Shivering World Page 5

  “Unless some of your people suspected Dr. Mahera was somehow responsible for this Gaea policy of non-­response.”

  Lindon DalLierx shook his head. “Sooner or later, the data will convince everyone. Goddard is meteorologically unstable. It could fall either direction, into permanent glaciation or permanent habitability.”

  “But they’ve found nothing new?”

  “Dr. Brady-­Phillips, if they have, I have not been told.”

  Nor, plainly, would he tell her anything he knew. Especially if he was guilty, or if he’d ordered Mahera eliminated. For that matter, if Mahera was killed for the colonists’ security and the colonists were investigating, they might pretend to solve the case. Who might they accuse?

  “I don’t understand why Lee hasn’t asked the Gaea station to act on the recooling evidence,” he added, “but I’m not a scientist.”

  “I’d guess Dr. Lee is reluctant to respond to data she sees as ambiguous, assuming all the simulations still give go-­ahead readings. We do place higher value on computer projections than on raw data. I am personally willing to take the concept of recooling quite seriously.” Graysha drew a deep breath. “And what would have been the advantage of buying another fusion generator?”

  “Direct, aren’t you?” He raised his head.

  “I try to be honest, Chairman.”

  “Good,” he said. “Think about cooling, then. If it continues, extra generator capacity would ensure my people’s survival a little longer. Since you are frank, I shall be, too. I will continue to petition Gaea Consortium to review the decision to hire you, particularly in light of your illness.”

  “I am not an invalid.” How many times would she have to repeat that sentence? “Wait a week or two before you petition for my dismissal, since I have to stay a month anyway. I hope to surprise you.”

  DalLierx shut off his little monitor. “Well, I hope you enjoy your time on Goddard. Do you have any other questions?”

  “No.” She stood up. “Thank you, Chairman.”

  He stood, too. “It was pleasant meeting you, Dr. Brady-­Phillips, and I wish you all success in your career, wherever you . . . and your pet . . . eventually settle.”

  Maybe he disapproved of non-­useful animals. For herself, she relished Emmer’s velvet fur and fond noises. “Would you tell me if any more information turns up on Dr. Mahera’s death?”

  “Certainly.” He walked her to his office door.

  She found her way back down to the concrete corry without trouble. Maybe it was her imagination, but many of the colonists in this building looked like young people rapidly turning old, aged by long hours and hard, wearing labor.

  She headed south, back toward the hub and her own work, feeling burdened by too much new information and plagued by the sensation of having heard something terribly important without recognizing it.

  Novia

  “I heard Graysha ended up on Goddard, of all places.”

  Novia Brady-­Phillips set down her mug of black coffee and eyed Hannah Weil over the student union cafeteria table. Light streamed through an open ceiling, mingling with breezes from Newton University’s rooftop ventilators. The largest habitat in the Alpha Centauri complex, Newton housed a sprawling campus complex that included USSC’s regional offices.

  As a matter of fact, Novia did know about Graysha’s new posting. She’d waited two terrannums to find that vacancy. “Her proposed teaching position at Halley Habitat was converted to on-­site terraforming,” she said.

  “Is Gaea Consortium having organizational problems,” Hannah asked, “or is Novia Brady-­Phillips investigating something again?”

  Novia frowned. She’d just returned from Einstein Habitat, another great space city in the Alpha Centauri Complex, to her old home in Newton Hab, near this university—and she was quietly reopening the inactive posthumous surveillance of Henri and Palila Lwu. Fifteen thousand followers survived them, and Henri Lwu’s work in callosal equalization was well known.

  “Whatever you heard,” she said, “I would appreciate your keeping it to yourself.”

  “Your own daughter.” Hannah’s tone reproached Novia.

  “She is doing on-­site terraforming,” Novia said firmly. “She went over to Halley to pick up a few more credits, and she was going to lecture undergrads at Gaea’s new high school. It was beneath her.” Novia’s connections at Gaea Consortium had snared Graysha the second, more lucrative job offer. Acceptance had been up to Gray . . . nudged by those terrible debts.

  Novia knew how to use debts.

  Hannah Weil folded her hands. “Your own daughter,” she repeated. “Novia, if you are using her in an investigation, she has the right to know.”

  Novia raised her chin. “Graysha makes her own decisions.” And to reach this important goal, Novia didn’t feel guilty about nudging Graysha in a risky direction.

  Gray had so little life left. It should count for something important.

  Hannah picked up the lunch tab. Half an hour later, back in the stuffy dorm room she’d rented, Novia keyed onto the headquarters’ EB net. Its Goddard file still was small, for Gaea Terraforming Consortium had only declared Goddard open for settlement five terrannums ago. Out there in the Epsilon Eridani system, only Copernicus Hab was up and running. After two terrannums’ search, they had enlisted the Einsteinian Lwuites. L-­wu, she pronounced carefully to herself, giving the name its two distinct syllables.

  Novia scratched her chin. Less public than Henri Lwu’s brain work was the fact that his wife, Palila, was related to one of the last surviving offspring of the Strobel Coterie. Those legally transgened so-­called humans were responsible for the 2030 Troubles. During the twenty-­first century, when humankind lived only on planetary surfaces, young Coterites had tapped the UN’s information and control nets with the intention of eliminating third-­world populations. They believed that those poverty-­stricken millions were decreasingly useful to technological civilization.

  The genocide wouldn’t have been violent, of course. Coterites would have diverted aid and laced charity foodstuffs with slow but virulent poisons and abortifacients—that, at least, had been their plan, as pieced together by investigators.

  What actually came to pass was a series of uprisings that threatened all human survival.

  Novia’s Eugenics Board traced its beginnings to the mop-­up decades. UN officials gave the EB unprecedented rights over cloned and transgened individuals. They were hunted down, forcibly hospitalized, and rendered incapable of reproduction or cloning.

  As a crowning touch, UN and EB publicity engines blamed the entire post-­human race of “laboratory creatures” for the catastrophic Troubles.

  Novia had long suspected that the late Lwu partners’ so-­called religion was an excuse to conduct genetic manipulation. Why did Henri Lwu find so many individuals willing to impose fetal brain work on their own helpless offspring? Until the Lwuites quietly shipped out, not even the EB suspected there were so many of them.

  Fifteen thousand!

  Keying quickly, Novia used her security pass to access the Henri/Palila Lwu inquiry file. This one was larger. Though the original case had been tabled for lack of evidence, all information was saved by EB surveillance at Einstein Hab.

  Novia pushed back from the desk, glancing out her window at a forest preserve that arched upward from the vast campus’s edge. Space habitats did not have horizons—not inside, where people lived.

  So what sent the Lwuites so far out? To get Graysha healed, and the Lwuites convicted—if they were guilty, of course—would take more maneuvering than even Novia normally put into a case.

  Poor little Gray was one of a tiny minority truly victimized by anti-­homogenegineering laws. Illegal supergening was too dangerous—to everyone—to allow even the smallest transgening clinics. As the human race spread into space, it would get harder for the Eugenics Board to police and protect everyone.

  So be it. Novia rubbed her pre-­arthritic left knee. Conceived with the ill l
uck to inherit recessive Flaherty genes from both parents, Gray was the sweet, ordinary-­looking kind of girl that people tended to pity . . . as her roach ex-­husband, Ellard, found out. If the Lwuites were illegal practitioners, they might approach Graysha. That could give Novia’s EB a string of rapid convictions.

  She couldn’t move too quickly, though. She must wait until Graysha could realistically hope to be gene-­healed, because for Graysha, the alternative prognosis was too sad . . . too brief. Novia’s excellent connections would ensure Graysha immunity from prosecution or irradiation. She’d only need to serve as key witness against the Lwuites.

  Novia knew she had passed the deadly gene herself. She’d love to atone for the act and get normal grandchildren in one step. Now that she’d reopened the investigation, her next logical step was to search out any surviving Lwu employees.

  If Henri Lwu had set illegal operations in motion, tampering with the human genome behind the Lwuites’ peaceful front, Novia Brady-­Phillips would find out.

  Recognizing pride in that conclusion, she hastily asked forgiveness. If the prayer felt mechanical, she could plead repetition as her excuse. Talented people often had to confess their pride. The Universal Father would understand. One of His first and greatest spirit-­scions fell under that very sin, and personally, she found Lucifer a sympathetic character.

  As she reached for her computer, a sparrow perched on a structural brace outside the open window and sang noisily. Novia touched a button on the desk’s rim. Her window slid shut, silencing the distraction, and then she darkened it to maximum polarization.

  ―――

  Across Axis Plantation’s hub from the Colonial Affairs corridor, near the broad Gaea hall, Graysha located Gaea employees’ housing. This tunnel was narrower, with low walls that rose straight up from the floor. Cooking scents drifted from her left.

  Since she had not seen her apartment yet, it was easy to picture herself lying down, orphaned once again, in the Health Maintenance Facility tonight. Emmer’s warmth around her shoulders felt comforting and companionable, though it would be nice not to have to explain the gribien to everyone she met.

  Graysha found the Gaea cafeteria easily. Inside its fan-­fold doors, she joined the shortest of four food lines, accepted a pre-­filled tray, and then found a familiar face—Dr. Varberg—at a table near the big noisy room’s center. “Feeling all right?” he asked in a solicitous voice.

  “Absolutely.” She sat down across from him, unwrapped the large sandwich she found on her plate, and twisted for comfort on the concrete bench.

  On the other side of Varberg sat an extremely tall black woman. “Jirina,” Varberg said, “this is our new soils person, Graysha Brady-­Phillips. Graysha, Dr. Jirina Suleiman looks down upon us all. She’s Virology.”

  “Born and schooled on Mars, so I’m used to planets.” The black woman had a voice as deep as her rich dark skin, while her high-­bridged nose and strong cheekbones suggested complex racial blending. “You just had an interview with the CCA, I understand. How hard did he bite?”

  “Not half as hard as he could have,” Graysha answered. “Is he really as young as he looks?”

  “No. Mid-thirties, with two daughters.”

  Married. Too bad, she observed lightly.

  “And they’re as pretty as he is,” Varberg said.

  Graysha bit into her sandwich. The filling was bean paste and cheese, and it tasted better than she would have expected. The bread was whole grain and chewy, as fragrant and fresh as something from a fine hab restaurant. She saved Emmer a crust wrapped in a cloth napkin, enough for a full day. To her relief, the gribien slept peacefully, keeping her ears down.

  Varberg and Jirina continued a conversation she’d obviously interrupted, something about immune reactions and viral sheaths. When it lulled, she asked Varberg about the shortage of cold-­tolerant microorganisms she’d noted when reviewing the microbial inventories.

  “We’re getting warmer, not cooler,” he answered around a mouthful of something green, “so you don’t need cold viability.” He nodded across at Graysha and aside at Jirina.

  This must be part of the “local Consortium policy” DalLierx had alluded to. Graysha looked at the tall woman, who winked and inclined her head toward Varberg.

  Graysha pursed her lips. “Supervisor Clayton on Halley gave me the impression there was a problem with the temp cycle.”

  Varberg stirred cream-­colored pudding with his fork. “Offworlder. Too busy with equations to deal with real weather patterns. They fluctuate, Graysha. You can’t rig a solar sail to tow an air mass.”

  When he looked away, Graysha raised a questioning eyebrow toward Dr. Jirina Suleiman.

  Later, the woman mouthed, and the conversation moved to other topics as Graysha worked on her sandwich. Ten minutes later, Jirina walked her up the corry to her apartment. “Thanks for that cue over lunch,” Graysha said. “Doesn’t Dr. Varberg like to explain simple things to new people?”

  Jirina laughed so shortly it sounded like a cough. “Varberg can be a pomposity. Particularly in a group, for some reason.”

  Wanting to like her boss, Graysha frowned. “What’s the story, Jirina? Was Jon Mahera murdered?”

  “We honestly don’t know. For a week, it looked accidental. Then one of Vice-­Chair MaiJidda’s brownclothers started asking questions, and before long no one was certain.”

  “MaiJidda?”

  “You met her. Vice for police.”

  Graysha blinked. The vice-­chair for police met her at the shuttle? What were they so afraid of?

  Mother, she guessed.

  Jirina went on. “I’d be inclined to believe MaiJidda just wanted us nervous if it weren’t for . . . well, the day after it was first called murder, everyone on the floor found a cupful of sand on their computer station. Took half an hour to clean up. Someone here is not quite right.”

  Jirina slowed to a stop. “What number are you?”

  Graysha thought of Will Varberg plucking petals from her marigolds. She pulled out the mag strip Melantha Lee gave her and read, “Unit seventeen.”

  Jirina led her to the door. Graysha passed her key across a reader, walked through and glanced around, then gaped. At the center of the room, between her three flexcases and her long, soft duffel, stood a bare cement pad. Tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep on that. “No, Jirina, no. Concrete beds?”

  “Don’t worry, Blondie.” Jirina tapped a hollow at the bed’s foot. “With the roll and covers in here, it’ll be comfortable. Hope they gave you enough closet space.”

  “And a pillow?” Graysha asked, reaching up to her shoulder. Emmer hung limp as she lifted her off.

  “I wondered if that might be a gribby.” Jirina stroked Emmer with a ruddy palm. “Friend of mine kept one for a pet. Handy, I thought. Almost no work.”

  “All I need is a pillow for her to sleep on. She’s getting old.”

  Jirina raised the hollow’s lid and pulled out a plump cushion. “There, gribien. Home—” Jirina halted.

  Graysha followed the black woman’s stare. Squarely centered on a shelf behind the bare concrete pad was a rounded pile of fine-­grained brown sand.

  “Well,” Jirina said lightly, “I guess you’re really one of us. Welcome to Goddard.”

  Graysha uneasily curled Emmer onto the pillow around the crust she’d saved. Emmer raised her head, looked all around with gleaming black eyes, nibbled briefly, and then fell back asleep.

  Jirina swept the shelf clean with one hand. “How old is she?”

  “Five terrannums.” Determined to ignore the sandy pile and the questions it raised, Graysha rubbed her creature’s back. “She was the cull of her litter.” Curious, she stepped around a corner. To her dismay, odor-­free clean room facilities of the habs were here replaced by a small sink and hollow stool, with one storage hatch beyond the antique facility.

  The bedroom, at least, felt cozy. From a flexcase, she pulled her perfuming box, wrapped carefully with stocki
ngs.

  “What’s that?” Jirina asked.

  Graysha unclasped the styroplast box’s catch and flattened it on her desktop. Fifty rows of tiny vials lay tucked into foam-­padded slots. “Scent art. Something I picked up on Newton. These are esters I didn’t think I’d find in Halley Habitat.”

  “Interesting hobby for a micro person. Especially if your specialty is soils.”

  Graysha closed it up, grinning. “The fact the job literally stinks makes subtle scent work especially satisfying. Thanks for your help, Dr.—”

  “Don’t ‘doctor’ me. I go by Jirina, in and out of the lab.” She unfolded her impressive height off the bed.

  Graysha nodded. “Then I’m Graysha, please. My mother calls me Gray.”

  “You look white to me. Or maybe pale pink.”

  Concerned, Graysha glanced down at her fingertips. They looked rosy, as they should after lunch. Then she realized the remark referred to her race, not her health.

  Jirina pivoted on one foot. “You don’t mind me calling you Blondie, do you? It’s fun to tease the other minorities, but only if they’re willing.”

  “Always glad to be teased,” Graysha answered. “It’s a sign of friendship.”

  “You understand.” Jirina winked. “Good.”

  Several minutes later, as they strolled back through the hub and into the warmer Gaea tunnel, Chairman DalLierx’s words came back to her. She asked Jirina, “Do you think Goddard is cooling?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think. The charts say it is.”

  “I don’t just mean seasonally—”

  “This winter,” Jirina interrupted, “is already two degrees colder than the last, which was one degree off the predicted average. But we can handle it, I think. Varberg was right about one thing—you’ll find it frustrating to deal with a physical world when your computer will simulate a ten-­terrannum weather pattern change in six minutes flat.”