Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  She brought up the recorded birth and death charts.

  “Births are nonexistent thanks to the actions of Samnal Jenkins. Pregnancies are also zero which may be explained by the massive acquisition of birth control products immediately following Dr. Jenkins’ actions.”

  Olias was grim, but it was no longer aimed in her direction. “That death rate curve is not good. We lost two percent before The End and, am I reading it right, another percent since the New Year?”

  The Captain didn’t even correct Olias about calling it “The End” rather than her preferred “The Disaster.” That worried Ri almost as much as their doom spelled out so clearly in the curve she was about to show.

  “Yes, even with the R2 blowout in December, the reported death rate is a little worse.” She called up the last curve, much steeper than the others, in a downward direction.

  “This, Captain, is why I came directly to you. This first curve is our reported population. The new curve is based on unique individuals thumbing into the system in a three-day period. Remember that they do this for passage between areas, purchases, and meals. It should capture every ID every day.” Except Bryce, but she wasn’t about to try and explain him.

  “I’d feared we were losing a few people a week, that’s what the death rate shows. The population drop is more on the order of five to ten. Per day. We will cease to exist in three or four years. Those people aren’t leaving on shuttles, or jumping out of airlocks.” She swallowed remembering how close she’d come to doing just that.

  “But neither are they consuming more. They’re simply disappearing.”

  “And how do you explain this?” Olias was leaning in to study the curves more closely. His lower lip was caught between his teeth.

  “I can’t yet, sir. I’ve been working with a small team in R4 on this. I also recruited the Icarus crew.” She ignored Olias’ flinch. “But they have focused more on Stellar’s physical security.” Actually, they’d mostly become bored once they understood how Stellar was built. They’d drifted back to their own hobbies, though they’d remained in the cramped quarters of Icarus rather than returning to their spacious apartment.

  “The R4 team only started investigating these problems in the last few days. A few isolated anomalies have been uncovered, each so far pointing to foul play.” She decided against mentioning the scream in R4L1.

  “How long, Ri? How long has this been happening on my ship?” Devra’s voice was harsh, as upset as Ri had seen her since the day the Earth was destroyed and Ri had to make the announcements for her.

  “The first occurrence I can confirm is three weeks ago. We believe that a jungle worker named Otto Kenman was dispatched by an Emilia Wirden, perhaps in self-defense. She has since been a victim and is no longer available for questioning. She was the first we know of to help someone else disappear.”

  Olias scowled at her as if she should have known. Ri cared less and less as the impact of the information she was projecting became clearer.

  “That’s what they call it in the corridors. I can use murder if you prefer. Her last registered purchase was in…” Ri tapped a few keys. “R2 Desert Pub. She was drinking with… Hold it.”

  It took a moment to call up the meal counters. She downloaded all the meals in quarters, pubs, restaurants, mess halls, and private quarters. As an afterthought she added the biome logs. Interesting that the Arctic recorded none since Carla’s death except for her own request for hot chocolate.

  Bryce really had done as he claimed and programmed himself out of existence.

  When she totaled them up and tallied them by day, it was easy to see that the trend had started only five days before Emilia had disposed of Kenman. And it had gained momentum in the last week. She projected the curve, which was dangerous based on so few data points, so she used a best case projection.

  Silence descended on the room.

  Ri forced her head around to face the others. Olias was swearing under his breath and the Captain had simply closed her eyes.

  They had a year and a half to live.

  # # #

  “Robbie.”

  “Uh. Ri?” Her voice was deep and husky with sleep.

  Ri adjusted the headset but it remained uncomfortable.

  “You asleep in the middle of the day?” Ri couldn’t help teasing the woman. She’d been a friend of the Angel-lady and it made her feel very close even though they’d only spoken of her for a few moments.

  “Jaron and I spent most of the night analyzing the data he gathered in R4 and the information you sent us on the other rings.” By the sound of Robbie’s sigh, that was about all they’d done, too.

  “We’ve got some problems and I can’t reach Jaron. The Captain wants to meet with my, our R4 team in twenty minutes at Command Conference One.”

  “Come again.” Her voice was suddenly wide awake. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve been running some numbers and it’s not good. The Captain wants everyone.”

  The voice that replied was all business “I’ll be on my way in two minutes, then I’ll track down Jaron as he’s no longer here. Man never sleeps. Probably back in his jungle.” Her voice was briefly muffled and there were sounds of the woman getting dressed.

  “Can you reach Bryce? I don’t know where he goes to ground during the day. You sure you want to do this to him? He won’t like it.”

  Ri lowered her voice, even though Halliday looked to be absorbed in work of his own now on the far side of Command. “I just had a thoroughly enjoyable lesson in not messing with Captain’s orders. She said full team. She meant it. I’ll get him to meet you at the lift by R4U in,” she glanced at a readout, “nine minutes. If he’s not there in ten, just go. That’ll leave you barely enough time to get here.”

  She cut the connection and fought against the tightening of her shoulder muscles. Yesterday Bryce had trusted her with the secret that she had to agree was best hidden. Today she was dragging him into Command Central. At least with Robbie as an escort, he wouldn’t have to thumb into the system to get here. That was something. The best she could do.

  No time to think. Just act. Ri made sure that Halliday was looking the other way before dialing Carla’s lab. She still remembered the code, though her hand ached as she keyed it in, a familiar pattern not used in far too long. As the calling tone ended, she heard a loud crash through her headset. She raised a hand to cover her smile.

  “Bryce?” she whispered into the mike.

  “Ri?” Her name was barely a gasp which was followed by an aftershock clatter of something else falling.

  She explained the situation quickly and could hear him swearing as he understood the extent of the trap he was in. His ire seemed primarily directed at “the Old Bastard” though enough spilled over in her direction to make her eyes sting badly.

  He slammed out of the lab thirty seconds later with the pickup still wide open to his blistering invective. He was obviously very practiced at cursing in a wide variety of dead languages.

  # # #

  Bryce barely spoke to Jaron and Robbie as they headed toward Ring One. Of course, they were both wide awake, but it was the middle of the night for him. His hands throbbed until he noticed they were clenched so tightly there was no blood in them at all. A sharp tingle of pain answered his attempts to uncurl his fingers as they descended toward Ring One Level Three.

  The red walls of the command sector suited him just fine. It was the color he was seeing in his head anyway. The Old Bastard’s memories were having a high time of it as he lectured Bryce on who to trust—no one, and when to trust them—after they were dead. And Bryce Sr. was proof that even that wasn’t sufficient.

  He rubbed his aching fingers together and wished for the billionth time that he could reach in and kill his own mind.

  The R1L3 command conference room was a vast space with two dozen chairs circling the high e
dge of the central floor. All but six had been slid back to the walls and the remainder were turned into a loose “V” shape open toward the sunken floor. Ri and two others were already seated when they arrived. He didn’t want to sit next to Ri, but then he focused on the vastly scarred man on her right.

  He almost called out the man’s name. The old memories knew him well. Yet they withdrew with a sudden caution that surprised Bryce. He pushed a little and was offered an image of the team who had caused the death of Japan, with Olias as a hulking presence in the background.

  By the time he cleared his head, Jaron and Robbie had taken the other seats leaving him only the one choice. Next to Ri.

  She tested a brief smile of welcome on him that he did his best to ignore. It wasn’t hard.

  “Who the hell are you?” Olias snapped at him. Bryce couldn’t believe his good fortune at not being recognized as other images kept trickling in of his parent’s betrayal of his team’s trust so long ago.

  “I might ask the same of you.” Worth trying the offensive. He rested his elbow on the chair arm and almost rested his hand on the commpad built into the arm. His thumb would have landed dead center on the scanner. That would surely announce who he was in a hurry.

  He jerked his hand away and looked up to see Ri watching him carefully. She was trying to wear her hard-bitten, Security Officer persona, but it was cracked, even worried. He looked away. Leave her in her own stew. He would focus on not touching anything until he was safely back in his bar.

  Olias was clenching and unclenching his fists and Bryce was forced to amend, if he was allowed to depart alive from this hell.

  The Captain, a small woman with graying hair, calmly raised a hand and the big man fell silent. Bryce was at least momentarily safe from physical attack. But not the baleful glare.

  “Commander Jeffers. Would you please introduce everyone, if this is indeed your whole contingent? For the duties you described, it seems a rather small team.” Her voice, while soft and well-mannered, also had a bolt of steel up the middle that no one in his right mind would argue with. Not even Olias.

  The challenge that drifted off the last word wasn’t exactly sarcasm, but it certainly highlighted that they were a scruffy-looking lot. The thin scientist, the large arboreal specialist, one gangly bartender, and a pint-sized chief of security.

  “They are sufficient to the scope of our research to date. You know Jaron MacAndrews obviously.”

  “Welcome back, Mr. MacAndrews. You are well, I presume.”

  Jaron flushed bright red and barely managed a nod. The Captain had just made it perfectly clear that she may have pardoned him for Samnal’s murder, but wasn’t about to cut him any slack. Bryce would have to watch her even more closely than her tame gorilla.

  Ri continued calmly as Jaron wrestled with his inner demons.

  “Robbie is Jaron’s chief forester and Bryce is a bartender in Ring Four.”

  Olias’ neck bulged, “What the hell are you doing with a bartender? This is a serio—”

  The Captain raised her hand again. “We shall take these people at face value, Sub-Captain Sunra. Please recall that I requested this meeting and all of these people have kindly joined us from their normal routines.” Her calm face looked expectantly at them ever so much like a school master waiting to hear someone present a prize-winning term paper.

  “I believe we are ready for your presentation, Commander Jeffers. Or is one of your specialists leading the meeting?”

  “No. I’m…”

  Ri glanced to Jaron and Robbie, but sensibly avoided looking at him. She keyed her commpad. The center of the room filled with a large three-dimensional projection. Bryce didn’t even need to blink to make sense of it.

  “Humankind is dying.” He bit his tongue, but the analysis had slipped out and he knew it was accurate. He had too many memories of similar charts of population curves on Earth, though usually the slope was in the opposite direction. Overpopulation, not underpopulation had been the WEC’s burden.

  Jaron was shaking his head. “I don’t see…”

  Bryce stepped out onto the lower central floor. Some part of him screamed to shut up but the old memories were in control. And he figured that Jaron would be least offended by him showing the significance of the colored arcs. He indicated the break point in the curves’ slopes.

  “Look here, Jaron. Stellar One was doing okay up until this point.” A dull red line lay at the bottom of the graph without a single wiggle. Ri was looking right at him when he turned to face her.

  “Is that the birthrate curve?” He pointed downward.

  “Yes, the two women who escaped the aftermath of Samnal’s disease were early term and opted for abortions. One has since killed herself. So our projected short-term birth rate is truly zero.” She tapped a few keys and a dashed green line was added to the graph. Riding low-to-middle until Samnal struck, it jumped to the top of the graph and stayed there. He traced his finger along it.

  “You can see that fully a hundred percent of the female population selected long-term birth control implants within days after Samnal. So the long-term birthrate is zero as well.

  “But this is what is throwing you, Jaron. The reported death rate isn’t matching the population decrease.” As he spoke, he attempted to imagine he was sitting in his chair. Silent. Not participating. Instead he was standing center stage revealing skills that were not part of the past of either a bartender or a stowaway shuttle mechanic. They weren’t his skills anyway. They were his parent’s.

  Ri changed the projection and he stumbled back from the message so clearly painted there before him. A year and a half. But there was something not right.

  “What?” Olias rose to his feet and came to stand beside him. He shook Bryce’s arm in a painful grasp. “What is it?”

  His hand, of its own volition, traced the holograph’s curve. The angle wasn’t right.

  “Ri, did you account for the shared psychic degradation as the community decreases in size? The curve is wrong.”

  At her silence, he turned. She was frozen by his question.

  He strode over and, careful to leave no fingerprint, pulled up Wilkson’s studies of 2071 to 2080. He had to thumb in to open the document but he knew that it was the document’s own protection system that was doing this, not the central security system, so he’d be safe. He still hesitated before doing it.

  Ri was watching him closely, finally he just gritted his teeth and slammed his thumb down. The document opened. He waited but no alarms sounded. Releasing his breath, he selected the file on the cumulative nature of negative emotions in closed societies. As the group size decreased, the intensity of any communal emotion increased out of proportion to the population variation.

  He linked the equation to Ri’s data and turned to the chart. There was a curve he recognized. Then he felt sick to his stomach.

  He hated being right.

  The broad Sub-Captain returned to his side. His bloodless face caused his scars to stand out grotesquely across his scalp. “What is it?”

  It was so obvious. He looked around the circle. Ri sat with her eyes tightly closed, she’d of course be familiar with this type of charting from her biome work. Robbie conferred with Jaron in broken words. The Captain looked less certain.

  He led Olias back to the graph. “This is time. This is the population of Stellar One. This is where the population of your world reaches zero.” He placed his finger gently on the curve nine months and two weeks in the future. He could almost feel the chill of the point even though it was only projected light.

  “Data of this type can typically vary by as much as twelve percent, call it a month, up or,” he paused, “down.”

  # # #

  Ri tapped for a quick readout of the file Bryce had accessed. She’d never seen a document with its own protection system before. How many more of those lay hidden i
n their databanks? She’d studied the dynamics of socio-biologics under the Angel-lady’s tutelage. It was that which had aroused the Angel-lady and sent her to Nara. Ri still used the techniques a great deal for creating flora and fauna viability projections for the biomes.

  But she’d never heard of Wilkson. She didn’t even recognize half of the variables in the equation. A recent minor variable had been added with a footnote citing Orinoco research by Robbie Enlara. Ri glanced over at her, but she was too engrossed by the displayed curves to notice Ri’s attention.

  She called up the title page.

  Unless specifically authorized by

  Bryce Randall Stevens

  -President, World Economic Council-

  in opening this document you have

  already committed an act of treason

  punishable by immediate execution

  with extreme prejudice.

  It was followed by the spectrum emblem of the WEC. Even though the council was gone with the Earth, she couldn’t catch her breath. She nearly choked trying to get air into her lungs in broken gulps. Just before she cleared the screen, she thought better of it. She flipped to the end and found the place to add her own print to the authorized list first. She looked to see if anyone else had been watching.

  Everyone except Bryce was staring fixedly at the graph. His eyes looked straight at her. At first she wondered if they were angry, but the droop in his shoulders could only be interpreted as sadness. She attempted to nod. His weak smile seemed to tell her it would be okay, but she couldn’t wipe the sweat off the palms of her hands. Even the shipsuit material over her legs wouldn’t do the job.

  “Bryce.” The Captain’s voice, as steady as if she’d just been served dinner, was the first sound in the room in the long minutes since Bryce’s revelation. Everyone spun to face her.