Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  Jaron slipped a commpad from his hip pouch and placed it on the bar. He pushed his untasted beer aside to make room.

  “Northeast levels one through four have been abandoned to dust.”

  “Colonists never came aboard.” Bryce worked to hide his smile from the scientist as Jaron’s shoulders sagged at such a simple explanation.

  He made a note before continuing.

  “The ag-workers are far more consistent about their gambling and sex than their work.” Jaron looked at him expectantly.

  “No one seems to be starving. How much food is being recycled versus what is being produced?”

  Jaron tapped in a few queries and frowned. “That’s awfully inefficient.”

  “No lack of food?” Bryce cocked his head to see the display. About thirty percent recycled, that was inefficient. It was four times his loss per keg to foam, spills, and such. That was even including the free beers.

  “No lack of food.” Jaron reset to an earlier screen. “But their behavior is deplorable.”

  “Whose behavior is deplorable?”

  Bryce tried to hide the flinch at the sound of that voice.

  Jaron knocked his commpad against his beer and both flipped off the bar as he spun to face Security Chief Ri Jeffers.

  In a blur of motion, she dodged the beer and caught the commpad. Damn, she was fast. She retrieved the empty mug and set both on the counter. Reaching over the bar, she pulled the towel off Bryce’s shoulder and wiped the stool before tossing it into the puddle on the floor. But the way she moved gently onto the now dry stool made it only too clear what accident had happened to Merkar’s goons. Four of them disabled, that would take some serious doing. What was she, this slender beauty?

  “How about a pair of fresh ones, Bryce? And what did you do to your hand?”

  Jaron and Robbie looked quickly, they hadn’t even noticed the red-soaked rag he still clutched.

  “Slipped.” Then he clamped his jaws shut to keep from making another idiot statement in this woman’s presence. He’d probably explain that he was the world’s dictator reincarnate from the grave. They really didn’t need to know he was a clone, but who knew what he’d blather out in her presence. He set the two mugs on the counter and faced her.

  She raised her eyebrows at his answer, but that was all he was damned well going to give her. She turned her attention to Jaron, though he could feel some of her attention remained upon him.

  “Whose behavior is deplorable?”

  This cold, hard stranger had nothing to do with the shy and quiet woman he’d cooked for this morning. She couldn’t.

  Jaron stammered for a moment, but Robbie’s squeeze on his shoulder calmed him down once again.

  “Last night and today, I have seen:” he consulted his commpad, “seven fights, three of which drew enough blood to endanger life, and thirty-four games of chance, primarily cards. Quite arcane when compared to the entertainments sitting idle in the L2 and L3 malls. I observed approximately the same number of people arguing about sex as I saw publicly in the act; thirty vs. twenty-seven. All of this during normal working hours.”

  “You’ve been busy, my friend.”

  Jaron smiled at him. The only surprise to Bryce was that the numbers on sex were so low. Of course, Bryce Sr.’s statistics were not based solely on public displays. The fighting about it versus doing it ratio was also a bit high.

  “And you’re studying this because?” Ri leaned in past Robbie to try and see Jaron’s data.

  Bryce took a breath and let it out slowly. Perhaps Jaron would keep her attention away from whatever reason had really made her drop by.

  Jaron nodded toward Bryce. “We were debating the observability of Homo sapiens in a quantitative fashion. I have been studying humanity as a species.”

  “Why only Ring Four?”

  “It is where my jungle is. It was also a readily available community. I did try to look up the statistics for inter-ring travel but couldn’t find it.”

  “On a typical day it is below one percent. The peak was four percent, a bit over four hundred individuals, but that was before The End.”

  “You just happen to know that,” Bryce tried for a scoff but failed.

  “I’m the Security Chief. It’s part of my job.” Her flat gaze told him just how stupid his remark had been before she turned her attention back to Jaron.

  Bryce glanced around, but the bar was fairly empty. He took the opportunity to wrap a clean white towel around his hand which had finally stopped bleeding. Mostly. There had been something of an exodus at Ri’s arrival. The feel of the air was altered on a room-wide scale when she was in her serious, security mode. At the moment the temperature was near Arctic and falling. Or maybe the others had also concluded what had happened to the four goons. Or rather who had happened to them.

  Jaz was mainly busy fetching empties from abandoned tables.

  “Well?” Ri prompted the jungle man.

  Robbie answered for him. “Other than the abandoned sectors of the northeast sector, that’s about it.”

  There was something in his eyes… Bryce leaned one elbow on the bar top.

  “What happened there?”

  Jaron looked like a gasping fish too long out of water. Ri glanced at him as Robbie wrapped a concerned arm around his shoulders.

  Bryce leaned his forearms on the edge of the bar and folded his hands on the damp, cool surface.

  “Just say it slowly.”

  Jaron’s face was as white as the bar towel around Bryce’s hand. And the scientist was sweating in the cool evening air that whispered down the halls.

  “There was a door.” He glanced behind him. Then looked at Robbie who clearly hadn’t heard about this.

  “Sealed. Northeast. L1. Around 55 or 60 degrees. Can’t miss it. Just follow the tracks. In the dust.” His hands were shaking where they clasped the commpad.

  “What happened that frightened you so much?”

  Jaron sat bolt upright. “Frightened? I’m a scientist. I was observing. Two set of footprints in the dust. Two went in. Only one left. And inside…inside…” he huddled back down.

  “Inside there was nothing.”

  They all sat there in silence for a moment.

  Robbie placed a hand on Jaron’s shoulder causing him to leap from his chair.

  “I think we better go check in on Harold and the other birds.”

  He nodded but it wasn’t clear he’d registered the words.

  Robbie began leading Jaron down the corridor away from the jungle, toward the lift back up to their quarters. Bryce could see Ri ready to leap in with one more question. He laid a hand on her arm and shook his head.

  She frowned but kept her peace until they were out of sight. He could see her assessing him carefully, like some crime scene she had just happened upon. The charm and energy of last night’s flirt, the peace of this morning’s companionship were nowhere to be found as she confronted him across the bar.

  “How did you know he hadn’t told the whole story?”

  He was sick of trying to be careful around her. Around everybody. He wiped the counter and moved to help Jaz.

  “I’m the bartender. It’s part of my job.”

  Chapter 22

  12 January 1 A.A.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me?” Ri knew exactly what was on Captain Turner’s mind and didn’t want to deal with it. So she’d agreed to meet him in the R2L3 West ag-bay.

  “You know what all this is, don’t you?”

  Ri looked down the long rows of potatoes and across the waving corn. “Why don’t you, Jackson?”

  “Fly boy, remember?” He kicked at the dirt as they walked along.

  “Well, I was a city girl. But this is the stuff of life. Food growing. We never dreamed of anything else in Nara. It fascinates me. Green as far as the
eye can see.”

  Which was true in the ag-bays due to the curve of the rings and the low ag-bay ceiling. Ten meters high, a hundred wide and almost sixty degrees of the Ring from end-to-end made the horizon into a wall of vegetation reaching up to the blue roof. The ag-bays were stacked four high in the same amount of area as one of the biomes. There had been no effort here to blend in the horizon, but it was still an expansive feel.

  Ri pointed down the length of the rows. “Potatoes low and corn high in this bay.”

  Jackson laughed. “As high as an elephant’s eye, and no, I’ve never seen one of those either except in the old vids before they extincted. Must have been something.”

  They walked in silence along the central path that divided the two crops. Ri kept trying to find a way to discuss what had happened the night before last and why she’d left and how she’d been too busy to return his signals over the last thirty-six hours, but every opening she’d thought of sounded stupid.

  Jackson slid over and cupped a buttock in one of his hands and squeezed hard.

  She swung her arm over his and drove her fingers into his sciatic nerve hard enough for his right leg to hitch momentarily and nearly send him to the dirt. “Don’t you ever stop?”

  “Give me one reason I should.” But his voice was less certain than his words as he rubbed his buttock and shook his leg to relieve the numb feeling she knew surrounded his knee at this moment.

  “Because the next time I touch you, it will be a knee in your balls. And any jokes about my not being able to reach that high just might prompt a free demonstration.”

  Jackson stopped by the central info-station, which squatted like a large bug in the center of the ag-bay. He sat on one of the seats facing the spinward fields.

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  She stopped a few steps past him. She’d brought him here seeking a relaxing setting. To make her forget about the mess over in R4, or the room her team had worked over with only one set of tracks departing, but learning nothing, or the wreckage in R2L0 that maintenance still hadn’t fixed, or the rumors that Merkar had put a price on her head…

  Ri dropped onto the seat next to Jackson and picked up a clod of dirt. She began exfoliating the layers with a thumbnail.

  “My fault, Jackson. There’s just too damn much going on.”

  “When was the last time you slept?”

  “We slept together night before last.” Actually she’d slept with, or at least near Bryce.

  “Nope. I woke up less than an hour after we sacked out and you were gone. Where?”

  “Running.”

  “Running?”

  Ri hung her head, “Running.”

  He smashed a couple of dirt clumps with the heel of his shoe.

  Ri scraped another layer clear from hers.

  “You’re right. I don’t know what’s going on either. I just can’t sleep. Sure, the Icarus team has just showed me some slick innovations in how to deal with an all-out riot that the designers never considered. That’s great. But there’s something else. And none of their data is pointing toward anything yet, but I can feel it. And it’s bad. Really bad.”

  “My people are good, they’ll find it. Now let’s get back to the ship and you can get some shuteye.”

  The clod of dirt burst to pieces in her hand. “You just want to satisfy that mass of testosterone you call a bloodstream.”

  She could feel his leer without even having to turn and look.

  “While I’d never turn down an opportunity, this time I’d…”

  “Chief Jeffers,” a deep voice boomed at her.

  Ri spun to face Olias standing on the far side of the info-station. Very carefully she rose from fighting stance. Olias hadn’t missed her reaction and scowled until she stood properly at attention.

  “Yes, Sub-Captain?”

  Without even glancing aside he spoke to Jackson, “Alone, Captain Turner.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson stand up and hesitate. After a long moment, when Olias still didn’t acknowledge him, his shoulders slumped and he moved away. Olias remained unmoving until his brother could have left the ag-bay and the ring itself.

  He crossed to Ri and held up a small, thin object that she finally recognized as a t-card.

  “It is against ship procedures for an officer to be without their tone card.”

  “By what regulation?”

  “Articles of commissioning for this vessel.”

  “I’m off duty. Have you ever heard of that?” She’d never dared talk back to him before. Why was she suddenly so full of anger?

  His scowl deepened. “ ‘Off duty’ as in spending too much time aboard the Icarus?”

  Ri gasped as if she’d been struck.

  He continued, apparently pleased with the success of his attack.

  “With your last double shift, you have achieved sufficient hours to a be full commander, not just a watch officer. And full commanders are never out of touch. I don’t give a damn how you feel about it. You will never be without this card again as long as you are aboard this ship.”

  “So now I am no longer entitled to any privacy?”

  He studied her like a towering wall about to tip over and crush her. He circled the info station, reached out, lifted the flap on her breast pocket, and tried to slide the card into place. She slapped his arm aside, hard. The card flipped into the dirt. He glared at her as he shook out his hand.

  “Next time I’ll break it.”

  He straightened to attention, leaving the card in the dirt.

  “If you want privacy, you will have to choose a different sleeping companion.”

  He walked away in the direction opposite to the one his half-brother had taken while she struggled to take a breath. Either Jackson was telling stories about her already or…she couldn’t think what. She watched Olias until he was out of sight around the curve.

  She jammed a heel on the t-card, burying it in the dirt, and slapped her breast pocket closed. She settled back to the seat of the info-station and frowned down at the print of her heel in the soil.

  Her knees were far less steady than Jackson’s must still be.

  # # #

  Ri slid up a lift to the axis, clamping her jaw against the twisting sensation as she Coriolised up to zero gee. Her inner ear had never been right since Levan had thrown her out of a speeding flitter at altitude as a practical training exercise in preparedness. She toughed it out until the weight was off and the door slid open. She had to bounce off the ceiling because she’d forgotten to hook her feet on the way up.

  Jackson had abandoned her, tail between his legs. He’d run away from his brother. He hadn’t even waited for her. Not much to count on when it might really matter.

  Avoiding the sliders along the outer axis, Ri hatched herself up to zero gee at the center of the core. She pushed off with a good kick, hatched through the two doors of the inter-ring airlock, and kicked off again. It was soothing to be headed away from Olias and Jackson and the whole bloody mess. People dying, maintenance incompetent.

  Hatched through the next inter-ring and the one after. Maybe she was overreacting. They had some bad problems to work out themselves. So what if they survived; they would only continue to fight with each other.

  She entered the next airlock and slapped the balance pressure pad. The far door didn’t automatically slide open. It was becoming hard to breathe. And it was so cold.

  The freezing air woke her enough to focus on the pad she had authorized on. The bright, red letters blurred before her eyes. Vacuum on the other side.

  “Shit.” She tried to catch her breath but there wasn’t any air to fill her lungs. The loud klaxon faded away as the air drained out of the lock.

  She swung a hand as fast as she could. It seemed to take forever for the command to travel down from her
brain and reach her fingertips. The numbers dropped to thirty percent before she completed the gesture and cancelled the cycle. Her vision tunneled in until all she could see was a single fingertip hovering over the panel. She swung her head around until she found the large, green repressurize button. It then took some experimentation to move her hand until it blocked the field of green that filled her remaining field of vision.

  Her ears banged as air flooded into the chamber.

  # # #

  Robbie worked her way along the trail, using her machete to fell the brush that constantly threatened the maintenance trails. The growth was lush beyond natural here on Stellar One but still within the safety limits of their working model.

  Per Jaron’s instructions, she made no effort to avoid the fruit trees, letting whatever fell lie and rot naturally. Interesting that a bartender had solved a puzzle her entire crew had not cracked. But the adjustment pulled the actual curve into neat alignment with predicted, their model was now field-verified.

  The jungle was changing. Neither the openness of the Orinoco station jungle or the dense overgrowth of Sumatran fauna that she’d intermixed in the design were dominating. It was growing into its own, unique organism. She slashed some banana leaves and an intruding bunch of plantains to the ground. A few slices with the machete opened most of the fruit to promote faster rotting. She kicked it into the bushes so that it would not become an obstacle on the trail.

  It was no longer an ecosystem. It was a mutually dependent single organism. Not banana, paranut, ceiba, parrot, orchid, but rather “jungle.” No, more unique than that. “Stellar One jungle.” It was a unique, one-of-a-kind organism. And it was a successful one. Susan Jeffers would have approved and it saddened Robbie that there was no way to share it with the woman who had conceived it.

  Robbie broke through the trees into the small clearing just as evening fell and jammed her machete into its sheath. She set it against the rock Suz Jeffers had moved for her from alongside the Orinoco River where they’d first met. Sweat dripped off her brow and stung her eyes. She splashed water from the small pool of fast flowing water onto her face. Just perfect for a quick swim against the current. She plunged her head beneath the water and let it soak into her curly hair. Dragging off her shirt, she let the warm water trickle over her body as the evening breeze cooled her skin.