The Seeds of Time (38 page)

They were on her in an instant. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, as they used a little too much force. “Don’t worry, I’m coming, just like to get there with my arms still in their sockets.”

The corridor widened out to a seating area with med techs on break and a few Biotime staffers playing vid games. Almost got through, no one recognizing her, but there was Starfish Void. Her old Dive competitor was heading toward her. Inwardly, Clio groaned, stopped.

“Clio?” he asked. They were dead still, staring at each other. Starfish looked toward her army escort. Then he said again. “Clio?”

“So?” Clio said, managing a good smile.

“Jesus, Clio.” He filled a long pause with a gaping stare. A foot shorter than Clio, he craned his neck up at her. “You gone army?”

Clio winced. “Maybe.”

The linebacker tugged on her arm, while the other held open the door marked,
DIVE SIM
. Clio shrugged at Starfish, leaving him mouth open, like he’d just seen Elvis.

She walked through the door to face another old acquaintance: Dive Sim. Controls banked along one wall,
and, opposite, the door to the heavy chamber where you slid in on the gurney and lay so close fitting, you felt like you were getting canned. The med tech kicked a stool into place so she could climb up to lie down.

She breathed a long, noisy sigh through her nose. Christ on a crutch. Should have known they would test her for Dive, should have known that’s what Tandy wanted. But why did they need a crazy felon like her?

The techs secured the helmet leads, this time easy, without any hair to mangle the paste, and she lay there thinking,
Hope to God I’m over the hill, hope to God I got nothing left to give the bastards
.

And when she emerged from the chamber the tech made eye contact for the first time with a knowing smile that said, You squeaked by, one more time, you still got what it takes. She stared through him to see Tandy waiting there for her. From him, no phony smile, just a nod.

She staggered, feeling mildly vertiginous. Tandy grasped her arm and she managed to pull away without falling down. Sick to her stomach, which might be the test and might be another freeping A-plus on Dive, soldier, and don’t need any help to walk, thank you.

Clio jerked the cap back on her head, walked through the door he held open, into the corridor where Starfish was waiting.

She looked over at Tandy. “Give me a minute? An old friend, hey.” Tandy pursed his lips, a small shrug. Must mean yes. Clio hauled Void over to a side bench.

“Jesus, Clio,” Void said, voice quavering in the unmistakable tremolo of burnout.

“No, I ain’t Jesus. And stop your ogling, Starfish, you look like your jaw’s unhinged.”

“Jesus, Clio. We thought you were dead, lost in the
Starhawk
incident.” He glanced over at Dive Sim. “How’d you do? Passed, I guess? You always pass, Clio.”

“Yeah. Passed.” She glanced away from his eyes, and those rueful irises, once brown, now cloudy at the edges like cooked eggs, sunny side up.

“Lucky. You were always lucky, Clio.” He took a deep
breath, licking his lips. “We thought you died with the
Starhawk.”

“Sort of wish I had?”

“Clio! Nothing like that.” He wiped his mouth with the back of a trembling hand. “But what happened?”

“I escaped. Just barely, got pretty chewed up. Lost some weight, and so here I am. How’s tricks at Timeco? You still working?”

“Whole
Starhawk
crew lost, that right?” he continued. “Niang biota on the rampage, whole ship blew? That’s what we heard.” He was noting her shaved head beneath the rim of her cap.

“Head wound,” Clio said.

Starfish nodded. “Tough break. You look good, though, Clio, for somebody who should be dead.”

Clio smiled one of her old big ones. “Why thank you, Starfish.”

“Sorry. Not the thing to say.” Starfish’s rheumy eyes swam in Tandy’s direction again. “Who’s the brass?”

“Colonel Tandy. Talking to me about a job. What about you? You don’t look good, Starfish.”

“No? No, I guess not. Not on active service now, Clio. I hit my limit.”

Hit my limit
. As though it were trout fishing and not spaceflight, Diveflight, life itself to a man like Void. He looked over at Dive Sim again. “Got a great package, though. Complete disability, lifetime Vanda status—as an advisor.”

“I’ll bet.” Keep him on six months or so and then send him Earthside to some admin post. No pressure, no decisions. No fun. “So what’s the news around here?” Clio asked. “Anything new? Besides army on-station?”

“Jesus, Clio, you mean you haven’t heard about the
Galactique?”

“Sure. Who hasn’t?” But no clue.

“Jesus, Clio, the biggest damn ship in the universe, and word is they’re going back to Niang. Biotime’s got the contract.” He nodded glumly. “So guess I know why you’re here.”

Clio shrugged.

He lowered his voice. “There’s crazy stuff on Niang, Clio, real crazy. Heard they lost another crew there. And Jesus, bodies mutilated, and Harper Teeg gone so far out, there aren’t any zip codes. You believe that, Clio? That Teeg could kill off a whole
platoon?”

“He’s crazy, for sure,” she said.

“I knew him. He’s not
that
crazy.”

“So what’s the word on-station?” Clio asked. “Who’s the enemy on Niang?”

A crew member in an Alpha One uniform, blue, with a lavender turtleneck, walked by them, looked over at hearing the word
Niang
.

Starfish nodded at him, quickly looked away. Voice now a whisper. “Tell you, word is the planet’s a death trap. Word is, the Nians will kill anybody in reach.”

“Nians? What Nians? The place is all plants and lower mammals, nothing you’d call
Nians.”

“They’re not human, Clio. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t do the big Dive anymore.”

“Humans can mutilate, can’t they?”

Starfish shook his head. “Not like this. You been really out of it, Clio, if you haven’t heard all this. How bad were you hurt, pretty bad?”

“Let’s just say they had to sew some things back on.”

“Jesus.” Opened his mouth to say something.

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“So what about these Nians? I been out of it, Starfish. So tell me.”

He snorted. “I don’t know shit. You ask questions around here, all you get is rumors. But you can ask around.…” Tandy was coming to retrieve her, and Starfish lowered his voice, moving closer. “Nobody believes this Harper Teeg shit.”

Tandy took her arm.

As Starfish wiped his hands on his togs, the tremor of his fingers calmed for a moment. “Maybe we can get together sometime, shoot the shit.”

“Gonna be pretty busy,” she said.

As Clio and Tandy turned to leave, Starfish said, “Just don’t forget your old friends, Clio.”

I never forget, Starfish. Part of my personal hell. Never forget
.

“Friend of yours?” Tandy asked.

“I guess so. All of a sudden.”

“Helps to know who your friends are,” he said.

As they crossed into C Quadrant, they were bound for the VIP suites. And then they stood in front of a door marked
ELLISON BRISHER, CHIEF OF BIOTIME OPERATIONS
. The door slid aside, and Clio entered the room.

Behind a square and massive mahogany desk sat the man himself. A smile punched its way into the folds of his heavy cheeks. God, Ellison Brisher. Clio hoped to hell he was in a good mood. He didn’t have much reason to be mad. She had scrambled the Niang mission, abandoned two crew members, refused captain’s orders, released contaminated biota shipboard, scuttled a three-hundred-billion-dollar starship, and conspired to destroy Earth’s biological mantle. Still, she hoped he would be civil.

Ellison sat utterly still behind the desk, as though caught in his chair—which, in fact, he filled to overflowing. His eyes followed her without emotion as she walked across the deep carpet in a half dream: dreaming of sinking into a carpet of oblivion, dreaming of being shipboard with mechanical things, predictable things, dreaming of Dive, that ultimate dream.

His eyes flicked over her as she stood before him. He was going to play with her, like a grizzly with a hiker. Ellison wasn’t hungry. He just wanted to play, she reckoned. For now.

He reached for a roll of chocolate fizzes, the only item on the expanse of desk. His wrist turned the candy in her direction. “Fizz?” She shook her head. Ellison peeled back the paper one fizz-length, popped a candy in his mouth. Munched thoughtfully.

Clio’s body had become rigid, standing there, her arms frozen, jaw stuck, throat glued shut. Stop this. Don’t take the silent approach with Brish, he won’t like it, deprives
him of fun. But he hadn’t really begun yet, hadn’t started the fun. This was preamble. Letting the mouse run for the pleasure of catching it again. All her disasters, all her moments of hell shipboard, planetside, stationside, and she had met her monsters head-on. But put Ellison Brisher behind a wide mahogany desk eating chocolate fizzes and smirking over her future, and she half died with panic.

“I must say you don’t look well in that shade of green.” Ellison wrinkled his nose. While still chewing, this had the effect of making him look like a rodent. “My God, Tandy, did you feed the woman? Skin and bones, a hag.”

“She’s eaten.” Tandy took a chair. Clio ignored him for now, got enough to do, sparring with Brish.

Brisher’s tiny eyes looked her up and down in the usual way. Anger stirred, in the old way. “Look Brisher,” she said. “I’m not flying for Biotime. That what I’m here for, ’cause you want me to fly? Go pick yourself somebody else out of your stable, I’m done with that shit. Space Recon is a lie. The future is a lie. There isn’t one. You know that, I know that. End of story.”

Brisher sighed. Looked over at Tandy, then back at her. “That’s a nice speech, Clio. Glad you got that off your chest.” He made as though to shift in his chair, but his bulk wedged further into the seat than a mere bureaucrat’s arms could dislodge. “I’m upset too, you realize,” he said. “Your pranks, et cetera. Biotime is rather upset, not to mention the U.S. government and the United States Global Security Council. But we won’t go into that right now. Except to say, it may be in your best interest not to jump to premature conclusions.” He looked over at Tandy, perhaps for a clue on how to proceed. Tandy a blank, not helping.

Brisher continued. “Take a seat, Clio.” He nodded at the chair opposite Tandy.

She sat slowly, warily, into its cool leather. Got to stay alert, something coming down, no question.

“When the special forces finally located you, they didn’t intend to kill anyone. That happened by accident. They were instructed to bring you, vander Zee, and Captain Russo out alive. Then apply the defoliant.” Brisher licked his teeth,
probing for extra tidbits of chocolate. “They didn’t quite carry off the assignment. They failed to retrieve you, for one thing. You went missing on us for what—three months? Once we did get ahold of you, we debriefed you under heavy serum—you weren’t talking, you see—and you were able to fill in the blanks on what occurred on Niang, and then where you planted the seeds once back here, et cetera.” He braced his fists on the chair arm and heaved himself to a standing position. Reached for the fizzes, popped one. He sat on the edge of the desk, as though he could move no further.

As his mouth still worked on the candy, he continued: “Told a good story, you did.” A longish pause. “Told about the alien ship, in fact. You see, Clio, in all of this, the alien ship is the one piece whose significance you seem to have overlooked. You actually came across an abandoned alien ship in that Niang miasma. Never mentioned it to your superiors. Our first contact with an intelligent alien species. Rather big news. But I suppose you had other things on your mind, staying alive, saving the Earth, whatnot. Anyway, we sent a science team back to Niang to investigate. Eventually they found the ship and looked it over. Heading back to camp they were ambushed and massacred.”

Now Clio started to listen. “Killed by Harper Teeg?”

Brisher ignored her question. “One man made it back to the lander. Before he died, he described an attack with automatic weapons. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to describe where the ship was, exactly. What he
did
describe were the star charts that survived the general decay on board. The charts showed several inaccessible parts of the galaxy. Places Dive can’t get to. That ship likely had the capacity to travel pretty fast. Speed of light, even.”

Clio’s mind was racing. “Dive can go lots of places, anywhere in Earth’s galactic path.”

Brisher shrugged. “Well, the science team thought of that of course. And the message the man delivered is, this ship is faster than light. His opinion, anyway. Said it also had Dive capacity. What I’m saying, Clio, is that we may have found a civilization that’s thousands, maybe millions, of years ahead of ours.”

Clio barely breathed. FTL. The stars, within reach. Released from Dive limitations, the stars. To be part of
that
, by God, even with time-dilation effects, even to leave behind your own generation while they sped through their lives and yours stretched out and out. Never to come back to your own family and friends. But then, some—like her—had nothing to come back to.

“You talk about saving the Earth,” Brisher continued. “Well maybe, with the stars at our disposal, we could do just that. Find cures, find decent DNA, share knowledge with advanced civilizations. Maybe we aren’t doomed, then. Quite a few advantages, you see?” He stood, pivoting back into his chair with a sigh as he settled into the seat. “This may be a good moment for Colonel Tandy to pick up the story.”

Tandy leaned forward. “We sent in a small armed force to take out the mutineers still hiding in the jungle and secure the alien ship. In the jungle, a whole platoon was picked off one by one. The bodies were found piled together and there was no sign of the ship. The remainder of the force gathered their dead and abandoned the mission.”

He fixed Clio with an intense brown gaze. “A few of these soldiers weren’t killed by gunfire. Two were killed by extreme trauma to the heart and cardiac arrest.” He leaned forward, taking a folder from the desk. Opened it, produced photos. “These were the men.” He handed Clio the photos.