She spent the rest of the day mentally preparing herself for a visit to the quartermaster. By the time she left the lab she was ready, and detoured to the supply room where Ken was closing up. He was already dressed for the evening’s occasion in creased pants, a collared shirt, and a purple waistcoat.
“You’ve left it a bit late,” he said. “You want a frock for the party tonight, am I right?”
“Uh, just something simple. I have no idea about this stuff.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
He looked so eager, she half expected him to rub his hands together with glee. He scrutinized her for a full minute, circling her slowly, then yanked open a closet, pulled out a few clothing items, and dropped them on the low shelving unit
in the center of the room. Sorting through them quickly, he selected two and handed them to Edie.
“These will fit.”
Apprehensive, she picked them up. The dresses were made out of smooth sheer fabric, one dusky pink and the other dark shimmery blue. Did people really wear these things?
Misinterpreting her look, Ken said, “Go on, they’ll fit. I’m never wrong. Which one?”
“I can’t wear these.” She put them down.
“Nonsense.” Ken selected the pink dress. “You’ll look pretty as a rose in this.”
“
No one
will ever get me to wear pink.”
He raised a thick brow at her and relented, replacing the dress. He held up the blue dress against her. It was a little shorter than she’d have liked, reaching halfway down her thigh, but the color was more subdued and the neckline not quite as outrageous.
“Perfect. Now—shoes?” Ken waved at the footwear selection lined up at the bottom of the closet.
“Forget it. I mean, thanks for your help, but who wears pumps on a starship?”
“Stick to the center strip in the corridors so you don’t catch a heel in the gravplating. Here we go.”
He found a silvery-gray pair. Reluctantly, Edie pulled off her right boot and stuck her foot into the stupid thing. It was too big.
“Hmm. I’ve got more that might be your size.” Ken found a pair of black strappy sandals with ridiculously high heels.
Edie had had enough. “Sorry, I’m not wearing those. Just…no way.” She glanced at the dress, trying to imagine herself in it, and failing. “Let’s forget the whole thing. Just find me a tee with glitter on it, something like that.”
She put her boot back on while Ken watched. “You’re not leaving my shop without a nice frock. Take the blue one. I’ll rent it to you for half price.”
He was very persuasive. She did manage to resist his
imploring when it came to the shoes and matching accessories, but handed over creds for the dress and got out of there as fast as she could.
“These storms are giving our base camp a real battering,” Caleb reported that evening. He’d made a direct call to her quarters while she was getting ready for the evening’s function. Natesa had told her to be there in ten minutes for something called cocktails. “Finally got Natesa to agree to postpone the VIP tour until the weather improves.”
“As if sunshine and rainbows are going to make Prisca look any better.”
“If you think Prisca is unsalvageable,” he said, sulking now, “just say so.”
“I think Prisca is unsalvageable. More precisely, I don’t think it was ever viable.” She sounded more phlegmatic about it than she felt. Her years of working with alien ecologies had given her an appreciation for the creativity and beauty of nature. Three billion years or more of unique evolution were about to be destroyed on Prisca. Not just altered and redirected, but wiped out—turned into organic sludge. “Look, I really have to go,” she told him.
She signed off, took a quick shower, and yanked a comb through her damp hair—then stepped into the dress. She had to move slowly to avoid ripping the fabric, so flimsy and soft, with a sheen highlighting the neckline and bodice. The back was cut rather low, and the halter-style top exposed her shoulders and framed the inlaid shell between her collarbones. All in all, she did not feel like herself. In the mirror, she didn’t look like herself, either. But she did look pretty good. Her reflection gave her a boost of self-confidence.
She started wishing for the sandals Ken had shown her. But those heels…there was no point tottering around feeling insecure all evening. In any case, it was too late now. She freshened up her work boots and pulled them on. Who looked at a person’s feet, anyway, when there was cleavage up top?
Outside her room, a couple of admin staff headed to the lift in front of her. Edie stepped into the car with them. The man wore a smart sport jacket, the woman a scarlet-and-gold dress that was much fancier than Edie’s. She’d taken some time with her hair and makeup, too. Edie tucked stray stands of hair behind her ear, feeling mousy by comparison. Then the man gave her an appreciative look, which helped.
The admin suite, cleared of office furniture, was set up with lounge chairs and trestle tables laden with finger food. Bland music wafted through the air. In one corner, a few meckies had assembled around the drinks table. They wore colorful scarves and bracelets, and chinked glasses with exaggerated mock manners. Finn was nowhere to be seen. Edie had never found a reason to wear a dress before and now she had one—but couldn’t find him. Winnie gave a tipsy shrug and claimed not to know where Finn was.
Edie already wanted to leave. She hated crowds and speeches—especially Crib ’crats giving speeches, and there were bound to be plenty of those coming up.
The VIPs were easy to spot among the milits and the regular crew because their attention was focused on the children, who sat in a small circle in the center of the room. A globe of dancing lights surrounded them—a glamorous demo, not a meaningful example of their Project Ardra work. But it served its purpose, which was to impress the guests. The children’s stifled yawns, indicating it was past their bedtime, were perhaps not quite so impressive.
She noticed Pris among the children—she hadn’t realized the girl was well enough to attend. Edie could tell which of the four patterns in the holo was hers. It wasn’t quite in sync at times, causing the other children to throw her irritated looks. Not enough for the audience to notice, but it was clear Pris was having trouble with her interface.
Natesa stood nearby, wearing an emerald-green sheath with a slit up the side. She nodded in bored acknowledgment to the elaborately dressed man chatting in her ear. From his uniform, Edie realized he was the captain of the
Fortitude
, the ship that had ferried the VIPs to the
Learo Dochais
. Natesa kept her eyes on Pris. Her hard expression told Edie exactly what she thought of Pris’s performance, and Edie knew the woman well enough to know what was going through her head—she may not blame the child for her mistakes, but she was sorely disappointed. And Pris would suffer under that disappointment. She would be made to feel it was her fault, however subtly, because she’d been brought up to believe that her value as a human being lay solely in her ability to perform as a cypherteck.
Pris already knew that. She looked devastated, and Edie’s heart went out to her. How could she abandon these children to such a life? She alone was uniquely able to empathize with them, and she was going to walk away.
Through the tumbling lights of the holo, she noticed Finn at last, watching her from the other side of the circle. He wore his regular work clothes—no party dress-up for him. She was grateful he could no longer sense her emotional state because at that moment she could barely breathe. Anger and guilt congealed into a solid lump in her chest. She turned away from the children and pushed blindly through the crowd. She needed to get out.
She was going the wrong way. Whirling around, she headed for the exit. Someone brushed her arm as if to slow her down, and she pulled away sharply before realizing it was Finn—he’d moved to follow her. The concern etched on his face did nothing to alleviate the heaviness dragging at her heart.
Natesa was suddenly at her side. With her was an older man in a black tux and an absurd silver bow tie. Natesa wrapped her bony figures around Edie’s upper arm, firmly enough to force her attention away from Finn.
“Edie, this is Administrator O’Mara. He’s interested in your work with the children.” Natesa gave a charming smile as if she and Edie were best friends. Then she moved off with a meaningful look that Edie interpreted as a warning to start parroting random boasts about CCU’s wonderful protégées.
“Lovely to meet you, Ms Sha’nim. Call me Eric.” O’Mara’s grandfatherly manner put Edie somewhat at ease as he corralled her toward the drinks table. Edie looked around for Finn, but he’d faded into the background noise and motion of the party. “What’ll you have?”
She looked at the colorful assortment of bottles arranged on the table and swallowed, confused. O’Mara smiled, further eroding his image of a fearsome senior ’crat.
“Try this.”
He mixed a clear liquid from one bottle with fizzy water from another, and added a squirt of amethyst syrup. He dropped in a couple of frozen glowing spheres and handed her the glass. Edie took a sip. The bubbles stung her tongue with a vaguely fruity taste and then the alcohol burned her throat. She nodded with a smile and took another sip to please the attentive old man.
“What do you want to know?” she asked. May as well get this over with. Then she would leave this wretched party.
“You probably don’t know this,” O’Mara said, “but I was a biologist for Crib Central, stationed on Talas for several years while you were at Crai Institute. I oversaw the resettlement camps and unofficially advocated for the Talasi during that difficult period.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Edie wondered why he was telling her. She’d had no involvement with the Talasi since Natesa removed her from the camps as a child.
“Tragic situation.” O’Mara stared into his drink. “Still, I understand things are looking up. Detoxification of the forests is proceeding well, and several tribes have moved back to their ancestral zones.”
The alcohol in her stomach emboldened her. “Perhaps you can tell me how Natesa managed to convince the elders to take custody of dozens of Talasi children, to be raised by the Crib.”
“I’m sorry, that was after my time. I’m also a former cypherteck with great admiration for your talents. When I retired, I was so very proud of my thirty-five percent success
rate with terraforming. Then you came on the scene and I realized my self-assessment had been somewhat generous.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I’ve followed your career with some interest. I’ve always wanted to meet you. When Colonel Theron contacted me on his way back to Scarabaeus and asked me to join this little tour, I jumped at the chance.”
So this was one of Theron’s “spies,” as Caleb had put it. And apparently Natesa didn’t realize who he was or she wouldn’t have introduced him to her.
Edie modified her original question. “What does Colonel Theron want to know?”
The look in O’Mara’s eyes told her he understood that she understood what was going on. He was good enough not to play games. He guided her into an adjoining room, someone’s office that had been given over to yet more displays extolling the success of the project, before asking, “What’s the latest word on Prisca?”
“The lab produces daily reports with all the updates you need to know.”
“We just learned that the tour of the planet’s base camp has been canceled. Why?”
“Not canceled…postponed.”
“Not postponed.
Canceled
entirely.”
“Well, there’s a storm.”
“Storms come and go. We were scheduled to stay for three days. Now Natesa’s shipping us out tomorrow and fobbing us off with a detour to some state-of-the-art science station on Port Trivane, on the way back to Central.”
Things must really be bad. “I don’t have an explanation for you. I didn’t know any of that.”
“Could it be that she doesn’t want us to see firsthand what’s happening on Prisca?”
Edie was tired of the charade. In a few hours she’d be on Valari’s ship and none of this would matter. “Look, if our pretty displays and demos don’t convince you that everything’s wonderful, my platitudes won’t change your opinion.”
“I don’t want platitudes. I want the truth.”
“I know what you want. I know what
he
wants—me, on his team.”
“Yes, we’d love to have you on the team. How would you feel about that?”
“That’s a strange question. Don’t I have to go where I’m told?”
O’Mara gave an awkward smile. “Make no mistake, Theron has the authority, backed by the Weapons Research Division, to order you to Scarabaeus. But there have been…problems in the past with your compliance.”
“So that’s why he sent you—to find out if I’d
willingly
join him. He tortured an innocent friend of mine for no reason. There’s your answer.” Edie jerked away from O’Mara, intending to leave.
“So let’s take it as given that you don’t want to work with the colonel. But what about the planet itself?”
She stopped in the doorway. What about Scarabaeus? Its lure was inescapable…
“The reports coming from Theron’s team are remarkable,” O’Mara went on, seeing he had her attention. “The complexity of the biocyph, the unnatural behavior of the aggressive organisms it creates as if on a whim, changing daily. This is well outside the biocyph’s programming, no matter what mutations have accumulated. These developments are surely the result of some sort of emergent property.”
She shook her head. She wouldn’t get dragged into this. She couldn’t. By tomorrow she’d be light-years away. They’d have to figure out Scarabaeus for themselves.
“It sounds like you’re trying to say Scarabaeus has evolved sentience, which is impossible,” she said brusquely. She meant it. Stating the idea aloud sounded ridiculous to her ears. “No sims have ever predicted anything approaching that outcome.”
O’Mara produced a datastick from his pocket and snapped off the top cap. He held it up between thumb and forefinger. “I think you’ll find this interesting. It’s a download from a BRAT on Scarabaeus.”
“I thought Theron’s people couldn’t access the BRATs.”