Date Point: 2y 8m AV
Diplomatic shuttle, docked at Kwrbvlwek Galactic Shipping Interstellar Cargo Waystation 832.
Ayma
As always, Xiù wasn’t in her bed when Ayma awoke. Ayma’s human sister had got into the habit of waking early so as to exercise under the punishing gravity of her homeworld before Ayma and Regaari awoke, and had been sleeping restlessly for the last few days in any case.
She had taken Triymin’s death hard. They all had, in their way, all blaming themselves for the innocent, broken little Sister’s untimely end. Ayma had berated herself for not making Triymin feel more welcome, for not being more sisterly to her. Regaari—enigmatic, handsome, driven Regaari—had redoubled his endurance training, spending longer and longer on the treadmill as if by training himself until he could keep pace with a human, he might somehow in some small way undo what had happened.
Ayma had seen Xiù’s grief before. The human tended to go quiet, curl up somewhere dark and sob until somebody dragged her out of it. This time was different, and she had been puzzling over why for some days. While Xiù had gone quiet, it had been the kind of quiet that Regaari had mastered, as if she was being silent so that she could watch without disturbing what she was watching.
That worried Ayma. And so, checking on Xiù had become the first task of her day.
Regaari growled something and turned over in his sleep as she padded past him. He really had been beating himself up recently, and Ayma didn’t doubt that his muscles were aching and fatigued from it, though this was the first he’d actually shown of it.
Well, that and being the last to wake. That wasn’t like him either.
There was something off about the ship. They had docked last night at a private corporate cargo relay station to take on basic supplies, synchronise with the galactic data network, degauss the hull and generally tend to the business of keeping their ship flying. Now, in the morning, it seemed eerily still, and colder somehow. Maybe even quieter.
That was it. Xiù was not a large person, but the characteristic density of a Deathworlder meant that when she was moving around, the whole ship vibrated just a little bit. She wasn’t heavy, she was…
Firm. that was the word. The ship trembled a little wherever she went inside it, as if it was just a little afraid of her. Ayma loved her sister, but having felt the full force of Xiù giving her an angry deathworld glare, she could relate just a little.
There was no music, either. None of that raucous pulsing noise that Xiù liked to pollute her personal space with when she was alone and could get away with it.
Only one thing caused her to pause as she headed towards the gym. The cabin that contained the modified cargo container, with its salvaged stasis field generator, that served as Triymin’s coffin until they could somehow get her back to Gao, and to a proper funeral. She always paused by that door.
The gym itself, however, was dark and empty. When Ayma experimentally waved a hand over the threshold, she didn’t feel the tug of any extra gravity.
“Shoo?” she called.
“She’s not here either?”
Ayma flinched. Regaari raised his paws apologetically. “Either?” she asked, grabbing the important word.
“You woke me up.” He explained. “When I went up to the galley, her cloak and disguise were gone.”
Their eyes met, then simultaneously widened, and they scrambled back towards the sleeping cabin, Regaari beating her there despite his battered muscles. Ayma didn’t need to get there first though. She was already feeling the urge to make a mournful keening noise, and the impulse only grew stronger when she saw the open compartment under Xiù’s nest-bed. Xiù didn’t own many personal effects, but they were all gone.
“I’ll…check the security footage.” Regaari said. “Check every compartment, just in case?”
It was something to do, but Ayma didn’t need to look very far. Glancing into the room containing Triymin’s coffin was enough.
This time, she really did give voice to her sorrow, and the noise soon attracted Regaari.
Resting atop the coffin was a datapad, projecting a short, simple message.
“I’m sorry.
Take care of yourselves.
I love you both.
Goodbye.“
Two years later.
Date Point: 4y 9m AV
A motel somewhere along I-84, Utah, USA, Earth
Kevin Jenkins
“Cimbrean’s appointed governor, Sir Jeremy Sandy, was quick to dismiss any suggestion of blame, stating that the damage was beyond any reasonable prediction.“
The footage of decaying foliage and the aerial shots of creeping brown pestilence cut to the image of a silver-haired man who looked like he hadn’t been getting enough sleep, standing at a podium in a garden under grey English skies.
“I came to Cimbrean for many reasons—the future of humanity as an interstellar civilization, to realise the ambitions of generations of dreamers, and to preserve its unique biology for posterity and for the benefit of the human race and others.”
“The thought that we are going to lose it all, that the biosphere of the entire planet was doomed even before the first colonist set foot on Cimbrean, is gut-wrenching. But the fact remains that, devastating though this tragedy is, it is not the result of an act of malice. The circumstances of this disaster were uncontrollable, therefore we shall not be naming the person responsible, nor apportioning blame—there is none to apportion, as they could not have foreseen or avoided this outcome by any realistic means.”
The governor paused significantly, and adjusted his glasses as he looked directly out across the crowd and at the cameras.
“Blame will accomplish nothing, and if nothing is accomplished then Cimbrean will die. It is that simple.“
The footage cut to Sandy shaking hands and standing alongside other politicians for the press as the reporter continued.
“This morning, the Global Representative Assembly’s Office for Extraterrestrial Policy issued a statement confirming that the search for other potential colony worlds would remain essentially unchanged.“
The statement was displayed even as it was read out.
“…Although the news of ecological disaster on Cimbrean has of course been taken into account, the Assembly’s survey of potentially habitable worlds was already focusing on so-called “death worlds” which are likely to be more well-suited and resilient to human habitation, including being better able to resist the kinds of microorganisms which are behind the Cimbrean tragedy…“
The footage returned to Cimbrean, showing teams of scientists patrolling the infected area in protective clothing, sampling the ravaged greenery.
“While the decision to supplant Cimbrean’s native species with ones from Earth has attracted widespread protests and accusations that the colony and its sponsors in the British government have failed to fully explore the available options for containing or reversing the bacterial spread, it seems likely that the plan to import Terran plants and animals is set to go ahead. The British Prime Minister has already pledged the continued support of his government to Cimbrean despite criticism from the opposition that saving Cimbrean will be a waste of time and money.“
Kevin didn’t recognise the next man on screen, but he was clearly a British politician. Nobody else could wear a bad suit, bad teeth and bad hair so comfortably.
“Everything we’ve seen and been told about the galaxy says that there are literally thousands of planets out there waiting to be claimed, most of which have ecosystems much less fragile than Cimbrean’s and gravity much more suitable to our needs. So this so-called ‘terraforming’ project seems to me to be a case of throwing good money after bad, especially in today’s fragile economic climate.“
A commentator gave their opinion from in front of a green-screen depiction of the New York skyline.
“Have we REALLY exhausted all of the options here? ‘cause as far as I can tell the situation on Cimbrean went from A-Okay to Apocalypse overnight. Where’s the in-depth investigation, the planning?” He raised his voice to shout over the interrupting objections of his opposite number “I don’t believe that a whole planet is so fragile that we can write it off the second some hiker takes a…a comfort stop in the woods!“
Screen time was then given to the person who had tried to interrupt him.
“The criteria laid down by the Interspecies Dominion for classifying a planet are well-established and clear. I know, I know…” She paused as she was interrupted, and the footage cut to her continuation. “I know it’s hard to really get your head around the idea that our own home planet is so incredibly deadly, but all of the samples and information coming back from Cimbrean so far, all the abductee accounts, all the scientific resources we now have access to all point to the fact that we’re statistical outliers, right on the far end of the bell curve.“
The next speaker was clearly being interviewed in his office, and had the air of big business about him. It wasn’t long before his name was displayed at the lower edge of the screen, proving him to be the CEO of some company or another. Moses Byron.
“Cimbrean isn’t going to be abandoned for one simple reason: Oil. It has a lot of oil. Sure, we may be moving more and more on to using solar energy collection fields to power our cities, but we’ve got a lot of cars still on the road that aren’t about to stop running on gasoline anytime soon, and we’re never going to stop needing plastics. Cimbrean represents an opportunity for the West to break our dependence on Middle-Eastern and Russian oil, and this ecological disaster doesn’t change that. In fact, it represents a golden opportunity.”
“If we’re replacing the ecosystem of an entire planet with one of our own design anyway, then we don’t need to worry about the conservation and preservation efforts that…I don’t want to say ‘hamper’ industry on Earth. Conservation and environmental preservation are obviously hugely important, and I don’t want to give the impression that I think they’re bad things, ‘cause I don’t.“
“But if Cimbrean’s already written off then there’s no longer any reason why we can’t have huge GMO farms over there, growing crops in a low-pest environment, meaning a gargantuan food surplus for Earth. The same goes for oil drilling, fracking, for open-cast mining…The incentives that exist not to do those things on Earth no longer apply to Cimbrean because the fatal damage has already been done. So instead we can stop damaging our own planet and make the best of a tragedy.“
The reporter asked a question directly to the interviewee at that point. “Don’t you think that’s a cynical way of looking at it?“
The businessman gave an uncomfortable little exhalation.
“I won’t deny you could call it that, but I don’t think I’m being cynical. I think I’m trying to look at the ways we can turn a bad situation to the good.” He said.
“Sure, it sounds heartless at first glance, but at second glance I’m talking about the opportunity to…to wipe out famine, to limit the damage we do to the Earth. Imagine if we never cut down another inch of Amazon rainforest ever again because we’d moved those tree species and their logging operations over to Cimbrean instead? That’s got to be better than just letting one planet die while we continue to wound the other, right?”
He shrugged, sat back and folded his hands in his lap. “If that’s cynical then…guilty as charged, I guess.”
Kevin stopped listening as the reporter signed off, and sat back thinking as the anchors segued into the next article, about a recall of translation implants, scratching idly at the bald patch in front of his own temple where his own crude version had been installed, supposedly the first one custom-built for a human nervous system.
Eventually, he reached a decision.
“Still doesn’t seem real…”
Date Point: 4y 9m AV
Cimbrean Consulate, London, United Kingdom, Earth
Sir Jeremy Sandy
Sir Jeremy became aware of his aide, Jack, entering the office and reached forward only reluctantly, and took his time removing his earphones and turning the music off. He’d been enjoying a few moments to himself.
“Jack?”
“Mister Moses Byron will be here in five minutes, Sir Jeremy.”
“Already?” Sir Jeremy sat back, folding his hands on his stomach. “I know the man has a reputation for alacrity, but…”
“He has a reputation for buzzing around like a blue-arsed fly, sir.” Jack smiled. “I understand he got in his jet the second you agreed to see him.”
“And a reputation for being such a straight-talker that you could draw a triangle with him.” Sir Jeremy finished.
“Shall I keep him waiting?”
Sir Jeremy thought about it. The presumption on his time was a little irritating, but on the other hand…“Ordinarily…no, no thank you Jack. See him in directly when he arrives will you? And, have some coffee ready.”
“Yes, sir Jeremy.”
Sir Jeremy cleared up a few letters and some of the shorter reports as he waited. Moses Byron was a self-made billionaire, a man who had stepped out of the relative obscurity of the business sector within the last four years already with a few million to his name, and had put that money to work in spectacular fashion, capitalising on all the domestic, terrestrial opportunities afforded by the discoveries coming out of Scotch Creek and the universities as the secrets of alien technology were unpicked.
Byron owned the production of volumetric projectors, stasis fields generators, solar collection fields and at least two kinds of alien-derived power storage cells that promised to give the latest generation of smartphone a full month of life when charged. Thanks to him, the near future promised to contain true 3D cinema, the stasis “fridge”, self-sufficient electric cars.
He also, to the public’s delight, seemed to be an intensely moral man, unafraid to court controversy by telling the truth as he saw it.
Sir Jeremy had an immediate mistrust of the man, but rose to shake his hands when, after a few minutes, Jack opened the door and ushered him in with a soft “Mr. Moses Byron, Sir Jeremy.”
The handshake was crushing, and Moses himself was loud. “Hey, so I got a question, do you mind if I call you Jerry, or do you prefer Sir Jeremy?” he asked.
“I prefer Sir Jeremy, if it’s all the same to you.” the governor replied, retaking his seat.
“Then Sir Jeremy you’ll be, and sorry for asking.” The twinkle in Byron’s eye said that he knew he was playing to type, and that no force in the galaxy could induce him to care even a little bit. Sir Jeremy congratulated himself on predicting that Byron, for all his bluster and bluntness, would turn out to be deeply shrewd.
Two could play at the excessive directness game.
“So what do you want, Mr. Byron?” he asked. “I saw you on the news, giving the impression that you rather thought you could annex Cimbrean into your growing empire.”
“And save the world with it.” Moses beamed, revealing the kind of white, even teeth that could only be the product of extensive expensive dentistry.
“Very ethical of you.”
Byron laughed. “Ah, Ethical is a product, Sir Jeremy, and it sells so well because it advertises itself. Hell, it’s a brand. You Brits have that little red tractor you stick on your food to say it’s been locally sourced. Ain’t no little sticker for cheap imported stuff made by Chinese kids for a dime an hour, is there?”
Sir Jeremy sat back. “Your point being…?”
Byron shrugged. “Did you read my proposal?”
“I did. Despite what you said on TV last night, I really don’t see what you stand to gain. Your own proposal is so self-limited that you wouldn’t see a return on your investment for…decades.”
Moses Byron grinned again. “If we’re talking about the return on the investment directly from the investment itself, then you’re not wrong.” he agreed. “But to be honest, how much money does a guy need? I can afford to fly to London on a whim, no big deal. Seriously, I could lose that kind of money in some inventive tax paperwork, if I was the kind of guy to stiff the public sector like that. How much more do I really need?”
“That’s an attitude which is slightly at odds with my past experience of business billionaires.” Sir Jeremy observed.
“Man, I feel sorry for you. You’ve been hanging with the idiot crowd, I can tell. The kind who think profit equals dollars, am I right?”
Byron leaned forward. “But yeah, I have an angle, sure. It’s just not one that puts me in control of the planet like you’re worrying about. That’d just limit me and make me look like the bad guy, and the Byron brand is all about looking like the good guy. Ethical is a brand, right?”
“I see. The cynical good guy.”
“You got it, yeah. I know common wisdom is that people don’t like a hard truth, but it’s worked for me so far.”
The meeting paused as Jack entered, carrying a cafetiere, cups, sugar, cream and some files, which he handed to Sir Jeremy before retreating.
“Coffee, Mr. Byron?” Sandy asked, depressing the filter.
“Black and sweet.”
Sir Jeremy poured. “You’re creating an opportunity.” he said, as he did so.
Byron threw his hands wide and smiled. “You caught me.”
“But I don’t think that opportunity is on Cimbrean. I think you meant every word you said during that interview but ultimately I think that my planet is just the, um…” he paused, considering how to phrase it. “The floodgate that you want opened.”
He dropped a sugar cube into the coffee. Moses held up two thick fingers. When the second cube went in, he curled one of those fingers down.
Sir Jeremy poured his own coffee before adding the third cube. “How much money does a man need? I’d submit that it’s less than you already have.” he said. “And yet here you are. If it was about being the ‘good guy’ then you could do that here on Earth. Any charity in the world would be delighted to receive this kind of money, so: Why Cimbrean?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Jerry.”
Sir Jeremy issued a humourless laugh, and added the third sugar cube.
“If we are going to prevent the total collapse of Cimbrean’s breathable atmosphere, the first step is almost certainly going to be phytoplankton.” he said, handing the drink over. “But the water is so rich in nutrients that the algae will get out of hand almost overnight unless we have zooplankton and krill to eat them, and unless we want the seas to be solid pink with krill, we’re going to need something that eats them in turn. How do you import a whale?”
“More to the point,” he continued, “how do you import a sustainable breeding population of whales without harming the whale population on Earth? What complications might arise from that? If the whales we choose migrate to the Caribbean to breed every year, then how are they going to fare on a planet that doesn’t have a Caribbean? And that’s just the, the primary school science class version of that food chain, and only one food chain.”
He poured cream into his own coffee. “Nothing like this has ever been attempted. We’re bringing on board science fiction writers because those are the only people who have even considered these kinds of scenarios. The expertise and knowledge to make it happen all but don’t exist.” Before sipping his drink, he looked Byron straight in the eye. “There are noble causes right here on Earth that could boost your Ethical Byron Brand, and Cimbrean meanwhile can offer no guarantees that we shall succeed.” he added.
“So?”
“So as useful as your money will no doubt be, you appear to be treating me like part of the so-called ‘idiot crowd’.” Sir Jeremy said. He took a sip, levelly holding Byron’s gaze. “Not to try my hand at equine dentistry, but I’ve always preferred the aphorism ‘if it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ so I ask again. Why Cimbrean?”
Moses Byron’s jovial attitude was gone, revealing the hardened veteran businessman underneath.
“You’re gonna turn me down?” he asked.
“I hope I don’t have to. As I said, we need the money and to be frank I don’t care what you have planned. I require only an added clause.”
“Name it.”
“Do you have any neural cerebral augmentation implants, Mister Byron?”
Byron frowned at the apparent non-sequitur. “No.”
“No translator implant or anything like that?”
“God no, I prefer my head the way the good Lord made it.”
“Good. The stipulation I am adding is that you will provide—under supervision by an observer of my choice—medical evidence to prove that you don’t, to be repeated on a regular basis. In the event that you ever do acquire any such implants, any and all property and developments you own within one parsec of the Cimbrean star will immediately be ceded in their entirety to the Cimbrean colonial administration or, if that’s not acceptable, to a private owner of the administration’s choosing.”
”…That’s it?”
Sir Jeremy nodded and sipped his coffee again. While he typically preferred tea, he had to admit that Jack prepared excellent coffee. “Yes.”
“Well, ‘not to try my hand at equine dentistry’ here, but what the hell does it matter?” Byron looked downright confused by the demand.
“I’m not at liberty to tell you. Suffice it to say that I’m eliminating an ulterior motive.”
Byron took a swig of his own coffee to cover his bemusement, then set the cup down on Sir Jeremy’s desk. “Fine, whatever, I accept the term as given.” he said “Have your people call mine, write it in.”
Sir Jeremy smiled, and shook his hand, pleased to note that Moses Byron’s grip was much less certain and strong this time. “I look forward to seeing what you have in store, Mister Byron.” he said.
4y 9m 3d AV
Starship Sanctuary, deep space
Allison Buehler
Julian had an irritating habit of cleaning and maintaining his gear on the coffee table in the Sanctuary’s main lounge, which was compounded by his grumbling that he couldn’t concentrate on the job while any kind of entertainment was on. Six years of having nothing to distract him but staring into the campfire meant that any movie, TV show, game or anything else on the big screen opposite the couch commanded his attention.
Allison had, therefore, waited until he was pretty much finished before poking her head round the door, acutely aware that they hadn’t exchanged more than three words at a time in a couple of weeks now.
“Hey, uh…you busy?” she asked.
He glanced up, and gave her a long, cool, evaluating stare before moving over on the couch. “Just finishing.” he grunted.
+God, he’s sexy when he’s pissed.+
She sat down next to him and put the box she’d brought with her down on the table. He frowned at it.
“What’s this?”
“Peace offering.”
He blinked at her, then shrugged and twisted the catch on the front of the box.
She’d worked hard, with Lewis’ help programming the nanofactory, to produce an almost exact duplicate of a Smith & Wesson 22A. “My Grandpa taught me to shoot with a gun just like this.” she said. “I was…hoping you’d let me teach you. You said yourself you’ve never fired a gun before.”
“What, you want an excuse to rub up next to me on the shooting range?” Julian put the gun back down again.
“Um…”
“I’m not your fucking plaything, Allison. You wanted a perfect peace offering? Well how about a goddamn apology?”
“UGH!” she stood up and left the gun behind. “Whatever, Etsicitty. You want to learn how to fire that thing, you let me know.”
She was glad that nobody on the ship was between her and her quarters to see her expression. The moment the door closed behind her, she drove her fist into the wall, denting it slightly and bloodying her knuckles, which prompted a round of swearing and running her hand under the cold faucet.
“That was an apology, you jackass.” she muttered.
4y 9m 5d AV
Sara Tisdale
The Cimbrean summer was gentler than Sara remembered from Earth. Back there, even in notoriously grey and mild England, she had always had to wear sun cream when thesun was out, and lots of it. She’d always hated it.
Cimbrean was much better. Its thick Ozone layer and the Cimbrean star’s comparatively low UV output (low relative to Sol, anyway) combined so that on an afternoon like today, you could stretch out face-down on a rock and just feel warm, with none of the burning or dryness.
She flinched as water splashed across her back. “HEY!”
Her little brother and one of the newcomers, Stacey, grinned impishly at her and kicked away from the bank, scrambling back towards the middle of the lake to escape her wrath. She let them go and tried to settle back again.
They had come swimming every day since the news broke. Everyone knew that Lake Junkyard was on borrowed time, that sooner or later the bacterial filth would reach it, and they wouldn’t be able to swim in it any more without risking dysentery. Squeezing out every minute of good swimming time before the day the bad news finally came was important.
“Hey.”
Adam sat down next to her to dry out in the sun, having swum out to the sunken spaceships and back as he usually did. He was really taking his exercise seriously, but he didn’t seem to really enjoy just fooling around in the water like most of the others did. He’d arrived late on an ATV of his own, and had dived straight in without even saying hello, a sure sign of something on his mind.
Sara had been sleeping in the spare bed in his house while her parents and Ava had been away, and it had killed some of her crush on Adam, replacing it with a solid friendship. After all, who else was she going to talk to? He and Ava were the only others in her kind of age range, the rest of the Cimbrean children were all ten years old or less, and hardly anybody seemed to be bringing families with them any more.
“Hey.” she returned the greeting rather more sunnily as she rolled over and sat up. “Do you have any news? I heard maybe there’d been some word today, but I heard it from Kieron and he wouldn’t tell me where he heard it from and you know how he makes stuff up.”
Adam smiled a little, his mood breaking down in the face of Sara’s unrelentingly cheerful motormouth. “No.” he said. “Stupid military hospital won’t share anything with us. ‘Patient confidentiality’ they say.”
“But I’m their daughter! And your dad’s Ava’s guardian, right? I mean I thought he was and if he is then that’s pretty much the same thing as being her parent and don’t they usually tell parents about what’s going on?”
“Yeah.” Adam agreed. “But he called the guy he has to deal with, and I’m quoting here, ‘A bureaucratic sadist with a phone pole up his ass’.”
Sara giggled. Adam’s imitation of his own father was uncanny, and not just because they were related. He had Gabriel’s mannerisms down perfectly.
“Is that all he said? Because I’ve seen your dad when he’s having a tough time and I didn’t know half of what he was saying until you taught me what they meant and I don’t see how he could just stop there when Ava’s in the hospital and they won’t tell him how she’s doing.”
“Hell no, it wasn’t all he said.” Adam agreed. “But I’m not allowed to teach you how to swear in Spanish any more, remember?”
She laughed again, remembering. The first couple of days of zero contact, not knowing what was going on with all the people who’d been shipped back to take care of their Cimbrean Tea poisoning, had been the hardest. By way of trying to find a method to release the stress harmlessly, Adam had been teaching her a few choice phrases in Spanish, right up until the point where his father had walked in and just folded his arms disapprovingly.
It had worked though. “So what else did he call him? Come on, spill it, it’s not like anybody’s around who’ll tell us off.”
Adam chuckled, shaking his head. “Guess.”
“What about…hmm…a puto?”
“Yep.”
“A Pendejo?”
“Plenty of that, yeah.”
“Ooh! I know! Did he call him a pinche idiota?”
Adam grinned. “Oh yeah. To his face.”
“Woah! really?”
“And then some. The guy stood in Dad’s office explaining ‘national security’ this and ‘discretion’ that and Dad told him to métetelo por el culo, right there.”
Sara was in awe. “Your dad is amazing!” she enthused. “He really told the guy to do that right there in his office? That’s so cool.”
“I know, right?” Adam nodded, then sobered. “‘But he said he regretted it afterwards. Said he could have got more done if he’d stayed frosty, yeah?”
“I guess…” Sara thought about it. “It’s been, like, two weeks hasn’t it? Nearly. Yeah, it was on Saturday the week before last wasn’t it, and then…wow that time’s gone fast hasn’t it? All those scientists and reporters and everyone coming and going and everything…”
“More of them today. Apparently some really rich dude wants to give us a whole load of money, it’s big news.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s the really rich dude?”
“Some guy called, uh…Moses…something.”
“Moses Byron? Mum and Dad talk about him a lot, like he’s…like, they think that all businessmen should be like him, they say he’s really honest and he’s one of those people who got money and didn’t turn into an asshole, and he’s making the world a better place and stuff. He’s, like, the only person in a suit I’ve ever heard them say something nice about.”
Which wasn’t exactly true. They’d also been fairly flattering about Sir Jeremy, and about Gabriel Arés, but she knew what she meant.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah. He does stuff like lobby governments to legalise Marijuana so he can…what was it Mum said?” She concentrated, trying to remember a speech he’d given that Hayley had admiringly quoted. “Something like ‘Rehabilitate the global trade in drugs and take it out of the hands of unethical pushers.’ Mum and Dad’re really in favour of that.”
Adam bobbled his head. “I guess that makes sense.” he conceded.
Unable to think of anything interesting to say, Sara picked up her camera and focused it on the first thing that she saw, other than Adam himself. The reflection of the tree line of the opposite shore was perfect, almost mirror-still, and she zoomed in on it.
A thought seemed to occur to Adam “Hey…did your folks ever do drugs like that?” he asked.
“Like what, marijuana?” Sara asked, pressing her eye to the viewfinder and twisting at her telephoto lens.
“Yeah.”
“Sure they did. They said it was part of their whole ‘being in touch with nature’ thing. They were really big on that. Grandma said the only reason they moved out of that teepee village in Wales was because of the child protection service.”
“Did you ever…?”
She nodded, and hummed a confirmation—”Mmm-hmm.”—before smiling sheepishly at him. “Dad used the same number for his PIN and for the safe, I figured it out really early on. Three three eight one, his birthday. So, when they went out one time I…y’know, I tried out some of their stash.”
She rolled her eyes internally when he gave a dismayed little head-shake in response to her answer, but his next question at least showed how open-minded he was. “What was it like?”
Sara invented furiously. The truth was, she had been sick and scared and hyperventilating too much to tell how much of the experience had been the drug and how much had been anxiety. “Just…weird, I guess.” she said, borrowing what she’d seen of her parents when they got high. “I don’t really remember, I just coughed a bit, found everything really funny for a while, got hungry, ate a whole tub of ice cream and fell asleep.”
“Didn’t you get in trouble?”
She laughed a little, lining up her camera to take a second picture of the distant trees in case the first wasn’t satisfactory. This question, she could answer honestly “Mum and Dad don’t believe in trouble, or grounding me or whatever.” she said, omitting that they’d gone easy on her in part because she’d had such an awful time. “Dad just changed his combination and his PIN and asked me to wait until I’m eighteen.”
Adam laughed, a little disbelievingly. “How the hell did they get to come here?” he asked. “I thought the first colonists were supposed to be, like, the best and brightest.”
“They are!” Sara protested, indignantly defending them. “They’re both botanists, really good ones! And there was never, like, anything official, they didn’t get caught or arrested or anything like that, ever. As far as the authorities knew, they’re a pair of doctors with a bunch of published papers, the best and brightest like you said.”
“But you said child protection…”
“I said they moved out because of it, not because the child protection people ordered them to or anything. They moved out because they knew child protection wouldn’t approve, so they moved out before that happened. My parents are really smart people, Adam!”
There was an awkward silence, during which she turned away, cheeks burning, and took an angry picture of the reflection of a hilltop where it blurred and distorted around the swimmers. It took Adam a good few seconds to finally apologise. “I’m sorry Sara, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, you did.” She said. People always said that whenever they insulted her parents to her face, and Sara had long since given up on being upset by it. “It’s okay, it just means you don’t understand them.”
She put the camera down suddenly. “I really miss them.” she added. “Nobody else around here thinks like they do, everyone’s all closed-minded, talking about banning the Tea stems when the plant’s all over the place right now, and going to be extinct pretty soon anyway. What’s wrong with a little bit of fun? Does it really matter if people are…are chewing something, or smoking it or whatever? Why does that matter?”
“I don’t know.” Adam confessed.
“See, that’s why you’re cool. That’s, like, the honest answer.”
She sat back and stretched, pointing her toes. “Why do people have to make things so complicated?” she asked.
Adam made an interrogative noise. “Mm?”
“There’s this…saying thing that Mum and Dad like.” She told him. “’An it harm none, do as thou wilt’ shall be the whole of the law.”
“Okay…?”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? Why do we need all these rules and stupid laws that just stop people from having fun? Why can’t people just do what they want so long as they’re not harming anybody?”
Adam went quiet for a bit, and she was about to change the subject before he spoke. “People hurt each other.” he said. “They’re not like you, Sara. They don’t…hold themselves back just because they were asked all nicely. They’ll do things like…like go to a sports event planning to shoot random people in the crowd, or they’ll blow up a whole city. Or they get drunk and they…”
He went quiet again, then started laughing a little strangely.
“Adam?”
“Isn’t that weird? I can talk about the roller derby, I can talk about the bomb, but I find it harder to talk about Mom and her drinking.”
Sara scooted up to him a bit. “Did she hurt you?”
“Not like…not physically, or anything like that. She never touched me. But she…said things, you know? Painful things.”
“Yeah, but…Sticks and stones, right?”
”…No.” Adam looked away, and scooted away from her a little too. “No, that’s…I don’t wanna talk about it.”
After the awkward silence had gone on a little too long, Sara finally found the courage to break it. “Wanna swim instead? Race you to the big ship?”
“Race me? Come on, the only way that’s fair is if it’s a race for me to get back here before you make it out that far.”
“You’re on!” she sprang to her feet and sprinted for the water, laughing at his dopplering “Hey!“
She hit the water at full tilt and dived in, still grinning, enjoying the cool liquid feeling of freedom on her skin as she wriggled a few dolphin-kicks under the surface.
Win or lose, at least she was going to have fun.