Confrontation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 4) (3 page)

The meeting was neither good nor bad. I had expected a few of the guys to erupt into a battle cry but they did not.

As has become normal around here, the camp is divided on the significance of the visit. The “evidence” shows that this creature arrived in our camp unannounced and destroyed our shelter and our food. Thinking as humans, several with military training and backgrounds, there is one perception that this was the act of an aggressor.

My camp, consisting mainly of me, is of scientific leaning. We—
I—
believe that it was simply investigating. The creature had no intention to harm or destroy. It seems natural to me that if an alien arrived on your planet and established a colony, you might want to see what they were all about.

Luke did ask for support to go to try and track the creature to find where it lives. The general consensus was that it is a bad idea for all the reasons we were delaying the exploration of Locus. However, we agreed that developing the capabilities to leave the containment field or at least create a portable containment field had moved to the top of the priority list.

Regardless of intentions, there are large creatures on this planet capable of destroying our buildings and, one would assume, our lives. Preparedness does not have to take the form of aggression, but it should not take the form of concession.

We have one more rest period with the sun in the sky. During the ensuing work period, I am going to extrude my first length of pipe. Liam has signed up to come with me and help. My goal is to have an air pocket in the space plane before the next sun-up work period.

I’m gathering several ingots of stone. On land we can drill holes in them to create the void in the center of the pipe. When the time comes to head out in the raft, I want to have everything ready. 

“The McMurdo guys want to have another vote,” Liam says as he sits down next to me.

“They think we need a wartime consigliore,” I joke.
The Godfather
was one of my favorite movies.

My brother is puzzled. “A what?”

“A leader. Someone who is capable of making tough decisions when it comes to life and death,” I say, and smile sadly.

Ironically we have been dealing with life and death for the last eighteen months. My mother and father have shepherded all of us through it with remarkable aplomb. For the first time, I realize that even though we all see mom as the leader of the village, it really is a team effort. I have no doubt that she and dad discuss things in private and that he has an influence on her decisions.

“Well, mom said it’s fine with her,” Liam says, closing the loop on his bit of news.

Thinking about my parents’ relationship helps me. They are far from conflict-free, but I would say that they are definitely a team. Sofie and I are conflict-free, with the exception of our argument that was so rudely interrupted. Maybe I need to blurt out things that I’m thinking about the way my dad does.

Recognizing that we don’t have to be peers to work together is a thing I have always struggled with. Letting Sofie in to my insecurities and doubts could strengthen our connection. Perhaps our bodies sense that our connection is not strong enough to have children?

My thoughts are interrupted. “Seamus,” Henry says, standing in front of Liam and me.

“Hey Henry. I’ve never done anything like this, so if you see a mistake, please tell me,” I answer.

“Nothing from me,” he says. “I think the logic is sound. It might take a little trial and error, but I’m confident you’ll get it.”

“Thanks.” It’s my turn to ask questions. “Is there something we can help you with, then?”

“I’ve agreed to take the role of moderator for a coming election. We are in the early stages, so it’s my job to inform you that we will have an election and to let you know that anyone interested in being a candidate can state their case during a meal.” Henry handles this with the same confidence and precision as always.

“Does this mean that you are not going to run for office?” I think he would be perfect for leading our group, after mom.

Henry smiles as if he knows what I’m thinking.  He says, “Like your mother, I am not nominating myself.”

“Do you know when we vote?” Liam asks.

“Not yet. We will have to see how many people wind up being nominated to make sure everyone has a chance to speak,” he explains. “Which reminds me, nominations close at the end of the next rest cycle.”

“Anything else?” I’m ready to move on.

“No. I need to go. There are a few other people I still have to tell.” With that, Henry turns and walks away.

Sofie has not come back to the house for this rest period. This has happened a couple of times before, but there was always a plan communicated to me. Today there was no mention of her not coming home. There have been a few times when I wished that I could have some alone time, but now that I have it I wish she were here. Last time she stayed away for a rest period, she was with Grace and helping with something for Remmie. I’ll assume that is the case again now.

Even though the youngest survivor from Earth lives with my sister, Sofie is like a really close aunt. Remmie has slept in our cabin a few times, and he knows that if Grace is not available, Sofie is the next one in charge. I tried to get Remmie to live with us to take some of the pressure off having children, but it didn’t work.

Actually, that was another strike against me. Sofie and Grace are both clear favorites for Remmie, but he has always been a little skittish around me. When we gave him the choice to stay with Grace or Sofie, he asked if I would be staying with Sofie, too. When we said yes, he picked Grace without hesitation.

The thought of who is in charge shifts me over to the upcoming election. A few of the alpha males from McMurdo decided that my mother wasn’t strict enough. Rather than looking at results, we’re alive on a planet other than Earth with food, water and shelter, they are worried about style. Their very insincere claims of wanting to unburden my mom allowed them to convince a simple majority that it was time to vote on who can claim leadership over our little colony. With my mother being the leader for so long, I never thought about how things might change if it were someone else. I haven’t recently used my relationship to nudge mom toward or away from a certain decision, but it has happened.

We don’t need a leader as much as a tiebreaker, kind of like a mom. No wonder my mother was the perfect fit. Is there anyone else in the group that seems like a great mother? Certainly not Jane or Cassandra; I wonder if either of them are running?

On my way back from the central cabin, I had heard someone mention the need for a constitution. I’m torn on the topic. I know that Mike is a red-blooded American. More than once he has said that there is a reason “Americans” are the ones who survived the apocalypse. He may not realize that we have a Canadian and Australian in the group.

If we are going to have a constitution, I’m not sure it makes sense to re-invent the wheel. We must have a copy of the U.S. Constitution on one of the tablets. But how would the non-Americans feel about that? If Mike is elected, can he force the issue and get us to adopt the U.S. Constitution as our rule of law?

Mike would make for a dangerous leader. I don’t consider him overtly violent, but he is emotional and reactionary. In stressful situations, like colonizing a distant planet or confronting aliens, a person needs to take their feelings out of the equation. Decisions need to be based on what is good for everyone.

Part of me thinks that I should nominate myself. Can I separate my emotions from the real needs of the larger group? Sofie may say that I have no emotions to begin with, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

“Hey.” Sofie walks through the door, interrupting my thoughts.

“Is everything okay?” I ask with concern.

She shakes her head. “Not really.”

I get up and close the short distance between us.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Us. We don’t work, Seamus,” she says. “It’s not just a baby, either. What have you been doing since you came back to the cabin?” Her face is red but she is not crying.

“Thinking,” I answer honestly. “Mostly about who’s going to be the next leader and how things might change.” The truth can’t be bad.

“So you just sat here thinking with no idea where I was? This is what I’m talking about!” She’s raising her voice.

“I assumed you were with Grace or Remmie. It’s not like we have car accidents or bad guys prowling the streets.” As usual, I am on the defensive.

“Our village was recently attacked by an eight-foot-tall, six-legged alien. He crushed a
building,
but you don’t think anything bad could happen to me?” She burns a hole into me with her eyes.

“Oh my god, did the thing come back?” I shudder at the thought.

“That’s not the point. You sit and you think, but not about me. When I didn’t come home, you should have gone looking for me,” she says, slipping past angry and into sad.

I feel like she is striving to be like other people. “But that’s not me, or us,” I insist. “I know that Liam and Cassandra are in everyone’s face with their lovey-dovey crap, but we’re two adults who don’t need to hold hands or make out at breakfast.”

“Did you know that Grace and Jake go on a date every other rest period?” she asks.

“A date?” I’m not following.

“Yeah. I watch Remmie and now the baby, and they take some food and a little pollen water and they go for a walk. They find someplace new and they sit and have a picnic. I’m sure they fool around a little or whatever, but it’s sweet and romantic and gives them both a break from this crazy way we live.” Her eyes are far off.

“I didn’t know you wanted stuff like that,” I confess.

“Have you ever thought about what I want?” Her simple question sums up all of our issues.

“Of course.” I must have, but I think it may be a lie.

“Hah,” she laughs. She’s calling me on it. “What did you come up with?”

“Look, I think about you all the time. It’s just that ‘romantic’ isn’t in my nature,” I say, and I know my answer is lame.

“Well you can work on that while I’m at Grace’s.” Sofie crosses the room and collects her small handful of clothes.

Without another word, she turns her back on me and walks out the door.

Sometimes a project that you were nervous about goes better than expected. It’s funny how your gut can impact your emotions. The facts, my brain, said that extruding the pipe would work. The logic was sound and the principle was simple. My instincts, though, said that I have never extruded pipe before—and it was not a simple feat.

For a change, the logic held strong through implementation. Liam and I were able to extrude all of our ingots into pipe and even had time to fashion more connectors than we need. Still, there are not enough lengths of pipe to cover the miles from the space plane to the shore, but we have a good start.

On the other hand, there are projects that should be pretty straightforward but get too complex. Our leadership transition is one of those. Intellectually I had no idea what to expect. In one sense, we are in an office setting where a manager has quit and the rank-and-file are competing to take over. The organization isn’t broken, so in theory it doesn’t need to be changed.

Another way to look at it is that we are at war and the field commander has been killed. Someone has to step up and lead. We are not really at war, and no one has died, so this analogy is a stretch, yet it is the approach Mike seems to have taken since being elected after running unopposed.

He is shrewd enough to keep the changes subtle and to justify each one individually, but I see his bigger picture. We are asked to become more precise and more efficient; in short, more accountable. I have no doubt that accountability will come with some form of measurement. Rankings are not far behind measurement, and with ranking people come the creation of classes.

The justification for each process improvement is security. Who can argue against security? If we are going to be ready for the next interaction with the natives, we have work to do.

Just as I was getting comfortable working in the garden, my role has changed. Mike insists that I work full-time on recovering the backpack reactor and converting it into a portable containment field. While I don’t disagree that it is important or that I wanted to recover the spare reactor, I hate being told what to do.

In the first session, Liam and I made ten lengths of pipe. Each was approximately twenty feet long; we have a total of two hundred feet of pipe. I thought that was impressive for the first pass, but it doesn’t even make a dent in how much we need.

Henry and I have estimated that the space plane is about ten miles from shore. That means we need one-hundred-and-fifty times as much pipe as we have already made.

It takes a full work session to make ten ingots, and a full work session to extrude ten lengths of pipe. I have a full year of pipe manufacturing ahead of me. I doubt that it is the best use of my time, and it certainly isn’t interesting. I want to tell Mike that just because I’m the process engineer doesn’t mean that I have to be the manufacturing technician as well.

Mom and Dad have advised me to roll with it. The garden is in great shape and doesn’t take too much of their time. If I were there too, it would mean even less work for them. Boredom is becoming a problem.

Liam has been working with the other guys to drop trees and rebuild the central cabin. His job is to drop the trees and drag them back to the site. He’s good at it and his frequent distractions don’t seem to be a problem. Right now I am about to be one of those distractions.

“Hey Seamus,” my brother greets me as I walk up.

“What are you working on now?” I ask, for lack of a better opening line.

“Dude, Mike might be crazy. He wants us to build a stone keep? I don’t even know what a ‘keep’ is.” Liam has confusion all over his face.

“A keep is like a really safe storage locker,” I explain. “Castles used to have a keep in the very center to keep their arms and grains safe in the event of an attack. It makes sense for us to build one. I’m not sure if stone is the best approach.” I can see a military slant taking over our attitude.

“Well, he has Cassie working on pulling slabs of stone out of the quarry. He wants them real big. I have no idea how he expects to get them here.” He shakes his head.

When mom was leading the group, we never had assigned projects. We knew what needed to get done and we helped however we could. The balance of work may not have been fair, but it was self-directed and there were no excuses. I don’t like the way Mike is telling people what to do.

“Well, Mike has a problem on his hands, then,” I start to complain.

“What problem is that?” Mike says, surprising me from behind.

“Either I can take ingots out of the quarry to work on the pipe we need for getting to the space plane, or Cassandra can pull slabs out for your keep. We don’t have the resources to do both,” I answer, with a little more emotion than I want.

Deep down I’m also concerned with the taking of resources. I know that something mined the monoliths out of the quarry, but there is no sign that they ever removed more material than that. We have already extracted more stone for pipes and shelter than they ever extracted. Is it really human nature to just come in and take whatever we want?

“I was coming to tell you that the ingots can wait. I just spoke with Grace, and she believes that the space plane was no more than fifty feet below the surface.” Our new leader smiles confidently.

“She’s pregnant! I’m not letting her go down to the space plane.” I can’t even believe he is considering asking.

“Don’t worry about your sister, I’m not a monster,” Mike says. “But she did say that Liam was a pretty good swimmer and that he could probably make it to the plane.” He smiles and looks at my brother.

“How deep was grandma’s lake?” Liam asks me.

I was ahead of him on his thinking. “The chain for the float was twelve feet. So down and back was halfway to the plane.”

“He can bring a length of pipe and take a breath halfway. This is going to happen; figure out how to make it work,” Mike says. He turns and leaves.

I’m not in the military and I refuse to be treated like I am. Hopping to my feet, I race after Mike.

“We did not elect a dictator,” I start in.

“It’s okay Seamus, I can do it,” Liam interrupts me.

I jab the air with my finger. “I don’t care if you can or cannot. He does not get to tell us who has to risk their lives.”

“Seamus, we can’t wait around for a year to make enough pipe to get air into the space plane,” Liam says patiently. “We need a contingency plan for bugging out. We need that reactor.” He is more pragmatic than me for a change.

It’s hard to disagree with his good point, but I try. “I’m not sure I agree. Even if I did, we should agree on the plan as a group and you should get a chance to volunteer.”

“Then fine, I volunteer. Seamus, the cool, casual experiment is over. We need to get serious and prepare ourselves for conflict.” Liam has a hardened expression.

I’m worried the he has been brainwashed by Mike and Cassandra. My brother was never the type to get serious, let alone follow a cause. There should be a middle ground between preparedness and what we are doing, but I cannot describe it.

I’m not sure how we can reach consensus, so I say, “I think we should talk to mom and dad about this.”

“You and your brother are adults,” Mike interjects. “Your mom is not in charge, and you need to make decisions for yourselves. Seamus, I’m not asking him to go on a suicide mission.” Mike softens his face and his tone.

He has a point. It seems like the world has grown up around me and I’m still acting like a little kid. I want my mommy to settle disputes; I sulk and pout when things don’t go my way. Worst of all, I retreat inside my own head selfishly and neglect the ones I care about most.

The only reason I’m standing up for Liam right now is that I don’t agree with the plan. Being completely honest with myself, I would conceivably send him down to the space plane, too, as long as it was for something important to me.

Liam tries to lighten my mood. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared. But how many crazy things have I done that worked out great? A TON!”

“Can we at least do some testing in shallow water so we know you can get enough air through the pipe?” I didn’t even realize I was conceding until I was speaking.

“Hey, I never thought of that,” Liam says and winks at me. “But seriously, Seamus, I want you to come with me in the raft. If anything goes wrong, I know you will figure something out to save the day.” Liam always mixes his jokes with sincere emotions.

“This is a priority. Next time I see you, I want an answer on when you’ll be back,” Mike says. He turns and leaves us.

“I’ve got a few more trees to drop for this session. If we test the breathing at the next rest session, we can go out during the following work session. I’ll meet you in the lake after dinner?” Liam asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer.

I wish Sofie were near. She would know how to calm me down and come to terms with this. Maybe if I think like her, I can solve this myself?

Thinking like Sofie means not thinking about my problems at all. It means that I should be thinking about how I can help Liam or seeing if there is anything I can do for Sofie. She wouldn’t come find me to help her; she would come find me to help me.

To help her, I need to figure out what’s bothering her, though she’s told me more than once. I am supposed to think about her. Somehow I need to show that I am thinking about her. It’s so confusing.

My best bet is probably to just go find her. It will be hard not to vent my frustration to her, but I have to try.

Turning on my heel—I haven’t done that in a while—I start off toward Grace’s cabin. After two steps, my heart jumps; Sofie is standing directly in front of me. She doesn’t say anything, but gives me a half-hearted smile.

“I was just thinking about you,” I say honestly and with a little surprise.

“Yeah, Liam told me you were kind of worked up about him diving to the space plane.” She sighs softly.

“Oh yeah, well, we’re grown-ups now and we can do what we want. I was coming to see what you were up to and if I could help with anything?” I hadn’t thought about what I was going to say and maybe that helps.

“Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Remmie. He is really smart. I showed him how to group things and now he’s doing division and multiplication. It’s incredible how he can turn one concept into another,” she says, shaking her head.

“Maybe you and I can work on teaching him some more advanced things. It would be kind of cool to nurture the next generation of physicists.” I want to say something about how smart our children will be, but I refrain.

“Or you can teach us both. I got straight A’s in high school physics.” Sofie puffs out her chest with pride.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” I ask.

It feels good to be with her and not look to extract something from the time. I’m not keeping anything from her, but I’m not unloading on her either. The balance is delicate, but I can see how it works.