by Kathy Tyers
“No.” Stiffly, Graysha folded her hands on her lap. “My mother used me, as a young child, to make propaganda broadcasts—at least that’s how I see them now. At the time, I thought I was helping other people do the right thing.”
“I can’t imagine your own mother taking advantage of you like that.”
“I worked at her office during school for a while, too. It beat cage mucking and paid better. But I hated being their token staff genefective.”
“I think I can see that.”
Was there a chance Jirina, the virologist, knew enough about chromosomal manipulation to work on a human? Standard genegineering used harmless but infective viruses to insert or delete specific bits of DNA within host chromosomes. Highly illegal “Strobel Probes” could be implanted along a woman’s fallopian tubes to ensure the infection of every ovum released.
“Jirina . . .”
The black woman arched an eyebrow.
Should she ask? Jirina definitely was sympathetic.
Still, something held her back. “I doubt they’d change the laws in this generation,” Graysha said. “Whatever happens, it’ll be too late for me.”
To her relief, Jirina didn’t demand to know what she’d meant to say. “That’s what I heard.”
“There are still too few of us for the Eugenics Board to bother making exceptions. Most genefects are correctable with transplants or prosthetics, after all. If all those thousands of people were as incurable as I am, as a group we’d have some political clout.”
“But you can’t blame them for going along with what’s legal.”
“Of course not.” Graysha stretched out a leg. This floor was anything but comfortable.
“As a researcher,” Jirina said, “I understand. But personally, I don’t know why you stand for it. You would think, if we can terraform a world, we could change a capillary system. And no,” she added, giving Graysha a sharp glance, “since you’re being too gracious to ask, I don’t know any way to fix your problem. Unfortunately.”
“Thank you anyway.” Graysha meant it sincerely. “Do you enjoy terraforming, Jirina?”
The other woman shut her eyes, exhaled, then spoke. “I think all day, week after week, on a planetary scale. We’re trying to duplicate hab technology here, but with uncontrolled temps and air masses. It’s so much. So big.
“Then I notice some tiny detail on a table in front of me, the weave of a basket”—she shaped her long hands around an imaginary object—“or the design painted on a stoneware bowl, and I see the beauty of things on my own scale. That’s when I feel truly insignificant.” She opened her eyes, raising her head. “But yes, I enjoy terraforming. I’ve had to learn to think in the huge while living in the small.”
“Yes,” Graysha said, “yes. I see what you mean.”
―――
“Are you avoiding me, lovely woman?”
Graysha almost dropped a tiny Erlenmeyer flask. “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she exclaimed. Across the counter, Libby smirked. “No, I’m not avoiding you.”
Paul lounged against her countertop, pulling at one of his neatly top-stitched cuffs. “I’m still covering one of your predecessor’s jobs, and I’d like to pass it on.”
She touched the flash switch to denature any protein molecules on her loop dropper, then eyed the row of flat white phoresis gels she’d loaded. “Here, Libby.” Handing them across to the Lwuite tech, Graysha took a deep breath. Then she turned to Paul. “Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner? I didn’t mean to—”
“Experimental greenhouses need sampling only every month or so. Can you take an hour this afternoon and get to them?”
“Yes, good,” she said calmly. “We need to talk anyway.”
―――
Strolling up a path between sandy dirt and open starry sky—it scarcely bothered her anymore, if she didn’t look straight up—Graysha recounted highlights of her Goddarday with the D-group. When she came to DalLierx’s firing-line inspection, Paul laughed heartily. “Surprised him, did you? Good. He needs his tree shaken every now and then.”
Remembering Jirina’s comment about “romancing pigtailed girlies,” Graysha bristled. Maybe DalLierx had reprimanded Paul for pestering Libby.
A long row of greenhouse Quonsets looked like pale gray humps under the starlight. Graysha glanced back and eyed the tall smokestack. Above its blinking beacon, stars seemed to shimmer and dance.
Paul squeezed the remote he carried and a row of lights came on, washing out the stars. Graysha read off the signs painted on Quonset doors. Greenhouse D-I, D-II, D-III . . . There. Greenhouse D-V, their destination. Paul lunged forward to open the door. She stepped through, enjoying the sensation despite her irritation with Paul and her determination not to become his latest conquest.
Once the door boomed shut, he peeled off his parka. “Here, look. Isn’t this clever? Grain growing in racks, hybrid grains.” He lifted a drooping green seed head to reveal its support system. “Stems run through layers of wire mesh so they don’t flop over. One cubic meter of space can produce food for several people each G-year.”
It was far too warm for coats in here. Graysha left hers beside Paul’s on the floor. “Those are fiber-optic cables coming down that corner,” she observed.
“Right. Focused at growth spots on the plants. Watch.”
He touched a control box, and the lush grain-rimmed room instantly darkened. As Graysha’s eyes adjusted, clustered pinpoints of green focused. “There must be an automation and sensor system,” she guessed, “to make the fiber tips follow those growth spots.”
“Very good,” came his voice in the darkness.
Fainter light started gleaming near her hip level. “Is that luminous plankton in the nutrient tanks?”
Paul was a wide-shouldered shadow in front of the next container. “Either that’s a good guess or you’ve been studying. Yes. Water’s very cold, but plankton releases enough energy to make a difference. That’s what you’ll need to check.”
She turned on one foot, making mental notes. How many growth tanks—
“Graysha.”
The shadow moved closer.
“I don’t mean to pry into matters that aren’t mine, but you seem to be needing a man.”
“Needing?” She backed away from the shadow, feeling behind her with one hand to make sure she didn’t crush precious greenery. “What do you mean?”
“Jittery,” he said gently. “And little things seem to upset you. I know the signs.”
“I’m fine.” She tried to sound firm.
“I only wanted you to know that if you had a need . . .’’
“Paul,” she began, but this time reasonable statements caught in her throat.
He stepped closer. He was taking her hesitation as an invitation. She should say something. She wanted to speak—
His arm slipped around her shoulders. The citrus scent that always surrounded him drew her into a warm cocoon. She let him kiss her, and her eyes fell closed.
He pulled his lips from hers, and she felt him tug at the hair tie at the nape of her neck. “Here?” he whispered, “or would you be more comfortable somewhere else?”
“Paul,” she said, grappling deep inside her convictions for the strength to resist her own urges . . . let alone his. This pounding physical urge felt too much like fear. She did not want to be conquered . . . to become one more notch on Paul Ilizarov’s belt. “Paul, let me go. Just for a minute. Let me get my breath.”
He strolled back to the control panel, switched the greenhouse lamps on again, then sank cross-legged onto loose pebbles, patting a spot beside him. “Tell Uncle Paul.”
She almost laughed, then realized the condescension was no joke. To him, women were toys to be enjoyed and discarded. She sat down, re-smoothed her hair, and picked up a smooth stone—where had river rock come from on this world?—to rub with one thumb. “Thank you, Paul. I have been needing a little attention. Forever, it seems. I was married
once, did you know that?”
He pulled open his lab coat. Beneath it he wore a blue V-necked shirt, perfectly color-matched to his eyes. “Yes. I read your file on the Gaea net.”
“I haven’t read yours.”
“You’re not nosy enough.”
Graysha laughed shortly, just starting to realize how narrowly she’d escaped. “So. Have you been married?”
“I don’t believe in marriage.”
She seized the opening. “I do,” she said, staring at his eyes. She must convince him. “Please don’t get me wrong.” Friction from her thumb warmed one side of the rock. “You . . . do good things to me. Are you hearing me, Paul? This is neither a put-down nor a put-off.”
“No, no.” He rested both elbows on his knees, his chin on both thumbs. “I want to know how you feel. Go on.”
By heaven, the condescension was real. As if she needed proof. Further armored by that realization, she drew a deep breath. “I don’t want to do anything along the way that might endanger my . . . my chances, my future, with the right man.” If Paul were the right man, he’d understand.
“You don’t want me today.” He ducked his head and stared up at her, his eyes like blue coals. “But I’ll be around. You’re a beautiful woman, and you need a man, not one of those brain-warped Lwuites. I cannot fathom the fact that you’re unmarried, if you wish to marry. Unless . . . is it the disease?”
“That’s a factor,” she said slowly. “I shouldn’t pass on defective genes. Most men who want children don’t want known genefects.”
“I see your problem.” He raised up on his knees, twisted his legs, and sat down closer, pressing his shoulder against hers. The blue shirt gleamed as if wet. “Promise you’ll come to me if you’re lonely. That’s all I ask.”
It wasn’t all you asked earlier. But at least he offered an escape from the situation without obvious hard feelings. Ellard’s ego had been too brittle to let him do that.
“I promise.”
―――
That evening at her apartment keyboard, she punched on to the Gaea net and ran concurrent searches on cooling, temperature, Celsius, and every other key word that might shed light on the atmospheric issue. The net gave her a five-page list of experimental references, coded by floor, researcher, and date. Too tired to bother checking them all, she saved the list to her personal file, sublabeled it Cooling, and signed off.
After a hot sink bath, she curled around Emmer. “What do you think, old lady?” she asked, rubbing under the creature’s sharp little chin. Emmer made clicking grunts of contentment. “Do you care if it’s cold up top?”
Probably, as Jirina intimated, the downturn was a random fluctuation in planetary equations, a tempest in a teapot. Still, if she’d learned anything from working with Novia, it was to beware the woman or man who steered you too hard in some other direction.
She fell asleep curled around Emmer and woke about four, fully rested. Might as well start skimming those references, she decided. Smoothing her wrinkled clothing, she sat down at the desk and called up her Cooling subfile.
Her keystroke brought up half a screen of gibberish.
She snatched her fingers away from the keyboard. Was this a malfunction or had someone trashed her file? Could it be a virus programmed onto the net to protect someone’s secrets from nosy investigators?
Working quickly, she repeated the search, then saved it again, this time as Ellard. Guessing she might also find that file garbaged unless she camouflaged it, she wished fruitlessly for a hardcopy printer, then—inspired—she added a screenful of divorce data at its head. Then she recopied the list once more, onto the end of the reading file she’d made for Liberty JenChee.
After stretching, she punched up the first entry, Methane, Ice, and Albedo, Jirina had mentioned albedo, the reflection of energy back into space, as a possible factor in planetary energy loss.
She propped her elbows against the desk’s rough edge and started to read.
Poison
Graysha was eating lunch alone the next Dday in the Gaea employees’ cafeteria when someone tapped her shoulder.
Behind her stood a small thin woman and a man nearly as small, both carrying trays. Most of the woman’s curly black hair was caught loosely in a tie like the one Graysha wore. “I’m Antonia Fong,” she said, “and this is my husband, Benjamin Emerson, of Sociology. You responded to a report of mine.”
Fong, Emerson. Now she remembered where she’d heard the name Fong. Jirina had claimed Fong and Emerson were considering re-upping to spend another triannum on Goddard. She swallowed a mouthful of green salad, then asked, “Would you join me, Dr. Fong, Dr. Emerson?”
Antonia took the spot on Graysha’s left while Benjamin came around the table to face them. “I understand you spent a Goddarday with the colonists,” Antonia said, then went to work on fragrant rice and vegetables.
“It seemed appropriate, particularly when I learned I was the only Gaea person volunteering. As new person on the Gaea team,” she added, “I’ll be here the longest, finishing out my triannum. That made another good reason to work myself in.”
“I see. You must like them.” Antonia tugged on a long, loose strand of curly hair and pushed it behind her ear.
“I do so far, as a group. They have their share of cranks and oddbods.” Graysha finished the last bite of her salad and started on the grilled fish, wondering if it was raised in an algae-filled tank at Wastewater Management. That notion gave the old expression “trash fish” new meaning. “The colonists are certainly concerned about the cooling. What do you think of it?” she ventured when nothing remained of the fish but three fins and a pile of bones. She thought it better not to mention yesterday’s lobotomization of her file.
Benjamin Emerson frowned, but Antonia answered. “Only a hunch. Call it intuition, if you will. Field data as a whole supports Consortium policy, but I can’t shake the feeling something’s wrong. Have you gotten any new directives from Halley Hab?”
Graysha stirred the bone pile with her fork. “You don’t have data, either, other than your paper on the Dutch cats? I have only a hunch, supported by contact with worried colonists.”
Benjamin Emerson gave his wife a glance that hinted at “told you so.”
“All I can offer is moral support,” Antonia said, “and a promise to send you anything I find out for certain.”
“I’ll take it,” said Graysha. “And you have the same promise from me.”
―――
The next day, Graysha brewed a second cup of caffeinated alfalfa tea and dawdled along the yabut-cage shelves as she waited for the town meeting to start. Several new batches of offspring, hairless and pink with grape-colored spots where their eyes would be, wriggled inside the middle row. Trevarre’s tiny, almost illegible handwriting recorded breeding codes, birth dates, and litter sizes on the end of each cage. She’d caught him singing at his work earlier and stood dumbfounded by a rich, mellow baritone that made her own occasional warbles sound like distress calls from a sick bird. No wonder Blase LZalle wanted to exploit him.
She finished a circuit of the room, and still the town meeting didn’t come on. Libby had joined her today, opting to remain on station and catch up on her reading. Jirina occupied a corner stool, and Trev sat in Varberg’s chair pulling at one ear. She’d never noticed how far they protruded. He must’ve had his hair cut.
“Graysha?” Libby called. Her tone of voice made Graysha suspect the problem before she reached the screen. “Look.”
At the end of her reading list was half a page of gibberish.
“I must’ve hit a wrong key,” Graysha murmured. “Sorry. Delete it.” This had to be a viral defense, possibly left on the net from Jon Mahera’s last days. If she wanted to read abstracts, she’d have to search them down one at a time.
She could do that. It made her uneasy to remember that Dr. Varberg knew her password, and she’d never bothered to change it. Maybe surviving Messier had left him m
entally unstable, attempting to submerge a split personality while trying to maintain professional confidence.
Or something like that.
Her chest constricted. As farfetched as it seemed, that might explain the “accidental” miscue for which Jon Mahera died . . . and the fact that he’d been able to cover for it. Half of Varberg’s mind might truthfully answer that he didn’t mean to send Mahera out to his death.
Those mysterious piles of sand remained unexplained, too.
She shook her head. The entire train of thought was too paranoid to carry weight. She would change her password, though. Immediately.
The screen lit. To her surprise, it showed not the meeting room but an office Graysha thought might be in the CA building, its concrete-block walls unpainted and undecorated. “We are sorry, but this week’s meeting is postponed,” said the eldest CA committee member, Taidje FreeLand. “Chairman DalLierx is seriously ill. Issues scheduled for today will be discussed as soon as an interim chair is chosen by the CA Committee.”
The screen went blank.
Ill? What diseases were there to catch on Goddard?
Libby sat up rifle straight.
“He’s sick?” Jirina asked aloud.
Graysha took a stool and repeated her mental question out loud. “We don’t have diseases here, do we? I went through a thorough health screening.” She raised an eyebrow at Libby.
“We do have cold viruses,” muttered the Lwuite tech. “I know that from experience.”
Graysha wrapped her ankles around the stool’s legs, anchoring herself to what was real—not speculation. HMF physicians insisted they’d screened out major pathogens before allowing colonists to immigrate, and she’d sat out a short quarantine. Mutant bacteria, or viruses? she wondered, chilled. A mutant plague born of the ultraviolet bombardment might rip through Goddard’s population too rapidly for evacuation. Maybe an ancient native virus had lain dormant inside its sheath over the world’s dry years, only to be rehydrated by human meddlers.
