Future Prospect

by Lynn Rae

  She returned her attention to Colan when she heard another plate slide her way across the table. It was full of cold noodles coated in some sort of orangish sauce and studded with tiny blue seeds.

  “Eat it. You might be up to seven hundred calories if you do.”

  “Doc Polin said six.”

  “Eat it anyway.” He glared at her, and she felt like rolling her eyes, but since he was being vaguely nice as he fed her from his own stores, she restrained herself. The noodles were chewy, and the sauce contained a lot of curry and heat, much more than she’d expected. Taking a big swallow of water, Lia nodded her head.

  “What it this?”

  “Curry-fried lingon.”

  “What’s a lingon?”

  “Simple organism from here. Grows in long strands from stoma trees. Lots of protein.”

  It tasted all right, so Lia kept eating. “Is this one of the creatures your friend thinks is part of the collective sentience?”

  “Probably. And it’s not like she’s a close friend. Not anymore.” Colan stopped staring at some containers on his counter and edged her way, leaning a hip on the counter as he monitored her food intake. He’d had one of the stuffed eggs but nothing else, and Lia wondered if she was eating all his food.

  “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

  He shook his head and shifted his hip. The movement distracted Lia, and she put down her fork.

  “Do you want to share this?”

  Another head shake and now a little line appeared between his brows. Grumpy Colan emerged from hibernation.

  “Am I eating what you’d planned for lunch?”

  “Stop worrying about me. Eat it.”

  “I can’t eat if you’re just staring at me.”

  “You want me to go hide in the bedroom?”

  There was a bedroom? For some reason she’d pictured him sleeping on the wide, soft looking sofa behind her. Or in the swinging hammock she could see hanging outside through of one of the back windows.

  “It’s your house. Don’t let me stop you.” Maybe she was that repellant to him.

  Colan frowned, his nice mouth curving into a tight, unwelcoming shape. She took another bite of the chewy lingon and worked on that so she wouldn’t say any more. He took a deep breath and shifted against the counter again. She was eye level with part of his anatomy she shouldn’t make acquaintance with, so she concentrated her attention on the back window and the gently moving hammock. That would be a pleasant perch at night. Swaying back and forth as the night crept in while the day disappeared.

  “Why aren’t you eating? Don’t you like it?”

  “I do like it. I was just thinking about your hammock.”

  “I’ll give you a tour after you finish your lunch.” He turned and pulled a container from the chiller and sat next to her at the narrow dining table. Opening the lid and spooning some of the contents onto her plate next to the noodle creatures, Colan shook his head as she opened her mouth to protest. It was some sort of chopped green salad with chunks of dried fruit and nuts, and frankly, she wanted to eat it. He pulled a fork from a container on the table and began to eat the remaining salad from the container.

  “I think with that salad I’ll be close to eight hundred calories or over.” Lia decided to tease him, feeling much more comfortable now that he sat and ate and stopped staring, brooding, and leaning all over the place. He grunted and ate a bite of food.

  “You need to gain weight. Next time I’ll fry something with some sugar in it.”

  Lia stopped twirling a very long strand of lingon. “Next time?”

  He poked around in the salad for a few beats and shrugged his shoulders. “If you want to again.”

  “If I want to what?”

  “Have another meal here.”

  “With you?”

  “I suppose I could cook, leave it on the counter for you, and go hide in the bedroom while you eat it.”

  Lia grinned as he shook his head with exasperation. “You sure want to go to this mysterious bedroom a lot. I’m not sure I even believe it exists at this point. Is it some sort of psychological safe haven?”

  Colan turned his head and shot a disgruntled look at her. “I told you I’d give you a tour if you ate your lunch. All of it.”

  “Will this tour include the mysterious bedroom?”

  “You can look in from the doorway, no farther.”

  Lia couldn’t keep a straight face any longer. She laughed. The doctor said she was tense, but a good verbal interaction with Colan Nestor seemed to refresh her. She glanced over at him and was relieved to see, despite the forbidding set of his expression, there was a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth. “We don’t get along very well, do we?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I guess not,” was his deadpan reply.

  Lia shook her head and peered down at her plate, surprised to find that it was mostly empty. How had she eaten that much and not even noticed? And she hadn’t thought once about the datpad set to emergency notice Colan had insisted she leave by the door. No wonder she felt refreshed.

  “Did I eat enough to get that tour now?”

  He rocked his head back and forth as he considered it, glancing from her plate to her face a few times until he gave a nod and rose to clear up the dishes. Lia turned in her seat to watch him as he cleaned up in the kitchen.

  “I heard you have some unexpected visitors arriving soon.” Now that she’d eaten, he seemed willing to talk about work again.

  “We do. A ship full of settlers jumped ahead of schedule, and they’re orbiting now, anxious to drop. We’re holding them off until tomorrow so we can get the bare minimum done in time. Otherwise, they’d be sleeping on the wet ground and eating survival rations.”

  “A few days of that might make a lot of them reconsider their adventure and jump right back off Gamaliel next chance they get. Better to come to your senses here in town than lose your nerve out in the forest.”

  “Are you against the immigration of extractors?”

  Colan shrugged as he rinsed the last plate and loaded it into a miniscule washer. “I don’t like all the fuss and bother. But since I mapped the planet, I can hardly hold it against someone if they want to come and take a part of it for themselves.”

  He circled away from the kitchen and leaned against the counter again, toweling his hands and watching her with that assessing gaze she found harder and harder to look away from. A few quiet moments passed, and Lia wondered about that oft-mentioned bedroom.

  As she opened her mouth to say something clever, Colan’s door alarm chimed. He waited a second. When it buzzed again, he threw the towel on the counter and stomped toward the door, muttering something inaudible. Lia spun in her chair and watched as he triggered the door open to reveal Riva Estep on the stoop. She strode right in and started to talk.

  “Have you heard? They’re here already! Tor, you have to help me. You understand what’s at stake. This is a horrible disaster, and I don’t know how anyone will be able to live with themselves. Stars, they’re going to destroy this world, and these people are here to help them do it. You have to stop them, Tor. You’re working for them; you can make some sort of delay or problem to—”

  “Riva, have you met Lia Frei? She’s the new scheduler,” Colan interrupted and waved his hand in her direction as Riva finally noticed her sitting at the table. The agitated woman halted her forward momentum, and her mouth hung open for a second.

  “You’re joking, Tor. You simply must be joking,” Riva sneered as she looked Lia up and down.

  Lia glanced back and forth between the other woman and Colan, who had reverted to his usual grim and blank expression.

  “I know we aren’t on the best of terms, but to take up with one of them. Are you doing it to spite me?” The other woman shook a dismissive hand in Lia’s direction as if she waved off an annoying flivver.

  “Doing what to spite you, Cit. Estep?” Lia spoke up, unhappy to be cast as an undesirable in this little drama. All the
satisfaction and good feelings she’d gained during their interrupted lunch had disappeared.

  The other woman took another step her way and peered at her. “Tor can speak for himself. He owes me that much at least. I have nothing to say to you, you little collaborator.”

  Lia blinked at the venom in Riva’s tone. “That’s an interesting character assessment coming from the person who co-signed on the planetary utilization plan, unless there’s another Riva Estep wandering around?” She saw Colan over the other woman’s shoulder flash a quick smile which he hid as soon as Riva spun to glare at him.

  “Get her out of here, Tor. We need to talk.”

  Colan shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. Lia stood up from her seat at the table so when Riva turned back to her she’d be on equal footing. She was getting a strong sense the scientist was close to losing control of her behavior, and she hardly wanted to be in a vulnerable position when the other woman did.

  She also didn’t want to stay in this suddenly too small space and argue with an unbalanced person. She had work to do, was fueled up, and whatever strange accusations Riva wanted to fling about with irrational abandon, Lia didn’t want to hear.

  “Excuse me.” Lia moved past the other woman, walking close enough to Riva to make her move out of the way. She just wanted to press in on Riva Estep’s space. What an annoying woman. How Colan could consider her a friend was perplexing. Then again, there wasn’t much human variety on Gamaliel. That was about to change in a few hours.

  Colan followed her to the door, opened it for her, and then followed her out on the decking.

  “Thank you for lunch.”

  “Don’t forget your datpad.” He handed the device over to her, and she smiled in surprise. Had she actually been about to leave without it? She had been well and truly distracted.

  “Thank you for that too.”

  “Tour next time.” Colan leaned closer to her with this assurance, and Lia had to resist the urge to lean up and kiss him on the cheek. It was utterly inappropriate and out of the question, of course. Colan glanced at her mouth, and she regretted her mature impulse immediately.

  She turned away and stepped carefully down the ladder, Colan watching her every step of the way. Giving him a wave, she turned away and headed back to the offices, stepping around the deeper boggy spots along the way.

  Newly-landed settlers clapped in the sunlight as Moca concluded her welcome speech from a makeshift podium on the landing deck, and Colan wondered how many of them were going to get headaches in the next few hours. He stood on top of the half-completed flight terminal, compliments of an accommodating Welti, and watched about fifty people become new citizens of Gamaliel.

  In the space of a few days, the planet’s human population had doubled, and the original residents were now outnumbered. When he’d asked for a perch to view the landing and arrival ceremony, Colan had originally thought he’d wanted to be away from human contact and the potential for questions or requests. As he scanned the crowd of blinking, tired-looking people in new boots and lugging small cases, he knew he’d been hoping to spot Lia and observe her from a distance. Keeping his distance from her seemed like a good idea. Every time he was in proximity to her they fought and he thought about kissing her, which was no way to get through the day in a relaxed way. He hadn’t spotted her yet.

  He heard someone climbing the ladder to the roof and turned, hoping for a second it might be Lia tracking him down to pester him about a message she’d sent a few minutes prior, but it was Zashi dressed to blend in with the new settlers in trek boots and a brand new jumpsuit rather than his usual dark grey uniform. He joined Colan at the edge of the roof to watch the group of people now making their way toward the new barracks module where they would be checked in and then allowed to start familiarizing themselves with their new hometown; Pearl.

  “My guess is we’ll lose twenty percent in the first three months.”

  Colan glanced over at the other man. “Fatalities?”

  Zashi shook his head. “Jumps back out. This is a nice planet. I’m hoping for no fatalities.”

  Colan watched the newcomers straggle away; some in family groups, some unattached, a few laughing and excited, most just worn out from travel. All of them looked too soft to manage any sort of trek in the forest. “I would guess thirty percent gone by then.”

  Zashi grunted and held out his hand. “What are we betting?”

  “Quart of gin?”

  “Done.” They shook on the bargain, and Colan watched the unorganized line of settlers disappear into the building below. No Lia anywhere in the crowd. She must have been inside helping to prepare.

  “Any criminals in the mix?”

  Zashi blew out a sharp breath and shook his head once. “An embezzler, a reformed huckster, and a few with assaults on their records. About the combination I anticipated with a group this size.”

  Colan thought over the criminal records of the Pearlites he knew and had a feeling the natives could hold their own with this new bunch. The last settler entered the building, and the once-populated deck was empty save for the podium and a swarm of flivvers.

  “Guess the show’s over.” Colan headed back toward the ladder.

  “Lia’s inside.”

  Colan was unsurprised the security officer knew where Lia was since it was his business but wondered why he’d mentioned it. Zashi pulled out a pair of shades and put them on as he turned away to survey the new construction from his higher vantage point like an eagle surveying its domain.

  With every step down the ladder Colan told himself to just go home and work on some survey analysis in preparation for his final planetary report, but by the time his boots hit the soft ground he looked for a door into the terminal building. Within a few seconds he’d found one and was going inside without thinking too much about his motivation. He heard some rustling coming from farther down a corridor and walked in that direction, peering into empty rooms along the way. This place, when completed, would serve as a warehouse, admin center, and passenger terminal with baggage claim. Right now it was a lot of blank walls and open windows.

  Entering the room, Colan saw Lia crouched over a disassembled switchbox, virtuwires, and leads flung in all directions, her datpad flashing near her knees. Not wanting to startle her, he knocked his knuckles against the wall frame and watched as she twisted around to see him, her forehead crinkled into a worried expression. Her body was bent in an uncomfortable position, and she was flushed.

  “Have you eaten?” That was a reasonable excuse to find her and talk with her.

  “What? No, it’s just—” She glanced at her datpad and sighed, her shoulders slumping as she realized it was well past lunch. “Damnit. I need to get this done so Tully can network. He wants to start in an hour.”

  He edged closer to her and glanced inside the open panel in the floor and at all the electronic and phase field circuits in a muddle beneath her hands. None of this even vaguely resembled scheduling. “What are you doing, and why are you doing it?”

  “Helping out Tully. He’s over in main getting networks set up for all the new rooms at the barracks, and Welti is busy putting finishing touches there, so I’m over here trying to get the basic system to boot so we can start running arrivals through here. We just got word another ship is due ahead of schedule, so this needs to be done.”

  “Why you?”

  “There isn’t anyone else available. And I know the basics, so here I am.” Lia leaned back on her heels and settled to a seat on the floor with a sigh. Colan didn’t like standing so high above her, so he lowered himself to a crouch nearby and glanced at the virtuwires again even though he wasn’t interested in them at all.

  “How do you know what to do?”

  “My last assignment was Station Thirty-One. We were short staffed, and the tech officer decided I was capable. I spent a lot of time wedged in ducts and hanging from ceilings. Not one of my more intelligent episodes.” She shook her head and curled her lips
in a rueful smile. Her fingers tapped at the display by her feet, and she frowned.

  “Not going well?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid to power up, have it short out, and burn the place down. We don’t have enough safety officers on planet to respond to a fire.” She shot him an exasperated look and then returned to frowning at the mess in front of her. He wanted to help her or distract or feed her or do anything that might be useful.

  “Give it a shot. I’ll put out the fire.”

  “With what?”

  “My shirt?” He ran his hands over his second best shirt. It had only one patch on the hem, so it wasn’t even noticeable when it was tucked into to his trousers, which he hadn’t. He should pay more attention to his appearance.

  She grinned and shrugged her shoulders. Picking up her datpad, she called out to Tully she was giving it a try, and Colan heard the young man’s encouraging acknowledgement. Taking a breath, she swept her fingers over a few nodules which glowed red and waited as the wires and conduits started to wink green. With a hiss, smoke drifted up from somewhere under the floor. Muttering under her breath, Lia powered the unit down and lowered her head to peer inside. Reaching in, she jiggled something. There was a strident whine and crackling sound, and she drew her hand back rapidly. Over balancing, Lia rolled to her back as Colan reached to grab hold of her arm. She winced and shook her hand, tears glittering in her narrowed eyes.

  “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  “Phase shock. It’ll be all right.” She shook her hand as she cried out a few pained tears, and Colan leaned over her.

  “Let me see.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine if you were shocked. Give me your hand.” He reached out and grasped her wrist to inspect her skin as she struggled to sit up. They both bent over her injury as he twisted around for a better view. There was a faint pinkish grid imprinted across the back of her hand, fanning out in a typical dispersal pattern. No blisters, blood, or burned flesh which was a very good sign.