Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (33 page)

Kaia watched her father. She knew he was in a
difficult position. He disagreed with slavery. The very word tortured him with
thoughts of selling Ship 12-22 to the Others. But he also had intergalactic
relations to consider. Slavery was commonly practiced among many alien races, and
he wasn’t likely to change that on this Minean evening. Besides, not allowing
them to search for their property could anger the Asgre, and as yet they had
shown no aggression except toward
Vigilant
, which had fired on them
first. But if they were to become disgruntled and open up their weaponry on the
city, it could be disastrous.

“You will let us search for them, surely?” Galo
pressed, his voice supplicating.

Reagan turned to his troops. “Stand down,” he
said, and the soldiers stepped into their at-ease position. Reagan back to
Galo. “You have one week,” Reagan said. “You can search on this planet for one
week, and then you need to leave, whether you have located your—” Kaia heard
the hesitation in his voice, “property—or not.”

Galo bowed repeatedly. “Thank you, thank you, so
much,” he said. “We will begin our search this moment so as not to disrupt the
lives of our new human friends for any longer than necessary.” He switched off
his translator, and spoke to the other Asgre. Without the translator, the sound
of his voice was grating.

And then Kaia saw them. More ships descending.
Five more in all. The black-suited Asgre teams disembarked while the troops
stood silently and watched them flow into Coriol.

A light rain was falling as the family left their
cottage and headed for the sol train. It was quiet and comfortable inside, and
Ethan settled Rigel on the seat beside him, pulling the child close and
glancing at Polara. Her eyes were half-closed. She hadn’t been herself lately.

They had taken her to the doctor, but he had been
characteristically unconcerned and sent them home with instructions for more
naps. Other than her fatigue, she had shown no signs of the dreaded Minean
fever. Still, a somber mood permeated the train.

Bands of Asgre mercenaries were swarming the
city. The defense bulletins assured that they were not dangerous to humans who
didn’t get in their way, but their presence was unnerving. The black-suited
figures traveled in packs of five or six, two of them running scanners and the
rest of them jingling with the load of manacles and shackles they carried, made
from the only metal their slaves could not move through. There was no
forgetting that they were here hunting.

Ethan hoped that Theo would value the potential
of the Vala partnership and keep quiet. The Asgre had spent three days of their
allotted seven. If they could hold out for a few more, the Asgre would leave
and the Vala would be safe.

When they arrived at the end of the Water
District line, the rain had increased to a downpour. They pulled out their
umbrellas and stood to walk to the farm. As Ethan moved to exit the train, he
heard Aria’s frantic voice calling his name. Ethan saw Polara, usually so
active, lying still and listless on the floor of the train. Her shirt was
pulled up a bit, and Ethan saw the marks spreading in arching whorls up her
stomach. He scooped her up and they caught a hovercab for the hospital.

A nervous young doctor admitted them into an exam
room and looked over the bruises.

“It certainly seems to be Minean Fever,” the
doctor said sadly.

“What can we do?”

The doctor shook his head. “Keep her hydrated, if
you can. The vomiting will quickly remove the fluids from her body, then she’ll
have dehydration as well as the bruising, the weakness, and the fever. You can
keep her at home if no more bruises show up, but if they get worse you should
bring her back here so we can make her comfortable until—” the man stopped just
in time.

“What else?” Ethan knew there was no more to be
done, but he pressed for answers anyway.

The young doctor shook his head, and Ethan felt a
wave of hopelessness. “That’s really all. And I should probably tell you, Mr.
Bryant, that your daughter may not make it through this.” He adjusted his
glasses, cleared his throat, and amended: “Probably won’t. We’ve been seeing
the worst of it in kids and the elderly.”

Ethan stroked Polara’s hair softly. Over half the
people he loved were kids and elderly. “I want to see your boss,” he said
suddenly.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Zuma’s gone home for the day.”

Dr. Zuma. He should have known. Ethan picked
Polara up from the table gently. She stirred slightly and turned into his
shoulder as he left the office and caught a hovercab.

***

Dr. Zuma’s house was one of the stone and steel
mansions up on Yynium Hill. Ethan had met her once, when she’d hunted him down
at a restaurant near the housing district to sign a Colony Office certificate
of clearance. When Ethan had seen her, she seemed distrusting of the blue
Minean clay houses and the people who lived in them.

Ethan knocked on the door, expecting one of the
Saras household employees to answer, but Dr. Zuma herself opened the door. Her
face contorted in annoyance and shock when she saw Ethan and the
blanket-wrapped bundle he carried.

“What are you doing here?”

“I need you to take a look at my little girl. She’s
got Minean fever.”

Zuma sneered. “I don’t see patients at my house,
Mr. Bryant. No matter how well connected their parents are.”

“And I don’t stamp approvals at dinner in a
restaurant,” Ethan said pointedly, “but I did.” She owed him one, and she knew
it.

“I want to know what we can do to stop this,”
Ethan said. “I want to know what’s causing it.”

The tick of Zuma’s eyes to the right revealed
that she was lying to him when she said, “I don’t know what’s causing it.”

“What do the lab reports suggest?” he pressed. “Even
if you don’t know for sure, you have a guess or two. What could it be?”

Zuma looked at the child and he saw her soften
slightly. “We think it’s a kind of gas poisoning,” she said, and closed the
door.

Ethan bit back a curse, glancing down at the
child, so limp in his arms. Zuma hadn’t told him everything, but at least he
had something to go on. He got back in the cab and took Polara home.

Hours later, the little girl lay pale and
wheezing, bright purple flowers on her cheeks. They had spread up from her
stomach now and covered, in colorful layers, her neck and face. Ethan glanced
at Aria. They knew what that meant. Catching another hovercab, they took her to
the hospital.

***

Aria stared at her little girl, after two days still
lying motionless in the hospital bed.

The doctors had treated her as they did all the
patients, with Reagan cells and replenishment packs, but the bruising had
spread and Polara had sunk deeper into unconsciousness. The chief pathologist
had told Ethan that a gas was causing this. What gas would do this? It wasn’t
unlike carbon monoxide poisoning, but the bruising and the long-term blockage
of nutrient absorption didn’t fit. Besides, Minea ran on clean energy, and if
someone did get carbon monoxide poisoning, they knew what to do about it.

She unzipped the plastic cover over Polara’s bed.
It seemed to her that the sealed chamber had intensified the effects. Why?

As she walked the hall, she saw the hundreds of
people stricken with it. She could find no pattern to the people who became ill
and those who did not. Why was she fine and Polara was ill? She suspected Ethan’s
genetic modifications were protecting him, but why was Rigel free of the marks?
And would he stay that way?

***

That evening Ethan came for his shift at Polara’s
bedside. Aria hugged him, clinging to his strength.

“No one is looking for this gas, that Dr. Zuma
mentioned, Ethan,” she said. “I’m going to. But I need equipment.” She looked
into his eyes. “Talk to your surveyor friends. Traore said their equipment is
stored in the same warehouse as the equipment of the other agencies. Maybe they
could get their hands on an air quality monitor.”

“What could we learn that the agencies don’t
already know? How can we figure out what the experts can’t?”

“Ethan, I think they already know what’s wrong.
They’re choosing not to do anything about it.”

She could see by the shadow in his eyes that he
knew she was right.

“Then let me go,” he said. “I don’t want you out
in the streets tonight, especially not with all the Asgre packs roaming.”

Aria looked at him, trying to formulate why she
had to go. Her voice was a quiet croak when she spoke again.

“I need to go. I—I can’t watch her. I need you to
be here if she—” she turned away, tears falling on her shirt.

Behind her, she heard Ethan dialing his missive.
He held a quick conversation, then spoke to her. “Traore will meet you at the
house with the sensor,” he said softly.

An hour later, she crept along, running the
sensor in front of her. It had led her across the city and out into the mining
district. It glowed yellow, then orange, then, as she approached the mine, a
deep blood red. The gas was, unmistakably, coming from the mine.

***

Early in the morning, Aria made her way back from
the mine and set the sensor next to the front door while she turned the knob.
Aria felt resistance when she pushed open the door to her little cottage.
Muscling past it, she gasped. The door frame, the walls, the table, were
covered with Taim plants. As tall as her fingers, supported by a central stem
and spreading into a crown of shining, waxy leaves at the top, they were
growing across the cabinets and over the windows. Morning sunshine lit the
curtain of plants from behind, turning the living room bright, rich green. Soft
surfaces, like the rug and sofa, were clear, but most of the hard surfaces were
covered.

She couldn’t even fathom the work that lay ahead
to clean out all of these plants. They were a mess.

And yet, she thought as she swept some onto the
floor to sit on kitchen chair, they were the closest to life she’d felt in
weeks. Since the day she had seen Daniel’s neighbor covered in bruises, since the
day of Marise’s funeral, since the day Polara had first begun to act sick, Aria
had been surrounded by death and the threat of it. Aria ran a gentle finger
over the top of the soft seedlings on the table. They were living, growing,
thriving in spite of all the Zam cleaner in Coriol.

She would let them grow for now. She walked into
her lab and reached for the microscope. Maybe she should study them, to see
what made them grow so well. Perhaps they held a solution to the crippling food
shortage that continued to plague Coriol.

On the desk, Aria saw the little silver object
she had stolen from Gaynes. Over the last few weeks, she’d thought about trying
to return it, but the thought filled her with dread. Instead she’d stashed it
here.

She abandoned the idea of the microscope and
picked up the little silver object instead. It looked familiar to her. She felt
she had seen one before. Perhaps at the Food Production Division? Or the kids’
play yard? She couldn’t believe she had stolen it. Maybe walking out with that
apple weeks ago had started her on a bad path. Polara had enjoyed that apple,
though, and every moment of her daughter’s joy seemed precious now.

She sat heavily in the chair, and pulled out her
missive to check in with Ethan at the hospital. He showed her Polara on the
bed, unchanged, and the baby in a playpen nearby.

“Are you all right?” Ethan asked, a hint of fear
in his voice. “Your cheeks look a little red.”

She made an excuse, not wanting him to know she
had only just returned.

“I know where the gas is coming from. And it explains
why no one is doing anything about it,” she said, looking at Ethan on the
screen of the missive. “The mine.”

He nodded, as if he had already suspected that.
They talked a few more minutes, then he asked her to get a little more rest
before she came back to the hospital.

They signed off, and she stayed sitting at the
desk. She pushed back the tray of Taim plants she had started what felt like a
lifetime ago and pushed the spindly broccoli tray back beside it to give her
more room as she examined the little capsule.

It was smooth and small, no longer than her
little finger. Upon inspection, the top had a ring and a smooth black band
printed with a series of numbers and letters. Carefully, she twisted the top,
which came off easily. Out slid a long glass vial filled with a swirling opaque
gas. One end of the vial was tapered, the other was topped with three needles
in the shape of a triangle.

It was one second’s carelessness, as she turned
to reach for a flashlight to shine through the gas to get a better view of it,
that caused her to drop the vial. She grasped for it, but missed and winced as
it hit the desktop and shattered. Instinctively, Aria threw a hand over her
mouth and nose and stood back as the tendrils of gas snaked out of the vial and
began to rise. It washed over both trays of plants on the desk and she took a
step back, but before it could spread and dissipate into the air near her, Aria
watched in wonder as it was pulled toward the flat of Taim as if by magnetism.
The gas disappeared and she watched the little plants swaying as their leaves
absorbed the gas right in front of her eyes.

Aria stood unmoving as an idea began to form in
her mind. The sterile hospital room flashed in her mind. There was no Taim
there, and no Taim at the school where Polara had been spending her days. What
if this gas was making people sick, and the plants, somehow, had the power to
attract it?

She glanced at the common broccoli plants she had
been growing next to the Taim tray and drew in a breath. Black lesions that
were not there seconds ago covered the leaves. They were exactly like the ones
she had seen at the farm. The gas was causing the crop blight as well.

***

Galo walked more
quickly, striding toward the dark arch of the mine entrance. He watched the
humans sidestep, moving out of his way. They were sweating in the morning sun,
which was unfathomable to Galo. How could they be uncomfortable in such a
temperate climate? Back on Ondyne II they would roast and freeze in a single
day. Such fragile creatures.

Six days the Asgre
had been on the ground, and only the barest indications of the Vala had been
discovered. But now one of the mercenary teams had found signs that the Vala
may have been, at one time, in the humans’ mines. That made sense, because
there were materials that the Vala could not move through, and those materials
could also possibly shield them from detection. Perhaps those materials were
found naturally underground on this planet. Galo tapped the control panel on
his forearm.