Finder

by Suzanne Palmer

  There were only a few ring stations in Cernee, which combined the architecture of wheels around a central cylinder, on a much larger scale.

  This was the first time Fergus had been in a wheel where the outermost surface—the basement floor, as it were—was transparent. The farm’s catwalk ran along the outside edge above thick, transparent xglass that formed the outermost shell of the wheel, like an inside-out greenhouse. A slight blurriness to the light coming through suggested the presence of a thin gel shield to catch fast-moving particles and absorb some of the solar radiation.

  The lichen grew overhead like a thick ceiling carpet, a patchwork of blues and greens bathed in the stark light. If Fergus stretched his hands up, he’d just be able to brush the lichen with his fingertips; given how he towered over the Vahns, he expected they had to use ladders to harvest it.

  Once they’d spun to face the sun, Mauda began to walk the narrow path at a pace that exactly matched the spin so that the sun stayed directly underfoot, throwing their shadows upward.

  “Mother was on her way to meet one of our regular buyers at Central,” she told him. “Now that all the crates have found their way home, we need to arrange another meeting. We grow a modified lichen, freeze- and rad-tolerant with boosted nutritional value. Compact, grows fast, keeps forever. A lot of rockcrappers and deep spacers live off it and little else.”

  “How does it taste?”

  The faint trace of a smile ghosted across her face. “If you have nothing else to eat, it tastes great,” she said. “Also, we grow many flavors.”

  “Yeah?”

  She pointed at a blue patch overhead, then at green and purple, then at other shades in between. “Those’d be Ew, Ick, Blech, Yeegh, and Guh,” she said. “Want to try one? I recommend the Guh.”

  “Do you?”

  “No,” she said. “Here we are.” She stopped at another ladder beside the path, then ascended to another section of the wheel’s interior. He followed her up, relieved to go back inside solid walls.

  Although claustrophobically narrow, the interior of the wheel was clean and well lit. Mauda led Fergus through the halls as Mari stomped along close behind him. The pitchfork was nowhere in sight, but the menace of it shone brightly on her face every time he caught her glare.

  They passed several more women in the tight corridors, including one carrying an infant. He found himself thinking about cloning again. “Are there many of you living here?” he asked.

  Mauda made a noncommittal gesture. “Just family,” she said.

  As they walked, Fergus glanced down at his shirt. It had several tears in it from the shrapnel cannon and a large bloodstain eclipsing the faded yellow umbrella of the Kuan’s Café logo. It had been his favorite shirt, and he felt his grudge against Gilger increase. “My pack—” he started to say.

  “It’s safe,” Mauda said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a family meeting. We have a lot of talking to do.”

  She turned to Pitchfork Mari. “Can you take him down for some food until we’re ready for him?”

  Mari crooked one finger at Fergus. “Come, Earthman,” she said. She led him a quarter turn around the wheel and then into a large dining hall. There were a half dozen women and two small children in there. All conversation died as he entered.

  Mari pointed at a pot on a side table. “Bowls and spoons are next to the pot. Help yourself. Stay here until I come back for you or else.”

  She stomped out again.

  Fergus smiled anxiously at the women, picked up a bowl, and ladled out a small portion of soup. Then he crossed to the empty end of the big table in the center of the room and sat down. “Hello,” he said.

  No one answered. Giving up, he dipped the spoon into the bowl and took a tentative sip. It was less licheny than he’d feared and warmer than he could have hoped, but he ate in uncomfortable silence as the other Vahns stared at him.

  It was the youngest girl there—Fergus guessed she was about five standards old—who broke the ice. She got up, walked the length of the table, and set down her bowl with a sloshing thump beside him. Frowning, she reached out to touch his beard. “You’re funny-looking and have weird red hair all over your face,” she said.

  “Mella, no!” one of the other women said, her eyes wide with horror.

  Fergus smiled. “I am, and I do,” he said to the girl. He pointed at his own chin. “This is called a beard. I was born on Earth, which is a planet very far away from here. Do you know about Earth?”

  “Yes! It’s near Mars, right?” the girl said. “Mari and Arelyn talk about Mars all the time! I’m Mella.”

  “I’m Fergus,” he said. “And yes, Earth is very near Mars.”

  Mella sat down. “Mari never talks about Earth, just Mars, Mars, Mars, boring Mars! Did you have to run away because of the giraffes?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Giraffes. I have a picture book.”

  He laughed. “There aren’t any giraffes anymore,” he said. “At least, I don’t think. But even when there were, I’m pretty sure they were friendly.”

  “They didn’t eat kids?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” She took a long slurp of soup and looked disappointed.

  The other child came over and sat down next to Mella. “Tell me about Earth too!” the new girl demanded.

  “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been there, and it’s a very big place,” Fergus said.

  “Did you live in a wheel?” Mella asked.

  “No,” he said. “I lived on an old farm on the side of a mountain. Mountains are like giant rocks that stand up tall on the surface of planets. My grandparents were born in a small town named Kilcreggen, which was flooded over when the oceans rose and the lochs merged together and everyone—”

  “What’s an ocean?”

  One of the women laughed, and then another. Although conversation didn’t start up again, they were now looking at him more in curiosity than fright. So he did his best to explain using the soup bowl and a hunk of bread, and the girls both asked questions, and then the other women did too. By the time Mari came back to fetch him, everyone was laughing and talking loudly and a wasteful amount of soup had gone tepid.

  Mari glared at him suspiciously. “Put your bowl in the wash over there,” she said.

  Fergus stood up, wiped his chin, and picked up his bowl. His was empty; he hadn’t realized he’d been that hungry. “Maybe someday you’ll get to see mountains and oceans and birds for yourself,” he said to Mella as he slid it into the washer.

  Whatever warmth he’d earned from the room evaporated in an instant. Mari gave him an odd, cold look. “Time to go,” she said. “Now.”

  She ushered him out of the room. “The family is ready to talk to you,” she said.

  “Sort of a key witness thing?”

  “More like an Exhibit A thing,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  Judging by the curve of the floor, they’d gone another third of the way around the wheel when Mari stopped in front of a large door. Fergus could hear arguing on the other side. Mari rolled her eyes, then knocked loudly and counted to three. Opening the door, she shoved him in ahead of her.

  Around a dozen women, all very much Vahns, were sitting in a semicircle of chairs in a large room with faded off-white walls, one of which had a drawn-out scrawl of some child’s art that had either escaped notice or survived attempts to remove it. There were a few empty chairs left, plus a solitary one in the center. Mauda was standing. “This is Fergus Ferguson,” she said. Mari leaned against the wall by the door.

  Another woman only slightly younger than Mauda leapt to her feet. “This man should have been spaced the moment he showed up here, not led inside and fed!”

  “I don’t believe he’s our enemy, Muire,” Mauda said.

&
nbsp; “Who said you get to be the judge of that?”

  “Mother did when she named me second-in-charge,” Mauda said. “Can we move on?”

  “And Mari? What do you think?” The woman looked at Mari, who seemed surprised to be asked.

  “Yeah,” Mari said at last, the words reluctant at best. “I don’t think he’s here to hurt us. Intentionally.”

  Defeated, the woman sat down, glaring across the room at Fergus as Mauda waved him toward the seat in the center. He sat, keeping his expression what he hoped was neutral and harmless.

  “Your name is Fergus Ferguson?” one of the other women asked. “Your mother had a sense of humor.”

  “Yes,” Fergus lied. He got that a lot, but the truth was he’d never in his life heard his mother laugh and could barely remember her smiling. The years she’d spent staring out over the inland sea that had once been the home of her parents and grandparents, obsessing about a heritage lost to her, had drowned whatever joy she might have had. She’d tried to pull him down into that same bottomless grief, and no matter how far away he got, he still felt the overwhelming need to escape.

  “Please tell everyone what happened in as much detail as you can,” Mauda said.

  “Um, okay,” Fergus said, pulling his thoughts back out of the past. “I jumped in-system at Crossroads Station and caught a ride on a freighter from there to Cernee. It docked at Rock Five, and then they dropped me at Blackcans by shuttle on their way to a hab named Footstuck. From there I got on the first cable car to Mezzanine Rock. Mother Vahn was the only other passenger, and she and her crates were already there when I boarded. There were a few other people waiting at the cable terminus, but no one else got on—I assumed at the time they were waiting for someone. Is it possible there was general knowledge that the car would be attacked?”

  “Mother was well liked in Cernee. We don’t make trouble, and we contribute regularly to the settlement emergency food stores. A rumor like that would have reached us,” Mauda said.

  He told the rest of the story up until when he’d attached himself to the last of the homing crates in the hopes that it would carry him to safety. “I woke up here, and you know the rest,” he finished. “My apologies for what might be an intrusive question, but what’s Gilger’s argument with you, anyhow? You don’t seem like a threat to him or that you have much he’d consider worth stealing.”

  “He’s a Faither, at least nominally,” Mauda said.

  “Right. And they believe clones are soulless abominations,” Fergus said.

  Several of the women scowled, but Mauda nodded. “I wouldn’t say he’s devout except when it’s convenient. Graf, on the other hand . . . he’d probably have already killed us all if not for Gilger’s restraining hand. It may be that Gilger has finally become powerful enough not to care about repercussions.”

  “If that’s true,” he said, “given that Gilger has the tech to take out a cable car and he has an armed ship, why hasn’t he just attacked your farm directly and been done?”

  “We’re part of what’s called the Wheel Collective,” Mauda said. “There’s an even dozen interconnected wheels here and a stationary hab named the Hangar. Eight of the wheels are our farm, and the rest are home to Mr. Harcourt and his crew.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Harcourt is a weapons dealer. Openly attacking the Wheels would mean starting a war with someone who can and will fight back. Gilger hates Harcourt as much as Graf hates us. No one has ever figured out why, including Mr. Harcourt, but Gilger knows he can’t afford to take him on.”

  “What about your Governor?”

  “How do you think any politician makes life out here pleasant?” Muire interjected bitterly. “We’re farmers; he’s out of our price range.”

  “We haven’t had much direct interaction with Cernee’s government,” Mauda added, her eyes on Muire, “although Mother had some confidence in the integrity of the Governor and Authority. I don’t know enough to have an opinion of my own.”

  Fergus leaned forward in his seat. “Even if—when—I take Gilger’s ship away from him, he’s not going to leave you alone, and from how you describe him, he’s still going to have a lot of resources to come after you. As much as it pains me to say it, I think you should think more about your survival than revenge. With Mother Vahn gone, that’s the end of your farm sooner or later anyhow.”

  “And how do you figure that?” Mari stood up.

  “Look, no offense, but everything I’ve heard says cloning is best as a one- or two-gen process because of pattern integrity degradation. With the original gone—”

  “We’re not—”

  “Mari!” Mauda snapped, and the younger woman retreated to her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and chewed angrily at her lower lip.

  Not clones? Fergus wondered if that’s what she had been about to say, but there was no other explanation he could think of that didn’t fall solidly into the realm of fantasy. That Mother Vahn might lie to her family about their origins was disappointing, but it was the only plausible explanation. It wasn’t, however, his job to puncture those fictions, nor to track down the truth.

  “The long-term survival of our farm is our concern, not yours, Mr. Ferguson,” Mauda said. “A few minutes’ conversation on a cable car doesn’t make you part of the family, or even, to be blunt, a friend. It suits our ends to give you back your things and let you go about your business taking Gilger’s ship away from him. You should be grateful for that.”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Aside from wishing you sincere luck with that, our purposes and paths diverge. You will have to find your own way around Cernee without help from us.” Mauda pursed her lips. “If that sounds heartless, it may be some small comfort to know I’m not in much different straits myself despite having lived here my entire life.”

  “How so?” Fergus asked.

  “While you go about your business with Gilger, I need to get our lichen crates to Central to conduct ours. None of us besides Mother have ever been far from the Wheels. She handled all our dealings with the outside world, especially once Graf arrived and got interested in us. I have the most experience off the farm, but even that’s limited. I don’t suppose you have much sympathy, as in your line of work you must be adept at learning your way around unfamiliar places, but for me this is not a natural skill nor a responsibility I look forward to.”

  “My original intention when I arrived was to start at Central,” Fergus said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “So?”

  “So I am good at getting a feel for things. I also owe Mother Vahn a debt for getting me out of that cable car. If you’d like me to accompany you to Central to help work your deal and then part ways there, I’d be willing to do that. And it might be safer to have a second pair of eyes out.”

  “No, Mauda!” Mari said from across the room. “If we need to send someone else, I’ll go with you.”

  Mauda frowned, considering for a long minute. “I’ll take you up on that offer, Mr. Ferguson, if there are no other strings attached.”

  “None,” Fergus said, “though if you want to point out any landmarks on our way, I’d be grateful.”

  “Mauda!” Mari said.

  “No, Mari. It’s not safe out there for you.” Mauda surveyed the room. “If there are no other objections?”

  When no one had anything further to say—though Muire clearly had much she wasn’t willing to, and Mari looked like she wanted her pitchfork back—Mauda turned back to Fergus. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll ping our buyer and set up a new meet, then.”

  He stood as everyone else filed out of the room. Muire and another woman were deep in argument, casting suspicious glances back at him as they crossed through the door. “Let me show you to a room where you can rest while I set up the meet,” Mauda said.

  He nodded. “That and a chance to clean up
would be much appreciated.”

  Mauda led him around the wheel back the other way and up a ladder, Mari following silently behind them. She opened an interior door to a small, plain room with a bunk, wash basin, and mirror. “Will this do?” she asked.

  “This is fine, thank you,” he said. He stepped in and sat on the soft mattress.

  Mauda closed the door, then moments later Mari opened it again. “Don’t wander,” she growled, then slammed it shut.

  Fergus’s pack sat at the foot of the bunk. He let out a low breath and hauled it up next to him. He rarely needed much, but a change of clothes was remarkably high on his short list at the moment. His leg where the cable had hit bore an angry red puckered caterpillar that ran from the back of his knee down across his ankle; he’d have to check his exosuit to see if it had been able to fully self-mend. If it hasn’t, he wondered, where will I find another one? Out here along the Gap, exosuits were expensive, and he hadn’t met one yet that hadn’t left his larger Earther frame with a colossal wedge-up.

  Once he had changed, he lay down on the bunk and stared at the ceiling, resisting sleep long enough to sort through the day’s events and impressions. Until the job was done, information was everything. Idly he wondered if the door was locked, then decided he didn’t care; he wasn’t afraid of Mother Vahn’s strange family, not even Mari. Closing his eyes, he put his hands behind his head and let himself drift off.

  Chapter 3

  He slept just long enough for the aches of the cable car escape to settle in. Forcing himself to his feet, he found the fold-out lavatory funnel and took care of immediate business. Done, he let some water from the single tap into the adjacent basin and washed his hands and face before stripping off his shirt. He did his best to clean the rest of himself up, taking care to examine each cut and burn.