by Kathy Tyers
“Don’t give up!” Graysha insisted. “I could start with another sampling trip.”
Dr. Lee’s black eyes gleamed. “Yes, you could.” Graysha heard a threat of sabotage in that smooth voice.
As she rode back to her lab, she flicked a finger up and down the elevator’s control panel. What could she do now—cast herself upon Lindon’s mercy? As appealing as that sounded, it would solve nothing. Admit her extra cache of organisms existed and make them vulnerable to Melantha Lee—or whoever sterilized her other cultures?
No, she couldn’t do that, either. If she came up with nothing new within half an hour, though, Hauwk and Lee might order Goddard evacuated.
That would mean certain death for Lindon and his people—if their secret got out.
And she’d found no HMF antibiotic that would safely kill Varberg’s cloud-borne bacteria.
There was no time to lose.
When the elevator door slid open, she turned on one heel and jogged up the hall to retrieve Varberg’s cache of Gaea antibiotics.
HMF
She didn’t quite make it to the HMF with her clutch of antibiotics. Halfway across the hub, she decided to try contacting Lindon from her apartment. Once alone inside, she snatched Emmer from her pillow and draped the gribien over her shoulders as she turned to her keyboard. “Poor old lady, ignored again.” Emmer clicked contentedly, oblivious to Graysha’s tension.
Lindon answered her message alarm immediately. Her spirit sank. She’d hoped to send text and give him time to think about it. +Bad news,+ she typed rapidly with her keyboard set for simultaneous transmission. +Varberg admits creating the CFC-killer germ and releasing it into the environment, and Lee was definitely in on the project. He tailored it to die off after two cold seasons, but gene sequences he stuck on got mutated off in the UV. We’ve got runaway multiplication, with too many CFCs gone to easily replace. That’s why Trev got his samples first trip out. And someone destroyed my Gaea lab organisms.+ She went on to explain her quandary with Melantha Lee and the threat of evacuation.
He didn’t come back immediately. As she’d guessed, he needed time to think this through.
It wasn’t his responsibility anymore, though. +Should I consult Chair MaiJidda?+ she typed.
―――
Lindon clenched his fingers. Bee had sent a message this morning, asking him to release her from the new mandatory crèche religious ed. program. Already, a dangerous doctrine of physical immortality as a reward for persistently applied intelligence had crept in. It scandalized Bee, to Lindon’s relief. At least Sarai was back, having returned yesterday to a celebrity’s welcome. She was settling in with Crystal and Duncan.
As for Ari . . .
He blamed her for the new crèche program, but he felt he was starting to understand her. An avowed atheist, she had no external accountability, nothing to restrain her from setting herself up as the Lwuites’ new spiritual leader.
But he couldn’t let her reprogram his children’s souls. How could he fight her?
First things first. Unless Goddard remained habitable, his people might cease to exist.
Graysha was waiting. He’d hoped to propose today, but now he didn’t dare distract her.
Should she consult Ari? +That’s up to you,+ he keyed, +but I wouldn’t, not yet.+
+I’ll check and make sure the HMF bugs are still growing.+ She went on to briefly explain the difficulty of killing cloud-borne organisms without sterilizing the environment below. +I combed every reference on the net or on abstract. I think I know everything about strep’s sensitivity to antimicrobials that there is to learn. But the really ironic thing is that the best defense against any bacterial growth is chlorine. An organism breaking down CFCs literally bathes itself in chlorine. It must be fantastically tough.+
+Surely it has a weakness. Keep me posted, and be careful in the corries. Some people are very angry about Varberg’s actions.+
After signing out, he bent low over his tightly folded hands, praying. Protect her, since I can’t!
―――
Graysha exhaled a long, shaky breath. Was she thinking clearly? Was Lindon? The ache in her chest dissipated to become a dull sadness throughout her body. Steadying Emmer on her shoulder, she trotted on to the HMF with her stash. No one there looked particularly hostile, but she doubted she’d know if they were.
She didn’t remember turning off the heater. She flicked it on, then pulled open her little incubator and held one plate up to the light. Though it was too soon to check these, she thought she could detect growth, if not clear zones. The next plate looked similar. She still had cause to hope, then. She set the Gaea antibiotic vials on the countertop.
She was examining the tenth plate when Emmer’s soft clicking stopped. Her grip went limp.
“Sleeping hard, old thing?” Graysha asked, stroking soft black fur. “What is it?” She pulled the creature from her shoulders, alarmed by Emmer’s lack of resistance. Emmer hung limp over her left hand.
“Emmer?” She tapped her pet’s soft head, then caught a flash of yellow. On her forearm, her t-o button gleamed its pale warning.
Was that why she felt so relaxed, so drowsy?
She hadn’t eaten much lunch. A breath of fresh air should help them both. She shuffled to the door, grasped the handle, and tugged. When nothing happened, she pulled harder.
She worked the handle up and down. “Fresia?” she called. “Hello! Is anybody there?” She pounded on the heavy panel. Metal and concrete, it accepted her blows silently.
Confused, she scurried back to her incubator and replaced her plates. She laid Emmer across her thigh, took a deep breath to calm herself, then another. This little room didn’t have so much as a keyboard to call for help.
She was definitely sleepy. Deep in a lab-coat pocket, she always carried the glucodermic. Hurriedly she fished it out, uncapping it with trembling hands. She would never hit a vein with these shakes. It would have to go straight into a muscle. She pressed the point to her thigh.
A noise startled her. Was that someone out in the medtech station rattling glassware, or was she hallucinating?
“Hello!” she gulped, springing up. Emmer and the glucodermic fell together to the floor. Her legs crumpled in familiar agony. Pushing toward the door, she drew a deep breath and screamed, “Fresia!”
Cramps blazed up her body. Her arms collapsed when she tried to rise up on them.
Close beside her, the syringe lay leaking a small clear puddle. Desperate, she slid over a hand, dabbed it in syrup that was oddly thin, and thrust the coated finger to her mouth.
Hideous! She retched at the taste, tried to spit, then retched again.
And the world shrank away.
―――
Ari MaiJidda keyed over to the D-group lidar simulation she’d had designed, then fed it downline to two techs in training. If it seemed abnormally realistic this time, that was deliberate. A threat could be approaching.
She’d locked Varberg up after his “interview,” impounding the staph-doctored inhaler in case she needed murder evidence. On lidar, Copernicus’s shuttle looked larger than required to remove him.
At least it looked too small to accommodate the whole colonial population.
Still, she was ready to activate D-group if a forced evacuation seemed imminent. After deploying personnel to defend Port Arbor, she must distribute extra supplies to crèche parents and assign track-truck drivers for possible scattering onto the wild. It was warm enough out there for survival. Since they weren’t well enough armed to field a conventional force, they would have to use guerilla tactics.
At least Graysha Brady-Phillips would leak no more information to the Eugenics Board. An HMF monitor had shown her rushing through the medtech’s station, letting the door swing shut behind her.
Finally, after three botched attempts, Ari had one victory.
She looked out her window. The long sunset was beginning.
―――
&nbs
p; Lindon was sitting on his sister’s living-room floor when a knock sounded, but he couldn’t stand up without thrusting Sarai from his lap. Lavished with too much public attention, she’d already started to withdraw. This was why he’d petitioned for Crys and Dunc to take custody. Under this circumstance, education directors would surely let him keep her out of the crèche.
As the door swung open, she jumped off him, shouting, “Uncle Kevan!”
The name soaked into Lindon’s tired brain. He rose too. “Kevan?”
His brother, unshaved and smelling like the AnProd range, bent to hug Sarai. “Hello, Princess,” he said, then shook his head at Lindon. “Tough news about the election.”
Lindon thought he remembered his brother being smaller—certainly not this much taller than himself. “You look well fed.” He extended a hand.
“Going to be better fed, too.” Kevan’s flushed cheeks matched the gleam in his eyes. “I’ve got a vein of the best boron ore you ever saw.”
“Boron?” Lindon asked. “Sarai, let Uncle Kevan go for a few minutes. We need to sit down and talk.”
“I’ll talk, too.” Sarai tossed unbraided black hair while she clung to her uncle’s hand. “What’s boron?”
To Lindon’s surprise, Kevan knelt down beside a pile of brightly colored plastic blocks. “Boron is a rare incompatible lithophile element. Can you say that?”
She jerked her head away. “I’m not a baby.”
Kevan stood. “Your replacement in the chair doesn’t stall,” he said. “I’ve been extracting since that Gaea kid dropped out of the sky on us, and MaiJidda just sent six track-trucks out for it.”
“Do you think—” Small hands clutched Lindon’s belt loops. “What is it, Princess?”
“I don’t . . . don’t know.” Covering her eyes, she bent forward and started to cry.
“You’re tired,” he murmured, “and everybody’s been fussing at you. Let me tuck you in for a nap. Kevan, please don’t leave.”
“Have to. More hoops to dive through. Imagine if we found enough of this stuff. Buyout.”
“Dreamer,” Lindon called over his shoulder as Kevan strode out the door, but the thought fired his imagination. To pay Gaea and be independent this early was worth dreaming. Quietly, they might vanish from USSC surveillance.
First, though, Varberg’s work had to be undone.
He pulled Sarai’s blanket up over her chest and sat for a minute, stroking her forehead the way she’d liked as a toddler. Lord of wonders, heal her. Protect my people. And Graysha—
Abruptly an urge came over him to get up and run, as if some inner sense heard a cry in the darkness. He’d heard it when Cassandra died, and it terrified him now. He drew away. When Sarai didn’t protest, he hurried out her door into Crys’s entryway. Fear nipped his heels like a nightmare that refused to fade.
Sarai was safe. Bee was protected. What about Graysha and the hostile Gaea supervisors? He called her office from his sister’s terminal. She didn’t answer.
The hub, then, or the safe lab. She’d said she was headed down there.
He jogged down the HMF stairs. “Hello, Fresia. Is Dr. Brady-Phillips here?” he asked the medtech.
“She arrived an hour ago. I’ve been in and out, though. She might have left.”
Lindon pushed open the door and lurched forward. Graysha lay face down and still on the concrete floor, her arms bluish pale except for a t-o button so yellow it almost glimmered.
“Fresia!” he cried before the door could swing shut again.
―――
Novia hunched close to the door of the shuttle’s control room. Only two could fit inside with the pilot.
“We have all appearances of a runaway situation.” That was Melantha Lee’s voice. Closer after four interminable days’ travel—much of which Novia had spent feeling wretched, having traveled without a takeoff fast—now they experienced only a three-minute total time lag in transmissions. “Dr. Varberg’s research was sound,” Lee said. “I don’t want charges brought against him. It was only the worst kind of coincidence that led to this particular mutation.”
Flora Hauwk glanced over her shoulder toward Novia. “I think I see your point,” Hauwk said. During the last three-minute break, they’d discussed on-site personnel’s attitude. Obviously, Varberg and Lee were pushing for Gaea reward money and hoped to see Goddard abandoned for other reasons. The notion of blaming finances pleased Lee just a little too much. If Goddard weren’t abandoned, she and Varberg might face charges they thought to avoid by inserting that suicide gene.
And maybe Gaea ought to reward them anyway. That money would be nothing compared with the cost of continuing to run terraforming on Goddard—particularly with a new, potentially disastrous geological problem. Gaea ought to accelerate the forestation of Mars, conduct more aggressive research into Venus’s problems, or even—with the help of this new organism—assist Terra Two with atmospheric cleanup on Earth. Blase LZalle, his flame-red hair showing over the top of the first officer’s chair, had loudly voted for Venus.
All that remained was to contain these colonists aboard evacuation ships and begin chromosomal testing. Professionally, she had to be pleased.
Personally, she wished things had turned out differently.
Hauwk was still talking to Lee. “I have a go-ahead from HQ to use discretion regarding whether to evacuate, and I think, from all you’re telling me, that you can count on it. But don’t start packing. Don’t give the colonists any sign of what’s going on. If they’re not willing to leave peaceably, as you implied, herding them could be tricky. We may have to threaten. You have isolated bunkers for Gaea personnel, don’t you?”
Supervisor Hauwk ended her transmission, then stood up, nearly bumping her head on a row of lights and switches. “I can’t see using those missiles on the Axis site.”
My daughter is there! Novia wanted to shout, but she had operated too long in this capacity to abandon her professional demeanor. “No, no,” she said, “Port Arbor. That’s where the clinic activity is taking place. It’s too bad we won’t have time or personnel to do a complete job investigating that locale. I’d like to have had their research for my files.” I tried, Graysha.
“This still might be managed without a confrontation,” Hauwk insisted.
Novia clenched her armrest. If the Lwuites hadn’t dampened aggression, they might have taken Graysha in and healed her by now. Neither hot nor cold, they deserved double retribution. “As we all hope,” she answered steadily. “It’s a widespread loss of their lives that we’re trying to prevent.”
―――
White light shone on white concrete walls, and Graysha’s belly ached as if she’d been vomiting. What was she doing here? Where was Ellard? The dreams she’d been having . . . alternately sweet and troubling . . . about someone else . . .
Feeling her cheeks warm, she rolled away from the wall. “Ellard?” she called.
Then she realized this wasn’t her bedroom. It was a hospital or clinic, because it smelled ethanol-phenol medical. But the bed lacked autoinjection apparatus, and no drop-down mask hovered over her pillow. If this was a clinic, it was antiquated.
Disoriented, she pushed up to sit. Out the window near her bed’s foot, floodlights bathed unfamiliar pale green fields that stretched away toward blackness. Blinking beacons marked the top of a huge distant crater wall.
In that case, her complex dream—and Lindon DalLierx—were real. Hurriedly she slid up the left sleeve of a flimsy hospital gown. At the center of its tiny floral tattoo, her tissue-oxygen button looked pale.
But not yellow. Relieved, she pushed up toward the head of her bed and flopped back onto her pillow. She’d had another Flaherty’s attack—a terrible one—in her so-called safe lab, and whatever was in that HMF glucodermic, it wasn’t glucose.
She reached for the call button in her bedside table, then hesitated. Had Dr. GurEshel tried to poison her?
No. If GurEshel meant her ha
rm, she’d have—Graysha gulped down a foul aftertaste—she’d have murdered her here without letting her wake up.
She touched the call button.
Half a minute later, Yael GurEshel whisked into the room, pigtail flying behind her stocky back. “You’re awake,” she observed. “Any lingering muscle cramps? You slept a number of hours.”
It was too late, then, to get any word to Melantha Lee before she and Hauwk conferred.
“I feel rested,” Graysha said cautiously.
“When did you last eat?” GurEshel pulled a pocket memo from her lab coat and touched something up. “What meal?”
Dissociating dreamlike reality from her uncannily vivid two-terrannum-old memory took a few seconds. “Lunch, I . . . I think.”
“Lunch on what day?”
Graysha tried to remember. “Dday” she said after a struggle. “Dropoff.”
“Yesterday.” GurEshel worked at the memo again, then pocketed it. “Here’s what we’re going to do. The shuttle coming to remove Will and Edie Varberg will reach parking orbit midday tomorrow. I’m ordering a drip-pak for you immediately. We’ll get your blood sugar and oxygen to an acceptable level while still maintaining your takeoff fast. Copernicus has an excellent hospital facility.” Pausing for breath, GurEshel crossed her arms in front of a browncloth smock. “It’s obvious now that your health is simply too poor for you to remain on Goddard. We’ll stabilize your condition today and release you early tomorrow morning to finalize your affairs, turn over your research to your associates, and pack your belongings. By then we will be able to give you specific pickup instructions.”
GurEshel seemed sincerely determined to protect her. After all, she’d had two severe attacks since arriving.
But Ari MaiJidda had deliberately provoked the first and probably the second. She wasn’t as sick as Yael GurEshel had to assume. Still, Graysha hesitated to tell her so.
