Tropic of Creation (16 page)

He grinned at her as she backed away from him. “Makes you wonder, don’t it?” he repeated.

She broke eye contact, sidling away from him. He was crazy. It couldn’t be true that nineteen enlisteds had died last night. Nineteen lives gone, gone as
food
, he had said. It was worse than murder, worse than war.…

Flanking the largest knot of the crowd, she finally worked her way forward to see medics tending to the bodies. They hoisted a woman onto a canvas stretcher, her face as pale as her blond hair. No wounds or blood, but as Sascha surveyed the area near the tent, she saw a gout of blood lying under a small animal body. Her father was bent over this carcass.

Sascha could only stare at the very large pool of blood, the casual food of the rodents, or whatever these creatures were. About the size of a rat, the creature was smooth-skinned and bore splotches of dark color, rather like CW camouflage fatigues. From its snout protruded four saber teeth, two pointing up, two pointing down, that could well be the device that had locked on to the soldiers, perhaps delivering a quick poison before feasting at leisure. Long hind legs with muscular hip joints suggested the creature jumped onto its prey. It was plump, but growing less so the longer it bled onto the ground.

Her father approached her, putting his arm around her
shoulders. In the milling crowd of soldiers they formed a pocket of stillness. After a moment she asked, “Father … why didn’t anybody know?”

“They never called out. No one heard a thing. The animals gnawed through the tent walls, probably driven by scent. When they got in they must have paralyzed the occupants all at once.”

“Did they suffer?”

Geoff Olander started to say something, seemed to think better of it, and gazed over her head at the Gray Spiny Forest. At last he looked at her and said, “Sascha. You should realize what we face. You’re almost grown now.” He looked at her with dismay, as though he wished she were not almost grown, that he didn’t have to speak to her as an adult. She thought again how her body was betraying her, to cause her father such a bitter moment.

“The
Lucia
isn’t coming in.”

“But Captain Marzano …”

He shook his head. “She didn’t make it to the ship. If she had, she’d have been here by now.” His voice was gentle, his eyes more so as he said, “I’m afraid for this camp, Sascha. It pains me to tell you … the danger is very serious.” He glanced toward the tents. “No need to upset your mother about this.”

“What will we do, then?” He always had an answer for a question like that.

But this time he only said, “I want you to be watchful, Sascha, and to stay close by. Promise me you won’t take chances. This isn’t a game anymore. You see?” His eyes searched hers as though plumbing her thoughts, as though he was afraid she
did
see.

“Yes … I promise.”

He gazed into the distance, in the direction of the
Lucia
.

A shuffling noise interrupted them, and they turned to see an enlisted, helped along by two others.

“The survivor,” her father said under his breath.

The man walked in a kind of slow motion, his eyes serene with tranks. On spying Sascha, he stopped abruptly. “Kids?” he muttered to one of the medics. “We got kids?” He started to smile, then broke into a ruined laugh, saying, “Oh, no, Christ almighty, whose idea
was
this?” He looked directly into Sascha’s eyes as the others tried pulling him away. “Whose fucking idea was this worthless bloody mess?” As they hauled him past Lieutenant Roche, he shouted, practically in his face, “This your big stupid idea, you raging asshole?
Was
it?” Roche looked as though he was ashamed of himself, as though it had been all a terrible blunder on his part. He winced as the soldier started wailing, “Oh, no, no …”

“Get him out of here,” Roche told the medics. “And shut him the hell up.” Roche turned, resuming his talk with Lieutenant Anning, the bot specialist. Anning was halfway through morphing one of their two bots into a squat machine on rollers. The verbal codes sounded like a language where she knew only every other word. The bot housing shifted in a liquid-looking wave, a mutable housing for the platforms of nano beneath. Flat black, the machine looked like the finest metal matrix, silky in texture, catching a shimmer now and then as the plates exposed the working nano beneath.

Roche caught Geoff Olander’s eye. Sascha should not be so close to the military-grade nano.

As her father escorted her back to the tent, Sascha could hear a fizzing in the distance, as the bots got to work, defoliating an area just outside the west camp perimeter, improving the landing site.

She said good-bye to her father outside the tent. Together, they watched Sergeant Ben Juric leaving with the remaining bot, heading into the forest on the east side of camp.

Under his breath, her father said, “Damn him.”

“He can’t kill the whole forest,” Sascha said.

Geoff Olander snorted. “He can try.”

“He’s trying to protect us, though.”

He sighed. “We’re getting out of here, Sascha. Do we have to leave a wasteland behind us?” He smiled, shaking his head. “Never mind. Go keep your mother company. Lace up the tent flap behind you.”

Cristin delivered no lecture, no cross looks. They waited together throughout the morning as the tent approached broiling temperatures. Each lay on her cot, drinking sparingly from their now-rationed water. Catching rainwater was inefficient, but no one wanted to venture close enough to tap the trees. As Sascha lay there, she listened for any hails from the camp that might signify that Nazim and Baker Camp had made it in.
On a nice day it would take an hour and a half.…

Gradually, as the sweltering day wore on, they each came to understand that they would be spending another night on Null.

Late in the afternoon, the rains began again, keeping up a steady barrage into the evening.

When the sounds of muffled explosions came from the forest, Sascha heard her mother at the tent flap asking the guards what it was. “The bots …” she heard. And then: “…  pushing back the edge of the Sticks.” They always called it the Sticks. No matter what it was becoming, they stuck to the version they liked better. Sascha slept fitfully, now and then aware of forest-muffled detonations amidst the rain, and the sickly odors of chemicals burning.

T
hrough a haze of nausea, Eli noted that the communal elimination chamber was blessedly empty. Having accompanied him this far, Maret withdrew with the guards to the far side, facing away. She had learned his fastidiousness, though she thought it strange.

Here the hab was swollen in places, creating thick vertical cords that plunged into the pits below the toilets, feeding on wastes, no doubt.

He cleaned up with the air brush and then managed the walk back, with Maret speaking in low, guttural whispers to the guard, her expression betraying flickers of what he took for anger.

When he was settled back in his cell, she gave him a sack of water. He sipped through the straw, his eyes closed.

“You are sick,” she began. “I am very deeply sorry. The food makes you sick.”

Sick
. No, that wasn’t it. He was dying. He hoped.

When he had made his decision, he thought it might be born of lack of sleep and despair. But when he woke, he hadn’t changed his mind. It was the last thing he had to
gamble: his life. He reasoned that if the ahtra wanted him alive, he might have a bargaining chip. The fact that he expected to die, and did not any longer greatly care, gave him power for the first time since he entered the hexadron and burrowed down.

Fingering the mushrooms in his pocket, he assured himself that his wafers were still there. These were the common blue fungi that made him violently ill and that he’d been conserving.

Maret was talking again, in her low, calm voice. “I wish to take charge of your feeding from now on. I was not summoned when you first became sick. Now I tend not to trust what is happening.”

“Join the crowd.”

Her smile showed her pleasure at knowing the idiom. An ahtra smile was not a response to humor, Eli had learned, but a sign of enjoyment.

Then she became serious again. “Among my people,” she said, “we say we have two sadnesses, held in the two chambers of the mind. I have both sadnesses now.”

He sat staring at her, his arms resting on his bent knees. “Why? Why be sorry?”

“Because I tend to believe you are being poisoned, regrettably, and against all orders for your safety. I have called for a chemipractor.”

“Don’t bother, Maret.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a few of the mushrooms. “I’m leaving.”

Maret’s large eyes fixed on the blue fragments in his hands.

He took one and placed it in his mouth, chewing slowly, letting the oily and bitter liquid drip down his throat.

“I will take these from you, Eli Dammond.”

“I’ll get more. They grow everywhere.” They had to take him along the corridor to the communal toilets. They seemed oblivious to the concept of individual latrines.

He popped another fungus in his mouth. His mouth flooded with saliva. Swallowing, he gagged, but kept them down.

“Do not do this,” Maret ordered.

“Like I said, I’m leaving.”

“You do not wish to live?”

“No.”

“Ahtra do not kill themselves,” she said, pedantically.

“Humans do,” he said, eating another.

Suddenly, she thrust out her hand, leaning forward and touching his wrist. “Why?”

He shrugged. “To express outrage. To die without doing further harm to my people.”

“You do not harm your people.”

“It’s a human concept. Guilt by inaction.” She must be certain of his resolve. She must understand it.

“Nefer forbids this act,” Maret said in growing agitation.

He snorted in a half laugh. “To hell with Nefer.”

Maret’s hand dropped into her lap. She remained silent. Then she spoke very low: “What do you want that will make you stop this?”

He reached for the water tube, and sipped, trying to keep the poison down.

“What will be persuasive?” she pressed on.

A wave of nausea left him sagging limply against the spongy wall. He whispered, “You’re going Up to the surface.”

She leaned closer to hear him. “How do you know this?”

“Word gets around. When you do—go Up—I want you to help my people, my camp. Whatever it takes, I want you to promise to help them. Whoever’s left.”

She remained still as stone. In turn, he remained locked in place, ready to make a meal of the buttons, or cast them down.

The room grew cooler, along with his thoughts. He had a new peace, now that he could finally act. “I don’t accept that they are all dead. I don’t accept it.” He chewed another mushroom.

As he did so, she whispered, “They may yet live.”

He had forced her to say it. But still—it was all the hope he had.

She went on, “But they are like babies set into a raging river. Without great courage—of the sort they cannot have—they will tend to die swiftly. But in truth, we cannot know.”

“Why? Why will they die? They’re seasoned troops.”

“Because they are not accustomed to Up World. It will have terrors, for which they are unprepared without guides to teach them. We undergo deep training, encountering our weaknesses many times. Then, Up World, we are prepared.”

“Maybe surface worlds have more terrors for you than for us.”

“Perhaps. But we are hardened against mercy that might make us soft.”

He looked at the mushrooms in his hand. They had tiny spots on the outer edges. Toward the center, they deepened in color. The detail of each cap impressed on his sight with preternatural vividness. The caps rested in his hand amid the lines of his palm as though in some meaningful alignment to his life. “Well?” he asked. “Will you help them? When you go Up?”

Her voice was a shadow. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes. Now that he had extracted her promise, he wondered if it was enough. If he had sold his death too cheaply.

“Eli,” Maret said from what seemed very far away.

He rested his head against the wall. His body was loose, floating, but his mind was firmly anchored in each passing moment.

“May I have the food?” Maret asked.

Eli slowly raised his arm, allowing a spattering of mushrooms to pass from his hand to hers. He gazed at her with a detached interest, noting the patterns on her smooth skull as she bent over the mushrooms.

“What can I do for your comfort, Eli?”

He could barely hear his own voice. “Get rid of the smell.” The perfumes in the room added to his nausea.

Maret went to the data plug by the door, then returned to sit cross-legged in front of him once more. The air freshened. He breathed it in like nourishment.

Maret spoke very softly. “I never knew—an individual—to kill themselves for the sake of another.”

He cocked his head. “Isn’t that what war is?”

“Yes. But this was different.” The tone of her voice was hushed, as though she knew how sensitive his hearing was at this moment just after death had passed him by.

“One learns very much from you, Eli.”