Putting Up Roots

Chapter Six

The lander drifted in and came to rest in the middle of a cleared circle about two hundred yards across. The perimeter was surrounded by a seven-foot silver fence of flat posts. Five orange-yellow buildings with small round windows, like the viewing ports on the Cerberus, stood in a cluster well inside the fence.

“Breathing masks on,” Bothwell Gage said. And, when Josh and the others stared at him because he wore no mask himself, “I don’t need one. I’ve been here before, and I’m long since acclimatized. The injections that you had when you left Earth take a few days before they’re completely effective. You could probably breathe the air of Solferino right now with your modified lung alveoli, but I’d rather confirm that when we’re inside a building and have medical equipment handy. Think yourselves lucky. It’s full body suits on Merryman’s Woe.”

He opened the door of the lander and led the way outside. Josh, a light mask in place over his nose and mouth, stepped gingerly onto a surface that felt and looked like a dense purple rug. It was plants, or perhaps all one plant, with springy two-inch stems that flattened under his weight and bounced back upright as soon as he lifted his foot.

He stared around him, noting that the others were all doing the same. The air seemed unnaturally clear. Grisel, the star whose gravity field held Solferino, Cauldron, and the four other planets of the system in orbit, was high in the sky. It was bigger and redder than Sol. Josh had only seen Earth’s sun dull and swollen like that at Burnt Willow Farm, when it was down on the horizon and close to setting. In the city he had never seen a sun like that. The high buildings blocked out sunsets.

Thin fingers of purple and yellow vegetation reached up over the silver fence. Beyond them, far off in the distance, the ground ascended steadily to three rounded peaks. On top of those hills sat clusters of gigantic purple and yellow balloons, looking like markers for some colossal birthday celebration.

“You’ll have plenty of time to examine everything in the next few days,” Gage said. Even the Lasker brothers were staring around in fascination. “Right now I want you all inside. I’m very surprised they haven’t come out to meet us. I’ll just say this about Solferino: This place is the most Earth-like world we know—except, of course, for Earth itself. But that doesn’t tell you half the story.”

He began to walk the group toward the buildings at the edge of the clearing.

“The fact is, Solferino is the most Earth-like extrasolar planet that humans have ever encountered, by every measure that you care to choose. Grisel is a little bigger and cooler than the Sun, but the temperature range over much of Solferino is something you can tolerate. Gravity is only slightly different from Earth, and the day just one hour longer. The planet has one big moon—a very significant fact in shaping the development of life, if the archaeo-biologists are to be believed.

“Most other planets that humans have visited haven’t developed life of any kind. They are of value only for mining and minerals. And if they do have life, it’s single-celled organisms. This is the only place we know, other than Earth, where complex, multi-celled life has developed. With minor lung modifications to accommodate differences in oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor, you can breathe the air. This is also the only place where living things exist that we can clearly recognize as plants and animals. My next stop, for example, will be Merryman’s Woe. On that planet, all we have found so far are cyanobacteria and things similar to slime molds—very valuable, maybe, but not remotely like multi-cellular plants and animals. But Solferino life is amazingly Earth-like. Many of the animals have internal skeletons and backbones, the same as we do. The plants have discovered the use of cellulose, which makes large organisms possible, like the ones over there.” He pointed to the huge balloons on the distant hills. “Those really are plants, though you might not think so when you first see them. So when you walk around on Solferino, don’t think about how different it is. Think how like Earth it is, and be amazed.”

“Well, isn’t that truly, truly wondrous.” That was Sig Lasker on Josh’s left, speaking too softly for Bothwell Gage to hear and mimicking the instructor’s high-pitched and nasal voice. “Hey, guy, you don’t have to do a sales job on me. We wanted to come here—though I’m not sure we’d have been any worse off if we’d stayed in the Pool.”

Josh was inclined to agree. Listening to Uncle Ryan and Aunt Stacy, you’d think that Solferino must be some sort of heaven. The real thing was strange, and definitely scary. What about that tall, silvery fence? It surely hadn’t been built to keep anything in. What was it keeping out?

“Animals with internal skeletons and backbones,” he said aloud.

Dawn was walking at his side. She didn’t look at him, but she added, “Lions and tigers and bears.”

Everyone turned in unison to stare at the silver fence.

“Not quite,” Gage said. “The most advanced—or at least, the most intelligent—animal on Solferino, so far as we know, more resembles another of Earth’s larger species, the panda. Solferino life forms need their own classification system, but in our terms the nearest thing would be the Procyonidae family—which includes pandas, and also our friend the raccoon, whom you all know well.”

The whole group, with the exception of Dawn and Bothwell Gage, exchanged looks that said, We’ve got a real bunghead here. Josh couldn’t speak for the others, but he knew that he had never seen a raccoon. He wasn’t sure they weren’t extinct outside zoos and private collections. Who did Gage think he was dealing with? Rich kids who lived out in the country and took walks on closed game reserves?

“They term that animal Procyon solferino pseudolotor,” Gage continued, unaware of the trainees’ reaction. “A bit of a mouthful, so it’s more commonly called a ‘rupert.’ One reason for the fence, apart from holding back the taller vegetation, is to keep animals like the ruperts out. Some of them like to lie in the open, and they get in the way. They used to be flattened by the landers, because they wouldn’t move. I suppose that smartness is relative. The rupert is reputed to be quite intelligent, but extremely shy. However, I’m not sure that I believe either of those statements. No Solferino animal has a great need for cunning and wariness, nor is there a logical reason for it to be shy. Maybe they mean that it is nocturnal, and only comes out at night. The larger native beasts are also, so far as we know, all vegetarians.”

So far as we know—there it was again. It was another way of saying, we don’t know. Josh, walking along last in line, wondered. What did people actually know about Solferino?

“And of course, there are some major differences that you might not notice unless you look for them.” Gage waved his hand upward. “For example, no Solferino animal has ever mastered the air. You will seek in vain for birds, bats, and flying insects. Plants, however, are another matter.”

They had reached the buildings, which put an end to Gage’s well-meaning tutorial and mystifying final remark. He had been striding ahead at an increasing speed that suggested uneasiness on his part. He hurried straight into the central building, and the trainees followed. They found themselves in three connected rooms, two dormitories with a combined kitchen and living area between them. As Josh closed the door—a broad flexible skirt on its edge provided a perfect air seal—he heard a mutter of equipment coming to life in the ceiling. A current of cooler air blew from wall vents.

Bothwell was emerging from one of the dormitories. He shook his head in bewilderment.

“Where can they be? There’s not a sign of them. Stay here while I check the other buildings. But surely they would have come out when they heard the lander? You can take your masks off now, by the way. You are in a closed environment designed to match Earth’s atmosphere in composition.”

“No sign of who?”

It was the obvious question, but only Sapphire Karpov was bold enough to ask it.

“The other people.” Gage realized that was not enough explanation. “We weren’t supposed to find this place deserted. Our arrival was expected. I am supposed to depart at once in the Cerberus for another node transition, and begin my work on Merryman’s Woe. There should be Foodlines teachers and scientists waiting for you, as well as someone in charge of the kitchen and general maintenance.”

“You mean we won’t be able to eat?” Rick Lasker made it clear where his worries lay.

“Oh, certainly you will. There are ample supplies.” Gage waved at a line of storage cabinets along the kitchen wall. “And the autochefs are good ones, they can handle most things you are likely to ask for. My worries are more general. A failure of organization like this is quite unusual.”

“Why don’t you call Foodlines headquarters and ask them?” Amethyst said. “They must know. Or see what the other Foodlines groups here can tell you.”

That produced a strange expression on Bothwell Gage’s face. “You don’t seem to understand, my dear. We are twenty-seven light-years away from Foodlines headquarters. A radio signal would take that many years to travel there. The only way to get a message to headquarters in a reasonable time is by taking it back through the network nodes we used to come here. That would be hugely expensive, but it suggests another thought. If the others are already here and for some reason beyond the fence, messages may have been left in the camp’s communications center. I must check.”

He headed for the door and pulled it open. As he went out he turned and added, “Stay here until I come back. Don’t go anywhere.”

The door closed behind him and he was gone, leaving an awkward silence. The group stared at each other.

“Don’t go anywhere.” Sapphire Karpov scowled. “Sure. Where we likely to go?”

Rick Lasker said, “How long’s he gonna be away? I’m starving.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“If those are standard autochef designs,” said Sapphire, “we’ll be all right.”

“You know how to program one?” Josh asked.

“I do. And Topaz can make an autochef stand on its head.”

The group converged on the supply cabinets and began to raid them for food.

“You know what?” Sig Lasker said. He had not joined the others, and he was standing alone in the middle of the kitchen.

“Nothing you like here?” Hag had his arms full of bottles and food packets.

“I’m not thinking about food. I’m still thinking of him.” Sig jerked his thumb in the direction of the outside door.

“What about him?” Amethyst asked.

“Gage only answered half your question. He said he couldn’t reach Foodlines headquarters easily. But he never said why he couldn’t talk to other Foodlines groups here on Solferino, to see if they knew what had gone wrong.”

“What do you think that means?” Josh was wondering if he had read Sig wrongly. The biggest Lasker brother looked and sounded like a thug, but he might be a smart thug.

“I think there are no other groups. This settlement is it. I don’t know what you were told when you signed up, but everything turned pretty vague in our briefings when it came to the number of people already on Solferino. I got other ideas, too. I have to think.” Sig headed for the longest of the tables and sat down. After a few moments the others drifted over to join him, all except Topaz Karpov and Rick Lasker, who were studying an autochef, and Dawn, who stood in a corner of the room staring at a blank wall.

The group at the table exchanged speculative glances. Without Bothwell Gage to tell them what to do or how to organize their interactions, they were not sure how to behave. Tomorrow they might fight like their old selves, but the day’s experiences had made them drop their guards for a while.

“Other ideas, like what?” Sapphire Karpov asked after a few seconds.

“Ideas, like weird.” Sig stared down at his closed fists. “Let me ask you a question. Are your parents on their way to Solferino?”

Amethyst laughed, but Sapphire shook her head. “He’s not joking, Amy.”

She turned to Sig. “What you ask only sounds funny if you know my parents. They’re a little, well, let’s say strange. How many other people d’you know who named their kids after gemstones?”

Hag grunted, in what might have been a suppressed laugh, but Sig shook his head at him.

“So they’re not here,” he said, “and you don’t think that they’ll be coming?”

“I’ll bet on it. You’d never get them to Solferino as long as there’s a bar or a casino open on Earth.”

“So how come you four are here? Never mind, that’s none of my business.” Sig turned to Josh. “How about you?” He jerked his head to include Dawn, still standing up, but he wasn’t addressing the question to her. “Are your parents here on Solferino?”

“We’re not brother and sister.” Josh cleared his throat. “She’s my cousin.”

He knew that wasn’t Sig’s real question, and he went on, “My mother won’t be coming. She’s… busy, back on Earth. But my aunt and uncle—Dawn’s father and stepmother—they’re supposed to come out in a few months, when they’ve tied up their other business.”

Supposed to. Except that Josh was suddenly sure that Aunt Stacy didn’t want to. She wanted to stay and live in the farmhouse at Burnt Willow, even if Uncle Ryan wouldn’t be working the farm himself any more. Josh didn’t want to tell any of that to Sig and the others. And what he had said just might be true.

Sig put his hands palm up on the table and shrugged his big shoulders. “All right. They’re coming to join you. That blows my idea. Let’s eat.”

Topaz Karpov and Rick Lasker had arrived at the table with loaded plates of food.

“What was your idea?” asked Sapphire.

“Nothing that matters. Forget it.” Sig turned to Hag. “And you forget the other thing, too, all right.”

“Me? Forget what?”

“You know.” Sig picked up a fork and began to eat. “Not another word,” he said with his mouth full, “ ’less you want a thick ear.”

Hag’s dark-complexioned face showed injured innocence. But he too picked up a fork and started to eat.

Josh went across to where Dawn was staring at the wall, turned her round, and brought her to the table. He sat her down and took a seat next to her.

Topaz Karpov was on his immediate right. She pushed two plates of food toward Josh and Dawn, and smiled at him shyly.

“She’s not really like, brain-dead, is she? I thought she was, at first.”

It occurred to Josh that those were the first words that Topaz had ever spoken to him, except in answer to a direct question. “No,” he said. “She’s not brain-dead.”

He felt almost guilty, talking about Dawn as though she wasn’t there. That’s what Aunt Stacy did.

“Dawn is autistic,” he went on. All the others were listening closely.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means she’s different. She doesn’t speak much, but she hears everything, and I think she remembers everything. What made you change your mind about her?”

“She said, ‘Lions and tigers and bears,’ after you said ‘Animals with internal skeletons and backbones.’ ” Topaz craned around Josh, to look more closely at Dawn. “She’s beautiful, you know. Can Dawn read and write?”

Josh felt like a fool. He had taken Aunt Stacy’s assessment, without bothering to check for himself. “I don’t know.”

“Can you read, Dawn?” Topaz asked.

She might as well have been talking to herself. Dawn went on eating and took absolutely no notice.

“Total retard,” Rick Lasker muttered, after a few silent seconds.

Josh heard that comment with oddly mixed feelings. Somehow it seemed all right for him to resent Dawn—after all, he was saddled with her, and he was the one who had to drag her around with him like a baby. But that didn’t give strangers the right to insult her. He was saved from having to react to Rick, because Amethyst Karpov suddenly sat up straight and said, “Shut up, all of you.”

“Amy!” Sapphire said. “You don’t—”

“Shut up, and listen. Can’t any of you hear it?”

They could. It was the whine of engines from outside.

“He’s leaving us!” Rick cried. “He can’t.”

There was a rush for the door, halted briefly by Sapphire’s urgent shout to her sisters: “Face masks!”

Sig, leading the way, jerked the door open with one hand while he was still fiddling with his mask with the other. He halted on the threshold, until the others crowded behind him and shoved him out of the way.

Josh came last in the group. He had paused to bring Dawn along, decided to leave her at the table, and hurried after the others. They had all stopped close to the doorway. He pushed his way through them, and was enormously relieved to see that the lander stood exactly where they had left it, in the middle of the cleared circle.

Bothwell Gage certainly hadn’t left Solferino. He had emerged from the building to the right, and he was waving his arms excitedly in the air. The sound of engines was louder. It came from a cargo aircar, settling down fifty yards behind the orbital lander.

While they all watched, the bigger vehicle rolled steadily forward and came to a halt. The engine whine ceased. The carpet of dense purple vegetation beneath, flattened by powerful downward jets of air, sprang back upright.

A strange and profound stillness fell on the clearing.

The contrast between two people could not have been greater. Josh knew that if Bothwell Gage had been left in charge on Solferino, Sig and Sapphire between them would have eaten the helpless biologist alive.

With the new arrival, though, it was obvious in the first two minutes that nothing like that would happen. They later learned that Solomon Brewster was employed as a scientist and settlement manager, but with his height, deep chest, and huge arms, he looked more like a street bruiser. His hair and eyebrows were pale blond, contrasting with dark and penetrating eyes. Josh saw Sig Lasker make a quick evaluation and come to attention. Sig was going to take the man very seriously.

The new arrival glared at the group as though they had no right to exist. His first words were, “What the devil are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting anyone for another week.”

“A fortunate accident of timing.” Bothwell Gage tried a smile, which was not returned. “I was on Solferino two years ago, with the first exploration party. Now I happen to be on my way to Merryman’s Woe, and the Foodlines staff coordinators decided that it would be economical and convenient if I accompanied this group as far as Solferino.”

“Convenient to whom?” Brewster scowled. “Not to me, that’s for sure. Come on. You and I need a minute or two of private talk.”

The two men disappeared into one of the buildings. Josh and the others had no idea what was said there, but when they emerged again, after much more than a couple of minutes, Bothwell Gage seemed to vanish into the background. Josh didn’t even notice him leave, although later in the day he saw that the small lander was gone.

“I’m going to be responsible for training all of you in addition to my other duties,” Brewster said, as soon as the group was settled inside the building. “Let’s start with names. Mine is Solomon Brewster. My friends call me ‘Sol.’ You can call me ‘Sir.’ What’s your name.” He pointed a thick finger at Sig.

“Sig Lasker.”

“Sig Lasker, sir. Is that your full name?”

Sig hesitated. “No.”

“No, sir.”

“No, sir.”

“Better. What is your full name?”

“It’s Siegfried Lasker.”

“All right. You.” The finger jabbed at Hag.

Hag swallowed. “Hagen Lasker. Sir.”

“And you, the next one?”

Rick looked miserably at his twin brother. “Alberich Lasker. Sir, I’d rather be called Rick.”

“I don’t blame you. Siegfried, Hagen, Alberich.” Brewster glanced from one Lasker brother to the next. “Three characters from a Wagner opera. What is it, your parents are opera freaks? People who give their kids weird names ought to be shot.”

The three brothers nodded in vigorous agreement.

“All right.” Brewster moved on to Ruby. “How about you?”

“Ruby Karpov, sir.”

“Nice and normal. Very good. That’s the way to answer.” He pointed to Amethyst. “And you?”

While the Karpov sisters squirmed and looked for ways to avoid sounding like a jewelry catalog, Josh breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever his mother’s sins, she had not cursed him with an eccentric name. Given her interests and the names from plays that he had heard thrown about since he was old enough to remember anything, he might easily have finished up as Willy Loman Kerrigan, or Hamlet Kerrigan. When his turn came he was able to speak his own name with confidence. “Joshua Kerrigan, sir.”

“Very good,” said Brewster. He went straight on from Josh to Dawn. “And your name?”

She took no notice of him at all.

“She’s called Dawn,” Josh said. “I don’t think she’ll talk to you.”

“Talk to you, sir. Anyway, you weren’t being asked. What do you think you are, her keeper?” But Sol Brewster’s question was almost absentminded. He was much more interested in examining Dawn. “So this is the autistic one.”

That statement told Josh several things at once. Since Brewster knew that Dawn was autistic, he probably knew plenty more about the group. That was to be expected, if he was going to be in charge of them.

More important, Brewster had pretended not to know anything. He had deliberately embarrassed the others by making them state their full names when they obviously didn’t want them talked about. Even the “very normal” comment when Ruby Karpov gave her name lost its innocence, if Brewster knew what was coming with the other sisters.

Why would anyone do things like that? Presumably, to show who was the boss. But it also suggested a big mean streak.

Josh wondered if Sig Lasker had read that on his first sight of Sol Brewster. It was a wise decision to be careful how you dealt with the man.

Brewster had apparently had enough fun with names. His attention was now moving elsewhere. “We’ll stay here for a few days,” he said, “to get you used to Solferino air and gravity. Then we’ll travel farther afield. I’ll outline the program for each of you tomorrow, but there’s some things that can’t wait. Like, who made that mess in the kitchen and didn’t bother to clean it up? The place looks like it’s been struck by lightning.”

Josh caught Topaz’s eye. Everyone had been eating when the cargo aircar arrived with Brewster on board, and there had been no time to think of clearing dishes. Topaz opened her mouth, but when Josh shook his head she had enough sense not to say anything.

“I don’t care who did it,” Brewster went on. “All of you can fix it—and soon.” He stared at the group again and seemed to come to some decision. “Before you get to clearing up, though, I want to say a few more words. You are probably wondering just what’s been going on here in the settlement. I’m sure you could tell that Professor Gage was having a fit when he found this place empty, with nobody to hand you over to.

“That was my doing. I’m in charge here, and a few days ago I made a decision. I took everyone at this installation to orbit, then sent them on to the main Grisel system medical center for detailed evaluation. That’s why I wasn’t here to greet you. Before you begin to panic, let me assure you that there was nothing wrong with anyone. Quite the reverse, in fact. During the past seven months of operations of this facility, there has been not a single case of sickness. Not even minor ailments. You may not realize how strange that is, with a total of forty-five people present. The on-site medical computers claim it’s a one-in-a-billion chance.

“But it goes beyond that. People on Solferino found their old problems disappearing. I’m not just talking about things that might be easily explained, like allergic reactions. Cures like that might be caused by a change in plant and animal allergens. We had half a dozen far more peculiar events. A man with a long-term digestive problem found that he could eat anything with no aftereffects. A woman who had been told she could never have children, married to a man who three times had been declared completely infertile, became pregnant—you can imagine what sort of a shock that was for everybody. I noticed that scars on my own face that I’d had since a skating accident when I was fourteen were fading and vanishing. Other people told me the same thing, the signs of old injuries were disappearing. I finally decided that it was time for people to visit a more advanced medical center when the teeth of the oldest person here started to fall out—and a new set began to grow in.”

Josh thought at once of his own teeth. In the general excitement of leaving Burnt Willow Farm, dental treatment had been forgotten.

“So.” Brewster stirred in his seat. They had been listening to him in total fascination, and now he looked them over, one by one, as though assessing any medical problems they might each have. “What is it? Something in the water, something in the soil, something in the air, something in the radiation from Grisel? We don’t know.

“But I’ll tell you this: If you do exactly what I tell you to do while you’re on Solferino, you won’t come to any harm. And maybe there’s more than that. After a few months here, maybe you’ll be fixed up to live forever.”