by Kathy Tyers
As the voice droned on, cartons kept coming, these filled with delicate surgical equipment. Not one person abandoned his or her place.
Her arms ached, her back cramped, and her legs were ready to buckle when she heard the amplified voice again. “Thirty seconds. Take cover if you can hear my voice. Take cover.” At last, people started racing downstairs. Each one clutched one last carton. “Come on,” Jaq cried as he caught up with her.
Libby dashed with him around one more bend, then fell behind a massive natural wall and covered her face with both arms. Jaq set down a flask and knelt over her, shielding her body with his own.
―――
Blase LZalle sat on Trev’s bed. Trapped inside his tiny clean room, Trev perched on the toilet’s lid.
“We’ll be leaving in forty minutes.” His father’s voice came through the door, which was jammed shut with everything Trev could find, but couldn’t be locked. “You don’t need to pack. I have everything you’ll need.”
Including, Trev guessed, cooperation drugs. He wiped sweat from his forehead. He wouldn’t need so much as a change of shorts for transport if Blase meant to keep him harmoniously tranked.
Homing instinct and sheer bad judgment had driven him back here to his private little hole. Blase had arrived almost immediately. Someone on staff, forever condemned in Trev’s mind, had given him a master key.
How ironic that he’d hoped Blase would back him. He was taking revenge on Goddard, all right. “Love the hair, Blase. And the new chin, too. Great.”
“Next time, I can see I’m going to have to ask for a four-striped nose,” came the voice. “What have you been doing? Face it, Trevarre”—Blase’s voice became sweet and calculated as he switched on the vocal doubler—“you have to come out. Gaea personnel are being evacuated.”
“You want to get mad at somebody?” Trev called. “Take it out on Gaea, not the colonists. You could get even richer here. They’re just going to abandon the place. Think of it—a whole planet!”
“We’re leaving. Now. The colonists are, too.”
“No!”
“Yes. Some this trip, the rest in a few weeks, once the Eugenics Board can get a transport here.”
Trev’s stomach curdled.
“Exalted Ms. Novia already called for it, and three more medical teams. You want to come along now, or do you want to go when the colonists do and take a dose of full-body irradiation along the way?”
“Get out of my room.” Trev pushed open the door a few centimeters. “Get out of my life. Leave me alone.”
“Out of your life? I gave you life, boy.”
“But it’s mine now, mine to live.”
“Come home where you belong and we’ll forget it was my money you spent on shuttle fare off Earth.”
“Mine,” Trev cried. “You gave it to me!”
“For surgery,” Blase shouted back. Trev could tell his father had reached the end of what little patience he started with.
“You never even missed it. Listen, you’ll recoup that much and more from the boron ore, if you come back for it. I’ll be your agent, your onsite rep. Nobody here cares what I look like. I’ll be legal age in a terrannum and eight months.”
Behind Blase’s legs, browncloth rippled. Dutchy. In an instant, Trev saw a new possibility. “Dutch, wake up. Want a treat?”
The kitten sprang out of hiding and pranced toward him, short tail erect and quivering.
“Cat, huh? Nice healthy one.” Blase reached down to pet Dutch.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Trev said. Dutchy whirled around, snarling out a hiss.
Blase’s recoil was Trev’s chance. Yanking open the heavy door, he scooped up the kitten and threw him into Blase’s face. “Treat, Dutchy, treat,” he yelled. Dutchy might bite or follow, but Trev didn’t have time to reason it out. He’d spotted a trank gun on his bedcover.
He ran hard, without looking back, until he made it out of Gaea housing into the hub. The absolute-black shadow followed. Choosing a corridor at random, he ran north for it at full speed, scattering knots of Lwuites. He knew of only one door up this corry that opened to him: Ari’s greenhouse, left around the first bend.
Left, then right, then two, three, four doors, and he flung himself at the fifth. He dove through and locked it from the inside, not much better off than he’d been before. Blase still had that master key.
But maybe he hadn’t seen which door Trev chose. He stood panting, trying to swallow. Maybe, if he was lucky, the master key only opened Gaea housing. He dove onto the pebbled floor behind Ari’s lushest ferns.
Ten minutes later, he’d heard no sign of the door opening. His heart slowed down enough to let him think.
Gaea was pulling out. It was going to happen within the hour.
After that, the EB would come for the colonists. Well . . . he wasn’t a colonist, and no one was going to shine a radiation torch on him because . . .
That didn’t wash, either. He had no ID. The EB would have no reason to believe him if he claimed he was no Lwuite.
They’d have to catch him first, he decided. Ari couldn’t afford to turn away D-group volunteers now. She was probably his only chance to claim protection.
Pebbles kneaded his stomach as he crawled to a small com unit he’d seen on her worktable. He tried calling her office but got a busy signal, tried again with the same result, then again, then again. Everyone on site was probably trying to call her.
He rolled away from the table, pulled his knees up against his chest, and clasped his hands around them. His best chance, then, was to lie low right here.
Solitaire
Lindon heard wind gust past Ari’s window, and the building’s concrete corners howled an answer. The First and Second Circles of Axis, Hannes, Center, and Port Arbor, communicating online for fifteen minutes, hadn’t reached an agreement on the Brady-Phillips ultimatum nor on Ari’s insistence Lindon be charged with collaboration. She still wasn’t letting him leave, and some of his friends were shooting hostile looks.
“Chair MaiJidda,” said the secretary, “we have another power drain in the Gaea building.”
Ari turned aside, frowning at the small desktop speaker. “Then it can’t be a line malfunction. What are you reading?”
“Usage on fifth floor. Five outlets active now.”
Ari slid her chair aside and typed in a code, then peered at the screen. “This is an inventory of some kind being scrolled. Bacterial, I think.” She cocked one eyebrow. “Lindon, it appears your Dr. Brady-Phillips is entering new data, negative reports on the inhibition of S. gaeaii. That’s our CFC killer, isn’t it?”
Kenn walked around the desk and read off the screen. “Why? Lindon . . .”
“Yes,” said Ari, and when she looked up, it was at Lindon. “You told her ‘everything,’ as you so demurely put it, and we know you for a man of your word. That means the two of you have discussed marriage. Am I correct?”
Lindon felt his cheeks flush. Evidently he still was not a private person. “Yes, but only in general terms.”
“Get over there. We don’t dare use the net. Get a commitment—now—and then hide her.”
This woman, he reminded himself, wanted to be a prophet, a speaker for God Almighty. “No one,” he insisted, “has the right to force Graysha to stay here, not in her medical condition. She—”
“I think you could,” she said quietly, “with a face like yours. Remember what she wants from us. She’d stay on and help us finish Gaea’s work if you asked outright. We’d have a chance of survival if she could fix the CFC layer. It certainly would influence my vote.”
“That kind of personal pressure is not fair. There are spiritual issues. She has barely—”
Ari slammed one fist on the desk. “Lack of hostile aggressiveness is one thing. Lack of guts is another. Do you think God wants your daughters to freeze to death or die irradiated in prison? Sarai is emotionally crippled already.”
She wanted guts? He shouted. “Why do yo
u want Graysha now? You tried to kill her. Three times. Are you going to try again after she saves us—if she can carry it off?”
“All I want,” Ari said in a rising voice, “all I’ve ever wanted, is to see this colony survive. There was a time when she was a danger to us, through you. Now we’re in the worst situation possible, thanks again to you, Judas.”
Taidje extended a hand between them. “Lindon, one trained terraformer, no matter how inexperienced, willing to train others, might tip the balance in our favor. She will not be harmed. Correct, Ari?”
Ari continued to stare narrow-eyed. “While you are gone, we will take a preliminary vote on whether to evacuate.”
The thought of sending Graysha away with her mother sliced through Lindon’s heart—and really, his hopes had not changed. “I’ll check in from the Gaea building,” he said.
“Be careful,” Taidje suggested. “She might not be alone.”
―――
Graysha jumped and shifted her grip on a 10-ml tube when Lindon slipped into her lab and shut the door behind him. “Did she hurt you?” he asked urgently. He still wore the elegant short coat, but long dusty smudges marked his fine slacks.
Thank God it wasn’t Novia—or Paul! She’d half expected to catch a breath of citrus lab lotion. She set the tube in a rack. “Only where it doesn’t show. What are you doing here?”
“I came to ask you the same thing. Graysha, Ari wants to know if you intend to stay here. But I didn’t come here as her messenger. Tell me . . .”
She wanted to hold him again. She wished she’d known him at Einstein—except there, he wouldn’t even have spoken to her. “I mean to stay,” she said simply, “if you do.”
Lindon took a step toward her window and looked out, down toward the barns and crop fields. “To me, Goddard is the choice of hope, and evacuation is despair. I tried to convince them, but I’m not sure how the vote will go. First Circle committee members are probably voting. I’d check in, but I don’t dare use the net.”
“Of course not.” She dropped her second tube of mingled S. gaeaii and another strep strain into the spectrophotometer’s tube port.
―――
Ari MaiJidda glared up at Kenn VandenNeill. “I don’t believe this,” she snarled.
“It is ironic.” He thumbed the Acknowledge key.
She felt cold, and bitterly cheated. Of the electronically assembled CA committees, eleven First Circle members had voted to stay and eleven to evacuate, with two abstaining. She wanted to fling those numbers at Lindon and drop the weight of fifteen thousand lives like a millstone back on his shoulders, but on that issue, the others had outvoted her. He would not be told that he held the deciding vote until he cast it. Lindon—Lindon alone, after all her maneuvering—would decide the fate of Gaea colony.
“Get me a cup of coffee, someone,” she demanded.
―――
Lindon’s warm hand closed around Graysha’s arm. “I won’t ask you to stay for my sake, because the vote could go to evacuate. I can’t ask you to share prison. But—”
“Why not?” she interrupted. “I’d be responsible for putting you there. Just like the—”
“If we accept Novia’s terms, that will be our decision, not yours. There are twenty-five First Circle members. That spreads out the authority—and the responsibility. It lets each one of us vote according to our conscience.”
“So,” she asked, setting down another tube, “why did Ari send you over?”
“Because I’m responsible for the automatic conviction, if anyone is.”
That didn’t seem to follow. Unless— “Because you were afraid Novia would find out things, from me. Because you told me everything and wanted to—”
“To convince you to marry me. Eventually.”
Her breath caught before he spoke the last word. Slightly deflated, she reached for one more tube. “In a couple of minutes, we’ll eliminate one more possibility. I could set up the entire sequence of 192 cultures for a tech to read, but I don’t have a tech anymore. I could leave with Novia now—and I could lobby against EB actions from Copernicus. But Lindon, if your people leave Goddard, that will be . . .” She imagined the hideous effects of full-body irradiation. “You mustn’t,” she finished weakly.
“The vote will be close, I think. We don’t want to watch our children freeze or starve.”
“But you don’t want to watch them die of a dozen different cancers over the next ten years. That would be even crueler.”
He lowered his eyes. “They might suffer one way or the other, or for some reason we don’t even foresee. There are no guarantees of an easy life. Only eternity is certain.”
Plainly, Lindon—a father of two—was still trying to spare her the pressure of deciding for the whole Lwuite colony. “Did you come over here only because Ari ordered you to?”
He closed his hands around her shoulders. “No! I want a good life for you, Graysha. I can’t ask you to give up medical support.”
She crossed her arms, laying one hand on each of his. “People do strange things for love. Ask me, not for Ari, and not to soothe your conscience. Do you want to know if I love you?”
His shoulders rose, then gradually dropped. “If the vote goes to stay,” he said slowly, “and if you’re willing to stay, I’d like you to stay as my wife. Help us survive. Help me. But if they decide to evacuate,” he added, sliding his hands down to grasp her upper arms, “go away with Novia on that second lander flight and do what you can for us offworld. Please. She already knows everything about us, doesn’t she?”
Graysha set down the tube she was holding, acutely aware of Lindon’s warm hands on her arms, of the faintly musky smell clinging to his fine clothing and the protectiveness in his voice. “She knew before she got here, Lindon. She didn’t even interrogate me.”
His eyebrows rose. “What did she do?”
“She tried to save me . . . from you.” And this time she strangled her compulsive honesty instead of telling him Novia had meant for her own genetic healing to condemn his people. “I won’t leave you to end your life in a prison alone,” she added. “Don’t ask me to. Don’t think so little of me.”
He slipped one arm around her waist. “Here, in habitats, or on Earth, we all live in God’s hands. There is no safer place.”
She pressed to him, crossing her hands behind his back, and he lifted her chin with one hand. Slowly he kissed her, then he pulled back just far enough that his lips brushed hers when he spoke. “Would you marry me, then, either way? If the vote goes to evacuate, I’ll probably be the first one on the irradiation table.”
“Yes. I will,” she said, “either way.” She kissed him again, silencing his fear. His hand curled around the back of her head. She grabbed the hair tie off the nape of her neck and flung it away. “I wasn’t supposed to have children anyway.” She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and tried not to sound bitter. “If I can’t have gene-healed children, I’ll have none. Let Novia live with a little of the same anguish and emptiness she has caused other people. But you already have a family. Will Bee and Sarai accept me?”
“They already like you.”
Pushing away, she glanced over her shoulder at the water bath. Nearly 190 samples remained to be run through Jirina’s spectrophotometer. “Tell Chair MaiJidda I’ll stay with your people. Here or . . . wherever.”
“Can you leave these for a while without ruining them? She’ll need to hear it from you.”
She hesitated. What difference would an hour make? “Yes. I’ll lock down. Since I’m staying for a while one way or the other, it won’t make any difference whether we get our readings now or later.”
“What if we vote to stay and there’s nothing here to kill that organism?”
She didn’t want to answer. “Lindon, how will you vote?”
He pulled her against him. “I’ve prayed over and over for the right desires. I have only one now.”
“You want to stay,” she guessed.
>
“I do.”
―――
Ari MaiJidda sat erect behind her desk, hands folded on its surface. Graysha read defiance in that posture.
“So you still claim you mean to help us,” she said to Graysha. Then she glared at Lindon. “We’re staying. By one vote.”
Graysha thought Lindon looked a little pale. He’d said he would vote to stay. One vote—his vote, after all—had established their course. Their doom, maybe.
She thrust trembling hands into her pockets. “I don’t know if you care, Chair MaiJidda, but Commissioner Brady-Phillips learned nothing new from me, except the fact that Lindon and I are close. The conviction was already registered. She only needed physical confirmation. Cheek scrapings, blood samples. You’ll eventually hear from the test victims.”
MaiJidda did not sound impressed. “There are people who will die because of this decision, Doctor. There is no escaping that.”
She felt Lindon’s warmth close to her right shoulder. “I’m one of them,” she said. “And it won’t be long for me, compared with some of your people.”
MaiJidda crossed her forearms on the desk. “That’s correct.”
“I can teach your young people, though. That’s a legacy I would like to leave.”
The others in Ari’s office—Graysha recognized Taidje FreeLand by his shock of white hair—exchanged glances. Ari asked, “What if your present experiment fails?”
What could she do against an unending ice age? “I don’t know,” she said softly. Outside, the wind gusted again. “I can only promise my best effort, with God’s help.”
MaiJidda’s eyes narrowed. “So, you’re one of them now.”
“Yes. I am.”
The CCA scowled. “Congratulations, Lindon.”
“Chair MaiJidda,” Lindon said, “Graysha is leaving all hope of medical aid. She deserves our promise that we will try to heal her genes, both those she will pass on and those . . . killing her.”
“There is no assurance we can do either.” Kenn VandenNeill looked pale, standing close to the depolarized window, and Graysha guessed he’d voted to evacuate. “Our access to USSC net is due to shut down immediately, with no medical exceptions, because as the commissioner put it, this is a ‘medical offense.’ And it will take months to rebuild Port Arbor Clinic.”
