by Lynn Rae
“I’m not joking, Moca. Imagine my shock when I boarded the ship and this new information buzzed into my feed just as we were taking off. They timed it perfectly so I couldn’t reply. ” Cordon shook his sleekly handsome head. Lia had developed an interest in the man when they first started working together, but that dissipated when she’d gotten to know him better. He was far too ambitious and politically connected to be a comfortable companion for her since his schedule would have always superseded her own plans and desires. They’d developed a good working relationship, and Lia was pleased he was on planet and could take over some of the bureaucratic duties she’d had to assume in his absence.
“It’s unacceptable to completely gut our entire plan and leave us no time to adjust! Just look at this directive; ‘all sections will be equal in surface size and distribution of ephiphytes.’ This planet isn’t filled with cultivated fields of these things we can parcel into tidy little lots with square corners. It’s a wild environment that’s impossible to divide in any sort of equal manner. What are we supposed to do, go out and measure each branch and leaf?” Moca ranted, obviously not expecting anyone to answer the questions which lay before them—the impossibilities spoke for them.
“It’s going to require a complete rework of everything. Our maps, our survey methods, how we conduct the landings,” Cordon concluded with a dour expression on his well-formed face. He was attractive even when distressed. Unlike Colan Nestor who looked like a rumpled hermit in just about any mood she’d seen him in and especially riveting when he’d been nearly naked that very morning while searching for those mischievous boys. Lia tried not to let the thought of how his muscular body had caught her attention intrude on her current assignments. She’d be hopelessly distracted and not able to contribute much to solving their new problems.
“Of course it is,” Moca snapped and scowled at her displays. “Right. Cordon, you and I will sequester for the next twenty-four hours and reformulate everything. Lia, you continue pushing through construction as if nothing has changed. We’ll send you reworked plans as we finalize them.”
“What about the Pearlites?”
“Continue to run interference for us. We’re going to be too busy to deal with backyards and plumbing for the near future.”
Lia took a breath, her hopes of avoiding Colan after this meeting dashed. Not that she was going to feel embarrassed about seeing him again. He’d acted as if his near nudity was no cause for notice, so she should be able to ignore it right along with him. She could forget his muscled arms, broad chest, and all that hair curling over tanned skin. Of course she could.
The meeting room door swung open. Colan appeared with a surly grimace, and Lia gulped. She’d known he was on the agenda, but somehow the sight of him was still a shock to her system. Moca called out and invited him to take a seat, which placed him across the table from her. Now she was unable to avoid looking directly at him unless she stared at her quinoa or unhappy datpad. He shot her a glance she couldn’t interpret and then turned to Moca.
“Cit. Nestor, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for coming. This is Assistant Magistrate Cordon, newly arrived with bothersome news.” Moca shifted in her seat and smiled, but her irritation with the situation was impossible to disguise with good manners. “It seems our congressional supervisors have reworked the settlement plans for us. Simply put, they want absolute equality of natural resources and physical size between each apportionment. In the interest of fairness.”
“And in the interest of not having to listen to people whine about what their neighbor has,” Cordon added with a scowl. His scowl was puny compared to the one curling across Colan’s face.
“You’re joking.” Colan’s voice was cold with disapproval.
“That’s what I said.” Moca smiled at him in a soothing way. Lia wished her luck. “But they aren’t. They also aren’t here or apparently well-versed on what the term ‘initial colonization’ means. Or ‘undeveloped land’. Or ecosystem maintenance’. In any case, we now have some new parameters to work through, and I was hoping you could walk us through your planetary survey.”
“You want me to explain the entire planet’s geography to you?”
“Yes, in as much detail as you can manage in the next fifteen minutes.”
Colan sucked in a breath and looked as if he wanted to stand and walk right back out of the room. Lia couldn’t resist watching the way his chest expanded against his battered shirt and picturing the muscles shifting underneath the fabric. Maybe this meeting might have some unanticipated benefits, at least for her private thoughts. But when he shot her an incendiary scowl, all contemplation of his physique disappeared. Why was he angry with her? She hadn’t caused any of this or summoned him here.
“Fifteen minutes for tens of thousands of square kilometers of land mass and even more oceans? And that’s just the continent we’re on. Unless Congress has decided to open up the entire planet to these extractors now?” His brown eyes flashed, and Lia suppressed a shiver. He was hard to ignore when he was agitated, and some dark part of her psyche wished he’d focus some of that intensity on her. Some near-painful twinges in sensitive parts of her anatomy accompanied the idea.
“Just this continent for now. We’d be in full panic mode if it was the planet-wide edict.”
“Planet-wide? So you’re saying there are plans in place to allow these untrained folks loose over the entire world?” Colan glared and stretched his hands out on the table top, his strong fingers flexing against the dull resin surface in an intriguing way.
“There are plans, different phases of development, and all dependent on how well we do here initially,” Moca replied, sounding calm in the face of his agitation. Lia wasn’t; she was having a hard time taking a deep breath at this point.
“And dependent on how well they actually work at extracting the substance. There’s a market for it of course, we wouldn’t be here otherwise, but the technology is untried, and as you mentioned, the people coming here are not trained in the mechanics of collecting cortiglow or surviving in an inhospitable wilderness. It could be a complete disaster.” Cordon shifted his datpad around as if he could somehow make everything fall into place with a few well-chosen taps on the screen.
“It is going to be a complete disaster,” Colan agreed. “You do realize people are going to be injured and some are going to die here? All for this enhancement hormone?” His scorn was clear.
Lia understood his dismay. The compound one of the local scientists had discovered by accident on one of the endemic organisms of this planet had, on analysis, been filled with a chemical cocktail which miraculously stimulated the network of cortical nodes in the human brain. It wasn’t habit-forming, there were no abrupt high or crashing sensation, and it eased anxiety. Also, it reputedly could intensify orgasms. Not that Lia had any intention of trying it out for herself. The recreational and pharmaceutical applications promised to be lucrative, and this had prompted Congress to regulate the exploitation of Gamaliel immediately. Better to control how the prospectors exploited the resource and levy taxes on it from step one, than to allow them to run amuck unregulated and destroy the very organism they needed.
“We are here to prevent that as much as possible.” Moca sounded as reassuring as was possible for someone facing such a challenge. “For example, the native health hazard information your Padev sent to Doctor Polin has been incredibly helpful. A little frightening, but helpful all the same.”
Lia glanced back and forth between Colan and the other people at the table. Everyone watched him and waiting for his acquiescence. With a grunt, he rose up and braced his hands against the table, leveling a disapproving stare at Moca and Cordon. Lia watched the muscles in his arms bunch. Did the man not possess any shirts with sleeves?
“It’s an impossible task. There’s no way to divide a natural landmass into exactly equal parts as you all very well know. I came here expecting some word you were solving some of the problems you’re already causing here, and
instead you want me to solve yours. I have better things to do with my time.” He shoved himself away from the table and gave Lia another burning look before he strode out of the room, the door closing behind him with a click. Lia braced for a slam. Instead, she took a deep breath, feeling marginally less dizzy without Colan’s superheated frustration in the room.
She faced her supervisors. Neither one of them seemed pleased they had been dismissed in such an abrupt way.
“So, he’s our community liaison?” Cordon tried to joke, but no one smiled. Moca shook her head once and gave Lia an assessing look.
“He is. Lia, you have your work cut out for you.”
“What am I supposed to do with him? He’s cranky like that all the time.”
Moca raised her eyebrows. “I know dealing with him must be unpleasant, but considering all the work Cordon and I have now, and the fact he’s used to you, we’ll need you to stay on the task. I’ll ask Tully to come up with some models for apportioning the territory, but we’ll need disgruntled Citizen Colan Nestor’s consultation to ensure we are doing it as well as possible.”
Colan stared at his largest display and frowned at the continent. He’d brought it up in modified dimensionality and highlighted the areas where the precious cortiglow might be found based on microclimate, elevation, and soil type. There was no way to know if the right epiphytes were actually growing on any of their symbiotic partners unless you went out and found the things, which he had no intention of doing. Let the settlers wander around out there and count translucent, five centimeter-long organisms. He was done helping these congressionals with their ridiculous requests.
Glancing around his cluttered office at the science station, Colan contemplated straightening up but decided against it when he saw his temporary office mates. Ermil and Perrin, in disgrace for their explosive antics the previous day, were confined to the science building while their mother was working. Colan volunteered to supervise them for the morning since he knew he’d be trapped here as well. Both boys were hunched over their own displays of the planet, dividing up land and water in a massive competition with complicated rules he had no interest in following. Right now it seemed as if their continent was bisected by an enormous spiral of flaming red. It seemed one of the little generals had decided to burn his holdings rather than let them fall into enemy hands. Colan was beginning to understand the sentiment.
There was a brief knock at his door, and Riva appeared in his office. Her clothes were disheveled, and her skin was dull. It looked as if she’d been out in the forest, or she hadn’t showered in days. “Tor. What are you doing?”
“Working.”
“No you aren’t. You’re aiding and abetting these criminals. You’re theirs, bought and paid to do their bidding.” Her wide, blue eyes glittered, and Colan wished there was more than a small desk between them. Not for the first time, Colan regretted having a personal relationship with her. They’d been similarly unattached and bored and had engaged in some recreations the year before. It had never progressed much beyond the physical, but Colan always felt a sense of responsibility toward her after it had ended. Riva knew that and took advantage on occasion.
“What criminals, Riva?” Colan tried to warn her to tone down her rhetoric with a glance at the boys sitting in the corner listening in, but she was oblivious.
“These congressional thieves taking over the place like an invading army, that’s who. They’re just cutting and digging and building. It’s horrible. And you’re working for them. How could you, Tor? Don’t you know what they’re doing?” Riva’s neck and cheeks flushed red, and she tossed back her disordered blonde hair with shaking hands. He wasn’t sure if she was going to cry or scream.
Yes, he certainly did know what they were doing courtesy of Lia’s incessant messages, memos, and updated updates. His datpad vibrated every ten minutes with another fresh missive, and he’d contemplated throwing it out the window numerous times. Or giving it to the boy wonders to destroy in a flamboyant way. Maybe later.
“Riva, they have every right to do what they’re doing. This isn’t our planet.”
“And that’s the problem right there. It isn’t their planet either. They’re stealing it from the native species, and it’s a war crime. It’s genocide!” Riva’s voice rose, and she leaned toward him over the desk, her blue eyes boring into his as if she could convince him to take up arms and drive the new people back into orbit.
“You know there are absolutely no sentient species on this planet. Everyone in the science section spent two years searching and testing everything that moved. You wrote the reports.”
“That was a mistake. I know there’s more at work here. I have a feeling…I have a theory there is some unifying force here—in the croakers and curlers and all the flivvers, all feeding off the same energy.” She rolled her eyes up to the low ceiling and took a deep breath as if the idea was a great comfort.
Colan felt a tremor of dread. Riva seemed to be falling into a mania which sometimes cropped up among scientists isolated on strange worlds. Otherwise rational professionals would succumb to a compulsion to see a collective intelligence among the organisms they studied. Since no one had ever discovered sentient beings on any other world, many humans were desperate enough for company to misinterpret their data and ‘discover’ shared consciousness in arthropods, mushrooms, and algae. Then again, considering how difficult his fellow humans were to deal with, a sentient alien species would do well to avoid them. In any case, it seemed Riva had joined the fringe.
Colan shook his head, not sure what he could say that wouldn’t send her off on another irrational speech.
“I know you don’t believe me, Tor. You’re a cartographer. You look at the surface of things. I’m researching the molecular composition of life on Gamaliel, and there are convergences impossible to ignore. Interrelated and woven together in some genetic web we don’t have the ability to understand. We have to protect them. Tor, they can’t defend themselves.”
Perrin and Ermil were fully absorbed at this point, their bright brown eyes focused on Riva’s performance. All Colan wanted to do was cool things down, get Riva out of his office, and keep the boys safely occupied for at least another hour. The myth of interwoven croakers and curlers was of no interest to him.
“Riva, please. You know the settlement plans for the area were designed by your colleagues to have as minimal an impact on the life forms here as possible—”
“There shouldn’t be any impact at all, no matter how minimal! They’re going to destroy the forests and pollute the water—”
“No, they aren’t.” Colan took a deep breath and tried to stay even-tempered. Riva was agitated enough for three or four people, and he didn’t want to add fuel to her deranged fire. He certainly wasn’t going to mention any of the numerous studies debunking collective sentience. She didn’t seem capable of reading a footnote or two. “All construction is taking place within Pearl’s boundaries, and we’ve already cut and dug up the area, long before they arrived. In fact, their new water treatment facility is going to be significantly more efficient than our own—”
“Stop spouting their lies! No, we have to stop them, before any more get here.”
“We could blow it up!” Ermil volunteered, leaping to his feet with a grin. He was on board with creating mayhem. Perrin, older and slightly wiser, watched the adults with interest. He looked willing to engage in some destruction given a modicum of encouragement, which was exactly what Colan was desperate to prevent.
“We aren’t blowing up anything.” Colan took a breath, frowned at the boys for a moment, and then stood and faced Riva, who vibrated with an excess of emotion Colan didn’t want to understand.
“Why not?” she asked without meeting his gaze. “Why not blow it up?”
“Because that would be wrong.” He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with her.
“What have they done now?” Gina’s voice floated into the room. She arrived a second late
r and immediately scowled at her boys who shook their heads in denial. At least this time they were telling the truth.
“Nothing. They’ve been good. ” Colan was quick to absolve them, and the boys sent relieved grins his way.
“That’s hard to believe. Hello, Riva, where have you been? Those photoelase analyses you ordered are back if you want to take a look,” Gina spoke to her subordinate as she gave her sons quick hugs in greeting.
“I’ve been busy, Gina. Busy trying to make things right. Like you should be doing.” Riva glared at the science station head. Maybe she thought Gina was in the traitor camp as well. Colan didn’t really care anymore; he just wanted to have his office to himself again. “Even if you don’t care about Gamaliel’s life, you should care about fellow humans. They’re destroying them.”
“What are you talking about, Riva?” Gina sounded tired. She should be tired. She worked long hours and managed two children on her own every day. Colan got tired just thinking about it.
“Rue and Tun. They lost their home this morning while the two of you did nothing. Tore it right down and scattered it to the cardinal directions like they were smashing a flivver.”
Colan shook his head. Lia had promised him nothing would happen to the two older folks the last time they’d talked. Their little house was scheduled for demolition to make way for part of the new barracks facility, but Lia had told him not to worry, she was taking care of it. “They weren’t supposed to do that. Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. I watched them do it not one hour ago. One little explosion and no more house.” Perrin and Ermil both brightened at the word explosion, but Colan’s whole body tensed as he realized Lia had lied to him. He should have distrusted the woman as soon as she’d given her word. She’d told him what she thought he’d want to hear so he’d clear out and leave her to it. All she cared about were her precious timetables. He took a breath as he contemplated the two elderly citizens without a roof over their heads tonight. How could she have done that?