For once Mark Talbot had a name for the chirring, whining pulsations of sound. Kylee had told him in no uncertain terms that it was called the chime, and it was made by the little creatures called invertebrates.
“Not that we’re even close to understanding Donovanian evolution,” Dya had explained. “Naming them ‘invertebrates’ was the first frame of reference the initial researchers had to fall back on. Their evolution and adaptive strategies are turning out to be a great deal more complex.”
“Who’d have thought?” Talbot asked himself as he wiped sweat from his face and winced at the ache in his back. “I’m actually learning something that doesn’t have to do with regulations, rank-and-file weapons drill, or crowd control.”
He tilted his head where he bent over the bean plant and stared up past the hat brim at Capella; the alien star burned an actinic and blinding white from high in the sky. Out in the midday sun, the temperature had to be close to forty Celsius. He’d already drained his water bottle.
Across the field, heat waves rose in silvery patterns, making the fruit trees, pines, and forest beyond dance and sway. He’d been hotter though. In Sudan. Desert training back when he was just out of boot.
Bending back to his work, he continued to pluck bean pods from the plant, taking all the ripe ones as Damien had showed him, leaving the ones that continued to mature.
Talbot shifted his basket slightly so he could pull a big, thick, squash from the next plant. The field here was a hodgepodge of beans, corn, squash, cabbage, carrots, and broccoli. According to Rebecca, they shared nutrients, and the corn provided just enough shade to ameliorate the harsh sun until the afternoon showers came rolling in from the west.
One thing he could say, the dark red soil certainly seemed fertile, for the crop was substantial. Additionally, the original seed stocks had come from hydroponics applications and had been modified to produce endlessly.
He snapped off another ripe-looking squash, shuffled over, and stripped five ears of corn from several of the tall plants, all of which topped off his basket.
He paused, arched his back, and pulled off his floppy hat. Woven from strips of leaf, it was light, airy, and the wide brim provided shade from the brutal sun.
A flock of scarlet fliers went wheeling and diving overhead, their calls raucous. The chime shifted, swelling on the hot, still air, and then altered its tremolo before subsiding.
“What the hell are they saying to each other?” he wondered. “Hey, look at the stupid human standing out in the hot sun picking plant parts.”
He grinned, bent, and hoisted his basket, fitted his arms into the shoulder straps, and shrugged the load onto his back. Turning, he plodded his way back down the row toward the high, mushroom tower of Mundo Base.
In the forty days since Kylee had found him in forest, he’d settled in, recovered his strength, and fallen into the routine they had established for him.
In a lot of ways, he felt like that old children’s story he’d watched as a kid: Alicia through the Wormhole. The one where the young station girl falls past the event horizon and drops into a distorted and off-kilter universe that reeks of the insane.
He smacked his tongue in his dry mouth, enjoying the strain on his body as he almost trotted back, and made his way past the shops and outbuildings to the tower base. Inside, he hung his hat on the hook they’d given him, kicked off the slightly oversized quetzal-hide boots, and padded barefoot to the lift.
Engaging it, he watched the tower’s skeleton swish past as he rose to the main level.
Passing through the foyer, he carried his basket into the kitchen and placed it on the counter. Damien, the twelve-year-old boy, and Shantaya, nine, both Rebecca’s offspring, were already at work on the week’s menu. They were slicing crest meat into thin strips which would be rinsed, soaked, and finally stewed in cactus pad mucilage to cut the meat’s heavy metal content.
Where he came from, the idea of kids cooking a week’s worth of food on their own, without supervision, would have defied credulity.
“There’s enough food out there to feed a small army,” he observed.
“The original farm was designed to feed five hundred,” Damien told him as he pulled a ceramic blade through beet-red crest flesh. “Population has been in decline since.”
Talbot studied the kid; even at his tender age, he had Rebecca’s bones, the same dark brown eyes and wavy brown hair. Dya had told him that Rebecca’s ancestry was something called Ainu, from northern Japan.
Shantaya, Damien’s little sister, had the same resemblance, though the wider nose must have come from Rondo, the father.
“We will attend to the vegetables,” Shantaya now told him. “Rebecca would like to see you in the lab.”
Talbot took a moment to wash his hands and scrub the sweat from his head and neck. Then he crossed the foyer to the east lab. Originally, this space had been dedicated to dormitory cubicles, but as Donovan whittled away at the population, more and more lab functions had been transferred from the surface to the dome. Rebecca and Dya had divided the space, each filling their sections with microscopes, centrifuges, FTIR machines, and spectrographs. As to the rest of the jumbled and exotic equipment, Talbot had no clue.
His combat armor—recovered from the forest three days after his arrival—now rested on an elevated table, looking for all the world like a defunct robot. The kids had helped him clean it, oohing and aahing over the various scars left by quetzals and death fliers. The power pack was up to seven percent, but would go no higher.
He found Rebecca at her desk where it faced the window with its view of the eastern horizon. Looking out at the vista was to see an endless ocean of bumpy, rounded treetops that faded into the distance. Like a rumpled carpet of the various greens and blues.
“Have a seat,” Rebecca told him as she checked a data sheet by her right hand and added a notation to the holographic display projected by her notebook.
Talbot dropped into the chair, studying the tall woman as she concentrated. Nothing about her could be called particularly attractive, but she exuded a kind of presence and command. Sometimes, given his background, it was all he could do to keep from saluting and calling her “Colonel.”
Rebecca terminated the display on her notebook, then reached for another of the data sheets, handing it to Talbot.
He stared down at row upon row of what seemed code. Four or five letters and numbers in orders that made no sense to him.
“I don’t understand. What is this?”
“Your genome,” she told him. “Or, at least, the part of it which is of interest to us. We took the sample the day you arrived. We just haven’t had time to run it until yesterday.”
“Okay, and why is this important?”
She turned her thoughtful dark eyes on his. “You’ve been here for some time now. Worked in quite nicely, actually. Initially you were a little reticent in the company of the children, but you seem to have come to an understanding.”
“Yeah, well, they’re not like any children I ever knew. Kids are supposed to be laughing, teasing each other, watching holo-VR, and being, well, kids. When your kids are not in class with you, Su, or Dya, they’re working. Half the time I think they’re some kind of midget adults.”
Rebecca smiled, a faraway look in her eyes. “I remember the kind of childhood you are talking about. Seems like a fantasy. Long time ago, different universe. Here we don’t have the luxury to let children be children.” A pause. “I’m curious. What do you think of us, of Mundo Base?”
“It bothers me that I’m locked in my room every night. Sort of feels like I’m a convict. Some sort of parolee. Not to be trusted. Hell, Rebecca, even if you had any family silver or jewelry to be stolen, where would I fence it?”
“Pending our conversation here, perhaps we can change that. When you arrived, we didn’t know you, or what you represented. We took that precaution for your protection. And ours.”
“Afraid I was going to mug you in your sleep?”
“No. Actually, we were afraid you’d do something stupid, like try and sneak out some night, hotwire an aircar, or screw something up, create some sort of mess.”
“Hey, I get it. It’s just that I effing don’t like being treated like a child. I’m a combat vet who’s been up to my ass in the shit, so you have no idea how humiliating it is to be told that I can’t set foot past a certain line unless I’m accompanied by a child to keep me safe.”
“But the fact is—”
“Yeah, yeah. They know a fricking lot more about Donovan’s dangers than I do.” He softened his reaction with an amused grin. “Hey, I was out there.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “But for that armor, I’d have died the day we first set down. So, here’s the thing: I don’t have to like it, but I’m smart enough to know when to swallow my lumps, shut up, and listen. Especially when it’s Kylee, Damien, or Shantaya trying to keep me alive.”
Her thoughtful eyes continued to assess him. “Tell me the rest. Be honest.”
He shrugged. “Just because I feel like I’m out of my league most of the time doesn’t mean that I’m not glad to be here. But honestly, if I thought my squad was still on-planet, I’d rather be back with them. That longing, however, is more than balanced by the fact that I’d be brought up on charges for absence without leave, tossed in the brig, or maybe even shot. So, Rebecca, it is what it is.”
“You seem to be particularly taken with Kylee.”
“Her and Rocket? I never thought I’d feel this way about a kid and an alien.”
“Special place in the heart, huh?”
“That’s a pretty good way to put it.”
She nodded. “And how do you feel about me, Dya, and Su?”
“A little distant. As if you see me as something more than a lab specimen, but less than a man.”
She stared off past the horizon. “Of course you’d think that. It’s just been the family for so long. So few of us. Then just us three. I think we began to assume there were no other human beings. Your arrival was . . . unexpected.”
“Intrusive, you mean? Actually, I get that. I came from a big family myself. I’m an outsider. You’re the C.O., the leader. You have the right to distance yourself. Dya? I think she makes the effort, but just can’t quite trust herself to lower that last barrier. Su? I think I make her nervous at a fundamental level.”
“You do. Some personalities just grate. You do not exhibit the skill sets Su expects in a man, but she is station-born, where the men she enculturated with acted differently.”
“How so?”
“In her world, your companion, Shintzu, would have been the one to survive. Males are more, let us say, decorative where she comes from.”
“Shin was plenty tough.” He shook his head. “That a slug got her? That was just luck of the draw. Literally. We tossed a token to see who’d bathe first that day.”
“And Mundo Base?”
“It’s falling apart around your ears, Rebecca. I’ve been making a list of things that need maintenance. Half the light panels are burned out. That soft rattle in the lift motor? I’d bet the bearings are starting to wear. I found some rubber gasket material in the big shed and stuffed it into the crack where the window was leaking by Taung and Ngyap’s bunks. But it needs to be sealed from the outside, because there’s no telling where the water is going between the walls. And that’s just the start of the list.”
“Which means?”
“Eventually, maybe in the next couple of years, you’re going to have to give up the dome.”
“No.”
Talbot spread his hands. “Rebecca, look at my armor back there. In this humid environment, even the best voltaics eventually will end up compromised. Seals crack, moisture and biological material infiltrate, and electrical circuits short out. Power packs have a life span, as you know. When the original refrigeration units went bad, Rondo wired in the power pack from one of the aircars. The second one is running the base atmosphere plant. Technology, even the best, wears out. Entropy is part and parcel of whatever universe we’re in here.”
“And then?”
“Like Dya says: Move, adapt, or die.” He paused. “Or contact Port Authority and see if we can barter for replacement parts from either Turalon or Freelander.”
She flinched. “There is a reason we cut the ties last time.”
“Talina Perez shot Clemenceau years ago. They declared independence, granted deeds and titles. What they call a ‘libertarian’ society.”
“Talina Perez was Clemenceau’s ruthless hired gun.”
“Might have been. Now there’s a council. Shig Mosadek, Yvette Dushane, and her.”
“Shig?” She fingered her chin. “Inoffensive Shig? The teacher? That’s a surprise. Dushane, now she was a tough one.”
“You guys decide what you want to do. I’m just telling you, you’ve got problems coming. There’s a reason the floor slopes under the kids’ bedrooms. The floor joists are rusted through. You know as well as I do that things are falling apart. Eventually, however, it’s going to be something big. You might want to start planning for that unfortunate reality, because it’s coming.”
“What part do you see yourself playing in that future, Mark?”
“You tell me. This is your home. Your family. For the time being, I’m here on sufferance. I’m willing to haul my weight, shoulder my share of the burden, but like the kids constantly tell me, I’ve still got a lot to learn.”
“Actually your door has been unlocked for more than a week now. That you haven’t tried it indicates that you’re content with your life here. Now that you know, we will trust you not to do anything stupid—like go for an evening stroll outside under the moonlight and get eaten. Or open a vial of some poisonous substance Dya has concocted from one of the deadly plants.”
“Thank you. I’ll do my best to stay alive.” Then Talbot lifted the data sheet. “What’s this all about?”
Rebecca didn’t even hesitate when she said, “We want your contribution to the future.”
“I said I’d shoulder my share.”
“Thank you.” She fixed him with her curious brown eyes. “Dya has compared your genome with each of ours. The genetic load isn’t prohibitive in any combination. Dya will ovulate sometime in the coming week. We’d like to try and impregnate her if you don’t have any objection.”
Talbot started. Mouth open.
Rebecca lifted an eyebrow, as if to hint that it was his turn to answer.
“I, uh . . . Well, just how would this . . .” He felt an odd constriction at the base of his throat.
“The usual way. Unless you’d be more comfortable simply ejaculating into a cup, in which case we can use a syringe to inseminate her.”
At a total loss, he just stared.