Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy (2 page)

“Similar,” said Exeter. “Not identical.”

“And that will be our salvation.” Banks manipulated the display again, and charts of data appeared, followed by two virtual double-helix DNA models. “Captain Baker ate their wheat, as did her crew, Admiral. Their corn. We can eat their grains, digest them, draw sustenance from them. But it is more than that. Dr. Tyson’s analyses survived the escape from Cygnus twelve years ago.” He indicated the helixes as they twisted in tandem above the table, the various nucleotides glowing with their assigned colors. “One of these is our master rice grain. The other is just one of many Cygnus equivalents. The genetic variations are still robust there, and haven’t yet been standardized. Watch.” With a swipe of his hand, Banks pushed the images into overlap. They did not match up exactly, but almost, enough. “Genetic compatibility. The grains can hybridize. These Cygni DNA strains can restore diversity to our stock, and avert this looming famine.”

The holo folded in on itself and vanished. Banks forced himself to be silent in the next few moments, warring against his own tendency to keep chattering past need, burying his point in extraneous words. He watched as Exeter considered, stroking that beard, knitting that thick brow in concentration. Finally, the Duke spoke.

“You really think it can be done.”

“I do, my Lord. What’s more, it may be our only chance. The leading xenobotanists in the Empire tell me that we will need seed samples, and preferably living plants, in no more than a year’s time if they are to successfully engineer new, stable hybrid strains in time to avert the collapse of the food stocks. Cygnus is perhaps two months distant for our deep-space vessels. Factor in lead time prior to initial departure, plus several weeks of work by our scientists while on site, and the margins for error begin to grow uncomfortably slim.”

“Cygnus.” Exeter blew out a ponderous sigh, like a great mythic whale. “We haven’t been there in all the years since Baker’s death. No contact at all. And when we left, it was with our tail between our legs; the greatest empire in the known galaxy fleeing a backwater planet not even capable of interstellar travel.”

“From the reports of the
Drake
’s crew, it is a complicated planet, my Lord. Rival factions of intellectuals, military, and their clergy alternate control, and there is no way of knowing what the last dozen years have wrought in their internal politics. We have no time to reconnoiter for more intelligence. And, frankly, I see no other option.”

The Star Lord rose with a grunt, not in a way that signaled an end to the meeting, but rather the restless movement of a man who spent most of his prime years on the command deck of a starship. Clapping both hands behind his broad back, he stood, silently gazing out one of the tall windows of his office. He then walked to the ornate sideboard and poured an amber liquid into two glasses. Exeter offered one to Banks, who tried to refuse.

“Take it,” snapped the Star Lord, and Banks did. He brought it to his nose, and the Scotch had a wonderful, sharp aroma. Knowing Exeter, it was likely real, imported from the last true distillery in the Edinburgh District, rather than the synthetic liquor the commoners endured. Sipping, he allowed himself a moment to savor the drink before returning his attention to the Duke, who spoke in a low voice as he stared at his own glass. “You know, matters of the Fleet are my bailiwick, but I cannot act with impunity here. With the unknown conditions on Cygnus, the violent end to our last visit, and the urgency of our errand, I would sooner send an armada, but the forces against you at Privy are considerable. We must act swiftly, you say, and quietly, too, I think, to avoid bureaucratic entanglements. I can send a ship, but it will not be a ship of the line, perhaps not even a frigate. And her complement,” he raised an eyebrow, “will be modest at best. I have no post-captains at hand, and I will only be able to send a minimal squad of machrines.”

“I doubt a frigate would be the best option at any rate,” Banks said. “The amount of tonnage we’re talking about, with the irrigation and support systems needed for seedlings, would be far more readily accommodated by a cargo vessel.”

Exeter nodded, and ran a weary hand through one of his graying temples with a sigh, looking up at the image of the
Drake.

“A shame, really, that we don’t have her to send. I would have greater confidence in your plan.”
“As would I,” replied Banks, swirling his glass. “But I may have the next best option, to the extent that such a thing exists.”

“One of her officers?” the Duke frowned at this, thinking. “Clark is commandant at Greenwich, and I can’t move him without attracting notice. Zhu is dead. Martinez and the Agincourt are out past Nelson Station, and won’t be back for a year or more. Who else is there?”

“Pearce.”

“Pearce? William Pearce?” The Duke’s brow furrowed as he tried to dredge up what he knew of the man. “A Lieutenant, wasn’t he? Commoner? Never made commander, if I recall. Last I heard, he had left the service to become a commercial cargo-runner.”

“He’s an experienced navigator, my lord,” Banks said smoothly. “He’s been in space these last few years, not ashore growing fat and lazy on the captains’ list. Sailed with Jane on her last voyage, so he’s already been where we need him to go. He speaks some Cygni, and there are few enough in the service who can boast that claim. Besides,” he added, “who better than a cargo-runner to run some very precious cargo?”

Exeter slumped back into his rocking chair. “So you propose we send a merchantman, commanded by a failed naval officer, with only a handful of machrines, to a planet that killed our greatest explorer and routed her crew.”

“You sum it up aptly, sir. And yet it would seem to be our only hope.”

Pearce

The
Britannia
was an old ship, and as she settled into her berth at Spithead Orbital Station, her ancient titanium-steel hull shuddered. All the same, Captain William Pearce wore a seldom-seen smile as he gave the orders from the command deck to reef home all gravity sails and make the ship fast to her moorings. Pearce’s starmanship was second to none, and he expected his crew to follow every order with precision and alacrity. Now, though, his commands were a little less brusque, his tone a little less grating than usual. Their just-completed run to the New Indies system had been his third in the last two years and by far the most profitable. The
Britannia
might be a relic, but she had a big belly, and her holds were stuffed with the rare liquors and exotic delicacies the New Indies were known for. Opal rum, greatfruits, actual meat -- the sort of food and drink only the very wealthy could afford, the very symbols of aristocratic status. The take from this voyage would vault Pearce and his family out of a working-class life and into the lowest tier of affluence.

Born into the laboring world, without the benefit of exalted family name or inherited wealth or property, his prospects on Earth had been limited. Gone to space as a young man of eighteen, educated but not a gentleman, Pearce had learned the Royal Navy’s trade before the mast as an able-bodied starman. By virtue of his talents as a navigator and his own constant effort, he was soon rated a midshipman and eventually Lieutenant, but there his career had stalled. Without name or sponsor, with little all-important “interest” at the Admiralty, let alone having been present for one of the worst disasters the Fleet had ever known, he stood scant chance of advancing to post-captain rank. So he had made the move to the merchant marine, and improved his financial prospects. He had begun to make peace with his lot, though he would still dream at times of the second epaulette, of making the post-list, of someday raising a flag of his own as an Admiral.

Dreams are for children
, he thought, trying not to think about what post-rank could mean for his family. A weary thirty-five, he was no longer a child, and dreamed even less than he smiled.

Pearce came from an earlier generation of star-mariner, before the Navy had begun to filter artificial sunlight into His Majesty’s ships to regulate body chemistry, and he was pale, almost chalky. When he had joined the Royal Navy years before, Pearce had expected to endure aheliopathy, the malady that for more than a century had afflicted half or more of the crews on the years-long voyages of deep-space discovery. Star-mariners called it space scurvy, as a nod to the malady of their seagoing forebears, though lack of vitamin C, or any nutritional deficiency, could never be isolated as the cause. A solution eluded researchers for decades, but Pearce was lucky to sail under the legendary and visionary Captain Jane Baker. Baker had no medical or scientific background; indeed, she was a commoner, born to mineral-diggers on Io, but she had a rare instinct for psychology, and part of her genius was to pinpoint the effects of aheliopathy as related to emotional, rather than physical health. Among her many innovations was a photocell that captured stellar light and amplified it to ward off the effects of the disorder on her crew. On her three legendary voyages, Captain Baker lost men and women to accidents and ill luck and, most famously and tragically, native insurgency, but never a one to space scurvy. It had been from her that Pearce learned stellar navigation, crew management, enlightened interaction with the indigenous peoples of other planets, and avoided illness.

Still, Pearce was pale, as were many of those under his command. Not so Christine Fletcher, his ship’s master and second in command. This was no surprise; in most respects Fletcher was unlike her captain. She was jovial where he was taciturn, dark and attractive where he was not, and beloved rather than merely respected by the crew belowdecks, with an easy charisma that beguiled most everyone. Perhaps most importantly, she came from less common stock than did Pearce. Fletcher was an Ochoa on her mother’s side, an old family that held a baronetcy in St. Kitts, with, the rumor went, an entire quarter-acre of their own land. Pearce had never visited, but Fletcher had told him there was actual soil there, and grass. Like most those of his social class, Pearce had never trod on Earthly grass. Her family’s house, on Brimstone Hill at the knees of Mt. Liamulga, even had a view of unreclaimed patches of the Caribbean, black-green and lifeless, but still, water under sky.

Despite their differences, Fletcher’s association with Pearce had been profitable for them both. She was an excellent first officer, a talented pilot, a virtual genius at systems repair, and though he would never admit to anyone, Pearce had privately vowed never to go to space without her. He watched her in silence as the last groans and clicks of the Britannia died away, admiring her flawless management of the exercise. She was efficient and competent, and if she were friendlier with the crew than he, so much the better. As the commander of the vessel he was a god among the stars, necessarily apart from and above the women and men under his authority. Despite her gentile birth, Fletcher had a common touch that Pearce, a commoner himself, lacked. If she gave the crew someone on the upper deck to trust, the ship could only benefit. As he watched, he was also reminded how beautiful she was, how broad-shouldered and strong and yet undeniably feminine. Still, nothing stirred in him except deep professional regard and camaraderie. For this he was exquisitely thankful. If there had been anything more, if he had desired her, it could have threatened their lucrative association. And he would never hurt Mary, not for all the Opal rum he had ever carried.

“Christine,” Pearce said once she had finished seeing his orders carried out. She turned to him and smiled, her teeth a perfect blinding white, her lips black against her mahogany skin.

“Bill.” He nearly flinched at the casual address, but then remembered they were at anchor now, and she was, after all, his social superior. Back ashore, he wasn’t Captain Pearce.
Just Bill
, he thought.

“If you will be so good as to coordinate the unloading with the terminal officer, I will proceed straight to the surface to make the advance arrangements with our import agent.” Fletcher nodded.

“The usual for
Brit
?” She patted one of the walls of the vessel. “Inspection and recondition?”

“Yes. She’ll be a few weeks in the yards, at least. Please ask Garwood to pay particular attention to her anterior mainmast; I think the last fluxstorm might have shifted her hips a fraction. Nothing else out of the ordinary. I suspect you and the rest of the crew should be ashore by tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. Well done, Bill, as always.” She turned to leave the command deck, then stopped when Pearce coughed quietly.

“Mary and I…we would be delighted to have you to dinner tomorrow night. Should your schedule permit, of course. James does so love to see his Aunt Christine.” That blinding smile again.

“Oh Bill, that is sweet, but I’m skiffing over to the island to see my grandfather.”

“Ah. Yes, of course. Of course. Another time, then.” She must have detected the disappointment in his voice, because she hesitated. Into the intervening silence came a loud bang from outside the ship, and angry voices. Pearce waved a hand.

“Best lend a hand,” he said. “Or the stevedores will play harry with our cargo.” In another moment, without a backward glance, she was gone.

Social superior,
Pearce thought, but only for an instant. His mind shifted swiftly to thoughts of home, of Mary, of his son. He had not seen them in months, and yet he still lingered. By skill and temperament he was a creature of the stars, confident with a full spread of sail and star-room to navigate. Planetside, he stumbled and diminished. When he finally disembarked from the
Britannia
, he wondered how long it would be before he would feel the completeness of space again. Competition was fierce for merchant commissions, and there was no guarantee when the next would come his way.

While his mind ruminated, Pearce’s feet moved of their own volition, carrying him down the well-known corridors of Spithead. There were other orbital stations, of course, dozens of them, and he knew many of them, but he considered this his home port. He used a wall comm console to send word ahead to Mary at their apartment on the Isle of Man. The name was a historical curiosity, as no open water remained between Cumbria and Ireland; the entirety of the British Isles had long since become a single teeming mass. Still, he was a Briton, and Britons clung to their traditions and their artifacts. Spotting a transparent section of station wall, he paused to gaze down at the rotating orb below.
Home
. Not just to him, but to thirty billion people, all of them technically Britons, subjects of His Royal Highness, King Charles V. But the Pearces were ethnically Britons, counting as ancestors those who had lived under a King whose reign was limited to the islands, at a time when they were islands in truth and not just convention.
Commoners we may be
, he thought,
but British commoners, at least
.

The ferries left for the surface every hour, so there was only a short wait once Pearce arrived at the personnel terminal, duty bag over his shoulder. Four or five others sat in the rounded metal chairs, each plugged into his device, filament-thin cords trailing from their ears to their laps. One was familiar to Pearce, a young merchant officer he had seen at Spithead before, but he knew better than to nod, or wave, or make any sign of recognition. It would have been useless, not to mention rude. The man’s eyes were closed, his brain pleasantly swamped by his specific neuro-customized mix of words and music. Pearce had never quite gotten the hang of them, though many of his fellow-officers swore by the things.
Maybe I just don’t know how to relax
, he thought.
Or maybe I simply haven’t hit on the right formula yet
. The shuttle came then, a portly, doddering oil-eater. Filing in with the others, Pearce closed his own eyes and let his mind drift to thoughts of home.

About an hour later, the shuttle touched down at the Douglas Bay modal hub, and Pearce felt Earth beneath his feet for the first time in four months. Some star-mariners swore they could feel the world spinning underneath them when they weren’t in space, but he thought that was mostly just talk. On-board artificial gravity and environmental systems were so advanced now that they simulated not merely diurnal patterns but seasonal rhythms, and unless you looked out a port glass, you would never have known you were in space.
But you do know. You never really forget that the void is inches away
. He felt heavier ashore, and, strangely, trapped. They were above him, below him, his neighbors and fellow subjects of the King, in teeming numbers. Here, he was one of tens of billions, and he felt a momentary pang of longing for the sense of freedom and elbow-room of a cramped starship parsecs away, for the intimacy of a crew at work, for the elation he felt while doing what he knew he was made to do.

Mary understood that about him, God bless her, and he loved her as much for that as for anything else. She knew he was drawn to that void, and that he was more at home among the stars than with her. He had never been unfaithful to her, at least, not with another woman. Sometimes he wondered if that would be worse or better for her than sharing his heart with the stars. It was not an experiment he ever intended to carry out.

He was in the Gray Apartments then, the vast cluster of fifty-story buildings that housed millions. They were comfortable places, and not cheap. As he walked down the forty-fifth corridor of building twelve, he noted with pleasure the clean, well-lit floor and walls. He had grown up in far less affluence. His own parents had shared their rooms with two other families, rooms that smelled unremittingly of the agrifactories where his father worked. Pearce had gone into the Navy as soon as he was old enough, to get away from that odor as much as the overcrowding.
There are no smells in space
, he thought, and then he was at his own door. He keyed in his access code, the door slid open, and he stepped inside.

“Dad!”

James was taller than Pearce remembered, but not much. At thirteen, the boy still only stood a little taller than a meter and half. And he moved stiffly, with none of the kinetic restlessness a child his age should have. His eyes were prominent in his pale face, so much like his own, and they were intelligent eyes, curious eyes, that right now reflected only joy at his father’s homecoming. Pearce dropped his bag and crossed the room to embrace his son, unable to ignore how thin he was. After a moment, he broke and held James at arms’ length, hands on both his shoulders.

“Looking good, son,” he lied. “Before I know it you’ll be ready for a ship of your own.” It was what he always said when he first came home, and it never failed to light the boy up from inside. Until now. This time James merely smiled, just a little, and that joy in his eyes dimmed.

“Sure, Dad. Why not.” There was a heaviness in his son’s voice that had not been there before, and it chilled Pearce’s heart. The boy had always been cheerful, even through all the procedures and surgeries and tests that he had undergone. Each year he grew slower and weaker and smaller than other boys his age, yet there was a durable optimism, a seeming imperviousness to his own progressive erosion, that gave James a fierce, infectious charisma. Pearce looked for some hint of that now, some echo of the boy who always joked with his doctors and thought the full-body scanners were an adventure. But he looked without success.

Tell me he hasn’t given up on himself
, Pearce thought.
Tell me we have more time than that
.

“Billy.”

Mary Pearce stood in the doorway to the kitchen, hugging herself with white arms. Her long red hair was up, not quite as fiery as it once was, and there were lines creeping across her sharp features, but Pearce loved her, and went to her. She smelled of synthed olives, and something flowery, and nothing the least bit like the agrifactories. He kissed her, as long and deeply as he dared in front of James, and brutally shoved aside his concerns. His arm still around her waist, holding her against his hip, he turned to face their son.