26.

ZOE ALAKIS.

On Pergamus, Zoe Alakis waited for Tom Rom to return with new findings. She looked forward to seeing him, hearing about his new discoveries, and studying the samples he brought for her. He never let her down.

Other people longed to visit strange worlds, but Zoe was terrified by the idea of exposing herself to all that. She was no coward, but she was no fool either. Every planet was full of insidious, invisible organisms ready to compromise biological systems. Compromise biological systems: a fancy scientific way of saying "Kill any human who allowed herself to be vulnerable."

Tom Rom took enormous risks for her-he always had-and he knew how much Zoe appreciated his efforts, his sacrifices. Thanks to him, as well as her dedicated scientific teams and her spare-no-expense research facilities, Zoe possessed a vast library of cures and treatments, and an even larger library of diseases. It was her arsenal against the worst imaginable situation.

Her central dome on the planet's surface contained everything she needed. It was home to her. It was safe, and she never intended to leave. The filtered air inside her dome was cool and smelled metallic from the disinfectants. She needed no scents to brighten her quarters. The wallscreen continued to sort news reports, interviews, articles, and research papers.

While she waited for Tom Rom, she had programs to administer and results to assess. Zoe ate a bland breakfast porridge of autoclaved grains and devoted her morning to reading the project summaries from her Pergamus teams.

Two of the surface domes were biological sweatshops where a hundred diligent but unimaginative data specialists crunched through genetic maps of countless microorganisms to be stored in her ever-growing database. The vast majority of those microorganisms would never be looked at, would never prove useful, but at least Zoe had them. Someday, she would allow the information to be shared among other researchers, but not now. They didn't deserve it; no one deserved it. For the time being, that treasure vault was hers alone.

Most of the project reports showed continuing work, but little progress. Even with generous funding and the best equipment, breakthroughs were rare. But today's report submitted by Dr. Hannig from Orbiting Research Sphere 12 was flagged as important, so Zoe contacted him via screen. She never met personally with any researcher. While her teams operated under the strictest sterilization and decontamination protocols, she still had qualms about their proximity to the dangerous diseases.

She didn't need to refresh her memory about his work; she kept track of exactly which diseases each team was studying. In his weightless research sphere, Hannig and his four associates worked in a sterile facility lit by white lights. The lead researcher drifted into the screen's frame. He was a round-faced man with bristly white hair and close-set eyes. He had gained weight, or at least curves, from his recent six months in zero-G.

"Ms. Alakis, we've made progress in curing Tamborr's Dementia. Our models show that we can develop a phage through auto-cloning techniques. This stops the deterioration of the neural systems in the brain and might even begin to restore the biochemical channels."

Zoe brightened. Every time one of her researchers found a cure, she felt as if she had acquired another weapon in her arsenal for the never-ending war. "I'm pleased to hear that, Dr. Hannig."

The man kept smiling and nodding, as if he could feel her pat him on the back, even from orbit. "It's an innovative approach, and we wouldn't have thought about it without access to your previous work on Heidegger's Syndrome. It gave us the key we needed."

"Now you see why all the research is interconnected, why I need to have everything."

"Tamborr's Dementia is not common, but this breakthrough could help many people," Hannig said. "Even the methodology would give other teams the possibility of-"

She cut him off. "My terms are not negotiable, Dr. Hannig. You read your contract, you know the conditions, and you understand the penalties. My funding, my research teams-my cure."

He looked hurt, which soured her joy in his breakthrough. She hated it when her scientists acted like this. Zoe had not founded Pergamus because she wanted to be a humanitarian. She'd always taken care of herself, and she kept the cures for her own use, exclusively. After her death, the library could be opened to others, but until then she kept tight control. If anyone disobeyed her orders, Tom Rom would hunt them down and retrieve the information. And she knew he would do it. Yes, she could count on him....

Tom Rom had come to Vaconda when Zoe was eleven, three years after her mother died in the crash. He arrived with a group of interns, but he wasn't one of them. He came to Vaconda because he wanted to be there, but he remained secretive about his background. When Zoe asked where he came from, he answered, "Everywhere." He tapped his forehead. "Home is here. I carry it with me wherever I go."

For months, young Zoe tried to get him to talk, pestered him to tell her about his past, places he had seen, but he remained stony. "Those are my stories. You have to create your own."

Over the years, other interns came and went, while Tom Rom made himself indispensable. He taught Zoe much survival craft, taking her into the lichentree jungles and along the forest floor. When she asked where he had learned so much, he said, "I continue to learn, step by step-it's common sense, past experiences, and reactions. I'm learning about Vaconda at the same time you are."

The other helpers left, but Tom Rom performed their duties and more. He did everything Adam Alakis asked him, helped maintain the forest watchtower, repaired systems that failed, built additions to their tower, installed research traps on the forest floor. Whenever they needed supplies, he flew off to other Hansa worlds. He watched the weather, sniffed the air, listened to the jungle in ways that no sensor devices could record.

Once, he woke Zoe and Adam at dawn, wearing an alarmed expression on his normally placid face. "We don't have much time," he said. "Help me." Together, the three of them scrambled to string emergency netting all around the tower balconies. Tom Rom rigged it to their generator and electrified the mesh just before a swarm of hummers scoured through like a storm cloud across the lichentree tops.

Zoe remembered that long, buzzing, frightening afternoon. When a midlevel door cracked open, part of the voracious swarm swept into the access shaft and the living quarters where Zoe and her father had taken shelter. Tom Rom rushed in, flinging hummers away from his face, diving toward the two. Adam demanded that Tom Rom take Zoe to safety as he battered at the hungry insects, and that was what Tom Rom did, dragging her away even as she screamed for her father. Tom Rom wouldn't listen to her. He threw her in a closet, sealed the door, and waded back through the swarm to rescue Adam as well. Afterward, he accepted disinfectant salve on the numerous bites that pocked his skin, but insisted he did not need any painkillers. Zoe asked him if he even felt pain, but he didn't answer her.

When Zoe was fifteen, her father came down with a severe jungle fever, suffered for a long time, recovered after taking massive doses of the most potent medicines they had developed on Vaconda, but afterward he seemed weakened, wrung-out, deflated. Adam Alakis grew weaker over the next year, long after he should have recovered from the fever.

They finally went offworld to a medical center on Khandul, where Adam was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder known as Heidegger's Syndrome. There was no cure, and the degeneration would be gradual, but inexorable.

Afterward, Adam went back to Vaconda for the long, slow process of dying that would take the next four years. Zoe was appalled, unable to believe that a tiny virus had such power. She never wanted to feel so helpless again....

Now, as Dr. Hannig and his research associates faced her on the screen, Zoe called up her accounts, studied the other work his team had done on ORS 12, Hannig's specialties, his particular interests, even his family history. Her smile was cool but sincere. "Your work on Tamborr's Dementia is a remarkable achievement, Doctor. I can't thank you enough. As before, I am pleased to offer you and your team an extravagant financial reward for work well done. Success is its own payment, but I'll pay you enough to leave Pergamus if you wish, retire on any planet-on the condition that all research stays here, all records are wiped, and you never reveal what you did for me." She paused only briefly, then continued, "On the other hand, if you choose to continue working for me, you will have your pick of programs, the best facilities. I'll refit ORS Twelve with whatever equipment you desire."

She waited. Some research teams accepted the payoff and left, but most were dedicated for their own reasons, even with her draconian rules. She selected her employees not just for their genius, but for their lack of outside connections. They liked to be turned loose on a medical playground.

Hannig glanced at his associates, but they had obviously discussed the matter beforehand. "There's still too much to be explored, Ms. Alakis. Bank the bonuses in our accounts, and we'll discuss which line of investigation to pursue next."

Zoe was not surprised. "Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your drive, as always. You and your team are shining examples of human ingenuity. Work on whatever you like, so long as it has a chance of being useful, and the cures are mine to develop and keep."

After signing off, she skimmed through spinoff research proposals from her scientific teams, then approved the funds for every single one. Why take chances?

Tom Rom could always procure more prisdiamonds if she needed the money.

CHAPTER.

27.

GARRISON REEVES.

When the bloaters exploded, Garrison had been accelerating away from Elisa's ship. He had activated the stardrive, shields on full-and they missed the worst of the blast.

He could not believe Elisa had actually fired on them! No doubt she had meant it as a warning shot to prove she was serious, but the bloater detonated like a small supernova. The shock waves compounded the flame fronts, blossoming outward like solar flares.

Seth yelled. The windowports automatically opaqued as the flash roared over them until their engines made sufficient headway. Before the damaged stardrive shut down again, Garrison's ship had leaped so far away that the light from the growing explosion took a full three minutes to reach them.

Their life-support systems were drained and damaged, but the hull remained intact. Garrison's hands flurried over the controls. Though in shock from what had just happened, Seth pulled himself together and helped his father. Garrison had never been so proud of him.

Elisa was surely dead in the inferno. The conflagration had erupted so quickly, shock waves extending outward in all directions. No, she couldn't have survived back there. Seth realized it as well, but they didn't talk of it. Not yet. The boy finally whispered as the main lights came back on in the piloting deck. "Why did Mother do that?"

Garrison hated making excuses for her. "She didn't know they would explode."

"She still shot at us-why would she take the chance?"

Garrison focused on the controls in front of him and said in a quiet voice, "I really don't know..." Maybe he didn't know Elisa at all, not the way he had thought.

She was so different from the woman he had met and fallen in love with. Growing up in clan Reeves, working at the half-empty reconstruction site of Rendezvous, he'd been trusted with starship runs since he was seventeen, flying to clan strongholds and Theroc, negotiating for supplies, requesting loans (which, more often than not, had to be reclassified as "donations").

But Earth had always been a forbidden destination; Olaf Reeves made that very clear. The clan leader hated the Hansa, though it no longer existed. "You only have to look at the destroyed Moon to see the danger they brought upon themselves."

Once, standing up to his father, Garrison pointed out, "Rendezvous was destroyed too. How is that different? Did we bring it on ourselves?" Olaf slapped him, hard. For insubordination.

After that, Garrison acted dutifully obedient, but the more he was told not to go to Earth, the more tempted Garrison was, and so he made an undocumented detour on one of his runs. When he saw the busy rubble-corralling operations in the debris field of the Moon, it reminded him of Rendezvous-the big ships and equipment. The Moon operations, however, used the efficient Iswander modular habitats, and he realized the modules could be used to great effect at Rendezvous. Clan Reeves would be able to finish their large, slow, long-term project.

Knowing this, he'd met with a Confederation trade representative who worked with wealthy and ambitious Roamer industrialist Lee Iswander. Her name was Elisa Enturi, independent, hardened, out to make a good life for herself. He learned that she might be able to help him get some of the Iswander equipment modules for Rendezvous. She agreed to help.

Later, he had spotted Elisa at an Earthside bar. They went out on a balcony with their drinks, and she discouraged light conversation. "The meteor shower is supposed to be spectacular tonight. I want to see it." Together, they watched the shooting stars, which were frightening and beautiful, and they didn't talk business at all.

Elisa helped him make a deal with Lee Iswander, leveraging the finances from his line of clan credit. He arranged to buy surplus modules and heavy equipment from the lunar operations. He saw it as his chance to demonstrate to his father the sort of abilities a clan leader would need. This was also a big deal for Elisa, because it made significant profits for Iswander Industries. Garrison and Elisa went to Rendezvous with a flotilla of Confederation machinery and modules.

Olaf was horrified and wanted nothing to do with the "help" from Earth, blaming them for the destruction of the former Roamer center of government. He upbraided his son for making such a foolhardy mistake, refused to accept the delivery. Elisa lashed back at the stubborn clan leader, "Sorry-the shipment's paid for, and Iswander Industries will not take them back."

She dumped the equipment modules at Rendezvous and left. Just to show his disdain, Olaf cut them loose and let the modules drift out in space, not wanting to clutter the rest of Rendezvous with them.

Garrison was appalled by his father's bigotry and stupidity, and told him so. Olaf slapped him again, beat him down. This time Garrison slapped his father back. "Don't treat me like a fool, Father, when you're an even bigger one."

Returning to Earth, he had found Elisa to apologize for the treatment she'd received from his pigheaded father. She said she only cared about the treatment she received from him, and Garrison treated her very well. Together, they slipped back to Rendezvous, rounded up all the perfectly good modules that Olaf Reeves had discarded, then returned them to Iswander Industries where they were quietly sold again. Out of pride, Olaf would never bother to search for the modules (or never admit it), and Elisa looked like a hero for doubling Iswander profits.

She and Garrison celebrated, and commiserated, and slept together. Realizing the most potent way he could defy his father, he married Elisa. She introduced him to Lee Iswander, and they began working together. Olaf disowned his older son, but Garrison didn't care.

He had been happy when Elisa got pregnant, though she found it inconvenient. Congratulating them, Iswander gave her time off for the new baby and distributed her responsibilities to secondaries, promoting them instead of her. Elisa felt left behind, but she hadn't admitted she resented her husband until later.

On Sheol, Garrison had his work, but he cared more about his family than advancement. Oddly, though Olaf Reeves had never even met his grandson, Garrison began to realize the call of family that he hadn't understood before. As he thought of the falling out with his father, now he worried that the clan leader might have been right about Elisa....

He and Seth spent eight hours assessing their damaged ship as they drifted in open space. They repaired what they could, verifying their energy levels and life-support reserves before calling up the starmaps.

"Where are we going now?" Seth asked.

Garrison didn't trust the engines, but he could limp along to a destination, provided it wasn't too far. After the pummeling it had received, this ship deserved a full refit and overhaul in an adequate spacedock facility, but he couldn't afford that. He had left everything behind on Sheol.

He was a Roamer, though. Maybe they could go to Newstation and ask some sympathetic person for help. But feeling the sharp pain in his heart from knowing that his wife was dead-and he had indeed loved her-he realized that he had only one place to go.

Home.

Garrison set course for the clan Reeves settlement at Rendezvous.

CHAPTER.

28.

LEE ISWANDER.

1,543.

The number haunted him. 1,543. Lee Iswander wasn't even convinced the count was accurate, but that remained the official casualty number from the Sheol disaster.

Once he and the evacuees had arrived safely at Newstation, two days' starflight away, Iswander felt it was his grim obligation to scroll through all the names of the dead. It bothered him that so many of these people were unfamiliar to him. Yes, he knew a handful of team leaders, shift supervisors, some of the crew chiefs, the five smelter barge pilots, but he simply didn't recognize hundreds of his own workers; in many cases, even their clans were unfamiliar.

Frowning, he called up the personnel records, their images, studied how long those people had worked for him, reviewed any commendations or reprimands they had received. He did recall a few of the faces from when he walked through the cafeteria chamber in between shifts at Tower Three, but most were just random strangers to him-men and women who had families, people with political leanings, people who loved their work, and people who hated it.

1,543.

The escapees vocally blamed Iswander's lack of foresight, his failure to design proper protective systems. In the grief, shock, and anger, no one gave him credit for the nearly five hundred who had survived. Didn't that count for something? They only saw that he'd placed all those people in danger for the sake of his profits, that he had not provided adequate safety margins, that there had been no comprehensive disaster plan, not even enough escape ships. He had managed to save a quarter of them.

But three-quarters of his personnel were dead.

The deaths had not all been swift and painless, either. Even Iswander cringed as he thought of how many were trapped inside the sunken smelter barges or the collapsing towers where they had fled for safety ... only to be roasted alive. It gave him nightmares-as well it should.

His ambitious Sheol facility should have been a shining example of Roamer ability to succeed while dancing on the cliff edge of danger. Lee Iswander was proof of both Hansa business acumen and clan ingenuity, yet all of his accomplishments had been swallowed in a whirlpool of molten metal and stone.

In his own defense, he submitted engineering records to show that the structural materials and heat shielding should have been sufficient against the Sheol environment. Normally, Roamers would have been sympathetic in the face of a planetary catastrophe ... but Iswander had been warned. Garrison Reeves had made no secret of his concerns that Sheol itself was changing, and Roamers knew how capricious the universe could be. They did not ignore warnings. Iswander simply hadn't wanted to spend the money, hadn't let his operations be inconvenienced by a potential disaster.

The evacuees took refuge at Newstation. Clans met there, Roamers exchanged assistance, other ships came in to offer help to the refugees. There in the giant wheel habitat, they recovered, and they talked.

Normally, Roamer clans pulled together in times of crisis. Throughout their existence, they had faced setbacks, and their history was full of tragedies. But Iswander could tell by their harsh whispers that they did not feel sorry for him or forgive him.

Reunited with his rescued wife and son at Newstation, Iswander holed up in his usual suite with all the amenities. Always before, it had been a room where he slept and prepared for business meetings; now, it became a place to hide. He couldn't stay here for long.

He sat in the chamber, staring at reports, reviewing his losses. He was ruined, of course. The Sheol disaster would drain him of everything he had. Lee Iswander would be reviled, disgraced-and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

1,543.

Londa brought him a cup of pepperflower tea. It had never been his favorite-too sweet-but she felt as helpless as he did, and this was her way of making a gesture. "It'll be all right," she said, finding nothing absurd in her statement. "I can talk to some of my family. Maybe they can help."

"Thank you, Londa." He took a sip of the tea, then shooed her away as politely as he could.

"Would you like me to bring lunch? I can make your favorite."

He wondered what she thought his favorite was. In fact, Iswander didn't even know he had a favorite, but it would give her something to do. "That sounds nice. I'll have to go soon, though."

As Londa bustled off, Iswander felt metal jaws of guilt gnawing at his stomach. He knew most of the clan heads, but not well enough to consider them friends. He couldn't guess how any of them would react. He tried to think of what he would say at the clan gathering, whether he should be defiant or defeated, whether or not to beg for understanding and forgiveness, a second chance.

He knew, however, that Iswander Industries would never be able to secure funding for even a traditional, stable Roamer business such as skymining, despite the continuing demand for stardrive fuel. Nor was he likely to find large crews to work for him.