by Kathy Tyers
He closed his fist, shutting off the pocket memo. Either Brady-Phillips had a brilliant intuitive streak or he’d missed incriminating data when he purged Mahera’s files. “Who’s going to watch Graysha?” he’d asked Lee down in her office.
She’d answered with a narrow smile. “Paul owes me 5 percent for keeping secrets, too. Besides, he’s been more than willing to watch her. I can’t imagine that will change.”
The knowledge that she was also blackmailing Ilizarov didn’t surprise or bother him. He just wished he could figure out a way to be clear of this mess.
If only Graysha had waited just two more months to start investigating, there would have been nothing to find. His suicide gene would’ve destroyed all the wild-released bacteria, Goddard’s warming would have resumed, and he could’ve left Goddard with a guaranteed early retirement.
For Edie’s sake, he would try to stay invisible until they got offworld. After all, he had created the means by which the Messier disaster could be prevented from ever recurring. It was a breakthrough of heroic magnitude, and Lee had promised the whole floor would benefit—all but Graysha, whose official connections were too delicate to bring her inside. Maybe now he could sleep without being tormented by survivor guilt.
He shut his eyes. Rivers of dark mud flowed across his vision, then catastrophic walls of water. Haggard forms huddled together on Messier’s high ground, some unmoving. Children cried for food. Adults longed to sleep.
It could erode a man’s sanity.
―――
Dday, Dropoff, settled in. The first wave of track-trucks rumbled off into the dark distance, then the colony went on alternating watches. To Ari MaiJidda’s amusement, Melantha Lee changed her mind and authorized expenditure of Gaea funds for additional auxiliary fuel so that individual Gaea employees could depart on a second evacuation convoy if they chose. Barring catastrophe, that group would leave for Center early Aday morning.
Ari double-checked Brady-Phillips’s schedule on her apartment console. The woman had checked out for the first sleep shift as evacuating Gaea employees prepared to travel. This could be Ari’s last chance.
She shook two sleep-replacer capsules from her nearly empty vial. Clutching one capsule, she swallowed the other and lay down on her bed.
Two capsules and two hour-long naps roughly equaled a full night’s sleep, and she was willing to live with depressive side effects in order to deal with Brady-Phillips.
When the first trance faded an hour later, she swallowed the second capsule and closed her eyes again.
She woke to deep, gloomy darkness. Refusing to dwell on the futility of her efforts—this profound depression was simply a side effect of the sleep-replacer trance—she dressed, pocketed a pair of gloves, and slipped out into the quiet hallway. Everyone was either working or sleeping. With volcanoes erupting to doom Axis Plantation, it was no hour for casually strolling the corries.
She waved her D-group master key across the apartment’s lock. Silently the door slid open.
Doomed, she repeated to herself, eyeing the woman sleeping on the bed. She has doomed us all. Brady-Phillips deserved to die.
A dim desktop monitor lit a knotted-rope wall hanging. Ari glanced from that to the sleeping scientist’s throat.
It would be easy to outmuscle and strangle the smaller woman, but she couldn’t get away with that. On the countertop near that monitor, in a pile of pocket paraphernalia, lay a glucodermic whose existence Ari had suspected ever since that day on the firing range.
She slipped on her gloves, snatched it up, and backed out. Up the corridor in a dark supply closet, she waved on a ceiling light. She laid Graysha’s labeled syringe atop a pile of clean linen and pulled a confiscated glass ampule from her breast pocket. A topside rancher had intended to illegally euthanize several sick sows. Brooding, Ari held the glass bubble up to the lamp. That pale, cloudy liquid was death—consummate sleep, the ultimate futility of existence stated fully and finally.
She snapped the glucose ampule from its housing and carefully inserted the other. If the HMF performed an autopsy, its own glucodermic would be implicated as the source of poison.
Even that didn’t cheer Ari.
Silently she returned to Graysha’s apartment, and she laid the glucodermic back where she found it. She was certain Brady-Phillips would need glucose once she struck out over the wild with evacuating employees. But was that certain enough?
She eyed the body’s attitude of sleep. Brady-Phillips lay limp on her stomach, one arm clutching an extra pillow. Her furry creature looked like a stretched-out black hole next to her head.
Should she—could she—try to hit one of Graysha’s self-injection points with that glucodermic? That still would make it look like Graysha accidentally poisoned herself.
No, she decided. I’ll be here at Axis and she’ll be gone when it happens.
Maybe it was only a side effect of the sleep-replacer trance, but Ari fled with her heart thumping.
―――
Graysha actually enjoyed reporting to work with Varberg gone. Now she could work on her project in peace. She watched the second convoy roll off, standing at her laboratory window. It irritated her that the Varbergs left when no adult Lwuites, except crèche parents, had gone. Surely Lindon would understand that when Graysha refused a spot in the second convoy, she meant it as an atoning gesture. Even Novia might be proud.
Whether or not her efforts won Lindon DalLierx’s trust, the cooling issue had become her own. She would not rest until she proved what caused it.
But all Gaea’s planes were grounded today. She could do nothing but her reading.
She skimmed abstracts with a vengeance.
―――
In Trev’s sleeping room, there was barely room for a bed shoved up against the side where the slanted ceiling hung low. Underneath the bed frame, Trev knelt beside a cage he and Yukio had liberated from Zoology. He pulled on one leather glove. That wasn’t exactly his, either, but Zoology wouldn’t miss it for a while. His bandaged face still stung. This time, it was no shallow scratch on his chin. Slices of flesh were gone. He’d considered asking if the HMF doctors could remove those long gouges.
Then he’d reconsidered. Those linear scabs were badges of honor. “All right, Dutch,” he crooned. “It’s Pops. Cage that weasel temper for a while, will you?” Gingerly he lifted the latch. “I’ve got milk for you. Milk?” When the little weasel cat hissed, he shifted his hand to hold the borrowed bottle by its bottom end, as far from the nipple—and Dutchy—as he could without dropping it. A few drips spilled on the kitten’s nose.
The long pink tongue snaked out.
“Nice milk, kitty. Kitty, kitty.” He felt like an idiot pitching his voice this high. “Come on, guy.” He shoved the nipple inward again.
Dutchy’s hissing fit made him drop the bottle.
“You want to starve?” he growled, then plucked up courage again and reached back into the cage. The poor creature really was nearly starved. It had refused food for three days. Trev couldn’t remember feeling so terrible. If he hadn’t gotten that stupid urge to adopt a pet, little Dutchy would be out there in the wild, gorging contentedly on cat milk.
He shook the bottle so a tiny drop clung to the nipple, then held it close to the kitten’s nose. “Kitty, kitty” he sang. The kitten crouched, flattening his ears against that tiny, tawny head.
When the bottle didn’t move—when Trev’s arm ached and trembled so badly that he had to prop it up with his other hand—the rough pink tongue reappeared. It cleaned the nipple tip. Resisting a powerful longing to shake another drop loose, Trev held still.
After two more licks, the kitten bit down on the nipple. A stream of drops appeared. Trev was beyond caring if Dutchy’s cage got milk puddles, but it would’ve been a groundless worry. A frosted muzzle closed on the nipple. A chain of bubbles started to rise toward his hand, and to Trev’s disbelieving joy, little Dutchy started to purr.
/> “Kitty,” he crooned, “good kitty. Good milk. Pops will feed you.” He eased his ungloved hand alongside an apricot-blond flank while pulling away slightly with the bottle. Dutchy followed the source of manna. Trev’s bare fingers touched wiry fur. Finally!
Instantly, the kitten let go of the nipple and closed sharp teeth on Trev’s unprotected hand—but he didn’t bite hard enough to draw blood.
“No milk here,” Trev said through clenched teeth, holding his hand rock still. “Up here. Look, Dutchy. Up here.” He wiggled the bottle temptingly.
Dutchy lunged for the nipple.
―――
Graysha settled in with Jirina to watch the weekly town meeting begin right on schedule in the dark middle of Freezeout afternoon. Ordinary concerns were discussed, and though officers postponed several until the crisis ended, the committee members presented an admirable illusion of normalcy.
Ari MaiJidda glided into the live zone when the scheduled time had nearly passed. “I have a question for the chair,” she said.
Lindon gestured that she should speak.
MaiJidda wore her snug D-group uniform. “In light of the upcoming election,” she said, “I would like Chairman DalLierx to explain a comment of his that was reported by Marta CerRetti, a crèche parent. I will quote.” She lifted her pocket memo and began to read. “ ‘I’ve wondered if it might be feasible to discontinue neonatal treatments. I don’t see much effect, considering the risks we subject them to.’ End of quote.”
“Ooh,” Jirina said. In Varberg’s absence, she’d appropriated the big chair. “He oughtn’ta said that.”
“Shh.” Graysha perched on a stool, watching Lindon’s face. He didn’t answer immediately.
MaiJidda looked down at Lindon’s table, then aside at one of the operator stations. “Does the chair recall making that statement last Windsday?” she pressed.
“Vice-Chair MaiJidda makes it sound like an accusation.” He slowly folded his hands. “Yes, I said that. I assume we all have considered the possibility. All of us are normal humans, with propensities toward greed, selfishness, and yes, violence. The aggressiveness we’re skimming off might be vital for survival now. Our very existence has become a struggle.”
“Your faith becomes you.” From Ari’s fierce grin, Graysha guessed she felt she’d damaged Lindon’s chances in the postponed election.
“He’s right,” Jirina muttered. “For a supposedly gentle group, they sling enough mud.”
Lindon was speaking. “Don’t I remember you making a similar conjecture at the HMF?”
Ari made fists on the tabletop. “Never.”
“Even if we were biologically identical to other humans, we would remain a people,” he said. “I have no desire for reintegration, and I have made no statement in favor of the cessation of those neonatal treatments. I raised a question. That is all.”
“We don’t need questions, Lindon. We need certainties.”
Even if those notorious fetal treatments were discontinued, whatever they’d done to their genes would still set them apart: That, Graysha guessed, was the thrust of Lindon’s argument, though both scrupulously avoided the subject of genetics.
“Hoo,” Jirina breathed when the set dimmed. “I thought he had re-election sewed up. Now I’m not so sure.”
Graysha shook her head. She wasn’t sure, either. Why—if he wanted to stay in office—did he admit his doubts?
When daylight broke again, small lava cones showed around the volcanic vents. Still Urbansky sent no warning of impending magma rise. Gaea and the CA building held an audi council, and Graysha listened from the privacy of her lab. As when he was publicly accused, Lindon’s voice remained calm when others shouted, accepting correction without showing temper. Admiring him came easily, particularly from this safe distance.
All aircraft were allocated to Geology while daylight lasted. Between conferences, she mapped the three-dimensional circumpolar regions and memorized streptomycete data as groundwork for atmospheric study. The floor was quiet and calm without Varberg around. She urgently wanted to sample his streps bank, but Melantha Lee rode the elevator constantly, even sleeping in her office, and Paul became a friendly nuisance. At least he stopped making suggestive comments and gestures.
―――
When Graysha retreated nightly to the housing wing, sleep eluded her. She read Lindon’s book twice, straight through. For that man to share the same fundamental faith with her mother seemed unthinkable. Novia’s church claimed God had vested all humanity with holiness by sending Christ in human flesh. But everywhere Graysha looked in the book, Christ seemed only to say that He—alone—had holy power and authority. And each time she came to the eleventh chapter, one line struck her: “. . . it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” The words, mightily profound, came from the lips of a villain. If early Christians invented the whole story, wouldn’t they have attributed that bit of wisdom to Christ—or at least a disciple?
At least the book kept her mind off her current danger. Even, sometimes, off Lindon. Long prayers for protection became her substitutes for sleep-replacer capsules.
Other Gaea people, and the Lwuites, had had time to realize they faced uncontrollable planetary phenomena. For Graysha, the realization that this was no normal, human-friendly environment came a little harder.
Yet plantation life went on. On the third circaday after eruptions began, the ground hadn’t melted beneath her. It was time to sample compost, a job previously performed by young Lwuite techs.
Like the halfers, the compost-aging beds smelled less foul than she expected, and the layers of bacterially active material kept her hands warm.
She rested against a concrete post, Lindon’s book fresh on her mind. The Jews of occupied Palestine had lived every day under threat of death—by starvation, plague, or the whim of foreign conquerors. Most of human history had passed without assurance of survival . . . for anyone. Recent generations owned a new hope: the reasonable expectation of long, untroubled life. Perhaps that accounted for the general decline of religions.
Long life. Ha. She closed up the black satchel and brushed dirt flakes from her muslin shirt. She really ought to give Lindon’s book back, thank him, and avoid seeing him again.
When she spotted him crossing the hub toward her, her cheeks flamed. “How are you?” she asked when they met halfway.
“Good enough.” His short-sleeved shirt made his arms look bony, as if he’d lost more weight. Two call bands on his left wrist accentuated the thinness.
“Are you in touch with your daughters?”
“Indirectly. They enjoy camping out. Do you have a minute to talk?” He tilted his head toward a bench.
“Do you?”
“About that long.” But when he sat down, stretching out his legs in front of him, he didn’t speak right away.
He definitely did not look good. She wondered if he might be skipping meals. According to Novia’s pastor, primitive believers sometimes fasted. Was he—?
“Graysha, I need to ask you something that I haven’t been able to get Lee to answer. What is Gaea going to do if we evacuate Axis Crater?”
She’d been ordered not to discuss this with any of the colonists. “Dr. Lee,” she said carefully, “wants to relieve you of the responsibility for Gaea staff.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He leaned back, exhaling and closing his eyes. Someone hurried out of the HMF, down the shortest hub path, and vanished into the northward corridor.
Once again, her compulsive honesty defeated common sense . . . and Dr. Lee’s orders. “Most of the Gaea staff have elected to evacuate when you people do. But some have left already, and we’re free to go at any time, as individuals or by full truckloads. The . . . um . . . rest of us will keep things running as best we can, as long as humanly possible.”
His eyes opened, showing dark lights. �
��You aren’t staying.”
“Actually, I am.”
He straightened, facing her, and the concern she saw in his eyes made her want to jump up and cheer. “If the crater starts to infill with magma, you won’t have enough warning to get out.”
“I don’t want to waste time running away when I could be useful.” She rocked onto her feet.
“Wait.” He reached toward her hand.
This was the time to give back that text capsule, to thrust home the shame in her past and say good-bye, but she’d left his book at home . . . and she couldn’t say it.
She slid her sampling satchel’s strap down her arm, set the cloth bag on the bench beside her, and remained standing.
“Living like this,” he said, looking down at his feet, “each one day, as I get to live it, changes my perspective. It’s time I apologized for the way I treated you when you arrived.”
She never expected that! “I think I forgave you several weeks ago.”
“And the Rebecca Endedi children are not your responsibility.”
Her throat tightened. “Yes, they are. Partially, at least.”
“Their parents accepted the risk.” He stared across the hub again, and she stared down at him. “What do you think of Goddard now?”
Relaxing, she sat down again. “Frightening,” she admitted. “Impressive. Uncontrolled. But I can visualize it, one day, as a home for humans. You’ll never live to see it the way it will be, nor will any of your generation. I’m sorry for you.”
“Moses never crossed the Jordan.”
She folded her hands and eyed him, daring to smile. “Is that who you’d like to be? Moses?”
He uncrossed and then recrossed his ankles. “In a way,” he said at last.
So deep a confession called for her to answer in kind. “I never wanted anything quite so lofty. To teach, to encourage people who need me, who are willing to learn. The satisfaction of bridging the gap between ignorance and learning. But life threw me a curve before I was born. And truly, I hope, I wish, I could have children of my own, but gene-pure, before I’m too old to see them grown. There has to be some way I can make amends for damages I’ve done.”
