Shivering World Read online

  His eyes looked more sad than defiant. She thought she understood. She’d spent more than a little time haranguing staff at Einstein University to take gentler care of lab animals.

  “But yabuts are edible,” she admitted. “So’s their chow, for that matter, if food runs short. This is a frontier world.”

  He grunted.

  Evidently she’d lectured long enough. “Our coffee’s instant, but it’s made from real beans. Want some?”

  He raised his head. “Coffee? I mean . . . yeah. Uh, thanks.”

  Several minutes later, in the privacy of Graysha’s office, they sat sipping.

  “Did you hear the news, Graysha?” Jirina’s deep voice called from the outer doorway.

  Trev cringed. He twisted to peer out into the lab.

  Standing in the office arch, Jirina looked like a black goddess compared to the cowering youth with his mottled cheeks. She peered down at him and asked, “What are you so afraid of, little brother?”

  “Forget the ‘brother,’ ” he muttered. “I’m not anybody’s brother.”

  “Ooh,” Jirina said with an exaggerated shrug.

  Graysha beckoned her in. Jirina took her usual spot on the cold concrete floor, then said, “I’m sorry for you.”

  Amused, Graysha solemnly told Trev, “Jirina’s my friend. I don’t have many here yet.” Turning her head, she added to Jirina, “This is Trev, and he’s here, and he’s frightened of something. Why else does a person stow away?”

  “I paid passage.” Trev vehemently accented each word.

  “How far?” Graysha asked softly.

  He took a long, slow drink of coffee.

  Graysha recalled Jirina’s question at the door and murmured, “What news?”

  “That it was Varberg.”

  “But it was accidental,” Graysha added, watching Trev for a reaction.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s like this. But you’ve both got to swear to be quiet about it, at least until word gets out.”

  Was that all it took to draw a confession—a little show of sympathy? Graysha raised her eyebrows.

  “Ever heard of Blase LZalle?” he asked.

  Graysha pursed her lips, thinking. She hadn’t spent much time studying history, nor did she pay much attention to politics. Jirina stared silently at Trev.

  “Music,” he prompted.

  Jirina made wide eyes. “Had a guitar pick grafted on in place of one thumbnail, once.”

  “Him. Five complete surgical transformations in twenty-­one terrannums, plus minor alterations. Sometimes he’s Afro, sometimes Sino, sometimes Abo. Limbs made of rubber.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Jirina said.

  Trev glanced at Graysha as he reached up into his wiry hair to scratch the lower ear.

  She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Trev. Maybe he wasn’t big in Einstein.”

  To her surprise, he smiled with real warmth. “Finally, someone with the good taste not to know the man. Anyway, he held a competition about nineteen terrannums ago to find the genetically perfect woman to bear his child. Married her and then hid her away on Venus, the world of love. Or Venera, as natives and Russians call it.”

  “Yes?” asked Graysha.

  He touched his chest. “Trevarre Chase-­Frisson LZalle, son of the Rebuilt Wonder and the Genetically Perfect Woman.”

  Jirina puffed out a breath. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Chase-­Frisson LZalle. What brings you to our happy little rock ball?”

  He twisted his features into a leer. “Do I look genetically perfect?”

  “Oh,” Graysha exclaimed. “Dear God. Your father wanted a perfect child. He rebuilt himself. Now he wants to rebuild you.”

  Trev’s fingers, clenched on his knees, turned pale. “Exactly. Exactly. He doesn’t care that I don’t want to be beautiful. He knows even local anesthetics give me double-­sick migraines. But he wants to debut me, his Mr. Perfect Son, at a music fest in two terrannums—it’s already booked—and I can’t even stand his music. I’m a failure, and he’s used to million-­maxim successes. He expects them. Nothing less.”

  “You’re the only son?” Graysha asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “Well.” She rocked back on her chair. “You couldn’t hide much farther afield than Goddard.”

  “I wasn’t heading for Goddard,” he insisted. “I bought passage from Earth to Alpha under the Smith name. So far so good, only it wasn’t far enough out. I spotted his name on a sales marquee. So I decided to stow for Galileo Hab, in the Barnard’s system.”

  “It’s supposed to be pretty there,” Jirina said. “Experimental forests.”

  “So I heard. I like that stuff. Trees, bushes. But there were two shuttles leaving Halley’s main loading dock at once, and I—”

  “Got on the wrong one?” Jirina asked.

  “I’ve been tissue typed.” Now he looked really glum, lips twitching, arching his eyebrows. “ExPress Shuttle Service could have me ID’d within a week and have word to LZalle in two. He can afford to send a private shuttle out to get me. But,” he added, dropping his voice, “I don’t think it’d stop there.”

  Graysha shrugged off the threat. She’d hired a resourceful assistant, she guessed—if he would just learn to cooperate. “He can’t force surgery on you,” she said. She tapped the space bar on her computer.

  “No, but he can start with psych therapy. In two months I’ll be panting for them to cut.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Graysha. “Really, I am. I don’t have a lot of clout around here, but if you could make yourself indispensable to Gaea, I would think there’d be some chance they’d let you stay on.”

  “How do I do that?” He leaned into the question, looking a little too sincere.

  What does he really want? Graysha wondered. And what else is he afraid of? “I’m sure you aren’t interested in this kind of work,” she said, “but Gaea is the only employer here, and I’ll give you a chance to do some real research if you’ll promise to give it your best.” Abruptly she chuckled.

  “What?” Jirina asked.

  Graysha folded her hands over one knee. “I gave up a teaching job for this position, Trev. I miss it already, and I’m glad you’re here. I’ll show you what I can. I’ll even lend you some text capsules tonight, and I’m sure Dr. Lee will check you out a viewer.”

  “Sounds all right,” he said, staring at his feet.

  “Are you a good student?”

  “When I want to be.”

  In other words, normal. “First, then.” She stood up. “Let me start on the glorified dishwasher we call a ‘glassware processor.’ ”

  “Sounds thrilling,” he grumbled.

  “Oh, it is.” Graysha grinned.

  Jirina snorted.

  ―――

  Graysha organized Liberty’s and Trev’s schedules, set up a soil-­nutrient scan to run, then had twenty minutes of spare time. Inside her inner office, she kicked the heat up a notch, then signed onto the Gaea net. Free-­associating, she found one more open file on Henri Lwu. The abstract was from a postdoctoral thesis, buried among Gaea library headings.

  Balance of Logical and Emotional Processes in the Human Male, she read. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no techs were watching, then she read on.

  According to Henri Lwu’s abstract—the short summary at the head of his article—the problem was a lack of cross-­hemispheric connections in the male brain. “Good thing a female didn’t do this research,” Graysha muttered. “She would’ve been ostracized for sexism.”

  Lwu’s experimental research supported an old theory that the splenial region of the corpus callosum, a connective region between the brain’s frontal hemispheres, shrank in a flood of hormones and serum fractions at about the eighth month of a male’s gestation. In experimental groups, starting with rodents, he’d done cranial injections to protect the corpus callosum from cell die-­off at this critical phase. It was one way to affect the brain without diminishing primary sexual development. An e
xperimental summary gave details of how the procedure could be practiced among a general population.

  Graysha scratched her head. He’d found volunteers for that? Mothers willing to let him experiment on their children for the sake of so slight a change? She knew how to read graphs. The results were measurable but marginal.

  Finding the notion ugly, no matter how nobly inspired by Henri Lwu’s devotion to peace and nonaggression, she shut down the computer and resumed work in her lab.

  Ten minutes later, it struck her as odd that Gaea Terraforming Consortium had posted that abstract in its own library.

  Trev yanked a rattling rack of inverted culture tubes from the processor and started sorting them into drawers. “All right, it’s your turn,” he said. “I told you where I came from and why. Now that you know about me, tell me about these Lwuite colonists.”

  The faint off-­odor of warm TSY growth medium drifted down the hall from the media kitchen. Blinking at her clock, Graysha pushed her stool back from her scanning scope and rested her eyes. It would’ve been nice if Trev asked about her own background first. Trev obviously didn’t make “nice” a priority.

  He was young. “They don’t mix much with us outsiders,” she said. “I don’t know if they’re secretive or if they feel awkward about being labeled a religious group by humanity at large.” Graysha could understand that sentiment. All her life, people had assumed that Novia Brady-­Phillips, defender of God’s unaltered creation, had raised her mutant daughter to be likewise religious. Variant faiths piqued her curiosity, but Graysha distrusted all religions, especially her mother’s Church of the Universal Father. It just didn’t seem logical that the God who inspired so many religious wars would suddenly announce that he really only meant to create perfection and watch it run down.

  If he existed at all.

  “So tell me what you know about them,” Trev said.

  Graysha sighed. “Supposedly, they were founded by a scientist who insisted the male mind didn’t need to be as compartmentalized as it is.”

  “Try that in English.”

  “Men—allegedly, Trev, I’m not saying I buy into this—tend to have trouble balancing logical and emotional thought.”

  “Oh, that. What did this scientist do about it?”

  Young people sometimes accepted such abrasive assertions! Amused, Graysha said, “Dr. Lwu theorized that this was part of what made men too aggressive. Too likely to start fights.” Hedging the concept in vague scientific jargon, she told him what she’d learned from the computer. As she finished she rubbed her eyes and looked out the window, where stars sparkled.

  “I heard that,” said Paul Ilizarov’s voice from the door.

  She whirled around.

  Paul lounged against the arch, making her wonder how long he had stood there. Pointing at Trev, he added, “Don’t let him damage glassware. The colonists charge us five hundred percent of market value for glass.”

  Varberg or Jirina must have told Paul about Trev. “He’s doing fine. What do you know about our colonial employers?”

  The oceanographer moved languidly, as if he’d spent time on a seagoing ship. “Those rumors you mentioned? Rumors. I’d guess the truth is even stranger. Otherwise, why would they hide out here? Parsecs from civilization, living from provision ship to provision ship, dependent on us for everything, and meanwhile freezing their fingers to plant kudzu. At least they don’t have to weed it.”

  “Not yet.” Graysha returned Paul’s smile, then saw that Trev looked blank-­faced again. “No native plants to blow weed seeds into their croplands,” she explained, then she turned again. “Paul, you have a Lwuite tech. Don’t you know something about their faith?”

  “I have two Lwuite techs. Twins. I think you’ve only seen one at a time. They won’t talk religion, and believe me, they’ve got the RL Act memorized.”

  Proselytizing, according to the Religious Liberties Act, was illegal without duly registered inquiry—and inquiries need not be answered. The Act had been pushed into USSC law by her mother’s church, probably to keep splinter groups small. “But they are religious.” Graysha pursed her lips. If Paul knew this little after two terrannums, the Lwuites certainly did not preach outside their own numbers. Maybe Liberty would tell . . .

  No. Liberty JenChee was not what one would call talkative.

  Paul rubbed one thumb against his elegant chin. “Trevarre, is your father really that much of a beast?”

  Trev drew up tall next to the lab counter. “Who told the Russian?”

  Graysha had no idea. “Trev,” she said, “this is Dr. Paul Ilizarov.”

  Scowling wide-­eyed, Trev turned back to Paul. “I don’t think you want to know.”

  “He tours. You must not have to see him too often.”

  “If he ever gets to Goddard, you’ll wish you never heard his name.”

  Graysha sympathized with Trev, despite his atrocious manners. What a thing to look forward to—a complete surgical reconstruction. Transgening would have been kinder.

  Paul pulled a hand from his lab-­coat pocket. Manicured but strong looking, it was the shapeliest man’s hand she’d seen. A faint whiff of citrus made her guess either his hand soap or his lab lotion came from offworld. He gave Trevarre an ice-­blue glare, then looked away from the youth. “My techs are on town-­meeting crew today, and I need some filter plating done. Think he can handle it?”

  “Trev, are you finished?” Graysha asked.

  Trev pointedly dropped another handful of tubes into a drawer.

  “Carefully,” Graysha murmured. She’d better separate these two, even if it meant equivocating. “Yes, Paul, I’ve taught him how to plate. I’ll send him over when he’s finished with this.”

  Paul touched her shoulder, making her shiver. “Thank you,” he said.

  Flustered by the electric tension emanating from that man, she was glad to be alone with Trev again.

  “Plate?” Trev demanded. “What’s that?”

  Graysha shook her head. “You need to try and get along with Dr. Ilizarov.”

  “Ha.” He wiped his nose with a brusque backhand. “Come to Venus some day, Graysha. Spend time with the Novaya Muscovites and then tell me to get along with Russians. My father took me out of school after the third time they ganged up on me.”

  “Paul knows who and what he is, that’s all. When you’ve got his kind of experience, you can accomplish all you want.”

  “Oh, save that stuff for your students.” Trev shoved the tube rack back into the processor.

  Exhaling, Graysha shut her eyes. “All right, student, let me show you how to prepare a filter plate so you won’t have to embarrass yourself asking Dr. Ilizarov how to do it. Is that fair?”

  Trev endured the demonstration, and she sent him to Paul’s lab. As she was about to return to her own tasks, she heard a rap at her doorway, then a voice from out in the hall. “Dr. Brady-­Phillips?”

  “Good morning,” she said to a petite woman in cuffed browncloth trousers. “Come in. Have we met?”

  The woman smiled back, eyes sparkling below black bangs. Her braids were very short. “No. I’m Chenny HoNin, chair of Hannes Prime. I really don’t have time to talk, but I wanted to see you while I was visiting Axis. You seem to have acquired an instant reputation.”

  “The fall I took?”

  “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

  “Healing well, thank you.” She appreciated the woman’s cheerful disposition.

  “I just think you should know Hannes Prime’s Colonial Affairs Committee was unanimous about wanting to hire you.”

  Hannes? Mentally she reran part of DalLierx’s vidi. Hannes settlement . . . northerly mining community . . . “Oh,” she said. “That’s kind. Thank you.”

  “Must go.” The small woman extended a hand. “Hope you’re settling in safely.”

  One more name to remember, one more colonial face. Could Hannes be a more sympathetic place?

  Muddled by too much humanity and too man
y questions, Graysha returned to her scanning scope.

  Lwu’s People

  Early Sunday—Bday by the scientists’ designation and not a Sabbath—was still too cold for much outside activity. Lindon sat in his office, catching up on desk work. A soft tone hummed out of the speaker in his chair’s headrest. He fingered a desktop switch and spoke toward the audi pickup. “DalLierx.”

  “Lindon, I’m glad I caught you.” Chenny HoNin, chair at Hannes Prime, had a voice that radiated cheerful assurance. “But I wish I had better news.”

  He darkened his monitor so he could give Chenny his full attention. Like him, Chenny had been elected during their people’s crossing from Einstein Habitat. Unlike him, she had voted with the majority to bring in a new soils person. She couldn’t have known how dangerous that decision would prove.

  “Whatever it is,” he told her, “I’d rather hear it from you than be blindsided by someone else.”

  Chenny laughed softly. A born peacemaker, she even managed to stay friendly with Ari MaiJidda.

  Unfortunately, Ari had approached Lindon a little too directly during the crossing. She didn’t take gentle discouragement well.

  “All right, then,” Chenny said. “Ari wants your job. She’s going to call for a fresh election.”

  Lindon sucked in a breath.

  “What, does that surprise you?”

  Chenny was right. This shouldn’t startle him at all. He glanced out his office window. Stars shimmered over the toothy horizon. “On what grounds? Did she say?”

  “Lindon, you’ll have to fight your own battles. I just didn’t think it would be fair to let her shock you publicly during the next town meeting. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  Lindon polished the edge of his leather desk cover with one palm. “I appreciate knowing, Chenny. Thank you.”

  “Maybe she just thinks Axis Plantation would be better off if you got a fresh vote of confidence.”

  “Ari?” He didn’t think so.

  Again the soft laugh.

  On the other hand, he reflected, between the Brady-­Phillips threat and the worrisome cooling, a crisis could come soon. Axis Plantation probably could weather it better during the honeymoon phase after an election, with either a freshly elected or re-­elected leader. “How long will you be here at Axis?” he asked.