The Homestead

by G R Higginbotham

  She nodded. “We’ll make sure it is. See you then.”

  Moses was exhausted. He was spending his days working with the people of Homestead IV doing his job, and every free moment running around trying to figure out who did what terrible thing and when. There wasn’t enough time to sleep. He needed to rest and refocus himself. When things got frantic like this it was very hard for him to stay on task. When he became distracted, everything suffered. His patients. His side projects. Even his ability to think straight.

  He quickly got ready for bed and was able to sleep deeply through the night.

  Chapter 11

  The files from Adrie Petersen arrived first thing in the morning, sent right on schedule. Rebecca was true to her word. The amount of information was staggering at first, and it made Moses think that perhaps the twenty-four hour deadline to discuss all of the information contained inside was a bit too ambitious. It would take one person weeks to go through every notation that Adrie had made in her many years at Homestead IV. But then he remembered the search filter options. That good night’s sleep was paying off already.

  He searched for keywords “algae” and “mold” that may be relevant to what he was looking for and narrowed it down to a couple hundred entries. Most of these were over the span of a few weeks. He started with the earliest and moved forward from there.

  She first had the idea that the algae fields could affect the integrity of the pollination when some of the trees on levels 14-22 began showing signs of bad health. When she investigated, she found that the bees used on those levels had traces of algae on them. Apparently Mags’ assessment of the spread of the spores was not accurate. She discovered that their programming had led to skimming the surface of the clean water, picking up some trace algae from that supposedly clean source and carrying it to the trees. The trees that contained high levels of moisture somehow absorbed and ingested small amounts of algae and began to become sick as a result.

  Adrie then began treatment for the trees, and recalled all of the involved pollinators so she could destroy them. She made new bees with new programming and thought that would solve the problem.

  Weeks later, more trees in other levels began showing similar symptoms. She went through the same procedure to repair the bees and restore the plants involved. She was growing concerned that the situation was more widespread than she thought at first, and initiated a level-by-level review of the code for the bees. This showed inconsistencies in the programming. Some pollinators had the correct program, and some had an alteration in their code that caused them to dip into the dangerous waters. It seemed like a normal coding degradation that was a byproduct of the autonomy built in to the robots themselves that allowed them to forage and seek out pollen on their own for a specified portion of every day.

  She spent a few weeks going through the coding and trying to eliminate this degradation pattern. She finally had it cracked and assumed the problem was corrected. She was certain there would be no more sick trees.

  A few months later, some of the trees starting showing new symptoms. She was never able to find any coding errors, and so wanted to fix the problem by stretching a netting over the water levels. She began taking regular trips down to the algae labs to talk to the scientists there and convince them that it was necessary. Idleman and her colleagues down in the aquaculture labs fought her, claiming that there was no way the algae could have spread to the clean water, and that the netting would block enough of the sunlight to dampen their overall productivity in terraforming by 10%. To fight it, they went to Chief Jacobs and enlisted him in their cause. He demanded that Adrie stop messing with other departments and causing their productivity to drop, and instead declared that the problem was clearly in her department and she should fix it. If she couldn’t, he said, then she would be sent home. He didn’t care how much she was responsible for the research that allowed civilian colonization and contribution to the terraforming project, he wanted her to fix it within the week.

  She was disturbed by his demands and the vehemence with which he threatened her. Eviction terrified her. And her greatest fear was that if she was sent home, Harold would remain. His devotion was split between her and their ongoing research, and she wasn’t sure which he would choose if he was forced to pick just one. For the next several entries in her log, she was consumed with the thought that Harold would abandon her if forced to choose between his wife and his work. It became even more dire when she spoke to him about it and he grew angry with her. He wanted to know why she would endanger all they had worked for by causing trouble like this. He confirmed her fears. She was devastated. He just wouldn’t hear her.

  Moses was saddened at how the woman’s community seemed to be turning against her just because she was trying to fix a potential threat to the habitat. Adrie had correctly reasoned that if the plants began to die off, then the balance in Homestead IV would shift drastically. It would be subtle at first, but eventually it would cascade at a rate that they may not be able to correct in time to prevent the death of many of the inhabitants of the underground facility. Instead of finding a community that would work together to protect and nurture each other, she found people consumed with their own goals and interests. They would abandon the health and safety of their neighbors - and ultimately themselves - for the goal of a transformed Mars.

  So Adrie struck out on her own to solve the problem. She procured a workstation down in the algae labs in order to track bees that had been contaminated down there, and to find an answer as to how it kept happening. Jacobs did all he could to confound her work. Harold Petersen grew bitter about her absence from their farm. Idleman resented her interference in her department. But Adrie kept working.

  She discovered that some bees were using the ventilation system to bypass levels and come directly to the algae fields. This explained how they were getting below the level of clean water at the top of the algae labs. But Adrie could not decipher how they had managed to reprogram themselves to take this unsanctioned route down below the designated area. There weren’t even plants for them there to pollinate. There was no way they had randomly developed this new program. And she knew she hadn’t done it. And Harold could barely implement the programs she had already written.

  Then she made a discovery that she didn’t know how to handle. She found proof that the programming had been intentionally altered. Someone had managed to create a new programming workstation separate from the main unit in the beehive. Someone else was capturing and reprogramming the pollinators. And then they were releasing them into the habitat to accomplish their own goals. But what were they trying to accomplish? Where was the new workstation? On the surface it looked like they were simply trying to pollinate trees with algae, but that was nonsense. Nobody would be foolish enough to try that because it just wouldn’t do anything except poison the trees. So were they trying to exterminate the plants in Homestead IV? That would only lead to the death of everyone; the plants were vital to the delicately precise ecosystem they had so carefully crafted. Without them people would die and the project would fail. What was the point?

  These questions plagued Adrie throughout her final months on Mars. And now those same questions were thrust upon Moses, ready or not. On top of that, he also needed to determine if the mass spread of algae was finished or still occurring.

  Moses had to stop here. He had patients beginning to queue up in the waiting area and he needed some time to process what he had read. Besides, it wouldn’t do to let anyone else know what was going on. That would only cause chaos, as well as preventing him from looking into the answers he so desperately wanted to find.

  But he needed to find those answers. He could trust Rebecca. She could help him find the answer to the most important question: was someone in Homestead IV determined to destroy it?

  Chapter 12

  After a long and seemingly never-ending day treating patients, and thankful to have very few runny noses and coughing complaints, Moses started to look for Rebecca. What
started as a casual hunt among her favored haunts quickly became a frantic scouring of every place she might have a reason to visit. It became evident that she wasn’t going to be found any time soon when he discovered that even the officers in ICE administration were unable to locate her.

  He had been careful not to let on that he was searching for her, and began to observe the gray uniforms in the same places he was going. They had the luxury of manpower, so the shapes and shades within those uniforms changed. The mission and attitude contained inside did not. They were not on a mission of curiosity, but instead wore serious expressions and harsh tones. Their orders must have come from high up to elicit those tactics, and they obviously weren’t succeeding. Had he not been so concerned about the whereabouts and status of Rebecca, he may have even secretly laughed at their misfortune. But he didn’t. The stakes were too high.

  Not only did he need Rebecca’s help in answering some very important questions, but he was worried about her. It wasn’t like her to neglect her duties, or even to be unreachable. She was desperate to stay on Mars, and this wasn’t giving her any help in that department. She was riding a fine line between employment and deportation to Earth even before he arrived. Any slip up like this may shift the balance in a direction she didn’t want it to go. She must be in trouble. Even illness hadn’t kept her from her duties during the algae crisis a few weeks earlier.

  He continued his search, but already had the feeling that he wouldn’t be finding her this day. He tried to ask questions of her coworkers without giving away his intent. Nobody had heard from her all day. She had been seen in the elevator going down from the top floors yesterday evening. That was the most he could learn. And hardly any help at all.

  He finally gave up the search and went back to where it started. When he first began looking for her, Moses tried her quarters. When she didn’t answer the first time he had started looking elsewhere. Now he was back and decided a clue may be hiding inside the tiny room. The door operated on biometrics, but as facility physician he had the ability to override the system to gain entry. The only problem was that there would then be an electronic record of his override. But what choice did he have?

  Inside, the room was in order. Her personal workstation was switched on and Adrie’s logs were pulled up on the screen. She had managed to get through more than he did when his patients forced him to quit scouring and get to work. The log that was open was disturbing, detailing Adrie’s sickness and how hard it had become to concentrate on resolving the problem of reprogrammed bees while her health became so poor. The theme seemed to be her disappointment in Harold, and how he was pressuring her to stop looking into things. Apparently she had found something in the water reclamation system that was allowing the spore problem to survive filtration. That was the end of the entry.

  Moses remembered the reclamation department from early on in his orientation tours with Rebecca. The department head was a heavyset man from India that enjoyed puns and ogling every female that entered his space, and who had little concern for the efficiency of his department. When you were in charge of keeping everyone alive through cleaning their drinking water, there was not much chance of being found under-productive. He must feel safe enough to let things slip.

  It was almost too late to expect anyone to be down there working, but Moses decided it was worth a visit. If they had seen Rebecca Martinez yesterday evening, they might have some more information that would help locate her. Besides, it was close to the mycophycology labs. He had been trying to make it down there to ask Idleman some additional questions but other things kept intruding. Things like facility-wide sicknesses and missing partners. The more he thought about it, the more he was confident that if Rebecca Martinez wasn’t in serious trouble then he was going to have to set her straight on a few things. It just wasn’t convenient to try to solve two murders and have your partner turn up missing at the same time. Not convenient at all.

  Almost as soon as he had the thought, he felt guilty. If she were in trouble he would feel even worse for having thought it. He would have to find her, and quickly, to keep her out of trouble. He needed her. And not just for the investigation. She was a friend. And a good one at that. Perhaps even the only one he had made here. Hell, he didn’t have many from before he came here. Friends didn’t come easy for Moses Truman, and so he better do whatever he had to do to find this one and bring her back from wherever she was. And if she was hurt, God help whomever had hurt her.

  He left the quarters of his friend in a hurry, made sure to make everything appear undisturbed and also turned off her workstation after closing Adrie Petersen’s logs.

  During the long lift ride down to water reclamation, he couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of Rebecca unconscious and locked away in a dark room. He was really starting to worry about what would happen to her if he didn’t find her soon. Or what had already happened. There was a killer loose somewhere. He knew she would hate being rescued, and some part of him wanted to be the one to rescue her, to show her that he would always get to her when she needed him. This friendship business sure came with a lot of baggage.

  When the doors finally opened, Moses found the workers getting ready to leave for the day. Good. He had gotten here before they left.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Irfan Bedi loudly greeted Moses from across the main workroom of water reclamation, leading him into his personal office. The room was decorated with more of its owner’s personality than Moses had seen in other offices throughout the homestead by a considerable amount. Behind the desk was a colorful padded seat of turquoise with silver wooden accents, almost like a throne in its ornate detail. The smell of incense permeated the room, in spite of a clear violation of the facility’s no open flame policy. There was a cricket bat mounted on the wall behind the desk, and jerseys hanging framed on the other walls.

  Bedi draped his prominent bulk across the throne and told Moses to sit in the much smaller chair across the desk. After pleasantries, which took longer than Moses had patience for, he was able to direct the conversation to more urgent matters.

  “Dr. Bedi, thank you for meeting with me. I know you were ready to leave for the day. I hope I’m not interrupting your plans.”

  “Please, call me Irfan,” he grinned. “I’m happy to talk with you. I feel like we haven’t had much time to get to know one another.” Moses smiled back. “You’re from Uganda, right? The Cranes have been dominating the continent on the cricket ground lately. They may finally get some international titles. Do you follow the games? I’ve got a friend from the Middle East who sends me vids of all the matches. I’d love to watch them with you sometime.”

  Moses shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I was only in Uganda as a child. I moved to the US long before I could develop an understanding of cricket.” Irfan somehow managed a frown while still grinning like a fool. He redirected the conversation. “I was wondering if Rebecca Martinez had come here in the last day or so. We were working on a project together, and have lost track of each other.”

  “She was here last night right about the same time you came today. I thought she was coming to take me up on my offer of dinner and great conversation, but she was just asking a lot of questions about the Petersen Referendum.”

  Moses leaned forward. “What’s that?”

  He chuckled. “I like to give all major changes to our filtration system an appropriate title, in order to honor the individual who prompted the change.” Irfan winked. “You know, good for morale and all.”

  “And how did this one get that name?” Moses asked.

  “Sweet little Adrie Petersen discovered that some of the residue from the mycophycology labs had eked into the main water supply at the bottom of the hab. Just the tiniest amount. Even in small amounts, the contaminated water could have deleterious effects on the colony over time. So we introduced extensive algicide into early stages of filtration to rid the water of even the smallest levels of contamination. I named it in honor o
f her. It was really too bad about her. She sure was a sweetheart. She loved cricket. Surprising, since the Royal Dutch Cricket Association hasn’t produced a decent lineup in decades. But she would sit up here and talk to me about it for a long time.” He sighed, reminiscing about their conversations.

  Maybe Moses had read this guy wrong. As overbearing and saccharine as he seemed at first, it looked like his gregariousness was genuine and from the heart. He wasn’t sure if it was better when he thought it was ersatz friendliness, or now that he knew Bedi was a truly nice person. He was used to dealing with false friendliness. The real thing with such sustained intensity was prone to get him off-balance.

  “That’s good to know. Thank you.” He tried to return some of the man’s friendly attitude. He wasn’t sure how well he was pulling it off. “Did Miss Martinez mention where she was going when she left here?”

  Irfan offered his first full frown. “We had been talking about how angry Harold Petersen got with Adrie for meddling with other departments, and Becky got really concerned.” It bothered Moses to hear Rebecca referred to in such a familiar way. He had never heard anyone call her Becky. “I’m pretty sure she was going to their farm to confront Harold about it. Although, it was so long ago, I don’t know what she thought she could do about it. He’s been grieving for her for a long time, and throwing a marital dispute in his face that he had with his dead wife months ago can’t be a good way to get on his nice side. It isn’t very big, you know. His nice side.”

  Moses filed that information away for future reference. He had some additional questions.

  “Any ideas how the water supply became tainted with the pollen? I thought there were measures in place to prevent that sort of thing.”

  Shifting back to friendly but helpful, the hydrologist immediately adjusted his face back to a smile that reached all the way up to the wrinkles around his eyes. “There were systems, but that stuff only ever works in theory. Once you hit the real world, stuff always goes wrong. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t need scientists from the real science community, they would just staff it with their corporate scientists. This place would be totally automated and Mars would already be habitable. Machines don’t ever work like the designers think they will. Adrie’s bees would hit a terminal glitch and fall into the water after dipping into the algae fields. She was always determined that the problem came from outside somehow, but I’m sure it was just a natural degradation of their tiny little robotic brains.”