The Dark and Hopeless Places

The Dark and Hopeless Places

  Copyright 2011 Vincent L. Cleaver

  On Earth, it is 1973. In the Galactic Conservancy, it's much later than they know; but still, the Survey, surveys; the Engineers bring dead worlds to life and dream of building new wormholes; and the Rangers, protect. As they have, in one form or another, for three thousand years.

  ***

  Edelweiss, someone had named it. It was another one of those living worlds. The Survey would be looking for signs of viva-forming, ecopoiesis, not that that mattered a whole lot. A living world is a living world, and the Engineers would be taking samples and adapting the survey plats and models for use on dead and barren worlds in their backlog. Someone had named it Edelweiss and without fail it would grow to bloom and seed other worlds.

  It was currently coming out of an ice age, thawing and refilling its seas and oceans. It was drier than Earth, but wetter than some, and typical of living worlds in the wider galaxy. The Survey was especially interested in a great freshwater lake that lay at the heart of the third largest continent. It was filling to capacity behind an ice damn, and when it went, it would scour away thirteen hundred kilometers of the river valley below it. There was a branch valley to the Northeast, and this was where the Survey had established a base camp, over thirty kilometers from danger, but close enough for the scientists and documentary crew.

  They didn't worry about danger, of course; they knew they were safe. They had a Ranger.

  ***

  The ice dam had been predicted to let go in a few days previously, give or take. The scientists and wranglers were first excited, then increasingly bored, as the event unfolded on its own time-table.

  Kevin Boyle was a scout with the Galactic Survey, and he’d read enough of the pulp SF that Old Complications had found for him to know just how cliché that was. It sounded romantic, uplifting. The reality, for a new scout on his first survey mission, was more… earthy- that was the word he was looking for. There was a fair amount of digging to be done, even with robots at your beck and call. “You don’t always have robots,” he’d been told. It was form of hazing, establishing group hierarchy, and it had paid off. He now had three dozen animals and plants to his credit, including the delicious tubers that he had been digging for just now.

  He’d skinned out of the top of his gray uniform coveralls, and tied the arms around his waist. The uniform was fairly boring, compared to other ‘clownsuits’; just one mission patch and the Survey insignia, a map under an open wormhole, seen at three-quarters profile, and wedged between two suns. In two-dimensions, it wasn’t obvious which star the wormhole opened to, and the intended impression was that it opened onto both, which was, indeed, the way it worked. The two ends of a wormhole spanned the light years in between. The mission patch was the current one to Edelweiss, a field of white flowers in a blue oval, with the legend, in Ilshani- ‘We came to know the Universe.’

  He wiped sweat and dirty blond hair out of his green eyes, and a shadow passed over him. A woman above him said, “You wanna to put that shovel down and help me?”

  Kevin looked up, and up. She wore a torn and soiled black and gold uniform, for the Galactic Conservancies’ search and rescue corps, the Rangers. They came and got you when your ass was well and truly stuck in a crack. He kept looking up, long legs, hips turned just a little, where the woman had a young Bluehorn in a fireman’s carry over her shoulders. One-armed; the left hung loose and wrong.

  “Hey, dumbass, I’m talking to you! Eyes up here, perv!”

  Kev closed his mouth with a click of teeth coming together, hard, and climbed up out of the hole he’d dug for himself, delicious tubers forgotten. He wished he could disappear. “Here, let me.”

  “Ordinarily, I’d handle him myself, but I’ve got a little problem with my arm…” the Ranger said, and she grimaced. Kev took the Bluehorn youth over his shoulders, and he hoped that carrying the youngling that way wouldn’t hurt him more, but he wasn’t about to second-guess a Ranger. He saw her move her arm gingerly, and the broken bones shifted under her skin as he watched. She staggered, and he grabbed her good shoulder.

  “Not too bad, digger.” The Ranger woman smiled, woozily. “You think you can get all three of us into camp from here? I’ve got a report to make.”

  Kev kept her moving, and shouldered the youth as best he could. He did not panic, because he knew that if he did, he’d never live it down. And she’d never, ever, smile at him like that again.

  ***

  “Not too shabby, son.” Mission Commander Lanjik Brooj was the father of the Bluehorn youth. He was trying not to be too impressed, and failing. “Aw, stuff it!” He grabbed Kev and bear-hugged the poor young man. Nearly broke his back; at least it felt like he did, anyway.

  “Nothing…” Kev managed to gasp out, and fell into his camp chair. He sucked in air, and blinked. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

  “Beg to differ, digger…” Ranger Karen Cook said, as she came through the open door of the shelter. “Mission Commander Brooj, I’m filing a report, but I thought I’d let you have a look, and give you a chance to comment.” She reached up, and tapped at the air; her eyes saw the file as an icon, floating in the air, and the distributed network keyed to her gestures and sent the file to Brooj’s inbox. She winked at Kev, her blue eyes merry against a light dusting of freckles, and an icon appeared in front of his eyes, as well. He tapped the Old High Ilshani characters for ‘Security Report’ (literally- ‘Danger-Finding’), and it opened into list of a dozen major lapses in safety and security, all in modern Trade Ilshani.

  To his credit, Brooj did not bother trying to negotiate. They went over the document, point by point, and he pulled in his people to get things set to rights. Point number one was a dead zone in the local net. The unspoken suspicion was that the youngling, Ajik, who was very good with information systems and bots, had set it up.

  “I don’t know what it was all about, Commander, but he was hanging on for dear life when I found him. When I went to pull him in, he flinched away from me,” Karen said, sounding particularly pissed over that point. “He fell down the steep hill, here, at location Jeh- Toh- Ssa- Lah,” naming and pointing. “I, uh, went after him.”

  “You fell down, on purpose?” Kev was staring at her.

  Karen looked just a little sheepish, and she shrugged. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she flipped it from her shoulder with a toss of her head. He’d seen that mannerism, somewhere… Old Complications, also a Ranger. “He was headed right for a nice sharp, uh,” she glanced at the father, and edited herself, ”It seemed liked the thing to do. It all worked out.”

  “But you broke your arm!”

  She looked down at her left arm, in a cast, and switched from Ilshani to English, saying very low, “This pain tells me that I’m still alive. Live and learn; I always do.”

  Kev glanced at Brooj, who looked curious, but in no way insulted. The Bluehorn waited a moment, and then, when the two humans failed to continue in their own language, said, “I appreciate what you’ve done, and are doing, Ranger. We might-“

  There was a rumbling sound that grew louder and went on and on. Kev bounced around in his chair, and he’d just realized that this was an earthquake, when it stopped. Brooj was out the door of the shelter, almost running over Kev, and right behind Karen.

  “Was that the ice dam?” she asked.

  “I don’t… No, it was a perfectly normal trembler. Pollution!” Brooj tapped at an invisible icon. “Report!”

  “Mission Commander, that was a mid-plate fault, previously unknown. Possibly stressed by the mass of all that water… It was a scale 19.” That was equivalent to a 6.5 on the Richter scale, which nobody in the Conservan
cy used. “We can expect after shocks, but the current problem is that part of the ridge south of the ice dam has collapsed. Water is pouring through, and undermining that end. It- it just let go!”

  The could hear a roaring sound, over the comm.

  “Where are you?!”

  “Too close, commander, the runa-“

  Silence.

  “Central, what is the present location of Runabout Ssa?”

  “Runabout Ssa is currently out of service. It suffered catastrophic systems failures three point seven seconds ago.”

  “And Runabout Jeh?”

  “It is also currently out of service. A team of robots is digging it out from under seven tonnes of-“

  “Gods and Ancestors!”

  ***

  “We have three dead,” Brooj said, “and both runabouts are out of commission. The good news is that we didn’t suffer any secondary damage when the surge swept upstream further than expected. The bad news is all from tertiary effects. The western bank of the river, just about opposite us, collapsed, and the surge piled up mud and green timber two or three measures high. It’s dammed the river, and now it’s filling the oxbow lake and threatening the base camp.”

  “We move what we can then.” Karen said. She was not exactly in charge, except… this was what Rangers did. “When is the next starship coming through?”

  “Three days; the Golden Harvest, but she will be late. I know the Captain is planning a big send-off for his old first officer, at the Directorate of Transportation Supply and Repair Platform at Kelfar IV, in Junjin’s Reach. They could be two or three days late.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We have a pregnant Gara, about to whelp… Is that funny?”

  “Just that ‘Gara’ means ‘mother’, in their language, nothing more.” She turned and walked to the door of the shelter, and Kev followed her. “Happy birthday…” she said, meaning the Gara kits, he decided. She crossed the threshold, and kept going. He followed her down to the water, and finally worked up the nerve to speak.

  “I thought you Rangers paired up?”

  She still had her back to him, looking out at the rising flood.

  “I had a partner, once. He died on me.”

  “But still…”

  “Some do, and some don’t. Old Complications doesn’t, much, anymore.”

  “His old partner is the Commandant, now. And besides, Ol’ Cee is a law unto himself.”

  “Do you know my teacher?”

  “He used to visit my grandparents a lot. Still does, but he’s very busy.” So busy that he usually came there only when he was convalescing. He valued the company of very old friends; O.C. had married an actress, and that had not worked out. Somehow, that the living legend had failed at something, made him more a real person, to Kev. People failed; it happened, every day.

  Kev went on, surprising himself .“My mother... never found anyone, in her generation; she died alone.” Kev regretted the words, as soon as he said them; the sounded so weak, needy. He could not call them back, so he squared his shoulders and faced her. She was looking away, though.

  “My mother died when I was thirteen. She drowned, along with my baby brother. My father saved the two of us, and…” Karen wiped at her face. “Old Complications fished us out of the ocean, and offered to take us to Ilshan. My father said yes.”

  “Just like my grandparents,” Kev said. Old Complications brought home a lot of strays, and not just from Earth, which was protected and off-limits to the wider Galaxy. Humans were rare, even in the Conservancy, where most of Ol’ Cee’s strays had settled. There were a few dozen humans, most of who were Kev’s blood relatives. He was painfully aware of the shortage, both because of his mom, and because of the ‘Human Breeding Group,’ a bunch of busy bodies in the Conservancy who seemed to feel the continued survival of humans off of their homeworld too important to leave to a bunch of apes.

  “What about you and your father?” Karen asked.

  “I never had one. I’m... a transgenic clone of my mother. The Y-chromosome came from her brother, my Uncle Kyle.” He didn’t care to talk about his mother any more just then, and they sat in silence for a bit. The water rose up to their feet, and they retreated.

  “My father is a Ranger, now,” she said. “Then, he was an artist, with rich patrons and connections. He married my mother, an heiress, so that they both could have a little more freedom; her, from her family, and him… Dad was running from something. I know that much. I overheard my mom and him yelling about it, although I never really understand.”

  “They had money, for boats and for jet-setting, and we went on a long ocean voyage when I was… thirteen. That was the happiest time of my life; my mom and dad, and little brother. Tropical ports, coconuts, squid and jellyfish…”

  “Then we got caught in a typhoon. The boat held up for half a day, and then we started taking on water. Before we sank, Dad got the life raft launched, with me on it. But my mom and brother did not… I think that Dad would have gone for them, if it weren’t for me. And I- I was a very strong swimmer, but I stayed where I was.”

  “You couldn’t have saved them.”

  “I could have tried for them, but then my Dad would have…” She sighed. “So, I stayed where I was.”

  Survivor guilt, oh yes, Kev knew all about that. His mother had been alone, so very long, and maybe she had thought that a child would… But it hadn’t been enough, to hold her, to his world.

  Karen was looking at him, curious. “Talking to you is like talking to him.”

  “You mean your father?” Kev blurted out, lost.

  “Old Complications. Only he tried and tried, to winkle this out of me, but I’ve never told him about that.” She looked out at the muddy waters. “I suppose it’s what made me a Ranger.” She came over to him and handed him some string. “I need some help, digger. Can you tie my useless wing down for me?”

  “Why, what are we going to do?” There were bags under her eyes, but her mouth was set with a slight smile, as if to say to the universe, ‘Bring it.’

  “We? I don’t quite know. Something will come to me, as we go along. It usually does.”

  ***

  The land bridge to high ground was soggy. A lot of vital equipment and supplies still needed to be moved, and two humans were not nearly as useful for that, especially the one-armed woman. Three Markov, who had the basic shape and temperament of Earthly Hippos, and a Hunter, all four of them big centaur-like aliens, were shifting the heaviest, most essential items. The smaller species carried younglings, bags of food, whatever they could.

  “This is not what I had in mind, when I joined up…” Kev muttered, as he picked himself, and soggy bag of crisping grain, back up out of the mud. Karen grabbed his free hand with her good right, and balanced the load across her shoulders with expert care.

  “What were you thinking?” She asked, conversationally.

  “I got tired of doing the same thing, every day, on my homeworld. My Grandparents are viva-forming Dee Lah Wah, and I drifted into helping out. I mean, it wasn’t the same, exact thing, everyday, but…” He sighed. “My granddad got me onto a south-continent work-gang. We built landing zones, small dams, and we introduced Blue Hunterwings and Snow Dragons into the Heartbreak Mountains, that sort of thing. It’s my home, still. Ol’ Cee took me on my first hunt in the First Landing Wildlife Preserve, about fifty- What?”

  “Why would you ever leave?”

  “Adventure, I guess?”

  “Got that right here, friend,” she said, smiling and letting the bag on her shoulder fall on top of some other things in a pile.

  “Maybe there was something else.”

  “You get in a fight, with your grandparents, or- What did happen to your mom?”

  “She died.”

  Karen looked at him, and let it drop. She made a point of changing the subject, speculating on the arrival of the Gara kits, and Kev was grateful. But he caught her looking at him, from time to time, and he co
uld almost imagine what she was thinking. There was no pity, in those eyes, but there was knowledge, an understanding. ‘Why didn’t she pick me?’

  “You grew up with Old Complications in your life, so you know the 12 precepts, right?”

  “Not by heart, no, I don’t. But, I know some of them. Why?”

  “'Always seek to inspire those around you; the life you save may be your own.'”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” Kev said, a little angry.

  “No, I was thinking… never mind. I’ve got to see to something.” She left him, almost seeming to flee. He stood there, and after a moment, shut his gaping mouth. She had meant him.

  ***

  ‘Know yourself, know your duty.’ That was what the Rangers said. It meant that you could not do what you needed to do, without knowing yourself, and that part of a Rangers’ duty was that essential self-discovery.

  That philosophy had not appealed to Kev, not when his mother died. He had wanted to forget everything. He had thought her suicide was the most selfish thing he could imagine, and it had hurt him. It wasn’t until years later that he accepted that it had had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her; the way she saw the universe, or, if nothing quite as grand as that, then a failure of something; faith, courage, hope?

  Karen Cook was a Ranger; she lived to rescue people in all the dark and hopeless places. Once, she had failed her mother, her father and her little brother, and so, now, she could not give up. But that wasn’t necessarily enough to live, was it? Kevin kept working, moving things from place to place, while his mind turned the puzzle over, endlessly.

  “I need your help.” Karen was back, and looking very determined.

  Kev looked up at the Ranger woman, and said, “Huh?” Then he winced, because it sounded so stupid.

  “You okay? Hurt? No? Good. I need a hand; I’m short one, today.”

  “It’s not your job to save everybody, you know-“

  “It kind of is. I’m the only Ranger for light-years.” She turned and started walking away. “I don’t have time for you to tell me that I need help; I just asked. But even if you’re not going to help me, I’ll find a way. Rangers always do.”

  Kev ran after her. It felt right, somehow. “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t help you. It’s just that, at some point…”