142: SEEDS

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“What? You can’t go out there!” Max goes to rise from the table, and Tinera and the Friend let them, but don’t let go, don’t let them try to block our path as we head for the door. “You can’t!”

“We won’t put the colony in danger,” Captain Klees assures them. “That’s what the space suits are for.”

“Thing is,” Tinera says, “when you’re not willing to harm someone, you lose quite a bit of leverage over them. How, exactly, can you stop us from sending a scouting party out? Why shouldn’t we go and get information, if you won’t tell us?”

Max pulls their wrists free from Tinera and the Friend, and neither of them try too hard to restrain them. No one wants a fight. They’re too far away to try to block the door; no reason to hold onto them any longer. For the first time, Max doesn’t look even a little bit happy – just scared. And angry. Really angry. “You’ll get people killed if you go out there, you idiots!”

We all stop.

“Get people killed?” Captain Klees asks. “What do you mean?”

Max sets their jaw. I take a stab in the dark. “Killed by famine?” I ask, and there it is, the flinch. We crew all exchange sombre looks. It had been a controlled famine. A threat still being hung over their heads by those in power; this Celti, maybe.

“Things going on right now,” Max says quietly, “are very, very complicated. More than you can imagine. You can’t just blunder about out there and fuck everything up.”

“You’re right,” Captain Klees says as we all return to the table. “We probably shouldn’t do that. So how about you tell us what’s actually going on so we don’t break anything by accident?”

“I can’t! I’m not allowed to!”

“Why not? Like Tinera said, if killing us isn’t an option, us finding out is inevitable, right? Why keep secrets?”

“That’s what I said, but I was voted down. So.”

“Is anyone listening to us right now? Through microphones or cameras or anything like that?”

Max looks surprised at the question. “Um. Not that I know of. But maybe? It never occurred to me.”

“I’ve been looking over the habitat pretty thoroughly,” I say, “and haven’t found anything that might be a bug. I’m no expert, I might have missed something, but if Max didn’t even think of it then we’re probably safe.”

Tal raises a finger to get everyone’s attention and points to the new computer. Captain Klees nods. Tal unplugs the computer, and then as a group, we all move into the bedroom, as far away from it as possible.

“We can’t be certain of not being heard,” Captain Klees says, “but here’s the deal. If you don’t give us answers, we’ll go find them. So we can take a chance and talk, or me and some of my crew can go looking in public.”

“You have no idea of the risk you’re taking.”

“Enlighten us, then. It’s like you said on the tour – we brought food. More of it than you’ve seen in your life. There’ll be no more famine.”

Max is thinking. Hard. Probably trying to calculate the minimum amount they can tell us to keep us satisfied so we don’t run off unsupervised. That’s fine; that’s what we all expect, I think. It’s still the most information we’re likely to get.

“Okay,” Max sighs. The bright grin returns, more brittle than usual. “Where should I start?” What do I need to tell you to stop this questioning?

“What happened to put you in here unprotected, ahead of schedule?” the Friend asks.

“Your ship dropped the second pod yesterday, a supply pod. There was a breach in the landing.”

We all nod. Most of the shielding bulk on the drop pods is for the five thousand humans that the Courageous was expected to drop onto Hylara; the materials pods are less protected and a breach would be unusual but not completely out of the realm of possibility. Despite our oversupply of ‘good’ pods with so many of the colonists dead, it’s not surprising that the orbiting crew would decide not to waste one on some seeds and growth medium.

“But you said that Dr Kim has the growth medium for my foot,” Captain Klees said. “So some cargo survived?”

“Most of the cargo survived. The entire pod survived the dangerous part of the descent. But something in the hull tore in the low atmosphere, they said, and ruptured the containment of the seeds of several species of terraformation pioneer plants.”

Tinera and Tal’s expressions both change. Their eyes narrow and they exchange a glance; thoughtful, suspicious. They know the most about how drop procedures work, and their expressions tell me that Max’s claim doesn’t make sense. Captain Klees also exhaustively studied the procedures for our drop; I glance at him and he looks thoughtful, too. I myself don’t know much about how the pods are packed or the force it takes to rupture one or whether the growth medium could be expected to survive if it happened, but I trust their judgement.

“Has it been reported to the Courageous?” I ask. “I’m sure they can send more.”

“The seeds aren’t the issue. The issue is that the containers ruptured and spread them out over a wide area. So they reported.”

“The chances of the seeds surviving an even that could breach the hull are very, very low,” Tinera shrugs. “And even if they do, so what? Saves people having to spread them later. You said there’s no aliens, so if anything actually survived in this atmosphere, great! We can get some vegetation going!”

“There’s been… some debate about that. A lot of people aren’t happy that you’re here.”

“Yeah, we noticed that.” Captain Klees puts on his most reassuring expression. “We wanted to talk about that, actually. I know you guys have your own ways and soforth, and you don’t want a couple of thousand strangers overrunning your community and possibly making your lives worse. Before we start sending people down, we need to talk about how to do this right. And if your settlement is completely set against the ship, well, this ground crew is kind of stuck here, but the rest can drop critical supplies and then settle in a different area of the plan – ”

“No!” There’s panic in Max’s voice. “No, you absolutely cannot do that. They don’t want your ship here at all, but now that you are here, you have to settle with us. Taking the ship somewhere else on the planet is completely off the table.”

“Why? You worried about wars in a few centuries’ time? Our communities would know that each other exist; I’m sure they’ll be – ”

“I’m worried about people dying without the things they need to survive.”

“So you are critically low on something here?”

“No. No, it’s… look. What’s important here is that people are very divided about the Courageous being here, and what it means for the future. A lot of people are very happy you’re here. A lot of others… aren’t. And the most divisive issue in the whole thing is terraformation. Almost everyone is hoping that those seeds can’t survive in our atmosphere.”

“Why?”

“It’s political.”

Captain Klees frowns, like he doesn’t understand. But I’m pretty sure I do. Controlled famine. The food production in this colony is controlled by some faction, presumably the government, this ‘leadership’ that Celti’s a part of. It’ll be a long, long time before farming is a viable option, but the idea of plants growing freely, of people able to grow their own food, is a very serious threat to those kinds of people. We represent a double threat to this society, a threat of both empowerment and disempowerment – the threat of our own people, with superior numbers and supplies and might, moving in and taking over, but also the threat of toppling whatever oppressive powers structure exists here already by helping people to supply themselves.

Probably. I still don’t have enough information to say much for certain.

“The real issue hit a couple of hours ago,” Max continues. “Some people didn’t trust the retrieval team’s reports on the contents of the pod. They went out to have a look. They’re claiming that the retrieval team damaged the pod themselves and took the seeds, and probably scattered them around the area by hand. They plan to weed out the plants but there’s not much they can do until they sprout; there’s no hope of finding all the seeds in the sand.”

“So the retrieval team are pro-terraformation?”

“Most people involved in working with you and the ship are pro-terraformation. The retrieval team were three friends of mine; Liel, Hatrain, and Hive.”

“A different Hive, or…?”

“Hive Cattail. We only have one Hive. They’ve all been arrested, of course. Nobody can prove what they did, but, well. Everyone knows they’re guilty.”

“I don’t know your legal system. Are they in danger?”

“No. Not… as things stand. We’re a very small community, we don’t go about killing each other or anything like that. But, well, people have been acting very irrationally, since we got news of your ship. Legally they’re safe, but I’d… I’d feel a lot better if this hadn’t happened. Anyway, the point is, Hive’s been removed from their job, obviously, and this whole thing is stirring up a lot of resentment towards the ship and towards you. They’re saying the ship sent terraforming stuff down right away because they’re in on a plan to terraform the planet behind everyone’s back.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Tinera says. “They assume you’ll want that stuff because trying to terraform the planet is an obvious step, especially if there’s no aliens here. They’re not trying to force anyone to do anything.”

Max shrugs. “The ship is the ultimate source of the problem, so I’m not surprised at the resentment. A lot of people are feeling really threatened right now. They’re feeling threatened by you, and the old topic of biohazards came up. That there might be something in you that’s going to wipe us all out by accident, or maybe even on purpose. We pointed out that if you wanted to kill us on purpose, you’d just have bombarded us from orbit before landing, but the nervousness is still there, especially over the virus thing. So someone had to make a grand gesture and defuse things, or at least distract them, before anything got out of hand.”

“Which is why you’re here, very pointedly not catching viruses and dying?”

“Exactly. I’d have loved to wait a few more days, but this seed trick that those idiots pulled have touched things off, so here we are.”

“And if you do catch something and die?”

Max shrugs, the bright smile back. “I’ll just have to be very careful not to. The medical estimates are always incredibly cautious. I’m sure a few days early is fine.”

“So who specifically do we need to worry about?” Tinera asks. “This Celti’s involved, I assume? Is he likely to flip out and cause trouble?”

“No! He’s not… he’s too old and too sensible for that. But that’s not true for everyone. He’s only got the best intentions for the colony at heart, we all do – nobody likes colony fighting like this. We have rules, we discuss things, we decide together. If the retrieval team really did spread those seeds, they broke the rules and put everyone in danger. The other side might break the rules, too. There’s a lot at stake here.”

“You keep saying stuff like that,” Tinera says, “but you’ve not given us many actual facts to work with.”

Max shakes their head. “There are rules.”

I nod, but I’m running the numbers. I’m definitely not proud of it. I know the numbers don’t matter, not in the way I’m running them, but the mathematics of lives is second nature now, and less than five hundred people live here. I ejected a ring of one thousand to save Denish, and yes, most of those wouldn’t have survived revival anyway, but that’s certainly not what I’d been thinking about what I did it. A little part of me, still thinking like Courageous crew, mind still on the colonists up there we need to funnel down, just can’t comprehend this political scuffle as having a lot at stake. They won’t starve again; we have food. We have the means to set up an ongoing food supply. All this over some scattered seeds? Any attempt of the government to control this colony through their food access is already doomed to fail. Why are we bothering with this? We can start dropping people and supplies and building this place up, making it better for everyone. This local stuff doesn’t fundamentally matter; we can ignore whatever’s going on here and there’s not much they can do about it. It’s just four hundred people in tents.

I dismiss that notion and refocus my perspective on the troubled liaison sitting across from me. I lean forward, and ask the most important question yet.

“Max. Can you show us how to wear those robes you guys wear?”

Max looks up at me in surprise. So does everyone else.

“We want to trade fashion tips?” Tinera asks. “That’s what matters right now?”

“Absolutely. I want to know about the robes, and how to tie the belts, and if the belt designs have meaning. I want to know that the local handshake looks like, how you greet each other, your table manners. I want to know about the linguistic quirks and what’s considered polite forms of conversation, polite forms of address, polite body language. Most of the people here haven’t seen our faces; we’re just silent space suits descended from the sky to them. In a few days, that’s going to change. I’m still not entirely clear on the details of what’s going on here, but the most important thing that we can possibly do is make a good impression. This is a completely insular culture of people who have never seen anyone outside their community before. We’re strangers in a culture where nobody has ever interacted with a stranger. The most important thing we can possibly do is make a good impression. So. Max. Should we get to work?”

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