Whistling Past the Graveyard

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Not yet,” the boy said. “I’m still studying. Maybe by the time I’m ten.”

  Xander had been born aboard the Curiosity during one of Tasia and Robb’s runs. The boy spent more time aboard the ship than on the surface of any planet. Tasia was the daughter of a well-known Roamer clan, and Robb was a former officer in the Earth Defense Forces.

  “You’re welcome to come along with us to Newstation,” Robb said. “We’re going to see Tasia’s brother, Jess.”

  Rlinda bent over, still paying more attention to the boy. “Have you ever met your uncle, Xander?”

  “Of course. He’s famous.”

  “A lot of us were famous, my dear boy, but that isn’t always as fun as it might sound.”

  “We’ve all been to Newstation,” Tasia said, “and now we need to go back for some business.”

  “Tasia wants to be Speaker of the clans someday,” Robb teased.

  His wife shot him a quick glare. “Shizz, not on your life! Del Kellum can have the position.”

  “He won’t be Speaker forever,” Rlinda said.

  “And I won’t be Speaker at all,” Tasia replied. “But we do want to see Jess. He and Cesca are forming a school inside the hollow comet near the station. It should be a sight to see. And you should go along, Rlinda, because as Trade Minister, you need to meet with the Speaker of the clans, since most Confederation trade comes from the Roamers.”

  Rlinda knew it was true. “You make a compelling argument ... even though I did just get home.” She sighed. “I wanted to relax, cook a few meals, tour my restaurant.”

  “We’ll take the Curiosity without you, then,” Robb said, “and we’ll report back.”

  “You will not take the Curiosity. I’m going with you. Just give me a day to take care of loose ends.”

  Rlinda was already considering her favorite meals to cook, then decided that was better left to her professional chefs. “We’re all going to dinner, my treat. We’ll order a selection of items off the menu—for quality-control purposes.” She tousled the boy’s hair, much to Xander’s annoyance. “We want this young man to grow up with a distinguished palate.”

  “Shizz, distinguished or not, I’m happy for a free meal,” Tasia joked.

  “And the conversation,” Robb added.

  “We’ll stuff ourselves,” Rlinda said. “Then we can digest it all on the flight to Newstation.”

  Chapter Seven

  Daniel

  Budding grieka plants covered the valley and the hills, spreading, growing. If Daniel hadn’t known what they were, he might have found them lush and beautiful. They would blossom soon and spread death.

  The spores must have lain dormant inside the soil until something triggered this explosive growth. It might well have been a natural cycle on Happiness, a surge that occurred every decade or so, but since the colonists had only been there for a dozen years total, they were unfamiliar with the regular recurrence.

  Daniel vowed he would not lose a third of the people he knew here!

  Rickard, the sick man from the alpine meadows, died the day before, which brought sorrow but no surprise, considering his condition. Everyone had seen his swollen eyes as well as the pus and mucous leaking from his face. Father Jeremiah insisted on a formal funeral, quickly done, with spoken prayers and sung hymns. They all knew that before long there would be too many funerals to count.

  Daniel’s heart ached with dread as he watched the grim, frightened farmers staring at the alien growths that infested their arable land. With a sick feeling, he stood outside his family home in the cool morning, breathing the fresh air but knowing that the air might already be laden with the potentially toxic spores.

  A faint mist hung in the low-lying areas of the valley. Some neo-Amish farmers were out tending their fields, while their wives took care of the vegetable gardens or the livestock. The whole village seemed either oblivious or determined to ignore the peril.

  Daniel had tried to urge them into action, but no one could decide what action to take. Many of the Happiness colonists prayed, though they admitted that would likely not be enough. It certainly hadn’t been sufficient the last time. Others simply went through their days with a fatalism, knowing what was to come from the spore storms, but convinced they would somehow survive … or at least a certain percentage of them would.

  With her quiet and shy demeanor, Serene came out onto the porch. She held a metal cup of strong coffee she had boiled. “For your morning, my husband.”

  He accepted the hot cup, which burned the tips of his callused fingers. He leaned close to touch her shoulder with his, glad for the closeness of her. His wife. The mother of his children. The first person to make his exile tolerable and then wonderful. He would not lose a third of the people he knew here!

  The children were out playing, although Daniel felt a deep dread, not wanting them to touch the grieka plants—but they were everywhere. Daniel nodded toward the far side of the valley, where black smears of smoke wafted into the sky. “Look, Serene. The Van Deens are burning all their fields.”

  “They argued with Jeremiah. We usually listen to him, because he is often right.” She looked at Daniel with a bleak expression. “But not this time.”

  “Neither side of that argument was correct,” Daniel said.

  The Van Deens and four other families wanted the neo-Amish to engage in an extreme eradication effort, chopping down and burning any grieka plants they found. Daniel applauded the fact that they were taking action, while Jeremiah insisted that his people could not thwart the will of God.

  Under other circumstances Daniel would have been with the Van Deens, torching the ground to kill the grieka plants, but from his own quick scouting expeditions into the hills, he saw the prominent fleshy sporeflowers everywhere, a carpet from this valley to the next, probably across the whole continent. They were unstoppable. Once the grieka flowered and burst, the skies would be filled with spores, and the winds would carry the dust everywhere. Burning a few acres would do nothing to diminish the threat.

  Still, how could they not do something? How could the people just stand here and accept their fates? Daniel knew the neo-Amish all too well, and accepting their fate was exactly how they viewed life. They were passengers through their existence, guided by God.

  After being torn from his ostentatious and spoiled life as a Hansa prince, Daniel had gradually accepted his situation. He’d grown to admire the neo-Amish for how they purged stress and conflict from their lives with a purity of acceptance. Daniel gritted his teeth. He would not accept that fatalism now.

  His children did not understand the tension throughout the colony. All three ran about with the carefree exuberance of children, and their delighted outcries attracted Daniel’s attention. They had found something near the garden.

  He and Serene left the porch went to see what had drawn their attention. Ruth was bending down on her skinned knees to look at a particularly tall grieka plant. The fleshy bud had cracked open to display spotted pink petals. “It’s a pretty flower!”

  In alarm, Daniel grabbed his daughter’s skinny arm and yanked her roughly away. “Don’t touch that!” Startled, Ruth was ready to burst into tears. The two boys were wide-eyed at their father’s tone. “Stay away from those flowers—all of them!”

  Leaving the children with Serene, he ran to retrieve his hoe and hacked the plant apart, as if he could accomplish something by directing his anger at this one target. He felt sick inside.

  He saw Father Jeremiah leave his house, dressed in work clothes and wide-brimmed hat. He headed toward the fields to do his daily work, as if this were any other morning. Daniel strode up to him. “Father Jeremiah, do you have records of the last outbreak? What did you learn? You must have studied the grieka plants—what is their life cycle? How fast do they blossom?”

  How much time do we have? was what he really wanted to ask.

  The neo-Amish had practical midwives, healers, and herbalists, but they conducted no medical research nor
any scientific studies beyond what was necessary for agriculture in their daily lives.

  Jeremiah looked at him as if he had spoken in an incomprehensible language. “They are plants. They grow, they mature, and spread their spores. They are part of this planet, and we are just visitors. Sometimes it is difficult.”

  “And sometimes a problem can be solved,” Daniel insisted.

  When Jeremiah just gave him a blank look, Daniel pleaded, “Are there journals at least? Descriptions of the symptoms, how people are exposed to the spores? Which ones get sick and which ones don’t? Was there any pattern?”

  Jeremiah’s heavy eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head. “The ones who survived are all around you—that much is obvious. The ones who died are buried in the cemetery on the hill.”

  Daniel hardened his voice. “I know, I’ve been up there. I counted the graves, and I looked at the names. We’re going to need a lot more graves after this outbreak.”

  The leader nodded solemnly. “Yes, Daniel, we will.”

  “But what if there’s a way we could prevent it? How did you try to treat the people last time? Did anything work? We need to prepare now.”

  “We did what we could.” Jeremiah scratched his beard. “We wore scarves over our mouths and noses. We stayed inside our homes. We washed ourselves and tried to stay free from the spores. But once all the flowers blossomed, the spores were like a fog in the valley. There is no way to fight it.” He leaned closer, dropped his voice. “Daniel, you and your family should prepare. It is certain that some of us will not survive the spore storms. You should pray, tell your wife and children how much you love them, and then hope.”

  “Hope is not enough,” Daniel said.

  “Hope is always enough.” Jeremiah seemed to be quoting a platitude, rather than stating anything of use.

  Daniel refused to accept it. “I’ve never regretted leaving the Hansa. Once I turned my back on civilization, I realized how irrelevant all those luxuries were. But what if the solution is something simple? What if all we need to survive are respiratory filters and door seals? What if a common antihistamine could cure us? We owe it to our people to investigate that possibility.”

  “And how would you investigate it?” Jeremiah said. “We have no research facility. We have no large pharmacy.”

  “Other places in the Spiral Arm have those things. Rlinda Kett was just here, Olaf Reeves has visited us.”

  “We cut all those ties.” Jeremiah’s face darkened. “We have no ships of our own, and we can’t just go exploring.”

  “We have the Klikiss transportal. We can reconnect the power source. I could travel through, find help.”

  “You will not. I forbid it.”

  Daniel was shocked. “Then you would guarantee the deaths of a third of our people.”

  “I guarantee nothing. God takes each one of us, and He decides the time.”

  “If we give up, then we decide the time. The storm here lasts only a few weeks, you told me so yourself. We just need to survive that long. Maybe the Roamers could evacuate us for a short while and then bring us back. It could be an easy solution, and it would prevent so much unnecessary death.”

  The leader raised his arm as if about to strike Daniel down. “That would be even more dangerous to our way of life, opening the doors to a contamination of a different sort.”

  “I’m just suggesting filter masks!” Daniel snapped. “It could save us, something so simple.”

  Jeremiah looked sad instead of angry. “And what happens the next time we need something easy? When someone suggests that we could feed more of our people if we accepted giant harvesting machines? What if they offered us swift transportation so we could go farther with greater convenience? Then we would die as surely as if we had perished from the spores. The neo-Amish will remain true to ourselves. That is my decision, and the people will follow me.”

  Daniel heaved a heavy sigh. “And is that what the upper village would say? Will those dying people all agree with you now, Father Jeremiah?”

  The leader squared his shoulders and adjusted his wide-brimmed hat. “Yes, I believe so. Ever since Rickard arrived, I have been meaning to go check on them. I will travel up there and see with my own eyes. I will come back.” He set his mouth in a grim line. “It will prepare me for what is in store for us here.”

  * * *

  The colony leader was gone for only a day, and he returned with a heavy heart and a dark report. Daniel stood close to Serene and their children, listening to him. “Twenty dead there already. They are tending their sick and burying their dead. I prayed with them, and I helped them dig new graves. I invited the healthy ones to come down with us, but they know the grieka spores will also blossom here soon. Up in the high meadows the winds are brisk and most of the spore pods have already burst. The storm will pass, and the survivors will carry on. We must do the same when it happens here.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes were moist and red. He regarded the frightened listeners, who muttered before nodding their acceptance.

  Then he sneezed and coughed. He wiped his eyes. Daniel had thought the man was crying, his eyes reddened with tears, but now he noticed the first signs of allergic swelling. Father Jeremiah had been exposed to the spores up in the meadows.

  While the other neo-Amish blindly heeded Jeremiah’s pronouncements, Daniel’s thoughts continued to churn. He looked at his three perfect children, his beautiful wife, and thought of Happiness. Years ago, he had determined to no longer fight against his circumstances, against the neo-Amish and against his exile. But now he felt an urgency and determination. He might have the only way they could survive.

  Next morning when Father Jeremiah did not come out to work in the fields, Daniel and Serene went to check on him. Serene brought the colony leader fresh bread, cheese, and coffee for his breakfast. They found Jeremiah groaning on his narrow bed. His eyes were swollen shut, oozing greenish pus.

  Serene swallowed hard, but didn’t rush forward in dismay. Rather she simply went to the water basin, moistened a washrag, and tended the sick man. They all knew the sequence that would happen now. Maybe he would recover, maybe he wouldn’t.

  Regarding the bearded leader, Daniel turned to his wife, terrified to imagine how he would feel to see her in bed like this, or his sons and daughter, trying to make them comfortable in a futile effort. “I will not let it happen,” he said in a voice that was more of a growl. “Serene, tend to Father Jeremiah and watch over our children. I have someplace to go.”

  She looked at him in alarm, but accepted his decision. She went back to dabbing Jeremiah’s sweating forehead with the wet cloth.

  Stepping outside, Daniel looked across the valley where he saw the carpet of growing green grieka plants, now mottled with splashes of color, a vibrant cheerful pink. Many of the flowers were starting to bloom.

  Chapter Eight

  Garrison Reeves

  With all the papers signed and the deal done, Garrison arranged for the sixteen prefabricated modules to be carried aboard an Iswander Industries vessel flown by Elisa Enturi. She wanted to be there in his triumphant moment when he delivered the modules to Rendezvous. The large, versatile structures could be used for habitation, industry, or even storage.

  As Garrison got to know her, he found that he and Elisa had much in common. Elisa had no great love for Roamers (with the exception of Lee Iswander), considering them backward and unruly, but Garrison managed to convince her that he was also an exception, and fundamentally different from his father. In Elisa’s eyes, Olaf Reeves represented everything that was wrong with the clans, and Garrison could not disagree.

  “Things will change when I am clan leader after him,” Garrison promised. “These modules will help us finish our grand project—a project that no other clan believed we would ever complete. That way I’ll demonstrate to my father, my family, and all Roamers exactly what kind of leader I will be.”

  He flew the Workhorse alongside her ship into the Meyer system, arrowing tow
ard the asteroid cluster. Garrison felt proud, although he could not deny a flutter of anxiety. Despite his bold discussions with Elisa, he worried his father would not react well. Olaf was determined not to do anything the efficient way, the practical way, the “easy” way, because only he understood the “right” way.

  Elisa maintained comm silence, while Garrison transmitted loudly on all bands. His brother Dale’s face appeared on the screen. “We expected you back four days ago, Garrison. Did something happen to you?”

  Garrison smiled. “Nothing happened to me, Dale. But I brought something that will save us far more than a few extra days of time—it’ll change Rendezvous. We might actually see this project done in our own lifetimes.”

  Olaf’s bearded face crowded out Dale as he brushed the younger man aside. “I’ll be the judge of that. We’re detecting two incoming ships. Who is with you?”

  Garrison chose his words carefully. “A woman representing … another Roamer clan.” Lee Iswander was indeed a Roamer, but he knew his father wouldn’t like this. “I purchased some equipment that will help our work.”

  The older man looked skeptical. “It’s about damn time other Roamers saw their Guiding Star.”

  “We all do, Father,” Garrison said, then signed off the comm.

  As they had planned ahead of time, Elisa’s ship dropped off the sixteen modules at one of the satellite asteroids just outside the main cluster. The structures floated free in space, anchored to the surface of the satellite asteroid with monofilament tethers. Led by the chief mechanic, Bjorn Elkand, ten curious members of clan Reeves arrived at the satellite asteroid. Bjorn sounded delighted when he realized the potential of the modules.

  Both ships headed to the central asteroid complex, landing inside the main bay. When he and Elisa emerged from their respective vessels, Garrison was nervously smiling. Dale looked shell-shocked and silent, joined by beautiful Sendra Detemer, who had made up her mind she wanted to marry Garrison someday. Sendra’s face showed a flare of jealousy when she spotted the exotic Elisa Enturi traveling with him. Elisa came to stand by him, clearly satisfied with her large business deal.