The Seeds of Time (11 page)

“These things are gone now. They can be lost. This was our final, most bitter lesson. You who may come upon us here, learn from us. Nurture your world, your habitat well. They are finite gifts. Imagine them lost and you will cherish them the more.”

He paused. “Whoever you are, whenever you listen … I wish you … good fortune. Goodnight.”

Clio and Zee stood for a long while without speaking. At last, Clio leaned down to embrace Hillis, who had collapsed
into Zee’s chair. She sought to comfort him, or to be comforted.

A slight pull of his shoulder, away from her.

Rebuffed by Hillis and stunned by the broadcast, Clio said softly, “Why, why did you want to know?”

He looked up at her bitterly. “Why
didn’t
you want to know?”

She sank down onto the bunk. Trying to breathe, trying to process what she’d heard. Trying to deny it. “Maybe there’s more than one future,” she said.

He glanced up at her.

“Maybe we can change it, maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.” Her voice trailed off, as he continued to watch her, silently, his eyes like caves of ice.

“Planet Earth, I’d like you to meet your long-lost sister.” Teeg spoke low, catching the tension on the bridge, subduing himself for once. After a journey of three months—all the while stuck with Harper Teeg on a rig the size of
Starhawk
—Clio was ready to pay him to shut up.

She leaned back in her chair, watching Niang’s Planet display itself below. On the planet surface, a great ocean glided by, as green as the Pacific, with many islands riding on the waters toward the curved edge of the planet. Niang was a dazzler, by Earth standards.

The standards that count.

Clio was patched into mid-decks crew station, listening to the crew deliver the nonstop data on Niang. No artificial orbiting materials. One moon. Asteroid-type debris in high orbit. No aircraft sighted; the only radio transmissions bursts of electrons trapped by the planet’s magnetic field and occasional lightning discharges. And on Niang’s nightside, no lights except for, here and there, a forest fire.

No visible civilization.

Got to get that right. Didn’t come this far to give the locals target practice.

A continent crept into view, huge, unbroken, a single landform. Already the science team referred to it as Gaia. Clio heard Meng, the botany tech, exclaim over the headphones, “Holy Jesus, look at that color.” Blue-green it was, bordering on turquoise. The colossal forest of Niang, broken only by the deep clefts of rivers. Rivers so vast they would consider the Nile a mere tributary. From the infrared
radiation readings, the whole planet was within temperate to tropical temperatures.

“Could be anything living down there. Under that canopy.” Estevan, ship’s anthropologist. He’d been glued to the monitors for two hours now. “If there are settlements, they don’t clear the land for them.”

“Incredible.” Hillis’ voice. “The readings are incredible. They just keep coming in. One-fifth oxygen, boys and girls, and we got a match on CO
₂
, nitrogen, methane, temperature. It’s a match, it’s still a match. I’m not getting any adverse indicators. Beautiful. Beautiful. It’s like Earth, it’s her other face.”

On the bridge, Russo took off her headphones. “Finn, you’ve got the bridge, I’m going mid-deck to conference.” Russo heaved herself out of the captain’s chair like the world was on her shoulders. Which it was, in a way.

There below them was Niang’s Planet. A paradise. Maybe better than Leery. Though nobody wanted to say it, it was underneath their voices, a submerged dream: this is the big one … all biota viable … the regreening of Earth … a billion-dollar find, sweetheart … how you gonna spend yours?

Clio climbed into the captain’s chair as Russo left the bridge.

“Well goddamn,” Teeg said, not turning around, watching the viewport display. “Goddamn anyway.”

“Problem, Teeg?”

“Who’s senior here, Finn, tell me that?”

“Senior what?”

“Senior what.” Teeg was smiling, shaking his head, as he turned in his chair. “Senior pilot. Who’s the senior pilot on
Starhawk?”

“You are. Jesus, Teeg, you hacked about me sitting here?” Clio started to laugh, then thought better of it.

“On the bridge, I’m second in line, that’s all,” Teeg said. “That bitch knows that.”

Clio let out a long, slow breath. Teeg really cared about this little slight. He sat there brooding like a schoolboy. An eight-year-old in a man’s body. Jesus. And she had slept
with him, sought him out, asked for it. Got it. She was starting to wish she had kept her legs crossed.

“Pilot’s job is the main job on this bridge, you know that Teeg.” Give the dog a bone, Clio thought.

Teeg looked up at her, warming a notch. “Think so?” His face collapsed from hope into skepticism. “Because I’ve earned my stripes on this rig. Damn if I haven’t. Russo likes to keep power, you notice that?”

When she didn’t answer, Teeg drew his eyes down Clio’s body, changing gear. “You sure are one gorgeous woman.” His tongue flicked at the corner of his mouth. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re not wearing one stitch of clothes, sitting there. The way it oughta be, sister.”

“Were you born obnoxious, Teeg, or do you take classes?”

“I work at it, same as you, honey.” He tapped his chest. “But deep down, I know how you feel.”

Clio rolled her eyes and punched a new comm line, listening to crew chatter, drowning him out. Definitely a mistake, that business with Teeg. She’d have to straighten him out real fast. One screw was all it was, was all it would ever be.

Teeg patched into her channel. “You know why Russo’s so paranoid?” His voice invaded her ears, nasal and annoying, like a fly buzzing. “ ’Cause she’s Biotime’s little doggy on a leash, that’s why. She’s ship captain, but she owes her soul to Biotime, the only outfit that’ll hire her on. After her little escapade. You remember the story?”

“Yeah, Teeg, we all remember the story.”

“How she was the only one got out of that orbiter alive?”

“That was a long time ago, Teeg.”

“The oxygen went. And the six of them shared the emergency supply. They huddled around the oxygen packs on the suits and took snorts, until they figured out that they weren’t going to make it. Then they drew straws, and Russo won. And she sucked on that air all the way through reentry, and watched them die, man. Watched them die.”

“Shut up, Teeg.”

He looked startled. “Guess you ladies like to stick together, huh?”

“Just shut the fuck up.”

Teeg swung around toward the control panel, and silence reigned on the bridge. Clio glared at the back of his head.
What an asshole
.

Off shift, Clio was sleeping hard. The kind of sleep where you feel like you’re lying on the bottom of the ocean with a mile of water holding you down. She was nearing the surface, hearing a knocking sound. It persisted.

“Clio? Clio?”

She woke, rose up on one elbow. Somebody at the cabin door. “Yeah? Come in.”

Zee sidled through the door, leaned back against it. “You awake?”

“No.”

“Because you need to know what’s going on.”

Clio staggered over to the water dispenser, swabbed her face, ran her wet hands through her hair in an effort to restrain it, flatten it. It still stuck out in every direction.

“You look great,” Zee said.

These days he was anxious to please her, still trying to heal the rift between them. She wanted to turn on him, say, “Look, Zee, I don’t care, all right? I just don’t care if you slept with Hill. It’s over anyhow, right?” But she restrained herself. The kid was in love with her. You had to have a little sympathy.

Clio groaned and lay back down on the bed. “So sit down and tell me what’s up.”

Zee folded his body down into the desk chair. “Russo’s calling for a ground mission.”

“So? What we came for, right?”

Zee sprang up. “Not just a ground mission, a camp. She’s going to set up a camp!” Zee began pacing. “She can’t do this to me, this isn’t what I signed on for!”

“Wait a sec. What do you mean,
camp?
Remember, I’ve been asleep, probably missed something.” Clio was starting to track, the mind was warming up, but slowly.

“I’m an astrophysicist, not a soldier. I’ve never even used a gun before.” Zee was waving his arms, pleading with Clio.

“Goddamn it, Zee, sit down and start from the beginning or I’ll throw you out.”

Zee continued pacing. “Niang’s the jackpot, Clio. The science team is so turned on, nobody’s slept for a day and a half. It’s perfect. It’s an Earth clone. Everything looks great from up here, even the elevated CO
₂
levels. The atmosphere has heightened methane, the temperature’s ideal. And the planet’s forest goes on forever. It’s a match. It’s Big Green on wheels. And Russo’s gearing up for a prolonged stay. She’s ordered a camp, and nine of us are going down. Nine of us! I’m supposed to help with camp security. Wear a gun!” He crumpled into the chair.

Clio snapped fully awake. “What about me?” She sat up, and swung her feet over the bunk to the floor.

“You’re staying aboard. Commander Shaw’s in charge of the mission. Hillis, Estevan, Meng, Posie, and Liu and Shannon are the science squad. I’m on security. Teeg’ll pilot the shuttle.”

“What’s Hill say?”

“He’s all for it. He’s so pumped up, he hasn’t left the freeping monitor since last day shift. And he ignores me, completely.”

“He’s ignoring everybody,” Clio said. She stretched her legs to chase the sleep out of them.

“No, I mean he
ignores
me. Like I don’t exist.”

“Hill doesn’t have a lot of room in his life for people, Zee, if you never noticed.”

“He had room for me before.”

Maybe he wanted something from you, she felt like saying, and didn’t.

Zee opened the viewport and gazed out at the local stars, lovely and distant as Zee’s hopes for Hillis. After a time he said, “We may never see these stars again. I’ve just begun my observations. To take me groundside right now is …” He turned to plead with Clio. “… tragic. I was born
to be here, doing what I’m doing. Not mucking about in some screaming jungle.”

Clio stood up and headed for the stowage bin to rummage for fresh togs. Peeled off her T-shirt, grabbed a new one. “Zee,” she said, “this isn’t Princeton. This is Recon, for godsakes.”

Zee averted his eyes as she undressed. Clio noted this, pulled the tee over her head with a snap. “Look, it’s my quarters. You don’t like the view, go find another.”

“Clio. It’s not that. At all.” He looked back up at her.

She swung around, zipping up her suit. “Look. You signed on, Zee. You signed on for whatever comes down, the same as the rest of us. You sign onto Recon, you take what comes.” She clipped her belt on, stared at him. “You walk into my cabin, you take what comes.”

He nodded slowly, headed for the door, turned. “I wish you were going with us.”

“I’ll keep the home fires burning.”

He smiled, turned, and left, closing the door behind him.

Her irritation faded. Zee was scared, didn’t realize they were all scared, to one degree or another. Signed on for it, but didn’t mean you weren’t scared. But damn if she was going to reassure him. Who was going to reassure her?

Clio sat in the galley nursing a cup of coffee. Estevan and Meng had a game of cards going, trying to waste the last couple hours until the surface mission. Estevan was muscular and abrupt, snapping the cards down and glowering over his hand at Meng, who was well ahead. Meng sweetly called the play: Estevan’s three jacks stared balefully at Meng’s straight. She swept her earnings into a pile, humming, goading Estevan. She dealt another hand.

Posie was digging in the refrigeration hatch for something to eat, commenting on the rejects. “What’s so hard about a ham sandwich? Man wasn’t made to eat food from a tube.”

Estevan frowned mightily at the hand he had just been
dealt. Without looking at Posie, he said, “Tubes are easier. You just pop off the top and suck.”

It began then. The screech of the Klaxon, grabbing the ship and filling it with a metallic howl. Estevan lurched out of his seat and Posie dropped the carbo tubes in his hands.

Ship’s voice calmly announced the worst: “CLOSE ALL HATCHES, PRESSURE FAILURE IN LAUNCH BAY.”

Clio flung herself up the ladder to the flight-deck hatch, screaming at Posie to shut the third hatch to the galley, the crew-station hatch. Clio grabbed at the flight-deck hatch, pulled the toggle to release it from the ceiling, and cranked it shut. She swung around to check the other hatches. Each one was shut, and guarded now by a crewmate, as though hell itself might barge through those doors. Though the alarms were still screeching, Clio could see Estevan’s mouth forming the words
holy shit, holy shit
.

Then, over the Klaxon’s blare, Estevan yelled at Meng, “Get your ass in gear, we’re ready to blow apart, you bitch!”

Meng, still seated at her cards, stared up at him. As the alarm subsided, Estevan screamed, “You gonna play cards on doomsday?”

In the ensuing quiet, Meng placed her cards facedown. “They must have fixed it,” she said.