Fire Season-eARC (22 page)

Valuable time was spent while they surveyed the area until they located a stand of yellow rock trees that didn’t seem to have been used by the treecats. However, the anthropologists’ insistence on not contaminating the site made setting up camp more difficult. While the network of branches and nodal trunks made picketwood ideal for what Kesia flippantly termed “treehouse building,” the straight-trunked rock trees were less well-suited.

Eventually, however, they located a stand of younger trees, many of which retained horizontal limbs at a relatively “low” seven or so meters from the ground. At least rock trees—called such for the extreme hardness and density of their wood—were strong enough that even a young one could hold a fair amount of weight.

Transporting their gear and erecting the camping shelters at that height above the ground introduced the next problem.

“I just looked at my counter-grav unit,” Virgil said. “The read-out seems lower than it should be.

His tone was hesitant. Anders didn’t blame him, given that Dr. Whittaker seemed set on making Virgil the scapegoat for any and all problems having to do with equipment. He’d already been reprimanded for only arranging for enough food for their planned jaunt and because the box containing the tea Dr. Whittaker favored, along with a few other luxury goods, hadn’t been among those removed from the sinking van.

There was a moment’s hesitation while everyone else checked their units. All, to varying degrees, were exhausted below the level they should have been. Dr. Whittaker’s was the closest to normal. He somehow seemed to think this made him virtuous.

“Perhaps you damaged the unit,” he began, “with all that jumping about in the bog…”

Dr. Emberly cut him off.

“The source of the problem is obvious,” she said crisply. “At our usual rate of use, these units are good for about thirty-three hours. However, since we’ve been using them to lighten our loads while we make camp, we’re burning more power. Usually, that wouldn’t be an issue, since broadcast power from the van would have recharged the units as we used them, but that isn’t available.”

And,
Anders added in silent, vicious commentary,
since Dad has mostly been standing around, giving orders and not doing much hauling, he hasn’t burned as much power as some of us.

Anders’ own unit’s read-out was about the same as Virgil’s. He tried to remember the conversion factor. Details escaped him, but he did remember that at minimum power use—which reduced gravity by about twenty-five percent—the counter-grav units were good for right on forty-eight hours. Since they already had been using them at a higher setting—Sphinx’s gravity was one Terran normal, plus an additional third or so—they had been drawing power to counter an extra fifteen percent. That was why the units were good for about thirty-three hours, rather than the full forty-eight, since increasing counter-grav above the minimum drew power at a higher rate of use.

And over the last couple of hours,
Anders thought,
we’ve been acting as if this is an inexhaustible resource, when it’s anything but…

“Do we have any power packs?” Kesia asked anxiously.

“We have a few,” Virgil replied. “We don’t have anywhere near enough for us to continue at normal use without our completely running out.”

“So,” Dr. Emberly said, making an adjustment to her own unit, “we need to decrease use immediately. We have ladders, so we’ll use them. All of us who are healthy and strong should see if we can decrease to minimum usage levels.”

Anders spoke up. “Dr. Emberly, you mentioned ‘healthy.’ I noticed that your mother has taken off her unit so that Dr. Nez could use it. She can’t keep doing that or we’re going to have two patients, not just one.”

As soon as they’d gotten the first platform and shelter up, Dr. Nez had been moved to safety, with Dacey Emberly accompanying him as nurse. At first she’d taken her sketchbook out, but the last few times he’d been up, Anders had noticed she was sitting very still, moving only to periodically check on Langston Nez.

Kesia Guyen said, “I agree with Anders. Dacey’s looking a bit blue around the lips. Does she have a heart condition?”

“She does,” Dr. Emberly said, a thin line appearing between her brows. “Nothing so bad that she couldn’t go on this trip, but that’s one of the things she takes medication for. Any chance we can get Langston’s unit working, even a bit?”

“I could take a look at it,” Kesia said. “John’s good with gadgets and I’ve learned a trick or two, but I can’t offer a lot of hope. The type of units we’re using aren’t meant to be submerged and then cemented with mud.”

Setting up their camp took most of the rest of the day. That night, they ate lightly, but at least water wasn’t an issue. The same swamp that had eaten the air van gave as much water as they needed, and the purification unit Virgil had selected was efficient and used minimal power—a model intended not for luxury camping, but for disaster situations.

Since he slept with his counter-grav unit off to conserve power, Anders might not have slept well if he hadn’t been exhausted. The next morning, he awoke, not precisely refreshed, but feeling better. It had been agreed that anyone who would be moving around could set their counter-grav units for the minimum power drain. That meant he only had to deal with fifteen percent extra gravity. After a night at thirty-five percent extra, Anders felt as if he could fly.

“I’ve a guide book here,” he said, holding up his reader. “Stephanie also gave me some articles her mother wrote. I thought that maybe I could do some foraging.”

Dr. Emberly looked interested. “Is that guidebook the Forestry Service issue? I kept meaning to ask for one, just out of curiosity. If you’ll accept an assistant, I’d like to join you.”

“Is this foraging really necessary?” Dr. Whittaker grumbled.

A big man, he was clearly not happy about having to function with his usual weight increased. Anders could have sworn he’d seen Dad raise the power level on his counter-grav unit above the agreed upon minimum a few times. Only a heated intervention on the part of Dr. Emberly had made certain that two of the spare power packs had gone to Dr. Nez and Dacey.

Miraculously, Kesia had managed to get the damaged unit working, but it would not counter gravity above a twenty-five percent reduction, and used quite a bit of power to do so. A schedule had been worked out where Dacey traded units with Dr. Nez, so that each of them had time at normal gravity.

Dr. Nez remained unconscious, his breathing labored. Since none of them had medical training above first aid, they couldn’t diagnose what was wrong.

But he probably breathed in some mud,
Anders thought,
and the particles are inflaming his lungs. He’s probably well on the way to pneumonia. As it is, he’s lucky all of us were so dosed up on antivirals and antibacterials before coming here that he’s resistant to infection. Dacey keeps Langston’s lips moist, but we can’t get him to drink more than an occasional swallow, so he’s getting dehydrated, too.

“Is foraging necessary?” Dr. Emberly repeated Dr. Whittaker’s question and then answered it herself. Not for the first time, Anders was glad that there was one member of the crew who wasn’t intimidated by his father. “Yes, it is. I know you’re hoping we’ll be rescued quickly, but I assert that is an unrealistically optimistic position. We won’t even be missed until tonight. I doubt any serious search will be mounted until the next morning—and then all they’re going to find is that we’re not where we said we’d be.”

Dr. Whittaker looked weary, but Anders wasn’t sure that he wasn’t playacting at remorse. By now, he didn’t trust his dad’s intentions. That doubt increased with Dr. Whittaker’s next words.

“I see. Since we lack extra food supplies…” Here Dad paused to glower at Virgil, “Then I suppose we must plan for the worst. However, since some of us lack either an SFS guidebook or your skills as a xenobiologist, perhaps we can carry on with the job we came here to do.”

“You mean inspect the treecat areas?” Kesia sounded astonished.

“Why not?” Dr. Whittaker said. “You’re a linguist, but you do have some training in basic field methods. You can photograph and record. Best of all, if we use ladders or record from ground level, we can conserve the power on our counter-grav units.”

“Well,” Dr. Emberly said reluctantly. “You do have a point. We can’t have people getting poisoned because they eat native plants that aren’t compatible with our metabolisms. Anders and I will make foraging our department.”

Oddly enough, while foraging, they learned quite a bit about the treecats. This group of treecats hadn’t precisely been farmers, but there was evidence that they did encourage plants they liked. One of their first finds was a recovering patch of near-lettuce.

“Probably harvested before they moved,” Dr. Emberly commented as she carefully clipped off the edible leaves, “but with the roots left to send up fresh growth. We’ll do the same.”

They found some near-pine a short distance away. Survey through binoculars showed some ripening nuts near the top. After consideration, Dr. Emberly decided that they would expend enough extra power on one counter-grav unit so they could harvest some of the thumb-sized nuts. The trees were branchless for the lower third of their height, so climbing wasn’t an option.

“We’re going to need the calories,” she said to Anders. “You go up. You’re more agile. Remember, only pick the pods that are turning a dark reddish brown. Drop them down and I’ll gather them.”

Anders agreed, not admitting even to himself how good it felt to be lighter. Dutifully, however, once he’d gotten into the branches, he turned the counter-grav unit back to minimum and kept it that way until he was ready to climb down. Then, well aware that broken bones would inconvenience them more than a drained battery pack, he turned the counter-grav unit back to normal gravity for his descent.

The SFS guidebook proved useful for other things than plants. It told them which animals were edible. The anthropologists weren’t set for hunting, but Dr. Emberly knew how to make fish traps.

“Lace willow will work,” she said, showing Anders what parts of the plant to cut. “However, I don’t have much hope of catching anything. The treecats probably fished out this area. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s part of the reason they moved on. In a year with normal rainfall, the swamp would be replenished by rain, but now it’s relying on whatever ground seep there is. We haven’t seen much sign of near-otter or near-beaver. It’s possible near-beavers might have originally created this wetland long ago.”

If it hadn’t been for the desperate nature of their situation, Anders would have enjoyed the outing. However, when they returned to camp, laden with their gleaning, and found Dr. Whittaker gloating over some stone tools and broken baskets, while on a bedroll, Dr. Nez wheezed for every breath, what Anders felt most strongly was a sense that everything was all wrong.

And I want to make it right,
he thought, clenching his fists in desperation.
I want to make it
right
.

*
 
*
 
*

Stephanie, Karl, and Jessica were permitted to join the search for Dr. Whittaker and his crew, but only if they all swore they wouldn’t say anything about the situation.

“I’ll keep the secret,” Jessica said, holding her hand up in a timeless gesture dating back to ancient courtrooms, “but I’ll admit that I don’t quite understand why. When I was living in the Tasmania system, a little girl went missing in the foothills of some mountains. Not only did the local police send out teams, they recruited everyone who was willing to help. It was one of the volunteers—my dad—who found the kid, too…”

Chief Ranger Shelton gave a tired smile. “Asking for volunteers would be a sensible course of action to take in most cases, but this isn’t one.”

He held up his fingers and started ticking off points.

So that’s where Karl picked up that mannerism,
Stephanie thought, swallowing a wholly inappropriate giggle—a giggle she knew was born of the tension coiling and uncoiling in her gut.

“First of all, it’s fire season,” Chief Ranger Shelton said. “With the drought conditions, the risk is higher than usual. As Stephanie and Karl can tell you, most fires—on other worlds, at least—are started by human action. Here on Sphinx we don’t have enough people yet for that to be the case, but the more people you have wandering around, the more likely you’re going to have somebody
careless
doing the wandering. As much as we want to find Dr. Whittaker and the others, we don’t want to be responsible for scattering potential fire sources all over the landscape.

“Second, although those of us at SFS have welcomed these off-planet scientists and their insights, our feelings are not universal. There are many here on Sphinx who view them as intruders. Worse, Dr. Hobbard tells me that not all of the intellectual community even here in the Star Kingdom was delighted about the decision to bring in out-of-system specialists, no matter how carefully they were chosen.

“Third—and rather selfishly, as I’ll be the first to admit—if the news becomes general that these people slipped SFS supervision so easily, we’re going to come in for a lot of criticism. Already SFS is not the most popular body on the planet. We spend too much time telling people not to do things they want to do. We protect resources many colonists prefer to see as limitless. These people would just love an excuse to criticize us further.

“Fourth,” Chief Ranger Shelton’s expression turned very serious, “there’s the question of why Dr. Whittaker and his crew apparently never arrived at their first scheduled destination. Did their accident happen before they could arrive or did they have some other agenda? We’re operating on the assumption that either the accident occurred first or that, for some reason that doubtless will make perfect sense when we hear it, they changed the order in which they were going to view the sites and neglected to tell us. They may not have thought it necessary. After all, they were cleared to visit all of those areas. In any case, for some reason they went to another site first—and the accident occurred then.”