He sighed. “And then we came here, and it’s like an honest-to-god paradise – you have no idea. Me and the others, we’re all bug-eyed just watching you all. Everyone’s so healthy and wholesome, it’s like seeing a movie from a hundred years ago. Fresh food straight out of the ground – have you any idea how rare that is on Earth anymore? And good-looking, healthy kids running around playing games outside like it’s the most natural thing ever.”
Ernie shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
“And so …” John prompted.
“… and so you’re wondering why I don’t jump at your offer like I just won the lottery?” He sighed again. “It’s what we had to do, John. To get ourselves on that ship, we had to sell our souls to that sonofabitch.”
Ernie didn’t mention him by name, but John had no doubts about who he meant.
“Him and that bitch of his. I sometimes wonder which of them is worse.” He gazed at the wall as he leaned there, letting the seconds slip by.
John waited.
Ernie looked up. “Edward’s got us lock, stock, and barrel. Our contracts bind us to his service for the whole time we’re here and the journey back. Oh yes,” he said, seeing John’s surprise, “that’s part of it. We’re only here a couple years to do a specific job, then we go back. That’s the deal.”
He shifted his feet and looked at John with a haunted expression. “He’s got our families, John. Not our immediate families – apart from the paying passengers, none of us here have kids – the rest of our families, back on Earth. Edward’s got this massive stasis facility under the ground in Greenland. There’s tens of thousands of people down there, all in fusion-powered stasis chambers, waiting for our return, waiting for the radiation to fade away. We’re the only thing keeping them alive.”
John swallowed. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Earth’s a long way away, Ernie.”
Ernie shrugged. “Are you willing to bet he wouldn’t send a signal telling them to cut our families loose?”
John felt sick, and this time he had trouble meeting Ernie’s eyes.
“No. No, I guess not.”
“So, a definite ‘no’?” David asked.
John nodded. “I could tell he wanted to say yes, but Harper’s got his nuts in his hand right now. I think he’d agree in a heartbeat if that changed.”
David, John, and Grace walked outside, following the Haven River down to the lake.
“How did it go with Kevin?” Grace asked, turning to David.
“I had better luck with him – he doesn’t have Ernie’s problem. None of them do – they all paid for their ride.”
“I’ve been wondering about that – Harper doesn’t seem like someone who would care about keeping that kind of agreement. Why didn’t he just ditch them and bring more of his own people?”
“Ernie says he does care,” John said. “He’s known for being a complete hard-ass and treating his employees like cattle, but he prides himself on keeping promises. He sold these people a ticket and he kept his word. Ernie says they got a better deal than the others because they had emergency evacuation plans in place. When the shit hit the fan they flew by charter jets to shuttles dedicated for their use and went straight from there to the Inspiration. Everyone arrived within a few hours.”
“I guess five billion will get you premium service,” David said.
“Yeah, well apparently it wasn’t so smooth for the others,” John said. “Some professionals aren’t the ones Harper meant to bring, they had to round up some ringers to make up the shortfall at the last minute. The security staff aren’t the originals, either. Ernie says they got caught up in some action on the ground, so they just grabbed whoever they could find.”
“Not very reassuring,” Grace said.
“Not at all,” David agreed.
“So, about Kevin,” John said.
“Yes, Kevin. He accepted the job. He’s an interesting sort – Special Forces in his past or I’ll eat my hat. He’s agreed to try to coordinate the passengers – he wouldn’t commit to complete success, as some of them are difficult to manage, as we’ve already discovered.”
John and Grace lifted their eyebrows, then laughed. “That’s an understatement.”
David grinned. “Well, I guess we can see it from their point of view. They’re used to getting anything they want with a snap of their fingers. Now they have nothing and they simply don’t know how to survive in a world without money.”
“They’d better bloody learn,” John said, “or they’ll go hungry.”
“Fascinating,” Scott Brand said, examining the squidge skeleton at close quarters. The yellowed bones of the creature looked just like the skeleton of a terrestrial animal, the obvious exception being the six legs.
The professor had a row of ten skeletons lined up in front of him for inspection. To his delight, he’d discovered the large number of squidge skeletons meant he could have as many as he liked.
“You’ve noticed, huh?” Josh asked.
“It’s hard to miss. These creatures are all so similar it’s difficult not to draw the conclusion the genetic diversity among them must have been minimal.”
Nigel grunted. “I have a hypothesis they didn’t reproduce sexually.”
“Hmmm. It’s possible, I suppose. Unfortunately, we’ve missed our chances to find out for sure by … a few thousand years?”
“So far as we can tell, it must be at least ten thousand,” Nigel replied.
“But these bones are so well-preserved.”
“There’s definitely something screwy about the whole thing,” Josh said. “From what we can tell, this planet once had an ecosphere containing plants and insect-like creatures, both on land and in the sea. There’s not much evidence left of other life forms – we think their tissues must have been soft, unlike the trees and insects that evolved on Earth. But somehow these creatures,” he indicated the squidges, “evolved very rapidly, before some kind of disaster that eradicated all life. It’s still an unsolved mystery.”
Scott frowned. “What disaster would remove evidence of other life forms, cause these creatures to bury themselves in pits, and let their bodies decompose? I mean, there is no evidence of any soft tissues anywhere, right? And yet no bacteria that could’ve broken them down?”
Josh shrugged. “It must have been gradual. The microbes must have survived long enough to decompose the squidges’ bodies before dying off themselves.”
“Possibly, possibly. Have you found these creatures’ bones everywhere?”
“Everywhere we’ve looked, including Mu and Lemuria,” he said, referring to the other continents.
Scott leaned forward. “Do you have a map?”
Nigel answered. “Yes, we can pull one up. Do you have an idea?”
“I think so. First I need that map.”
“What are we supposed to do now? We don’t have access to computers or tools or raw materials. All we have are these,” Chuck Swanson said, waving a data pad. They found themselves at a loose end now they’d finished working on the houses.
The group of twenty – ten engineers and ten scientists – sat by the shore of Lake Cartier. By now they all had breather masks and reveled in the freedom to move around outside, although they had strict instructions to stay in pairs and be careful with their battery life.
“Well,” Ernie said, scratching his head, “I’m sure John would let us have access to anything we wanted, if we asked. The question is, what do we want?”
Silence fell for a moment. Most of them worked in aerospace. Spaceship designers, materials engineers, propulsion specialists, stasis specialists, electronics designers, software engineers, robotics specialists … the list went on. A small group, but the technology they’d brought with them magnified their reach and power many times.
“There’s a specific reason we’re here,” Eugene Holt stated. A physicist, one of the best Edward could buy, Eugene specialized in the physics behind the propulsion and stasis field
s.
“Something we’re not authorized to start work on,” Heinrich Schick said, a scowl forming on his face. “We have no authorization to do anything.”
Ernie suppressed a sigh. A stickler for following rules, Heinrich could be expected to follow Edward’s commands to the letter.
“We built some houses, didn’t we?” said Tracey Howells, squinting at Heinrich. One of the ringers, Tracey was a last-minute addition to the crew from the orbital shipyard when it became clear not all the designated engineers and scientists would make it. The antithesis to Heinrich, she always rolled up her sleeves and pitched in first, asking about rules and regulations second. A solid woman of around thirty-five, with short black tussled hair and callouses on her hands, Tracey might not have been sophisticated, but Ernie trusted her over Heinrich any day of the year.
“We had no authorization to do that,” Heinrich said.
“Oh, please. If we’d waited for Edward to tell us to help, you’d still be squattin’ in a tent and shittin’ in the woods.”
Heinrich’s face reddened and Ernie could see an argument brewing. Another one. This time he did sigh as he contemplated how some scientists seemed to have the social graces of three-year-olds.
“Look,” he said, heading off Heinrich’s retort. “We are free to help the colonists where it serves our own interests. I have that on good authority from Carla.”
That got their attention. They all knew Carla acted as Edward’s mouthpiece. If she said it, Edward willed it.
Tracey crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows in Heinrich’s direction. He scowled at her in response.
“I just want to do something. Anything useful,” Gena Sanchez said. A small, birdlike woman with a thin face and liquid brown eyes, she resonated nervous energy – energy that currently had nothing to expend itself on.
All eyes turned to Ernie. He had become their unofficial leader of sorts. Even Heinrich seemed to respect his levelheaded judgments. Ernie took care not to abuse the faith they put in him – an unofficial leader could only achieve so much. At the back of his mind he still thought about John’s offer and how much he regretted turning it down. Maybe, just maybe, he could prepare the way to change that position later.
He had an answer for them, one he thought would make most of them happy; one he’d already discussed with John and got his full agreement for. But he had to be careful not to force it on them – he wanted grassroots support.
“Well,” he said, feigning indifference, “I guess the situation is we’re allowed to pitch in so long as we don’t use any of the new tech we brought. If we do something that advances our cause while doing so, we’ll get the OK from Carla and Edward.”
Many of the others nodded as they followed his logic. Heinrich didn’t, but neither did he object.
“We need a project,” Tracey said.
“But what?” Chuck asked. “They’ve done a really good job on Haven, their mining site runs like clockwork, what does that leave for us to do?”
Ernie frowned in concentration. “Well, there is the spaceport …”
“Spaceport?” Gina’s eyes lit up. So did almost everyone else’s. “They have a spaceport?”
“No,” Ernie said. “That’s the project.”
All hell broke loose as nineteen excited people debated the possibilities. Well, eighteen, as Heinrich didn’t seem convinced.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Heinrich said, cutting through the clamor. “How can we build a spaceport without using technology we aren’t supposed to use?” He looked at Ernie. “This doesn’t make any sense, unless you mean just help put up some buildings.”
Ernie found himself the center of attention once more. “They have plans for that already, we just have to implement them. They know they can’t get their shuttle to orbit with the low oxygen levels, so they’re planning to use older technology to get there.”
He scanned the faces around him and saw they were hanging on his every word.
“They’re planning to build rockets.”
Ernie beamed as they competed to shout questions. He had them hooked.
The babble of voices died away as the hour drew late and people shuffled off home across the park.
The pavilion consisted of a large, open plan building with two rows of food preparation benches and open space for tables and chairs. One entire wall opened to the park, where tables were scattered outside under a pergola draped with fairy lights.
Several groups of night owls were still sitting out there, soaking up the mild atmosphere, nursing drinks and shooting the breeze.
Elizabeth was the last remaining volunteer for the evening. She finished tidying and mopping the counter tops, then stood watching the people outside, her eyes focused on one person: David. He sat in profile to her, the wash of light from the door detailing his face with shadows. John, Nigel, and Josh, were with him, the four of them joking and talking, as they so often did.
“You love him, don’t you?”
Elizabeth started. She’d forgotten there was another person in the pavilion, sitting at the back.
Carla.
Click, click, click. Carla’s boots echoed on the flagstones of the pavilion floor as she walked over.
“I’ve been watching you,” she said, leaning on the counter next to Elizabeth. “Whenever David’s where you are, your eyes start and end on him. And when you think you can get away with it, you stare at him. Like you did just now.”
Elizabeth blushed and looked down. “I-I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
Elizabeth stole a glance. Carla was smiling at her. Elizabeth didn’t like this strange foreign woman, but she had her trapped.
“I don’t blame you,” Carla said.
Elizabeth’s head jerked up. “You don’t?”
“No, of course not. I mean, look at him.”
Elizabeth’s eyes swiveled involuntarily to focus on David once more.
“He’s powerful, intelligent, and, let’s face it, incredibly good looking.”
Like many redheads, Elizabeth blushed readily, and this time she was sure the blush had reached her ears.
“Of course, I understand your dilemma. Being the eldest girl here and having no one else to turn to. And David, so handsome, so wonderful, and yet so married to Grace. Difficult.” She shook her head.
“I could never hurt Grace.” The words tumbled out before Elizabeth could stop herself.
“No, no, of course not. But sometimes, people change, you know? Even couples like David and Grace, they grow apart over time, and need to find someone new. It does happen, believe me. Everyone lives for so long. Who would expect a couple to stay together for a hundred years?”
Elizabeth stayed silent, but she listened.
“Of course, that might not be the case with David and Grace. But it doesn’t do any harm to keep one’s eyes open, does it?”
She drew closer to Elizabeth and stroked her hair once. She brought her lips close to Elizabeth’s ear and whispered, “Sometimes, if we wait long enough, what we want comes to us. But not often. Most times, if we want something, we have to go and get it.”
She drew back and looked at Elizabeth, who stared as if she’d never seen her before.
Carla smiled. “Poor Elizabeth. So pretty, and so full of love. You deserve better than to be sitting here pining away, don’t you think?”
She smiled once more before turning and walking away.
Click, click, click.
Sabine could tell that she terrified Suki, and let up on teasing her. They soon found common ground. The two had had similar childhoods, at least up to Suki’s age. They both came from wealthy families and had led sheltered lives when young.
Suki told Sabine all about her new friend, Mia, and how they’d starting hanging out with her and one of the other Haven boys, Nico Thompson.
“So what do you think of Mia?” Sabine asked. They sat on their beds hugging their knees to their chests, talking.
“Less sophisticated?”
“Yes,” Suki said, “but not in a bad way. It’s just they have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a city.”
“You know who they’re like?” Sabine asked.
“Who?”
“They’re just like kids from a small town. They don’t have the cool attitudes of the city kids, but they’re a hell of a lot more normal in lots of ways. More grounded.”
Suki nodded. “Yeah. Life for them is simpler – although they start work at ten, can you believe it?”
Sabine grinned. “They learn by doing here. They don’t think it’s work; to them it’s like another kind of play.”
“Yeah.” Suki’s eyes focused on something far in the distance only she could see. “I need to figure out what I want to do.”
Sabine’s lips parted as she realized she didn’t know what she would do now. “Mmmm,” she said. This required some thought. “So Mia’s OK, huh?”
Suki grinned. “Yeah. Scott thinks so.”
“Is that who he’s mooning over? I could see the signs.”
Suki’s brow furrowed. “Signs?”
“Of a love-sick teenager.”
“Oh. Do you think so?”
Sabine nodded. “Oh yeah.”
“Huh.”
“And what about this Nico?”
Suki’s cheeks colored.
“Oh my God – not you too!”
The Seasoning Page 11
