America 2040 - Golden World Part 15

"Yes," Rodrick said. "And Miss Burr, from the library." He had found that Evangeline Burr was an exceptional woman. In an era of specialization, Evangeline possessed more interdisciplinary knowledge than any person he'd ever known. And if she didn't have the facts in her mind, she could find them quickly. He'd made a note to himself to start utilizing Evangeline as a bridge between the various scientific fields; there'd been instances back on Earth when a discovery that seemed insignificant in one field would have opened entirely new avenues of speculation and progress in another field if people had but known about it.

He showered quickly. He tried to concentrate on the possible meanings of the miner's actions, but his mind kept going back to the meeting he'd been asked to attend the previous night. He had a few extra minutes after he was dressed while the enlisted men were preparing for a captain's breakfast, so he unhooked what looked like a b.u.t.ton from his uniform and put it into his projector. It was actually a little recording device he'd been given by Presidential Adviser Oscar Kost.

"Captain Rodrick," Clive Baxter said smoothly on the screen, "thank you for coming. We won't keep you long."

First Officer Rocky Miller was not shown on the screen at that time, but he was in Rodrick's mind. He'd been sitting away from the conference table. "I'm just an observer, Captain," he'd told Rodrick.

"This Committee of Concerned Citizens has been formed, Captain," Baxter explained, "to consider problems that, because you are a busy man, might have escaped your attention."

"Please continue." Rodrick's own voice came from the speakers.

"You've seen these," Baxter said, indicating an a.s.sortment of semitropical and tropical fruit arranged artistically in a basket at his elbow. "And I'm sure you have sampled them and found them to be quite delicious."

Rodrick had merely nodded.

"To the south of us there is a paradise of plenty," Baxter said. "In my talks with Dr. Kwait-whose ability and knowledge I greatly admire-he has expressed concern with the selection of this particular site of settlement."

Rodrick was startled but showed no reaction. To his knowledge, the only concern Kwait had expressed would be of equal concern anywhere, and that was the lack of vital trace elements in Omega's soil.

"While it is rather beautiful here, in a stark, barren way," Baxter continued, "there are those of us who feel that it would have been to our advantage to build the first settlement in that semitropic zone to the south, where the rains are year round, and there is edible, native fruit in plenty." "Dr. Baxter," Rodrick said with elaborate patience, "the characteristics of a desirable settlement site were the subject of thousands of hours of consideration by the planners back on Earth. My selection of Stanton Bay fits their top recommendation almost exactly. If you'd care to become more familiar with the rationale behind the choosing of an area such as Eden, the reports of the Earth planners have been decla.s.sified and are available in the library." He thought that would end the discussion.

"If I may speak?" said a stern-faced woman whose field was geothermal energy. "We have all studied those reports, Captain. There's just one thing wrong with them. None of the planners have ever been off Earth, and they have not seen Omega's beautiful and fruitful areas farther to the south. We feel that we are within our rights to consider the possibility of, one, establis.h.i.+ng a satellite colony-"

"Hold it right there," Rodrick interrupted. "You're within your rights totalk about anything. But under no circ.u.mstances will this colony be divided."

"As I was going to say," the stern-faced woman went on, "either establis.h.i.+ng a satellite colony or an outpost to gather and s.h.i.+p to us the delicious foodstuffs of the south or, two, moving the entire colony to that more favorable climate."

"We can begin to make use of the resources of the entire planet when we've got this planet surveyed and mapped," Rodrick said, "and when we're producing our own hydrogen fuel."

"Yes," Baxter agreed. "But there's this, too. Captain- and please don't for a moment think that this is criticism of the excellent job you've done. However, as you well know, our const.i.tution calls for free elections. "

"At a time when the colony is secure," Rodrick said. "I don't think I have to remind you, Dr. Baxter, that it hasn't been two weeks since we lost a member of our group."

"That was a simple accident," an astronomer cut in. Rodrick, try as he might, couldn't remember the man's name. "It could just as easily have happened on Earth, with one difference, the animal being a lion, or a grizzly bear."

"That's one way to look at it," Rodrick said, wondering howthat had slid past psychological testing.

"Gentlemen and ladies, let me a.s.sure you that I have no desire to bear the responsibility of command for one minute longer than necessary. More and more I'm leaving decisions in the hands of the various committees. You yourselves sit on many of the more important ones. I'll be the first to ask for, insist on, free elections when the time comes."

"And that time will be long after Hamilton is too well established to be moved," Baxter complained.

"Captain, the chief purpose of our asking you here tonight is to give you this pet.i.tion, which is signed by some few hundred of us. In short, this pet.i.tion asks that, one, a concentrated study be made of possible town sites in the semitropical south; two, if such an investigation proves, as it surely will, that the southern areas are more habitable and fruitful, then you will call a special referendum and give the colony a chance to vote on the possibility of moving our settlement south before it is too late."

Rodrick took the sheaf of papers from Baxter. He knew that pet.i.tions didn't really mean much.

Americans were open-minded people, in general, and usually considerate of the other person's feelings.

He himself had signed pet.i.tions for actions in which he did not fully believe, just to be kind to those who were circulating them. He didn't think for one minute that the solid-minded citizens of Hamilton would vote to uproot and make a difficult, lengthy move. "I'll read it," he said. "And I will take the matter under consideration." He turned to look at Miller. "Is your name on the pet.i.tion, Commander?"

"No, sir," Rocky said. "As an officer in the s.p.a.ce Service, I feel that I should not become involved in political matters. Again, I am only here as an observer."

But now, Rodrick heard others arriving in his dining room for breakfast, so he flipped off the projector and replaced the b.u.t.ton on his uniform. Neither the small number of people present at the meeting of the so-called concerned citizens nor the pet.i.tion, which was, indeed, signed by over three hundred people, concerned Rodrick. It did trouble him that his first officer was present at the meeting. Miller was always strictly correct, very, very service in his demeanor in the presence of the captain, but Rodrick thought he'd noticed a change in the man during the last year ofSpirit 's outward voyage. Rodrick had never been a man to encourage familiarity with his junior officers-it just wasn't good policy-but he thought he had begun to build up a good, working relations.h.i.+p with Rocky Miller. Could Rocky have guessed how he felt about Mandy? He heard voices from the dining room, rose, entered, and was greeted by those gathered there. The table steamed with fresh Omega rye bread, hot, fibrous cereals, a platter of soy-based bacon and eggs, and coffee. He greeted each guest by name, sat down, and asked Grace to say a morning blessing.

Good smells, good tastes, and good companions.h.i.+p combined to drive the unpleasantness of the previous evening from his mind. "Amando," he said as he took his first sip of coffee. "Have you had a chance to locate a site for our first coffee plantation?"

"The subtropical foothills to the south seem ideal," Amando replied. "I'm germinating seeds on board s.h.i.+p." "Good, " Rodrick said. "If someone asked me the one essential ingredient of civilization, I think I'd have to say hot coffee in the morning. "

"Captain," Paul Warden said, "you haven't had a chance to take a look at this." The fan of gold, which had been removed intact from matrix rock, had been placed carefully in a gla.s.s-topped, velvet-lined box.

"Very nice," Rodrick commented. "It looks almost designed."

"We're going to find metals," Stoner McRae said happily. "We might have to dig deep, but we'll find them."

"That's what I want to hear," Rodrick said, his thoughts flas.h.i.+ng back to Earth. The question was never far from his mind. Had Earth been destroyed by nuclear war? Were there people alive on it? He had taken very few people into his confidence by telling them about the imminence of nuclear disaster: Mandy and Rocky Miller, Jackie Garvey, Emi and Ito Zuki, and Evangeline Burr. He wondered if he should expand that list. Then he reminded himself that if word got out that all the bombs in the s.p.a.ce stations, submarines, underground silos, aircraft, and low-flying missiles had been used, that Earth was nothing more than a cinder, there'd be no real incentive in the colony to produce the rocket fuel and rhenium necessary to send theSpirit of America back. They were Earth s lifeline, and Rodrick wasn't about to forget it.

He asked Paul Warden to tell him all about the events of the night. When Paul was finished, Rodrick said, "All right, let's think and talk about the miners. What do we already know, and what can we project as being true?"

"I think it's obvious," Grace began, "that they are very intelligent." "Intelligent enough to know we have ears on them," Warden said.

"We're sending impulses into the ground," Max Rosen said, skeptical. "They probably feel them in some way."

"And then figure out what they are?" Warden asked.

"Dr. Wilson," Rodrick said, "you're the animal behavior expert."

James Wilson was thin, fit, and half-bald. His wife, Lola, thought that he was G.o.d's gift to the universe, but his teenage daughter, Mickey, wasn't quite sure. James was one of the foremost proponents of starting to grow dog embryos. He loved all animals, dogs especially, and he often made a point of going out of his way just to play with Clay Girard's Jumper.

"I'm impressed," he said. "First they exhibit extreme territoriality, defending their tunnels fiercely against the crawlers, and then, quite suddenly, they disappear. My guess is that there is some kind of communication among them, perhaps on the level of, say, Earth crows, which use scouts and rather elementary communication to spread the warning of danger. "

"Let's a.s.sume for a moment that they have a high degree of intelligence," Mandy Miller said. "The brain is quite large. We can take it for granted that there is communication among them. They seem to have a highly regulated... well, call it society. It's amazing enough that they carry their waste such great distances to discharge it in those neat, straight mounds that Dr. Kwait found. And they chose a depression, as if they were being careful about spoiling the landscape."

"What puzzles me most," Amando Kwait said, "is why only one mound showed fresh earth."

"I've been thinking about the fact that the digging began just after the death of Lynn Roberts," Rosen said. "What connection do the two events have?"

"When drilling in stone," Evangeline Burr said, her voice low at first, then gaining confidence, "the metal drill bits have to be cooled with a fluid, usually water."

"You're suggesting, Miss Burr," Rosen asked, "that the miner was using Miss Roberts's body fat"-Max was not a man to mince words-"as a coolant or a lubricant?"

"I was just thinking out loud," Evangeline replied, rather shyly, bringing an encouraging grin from Paul Warden, who was seated across the table from her.

"Good thinking, " Stoner said. "We have only one recorded incident of a miner digging. That came when he had, uh, body fat available. We know that the local wildlife avoids the traps. We know that there's been no activity for a long time in the dumping grounds. Maybe the things can only dig when they have a supply of, uh, lubricant for their drill bits. That would explain a lot of things."

"We could test it out by feeding one a silver-horned antelope," Warden said.

"Let's not kill one of those beautiful animals," Grace objected, committed.

"Maybe we wouldn't have to use a live animal," James Wilson suggested. "What would you suggest?" Rodrick asked.

"Our own cooking synthetic," Wilson said.

"Or petroleum products," Stoner added. "We could supply them with plenty of our cooking oil, since we've got crude now for synthesizing."

"They'd want it thicker than cooking oil," Grace remarked. "The fat was the consistency of cool b.u.t.ter."

"No problem," Evangeline said.

"Okay," Rodrick said. "Paul, why don't you have the labs run off a supply of a synthetic animal fat, and then you can go out and see if that interests our underground friends."

"I think he should put a basin of it beside the hole at his camp," Evangeline said, then blushed. When Rodrick looked at her, she explained, "A gift in exchange for a gift."

Warden's camp was enlarged that evening. All those who had attended the captain's breakfast were there, along with selected others. The supply of hot dogs was ample, but Paul had to take a crawler and gather firewood at a distance. He was pleased when Evangeline offered to go with him. She sat next to him demurely, in silence, as he drove away from the camp toward the river, where the trees were thicker.

Finally she said, "You must be very proud to have been the one to make this odd discovery about the miners."

"Well, I was just there, doing my job," Warden said, giving her his half grin.

"I would never have been brave enough to stay there all alone," she said, with a s.h.i.+ver.

Paul laughed. "That's not your job."

"No," she agreed.

"You like your work?"

"Very much."

"Once when I was young I decided I wanted to be a scholar," Paul said. "I quickly decided that it required too much time indoors. I've been a dummy ever since."

"You're not a dummy," she said, so quickly and so heatedly that he looked at her without his usual grin.

"Well," Paul said, recovering, "what I mean is, I have my degrees, sure, and I'm a halfway good electrical engineer, but when it comes to theory, like, say, field theory, I'm in deep water. "

"Field theory?"

"Electrical. Gravitational, the whole mess."

"There are two very good books on the subject. If you'll drop by the library, I'll get them out for you.

Does field theory intrigue you?" "Yeah, well, you see, there's this woman. She's a whiz at it, spends all her time working, studying, experimenting."

The charm of the night suddenly disappeared for Evangeline. "Oh, you mean Sage Bryson, don't you?"

she asked.

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"She spends a lot of time in the library. We've talked. She's the only one I know who is working seriously on field theory. Actually-" She paused, for what she was about to say could be considered to be critical. She gave a mental shrug and continued. "-at least in my opinion, Miss Bryson is working in a very unrewarding field... until there is a new breakthrough. What I mean is, with our present knowledge, field theory has been taken about as far as it will go."

"Yeah, well," Warden said.

She's not the woman for you, Evangeline wanted to say. But she was silent. The crawler entered a grove of trees, and it was the work of only a few minutes to gather enough deadwood to light up half of Eden.

When they were back at the camp, Evangeline separated herself from Paul and joined Max, Grace, Mandy, and Duncan Rodrick in front of a cozily burning fire. She tossed in some of the wood she'd gathered and only half listened to their conversation. Why, she wondered, had she been so upset when Paul had said he was interested in field theory because Sage Bryson was? He was nothing to her.

But he had such a gentleness about him, the aura of steel and velvet, and such an odd, endearing little grin.

She was still musing when Paul came and sat down beside her and asked if she had eaten. He roasted hot dogs for both of them, and she began to join in the conversation. It was then that she remembered something Sage Bryson had said. They'd been chatting idly about people, and Sage had narrowed it down to men in particular and had expressed an almost vengeful distaste for men. Evangeline remembered Sage's exact words: "They are always after me," she had said.

Remembering it now, Evangeline smiled. That was a problem she'd never had. Men were never after her.

But why? something inside her seemed to ask. Then the answer came.Because you purposely hide when you can and make yourself unattractive when you can't. You starve yourself keep your legs looking like matchsticks, your b.r.e.a.s.t.s tiny. What are you hiding from, Evangeline?

Perhaps, she thought later, when she was in her own bed, it had been the night air, the feeling of antic.i.p.ation from waiting for the miner, the flickering campfires, and drinking the s.h.i.+p's gin, which had been made into delicious fruit drinks with a bombing power.

Whatever it was, she had decided there at the camp-fire with Paul Warden sitting beside her grinning at her to stop hiding. Of course Sage Bryson wasn't the woman for Paul. She was. She, Evangeline Burr, was the woman for Paul Warden, and she'd have to find some way to let him know it.

For Evangeline, that decision was the highlight of that night, and would always be, even though an event of great importance to all followed her interior dialogue and decision.

Grace Monroe insisted on staying at the campsite all night. There was nothing for Max to do but grind his teeth and stay with her. They had not gotten around to filling out the marriage papers that day.

It was Grace who first saw the miner. A flat metal pan full of synthetic animal fat had been placed atop the drying dirt at the entrance to the burrow. She heard the miner coming on Warden's monitor. The two men were sleeping peacefully, and she decided not to wake them until the miner was closer. And then, when it began to creep upward, a movement at a time, she was too excited to waken them.

She saw the dead-white head, and then a length of neck extended slowly, carefully. The great mouth opened, and something was deposited beside the metal pan. She didn't realize until later that she had not smelled the stench of rotting flesh. She watched in fascination as the miner sucked up the fat and backed slowly into the tunnel. Then she woke the men and Warden turned on the lights. This time there was an a.s.sortment of metallic ores. Stoner later identified the ores as containing iron, silver, lead, and, most importantly, sulfidic copper. Stoner raced to the lab with the ore samples and the first tests were run on the copper ore. He whooped with joy, reached for the communicator, and called for Rodrick.

"We're going home, Captain!" he shouted.

Rodrick raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening, Stoner," he said. He was on the bridge with Ito Zuki.

"We've got our first batch of rhenium aboard," Stoner said. "It's not much, but it's there."

"In the ore from the miner?" Rodrick asked.

"The copper. Just like on Earth. Sulfidic copper is not the best source, but it is a source. And now that we know there's rhenium here, we can start looking for the molybdenum sulfide ores, where we can expect to find it in greater quant.i.ties."

"Thanks, Stoner," Rodrick said, "that is very good news."

Stoner thought the skipper was being very blase about it. He didn't learn until later that Rodrick had just been on the communicator with Allen Jones, the underwater architect. Allen had been doing some test diving at the mouth of Stanton Bay, using an amphibious crawler as his surface vessel.

"We can't tell yet whether it's a boat or not," Allen had said. "It's in bad shape, but it looks like a boat to me. One thing for sure, Captain, it's made by human hands." Then realizing that he might have used the wrong description, since humans in the form of the people from Earth had certainly not made the artifact he'd discovered in the sands of the floor of the bay, Jones added, "Or whatever." It was that "whatever"

that Rodrick had on his mind when he heard Stoner's good news about the rhenium. That, and the question of how the miners knew that the colonists would want metals as a peace offering... and how the silver-horned antelopes knew not to be afraid and how the predatory p.u.s.s.ycats encouraged the humans to scratch their bellies. He had talked it over with Mandy, Grace, and James Wilson, who all agreed that the answer lay with the mysterious inhabitants of the dead city. It was they, the scientists had agreed, who had taught the miners, antelopes, and p.u.s.s.ycats what people-or "whatever"- liked or needed, and how they would act. They probably had taken metals from the miners, hadn't eaten the antelopes, and had scratched the p.u.s.s.ycats' bellies. Now, it seemed, they had also built boats.

FOURTEEN.