Shivering World Page 6
“Why do you think this is happening?”
“I like albedo.” Jirina stared up the corry as she walked. “We’re getting more reflection of light and heat back into space from ice caps that are freezing purer and brighter than we simulated. We have another carbonaceous asteroid under tow right now. Next G-year, we’ll blow it up over the north pole and give that ice a nice dark dusting. That should warm us up.”
“So you don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
“Dr. Lee doesn’t seem to think so, and she has the entire project’s overview at her fingertips.”
“But DalLierx thinks so.” Why wouldn’t the colonists worry? They hoped to pass this planet to their children. “Could our green plants be taking up too much carbon dioxide, as well, thinning the greenhouse layer?”
Jirina shrugged. “You want to talk greenhouse layer, talk CFCs. They’re supposed to play a much bigger role than the CO2.”
They climbed a short, broad flight of stairs to the Gaea building’s first level, then boarded the elevator. “CFCs,” Graysha echoed. DalLierx also mentioned the chlorofluorocarbons. “But CFCs linger in an atmosphere for a century after we put them there. Otherwise, why would we bother using them for temp raising?”
“Correct, Blondie. On Mars, they stayed, but could they be getting away here?”
Graysha thought about all she’d learned concerning terraforming. “Why should they? Goddard has more gravity than Mars. It ought to hold greenhouse gases perfectly well.”
“You explain it, then,” said Jirina.
“I intend to.”
The black woman tilted her head and asked, “Why?”
Because I want this to be a habitable world some day. Graysha gripped the elevator rail. “Call it a hunch.” Why should she care? She had an ulterior motive for being on Goddard, but she also loved the idea of making a world live. “Just a hunch.”
Graysha waved good-bye to Jirina when they reached her own lab. She’d just opened one roll-side cupboard beneath the countertop, intending to inventory her glassware, when movement at the far edge of vision caught her attention. A young woman—sixteen, perhaps seventeen—peered in through the lab’s hall door. One brown pigtail dangled over her shoulder.
“Oh, hello,” said Graysha. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Hello. I was just curious. I work for Dr. Paul.”
“You’re a tech?” Someone so young had to be a colonist.
“Uh-huh. I’ve got to go. Bye.” Her head whipped back and out of sight.
Goodness, the Lwuites were skittish. Graysha stepped to the door and looked out into the hallway. High-ceilinged, it reminded her of a habitat dock, except for the strange angles at which floors met walls. Abruptly she realized she’d learned to see almost-right angles from a slanted perspective. These corners, truly ninety degrees, looked odd.
Without warning, the ground shook and trembled. Graysha grabbed for a large flask she’d brought out onto the counter. Exactingly fitted into slots on the shelves, her array of graduated cylinders rattled but didn’t creep.
“Hoo,” Jirina’s voice called out from the office next door. “Shall we dance?”
“What was that?” Graysha asked, willing her hands to stop trembling.
“Microseism. We have them all the time. Goddard’s adjusting to weight in new places, especially out under the ocean. Geology injects lubricants down into the subduction zones every now and then. Little quakes now are better than big ones later—so they say.”
“I hope Geology knows what it’s doing.”
“Oh, we’ve got the best,” Jirina answered. “They’ve even located sub-crustal magma northeast of Axis. We might restart continental drift in this century.”
Then the planet really would live. Subcrustal magma sounded dangerous, though.
On the other hand, Jirina didn’t sound concerned.
Graysha decided not to worry about it.
―――
Lindon DalLierx stepped up to the edge of Colonial Affairs’ broad rectangular roof and shaded his eyes to stare northeast toward Axis Plantation’s spacefield. Beyond the Axis cluster of stone-and-concrete domes and cubes—and the fields, gray and brown, touched with hopeful green—was a small, blackened crater. That scorched landing scar was his visual memory link with the home and lifestyle he’d left behind. It was the colony’s tenuous tie with the supply trade it needed to survive.
He adjusted gray-green UV goggles to keep them from pinching his temples, then turned back around. To the south, beyond greenhouse Quonsets, stretched a barn-dotted animal production range of twenty square kilometers. Past the production range, a battery of wind-powered generators whirled like the pinwheels he once gave his daughters.
Vice-Chair for Records Taidje FreeLand waited close by on the roof, warming his hands in parka pockets. “None of us wants to go,” FreeLand said. “We don’t have to give up yet. We’ll weather this.” A wisp of white hair fluttered from beneath FreeLand’s browncloth hood. One of Henri Lwu’s three surviving research assistants, Taidje FreeLand never lost his air of calm self-assurance.
Lindon pushed his own parka hood back to let the wind cool his head. “We should have had at least a G-year before they found someone qualified to fill that position. And now this. At the last minute we find out the woman Gaea found is N—”
“Novia Brady-Phillips’s daughter,” FreeLand interrupted. “We all know it, as of six-thirty yesterday morning. Calm down. Think about something else. Pray, if you can keep your mind on it.”
“Calm down,” Lindon muttered, pivoting to face the building’s other edge. Though the sky still gleamed, he imagined he could pick out a flicker low in the sky that might be the colony’s near neighbor, Copernicus.
The planet Goddard was desirable. True, one had to fly outside this crater scar to see its eerie geologic beauty, but even down here, as dusk gathered over the east rim and the turquoise sky dimmed to gray, he felt a sense of promise, of freedom, and a link to one non-corporate Creator whose Buyout was already paid.
Back on Earth, billions of people scurried to build shelter domes, huddling away from its rancid air and the deadly UV that now poured down a vast ozone hole. Many of Earth’s wealthy and educated people had moved to habitats, but hab life was ruled by the dangers of depressurization and radiation. That took a heavy toll on freedom.
On broader worlds like this—he squinted toward the red sun his people had once called Eps Eridani—a wiser humanity might start again, cautious of its resources, knowing what treasures they really were.
Goddard is ours, Lindon insisted. Ours. We’ve worked so hard for it. Within two of his people’s generations, there should be a temperate, habitable band along Goddard’s equator. His great-grandchildren would build up the population, spread out, and start new settlements. One generation more, and they could start buying out Gaea’s investment—billions of maxims that the consortium spent on resource-rich asteroids, surface microorganisms, and infrastructure . . . plus interest.
Increasing the colony’s numbers, committing more people to lives of hard work, would bring Buyout sooner. Some day, maybe, they would send a representative to the United Sovereignties and Space Colonies.
First, they had to protect themselves and their children. They could not go back.
His thoughts shifted back to the new arrival. Dr. Brady-Phillips had asked specifically about mammalian genegineering.
And she brought a pet. A pet. He’d given up Valentina, his daughters’ adored champion Samoyed, when they emigrated. Pets simply couldn’t be tolerated under stringent colonial conditions. She—
“This isn’t working,” he muttered.
Gravel crunched under Taidje FreeLand’s shoe. “We might bring the woman in, befriend her. Undoubtedly she could provide key information about Eugenics Board policies and standard procedures.”
Lindon laughed shortly at the older man, trying to shake off a sense of impending
doom. “It’s looking likely that whoever killed Dr. Mahera was a co-professional. Suppose Graysha Brady-Phillips were killed next. What are the odds Commissioner Brady-Phillips would decide that needed investigating? Suppose—”
Taidje FreeLand raised a silencing finger. “You’re not yourself, Lindon. I called you up here to talk sense into you before you frighten your staff. Now calm down.”
Truly, he wasn’t himself. Hardship, even tragedy, had steadied him in the past, stripping away all defenses but his faith. That foundation held. Always.
“That’s better,” FreeLand said. “How much production will it take to outweigh the funds she’ll cost us? Calmly, now.”
Lindon took a deep breath of the late afternoon’s pure, chilled air. “Thank you, Taidje. I apologize for behaving that way.”
FreeLand straightened his goggles. His goggle strap made a long, straight dent around his puffy parka hood. “We could send her away, escorting that stowaway to Copernicus. I’d rather see him tried there, anyway.”
“Possible,” Lindon answered, sniffing the frigid wind. Had he caught a breath of pine from the infant forest?
“Offer her a bonus if she would accept transfer. Could we do that without seeming to incriminate ourselves?”
“That stowaway could be an EB agent, too.” Lindon calculated quickly. “Fare for two to Copernicus would drain our reserves.”
“Yes, but if we could find the boy’s relatives, perhaps we could convince them to pay both fares.”
“I got the feeling, talking to him, that contacting his family might not be our wisest choice. But you’re agreeing with me, aren’t you?” Lindon stared eastward into a darkening sky, where two star-dots had appeared since the last time he looked up. “Even Ari is backing me on this, and we haven’t matched goals twice since the crossing.” And FreeLand knew nothing about all that happened between them en route to Goddard. “We agree then—Dr. Brady-Phillips must leave.”
“Yes,” FreeLand admitted. “It will be better if she does.”
Wastewater
After a hasty shopping trip for local clothing and a slow, satisfying dinner, Graysha foot-dragged back to her room, so full she could scarcely move. She untied and brushed her hair, pulled off her clothes, and slid between sheets on a genuine concrete bed. She’d unrolled a thin fabric-covered foam mattress to cover it, and it felt wonderful. Yellow-brown walls made her feel like she was burrowing in a cave.
Emmer grunted beside Graysha. Thirty centimeters long when she stretched out, she waved her stubby forelimbs. Graysha batted one paw from behind, avoiding claws. The aging gribien never had been active, and these days she rarely wanted to play. Tonight she seemed tender and kittenish, but after half a dozen swipes, her paws curled up and her eyes fell shut.
Graysha yawned. It was Cday, and Eps Eridani wouldn’t set until late “tonight,” but down here she could shut off the light and go to sleep in total, comfortable darkness.
She was more than ready. The covers felt deliciously warm, though the chilly room air made her uncovered nose tingle. Turning carefully so as not to jostle Emmer, she clutched a feather-stuffed pillow. Weird prickles, probably feather shafts, poked her through its case.
Sand, she remembered as consciousness faded. Sand on her shelf had to be a threat, or a warning. Who had known this apartment would be assigned to her? Was someone afraid of what she might find here? The questions faded as she drifted off to sleep.
An unsettling image floated on her mind when she woke the next morning: After hefting trays full of concrete-encased bacterial cultures into stone incubators, she watched heavy-hearted as carefully inoculated dishes sank under icy water.
Only a dream, she observed as her mind focused. Get up and get moving. It’ll fade.
She bathed at the sink, then pulled on one of her new shirts and a new pair of pants. Colony-woven fabric scratched her shoulders and legs. What was it made from? she wondered. Wool, linen? She fingered the organic weave roughened by slubs of brown thread.
Well, she decided, when in Rome, wear what the Romans wear.
Roman togas probably itched, too.
―――
She was pleased by how easily she made it to her lab. Two sharp left turns took her to the Gaea building, just southeast of the housing wing along a wider hall. To her surprise, a message waited on her computer. Colonial Affairs was offering her seven thousand maxims as a severance gift if she would escort the stowaway back to Copernicus Hab. Dr. Yael GurEshel would provide medical assistance for the trip if she needed it.
Graysha smiled as she finished the message. She wanted to find out the secrets of this new world before she went anywhere. The cooling “non-issue” presented a fascinating puzzle. After sending a firm but polite refusal, she checked Dr. Varberg’s list of catch-up duties and pulled a rack of banked soil samples out of her refrigerator.
Will Varberg brought in a younger man about an hour later. “Did you meet Dr. Paul Ilizarov, our oceanic microbiologist?”
Graysha turned away from the glassware racks beside her ion sterilizer. This must be the tech’s “Dr. Paul.” Such blue eyes on a brown-haired man were probably cosmetic transplants, but they glimmered convincingly. With his cleft chin, muscular shoulders, and slim hips and waist, he looked more like a vidi actor than a scientist. She clasped his hand, feeling self-conscious about the small bandages still spotting her own.
“Very glad to meet you,” he said. She heard Russia in the lingering trace of his accent. “I’ve covered some of Mahera’s non-oceanographic water-related duties. I am pleased to hand them back to you.”
“Wastewater?” she asked.
“One guess—very good. Wherever did you get such beautiful hair?”
Graysha’s cheeks warmed. There undoubtedly was a shortage of new women in the Gaea building, since shuttle trips were so expensive and rare. “From my mother, I suppose. It’s the Newton Hab blond-dominant gene.”
Dr. Varberg cleared his throat. “Dr. Ilizarov makes Goddard’s isolation a little easier for Gaea’s women, as I understand.” His mouth smiled. His eyes did not.
“When does the wastewater need to be checked next?” she asked.
Paul Ilizarov turned his head so Varberg would not see him wink. “Yesterday. Shall I show you around?”
“Thank you.” Even if he treated all Gaea women like this, his manner charmed her.
“One moment. Let me shut down Jirina’s differential filter.” He pivoted smoothly and strode off up the hall.
Graysha stared after him. She’d always enjoyed dealing with Russians, so strangely self-assured and wonderfully self-deprecating. Though their lead in space colonization had ended decades ago, the best astronomers, and most top scientists in any discipline, still carried Slavic surnames.
“He’s a heartbreaker,” Varberg said quietly, almost growling the words. “I hope you’re not easily victimized by that kind.”
Surely Varberg was too old to be jealous. Anyway, it’d taken no heart breaker to victimize her before. Ellard was as homely as a hog. “I don’t think so,” she murmured.
―――
“It’s quite an amazing place.” Paul Ilizarov paused in front of the underground wastewater treatment facility’s door.
Feeling dubious, Graysha adjusted the shoulder strap of a black sampling pack. Paul had draped her ceremoniously with the pack, calling it Jon Mahera’s personal property.
That was almost as bad as having Mahera’s nameplate still on her door. Later today, she’d pry it off. By morning starlight, the threat of sand on her shelf seemed preposterous, even funny.
Paul pushed open the treatment facility’s door, and she braced for ten minutes of choking chlorine fumes.
Instead, the first warm puff of breath smelled of damp jungle. Trickling and bubbling sounds played along with humming unseen pumps and heaters. On her left, along the building’s southerly wall under banks of lamps separated by broad skylights, fat glass cylinde
rs stood three meters tall. Three were black with sludge, six were intense with the green of dense algal growth, and three were water clear. Everywhere else lay mats of greenery. On both sides of a concrete path, plants floated on small fluorofoam rafts—willows and watercress, ruffled lettuce, and other species she didn’t know. She’d grown up with greenhouse technology, for her father was a pharmaceutical botanist. But this was wild, spacious, lush, and more enchanting than any greenhouse she’d ever seen.
“This is one of the best kept secrets on Goddard,” Paul murmured. “Be so good as to not tell others. Too much visitation would compromise our drinking water’s purity.”
“I understand.” She knelt on a pebbly concrete walkway and lifted a half-meter raft of red lettuce off the water. Dripping roots dangled through a mat of transparent eggs. There had to be fish, or maybe amphibians, breeding along this raceway.
She slipped the raft back down into its berth. “So the system’s like hydroponics?” she asked.
“Lwuites have adopted self-sustaining systems wherever possible.”
“If it’s their priority, why do we go along?” Not that she objected. She would’ve gladly moved her office right here onto the path.
Crouching, Paul pressed lightly against her arm. “Technically speaking, we work for them. Only until they’re capable of taking over, or so says the fine print.”
She set Mahera’s sampling kit down and eyed the greenery. “All right. What do I do?”
He pointed at one corner of the kit and answered, “Your nutrient tubes are marked, one for each sampling spot. I’ll show you where the first raceway begins.”
She made the circuit, mindful of her audience and her sampling technique. Finally, he paused beside a black, foreboding aeration tank and grasped a petcock. “Be ready to move quickly. This one smells as you’d expect.”
He didn’t exactly roll his r’s and l’s, she decided. He rubbed them. She drew a pipette and fitted it with the clickdraw. “Ready,” she announced. One-handed, he screwed open a sampling port. Graysha plunged in the pipette, holding her breath. He closed the port as she inoculated the tube. “Phew!” she exclaimed.