by S. D. Perry
Too late, she thought, and her smile grew. Her heart belonged to another. It was a girlish thought, romantic and silly, and she didn’t care a whit; it was true.
Still smiling, she surveyed the rest of the lab. Nearly everyone was finished with his or her task. The tricorders were calibrated, the sensors placed, the complex arrangement of compounds and amalgams prepped to be beamed directly to the waiting regolith outside. Inception would be
under way in a matter of minutes. It would
be a success, she was sure, would give her plenty to tell Mister Spock when next they spoke. Perhaps she should call him this evening, to deliver the good news. He had expressed so much interest, he would probably be pleased—if that was the right word—to learn about the results as soon as possible. Her heart skipped a beat as she thought of other things she wanted to say, things she might be ready to tell him.
Maybe, maybe not. What had seemed so clear during her conversation with Carol was now less than firm, her resolve having flagged somewhat as she considered the improbability of Mister Spock’s returning her affections.
“Here we go,” Carol said, expelling a deep breath. “Everyone keep your fingers crossed.”
Everyone watched as Carol, Mac, and Eric began the transport sequence. There was nothing to actually see, but it would have been unthinkable not to watch, anyway.
“Start charting the numbers,” Carol told Dachmes.
The lab was silent except for the tapping of Dachmes’s fingers on his keypad. Leila scanned the faces of her teammates, each one manifesting nervousness in a different way. Tam’s mouth was tight as she fussed with her tricorder, her shoulders hunched. Alison kept touching her hair, hooking it behind her ears. J.C. rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Nearly all of them were transfixed on one or another of the monitors, knowing they wouldn’t see results for a while, obviously not caring.
“Nothing’s going to be happening for at least another forty minutes,” Carol said. She smiled, but she too seemed anxious. “And I’m sure you’ve all heard that a watched pot never boils. Go get a cup of coffee or something.”
Verne sniffed. “I’ve never been able to get used to food slot coffee,” he said.
No one asked you, Leila thought, but smiled when he glanced in her direction, unable to help it. She tended to avoid conflict whenever possible. Adam had always said she was too nice to people, that she let them take advantage ?
She realized suddenly that she hadn’t even thought of Adam all morning, hadn’t thought much about him in days, really, and the realization felt good. Affirming. She started to search for some parallel to Inception, something about new growth, life from lifelessness, maybe, and abruptly gave it up, too pleased with herself and the moment to try and designate it. It was enough simply to enjoy it.
Presumably inspired by the realization that Troy Verne wouldn’t be joining them, the grad students and J.C. all headed out. Dachmes leaned across the counter, smiling at Leila.
“Would you man my station? You don’t actually have to do anything at this point, just ? keep my seat warm, I guess. Unless you want to come with me ?”
“That’s all right,” she said, and walked around the counter, taking his seat. She smiled up at him. “Take a break. You deserve one.”
“I’ll bring you a coffee, if you like,” he said.
“Oh, no, thank you. I’m nervous enough as it is.”
He walked to the door, but before he exited he threw her a look that cinched it, that made her certain of his interest. She looked away, felt herself blush. It was flattering, of course—Richard Dachmes was intelligent, he had a nice smile and a quietly sardonic sense of humor. They shared many interests, as well, but there just wasn’t any comparison to her enigmatic, brilliant Mister Spock. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, though. She’d have to make a point of mentioning a new love interest the next time Dachmes was in earshot. That way, there wouldn’t be any awkwardness.
Verne heaved an exaggerated sigh. “So, what’s going on? How will you know when it’s all over and done with?”
There was a terse pause before Mac answered. “Well, right now, the atomic particles in the soil are responding to the colloid.”
“You mean the nitrilin?”
“It’s a homogenous mixture, composed of several compounds, but yes, nitrilin is one of them—the most important one, in this case.”
“What’s it going to do? Besides not blow us up, knock wood.”
“An explosion is extremely unlikely,” Mac said. “Even if it was a real possibility, the force field we’re employing would be more than sufficient to dampen it. We’d barely feel a slight tremor.”
Troy looked at him skeptically. “What about underground? Does the force field extend beneath your test plot?”
Leila exchanged a look with Carol, who shook her head ever so slightly. Obviously, Verne hadn’t even bothered to read the simplified summary that one of the grad students had written for him.
“Underground, we’ve got a natural force field,” Alison interjected. “There’s an impenetrable layer of permafrost about a meter beneath the surface that will prevent the process from continuing further.”
Mac nodded. “Anyway, the sims indicate that our volume of solution will diffuse in capacity beyond a depth of one cubic meter, give or take a few centimeters, with the density change. If it went deeper, we’d have to deal with all kinds of geological issues.”
“Like what?”
“Like alterations in substrata density, buildups of expelled gas,” Alison said, “or what the added density could mean to regional fault lines.”
At Verne’s look of concern, she added, “Which we don’t need to worry about. Really.”
The rep was silent for a moment, his expression thoughtful. “Well, so then, what’s it going to do?” he asked.
Mac was becoming irritated, his indefatigable patience apparently coming to an end. “The intended results of this experiment are twofold. In the first part of the process, key elements will be released from the regolith, including oxygen, and the resulting reaction, the second part—”
Verne cut him off. “In layman’s terms?”
Mac smiled sourly. He tapped a nearby mon itor. “In layman’s terms, all you need to worry about are these numbers here. When you see the number nineteen come up, the first phase is over, and you can report that we’ve been successful.”
“Nineteen? Why nineteen?”
Leila chimed in, hoping to give Mac a respite. “The atomic structure of the soil changes quickly, as soon as it’s combined with the elements in the suspension. The nadion levels in the nitrilin will experience a quick drop, and then a very gradual surge. It will slow down and settle on point nineteen. That’s when we’ll know that it’s no longer volatile, that the nitrogen-oxygen reaction we want will be controlled. There are other factors after that—soil pore space levels resulting from the second phase, for instance, that’s where Alison and I will come in—but those can’t be measured until the initial reaction is stable. When we see point nineteen, we can be fairly certain of stability. And therefore, of success.”
“Well, rah-rah point nineteen, then.” Verne pushed himself from his stool, stretched, then wandered off to the far corner of the lab, where Tam was watching the sensor reads. Tam ignored whatever Verne said to her, her shoulders still hunched, her expression dismal.
Carol moved closer to Leila. “Should we save her, or offer her up as a sacrifice?” she asked, her voice low, her smile betraying her.
Leila smiled back. “I actually feel a little sorry for him,” she said. “He’s very far out of his element here.”
Carol mock-shuddered. “Whatever his element is, it’s not on the table.”
Leila laughed. “To be fair, I don’t like food slot coffee, either.”
“No one does,” Carol said. “Someday, they’ll get it to taste good, but it’s never going to be the same as real. Not like your tea.”
Neither spoke for
a moment, Leila pleased at the compliment, at its implications. It had been nice, to talk. Leila hadn’t had many close friends in her life, had always been too focused on work, or love. But she thought that her propensity toward shyness might be changing. So much was, and there was no reason that the new Leila Kalomi need be lonely. Walling herself off in her relationship with Adam had been a mistake she was determined not to repeat.
Carol moved toward one of the lab’s small rectangular windows, gazing out at the reddish sky. Leila watched her, felt a twinge of anxious excitement at the thought of Inception’s next phase. She and Alison would be transported out into the test plot within an hour of verified stability, to collect the first samples and read the nanometers.
She turned back to the nadion screen, watched the numbers travel up slowly. Point four. Point five. Point four again. Point three. Back up to point five. It would go on like this for a while.
Her gaze dropped to her hands. She thought about the coolness of Mister Spock’s fingers, when he’d taken the apple from her hand that day at the embassy. Perhaps when she called, she would ask him—casually, of course—about signing on to a starship as an enlisted. She wasn’t sure if it was possible, but if it was, and if there was any way she could be assigned to his ship ?
I wouldn’t have to tell him how I ? the depth of my feelings, not right away. But after we’ve worked together awhile, become close, I could—
“Hey!” Troy Verne’s loud, nasal tone interrupted her thoughts. “Is it supposed to be doing that? I mean, you said point nineteen, right?”
Carol whirled around, and Leila stared at the monitor, the pathway of numbers, felt her stomach lurch. The nadion levels were at point twenty-two, and continuing to climb.
Carol saw the read and ran to the hallway, her voice raised to a shout. “Dachmes! Get in here now!”
Even as she called for the statistician, the station’s incoming line started to bleat for attention, accompanied by a taped computer loop, calmly insisting that the call was extremely urgent.
Leila felt frozen, not sure what was happening, aware only that something had gone wrong, very wrong, and that it seemed to be getting worse.
Once he caught the gist of the transmission that Karen Dupree had forwarded—which took about a minute and a half, thanks to Swanson’s amateur theatrics—Kent rose from his computer desk, uneasy, reluctant to view the rest of the loop. He moved to the large, curved picture window in his apartment, looking at but not seeing the Martian landscape, and attempted to piece his thoughts together.
This doesn’t mean anything. The kid is a fool, but he wouldn’t sell you out. And no one knows what’s actually happened, not yet.
He stared numbly out the window, looked skyward. Almost automatically, he found the bright “star” that was Starfleet’s Utopia Planitia station, in orbit around the planet. There were Martian citizens who liked to try and pick the satellite out of the sky, saying it was good luck to see it just as night was falling; some even taught their children the seemingly innocuous bit of propaganda as lore. As far as Kent was concerned, the twinkling satellite was a reminder of the ugly landmarks people had plastered all over the galaxy, marring natural perfection with their various ignoble pursuits.
He abruptly closed the drapes, sat down to think. It seemed that Josh Swanson had sent the press a long-winded taped statement, claiming responsibility for some form of sabotage on a “secret” Martian experiment. Although no legitimate press association had yet opted to air the statement, the free net had jumped on it, was aggressively broadcasting Swanson’s declaration on every major link—without substantiation of any experiment at all, let alone one that was going awry.
Brilliant. The blind leading the deaf, dumb, and desperate.
He had known that Swanson was going to do something—something to delay, or even stop, the experiment. But sabotage had not really been on the menu, at least not as far as Kent had understood. Swanson had told him only to watch the links and to prepare a statement from Redpeace, describing why terraforming Mars was unnecessary and possibly even dangerous. To be ready for an opportunity to spread the message.
He just said he’d buy us some time, Kent thought. That WE had access to the equipment, and he would make sure that it “didn’t work so well.” He’d certainly never said anything about claiming responsibility.
Kent went back to his computer, looked at the few lines he’d already written. We condemn the irresponsible acts of a few careless individuals. He tapped listlessly at the keys, feeling rudderless, unable to focus. After a moment, he called up the loop copy that Karen had sent, restarted it.
A dark room, a dark figure wearing a bandanna over the lower half of his face. Gritting his teeth, Kent watched.
“Action is the only language that the big corporations can be expected to understand,” said the figure from the tape. “That’s why we have taken drastic measures in order to ensure that this experiment is a failure. Were my actions criminal or heroic? You, the viewing public, will be the judge of that. What is the significance of a few man-made laws in pursuit of the greater good? I have attempted to save the people of Mars the misery of a potentially catastrophic, atomic-level experiment. Besides the colonists, what about Mars’s complicated and delicate ecosystem? What about potential life-forms that have not even been discovered yet? What about the archaeological sites that have never been thoroughly studied?”
Offscreen, someone hooted approval. Swanson—for there was no doubt as to who was behind the ridiculous disguise, not to Kent—seemed to take heart, his voice to grow in intensity and drama.
“Before you judge me, maybe you should be judging these so-called scientists, who are supposed to be helping people. Maybe you should take the corporationsto task. They care only about the short-term effects of their actions. What are their motives? Getting all the resources for themselves. They don’t care about people or any other life-forms. It’s important for those of us who care, who don’t want to live in a so-called progressive reality, to stand up and be counted.”
Stung by his own words, almost the exact phrasing he’d used with Swanson back at that rally, Kent paused the transmission, stared at the angry young eyes over the mask. The statement was all redundancies past this point, disjointed and rambling rhetoric. Karen’s accompanying message had related that while the Federation was not yet a hundred percent certain of Swanson’s identity—the WE manifesto had been online for all of half an hour—they expected to have the tape’s electronic signature unscrambled within hours. Perhaps they already had. It wasn’t as though his outlaw “disguise” would stand up to Starfleet’s recog technology for more than a few minutes. The kid was doomed. Kent dearly hoped that he would not be doomed right along with him, but he probably shouldn’t place any bets.
Stop it. You’re not responsible for what WE does. And it’s not as though you really knew anything, he reminded himself. It was a gift horse, as the saying went, and he meant to abide by the maxim’s admonition. He was finally getting what he wanted—media coverage on a grand scale, real time to tell the public the truth, to enlighten them to those things that had been obscured by the almighty Federation for far too long. He was going to have to take advantage of the opportunity in every way he could.
He went back to his press statement, reexamining, with forced optimism, Redpeace’s course of action for handling the unexpected publicity. Of course, there was always the danger of being lumped in with the fanatics at a time like this, but if he played it right, the contrast between Whole Earth’s crazed video bandit and Redpeace’s smooth professionalism—as represented by his own calm, open demeanor, his well-prepared statement—could prove to be invaluable to the cause.
He forced aside his lingering uneasiness. Things were really happening now, finally. News of Kraden’s botched experiment would hit the links anytime, justifying Swanson’s tirade and lending credit to the obvious and overlooked truth—that you couldn’t tamper with nature and not expect the unexpected. Mars c
ould still be saved. It simply needed to be left alone.
With a little luck, he told himself, that’s exactly how this will work out.
Carol issued orders as calmly and clearly as she could, her tone, her mind devoid of any feeling or interpretation. The time to feel what was happening was later, not now. Not while she had a chance in hell to fix it.
“J.C., do not take your eyes off those force field tolerance levels,” she said. “Mac, Tam, get me the tricorder readouts on all sensor points. Everyone, I want an assessment in two minutes.”
The sound of the incoming line was an insistent irritation. “Alison, shut off that damned comm, will you?” Carol snapped. She had to be able to think. She leaned over the mainframe monitor, started pulling up the reads.
“Doctor Marcus, do you want me to alert Starfleet?” It was Gabriel, one of her grad students.
“No, we have this under control,” she said. “Dachmes, cross-check the numbers with the sims, the ones from the first test. And I need someone to prep the aleuthian.” She looked around, saw that Leila wasn’t occupied; good, fine, she could do it. As long as they had the neutralizing aleuthian gas, there was no real problem.
