Shivering World

by Kathy Tyers

  Graysha turned toward him, startled.

  “Yes, he said rebuild.” Ari leaned away from her desk. “Your mother’s assistant sent an air-­to-­ground missile into the facility fifty-­five minutes ago. That doesn’t change your mind, does it?”

  “Not at all. But can your researchers really—”

  “Until the commissioner is offworld,” Ari said sharply, “and you still stand here, I will tell you nothing more. I think you can understand—you better than anyone else—our need for security.”

  “Yes,” Graysha whispered.

  In the distance, a roar rumbled skyward. Graysha looked out the window and caught a glimpse of smoke trail.

  “First load off,” Taidje announced.

  “Just a minute,” said the secretary at Ari’s terminal. “Something just came over the net: ‘Alert, Axis Plantation. Dr. Graysha Brady-­Phillips did not report to the evacuation station with the rest of Gaea staff. She is believed to have been kidnapped by former Axis Chair DalLierx. Commissioner Brady-­Phillips authorizes full pardon and a five—’ ” the secretary hesitated, then read on. “ ‘Five-­thousand-­maxim reward, payable immediately, for information leading to the apprehension of DalLierx or restoration of Dr. Graysha Brady-­Phillips to the Axis co-­op within the two-­hour period before second lander takeoff at approximately six-­thirty. Dr. Brady-­Phillips must be unharmed for the reward to be honored.’ ”

  Graysha shook her head. Loose hair flapped against her shoulders. “She still thinks she’s trying to save me.”

  “Lindon,” Ari said, glancing at the door, “you’ll notice no one’s asking for you to be unharmed. Get her out of here and get her hidden before I decide to pick up a pardon and a little spending money.”

  ―――

  At last, Trev got through to the CA offices. In an instant, he found himself faced with a staggering choice: throw in with the colonists, who were risking everything to stay on, or go home with Blase?

  No choice at all. He wasn’t afraid of risks, and hunger had never hurt him before.

  Gaea was confiscating the boron ore he’d found. So what? There would be more, and he’d find it. Goddard would need prospectors worse than ever. Maybe Yukio would work with him.

  Blase would come back, he guessed, scouting for more and better ores to invest in . . . and hunting Trev in the wild.

  A terrannum and eight months, and he’d be legal age. Hiding that long was worth trying. He knew how to kludge, sneak, and pilfer. He’d find a cave. Graysha would help—that is, he assumed she was staying.

  He crept back to his hiding place behind Ari’s prized ferns. He simply had to lie here and wait for the Gaea lander to ferry its second load away. In two hours, Trevarre Chase-­Frisson LZalle would be almost a free man.

  He just hoped he’d be able to find Dutchy. That would be one mad little weasel cat.

  ―――

  Graysha hurried with Lindon back down the CA building stairs, hardly daring to hope they could pass through the corridors unseen by Lwuites hungry for pardon and the proffered reward. She hated to run and hide, but short of demanding an armed escort, she could think of no other way to keep from being dragged on board that lander.

  “This way,” Lindon said softly when they reached the lowest landing. He opened a narrow door across from the corridor arch. To her surprise, she stepped outdoors onto an unsheltered balcony. Freezing wind whipped her loose hair and stole her breath.

  Lindon stripped off his gray wool jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “We’re not as likely to be spotted out here, but it won’t be safe for long.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a straight shot over the hub to Wastewater.”

  She glanced up. Nearly at its zenith, Eps Eri shone red through the incoming clouds.

  Lindon plunged down metal-­grate stairs and waited at the bottom. By the time she reached him, she’d managed to thrust her arms into his jacket. Ragged clouds hurried overhead, chased by the oncoming storm. She scrambled across piles of rubble laid down to protect Axis’s residents from ultraviolet radiation, and that reminded her to squint. Ankle-­high dwarfalfa stems tugged her feet on the way over one edge of the hub. Lindon avoided the skylight, keeping to its southerly side, and led to a blockhouse not far away.

  Once inside the blockhouse, they pounded downstairs. It was a short dash up the empty Gaea corridor to Wastewater. Graysha sank panting onto the pebbled walkway.

  “You’re getting better,” he remarked. “There was a time when running that far would have made you very sick.”

  “I guess you’re right.” She caught a breath of fragrant air and listened to warm water trickle down raceways. Lindon fiddled with the door, wedging it shut with one foot.

  “Will it lock from inside?” she asked, pulling off his jacket and then her own. Wastewater air seemed stifling after that run outdoors.

  “I don’t think so—”

  Something hit the door from the other side. She scrambled to her feet.

  “Hide,” he whispered.

  “You too.” She splashed through the nearest raceway onto a narrow concrete dry strip, behind tall cattails along the wall. Kneeling, she strained to listen.

  Low male voices drifted unintelligibly above the water’s noise for a minute before Lindon’s rose. “It’s all right. It’s Kevan.”

  Graysha stood up. Lindon’s brawny brother carried a D-­group pistol inside his belt. She worked her way cautiously up the raceway and then sat down, pulling off her soaked shoes and stockings. “Good thing it’s so warm in here,” she said. “I guess I panicked.”

  “I can understand that.” Kevan grinned down at her—way down. He stood half a head taller than Lindon.

  “Did someone send you here?” she asked.

  “Ari.” Lindon frowned. “She sent him to help us, but that worries me. If this was the first place she thought of, we’ll have others here soon.”

  Graysha pursed her lips. “Mother will send the nettech. I know enough about those people to be afraid of them. We’d better go somewhere else. Someplace that wouldn’t occur to Ari or my mother.”

  “Pastor’s study?” Kevan suggested.

  Lindon nodded. “She probably wouldn’t think of that.”

  “Maybe not.” Graysha sat down cross-­legged, wishing she could think of some brilliant place of concealment. “But the nettech will have an infrared snoop scope, and our footprints will show up as warm spots. The less we travel, upside or down, the better.”

  “Yes,” Lindon said reluctantly. “Is there anywhere close?”

  “The Gaea building has plenty of little hiding spaces.” As soon as she said it, though, she shook her head. “Too likely to be searched.” She stared around the wastewater plant, biting her lip. “What time is it?”

  “Five o’clock,” Kevan said.

  ―――

  The ExPress relief pilot scurried around the co-­op, distributing sickness bags and skin patches, warning Gaea people that this flight—after inadequate fasting—would be less than comfortable. Ignoring him, Novia leaned forward over her table. “Totally destroyed?” she asked.

  Jambling smiled back, the satisfaction in his eyes making her nervous. He’d just checked back in. “Not one block left standing on another. It wasn’t quite evacuated, either. I got warm spots on the snoop just before I fired.”

  “That’s their worry. I need you to find Graysha.”

  “I saw your message on the net. Sounds like you’d just as soon have DalLierx iced.”

  After all Novia had done for Gray—two terrannums of waiting for that opening, careful planning, strings pulled, the risk to her own career . . . Novia hadn’t known she could feel such self-­righteous anger.

  “Kill him if you have to, just keep him from molesting my daughter. You have an hour and a half, maybe two or three if the weather holds.”

  “And if I don’t find her by then?”

  Novia lowered her voice and fingered a rough sp
ot on the table. “Are you afraid of spending a few weeks here?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. Then the lander can take off on schedule, ahead of the storm. They’ll think you went with me and come out of hiding. Once you catch her, take a secure position—give her a quiet pill, for her own sake—and signal the shuttle. You’ll have to protect yourself from them, as well as the weather.”

  “I can take care of myself. And them,” he added. “You should have seen their so-­called defenses at Port Arbor.”

  “You will not harm Graysha.” Novia loaded her voice with threat. “Do you understand? I am sending you back out there with only one purpose. To get her safely offworld. To me.”

  Copernicus had excellent euthanasia facilities. Graysha would not suffer.

  And then Novia’s conscience could rest.

  Deep Soup

  Graysha looked back and forth across the raceways, breathing the warm green exhalations of thousands of plants. “If only there were someplace we could hide in here. It’s almost warm enough that he’d have trouble using the IR snoop—” Her eyes caught on the huge glass tanks along the south wall. “Wait a minute.”

  Lindon and Kevan followed her up the pebbled raceway.

  “Any one of those is big enough to hold two people, even if both of them were Kevan’s size.” Lindon tapped an algae tank.

  “One thing concerns me,” she said. “Temperature. It wouldn’t take long to die of hypothermia if they were only a few degrees too cold.” She examined the sampling panel.

  “Well?” Kevan asked.

  She turned back around. “No thermometer. Guessing from ambient air temp, they might be a little cool. But that hour and a half until the second lander takeoff is a long time in even slightly cool water.”

  Lindon looked dubiously at the roiling black sludge in the aeration tanks on his left.

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly, “they’re warmer. But bacteriologically speaking, that is not a good place to be. We’d sink like stones. It’s something about the chemistry in there.”

  Kevan raised an eyebrow. “Good thing we have you along. I would’ve thought they’d be perfect. Warm, dark . . .”

  “Algae,” Graysha said, “smells bad enough.”

  Lindon shook his head ruefully. “I hate to remind you two, but I lost my sense of smell when I was poisoned. This will be worse for Graysha than for me.”

  “You’d be harder to see in the sludge,” Kevan pointed out.

  Lindon tilted his chin and grinned up at Kevan. “Do you have it in for me, little brother?”

  Graysha shook her head. “Don’t even think about it. We’ve always been taught the sludge tanks are deadly, Kevan.”

  “I’m willing to try the corridors,” Lindon said.

  Kevan frowned.

  Lindon straightened his gray suit coat over his arm. “Graysha, could we catch anything dangerous from the algae? Would we ruin the colony’s water supply?”

  “No,” she murmured, “on both counts. I can readjust the microbial pops later, just like the raceways out here. The little shrimps living in there don’t bite, either.” She slipped behind one tall tank for a closer look. Narrow metal service ladders mounted the back of each tank. “If I’m right about tank design, there’ll be rungs inside them, too.”

  In another minute’s hurried debate, they finalized a plan. Kevan cut long breathing reeds for each, not to be used unless the nettech actually entered the wastewater plant.

  Graysha led up the central ladder, wearing Lindon’s wool jacket again, clutching the reeds in one hand. Perched at the top, she caught her balance. “Okay,” she said, “these are simple mag clamps holding the lids shut. Don’t close them on us, Kevan.”

  “You can keep your heads above water inside.”

  “Yes, enough to breathe for a while. But please don’t close the clamps. Claustrophobia would finish me.”

  “We still haven’t decided it’s warm enough in there.” Kevan handed up their shoes and her suit jacket, tied together and weighted with raceway stones.

  She lifted the clear glass lid, took a last gulp of clean air, and swept a foot into the water. “It’s warm,” she said, deeply relieved. “It’s actually warm.” Frowning, she dropped the knotted bundle into roiling deep green water. “Novia,” she groaned, “you owe me for this.”

  She checked her pants pocket and made sure she still had her lockdown key, then turned and started descending the interior rungs. “It’s warm, all right,” she said as it lapped at her calves, then her thighs. “Not bad at all,” she added for Lindon’s sake, then kicked off the rungs and plunged into the soupy water to her shoulders, trying not to breathe deeply. The musky smell was inescapable. She found another rung with one foot and then squeezed aside so Lindon could climb in. “One hand to hold on with, one to hold the reeds. This is going to work, Kevan.”

  Lindon started down stocking-­footed. The water level rose as he descended until less than a quarter meter of air remained under the tank lid.

  “Check this.” Kevan pointed right and left. “This tank sticks out like three sore thumbs.”

  “It should drain down to equilibrium.” Graysha eyed a thin line of scum that collected on the ladder. “Yes, look. The level’s dropping.”

  “Don’t go under unless you have to,” Kevan warned. “You lose a lot of body heat through your head.”

  “And we won’t be able to see at all once we’re down.” Churning water clutched at her loose hair. She shuddered at the slimy touch. “How will we know if it’s safe to come up?”

  “I’ll pat anything I can reach underwater twice if I come for you and you’re under. Good luck.” Kevan dropped the lid, and it thudded home.

  Water-­borne touches against her arms and legs had to be shrimp grazing on the algae. The smell had vaguely fishy undertones. As Kevan hurried out, the soft hiss of tiny bubbles breaking at the water’s surface made Graysha laugh softly.

  “What?” Lindon’s head appeared to float less than a meter away. Down one of his cheeks, a thin green stripe dribbled.

  “Soup.” She chuckled again. “Trev would say we’re in ‘deep soup’ now.”

  Smiling, he pressed her hand on the ladder rung. “Warm enough?”

  “Just fine.” She could stand this for an hour and a half, or even a little more.

  Clinging to the ladder at her right side, Lindon settled into a brace position and watched the door through the tank’s clear wall.

  ―――

  Jambling pulled the IR snoop off his right eye. Down this deserted northerly corridor, he’d followed the lingering infrared signature of two sets of footprints leading to a single door. Only one led away. He disrupted its lock and slowly slid the door open. “Come out,” he called, crouching to level his trank gun into a tangle of ferns, “and you won’t be harmed.”

  No one answered. One-­handed, he brought the snoop back down. Someone lay along the nearest wall, a clear and easy shot. He took it, counted a slow ten while echoes of the trank gun’s zing died in his ears, then cautiously walked in to claim his prey.

  ―――

  Novia stroked the tight black ball she’d recognized as Graysha’s pet when Jambling sent it up from her room with Paul Ilizarov. She liked that young Russian. He’d admitted a particular distaste for Lindon DalLierx, so when he offered help, she hired him.

  Four tables away, across the co-­op, Blase LZalle’s shouting match with Flora Hauwk—over the share of boron ore he already imagined was his own—made it hard to think. It took the combined efforts of three Gaea men and that tall, strong black woman to hold them apart.

  Her com emitted a soft tone. She held it to her ear. “Thought I’d found her,” muttered Jambling’s voice, “but it’s the LZalle kid. He’s tranked. Instructions?”

  LZalle Senior stomped the floor to emphasize a point. Novia stifled the temptation to gloat. LZalle’s money couldn’t buy help from Supervisor Hauwk—or the love of his only son. Hauwk had ordered Trev
arre bound over to his father, but Novia did not feel compelled to comply.

  All this baffled her. Both their children had chosen isolation, hunger, and lingering death on undeveloped regolith, while habitat life was secure and tightly controlled. “Leave him,” she grumbled into the com. She went back to stroking the velvety gribien. It calmed her.

  Something crashed against the upside stair. The ExPress relief pilot clumped downstairs, slamming the door behind him. “It’s getting wild out there,” he called. “Sorry, we can’t delay. When that lander gets back, we’d better take off. No more waiting.”

  Blase LZalle froze in position, a red-­haired statue carved in black. From across the co-­op, Flora Hauwk raised an eyebrow at Novia.

  LZalle, Novia reflected, could afford to come back to Goddard on his own. He wouldn’t need EB help. She and Hauwk had business to conclude. As the pilot said, No more waiting.

  But this was her last chance, too. She balled one fist and struck the table. The gribien curled tighter still.

  She touched the com’s Alert button.

  A few seconds later, it said, “Yo.”

  Novia held the com close to her mouth. “Go to the new chair. MaiJidda. Find out whatever she knows about Graysha.”

  He started sending eight minutes later, as all around her Gaea personnel gathered up belongings and started to form a line. “MaiJidda talks very well with a minimum of persuasion,” he said. “Graysha has chosen to stay here with the colonists. MaiJidda told her to hide, but there’s no love there. I’m on my way to check out the locale she suspects. Take off without me if you have to.”

  Novia felt her facial muscles go slack. Graysha chose to stay behind, just as she’d feared. She wished DalLierx dead. No—imprisoned, helpless, emasculated.

  Her conscience demanded she confess hatred as sinful. It demeaned the holy human organism, flooding her bloodstream with harmful substances.