The Seeds of Time (13 page)

She wandered back toward crew tent to find her duffel. Teeg fell in step beside her. “Where’s your weapon, Lieutenant?” he said.

Clio arched an eyebrow. Calling her lieutenant was odd. “Getting it.”

“Stay armed. You’re on mission now, not playing cards, waiting for Dive on
Starhawk.”

She looked over at him with her best drop-dead look.

“That’s an order, Lieutenant.”

Holy God, he was serious. “Yessir.”

Teeg glared at her. “I’ve got eight people under my command here, Finn, and probably the most important ground mission in Biotime’s history. I need everyone working on the team, playing their role, no questions asked. You understand?”

“Well, I got just one question, Teeg. What am I supposed to shoot? We don’t know what might come out of those woods. Could be a hippo, and this is his feeding patch. Could be a delegate from the local chief. Who decides when to shoot?”

“That’s two questions. Anyway, first, shoot anything that looks threatening. Second, if I’m not around to give the order to fire, use your judgment, but aim to wound, not kill.
Unless it’s charging.” He finished peevishly, squirming under Clio’s contemptuous gaze.

“That’s what I was doing, using my own judgment. What I usually do, you know.” She started to peel off, toward the crew tent. Teeg grabbed her elbow.

“Wouldn’t mind seeing you in my tent tonight, Clio.” He smiled, which looked better on him than the frown it replaced. “Good for the commander’s morale.”

“I don’t think so, Teeg. It’s not good for mine.” She pulled her arm away and disappeared into the crew tent.

Zee looked up as she stalked through the tent flap. “He bothering you?”

“No, we were just discussing camp morale.”

“Because he’s getting on everybody’s nerves,” Zee said. “We’ve only been on the ground three hours, and already he’s so puffed up with himself. Told me to start patrolling the perimeter. Patrolling. Walk around the wires and watch for anything strange. The whole screaming planet is strange. It’s blue, for one thing. And those bugs, those dragonflies. What if one lands on me?”

Clio clipped a holster to her belt, dropped the Harmin 317 into it, snapping the cuff over it. “Blow its brains out, I guess,” she answered, sweeping her eyes toward his holster.

Zee made a long-suffering face. Then he brightened. “Maybe we could patrol together. Want to?”

Clio grabbed a khaki hat, one of those issued to protect them from the hot sun, and left the tent with Zee. She noticed Teeg watching them from the door flap of his command tent.

“I don’t think he likes me,” Zee said, conscious of Teeg staring at them. They passed Posie, who was removing a splinter from Estevan’s hand in the shade side of the med tent. “And the Doc. He’s Teeg’s pal, Clio. Ran to tell Teeg that I wasn’t wearing my gun. Next thing I know, I’m getting this lecture on camp security from fearless leader.”

They walked the ring of wire, on the inside. “He still never talks about it?” Clio asked. “Hillis never talks about the radio transmission?”

“Hillis? No, he never talks about it.”

Clio saw movement in the trees. Toward the top, near the overarching canopy, a blur of movement, a dip of a branch. If there was something, it wasn’t showing itself.

“Hillis avoids me.” A hint of bitterness crept in: “Sometimes it really hurts.” And then, more matter-of-fact, he said, “I maybe brought out some feelings in him that he’d rather not know about.”

My God, my God, Clio thought. Did Zee think that Hillis was a closet homosexual? That Hillis was as innocent as Zee himself was? She looked up at Zee, the brilliant physicist hopelessly contemplating the puzzle of personal relationships. She didn’t like to think that Hillis had toyed with Zee to win his loyalty, to get him to work on the Future Ceiling problem, but there it was. He’d used Zee. And now he was through with him. Not a pleasant thought, that Hillis would use sex that way. That was more Teeg’s style. Teeg, who lost a verbal sparring round with her a few minutes ago and immediately wanted to subdue her with sex. Wanted to get on top of the problem, that was Teeg’s way. She put him in his place, no mistake.

One screw does not confer a season pass, Teeg
.

That night Clio and Estevan shared the watch. Later, Zee and Posie would relieve them. Estevan walked clockwise, Clio counterclockwise around the perimeter, where the floodlights did a fairly good job of illumination except for the dark patches between the widely spaced lights. Estevan got spooked the first time they met on the perimeter, so he concocted a series of notes to whistle as they grew close to each other. After a dozen or so circuits, Estevan was convinced that the birds had picked up the code and were repeating it sometimes. If so, they had just taught the local birds the first bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.” After that, they switched codes every other circuit.

The dragonflies were thicker at night. Attracted to the big floodlights, they swooped down on the giant lamps, in a constant game of touch and go. The wires took their toll, with the aroma of cremation drifting on the still night air.

•   •   •

Clio and Petya hid in Walter Reesley’s basement for three weeks after the DSDE raid. The old man seemed bemused by their presence, shuffling down the stairs with food and magazines for them, sitting on a crate, watching them eat, rubbing his arms against the cold and muttering. When Clio talked about leaving, the old man would become agitated and wave his hands toward the outside and say it wasn’t safe yet, but that they should wait, and he would find “passage” for them. One night he herded them into the back of his Chevy pickup, threw a plastic tarp over them, and drove them to a field where they met a woman with a van. She held Clio at arm’s length and studied her face a long while, then patted her cheek, saying, “You’re your mother, twenty years ago.” She told Clio and Petya to get in the van and lie on the floor, then covered them with a blanket, and drove off. They never got a chance to say goodbye to Walter Reesley, because they didn’t realize he wasn’t coming along
.

They lay in the back as the woman drove most of the night. Once she stopped and gave them sandwiches to eat. Her name was Lena, she said, a friend of their mother and Elsie. By that they knew they were in the hands of the underground
.

“What happened to Mom?” Petya asked
.

Lena chewed her mouthful of sandwich and looked at Petya for a long minute. “Quarry,” she said. “We don’t know which one, and don’t you ever look.” She pinned them with her gaze until they nodded understanding. “Don’t ever look. You’re underground now.”

Several hours later, still on the road, Clio heard Lena talking on the car phone. She told them to stay covered, there was a blockade up ahead. A routine stop-and-search, but for them it was a disaster
.

After a few minutes they heard Lena say, “I’m sorry kids, they’re going to search us. They’re waving me over to do a search. I’m just real sorry. We almost made it.” And then the door slid open and the blanket was pulled off their faces, and a man shone a flashlight at them for what seemed a long time. Then he pulled the blanket back over them, and
Clio heard him telling Lena to drive on out. And Lena drove silently a couple miles and took a sharp turn off the road
.

She yanked open the door and got them out of the van. She said the policeman had let them go, she didn’t know why, but that they were in grave danger and he might change his mind if he looked them up on CrimeNet and found out who they really were, that they had murdered a DSDE agent. She told them to run into Granville, four miles north, and wait by the water tower. She would send someone for them, someone wearing a yellow bandanna tied around the right thigh. And she hugged them both in turn and shooed them into the woods, then drove off, laying rubber
.

After that, the police cars came screaming by, hell-bent as they raced down the road after Lena. And then not long after, they come into the field with dogs, and Clio and Petya ran and ran, and finally Clio told Petya they should separate, that maybe the dogs would only catch one of them. She knew she could never run as fast as Petya; he still had a chance. But they ran for five or ten minutes before she could convince Petya, and he cried as he left her, and she said, “Meet me at the water tower.” And then he smiled and sprinted off
.

By dawn she was hiding in the long grasses under the Granville water tower. And by noon, a man showed up with a yellow bandanna tied around his thigh, and they waited together for several hours there at the water tower, but she never saw Petya again
.

The man’s name was Kevin Speery-Hall, and she became Antoinette, replacing his daughter, dead at twenty-one of the Sickness but never taken to the quarries to die
.

Two years later, when Biotime came through Minneapolis on a big testing drive, on a lark she got tested for Dive tolerance, and they came back into the room with three or four people wearing business suits and talked to her about her plans for the future, and how would she like to learn to be a pilot. And Biotime asked a few perfunctory questions about her past, but in the end they didn’t want to know, didn’t care what her citizen status was, as long as she
could Dive. She signed on the dotted line: Antoinette Speery-Hall
.

Clio’s first night on Niang was fitful, with the heat and humidity a misery. She lay awake listening to the night songs of the jungle—not lullabies, but the ticking of mandibles, the shrieks of prey. She slept, finally, when a light rain on the tent drowned out the alien forest.

In the morning, Clio emerged from the crew tent to find the world shrouded in mist. A white fog rolled over the camp in waves, like a sea of perfumed methane. Across the clearing, the forest could barely be seen, its towering perimeter trees wavering in the mist. Beneath her fatigues Clio’s undershirt, wet from night sweats, clung to her like cold seaweed.

Zee approached her with two steaming cups. “Coffee, my lady?”

She smiled. “Sir vander Zee. My prince.”

His reply was cut short by a shout from one of the tents. Posie emerged from the fog holding up a ten-meter length of white toilet paper. No, not toilet paper—medical gauze. “Someone trashed the med tent,” he exclaimed, looking at Clio. “Supplies are missing—place is a mess. We’ve been invaded!”

Clio and Zee rushed to the open flap of the med tent and peered inside. Med kits lay open and disemboweled. Gauze bandages draped from cot to comm unit and back again, but no serious damage. Outside, Posie was upbraiding Hillis and Liu, last night’s security detail, when Estevan wandered into the center of the compound and announced that his shoes were missing. That meant whatever had been in the camp had been in the crew tent.

After that, everyone went armed. Speculated on the invader. It had pranked them, done little actual damage. Maybe it was harmless. Maybe it was an immature animal—with the adults another story.

As Posie and Teeg conferred in the commander’s tent, Estevan prepared camp breakfast in his stocking feet. The cooking sausage tubes filled the tent with their delicious and
familiar aroma. When the crew gathered around the mess table, the talk centered on the night visitors.

Meng said, “Now at least we know the creatures wear size-eleven-and-a-half shoes and aren’t picky about the fragrance.” She peered maliciously at Estevan over her cup of green tea.

Estevan whipped egg powder into water. “Next time, Miss Chow Mein, they’ll take your fucking hair-goo.”

Teeg appeared in the tent door just as Estevan was dishing up.

“OK, folks, we got a serious problem here,” he said. “Someone or something has pretty free access to the compound, despite the nerve wires and the patrols. I’m sending out a scouting party this morning to have a look-see. Botany says they’re ready to collect a couple samples anyhow, so Hillis, you’re on, and then Meng, Finn, and Posie as team leader.”

Estevan’s mouth dropped open as he stood there holding the pan of eggs. “You’re sending Clio? Why do we need to send her? She’s our ticket home.”

Hillis spoke through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “That’s right, probably you should send Zee. Clio can stay on security at camp here.”

Teeg turned calmly to face Hillis. “There’s something you all should probably understand before we go any further. We’re not making group decisions here. I’m commanding this mission, and I’m making the decisions, like who’s on the scouting party. Clio’s assigned to security on this mission, and Clio’s going on the scouting party. Any more questions?” Posie had come in the tent door behind Teeg, with a Dharhai-8 assault rifle slung over his shoulder.

The crew stared at Posie.

Clio raised her hand, schoolgirl style. “With the commander’s permission, I’d like to suggest we bring Estevan into the decision here. He’s our anthropologist. Looks like we might have some intelligent life-forms to deal with, and that’s why Estevan’s on this mission, right?”

Teeg’s face hardened. Then he smiled over at Estevan. “You got anything intelligent to say about the invaders,
Estevan?” Estevan began to say something, but Teeg cut him off. “Because if you do, I’d be glad to hear from you in my tent. That’s one thing I want you all to remember. I’m always available to hear what you have to say, so I hope you’ll share your thoughts with me. At the proper time. Right now, eat up, party will head out in twenty minutes.” He slapped the tent flap back, and exited.

Estevan slammed the pan down on the stove. “Hail, Caesar.”

Meng pushed her plate of untouched food away. “Somebody has to be in charge, don’t they? Me, I’d just as soon have it be someone who’s still got their shoes.”

Everyone was now looking at Shannon, to see whose side she was on. “Well, he
is
head of the ground mission,” she said. “If we have to vote on everything, we’ll never get anything done. Besides, Clio’s no better than the rest of us.” She studiously avoided Clio’s eyes. “We’re all equal here, and I’m not doing all the grunt work, that’s for sure.” Shannon was the most junior of the crew, on her first mission.