by Ginger Booth
“We tried,” Groot admitted bitterly. “They grow it in vats, some bacteria, genetically engineered to produce it. The original molecule was found in bacteria. But without enough gravity, it dies. Our power cut out, the grav plates went offline for a few hours, and the whole batch died.”
“You don’t have samples on ice of this bacterium? Its DNA?”
“I…don’t understand. You know genetic engineering?”
Ben shrugged. “Not very well. I took basic college biology and medical engineering. Sanjay knows more.”
Groot boggled. “No one on Mars has been to college. Less than one percent on Luna. Of course we want to ally with you! Tell us what you want in return.” He leaned down closer. “Take Rover with you. Show him your ship. He can help you with comms.”
“Chairman, we’re coming back in a few days –”
“No, you’re not! You’re leaving to collect your friends from Earth!”
“There’s nothing I can do for my friends on Earth right now. They’re on the other side of the sun.” This fact was completely irrelevant for his warp gateway.
Groot narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you. Both worlds, same day. You came here together. You have a better warp drive.”
Ben touched his arm, and offered a hand to shake. “I will be back. Just a few days. And we’ll talk.”
“Please take Rover with you. Just in case.”
Ben glanced to the kid. He’d been consistently helpful. Despite his chief of security business, he’d been eager to show them everything, never threatened them. He was a good kid. The commandant wished his daughter would date such a good kid. Frazzie’s taste in boys was atrocious. Even now, Rover stood straighter and tried a brave smile when he saw Ben looking at him.
And Sanjay would have someone’s blood to play with. Teke would be pissed off, an added bonus. And the chairman was right. The instant Ben got word Thrive was ready for extraction, he’d be gone like atmo through a breach. Having someone along who knew how to contact Luna would be useful in that event.
On the other hand, Rover would get a good look at Mahina’s foremost tech, and the know-how to spill it all to Luna.
I have no friends on Luna. Yet. But he’d come here to scope out all the worlds of the Earth system. Luna was one of them, and the most populous of the space colonies.
Ben marched back to Rover and met his eye squarely. As a gravity stretch, the teen loomed above him, but Ben was used to that. His dad and husband were both stretches, and he’d grown up fighting them. “If you come aboard my ship, it’s a one-way trip. You’d never come back here. Not because we’re leaving, but because there are secrets on my ship. Ones we don’t share.”
“I’ll go anywhere! Right now! Swear me into the Colony Corps! I’ll serve you faithfully, sir!”
Oh, dear, the kid was a believer. He wanted to enlist. Had Ben been any different at this age? Yes. His dad paid Sass to cart him away, widen his horizons. Left to his own devices, Ben would have stayed home playing video games and completing his distance learning degree at Mahina University. One of only four settler students enrolled, he thought he was hot stuff goofing off at Dad’s.
But he was competitive to a fault. If he’d been baling hay, working an idiot job instead of attending MU, yes. He would have grasped any brass ring that came his way. He liked Rover.
Ben glanced to Remi, whose eyes lit in amusement. He nodded. Groot grasped his hands in entreaty. Because of course, if Ben accepted a recruit from Mars, the Mars cause would whisper in his ear until he saved these people.
Knowing that he was being manipulated somehow didn’t make him immune to it.
“Fine. Into the airlock. Do not make me regret this, Rover!” He really would make a good boyfriend for Frazzie. Which probably meant his daughter wouldn’t give him a second glance. He pointed a finger at Groot. “I intend to return in just a few days. With a quality airlock and power to decant your computers.”
“And a CO2 scrubber? I beg you.” Groot attempted to look penitent and sincere. He didn’t succeed.
“We’ll see.” And with that Ben escaped through the airlock door Remi held open for him.
“You’re so easy,” the chief accused. “Soft.”
“What do we want in that data, anyway?” Rover piped up, eyes shining with excitement.
“Science that was supposed to arrive at the Rayas and Mubarak colonies.”
Remi added, “The main Rayas research was accelerated learning. How to educate people fast.”
Just as the airlock finished cycling, Hugo appeared at the door with a cart full of his equipment. Ben reversed the cycle to let him in.
Minutes later, he regretted this as Hugo finished answering Rover’s renewed question before Ben could stop him. “Dark energy and warp drive research! Very exciting!” He registered Ben’s glower. “Isn’t it?”
“It is,” Ben agreed. “Perhaps a little too exciting. Rover?”
“I won’t tell anyone!”
Sure he wouldn’t. Because an eager boy, sworn to join them only minutes ago, was now fully loyal to the Colony Corps instead of the planet of his birth. Not. Ben shook his head in disgust.
“I’m sorry,” Hugo attempted. “Forget I said anything.”
“Hugo, think,” Ben exhorted. “And do it silently this time.”
25
American programs of internal ‘culling’ strengthened their standing in the Northern League, and reduced domestic friction against the new regime.
At his host’s invitation, Clay sank into a generous armchair, and breathed luxury. He gazed around the hushed study, drinking in the layers of texture, rich woods, books with leather bindings, tasteful plants in spotlights, textured velvet walls, deep rugs, each a work of art. While outside the enormous sashed windows a vicious storm had arrived.
A guilty doubt about Darren’s piloting flitted into his consciousness, to be firmly evicted. Because Clay knew these halls of power, and must pay very careful attention indeed. In such a room, devious men tread circuitous routes to learn what they wished to know. Fortunately, the first mate was born to those rooms.
Fidget lay quietly along the wall where he laid her.
He let his eyes settle on his host, Melkor. Unlike Sass, Clay paid attention to fashion. Most Dome people wore uniforms, or clothes so lacking in flair they might as well be uniforms. Not so the middle-aged man before him, in meticulously tailored wool twill jacket, of expensive drape, devoid of lapels, over a smooth business shirt with a subdued luster. Before leading his guest here, he introduced himself modestly as an assistant attaché of international relations. From his attire, Clay read him as high up the food chain indeed, and headed higher.
Clay found it more comfortable to read the furniture, ambiance, and clothes than to meet the bureaucrat’s eyes. In this sumptuous room, he met with a fish person. The protuberant gelid orange eyes reminded him of a clownfish in his father’s aquarium when he was a child. The man’s gestures were genteel and understated, executed with webbed fingers. And clownfish were extinct.
“A lovely room,” Clay purred, admiring a tastefully erotic statuette.
“Indeed. In the Ministry, we must entertain the most powerful of visitors. And you, Rocha. You must be highly regarded among your people, to be sent as emissary on such an historic mission!”
Actually he was first mate, and no one on Mahina gave a fig. Even Ben’s parent company, Thrive Spaceways, took a dim view. ‘Lotta red ink, buddy,’ were Cope’s exact words, Ben’s husband and CEO. ‘Try to make a profit. Somehow.’
“I have some influence,” Clay allowed, and shifted his focus to his decades of service to Mahina Security, as liaison between haves and have-nots. And his son was a grand pooh-bah these days. Yes, powerful people back home listened to him. “My world seeks to expand its acquaintance.”
He smiled, and noticed that Melkor’s facial muscles didn’t appear equipped for much expression. Well, they’d smelled each other enough. “Our primary challenge in
the colonies is that we are few. As you know, less than three million left Earth –”
“Closer to two million, wasn’t it?” There, a twitch at corner of his mouth, and a smoothening of his voice to gentle his contradiction. “Spread across a number of new worlds, wasn’t it? What was that number?”
“Unclear.” Clay stuck to his own chosen narrative. “On my moon, Mahina, we had only one dome. Until recently, that dome served as bastion of science and technology, only for the educated few. The urban community was descended from the original terraforming team sent from Earth. The later influx of refugees outnumbered them greatly, and could not be accommodated in the dome. Perhaps Earth had a similar experience.”
“Of course,” Melkor murmured. “So the ‘Diaspora’ wave from Earth was perhaps less than welcome. It must have been difficult.”
“Uh, yes.” It engendered decades of armed hostility. “But my point was, a highly technological civilization requires an educated workforce. But those outside the dome’s protection were short-lived and unhealthy. They couldn’t afford years of education. But this left us falling behind. Because our environments in the colonies are unlivable without technology.”
“True on Earth as well. And Mars and Luna.”
This gave Clay pause. In fact, after Sass started her outrageous campaign twenty years ago, Mahina had since crossed a line. Perhaps everyone on their moon now lived better than the Earthlings. And they walked free, able to breathe the air outside the domes, with nanite medicine to stave off the cancers and clear their bodies of the toxins. He needed to watch his assumptions here. The Earth he walked as a young man, as a child playing in the snowy woods – Melkor had never seen that planet. Unless those gills worked in thin air, Melkor had never ventured outside a dome without a breath mask.
Clay leaned forward in his obscenely comfortable chair. “What we seek, is an exchange of ideas, scientific advance and technology, between worlds. You have vastly more people than we do –”
“And how many is that?”
“Mahina received a quarter million settlers in the Diaspora. We’ve grown faster recently with immigration from less fortunate colonies.” Both statements were true. The implication was not. Mahina had recently regained a population of a quarter million, by draining most of Denali, plus adding quite a few from Sagamore and Sanctuary. Before the immigration of the past few years, the moon’s population fell like a rock.
Melkor blinked his gelid eyes with transparent lids. “For a current population of?”
This guy was sharp. “We consider ourselves underpopulated. Yet without further technological advances, we can’t accommodate more.” This was untrue. Mahina could accept tens of thousands more without much fuss. But Earth could supply millions, an overwhelming invasion that would kill them all.
“Hm. And how old are you?”
Clay smiled politely. “Older than I look. We all are. Our medical technologies have improved, of necessity. How old are you?”
“I am 38.”
The first mate raised an eyebrow. “Impressive, to hold such an important role so young.” Clearly this functionary was a winner.
“I was selected, of course. As were your…settlers? The best and the brightest, brought into the dome for education?”
“Sometimes.” A tiny few earned a place in the University from outside the dome. For instance Ben was the result of a successful genetic experiment. But most influx to Mahina Actual dome was due to graft or corruption, or in the case of Clay’s son, frowned-upon urban-settler liaisons. “Not a perfect system. Are many in your domes selected from outside?”
“More than half. There is a…lack of interest in childrearing. Few dome dwellers enter committed relationships. Such as yours with your captain?”
“We’ve been together some time. Though not committed, like marriage or anything. So your dome children are born out of wedlock, and the state helps the mothers raise them?”
Melkor blinked a few times. “You mean pregnancy? Women don’t bear children anymore in the domes. In the colonies?”
“No. That isn’t possible,” Clay agreed. “All colony children rely on artificial gestation.”
Melkor nodded, comforted to match his expectation. “I was born by pregnancy before adoption. Florida.”
The Mahinan noted that Florida was underwater. But this man had gills. “So you were born with…?” He waved fingers delicately at his neck.
“No, my augmentations were installed when I was ten, after adoption. But since I was born among boat people, my seeming was selected to interface with them.” He smiled microscopically. “To your point, dome children are reared by the state. For efficiency. Adults live alone in the capitol.”
Clay wondered if the man kept in touch with his birth family. The topic seemed entirely too sensitive to ask. “Our children are reared in creches for their health, but with parental involvement. Only married couples, or highly successful single people, qualify for children. Parents support the children financially.”
“Thus your population fell,” Melkor easily interpreted. “In the Northern League, people choose when to volunteer as parents. And most do, but only for one child, rarely two. I’ve had three myself, all by the same mother. But I’m unusually sociable.”
“I have one son. Not by Sass. His mother passed away. And Sass’s only child died here on Earth.” Clay narrowed his eyes, drew breath to speak, then didn’t. What would make people so uninterested in procreation? He suspected the first thing his crew noted, that their augmentations made the dome folk repulsive. Or did their addictions control them to the point it overrode even the basic instinct to procreate?
“Ask,” Melkor invited. “Our only agenda today is to become acquainted.”
Damn, this guy was good. “I was wondering if your wife matches your…seeming…and that’s why you’re attracted to each other.” There, that was tactful.
The attaché recoiled slightly. “We are not married. And I find her repulsive. In feelies, I do select augmented figures. Augmented for sex. I enjoy a few tattoos on the face.”
Feelies. “This is virtual reality?” If so, Clay readily understood what parts of the female figure might be enhanced.
“I recall life before augmentation,” Melkor shared. “That’s why I volunteered to speak with you. Our implants provide a wildly enriched universe within. For most, it’s difficult to bridge the chasm to communicate with prim– natural humans.” A fish-eye winced at his faux pas, the pupil squeezing to a narrower oval.
Primitive. “It must be fascinating. Are your senses enhanced?”
“Of course. I can tell when you adjust the truth, or omit it. I can taste how you just now became more nervous. But please, be at ease. It’s only to be expected that neither of us wish to divulge all our secrets today.” He spoke in a remarkably melodious voice, for a clownfish. “You should try augmentation.”
“No, thank you.” Clay’s hands began to sweat.
Melkor laughed softly. “It wasn’t a threat. No, Pontiac will not keep you. Another is interested. Although your girlfriend’s long life is a distraction to some. For the moment, we only wait for her to heal before sending you onward.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. But who are we being passed to?” Clay thought Pontiac was top dog for the Americas.
“Mm. I had a question for you, Rocha. How long did your trip to Earth take?”
This was a danger zone. “We’ve been preparing this trip for years.”
“The transit itself. A day? A year? Surely not the three years it took you to reach Mahina? Ten years objective time, was it?” Melkor’s orange eyes bored into him, gauging the Mahinan’s response. He breathed, “Less than a day?”
Clay firmly imagined the figure augmentations he might choose on a woman in virtual. The mental trick didn’t serve too well. Clay detested virtual sex, because his nanites kept his libido at a frisky 19 years old, and accepted no substitutes. Virtual sex was torture. Sass could pace him, the easiest part of their
relationship.
Fish man blinked repeatedly. Good, he didn’t read minds. “When will your lover Sass be whole again?”
“I don’t know. She’ll heal faster if we’re given a nice quiet apartment to rest in. Where she feels safe. I imagine she finds your medical section…upsetting.”
Melkor stiffened, transparent lids sliding over his eyes quickly. “How old did you say you were?”
Clay shrugged.
“You too were born on Earth.”
He winced involuntarily, and tried a bald-faced lie. “I was born on Mahina.”
“That’s interesting.” Melkor rose. “Let’s join Sass in medical. And collect her for your apartment for the night.”
26
The Northern League’s continuing space programs would have been an outrage to the starving, dying taxpayers who funded it, were they informed.
“– I died, right there in the mud, next to the shuttle that took us to Vitality,” Sass burbled. “And the nanite cocktail reconstituted me, rebuilt my whole consciousness, personality, everything from my memories. I’ve been an android ever since. Only I didn’t know.”
She blinked in consternation. What an extremely odd sensation to regain consciousness already speaking. She took in her surroundings. The smell of antiseptic hadn’t advanced much in a century. The glow from every direction, proof against a single shadow in the room, was not an improvement. White-jacketed medics stood glued to displays blazoned across the smart walls. Sass gulped as she recognized her own elbow, left leg, and right foot. Judging from the regeneration progress, she’d been out for some time.
All three regrowth projects had reached the maddening itchy stage. The nanites extended simple bone out to the final length of the missing limb, cloaked with skin from the start. She thought of that as the antler stage. Then the nanites fashioned individual bones out of the initial bone. The muscle and service blood vessels grew in parallel. Aside from lumpen ugliness, those stages weren’t particularly painful, because the nanites saved the nerves for last. And those itched like hell.
