“I recognize you from the vids.” She held out her hand, palm down.
David took her hand. He seemed uncertain, as if wondering if she meant for him to kiss it. He squeezed her hand and Carla squeezed back, holding his hand for a heartbeat longer than necessary.
David disengaged his hand. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Grace.”
Grace shook hands with Edward and then turned to Carla.
“Grace Ng,” she said, holding out her hand. There was the merest hint of frost to her greeting, and Carla knew she had noticed the moment she’d shared with David.
This place may be more interesting than I thought.
She scanned the remaining adults, identifying each of them. The women she had little interest in, but marked them for the sin of being prettier than her. She located the other American man, Joshua, alongside the Russian woman. The Englishman, Nigel, stood next to him, the mate of the Frenchwoman. Or was he? Carla frowned and pulled her mask back for a breath. He held the German woman’s hand, the engineer. Her gaze swept to the left and stopped. There was John, and he was with Nathalie, the French astronomer.
Where David was tall, dark, and handsome, John was the golden boy. Blond hair, blue eyes, and roguish good looks warranted a second look, which Carla was sure to take, earning her a scowl from Nathalie.
Carla stepped over to John, nodded at Nathalie and extended her hand to him.
“Carla Lewis,” she announced, checking John out at close quarters. Definitely worth it, she decided, although on third look she noticed that unlike David, John showed signs of having gained a few pounds.
“Enchanté,” John replied, squeezing her hand.
Nathalie watched Carla like a hawk.
The others in Edward and Carla’s lander were twelve men and six women. David noticed the gender imbalance and theorized that, unlike the Hope’s crew, Edward’s was not composed of breeding pairs.
Six of the men were hard-looking, with firm handshakes. David picked them as ex-military by their bearing, a thought he tucked away for further analysis. He exchanged a look with John, and could tell he was thinking the same.
The remaining twelve men and women looked like couples. They were also quite … ordinary, people you’d have found in any city in the US or Europe. They didn’t seem to have distinguishing physical characteristics, and David wondered what the selection criteria had been this time.
Once everyone was out, it became clear just how much their life would change. Only one lander had disembarked, and already the group of newcomers was two-thirds the size of their own, children included. The adults outnumbered them by more than two to one.
David pushed worries about what that might mean aside. Not now, he thought. Focus on the task at hand. You can worry later.
He smiled and addressed the group. “On behalf of the people of Serendipity, welcome to our world. We’ll now take you to our habitat, which we call Haven, where we’ve prepared a place for you to stay. I’m afraid the size of your group caught us by surprise, so we only have permanent housing for some of you. In the meantime we have tents and facilities in our parklands. We expect to have enough houses for everyone within the next two weeks, perhaps less if you can pitch in and help.”
One newcomer, the last out, pulled his mask aside to speak. “We can help,” he said, indicating his five companions. “We’re all engineers.”
John and Heidi looked at each other, eyebrows raised. This was news. With an influx of new engineering talent, they could expect a serious productivity boost.
“Excellent,” David replied. “The more help the better. We’ll now board the shuttle – children first and down the back,” he said, looking at them, “and then our guests. It’s a short flight.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The shuttle touched down at the east end of Haven, where they’d recessed the shuttle bay. When they built Haven it had been open to the native air. Over the years, they’d added a concrete apron and enclosed the space with two large doors, so they could seal the shuttle in. This had made loading and unloading cargo much more convenient, and allowed them to unload their passengers without the need for masks.
David taxied inside and closed the doors, triggering high-speed fans to bring new oxygenated air in from their habitat.
He unstrapped and exited the cockpit to a buzz of conversation. Edward and Carla sat up front flanked by the six men David had decided must be a security team. The rest of the newcomers sat on the deck behind the seats. Apart from the grim octet at the front, they each had a Havenite child talking to them nineteen to the dozen, telling them all about Haven and what they did there.
David placed finger and thumb in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle that had those near him reaching for their ears. He grinned as the chatter came to an abrupt stop.
“Good, I’m glad I’ve got your attention. The Havenites here already know what happens next, but for the benefit of our guests let me tell you the plan. We’ll escort you to Solar Park, in the center of Haven, where you’ll find our shared kitchen facilities and some tents. We’d like you to stack your cases there, and then we’ll provide you with lunch – I hope you’re hungry. Grace and I will fetch the other passengers – we should have everyone here within the hour. After lunch we’ll show you around and assign a place for you to stay. Are there any questions?”
The engineer who offered help earlier spoke up. “Will we need our masks?”
David shook his head. “The atmosphere outside the shuttle is breathable, so just walk through the hatch. Grace?”
She smiled and opened the door.
“I suggest we exit from the front first,” David said, looking at the children poised for a dash to freedom. Seeing their disappointed expressions, he said, “Maybe you could help carry the luggage?” Their faces brightened, and in next to no time a procession of people was threading its way through the shuttle bay to the entrance to Haven proper.
Most of the newcomers were focused on reaching the lush paradise visible through the glass wall of the shuttle bay. The engineers craned their necks every which way, talking about what they could see. John and Heidi caught up and found themselves peppered with questions. David grinned when he saw the engineers’ partners roll their eyes, no doubt used to seeing them focus on technology first, anything else second.
David and Grace returned to the shuttle, fending off requests from various children to come. Neither would give in; they didn’t want to end up with a full shuttle on every trip. Disappointment didn’t last long, though, as the children reattached themselves to the newcomers, alternating between asking questions and telling them all about their lives.
The first person out of Lander Two was a man with sandy-brown hair, faded blue eyes and a tanned, freckled complexion. He was good-looking in a rugged way, and was smiling through the clear plastic of his mask. At the bottom of the ramp he stuck out his hand and introduced himself.
“Kevin van Zyl,” he said, in an accent David had trouble placing.
David grasped his hand. “David Miller. This is my wife, Grace Ng.”
“Pleased to meet you David, Grace. This is my wife, Bianca.” He took the hand of a tall, attractive woman with a smile that reached all the way to her brown eyes. Grace liked her straight away – the contrast with the darkness of Carla couldn’t have been more striking.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Bianca said, shaking David’s hand and pulling her mask aside for a moment to kiss Grace. She held out a hand to three children now making their way down the ramp.
“These are our children – Daniel, Sasha, and James. Come say hello, guys.”
They bounced on their feet and grinned to each other as they tested the low gravity.
David and Grace looked at each other, sharing a common understanding – they wanted to welcome people like this to their colony.
“Are you an engineer, too?” Grace asked, thinking of the passengers from the last lander.
Kevin laughed. “No, not me. I’m �
��” he looked at Bianca.
“… an entrepreneur,” she finished with a smile. “Kevin builds companies.”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
Kevin laughed again. “I know what you’re thinking. What am I doing here? What use is an entrepreneur to a colony so small you probably don’t even have money?”
“Well …” Grace started.
“You don’t, do you?” Bianca asked. “Have money, I mean?”
This time it was David and Grace’s turn to laugh. “No, you’re right, we’re too small for that yet. And we are wondering what brings you here.”
“It’s simple,” Kevin said. “We’re paying passengers.”
Kevin and Bianca laughed at their expressions. “Not what you expected, is it? The first interstellar passengers?”
David and Grace shook their heads. “Are – are there others?” Grace asked.
Bianca nodded. “Half of us are paid passengers. The other half Harper selected, although we don’t know on what basis.”
“But don’t worry,” Kevin said. “You mightn’t need entrepreneurs yet, but we can earn our keep in other ways.”
David nodded. “I’m looking forward to hearing about what they might be, but for now we’d better get you folks to your new home.”
Carla found there was a lot to see as they followed their hosts from the shuttle bay. They were in a cavern of immense proportions, yet the enormous skylights in the ceiling made it seem as light and airy as a conservatory. The noonday sun streamed down into the park in the center.
Warmer than a summer’s day on many parts of old Earth, the air was moist, and infused with tropical smells of rich soil and vegetation. She wished she was wearing something lighter, and began to appreciate why the children wore so little.
There was an atmosphere of bonhomie as the colonists and newcomers chatted, making their way through the trees. The younger colony children seemed to have gotten over their initial shyness and were making the most of the opportunity to meet new people.
The path opened up as they exited the trees, and even jaded, cynical Carla stopped, eyes wide. Sunlight glittered off the surface of an oval lake like a field of scattered diamonds. She could see parkland clothed in verdant green lawn, trees bordering the far side. A river flowed from the northwest to the lake and drained under the windows toward another lake in the distance. And those windows! Carla had never seen the like. The height of a four-story building, they enclosed the entire front of the cavern, eventually disappearing into the distance – she had to look hard to see where they ended. In the distance, a graceful bridge arced over the river, joining the park to a forest, the trees so dense it was impossible to see further.
“Whoa.”
Whoever uttered that single word summed it up. Haven was beyond anything they had imagined. At best they’d expected domes with gardens. Instead they found a piece of the Earth as they wanted to remember it.
Edward nodded in approval and turned to Josh and Nigel. “Your work?”
“It’s the result of a lot of hard work by all of us,” Nigel replied. “The engineering, the planting, the chemistry of it, and just plain hard labor. But it’s been worth it.”
“Hell yeah,” one of the tough-looking men said. “It sure was.”
Landers Three and Four, David discovered, held a mix of scientists, engineers, and paying passengers. They seemed like ordinary folk, if perhaps smarter than average.
That meant, he thought, the fifth and last lander must have the rest of the paying passengers. This proved to be correct.
If Edward had sorted his passengers into groups before allocating them to a lander, then David soon worked out what the fifth group must be.
Misfits and complainers.
An Indian man and his son appeared first on the ramp after it thumped into the ground. He started by complaining they’d been kept waiting too long. Then he insisted on taking two seats in the shuttle for himself and two for his son – one each for them and one each for their cases.
Next came a family of four – a florid, harried-looking man with a shrew-like wife and two plump children who refused to carry their own cases.
The woman who followed was about thirty years old, thin, and wearing a tank top that showed off an extensive collection of tattoos. Numerous body piercings, and purple hair completed an image which couldn’t have been more out of place in a conventional backwater like Haven.
David and Grace looked at each other. Life had just become more interesting. They ended up loading half of the cases themselves, as their guests either didn’t want to, or expected someone else to do it for them.
David stacked the last of them at the back of the shuttle and straightened to find five passengers standing there, unhappy expressions on their faces.
A woman stepped forward. “What kind of airline is this, anyway? There aren’t even enough seats!”
David pursed his lips. She looked about fifty, although life extension therapies meant she could have been much older. She had shoulder-length blonde hair streaked like the pelt of an exotic animal, and wore enough makeup for her and three others besides.
“Ma’am, this isn’t an airliner. It’s the one and only aerospace shuttle belonging to the colony. There ought to be enough seats for all …” his voice trailed off as he spotted the problem. Several problems.
“Excuse me one moment,” he said, pushing through the unhappy group. He strode to the front of the shuttle and picked up the two cases occupying seats.
“Take your hands off those at once! Those are mine!”
David gave the owner of the cases a sharp look. “I’ll take good care of them when I store them at the back with the rest of the cargo.”
The man glared at him. “You will hear more of this when I complain to your manager.”
“I wish you every success. I suggest you sit next to your son if you don’t wish to share with someone else.”
He walked back to the end of the shuttle and motioned the lady with the complaints and makeup toward the front. She pushed past without so much as a thank you, towing a boy around eight years old behind her.
David turned back to the others and held up a forefinger to forestall another round of complaints. He returned to the seated area, where the two plump children occupied two seats each. He addressed the boy.
“I’m afraid we’re short on seats. Can you and your sister move up so you have one seat each?”
The boy sneered at him and raised a middle finger. “Fuck you!”
“Tyler!” His mother, sitting in the seat in front of them, turned and scolded him. “That’s no way to talk to the pilot.”
“I don’t care. He can’t tell me what to do.” Tyler adopted a sullen expression that told of many past victories.
David looked at the boy’s father, who shrugged. He wouldn’t try to do anything about it. Tyler’s expression changed from a sullen frown to a smirk, but it was short-lived. He gave a little squeal as David heaved him out of his seat and stuffed him into the one next to his sister. David couldn’t tell if he’d surprised Tyler by calling him on his petulant behavior, or by demonstrating that someone could still lift him.
“Sit there,” David said, as if to a naughty dog, “and don’t move until I tell you.”
Tyler, eyes wide, nodded, not saying a word.
Complaints from the rear of the shuttle had ceased.
David waved the remaining couple forward, and they took their seats without a word.
That left just one person without a seat – the tattooed lady. She looked at David, her head tilted a little to one side.
David smiled, and received one in return, the first he’d seen from this group.
“Come with me. We’ve got a seat up front for you.”
He turned and led the way to the fold-out jump seat behind the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. The tattooed lady strutted after him; she didn’t seem to give the slightest damn what anyone thought of her tattoos, studs, or hair color
.
“What’s your name?” asked Grace when they reached the cockpit. “I’m Grace.”
There was a flicker of warmth in the other woman’s eyes. “You can call me Sabine.” Her voice was thick with a familiar accent.
“You’re French?” Grace asked. “Nathalie will be pleased to see you.”
Sabine snorted. “Français? Non. Je suis Québécoise.”
“Huh.”
Sabine gave a sardonic half-smile. “Oui. Huh.”
They’d planned to wait until everyone arrived before serving them a meal, but that didn’t work out. The first batch of newcomers were hungry, so they served the food straight away. The soups, salads, and sandwiches on offer disappeared at such an alarming rate the Havenites soon had to make more. The children were sent to the gardens to fetch produce, while the adults worked in the kitchens and teenagers waited table.
Their pavilion and communal kitchen was open on one side, tables spilling out from the building onto the grass. They’d made another ten tables to accommodate the newcomers, and these filled up as fast as the shuttle delivered more people.
Joyce took a tray of sandwiches to the table nearest the lake, which was occupied by the six men David had pegged as ex-military. They’d already worked their way through two trays plus soups and salads, and wanted more.
One of them looked at Joyce and smirked. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Joyce.”
“Joyce, huh? You know, you’re real pretty, Joyce, do you know that?”
Joyce looked down, her ears burning. “Everyone says I look like my Mom.”
“That figures,” a second man said, leaning back in his chair. “Your Mom’s pretty hot too. Like mother, like daughter.”
The Seasoning Page 6