Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (35 page)

“Innocuous,
then. He’s innocuous. How’s that?” Rachel said, a little miffed.

“Same
thing,” John said with a steely tone.

Rachel
just sighed. This was getting ridiculous.

“Let’s
forget it,” Donna said.

“Fine,”
Rachel said.

“Fine,”
John said.

They sat
silently, fiddling, tapping and staring. No one had to say it; it was just too
obvious. What were they but a shuttle pilot, a nurse, and a biologist?
Commonwealth contractors who started and ended their lives in debt and who
flourished or perished at the pleasure of those who held their contracts. They
were so knowledgeable in their respective fields that there was no more to
teach them. They were the end product, the final result, of a training process
that used up their lives from childhood far into adulthood—just so they might
have value to the ones in power. It had always been so. Collectively, they
could fly most light and medium weight aircraft and repair them if need be, or
diagnose and treat nearly any physical malady that didn’t require major
surgery. They could even classify the life forms of an entire planet.

But, in
the area of revolt, insurrection or mutiny, they had no idea what to do. So
they sat, and stared and tapped and worried.

“Rachel’s
goofy apprentice has already eyeballed me. No telling who he’ll tell,” Donna
finally said. “We’d better get me hidden.”

“That’s a
good place to start,” John said.

21

Joan flopped and turned, resting
her face finally an inch or two from Bill’s back. The heat from it radiated
onto her face. It was hotter than usual; too hot to sleep in the same bed with
another body. She got up and took
  
her
pillow with her. The spare bedroom would be a little cooler. Mike was back in
his own shelter, and all that cool space was going to waste.

She
flopped down on the bed and sprawled. An hour later she was still tossing and
turning, wide awake.

I
shouldn’t have hit him. Goddamn it.

She was
making breakfast when Bill came into the kitchen, his hair wet and skin shiny
from the shower and razor. “What happened to you last night?” he asked.

“Couldn’t
sleep.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“Too hot,
huh?”

She
poured him a cup of coffee. “That’s part of it,” she said.

“What’s
the other part?”

“You
know.”

“The
kid?”

“The kid.
Eddie Silk, Bill. His name is Eddie Silk.”

“His
name’s
bug food
now,” he said and
ducked into his coffee.

She
looked daggers at him and drew a deep breath. “That’s ugly. That was an ugly,
ugly thing to say.”

“He was a
bad egg, Joan—a little crook. He got what’s coming to him. Stop worrying about
him. We’ve got enough to worry about. If you have to worry about somebody,
worry about the nurse. Any word on her?”

What was
the use? It was Bill she was talking to. “No. Not yet. Somebody said they were
going shelter to shelter asking about her. Then I heard she’d been shipped back
and that there was another one on the way. I thought I’d call security and see
if they had any information. I’d like to get this rash looked at.”

“She’s
probably dead. Took a hike and got bitten by something.”
    
”That’s optimistic.”

“Well,
you know me.”

She put
his breakfast down in front of him and handed him a fork.

“Eddie
could still be alive, you know.”

“Not
likely.”

“They
didn’t find his body.”

“They
won’t either. There’s nothing left to find. He’s dead. He died. No one can
survive in the green, you know that.”

“They
didn’t try very hard to find him.”

“They did
what they could.”

“Yeah,
sure. Bunch of incompetent assholes.”

He
swallowed quickly so he could talk.

“Will you
let it go?” he glared.

“That’s
easy for you. You didn’t drive him away.”

“He drove
himself
away, dammit!”

Bill got
up and dumped his coffee into the sink. Joan planted her chin in her hand and
half watched him. She knew that look on his face, all tight and steely. She
didn’t want it to end like this, but she knew the pattern.

“Don’t
you want breakfast?” she asked.

“No. I’ll
grab something on the shuttle. Sometimes they have donuts.”

That was
a lie, and she knew it. But if he didn’t want to stay, she had no way to change
his mind. It didn’t matter what the reason was. Bill was Bill.

He
started to clear the table. “You can save this stuff for
tomorrow,” he said. “It’s still good.”

“Leave
that. You’ll be late,” she said gently.

He rolled
up his sleeves and picked his lunch box off the counter. She sensed him hesitate
at the back door; but before she could say anything, she heard the door open
then close after him.

She sat a
moment longer, thinking about Eddie. He’d been gone nearly five long Verde
days. Unless he was either very lucky or very tough, he was most certainly
dead. When it happened, she’d thought surely he’d come back later that day, or
maybe the next day at the latest after spending a horrible night out in the
green. She knew now that it was probable he’d never made it through that first
night alive.

I
shouldn’t have hit him.

She
slapped a lunch together and headed out the door. By the time she got to the
truck, the early morning heat had evaporated some of her guilty thoughts. She
got behind the wheel with a sigh and drove off.

* * *

The crew was
milling around or perched on containers like monkeys waiting for the day’s
orders. The first minute was the worst when she’d have to walk past them and
answer the question sometimes voiced, sometimes not.

“Any word
about Eddie?” they would ask.

“No,”
she’d say flatly
. “I’ll call security again and see.”

Then they
would form up into a loose line behind her as she opened the door. They’d
trickle in and go over yesterday’s status and today’s task list. She'd give them
instructions about what to put where, and the day could begin. They wouldn’t
mention Eddie again that day.

She
poured herself a cup of coffee and checked the day’s incoming shipments, trying
to put the thoughts of Eddie to rest one last time. She had to look at the
manifest twice to make sure she was reading it right.

More
connectors, fasteners and assembly tools by the containers full—but nothing to
use them on. They now had enough connectors to string together fifty linear
kilometers of raised dock
—
and
no dock modules. She hadn’t seen an order for anything bigger than a hand lift
in weeks. No walls, floors, pipe or machinery; just little pieces, high counts
of little shit. Where was the big stuff; all the things that made a mining
operation possible? They should have had millions of meters of pipe of every
gauge, pumps, heavy equipment in pieces ready to assemble, trucks, loaders.
Where was it? They had ratchets and Bennet clamps by the thousands, screws by
the literal billions, assembly tools of every description by the hundreds of
thousands. It was if they were gearing up to build a city, not a mining
operation. But where were the things to
build.
They could have equipped ten thousand riggers with the stuff on hand, but the
riggers would have had to stand around with their thumbs up their butts because
there was nothing to put together.

Today’s
deliveries looked like more of the same. Something was out of whack.

She cut
the crew loose with the order, “Just like yesterday. Get moving.” Then she turned
to the news, just to bury herself in something unrelated to where she was. It
wasn’t something she made a habit of. She didn’t like Earth news. It was
usually very depressing, and thirty days old to boot. Besides, you didn’t have
to read the shitty details of the news to get the gist of it. It got read daily
by somebody, and they’d always pass the important stuff along. She scrolled
through the headlines and almost switched it off but was too late. The little
headline at the bottom of the last page was there in front of her eyes before
she could react:

“DGSS
Predicts Second Great Collapse."

She felt
a cold knot form in her midsection. She didn’t want to, but she read the entire
article. By the time she was done, the knot was colder and tighter than when
she started, and her heart was beating in her ears. It was like a long
forgotten and frightening history lesson had been taught to her once more.

Every
child knew the history of
The Great
Collapse of 2344
, because it was a pivotal event of the millennium.

The Great Collapse
was the
final black and tumbling tile at the end of a chain of trigger events that had
built up over hundreds of years. Unchecked human growth and excessive demands
on the Earth’s resources lead inexorably to a cataclysmic collapse of the
social order that lasted thirty years. The Small Wars were the worst.
Collectives of gangs in district upon district fought over the Earth’s bones
with tribal ferocity. There were so many armies, large and small; that it was
said there was a general on every block. During that thirty-year period, the
Earth’s population dropped from five hundred billion to less than one billion,
although no one really knew the actual number of survivors. The Great Collapse
was also called the Apocalypse, from the ancient Judeo-Christian text.

Some said
the Earth had never recovered from the shock of supporting the impossible
population prior to the Collapse and especially the devastation suffered during
it. Now, six hundred years later, the population was again approaching the
half-trillion mark with the old fears of collapse renewed. In short, social
conditions were much as they were then, the article said.

Joan had
forgotten most of the history lesson but one thing stuck in her mind. The
historians said the Great Collapse started in one calendar year—2344—and by
2345, most of the world’s population was dead; starved or killed by disease or
war.

She
turned her pad off and pushed it aside.

Bullshit.
They couldn’t let it happen again. No way. Nobody takes that seriously. That’s
why it’s on the back page.

The
article left a funk around her like foul smoke. She made herself another cup of
coffee and went outside, trying to shake it off. The morning’s heat and the
rich scent in the air helped.

The guys seemed
to have everything under control; the lifts were moving around the dock and
back and forth like ants. She nodded her approval at Mike as he drove by and
got a salute from him for her trouble.

She
ambled out to the west side of the dock and looked out over the vista. There
was a deep valley that started just a few kilometers out and ran westward like
a giant trough. In the far distance she could see the smooth, gray ocean
stretching from one side of the valley’s end to the other. She breathed in the
air. It must have been spring or summer on the planet because the scent that
reached her on the gentle breeze was sweeter than usual and made her struggle
for more of it, to strain and fill her lungs with it, so sweet and rich was the
scent.

My God .
. .

She
breathed it in.

She could
see flowers, bright against the jungle’s dark tapestry, lighting it up in
patches. They hadn’t been there the last time she’d looked.

Only two hundred people on the entire planet. That’s the way it
should be.

* * *

That evening,
Bill’s normal mood had returned. At least he was talking and that was always a
good sign. They went to bed early and made love long in the early evening’s
heat, leaving their sweat and scent on the damp bed clothes. They showered and
went back to bed, but found themselves too hot and still invigorated from their
coupling to sleep.

“I heard
something strange today,” he said in a distant voice. “What was that?”

She heard
him take a deep breath through his nose. “Nothin’. Never mind.”

“What?
You can tell me.”

Long
sniff.

“Lavachek
said he heard from some guy he knows from home who just got here that there're
over a million shelter sections—complete kits—on the way in the next sixty
days. Said he saw the order himself.”