Sarah Zettel - The Quiet Invasion

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2024-12-20 0 0 913.32KB 423 页 5.9玖币
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CONTENTS
•Chapter One
•Chapter Two
•Chapter Three
•Chapter Four
•Chapter Five
•Chapter Six
•Chapter Seven
•Chapter Eight
•Chapter Nine
•Chapter Ten
•Chapter Eleven
•Chapter Twelve
•Chapter Thirteen
•Chapter Fourteen
•Chapter Fifteen
•Chapter Sixteen
•Chapter Seventeen
•Chapter Eighteen
•Chapter Nineteen
•Chapter Twenty
•Epilogue
The Quiet Invasion
Sarah Zettel
ASPECT® WARNER BOOKS
A Time Warner Company
This book is dedicated, with deepest thanks, to my spiritual big sister,
Dawn Marie Sampson Beresford.
Acknowledgments
The Author would like to thank Timothy B. Smith for his expert
technical advice, Laura Woody, who knew about the yeast, and Dr. David
Grinspoon, whose Venus Revealed she consulted fre-quently during the
writing of this book. She would also like to thank Betsy Mitchell and Jaime
Levine, whose patient work made this a better book, and Karen Everson,
who was there for the crisis.
Contents - Prev / Next
Chapter One
"This is Venera Control, Shuttle AX-2416. You're clear for land-ing.
Welcome back."
Hello, Tori. How are you doing? thought Helen from her seat in the
passenger compartment. She liked the fact that the shut-tle pilots left the
intercom open so she could listen to the familiar voices running through
the landing protocols. Over-hearing this final flight ritual made her feel
that she was really home.
I just wish I was really home with better news.
She bit her lip and settled a little further back in her crash-couch.
Helen was the only Venera-bound passenger this run. She'd flown from
Earth in the long-distance ship Queen Is-abella, which now waited in
orbit while the shuttles from Ven-era ferried down supplies and
equipment that had to be imported from Earth.
Helen stared straight ahead over the rows of empty couches. The ceiling
and front wall of the shuttle's passenger cabin were one gigantic view
screen. Venus's opaque, yellowish-gray clouds churned all around the
shuttle. Wind stirred the mists constantly but never cleared them away.
She strained her eyes, struggling to see the solid shadow of Venera Base
through the shifting fog. Despite everything, Helen still felt as if she
carried the bad news with her, that nothing could have changed aboard
Venera until she got there and handed the news over.
I'm not there so it's not real yet. Helen smoothed down the indigo scarf
she wore over her stark white hair. Arrogance, arrogance, old woman.
This last trip should have finally put you in your place.
She really did feel old. It was strange. Even in the modern era of med
trips and gene-level body modification, eighty-three was not young. She
had never felt so old inside, though. She'd never felt calcified like this, as if
something in her understand-ing had failed, leaving her standing on the
edge of events she was unable to comprehend clearly, let alone affect.
The shuttle's descent steepened. At last, the cloud veil thinned enough
that Helen really could make out the spherical shadow of Venera
Base—her dream, her life's work, her home.
And now, my poor failure.
Even with self-pity and defeat swimming around inside her head,
Helen's heart lifted at the sight of Venera. The base was a gigantic sphere
buoyed by Venus's thick CO2 atmosphere. Distance and cloud cover made
the massive girders and cables that attached the tail and stabilizers to the
main body of the sta-tion look as thin as threads.
Venera rode the perpetual easterly winds that circled the planet's
equator. The shuttle matched Venera's speed easily, and the navigation
chips in the shuttle and the runway handled the rest. The shuttle glided
onto the great deck that encircled the very top of Venera's hull. It taxied
straight across the run-way and to the open hangar.
The shuttle jerked slightly as it rolled to a stop. A moment of silence
enveloped Helen. This was no tourist shuttle. There were no attendants,
human or automated, to tell her it was okay to get up now, or to make
sure she claimed all her lug-gage, or to hope she'd enjoyed her flight and
would come again soon.
Instead, the hissing, bumping noises of pressurization, corri-dor
docking, and engine power-down surrounded her. Helen stayed where she
was. As soon as she stepped out of the shut-tle, it all became real. The
transition would be over. Her illu-sions would no longer shield her. Helen
found she did not want to abandon that shelter.
"Dr. Failia?"
Helen started and looked up into the broad, dark face of the shuttle's
senior pilot. What was his name?
"Yes?" She pushed herself upright and began fumbling with the
multiple buckles that strapped her to the couch. Name, name, name…
"I just wanted to say, I know you're going to get us through this.
Everybody's with you."
Pearson! "Thank you, Mr. Pearson," said Helen. "We'll find a way."
"I know we will." He stepped aside to give her room to stand. Helen did
not miss the hand that briefly darted out to help her to her feet and then
darted back again, afraid of being offensive. She pretended to ignore the
awkward gesture and retrieved her satchel from the bin under her couch.
"Thank you again, Mr. Pearson." Helen shook the pilot's hand and met
his eyes with a friendly smile. P.R. reflexes all in working order, thank
you.
Then, because there was nothing else to do, she walked down the
flex-walled docking corridor.
Bennet Godwin and Michael Lum, the other two members of Venera's
governing board, were, of course, waiting for her in the passenger clearing
area. One look at their faces told her that the bad news had indeed flown
far ahead of her.
Her hand tightened around her satchel strap as she walked up to her
colleagues.
"I take it you've heard," she said flatly. "We lost Andalucent
Technologies and IBM." There, it's official. I said it. The last shards of her
comforting illusions fell away.
Ben Godwin was a square-built, florid man. Every emotion registered
on his face as a change of color, from snow white to cherry red. Right now
though, he just looked gray. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Michael, standing beside him, glanced briefly at the floor and then up
at Helen's eyes. He was a much younger, much leaner, much calmer man
with clear gold skin. He wore his black hair long and pulled back into a
ponytail. The gold ID badge on his white tunic proclaimed him the chief of
Venera's security. "They took the University of Washington with them."
He spoke softly, but the words crashed hard against Helen. "What?
When?"
"About an hour ago." Ben ran his hand over his bristly scalp. We tried
to get them to wait to talk to you, but they weren't—"
Anger hardened Helen's face. "Well, they'll have to talk to me anyway."
She brushed past the two men. "We can't afford to lose their funding too."
Helen did not look back to see if they were following her. she just strode
straight ahead into the broad, curving corridor that connected the
docking area to the rest of Venera. She ig-nored the nearest elevator
bundle and started down the stairs instead. She was not waiting around
anymore. She'd been wait-ing on people for months on Earth. Waiting for
them to tell her they had no more money, no more time to wait for results,
no more interest in a planet that would never be amenable to human
colonization or exploitation.
Helen kept her office on the farm levels near the center of Venera's
sphere. Full spectrum lights shone down on vast soil beds growing
high-yield cereals and brightly colored vegeta-bles. Ducks and geese
waded freely through troughed rice pad-dies that also nurtured several
species of fish. The chickens, however, were penned in separate yards
around the perimeter. The chickens did not get along with the more
peaceable fowls. Quartz windows ringed the entire level, showing the great
gray clouds. Every now and then, a pure gold flash of sheet lightning lit the
world.
The farms had been meant to give Venera some measure of
independence. Acquiring good, fresh food was vital to the maintenance of
a permanent colony, and from the beginning, Helen had meant Venera to
be a permanent colony.
Old dreams died hard. Venera might have actually had real
self-sufficiency, except for the restrictions the U.N. placed on
manufacturing and shipping licenses.
Old fears died hard too.
Helen's office was an administrative cubicle on an island in the middle
of one of the rice paddies. She knew people called it "the Throne Room"
and didn't really care. She loved Venus, but she missed Earth's blues and
greens. Setting up her work-space in the farms had been the perfect
compromise.
Helen kept a spartan office. It was furnished with a work desk, three
visitor's chairs, and an all-purpose view screen that currently showed a
star field. Her one luxury, besides her view, was a couple of shelves of
potted plants—basil, oregano, lavender, and so on. Their sweet, spicy
scents were the air's only perfume.
Helen dropped herself into the chair behind the desk and tossed her
satchel onto the floor. It was only then that she be-came aware that
Michael and Ben had in fact followed her.
"Who'd you talk to?" Her touch woke the desk and lit its command
board. She shuffled through the icons to bring up her list of contact codes.
"Patricia Iannone," said Ben, sitting in one of the visitor's chairs. "She
sounded like she was just following orders."
"We'll see." Helen activated Pat's contact and checked the time delay.
Four minutes today. Not great for purposes of per-suasive conversation,
but doable. Helen opened the com sys-tem and lifted her face to the view
screen. "Hello, Pat. I've just gotten back to Venera, and they're telling me
that U Washing-ton is pulling our funding. What's the matter? You can't
tell me the volcanology department has not been getting its money's worth
out of us. If it's a matter of being more vocal about your sponsorship or
about allowing your people some more di-rected research time, I know we
can work out the details. You just have to let me know what you and your
people need." She touched the Send key, and the com system took over,
shooting the message down after the contact code, waiting for a
con-nection, and a reply.
Helen swiveled her chair to face Ben and Michael. "All right, tell me
what's been happening since we talked last."
So Ben told her about some of the new personnel assignments and
promotions and how the volcano, Hathor Montes, was showing signs of
entering an active cycle. Michael talked about a rash of petty thefts, an
increase in demands on the data lines caused apparently by the
volcanology group gearing up for Hathor's active cycle, and a couple of
instream clipout personas trying to get themselves inserted onto Venera's
payroll.
"Now that would be all we'd need," muttered Helen. "Hand-ing out
extra money for a couple of computer ghosts."
As she spoke, the desk chimed. All of them turned their at-tention back
to the view screen. Helen's stomach tightened. The star field cleared away
to show a fashionably slim, young-looking woman with beige skin and a
cloud of dark-blond hair, worn unbound under a pink scarf.
"Hello, Helen," she said soberly. "I was expecting this. Lis-ten, there are
no complaints about the publicity, the facilities access, about anything.
The problems are application, oppor-tunity, and resource distribution.
The comptrollers have de-cided our people are going to have to be content
with St. Helens and Pelee for a while. The industrial research spillover is
contracting, and there is just not enough to go around right now." Her
expression flickered from annoyed to apologetic. "There's no more after
this. Anything you send is going to my machine. I'm sorry, but there is
nothing I can do."
The stars faded back into view. For a moment, Helen met Ben's gaze,
but she looked quickly away. She didn't want to see what he was thinking.
We could have done this, he was thinking, if you'd been willing to do it
small. If you hadn't in-sisted from the beginning on a full-scale base
where people could live and raise their children and make a lifetime
com-mitment to the study of this world.
She pressed her fingertips against her forehead. That was what he was
thinking. That Venus was, at most, four weeks away from Earth. It
wouldn't have mattered if people had to come and go. Venera could have
been made small and simple and then expanded if things worked out. But,
oh, no. Helen Failia had her vision, and Helen Failia had to push it
through. Helen had to make sure there were children like Michael who
could lose their homes if the funding ever collapsed.
"There is a way out of this," said Michael. "There has to be."
"What?" Helen's hand jerked away from her face. "Michael, I'm open to
suggestions. I've just spent four months scavenging the whole of Mother
Earth for additional funding. It's not there."
"Well." Michael rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and then brought
them back down to meet Helen's gaze. "Have you tried a com burst out to
Yan Su on the Colonial Affairs Com-mittee? There might be some U.N.
money we can dredge up."
Ben snorted. "Oh, come on, Michael. The U.N. pay to keep a colony
running? Their business is keeping colonies scraping and begging." As a
younger man, Helen knew, Ben had been strongly sympathetic with the
Bradbury Separatist movement on Mars—the same movement that had
blossomed into the Bradbury Rebellion and, for five short, violent years,
Bradbury Free Territory. Because of that, he still took a very dim view of
the United Nations and their off-Earth colonial policies.
She had to admit he was partly right. Since the Bradbury Re-bellion,
the C.A.C.'s sole function had been to make sure noth-ing like that ever
happened again. Hence, the licensing restrictions. No colony could
manufacture space shuttles or long-distance ships. No colony could
manufacture communica-tions satellites, although they were graciously
allowed to repair the ones they had. There was a whole host of other
hardware and spare parts that either never got licensed or were taxed to
the Sun and back again.
Most of the time that didn't bother Helen. She dealt with the C.A.C.
through her friend Yan Su, and so far Su had been will-ing to help
whenever she could. Now, though, they were com-ing head-to-head with
the old, frightened public policies.
"You think they want to deal with ten thousand refugees?" countered
Michael calmly. "It's got to be cheaper to let us stay where we're at than to
pay for processing ten thousand new resident-citizen files."
Helen nodded absently. She found, to her shame, she was not ready to
admit that that avenue had been shut off almost a year ago. Maybe she
could try again. Now is not the time for pride, she reminded herself
firmly. You've begged everybody else. Why not the government?
"Yan Su helped put us up here," said Michael, more to Ben than to
Helen. "Maybe she can help keep us up here." Ben's only response was to
turn a little pinker and look sour.
As little as she liked to admit it, Michael was right. It was time for last
resorts. Without their three major funding sources, they were not going to
be able to meet their payroll. They could buy some time by laying off the
nonpermanent residents and sending them back to Mother Earth, but
then they wouldn't be able to complete their research projects and they'd
lose yet more money.
Helen looked at the time delay again. Venus and Earth were moving out
of conjunction. If she put this off, the time delay was only going to get
worse, and she didn't want to have to conduct this conversation through
the mail. "Why don't you—"
Movement outside the office cleared the door's view panel. Grace Meyer
stood in front of the door with her arms folded and her impatience plain
on her heavily lined face. Helen sup-pressed a groan. What she wanted to
do was open the inter-com and say, "We're having a meeting, Grace. Not
now." But she held back. Grace had proven herself willing to make trou-ble
lately, and Venera did not need more trouble.
"We'll finish in a minute, gentlemen," she said instead. "Door. Open.
Hello, Grace," she said, not bothering to put on a smile, as Grace would
know it was false. "What can I do for you?"
Dr. Grace Meyer was a short woman with a milk-and-roses complexion.
Her lab coat was no longer crisp, and her tunic and trousers were as
rumpled as if she'd slept in them. She wore a green kerchief tied over her
short hair, which was the same strawberry blond as when she'd moved to
Venera fifteen years ago. Grace was a long-lifer. She was actually twice
Helen's age, even though she looked only half that old.
Grace nodded to Ben and Michael and then turned all her at-tention to
Helen. "I heard about U Washington."
Helen sighed. "The only thing that travels faster than bad news is bad
news about you personally." Ben and Michael did not smile. Ben looked
grim. Michael looked like he was trying to calculate the probable outcome
of this scenario so he could ready his responses.
"What about U Washington?" asked Helen.
Grace glanced at Ben and Michael. In that glance, Helen read that
Grace would like to ask them to leave but couldn't quite work out how.
And I'll be damned if I'll help you, Helen thought.
"Helen," Grace started again, "there are still sources of money out
there. If we shift emphasis just a little—"
Here it comes. "To the possibility of life on Venus?"
Grace leaned across the desk. "You saw my new grant from Biotech 24.
That's good money, Helen. The absorbers—"
"Are a complex set of benzene rings with some strange sulfuric
hangers-on under heat and pressure."
Grace was a chemist who had come to Venera to help look for the
ultraviolet absorber in the Venusian clouds. The clouds were mostly
transparent to ultraviolet, but there were bands and patches that
absorbed all but the very lowest end of the UV wavelengths. For years, no
one had been able to work out what was happening. Grace and her team
had isolated a large, complex carbon, oxygen, sulfur molecule that
interacted with the sulfuric acid in the clouds and the UV from the Sun, so
it was constantly breaking apart, reforming and recreating more of itself.
Which was fine; it had won her awards and acclaim, and brought Venera
a lot of good publicity.
The problem was, Grace was trying to get the compound, which she
called "the absorber" for simplicity's sake, classified as life.
Helen got slowly to her feet. She was not tall, but she had a few
centimeters on Grace and didn't mind using them. Espe-cially now. She
did not need this. "Your absorbers are not life. No funding university or
independent research lab we've had on board for the last ten years has
said it could be qualified as life, or even proto-life."
摘要：

CONTENTS·ChapterOne·ChapterTwo·ChapterThree·ChapterFour·ChapterFive·ChapterSix·ChapterSeven·ChapterEight·ChapterNine·ChapterTen·ChapterEleven·ChapterTwelve·ChapterThirteen·ChapterFourteen·ChapterFifteen·ChapterSixteen·ChapterSeventeen·ChapterEighteen·ChapterNineteen·ChapterTwenty·EpilogueTheQuietInv...

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