Sanctuary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  Then Dot commed her. “Captain, if you’re done with the mayors –”

  “Oh so very done. Done with Shiva, too.”

  Dot chuckled softly. “There’s another development. If you could come to med-bay.”

  “Good news?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  34

  Sass exited her office, then took the express hop down to the hold. Clay hadn’t left yet, so she ignored them all. Once inside med-bay, she locked the door behind her and nodded to Remi and Dot.

  Sass tried to smile, with haunted eyes. “What’s up?”

  Remi lounged feet up on the auto-doc cot, the only bed in the compact room. He flashed a similar half-smile. “Not my arches.”

  “Oh?” She had fallen arches once, after her son was born. The complaint was common enough. The Army doctor told her a third of all people had flat feet. Unfortunately they didn’t have them in the Army – they were cashiered. Of course, her nanites fixed that. “Well, you look tired lately, Remi. Getting enough sleep?”

  He waved to Dot, who took over. “Captain, Yang-Yang nanites correct flat feet. And those crow's-feet as well.”

  Sass peered more closely at his face. This time when their eyes met, her smile was warm and genuine, though professional.

  Meanwhile Dot pulled up another skull diagram on her monitor. Since they arrived on this planet, Sass had seen more of those than she ever wanted. This one didn’t show the lime green nanite dots.

  Dot flourished her hand. “Remi’s brain.” She flicked to another picture. “My brain.” On this one the nanites were magenta for Yang-Yangs. “Darren’s brain.” Lime green speckled throughout, with a smattering of magenta. “Your brain.” Sass and Clay’s extraordinary nanites were shown in cobalt blue. “Remi’s brain again.”

  “You’re not showing the nanites.”

  “No, Sass. He has no active nanites.”

  Sass’s eyes widened, and she laid a hand on Remi’s arm in reassurance. “We’ll get you a fresh set of Yang-Yangs, don’t worry.”

  Dot shook her head. “I gave him a fresh set of nanites yesterday. He came in reporting flat feet the day before, and several other symptoms of resumed aging. Today those nanites are gone from his system.

  Sass kept her hand on the engineer’s arm. “Has anyone else experienced this?”

  Dot looked down, then away. Medical ethics required her not to say.

  Remi volunteered, “Husna. That’s why she hides. Her face… She ages faster than me.”

  “Yes, she would,” Sass murmured. “And no one else? Remi, do you have any theories about how this happened?”

  He and Husna spent an unusual amount of time together. Granted, as a miner, he had more in common with Husna than anyone else. But she’d prefer he spent his spare time on several other engineering challenges on the ship. Markley’s nanites, for instance, and the still-warped pressure bulkhead for crew berthing. Not that she had much crew these days.

  “Question, captain,” Remi replied. “Your touch is not intimate, inappropriate?”

  She patted his arm, then left her hand lying as it was. “Do you think I am making a pass at you, Mr. Roy?”

  “No, captain.”

  “Good. Answer the question. What caused this?”

  “I don’t know, of course. We live same as everyone on Thrive. The only thing I can think of, is the lake.”

  “The lake?”

  “Yes. I step in the lake. An accident. My suit is wet, and I ride home with Husna in my arms.”

  “In your arms? Quick work, Mr. Roy.”

  “I told you, one horse has no air left!” Sass and Dot exchanged grins. “Ah, this is teasing, yes?”

  “Yes,” both women confirmed.

  He threw up both arms in disgust. “This water, she is no problem, yes? How does water get through a p-suit? But it did. I go to bed that night – of course alone! And my leg, it glows blue-green like the lake. In the morning, I speak to Husna. She has same experience, though the patch on her leg is small.

  “I help her study this, because I am confused. How does glowing water cross my p-suit? You know how dry it is here. My suit, she is barely damp when I mount Quartz with Husna –”

  “Quartz?” Sass asked.

  “They named the horses,” Dot supplied. “Quartz and Scheherazade. To be romantic.”

  Remi glared at her. “It was romantic! It was lovely! You and Darren should try this, ignite your romance.”

  “Rekindle,” Sass suggested.

  Remi waved that away. “My suit, her suit, they pass inspection. I even fill the leg with water. No seepage. We study the lake water samples together. To solve this mystery. But we don’t touch it again.”

  “From your investigation, are you surprised it seeped through your suit?”

  “From our studies, we understand nothing,” Remi conceded. “So I ask Hugo. He says this phosphorescence is why it is so hard to purify the lake water. The lake is forbidden now. But not when he is a child. When young, he swimmed in it.”

  “Swam. Huh. Could they really have enough mind control to keep teenagers out of the lake?”

  “Of course no,” Remi replied. “When teenagers fall in now, they go to quarantine. Six weeks.”

  “It’s been four weeks.” Sass thought this through. “Dot, is Husna safe for six weeks without nanites?”

  “She’s inconsolable. She’s years from an active dying stage –”

  “You misunderstand me. If you give her Yang-Yangs six weeks from now, will her aging reverse? She’ll be well?”

  “I think so. Unless… Well, she’s old in the meantime, and getting older. There’s risk of heart attacks, strokes, falls and broken bones.”

  Sass nodded impatiently. “But we expect she can survive aging for six more weeks.”

  “What are you thinking, Sass?” Remi asked.

  “What if we dosed Darren and Zelda with this water? Would it kill off all the nanites in their systems, including Shiva’s? And then we add fresh Yang-Yangs six weeks later.”

  “No!” Dot’s voice sounded strangled. As the other two glanced to her, she swallowed and fidgeted with the edge of the counter. Sass gave her a few moments, until she explained haltingly. “Please. We could test on Zelda. She’s young anyway. Living without nanites isn’t so bad for her, but… Wait on Darren until the experiment proves out.”

  Sass suggested gently, “That choice should be Darren’s. I’m sure he’ll consider his wife’s views.” That might mean he’d knee-jerk choose the exact opposite of what Dot wanted. “Maybe I should speak to him before you.”

  “Alright,” Dot breathed.

  Sass considered probing for whether Darren had some particular underlying medical condition she should be concerned with. But no, medical ethics constrained Dot, whereas Darren was free to share or not share whatever he wanted. She stood by her decision. “I’ll visit Husna, too.”

  “I go with you,” Remi announced, clambering off the cot. “To Husna. Promise me.”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise, Remi. Your age difference may have seemed small –”

  “No! The opposite,” Remi argued. “Now, Husna looks maybe my age. You, Dot, Clay, you never age. You don’t understand what it’s like. I do.”

  “You care about her, don’t you?”

  “But of course. We go now.”

  They found Husna in her cabin, mortified to be seen. Sass assured her that she looked fine. Compared to settlers only a few years ago, still in their twenties, the old woman looked healthy. The slight loss to her skin’s youthful elasticity began to show off her bones to better effect, granting her face a harsh strong beauty.

  Glancing nervously to Sass, Remi said these corny things, and held Husna’s hands in his own. The geologist seemed to drink up his earnest sincerity, and relax.

  Sass smiled softly, and squeezed Remi’s shoulder. “This is good news, Husna. A few weeks is nothing to women our age.”

  “My hair is turning grey. Here.” The geolog
ist tapped her temple.

  Sass grinned. She had more grey hair at 30 back on Earth. “You can bleach the rest to match. We did that on Denali, and cropped our hair to a couple centimeters long. You look a lot like Kassidy Yang. Trust me, she looked great in short white hair.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me,” Husna grumbled.

  “How so?”

  “Me, like Kassidy Yang!”

  “Hm.” Sass tilted her head and considered Husna. “No, I think you’re more beautiful. Can’t touch her charisma and acrobatics. But who can? I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Sass’s next stop, Darren, wasn’t so easy. His initial reaction was to demand this water to make him himself again instantly. Only as Sass gently presented Dot’s reservations did he have second thoughts.

  “I have disorders that run in my family,” he admitted. “Easily controlled by nanites. Diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Um…”

  “I know what they are,” Sass assured him. “You forget, I come from a time before nanites. On Mahina, I lived and worked among settlers who never had nanites. They died young.”

  “Of course,” Darren agreed. “I don’t know that Dot has the means to treat my conditions, save nanites. The damage should be reversible. If it’s only a few weeks doing without.”

  “Then she’s right? We should prove out this theory before risking you?And in the meantime, you should avoid the lake water.”

  Darren nodded abstractedly. “You know, Sass, my first reaction was ‘Eureka!’ We could hose the locals with the magic water. Free them all. But if their only health care is Shiva, that might be dangerous. Those poor children, completely untrained to care for themselves. And useless adults. Ideally, you should test this water on someone who’s been under Shiva’s control for years, and check how their cognition recovers.”

  “Interesting!” the captain murmured. “Kids have fallen into the lake. Hugo mentioned his son Bron fell in. I don’t know if I can get honest data about that. I can try. But as for you, think about it?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  Last stop on Sass’s list, Zelda was easy. “I want it now! Please!”

  Clay stuck his head into her office to announce, “I’m back. I hear you’ve had developments.” He came in and took a seat while she brought him up to date.

  “I made progress, too,” Clay shared. “I laid on the guilt trip pretty thick, flying into Sanctuary. About how Mahina was a desert world. During the terraforming we worked outside under the grueling sun. How to my captain, refusing us water was beyond the pale, contemptible. I talked Tharsis around.”

  “Good news! Well done, Clay!”

  “I’m not sure you’ve thought this through, Sass,” he cautioned. “He’s going to step up water purification. It’ll take a week or two, several trips into the spaceport to top off Thrive.”

  “Hurry up and wait some more.”

  “And don’t knock over the beehive in the meantime.”

  “Dammit,” Sass conceded.

  “Our backup plan, building our own distillery? No way. Especially you and me, we can’t touch the water. Unless you’re feeling suicidal. But as captain, you don’t have that right.”

  Sass hadn’t considered what would happen if their nanites were also susceptible to the water. They could downgrade to Yang-Yangs, sure. But what if their artificial consciousness actually resided in the nanites now? They could be comatose, or lose all their identities, their memories. Clay was the one who liked to play chicken with mortality, not her. Death hurt. She reached to hold his fidgeting hand. “Promise me, Clay. You won’t walk out on me, either.”

  He scowled. “We’ll bring home a vial.”

  “Clay, I can’t make your life worth living. I’d ask if I could make you happier somehow, but I can’t.” In fact, she quite resented the way he made his happiness her problem. “I appreciate you. Love you, even. Enjoy your company. What more do you want from me? I can’t make you the center of my universe. Thrive is that. The crew, and Prosper as well. Hell, even Mahina. I can treasure you as a great playmate, an excellent second in command, and a wizard with databases. And for all the history we share.”

  “But you’ve got Loki to remember Earth with now.”

  She grinned. “I am enjoying that. Earlier he told me about a mission in Virginia. His team dove into the Pentagon to retrieve ‘classified items’. That’s worse than our sea floor trek to retrieve Nanomage! They snaked an airline down from the surface into the labyrinth, and recharged their tanks on the fly.”

  To her surprise, Clay’s eyes narrowed. “I read about that. In a book. That mission happened before you were born.”

  “It sounds wild! Oh, you mean, that couldn’t have been Loki. Well, the Pentagon probably held plenty of stuff worth diving for.”

  “True,” he allowed, but still looked suspicious. “Be careful what you tell him, Sass. He’s fishy.”

  “You’re so paranoid!” Sass hastily amended her tone. She was trying to be conciliatory. “You’re right. No one on this planet is really our friend.”

  “Hugo Silva is. Don’t piss him off again.” He rapped her desk and rose to depart.

  “Clay, I’m still going to talk to everyone about our new agenda.”

  “Wait until we’ve secured the water.”

  “We could steal the water…”

  “Do I need to put you in the brig, Sass?” Annoyed, he continued out the door.

  “We don’t have a brig!” she retorted as the door snicked closed behind him. “Rego hell!”

  The Cupid could leave any day, and along with it her best chance to score a warp drive and fuel. Granted, it probably wasn’t enough fuel to reach Mahina. But if Clay kept getting all prickly about taking what they needed, she could be stuck on this planet for years.

  35

  “Wow, guys,” Ben Acosta breathed, alone on Prosper’s shuttle. He’d just powered up their next generation micro-warp for the first time. Several hours travel above the rings of Pono, and another hour’s travel to get clear of his spaceship, Ben gazed at the amazing fractal light show of their warp gate.

  “I don’t know about your readings, but from here it looks rock steady. No rotational drift. No running green filaments. Dead still.”

  Over the comms channel, Teke offered, “On our old diagnostics, it looks the same as it always did.”

  Elise clarified, “On my new diagnostics, it reads dead steady as you report. To within a thousandth of one percent.”

  She’d built new instruments to detect the movements Ben reported, to make sure her new warp antlers solved the problem. She took her time building the replacements, and constructed several pairs to select the most perfect mirror copies. Cope had likewise gone to insane lengths to ensure perfectly matched circuitry to deliver identical power to both horns.

  They had the time. The probes were their bottleneck this past month. The team had time to visit with family and tweak to their hearts’ content while Cope’s hired hands built the new components, and Cope himself devised the cast-a-gate mechanism, offset from the warp generating ship.

  “My compliments to the chefs,” Ben purred. “Sure I can’t take a little trip to Denali and test this baby out?”

  “Our wedding is tomorrow,” Cope growled. “Remember? You’re not going anywhere.”

  Ben shrugged a grin. He had no intention of skipping out on the re-marriage ceremony. His father and all three kids awaited them at Mahina Orbital for the low-key affair. All their friends from Thrive’s Denali trip would be there, save Sass and Clay. His pals Captain Lavelle of the Gossamer and Captain Gorky of the Heavenly Bodies were docked at MO, too. They flipped a coin at his bachelor’s party last night to decide on Lavelle to officiate at the wedding. Captain Acosta could hardly carry out the ceremony himself on Prosper.

  Sass married them the first time, on Thrive, parked in what became Schuyler Spaceport.

  “Spoilsport,” Ben teased. “Probe ready? We’re burning prodigious fuel.”

  “Looks go
od on our end,” Cope reported. “Now calibrating with Sora on Denali.”

  This first test was highly ambitious, all the way to Denali orbit. Where Ben trusted the poor probe would crash and burn into the planet’s dense and turbulent atmosphere. But Teke and Cope felt this was the ideal test. The probes were too expensive for them to build three or four to work their way up. Instead they elected to go for the gold and broadcast measurements out the wazoo. And the probe would surely find any remaining errors in their system during its brief lifespan.

  “Ben, we are go for probe,” his husband-to-be-again reported. “Initiate countdown.”

  “Ooh, I get to do it? Cool! Probe launch in 10-9-8…3-2-1-Go!” He had no visuals on the probe itself. The thing was 30 klicks away, and too small to see. The fractal flower didn’t blink or anything. “Um, did it go?”

  Someone clicked him in to overhear Sora’s amazement from Denali – in real time, no lag, over their moose-bot comms. “My stars, Cope, its orbit is not decaying!”

  “That can’t be,” Cope argued. “Even if we got it perfect, it should degrade and fall eventually.”

  Ben powered down the micro-warp, as Teke gushed, “Cope, with these numbers the probe will decay into atmo after orbiting ten times. On the nose!”

  “Well, hell,” Cope complained. “That doesn’t give us any error bar at all.” They all cracked up, whooping at having nailed the probe’s maiden voyage!

  The captain in his lonely shuttle bit his tongue rather than ask why they’d chosen ten orbits as their goal. “Acosta heading back. Congratulations, guys and gal!”

  “Good job, Ben!” Cope assured him. Teke and Elise were too busy slaking their thirst for raw data.

  “Thanks, Cope. Don’t worry about me. Enjoy your moment.”

  With ten orbits to go, Ben calculated they’d be up past 03:00 to watch the probe’s fiery final dive into Denali. Good thing he’d scheduled the re-wedding for supper time.

  After he plotted his course back to Prosper, Ben called the family to report success.