Karen slid off the bed and handed her the glass of juice. "Just so you don’t fall asleep again.”
Theo obediently drank. "How long was the sun out?”
"Almost an hour! I saw three weejees—little ones—they are so dear! And flocks of fliers are going north, above the clouds.” She pointed to the rain-streaked window. "It’s just drizzling now.” "Any sign of our cave bears last night?”
"No. Dr. Wexler said when you had breakfast, could you come to her lab?”
Theo smiled. "And I thought she was worried about my getting a headache from oversleeping. How did she look to you this morning, by the way?”
Karen thought for a minute. "Pretty messy. But her eyes are— I don’t know. It’s like this morning she was really smiling and before it was always pretend. I don’t think she’s afraid any more. Just very tired.”
"I think you’re right, Dr. Orlov. That’s how she hit me last night.” She told Karen what had gone on in the lab the night before.
"That’s why she wants you to run tests on our—” Karen began.
"Attention! Attention!” The intercom in the hall came on full volume and so unexpectedly that both of them jumped. The speaker’s voice was strange.
"Bother!” whispered Theo. "I’m not even showered or dressed.” She had one foot on the carpet when the voice repeated, "Attention! Attention! Eridan Base Three. This is the Aurora Corporation flagship Prince Vladimir, responding to your S.O.S. Vice Regent Koh in command. Respond on channel blue. Respond on channel blue.”
"Vice Regent Koh?” Karen asked confirmation in a worried whisper. Theo nodded yes. "She’s from Palus,” said Karen.
"Isn’t everyone who matters?” said Theo and began to brush her hair hurriedly. "Have you met her?”
"No. Why are you doing that? The ship’s probably a week out. Nobody can see you ”
"Attention! Attention! Eridan Base Three, this is—”
(tVladimir, this is Eridan Base Three. Base Commander Tairas responding. And grateful to hear your voice. But please lower your transmission. You’re coming in on everything that isn’t plastic.”
"Eridan Base Three. Give your identifying code.”
A series of high-frequency tones began repeating sequentially. "Acknowledged, Commander Tairas. We are going to attempt video ... we have a picture . . . glitching . . . but adequate. ...” There was a rasp of deafening static.
"Lower your transmission,” Tairas’s voice repeated.
“Sorry.” The hall speaker fell silent.
Theo sighed as if released from enthrallment. "I must get dressed. I must get to work. I must...” She stopped and looked at Karen sitting on the bed. Three months ago on the trip out here she must have seen this girl on the ship a dozen times and never gave her a passing thought. Nor had Karen given her one. Three months from now would they be strangers again ? And would time seem so empty as she was suddenly afraid it would ?
"The Vice Regent will decide what happens to us—all of us, the Expedition ...”
"Yes.” Karen seemed to be half listening. "She’s a great-aunt of my mother’s. She’s impressed by two things, money and intelligence. She put up Palus’s share of the Corporation. ...”
"How do you know this?”
"I listen. People think children don’t hear them when they talk business. But I did.” She got up quickly. "I’m going to the lab, Theo. I want to work on my meat pudding. See you.” And she was gone, leaving Theo to stare after her, perplexed. What was so important about meat puddings that it came before curiosity about the approaching flagship ?
But as she dressed she thought of all the things that should be done before that ship arrived. First of all, she had to file a petition to adopt, along with character references. There were preliminary studies to do on a dozen different specimens. There was the work on cryptobiosis; Evelyn’s group might need considerable help, and she was one of the few remaining people among the small staff who could truly help them. She wanted time to go back out into the field when the rains ended, to observe the dehydration of these creatures. Was cryptobiosis common among Eridan’s creatures? And—
"Attention. Attention,” the Commander’s voice requested. "Would all available staff not on guard duty please report to communications ASAP? The Corporation wants a candid look at you.”
XXVII
FlVE days later the Prince Vladimir entered Eridan’s orbit. From the surface of the planet the ship was visible each dawn. It glowed in the southern sky like a stray comet or a transient morning star. Or hope, Theo thought as she looked at it.
The sky was lighting behind the layered clouds, turning them the bruised reds and purples of this world. The sea was dark brown and noisy with high tide. Wind pushed clouds across that patch of open sky where the starship gleamed. The ship winked in the rising sun’s rays and then was obscured by mist. Theo shivered as if she had seen a bad omen.
She had risen early, as had always been her habit. There was to her a sense of continuity about the hour of dawn. It gave her a sense of quietness, purity, an intimacy with the real life of that particular world on which she walked. As there was on the Earth of her childhood; as there had been on a dozen different worlds, as existed here on Eridan, so would there be dawns on worlds to come. Forever and ever. Amen.
But the magic was missing from this dawn. In fact it had been missing since the Vladimir spoke. With that strange voice a tight knot seemed to have settled around her midsection. The knot diminished her appetite, made her sleep fitfully, and caused her to be accused of prolonged staring into space.
"What’s wrong with me?” she wondered. "Have I given up hope ? Did it go when Karen said, 'She’s from Palus’ ? And why does it matter so much to me, the thought of never seeing this child again ? Why physical pain ?”
Karen was worrying, too. It was nothing she said but what she avoided saying by spending almost all her time working on her meat pudding study. She was data-researching subjects far beyond her. Theo helped her, almost as if it were a game both played to pass the time.
But at night Karen ground her teeth in her sleep and moaned in bad dreams. The first time she slipped from her bed and hurried to the alcove, Theo’s impulse had been to put her arms around this lost creature and comfort her. But then she paused, remembering her own recent dreams. Where Karen’s mind was at that moment, Theo Leslie had not been, did not exist. So she turned on a soft light and knelt to call the girl back to the present. When Karen’s eyes first opened, for a second or more, a frightened stranger had looked out upon a strange room and a strange woman, then, remembering, had wrapped her arms around Theo’s neck and held on tight.
As Theo climbed the path up from the beach and topped the rise of the cliff, the wind caught up with her and swirled her hair into her eyes. One cold raindrop plopped against her cheek. Brushing the hair away, she looked out to see Jonathan Tairas walking down from the pools. Mistaking her gesture for a wave, he waved and turned to meet her.
"I’ve just been talking to the shuttle crew that landed at Base One,” he said by way of greeting. "After that I felt the need for fresh air.”
"What did they find?”
"It was pretty bad.” He took a deep breath.
"What way? What happened?”
"Well . . . Executive Commander Ito is missing. They still haven’t found out what happened to him.”
"Probably the same thing that happened to the Orlovs,” said Theo. "There was simply no witness to his death.”
"Probably. Their medical staff believed the fear was mass hysteria and treated the crew accordingly. Five of the medics were killed by enraged patients. What seemed to save the group was an attack by your animals. When that happened, it gave them a common and obvious enemy. They banded together against it. And fear of meeting cave bears kept them from collecting more crystals.”
"How many died?”
"Only three.”
“Why wouldn’t they respond to our calls? Why didn’t they ask for help?” said Theo.
"They were afraid. Just as we were afraid to really know what was going on there. And then, of course, some of them are guilty of murder. Most are guilty of mutiny. No one was eager to face the consequences of that.”
"What’s going to happen to them?”
"Eventually? I don’t know. Right now they are under quarantine. As we all are, by the way. The Vladimir doesn’t want live virus brought aboard. But what was bad about this morning was seeing the people at Base One on screen. You know—” He mentioned a number of names. "You would hardly recognize them. Sunken eyes, severe weight loss, haggard. I wonder if we look as bad?”
Theo was quiet, remembering her shock at Tairas’s appearance when he came to fetch her and Karen back from the mountains. As if reading her thoughts, he said, "Yes, I guess we do look—somewhat different.”
"I guess we do,” Theo said. "But would we be quite human if we did not?”
They walked in comfortable silence, circling the pools, and stood to watch the waterfalls spilling down to the sea. A small flock of kalpas dropped out of the clouds to rest in the nearby treetops. Like great long-legged herons, the creatures swayed and bowed to one another, dancers gone berserk. Dark brown with mad orange eyes, they seemed exotic even for this world. A gust blew and, as if by signal, heads lifted, wings snapped open, and they were airborne, slowly spiraling to enter the clouds again.
"You smile at them with the same pleasure that I smile at a sun storm,” Tairas remarked, watching her reaction. "That’s what is important, Theo—that joy. Everything else is . . . not incidental, but not as satisfying.”
"And subject to change?” suggested the woman. "And therefore dangerous?”
"Yes,” he said. "In our position it never pays to be vulnerable.”
"Are you gently trying to warn me I may be disappointed ?”
"Yes. The Orlovs are an old and wealthy clan. Karen is a result of five hundred years of careful breeding. She is heir to all they were and are—and, I would imagine, to a great deal of what they possess.”
"You think Vice Regent Koh will decide to return her to your colony?”
"It would disappoint me if she did. But it would not surprise me. Nor would it be an unjust decision. She has communicated through her first secretary her interest in the joint requests of yourself and Karen. Her staff has apparently spent much time on your biographical files.”
"And?”
"She will be here herself tomorrow morning.”
XXVIII
THE SHUTTLE WAS NOT AN ELEGANT CRAFT. TECHNOLOGY DICTATED ITS DESIGN. IT RESEMBLED A BAKING POTATO WITH LANDING GEAR; DIMPLED BY VIEWPORTS, KNOBBY WITH DOMES. IT WAS IMPRESSIVE FOR ITS SIZE IN HUMAN SCALE BUT BECAME INSIGNIFICANT WHEN COMPARED TO THE SMALLEST PARENT SHIP.
Because its weight would sink into the softness of the rain-soaked soil around Base Three, the shuttle landed on a rock shelf some distance away. To the staff watching from camp, the craft appeared as an elongated white ovoid, emblazened with the corporate insignia—an arching aurora. The utility cars were used to taxi the officers down to camp.
To avoid viral contamination, the visitors arrived wearing isolation gear, much as Theo and Karen had worn in the cave. The garb made them all look the same, one head bubble indistinguishable from the next as they came down the ramp. There was one exception—Vice Regent Koh.
She arrived on the third trip of the taxis, with no fanfare, no ceremony. She needed none. The moment she appeared in the hatchway it was obvious to all onlookers that here was Somebody. Jonathan Tairas came on the run.
Madame Koh was as small as colonials tended to be. To Theo, her face suggested a shrike. Her feathery beige hair, hooded eyes, and ancient, talon-like fingers reinforced the suggestion, as did the way she stood in the hatch, studying those assembled, her helmet turning slowly from left to right and back again.
"Madame. We are honored.” Commander Tairas bowed.
"Of course you are, Jon.” The reflectors in her helmet obscured her face as she stepped out into daylight. "I thought that was obvious.” Theo was unsure from the tone if the remark was intended as humor, but Commander Tairas chuckled.
"Well, what do you think of us?” He gestured toward the staff who stood about. "How do we look?”
"In comparison to Base One personnel—superb. In comparison to the Agricultural Base—superior. But compared to what you looked like when you first arrived, peaked. It is encouraging to see that none of you appears to have gone completely mad. I find that refreshing.”
"We have a fine staff,” the Commander said. "And, psychologically, I think the natural beauty of the site has been a great advantage.”
The shining helmet turned slowly as she viewed the site. "Yes.
You were always impressed by trees, Jon. To me one tree looks very much like the next. Decorative but dull. All this sky, all these living things.” The small form shuddered. "Shall we go to the conference room ? The sooner I review everything, the sooner I can leave.”
As the two of them passed, the Vice Regent slowed and her helmet turned in the direction of Theo and Karen. "Orlov minor?” she asked. The Commander nodded and said something too softly to be overheard. The head bubble turned toward Theo. "Interesting.” They entered the hangar.
"How old do you suppose she is ?” Karen wondered.
"I have no idea,” said Theo. "Why?”
"Much older than she looks?”
"Oh, yes.”
"Good. She’ll be interested in my meat pudding paper.”
"I wouldn’t count on it, Karen. She doesn’t strike me as being interested in animals.”
"Oh, she won’t care about the animal part. She will care about what they can do. They can extend their life, time and time again. And we have a big animal who does it, too. I bet she would like to know how.”
"So would I,” said Theo. "And when we have time . . .” It suddenly dawned on her what Karen was getting at. "You mean she will be interested in it from a totally personal view, as a means to defeat death?”
"Or just to live longer,” said Karen. "Plus, what if you could market the process ? It would pay back every bit of the money she could lose in this expedition.”
There were times, Theo thought as she looked down at Karen, when the girl seemed years wiser than herself. And a hundred times more shrewd. To Theo cryptobiosis was an interesting phenomenon, but because she had little interest in the unnatural state of human life extended by long periods of nothingness, she had never considered the phenomenon’s market potential, which might be considerable. The ultimate pharmaceutical ?
"Yes,” she said absently. "I suppose it would. But how is this going to help us?”
"It’s simple,” said Karen. "If the two of us together come up with something this great, not only would it be a shame to separate us—it would be unprofitable.”
Theo grinned but shook her head. "All she has to do is put the best biochemists she can buy to work on the problem. Whatever any of us create or discover on an expedition, by the terms of our contract, is the property of the Corporation. Her property. Including specimens.”
"Karen Orlov. Karen Orlov. Please report to Conference Room A.”
At that announcement Theo felt a cold stab of nerves slice through her self-composure. "Already?” she said. "She couldn’t have reviewed anything yet. She’s been here only five minutes.” Karen shrugged. "She probably just wants to meet me. I am a relative, after all. And nice, too. Don’t worry, Theo.”
The fact that she was busy didn’t keep Theo from worrying. Among the visitors were fifteen new staff members. Three of them were Theo’s responsibility. Depending on the Vice Regent’s decision, they would stay, either as permanent staff or to aid the remaining members in packing up and folding camp. Quarters had to be found for them, inoculations given, personal gear stowed, orientation tours conducted, introductions made. She felt it was a credit to her self-discipline that she was able to get them nicely settled in with only ten per cent of her mind functioning on their
problems. The rest of her thoughts were reserved for what could possibly be happening with Karen and listening for footsteps running down the hall. Midafternoon came and Karen still had not returned.
"Dr. Leslie. Please report to Conference Room A.”
She met Karen coming out of the conference room.
"What happened?”
"Nothing. We’ve been talking. She asked me questions. Who do I want to live with. What do I want to be. I told her all about my parents. And you. And the cave . . .” Karen shook her head in self-disapproval. "Maybe I talked too much.”
"What did she say?”
"Mostly, 'And how do you feel about that?’ and 'Interesting.’ Go on in. I think she just wants to get to know us both a little.” "What did she think of meat puddings?” Theo asked and then answered in concert with Karen, "Interesting.”
XXIX
ADAME Koh sat alone at the head of the table, engrossed in the desk screen. She did not look up as Theo entered and stood hesitantly inside the doorway.
“Please sit down, Dr. Leslie. That can't be comfortable—standing there in awe of me.”
Theo sat. In the quiet she could hear faint murmurs from the sound track of the tapes Madame Koh was studying and the sudden brisk rustle of her uniform as she leaned forward to press buttons that rejected old tapes, selected new. As she was still encased in the polarized helmet, it was impossible to tell her reaction to anything. The room smelled faintly of an alien perfume. Theo waited.
Abruptly the lighting went dim. Molecules shifted and the helmet became clear. Theo was now the object of intent study. She returned the interest, stare for stare, for this was a rare animal. And like all animals, it reacted hostilely to being stared at. The hooded eyes narrowed, the too-smooth skin darkened with a flush. The Vice Regent rose, towering at five feet one. Then, as if to deny self-consciousness, she pushed her chair close to the next and sat down again, using the chairs as an impromptu chaise longue. Displacement activity, noted the zoologist in Theo, and felt rather ashamed of herself. "Forgive me for staring. .. .”
H. M. Hoover Page 12
