IGMS Issue 39 Read online

  Then Keller revealed that he did not want his remains to be part of the actual monument.

  "No relic?" the Peshar asked. It reared up on its hindmost legs and thundered, "Disrespect!"

  The creature shook with barely concealed fury, clapping its great middle feet together as if they were hands and pointing steadfastly toward the door with its forelimbs.

  Reflecting on its irritation, Cerna thought he understood. The Peshari loved their ancestors and fixed their remains in permanent displays, but built no other monuments. Their architecture was functional and spare; and they made no statuary, either realistic or abstract.

  What had Keller thought he could get out of them?

  When he could stand the silence no longer, Cerna said, "So you want a monument. Want me to fab one for you? Shouldn't take too long."

  Keller walked to the edge of the path and rested one hand on a klick-marker. He scuffed the bottom of the marker with the toe of his boot, where a fading maroon stain testified to another failed human revolution. Cerna tried to remember who had died there --

  "It really is lovely here, isn't it?" Keller said. He was looking up at the glacier-topped mountains in the distance, shining in the early-afternoon sun.

  "Sure, I guess. It's all in what you get used to."

  "At night, too, especially the stars. I love the stars from here. This place is special, you have to admit that."

  "Is that why you want a monument? Something special for you, in a special place?"

  Keller chuckled. "Something like that." He walked on.

  Cerna looked around as they walked, admitting to himself -- he wouldn't give Keller the pleasure -- that the old man was right. The ground here in the valley, fed by streams coming off those glaciers, was so fertile that it had been an obvious place for the expedition to land. They had called the settlement "Alluvium," and it took very little time before they started calling the planet that.

  Then the Peshari landed in the valley, and everything had changed.

  Cerna got little else out of Keller as they approached camp and his friend refused an invitation to while away the evening watching an old movie.

  "No, I'm back on the dig tomorrow," Keller said, "so I'll grab a sandwich in the cafeteria, maybe some soup, and head up Winding Road to watch the sunset from the little point. And see the stars."

  Keller pulled on a pair of gloves as he was walking away, and Cerna returned to his speculations about his friend's sickness. Dr. Riverton usually took the day shift, but it was early enough that she should still be in the clinic.

  He hesitated for a moment outside the door. He and Autumn had signed a two-year marriage contract once, and with a start he realized that they would have been coming up for renewal about now if she hadn't broken it off after three weeks. Not that he blamed her -- she was right, he was practically impossible to live with.

  The anteroom was empty, so Cerna waved his proximity card at the detector and sat down to wait. The building was one of the earliest in the colony and showed its age, but it was at least fully enclosed and air conditioned.

  Autumn had an eclectic collection of children's drawings tacked up around the room. The most recent were left over from New Year's -- the Earth holiday from last week-- rather than the Alluvial solstice that was still months away. It was hard to square the old Earth calendar with the local calendar in terms of celebrations. So far, the traditionalists had won out, though one day the colony would probably synch celebrations with local conditions.

  He wondered how much and how quickly the holiday customs would change if the colony survived. Not that survival was at all certain -- the first generation of Alluvium-born colonists was not that big. Lots of people decided against raising children once the Peshari were in charge. Damn lizards.

  The door opened, and Autumn laughed and held it for Dr. Schurz, the chief geologist. Autumn said, "That story never gets old. Now, you keep that dry and clean and don't come back to see me again!"

  "Nothing would please me more. Hey, Toro, heard you went to P-town today."

  Cerna stood up as the two ladies entered. "Yeah, me and Phil Keller."

  "Did you go to The Stubby Tail? Came here for the cure?"

  "Nothing like that, doc."

  Dr. Schurz chuckled. "Don't call me 'doc' in here. Autumn might make me stitch myself up." She raised her left hand to show off her bandage.

  "I like that idea," Autumn said. "Might make you more careful."

  They said goodbyes all around, and when the geologist was gone, Autumn turned a wry little smile on Cerna. "Good to see you, Toro. What brings you around, really?"

  "You're stitching people up these days? With thread?"

  Autumn's grin turned briefly to a frown. She lowered her voice. "Yeah. At our last 'inspection,' the commandant confiscated our clinical nano-fabricator. Can't make any auto-sutures, or a lot of other things. I've gone primitive."

  "That could be it."

  "Could be what?"

  "When Phil and I were walking to town --"

  "You two walked?" She led him back into her office, sat on her desk, and gestured for Cerna to take the chair.

  "We couldn't check out a cart, they're all embargoed. You can't get any kind of transport, really, unless it's for the mine. At least it's not the month of sauna yet."

  "Still, that's quite a hike. Phil do okay?"

  "Yeah, except that I'm sweating and he's bundled up in a coat the whole time. Acts like he's cold down to the marrow. I asked him what was wrong and he said he'd come up allergic to the lizards. You know anything about that?"

  Autumn shook her head. "I can't tell you about a patient, Toro --"

  "But you don't have a fabber, so you can't make him any medicine?"

  "Toro, I can't --"

  "Come on, Autumn --"

  "No. As little as we stand on ceremony or protocol, we do still keep doctor-patient relations private. If you want to know more, ask him again. If he wants you to know, he'll tell you."

  Cerna frowned at her. "I'm worried about him, that's all. He went to their death-artist, Autumn, and asked for a stone slab with his name on it."

  "A what?"

  "I'd never heard of the like. Not one of their cremation-sculptures, just a big slab of rock. He said he didn't want his ashes to be part of it, so the lizard turned him down. Said it was 'disrespectful.'"

  Autumn pursed her lips. "Probably meant 'sacrilege.'"

  "I don't know. I don't think they would've done it anyway."

  "But he didn't tell you why he wanted this . . . monument."

  "No, and I even offered to fab it for him. A big simple ceramic, wouldn't be hard to run. We can't make real little things, you know, not like your nano-fabber could. Too bad the lizards took it . . . but, hey, what happens when our nanos expire, if you can't make more for us?"

  "We'll age faster," Autumn said, "and have to adapt faster to the chemical differences from Earth normal. There aren't that many, though, or this planet wouldn't be as good a match as it is."

  "Okay, but we'd get sick, too, right? So that's what's up with Phil? He sure wasn't his usual feisty self, Autumn. Pretty shaky, even. Are his nanos not working?"

  "It's not quite that simple, or straightforward -- but even if it was, I still can't tell you about a particular patient."

  "Right. Then do a hypothetical for me. If someone's nanos weren't working, and couldn't be replaced, what might happen?"

  Autumn's lips thinned, and she glanced away into a lower corner of the room. After a moment, she nodded.

  "It would depend on the person. A person with a particular bacterial, enzymatic, and so forth combination might not feel any effect, while someone else might get very ill. Some people might get sensitized to certain compounds over time. They'd feel no effects for months or even years, then suddenly react to the smallest exposure as if they were highly allergic."

  "Like Phil said about the lizards."

  Autumn shrugged. "There's no way to tell what would happen to
a particular person. Even with the diagnostic computer running different simulations, there are too many variables to test them all and come up with a confident prediction."

  "Okay, but say someone's nanos weren't working, and they got very sick. What could you be doing for him?"

  "Not much. The Peshari left us one chem analyzer and one synthesizer, which is good but still limited in what it can do . . . although I did manage to use the industrial fabricator to make a couple of additional parts for the synthesizer, to stabilize some of the processing --"

  "Oooh, subversive --"

  "We all do what we can," she said, "but sometimes that's not enough."

  "So, if I were really sick, you might not be able to do much for me."

  "If you had food poisoning, I could help you. Common bacterial or viral infection, or even most Terrestrial diseases, we could figure out a way to fix you. Local Alluvial disease, I'm not so sure. That's where the personal nanos have been the most help, and we've been pretty lucky. Worse than that . . . I might be able to keep you comfortable. Maybe."

  Cerna sat back in the chair and looked up into Autumn's pretty face. She was closer to Keller's age than his own, easily in her sixties, but in great shape and looked decades younger -- the blessing of the nanos. "One last hypothetical. If I was thinking about planning a party for Phil, would it be a good idea to make it a Midsummer party instead of waiting for his birthday?"

  Autumn looked away, as if scanning the room for the answer.

  "You might want to make it a Valentine's party."

  Work schedules kept Cerna from tracking down Phil to ask him what was really wrong with him. Two days after talking to Autumn, Cerna was in line in the cafeteria when Camp Chief Miscente walked up to him. "Tauran, can I see you for a few minutes?"

  The tone of Miscente's voice and the fact that he used Cerna's real name were plain bad. Cerna nodded and started toward the paystation without selecting a dessert.

  They sat in the farthest corner of the cafeteria. Cerna, unsure what was on the chief's mind, barely registered what he was eating except for a faint trace of garlic. He gave up after a couple of bites and watched Miscente paw through screens on his Portal.

  "Tell me, Tauran," Miscente said, "why do we suddenly need a separate building for a chapel?"

  Cerna sat back. "Huh? I doubt a dozen people ever do chapel stuff in the conference room at the same time. We don't need a building for that."

  "Then why did you design one? And why did it suddenly show up on the schedule today, with construction to start next week? And why design it with a basement?"

  "A what?"

  "I've got an excavation request to dig out a basement under a new building -- you can see the grid coordinates here -- that's labeled 'Chapel One.' Not just 'chapel,' but apparently the first of several? And not to dig footers for walls, but an actual basement? Or near enough -- the project plan says 'storm cellar.'"

  "None of our buildings have basements."

  "You noticed that, did you? So you just decided that we needed a building with a basement?"

  "I don't know how that happened."

  Miscente's eyes narrowed, and he pushed his Portal across the table. "The plans have your name on them."

  Cerna wiped his fingers on his pants before he picked up the slim computer. Since the Peshari's takeover, only a few humans were allowed such things. Cerna himself always did his designs on a CAD program on a shared terminal, so he fumbled a bit as he tried to call up the relevant references on Miscente's device. He looked at the design package -- a thorough fake, with supply lists, design review minutes, even two change proposals -- then paged through to the equipment requisitions. The excavation list --

  "I think Phil Keller did this."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Firstly, none of this is real, which is weird, and he's been acting weird. I mean, the date of this design review conflicts with last week's camp council meeting, and it says you were at the review. We both know that's not true. But look at this record here. Phil's a digger programmer, and somebody's reprogrammed this unit . . . and put my name on it, too. The backdated request was to dig footings, but the digger's been re-tasked."

  "Let me guess," said Miscente.

  Cerna nodded. "It's digging part of the basement right now."

  Cerna and Chief Miscente walked to the site of the so-called chapel, atop a small rise away from most of the buildings, flanked by a copse of the Alluvian bamboo-ferns.

  Machine sounds and the smell of freshly turned dirt guided them, though Cerna hesitated when he realized this was where the Peshari had massacred eleven colonists after the last uprising. Cerna visualized them where they had fallen; he had escaped being among them only because the Peshari had failed to capture the squad he had been in.

  Miscente strode on, and Cerna hurried to catch up.

  An automated backhoe had excavated three parallel pits, each about a meter wide, three long, and two deep. It seemed an odd start to a basement, and odder still that Miscente's executive-level authorization failed at first to override the digger's instructions. While they watched, it dug a fourth pit and then stopped. Neither Cerna nor Miscente could get it started again.

  The camp chief was the kind of gentleman for whom annoyance was about the limit he displayed. "Fix this, Tauran," Miscente said, his jaw tight as he teetered on the cusp of going beyond annoyed.

  Cerna caught the next ride to the mine overlook, and found Keller in the control room. "Got a second, Phil?"

  "Maybe." Keller eyed the status screens, holding up gloved hands to various figures on the display. He typed some commands, and pointed to the clock readout on the screen. "Apparently I do."

  "You do what?"

  "Have a second." The corner of his eye crinkled as he smiled.

  "Good, you old fart. Now what the hell is wrong with you?"

  "Nothing a good dose of cod liver oil won't cure. Too bad we don't have any cod."

  Cerna reached out and touched Keller's arm. "Phil, please."

  Keller frowned a little, and nodded. He scratched the side of his face, and seemed to shiver. "Doc says I'm full of some odd kind of cancer, since my nanos quit. Came on real sudden. I probably shouldn't be working, but I haven't told Alexandra yet and she'll need to train someone to do my job. You want to do it?"

  Cerna stood still for a second, then two, then more. Finally he asked, "You couldn't tell me this on our way to Lizardtown? This why you want a memorial stone?"

  "Could be."

  Keller held up his right hand as one of the Peshari remote-observation rigs entered the control room. The device traversed the length of the room, returned, and exited the way it had come. Keller put his hand back down, and Cerna took a deep breath.

  "Does this have anything to do with putting in a chapel, and with digging out a basement today?"

  "I think the plans call for a storm cellar."

  "Amazing that you would know that, since somehow my name got put on the plans."

  "Just call me Mr. Amazing."

  Cerna sat down in a console chair. "I don't know much about cancer -- heard of it -- but it must not be all bad if it's made you grow a personality in the last few days."

  Keller lowered his head, and looked at Cerna from under raised eyebrows. He smirked. "That's not the cancer, Toro. That's the good drugs your one-time wife cooked up for me."

  "That would explain a lot. But not about the storm cellars."

  Keller pushed back from the console, seemingly satisfied that his remote machines could work for a few minutes without his attention. "You've been watching your way through that list of the thousand best movies of all time, have you gotten to The Wizard of Oz yet?"

  "I saw that one a long time ago. I haven't been watching them in order."

  "So you saw a tornado, and you saw the little girl's family go down into a storm cellar to get away from it. The fact is that cyclonic storms like that are very destructive."

  "But we don't get anything l
ike that here."

  "True enough. They're very rare here, Holley says. Not the right prevailing conditions. But that's not really the point. The point is the storm cellar. Have you ever noticed how terrified the Peshari are of enclosed spaces?"

  "Well, all their buildings are open at the top." Cerna frowned. What difference did it make if the lizards were claustrophobic? It didn't seem to bother them. They built all their devices and furnishings to withstand the elements, and that had given them an advantage when they decided to attack. They would never build a flimsy computer; all of their gear, all their tools and toys, were rugged and tough. They were pretty rugged and tough themselves.

  "And all their buildings are one story," Keller said. "We thought it was just an affectation, something they brought with them from home -- after all, they like temperate places like we do, so they would have to invest a lot in heavy-duty architecture if they ventured far away. But they got here in spacecraft, right? Those weren't open to the sky. Did you ever talk to Tsao about what he saw inside their ship during the surrender ceremony? He said their naval architecture seemed to be focused on one thing: overdesign in terms of crushing strength."

  "Is this going somewhere?"

  "You ever notice that they run utilities above ground as much as possible? They'll barely dig a ditch more than a meter deep, and then they'll either widen it into a gully or set up beefier trench boxes than we would ever use. And they hate the mine. I think if they had their way -- if we hadn't started it before they got here, or if this area were more seismically active -- they'd just shear the top off the mountain and pick through the rubble for what they need.

  "You know they don't like us to go down into the mine ourselves, right? The best tech they allow us is like that remote, for monitoring the inside of the mine and directing the tunnelers and excavators. One time I told the lizard foreman that he should go in with me and take pictures of a truck with a broken axle, and I thought his head was going to explode."