by Eric Flint
A faint chuckle was heard. “Serves us right,” muttered Campbell.
“Sam! How are you doing?” Pearce said, brightening visibly at the sound of his voice. “And what do you mean, ‘serves us right’?”
“How am I doing? Rotten, right now. Feel like utter crap. Better off than the kids, probably because of the military enhancements, plus I’ve been around enough worlds and had enough updates that my nanos are probably just that much better at the job.” He gave a weary grin, visible in the omni’s feed. “As for what serves us right? Well, it’s not like we haven’t had to learn the lesson about wearing dust masks over the last few centuries, is it? So we went around with our bare faces hanging out as we threw alien dirt into the air, and got about what you’d expect.”
“Those kind of procedures always take a back seat in emergencies, and on new colonies,” Laura said. “Maybe they shouldn’t, but human beings haven’t changed. And us colonial types are more risk-prone.”
“Can’t argue that; staying at home’s so much easier and more comfortable, only us lunatics really want to come out here,” Campbell said.
“I prefer to think of myself as curious,” Akira said. “I can’t do cutting-edge research on an alien world unless I’m actually there.”
“Hah! That’s what field expeditions are for. Leastwise that’s one of the things my old commanders used to say; we were there to take the risks so you smart boys could get your samples without getting killed. And I’ll bet you’ve got about eleventy-hundred other guys in your field that do stay home most of the time.”
Akira laughed. “All right, I yield the point. Even after crash-landing on this most peculiar world, I still enjoy the thrill of walking through alien woods, never quite being sure something isn’t around the next tree waiting for me.”
“Lunatics all, then,” agreed Campbell. He gave a big sigh. “Aaand I’m already running out of steam.”
“Neurotoxic infections will do that to you,” Laura said. “But while I’m not talking about the details to the kids yet, I think we’re going to be all right. I’ve been watching your nanoresponse and it’s already giving me some useful data on antitoxin design.”
“Then,” Campbell said, “Let’s just hope nothing gets worse in the next few hours, ’cause then you should have your full medical nanoprogramming suite ready. Right?”
“Right,” said Laura.
And I’m virtually certain I can keep everyone alive for days even without treatment. Now that I know the cause, I can stop this. She tried not to let the worry show on her face, but she couldn’t relax yet. The real question isn’t whether they’ll still be alive.
It’s whether I can fix all the damage…and how long it will take.
Chapter 11
“You’re sure you don’t want another column?” Whips asked, studying the various designs he had been contemplating in his omni view.
Campbell rubbed his chin, and leaned back in his bed. On his right, Tavana was propped up and trying to pay attention, but it was obvious to Whips that he probably wasn’t going to stay the distance. Xander was more alert.
Tavana yawned prodigiously but focused on the projections. “Living in one of the columns, I like the idea, Sergeant. We have seen how very strong the islands are. Trees, even the biggest here—and they are amazing!—they have a history of rotting, burning, or falling in winds.”
“Can’t argue that,” the sergeant conceded, “but after our little experience with getting our own island to half commit suicide because we were such bad tenants, I really don’t want to do anything to mess things up here. The Kimeis already built a lot into one column, I figure the more of those we start plugging up, the more chance there is of drawing the wrong kind of attention. Xander? What’s your take, Captain?”
Whips felt the shimmering ripple of a laugh play along his flanks, though he doubted any of them could recognize it, which was good. It might seem funny, but even in the few weeks the newcomers had been here, it had become clear that Campbell meant it when he called Xander Bird “Captain.” And from their story, Whips guessed that Xander had earned it.
Xander plucked absently at the extra monitoring node Laura had installed on one arm. “Well…I’d say it’s not just our call. Dr. Kimei…I mean, our bio doctor, Akira Kimei—he’s probably the one best able to tell us whether it’s much of a risk. He recognized what was happening to our island, after all.” Xander’s gaze mostly avoided Whips, which wasn’t a surprise, but he was getting used to it. Fixing that phobia wasn’t happening overnight. “I can’t argue Tav’s points, he’s right. These columns,” Xander gestured at the shelter’s window, through which Sherwood Column was just visible, “they’re basically fortress towers that just need floors and amenities put in.”
This time he did look directly at Whips, and met the gaze of Whips’ top two eyes. “And holy crap, but I’m impressed by what all of you did there. I mean, even with the tools we’ve brought, setting up a column for living space won’t exactly be an afternoon job, and you guys managed to pull it off with not much more than sticks and stones. And they tell me a lot of that was your work.”
The prickly pattern of embarrassment stitched a clashing pattern across his skin, and he gave a shrug of all arms. “Oh, not a lot of it. I mean, it was really all of us together. Even Hitomi helped some.”
“Jeez, Whips, take some credit once in a while!” Sakura’s voice came from behind him. “Yes, it was mostly his design work. Sure, we all did the work, but he did most of the figuring out how to do the work.”
Xander’s face was slightly pale, but he managed a lopsided, amazed grin. “And you’re, what, fourteen? Fifteen? I wouldn’t have wanted to trust my teenage calculations anywhere near that far. Heck, I’m not sure I’d want to do it now.” His gaze shifted back to the diagram of the interior of Sherwood.
A low chuckle from the sergeant. “Son, just goes to show how much desperation and necessity are mothers of invention. Or just mothers.”
Whips gave a faint whistling oof! as Sakura plopped down on top of him. “Warn me before you do that!”
“I remember when you didn’t even notice.”
“You’ve gotten a lot bigger in the last couple years,” Whips grumbled, but he didn’t really mind; he’d been a sort of mobile couch as well as friend for Saki for a long time, and it was the closest to Bemmie communal contact that he was likely to get here. He cocked one eye in the direction of Tavana, expecting him to try to get his friend’s attention, but saw that the French Polynesian boy’s head had fallen back on his pillow. A faint snore emanated from the area.
“I guess,” Sakura said. “So, maybe stupid question—why not just build something right here, in the clearing? A house or something?”
“Might could,” Campbell said, “but leaving aside the tree-kraken, most of the dangerous wildlife—predators and the more irritable herbivores—hang out down on the forest floor. I don’t see any percentage in putting my doors and windows where they can reach if I’ve got other options.”
“Well, Dad’ll be back in a couple hours, you can get his opinion then.”
“Meanwhile,” Whips said, “it’s not like it’s a waste of time to work on both sets of designs. Maybe one day other settlers will come and they’ll have to find places to live too. And by the Vents does it make it easier to do design when I know all the tools you’ve got for me to play with!”
“What, don’t want to try boring more holes in those things with fire and grinding?”
“I would rather cut off my top arm,” Whips said earnestly.
The shelter door opened again and Pearce Haley came in. “Hey, everyone!”
“Well, good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Campbell said, with a not-terribly-professional grin. “Back from the hunting trip so soon?”
“Give credit to Caroline,” she said, hooking her thumb at the oldest Kimei daughter who was following her in. “She’s a goddamn Robin Hood. I shot one capy, she got two with that darn bow.”
&nbs
p; “Well, they were in a group,” Caroline pointed out.
“That wasn’t from our—” Sakura began.
“No, not from our local herds. Trying not to spook those. There was a new herd coming in and encroaching on the territory.”
“Local herds?” asked Campbell. “Trying to keep a good supply of game nearby?”
“That’s part of it. Hi, Whips,” Caroline said, stopping to give him a quick base-clasp of greeting. “Mostly though, we’re hoping to get a couple herds used to us so that we can actually start domesticating them. Machines are great but they don’t self-reproduce, at least not here.”
“True enough. You think you can pull that off?” Campbell looked genuinely interested.
“Dad thinks it’s possible,” Sakura answered. “Says they show a lot of favorable characteristics for it. So for the most part we want to make sure they don’t think of us as predators, or at worst as predators who focus well outside their herd.”
“So we hunt well away from them, and make sure we clean up any blood or mess before we go anywhere near them,” Caroline finished. She noticed the omni displays, since they were public-local. “Oooh, figuring out where you’re going to live?”
“Deciding between the alternatives, yes,” Xander answered. He’d straightened up and was now looking straight at Caroline, Whips noticed, and that triggered a Bemmie grin. Sakura noticed the shift in pattern, followed the gaze of his lower side eye, and grinned herself.
“Well, I hope it’s not too far away,” Caroline said, apparently oblivious to Xander’s focused regard. “Don’t want to have to hike through a kilometer of jungle just to visit.”
“Doubt we’ll have to worry about that,” Campbell said, and Whips thought he saw a hint of a smile on his face that was aimed at Xander and Caroline. “Whether we choose a column or tree, there’s plenty not far away.”
Laura stuck her head into the shelter doorway. “All right, people, you’ve kept my patients up enough. Time for everyone to let them rest.”
“Mom, I just got back,” Caroline protested.
Laura gave a mock frown, then smiled. “Five minutes for you, then. The rest of you, out.”
Whips looked up at Laura as they exited. “They are definitely getting better.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Laura agreed. “But they’re not going to be nearly a hundred percent for a while, and they’re still nowhere near there after two weeks. Seems to have hit the younger people harder, so I expect poor Francisco isn’t going to make a full recovery until another month or so.”
“Good thing they had the medical nanoprogramming unit.”
“God, yes.” She gave a shudder. “I might have lost Francisco if we hadn’t, and they’d be looking at much longer recovery times.”
“None of us will catch this, right?”
She gave him a reassuring squeeze at the base of his top arm. “Not a chance. I don’t think that exact agent lives on this island, and in any case I’ve made sure we’re all immunized to it and its relations now.”
“And they’ll all make a hundred percent recovery?” Sakura asked.
Laura smiled. “A doctor doesn’t like to make absolute statements, Saki, and you know that. But…yes, I expect everyone will be back to full capabilities eventually.”
“Then I’d better keep working on these designs,” Whips said. “Because it won’t be long until we’re building one!”
Chapter 12
“Huh,” Tavana said, a questioning air about him, as he lowered himself heavily onto a stump at the side of the path.
Sakura had a momentary flash of annoyance that he’d stopped, but she suppressed it. Tav was still not fully recovered, and was just starting to get back to regular activity. “What’s ‘huh’?”
“The sun, I could swear that just the prior dawn, it was rising between those two trees, but now it is on the far side of the one,” Tavana answered.
“Well, yeah,” she said, after a moment. “Think about it, Tav.”
The broad Polynesian face wrinkled for a moment, then Tavana smacked his head. “Stupid. The floating continent, it also spins. There is no really stable orientation here.”
“You got it. I guess Caroline’s having a ball gathering data on the planet with your satellite network. We didn’t know hardly anything about Lincoln before we landed, and, well, until you guys got here we still didn’t know much. ’Cept about the specific things here, anyways.”
“Well, those were the things that mattered, yes? Aside from anything needed for survival, planetography would have not just taken the backseat, it would have been in a trailer behind you.”
She heard her own laughter echo through the trees. “Yeah, exactly.” She saw him glance up into the sky again, his brow furrow, then relax. “What is it this time?”
“Oh, that.” He pointed into the sky a fair arc away from the sun.
Sakura could see a point of light, dimmed by the sky’s brightness but easily visible. Concentrating, she could make out a faint mist trailing out to one side. “Oh, yeah, a comet. There’s a lot of them here. I think there’s only been a few weeks since we’ve been here that there wasn’t a pretty bright one visible.”
“Oui, I remember we saw two very large comets when we entered the system. Meteors are common too.”
“Oh, you bet.” She grinned, remembering. “When we were out building that dock for you, we hit a meteor shower that Caroline said outdid anything she’d ever heard of on Earth; it was like fireworks. And if you stay out at night and look up at any reasonable patch of sky you’ll see a meteor pretty quick.”
“Any actually fall around here?”
“We haven’t found any meteorites, but there’s bound to be some. But Caroline said that finding them would be tough; on Earth they used to go to places like Antarctica where there was nothing but flat ice and figure that if they came across an isolated rock, it pretty much had to be a meteorite, but here in a jungle? Not working so well.”
“I guess so.” Tav stood up. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“It’s okay,” she said, even more annoyed at herself for her prior impatience. “You guys nearly died, I can’t get mad at you for taking it slow sometimes. But this trip was your idea.”
“Well, yes. I want to see how you do things here, and even if I am not up to helping much, it will be good to know how for when I am better.”
Sakura couldn’t argue that. “We’re almost there, so if you can keep moving for about five minutes you’ll be able to sit down and rest while I get to work.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes; Sakura found herself very aware of Tavana being close, even though he wasn’t really much closer than he was in a lot of other situations. Does he feel the same way? I mean…What do I mean? Do I, well, like him?
Tavana spoke suddenly, and his voice sounded unusually…tense? Nervous? It had a slightly higher, faintly strained pitch to it. “Um, Sakura, I was wondering, why here? That is, why is this the good place for your driftseed?”
The question relaxed her—to a startling degree. Boy, I am nervous! “Oh, well, that? It’ll be easier to explain when we get there.”
In a few moments they emerged into a semi-clearing along a narrow streambed. Across the stream, Sakura could see a strip of brilliant white, as though someone had taken a two-meter-wide paintbrush and drawn it across the jungle in front of them.
“What is that?”
Sakura studied the clearing and trees and stream for a moment to make sure everything was safe, then moved forward. “That,” she said as she hopped across the stream, “is what we’re here for.”
As they got closer, the white streak resolved itself into what looked like a massive snowbank, a literal drift of white fluff. There were small animals, something like green-brown guinea pigs, moving in and around the fluff, but they scattered at the humans’ approach.
Tavana surveyed the mound, eyebrows high. “Impressed, yes, I am impressed. So we use these rake-things to compress and scoop t
he driftseed into our bags, then carry it back?”
“Right. You can do as much as you feel up to, but don’t push yourself.”
She saw Tavana squint down the stream, then hold up his hand in the air for a moment. “Ah! I believe I understand.”
“Thought you would!” Tav was smart, which was one of the things she really liked about him—that, and him being kind of quiet a lot of the time. “Prevailing winds get funneled up here from farther down, where it spreads out, so a lot of driftseed comes in here, and then it runs straight into this area where there’s heavy growth because of the way the sunlight gets into the clearing.”
“Vraiment, yes, but what about the turning of the island? We just mentioned that, yes? Will that not change the winds?”
“Some, yes, but so far it looks like our island continent doesn’t just spin around like a top; it sort of wobbles back and forth but stays pointing in the same general direction.”
Tavana scratched his head, then took the scoop-rake off his back and started trying to gather driftseed. “How is that? I mean, why does it not spin completely around?”
“We don’t know,” she answered candidly, dragging her scoop in what had become a practiced motion. “Might be the way the island’s shaped that makes it stay in one general orientation, especially since it must dip way down to keep us all above water, or maybe there’s some kind of active orientation guidance from one of its symbiote species.”
Tavana was having difficulty getting the driftseed into the bag. “No, look, Tav, you have to scoop more first. Until it compresses enough it’ll just puff right back up and fall apart. You have to tell by the resistance and the look. Here, let me.” She took his arm and guided it through the scooping motion. He resisted at first, trying to anticipate her movements and failing, but by the second time through he had relaxed and just let her guide. “See?” she said finally. “Four, five good long scoops and it’s squished itself down and if you turn it like this,” she gave the scoop a sort of shaking half-turn, “It loosens in the grooves just enough. Now try putting it in the bag.”
