Haze, page 9
“Noted. Good idea!”
The warning chime rings.
“Time to meld. Jump in minus one hour.”
Dan is hoping that during shunt travel they’ll see some glorious vision, an image that will be the key to interpreting them all. Instead, the jump passes smoothly, safely, and without the appearance of anything out of place other than the occasional vortex.
At times, when he’s securely buckled into his chair for jumps, Devit finds himself thinking about his far distant ancestors, back on the southern islands of Earth. They only knew one planet, if indeed they even knew what the concept of planet meant. Their world was mostly ocean, thousands of kilometers of open sea dotted here and there with islands. They explored their ocean one island at a time in wooden canoes, steering by the stars and ocean currents. He wonders how many of those canoes never reached land, never came home. The Human urge to know, to travel beyond the safe horizon, always sent others out again.
When at night they looked up at the galaxy, spread like a river across the sky, did they all unknowing see the stars of the Rim? No one knows, exactly, or at least, none of the experts Devit’s asked do. His people were among the first volunteers to travel to those stars when the ship technology was new. Their descendants still ride other dangerous currents now every time a starpilot takes them through a shunt. Sometimes those ships never come home as well. Lost ships, the lost shunt—no one knows where they founder and drown, not in water but in light.
Traveling a shunt takes hours, or so it seems to the passengers in the ship. During that time everyone tries to keep their fear to themselves rather than add to the understandable anxieties, but the fear escapes and sits in the bridge with them. No matter how comfortable the jump chairs, no matter how often they look at their bodies, somehow everyone’s brain announces that they no long exist, not really, any more than a candle flame exists as some kind of solid object or enduring entity. We are all patterns, our brains tell us, nothing more than patterns of energy.
Passengers can always tell when the jump ends. Suddenly bodies are solid again, and not merely real, but the only reality. Devit wonders how the ancestors felt when they beached their canoes—a jump into shallow water, a solid hold on the wood of the canoe, and the feel of running it up on land, safe from the waves, home again.
When Dan’s voice comes over the intraship comm, “Jump successful, Captain,” everyone already knows.
Security chief Devit oversees everyone’s return to normal duty after jump. With this particular crew, all he really has to do is say, “Sai, everyone can unbuckle.” Except, of course, for Marda. When he contacts Medic Lee through the ship’s comm, she confirms that the little girl did fine.
“Not scared at all,” Lee tells him. “She’s still in a kind of shock. I don’t suppose any of this seems truly real to her.”
“Not yet, no, after everything she’s been through. Well, good. Over and out.”
Everything she’s been through. Devit tries to avoid thinking about Kay-Asi, his own daughter, but the sight of this helpless child has triggered memories. His beautiful little girl running to meet him when he came home on leave, a Fleet ensign—a promising young officer—at her Academy graduation. Only a year later she was kidnapped by Lep terrorists on a planet torn apart by politics, hidden in a place where her father couldn’t save her. The death of a thousand cuts, they called it, a Lep custom of great antiquity, one prick or tiny slice at a time. It must have taken hours for her to die. No one would let him see her body. No one would confirm or deny if they’d raped her as well. He supposed that meant they had, even if she was from a species alien to them.
If they’d told me, I would have found a way, I would have killed them and anyone in the way—
“Chief!” Evans's voice cuts through the memory. “Devit! What’s wrong?”
In his mind he’s back in the bleak office of the police chief who gave him the news. He remembers staring at the blank wall behind the desk, staring hard to keep from weeping—
“Chief!” Evans snaps. “Devit.”
Evans is standing in front of his chair. “ Are you ill?”
“No, ma’am. Just remembering something.” He tries to smile and fails. “Ma’am, I apologize. Did you call me?”
She hesitates, visibly troubled, looks this way and that, finally speaks. “Orbit in 5.6 solstandard hours. I just wanted to inform you.”
“Thank you, ma’am. We’ll be ready.”
As Evans turns and goes back to her captain’s chair, Mata walks over, his crest not quite flat, his eyes wary.
“Devit?” Mata speaks softly. “I have the horrible feeling I know what you were remembering.”
Devit looks at him, the slightly snouty, heavily scaled alien face, the yellow eyes sad under their protective ridges, and sees someone who desperately wants to help. “You’re probably right.”
“Seeing the child did it?”
“Yes.”
“I cannot tell you how sorry I am. About what happened, I mean.”
“You don’t need to. I know.”
“Thank you for that.”
Mata nods his way, then returns to his station. The memories sink back into the prison Devit built for them in his mind.
As the ship spirals around RE77-4th on its way to spacedock, Mary’s external scopes and cameras—her Eyes, as they are known—send a stream of images back to the main communication screen opposite the captain’s chair. Terraforming an empty world, they call it, but Evans can see why the company in charge has named it Merrval. She’s seen empty worlds before, the smooth basalt flows pocked with volcanoes, the steaming oceans, the cracks and ridges that will, someday far into the future, define continents. Clouds of methane, the usual atmosphere for a newly formed planet, swirled through their yellow-green skies.
Merrval’s three continents are fully formed. It has an oxygen-rich atmosphere and deep, clean oceans. Water runs in rivers and pools in lakes. As the ship travels around the planet, she sees several mountain ranges on the continents, some new and jagged, some worn smooth by old age. Fossils and recent finds of animal bones show that the planet hosted abundant life once. Two of the continents still harbor plant life in patchy forests and mangy-appearing plains. A number of specialized ecosystems cluster around thermal vents in the ocean deeps. On the third continent, a species of green moss clings to life at the edges of ponds and a few small streams. It’s probable that life-forms analogous to insects exist, all too small to be detected from a distance. No one knows who or what wiped the rest of the landscape away down to bare dirt and rock.
A group of investors from the Vranz Consortium, a small group of worlds within the Rim Council territory, are attempting to bring life back. Merrval. A marvel indeed, if they succeed in resurrecting this barren place of death. At the moment, the crew and the scientists all live on the elaborate spacedock system circling the planet. No one can walk on the surface unless they are swaddled in hazmat suits. The equipment that the Dancing Mary carries will allow the crew to build a limited number of structures on one isolated island to begin an experiment.
The project head—a skinny, sharp-faced Human named Dzhun d’Allet—turns out to be the hospitable sort. He arrives at the Mary with the crew who will unload the crates and padded bubbles into a pair of LTVs, big boxy vans with enormous float pads underneath. While the men and their longshorebot work, d’Allet and Evans stand on Mary’s bridge and watch on the communication screen.
“Come have dinner with us tonight,” d’Allet says. “We don’t get much company out here, you know.”
“You’re at the end of a single shunt, aren’t you?”
“We are. It took me a long time to find a merchanter to bring us what we ordered.”
“I don’t suppose you have any cargo for us to take back.”
“Message packets. Quite a lot of them, in fact. Probably, what? Eight standard months’ worth. The company will pay the going rate. I’ll see to that.”
The dinner takes place in another module of the spacedock. Although Devit’s worried about the ship just on general principles, Evans decides that the Prime AI units are more than adequate to keep a watch on it. A passenger LTV fetches the crew promptly at 1600 hours, local dock time. D’Allet welcomes them into a big dining area decorated with true Vranz flare—landscape holos from their home planet on every wall framed by big bouquets of red and yellow flowers tucked into luxuriant mazla.
“Morale out here is a very fragile thing,” he says. “The home office rotates crew members in and out from other projects, but the actual team, myself and the research people, needs to stay on-site as much as possible. We have to make things pleasant.”
Before the meal a white-coated staff member serves glasses of a pale purple wine. Evans takes a sip and smiles. “Lovely! Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.” He raises his glass in a half salute.
“I’m surprised you’ve had shipping troubles. Your home office pays well, really.”
“For now. They keep threatening to use one of the big companies. What is it? Speed Shunt—something like that. They’re undercutting the Merchants Guild rates. I keep telling them that the big companies don’t give the good service. None of them want to come all the way out here without a guaranteed return cargo. What should we send back? Dirt? All the accountants can see is the cost.”
“That’s worrisome! I’ll have to contact the guild and see what they’re doing about it.”
As they chat, Evans keeps a discreet watch on her crew. Dan has found the best-looking Human woman in the room, a tall slender brunette. In the comfortable low-level lighting, he’s removed his visor. All traces of the whip mark have disappeared, leaving him as beautiful as ever, with his devil’s green eyes in an angelic Pale face. His golden hair has grown back to a flattering length. He’s all strict attention as the woman talks. Evans can hear snatches of their incongruous conversation about something called ice plant.
“That’s Anne-Mahree Dubray, our biome specialist,” d’Allet says. “She’s going to establish a small colony of vegetation and wingless beetles on our island. To see if they live or die from some mysterious cause.”
“Interesting. How long has the continent been barren?”
“It’s impossible to tell precisely. We have two different extinctions. The first happened about 1,000 standard years ago. Most of the damage to the other continents dates from whatever happened then. The second was only a very short time ago, as planetary events go. Four-hundred years, perhaps, our geologist tells us. Give or take a few dozen.”
“The second event—I take it that some sort of life had recovered from the first disaster.”
“To some extent. Remains of a sort survive; animal bones, traces of actual buildings. All on a single continent, the one we’re geosynced to. The only logical explanation for that is someone attempted colonization. Whoever they were, they didn’t bury their dead, damn them, so we don’t know which species it was.”
“I suppose there must be a good many speculations about what happened.”
“Ye gods, yes! We get transmits now and then from sapients who want to tell us their theories. Mysterious magical forces loom large. Also, of course, the Hoppers get a good share of the blame.”
“At least they really do exist.”
“Yes. Unfortunately.” He pauses for a sip of wine. “The best theory concerns the EMF surrounding the planet. At some point it seems to have failed. There’s a good bit of residual radioactivity in the soil from solar radiation.”
“I didn’t realize that would be possible.”
“Neither did anyone else.” D’Allet grins at her. “That’s why it’s only a theory.”
Evans realizes that Dan has turned on the charm. He moves a little closer to Dubray, signals to the staff member to come refill her glass, smiles and responds to everything she says. Dubray is not bothering to resist. She smiles in return and now and then raises one hand to push a lock of her lovely brown hair back behind her ear or to touch the low neckline of her dress and adjust it a little lower.
D’Allet looks in their direction and raises an eyebrow. “Hah! She’ll be showing him her greenhouse next. It’s right next to her quarters. A little private place, you know.”
“I have no doubt that’s exactly what he has in mind.”
“Who is he? I’ve never seen such a good-looking man.”
“Our shunt pilot. His mother was a vid performer. A famous one, I think.”
“Of course! JohDanna, yes? I thought he looked familiar. I was an adolescent when she was at her peak. A boy’s crush of the worst sort on the safely unavailable older woman.”
Evans laughs and looks around for Devit. He has indeed noticed Dan’s hunting expedition, but he appears resigned rather than furious. He catches Evans’s glance and strolls over to join them.
“Don’t worry, ma’am.” Devit says to her. “We all know what he’s like.”
“Unfortunately. D’Allet, my apologies in advance. I suspect our crew member won’t be joining us for dinner.”
“I doubt if my biome specialist will, either. My apologies to you.”
Their prediction turns out to be perfectly accurate. Everyone else pretends not to notice.
Wang and Lee leave directly after the meal because Marda is exhausted to the point of tears. Devit, Mata, and Evans stay for coffee and brandy with d’Allet and the senior staff. While Dubray never reappears, Dan rejoins them just in time for the ride back to the ship in the LTV. He flops into a seat and gives everyone a vacant smile. With a sigh and a groan, the robotic van lifts up and starts its long trundle back to the Mary’s dock.
“Tuck in your shirt, Brennan,” Evans says. “You’re a disgrace! If we were still on active duty, there would be an action. Insulting a host! Conduct unbecoming an officer!”
Dan’s smile disappears. “Yes, ma’am.” He sits up straight, leans forward, and starts straightening up his clothes. “I apologize.”
Devit glances Evans’s way and raises a questioning eyebrow.
“You have permission to speak freely, Chief. You’ve been patient enough.”
Dan flinches back into his seat as if he’s trying to meld with the upholstery.
“For chrissakes, Brennan!” Devit dispenses with the ‘sir.’ “Do you have to screw every woman you meet?”
“No. Only the ones who want me to.” Dan looks and sounds honestly bewildered.
That, Evans decides, is the most annoying thing of all.
Lod-Mata makes a gargling sound deep in his throat. The rest of the ride passes in silence.
“Pete, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. You don’t need to be jealous or anything like that. I love you. Those others?” Dan pauses for a shrug. “They don’t mean shit to me.”
Devit has been looking forward to the privacy of their cabin, where rank and proper procedure don’t count. He has stored up several different things to say to start a fight so they can clear the air. Dan is sitting on the edge of their bed and looking up at him with the wide eyes and trembling mouth of a frightened child. Devit starts to speak, then realizes he can remember none of his prepared insults.
“Are you jealous?” Dan says.
“No. It’s conduct unbecoming an officer. You’re too good for that.”
“Like hell I am. I told you to just leave me on Nowhere Street. Would have saved you a lot of crap.”
Devit pulls the chair around to face the bed and sits down. A piece of information is nagging at him, some obscure facts about Throwbacks and the original Inborn that his mind has curiously decided to dredge up now. He realizes that without the vague memory, he would indeed be furious.
Devit picks his words carefully to avoid a possible fight. “Your father, Dan. Your mother only had an affair with him, right?”
“Not even that. She picked him out of a Fleet catalog.” He makes a sour face. “Hey, meet my dad, the sperm bank.”
“A Fleet bank? How did she get access to that?”
“Pete, c’mon. She was real good at getting anything she wanted.”
Just like you. Devit pushes that thought away. “Did she get a genome transmit on a data-save PL?”
“I never saw it if she did.”
“They always say that you can’t just pick out a gene here and there. They come in clusters or something.”
Genes for abnormal beauty—what was likely to have been bundled with them?
“I’ve heard that, yeah. But he had to have been a pilot. Where else would I have gotten the genes to handle shunt travel?”
“It’s not him I’m worried about. I’ll have to ask Lee. I don’t remember enough about this stuff.”
“About what?”
“Never mind. Just wondering about genetic details.”
“Sai. But do you forgive me?”
“Don’t I always?” Devit takes a vial out of his shirt pocket and tosses it to him. “Shut up and take your Haze. You’ll need to be clear tomorrow when we leave orbit.”
FIVE
No one can send messages directly over the vast distances of the Rim. Any communication has to be turned into a shunt packet, uploaded to a ship making a jump in the right direction, and then downloaded to another convenient ship for delivery. Thanks to the complexity, the Fleet handles the consignments of most interplanetary messages for a stiff price. Anything the sender wants kept private has to be written in a prearranged code or sent through one of the private firms that handle messages as well as cargo.
So. Suppose you want to contact your grandson. If he lives on the same planet, it will take a second or two. In the same planetary system, somewhere between eight and twenty minutes. One shunt away? Usually a solstandard week, maybe two. Any farther? You will need luck, money, and a great deal of patience—unless, of course, you are Fleet.
