The Seeds of Time (14 page)

Clio stared at her plate. She didn’t mind the scouting party, but she was starting to think Teeg was more than an asshole. He was a dangerous asshole.

They had been pushing through the forest for almost an hour. The mists had fled under the scouring sun and Clio was hot, but even after she stripped down to a halter top, the trail pack clung to her sweaty back, making her itchy and uncomfortable. The sticky sweet smell of the flora was starting to make her stomach queasy. “Smells like a freeping candy store,” she said to Hillis.

“The trees secrete it,” Hillis replied. He scraped a small spatula against the flat, nearly translucent trunk of one of the tube trees, as the crew had come to call the smooth stalklike growths. “It’s like a resin.”

Meng brought out a plastic capsule to hold the resin, and stuffed it into the sample case.

They were in a murky, tented world. The undergrowth formed a barrier on the perimeter of the jungle, but once
inside they proceeded quickly, impeded only by the web of vines forming the ropy, uneven floor.

Hillis and Meng were most interested in the trees, and hovered a long while over a recently fallen specimen, with a crown of fleshy leaves stacked thickly upon each other. The seeds were clustered in the lowest layer of leaves, some of them already starting to sprout from the juicy meat of the carrier leaves.

As he went, Hillis described the biota, speaking just loud enough for the patch recorder on his collar to pick up and record. He talked nonstop, and Meng, dutiful assistant, hung on his every word, occasionally adding a comment, and tended to the samples with expert, deft hands.

Clio watched them more than she watched for intruders. This was what Space Recon was all about, she thought. This was the heart of it, this jungle, the sample packs, the science. And Hillis was born for it, totally engrossed, as turned-on as a ten-year-old in a baseball-card factory.

Hillis unstoppered his water flask and drank deeply, then made his way over to Clio to sit next to her on a fallen tree trunk. “I’ve got a feeling about this place, Clio.” He looked at her, his blue eyes verging on turquoise in the steeped jungle sunlight. “This is the real sister planet, the one Earth could have been, without people. It’s fecund. Gloriously fecund. It’s beyond Eden. The crew is calling it Eden, but it’s not. Eden was supposedly created for humans, but this place …” He looked around, words petering out. “This place was created for plant life. For the Green.”

“For the Turquoise, anyway,” Clio said gently. He was so happy, and he was so handsome when he was happy.

A woman’s scream. Meng. They jumped up. Meng was pointing into the depths. She had drawn her gun, was pointing it at the jungle.

Posie got to her first. “What is it?”

“Jesus God, a spider! It was this big,” she said, throwing her arms apart, almost hitting Clio in the face as she rushed up.

Posie sighted the Dharhai and fired in the general direction
Meng was pointing. The report of the gun was swallowed by the thick air.

“Good for you Doc, you got a palm tree, broadside,” Clio said. She peered into the woods, but saw nothing.

Meng was shrill with excitement. “It was heading for us, along the ground, real fast. It was dark and hairy, an ugly bastard! And when I screamed, it veered into the woods, over that way.”

“Big teeth? Drooling?” Clio asked. Meng glared at her in answer, while Posie swung the barrel of the Dharhai around wildly, expecting to see spiders on every side.

“Christ, Meng,” Clio continued, “that creature might have been the president, coming to pay a visit. You made a fine impression.”

Meng was still pointing her gun into the jungle. “I don’t like spiders,” she said, her voice back to its normal soft tone.

“Pack up,” Posie said. “We’re sitting ducks unless we’re on the move.”

Hillis shouldered his pack. “Great. A military mind to the rescue.”

Posie ignored him. “Keep your weapons drawn. I’ll take point; Hillis, you bring up the rear.”

“I thought I was on security, Doc,” Clio said. “I can take up the rear.”

Posie swung around, and the rifle swung with him. “You’ll do what you’re told, Finn. I said Hillis to the rear. We could be under attack any minute, and I want the women in the middle in case they try to pick us off.”

Clio stared at him in open disbelief. She looked over at Meng, who shrugged, pulled on her pack, and got in behind Posie. Clio felt Hillis’ hand on her shoulder, warning her against the outburst she was getting ready to hurl at Posie. She turned to Hillis in outrage, saw that he was calmer than she wished he were. “Jesus, Hill,” she began.

“Skip it,” Hillis said. He urged her to fall in behind Meng and Posie, who had started out.

“The guy is insulting as hell. What is this women and children in the life rafts bullshit?”

“What did you expect? Posie’s a churchie kind of guy. The jungle’s what he’s always thought society was. Now he’s got a real jungle, and it’s bringing out the worst in him. Forget it.”

“Easy for you to say, Tarzan, bringing up the rear.”

“Shut up, Clio, and watch for tarantulas.”

For Clio the worst part of staying alert for danger was the unceasing chittering and birdcalls of the jungle. She couldn’t depend on her ears to detect movement, so she kept her eyes moving, scanning. She saw shadows, nothing more. High above, in the ceiling canopy, the tree crowns seemed to sway now and then, as though giants roamed there, in that rooftop highway. If the spiders existed—and Clio considered it a very good chance that they existed only in Meng’s superheated imagination—then they prowled the tops of the trees, not these murky depths.

Toward noon, Posie called a meal break in a large clearing with shallow hills of bare ground. They had to fight their way into the clearing because of the resurgence of undergrowth that flourished in the sunny perimeter of the jungle mass.

Meng ate with her gun on her knee, and her shoes off, sunning her legs. Her toenails were painted bright red. Clio stared at Meng’s perfect feet: tawny and lithe, with a high arch. Her red painted nails gleamed in a lusty statement at odds with her Recon uniform. Posie glanced at the feet, nervously. As if fleeing them, he stomped off across the clearing to examine one of the mounds.

“There’s snakes in there,” Meng said, nodding her head back the way they’d come. “Big ones.” She smiled, showing startlingly white teeth. Meng seldom smiled, and when she did, it was never in humor. Meng’s humor was dry, ironic, and devastating, as Estevan usually found out when he tried to trade verbal gibes with her.

Clio had seen the snakes, too. Never a whole snake, just glimpses of moving backsides.

Posie called them from the other side of the clearing. Clio and Hillis headed over to him while Meng laced her shoes.

Posie gestured at the mound. “Termite hill,” he said.

They looked closer and saw small, segmented insects carrying wood fragments into thousands of portals in the ground.

“That could account for the heightened methane levels on Niang,” Hillis said.

“Jungle’s probably loaded with termites, or the Niang equivalent,” Posie said. “This place looks more familiar all the time. Spiders, snakes, termites, birds. Hard to believe it’s not home.” He looked at Hillis and shrugged. “Maybe it is Eden.”

“No, it’s not Eden,” Hillis said.

“Well, maybe it could be, with a little work.” Posie was looking over at Meng, still bent over her bootlaces.

Clio walked into the brush to relieve herself. Then she pushed through to the jungle tent, and stood for a moment, watching. Crew’s voices were shut off here, replaced by the echoing crush of jungle sounds, close and far away into the endless blue-green depths. She was alone. Alone in a way that her crew-centered life seldom allowed. She breathed in, releasing the tension of the three-hour hike with Posie and Meng. A breeze stirred the tops of the trees, dipping the branches, as though Niang breathed too.

A thick vine was spiraled tightly around the tube tree in front of her. Then it moved, became a snake, turquoise and pitted with dark spots, uncoiling meter after meter. Mesmerized, Clio watched it display its fabulous length. After many long moments the splayed end of the creature came into view, completed its downward coil, and disappeared into the jungle floor.

Clio turned back, found Meng standing quietly behind her.

“Did you see that creature?” Clio asked.

“Yes. It was a big one.” Meng started to move past Clio.

“Guess you’re not interested in animals, huh Meng? Just plants and the botanical ooze?” Clio felt an urge to goad Meng, push her a little to see what came out.

Meng turned. “That’s right. Same as Hillis. Plants and
botanical ooze.” Her mouth stretched into a sweet smile. “Posie says to fan out. Look for water.” She moved away, stepping carefully into the deep humus of the jungle floor.

“Water?” Clio called after her. “We don’t need water.”

“Posie says look for a stream,” Meng said, her voice growing muffled.

“Why?”

Meng’s voice was as soft as a whisper in the trees: “In case we need to move camp.”

“But we brought all our water on board the lander,” Clio said helplessly. She stood thinking hard for a moment, watching Meng disappear into the blue shadows.

When Clio returned to the clearing, Posie was sitting on a rock writing in his notebook. He glanced up at her.

“Next time let someone know where you’re going, Finn,” Posie said.

“Shall I raise my hand?”

“Just let somebody know, that’s all.”

“Why do we need water?” Clio asked. “We brought our water.”

Posie kept scribbling. “Because we might need more, you never know.”

“There a problem with our water supply?”

Posie closed his notebook. “Maybe I like the looks of this campsite better than the one we’ve got. The clearing is bigger, for one thing. That makes it easier to see anything coming.”

“That’s nuts. We’re leaving in a few days. Not worth it.”

Posie stared at her. “Your commanding officers will be the judge of that.”

Clio stared back. “Before we move camp, I say we consult with Russo.”

“Russo’s a long way away.”

Hillis came up to them. “We found a stream just over there,” he said, waving in the direction he’d searched. “Hack away the vines, you can get down to the edge fairly easy.”

The others trickled in, shouldered their packs.

As they headed out, Clio said to Hillis, “Why do we need water, Hill? And why should we move camp?”

“I don’t know. In case of emergency, I guess.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“Hill, I don’t like the way this mission’s going. I don’t have a good feeling about it. Teeg has completely cut Estevan out of research. And he and Posie are going control-happy.”

Hillis shrugged. “I’ll grant you Teeg’s acting like a generalissimo, but what did you expect from him?”

“Goddamn it, you keep saying ‘What do you expect?’ You’re so cynical about everybody, nothing they do matters or surprises you.”

“Clio. There’s too much at stake here to worry about the small stuff. Niang’s a miracle, Clio. High-viable. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve got to get through this. Tolerate the assholes long enough to bring this haul back, because this is the big one, you know that? It’s the brave new jungle. It tolerates high ultraviolet, warmer temperatures, methane levels, all the indicators. It’ll take to Earth like a baby to the breast.”

“How do you know? Maybe it’ll die, just like the Leery plants did.” The moment she said it, she hated herself. Why not give him his hope?

She needn’t have worried. Hillis was oblivious. “No Clio,” he said, “1 don’t think so. This flora is too … pushy, too lush.” He looked over at Clio, pleading. “It’s like a gift, Clio. Niang’s a gift to us from the universe. A last chance to get it right, to replenish the green, reseed the Earth. Start again.” He grabbed her hand. “Nothing else matters, don’t you see?”

Clio felt that old Hillis-feeling in her chest, like a wave trying to pass through her. At moments like this she could almost let it out, let it go. “Yeah, baby. I see.” He was like a blind man. He didn’t see her anymore, not even when he looked at her. She patted his face. “I see.”

“No talking,” Posie said from on point.

The next morning dawned muted and grey, the sky saturated with the fruit-juice smell of waiting Niang rain. Clio managed a shower in the solar shower tent. As soon as she dried off she was covered with sticky film once again.

The sky lowered and a candy-smelling mist descended.

Clio strolled over to the med tent. Liu occupied one of the cots.

“You OK?” Clio asked him, trying to be nice.

A garbled voice answered her, as Liu tried to speak with his finger stuck in his mouth.

Posie was on the comm set, talking to Russo over a flurry of static. Russo was left nursing Shaw, and Posie checked in with her daily on the only communication rig in camp.

“Keep quiet,” Posie said to them, straining to hear the captain.

Clio sat next to Liu, whispered, “Got something wrong with your mouth?”

“Braces,” Liu said. “My braces sprang a break. Waiting for Doc to look at it.”