Chapter 41

14 January 1 A.A.

She was running. The bottoms of her feet pounded against the hard-packed dirt. If she could only move faster. The hurricane of fire was gaining ground. Ri slid down three levels and fought her way through the thick undergrowth. She could hear the fire eating the jungle. She finally broke into the clear and dug into a sprint when someone grabbed her arm to keep her back. The hand slid to hold her breast and she struck out.

Ri heard a cry as her fist hit flesh. The hold released on her abruptly and she rolled over to face her assailant. Jackson was sitting on the floor rubbing the center of his chest. She was lying on his bunk.

“What is wrong with you, Ri? You were a lot of fun a few days ago.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here. Remember?”

Ri looked around the room. It all seemed foreign. She’d crash-landed in Jackson’s quarters. He had photos of ships and groups of friends, frequently posing for the camera with arms draped over each other’s shoulders. Hundreds of people: on Earth beaches, in envirosuits atop Olympus Mons, Mars, crowded together in some Loonie bar; multitudes all smiled down at her.

She sat up, but lay back quickly. Her head tried to explode and she couldn’t stop the tears running down her cheeks. She wiped at her eyes; just tired, that’s all.

“What happened to you yesterday? You are acting well beyond strange and somewhere off into bizarre.”

She couldn’t make herself speak. This time she managed to sit up without being sick. She staggered out into the hall and brushed past Donnie and Rolovsky on her way out the airlock. She closed and voided the lock once she was through, that would slow Jackson down if he was trying to follow her.

Using the wall for support, Ri managed to reach her quarters in L3. A good blast under the shower brought her fully awake. As she dragged on her fresh shipsuit, she glared at the only decoration in her room. The blowup of the Earthrise photo filled an entire wall. She reached out to tear it down as a pointless dream, but stopped the motion. There must be something she could yet do.

She turned and dragged herself to command and tried to lose herself in the backlog of work. Halliday had the watch, but was nice enough to leave her to her mess. The message queue was huge and it took an age to wade through it all. She dumped over half with barely a glance.

A whole series were from the R3 Savannah biome. Copies of messages to maintenance about air scrubber failures. Finally a report that a makeshift had been implemented by the Savannah crew. Repair never responded from R2. She started a blistering message to the maintenance chief, but then wondered if they might be swamped with more important crises. Or, without her support, were the biomes not getting the attention they deserved? She pulled up Repair’s log. Nothing was flagged hot. In fact nothing had been flagged as complete in nearly two weeks.

She started inspecting the other departments that affected the biomes. Water Recirc and Waste Processing were both right on top of it. Air was doing well, though the reserves had stalled at fifty-seven percent. Should be higher, but it was well into the safe zone. Ag-workers in R3 and R4 hadn’t filed a report of any kind in weeks. R1 and R2 were spotty at best.

“Appreciate you reporting in, Jeffers.”

She stood too quickly and had to lean her hip against the console to keep her balance. “Sorry, Olias, I wasn’t well.”

“I can see that.” His knife-thin smile never reached his eyes. “What’s the status? Report.”

She snapped to attention in response to his barked order. “Biomes are stable or better. All life necessary systems are in balance. Air and water quality are nominal.”

“Best check again, Biologics Liaison Jeffers. Pay more attention to the agri-zones. Remember you are responsible for reporting on those seven zones as well. They provide our food and oxygen far more than your exotic environments.” He started to turn away, then thought better of it.

“And Jeffers. You may wish to rethink your sleeping habits and subsequent attention to your duties if you wish to remain on this command crew.”

He left the room without any further comment. Halliday, only a few meters away in the command chair, carefully didn’t turn to look at her. Ri lowered herself back into her seat. She could understand Olias’ anger at her sleeping with his half-brother, but to threaten her job. And she’d only slept with him the one time. Unable to make her fingers find the keys, she dragged on a headset and switched the console to voice mode.

As she began calling up production charts, her eyes came to rest on the main viewers where Earth was centered on the screen. A huge storm engulfed thirty degrees of latitude just north of the equator with wind speeds so high she could actually see the cloud movement. No hurricane in Earth’s earlier history could match this monster.

# # #

Ri stared at the chart on her screen. Something was wrong, but it was eluding her. Olias was right, the ag-bays were underproducing. Not much overall, but six percent meant that much less food and oxygen. It was no longer a mystery as to why the air reserves weren’t fully stocked yet. But with a six percent lower production, the kilograms of food available per capita per day were actually increasing.

She started projecting production and consumption changes over the last several months, but none of the curves matched. Then she spotted it. She closed her eyes for a long moment, but the results didn’t change when she reopened them. She checked it several times before clearing her screen and moving to rap at Captain Conrad’s office.

She was admitted immediately. Olias sat in a chair across from the Captain. She signaled Ri to sit beside him.

As she took her seat, Devra smiled at her gently. “Olias tells me you have not been well lately, not for several days if I read your shift logs correctly. I believe I experienced the results of your unwellness last night during the double watch I took myself.”

Ri was caught past the balance point and completed her journey to sitting rather than trying to snap to attention. Her mouth was dry and she tried to speak.

“I’ve… I’m…” If the Captain had been alone, she might have tried to explain, but Olias’ scowl was too daunting.

“You have been distracted of late,” the Captain completed for her. “And…”

Ri leaned forward at the Captain’s pause. “It won’t happen again?”

The Captain nodded pleasantly.

“I promise. It is an honor to serve on your crew.” And she meant it, too.

Captain Conrad leaned back in her chair and folded her hands before her. “Well, I am pleased that small matter has a satisfactory conclusion. Are you not pleased as well, Sub-Captain Sunra?”

Olias stared at her for a long moment before grunting and shrugged his shoulders. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a dirt-smeared t-card. This time he handed it to her.

“I must have dropped it.”

“Right. Then a digger ran over it and triggered an emergency alarm causing a mobilization of everyone except the Security Chief who for some reason didn’t have a tone-card.”

She locked the small keypad and sealed it into a hip pocket. Maybe she’d just keep her mouth shut for the moment.

The Captain nodded and turned back to Ri. “You wanted to see me about something. So important you brought it directly to me without first approaching the officer of the watch?”

Beneath the heat of Olias’ scowl and the Captain’s bland expression all she could do was nod.

“Olias, ease up on the poor girl now. I believe you have performed a sufficient job of scaring her for the moment.” She leaned forward. “Just say it, Commander Jeffers. You’ll remember how to speak normally once you get started.”

Ri could have hugged her. “As Sub-Captain Olias indicated, the agri-zones are underproducing.”

“And you’ve determined why so quickly. Isn’t that nice, Captain? I think that’s nice. I’m so glad to have you on the job again.”

Ri had never suspected Olias to be capable of sarcasm at all. And it was very effective, she was ready to punch him.

“No. I’ve found out why it hasn’t mattered so far. We’re dying.”

Olias was preparing to slice into her again when the Captain’s quiet voice stopped him.

“Go on.”

Ri rose and crossed to the wall viewer. She slipped a keypad out of the slot and returned to her seat. She started calling up the data, explaining it as she went. The various curves started to cover the wall. She tapped number values to display at key data points.

“Agri production is down six percent. Within tolerances, but we should be feeling the pinch. The first reason we aren’t, per capita consumption is down; people just aren’t eating as much. Simple fact of life is that happy people consume more calories. But that explains less than twenty percent of the variation from model. The second reason it isn’t a problem is there are fewer people doing the consuming as well.”

She brought up the recorded birth and death charts.

“Births are nonexistent thanks to the actions of Samnal Jenkins. Pregnancies are also zero which may be explained by the massive acquisition of birth control products immediately following Dr. Jenkins’ actions.”

Olias was grim, but it was no longer aimed in her direction. “That death rate curve is not good. We lost two percent before The End and, am I reading it right, another percent since the New Year?”

The Captain didn’t even correct Olias about calling it “The End” rather than her preferred “The Disaster.” That worried Ri almost as much as their doom spelled out so clearly in the curve she was about to show.

“Yes, even with the R2 blowout in December, the reported death rate is a little worse.” She called up the last curve, much steeper than the others, in a downward direction.

“This, Captain, is why I came directly to you. This first curve is our reported population. The new curve is based on unique individuals thumbing into the system in a three-day period. Remember that they do this for passage between areas, purchases, and meals. It should capture every ID every day.” Except Bryce, but she wasn’t about to try and explain him.

“I’d feared we were losing a few people a week, that’s what the death rate shows. The population drop is more on the order of five to ten. Per day. We will cease to exist in three or four years. Those people aren’t leaving on shuttles, or jumping out of airlocks.” She swallowed remembering how close she’d come to doing just that.

“But neither are they consuming more. They’re simply disappearing.”

“And how do you explain this?” Olias was leaning in to study the curves more closely. His lower lip was caught between his teeth.

“I can’t yet, sir. I’ve been working with a small team in R4 on this. I also recruited the Icarus crew.” She ignored Olias’ flinch. “But they have focused more on Stellar’s physical security.” Actually, they’d mostly become bored once they understood how Stellar was built. They’d drifted back to their own hobbies, though they’d remained in the cramped quarters of Icarus rather than returning to their spacious apartment.

“The R4 team only started investigating these problems in the last few days. A few isolated anomalies have been uncovered, each so far pointing to foul play.” She decided against mentioning the scream in R4L1.

“How long, Ri? How long has this been happening on my ship?” Devra’s voice was harsh, as upset as Ri had seen her since the day the Earth was destroyed and Ri had to make the announcements for her.

“The first occurrence I can confirm is three weeks ago. We believe that a jungle worker named Otto Kenman was dispatched by an Emilia Wirden, perhaps in self-defense. She has since been a victim and is no longer available for questioning. She was the first we know of to help someone else disappear.”

Olias scowled at her as if she should have known. Ri cared less and less as the impact of the information she was projecting became clearer.

“That’s what they call it in the corridors. I can use murder if you prefer. Her last registered purchase was in…” Ri tapped a few keys. “R2 Desert Pub. She was drinking with… Hold it.”

It took a moment to call up the meal counters. She downloaded all the meals in quarters, pubs, restaurants, mess halls, and private quarters. As an afterthought she added the biome logs. Interesting that the Arctic recorded none since Carla’s death except for her own request for hot chocolate.

Bryce really had done as he claimed and programmed himself out of existence.

When she totaled them up and tallied them by day, it was easy to see that the trend had started only five days before Emilia had disposed of Kenman. And it had gained momentum in the last week. She projected the curve, which was dangerous based on so few data points, so she used a best case projection.

Silence descended on the room.

Ri forced her head around to face the others. Olias was swearing under his breath and the Captain had simply closed her eyes.

They had a year and a half to live.

# # #

“Robbie.”

“Uh. Ri?” Her voice was deep and husky with sleep.

Ri adjusted the headset but it remained uncomfortable.

“You asleep in the middle of the day?” Ri couldn’t help teasing the woman. She’d been a friend of the Angel-lady and it made her feel very close even though they’d only spoken of her for a few moments.

“Jaron and I spent most of the night analyzing the data he gathered in R4 and the information you sent us on the other rings.” By the sound of Robbie’s sigh, that was about all they’d done, too.

“We’ve got some problems and I can’t reach Jaron. The Captain wants to meet with my, our R4 team in twenty minutes at Command Conference One.”

“Come again.” Her voice was suddenly wide awake. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been running some numbers and it’s not good. The Captain wants everyone.”

The voice that replied was all business “I’ll be on my way in two minutes, then I’ll track down Jaron as he’s no longer here. Man never sleeps. Probably back in his jungle.” Her voice was briefly muffled and there were sounds of the woman getting dressed.

“Can you reach Bryce? I don’t know where he goes to ground during the day. You sure you want to do this to him? He won’t like it.”

Ri lowered her voice, even though Halliday looked to be absorbed in work of his own now on the far side of Command. “I just had a thoroughly enjoyable lesson in not messing with Captain’s orders. She said full team. She meant it. I’ll get him to meet you at the lift by R4U in,” she glanced at a readout, “nine minutes. If he’s not there in ten, just go. That’ll leave you barely enough time to get here.”

She cut the connection and fought against the tightening of her shoulder muscles. Yesterday Bryce had trusted her with the secret that she had to agree was best hidden. Today she was dragging him into Command Central. At least with Robbie as an escort, he wouldn’t have to thumb into the system to get here. That was something. The best she could do.

No time to think. Just act. Ri made sure that Halliday was looking the other way before dialing Carla’s lab. She still remembered the code, though her hand ached as she keyed it in, a familiar pattern not used in far too long. As the calling tone ended, she heard a loud crash through her headset. She raised a hand to cover her smile.

“Bryce?” she whispered into the mike.

“Ri?” Her name was barely a gasp which was followed by an aftershock clatter of something else falling.

She explained the situation quickly and could hear him swearing as he understood the extent of the trap he was in. His ire seemed primarily directed at “the Old Bastard” though enough spilled over in her direction to make her eyes sting badly.

He slammed out of the lab thirty seconds later with the pickup still wide open to his blistering invective. He was obviously very practiced at cursing in a wide variety of dead languages.

# # #

Bryce barely spoke to Jaron and Robbie as they headed toward Ring One. Of course, they were both wide awake, but it was the middle of the night for him. His hands throbbed until he noticed they were clenched so tightly there was no blood in them at all. A sharp tingle of pain answered his attempts to uncurl his fingers as they descended toward Ring One Level Three.

The red walls of the command sector suited him just fine. It was the color he was seeing in his head anyway. The Old Bastard’s memories were having a high time of it as he lectured Bryce on who to trust—no one, and when to trust them—after they were dead. And Bryce Sr. was proof that even that wasn’t sufficient.

He rubbed his aching fingers together and wished for the billionth time that he could reach in and kill his own mind.

The R1L3 command conference room was a vast space with two dozen chairs circling the high edge of the central floor. All but six had been slid back to the walls and the remainder were turned into a loose “V” shape open toward the sunken floor. Ri and two others were already seated when they arrived. He didn’t want to sit next to Ri, but then he focused on the vastly scarred man on her right.

He almost called out the man’s name. The old memories knew him well. Yet they withdrew with a sudden caution that surprised Bryce. He pushed a little and was offered an image of the team who had caused the death of Japan, with Olias as a hulking presence in the background.

By the time he cleared his head, Jaron and Robbie had taken the other seats leaving him only the one choice. Next to Ri.

She tested a brief smile of welcome on him that he did his best to ignore. It wasn’t hard.

“Who the hell are you?” Olias snapped at him. Bryce couldn’t believe his good fortune at not being recognized as other images kept trickling in of his parent’s betrayal of his team’s trust so long ago.

“I might ask the same of you.” Worth trying the offensive. He rested his elbow on the chair arm and almost rested his hand on the commpad built into the arm. His thumb would have landed dead center on the scanner. That would surely announce who he was in a hurry.

He jerked his hand away and looked up to see Ri watching him carefully. She was trying to wear her hard-bitten, Security Officer persona, but it was cracked, even worried. He looked away. Leave her in her own stew. He would focus on not touching anything until he was safely back in his bar.

Olias was clenching and unclenching his fists and Bryce was forced to amend, if he was allowed to depart alive from this hell.

The Captain, a small woman with graying hair, calmly raised a hand and the big man fell silent. Bryce was at least momentarily safe from physical attack. But not the baleful glare.

“Commander Jeffers. Would you please introduce everyone, if this is indeed your whole contingent? For the duties you described, it seems a rather small team.” Her voice, while soft and well-mannered, also had a bolt of steel up the middle that no one in his right mind would argue with. Not even Olias.

The challenge that drifted off the last word wasn’t exactly sarcasm, but it certainly highlighted that they were a scruffy-looking lot. The thin scientist, the large arboreal specialist, one gangly bartender, and a pint-sized chief of security.

“They are sufficient to the scope of our research to date. You know Jaron MacAndrews obviously.”

“Welcome back, Mr. MacAndrews. You are well, I presume.”

Jaron flushed bright red and barely managed a nod. The Captain had just made it perfectly clear that she may have pardoned him for Samnal’s murder, but wasn’t about to cut him any slack. Bryce would have to watch her even more closely than her tame gorilla.

Ri continued calmly as Jaron wrestled with his inner demons.

“Robbie is Jaron’s chief forester and Bryce is a bartender in Ring Four.”

Olias’ neck bulged, “What the hell are you doing with a bartender? This is a serio—”

The Captain raised her hand again. “We shall take these people at face value, Sub-Captain Sunra. Please recall that I requested this meeting and all of these people have kindly joined us from their normal routines.” Her calm face looked expectantly at them ever so much like a school master waiting to hear someone present a prize-winning term paper.

“I believe we are ready for your presentation, Commander Jeffers. Or is one of your specialists leading the meeting?”

“No. I’m…”

Ri glanced to Jaron and Robbie, but sensibly avoided looking at him. She keyed her commpad. The center of the room filled with a large three-dimensional projection. Bryce didn’t even need to blink to make sense of it.

“Humankind is dying.” He bit his tongue, but the analysis had slipped out and he knew it was accurate. He had too many memories of similar charts of population curves on Earth, though usually the slope was in the opposite direction. Overpopulation, not underpopulation had been the WEC’s burden.

Jaron was shaking his head. “I don’t see…”

Bryce stepped out onto the lower central floor. Some part of him screamed to shut up but the old memories were in control. And he figured that Jaron would be least offended by him showing the significance of the colored arcs. He indicated the break point in the curves’ slopes.

“Look here, Jaron. Stellar One was doing okay up until this point.” A dull red line lay at the bottom of the graph without a single wiggle. Ri was looking right at him when he turned to face her.

“Is that the birthrate curve?” He pointed downward.

“Yes, the two women who escaped the aftermath of Samnal’s disease were early term and opted for abortions. One has since killed herself. So our projected short-term birth rate is truly zero.” She tapped a few keys and a dashed green line was added to the graph. Riding low-to-middle until Samnal struck, it jumped to the top of the graph and stayed there. He traced his finger along it.

“You can see that fully a hundred percent of the female population selected long-term birth control implants within days after Samnal. So the long-term birthrate is zero as well.

“But this is what is throwing you, Jaron. The reported death rate isn’t matching the population decrease.” As he spoke, he attempted to imagine he was sitting in his chair. Silent. Not participating. Instead he was standing center stage revealing skills that were not part of the past of either a bartender or a stowaway shuttle mechanic. They weren’t his skills anyway. They were his parent’s.

Ri changed the projection and he stumbled back from the message so clearly painted there before him. A year and a half. But there was something not right.

“What?” Olias rose to his feet and came to stand beside him. He shook Bryce’s arm in a painful grasp. “What is it?”

His hand, of its own volition, traced the holograph’s curve. The angle wasn’t right.

“Ri, did you account for the shared psychic degradation as the community decreases in size? The curve is wrong.”

At her silence, he turned. She was frozen by his question.

He strode over and, careful to leave no fingerprint, pulled up Wilkson’s studies of 2071 to 2080. He had to thumb in to open the document but he knew that it was the document’s own protection system that was doing this, not the central security system, so he’d be safe. He still hesitated before doing it.

Ri was watching him closely, finally he just gritted his teeth and slammed his thumb down. The document opened. He waited but no alarms sounded. Releasing his breath, he selected the file on the cumulative nature of negative emotions in closed societies. As the group size decreased, the intensity of any communal emotion increased out of proportion to the population variation.

He linked the equation to Ri’s data and turned to the chart. There was a curve he recognized. Then he felt sick to his stomach.

He hated being right.

The broad Sub-Captain returned to his side. His bloodless face caused his scars to stand out grotesquely across his scalp. “What is it?”

It was so obvious. He looked around the circle. Ri sat with her eyes tightly closed, she’d of course be familiar with this type of charting from her biome work. Robbie conferred with Jaron in broken words. The Captain looked less certain.

He led Olias back to the graph. “This is time. This is the population of Stellar One. This is where the population of your world reaches zero.” He placed his finger gently on the curve nine months and two weeks in the future. He could almost feel the chill of the point even though it was only projected light.

“Data of this type can typically vary by as much as twelve percent, call it a month, up or,” he paused, “down.”

# # #

Ri tapped for a quick readout of the file Bryce had accessed. She’d never seen a document with its own protection system before. How many more of those lay hidden in their databanks? She’d studied the dynamics of socio-biologics under the Angel-lady’s tutelage. It was that which had aroused the Angel-lady and sent her to Nara. Ri still used the techniques a great deal for creating flora and fauna viability projections for the biomes.

But she’d never heard of Wilkson. She didn’t even recognize half of the variables in the equation. A recent minor variable had been added with a footnote citing Orinoco research by Robbie Enlara. Ri glanced over at her, but she was too engrossed by the displayed curves to notice Ri’s attention.

She called up the title page.

Unless specifically authorized by
Bryce Randall Stevens
-President, World Economic Council-
in opening this
document you have
already committed an act of treason
punishable by immediate
execution
with extreme prejudice.

It was followed by the spectrum emblem of the WEC. Even though the council was gone with the Earth, she couldn’t catch her breath. She nearly choked trying to get air into her lungs in broken gulps. Just before she cleared the screen, she thought better of it. She flipped to the end and found the place to add her own print to the authorized list first. She looked to see if anyone else had been watching.

Everyone except Bryce was staring fixedly at the graph. His eyes looked straight at her. At first she wondered if they were angry, but the droop in his shoulders could only be interpreted as sadness. She attempted to nod. His weak smile seemed to tell her it would be okay, but she couldn’t wipe the sweat off the palms of her hands. Even the shipsuit material over her legs wouldn’t do the job.

“Bryce.” The Captain’s voice, as steady as if she’d just been served dinner, was the first sound in the room in the long minutes since Bryce’s revelation. Everyone spun to face her.

“Well, Sub-Captain. It would seem that bartenders can be useful in this situation if they will only come in from the cold.”

Ri flinched as Bryce stared at the Captain and then her. She shook her head ever so slightly. She had not even hinted about Bryce’s existence until he’d walked into this room. She shook her head again but it was clear he didn’t believe her.

Ri finally looked away, only to notice Olias boiling under the Captain’s reprimand, but he wouldn’t dare interfere with Bryce if he had the Captain’s protection. At least she hoped not.

“I do, however, have one question. You said, ‘your world.’ I assume that this was in reference to Stellar One. Is it not also your world?”

Bryce looked down at his hands. “Of course, Captain. My thoughts were…elsewhere.” Ri knew it had been Bryce Sr.’s words and wished she could cleanse the stain inside his head for him.

“Ah, thank you for clarifying that little matter. Well, people, we have the problem clearly before us thanks to Commander Jeffers’ team, obviously sufficient in size for the task to date. I am open to suggestions.”

The Captain slowly scanned the room. Ri followed her gaze. Jaron still wrestled with the implications of the data before him. Probably trying to figure out how his jungle could survive after the demise of Homo sapiens. Robbie was nowhere in sight, but Ri eventually located the sound of weeping from the open door to the washroom.

She met the Captain’s eyes, but had nothing to offer.

“Well,” the Captain didn’t look away, though her voice cracked from the strain. “Let us all sleep on it. Commander Ri. You are relieved of all watch duties to focus on this problem. Bartender Bryce, perhaps we can meet in this establishment of yours. Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. Sharp. No excuses. Until that time, this information does not leave this room.”

She rose and departed without any further comment. Bryce nudged Jaron, who, after some prompting, stumbled to his feet and went to check on Robbie.

Olias came to stand before Bryce and the diagrams. The colored lines seemed to arc and curve like a lightning storm between their bodies.

“Don’t you care about this?” Olias waved toward the projection. “About any of this? Are you so dead already that you aren’t afraid of this?”

Bryce clenched his fists at his sides. From Ri’s position, they framed the chart of their own death perfectly. All humanity was going to die, and these two might just get their part in it over with and kill each other now.

“Not much.”

Olias staggered back from Bryce’s gentle tone. After a long pause, he turned and followed his Captain.

# # #

Jaron had seen Robbie safely to her quarters and returned to the jungle. He didn’t doubt Ri or Bryce’s reading of the data, but wished he had the clearance to read Wilkson’s document. He didn’t have sufficient security clearance to locate it in the system, much less look at it. He plunged his shovel down into the soil. The trees were growing deeper than in a natural rainforest.

Earthly jungles rarely penetrated past a meter despite their massive height. On Stellar One they’d placed four meters of soil to ensure proper drainage. That the trees were using the depth here didn’t worry him, but he wanted to know the growth characteristics. He was already down a meter-and-a-half and the root structure was still going strong.

He heard a gabble of voices near the eastern hatch. He stood up in the hole he’d started digging this morning before the conference, careful not to bump the headwall. The soil layers were clearly delineated and he wanted to check the composition and chemical makeup of each layer with as little intermixing as possible. The strata looked healthy other than the continued presence of roots, but jungles also didn’t usually grow in a large metal box in a rotating environment.

Only his head and shoulders were above the rim of his excavation when the interlopers came down the trail. He was going to let them go by unremarked until one nearly fell on top of him.

“Watch where you’re going! How did you get in here?” He’d been locking down the hatches at night lately to keep the rowdier elements out of his jungle. It required being on his crew or an officer to authorize in at that level.

One of them knelt down and flashed far too many teeth in his direction. “Well, what do we have here? A jungle midget. Perhaps we’ve surprised an elf popping out of his burrow.” He pointed a finger at Jaron.

“You. Where’s my pot of gold?”

Jaron climbed carefully out of the test hole and faced the eight people. The smiley one rose to his feet.

“The jungle midget has grown.” He held out a large hand that Jaron shook reluctantly. He was as heavy-handed as Jaron had feared.

“Captain Jackson Turner and his crew at your service. Sorry to intrude on your late night session with the shovel, but it is a bit intense out there in the corridor.”

“We already have a Captain, Devra Conrad. Now who are you people?”

“Ever hear of the Icarus?”

“A shuttle or something.”

“A shuttle. Pish and tosh. A solar observatory. Came back in from the depths of space a week or so back.”

“Six days, Captain.” A woman not old enough to be out of school corrected him. All he did was grin at her.

“My but time flies when you’re having fun.” This Captain kept looking at his companions and back to Jaron. His smile kept growing.

Perhaps this was some test by the psychologists. He kept waiting for them to try and trick him ever since the Captain had pardoned him for giving Samnal the death he so richly deserved. But trick him into what? His DNA was already on file.

“A solar observatory? Hey, what are you doing?”

One of the people had jumped down into his test hole.

“Get out of there.”

The broad face glanced up at him. “Sorry. But I couldn’t resist. Name’s Rolovsky. What’s the dark layer here at one meter plus? Sure stands out from this yellowish soil, doesn’t it?”

Several of the others rolled their eyes and wandered off into the jungle. “That’s, ahh, old tree, probably ebony by the root shape. Scrape gently and see if there’s a pattern.”

Rolovsky aimed a large finger at the face that would surely damage the entire section for his own study. A small knife appeared magically in his grasp. He dug a neat groove along one side.

“Appears to be a grain to the soil, up and back to the left.” Jaron had to admit he could not have done it better himself. Between one blink and the next the knife was gone as if it’d never been.

“Groundwater silt replacement. It can preserve the original tree shape, but the ‘grain,’ as you called it, is typically the flow direction of the groundwater along the rotting wood. Takes decades to get like that specimen. The fact that it survived the rough handling to get here is amazing.” Jaron studied the large man as he clambered lightly out of the hole without disturbing it. He moved lightly despite his mass, much the way Robbie did.

“Thanks, soil’s my hobby. Cooking and a bit of magic for fun. Nice place you’ve got here.” He turned and looked about.

“Much more peaceful than the corridor. A man can really stretch in here. Not like on the Icarus. There, why you can’t hardly breathe without some command crew coming or…” He glanced over Jaron’s shoulder and stopped abruptly.

“Can’t hardly move on a small boat like that at any time.”

Jaron turned and the one with all the teeth clapped his hands together. “Tour’s over, folks. ‘Bout time we went home. Thanks for the exciting lecture. I was…enthralled.”

He grabbed and mashed Jaron’s hand once more before he could avoid it. They turned toward the West entrance and disappeared into the foliage.

Jaron climbed back down into the hole with the shovel in his hands. The Icarus. He didn’t know anything about it, perhaps that was the craft docked over in R1. But Jackson Turner’s name was somehow familiar. He just couldn’t recall why.

The shovel was heavy in his hands, just like a branch of ebony, its weight far too heavy for its size. He jammed the blade down into the rich, dark soil releasing its loamy smell only to realize he’d climbed in over the good face and destroyed the site for accurate observation.

# # #

“We walked the rings.” Sicily sat across the Icarus’ lounge table.

All Ri could do was nod. She and Bryce had uncovered little after everyone else left. There were a lot of attempts, usually late at night, to use the airlocks. Thankfully Ri had sealed them two days ago to keep herself from hatching through into space.

The composting system was another matter. It was extremely efficient and no body residues would last more than a few hours before being mechanically thrashed beyond recognition. Suicides accounted for some of it, but not enough. The number of disappeareds was climbing. And it wasn’t from any one area. They determined that R1 was the safest and R4 the least so, but that was all, despite their efforts.

Jackson cleared his throat, obviously attempting to return her to the present. She was sick of Captain Turner and should just have gone to her own quarters. She’d escorted Bryce to R4 and come back with little more than a mumbled ‘good night’ to show for it before he stepped down the dropshaft. She could be asleep by now. It was only five hours until the meeting with the Captain, and that would be really ugly. Why had she stopped here anyway? To check in. And they’d been waiting for her.

“Ri.” Donnie sat backwards on a chair with her chin resting on the back. “I don’t know what they used to be like, but ‘different’ like you told us is not the right word. It’s crashed code out there. What’s going on?”

Sicily rested a hand on Donnie’s shoulder. Jackson stood outside the group, leaning against the wall. There was no smile on his face now. He spoke without moving from his place.

“I took the whole crew out. R1 and R2 were okay like you said, if only a bit weird. We checked out the decompression damage. These guys could fix in six days what they haven’t done over there in six weeks. Three was a mess. The parts of L1 that haven’t been abandoned, should be. But Four,” he let loose a long whistle. “We broke up four rapes and a pair of near murders before we bailed. Do you have any ideas?”

Ri fought the twist in her gut. If only she could lay her head down for a little bit, maybe she’d find it had all been a nightmare. She shook her head and would have lost her dinner if she’d eaten any.

Jackson approached her with a hot soup pouch. She shoved it away and it splatted on the floor. The smell of boiled chicken filled the room.

She cut off Jackson’s curse. “Get me a commpad.” To hell with Devra’s orders. The whole thing would be out soon enough. If Ri showed them the data, they’d see it was pointless and finally let her sleep.

Someone pushed a pad into her hand. She thumbed into the secure files and displayed the graphs. Too tired to explain it again, she let them figure it out on their own. Hank and Donnie saw if first. Within moments only Rolovsky was insisting there must be some mistake.

“It’s right. The numbers are right. The formulas are right. We don’t know what’s going on but we’re losing and losing fast. We’ve got nine or ten months at the outside. The buildup is slow, right now we only lose five or ten people a day. In month six, the curve steepens dramatically. But no matter how you look at it, we haven’t got long.”

She was ready to lay her head on the table when Sicily asked her something.

“Hunh?”

“What’s this odd turn at the end of the curve?”

Ri magnified the area Sicily had indicated. It was right where the population curve crossed zero. Only it didn’t. It was when the population dropped into the low hundreds. Then, instead of continuing downward, the curve flattened out for a time. She scrolled to the right, a long time. Possibly years. Slowly trending downward but not dying out.

It was Nara.

She thumbed into Wilkson’s and drilled in on the equation. They dubbed the flattening of the curve as the Nara Reaction. It really was Nara in all its horror.

Ri hadn’t known until this moment that of all Japan, only Nara had survived the Crash and Smash. Only she had survived. The last of an entire race.

The sons of bitches had studied, recorded, quantified—and left them to die. The formula indicated that they’d never understood, only measured. None of the desperation. None of the clawing upward against an impossible unknown sociological curve that controlled their lives. She cleared the formula and locked it down. Pushing the commpad aside, she faced Sicily.

“You don’t want to know.” She could see the woman start to protest, but Ri cut her off.

“Trust me. If you live that long, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

She tried to keep her head up as a typical Icarus-style debate ensued. Hank and Rolovsky proposed ideas so fast that others could only slip in the occasional thought. This time no one drifted away. There were frequent references to the data she’d left displayed on the viewer, but no faults were found. They recompiled for today’s data and the answer didn’t change.

Everyone was involved except Jackson who still stood with his arms folded and his back against the wall. He stared at her as if waiting for something. She was too tired to figure it out and simply lay her head on the table. Probably whether or not she’d sleep with him tonight. He was just a guy with too many hormones. No, not tonight, nor any other. She tried to smile at her decision, but her face was too weary.

Ri was only vaguely aware as Jackson carried her to his quarters. She tried to protest as he stripped off her clothes, but he paid no attention as he tucked the sheets tightly around her. A bit of light and then the door closed.

Once Jackson left, sleep eluded her. She finally climbed out of bed and decided that a quick run in R4L0 was what she needed. The main cabin was empty when she slipped out, except for Jackson fast asleep in his chair. He looked at home there, no slavering ladies’ man with all his defenses on high. Maybe if she’d slept a while, she’d wake him and they’d…

She slipped out through the lock.

Once she slid down into R4 North, she didn’t wait for the vertigo to fully stop before heading down into L0.

She trotted to warm up, but it wasn’t working. She was stiff and awkward. The blue and ice white of the Arctic piping brought her to a halt. Sooner or later, it would be time to face Bryce and apologize for dragging him into this. Perhaps this morning would be better spent making peace than running herself ragged. She hatched up to L1.

At the lock, she dragged on a full coldsuit and cycled inside. The artificial starlight revealed the shapes of the boulders and glistened off the restless sea. She took a pocketlight, but didn’t switch it on. Wandering slowly, she reached Carla’s rock and climbed onto the ledge.

Starlight sparkled off the expanse of the waves. Carla’s last view of life had been the stars. Not even a last sunset in Arctic midwinter darkness. Had she managed to stay awake long enough to watch the stars turn or had the cold taken her too quickly?

Ri felt the whispers of her friend in the dark, not unhappy or desperate as she’d been at the end, but the whispers they’d shared in that final month of the mission; the secrets of the other crew members and the occasional lovers; the whispers of sunsets watched together while dreaming of the stars.

She closed her eyes and let the heartbeat of the sea wash over her. It was the heartbeat of Stellar One, still strong and stable, mostly. Three hundred and twenty less people were adding to that heartbeat than should be, but it was still safe. Of course, she’d felt the same hearing the gentle breathing of the sleeping cadre in Nara the night she’d screwed up and let herself be captured by the Angel-lady.

All the wishing in the world wasn’t going to bring back those times before she’d killed Ninka and Tinai any more than it would change Stellar’s population data. That curve was echoed everywhere she turned; some graffiti in the corridor, the shape of a wave in the starlight. They were dying.

Rocks rattled on the beach very nearby. She snapped on the pocketlight and illuminated a man’s face only a meter away as he climbed the rock. At the burst of light and her shout, he lost his grip and fell backward off the ledge.

“Ow! Shit! God damn it all!”

She leaned over the edge and shone the light on Bryce’s prostrate form.

“Are you okay?”

“No.” He struggled back to sitting position and squinted up at her. “And get that damn thing out of my eyes.”

She quickly aimed it to one side and could see him climb slowly to his feet and twist and bend to check his limbs. Once more he faced upward.

“Ri?” The question was very tentative.

“Yes.” Her voice didn’t seem to penetrate beyond the cone of light out into the great darkness of the biome.

He hung his head and rested his hands on his knees.

“Are you hurt?”

Bryce just shook his head and remained crouched for longer than it took her pulse to slow from the adrenal rush of surprise.

After she’d switched off the light, he finally climbed the face of the ledge. Sliding over, she made room for him beside her.

“You came back.” His low voice was quite soft.

She was glad of the hood and the dark. “I was going to run, but decided to drop in and see you. I wanted to apolog… To tell you I’m sorry I got you involved. I didn’t mean to…” She shook her head, there were no proper words.

“I stopped here and couldn’t get moving again.”

The silence stretched between them. She would give much to be able to see his face.

“I often sit here to watch sunrise.”

“Is it that late?”

She could feel his coat brush hers as he shrugged. “Not for a while. Eight, maybe ten hours. Less than an hour of sun a day at this point. Still doesn’t clear the horizon.”

The cold seemed to bypass the rock and leave a warm silence around them.

“Carla liked sunsets. She and I would sit here and watch them back before The End.”

The stars slowly turned overhead. They were a projection of how the stars would have moved above the Arctic Circle in Finland where some of Carla’s ancestors originated. A meteor streaked by, disappearing near the northern star high in the sky.

“You said this was her coat.”

Ri wrapped her arms around her knees as an icy chill penetrated through the coldsuit.

“I never met her.” His voice was the only warmth in the cold night. “I used to sleep in that small room behind the bar until I overheard a conversation one night about the empty biome. So I went exploring. Didn’t take much to override the hatches without setting off an alarm.”

She turned to face his dark form. “How did you do that? No meals show either, omelette or otherwise. Olias nearly stumbled on the activity in that dead man’s file, but I was able to divert him.”

“Thanks. I don’t think he’d like what he found. Though your Captain is a little too sharp for comfort.” He raised a hand as if to stare at it. “I was one hell of a good trouble-shooter on the shuttle run. And before. Odd jobs. Hiding and changing an identity isn’t as hard as it might seem. I eat as one person, pass through computer databases as another, and bypass hatch seals so that they operate locally and then I’m not registered anywhere.”

“So, that’s why my security override didn’t open those hatches anymore.”

He nodded and lowered his hand. “No magic. Just a little bit of reprogramming.”

“The anonymous bartender.” Ri tried to imagine living separated from the world like that. She had double-thumb security codes, command crew clearance, Olias and his damn t-card, and always a line of people who had just one more question. She hoped that Olias didn’t put together, as the Captain had, that Ri was in and out of the Arctic biome for a reason.

“I guess being his, um, progeny, you’d learn to be good at that.” She could feel him pause until he was stiller than the frozen rock beneath them. “No one knows other than Devra and me, and I think she’s only guessing.”

“Does she know who I am?” He relaxed only the slightest bit.

“I didn’t tell anyone, but I don’t know how much longer that will hold up.”

“At first I hoped that you hadn’t heard me, or that I’d been drunk enough to only think I told you.”

She rested a gloved hand on his arm. “You said it and I heard it. But that doesn’t change who you are, does it? You’re still my anonymous bartender and occasional breakfast cook.”

He rested his hand over hers and held it tightly in his hand, made even larger by his gloves. His grip was so hard that she almost pulled her hand free, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to keep her there, but rather to hold on himself.

They sat without moving and awaited the Arctic dawn.