Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3)

by Scott Rhine

  Her least favorite task was wading out into the lakes to measure the water levels so the planners could determine how much water each jump consumed. The flood sticks she installed would help the next team read the results with binoculars. Eventually she decided to build a raft to rig more permanent measurement devices. An expert at boats, Lou helped her with the undertaking. He showed her everything she needed to know about knots, but when it was her turn to demonstrate, she became so flustered under his intense gaze that she dropped her scissors in the lake.

  Each day the air in the sphere grew half a degree colder.

  Zeiss, Sojiro, and Red spent all their time in the cave the astronauts dubbed ‘the model train room’—with projections and maps covering the floor, ceiling, and every wall. They were replanning the next few legs of the trip with their new data. The next leap would take them to a nice, warm sun. They’d bask there to recharge the ecosystem. Since Sanctuary only had enough fuel for ten to twelve more jumps, each immersion into subspace needed to take them as far as possible; however, travelling too far or into a dark region would mean another winter. Nothing was ever easy. They decided to plot the course to Midway, the point of no return, and vote whether to continue or not once they arrived.

  On the fourth night, Lou drew kitchen duty for some minor infraction. He would sit for hours regaling the men of camp with action stories and off-color jokes. This kept the men away from legitimate work as well as their respective womenfolk—neither of which broke the charter. However, when he slipped and said something religiously intolerant, the women could give him “sensitivity chores” to rehabilitate him.

  Since his latest gaff gave Mercy the night off, she used the free time to have Auckland teach her how to draw and type someone’s blood. Proudly, she told her dorm mate, “I’m O positive, Oleander—universal donor. That means if anyone gets hurt, I can save them.”

  Preparing for the ‘night’ shift, Oleander laughed. “A noble sentiment. Sometimes, no matter what we do, bad things happen.”

  It was the first night groundside she didn’t collapse—the night the nightmares began.

  In Mercy’s dream, the aliens told her she could save the Brazil spaceport and everyone in it if she were clever enough. She tried to solve the problem, but her arms were slowed by high-g goo. Nonetheless, she shouted commands to Snowflake and typed on her helmet interface as fast as she could.

  When she failed, the spaceport burst into flames again. After which, the few smoking shards of her childhood home were leveled by a wall of water. She screamed until Oleander slapped her awake.

  Red ran into the dorm room. “Mercy, what the blazes were you doing?”

  “They were all counting on me. I wasn’t good enough.”

  Her childhood friend leaned next to her and put an arm around her. “You’re shivering, girl. I’ll tell Risa to bring a heater in here.”

  After Mercy calmed, she asked, “Red, what brought you into the dorm?”

  “Since you went to sleep with your headset on, you’d created a new project for Snowflake and were stealing our computer resources. If we’d let you continue, who knows what you might have built.”

  “I might have saved Brazil.” The dream still clung to her, more logical and real than the tragedy.

  “It’s okay. Now we know. At bedtime, we all need to take off our comm sets and mute them.”

  Oleander had to go back on duty, so Red held Mercy till she fell asleep.

  The next morning, Risa moved the incubators into the women’s dorm room.

  “What’s this?” asked Mercy, awakened by the sound of an electric screwdriver.

  “All the heat I can spare—thirty-five degrees Celsius,” the Latina said. “Toby said the lamps might help the depression if you were suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. The jerk doesn’t realize you lost more than anyone else at the spaceport. Nobody cared enough about him to show up for his launch. Dr. Baatjies also wanted you to have more hands-on experience with the life sciences, so he recommended you be in charge of the chicken ark.”

  “The what?”

  “Some of them may be turkeys or pheasants. We collected ten fertilized eggs of each fowl type we encountered, assuming eight would hatch. We’ve filled the greenhouses with all the plants we could sample.”

  “Like Noah’s Ark.”

  “Exactly. If winter lasts too long, we’ll be able to repopulate . . . and have omelets. Toby was in charge, but since you’re low woman on the bioscience totem pole, the job now falls to you.”

  ****

  Mercy had nightmares the next night, too, but there were no disastrous side effects. Yvette just put a hand on her forehead to check for fever. At least she wasn’t shivering now.

  At the end of the first week at the outskirts of the solar system, Yvette, Park, and Nadia travelled lensward to take the next shift. Toby went straight to the men’s dormitory. That night, the chicks began to stir in their shells. Mercy watched till morning as they pecked their way free. Toby found her there watching the chicks dry off and then wander around the box.

  Mercy was glowing when she said, “They kept knocking over the water bowl, so I made a big tray.”

  “Yeah. They’ll poop in that and spread diseases, but this is good enough for today. You’ll want pine shavings for the floor, and eventually roosting poles. My mother has chickens.”

  “How do I tell the boys from the girls?”

  “There’s a bump, but even a pro misreads that one out of every ten times. I can never tell the cocks apart until about five weeks when they either crow or develop a comb.”

  “They don’t eat the bugs yet, but Strut will eat the coarse-ground grain out of my hand.”

  “Tell me you’re not naming them! They’re food. For the boys, all but three must be, or they fight. You can only have one cock of the walk for each coop.”

  She opened her pocket to show him the chick huddled inside. “But she loves to snuggle!”

  Even Toby didn’t have the heart to discourage her. Instead, he reached into his bag. “Dr. Auckland said you’ve been taking his blood samples for the hemoglobin check, and you have a gentle touch. I suppose that will come in handy if we ever need to give children shots. You’ve earned this.” He handed back her cleaned lab coat.

  Her eyes opened wide, and she threw herself into a broad hug. Toby left his arms at his sides but closed his eyes to enjoy the thanks.

  “How is Yuki?” she asked, assuming the best.

  “Easy there. I had to remove your tourniquet to examine the injury more closely. Whatever we decide, it will probably take all three of the medical professionals in Olympus a good nine to twelve hours to achieve. I doubt we’re going to be able to accomplish that before we reach our mission goal.”

  “I could take Yvette’s place as nurse. You could train me.”

  He looked her over as she slipped back into her familiar lab-coat armor. “You show promise. Perhaps.”

  By the end of the second week beyond Sedna’s dark orbit, Mercy had nearly all of the birds named. Strut came to her whenever she held out her hand. The other chicks knew her by the sight of her white lab coat and would waddle behind her as if she were the mother hen.

  Coming back from guard shift, Oleander groaned. “They won’t stop peeping! How am I going to sleep?”

  “I’ll cover their pen while you’re in bed. They’ll quiet down.”

  “How can you stand it all day?”

  “They keep the nightmares away.”

  The hardened spacer couldn’t argue with the results. “Fine. The next twenty-four days will be subspace travel—a long jump. Watch them for any strange symptoms. I could use your help on my shift to watch for the predators.”

  “Okay. I won’t let anything in to eat my babies.”

  ****

  Toby, Red, and Zeiss oversaw the long jump personally.

  After the first full shift of their being submerged, Oleander reported evidence of a new winged creature—bats. She relayed this
information as she woke Mercy for her shift with Herk.

  “They must eat the insects at night,” Mercy reasoned.

  “Why didn’t I notice them before now?” asked the security team member.

  “Maybe they change their pattern in subspace.”

  “Perhaps it messes with their sonar, too.”

  “Did you track them back to their cave?”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “The guano will be good fertilizer. Ask Rachael.”

  Oleander sighed. “We’ll send out search parties.”

  “I just had a thought. Did Park have a headache after the first immersion?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I think gravity talents might be immune to the effect. That would be me, Park, and Z.”

  Taking off her boots, Oleander asked, “Are you suggesting we experiment on our commanding officer?”

  “I’m saying that I don’t think the designers of the ship would let us open the shutters if it could harm us. More than that, I don’t think they planted all this vegetation so it could die.”

  “There’s a definite negative effect every time we jump. Everybody else feels it.”

  “Maybe it’s just a boundary effect,” Mercy suggested. “I want to see what happens when we open just one of the giant shutters—”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Mercy continued, “At the translucent setting.”

  “They have a third setting?”

  “Every other window in this place does. To be safe, they could opaque all the windows in Olympus.”

  “That . . . could work.”

  “Would you carry the message to Olympus? For me?”

  The security specialist said, “If Red is on duty, she’ll try it. If Z is on, he won’t.” She glanced at her wrist to check the time. “I’ll try in five minutes.”

  After preparing for bed, Oleander lay on her mattress. Entering the proper mental state, consciousness left her body. A few moments later, she reopened her ice-blue eyes. “Make sure everyone’s inside. We have fifteen minutes till the test commences.”

  Excited, Mercy asked, “You mean everyone but me?”

  “Everyone. She won’t risk a single person on this. We want a lot of rock between us and any subspace radiation. Red’s going to set up their camera and some Geiger counters on the domino patio, open a shutter for ten seconds, and close it again.”

  The campers congregated in the mess hall, waiting for the results. After the experiment, Nadia checked the readings. “Nothing worse than the exposure we faced at the Antarctic station or the UN moon base.” Once she announced it was safe, everyone huddled around her to watch. When she activated the camera’s playback, the tiny screen flared with coruscating light. In her Russian accent she commented, “Is like Saint Elmo’s fire in different colors. The lighting effect looks like what happens when you put a florescent bulb in the microwave.”

  Nobody in the group other than Nadia had ever done this, so she explained, “The radiation excites some gas in the windows and gives us dim light.”

  “Enough to photosynthesize?” asked Mercy.

  “For the evergreens and shade plants, probably. The fruit trees will probably lose their leaves, but the daytime animals will think is it just another cloudy day.”

  “We’ll still need the grow lights in the main greenhouse,” Rachael said.

  Oleander asked, “What next?”

  Rachael replied, “We’ll put some pheasants out in the yard for a few hours and see if they survive the exposure. After that, Herk can go out in his EVA suit. When that works, we try someone in a normal spacesuit.” Turning to Mercy, she asked, “How did you know?”

  Mercy self-consciously bound her hair, blocking the stares with her elbows. “It’s kind of like my dad’s BMW. Whenever I wanted to do something new, like change the tire, I asked myself, ‘How would I design it?’ Then I’d look in that place and find the tools, hook, or mount point.”

  Laughing, Nadia said, “Is good thing Sanctuary is not Russian car. Then, only heater would work.”

  Chapter 22 – Let There Be Light

  The colors of the shimmering, opalescent lights covered the entire visible spectrum and beyond, averaging a milky red at the horizon and yellow directly overhead. Mercy blocked the blue end of the spectrum with shutters, fearing microwaves or other unsavory side-effects. They still experienced a little heat loss, but could travel in this mode for a few months without freezing. From time to time, those in Olympus recorded storms in the windows, especially near a nexus point or an intersection. During such events, the campers scheduled indoor activities to be safe. Once Zeiss trusted this form of daylight, he freed Toby to resume his biozone duties, assessing the damage from winter.

  The bright afternoon of his release, Mercy arrived at Toby’s bedside with a picnic basket, a spear, and binoculars. “Ready for botanist-assistant duty, sir.”

  Toby groaned. “My head hurts.”

  Mercy handed him a thermos. “Gingko something-or-other tea. Oleander sent it for the jump sickness. She harvested it from the mountain and swears it helped her recover from her last subspace immersion.”

  He gave a crooked smile. “Thanks. Does it taste like dirt?”

  She nodded. “The sugar helps, though.”

  He winced as he swilled down a cup.

  “Bad?” she asked.

  “No, just hot.”

  “I’d get you an ice cube, but we don’t have a freezer yet. I think they have a tree bark you can lick for the burn.”

  “No, a toad,” he corrected, making her laugh. She remembered stories of people on Florida licking rainforest toads for the hallucinogens. “I’ll meet you outside after I brush my teeth.”

  “With a rat tail,” she giggled.

  “How’s Auckland doing?”

  “Fine, as long as he doesn’t run. He’s been researching his condition and told Pratibha it could be months before his system recovers.”

  “If ever,” Toby whispered. “He can’t go more than eight hours right now without a nap.”

  ****

  The air outside was still cooler after the second jump, requiring jackets. However, the greenery overwhelmed any doubts Mercy had about the expedition. She stared in awe at the waterfall and the small rainbows formed along the river’s sharp descent. For the first micro-biome, Toby followed a gentle trail around the mountain until they reached a valley. On the way, they listened to the promised Tennyson. Just before they arrived, he turned off the reader and said, “Close your eyes.” He led her to a small clearing. “Sit. Now breathe in.”

  The scent of flowers enfolded her. “Ahh.” She opened her eyes. There were flowers of several kinds on every side and down below, recovering from the weeks of darkness. “It’s gorgeous!”

  He watched her face light up as she tracked the flight of an absurdly fat bumblebee. “Yes.”

  She blushed when she saw he was looking at her. Plucking a violet, he handed one to her. “For your hair.”

  “There are layers on the petals, like a target, not like the pictures I’ve seen.”

  “That’s the way a bee sees it,” Toby explained. “You have a unique perspective on the world. I envy you.”

  She looked at her knees nervously, waiting for him to whisper compliments or hold her hand.

  “You’re nothing like Yvette,” he began.

  Mercy wanted to shout at him, but she remained silent. Mother said sometimes you just had to let a man ramble till he got to the important things. Dad had been a little slow in the romance department, but that meant he had fewer bad habits.

  She smiled, gritting her teeth through an hour of talk where the biologist mentioned Yvette five more times. Condensation from the ground was seeping through her pants, and she’d finished her lunch. Eventually, she glanced at her computer pad. “Toby, we got off to a late start. I’m enjoying this time together in a special place, but we need samples from the next zone before dark.”

  “Right,”
the pale man said. “Let’s do this again some time.”

  As they cleared the picnic, he pointed to a butterfly. “There’s a beautiful specimen.”

  Removing a board from his pack, he held it out for the insect to flutter onto. Just as she was about to coo over it, Toby took out a large pin and stabbed it through the back. “Perfect for my collection.”

  She could find nothing polite to say after this display. In such cases, a lady said nothing.

  At the second location, they found a field of greenish-white flowers that Toby identified as hops. “Herk is going to be happy about this. He drinks a lot of beer.”

  Mercy harvested as much of the hops as she could fit in her basket. “Weird. Do you think the aliens are trying to recreate life at the farm in Oklahoma?”

  “That farm didn’t have this variety of wild rice or bamboo.”

  “So maybe there were other, earlier landing sites?”

  Toby shrugged. “Have Red ask the alien.”

  “Since we entered the control room, she doesn’t talk to him anymore—the test, remember?”

  Mercy noted in passing that the water levels had dropped a tiny bit more than expected. She scribbled notes on the subject but didn’t say anything to alarm the biologist.

  At the final stop of the day, he uprooted a bean plant and examined it closely. After chopping it and dropping it into an analyzer, he nodded. “It’s genetically modified.”

  “What for?”

  “To make it richer in oil, which also keeps away more of the insects. You wouldn’t want to eat it, but we could make fuel for lamps, heaters, or engines. Processing effort would be minimal.”

  “Wow. We packed a lot of discoveries into one day,” she said, staring at the mountain in the distance. “I learned a lot, but the shutters above us are closing. We’d better head back.”

  ****

  Rachael ambushed Mercy as soon as she reentered the storage caves. “What do you think you’re doing to my compost heap?”

  “Huh?” Mercy asked as Toby snuck away to the dining hall.

  “You put pine sawdust in my delicate mixture?”