by J. J. Green
“Let’s see how far back it goes,” Ethan said as Cherry and Garwin came up behind him.
“Yes, but no splitting up,” Cherry replied. “And if we’re in danger of getting lost, we come out immediately, okay? No one else knows we’re here, and I don’t want to die just yet.”
The farther in they went, the narrower the cave grew. They didn’t appear to be in any danger of getting lost. It was one long tunnel. Gradually, the floor rose. The roof remained the same height, however, so that they were soon stooping.
A black gap in the wall opened on Ethan’s right. “I’m going to take a look in here. If it goes somewhere, I’ll call out.”
The gap was tall but only wide enough to squeeze through by turning sideways. Ethan eased in, the reflection from his helmet light brightly reflecting on the smoothly polished rock. He was temporarily blinded. The narrow space soon opened wide, but he stopped when he was through, waiting for the green glare that was affecting his eyes to fade.
As he blinked, his view of the space he had entered became clearer. He was in a bowl-shaped chamber. The floor sloped down to the center, and at the far side a hole opened in the ceiling. At one time, he guessed that water might have entered the chamber from above and pooled temporarily before running out and down the tunnel to the ocean. There was no other exit.
Ethan spent a few more moments assessing the chamber. It was entirely dry, and so deep within the cliffs that he guessed the cool temperature would remain steady. He couldn’t see any signs of animals or their droppings. The area would make a perfect storage place.
He left to give Garwin and Cherry his assessment, turning sideways once more and edging through the gap. As he emerged into the main tunnel, the first thing he noticed was the lights from his companions’ lamps moving oddly. Then he saw the reason for the odd effect: they were locked in a close embrace.
Garwin and Cherry were kissing with an intensity that indicated a passionate, intimate relationship. Ethan felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. He took a step backward into the gap and paused a moment, resting against the wall while he decided what to do.
He scraped his helmet against the rocky surface, making plenty of noise. When he returned to the main tunnel, Garwin and Cherry were standing apart, looking like they’d hardly moved the entire time he’d been gone.
“It doesn’t lead anywhere,” Ethan said. He explained what he’d seen. “Maybe we could use it for storing food.”
“Great,” Garwin said. “This site is looking better and better. Let’s see if we can find another exit, and maybe we’ll have time to explore a few more caves before we leave.”
“Yeah,” said Cherry. “Maybe some of them link up.”
A few more gaps appeared in the walls and ceiling as they went on, but they weren’t like the first. They were shallow dead ends. They came out and went to another cave. After exploring two more, the sun was getting low in the sky, and they decided to call it a day. Garwin and Cherry sat in the back while Ethan flew the flitter through the growing twilight. The surrounding hills grew colorless and dark as the sun disappeared. The only sound was wind. It was fresh and humid after the rain that had fallen while they explored. Ethan didn’t turn around while he drove, leaving Garwin and Cherry to their privacy.
The sight of them kissing had awakened mixed emotions in him. First had come the shock. Ethan had heard the rumors about Garwin, but it was another thing to be confronted with the evidence. Next came the ache and grief of Ethan’s memories of Lauren. Finally, he felt something he realized he’d been denying to himself. As well as Lauren, the image of his friends’ embrace had brought Cariad to his mind. He missed her and regretted their recent disagreement and unhappy parting.
Chapter Seventeen
Cariad surveyed the offerings at the buffet for that evening’s dinner. Balls of yeast, flavored and colored to look like meatballs, floated in tomato sauce. Rolls of steamed rice were wrapped in layers of dried seaweed. Algae strips nestled among assorted fungi. Deep-fried crickets rested on a bed of taro mash. Cariad helped herself to some meatballs and salad and carried her tray to a table.
The remaining refectory in use aboard the Nova Fortuna was much quieter than it had been before most of the Gens had gone planetside. Though at the time she hadn’t much liked the noise and bustle they created, Cariad found that, now they were gone, she missed the crowds. Their absence had also made seating arrangements more noticeable and fraught. Now that only a hundred or so Woken were eating in a room designed to hold five times their number, who sat with whom and who sat alone was extremely obvious.
Cariad had adopted a default position. She assumed that her vocal opposition to Anahi meant that no one would want to be seen fraternizing with her. She always sat at an empty table. Occasionally an old acquaintance would take the political risk of sitting down with her, but often no one did. She didn’t really mind or blame anyone, but sometimes she felt the absence of company.
She opened her personal interface and propped it up before digging her fork into the meatballs. She re-examined the links Strongquist had sent her regarding the investigation into the bombing. Frederick Aparicio stood out in her mind, but it stubbornly refused to yield any more information about the man.
The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that he had to be significant. He’d been on the covert list of Natural Movement members, yet though she’d had nothing to do with the organization, she knew his name and she recognized him. The answer was buried somewhere deep in her mind, if only it would let the memory through. Long experience of fathoming out scientific problems had taught her the best thing to do was to try to avoid thinking about the thing that was bothering her. She should try to put Aparicio out of her mind altogether, then the link would probably pop out to her soon enough. But, naturally, the more she tried not to think about him, the more he sprang unbidden into her thoughts.
She chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of algae and fungi salad as she gazed at the frozen image of the man’s face, staring up at the camera in the lobby of the building where he’d worked. He’d been a systems engineer, Strongquist had told her. It seemed an odd profession for a member of the Natural Movement. The Guardian had said a fair proportion of the movement’s members had occupied technical professions. Supposedly anti-science, they’d been possessed of that all-too-human trait of hypocrisy about their beliefs.
“Frederick,” Cariad murmured, “how did I know you?”
“Are you working?” asked a voice.
Cariad looked up to see Rene, a young soil biologist who had been her roommate when they were both recovering from cryonic suspension.
“Not on anything productive,” Cariad said, closing her interface.
“I won’t disturb you if you’re busy.”
“It’s fine. Please, sit down.”
Rene put down her tray next to Cariad’s.
“Thanks,” Cariad said as her friend joined her.
“For what?”
“Sitting with me. I’m not exactly popular at the moment.”
“You mean for standing up against our new, self-appointed Leader? You’re more popular than you think. More than a few of us feel the same as you. We’re worried about the direction all this is heading, but we aren’t sure what to do about it.”
Cariad put down her fork. “You aren’t sure what to do? It’s easy. Stand up to her.”
“I only said some of us. Anahi has plenty of followers who think she hasn’t done anything wrong. And you know what we scientists are like. We hate getting involved in things that might take us away from our work. But don’t think you’re alone, because you aren’t.” Rene picked up a fried cricket with her fingers and bit it in half. She crunched up her mouthful. “Some of us want to swing things back to a more equitable situation with the Gens too, but we don’t know how.”
“If you really want to do something,” Cariad said, “you can start by speaking out. Let Anahi know that she doesn’t have a unanimous backing for wha
tever she wants to do. That might make her think twice before introducing yet another rule to crush Gen autonomy. Or it might not. I don’t know. I think she may be mentally unstable, and nothing anyone says or does will deter her. But it’s worth trying.”
“You’re right. We should do that.”
“And when you hear anyone praising what she’s doing, challenge them. Remind them why we’re all here. What our intentions were for the colony. They seem to have been forgotten, but you remember, don’t you? You remember the kind of world we wanted to build?”
“I remember. We wanted to leave behind corruption and selfishness and start afresh with better ideals. If the colony were made up of people who had been brought up without of the influences of human societies, it wouldn’t be unequal or cruel and uncaring. That was the idea. I guess we thought wrong.”
“Did we? Maybe if we hadn’t come along too, the Gens would have achieved that. Maybe it’s our presence that’s creating the problem. But we shouldn’t give up on that ideal. Things were going okay until Anahi decided to seize power. We can put things right again if we’re given the chance. I’m sure of it.”
“You think all these problems are due to our being here?” said Rene. “I guess that old saying is true. Wherever you go, there you are. We’ve brought the contagion with us. Even the Natural Movement came along for the ride.”
“As if we didn’t have enough to contend with,” Cariad said. “But that has something to do with what’s happened. People are frightened, and when they’re frightened, they see enemies everywhere, even in people who are really their friends. Maybe if we catch the Natural Movement saboteurs, the Woken and Gens would put aside their differences and reconcile.”
“Maybe.” Rene ate the other half of her cricket.
“I couldn’t ever learn to enjoy those things,” remarked Cariad. “Too many legs.”
“I like them. Full of protein too.” She popped another small one into her mouth.
“What I wouldn’t give for a cheese sandwich,” Cariad said, looking at her meal. She pushed her tray away. “On rye with mayo.”
Rene chuckled. “Are we going to have one of those “foods I miss” conversations? They only make it worse, you know. Unless you hid some cow eggs and sperm aboard the ship, I don’t think you’ll be eating cheese again anytime soon.”
“No,” Cariad replied wistfully, “no cow eggs or sperm, or pigs’, dogs’, cats’, chickens, or ducks’. No salmon’s, trout’s, tuna’s, or oysters’.” The decision to not introduce any Earth animals to the new world had been beyond debate. Any escapees in the alien environment could be disastrous, putting the ecological systems entirely out of balance. Growing Earth crops was risky enough. As for insects bred aboard Nova Fortuna. they were only available to eat on the ship. None would ever be taken down to the surface. On the new world, all food would be plant-based.
The mention of animal gametes tickled a memory at the back of Cariad’s mind, but the sensation was so slight that she barely noticed it.
“The thing I hate about it all,” said Rene, “is going down to take soil samples. I feel so uncomfortable working among the Gens. I feel like I should wear a sign that says “I’m on your side.” I try to tell them that, but I don’t think they believe me.” She ran her fork around her plate, scooping up the last of her taro mash as she went on, “One of my last thoughts before they put me under for suspension was that I was looking forward to meeting the people who would be there when I was revived. I thought it would be cool to meet people who had grown up on a starship.” She ate her forkful of food and asked, “Did you guess that the coloring and build of the Gens would homogenize like they did?”
“To be honest I didn’t even consider it,” Cariad replied. “We selected for health mostly, absence of recessive gene conditions, and sociability. Intelligence and other factors were a crap shoot. We predicted that we needed a range for a successful society.” She frowned. The topic of the conversation was ringing a bell in her mind.
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel like there’s something important I’ve forgotten, something to do with the gene selection process.”
“Does it matter any more?” Rene asked. “That was a helluva long time ago. If you forgot something, there’s no going back now.”
“No. It isn’t that. It’s… what were you saying?”
“I was talking about how the Gens all ended up black-haired and olive-skinned. I was wondering if you or the other geneticists knew that would happen.”
“And I said… ” Cariad gasped. “That’s it! That’s how I know Frederick Aparicio.”
“Excuse me?”
“Frederick Aparicio. That’s why I recognized him. Sorry, Rene, I have to go.” Cariad got up. “Thanks for the talk. Remember to tell the others what I said: stand up to Anahi. Show her she’s going to be held accountable. See you soon.”
She hurried out of the refectory. She needed to speak to Strongquist. As she sped down the corridor to her quarters, where she would be able to comm him in private, the memory of Frederick Aparicio sitting opposite her in her office on Earth played as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
As soon as she reached her cabin, she opened a comm to the Guardians’ ship. She had to wait to speak to Strongquist, and as she was waiting, she puzzled over something. The Guardians had all the documentation relating to the Nova Fortuna Project, from start to finish. So why hadn’t Strongquist come across Aparicio in a simple search of the records?
Chapter Eighteen
Cariad’s face was vivid in Ethan’s mind. He was glad he’d invited her to spend a day planetside with him, but he was also conflicted. The building of the new settlement in the ocean-side caves was progressing rapidly, and he knew the secret would weigh heavily on him while he was with Cariad on their planned excursion.
He wasn’t comfortable about hiding what the Gens were doing from someone who had grown to be a close friend. The problem was, the secret wasn’t his to tell. It was something that involved all the Gens. He couldn’t betray them by telling a Woken about it, even though he personally trusted her not to act on it.
It was inevitable that Cariad would find out. There would come a time in the not too distant future that all the Woken and Guardians would discover the old settlement was nearly empty and most of the supplies gone. What would she think then? She would know he had deliberately withheld the truth from her. Would she understand? Or would she be hurt that he hadn’t trusted her? He didn’t know. All he could do was hope that one day he would get the chance to explain, and that eventually she would forgive him.
The only alternative was to avoid seeing her for weeks. He couldn’t bring himself to do that. She was the one person he’d felt close to since Lauren and Dr. Crowley had died.
The shuttle from the ship wouldn’t arrive for another hour, but Ethan had nothing else to do, so he went to the flitter shed to borrow a vehicle. He planned on taking Cariad out to his farm to show her the green shoots sprouting in his fields and the small progress he’d made on the pre-fabricated farmhouse. In truth, Cherry had done most of the field work on his farm as she had turned out to be extremely adept and efficient at using the machinery. Perhaps that was one secret he wouldn’t need to keep.
The flitter shed was nearly empty. Most of the vehicles were being used to ferry equipment and supplies to the caves, with the Gen in charge, Verney, turning a blind eye to the practice. Ethan took one of the few remaining vehicles and flew it out and through the streets to the shuttle field. An office had recently been constructed there to process shipments and passenger arrivals and departures. A step in the settlement plan that had been too prominent to avoid, the Gens had built the office, but it was to be their final construction on the settlement.
Ethan parked the flitter in the lot and leaned back in his seat, putting his hands behind his head. He settled in for the wait, enjoying the pleasant anticipation of the afternoon with his friend. He looked up in the direction of the shuttles�
�� usual approach. The sky was unusually empty of clouds. In a while, he would see a glint of light, the first sign of the descending shuttle as the sun reflected from its metal skin. He estimated that Cariad would have already boarded. He imagined her in her seat, looking out the window or reading her interface, her expression serious and intent. He liked how she always thought deeply about things, but he also loved it when she laughed.
The interior of the flitter was warming up in the sunshine, making Ethan sleepy. Soon, he was in a light doze, and memories mixed with dreams played through his mind.
He remembered a time when he was very young, kindergarten age. He was at Main Park with his class and teacher, and all his classmates were playing or running through the grass and trees. Main Park had been one of his favorite places when he was a little boy. He loved the bright lights there, which his teacher had told him helped the trees to grow, and the smell of the air. It was cleaner and fresher than anywhere else. He was also fascinated by the Clock. Every time his class went there, he would look up at it to read the numbers. Each time they were different. The numbers at the end of the line changed as he watched, and they counted down, which was strange. All the other clocks he’d seen counted up.
His teacher had told the class that the Clock was counting down to a special event called Arrival Day. Ethan didn’t understand what that meant. He thought that to arrive somewhere you had to travel there, like when he went from the children’s dorm to school on the transit car. He didn’t understand how they could be traveling when nothing around him moved. His teacher had said that Arrival Day would be when they reached their new home.
