Hella Page 6

  We left the skyballs circling to finish the surveillance. Operators back at Mission Control would focus on whatever they still wanted to see. Captain Skyler wanted to catch up to the leviathans again. It would be useful to tag the other two and monitor their behavior, especially long-term. So we turned east and chugged along through the swath they had cut through the grass. The other two trucks rejoined us and we actually made pretty good time. The leviathans were still visible in the eastern distance and it wasn’t likely that they’d get to Dystopic River before sunset. But even if they did they’d still have to wait till morning to cross, so we had more than enough time to catch up to them.

  Captain Skyler did have us stop a few times to plant a few more monitors and pick up samples of the leviathan droppings—still my job. The leviathan poop wasn’t as wet and stinky as the droppings of the carnosaurs. Instead, it came out like giant pellets, all greenish-brown and a little bit moist. They were thick balls of rolled up straw with a distinctly grassy animal smell. You could make bricks out of them. If ancient history was any guide, you could probably even use them all dried out as fuel for a campfire.

  We caught up with the leviathans at 2430. The sun was lowering behind us and our long shadow reached ahead across the whispering waves of grass. This was how the carnosaurs tracked their prey, following the furrows that the big beasts left behind, so the rear vehicle was always on the lookout for anything else that might be coming up behind us. Aerial surveillance didn’t show anything, but aerial surveillance had missed our pack of carnosaurs. Captain Skyler got into an hour-long argument with Mission Control about that.

  The best guess was that the bigmouths had been sheltering under a thick copse of warping willows. There’s a series of gullies beyond the western rise. A spattering of streams nourishes a mini-jungle of forest and ferns, cooling everything under its canopy. I said, “Maybe the carnosaurs had been having their midday rest when the noise of our trucks disturbed them.”

  “Gosh,” said Lilla-Jack, sarcastically. “And the noise of big thunder-foot and his two buddies had nothing to do with it?”

  Captain Skyler made a hushing gesture. “We’ll study the records ourselves when we get back. Someone on the oversight committee suggested it as a possibility. It’s under advisement.”

  “Yeah, someone. Some councilor’s flunky, looking to score points. We didn’t break protocol.”

  “Shh,” said the Captain, and that was the end of it.

  The leviathans had stopped at a shallow pond. Slowly and ponderously, they dug at the mud with their gigantic front feet, then they’d back away and lower their great heads into the brown sludge, scraping even deeper. This late in summer, there wasn’t enough water to make a real wallow, but they could certainly find enough to wet their whistles—and they had very large whistles.

  The herd that followed would dig this pond even deeper. After a few more migrations, this might become a major water hole, not just for the leviathans, but for all the other creatures in this domain. When the water hole was deep enough it would become permanent. And then ferns and bushes and even trees might start to grow. Whether or not they could survive being in the path of the migration—that was unlikely.

  Lilla-Jack heated vegetable stew for first supper. We ate in silence, each of us turning over our own thoughts on various matters. Myself, I realized I was having an actual adventure. I’d seen more on my first outing than most people saw in a dozen. Jamie would be proud of me. Marley would be really jealous. That would have made me smile if it didn’t also worry me. Marley was already angry enough. And I wondered again if it was true, what Jubilee had said. Had Marley broken Jamie’s leg on purpose? Or had that happened by accident? Either way, I could expect more trouble from her in the future.

  After dinner, Captain Skyler invited me to join them on the bridge. I didn’t know if this was a privilege or an honor, or if he was still training me. But I was glad to go.

  I hadn’t finished fastening my seat belt when the radio started blaring.

  At first, I thought it was noise. Then I recognized it as music. Enthusiastic but clumsy. Something from old Earth, something religious maybe? Like a joyous march into the kingdom of heaven? Something triumphant. I’d never paid enough attention. I could ask the noise.

  “What the hell?” said Lilla-Jack.

  Captain Skyler flipped a switch on his panel. “Mission Control, what is that?”

  “It’s Beethoven. Beethoven’s Ninth. Fourth movement.” There was an excited edge to the reply.

  “Yes. I recognized that much,” said the Captain. “It’s kind of thin. Almost amateur. Why are you playing it?”

  “We’re not playing it. That’s an incoming signal. We’re relaying it. It’s the Cascade! She’s arrived! The Seventeenth Pilgrimage is here!”

  “Say what? Say again!”

  “Starship Cascade has dropped out of hyperstate.”

  “How far out?”

  “That’s the bad news. She’s on the far side of the system. This signal is more than two hours old. They’re a long way out and headed in the wrong direction, but they’re probably already correcting. We sent an immediate acknowledgment, and they should have it by 2630. They’re already transmitting their final manifests, and it looks very good. Lots of seeds and equipment. And twelve hundred new colonists.”

  “Hm.” Captain Skyler didn’t have to say it aloud. Twelve hundred new problems. “Do we have an ETA to orbit?”

  “Hard to say. We’re still processing. Apparently they had some trouble on the first leg. Nothing they couldn’t handle, but it affected the accuracy of their astrogation. She overshot the primary by a few billion, and she’s got a lot of delta-vee to burn off. At least three months. And then at least another two months to come around the star and match orbit. It’s a bigger slice than they expected.”

  “So they’re not going to be here until the middle of winter.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  Captain Skyler nodded. “Not good.”

  I didn’t need the noise to understand. Hella storms are hellastorms. It’s not safe to land anything when the winds are hitting hurricane velocity. It would be safest for the new arrivals to wait in orbit until spring. Probably six months until the weather settled. Add it all up, after three months in transit to arrive at orbit, they might spend more time waiting upside than the actual length of their hyperstate voyage.

  But that could be good news, too.

  It’s all about logistics. That was the noise talking again. We didn’t have accommodations for twelve hundred more people.

  But the Cascade hadn’t been expected until spring. The ship was nine months early. That was interesting by itself. Had somebody invented a faster way to travel hyperstate?

  Winterland was budgeted for the expansion, but digging out the new caves hadn’t started yet. And Summerland expansion—well, that wouldn’t be a problem. We knew how to do that. The newbies could land on Convenient Meadow; their life-pods were designed to convert into homes and stuff, and we could truck them in and stack them into towns. The maintenance facilities would be dug in deep for the long-term. That’s what previous immigrations had done. It was a good plan, but every new arrival was a major upheaval for everyone. So a five-month delay before landing people and their supplies, would give us more time to adjust the plans.

  Even better, it would give us five months to open up channels and get to know the new people before they actually landed. It would give us five months to teach them the ways of Hella and give them a better chance of surviving without a leash.

  Newcomers don’t always understand. This planet has killed a lot of colonists in the last thirty years. And only six of those deaths were caused by saurs. Twenty-nine were caused by infection. The rest were caused by stupidity. We have anti-stupid classes every week, with almost-daily reminders from those who’d survived. Captain Skyler said it bes
t: “The worst kind of stupidity is overconfidence—thinking that you already know.”

  A new voice now. “Good evening, Captain Skyler. They’re already asking how soon they can start landing after achieving orbit. They want to start prepping.” The screen lit up to show Lawrence Leibowitz, Madam Coordinator’s deputy. He must have been in the executive offices, the wall behind him was blue, but he was still buttoning his shirt and his hair hadn’t been combed.

  Skyler replied, “Morning, Larry We’ve been through this before. We can let them bring down an advance team, but we’re not going to risk any landings in high weather. Tell the Coordinator that I’ll see her as soon as we get back. It’ll be sometime tomorrow night. Twelve hundred is going to require a lot of planning and prep. Otherwise people are going to die from an overdose of stupid. Tell her she needs to call a meeting of the Landing Committee as soon as we can get everyone in the same room. You got all that?”

  “Copy that. And uh, I don’t have to tell her. She’s standing right beside me.”

  Madam Coordinator stepped into the picture.

  “Ah,” said the Captain. “Good evening, Madam Coordinator.”

  “Captain Skyler. Quite an afternoon you had. Very exciting.”

  “More than I planned for.”

  “Obviously. These things are never planned, are they?”

  “There was never any danger.”

  “We’ve both heard that one before. What’s that thing you say to the younglings? Perhaps you could remind me—the one about how everyone is entitled to one fatal mistake?”

  Skyler nodded to the camera. “Point taken.”

  “Thank you. I know how strictly you run your teams. But I’ve been taking calls all day about the issue of proximity. And you do have a child aboard.”

  “Not a child, Madam Coordinator. A fully trained intern. And I should add, this intern has done an excellent job in every capacity.”

  “That’s good to hear, but the question was raised, and I am informing you that there are some who are concerned about the endangerment of children.”

  “I’ll be happy to address that with anyone who wants. As soon as I get back.”

  “I’ve already set up the meeting,” she replied calmly. “But there’s something else I want to talk to you about. We have a second decision to consider. This could be the last voyage of the Cascade.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Things are bad on Earth. Very bad. The Cascade barely got out. We don’t have the full story yet. The transmissions they received on the way out were fragmentary. Look—ordinarily, I’d want to put a lid on this until we could figure out how best to break the news, but there’s no point. Too many people already know. It’s better to just tell the truth than let rumors run wild.”

  “I agree.”

  “I want you back tonight. Let Halloran complete the mission. He’s overdue for certification anyway. Oh, and bring the intern back with you. I think he’s had enough experience for a first time.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They exchanged a few more words and then the Coordinator signed off. Captain Skyler turned to me and said, “You heard the boss. Get your gear.”

  * * *

  —

  I’d never ridden a lifter before. Well, not awake. Mom says we rode one when I was little, but I slept the whole way.

  Flying is interesting. All those big fans are whisper silent, so it’s like gliding through the air. The technical appellation is “transport,” a large lightweight disk, surrounded by impellor plates, easy to lift, hard to knock down. The biggest cargo transports even have helium pods to offset their weight.

  We had a lifter attached to the roof of the Rollagon. A covered access ramp came up from the deck and attached to the hatch so we didn’t have to suit up. Even before the door was sealed, Captain Skyler was buckling himself into the pilot seat. He pointed me to the co-pilot’s place. “Might as well give you the whole show.”

  As soon as the last panel flashed green, he unclamped from the deck and we whirred up into the darkening sky. We rode high and fast, the ground sliding away beneath us. Long shadows pointed eastward across the yellow grass. Outcrops and trees and, once, a lone leviathan, another outlier from the herd. The furrow behind it looked like a crease in the ground. In the west, the sun hovered just above the horizon, its slow descent temporarily halted by our altitude.

  After a bit more, Summerland Station popped up ahead of us, already lit up like a holiday. We dropped down to the landing pad and settled as silently as a lifter can. Madam Coordinator and Councilor Layton waited just under the local canopy. They didn’t look happy. Captain Skyler approached them, helmet in hand. Not knowing what else to do, I followed—until he told me to wait by the lifter. He said he’d walk me home because he had to talk to my mom.

  Maybe he forgot, at least I think he forgot, but the communicator in his helmet was still on. So I could hear everything the Coordinator and the Councilor said to him. Madam Coordinator was mostly concerned with logistics—mostly the coming migration and the preparations for twelve hundred new bodies. The rumors about the Cascade and Earth were complications, but the logistics were still the same. Councilor Layton kept interrupting with assertions about how all this was going to affect the next election, how today’s little adventure wasn’t going to help Captain Skyler’s chances if he still planned to stand for a seat on the Council, and oh, by the way, that business with the intern—and that’s when I started paying real attention. “What was all that about?” he said. “You should have taken Marley, not that fraggy little droop. No brain-chip is going to make him a whole person. You’re only pumping up the freak so you can get into his mother’s bed—”

  I don’t get angry very much and I don’t always understand why other people do, but sometimes I get this hot rush of feeling that everybody calls anger, and that’s what happened then.

  I ran over shouting. “I am not a freak!” I shouted at him. “I have a syndrome. That’s all. And I have a compensator chip. That’s what makes me so good at everything. My chip makes me smarter than just about everybody. I can do better and faster research. And I don’t make stupid mistakes—” Captain Skyler touched my shoulder gently, but I shook him off, I wasn’t through. “I’m qualified. Marley’s not. And if you can’t see that, then you’re the mental cripple, not me!”

  Madam Coordinator interrupted then. “Kyle, that’s enough.” So I stopped. Because she was the Coordinator. She was the law.

  It was only after Captain Skyler led me away that I realized that every word I had said had been broadcast out through his open com-link. His conversation first, then mine. Everybody who been listening had heard every word. That couldn’t have been an accident. Captain Skyler never did anything by accident. But he was real good at making things look like they just happened by accident, or coincidence. Like arriving just in time between three leviathans and a pack of carnosaurs. Something to think about.

  We stopped halfway across the quad. He held up a hand for silence, then turned off his helmet. “Kyle. About what you said to Councilor Layton—”

  “Do I have to apologize?”

  “No, you don’t. You were right. But . . . please don’t do it again. Okay?”

  “Um. Okay. But he shouldn’t have said those things about me.”

  “No, he shouldn’t, but . . .” Captain Skyler paused. “He wasn’t talking about you. He was talking about everything he doesn’t understand. Everything he’s afraid of.”

  “It sounded like he was talking about me.”

  “Yes, but that’s because he’s stupid. Like Marley. Okay?”

  “I have to think about this. I’ll have to talk it over with Jamie.”

  “That’s a good idea, yes.”

  Mom was waiting at the door when we arrived. She hugged me tight, then sent me off to clean up and go see Jamie. Jamie had watched the
entire mission and wanted to hear all about the leviathans and the carnosaurs. He’d never seen a kill that close.

  The Rollagons have showers, but it’s not the same as home. A thirty-second shpritz isn’t as much fun as a ten-minute lather. And besides, there’s a lot more you can do in ten minutes than you can do in thirty seconds. Jamie caught me in the shower once, but before he could say anything, I said, “It’s my penis and I’ll wash it whatever way I want to.” After that, the shower was a private joke between us. “Are you going to wash fast or slow?” “Whichever way I want to.”

  I dried off in the air-blaster, wrapped a robe around me, and went to see Jamie, but he was asleep. I started back to my room, but Mom and the Captain sounded like they were arguing about something, so I waited behind the door and listened.

  “—and no, I was not using him. Testing him, yes. But more than that. Showing you what he’s capable of. Showing everyone. You heard him, he said it better than anyone, he writes the best documentation of anybody on Hella. Okay, yes, sometimes it looks like he goes into much too much detail, but if you go back even a month, a year, you’ve got real history recorded there, all the information you need and a lot more that you didn’t realize you needed. He puts things in context.”

  “We have the video records,” Mom said. “We don’t need to have him doing busywork, writing all those reports—”

  “He likes doing it. And the video records don’t give context. They don’t explain what’s going on—the logic of the moment, the relationships, the deep understanding. That’s what he’s good at. He sees things that the rest of us overlook because we think it’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be said. Sometimes we’re the cripples.”

  I could tell the Captain was pacing by the way he spoke. “We forget how much of our job is training the next guy in line, the one who’s going to take over when we move on. Your son can write the manuals for every job he’s ever done, because he’s so good at explaining every specific detail. Anybody in this goddamn colony who doesn’t recognize his value is the real jerk. You’re not going to be there every time some malicious little bitch dumps a lunch tray on him. It’s the only way to make this colony respect him as a fully functioning person.”