organism of the Streptomyces family. It metabolizes chlorofluorocarbons. She believes the organism is gene-­tailored. Reluctantly, she has stated that she further believes the organism originated in the Gaea microbial genetics laboratory. I would like to know if that is true and, if so, if you will assist us in eradicating the organism.” With her fingers steepled in front of her chest and iron-­gray curls pressed flat against her desk chair, Dr. Lee looked official enough. The speech sounded rehearsed.

  “Dr. Lee,” Graysha interrupted, picking up the cue she assumed Lee had dropped, “my cultures have died.”

  “What? Died?” Lee asked. Her eyes went round in her round face. “All of them? How?”

  “I don’t know.” Graysha stood stiffly beside Lee’s desk. “I still have Trev’s samples. There could be viable cells in the flasks.”

  Varberg laid a palm on each of his knees. When he leaned back on his own stool, a tic in one knee made his leg shake. “This is all unnecessary,” he said, “unnecessary. I’ll tell you why.

  “Yes, the organism originated in my office. I have called it S. goddardii by the way, and I shall apply for patent under that title.”

  Melantha Lee crossed her legs. “I hope you are eligible for patent, William.”

  “Gah. Heavens, woman! You don’t think I would release an organism into the environment—even a planetary environment,” he added, sneering the word, “without making sure it wouldn’t get out of hand. S. goddardii has a suicide gene. One locus cluster is altered to end the organism’s ability to reproduce after two seasons below minus-­twenty Celsius. It’s all going to die anyway.”

  “You said nothing.” Furious, Graysha barely kept her voice down. “You knew why Goddard was cooling, and you said nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t have found anything,” he said flatly. “It’s pure chance LZalle filtered any organisms. As I said, they’re dying off now. Next season, warming will resume.”

  “You thought you were going to conceal the organisms’ effect as a—what did you call it?—a wobble in the equations,” Graysha said.

  “Or a natural ultraviolet mutation.” Varberg smiled, showing teeth.

  Let him gloat. He’d be called in on another charge soon enough.

  “I will accept that,” said Lee. “Dr. Varberg, you strayed dangerously close to criminal actions in releasing that organism. But if you can prove the suicide gene exists on those cells in Dr. Brady-­Phillips’s laboratory, you will have been a tremendous help to the Gaea project, and I shall formally request dismissal of kidnapping charges.”

  “The cultures died, Dr. Lee,” Graysha repeated.

  Varberg tipped back his head. “Viable or recently dead shouldn’t make any difference. This should only take me a few hours. I’ll fire up my scope and map chromosomes on the bugs in your sampling flasks. Would you like to watch?”

  “No. Thank you.” Feeling nauseated, Graysha stalked out, leaving Lee with Varberg and his guards.

  Once back in her own lab, she formulated a report to Lindon, erased it, tried again, made fists in frustration, then stalked down the hall for tea.

  All her work, all their worry over antimicrobial sensitivity, and Lindon’s efforts to get her the HMF lab—not to mention Trev’s dangerous trip into polar clouds—for nothing. She ought to be glad Goddard would recover, but at the moment, she didn’t feel particularly enthused.

  Trev was bent over an animal cage in the break room when she stalked in. Seeing her, he straightened. “I told you that man was evil. I told you. I’ve seen enough like him in my lifetime to know one when I see him.”

  “You were right, Trev.” Come on, she chided herself, be thankful for the suicide gene. Goddard will recover. Her stomach churned with fury anyway.

  In Jirina’s office, a mirror image of her own, she spilled it. “Trevarre could have been killed. Any of us sampling those clouds could have been killed. And now he claims it’s been under control all along.” She dropped the gaeaii cultures she’d stashed in here into Jirina’s sterilizer. If someone was watching, they would think she just burned all her bridges.

  Jirina rocked her office chair. “He thought he wouldn’t get caught,” the black woman said, “or would get away with a professional reprimand at worst. But what does he care? He’ll have the money, and terraforming’s future just got bright. Hey, buck up. Want to get something to eat?”

  Her stomach still ached. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You eat.” Jirina wagged a finger. “It’s almost eleven, nearly lunchtime, and you’re under stress.”

  “I’d rather have co-­op food than Gaea cafeteria.”

  “Good.” Jirina stood up and flung off her lab coat, which she left draped over her chair back. “We’ll get some exercise on the way.”

  ―――

  Ari MaiJidda floundered in new business that morning. The matter of prospectors locating carbon in quantity had finally surfaced on her list, and she sent a pilot to check the location LZalle reluctantly named. Next evening, when she had an hour to spare, she must dance for him again.

  She shut down her monitor, then hurried from the CA building. While crossing the hub, she patted her shirt pocket to ascertain everything was there.

  It was time to act.

  Brady-­Phillips and Dr. Jirina Suleiman jogged north toward the corridor. Neither appeared to see her. Now that everyone on Goddard knew what Varberg had done, Gaea people walked the corries a little quicker.

  All this was Lindon’s fault, she reflected as she turned left into the HMF and hurried downstairs.

  A woman was working at the medtech station. “I’d like to see these planet killers firsthand,” Ari explained.

  “I can understand that.” The skinny medtech reached for a tube rack on her countertop with a gloved hand and carried it out.

  Ari slipped through the narrow inner door.

  After shutting off the room heater, she carefully slid a finger-­shaped canister between heater vanes near the inflow. Intense heat would melt a thin coat of wax closing this special canister’s port, and then it would start to leak. So small a canister held less than a lethal dose for most individuals. If it killed Brady-­Phillips, fine, but she was banking on the poisoned glucodermic.

  She tightened the inner door’s spring mechanism to make sure it closed automatically. That was the kind of thing people never noticed. Holding it open between her feet, she shifted a tiny switch on her D-­group key strip. Working patiently, she experimented with disengagement combinations.

  There. From the outside, the door still opened. From the inside, it would not.

  Lindon would be the only one who grieved Brady-­Phillips. Remember, Lindon, you’re the one who made this necessary. You and your missionary urges.

  You told her too much of the wrong truth.

  ―――

  “Graysha?” Jirina poked her head into the lab. “Dr. Lee wants you downstairs.”

  Riding the elevator, she rehearsed ways of telling Lindon his worries were over, that he’d confronted Lee and lost election votes for nothing. They’d all worried for nothing. The organism was already dying off out there.

  At least Goddard was safe.

  Once again, she found Dr. Varberg and his D-­group heavies sitting in Lee’s office, but this time Varberg wouldn’t look up.

  Drumming two fingers on her desk, Melantha Lee gestured Graysha toward a chair. “Evidently,” the Gaea head said calmly, “an ultraviolet mutation actually has occurred. Dr. Varberg’s suicide sequence was destroyed in a single organism. That one bacterium appears to have multiplied out of control.”

  All Graysha’s self-­righteous fury melted away. She gasped. She’d been a fool to think all her problems were solved.

  Varberg kept his angry eyes lowered and drew a huge breath, then said, “Dr. Brady-­Phillips, I authorize you to use all my code-­locked data.” Hi
s legs trembled.

  Graysha sat staring. “All I want to know is what kills the organism.”

  “Antibacterials.” She heard a note of hysteria in his laugh. “Spray a chemical disinfectant on those clouds, and the next time it rains you’ll destroy every soil organism on the planet!”

  “You’ve killed Goddard!” she exclaimed. She glanced aside. Lee sat motionless.

  Varberg pushed up out of his chair. “I’ll be in my office, transferring files to your access code. Then, evidently, I’m reporting to the CA building for another one of these pleasant little interviews with Chair MaiJidda.”

  His back filled the door and then shrank in the lobby.

  Melantha Lee leaned on one elbow, glaring. “You’ve ruined him, you know. His research is seized. He’s disallowed from reaping any profit from his experimental results, and the techs have brought in rumors of vigilante talk from our so-­called nonaggressive colonists. I hope you’re happy.”

  “I’ve ruined him? Dr. Lee, he’s paranoid, he’s . . . psychotic.” Graysha touched the marigold glass. Thinking of Lindon, lying gasps away from death, kept her from summoning up one shred of sympathy for Will Varberg. “And what about the colonists? He ruined their world, Dr. Lee!”

  “If that organism is multiplying out of control,” Lee said, “I’m sure Gaea’s System Supervisor will suggest evacuating the planet. It might be for the best. Copernicus Hab has plenty of open space, and I’m sure the colonists will be given a land grant.”

  “For the best?” Graysha feared she sounded slightly hysterical. She pictured Lindon’s stricken face when she gave him this news. “I have one or two things left to try,” she said. “I still might be able to pull it off.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Graysha hesitated. If Lee knew about this organism all along, she would be scrambling to hide all proof. “Let me think, Dr. Lee. Let me think something through.”

  “I’m anticipating mail from Flora Hauwk within half an hour. If you can’t give me anything specific before then, I’m afraid I will have to recommend evacuating. We can recoup some of our financial losses using asteroid-­mining platforms, but at this point I do not think this world will ever be open-­air habitable.”