by Kathy Tyers
“Have you read—” he began, but one of his wrist alarms buzzed, cutting him off. Graysha slid away on the bench. He touched the thin band. “Yes?”
A tinny voice said, “Ag Subcommittee wants to harvest all nearly ripe vegetables. Requests staff to get it done.”
“I’ll be right there.” He stood up, brushing wrinkles from the back of his pants, then looked down over his shoulder. “Your goals are every bit as lofty as mine. Please be in touch.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve read your text capsule. I’d like to keep it awhile if I may. I’m finding things I’d forgotten.”
“Of course. Keep it as long as you’d like.”
Why had she said that? As he jogged off, she sat staring at the nearest bit of lawn, trying to reconcile this depth of attraction with her first impressions of Lindon. Even when he showed her that reconnaissance vidi, his silences could have meant only attentive observation and the certainty she’d soon be gone.
He hadn’t asked about her new research. Either he’d forgotten, with so much on his mind, or he assumed she’d tell him if anything came up.
There was nothing to tell. She pulled her satchel back onto her arm and plodded back to the Gaea building.
―――
Novia passed a hardcopy sheet to the third person in Flora Hauwk’s spartan field office. Hauwk sat in the only reclining chair, next to a window she insisted on keeping open. Blase LZalle, ebony-skinned and resplendent in absolute-black fabric, lounged sideways across an office chair. In the course of her career, Novia had dealt with many different kinds of people. She’d never disliked anyone as much as Blase LZalle. If power corrupted, this man was positively rotten with decay.
From the too-black shade of his skin and his flaming red hair to the length of his legs, the shape of his cheek, jaw, and fingernails, everything about him had been altered. He reeked of jasmine perfume. And his demand, that his only child be remanded into his custody for similar cosmetic surgery, capped it all. She’d taken a devil’s advocacy stand against him with Flora, insisting the boy was old enough to decline elective surgery and therefore ought not to be bound over. Thus far it successfully delayed the necessity of declaring her Goddard investigation complete. Yesterday, Jambling had found all the evidence she needed in Port Arbor’s files. All that remained was to obtain physical confirmation. If all went well, Graysha would suffice as a living specimen.
LZalle stroked the vocal enhancer implanted alongside his Adam’s apple. As she understood it, he could use the enhancer as an octave doubler or for producing instantaneous harmonies. “That settles it, Hauwk,” he said. “I won’t rest easy about my investment on that planet with volcanoes popping up and atmospheric imbalances. It’s time to regroup, rethink, and relieve ourselves of the Goddard project.”
“Supervisor Hauwk has limited jurisdiction.” Novia clenched her hands in her lap. J. L. Jambling stood beside the office window, a black-haired wraith conveying the impression of not listening. “If Dr. Hauwk feels it necessary to evacuate—”
“The true difficulty,” Flora Hauwk interrupted, “is that volcanic activity was not predicted so close to the settled region at this time. Really, Dr. Urbansky’s job was supposed to involve mineral exploration. His most exciting work involved sediment samples—to see if Goddard is regularly bombarded from space, or often swaps poles.”
Novia rolled her eyes.
“Perhaps Goddard’s crust is less stable than we thought,” Hauwk said, “more easily fractured by magma upwelling. It could be time to cut our losses. Even Melantha Lee seems to think so, between the lines.”
Novia nodded. She’d drawn the same conclusion from Lee’s reports.
“I shall contact the home office, requesting permission to cancel the project,” Hauwk continued. “That will take some days, you understand. Commissioner, wouldn’t evacuation simplify your investigation?”
“Yes,” Novia admitted, “though with this crisis underway, illicit medical activity has halted. I would like to wait for more data.”
“I thought you had enough data already.”
Blase LZalle rested two fingers against the double cleft in his chin. Novia hated that chin, which didn’t look even slightly natural. “Good,” he said.
Novia directed her answer toward Flora Hauwk. Stall, stall! “Yes, I do. Their privacy right can be suspended long enough to obtain chromosomal samples with or without their permission. But I still would like to wait.”
“Chromosomal sampling should be easy if they’re contained shipboard for an evacuation.” Hauwk pointed at LZalle. “Trevarre will have to leave Goddard, too, if the closure order is given. Because he is only eighteen, you may take custody.”
LZalle tucked his chin to one side, mocking her. “Why, thank you.”
Novia stared at him through narrowed eyes. The poor child wouldn’t get a chance to resist. “Supervisor Hauwk, please reconsider. I’ll take him if he’s unwilling to go with Mr. LZalle. I am all for the rights of parents, but not when those rights infringe on their children’s identities. If that boy wants to keep the face he was born with, Mr. LZalle, it is your responsibility as a parent to praise his maturity.”
“To despise his cowardice.”
“Mr. LZalle—”
The singer sat up squarely in his chair, laying elegant hands on his thighs. “Ha. Commissioner Novia Brady-Phillips, Mrs. Virtue in a blue dress, sitting in your chair”—his voice lowered, becoming wicked and sharp—“and drooling for the chance to sterilize and irradiate fifteen thousand people. You would criticize me for trying to give one son, my own flesh, a decent chance at—”
“I will not sit here and take—”
“Mr. LZalle. Commissioner.” Flora Hauwk leaned forward on her desk chair.
“You’re the kind of woman who lays down the law and loves it,” LZalle continued. “You—”
Furious, Novia barked, “Jambling. Quiet him.”
“Just you hold on,” LZalle shouted, “you, Mr. Bodyguard. I have no intention of hurting the lady, so relax. Go ahead, Commissioner Brady-Phillips. You think humans are so perfect. So explain to me what gives you the right to go in there and—”
“Humanity, as it evolved under the Creator’s hand, is flawed.” Novia took a low tone of voice to keep from shrieking. “I’ll admit that. We are flawed in the sense that while we have the ability to save ourselves by doing good for others, most of us don’t bother to try. We are flawed in the sense that we have the ability to change our physical nature but not yet the wisdom to forestall the dozens of lethal disasters that step could create. We—”
“Are you opposed to artificial eyes, too?” LZalle imitated a pair of eyeglasses by looping both hands in front of his face and peering through them. “How about limb transplants? Wart removal?”
She kept her voice low. “I do not expect you to understand the fundamental difference between constitutional repair and chromosomal alteration. I expect you to dance around it. It is enough that—”
Flora Hauwk raised a hand and calmly said, “The boy should go with his father. Now, both of you—until I hear from Einstein, in order to prevent any difficulty with this defense group Dr. Lee reports and Mr. Jambling confirms—please avoid mentioning my decision to anyone outside this room. Mr. Jambling, that goes for you, as well. Novia, can you continue your investigation from here for the time being?”
LZalle leaned back and sneered, as if he’d enjoyed baiting her.
“Yes, Dr. Hauwk.” Novia regained her most dignified tone of voice. “Mr. LZalle, I’ll forgive your ill-informed accusations if—”
“You know what the old faiths call you people, don’t you?” LZalle grinned and spoke the hideous word. “Apostate. Even evil incarnate, claiming to speak for God—”
Novia flew up out of her chair, abandoning all hope of dignity. “Call me tomorrow, Flora,” she cried. She wanted to strike the man. Shoulders aching with the effort of resisting the urge, she strode out.
Prospec
tor Hunt
“Hey Teach, Zoology wants me to do another predator redistribution. Can I have Windsday morning off?”
Trev’s bandage mask was missing today, and the long slash marks across his stubby nose and blotched cheeks had scabbed over. Beyond Graysha’s northeast window, the billowing gray ash cloud had become part of the landscape after eight days of steady eruption. The sun stood high in the sky, surrounded by a ruby corona. “Bishop’s ring,” someone in Meteorology had called it. The high tension that followed the original evacuation order no longer affected work in the Gaea building. Among those who remained, life went on. The microbes multiplied, and still all the planes were allocated.
Graysha had just learned that she needed medical clearance for high-altitude flight, anyway. “Go ahead.” She washed her hands thoroughly at the counter sink. “But I may want you to help me do some atmospheric sampling near one of the poles, and I’m your priority employer. Are you going with Yukio again?”
One hand pocketed, Trev leaned against the door arch and scratched his scalp through unruly black hair. “Yeah.”
“I think you’re starting to care about the Lwuites and their planet,” she said.
“Nah, I don’t think so. Maybe I’m beginning to understand all that self-respect stuff. Maybe I like the way I feel when things get dangerous and I cope.”
Good for you, Trev. But instead of commending him, she nodded and said, “Drive carefully.”
“It didn’t take long before.”
―――
Early the next morning, Trev found Yukio in the fourth-floor break room. “Ready to go check those smokers from the air?” Yukio called.
“Yeah. First. Then we can go kitty hunting again. Going to let me use the trank gun this time?”
Yukio rinsed out his coffee mug and replaced it on a shelf. “Maybe.”
Trev boarded the elevator. Really, it wasn’t predators he had on his mind, nor simply self-respect. It was survival—his own, and the colony’s.
“Got the coordinates?” Yukio murmured once the door slid shut.
Silently Trev touched his pocket memo.
He would visit Lower Infinity Crater if there was time, but finding one of those prospectors mattered more today. Yukio was being real decent about taking a look. They planned to drop out of Axis’s audi net and sweep the area with infrared to find the cabin—if one existed—and make contact. If Blase did arrive, it would be a good place to run. As for volcanoes, he and Yukio had seen them closer than any of these people. The smokers no longer frightened him.
Airborne, Yukio steered for the cloud. Green streaks crossed the landscape below, promising springtime. “Doesn’t look all that much colder down there,” Trev observed. “What’s all the fuss about?”
“Short year. We’re almost to equinox. Summer will come, ash or no ash. It’s next winter that worries me.”
Flying over a shallow rocky lake, he spotted a section of the upland wild seeded with something—clover, maybe?—that was actually blooming through thin gray dust. Channels dug from the mudflow area settled out water, though ice ringed the lake.
Trev leaned the top of his head against the glass bubble. There, below, was another seeded patch gone green. From its medium-dark shade, he thought he recognized cold-kudzu.
Yes, he could live here. No scummy poisonous lakes. No claustrophoboid domes or habitats.
Once they performed their official geology overflight, Yukio set course south, overtly toward the Dutch cats’ breeding area. Trev fingered his mustache carefully, avoiding scabs. Twenty klicks north of where they first spotted the prospectors’ smoke, he unclipped audi and tracer controls from the panel. They were supposed to be fail-safe.
But this kid had been raised with electronics by people who liked to kludge. Brandishing a scalpel blade he’d liberated from Graysha’s lab, he studied the circuit board, then carefully inserted the blade. “Long as I leave that there,” he explained as Yukio peered at his work, “we’re out of contact. Soon as I pull it out, contact again. That simple. It’s not actually breaking any circuit. It’s creating a field and diverting current.”
Yukio pursed his lips and raised both eyebrows. “Not bad. Whoops.” He lunged for the control yoke.
“Can’t you get more speed out of this thing?” Trev asked several minutes later.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we have a head wind.” Yukio clenched the control yoke.
Trev waved one hand from side to side. “I’d notice from all the trees blowing around, maybe?”
Yukio didn’t answer.
Their locator dot eased along the plane’s small onboard map. Flying almost due south under audi silence, they nearly reached the map coordinates before he saw that thread of smoke from a prospector’s cabin: 2.15 degrees south of the equator, 4.7 degrees west of Axis meridian. With Yukio along, he figured he’d stand less chance of being run off just because of sheer ugliness.
He was switching on infrared when the plane’s ground speed shot up so abruptly that he felt as if he’d seen a vidi go into hypermotion. “Wind die?”
“Uh-huh.” Yukio banked to the right. “See anything down there?” he asked as the craft veered sharply.
Trev visually raked the boulders for evidence of human activity. “No, but—Yuke, what’s that?”
A cloud wall, white above and gray beneath, stretched across the northern horizon. Yukio’s ruddy cheeks went pale. “Get your knife out of that circuit.”
Trev yanked it free. From the long-silent speaker, grumbles of static filled the cabin.
“This is Foxtrot Alpha two-six-three,” Yukio said sharply. “Axis airfield. Come in, Axis.”
More static.
“Atmospheric interference,” Trev said, realizing it was not useful information.
Yukio performed the triangulation maneuver. “It’s coming on too fast. We can’t get home around it.”
Trev didn’t like the panicky note in Yukio’s voice. “Okay. Calm down. We’ll put her down. We’ve got time. Yukio, we’ve got plenty of time. Don’t lose that much . . . Pull up!” Trev lunged for the control yoke.
Yukio slapped him away. “There’s a good spot right under us. I’m going to circle back for it if you’ll get your greasy hands off my yoke.”
He was coming down too quickly, losing too much altitude without shedding airspeed, clutching the yoke and banking hard left. The cloud was closer than it had been a minute ago.
And so was the ground. “Yah,” Trev muttered, grabbing for his ankles. Who was going to feed Dutchy if he didn’t make it back?
As Trev wedged his head between his knees, Yukio shouted, “Hang on!”
―――
Graysha spent that afternoon at her computer, filling out forms to requisition a sampling hovercopter. Just before four o’clock, her screen came alive.
+Heavy snow mixed with nonlethal ashfall predicted within the hour. Recommend suspension of aboveground activities.+
Hmm, she thought. It was Windsday, after all. Sounded like a mud storm coming in.
The message faded, then a second one appeared, this one personal. Dr. Lee had diverted her request to the HMF for high-altitude clearance.
Either Lee was worried she might have an attack at that altitude or this was more interference. Delay after delay, and still Goddard cooled.
She checked her wincubator cultures, made notes, and recorded requests to Will Varberg, asking him to try creating drought-resistant specimens of two strains as soon as he returned.
Trev ought to be back soon.
―――
Trev blinked. What was he doing lying on his side clutching his ankles?
They’d been dropping too fast. Had they crashed? He couldn’t remember.
He took sensory inventory. Engine silent, no sense of motion—they were down. Gray mud dribbled in streaks down the windscreen, obscuring his view. Smoky light filtered into the cabin. The storm must have just hit. If this stuff had been coming down for
long, he wouldn’t be able to see out at all.
Uphill from him, Yukio sat slumped over the control yoke, his tiny braid dangling oddly alongside his sideburn. Blood welled from a cut on his forehead and dripped onto his browncloth pants. He’d misjudged the landing. Badly.
“Yukio.” His companion didn’t answer. Trev undid his seat harness and thrust himself up toward the Lwuite youth.
He was breathing.
Relieved and shivering, Trev let gravity pull him back down onto his own seat. They’d both stripped off coats in the heated cabin, but already he could see his breath. He climbed behind his seat, found the coats, pulled on his own, then stared at Yukio’s.
He shouldn’t move Yukio until he knew the extent of his injuries.
Crouching, he shuffled to the rear of the cabin. There lay the Dutcher bags. A minute later, Yukio sat blanketed in browncloth with his hooded parka topmost. Trev dabbed salve from the first-aid kit onto Yukio’s forehead. That stopped the bleeding.
Now what?
He eyed the control panel. From the locator map, it looked as if they were almost on top of his prospector.
He couldn’t go yelling for help in this storm.
Not for a while, at least.
Trev pulled his hood down farther and frowned up across the tilted cabin. “Yukio!” he shouted. “Hey, Yuke?”
An hour. Maybe in an hour the storm would ease off.
Maybe he should have gone for Blase’s surgery. This was going to be one cold, lousy place to watch a friend die.
―――
Graysha and Jirina weren’t the only joggers in the hub Windsday afternoon. Jirina was not fastest—a lanky settler lapped her twice—nor was Graysha the slowest anymore. She felt strong enough to leave her candies and glucodermic back on her dresser.
After eight laps, which almost equaled 5k, Graysha pulled down to a walk, her chafed underarms stinging. She steadied her hands on her hips to let perspiration dry and kept her stride long. Overhead, the hub’s single skylight was clogged with ashen mud. “Stone snow,” Jirina had dubbed it.
