“Got it. No easy way to find Whit on the planet,” Heming leaned back in his chair to the point where Vlad thought the chair he was sitting in would topple over. “So what you’re telling us is that we have to search an entire planet for a single person who is trying not to be found.”
“Not quite. He sent a message to Beryl.”
“You got a message?” Heming sat up in the chair and everyone looked at Beryl. She hadn’t said anything about a message.
Vlad saw Beryl glance at Iris, as if Iris had told her not to say anything about the message. Iris nodded at her, giving her the go ahead to tell them about it.
“Just as he signed off. He told me he loved me, and then he wrote, ‘Beryl is the key to finding me.’”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I have no idea.” Beryl looked at the message again on her phone, as she had at least a hundred times since she had received it.
“Great. So we’re back to searching the entire planet, unless and until we can decode this mysterious message. Just for future reference, the next time any of you,” Heming motioned around the table at all his fellow shipmates, “leave a message as to how to find you, try not to make it so cryptic that the person for whom it is intended has no idea what it means.”
“You’re not helping, Heming.” Vlad shot his brother the sort of look an older brother shoots a younger one right before pushing him to the ground when mom and dad weren’t looking.
“Because everyone else is coming up with such brilliant plans?”
“Whit couldn’t make the message any less cryptic,” Iris jumped in before Heming could get jumped by his older brother. “The Civitians are sure to find it at some point. I’m sure Ellis is searching through all of our communications as we speak, hoping to find out anything more we know than them. I suspect that no matter what I do to try to hide it, they are eventually going to find out that we have spoken to Whit, and then eventually they are going to find out that he sent a message to Beryl telling her how to find him.”
“And then what?” Fawn asked.
“Game on.”
“What do you mean, ‘game on’?” Heming leaned forward now, his previous complaints about their inability to find Whit forgotten.
“I mean, once the Civitians know we’ve been talking to Whit, no matter what sort of competition is going on now, then it is going to be truly deadly. I still don’t know exactly why they want him, but I highly doubt it’s because they think he can help save humanity.”
“Anything else we need to be worried about? You know, besides the fate of humanity?”
“And the fact that these guys are willing to kill to get what they want? And brought the biggest man I’ve ever seen with them, probably because he is a ruthless killer? Other than that? You’re probably OK. Unless there is something on the planet that wants to kill and eat you.”
“Got it. Our deaths first, the end of human civilization next,” Heming smiled and leaned back in the chair, once again precariously balancing. “No problem. I mean, we’ve all faced down those Earthling bastards before.” Heming looked at Mimi sitting across the room with him. “I mean, Earth AI bastards. You actual Earthlings are OK, even if you did let the Earth AI take over.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Mimi whispered, loud enough that everyone heard, but quiet enough that no one could claim the statement was made for their own benefit.
Vlad was about to make a snarky comment when Iris spoke up.
“Shit. Shitty, shit, shit.”
All eyes in the room turned to the swearing intelligence system as the speakers above them crackled to life.
“Hello, Columbinians.” The voice that came through the speakers of the ship was the familiar, deep voice of Wolf. “Ellis found a very, very interesting video in your communications records. We would wish you luck in finding Whit, but it turns out, we don’t wish you any luck in that endeavor. Please let this serve as a confirmation of what we assume you already know, which is that we are ready and willing to use any and all means necessary to find and capture Whit. We would advise you not to get in our way.”
The speaker went silent for a few seconds. Apparently, that was as much of a message as they were going to get.
“On the plus side,” Iris finally said, “at least they didn’t blow us out of the sky already.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jimmy Buffett was singing about a cowboy in a jungle when Vlad touched the Bird down at the edge of a clearing in the Libertas jungle. The clearing also happened to be the center of a compound cleared out of the forest, with numerous buildings and many farm fields spread around it.
A giant, electrified fence surrounded the clearing. Beryl guessed it was at least 16 feet tall, and it enclosed all the buildings except what looked like the home, which sat on the fence, with windows facing out into the woods, so its occupants could keep an eye on whatever was outside the fence.
Whatever was in the jungle, it required a lot to keep it out.
Beryl really hoped they didn’t run into whatever the fence was keeping them safe from.
“For the record,” Beryl said from her seat next to Vlad, “I’m still not a Jimmy Buffett fan.”
“Neither is anyone else.” Heming jumped up from his seat in the back. He was not one who enjoyed being stuck on a ship for a moment longer than necessary. Particularly today, after weeks on Rediviva, getting to stand on the surface of a planet again was an extra enticement to getting off of the Bird early.
“I don’t know, I kind of like a song about a tropical paradise where you can sit by an ocean with a fruity drink and go for a swim whenever the mood strikes,” Fawn said.
“You live on a planet that is a tropical paradise. It’s just that the ocean on said paradise is full of poisonous, man-eating creatures, making swimming a poor idea. As you recall, they did a number on your husband.” As soon as Heming said it, he put his hand to his mouth. Beryl could see that he had spoken before he remembered all the memories the mention of Fawn’s husband, Reed, would bring up.
Fawn stared at Heming, seemingly as shocked by what he had said as Heming was. When Fawn spoke, Beryl was surprised. “It’s too bad they didn’t do a number on you. It would have improved your looks.”
Beryl laughed in relief. All of the Columbinians on the ship had lost loved ones fighting the Earth AI, but for the rest of them, that loss had been a parent. Fawn’s loss was one that none of the rest of them understood. Beryl knew Fawn and Iris regularly talked about it. Iris insisted on it, for the therapy value it provided Fawn. Other than that, though, Fawn never spoke of her dead husband and children. As her friend, Beryl knew a day might come when Fawn might talk to her about it, but that day had yet to arrive, and Beryl wasn’t expecting it to arrive any time soon.
Satisfied everything was alright, Vlad opened up the back platform of the Bird. The smell of the outdoors suddenly overwhelmed the stale air of the Bird.
“Oh, that smells amazing.” Beryl let the fresh air and green smell of plants waft over her. It was nothing special or terribly different than the smell of the jungles of Columbina, but it was the first time she had smelled the outdoors in weeks. There were plants and even a park and gardens on Rediviva, but once you knew what an actual planet and nature smelled like, those gardens were a poor substitute for the real thing.
One by one, four humans, Iris, and Camp all exited the Bird. Iris had wanted one of them to remain on Rediviva, in case something happened on the planet to the rest of them—a very real possibility now that there were other humans on the planet and in the skies around the planet—who had strongly suggested they were willing to kill anyone to accomplish their goal.
Beryl stepped off of the Bird and felt the soft give of the grass beneath her feet as she took in the scene around her. The Bird was in the middle of a what looked to be a large, mowed lawn, with numerous fields of crops taking up about three quarters of the area within the fence. A number of farming drones buzzed around the fi
elds, tending the growing plants. The remaining quarter of the circle was mostly taken up by buildings. Several were immediately recognizable to Beryl as manufacturing facilities, where someone would create the drones and items necessary for life. Others were probably storage areas, along with the large, comfortable-looking home that bore a striking resemblance to the home on Columbina Beryl had shared with her mother.
But the most striking thing about the scene was that giant fence surrounding everything.
Striking and terrifying. Because, if you stopped to think about why you would need such a large and imposing fence, there were no reasons that meant anything good for humans.
“So, were you aware of the fence before we got here, Iris?” Vlad asked, forming a question that Beryl was wondering about herself.
“Sort of. I mean, I’m still trying to get through all the communications from Whit. It seems that there are some creatures on the planet he really wants to keep out.” Beryl thought Iris looked as if she was somewhat surprised at the fence, despite her words. Perhaps she had been expecting something less prison-like than what they saw in front of them.
“Do you have any idea of what sort of animals we’re talking about? I would rather not run into anything resembling a Vos without prior knowledge of it, if we don’t have to. Or a Hamstard, for that matter.” Vlad couldn’t help but steal a glance at Beryl at the mention of the animal that had nearly killed her several years earlier. The hamster-like residents of Columbina were adorable, reclusive, and potentially deadly, as Beryl had discovered the hard way.
“You’re going to have to. Whit had a list of several thousand animals he had cataloged, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, and I’m having trouble establishing a connection with Rediviva to access it. It’s in my long-term memory.” A single frown line appeared on Iris’s forehead, which sometimes happened when she was dealing with a particularly difficult problem to solve. “This is odd. I can’t establish a connection with Rediviva at all.”
“Now that you mention it, at about 10,000 feet, I stopped getting a signal from Rediviva, too. I just figured it had something to do with our relative position to the ship and whatever satellites might not yet be in place.” Vlad looked up at the sky as he spoke, as if it helped him remember what had happened as they came in for the landing. Rediviva hung there, easy to see if you knew where to look and what you were looking for.
So, too, did Ivy.
A few feet away from them, Camp suddenly barked, as if he had discovered something. Beryl immediately looked to her phone to see the translation of what his bark meant, but nothing appeared. She shook her wrist, as if that would somehow make the phone work.
“My phone isn’t translating for Camp,” Beryl said. Immediately, the other humans started looking to their phones.
“Does anyone have a working phone?” Iris questioned. The four humans shook their heads no. None of their phones were doing anything except acting as formerly high-tech bracelets. “This is not good.”
“Like, how ‘not good’ are we talking?” Heming asked. “We’ve had a whole lot of ‘not good’ in the last few months. I’m just trying to get a feel for where on the scale of ‘not good’ this particular piece of information should be placed.”
“How about somewhere better then ‘we’re all going to die,’ but worse than ‘there is a high likelihood this is going to end badly.’ We don’t have any communication with Rediviva. Thankfully, I have all my necessary memory, non-long term memory and most functions active, but that’s going to be about it for modern technology. Everything else requires communications with Rediviva and our satellites.” The line on Iris’s brow grew slightly deeper. “On the plus side, I don’t think this was the work of the Civitians. I saw some plans of Whit’s for some sort of communications jamming, though I didn’t pay them much attention as I tried to get through all the information he sent. And the Civitians will have the same problem when they get planetside. But those are only small pluses. Most everything else about this is not on the positive side of things. Think, we’re basically back to early 19th century communication. As in, if I can’t see you, I can’t hear you. Unless you write a letter.”
“So, what you’re saying,” Heming concluded, “is that on the scale of this situation’s shittiness, we’re pretty well fucked. Yet again.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sitting with the others on the comfortable chairs and couches in the living room of the clearing’s home, Vlad was glad that the energy source to the home was working. Not because it made the house more comfortable—which it did—but because it meant that the electricity running through the giant fence surrounding the complex was still working at keeping whatever was on the outside of it on the outside.
Camp had taken up a spot on a comfortable looking dog bed nearby. That his bed was comfortable seemed to be the only thing going well for the little dog. His head sat on his paws, and Vlad had never seen Camp look as sad as he did now. The smell of Poydras must have lingered in the home, bringing Camp both happy memories and the sad realization that wherever Poydras was, she was not in this house.
Not that any of them actually had any idea what he was thinking, what with the translators not working. Poor Camp was probably even more bewildered. His whole relationship with the humans had suddenly gone dark, and he would have no idea why.
“As I see it, we only have two options if we’re going to find my dad.” Beryl touched the emerald around her neck as she spoke. When they had entered the house, Beryl had wandered around as if it was not real. Vlad had watched her lightly run her hand across everything, as if she was picking up signs of her father wherever she went.
He knew what she was thinking: the house felt like the home she had shared with her mother back on Columbina.
And then, when she got to the small, spare bedroom—an odd room to exist, considering that no one in the universe even knew Whit was still alive only a few months earlier—Beryl had found a small package with her name on it. Inside, there had been a delicate bracelet of natural-cut aquamarines. The bracelet now sparkled on Beryl’s wrist as she spoke, the light blue crystals catching the light.
“Option One is that we conduct a ground search. The positives to this approach are that if we find him, we’ll be able to get him out of here as soon as possible. But that’s about it for positives. We don’t know where he is and without any communications, we’ll basically be wandering the woods without any idea where we are headed unless we can figure out the message he sent me. If the Civitians are out there, we could run into them at any time. Considering they are perfectly willing to kill us, I would rather not have that happen. And, whatever that fence is keeping out is something I do not ever want to see, and…”
“Got it.” Heming cut Beryl off. “Lots of negatives to that plan. What else do you have?”
“The other option is that we could return to Rediviva, and conduct an aerial search from space. The positives to this approach are that we have an easy escape route if the Civitians decide to come after us, and it keeps us out of harm’s way when it comes to whatever creatures we may find on Libertas. The negatives are that Iris already knows this is a difficult task, and…”
Heming groaned and cut Beryl off a second time, “I don’t want to have to go back to Rediviva if we don’t have to. It’s a nice ship and all, but now that I’m on Libertas, the last thing I want to do is to be cooped up on a ship again. Particularly if the Civitians are on the planet and looking for him on the ground. And, because we’re still going to have a lot of time on that ship if we succeed in this task and end up going to Earth. Plus, I would feel completely useless just sitting on a ship and waiting for Iris to do her thin.”
“You spent most of your life living on a ship like that,” Vlad said. “How can you feel cooped up on it?”
“I didn’t know any better back when we all lived on Hodios. Now that I’ve lived on a planet, I know how much better it is than living on a ship.”
“Look,” Iris j
umped in, “I know none of us, including myself, like to be stuck on a ship. But it is clearly the best option.”
“What about a hybrid option?” Fawn asked. “Something where some of us go back to the ship and monitor from the sky, while others are on the ground searching?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Iris said. “I could send drones to the parties on the ground with any information I can get, which would at least alleviate some of the communications difficulties, even if it wouldn’t eliminate them.”
Around him, the group continued to discuss the options, particularly Fawn’s hybrid option. Vlad agreed that it seemed like the best option, but he also felt like they were missing something that would tilt their decision one way or another.
He stood up and stretched, hoping the action would do something to make his mind think of what that missing something would be. As he did, Camp jumped up from the dog bed where he had been sleeping, probably looking for a treat or something to eat. Not that he had any idea without the dog’s translator.
When Camp nuzzled up to Vlad hand, though, Vlad realized what he had been missing.
“Iris,” he cut off Beryl in the middle of something she had been saying about the riddle her father had left them. She looked peeved at Vlad, but she would get over it, particularly when she heard what he had just thought of. “How difficult is it to get a dog to follow a scent?”
“Not as easy as it seems on old TV shows and movies, but it can be done pretty easily if you know how. Beryl taught Camp some basics years ago.”
The look of annoyance on Beryl’s face morphed into a smile Vlad knew was the one she saved for times when she figured out something that had been bothering her. “We can find him on the ground! It won’t even be difficult.”
“What? How?” Heming hadn’t figured it out, but Iris now had a look suggesting she knew what he and Beryl were thinking as well.
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