Shivering World

by Kathy Tyers

  “I’ll send a nurse to start the drip-­pak and immune enhancement.” GurEshel left as hurriedly as she’d arrived, without giving Graysha a chance to protest. Hadn’t anyone noticed the broken glucodermic?

  If they had, they’d taken it at face value. Graysha pressed up from the pillow, tempted to cut her losses and let them send her back to Copernicus. It wasn’t her fault if Goddard’s environment failed.

  That temptation passed quickly. She had to finish here. Where was Emmer?

  She flung her pillows aside and examined the bed, under the bed, and inside the small bedside table.

  Cold fear settled in her chest.

  The door opened a crack. She steeled herself to resist the nurse. No one was going to stick drip-­paks, which might be full of tranquilizers or sedatives, into her arm.

  Lindon’s solemn face peered around the door, then he eased the rest of the way into her room and shut the door. “Graysha, thank God, I was worried.”

  “Come in,” she urged softly. “Lindon, I have to get out of here.”

  He shook his head, crossing the room rapidly to seize her left hand. “You need to rest. Whatever brought on that attack—”

  “Listen to me,” she exclaimed, letting him examine the pale t-­o button. “Dr. GurEshel is determined to send me to Copernicus. If I stay in this bed, they’ll have me on the shuttle for sure. I’ve got to get back to work.” Heartsick, she pulled back her arm to grasp his hand. “They took Emmer somewhere. Do you know if she survived?”

  “Emmer.” His Peter Pan eyebrows arched. He reached into a jacket pocket and drew out a tight black furry ball. “It was a miracle I found you. There wasn’t anything else I could do except take care of your pet. I don’t know if it’s . . . going to make it.”

  Graysha had never seen the gribien ball up so tightly. She held Emmer close to her face and exhaled, offering her scent as comfort. “Emmer?” she whispered, stroking.

  Lindon reached down. Delicately, with the back of one finger, he stroked, too, but Emmer did not move.

  “Is it . . . dead?” Lindon asked.

  “Emmer.” Graysha shook her head. “Her name is Emmer. No, they go limp if they die. I’ll take her with me.” She clutched Emmer against her chest. “I need some clothes. Please? I have to get loose.”

  He frowned, biting his lower lip. “All right. Cooperate with the nurse. It’s painful to take out a drip-­pak, but I watched them do it when they had me in here. I can manage for you.”

  “Come back with clothes.”

  “As quickly as I can.” He brushed her forehead with his lips.

  Graysha didn’t have to wait long. Sulking, she bared her left arm for the nurse who arrived less than a minute later and gritted her teeth while a long, thin needle wormed into her vein. The nurse couldn’t be older than nineteen. “I’m sorry,” she said. “At Copernicus, they’ll have better equipment.”

  “That’s fine,” she mumbled as the nurse left. One thought gnawed at the back of her mind: Someone had tried to poison her. The bulging liquid-­filled bag against her arm looked more ominous by the moment. Finally unable to restrain herself, she started picking at the sticky tape that looped it in place.

  Lindon returned, carrying a towel-­sized bundle under one arm. “Nothing fancy,” he said, “and I had to guess your size.” He sat on the bedside and pulled the last strip of tape off her hand. Graysha stared. “Are you sure you want to watch?” he asked. “It’ll make you woozy.”

  Though curious, she couldn’t afford to faint. She turned her head and studied a line of grooves in the near wall.

  “Did you know,” he said calmly, “that your oddbod tech turned up boron ore where he had previously only reported carbon? The plantation’s buzzing with the find . . . and the hope of Buyout.” His hand pressed down firmly on hers. “Ari sent out six track-­trucks, and they’re back. Urbansky is checking it—”

  A long, painful slithering snaked out of her vein. “Ouch!”

  “That’s it.” He tossed the bulbous sack into a waste can. “You’re free.”

  She slipped off the bed and yanked off her gown before he had a chance to turn his back. Startled, he looked away.

  “Sorry,” she said, shaking out the clothing bundle. She pulled on the shirt and pants, and soft fabric shoes that were much too loose. “Boron ore?” she asked. “How much?”

  “We’ll know soon.”

  “All right,” she said softly. He turned around as she gently lifted Emmer. “Downstairs,” she directed. “It’s the only place I have any bugs left.”

  “We’ll take it slowly.” Lindon offered his arm.

  She grasped it. “No, we won’t. Hurry.”

  On Approach

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Graysha didn’t have to lean so hard on Lindon. Her inner lab door hung open, held in place by a metal wedge.

  “Lindon,” she murmured, letting one loose shoe flop against the wedge, “I don’t remember having to prop this before. It stayed open or closed as I left it.” She turned all around, realization penetrating the fog in her brain. “Emmer went limp just before I had my attack. Something happened in here. Something is wrong.”

  Lindon crouched to examine the room at floor level. “I don’t like it. Your research destroyed, and now this.” He knelt, staring at a blank spot on the wall. “You’re Novia Brady-­Phillips’s daughter, Graysha. More than one of us has worried about that.”

  “Well, I only know about one who’s been openly hostile. And another thing. Where’s . . .” She knelt to look for traces of the glucodermic. Not a shard or a dribble remained. “Have colonial police been in here?” she asked, sickened by her suspicion.

  “I would assume so. Let me check.” He hurried back out to the medtech station, where he spoke softly with Fresia. The young woman nodded and murmured something.

  Graysha stayed where she was. When Lindon rejoined her, she told him about dropping the syringe. “I’ve never put anything in my mouth that tasted less like glucose, and I woke up with stomach cramps.”

  “The nurses said you were very sick to your stomach.” As he stared into her eyes, his slanted eyebrows almost met at center.

  “And I would guess that Ari ordered colonial police to clean up,” she said. “I had another mysterious episode, too, besides the one at D-­group.”

  “When the crates nearly fell on you? What else?”

  For half a splintered second, she wondered if Lindon had thought he’d told her too much, then tried to mend his mistake.

  No. Never. Not him. “When I first arrived at Goddard and fell sick, it was because Chair MaiJidda ‘forgot’ to bring me a can of fast-­breaking food, then encouraged me to run across the landing area. Neither episode was a use of deadly force, but they were both plain warnings, Lindon.”

  His chin worked. “We found out who you were just before you arrived. I agree, that original incident wasn’t so sinister, taken alone. But she—someone, let’s say—has escalated the attacks. Wants to use the minimum violence necessary, but refuses to give up. If that’s the case, her . . . the next attack will be more direct. Promise me you’ll stay with someone tonight. Dr. Suleiman, maybe.” He gripped her hands. “You mustn’t be caught alone.”

  She felt vaguely disappointed, even though she knew she shouldn’t. He had all but proposed marriage yesterday. Today, it wasn’t “stay in my spare room tonight, you’ll be safer,” but “stay with someone.” Was he so ethical, was she so unlovely, or had he changed his mind about that, too, even after she committed herself to his God?

  “I’ll try.”

  His lips firmed, making him look irked.

  “I probably won’t be leaving this room for a long time. I’ve got to finish this.” She swept a hand up the lab counter, closing it on the antibiotics she’d found in Dr. Varberg’s lab, all 150 of them.

  “All right,” he said. “Then as soon as I leave here, I’m speaking with your tech, LZalle.”

  “Speak with Ari,”
she said soberly. “She’s persecuting an innocent person. She just can’t go on—” Graysha stopped speaking. “I’m sorry,” she added. “I’m asking you to act aggressively. That’s not your way.”

  Lindon’s mouth firmed. “Do you think I’m afraid of her?”

  “But,” she began, then she shook her head, remembering Lindon’s doubts about the callosal treatments. She’d barged into his life, sowing even more confusion.

  Abruptly, she realized they were both staring. Heaven knew what he saw—maybe a woman who’d been very sick, wearing someone else’s ill-­fitting clothes—but this lonely man had lost a wife eight terrannums ago, and he was not looking away. He eyed her, in fact, with a kind of hunger she’d seen twice, maybe three times on Ellard’s face. On Lindon, the expression was transformed: not a, “Come here, woman,” but a controlled ache he plainly hoped she might fill.

  Very well, then, he got full credit for ethics, and she didn’t need to feel unlovely! Smiling in spite of all danger, she pushed the antibiotics vial into her back pocket.

  He stepped closer, and to her astonishment, he fingered the underside of her chin. “I’ll save my anger for Ari,” he said. He leaned down, closer, and kissed her.

  It was the slightest touch, but he might as well have hit her with an earthmover or revectored the orbit of her heart. Maybe he didn’t mean to clinch her loyalty for all time, but as she pulled her hands free, clasped them at the nape of his neck, and drew him closer, she knew she could never look him in the eye again without remembering this moment.

  Whether or not this choice was wise, she was committed. Her peripheral vision went dark. The laboratory vanished.

  When she could see again, the quirk of little-­boy eyes, dark and concerned, tore at her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to do that. We’re both too vulnerable. But, Graysha . . .”

  He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled her head to his shoulder. She stared at the lab’s wall, incredulous. That one kiss obviously affected him just as deeply as it did her.

  She stammered, “It’s just that . . .”

  “No, I understand.” He backed away. “I love you, Graysha. Whether I should or not, I do. I’ll talk with you later, when we’re both steadier. I mustn’t keep you from . . .”

  “Lindon, I . . .”

  He rushed out. Graysha followed as far as the outer door, then turned back. Her insides flamed. The afterimage of his face had scorched onto her vision.

  Blinking, she drew her inoculated plates back out of the incubator one by one and stacked them on the countertop, then managed to focus her mind on her work and examine them.

  Cloudy. Every one of them, without a single clear patch. S. gaeaii grew profusely in the presence of every antimicrobial the colonists kept on hand.

  That brought her crashing back down. At least she still had organisms. If the cultures had been destroyed, she reflected grimly, one trip into the cloud cover would yield more than enough bacteria to start a fresh lab colony. She had more antibiotics to try, too, from the Gaea building—but too little time and too few organisms to inoculate more plates just now.

  She hurried out into the medtech station, wondering if Fresia PalTion saw the afterimage of Lindon in her eyes. “Could you spare a large flask of TSY broth?” she asked.

  “Heavens, yes.” The medtech flicked a long brown braid behind her shoulder and gestured toward a cooler with her own loop dropper. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  Moving like an automaton, she inoculated the flask with gaeaii microbes. They preferred a CFC medium, but she had to hurry. This general-­purpose broth ought to give her enough organisms to start a new set of antimicrobial tests later today, or tomorrow. “May I leave this in your refrigerator?” she asked.

  “Of course.” Fresia might be preoccupied, but her smile looked sincere.

  Graysha opened the metal door Fresia indicated and tucked her flask safely inside. “I didn’t label it,” she said dubiously. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Don’t bother. I label all mine. I’ll know which one is yours. Say, I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. I didn’t hear you call—”

  “Not your fault,” Graysha insisted. Not even slightly.

  ―――

  Back at her apartment, Graysha traded too-­large clothes for a browncloth outfit in her own size, scooped up Emmer, and headed back to her own lab, where she pillowed Emmer on the floor, wrapped in an extra lab coat. The little gribien stretched languidly, then curled up to sleep.

  Almost immediately, Trev skidded in. “Morning, Teach,” he puffed. “DalLierx seems to think it was foul play that brought on your attack yesterday. Hope you can stand my company, because I’m supposed to stick with you like limpet glue.”

  She sagged against the countertop. “That’s fine, Trev. Thank you. Where’ve you been?”

  “Down at Geology.” His lips curled up at both edges, then turned down again. “Introducing myself to Dr. Thaddeus Urbansky. He’s been assaying samples from a few truckloads of the rock I found down south. Says it’s good stuff. From the voice, I pictured him about seven-­foot-­three. Would you believe he’s shorter than I am?”

  It cheered her to talk to someone in such good spirits. “And how’s Dutchy?”

  Trev displayed his right hand. From knuckles to wrist, two parallel streaks flamed blood red. “He likes me better now that he’s learned I’m the food source. These are just impatience marks.”

  Graysha whistled. Hearing cart wheels in the hallway, she peeked out.

  To her surprise, a man in co-­op whites pushed the cart along. “Dr. Brady-­Phillips?” he asked.

  She beckoned him in, and he parked the cart between her lab counter and the nearest wall. “Mr. DalLierx sent this over.” He unloaded a set of covered dishes, then hurried away.

  Graysha removed the covers. Beneath one, steaming grilled ham made her mouth water. Waffles dripping with honey filled the other plate. “Where are they growing enough flowers to keep a beehive?” she asked. Trev shrugged. Two bowls held yogurt and fresh fruit, and the carafe gave off a scent of fresh coffee. “Looks like enough for both of us,” she said, “with leftovers for Jirina. Pull up.”

  Trev speared a slice of ham. “This will do me.”

  After eating just enough that Yael GurEshel could no longer declare her on a prelaunch fast, she tore off a strip of waffle and dropped it onto her napkin. “Emmer’s sense of smell is very keen,” she explained as Trev stared. “Maybe this will rouse her.”

  She knelt beside the gribien. “Emmer,” she whispered, glad to see her pet stretched out again. “Here, I brought you breakfast.”

  Black ears sprang up, a black nose sniffed, then white teeth closed on the waffle. Deeply relieved, Graysha returned to the outer lab. Jirina stood over the cart of food. “Thought I heard my name,” she said around a mouthful. “So I helped myself. Didn’t want you overeating when you’ve been sick.”

  “Jirina,” Graysha said suddenly, “has Dr. Lee put out anything about a change in the status of the Gaea station?”

  “No, why? What have you heard?”

  Graysha nibbled the torn waffle. “She’s scared. Doesn’t think we’ll be able to restore the planetary greenhouse in time.”

  “It does look bad, but you’ll do it. Invoke the Black Goddess if there’s anything she can do to help.”

  Then maybe the decision to evacuate wasn’t made. Chewing a multi-­grain mouthful, Graysha leaned against a countertop to consider her next move while Jirina chaffed Trev about his scratch marks. As soon as she left this lab for dinner, she would stop by the HMF with Gaea’s test vials—now tucked deep into her pocket—and initiate that second series of sensitivity tests.

  And there was, she realized dumbly, one other thing she hadn’t tried. Streptomycetes, almost all of them, were notorious antibiotic synthesizers. If some other strain gave off a natural chemical that inhibited gaeaii’s growth—but not the soil streps they were using to
create arable cropland—that might solve the problem without adding toxic chemicals to every raindrop. It was possible.

  But to find out if they had such an organism, she might have to carry Varberg’s entire streps inventory down to the HMF—or else bring a viable S. gaeaii sample back across the hub to this lab.

  The second option sounded easier. “Discovering” those TSY flasks might look suspicious, but she could worry later about Melantha Lee’s suspicions.

  First things first. She had to insure herself against sabotage. As soon as she and Jirina cleared the breakfast cart, she sent Trev to Varberg’s refrigerator for the streps inventory. Lee, she realized, hadn’t come up to check on her this morning. The Gaea supervisor was probably tidying up Varberg’s records.

  Would Lee order Graysha off Goddard on that shuttle? If so, she’d have to find some place to hide. Period. End of story. She was not leaving—

  What, she wondered, was Ari MaiJidda doing at this moment? Laying another trap, deadlier than the last?

  Trev returned. “We need broth cultures of every one,” she told him, pointing at Varberg’s array. “All 192 strains.”

  He groaned. “You have an idea.”

  “I have an idea.” She switched on her flame sterilizer and went to work. One row of fresh inoculations was nearly filled when she sensed a frigid stare. She turned her head. Melantha Lee stood in the center of the doorway. Her round face seemed to float between her iron-­gray hair and dark business suit.

  “Dr. Lee,” she said. “Good morning.”

  “Hello, Trev. How do you feel, Graysha?”

  “Much better, thank you.” Reach for the next tube. Dip the micropipette. You will finish this job.

  “Dr. GurEshel has been looking for you.”

  Graysha watched her tubes. “I suppose she would be. I feel fine.” Trev’s head swiveled at the edge of her peripheral vision. She ignored his curious stare.

  “I told her I hadn’t seen you,” Lee said. “It was true . . . then.”

  Sample into the tube, swirl. She glanced at Dr. Lee.

  The Gaea supervisor held both hands at her sides, tilting her head to look down at Graysha like Varberg had done. “I have a priority soils titration that needs to be done today.”