View from Ararat

by Caswell, Brian

  But Cox’s four children were never ‘chosen’. Not for them the position of privilege. Not for them the rarified atmosphere of the New Haven Academy, with its merciless schedules, its dog-eat-dog rivalries. And its buildings full of nitrogen-cooled, light-speed data frames containing every known fact in the entire universe of time and space.

  Not for them the pain of being shut out for one small mistake. OK, it wasn’t just one, and it definitely wasn’t small. And, if we’re being perfectly honest, it wasn’t really a mistake – except the part that involved being caught.

  But that doesn’t make the sense of loss any less real. I loved research. I needed it. I need it more than food, more than sex, more than anything. It was the reason I’d agreed to risk doctoring the log on the Ganymede Horizon. It wasn’t the money in itself, just the thought of scamming enough of it to make it to Deucalion and work again – with my mind.

  Cox’s children had never known that kind of obsession. They were born average. They were the lucky ones. They had each other, and they were secure in that.

  Tim was about my age. Actually he was six months older. I’d celebrated my eighteenth birthday – alone – a couple of weeks before we left Earth. He was eighteen and a half to the day when they closed the cryo-chamber on him. Krys was a year younger, but she acted a whole lot older. She was the surrogate mother – to the twins, to everyone, including Cox himself.

  I watched Cox sometimes just sitting there looking at them, drinking them in. He looked so damned proud.

  One time he caught me staring. He looked at me for a moment, then back at his sleeping tribe. Then back at me.

  Then he just shrugged and smiled. And that one action said it all.

  Later that night I lay awake trying to remember my father’s smile.

  I couldn’t even remember his face.

  The foothills on the eastern side of the Ranges are peppered with small caves, and we spent the next ten days holed up in one of them. This was partly to regain our strength before attempting the mountains themselves, and partly to build up our supply of food and water.

  Nothing grows on the windswept rock of the Roosevelt Ranges, so whatever food we were going to need to keep us alive up there we were going to have to carry with us.

  Which is easy to say. But finding food in the Roosevelt foothills isn’t exactly like picking apples or punching in a Net-order. Most things that grow or walk on the planet are poisonous, and the rest just taste like they are.

  And what else would you expect? We were on a foreign planet, with a unique and different process of evolution and previously unknown enzymes and amino acids and strange triple-helix DNA structures. It was a miracle that things weren’t a whole lot more different.

  But Jovian miners are resourceful people. And besides, I had my punchboard. When he’d burst into my hut that evening, Mac had told me to bring food and leave everything else, but I knew he couldn’t mean my punchboard. I hadn’t been without a punchboard since I was four years old. And it didn’t weigh anything much.

  Anyway, I’d stuffed it into my backpack along with the little bit of food I’d managed to find, just before we started running – which was pretty fortunate, as things turned out.

  I mean, it’s fine knowing that not all plants and animals on the planet are poisonous when you’ve just put yourselves into the irreversible position of having to live ‘off the land’. But unless you have a way of knowing which particular plants and animals won’t poison you, you’re likely to find a quick way of dying while you’re doing the taste-test.

  That’s where the punchboard came in.

  Being Research-issue – one of the few things I’d taken with me after they canned me – it had a universal interface. With it, I could ether-link access to any data frame anywhere, including here on Deucalion. Which is exactly what I did.

  The first thing I learned was that stands of Capyjou usually occur where the water table is close to the surface. This meant a little digging and our water problem was solved. Of course, you had to boil it before you thought about drinking the stuff, but it meant we weren’t about to die of thirst.

  The Bio-Research frame gave me detailed breakdowns of toxicity levels and chemical compositions of the different food-sources, while other commentaries listed side effects, allergic responses and relative-nutrition stats. I was even able to get pictures of the plants and animals in question, so we’d know what we were picking or hunting.

  Ocra tea we knew about. It was quite common – if expensive – on Earth, and a great source of trace nutrients and B group vitamins – or so the ads claimed. They’d been exporting it to the mother-planet in huge quantities since before the Revolution. But you couldn’t live on it.

  Capyjou you could live on, at least in the short term, if you absolutely had to. Carbohydrates from the leaves and stems, and protein from the tap-roots, which were a bit like sweet-potatoes in texture and general shapelessness.

  There were also a few organic compounds in Capyjou – enzymes, amino acids and the like – that were unknown in food sources on Earth. But all the literature suggested they were harmless zymogens – compounds inactive in humans, hanging around in the system for a while but producing no noticeable effects, at least not in any of the clinical trials.

  So it was quite safe to eat the stuff. After all, they’d been using it as a stock-feed on Earth for almost two hundred years, without ill-effects.

  Capyjou fuelled your body and didn’t actually poison you, but there, any resemblance to real food ended.

  We were used to the stomach-turning smell of the plant itself. After all, we’d been forced to use it as shelter on our trip across the flatlands. But it was only when the food we’d managed to bring out of the camp ran out that we were forced to try actually eating it.

  According to the information available, the only edible things in that part of the country were Capyjou or Yorum meat. And there were two things in favour of the plant over the animal.

  Number one: A plant stands still. You don’t have to waste valuable time and energy tracking it down and trying to kill it, before it decides to track you down and try to kill you – which Yorum are actually quite capable of doing.

  Number two: According to all independent analysis, Yorum meat is even more vile-tasting than Capyjou. If that’s possible. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’m willing to take their word for it.

  Anything that tastes worse than Capyjou, I don’t even want to think about. But it was eat the plant or starve to death – not exactly a great choice. Starving to death is a whole lot worse than just feeling that you want to throw up.

  After a few days in the cave it was time to move on.

  According to Mac and Cox, the only option was to cross the mountains and find one of the mining communities along the Fringes, where our rock-biting experience might be of use. We could lie low there until we figured out what to do next.

  We had no way of knowing what was going on back in the camp. Through the punchboard, I keyed in to Internet and got the latest reports, but it was all stories about how much the government wasn’t saying. There was educated guesswork and long-distance telephoto shots of the silent camp, and the ring of Security operatives surrounding it, but no real news.

  On the night before we began the climb I couldn’t sleep. I’d stood there that afternoon, looking up at the mountains we were going to have to climb and thinking of the girls. It was going to take a super-human effort to get them across to the other side safely, and I knew that it must have been worrying Mac and Cox a whole lot. I think it was part of the reason why we’d stayed as long as we had in the cave.

  So I was restless. The moons were hanging just above the peaks, and I stood in the cave entrance looking up at them.

  That was when I saw Mac. He was sitting maybe 30 metres from the cave entrance, with his back against a large rock, just staring. Not at the moons or
the mountains. Not at anything in particular. Just staring. Out beyond the stars.

  It was an old habit. I’d seen him do it inside the mining drone on Ganymede. You couldn’t see the stars on Ganymede, of course – the atmosphere obscured everything. But he wasn’t really seeing them now.

  There was something going on inside him, something that troubled him.

  I walked over and sat down beside him. For a moment neither of us spoke. Then he put his hand on my knee and squeezed gently. I looked at him strangely, but I didn’t pull away. Mac wasn’t a toucher. Not in that way.

  He turned his head and looked straight into my eyes for a long time, then he looked back up at the stars, and I waited for what was to come. I could see the rise and fall of his breathing. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  Finally he swallowed hard. ‘We’re in trouble, kid.’

  I waited, but he just sat there staring. It was up to me now. I knew that he needed a question – that he wasn’t going to be able to let it out without help. But I didn’t know what to ask.

  I tried for ‘comforting and positive’. ‘We’ll make it, Mac. There have to be passes we can get through. I found the maps on the ’frame. They show . . .’

  I trailed off. He was shaking his head slowly.

  ‘I’m not talking about the mountains, Cind. It’s not just about us. It’s much . . . bigger.’

  He took my hand in his, looked at it for a few seconds, then traced a finger along one of the lines in my palm.

  ‘Your life-line.’ He laughed to himself. ‘A long and prosperous life. People used to actually believe that you could predict things. By the stars, by the lines on your hand. That there were forces you could trust. Order you could count on.’

  He wasn’t really talking to me. The words were just his thoughts, spoken aloud, like a monologue on one of the virtual drama-sites.

  It was so unlike Mac that it scared me.

  Then, as if he suddenly remembered I was there, he dropped my hand, stood up, and faced towards the mountains. ‘I have a question for you.’

  ‘Yes?’ I watched his back.

  ‘Which is better: to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons, or to act with the best of intentions and destroy a world?’

  He was waiting for an answer, but I just didn’t have one.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  He turned back to face me. ‘You never asked me how I knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘What was going on in the camp. Why it was time to get out. How I knew what they’d do.’

  It was coming. I could sense the change in him. I stood up and reached out to him, placing my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Okay. I’ll play. How did you know?’

  ‘Helm Ritter.’

  ‘Helm . . .?’

  ‘Short for Helmut. He was in Security at JMMC. I used to play cards with him when I was Earthside, between trips. Before I left, I went to see him. Say goodbye, you know? I didn’t have many friends. That was when he told me about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The Crystal Death. The shit we’re running away from.’

  ‘He knew about it?’

  ‘There are no secrets in Security. They’re just very choosy about who they tell outside Security.’

  ‘But he told you.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  My hand was still on his shoulder. He reached up and covered it with his own, then looked me in the eye.

  ‘We were friends. It broke out some place in Costa Rica. The details were sketchy, but one thing he was sure of. They torched a whole town to kill it. More than ten thousand people. And everyone in the know at JMMC was holding their breath in case it had managed to escape. Because there was no way of fighting it, and they knew what it would mean for them if there was a major outbreak and people managed to tie it back to the company. They were covering their corporate arses, protecting the bottom line.’

  He looked down at me. ‘Ten thousand people died, but they contained the outbreak and kept their secret safe. How does anyone order the deaths of ten thousand people?’

  ‘By the numbers, Mac.’

  He looked confused.

  I moved across and sat down with my back to the rock where I’d first seen him. He didn’t move. I closed my eyes and went on.

  ‘Give someone a pulse-laser and ask him to walk up to a total stranger and shoot him in the head and he won’t be able to do it. Not unless he’s some kind of sociopath. But put that same person into an office, and fill his life with figures and statistical analyses of market trends and profit-and-loss schedules, fill him with . . . corporate loyalty, and you can convince him to move a production facility from one country to another and destroy the lives of a whole community – a decision which will lead to poverty, starvation, even violence and death. He’ll do it happily and sleep at night. Numbers are anonymous. Believe me, I know.’

  How I knew . . .

  ‘The secret is not to see them as people. Numbers, Mac. Reduce everything to numbers, and you can do anything. Numbers don’t live and breathe. They don’t look you in the eye as you press the firing button. And they don’t scream as they die.’

  It wasn’t an original idea. I’d read it somewhere. But it was true.

  He breathed deeply. ‘But that’s the point, isn’t it?’

  I wasn’t on his wavelength. I looked up at him, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘Numbers . . . Whoever ordered the fire was a monster, but it worked. For all the wrong reasons, that terrible act probably saved countless millions of lives. Cindy, there is no cure for this disease, this Crystal Death. If it escapes from the camp, the whole planet is in danger. I’ve seen the projections. Once it starts, it could wipe out everyone on Deucalion within a year. Thirty-eight million people.

  ‘Let me ask you. Would you consider the deaths of thirty thousand innocent people too great a price to pay to save thirty-eight million lives? Quarantine was an option before they were sure there were carriers. But now they have their outbreak, and it’s just the beginning. Because it will escape, kid. If they don’t torch the camp, there’s nothing more certain. And by now they must know it. How long before the people in the camp start looking like numbers?’

  14

  Both Sides of the Fence

  Quarantine Camp, Old Wieta Reserve

  Edison Sector (East Central)

  20/1/203 Standard

  AARON

  She lies motionless on the bed, silent at last. At peace. The asthmatic rasp of her breathing, the faint unconscious moaning of her final agony, faded moments ago. And suddenly the hut is empty of her.

  He stares down at the vacant shell that was his wife, but sees only the ravaged face of someone he barely recognises.

  It is then that the dam collapses. Tears and anger, relief and guilt. They pour out in equal portions, a chaos-wave of release that drives him stumbling for the door.

  Out of the dark hut. Away from the gut-sick, physical despair of her leaving. Out into the burning air and the empty laneways of the dying camp.

  Aaron Rodman blinks in the sudden sunlight and stands with one arm extended, his tortured cry echoing back from the blank wall of the hut opposite. He falls to his knees, and feels the distant sensation as the rough surface of the lane cuts through his clothing, deep into his flesh. But he is beyond mere pain.

  His left arm hangs almost useless by his side, and throughout his body the inexorable progress of the Crystal is slowing the functions of every major organ. Gradually, inevitably.

  Two days ago, down every artery and vein, through every capillary, the tiny fatal seeds dispersed and lodged and began their work. Growing, transforming. Killing him gently.

  And in that laneway, on his knees, oblivious to the murderous heat, he remembers.

  Rona. S
o strong, so totally resistant to despair. Rona, who taught him to believe when Earth’s future held no hope, no promises, nothing to believe in. His wife, whose stubborn optimism had carried them across the width of a galaxy, as far as human beings had ever travelled, in search of a new life.

  Her confidence which looked beyond the dark and saw the stars and all they promised. Even in the camp. Even in the darkest days after the outbreak, when the dying began.

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ she told him. ‘Too far for it to end here. Like this. Life’s not that cruel. I don’t believe that life’s that cruel.’

  Her litany. Her private covenant with the future. Her faith. Unshakeable.

  He remembers the smile she smiled then. He remembers, and slams his ungloved fist again and again into the unforgiving earth.

  For he recalls her last smile too. Her smile, and then the sudden horror spreading like a tide across her face.

  She had left the safety of the hut while he slept that day, desperate for something to still the cramping hunger in her stomach, convincing herself that she could make it safely out and back.

  And he had woken alone.

  He was watching from the window when she returned, maybe half an hour later, carrying a bunch of large green leaves. It was wild Capyjou, which grew in clumps in different parts of the camp, and which, according to rumours, was edible in an emergency. She was smiling, proud of her resourcefulness. She even waved at his stern face as she saw him there behind the glass.

  But then she stopped, the leaves fell from her arms, and the look of horror grew behind her eyes.

  She was staring at her upraised hand, at the small tear in the latex of her glove, at the pink skin, exposed. And she looked around her as if, suddenly, she could sense the leering presence of Death.

  ‘Rona!’ he cried as he ran out of the door to face her across the narrow laneway.

  But she screamed at him.

  ‘Stay away!’ And moved to widen the space between them.

  ‘Don’t come near me. Look . . .’ A whisper. As if to speak the words aloud confirmed the naked truth.