Janus (2 page)

The woods gave a long muted roar in the morning breeze, and the fronds swayed above her. A handful of dead leaves, like tiny brown gloves, released from last winter’s snow came pattering towards her. She shivered. “Screw it,” she whispered. “If that’s you, just don’t track mud all over the carpet when you do decide to come back, that’s all.”

She was too late to catch the crew of the dirigible in the cafeteria. Only a few tables were occupied, mostly by rock-cutters and a couple of security men. She didn’t want to talk to any of them this morning, and carried her cornflakes and soya-yoghurt towards an empty table; but then she saw someone else, a slim muscular man with black curling hair. On impulse she went to join him.

“Good god, Carlo,” she said, sitting opposite him. “Your latest kick you out of bed?”

He rolled his eyes theatrically. “If you’d seen how I fought—how I had to tear myself away—you’d have wept. And I thought it was merely duty that compelled me, not knowing that fate had decreed our paths would entwine this morning.”

“Yeah, fate can be nasty that way.” She found she wasn’t in the mood for banter. Hearing the stiffness in her voice, she grinned to compensate.

“Oh, so cruel, to a poor bachelor. Why are the prettiest ones always the coldest?” Carlo peered quickly at her and changed moods. “But fate will tear us apart soon enough. A new man came in on the gasbag last night. One, count him, one, from what was supposed to be a cargo shuttle. He was delayed somewhere up the pipe by medical complications.” He sipped at his steaming coffee. “Don’t ask me what, I only work here. And now he’s lined up for a session with the memory machine as soon as he’s through orientation. So of course Dr. Henry decides this is the occasion to try out his new algorithm, and guess who has to overhaul the machine and refresh our dear ruler’s overtaxed mind with what we do in his clinic. Are you going to tell me your excuse, or shall I start believing in fate again?”

She preferred to deflect his question. “Dr. Henry is going to watch a memory session?”

“He may well try to participate if we’re not careful,” Carlo said. “Just as soon as he comes in from his morning constitutional. He’s forgotten how long it’s been since he did any practical work.”

“Phillip Henry with mud on his boots. Have I slept a couple of years longer than I thought, or were you telling lies about him all this time?”

“We don’t evaluate the data, ma’am, just pass it along.”

She tried to chew a mouthful of cereal and finally swallowed it in a lump. “You still believe that machine of yours works, Carlo?”

He sipped again, then wiped his finger through the wet circle the mug had left on the table. “With patience, and a little luck,” he said, “yes, it works.” He hesitated. “At least, most people seem more comfortable with themselves after they’ve recovered some of their past.”

“So which didn’t I have?” she asked, and heard the note of strain return to her voice. “The patience or the luck?”

He peered at her again. “Both, perhaps. I did feel we were making progress when you gave it up. I’m not used to failing with a young woman. Are you going to give me another chance?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “My memory isn’t coming back on its own, that’s for damned sure. It wasn’t very complicated—I just wanted to find out why I came here, what I wanted to be, or do.”

He nodded. “And how’s Barbara?”

“Okay.” She bent her head as she scraped the last of the cereal from the bowl. But there was no reason not to talk about their relationship with him, was there? “She’s started going for midnight walks again.”

Carlo leaned back and watched her. “I think,” he said, sounding professionally cautious, “anything that reduces tensions might help you both. You’re both afloat in strange waters, not sure what you dare cling to. Perhaps you make too many demands on each other, because there are too many uncertainties in your lives. It might be good if you both decided to try again.”

Elinda shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s sure she’s happy enough as she is.” Except, she admitted to herself, that Barbara kept writing down her dreams and trying to analyse them: she felt it was now that mattered, not the past. If there was anything to be done, she had to do it on her own. “We haven’t been talking much lately, again,” Elinda muttered.

“All the more reason for you both to try something like that. Keep it in mind, at least.” Carlo looked at his watch. “And now I’d better tear myself away and start putting Dr. Henry’s toy through its paces. Take care.”

The hut where she had her desk was still locked. Probably neither Larsen, her boss, nor Christopher, their assistant, would be in for half an hour yet. Rather than sit and be tempted to brood, she decided to make her morning inspection of the Greenhouse. She put her key back in her pocket and headed past the hut.

The Greenhouse lay across the road from landing field and occupied almost as much land—terraced into the slopes and enclosed under shells of automated glass panels. As she entered, banks of strip lights under the transparent ceiling were starting to glow in a simulated dawn.

The crops grew in trays of coarse sand. Each tray was fed its own nutrient mix from a set of troughs mounted on brackets above it. Nitrate, phosphate, trace elements . . . She walked the aisles, checking levels in the tanks, assuring herself that the sensors were in place, that none of the diseases they had fought were reappearing.

At the far end, up the fourth flight of steps, were the vats where waste vegetable matter was processed into something like milk, and the cloned animal protein was grown. It worked both ways, Larsen had told her when she had started working with him: terrestrial life couldn’t eat the local food—plant or animal—without getting sick, but the crops they grew were safe from local pests for the same reason. If they could just get crops to grow in the natural soil, the colony would be one step nearer independence. Larsen himself spent long hours in the microbiology lab in the clinic working towards that end.

She made a mental note of a couple of problems and headed back to the office. On the way she caught sight of Carlo walking from the landing field towards the clinic. Beside him was a stocky, blond man who moved slowly, peering about him in a manner that could have meant either uncertainty or intense concentration. He must be the new arrival. He looked in her direction, but didn’t seem to notice her. Something made her think of snow, and warmth shared in a shelter from biting winds. She wondered when Barbara would return. Two steps to the man’s left, the taller, angular figure was Dr. Phillip Henry, the administrator, smiling animatedly and apparently talking non-stop while he pointed out things the others paid no attention to. Under the entrance light at the clinic she saw there did indeed seem to be mud on his boots.

She shook her head and went inside.

Someone had been in long enough to switch on the lights and turn on the heat, but she had the office to herself. She hung her coat behind the door and went to her desk. It faced south the window with a view of the river and the mountains. On a bright afternoon she had to squint to read her computer screen. As usual, the desk was littered with spare memory sticks, a couple of hardcopy botany texts and several piles of paper. The sheets had all been erased and recycled several times for reminders, lists, flow-diagrams, arithmetic, bits of computer code. Every unused space had been filled with her doodlings—curling, involuted shapes, chains of circles, blacked-in or empty. She could almost believe she was looking at an alien language, and wondered what Barbara, with her armchair dream analysis, would make of it all.

She felt a pang of irritation, and switched on the terminal to confirm that what she had seen of the Greenhouse fitted the facts as the machine saw them. She began working through the energy and mineral budgets, and was fully engrossed when the door opened.

“Early, this morning,” said Niels Larsen, carefully unbuttoning his coat. Something in his voice made her turn to look at him. He was wearing his usual black sweater; his clipped grey goatee and the lines that ran down from his nose around his mouth emphasised the doleful length of his face. “Did you take breakfast in the cafeteria before you arrived?”

She glanced at the time flashing in the corner of her terminal screen. “About an hour ago. I couldn’t sleep this morning.”

He pulled a carefully folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket. “You didn’t see any of these?”

The paper was a notepaper-sized leaflet printed in standard typeface capitals, and apparently photocopied. She read:

WAKE UP!

THIS PLACE IS A FRAUD!

IT IS A TOXIC DUMP FOR CRIMINALS

THEY HAVE PUT MURDERERS, RAPISTS AND

PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US

AND THEY NEVER TOLD US

EVERYONE!

GO TO THE COUNCIL

MAKE THEM TELL YOU WHAT IS GOING ON!

“It appeared on the datanet this morning,” Larsen said, “and someone printed it out. Of course the file has been erased by now, but there were copies of this on most of the tables when I went in for coffee.”

She shook her head. “There was the usual stack of stuff waiting for distribution when I was in. I didn’t bother to read them.”

“Whoever is responsible must have put them out in the last hour, then.”

“Someone’s either crazy or very sure of themselves,” Elinda said. “I wish I had a paper budget like that.” She shook her head. “I’d say it’s just a practical joke, but it’s too expensive for that. Someone probably believes this. I almost wonder why anyone would be so melodramatic.”

“It’s not a good omen for our new world, whether they’re crazy, malicious or overconfident,” Larsen said. “Secret criminals or secret lunatics. It seems the worm is in the apple.”

“I’d take the lunatic myself,” Elinda said “—as long as they stop at handing out leaflets.” She looked at him. “Or do you think there’s more to it?”

Larsen frowned. “We are still tied to the purse strings of our beloved home world’s consortium, and I can’t believe the administration there is more virtuous than others of its kind. There must be some bodies that would welcome an excuse to cut our funding.” He paused and sat down. “To be honest, what really troubles me about this piece of amateur journalism is the effect it may have on our community, whether it contains any truth or not. This is a very small society in which to sow distrust. I certainly would not want to see a witch hunt here, when the nearest sanctuary may lie in another universe.”

“You think it might not be a lunatic then? A—saboteur?”

He paused, frowning. “I feel if that were the main intention, some more direct action would have been taken. I believe—and hope—that it was merely misguided, and it turns out to be isolated and unfounded.”

“We should just ignore it then? But if there is something in it . . .”

“If there is—then what?” he said. “You should understand, as well as anyone, how meaningless it is to judge a person by their past—here, particularly here. No: remember it, but leave it alone. Or are you looking for a new career as an investigative reporter?”

“No thanks,” she said coolly. “I’m quite comfortable here.”

“Good.” He met her eyes briefly. “I’m glad.”

She tried to hide how much that crumb of praise meant to her.

About five minutes later, Christopher Huson, the other third of their team, came in. Brown-haired and gangling, he always reminded Elinda of an overgrown, over-studious schoolboy, despite the fact that he seemed to have an inside track on what recreational drug market there was in the settlement. “Checked your in-box lately?” he asked. “I think there’s a circular to all departments. Something to do with us putting on a sort of celebration, though I haven’t seen it.”

“Clearly,” Larsen muttered, and turned to his computer. “Your extrasensory perception is as good as ever, Christopher. It seems our masters back home want something more immediate than possible pharmaceuticals for their money—publicity in this case. Next spring there is to be a celebration of the anniversary of the landing here and the completion of the hydroelectric plant, and as a build-up, we are to provide regular progress reports for the public networks. Which means they expect us to have our facilities looking their best.”