Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9) (13 page)

Watching Shan and Ell dancing was really something though. They didn’t perform any of the amazing feats that Ell did when she danced alone, but… there was something elegant and graceful about the way they did everything
so
perfectly. Out of the corner of her eye Morgan saw other people watching them; she suspected those people also wondered just what seemed so entrancing about the way this particular couple danced.

As they sat in a booth at the Carolina Coffee shop Morgan turned to AJ, “So, do you see Raquel out at work very much?”

He turned to look at Ell, “Uh, no. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her out at D5R proper.” Frowning at Ell he said, “I asked about it once and someone told me you mostly go to other places as Donsaii’s representative? The D5R island and the Portal Tech facilities, etcetera. Is that right?”

Ell’s eyes twinkled, “Yeah, I’m here and there. I’ve even gotten to go up to the habitat a couple of times myself.”

Morgan got a devious look, “So, AJ, do you ever see
Donsaii
herself?”

AJ shook his head, “Not really. I’ve seen her from a distance a couple of times, but I’ve never talked to her.”

Since AJ had his eyes fixed on Morgan, Ell shot Morgan a look and gave a quick shake of her head. “Everyone at D5R is really impressed with AJ though,” Ell said, touching his elbow. “He’s the new whiz kid. They say he’s really turned their asteroid mining operation around.”

As they chattered on, Morgan watched in amazement as Ell ate two helpings of blackberry cobbler. With ice cream! The conversation was pleasant and Morgan realized when they got up to leave that she was looking forward to seeing AJ again. She decided that AJ stalking her to North Carolina might be weird… but it was pretty sweet.

***

Presidential Science Advisor Fladwami spoke to his AI, “See if you can connect me to Donsaii.”

A moment later her voice came on. “Dr. Fladwami, I truly am sorry President Flood lost the election. How can I help?”

“Actually, I’m calling to warn you of bad news. The Blaustein bill just got pushed through. President Flood asked me to let you know that he isn’t going to veto it. He apologizes, but it would be a pointless waste of his political capital when it’s obvious that Congress would just pass it again in January when Stockton
would
sign it. He doesn’t intend to
enforce
Blaustein either, but of course he will be out of office in January.”

“I appreciate his doing what he can.”

“There’s more. President-elect Stockton was over for a transition meeting. It would appear that she has somewhat of a burr under her saddle about you. President Flood tried to speak to her about what you had to offer and why he thought the Blaustein bill was a mistake, but she didn’t want to hear it.”

“Hmmm, I’ve been worrying about the likelihood of that. A brief search of her campaign speeches brings up my name with some pretty unflattering verbiage.”

“For a final bit of bad news, Stockton has chosen Elton Costella for her science advisor. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Costella is one of Ementhal’s cronies and I’m sure that Ementhal is the one who recommended him to her.”

“Oh, that’s sad. Costella’s an idiot…”

***

Papa had lost his job too! In the midday Mexican sun, Elsa Fuentes crouched silently by the corner of her house. Elsa’s mother had sent her out to play when Elsa’s father unexpectedly came home in the late morning. Elsa could tell something was wrong, so instead of going to Gloria’s house she had doubled back to listen.

Despite the warm sunshine, Elsa’s shoulders shivered uncontrollably with fear of this disaster she didn’t really understand.

Mama’s voice said, “No se puede Felipe ayudarle a conseguir un trabajo en su fábrica (Can’t Felipe help you get a job at his plant)?”

“No one can help me get a job Lucia! They’re
all
worried about their own jobs. El Norte is our only hope.”

“But, Enrique! The border is dangerous! Even
trying
to cross is very hard, then if we are caught I’ve heard that they may do terrible things to us!”

In a quiet voice Papa said, “
We
cannot go Lucia. It is
very
expensive. We don’t have enough money for all of us. I must go alone. When I have a job, I will send money. When I have sent enough,
then
maybe you and Elsa can come after.”

“I don’t
want
to stay here without you! There has to be a job here somewhere. Let me talk to my cousins…

***

New Delhi, India—A second woman was beaten to death in the Nagar Market. Again, the beating appears to have been in response to her application of an adhesive dot to the back of a man’s shirt. The dots say, “I groped a woman” and women all around the city have been applying them in protest against the loathsome practice. Men returning home or to their workplaces with such dots attached to them have been at the least embarrassed and sometimes humiliated in front of their wives and families. Some men who had female employers have lost their jobs.

Some men are calling the dots a form of terrorism. Many, of course, claim that they groped no one. They say their lives have been ruined by the random application of a dot by a woman who hates all men…

A tear slowly tracked down Viveka’s cheek as she read the news. She had only printed a few sets of the dots and given most of them away. She had been horrified when she heard one of her friends saying that she had just applied them to random men, “because all men had groped a woman at some time.” Viveka had vowed not to print anymore, hoping that the entire idea of the dots would fade away and no one would ever associate the phenomenon with her.

However, it would seem that thousands of young women had access to printers. Stores had sold out of printer paper with sticky dots and other women were printing them by the thousands. Viveka hadn’t been groped for days now, suggesting that her campaign had made some men nervous about the practice. However, she felt appalled by the human cost that had accrued as some women indiscriminately placed them and then men began lashing out against women seen carrying or applying the dots.

Viveka closed her eyes and sighed. Saying a little prayer she swore to herself that she would learn from this. She would work to
help
others. She would protect herself, but not set out to inflame others to reprisal in her stead.

She couldn’t help but think that there must be
something
better she could do. She had always been good at solving problems, unfortunately this wasn’t one of the engineering problems that she excelled at. She shook her head, social problems had always been difficult for her and this one was… unbelievably problematic …

***

Leo Jans and his research team watched in fascination. The display from their rocket’s camera showed the surface of Aycee. They’d been calling the planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B “Aycee” following D5R’s naming of Tau Ceti’s third planet “Teecee.” Aycee represented the only real planet in the binary star system, at least that their search of the system with the nice camera on the rocket had discovered. Without telescopic imaging they could easily have missed small or distant planets. Aycee’s orbit, at 120 million kilometers, placed it closer to B than earth was to the sun, however B was only about 40% as luminous as Sol. Alpha Centauri A, on the other hand, was about 50% brighter than the sun, but relatively far away. Leo assumed that any planets which may have formed farther from either of the stars had either plunged into one of the two stars, or been flung away into deep space. Where any closer planets might be wasn’t clear, but AC1’s orbit probably wasn’t very stable either. The fact that it may not have been in this particular orbit for very long was thought to be a likely reason why it didn’t have more advanced life forms. In addition to orbital instability, Aycee likely got pelted regularly with comets and asteroids disturbed by the dance of the two stellar heavyweights.

All in all, Aycee lacked stable hospitality for advanced life forms. Alpha A was much brighter than Alpha B and the distance between A and B was about the same as the distance between the sun and Neptune. So temperatures would be higher when Aycee was between Alpha A and B in its orbit and lower when it was on the far side from A. Intermittent bombardment from space would change temperatures by modifying atmospheric opacity and density. Leo suspected that just about when life had adapted to one set of conditions, it crashed when the conditions changed radically. At present, the planet was in the part of its orbit that was bringing it in between A and B. So, it was hot, with average temperatures of 54
^o
C (129
^o
F) near the equator and 3
^o
C near the poles. Water covered about 80% of its surface. Green water. The skies were cloudy and the land wet. Green covered almost every surface above the waterline too.

Donsaii appeared to have been right in her conclusion that Aycee lacked multicellular life. Unicellular organisms would be better able to survive and rapidly evolve to adapt to the frequent changes in conditions, so Leo suspected that if multicellular forms
had
evolved, that they had been wiped out. “Well,” he said to the team in general, “shall we go down?”

A general susurrus of agreement was punctuated, as he’d expected, by a vehement “no” from Abel Jones who constantly argued for a more careful survey of the AB solar system. Jones repeatedly demanded that they look for other planetary and sub planetary bodies even though most of the team wanted to survey Aycee itself, feeling the scientific payoff would be higher there.

Leo looked back over his shoulder at Abel who took a breath preparatory to launching into his reasons. Before Abel got started, Leo put up a forestalling hand. “I know Abel, I know. But right now we only have one rocket, and an entire solar system to investigate. We’re going to follow Sutton’s law... Noggin,” Leo said to his AI, “ask D5R to take the rocket down to land near the southern coast of that land mass that extends down from the north pole.” He glanced at the temperature chart, “Shoot for a latitude of about 70
^o
.” The chart said average temperatures would be about 20
^o
C or 68
^o
F at that latitude. Leo wouldn’t admit it to his team, but he secretly wanted to look at a location where humans might be able to live—even if we had no way to get there at present.

“‘Sutton’s Law?’” Lin Mi queried.

“Willie Sutton was a bank robber, who when asked ‘why he robbed banks’ is reputed, though he later denied it, to have said, ‘that’s where the money is.’ I think this planet is more interesting than the rest of the system, even though the system is pretty interesting in its own right.”

As they watched, the rocket turned itself to a retro position, fired its engine and began dropping toward the planet. Because it would take several hours to get down they broke for a long lunch.

When Leo and his team returned, they saw a rocky green shore rising toward the camera on the bottom of the rocket. The murky green water turned briefly white as the waves broke on the lumpy shore. Out the side cameras they could see reddish brown breaking splotchily through the green on the north sides of the rocks where less light struck.

Argument broke out over where to land, especially in view of the rough lumpy surface with a serious lack of nice flat landing places. Then Abel Jones said, “Look, over to the right. There’s a flat spot next to that large boulder.”

He was correct and Leo had Noggin ask D5R to land the rocket there. “Abel, for a moment there it almost sounded like you cared about the mission down here on Aycee?”

“Just didn’t want you wrecking my rocket,” Abel growled, “before we got any
real
science done back out there in the system.”

Lin Mi broke in, “Look at the numbers!”

They all turned to look at the screen which displayed, “Gravity 0.78, 1.8 atmospheres pressure, nitrogen 67%, oxygen 31%, carbon dioxide 1.3%.”

Leo gave a little fist pump, “We could live there!”

Abel frowned, “That’s a lot of CO
₂
.”

Lin Mi shrugged, “Yes, enough to stimulate respiration some. But tolerable.”

Leo said, “Let’s scrape up a little of the green stuff for that DNA and chlorophyll assay.”

“I don’t know why we care. We
can’t
get there.” Abel said in a grouchy tone.

Leo shook his head, then began directing his AI to extend the manipulator arm out of the rocket to take the test sample.

***

Gary stepped into the small conference room at D5R and found Ell sitting there with a blond man in his forties. She stood and said, “Gary, this is Aaron Miller, a patent attorney I’ve worked with on a couple of other things.” Turning to Miller she indicated Gary and said, “Gary Pace, carbon genius.”

Miller said, “I hear you can make graphene?”

Ell arched an eyebrow, “Among other things.” She turned to Gary, “Have you finished my knife yet?”

He nodded and pulled out a knife handle with a grayish semitransparent blade sticking out of it. The blade was long and slender, looking more like a stiletto or ice pick. He leaned back and reached into his pants pocket, pulling out an oak dowel which he set on the table next to the knife.

Ell picked up the knife and the dowel, easily shaving a sliver off the dowel to demonstrate its sharpness. Then she cut hard into it to notch out a little wedge of wood. “It looks so dainty! Would I be able to break it?”

“I don’t think so. It’s solid graphend with a diamond edge. I haven’t broken one in the Instron yet, but it should take close to six hundred pounds to break it in three point bending.”

Miller’s eyebrows were up. “So we’re patenting some kind of super knife?”