by Ginger Booth
She shifted her butt to the concrete and lifted the cushion. Bingo! “Notebook.” This was a cheap small spiral-bound model, warped from the damp.
She’d always felt something poignant about investigating the dead. As though each victim had a story to share, entrusted into her hands. Yes, today’s mission was fact-finding. But these sad little pages, in an uncomfortable camp, yanked at her heartstrings.
Clay and Eli rapidly checked beneath the other pillows. Eli found a couple letters. Sass studied her own find. The missing hash marks were here on the back. “One week.” Something had been written on the front cover, but she could only make out dents, not what was written. So she opened to the first stained page, and frowned in concentration at the crabbed cursive, a style of writing she rarely saw a century ago, and never since. Settlers on Mahina tended to the illiterate in her day, though Ben claimed the schools improved light years after she left for Sanctuary. In any event, no one used archaic cursive.
“August 16, 2180,” she reported. “Liam was right.” She gave up on puzzling out each word and scanned for the next she could easily make out. “Super-lightning. That’s what destroyed them. Natural causes, not war.” Though from her recollection of the 22nd century, the distinction didn’t make much difference. The two fed on each other into an unholy downward spiral.
“What is super-lightning?” Eli asked.
Sass tried to remember what she knew of the phenomenon. But her education before she left Earth was as bad as any Mahina settler. And she’d never seen super-lightning first-hand, only scare stories percolating through the tent cities. “Uh, Fidget, you explain.”
“Super-lightning,” quoted the mink in its sweet high tones. “A lightning strike orders of magnitude more powerful than normal, with bolts up to 1000 kilometers long and a hundred Gigawatts of power. That exceeds the energy output of the Upstate region at time of Earth departure. Super-lightning is positively charged, unlike normal lightning, which is negative.”
Clay added, “One of the weather patterns that grew more common in the 21st century.”
Sass sighed. “Normal buildings had lightning rods to carry strikes to ground. But super-lightning would simply explode the rod, and everything around it. And this is a high point over open ocean. Its lightning rod would have attracted any nearby bolt. No wonder no one rebuilt here.”
She turned to the last page, but Eli reported first.
“Suicide note. They had enough food but no…charges for the rebreathers? He says good-bye to his wife. Sorry he didn’t protect her and the kids better. He tried. And now he’ll try to dive his way out, see if they can escape through the underwater caves.”
Clay murmured, “They wouldn’t survive that without scuba gear. Doesn’t matter.”
Sass tucked her notebook find away, to study later. “Fidget, run ahead to the surface. Tell the others to meet us at the shuttle. We found all we’re likely to learn here.”
And the notion of super-lightning made her suddenly very anxious to return her people safe to the ship. Darren was a sweetheart, but he was an engineer, not a flight officer. Though where she could find safe haven on this planet – that was no clearer now than on the day she left for Mahina.
9
People are hard to kill.
Sass climbed down the shuttle ladder into her hold, to pandemonium. The science team talked a mile a minute, thrilled by their finds on Bermuda. Clay carried the mangy mink to the chief engineer for a checkup while the doctor scurried into med bay with his own gruesome prizes.
She stepped aside for Kaol to hop down, and opened a ship-wide address. “Attention, all hands.” She paused until those in the hold looked to her, but continued on the address system, booming from the walls. “We need a safe place for the night, then a debrief. Discussion.”
First mate Clay shot her a grimace. The security officer Kaol seemed dismayed that he had no opinion to offer. But Eli stepped forward eagerly. “The Sargasso Sea.”
Sass blinked. “The what?”
“We’d like water samples from the Sargasso Sea. We suspect the ocean is better oxygenated here than most places –”
“Eli. Safe place to park for the night, is the agenda.”
Clay corrected her. “Sass, he’s suggesting we’re in a good place. The Sargasso Sea is here, a bit further east. It’s a giant seaweed mat in the Atlantic.”
Eli spread his hands. “That’s what I was trying to explain. The ocean currents form the Atlantic gyre with a calm sea in the middle. Of sargassum seaweed. Most of the ocean was a desert even before the twenty-first century. Supported a very low density of life. The exceptions were coral reefs, marshes, mangroves, and spots like the Sargasso Sea. The ocean equivalent to rain forests for biome productivity. The coral died off centuries ago. But the Sargasso is right here.”
“You mean the reeking seaweed?” Sass asked, nose scrunched in revulsion.
Eli frowned at her. “It might not smell bad when it’s alive. Sass, we haven’t accounted yet for how high the oxygen levels are.”
“How high?” the captain asked in disbelief. “I can barely breathe out there. You’d keel over.”
Zelda, the atmo specialist, stepped in to bolster her boss. “Sass, the rain forests are destroyed, the reefs and marshes are degraded, and the phytoplankton levels are very low. We haven’t accounted for enough oxygen production to explain the atmospheric concentration.”
Sass pursed her lips. “Agenda. Park. For the night. Someplace safe.”
Clay cut in, “I like the Sargasso. Ancient sailors feared it, because they’d get becalmed. The weather worries me.”
“Oh!” During the century that culminated in the Diaspora, the weather on this planet worked to exterminate human beings almost as enthusiastically as their own governments. “Sargasso it is. Captain out.” Sass terminated the public address, and added, “Darren? How’s Fidget?”
“She’ll regenerate herself. Won’t you, sweetie?” he crooned to their ship’s pet, draped over his engineering podium for a tummy-rub. “Apparently she called Mommy for advice. Now she’s very itchy as her tougher fur grows in.” He scratched her side, then flicked tufts of white fur off his fingers. “She’s shedding.”
“I see that,” Sass agreed sourly. She stepped to join them, and stow her pressure suit in the lockers by Darren’s station. “Called Mommy? Fidget, we’re in a comms blackout. How often are you calling Mars?”
The mink rolled onto her wide puppy-feet and looked shifty. “Some. Always.”
Sass leaned down to meet her eyes firmly. “No calling without my permission. None. We’re hiding.” She raised a finger to her lips. “We stay very quiet when we’re hiding.”
“But there are millions of signals. No one will hear! We don’t speak English. No one will understand us.” Fidget averted her eyes. Her squeaky voice adopted a higher keen of panic.
“She’s probably right, Sass,” Darren suggested. “Who would understand data signals between our AIs? Plus they’re pointed at Mars.”
The captain straightened in dismay. How such a small creature could beam signals across the sun to Mars, and capture replies, baffled her. Any tight beam at that distance would surely spread wide as the planet. But the great AI Loki was a consulting toolsmith on the build of this silly mink. “Remind me to ask Loki how that’s possible.”
Darren’s eyebrows flew up. “Yes. Indeed.”
“So Fidget. How is Ben doing today on Mars?”
“They ate lunch. The colony smells bad.”
Sass allowed that was pretty good intel for a mangy robo-toy. “Thank you, Fidget. But no more talking to Merchant without my permission. Understood?”
The mink flattened onto the podium and began to keen in misery.
Clay reached in and scooped up the pet. “Sass, go fly the ship. It’s my job to hassle the crew. Notice how I don’t choose to, bitch. It’s alright, Fidget, just ignore the mean old lady.”
“You –!” Sass bit off the rest and stomped to th
e side of the hold. She stomped harder, with a twist on her gravity generator, to launch up to the catwalk to continue to the bridge. No respect! She slid into her pilot seat and used manual typing to find likely coordinates in this Sargasso Sea she’d never heard of before. Atlantic Gyre my butt. But it did sound like a quiet spot to leave the bridge to him overnight while she caught some sleep. Bastard.
Fortunately her irritation dissipated with the view as she flew low over the ocean swells with a glorious sunset behind her. She placed a rear camera on split screen to enjoy it fully. As the lemony light faded to honey, and the sky’s blue gained hot pink streamers on turquoise, the wind calmed and the waves smoothed, and gained ever-thicker clumps of floating straw. That’s a lot of seaweed. The same yellowish variety she’d smelled on Bermuda turned out to be this sargasso stuff.
She upped the false-color brightness compensation as the true colors drained to pewter swells with purple highlights, and kept flying, seeking even thicker wads. Eli wanted her to find the Atlantic’s answer to the Amazon rain forest here somehow. Yet her instruments picked up radio signals from the surface, and plenty of them. She split the difference, trying to give any locals a wide berth, yet seek the thickest seaweed, until radio contacts ringed her at ten klicks. Then she took station, hovering 100 meters up. Good enough.
Though what she’d sought was deserted open ocean. There are millions of people on this planet, maybe billions. Solitude may be hard to find. She opened the ship-wide address again. “All hands, full stop, Sargasso Sea. Maintain radio silence. This is a popular spot. Science team, assemble for EVA for samples. Captain out.”
With that, she retraced her steps, hopping down into the hold. And found Clay waiting at the foot of the shuttle ladder in scuba gear. “Seriously?” Though now she saw him, she itched to put on her own dive suit. Great idea! Except it wasn’t.
“I lead the away team,” he claimed sourly. “You stay here.”
“We’re not even pretending I’m the captain today? I give the orders, Clay.”
“Already given.” He turned and scaled the ladder. Apparently the geeks were already aboard waiting for him.
“We need to talk,” Sass warned him.
“Won’t that be fun.” He clanged the airlock shut behind him.
The housekeeper Corky called down from the catwalk. “Captain, when will you be wanting dinner?”
Good thing she was here to make the important decisions. “Soon as they’re back, Corky. Any chance we could clean up the fur?”
“She’s still shedding,” Corky offered apologetically.
Sass reflected that Mahinans knew little of furry pets. “Don’t wait.”
“Aye, sar.”
The captain sighed and checked in with the doctor to kill time. Poor Liam was astonished by the traces of healed fractures he found on the Bermuda skeletons. “For a paddy slave on Sagamore, this would be proof of brutal abuse. How did they break so many bones safe in a luxury dome?”
Sass suffered the weird clicking sensation again as memory awoke, whole and vivid, of the beatings she took in the army at 14. Were all my memories whitewashed before they were put in storage? “Earth is a rough place. Human life is cheap here.”
“Life is cheap on Sagamore,” Liam argued. “The minimum slave price would be two weeks pay on Mahina.”
Two weeks pay now, perhaps, but not forty years ago when Sass policed the villes. “Wrong direction. Humans had negative value on Earth when I lived here. I was paid to kill them.”
Liam met her eyes in shock. “What?”
She shook off her mood and touched his arm reassuringly. “Long time ago. Don’t worry. I don’t kill people for –”
“Sass!” Clay barked in her ear over her comms. “Coming in hot!”
“What?” she yelled, already running for the bridge.
The trip to the waves was trivial for Clay in the shuttle, only 100 meters down from Thrive. The only tricky bit was rolling out of the shuttle nook without making a splash. The contraption was designed for space. But he leveled out, with the floor of the airlock only his own height above the placid sea.
Eli’s trio came along for this quick outing. In a moment, they packed into the airlock and opened the door. Clay clambered down a rope ladder to ease himself into the waves. They’d made these scuba suits to dive on planet Sylvan, where the waters were more poisonous than Earth’s oceans, according to their samples to date.
It’s not as though anything would kill Clay. Or rather, he’d get over it. This fact infuriated him, as always. He let it go with the rope ladder, and dropped backward into the wild Atlantic.
Where he became instantly tangled in seaweed.
Oh, hell. When he thought ‘seaweed,’ he thought of the short varieties floating in New England waters. But this sargassum plant grew long ropes, suspended by float bubbles. He pulled out his utility knife and started hacking his helmet and air canisters free. “Eli, I’m tangled. Get started without me.”
“You could grab onto the rope ladder, and we’ll haul you up,” the botanist suggested. “Or we could throw you the life preserver.”
“No, I’m fine,” Clay assured him. “I want to swim beneath the mats, take a look.”
“And how’s that working for you?”
Clay grimaced in annoyance. It wasn’t working at all. Sure, maybe he could cut himself loose. But as he kicked around, the weeds extended at least as deep as his flippers could press down. Far from the sensual delight of swimming, this felt awful. And if there were sharks lurking in here he’d never see them coming.
If I can’t swim, neither can a shark. This thought was small comfort. Sea creatures ate smaller sea creatures, and that chain of chompers ran the full scale from whales to microbes. Something in here was capable of biting him. “Fine, you’re right.” He cut another shank of twigs to free his arm, and reached for the ladder.
Another few minutes of struggle – he needed to abandon his flippers – and he sat on a ladder rung, arm through to hold steady. He trained his bright helmet dive light downward, lest he draw unwelcome attention from those surrounding radios, likely fishing boats. “Ready. Drop the sample containers.”
Porter fed down the first container, dangling on a line. Clay filled it with surface water as the next container came down for a deeper sample. For that, he kept his body braced on the ladder, but reached one arm and his helmet into the wet mass of reedy bubble floats.
Something grabbed it. Astonished, he let go. “Um, another sub-surface sample container, please. I dropped one.”
Porter replied, “The next one’s weighted to go deep, if you can manage it.”
Clay checked its heft, and doubted it could push through the weeds when a grown man hadn’t. “I’ll use this for sub-surface. You’ll need something a lot heavier to sink it.”
For his second attempt, he squatted on a lower rung, rubberized feet in the waves, which lapped up to his lowered thighs. Holding on tight with the other hand, he pressed the container down into the weeds, helmet face into the water. This wouldn’t reach down much more than a meter. With thumb cocked at the ready, he flipped the lid closed as soon as the jar was full, while gazing around below.
And a light strobed him from below. Rego hell! That wasn’t the only light, either. “Everyone in! Now! We’re not alone!” He struggled to yank the sample bottle from the press of weeds. The second it worked free, he pulled himself out of the water and doused his headlamp. “Porter, pull this sample up or lose it!”
“But we wanted –”
“People. Underwater. We’ve been seen! Don’t bother with the airlock. Just get inside!”
He called Sass while he swayed his precarious way up into the lock chamber. He pulled himself in, stood, slid, fell, and landed hard on his ass. Ow. Rather than do that again, he flipped onto his belly to haul up the ladder.
That’s when the submarine turret broke the surface. Screw the ladder.
10
Some of Earth’s billions died of t
he famines which touched every continent. Too little rain, or too much, destroyed crops on a continental scale. The great cereal crops were decimated by disease.
Heart pounding, Clay scrabbled his way into the shuttle. The submarine turret knocked on the bottom, rocking the smaller vessel sideways and sliding him against a back seat. He regained his feet halfway to the pilot’s chair. “Shut that door!” A snick announced he’d been obeyed seconds after he set the shuttle climbing back to the mother ship.
Not that a 45-meter PO-3 was much of a mother ship. The ship is tough enough to face a submarine, and I’m not. Depending on what kind of submarine, and how annoyed its sailors were. Clay took a quick conscience check. No one should be too annoyed.
He zoomed them over Thrive’s nose, with over 20 cm to spare, and fish-tailed the shuttle around to the correct orientation, while simultaneously hitting the attitude jets to snuggle in, upside-down. OK, he scratched the paint on that maneuver. And Sass will bitch about my driving again. He slammed the button to initiate the mechanism – clamp on, flip, draw in, lock to ship, come on, hurry!
“Shuttle secure!” he yelled. “Sass, get us out of here!”
“What did you do to them?” his beloved demanded – Sass, anyway.
“I didn’t do anything to them, and are you fleeing yet?”
“I hit the gas before you finished clamping. Teach your grandma to suck eggs, Clay. You came in way too close. And did you scratch the paint?”
“I did, Sass. I scraped the entire side of the shuttle. It’ll look like hell, rust like hell, and I crushed the rope ladder, too.”
“Clay?” Eli interrupted. “How do we exit without contaminating the ship? Focus, please.”
Abruptly brought back to reality, Clay perused the state of his shuttle. Puddles of seawater lay everywhere, and soaked through the woven upholstery and foam seats. He’d dragged in a few clumps of sargasso weed, too. He peered through the airlock. The outer door wasn’t closed before the inner one. A bent ladder rung sat jammed between the open airlock and the ship’s door. He sighed and settled into the first mate job, while Sass had all the fun.