Cibola Burn, Page 43

  “My next assignment,” he said, “I’m working somewhere with maybe half Earth gravity. Weight. Who needs it?”

  Elvi chuckled. He wanted her to, and she even meant it a little. The foil was slick under her fingertips. She felt like she was a little girl sneaking snacks under the covers when she was supposed to be asleep, doing everything by touch. The wrapping of Fayez’s bar crinkled brightly.

  “How much more food do we have?” she asked.

  “Not much. I think they’re trying for one more drop, though. There are a couple people who can still make out some shapes.”

  “And Holden.”

  “The one-eyed king,” Fayez said. “We should poke out one of his eyes just to make that fit better, don’t you think? Him having two eyes is a real missed opportunity.”

  “Hush,” she said, and the foil gave way under her fingers. The emergency bar was crumbly and smelled like rat food from her days at the labs. It tasted unpleasant and nutritious. She tried to savor it. It wouldn’t be long before she missed this.

  “Any luck?” he asked. She shook her head by reflex. She knew he couldn’t see it.

  “The best theory we had was that it was related to the plural parentage. He’s got something like eight mothers and fathers, and the techniques to manage that can leave some systemic traces. But nothing so far.”

  “Well, that’s a shame. Maybe all the exposure to the protomolecule changed him into a space mutant.”

  She took another bite and talked around it. “You can laugh, but Luna’s looking at that too. And they’re trying to grow a fresh sample of the organism based on the sample data we sent. The early trials are showing some real self-organization.”

  “Kicking off another five hundred years of graduate theses,” Fayez said. “I don’t think you have to worry about your legacy.”

  Fingertips brushed against her knee, the physical act of reaching out undercutting the cynicism of his words. She took his hand in hers, squeezing the pad at the base of his thumb. He shifted closer to her. She could smell his body. None of them had been able to bathe since the storm came, and they probably all reeked, but her nose had become accustomed to the worst of it. She only experienced his scent as an almost pleasant funk, like a wet dog.

  “Not the one I’d have chosen,” she said.

  “And yet our names will live forever. You as the first discoverer of a new planet full of species. Me as the simple geologist who waited on you hand and foot.”

  “Why are you flirting?”

  “Flirting’s the last thing to go,” Fayez said. She wished she could see his face. “You do science. I hit on the smartest and prettiest woman in the room. Everyone has their ways of coping with the brutal specter of mortality. And rain. Coping with rain. My next assignment, I want someplace without so much rain.”

  In the next room, a child started crying. An exhausted, frightened sound. A woman – Lucia, maybe – sang to it in a language Elvi didn’t know. She popped the last of the bar into her mouth. She needed to get some water. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the chemistry deck had pumped out a clean bag. If it wasn’t time to switch out yet, it would be soon. Holden had said he’d come by and do it, but she wasn’t sure that was true. He was dead on his feet already, and he didn’t rest. Even when he needed to. Well, she could probably figure out how to switch out a water bag she couldn't see.

  “We shouldn’t have come,” Fayez said. “All those crazy bastards talking about how the worlds beyond Medina Station were going to be tainted and evil? They were right.”

  “No one said that, did they?”

  “Someone probably did. If they didn’t, they should have.”

  “You could really have stayed away?” she asked as she rose to her knees and started reaching for the chemistry deck. She could hear the soft ticking of the clean water coming through the outtake filter, a different timbre than the constant rain. “If they came to you with the chance to go to the first really new world, you’d have been able to say no?”

  “I’d have waited for the second wave,” Fayez said.

  She found the bag. The soft, cold curve wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected. The deck wasn’t putting out water as quickly as it had been, but if there was an error in the system, it hadn’t made a noise. Something else for Holden to check.

  “I’d still have come,” she said.

  “All this? And you’d still have come?”

  “I wouldn’t have known about this. This wouldn’t have happened yet. I’d know I was taking a risk. I did know. Of course I’d get on that ship.”

  “What if you knew it was going to be like this? What if you could look into some crystal ball and see us here, the way it’s all happened?”

  “If we could do that, we’d never explore anything,” she said.

  It was very strange to think that they were all going to die. She knew it, but it still seemed unreal. In the back of her mind, a small, insistent voice kept saying that a ship would arrive to help them. That another group on the planet would show up with extra food or water or shelter. She’d catch herself wondering if they shouldn’t be signaling for help, and have to make the effort to recall that there were no other bases. No other ships. In the whole solar system, there were just the crews and passengers of three ships. And fewer now than there had been before. Even with all of them packed into the ruins together like refugees so close they could hear each other snore, it made the universe seem very empty. And frightening.

  “We should find Holden,” she said. “The water’s coming slow. I wonder… Maybe he has a really good immune system? The fact that we’re all getting discharge means we’ve got some immune response to it. Like a splinter, maybe. It just grows faster than we can knock it out. Maybe Holden has some exposure that gives him antibodies to it.”

  “Did the blood scans find anything?”

  “No,” she said. “His white cell count is lower than ours too.”

  “Maybe his eyeball juice tastes bad,” Fayez said. “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but you made that little I’ve-got-an-idea grunt. I’ve heard that grunt. It means something.”

  “I was just thinking that it can’t be his immune system,” she said. “I mean, we’re all traveling in hard vacuum all the time. The radiation just on the way out here probably left all of us a little immunocompromised. And especially after Eros Station, he’s had more… more radiation damage…”

  Elvi closed her eyes, shutting out the green. A beautiful cascade of logic and implication opened before her like stepping into a garden. She caught her breath, and grinned. The joy of insight lifted her up.

  “What?” Fayez said. “He’s overcooked? The eye thing only likes us rare, and he’s well done?”

  “Oh,” Elvi said. “It’s his oncocidals. After the Eros incident, he had to go on a permanent course of them. And that means… oh! That’s so pretty.”

  “Oh good. What are you talking about? Why would his anti-cancer meds work on something from a different biosphere?”

  “It means there’s a Dawkinsian good move down around cell division somewhere.”

  “That’s one of those xenobiology things, isn’t it? Because I’ve got no idea what you’re on about.”

  Elvi patted her hands in the air. The pleasure running through her blood felt like being carried by light.

  “I told you about this,” she said, “that there are good moves – maybe even forced moves – in design space because we see things that show up again and again all through different branches of the tree of life.”

  “Right,” Fayez said. “Which is why we can come to New Terra and find things that have eyes and stuff.”

  “Because bounced light has a lot of information in it, and organisms with that information do better.”

  “Preaching to the choir, Elvi.”

  “But that’s not the good part. Holden’s on medications that selectively address fast-dividing tissues. Skippy’s a fast-di
viding tissue.”

  “Who’s Skippy?”

  “The organism. Focus here. That the onococidals work against it means there’s something like flight or sense organs near the mouth that’s going on at the level of cell division. Even though the proteins are totally different, the solutions they’re coming up with are analogous. That’s the biggest thing since we came here. This is huge. Where’s my hand terminal? I have to tell the team on Luna. They’re going to lose their minds.”

  She moved forward too quickly, stumbling into Fayez. He pressed the terminal into her hands. She sat beside him.

  “Are you bouncing up and down?” he asked. “Because you sound like you’re bouncing.”

  “This is the most important thing that’s happened to me in my life,” she said. “I’m floating.”

  “So this means we can treat the eye thing, right?”

  “What? Oh. Yeah, probably. It’s not like oncocidals are hard to synthesize. Just most of us don’t need a constant course the way Holden does.”

  “You are the only woman I have ever known who would figure out how to keep a bunch of starving refugees including herself from going blind and be excited because it means something about microbiology.”

  “You should get out more. Meet people,” Elvi said, but she felt a little pull of guilt. She probably should try to get people treated before she started talking to the team on Luna. It was still just a hypothesis anyway. She didn’t have any data yet. “Connection request Murtry.”

  Her hand terminal chimed that it was working. A gust of wind made the plastic window flutter. It sounded a little different than usual, and the constantly falling rain sounded louder. She wondered if the sheeting might be coming unsealed. There could be death-slugs creeping around the room and she wouldn’t have known. Wouldn’t have seen them. Something else she’d have to ask Holden to check. The double-tone of connection refused made her grunt.

  “Who’s working on the drops?” she asked.

  “Upstairs? Um. Havelock, I think.”

  “Connection request Havelock.”

  The hand terminal made a single chime and then stopped. She wasn’t sure if it had gone through or failed.

  “Mister Havelock? Are you there?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid it’s not a good time, Doctor.”

  “You’re coordinating the drops? I need to see if we can get —”

  “Is this something where people are going to die if I don’t fix it in the next five minutes?”

  “Five minutes?” she said. “No.”

  “Then it’s going to have to wait.” The hand terminal made the falling tone of a dropped connection.

  “Well, that was fucking rude,” Fayez said.

  “He probably has something else going on,” she said.

  “We’re all under a little stress here. Doesn’t mean he has to be a dick about it.”

  Elvi lifted her eyebrows and nodded, knowing as she did that he couldn’t see her. “Connection request Holden.”

  The tones cycled until she was afraid he wouldn’t answer either. When he did, his voice sounded terrible. Like he was drunk or sick. “Elvi. What’s the matter?”

  “Hi,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re busy right now, and you’re not really responsible for getting supplies to us, but if you have a minute, I’d like to —”

  Fayez shouted, interrupting her. “She knows how to make us not blind.”

  There was a pause. Holden grunted. She imagined it was the effort of standing up. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  “Bring Lucia,” Elvi said. “If you can find her.”

  “Is Murtry going to be there?”

  “He’s not answering my connection requests.”

  “Hmm,” Holden said. “That’s good. I don’t think he’s happy with me right now.”

  Lucia sat at Elvi’s side, holding her hand. It should have felt like an intimacy, but in context, it only seemed to indicate that she was giving Elvi her full attention. A physical analog to eye contact. Holden was pacing around the room, his footsteps sticky-sounding with the mud.

  When she was done, Lucia made a ticking sound with her tongue and teeth. “I don’t know how we’d manage dosages. I don’t want to give people so little that it doesn’t have an effect.”

  “What about picking babysitters?” Fayez said. “A dozen people whose cases aren’t as advanced. Shoot them up. They can take care of the rest of us until there’s another drop. Captain?”

  “What? Oh, sorry. I was… um. There’s a hole in the window. Plastic. I was just making sure there weren’t any death-slugs in here. And fixing it.”

  “Captain,” Lucia said, her voice sharp and crisp. “You’re taking medications for a chronic and potentially terminal condition. We are discussing whether or not to use your medication to treat other patients and leave you without.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Ethically, it’s actually a little problematic,” Lucia said. “If I’m going to do this, and I very much want to, I need to know that you understand —”

  “I do, I do, I do,” he said. “I’ve sucked down enough radiation that I bloom tumors a lot. The thing that keeps it under control does that thing with the other thing. And then there are other people and I can take a nap.”

  Elvi could hear Lucia’s smile when she spoke. “I’m not sure the human subjects board would call that sufficient, but broadly yes.”

  “Of course you use it,” he said. “Use it, go ahead. We’ll get more if we can.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  “I might get a new tumor before we starve. I might not,” Holden said. “I’m okay with that.”

  Lucia took back her hand, leaving Elvi’s feeling a little colder. “All right, then. We should start. Can you guide me please, Captain?”

  “Yes,” Holden said. “Yes, I can. But we may need to get a cup of coffee. I’m feeling a little tired.”

  “I can get you some stimulants if you’d like, but there’s no coffee.”

  “Right,” Holden said. “No coffee. This is a terrible, terrible planet. Show me how to make everyone better.”

  Chapter Forty-Two: Havelock

  T

  he armor in the brig was a simple, unpowered suit of Kevlar and ceramic. It was vacuum rated and had a fitting for a half-hour air bottle. Its intended uses included breaking up brawls among the crew and making short, tactical spacewalks. There were probably a dozen more like it up in the main security station. He hoped that the engineers didn’t think of them. When Havelock stepped into it, it pulled his pant legs up, bunching the cloth uncomfortably at the crotch. He put the shotgun strap over his shoulder and shifted, using both hands to pluck the pant back into place.

  Laughter doesn’t help,” he said.

  “Wasn’t laughing,” Naomi replied, then laughed.

  He took a fistful of disposable handcuffs and two Tasers from the gun locker. One had a full charge, the other was at three-eighths. He made a mental note to check the batteries on all the weapons later, then remembered that there probably wasn’t going to be a later. Not for him, at least. He could leave a note for Wei or something. He thought about calling Marwick, warning him that things were getting complex. Relying on the man’s decency and instincts.

  He didn’t do it.

  Naomi, floating behind him, stretched out, her fingers and toes splayed in the open air. Her paper jumpsuit crinkled and popped with every motion. Havelock looked around his office one last time. It was strange, knowing he probably wouldn’t see it again. And if he did, it’d be from the inside of the cage.

  If that happened, though, it would be because they’d found some way to keep from dropping into the atmosphere, burning in the high air. So the chances were low. He wasn’t going to worry about it.

  “First mutiny?” Naomi said.

  “Yeah. It’s not really something I do.”

  “It gets easier,” she said, holding out her hand. He looked at it in confusion. “I can take one of
those.”

  “No,” he said, tuning the suit comm unit to the channel the training group used as a default. There was no chatter at all. That was odd. He cycled through the other frequencies.

  “No?”

  “Look, I’m getting you out of here. Doesn’t mean I’m comfortable handing you a weapon and turning my back.”

  “You have interesting personal boundaries,” Naomi said.

  “I may be working through some things right now.”

  The first militiaman flew through the doorway too fast, pumped on adrenaline and unaccustomed to having a gun in his hand. The second came just behind him, feet first. Havelock felt his gut go tight. They both had pistols in their hands and armbands around their biceps. Naomi, behind him, took a breath.