Shivering World Page 12

  Sarai shifted against his chest. “We’ve finally reached Colonial Period in history. It’s exciting.”

  “Do you like being a pioneer?” For years, he’d wondered whether they would thank or blame him for the life they would inherit.

  “I like having you for Chair of Colonial Affairs.”

  “Oh.” Lindon paused, surprised. Bee never mentioned any pride in his position. How interesting that Sarai would take notice.

  “Mrs. DenChun said you were the youngest candidate.”

  So that was her reasoning. It looked as if she would always be his youngest child. These girls’ lives, and those of their descendants, were pledged to Gaea Consortium, their work the indentured price of land and technical help. His own life he’d pledged willingly. Signing over two more generations sat poorly with him. Gaea had no idea how long those servants would live. Soon, Colonial Affairs would have to decide how best to falsify death certificates.

  He hoped that by then he wouldn’t be involved in making decisions for the colony. Telling or even implying untruth sat poorly with him.

  “I was youngest,” he agreed. When she was older, he could explain some of the more complex reasons why he’d been chosen: his great-­grandfather Marc Lierx’s money and name, the Dalquist family’s leg up in politics, and the fact that he could honestly evade questions, quoting the RL Act—giving answers for himself that EB investigators might assume to hold true for all Lwuites. He’d been desperately glad to escape Einstein without enduring EB questioning.

  “She also said it was a two-­person job, at least. Is that why you always look tired, Daddy?”

  Lindon coughed out a laugh. “I want my girls to grow up on their own world, a world that can support them, where they don’t have to worry about crop failures or late supply shipments. So I work very hard—for you two, and for all of us—to make Goddard safe.” Sheltering his eyes with one hand, he glanced toward the sun. Eps Eri shone jasper red even through goggles, the normally dusty sky washed azure by the storm.

  “You’ll make it safe,” she declared.

  He cherished the moment, locking it away in his memory. Such utter confidence in her father could not last. “Sarai, I have to work with the people at Gaea. Getting along with them makes me tired sometimes. They have the science to make this world come alive. We pay them to tell us how to do it.”

  “That’s really not fair. We shouldn’t have to pay them to order us around.”

  Lindon shifted his elbow against a rock’s sharp edge. “But that’s our agreement. I’ve wished we had colonists on the science staff, but until one of our people is the best in her or his field, I’d rather hire the best to direct us.” He crossed her braids under her chin and pulled up both ends. “Does that make sense?”

  “I’ll grow up and be a terraformer for you, Daddy.”

  “I think you will.” He tickled her nose with the ends of her braids.

  They sat in a silence full of communion. Visually he traced the pale arcs of highways curving in from his right, from Center, to the crater’s middle, and east again to Port Arbor. The squat solar track-­trucks would be out today, charging their reserves, sparing the expensive auxiliary fuel. He spotted one crawling up the Axis notch. Straighter pipelines drew a giant 7 from Peace Reservoir to their point at another set of water purification beds beyond the settlement, then toward the crater’s tall wall and through it, straight as light, for Storm Sea.

  “Rock!” Bee sang down. Chipping and thwacking noises followed. Lindon scrambled to his feet, dragging Sarai along the ledge. A small scree avalanche settled near where they’d sat, flushing a winter-­white ptarmigan three meters above them.

  “Sorry!” came Bee’s voice again. “I’m coming down.”

  “Good thing you warned us,” Lindon called up the wall.

  When Bee reached the ledge, she brushed sand off her clothes. Scrapes on one hand betrayed at least one slip, but they didn’t look serious. There was little risk of infection on such a sterile world.

  “Ready to head back?”

  Bee leaned against a boulder, thrusting a finger into one boot. “I just hit a vertical I couldn’t climb. Pure impact glass. It was beautiful, but it was impossible.”

  “Sorry, Bee, but we have to go. It’s getting late.”

  “But I haven’t spent any time with you.”

  Lindon shrugged. “It’s never enough, Honeybee, that’s certain. We can talk on the way back.”

  He let the girls descend first. Bee jumped like a goat, using gravity’s pull to guide her from perch to perch, while Sarai held back, fighting for balance but just as determined. Lindon’s knees ached by the time they stood on the crater floor again. A faint trail led between rows of shoulder-­high lodgepole pines at the edge of the shelter zone. Sun-­warmed pitch gave off a smoky smell. Neither girl stepped off the trail. They didn’t need to be reminded of the undergrowth’s value. At the “forest’s” end, the wind hit. Sarai snatched his hand, while Bee thrust hers into her pockets. “It is colder than last year,” Bee announced.

  It had been good to forget Melantha Lee for two hours. Lindon gave Bee a dark look, and she broke into a trot.

  While Bee and Sarai dressed for bed, Lindon lingered in the crèche’s bright common room, talking with their crèche father and mother. Then he slipped into the girls’ tiny private bedroom, one of five built in a cluster around the common room, to kiss them goodnight. Childish graphite-­pencil sketches, drawn on the school’s washable paper-­equivalent, were pinned in neat rows over the beds.

  “I want you to listen to my prayers,” Sarai said firmly. She clenched a fist on her pillow and covered it with her other hand.

  He knelt, briefly wishing they still lived in Einstein. There, couples could afford the years spent raising children instead of using crèche efficiency. His great-­grandfather had bequeathed Lindon’s first-­generation Lwuite parents enough for comfortable security right there at Einstein.

  They sold nearly everything to come here. The weight of lost possessions, of all those other families’ willing sacrifices, lives now looking to him for leadership, was too heavy to think about too often.

  It baffled him that Ari MaiJidda wanted to take it upon herself.

  ―――

  From his apartment, Lindon called Kenn VandenNeill again and tentatively secured one more vote to petition Gaea for Novia Brady-­Phillips’s daughter’s dismissal. She might not be a spy, but they couldn’t afford the risk. If she wouldn’t escort the stowaway to Copernicus, they must approach Site Supervisor Lee. They dared go no higher in the Gaea chain, or they might attract attention.

  Four hundred thousand maxims saved would account for only half the funds to import that generator, let alone other colonial needs. Cradling his head between both hands over his desk, he pressed his eyes shut. A headache was starting behind them.

  Colonial funding was his least favorite aspect of the Chair. Goddard’s metal wealth was in high demand at Copernicus Hab, as was its delicate marble, but quantity transport of heavy items was costly. He looked forward to the day when they could offer the habs raw materials for composites: sodium soon to be percolated by rainfall into sea water, tungsten and other rare metals, if they ever were found, and maybe the rare lithophilic minerals used in stellar navigation—boron and beryllium.

  Planetary and colonial demand for rare lithophiles was on the rise, particularly those responsive to the magnetic fields surrounding most stars. Since those elements weren’t stable enough to be made in stellar reactions, they were found only on planets and in a few large asteroids. The Sol system’s resources were playing out. The CA Committee had gambled on colonizing Goddard largely in the hope of finding such specialty minerals. They’d be allowed to keep seventy percent of profits from all minerals found before the Buyout of their indenture, including the prospector’s bonus. After Buyout, they would have exclusive rights to market their own wealth wherever they chose.

  A G-­year ago, his brother had vanished ont
o Goddard’s open wild. Lindon guessed he’d gone prospecting. The brothers were almost exact opposites: Kevan hated responsibility and despised working a schedule. He’d taken advanced basic survival training. He was still alive—Lindon had to believe that.

  A shadow passed over his skylight, maybe from a worker cutting a bend on the road above ground. Lindon returned his attention to the list on his screen, which was keyed to the secure Colonial net, and entered another vote to send Graysha Brady-­Phillips away.

  He rubbed his chin, sanding rough skin off his fingertips with second-­shift stubble. It would be terrible to be dying inside. A call yesterday to the HMF had given him more details than he wanted concerning Graysha Brady-­Phillips’s medical condition. There was a 50 percent likelihood she would die before reaching age forty and 95 percent before she was fifty. This in a civilization where seventy was vigorous middle age, and Lindon hoped to achieve a century and a half.

  Living with the condition under normal circumstances sounded painless, but Yael GurEshel’s write-­up of the muscle cramps that dropped the woman made him ache in sympathy. Absently he rubbed his own forearm in the spot where her t-­o button had been implanted. The HMF’s insistence that she wait a month for travel gave him a bad feeling about her chances.

  He wanted her gone, but he could still pity her. Shutting his eyes, he offered a prayer for her comfort and health—and her immediate departure.

  If she tumbled onto the truth, it might be possible to keep her from reporting. Perhaps her terminal could be monitored to ensure she sent no mail that might contain coded messages. Isolating her from supply shuttle crews would be wise, as well.

  He left Ari MaiJidda a message to that effect, then swung his feet up onto the couch and stared through the skylight. Bee and Sarai would soon hear about Ari’s call for a fresh election. It would be better if they heard the news from him—before the next town meeting.

  It was too late, he decided, to speak with them today. He’d pay the crèche a visit before work tomorrow morning. The children were rising earlier and earlier on Windsdays, an adaptation their elders couldn’t make. Over generations, maybe humans could adapt to effectively use Goddard’s long days. He would not live to see it, but it was gratifying to think in the long term.

  May we be granted the long term.

  ―――

  Novia stood at an onboard work station, screening a news burst. She was finally headed for Eps Eri, sharing a USSC shuttle with an outbound civic councilor and her family. To her relief, they kept to their stateroom. The governmental shuttle had picked up local broadcasts at Halley Habitat, then streaked back off across space. Other travelers depended on ExPress Shuttle Corporation, the only dependable commercial service. USSC shuttles ferried governmental employees at 133 percent of ExPress’s top speed. At this point, the craft was well on its way to Copernicus Habitat, and that great new space city orbited Epsilon Eridani within seven light-­minutes of Goddard.

  It might’ve been nice to bring Lenard along, but he’d known he married a career woman. She often left for extended periods.

  She keyed up the Copernicus news burst, searching for any word from Goddard. Timing would be everything in this case. She must not arrive before Graysha won the colonists’ trust, went in for her operation, and started to recover. Guessing that Graysha would succeed easily and affairs on Copernicus would take several weeks to settle, Novia had planned what seemed a reasonable schedule.

  Novia had been only a minor investigator when Graysha was diagnosed in utero with her awful condition. That diagnosis made Novia a spokesperson for genefective anti-­homogenegineers overnight. It brought her to the chief’s attention, launching her rapid rise in the division—but it left her torn, half wishing she’d known she and Lenard both carried the Flaherty gene and that homogenegineering had been available. Should she have given up her career for an unborn baby’s sake?

  Of course not. She should have terminated the pregnancy and given Graysha a far better life, an instant entree to eternity.

  She’d last spoken to her daughter three months ago, when Novia stopped off at Halley on her way back to Newton University. Coffee after church on neutral ground had made it an amicable hour. Novia had reminded Graysha that true happiness came from obeying the laws that protected her descendants from exploitation. She wanted Gray’s few terrannums to be good ones.

  Ellard Huntsinger had taken advantage of Graysha’s kindly nature. Novia tried to warn Gray not to marry the first man who showed an interest, but a mother had to let her grown daughter make mistakes. She still wondered whether marriage and divorce drove Graysha to despondency or strengthened her faith. Gray refused to admit either.

  Novia sighed and tucked both feet deeper into holdfasts that kept her body close to keyboard and screen. Her left knee twinged. She’d replace it soon, when her pain patches had to be changed more than three times weekly.

  Searching the roster of known adherents to Henri Lwu’s “religion,” she had found two odd facts. First, the expected history of known genefects didn’t exist. Second, many very wealthy and very able people had been brought in, some at the last possible moment before crossing.

  The wealthy and able feared death even more than struggling workers. The more she found out, the more she suspected Henri and Palila had achieved some kind of victory over aging.

  That would not endear the colonists to short-­lived Graysha.

  Their numbers did imply secrets, though, which suggested criminality. On the screen she spotted something that looked significant: manslaughter and accidental death had been proved in the death of Gray’s predecessor. Excellent! As long as the case remained unsolved, she had worried. Now no one on Goddard could blame EB nettechs—posing, as they sometimes did, as supply crewmen—for killing Jon Mahera to create a vacancy for Graysha. They hadn’t, as far as Novia knew. Still, she needed to keep the settlers’ suspicions quiet.

  She would learn more, she hoped, when the shuttle reached Copernicus Hab.

  ―――

  “. . . and so water and other volatiles splashed onto Goddard’s surface from those asteroids and comet nuclei will eventually evaporate, giving us more atmosphere.”

  “Volatiles,” Trev echoed. He’d stuck one finger into a test tube and was tapping it against Graysha’s desktop, staring through the metal grate into a cage that held a young black gribien. Ordinarily twenty centimeters from its pointed black nose to the end of its flat body, this one lay curled into a tight ball, desperately sick for no apparent reason. At Trev’s pleading Graysha had given it a massive shot of antibiotics, but she was afraid all they could do was watch it die.

  Emmer had been this small once. Graysha had been married to Ellard, craving gentle company . . .

  “Volatiles,” she said softly, “are substances found primarily in ocean or atmosphere. They evaporate easily, so we say they’re ‘volatile.’ ” She studied Trev’s face for signs of comprehension. Beneath blotches of darker pigmentation, one cheek twitched.

  “No,” he finally said. “Adding ice to a planet won’t warm it up. I can’t buy that.”

  She sighed and glanced at Libby JenChee. The chestnut-­haired assistant shrugged but didn’t seem to consider enlightening Trev to be part of her job. The little inner office, three meters by two and a half, was snug for three adults.

  “Let’s take it once more, from the top. There are five pillars of terraforming. Enough gravity to hold a new atmosphere.” Graysha raised one finger. “If air gets away into space, you can’t even start to make a world live. Then volatiles, the evaporable things we were talking about: water, oh-­two, nitrogen. The ocean and air themselves.”

  He nodded.

  “Number three—energy sources. Something to burn or run generators so we can fuel modern civilization.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Four—physical and biological agents, to change the atmosphere and make it breathable. That’s our actual work, plus setting up biological and biochemical cycle
s by introducing microbes, plants, and animals. And, finally,” she said as she lifted a fifth finger, “time. Lots of that.” She relaxed her hand beside her keyboard. “We’re discussing number three right now—energy sources. The greenhouse gases we’re producing or importing—carbon dioxide, CFCs, and methane—absorb the energy that flows in from the sun and reflects back up off the planetary surface. Okay so far?”

  Perched on a lab stool with his back to the darkened window, Trev lifted the lid of the metal cage to stroke the gribien’s feverish body. “Okay,” he, said, but he sounded like he’d lost interest.

  Distracted herself, Graysha reminded herself that the gribien was only a lab animal, one of Varberg’s breeding population. “Greenhouse gases let solar energy stream in,” she explained, “but they don’t let reflected infrared out. Infrared and heat are so closely related that some people think infrared is heat. Now, with a good planetary greenhouse layer, less energy will leave the planet than it receives. As a consequence, it will warm slowly and gradually.”

  “Too fast, at Messier,” Trev said.

  Libby frowned and put in, “Too slowly, in our case. Original predictions have this G-­year’s temp average 16 percent higher than we’re measuring.”

  “Huh,” Trev said in a gloomy voice. “All right, Teach, I’ve got that much. Can you really call it ‘solar’ energy in the Eps Eri system?”

  This kid wasn’t stupid. “Common usage,” she answered.

  “If Goddard’s so small, it must be mighty heavy to have normal gravity.”

  “Not heavy, dense,” Graysha said. “Wrong term, but the right concept. That’s good. What was your area of study, Trev?”

  “Aircraft. Pre-­engineering.” He set his chin. “And I had enough science to know that adding ice to a planet won’t warm it up.”

  She sighed. Pushing away from the desk, she rotated her stool. It was Aday, dark again, and Trev couldn’t hope to save every sick lab animal.

  It was odd, though, to find a gribby that wouldn’t respond to food or stroking. Pathogen free and raised under radiation shielding, the creatures were phenomenally tough. This one might have been poisoned, but for the life of her she couldn’t guess why anyone would pull such a prank.