The Seeds of Time (27 page)

Clio swallowed, forcing her voice normal. “Hey, sorry about this dump, you guys. Captain sent me down to help.”

A pause. Then: “Put on an exposure suit. They’re in stowage by the instrument pallet.”

Clio glanced over at the hatch down to lower decks. Shaw could come to anytime. Should’ve tied him up. She dragged the bag of weapons over to the farthest workstation, shoved it underneath and behind a chair. Grabbed an exposure suit from stowage and shoved herself into it, feet first, snagging her boots on the damn thing, fumbling the zipper, fastening the soft helmet onto the suit body; all the while, a hard stare at the hatchway. Finally suited up, there was the matter of the pistols. No pockets, no belt. Held them behind her back, punched the intercom. “Coming through.”

Clio unlatched the door to the airlock, a space about six meters square, waited while it vented its air, refilled. Saw Meng—probably it was Meng, hard to tell through the helmets—looking through the clear plastic window; then the inner door unsealed, started to open. Clio stood back, let them open the door for her, saw two suited figures, one tall, one short, aimed both guns at the short one.

“I’m gonna kill you if you try anything, Meng,” she said through the faceplate. “Put your hands behind your head and kneel down.”

Meng didn’t budge.

“Do it now, Meng.”

She began to move, got onto her knees.

Clio pulled off her helmet, looked over at Zee.

“Holy shit,” he said, the words muffled behind his helmet. “These are the captain’s orders, Clio.”

“Jesus, Zee, you think I care? Didn’t you know it might come to this? Don’t give me that captain’s orders bullshit. You in or out?”

He pulled off his helmet, brushed the hair back off his forehead, started to zip down the quarry suit. “I’m with you,” he said stepping out of the suit.

“Look me in the eyes, then.”

His head snapped up, angry. “I said I’m with you.”

She handed him the other gun. “Watch the door.” To Meng: “Get out of that suit. Hurry.” Meng peeled it off, looking cowed, obedient. Made Clio nervous.

“Just don’t shoot, Clio,” Meng said. “I know I’ve made some mistakes, but I don’t deserve to die for them. You kill me, it’s like taking the law into your own hands, it’d be murder. You’re not that type, I don’t think, Clio. I just …”

“Shut up. Don’t give me a reason to shoot, Meng, if you’re worried.” She got Meng lying on her stomach, belt off, hands behind her back. Clio tied her hands, threaded the belt through a bulkhead pipe. Stood up, looked around. Every specimen had been loaded onto trays. Plastic bags bulged with seed boxes. It had been close.

Zee saw her looking at the trays. “Only reason we weren’t done by now is, I got her talking about each specimen. She likes to talk about her plants.”

Clio moved over to him, rested her head on his shoulder. “Thanks.” She looked up at him. “I should’ve known you’d hold her off. I rushed here so fast I didn’t take time to tie Shaw up.”

“Oh my God. You were going to tie Commander Shaw up?”

“When he comes to, he’ll be pretty mad. I left him on lower deck.”

“Oh my God. You knocked him out.” Zee scraped his fingers back through his hair. “Cripes almighty.”

Clio plunged through the quarantine airlock, out the other side, Zee following. Science deck was still empty. She pulled out the duffel bag. “Let’s dump this. It’s got every weapon on the ship except for our two.”

Zee carried it over to the extravehicular instrument pallet, hauled it up on the platform. He punched up the command, and the pallet turned slowly and stopped. Zee hit the rotate key again. The pallet whined, now caught in a quarter-turn position.

“Stuck,” Clio said.

“Maybe stuck, maybe not hearing the command.” He hit Reset on the function keys, tried again. Still nothing.

Clio was hovering over him, reached past him, hit the Rotate key five times in a row. The pallet began turning again, humming smoothly. She turned to Zee, shrugged. Outer panel opened, from the sound of it. Weapons dumped out.

Zee was visibly shaking. He crossed his arms in front of him, rubbing his hands on his upper arms.

Clio nodded. “I know. Deep shit. Really deep shit this time, babe.”

“What are we going to do about the commander?”

“I could go back down and tie him up.”

“Unless he woke up,” Zee said. “Then he’ll be waiting for you. And he would have alerted the captain.”

Clio bit her lip, trying to get her brain on line. “But maybe he’s still out cold. I hit him pretty hard. Damn. Should’ve tied him up. Probably waiting for me with a wrench.”

“You never called me babe before.” Zee was still looking at her, no longer shaking.

She grinned, shrugged. “Yeah.”

Zee let it lie. He pointed to the quarantine doors. “We should stow these doors. Make it easier to watch both the hatchway here and the emergency hatch on the far end of the deck.”

Good. That was clear thinking. But she was stuck on something.

Zee talked as he thumbed the controls at the
workstation. “We’re in a siege mode now. We have a hostage, we’re in a secure position. They have to come and get us.”

Clio’s head came up, finally locking on to the thought. “Except I got to get up to crew deck.” She slapped her thigh. “I got to get up there.”

Zee’s face showed what he thought of the idea. “We should stay put. They could be waiting for us up there.”

“Listen. Sooner or later we’re going to lose the Niang haul. If not today, then at Vanda, once they analyze it. We need some supporters, somebody like the captain, who carries some weight.”

“I’m not sure how much weight the captain carries with a thing like this, Clio. She may not be very persuasive.”

“She doesn’t have to be persuasive. She just needs to get some seeds through quarantine.”

Zee shook his head incredulously. “Clio, how you going to persuade the captain to break the law?”

A pause. “Play her the tape.”

It took Zee a while to realize what tape. “You’ve got the transmission,” Zee said.

“Yeah.”

“Where is it?”

“Hillis’ cabin.”

She watched him expel a long, slow breath. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, somebody’s got to watch our hostage.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“I don’t know which is worse, Zee. Staying here or going up deck.” She shrugged. “Either way, they could come after us. Besides, I know exactly where Hillis hid it, you don’t.”

He nodded glumly. Struggled to say something. “Be careful” was all that managed to get out.

She flashed a smile. Drew her pistol and climbed the ladder.

Clio pushed open the hatch door fast, sweeping her eyes through the galley. Nobody, not within sight. Coffee cups and the remnants of a meal still cluttered the mess table. She climbed slowly through, flicking her gaze to the crew station and bridge hatchways. She scrambled up the ladder to the crew deck, her back prickling.

Crew quarters were empty. The long corridor stretched down to launch bay, looking spooky. Pick a door, any door. Something waiting for you behind one.

First cabin was medlab. Estevan’s ghost there, urging her on.
Come on, man, you can do it
. Clio slid by, walking softly—nobody ever walked so softly—gun drawn, heart making a clanging noise in her ears. Pushed open Hillis’ door. No ghost here, only emptiness. The more you long for ghosts, the less you see of them—Murphy’s law, or something, Clio reckoned.

She fished inside the duffel and found the tape. Then she walked over to the console, paused. The captain might not wait to hear this, might send Shaw after her, straight to the cabin where the transmission originated. But if she ran the tape from science deck, she’d have to get back there first. Also a risk.

She powered up the console and slid in the tape plus an extra. Copied it. Tucked one disk into her vest pocket and thumbed the keyboard to send the transmission to all stations. Put it on hold, went to the intercom.

“Captain, this is Finn, you read?”

A long wait. “I read you, Lieutenant.”

“How’s Shaw?”

“Never mind how he is. What the holy hell is going on? You cracking up?”

“All I ask is that you listen to the transmission coming through. That’s all I ask. All you got to know is that Zee broke the Future Ceiling, and we programmed
Starhawk
on the Dive out to Niang to take a little detour to the future. This is what they found. You can believe that or not, up to you.” She switched off. Now they knew where she was; time to hurry. She punched in Send and left the cabin, double time down the corridor. They’d be confused for a minute, probably at least punch up to receive the transmission. And they’d figure she was still in the cabin. Wrong. She was in the galley, still empty, then down to science, closing the hatch behind her.

Zee stepped out from the wall he had been pressed against, watching the hatchway for Shaw or Russo.

Clio nodded at him. “It’s running.”

He punched up the program. The recorded broadcast was under way, with the announcer saying, “… the luxury to argue over who was to blame.…”

They listened again as Harding described the end, the end of life as humanity had known it, listened as he spoke his few last words for the departed, the late, great …

Zee sat at the console, Clio standing next to him, not wanting to listen but listening anyway.

And then it was done. Zee switched it off, sat quietly staring at the console. “On the way out to Niang, after the Dive, I stopped by Hill’s cabin one night after my shift. Hillis was lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, listening to the tape. I tried to speak to him, but he was far away, deep inside himself, not even listening, I don’t think. He was grieving.” Zee paused. “For me, maybe for you, the whole thing was too big to think about, but Hillis took it inside and grieved. I think he felt things more than most people … at least about this. Maybe he couldn’t express himself, but he felt the death of Earth in ways the rest of us never could. That’s why he loved Niang so much.” He looked up at Clio from where he was sitting in front of the terminal. “You know?”

Her voice cracked, answering him. “I know.” She leaned down, embraced him, wiping her tears on his shirt. Zee wrapped his arms around her waist, brought her onto his lap, rubbing her shoulder. He held her, crumpled against him, for a long while, then slid his hand onto the back of Clio’s head, into her thicket of red hair, rubbing her scalp for a moment, then pulled her face down to his, finding her lips with his own.

After a moment he stood up, holding her so that she stood with him, and turned her body to face his.
Stronger than he looks, by damn
, she thought. “Got to keep watch, Zee.”

“I am watching,” he said, as he buried his face in her neck, moving his hand up her sides to touch her breasts with his thumbs, pulling her closer to him at the same time.

The man’s on a mission, for sure
. Clio flicked her eyes toward the hatch, then felt Zee’s hand on her chin, bringing her face back to look at him.

“They’re going to do what they’re going to do,” he said. “We’ve done all we can. My guess is that they’re going to sleep on it.” He pulled her down to the floor. He had that single-minded intensity that seemed to come over men but that eluded her, with her mind still on the hatchway and on Meng, tied up over there but turned the other way, and Shaw and Russo on the bridge, or where the hell were they. Then Zee’s hands were getting real personal, and this brought her attention back to the moment, and she sighed, raggedly.

He put his forehead on hers, paused, said, “Let yourself go, sweetheart. Just let yourself go.”

God, how long had it been? Found herself counting back the months, then those thoughts vanished as he pulled the zipper of her suit down to her navel, and she arched herself out of the thing. He held the fabric of the arms down and she pulled free, folding her arms around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, feeling him wanting her, suddenly quite clear about whether she wanted him.

“Zee, Zee,” she said. “Just don’t think I’m promising
you anything, OK? Don’t stop, but don’t expect anything, OK?”

“Just shut up for once, Clio,” he said, tenderly.

Later, they raided the emergency tubes of food in quarantine section, fed themselves and Meng, let her wash up and relieve herself, then tied her back up, settled themselves down as best they could on the floor with chair cushions, and slept.

And Clio dreamed that she was running, running … The grass spiked up her skirt as she ran, jabbing her hard. She kept her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her, despite the shouts and the blare of horns behind her. Petya was running by her side. “Go,” she urged him, “go, Petya, don’t wait for me.” He was over six feet and strong, a much faster runner, and dressed in running togs. He put his arm around her and lifted her forward at a faster pace, but it was no good, her gown caught on the brambles, and now her high heels broke off and she was running barefoot. Why was she wearing a ball gown? DSDE was getting closer, the sounds of dogs barking and the horns, the awful horns, that sound was worse than anything …