by Ginger Booth
She was about to assemble her team and set foot again in the forests of home at last.
And then Clay had to spoil her moment. They’d received a burst video from Ben. She thought she’d managed to duck him. When she called last night by simultaneous ansible, she caught Ben’s crewman Judge instead, because the commandant was on Mars. Naturally the rare ansible did not accompany him.
She regarded the one-way video in full live color, recorded a few hours ago. Clay held it rather than interrupt her tricky piloting.
Ben looked like hell, with watery red eyes. His mouth hung open, corners drooping, rather his usual buffed and charming 25-year-old guise. He almost looked his real age today. Suddenly curious, she clicked play.
Ben sniffed three times, then blew his nose on a cloth napkin. She laughed out loud. He caught a cold! Served him right.
“Hi, Sass. Calling from death’s door. I’m told this is ‘only a cold.’” He glowered into the camera as though accusing her. “And you had them all the time before you left Earth. Plus allergies. Sanjay says the allergies are confusing the Yang-Yangs. Plus onslaughts from multiple viruses, none of which we’re immune to. So that’s the first thing. If you think Yang-Yangs will protect your crew –” He paused to sneeze again. “No. Sanjay estimates twelve hours, and we’ll start feeling better. For now, my entire away team is useless.”
His voice grew froggy. He paused for a gulp from a steaming mug. He tried to sniff his sinuses open a bit. What a piece of negative nostalgia to watch. His misery brought back for Sass the true reason why she slogged through so many years dogged and uncaring, simply shooting people if they bothered her in her cop rounds, without a second thought. She was sick all the time. The rain never stopped, bringing endless bouts of colds and flu. On Vitality, the refugee ship to Mahina, they took nearly a year to eradicate the viruses. But the Colony Corps was adamant – all communicable disease stopped here. Bless them for that!
“Next. These Martians fancy themselves some kind of client of Luna. Maybe because Luna is their only prayer of resupply.
“In further good news, the Martians are liars. So, take their intelligence with a grain of salt.
“This colony is failing. They adapted some. They can actually walk and talk in their air. We can’t. We’re trying to improve their lot a little. But it’s untenable. The last thing I want to do is resettle another planet so soon after Denali.” He paused to glower into space.
“Oh. Some of the life support failure was self-inflicted. Like, since we arrived in their sky. What the hell they think they’re doing, I don’t know.” He looked straight into the camera to hold her eye.
Sass suddenly sat forward, amusement vanished. “You be careful, Ben,” she whispered. He wouldn’t hear her. She didn’t record.
“So that’s it from Mars One so far,” he summed up. “The computers and their secrets are down. Status is characterizing problems. Then we head back to Merchant and build solutions. Then a second trip down to install the fixes. I don’t want to waste fuel flying an elevator back and forth to orbit.
“This is some kind of vestigial corporate community. Like the head honcho is the CEO, and they call themselves a subsidiary of some outfit on Luna. That part’s pretty silly. Education by apprenticeship. Max lifespan maybe 50, most dead by 30, children, but below a replacement rate. They’re dwindling to death and mostly clueless. Sort of like Mahina when we started. Your basic colony failing to thrive. Smells god-awful. Worse than Mahina Orbital that first time we broke atmo.
“Oh, and Remi points out, whatever brilliant research they’ve got, it didn’t do them any good. So there’s that.
“I’m sure I forgot something but I need a nap. Be careful. Rely on your mink. Ben out.”
Sass immediately hit the record button. “Ben! So sorry about your cold. True misery, aren’t they? Yeah, I had one for my last decade on Earth. Or worse.” She paused to smile sympathetically.
“Thanks for the warnings. I’d like to offer one in return. Beware of good-cop, bad-cop. There are so many ways to play. If you suspect they’re in cahoots with Luna, trust your gut. Beware of friendly Martians.” She paused to level him a look similar to the one he’d shot her.
“And sympathy plays. Those are a classic. The pretty young woman, desperate for help. You’re immune to girls, but your team isn’t. And even you can fall prey to the bright and hungry child with enormous eyes. Or the pretty boy eager for adventures of the horizontal kind. I recommend a team chat about fraternizing.”
She paused to doodle a fingertip across her desk. “They aren’t human here, Ben. Not entirely. Not anymore. You want to look at that part of our data burst. Fish people lurking in the sea.”
She added a few more low-lights from their data to pique his curiosity. Though that would wait until his nanites beat the virus. He wouldn’t feel curious about anything until his nose stopped running.
“And with that, I’m about to stroll in the woods of home at last. It’s still a beautiful world. Wish me luck! Sass out.”
“Sorry, Clay,” Sass murmured on a private line, as the airlock opened before her to the November woods. One of them had to stay behind and fly the ship. If this went wrong, it was too much to ask of the engineer.
“It’s OK,” he claimed. “The magic is stepping foot again where you tread so long ago. I got that in Bermuda.”
That gave her pause. Clay didn’t enjoy Bermuda. But she shrugged off the concern, with every intention of relishing Upstate. She looked around her companions, who shot her thumbs-up. Except for the mink, who fidgeted in her arms. She nodded decisively, and flicked her grav to 0.1 g for the hop down. Clay held Thrive hovering only a few meters above a dead-grassy field, but that put the door airlock about seven meters up.
She landed lightly, and took one bound to clear the landing zone before she turned off her gravity, her boots sinking slightly into the boggy grass. The clearing was surrounded by November woods, not Earth’s most beautiful view. But it was home. The familiar grey day, the brown on brown of thick bare branches above fallen leaves, a few dark conifers mixed in, and the cardinal red surprise of a few red maple leaves still clinging to a stunted tree –
“Sassafras,” she murmured, walking toward a sapling not much taller than herself. “Hey, team. Meet my namesake.”
She bent down a twiggy branch and found remaining leaves in all three tell-tale shapes, the oval, the mitten, and the double-thumb mitten, shining through the murk in brilliant autumn scarlet. A few yellow and gold leaves fluttered from maples as well. The underbrush by the sassafras included the darker red canes of wild raspberry.
Botanist Eli stepped beside her, and she introduced him to her old friends of the woods.
“You’re glowing,” he murmured with a soft smile.
“Am I? I feel it,” she agreed, beaming back at him.
The mink’s wiggle quotient finally exploded out of her arms to break the reverie, and she laughed. “Fidget! No more than ten meters from me at all times! Acknowledge.”
“Aye, sar.” And the mink immediately flew at a tree and climbed it. None of the trees exceeded the captain’s specified ten-meter limit. In fact the tallest looked like victims of a bad hair-cut experience a few years back, likely a microburst. The underbrush lay thick with fallen branches, some more recent than the autumn leaf-fall.
Sass turned to her team at last. “This field. See the stone outcropping. This is likely a few inches of soil over shallow stone, or an old road.” She looked around for the signs. “Yeah. A secondary road, a rural highway. That’s why grass grows here. The land is stony, marshy brooks at low points.”
Her eyes fell on a line of tumbled stone, thick with lichen. “That’s an ancient field stone wall. Someone cleared this land for agriculture once, maybe five centuries ago. Take measurements here. But stay in the field for now.”
Zelda and Porter erected their equipment. Kaol set off to walk the perimeter of the field. Eli fell in beside her as she chose to follow Kaol, pe
ering into the woods all around.
Suddenly she halted. Could it be? She’d seen the flick of a bushy tail. Then Fidget leapt to the same tree from another, and gave chase. “A squirrel! Fidget, stop!”
The mink, bright white on the dark wet trunk, froze comically. The scolding squirrel leapt to another tree. Which apparently belonged to some other squirrel, who chased it down the trunk. She lost sight of the pair of them as they raced into the underbrush.
“How can it breathe well enough?” Eli wondered. “Do you mind? If I take one for dissection?”
Her heart panged. “Kill it?” It seemed miraculous that there was a single mammal left alive on this landscape.
“Only one,” Eli excused himself. “Sass, that creature shouldn’t be able to run.”
She couldn’t bring herself to authorize harming it. But Fidget suddenly leapt down her tree trunk to pounce on something in the leaves. Her prey almost got away, but she pounced again. Then the proud mink trotted back to them with a creature clamped in her jaws, fluffy white coat spattered with crimson blood.
She dropped a chipmunk at Eli’s feet, then gazed up with shining brown eyes.
“Good job, Fidget!” Eli praised her. He bent down to give her back a stroke, fastidiously avoiding the blood near her mouth. “Um, don’t hurt anything else. But I needed one sample. Thank you.”
Fidget looked to Sass winningly, seeking more praise. She caught Sass’s expression of horror and turned to slink off in dismay, belly to the muddy grass.
“Good job, Fidget,” Sass praised belatedly. The mink flinched as though hit with a rock.
“The mink is good at reading human expressions,” Eli noted clinically. He donned lab gloves to collect and bag his sample. “She can read you.”
“No kidding,” Sass acknowledged.
“Fidget is fantastic. Every member of the crew is in love with her. Except you.” Eli skewered her with a glance. “Get over it.”
“Right. Eli, you’re in a forest. Do botany.”
He popped the dead chipmunk in his bag and straightened, then surveyed his bloody gloves and bag in distaste. “Gladly.”
Kaol rejoined them, and stepped directly before her. “We’re not alone,” he murmured. “Don’t look. But I’ve spotted three people. Traps. Markers. They vanish quickly. Shy.”
Sass nodded. “Science team, return to the ship. Kaol, let’s try to open a dialogue.” She checked his belt unnecessarily. He was armed, with sonics and blaster. She carried stunner and blaster herself. She eyed the hovering asteroid hopper. “Clay, drop the cargo door. Faster to board.”
Thrive dropped the giant gangplank of a cargo door to horizontal. Zelda’s first attempt to re-board overshot, as she flew a slow parabola over her target surface. Kaol rolled his eyes and relieved her of her testing equipment when she landed. Sass did the same to get Porter and Eli tucked in quickly. She tried to call the mink in, too, but Fidget ignored her.
She lightly dropped back to the grass. “Fidget, you need to obey, or you’re never leaving the ship again.”
“She’s obeying me, Sass,” Kaol corrected her, landing harder in a deep-knee bend. “I asked her to run up that tree and bring back video.”
“Oh. Sorry, Fidget.” She sighed. Eli and Ben had a point. She really needed to get on the same wavelength with this mink. “Clay, close the hatch. We’re keeping the mink for reconnaissance. Maybe she’ll tire herself out.”
The once-white dynamo streaked back to them with its hopping gait, and leapt into Kaol’s arms. Copious mud and leaves joined the blood staining her muzzle. Kaol didn’t mind. He pulled out his comm tab, and the mink touched it with her grubby whiskers to download her video.
Sass reflected that they needed to train the hyperactive robot to keep her camera level and move it slowly. But this time she managed to bite her tongue rather than criticize. Kaol simply halted the playback, opting instead to jump between still frames.
Standing side by side, the mountain of a young man pointed slightly to their left with his tablet, then shifted the mink onto his broad shoulders to free both hands. “This is our ten o’clock. Do you see the streamer of decorations?” He zoomed in.
Sass had taken that for a simple vine. But no, Kaol was right. Rather, it was a vine, but someone hung handmade totems from it, small figurines shaped like people, birds, and others she couldn’t make out, like childish Christmas ornaments fashioned from twigs and straw, battered by the elements.
“Fidget, did you see any people?” Sass asked.
The mink shook her head.
“She just doesn’t recognize them,” Kaol murmured. “Here.” He’d flicked through still shots to find one.
Sass didn’t immediately spot the figure either, even with the hunter’s finger pointing it out on the small screen. A swirl of fabric, in a blue shade of tan, lighter than the bark of the trunk withdrawn behind. Kaol rewound a little and played two seconds, all the glimpse the video caught. She caught a fleeting impression of a shy woman, hidden beneath a shawl as seen from above. She nodded for Kaol to continue.
He reached the end of Fidget’s video and stroked the creature’s head in appreciation. “That way. If you want to talk to them.”
“I do,” Sass insisted.
14
Several pandemics appear to have been natural. Unlike the colonies, Earth was strangely unable to control contagious disease.
Kaol drew the mink from his shoulders, draping the creature around Sass’s neck instead. Mink and captain regarded each other’s face in dismay.
“Need my hands free,” Kaol explained briefly. Then he set off in his chosen direction across the small field, crouched low, his steps silent.
Sass grew up walking in these woods, but long ago, and never silently. She ducked down and struggled to keep up as Kaol passed into taller weeds bearing burrs. Then he passed into the underbrush, occasionally pausing to gentlemanly hold a spiny cane out of her way.
Footing was treacherous on the steep hill slope, strewn with rocks under fallen branches, and thick with saplings and shrubby species, all camouflaged by the deep leaf litter. Muscular memory reminded Sass to lay each step in exploration before committing her weight to the foot. Kaol automatically slowed so he wouldn’t get too far ahead.
He climbed uphill to a short cliff, a chunk of granite sticking out of the slope, and climbed it. He turned to offer a hand, but Sass shook her head. She’d scrabbled up such rocks before, and a quick gravity adjust saved her some effort.
He shook his head at her microscopically, eyes flicking to the gravity generator. She turned it off obediently. She had to concede the point. The shy folk with their woven baubles didn’t strike her as techno-savvy either. He’d only shown her the one person, but he’d seen others. She trusted his judgment.
With a final heave, and accepting a hand the last of the way, she joined him atop the outcrop, where he squatted.
He barely breathed the words. “Now we stay very still. Fidget, that means you.”
Sass elected to sit on her rump rather than squat. He frowned, but let it go. He trained his gaze on the ground, a couple meters away, and she followed suit, though she saw nothing there except a shard of broken pumpkin spilling its seeds, vivid orange against the wet-dark leaves.
After a few minutes, Kaol murmured again, “Use peripheral vision. To my left, twenty meters. A man prays to a tree. Do not eyeball him.”
In her long years, peripheral vision was not a skill Sass had mastered. She split the difference, keeping her eyes on the ground a few meters further away, and drawing them around closer to the direction Kaol indicated. And she frowned. She didn’t see anyone.
But sure enough, a figure slowly unfurled from the ground, and raised his arms, head thrown back to look straight up the tree. He slowly lowered his arms, picked up a basket, and walked toward their right and slightly away.
“How do we approach him?” Sass whispered in exasperation. In sudden decision, she began to rise, in ultra-slow motion. She h
eld up one hand, and then the other, palm out flat. The man stood bent, so she didn’t straighten completely, to echo his body language as best she could. Fidget started to shift, so she petted her to stay still.
“Hello!” she called softly.
The man paused. She toed Kaol and signaled him to rise too. The tree man crouched lower and took a few wary steps away. She didn’t look at him directly, keeping her eyes down, but now she could see him more clearly.
He looked all wrong. Though gaunt, his neck was thicker than Kaol’s. Hunched, she doubted he was capable of straightening. His face was nut-colored with asymmetric knobby additions to brow and jaw. A flattened crooked nose stood over a slack mouth. His matted hair carried broken leaves and twigs. Gnarled hands hung at his knees. His clothes were of a loose weave like burlap, his feet bound with the same fabric and thrust into crude wooden clogs. He wore no breathing gear.
She slowly pulled her faceplate off. “My name is Sass. This is my friend Kaol.” A freshening wind fluffed her hair into her face. A spit of rain hit her eye and cheek. The eye burned slightly from it.
Alarmed, the man peered closer, and side to side, as though unbelieving what he saw. He grunted, “Hnuh! Hnuh!” Then he paused and looked up.
Sass followed his gaze to a low-slung dark cloud, promising harder rain.
Her new friend waved in a down-gesture, as though throwing her away. Then he turned and trotted downhill to their right.
“Wait, come back!” Sass called. He ignored her.
Kaol straightened fully, and sighed. “You want to watch them?” He pulled a few dot cameras out of his belt in offering. Back on Sylvan, they’d attached these dots to trees to observe the alien wildlife and learn their ways.
Sass nodded and restored her face plate, grateful for the first few deep breaths to revive her strength. “Fidget, place the dots to watch this area, especially that tree, and the direction the man took. Do you understand?”