The Seeds of Time (24 page)

“Excuse me, sir,” Clio said after a time. “But can I ask you a personal question?”

Russo hadn’t spoken since the Vanda transmission. She blinked over at Clio. Nodded.

“Do you have family, sir?”

A pause. “No. No family. Just Biotime, I suppose.” After a few moments: “How about you? Your father’s still in the Midwest—Minneapolis, isn’t that right?”

“Yessir. You know sir, I’m real sorry for what’s coming down. I got the feeling I’m never going to Dive again. Tell you the truth, I’m starting to get the shakes anyway. Truth is, I get them pretty bad. So I figure I’m done, one way or another. But I’m sorry you’re in trouble. Biotime ought to keep you, sir.”

“Well, the mission was my responsibility. If it had been successful, I would have had the glory. Now I get the blame. It goes with the stripes. Don’t fret about it, Lieutenant. It’s a good system. I’m not sorry.”

“What do you think they’ll do to you?”

“Quick retirement. Terms depend on the outcome of the hearing. No matter what the outcome, I’ll never fly again.”

“Me neither.”

“Oh, you’ve still got a few Dives left.”

“No, Captain. I’m starting to lose it. I never could admit it. But now, I’m retiring. I want to tell Brisher that first, before he yanks my pilot bars.”

Russo met her gaze, nodded slowly. “You have my permission to do just that, Lieutenant.” A pause. “I didn’t know.”

“Nosir. But I wanted you to know now, since we’re in for it with Biotime. I just want you to know, I don’t have a lot to lose. So I don’t feel like taking a lot of shit from Ellison Brisher. It’s not worth it.”

Russo was smiling broadly now. “That’s the spirit, Lieutenant.” She raised an eyebrow. “Just observe the protocols. It’s more dignified.”

Clio nodded, smiling back. “Yessir.” She turned back to the instrument panel, not seeing it, feeling light-headed, in the dazed way of one who has finally told a long-suppressed truth. The spoken words seemed still to hang in the air between her and Russo:
I’m losing it. I get the shakes, so I figure I’m done. Get them pretty bad, to tell you the truth
. Sucking in a breath deep into her chest, Clio knew why people talk of getting something off your chest, when you have something important to say, and you finally say it. The breath filled her rib cage.

Doctors on Vanda were patched into medlab talking to Zee. He was the only crew available for more or less constant watch over Estevan, since Meng was in charge of the botany deck and Russo, Shaw, and Clio were on constant rotation schedules on the bridge.

Clio listened in. Estevan was bad, real bad. And they were still two weeks out from station.

Over the last eight weeks Estevan had lost forty pounds, and most of his muscle tone. In the last week he stopped playing cards, much to Meng’s disgust.

“Only goddamn thing that keeps him alive,” Meng said. “Losing at cards makes him mad, gives him a reason to live.”

Clio thought she might be right.

Clio’s shift was up, a twelve-hour marathon. She was dog-tired, and headed down to crew deck, passed medlab, ducked her head in. Zee was sitting with his patient. He put his finger to his lips, indicating Estevan, asleep.

She nodded, swung back into the corridor, headed for bed. Passed Hillis’ cabin, paused. Then pushed his door open.

The bedcovers were tucked, the desk was clean. Someone had bagged his stuff, stacked it against the starboard bulkhead. Idly, Clio opened his desk drawers, one by one. Clean.

She started on the bags then, peering into the contents, trying to find evidence of his life, to find something personal. This one had folded shirts, togs, underwear, belt, shoes. She ran her hands over these items, waiting to cry, feeling her face swell up, then, knowing she wouldn’t cry; that release was too easy, it was too much to hope for.

Another bag held game disks, prescription headache medicine, notebooks filled with plant sketches and scientific notes, an audiotape, a stack of photographs. Clio started through the photographs: vistas of Earth, forests, trees, nameless plants. No people in them, and worse, no pictures of Hillis, no picture of Hillis and Clio, no people at all.

“I told her, Hillis,” she said. “I told Russo I’m burned out. But, anyway, DSDE knows, they’ve known for a long time, so I told Russo. I expected it to be hard to tell her, but it wasn’t. It felt like coming out of the closet. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t feel that bad either, not as bad as my nightmares.”

She put the pictures back into the box. “I’m going to
jail, or worse. So it’s really all over. You got out just in time, Hill.” She saw him inching toward the shuttle, a dozen weapons in his arms, a look of amusement on his face, as though it were all a game, as though he knew Teeg would never let him walk up that ramp. Tears jumped out of her eyes. The picture of Hill was so clear in her mind. As she closed her eyes against the tears, the picture was even sharper, in memory.

She picked up the audiotape. A slight clutch in her stomach. In Hillis’ scrawl, the label read “A Short History of the Future.” She tucked it back in the bag, cinched it up, stacked it back against the bulkhead.

Clio shut Hillis’ door behind her, turned to head down to her cabin when the emergency bells slammed into life.

“DON PORTABLE OXYGEN SYSTEM. DON PORTABLE OXYGEN SYSTEM,” Clio heard ship’s voice say.

She lunged for the nearest cabin door, Hillis’ cabin, grabbed the oxygen pack from the wall, pulled the mask over her face, sucked in a breath. Got to be fast when air systems go. You got two minutes without oxygen, then you’re out cold, and in four minutes your brain starts to die. Worse if it’s a toxic gas. Could kill you in seconds. Clio leaned against the wall a moment trying to get calm, stopped gulping air. Heart still pumping hard, she stepped back into the corridor, and reeled. Dizzy. The pack wasn’t working. She pushed against Posie’s cabin door, yanked the oxygen pack off the wall, sucked in hard. Nothing.

Back in the hall, gasping, she chanced breathing, hauling in a ragged breath. It didn’t kill her, but it was thin, very thin. She heard herself inhale with a desperate, sucking sound. She steadied herself with one hand against the bulkhead.
Fall down and hit your head, and you’ve just hung it up, girl
. She lunged for Shannon’s door, tore the pack off the wall, collapsed with it to a sitting position, flipped the mask over her mouth and nose.

Pulled in sweet, breathable air.

She struggled back to her feet, and checked out Liu’s and her own cabin’s packs. Hers worked. She dashed back
into the corridor and ran down to medlab. Zee was sprawled on the floor. Estevan had managed to climb out of his cot, and was crouched on the floor next to Zee. As Clio hurried over to them, Estevan put his oxygen pack over Zee’s mouth.

“Can you share your pack with him?” she asked him. He nodded yes, brought the pack up to his own face, alternating. Zee was coming around, struggled to get up. Clio pressed him into the floor. “You lie here until you’re OK, I’m going up to flight deck to check on the captain,” she said, and was already racing through the door. In the corridor the alarms were still sounding. Where was everybody? Clio slammed through the hatchway and took the ladder rungs three at a time down to the galley. Shaw lay at the foot of the flight-deck ladder, the galley oxygen pack lying uselessly at his side. Clio charged through the hatch into the forward crew deck, pulled down every pack in the room, testing them. One usable pack. Better than nothing. She rushed back to Shaw and slapped the mask over his mouth. As soon as he made a small movement, she left him, and started up to the flight deck.

Russo was attempting to get out of her chair, staggered back, saw Clio, waved her mask at her. “Air,” she said. Clio put her own mask over Russo’s mouth for a moment. Then took it back, sucked in a long breath, gave it back to Russo, and charged back down the ladder, fueled by one breath, praying for a usable pack on the science deck. All decks were accessed from the galley, making it a short run to science deck. Within twenty seconds, Clio was in the botany lab. No one in sight.

She ran to the intercom in the quarantine doors and shouted Meng’s name.

“I’m here,” came Meng’s voice.

“Meng, open up, I got no air.”

A long pause.

“Meng! Goddamn it, open up.”

“If there’s poison out there, I’m not opening the door.”

“Meng, there’s no poison! I’m OK but the air packs are ruined. Now open the door!”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Meng! I’m going to die out here. Help me.” Clio banged on the door with her fist. She was dizzy, starting to lose it. Clio pushed away from the quarantine doors and grabbed the nearest oxygen pack. Dead. Ran to the next station, found another dead one. Rushing back to the intercom, she jabbed the button. “Please, Meng! Open the door! I can’t breathe.”

“I’m sorry, Clio. Whatever’s killing you could kill these seedlings too. You don’t want it all to be for nothing, do you?”

“Meng, you murdering bitch. Open the damn doors.” That last a hoarse whisper.

She was starting to black out, heard Meng say, “Now, that wasn’t very nice, Clio.…”

She leaned into the quarantine wall, fighting to stand up, but finding herself starting to slip down the long, long wall into the void.

The sounds of the carnival jammed the air. Clio was standing in front of Amazon River House, where a gaping hole swallowed one car after another. From deep inside came muffled screams. Clio handed her ticket to the man. The orange scrap of paper stuck to her fingers for a moment, from the paste of sweat. He looked at her funny, as though she had passed him an unsanitary thing. Sweat couldn’t hurt him, you’d think he’d know. But bodily fluids were bad manners these days
.

The line of fun-seekers was emptying itself into the waiting cars. A young man up ahead turned around, searching the line for someone. He looked right at Clio a moment, and smiled. Then he climbed into a car. His T-shirt stuck to his back; a line of sweat down his backbone molded the cotton to his workman’s muscles
.

Clio shared a car with a teenage girl who screamed on cue at every snake, bat, panther that the Amazon House threw at them. Clio thought of the young man up ahead of her, riding alone. She wondered if he knew that the Amazon House used to be the Tunnel of Love, and she longed for
some of the sweet, silent darkness of that old-time ride, imagined the darkness spreading over her like a lover bending close, blocking the sun. But you couldn’t have Tunnels of Love these days. A bad influence on the teenagers, who everyone hoped were practicing abstinence. So they converted it to other uses
.

The sunlight hit her face suddenly as the ride ended, hurting her eyes. She saw the young man in the T-shirt standing in line for cotton candy. Amazon Man. She looked for the smile again but he didn’t see her
.

She was walking rapidly now, trying to spy Petya. It was time to get home for dinner. Mom and Elsie made a big deal out of meals together. He was supposed to wait for her by the ticket booth. Then she saw him in line for the Big Top. Her heart sank. The performance in the Big Top was an hour at least. She’d never get him out of line. Petya could be stubborn. She produced a big smile and approached him. “Big Top, huh?”

“Yes. There’s going to be elephants?”

Clio could hear the choir tuning up inside. She doubted the elephants; sounded more like a revival. “Maybe there’ll only be singing and such.”

A frown flickered on his forehead
.

“Want to come with me?” she asked. “Maybe we’ll get some cotton candy.”

“You have to stand in line to see the show?” He turned to watch the front of the line, still hoping for elephants. At twenty he still had never seen one
.

“You might be disappointed,” she said
.

“That’s OK.”

Clio was resigned. He wanted to see inside the Big Top, elephants or not. He had lived through a longer childhood than most, had seen a million promises broken. But as long as he stood in line, at least for that long, he had elephants
.

“I’ll be out here waiting. Then we’ll go, OK?” she said
.

Petya nodded happily, turned to shuffle forward in the line
.

When Clio turned she saw Amazon Man leaning against the Chair-o-Plane railing, eating the last of his cotton candy, watching her. He wasn’t bothering with subtlety. She found herself walking toward him, and wishing she wasn’t
.

His face was well worn from the sun, his eyes so soft blue she wanted to cup her hands across his brow to shade them. But you don’t touch people you’ve just met, she scolded herself. We have formalities. Before we touch
.

He broke the silence with a smile. “Hi.”

They did the Tilt-a-Wheel, then the Rocket. When the Rocket pitched into its headlong dive, Clio dug her fingers into his forearm, and he brought his arm closer around her. She had let him pay for the rides, so it was almost like a date. She let herself pretend he was her boyfriend instead of a man she’d just picked up at a traveling circus in a vacant lot outside of town
.

They found a storage tent on the outskirts of the carnival. They’d gone looking without deciding in words, just turned away from the middle of things to find a sheltered place
.

The tent cast a yellow glow on them as they sank down together, first to their knees, like some kind of nuptials. She pulled back and put her hand out between them, palm out. He reached into his jeans pocket and drew out the small scratch pack, broke it in half and pricked her finger. Nothing happened. “Don’t be shy,” he said, coaxing her in the ritual. She squeezed her finger, hard, until a glistening red pearl welled on her fingertip. He pressed it into the paper, where it turned the right shade of purple, certifying her clean. Then he held out his left hand to her, all the while stroking the back of her neck with his other hand. She scratched him hurriedly, watching it turn purple. Then she pulled him down on top of her, casting his shadow over her face
.