He Without Sin

by Hyde, Ed

  I do believe the Weasel is doing a little prospecting for himself on the Academy’s dime. It fits right in with his MO—looking out for number one. The clues are several. He is having Carol search for some specific, and I would assume rare, materials in crustal outcroppings, thus inorganic; he is having Mark do some special extracting as a ‘government’ job. But what exactly? It can’t be too bulky or heavy either. That would get noticed during launch prep. So very small or light, or both, and valuable— that narrows it down. I think Mark wants to talk about it. We’ll see.

  This business about eating meat from native animals has me both interested and repulsed. Aside from the danger of consuming potentially harmful or deadly chemicals and organisms, the actual consumption of meat is not a problem. It is very unusual nowadays but certainly was the norm and is the norm for developing populations. Check your teeth, the imprint of evolution cannot be denied. Not to mention the fact that the gastrointestinal machinery of the body is perfectly capable of dealing with and digesting this source of energy and nutrients. But, we have moved on from that stage to something better, have we not? Now, some of the fruits and vegetables have been thoroughly tested and have a big green light from Doc. But not so with meat, any meat, as far as I know. I need to corner him next time I go in and see what he says about it.

  Defector

  I am sort of kidding when I ask about access, trying to make the dreaded ‘small talk.’ She makes me nervous.

  Tracy answers, “Oh sure, I’ve got ‘em. No problem. What’ll you give me for them?” she asks as she looks me over with a suggestive expression. “I mean, this has to be a two-way street, so…”

  Now I’m really uncomfortable. My mind races to find a suitable answer and judging from her reaction I guess my face betrays me.

  “Relax dude, just kidding. Ha ha, that look’s almost as good as the one in the picture Les snapped of you on the cam a while back.” She returns to my question saying, “Sure, I’ll send them right along. Two things though: you don’t know where you got them and, don’t be too surprised at what you find.” She winks, puts a piece of something in her mouth and walks away chewing toward Dylan and Craig.

  She’s a good looking young woman with her brown hair always pulled back in a ponytail. She makes me uncomfortable for a couple reasons. First and foremost, she has been too buddy-buddy with Brachus for me to trust her. After all, she’s the human firewall he set up to insulate himself. Second, she’s got a mischievous look about her, in a racy way, which makes me wonder what she’s thinking. And I get the impression she enjoys saying things that can be taken two ways. Not flirty like Vanessa, but downright suggestive. Not my style.

  And she offered to give the passwords right away. I am too stunned to think properly at first. I guess the first step is to see if I actually get the access information like she promised. Then, see if it works. I gather my bits and bobs for the return trip from bio camp back to base. Dylan and Craig walk in my direction, talking. I’m sorry but Craig just looks way too young to be part of the team. I do know his background and qualifications, on paper, but he’s that type of man who looks like a kid, and probably always will. I think he cultivates that look by letting his mop top grow long, among other quirks.

  “Heading back I see. Got everything you need?” asks Dylan. I nod. “Porter is ready to go. He’ll take you. Thanks for the help today.”

  “No problem,” I reply. “Anytime you need help, or anything really, let me know. Hey, one quick thing. What is she chewing over there?”

  “Oh, Trace?” He looks over at Tracy, smiles, turns back to me and says, “That, Jason, is dried meat.” Dylan pauses to examine my reaction I guess. “You should try it. It won’t hurt you. And it’s delicious.”

  I shake my head, decline to comment and take my leave from bio camp.

  ______

  “Not you too?” I say to Porter as we head back to base.

  “What?” he says, turning away from the controls to look at me.

  “Your little snack there. It’s odiferous.”

  “Odiferous? Seriously? Odiferous? Here, have one.” And he tosses me a little irregular shred of something of a dark brownish red color. It is greasy, is odiferous, and I decline to put it in my mouth; I don’t even like handling it.

  “You really should get that stuff checked out by Doc before chewing. Or eating. Are you swallowing it? Good grief man, I’m not kidding.” I shake my head and wonder what is wrong with these people? I change the subject to one of more interest. “Say, what’s up with Tracy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, you know what I mean. I don’t think she’s spoken two words to me the whole time and now she’s totally nice and friendly? That’s what I mean.”

  “Haw! So you’ve noticed.” He says, looking at me to see, I suspect, if he should say more. “You might say they’ve had a little falling out.” He turns back to face the controls. “Or a big falling out.”

  “‘They’ being Tracy and…”

  “That’s right, Tracy and…” he looks at me again and we both know. “You might say she told him off and then told him where to get off.”

  “But, why? What happened?”

  “Rumors my friend, rumors. You know you really should try some.” He nods toward the dried meat I am holding while he adjusts his glasses with one hand.

  “We’ll see what Doc says and then, maybe.” When we exit the runabout at base camp, I toss the greasy tidbit aside when Porter’s not looking. “Where are you off to next? Some secret mission for Brachus?”

  “Of course. Top secret. Actually, I’m heading to a super spot—76 East and 14 South—just fantastic. My favorite. Hopefully I can stay a while.”

  “Loading up ore or…?”

  “No, not there, nothing like that there. I won a bet with Wes and he says I can have some time off. Besides, he needs the runabout for a bit. I’m taking it out there to him and, like I say, I hope he keeps it a while. Wouldn’t mind being stranded for a few days.”

  “Is it near those bluffs? They are awesome.”

  Porter responds only with a quizzical e to get back to them sometime. Never got my fill.”

  “What? Bluffs? No bluffs. Hey, gotta run. Wish me luck!” Porter runs off leaving me alone for a moment in the landing area.

  This is a stark and sterile area. The rugged surrounds are quite striking with the sun at this low angle. Bright reds and golds in direct light with sharply contrasting dark browns and blacks in shadow. All against thMaybe it’s my imagination but I think I can see them moving if I concentrate.

  ______

  The alert from my genie wakes me suddenly. What day is it anyway? It’s early, but plenty light out; the day is well underway. I’m still groggy, but take a quick look around the base camp. Porter is back. He only got a day or two at his special location apparently. But now I see he’s running out again in a big hurry straight to the transport unit. Something is up.

  I check my incoming comms and am surprised that there is, in fact, a message from Tracy. It says ‘Something just for you. Let me know if there is anything else I can do ;) Codes attached.’ I’d better save this for in my quarters when I have access to a decent screen and console.

  Now I see not one but two alarms! Is this thing working right? How did I sleep through that? One is a general alert and the other, earlier one, is from Craig to everyone.

  What to log first? Most important and most disturbing is what happened to Dylan a short time after I left bio camp last time. The good news—he will live. By a fluke they were near one of the cams so we got to see some of what happened. A big animal, what we would call a cat, was inside the outer perimeter. This has happened before of course; I’ve seen the tracks myself. You just can’t seal out the world completely without building real walls or putting up a dome, which David definitely didn’t want. But it never came to anything like this. Anyway, this large cat, easily as massive as a man—probably more—and longer than Dylan
is tall, attacked while he and Craig were out and, as I say, near a cam. The video just shows the beginning blur of the attack and the rest happens outside the field of view.

  Craig was not touched and used his weapon to dispatch the animal but not before Dylan suffered a lot of damage. It’s a wonder that either of them had a weapon the way they have lately been ignoring basic common sense. Lucky. Another lucky stroke is that Lester and Tracy both received the alert from Craig right away and between them they got Dylan to a clearing where Porter could land. We heard it was a real mess and they had to use some pretty serious emergency procedures.

  There were barely any vital signs by the time Doc got him. He says the timing was good however, with a little to spare, but not much. He says without the field treatment, Dylan would be a goner. The emergency field procedures were literally a lifesaver. Some of the meds, he says, are the same as we all get for the long parts of the voyage out here and back. He also says not to worry; it’s all easy from this point on. Patchin’ and sewin’, in his words. I don’t like to joke about it. Seems like with all his medical miracles, he could fix his cowlick. Maybe nobody’s ever had the nerve to tell him he has one.

  The access info from Tracy works. I can access the Resource Group’s cams for sure. I can also see their locally stored reports and other data. Just for laughs I pulled up a recent official progress report from Wes and tried to compare it to what I find through this new access. Well, first of all, there is no copy of it at all in any of their folders. There were plenty of docs of the same date and roughly the same time but nothing I could see matched what he sent in officially. Is he making this stuff up? Honestly though, his reports don’t hold any interest for me anymore.

  Carol heard through the ‘girl grapevine’ that Tracy caught Wes in a lie and some sort of compromising position but no details. What exactly is going on with this guy? I’m telling you here and now that it’s difficult to keep a positive attitude while suspecting the ‘leaders’ of misdeeds and lies. I should say ‘leader’ since it’s clear now that David has lately assumed a passive role and Wes is taking advantage. Also, while I think David may be misguided in his quest to hit a home run with his work here, I don’t think he’s up to anything really deceitful.

  Accusation

  “It was like slow motion. We both suspected something and stopped and looked at each other, then slowly and carefully looked around. You know how it is when you can sense that someone is watching you even though you can’t see them? That was the feeling. And you could for sure hear the rustle of the underbrush when the cat attacked. I froze and thought it was going for me, but it wasn’t. For the first few seconds I couldn’t seem to process what was happening, then snapped out of it and blasted the cat. I was really worried that my stupid delay would cost Dylan his life,” explains Craig. I’ll bet this encounter will add one or two experience lines to his boyish countenance.

  I glance around. The listeners look at Craig, or on the ground, but not so much at each other. Mark asks, “What were you guys doing out there? Isn’t someone watching those cams for just this sort of problem?”

  “The cams are set up for motion and sound detection and can respond automatically. But they don’t cover the whole area and they couldn’t see everything even if they did cover the whole area. I told you, we couldn’t even see it when it was stalking us at close range. We were out for some work on one of the new cams downstream past the rapids outside the entrance to the bio area. We never made it past the gate on this trip, for obvious reasons.”

  “Cams outside the bio area? This is news to me,” I say. “Is that how the animal tracked you guys in? From outside?”

  “I…I don’t think so. We didn’t make it to the outside this time, but maybe the previous times…” Craig continues, “Jason, you know that right at the entrance to the bio area it’s narrow and we’ve got that under control. You’ve been there yourself enough to know that I’m right. I think the cat came in from higher ground at the sides. He just was missed.” It is clear that Craig is still shaken up.

  “These things happen, Craig. Nobody said there wouldn’t be danger here, and I think we all are thankful that you responded the way you did.”

  “Hear, hear,” says Brachus, who has made one of his rare appearances at base camp. He is sitting sideways on a chair with one elbow on the back of it. His legs are crossed and the one on top is swinging back and forth.

  I add, “What about those cams outside, though?”

  “We were asked to set up a series out past the gate, way down where the land opens up. Wesley needs them to keep an eye on things for David…”

  Brachus pipes in with, “This is no time to discuss camera placement.”

  “Anyway,” Craig continues, “you should have seen this thing. I mean, it would freeze you right in your tracks. The muscles rippling, the fur glistening with color from a dark orange to black and back. I could just feel the power. But silent, powerful and silent. And just before I got it, it turned and looked right at me. I’ll tell you, you know it’s looking and thinking…”

  Someone asks Craig another question but I am not listening.

  Carol gives me a nudge and we walk out leaving Craig with the rest gathered to hear about the attack. I take her to the natural rock ledge seat where we sometimes come to talk. Cloud cover has muted the effect of the sun on the mountains. They remain darkly imposing and seem to be poised like me, waiting to hear what Carol has to say.

  “You’ve got to do something,” she begins. “And I’m quite serious. If what I hear from Tracy is true, you’ve got to do something.”

  “Me? Why me? What does she say?”

  “Let’s start with the easy one first. Wes is playing with the native men like they are animals. He is setting them up for fighting and then he and his goons are placing bets on who wins.”

  “She said that? Tracy?”

  Carol nods.

  “I’m not sure I believe it. That’s pretty low even for him. My guess would be that she is mad and trying to get back at him.”

  Carol remains silent, looking at me steadily.

  “You and I both know that at their stage of development, this society is still very physical. There will be fights for dominance and survival. It happens, and it’s not pretty. Now, maybe Wes is watching and passively betting on his favorites, but setting them up? I don’t know…” I suddenly remember Porter’s comment about winning some days off from Wes on a bet.

  “But, she says he is doing just that. Inciting them, and then making sure that a confrontation happens. By the way, the usual result is that only one survives. If we leave them alone and they fight, I can deal with it, even understand it, but set it up for fun and profit? No way.” She pauses and waits for my response. I don’t have a response and just shake my head.

  “You’ve only heard part of it. Brace yourself. Tracy says that she has nothing more to do with Wes because she caught him doing more than just betting on fights.”

  I guess I am a little slow because this is not making any sense. “You mean he’s actively involved with these fights? But how…”

  “Oh you poor thing. When we get you back home, we’ll have to get you out in society more. He’s ‘actively involved’ all right but not with the men.” Pause.

  “Get out!” I say as it dawns on me what she means. “Do you actually believe she’s serious?”

  Carol doesn’t respond directly. “You have access to their data now, right?” I nod. “I said earlier ‘if what she said is true’. Poke around there. What I hear is that you will see for yourself what’s happening and verify some, if not all, of it. Let me know what you find.” This sinks in as she pauses and then adds, “The rest of his people have to know what’s going on too, if only they would talk.”

  As we walk back through the open area at base camp there is a small group talking and laughing. I don’t see Craig anywhere but Lester is there. He makes eye contact with me as we move toward their general direction. Carol splits away.
I give Lester a “Hey” and decide to try something.

  Mustering up an accusatory tone I ask, “What the heck are you guys up to?” after I am close enough so that it is clear I am talking to Lester.

  “What, us?” and he indicates the small group, looking confused for a moment. “What does it look like we’re doing?” and he turns back.

  “No. Come on. You know what I mean,” I say as I stop and maintain a serious expression and the same tone.

  “No, I don’t know what you mean,” he says as he turns to me, taking a small step away from the rest. “And now you have my full attention.”

  “I don’t mean to break up your little confab, but we hear rumors about what’s going on out there, in the field, where you spend all your time. What the heck are you doing out there?”

  I see a brief but clear look of worry cross Lester’s face. He is silent for some several seconds, then smiles, rakes his hair back, and says calmly, “I don’t know who ‘we’ is and I don’t know about any rumors. What I do know is that if you needed to know what we are ‘up to’, as you put it, you would already know.”

  “I don’t ‘need’ to know anything. Just curious, that’s all. There are some pretty wild stories spreading.”

  This time, all I get are raised eyebrows and silence. I realize that Lester is probably not going to fall for it but I try one last tack by saying, “Oh, come on, you can tell me. I heard something from Porter about your exploits. I would think you’d like to share something as juicy as that,” I conclude with a wink.