by M. D. Cooper
Isa paused to give the men just enough time to absorb her words, but not so long that they could think up another argument. “Right. Now that you know how things stand, you can go.” She marched to the door and swung it open
“But—” said the handlers’ spokesman.
Isa interrupted, “You’ve been given the addresses and access codes to your temporary accommodation. If you have any problems finding your apartments, you can access directions via the Link.”
Hesitantly, the men began to rise. Isa tapped her foot. Like sheep, the cargo handlers filed out. The spokesman was the last to leave. He passed by her looking confused.
“Thank you so much for using Placement Services,” Isa called down the corridor after the men. “We wish you every success in your new careers.” She closed the door.
Stanford was holding out his hands out wide. “That was marvellous, Isa. I knew I was making the right decision by calling you in. How can I thank you? I know. You can take the rest of the day off. How does that sound?”
Isa regarded him with a level stare, considering the words she’d just spoken to the five men about unbridled opportunity.
“I can think of something even better,” she replied. “I quit.”
ROCK
STELLAR DATE: 11.26.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Compared to hollowing out a moon, the excavation of the granite on Knossos’s eastern escarpment promised to be a piece of cake. Erin estimated they would be finished within ten days or less.
Once again, she’d had to forgo using a molecular decoupler, as the by-product of the granite would introduce toxins into the ocean, something that Dr. Ryland would frown on.
She believed it would be possible to use an MDC for some of the fine finish-work, but for now, old-fashioned chemical explosives coupled with anti-gravity excavation would have to do the trick.
Sasha had proven invaluable in the planning of the work, determining the most efficient blasting patterns, while Erin had been busy advising on other projects. As she and Sasha watched from a safe distance down the bluff that ran above the beach, the first series of blasts shook the ground.
Erin’s augmented vision filled with data about the blasts, and she nodded with satisfaction.
“Looks like they were perfectly planted,” she said to Sasha. “Good work.”
“Thank you,” Sasha replied, smiling at the success—likely glad to be doing something productive for the first time in several months.
Over the next half hour, the workers bored fresh holes with high-powered beams and set more charges, triggering those as well.
The dust was settling from the latest blasts, and the a-grav skiffs were moving in to lift and carry off the debris, when a figure appeared in the haze, striding purposefully through it. It was a man. His brows were lowered and hands were clenched. He looked all too familiar.
“Doctor Ryland,” Erin said. “Good to see you again.” Then, she couldn’t help herself, she just had to add, “I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
Beside her, Sasha clapped a hand over her mouth and turned away.
Erin’s comment did little to mollify the scientist. “You…” He jabbed a finger at Erin. He seemed about to burst out with something furious, but managed to check himself.
Drawing a steadying—albeit shaky—breath, he put his hands on his hips and looked down as he struggled to frame his words. After a moment he looked up, his glare only slightly less severe.
“You said you weren’t going to do anything that would harm the marine organisms around here. Foolish as it was, I took you at your word. I thought you just might have the remotest idea of what you were talking about. And then you go and do this. I’m telling you, I’m not going to let you get away with it. I don’t care if you have top priority. I’ll take this as high as I have to go. I’ll go to the governor, if I must. As soon as she’s back, I’ll be lodging my complaint and…. Who the hell are you, anyway? Why has destroying this cliff got priority over seeding the Mediterranean? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Whoa,” said Erin, hands raised.
She looked up at the newly created hole in the cliff face, and at the skiff that was ferrying away the rubble. She glanced over the edge of the bluff and saw that hardly any more than a few stones had landed on the beach below, and that nothing at all had fallen into the water. She was sure of it.
“I don’t understand. I meant what I said; we haven’t done anything to the water. We specifically opted not to use molecular decouplers, as they can leach toxins into the water. Stars, we haven’t even been swimming. What are you talking about?”
“Shock waves,” the scientist replied. “Vibrations. That’s what I’m talking about. You know, that funny feeling under your feet when you blow something up? Or maybe you hadn’t noticed?” he added sarcastically.
“Vibrations?”
“Yes. They pass through the rock…” He jabbed at the cliff. “Under the island…” He pointed down. “And out to…”
Oh, damn. “The sea,” Erin said, wincing. “And I guess vibrations and fish hatcheries don’t mix.”
The biologist tilted his head and frowned at her, as if to say, You think?
“Doctor Ryland,” she began. “I’m so sorry. I should have consulted with you properly before beginning construction. I honestly had no idea that what we were doing could be harmful to sea life. I must confess that I do most of my work in space—I’m just down here trying to help speed things along.”
Her immediate and frank apology somewhat soothed the anger lines in the scientist’s features.
“It would have been much better for us to discuss your plans further before you started work,” he agreed. “When you said you were developing the area, I imagined some kind of construction work. Is that what you’re doing? Wait. On second thought, I don’t want to know. But I’m telling you, if you continue blasting holes in this cliff, you’re going to undo months of labor.”
He took another calming breath. “All the organisms I’m growing here are at very sensitive stages of their life cycles. You’ll most likely destroy everything I’ve worked at, and I won’t be able to begin again until you’ve finished. I can’t just pick up and move, either. I chose Knossos because it’s ideally situated for what I need to do. Are you sure that building here is essential for your development? I can think of a dozen places similar to this where you won’t be in danger of damaging the local ecosystem. Many sites remain exactly as the FGT left them, inhabited only by microorganisms.”
Erin replied. “Our surveys have shown this to be the best place for our development. But I don’t want to harm your sea life. Maybe I can think of a solution.”
“I don’t know what,” said Sasha. “I can’t think of a better place. Sure there are ones that suit the general requirements of the facility, but none that also provide for our…other needs. To make it here, we have to excavate, there’s no way around it. Without MDC’s, anything we do to remove the rock is going to cause vibrations. Unless we do it entirely with beams, but that would irradiate the surrounding area.”
“Yes, let’s not do that,” Dr. Ryland said, a note of sarcasm mixing with his general ire.
“There might be something,” said Erin. “Let me think about it.”
“Thank you,” Ryland said.
“We’ll stop work for today,” Erin said. “Can you tell the workers, Sasha? We won’t trigger any more detonations, but we’ll have to clean up the site.”
“I understand,” said Ryland. “I have to get back to work.” He turned and left.
When he was out of earshot, Sasha said, “Not exactly friendly is he?”
Erin replied, “I think he’s just very protective of his work. Understandably.”
“I don’t know about that. He said himself he was only raising young fish and other organisms. He could just start again when we fin
ish. It isn’t the end of the world.”
“Actually,” Erin let out a long sigh. “I can see his point of view. He obviously cares a lot about what he’s growing out there; he wouldn’t be able to do a good job if he didn’t.”
Sasha snorted. “As far as I’m concerned, the best place for fish is on a plate, fried.”
“I wouldn’t say that around the doctor if I were you. Have you told the team we’re finishing up for the day?”
“Yes. They’ll cart off the rubble, clean up the site and then head back to Landfall.”
“Good,” Erin gestured to Tanis’s shuttle, which rested atop the next rise between them and the mountains. “Let’s go up to the shuttle.”
Sasha picked up her a-grav pack. “Do you really think there’s something else we can do to hollow out the rock without causing shock waves, radiation, or ground-water poisoning? Because I can’t think of a single thing. Or at least, not anything that won’t take forever, and we don’t have that kind of time.”
“I have an idea, but I’d like to double-check that there isn’t another site we can use before I take it any further. Ready to go?”
As Erin strapped on her a-grav pack, Walter said,
Darn it. He had her.
As Erin landed on the dusty rock beside the shuttle, she shook her head. Her AI was quite the nanny.
ON THE WATER
STELLAR DATE: 11.26.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Martin Ryland guided his boat out to sea, silently fuming. He needed to get out on the water. A visit to one of his offshore nurseries would help him get those two smug engineers out of his mind.
‘I honestly had no idea that what we were doing could be harmful to sea life.’
What kind of idiot didn’t realize that underwater vibrations could affect marine organisms? Especially the young life that he’d spent the last few months hatching, feeding, and protecting all around the promontory’s shores. Those women were supposed to be well-educated and intelligent, for stars’ sakes. It constantly amazed him how ignorant people could be about how life on a planet worked.
No one seemed to have any understanding of, or familiarity with, nature. When people actually ventured outside the cities, it was to go planet diving or canyon racing or tsunami surfing. Everyone was looking for speed and excitement; no one seemed to want to just sit and appreciate the natural world anymore.
Eamon said.
Martin replied to his AI,
Martin gave a sigh of exasperation.
Martin’s hands still bore the evidence of the baby sea turtles’ exuberance. He probably should have taken the time to let his hand fully heal before going back in the water, but he hadn’t wanted to call in a replacement to tend to his hatcheries, nurseries, and breeding grounds. He just couldn’t bring himself to trust anyone else to do the job properly. Or maybe it was because he would miss the little creatures too much, even if he were away for only a short time. One or the other. He didn’t know which was true.
He only had a small dinghy, but it was plenty big enough for his needs, and fully equipped with navigation equipment in case he ever ventured out of sight of the shore. The boat’s GPS told him he was approaching the nursery, and he soon saw it, standing slightly proud of the waves.
Martin turned off the engine and let the boat coast to a stop. He was reached the buoy that was anchored well outside the netting of the nursery and tied off to it. After taking the bag of turtle food from its box, he put on his mask, rebreather, fins, and mesh gloves, then sat on the side of the boat before rolling backward into the water.
The archelon nursery had an automated feeding system, but he enjoyed tending to the little creatures himself. It also gave him an opportunity to see them close up and check on how they were doing. When the ecosystem in the Mediterranean was up and running in balance, the baby archelons would be able to find their own food. That meant, of course, they would also be food for other creatures, but that was the natural cycle of life.
For the moment, it was his job to supply a range of marine organisms that would kick the system into life. The archelons were only a small part of the plan, but like Eamon, he had an especially soft spot for the prehistoric sea turtles. One day, they would be four meters long and five meters wide, but right now, they were not much bigger than the span of his hand. Their little flippers and overbites made them very endearing.
Those overbites could bite, it was true, but he didn’t find that hard to forgive. They were only confusing his fingers with food.
Slipping down under the waves, he swam to the double entry to the nursery. Before he even unfastened the first door to go inside, the baby sea turtles had smelled their food and came gliding quickly over. Martin went into the space between the two doors and locked the first one. The turtles crowded against the mesh of the second. A quick unfastening of that, and he barely had time to carefully close it behind him before he was enveloped in a mass of shells and flippers. Grinning around his rebreather, he began slowly swimming away from the turtles while pulling handfuls of food out of the bag and scattering it in the water.
As always, he felt like he was passing out candy to hordes of excited children as he swam along.
When the food was all gone and the excitement was over, he spent some time floating in the nursery, just watching the creatures. They’d developed a pattern of swimming. They would slowly circle the interior anti-clockwi
se, periodically rising to the surface in undulating waves. Martin found them mesmerizing and calming to watch.
Every so often, he gently caught a turtle and examined it more closely. The creatures all seemed fine and unaffected by the blasting that had gone on that morning. They were probably far enough offshore that the vibrations would have faded to harmless levels. He hoped the same was true for the fish and shellfish in the shallower water around the island. He thought he’d managed to stop the detonations quickly enough to prevent any serious damage.
His exit from the nursery, with the empty food bag, was far less hectic. As he swam back to the boat, he reflected on the morning’s events. The chief engineer’s apology had seemed genuine. Should he really have expected her to know anything about marine biology? Maybe if she hadn’t caught him off guard while he was out swimming, they could have gotten along better from the beginning. If they’d had the opportunity to discuss her plans, she might not have gone ahead with the blasting. At least now it seemed that she was trying to find a way forward that wouldn’t harm the sea life. He was sure she would find another site for her development. Carthage was a big place.
Martin said to Eamon when he emerged from the water next to the boat.
He pulled himself up into the boat and stripped off. When he was free of his gear, he started up the boat’s engine and entered the coordinates that would bring it to the beach outside his office. Then he slipped into the water. It was the perfect temperature for swimming. Those FGT engineers had really thought of everything.
