The Seeds of Time (23 page)

Minutes later, Shaw came scowling into the crew station, flushed with exertion, grease on his face.

Clio relinquished her seat to Zee, as Shaw sat down at the terminal.

Shaw looked at the numbers, began calling up the thermal system into visual. A schematic onscreen showed the water output. “How can we be producing that much water?”

Zee said, “Maybe we’re not. Maybe we’re not using it up as fast as we used to.”

Shaw stopped dead. Looked at Zee. “That’s it.”

Zee was nodding.

“What’s it?” Clio asked.

Shaw punched at the keyboard, and there it was. Thermal systems had shut down the freon radiators’ water supply by thirty percent. They weren’t dumping their excess heat, they were conserving it.

Shaw hit the comm switch. “Captain, sir, we’ve found the problem … it’s the thermal-system computer program. It’s been diverting water out of the coolant system and storing it in the tanks belowdecks. We’ve been heated up by those tanks for days now.” Shaw listened a moment longer, then swung around to face Zee. “She’ll do a manual override. From now on, we monitor the thermal system, operate it manually if we have to. Zee, you’re on that one.”

“Yessir.”

Shaw nodded at him. “Good work.” Then he ducked through the hatch, heading for the flight deck.

Zee swung around in his chair, face beaming. “We did it.”

Clio brought up a big smile. “Yes, we did it.” All the while her stomach was sinking rapidly. It might be just a glitch in the program, an isolated event. Clio tried hard to believe it, and failed. “Zee,” she said. “Could you run some systems checks? Electrical, air system, pressurization, water. We should do a complete run-through.”

“Sure. Easy.” He shrugged.

“Manually.”

“Manually. That’d take a while.” He cocked his head. A question. Why?

“If the computer screwed up once, we need to double-check, that’s all,” Clio said.

“That would be true if we had a pattern of failures. But we don’t.”

She could do it herself. Not as fast as Zee, but she could do it. “OK. Maybe you’re right.” She headed to the galley hatch. “I’m going to clean up.” She grabbed a cup of coffee on her way through and climbed the ladder to crew deck, heading for her cabin. Heard Zee on the ladder behind her. She turned to face him.

“What’s going on, Clio?” Zee asked.

She laughed. “A cup of coffee and a shower. Not a lot.”

He held her gaze. “You’re suspicious about something. The coolant-system failure. What about it?”

“Nothing about it. Made me nervous, that’s all.”

“So you’re not going to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Zee gazed at her steady. “If you don’t trust me, Clio, who do you have? You going to keep stuff to yourself, never let anybody in?”

Clio looked away, started to prepare some excuse.

He stopped her before she could answer. “What am I to you? Some useful sidekick you can use like Hillis used me? Because if that’s what I am, you can keep your stupid secrets, I don’t even want to know.” He caught her gaze for a moment, then turned to go.

“Zee …” she began.

He swung around. “No!” He was shaking his head, words building up inside but not yet ready to come out. Then: “Keep your Red Queen magic away from me.” He was backing away. “Just keep away from me.”

Clio strode to catch up to him. “Zee,” she said, “listen to me. I don’t know much about trust, you’re right. But this is the biggest deal I’ve ever faced. I’m scared to death to trust. Help me.” She wanted to tell him, wanted desperately to tell him, she realized. To share the decision with another
human being. And of everyone on board, in fact, of everyone she knew, Zee would be her choice. All these years she thought it was best to trust to silence, but silence didn’t always save you. DSDE, for example, had other ways of knowing. She had to trust Zee, now.

He shook his head, a dark look falling over his face. “You’ve got to help yourself, Clio. I’m here for you, but you’ve got to take the plunge.”

She nodded her head, licking her dry lips.
Time to take the plunge
. “Let’s talk in my cabin,” she said.

They walked down the corridor of empty crew cabins. Russo’s and Shaw’s quarters, senior-officer quarters, were off the flight deck. Here, there were only Zee, Meng, and Clio. And Estevan in medlab. Names were still on empty cabins:
JON HILLIS, HARPER TEEG
,
ROBERT POSIE, SHANNON RESSMEYER, WONG LIU
.

She held open the door that read
CLIO FINN
, motioned Zee through.

Clio sat on the bed, put her untouched coffee on the desk. Zee perched on the chair, quiet. A patient man. She felt grateful to have a minute to find the thread of her story.

“You’re right. I don’t trust many people. Guess I’ve got too many secrets. My whole life is composed of secrets. I’m used to them.”

“They’re safe with me,” he said.

“Zee. The biota we took on. It has a flaw.”

He waited. He was going to make her do all the work.

“It eats metal,” she said, flat out.

“Jesus.”

“Maybe plastic, too. I’m not sure.”

“How do you mean, eats? Corrodes it?”

“No, it takes over, replaces metal. It replicates the shape, like minerals replace wood in a fossil. Except I have no idea what the process is. I only know it happens.” She told him then. Told him of the crashed ship, the Niang intrusion. How Niang erases technology.

Zee listened intently, absorbing her words. And Clio talked, told him every detail. It felt so good to talk, to let all
the words out. Give it to another human being, hold nothing back.

His eyes would sometimes flick to the left, a sign he was thinking hard. Yes, Clio thought, yes Zee. Think. It’s what you do so well. And I’m so tired of thinking.

“So you think the Niang biota is contaminating the ship,” Zee said.

“Yes. Question is, how is it spreading. All specimens are in quarantine.”

“But how effective is our quarantine? Maybe the pollen, or spores or whatever, have eaten through the metal, like acid through silk. And their first effects are being felt in the most delicate metal parts on board. The computer circuits.” Zee paused. “If we tell the captain, she’ll dump the plants.”

Clio nodded.

“And we can’t let her do that. Can’t tell her what’s going on.” His forehead wrinkled in a confused frown.

He was learning the necessity of secrets. All they could do now was keep watch, nurse
Starhawk
home. But to bring it to Earth, that was the issue. She waited for Zee to say it.

“So when you asked me if I would give up science for the regreening, this is what you meant.” He looked at Clio wistfully. As someone who had been happier not knowing. He got up and washed his face in the sink, toweled it dry. “Not just science. This is Western civilization. Buildings, electricity, transportation, hospitals, communications. Telescopes. Printing press. Computers.”

“Right,” Clio said. “And paper clips and lawn mowers. But people will survive.”

“How do you know?”

“The Niang monkeys. The animal life. It exists.”

Zee shook his head. “But it’s had millions of years to adapt. Niang could hit Earth like measles hit Hawaii.”

“Yeah. It’s a risk.”

“Clio. Niang will never make it through Vanda quarantine. It’s a bust.”

“We have to help it through quarantine.”

Zee stared at her.

“We smuggle it, Zee. Only way it’s going to survive.”

He sat down, towel still in hand. “Holy cow.”

Clio leaned forward. “Because it’s at least a chance. It’s maybe regreening with a vengeance, but it’s regreening. Without it, the future is a bust. The big die-off, Zee. So, the way I figure it, we don’t have much choice.”

They sat for a long while, not speaking. He had to work it out, take it step by step in his own mind, like she had. Zee had more to lose. He had his career. He had no quarrel with DSDE, had no sentence hanging over his head. The rising star, still ascending. Peter vander Zee, boy wonder, welcome home. So his choices were harder than hers. She gave him time.

Finally he stood up. Ran his hand through his hair, massaging his scalp after too much thinking. “Guess I’ll go run those systems checks.”

Clio got up, walked over to him. “You’re really something, you know?”

Zee smiled, a tentative, probing look in his eyes. “So are you.”

She moved toward him, put her arms around him, as he wrapped his around her. It was only a hug, but it felt safe, even if only for the moment.

The transmission from Vanda was weak, crackling and flickering. Say again, Starhawk. Say again, Vanda requested, as though they had trouble hearing, trouble believing, what they heard.

Then, within the hour, though it was two
A.M
. on Vanda, Brisher was on visual. Even through the snow on the screen, he looked bad. Doughy, creased.

His face filled the screen. “Not good news, Captain,” he said. “Not good at all. I’m disappointed.” He looked to his right, then back at them. “Folks here tell me five crew are dead, one more critically injured. You are down to five able-bodied crew? Over.”

Russo’s face was as blank as Clio had ever seen it. Her voice flat, captain-like. “No, we have three dead, two missing. Another man with a collapsed lung, stable but critical. We’re covered for essential ship functions. No ship damage. Over.”

“What in the name of hell happened?”

“Landing crew mutinied. Led by Lieutenant Harper Teeg, aided by Posie and Liu. Finn, Hillis, vander Zee, and Estevan resisted. In the conflict Hillis was killed, as well as Posie and Shannon Ressmeyer. Estevan took a bullet in his left lung, and we need to talk with a doctor on that.”

“You’ll talk to a doctor when I’m damn good and ready. What the hell were you doing during this shoot-out, Captain Russo? How did Shaw let the ground mission get out of control? Put Shaw on.”

“No need, sir,” Russo said. “Shaw wasn’t on ground mission. Teeg was in charge. Because Shaw was injured,
from an accidental depressurization in launch bay. Which might have been sabotage on Teeg’s part.”

“Well, you’ve got conspiracies all over the place, don’t you, Captain?”

She let it slide, her face stiff as the clipboard she was holding.

“Lieutenant Finn, you there?” Brisher asked.

“Here, sir.”

“What happened down on Niang? You got a believable story? I sure hope you’ve got one hell of a believable story.”

“It’s the same story Zee and Estevan have, sir. Teeg didn’t want to come home. He saw Niang as some kind of paradise. Where he could be leader. It was a chance to live a great adventure, to test himself against the planet. Only he needed us all with him, to survive. For company. Said he hated Biotime, sir. Always hated to take orders. When we wouldn’t go along, he clamped down on us, abandoned the mission. We tried to disarm him—Zee and Estevan and me. That’s when Estevan got shot. By the time the shooting was over, Hillis was dead. And Shannon and Posie. We got the lander back, but we barely escaped.”

“You’re saying we got five, maybe six crew lost because Harper Teeg wanted to play Robinson Crusoe?”

“Yeah. I guess so. Sir.”

“And why weren’t you on that ground mission, Russo? What was our Dive pilot doing on a ground mission?”

“It seemed the best assignment at the time. My place was to captain this ship.”

“Better think of a different answer, Captain.” Brisher’s face stared out from the screen, across seventy-two million kilometers. “I’m going back to bed. All I can say is, it’s sure going to be one sweet hearing at the Bureau.”

Then Vanda botany staff wanted to talk to Meng, and Shaw patched them through to science deck.

Clio was the first to break the silence in the cabin. “I think he enjoyed that,” she said.

Shaw glanced over at her. “What did you expect, a medal?”

“He’s sadistic, petty, and banal. But if he wants to give me a medal, I wouldn’t turn it down,” Clio said.

Shaw’s mouth was hanging open a notch. “That’ll do, Lieutenant,” he said. “You will observe protocols, you understand?”

“Yessir. Sorry sir.”

Russo was looking at Clio, a smile appearing for a moment around her eyes. “You’re relieved, Commander,” she said to Shaw. “Go get some sleep.” He hauled himself out of his chair, and headed back to the officers’ cabins.

Clio ran systems checks, running through automatic checks first, for something to do, giving Russo some privacy. Russo was dead meat, and knew it. Brisher had washed his hands of her. This was one mission they needed to blame on a live body, and the captain would do nicely. Russo was finished in Recon. It couldn’t be a surprise to her, but now, clearly, Brisher had taken a stance. You’re dead meat, he said between the words.

“I’m going to run a manual check on reaction-control system for rotation, Captain,” Clio said, asking permission. Took the silence for an OK. Clio grasped the hand control and gently moved it forward and backward, adjusting the pitch of the ship, then twisted the control left and right to adjust for yaw. The ship responded. The screen showed
Starhawk
rotating along its X/Y axis.