Putting Up Roots

Chapter Fourteen

When the flight from Sol Brewster’s anger ended, the members of the trainee group returned to the complex of buildings. They acted nonchalant—but no one went near the computer and communications center.

Rick and Hag headed into their dorm. Josh kept going and entered the next building, where the laundry and a little recreation area and gym were located. He had seen Sig go in there and was hoping for a private word, but to his disappointment Topaz was already inside. Sig had moved to sit on a gym bench next to her.

Josh decided he would speak anyway. He pulled a chair across, sat down facing them, and said to Sig, “You remember you agreed that Dawn and Ruby saw a smart rupert, but that Brewster wouldn’t believe it unless he saw it for himself?”

Topaz’s eyes popped, but Sig nodded casually enough and said, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Did you think of any way that it could be done—catch a rupert, I mean?”

Sig shook his head. “Not a chance. If ruperts are as shy as everyone says, it would be impossible.”

“Right. For you, and me, and Topaz, that’s true. But I think Dawn could do it. You haven’t seen her with animals. She’s wonderful.”

Topaz said, “I thought you were just telling us ruperts are too smart to be thought of as animals.”

“You know what I mean. I’d like Dawn to have a chance to find one. But she’d need somebody with her.”

“You’ve heard Brewster’s opinion,” Sig said. “He’d tell you it was a waste of time, and he’d never let you go.”

“I wasn’t thinking of me.”

“Who, then?”

“The only one who’s not going to be given heavy duties, apart from Dawn, because she’s too young. I was thinking of Ruby. And I was thinking you might help persuade Sapphire that it would be all right for her to go with Dawn.”

Sig didn’t have a chance to answer, because Topaz was way ahead of him. “Are you out of your mind? Saph spends her life trying to make sure the rest of us don’t get into anything dangerous. Now you want Ruby to go off into the wild woods, on a planet humans know almost nothing about, and try to catch an animal we know even less about.”

Josh felt like an idiot, especially when Sig raised his eyebrows and added, “Couldn’t have put it better myself. It’s the last thing in the world that Saph needs, considering what she’s going through at the moment. She feels like shit. Josh, you get the dumb-idea-of-the-week award.”

It only helped a little when Topaz reached out, patted Josh’s knee, and said, “I’m sorry. I think the ruperts are intelligent, too, and I think it’s really important to prove it. But not this way. Could Dawn go by herself? She’s a lot smarter than people give her credit for. She’s learning her letters, even if it’s slow work. If she keeps it up she’ll soon be able to read and write.”

“She is bright, in her own way.” But it was Josh’s turn to feel uneasy. “Maybe Dawn would be all right in the woods alone. I’m afraid to let her go, though.”

“We’re all protecting somebody,” Topaz said. “With Sig it’s the twins, with Saph and me it’s Ruby. With you, it’s Dawn.”

As Topaz was speaking, Dawn herself came into the room from outside. She smiled at hearing her name, but said nothing. She seated herself on the floor between Sig and Josh, reached up, and handed Josh her sketch pad.

It showed a landscape, a distant view of the Barbican Hills as seen from the departing cargo aircar. He didn’t remember all the details that Dawn had included, but he felt sure they were accurate. He was about to offer the pad to Sig when Dawn gestured for him to turn the page. He did so, and found he was looking at a photo-accurate drawing of the ship that he had seen passing overhead early the same morning. But Dawn could not have seen it then—she had been busy with her lettering, inside the kitchen.

“When did you see this, Dawn?” And then, to Sig. “I told you! That’s what I saw. It’s not a cargo aircar or a lander, it’s more like the ship that carried us up from Earth.”

“It’s a deep-space vessel all right.” Sig was head-down over the drawing, studying the fine details. “But if it’s the way Dawn drew it, the design is different from the ones we’ve used. The exhaust isn’t the same—see those little side plumes, like feathers? And the hull is shorter and fatter.”

Josh should have been as intent on the drawing as Sig. He wasn’t. While Sig was speaking, Topaz’s fingers had moved up from Josh’s knee and were gently scratching the outside of his left thigh.

It tickled rather than hurt, and it was actually rather pleasant. But he could not understand why she was doing it in public, and certainly not at this particular moment. He turned to face Topaz, not sure how he was going to ask her to stop.

She was leaning forward on the bench, examining Dawn’s drawing. Her two hands rested lightly on two knees—her own.

Josh glanced down. Nothing was on the outside of his pants, but something was inside them. There was a bulge near the bottom of his left pocket. As he put his hand down toward it, the bulge slid up his leg a couple of inches.

He jumped to his feet. He started to put his hand into his pocket, then hesitated. He knew what it was—or what it had been. That was the pocket where he had dropped, and then forgotten about, the brown seedlike thing that fell on his head as the giant balloon exploded in the stormy sky above them.

But what was it now?

No matter what, he couldn’t bear to leave it there, crawling invisibly up his leg. He inserted his hand into his pocket. He had to force himself to do it, but he felt his way downward until something soft and warm squirmed against his fingers.

He flinched, and a touch like wet feathers ran across his fingertips.

“What is it?” That was Topaz, alarm in her voice. He did not look up. If he didn’t do it now, he never would. He took a breath, reached deeper into his pocket, and closed his hand on a wriggling ball of damp fur. Trying to ignore its attempts to escape, he pulled the object free.

His instinct was to throw it far away without even looking at it. But the others were crowding around, wondering what was happening. He forced himself to reach down to the floor and open his fist.

When you could see it, the imagined horror looked small and harmless, even pathetic. A blunt gray head sat at one end of a multicolored ring of feathered fluff. Free to expand, little plumes of crimson and deep blue were gradually rising, opening into the shape of a badminton birdie. Josh couldn’t see any legs, but the creature was edging its way toward him.

He took a pace backward. He couldn’t have picked the thing up again to save his life, but he didn’t have to. Dawn was bending and lifting it in one smooth movement. She cradled the object to her chest in both hands, lowering her head to examine it more closely. The plumes were fully open, extending three inches from the domed back and gradually changing to lighter colors in the open air.

“What is it?” Topaz asked again.

“I don’t know.” Josh became less worried when he saw that Dawn was comfortable and relaxed. “I thought it was a plant seed from the balloon trees. Now it seems to be an animal.”

“Maybe on Solferino a thing can be both,” Sig suggested.

“Bothwell Gage told us differently.” But Josh realized that Gage hadn’t said that. Solferino, according to the biologist, was the only world other than Earth where living things like plants and animals existed; but it didn’t mean that an organism had to be either one or the other.

Meanwhile, Dawn was ignoring all of them. With her nose just a couple of inches away from the creature, she was muttering and crooning to it, or maybe to herself. Five seconds more, and she set off without a word for the building exit. Josh and the others followed in silence.

Dawn paused when she reached the cleared area outside the gym. She went down to one knee on the dense purple carpet of plant cover and scratched a clear patch with her fingers. She put the animal she was holding into the middle of the patch, and waited.

Nothing happened, except that after a few seconds the little creature set a determined path for the edge of the cleared area.

Dawn murmured her disapproval, reached down, and picked the animal up again. The blunt gray head lifted and quested, and the tiny trunk seemed to sniff the air. The body wriggled.

Dawn took no notice. She was off again, holding the animal firmly and heading for the gate that led out of the compound. Once into the forest of umbrella plants she kept going, moving uphill until she found a place where the leaf canopy was less full and Solferino’s reddish sun could break through to light the surface. She halted in the sunniest area and again reached down to place her little captive on the ground.

It lay for a few seconds without moving. Then an explosion of fine soil appeared on all sides of it. The body began to sink, surprisingly quickly. In less than thirty seconds it had vanished. All that was left as proof of its presence was a small conical heap of red dirt.

“Plant, or animal?” Topaz was the first to speak. “I guess we still don’t know.”

“We were told Solferino wasn’t dangerous,” Sig said. “We still don’t know if that’s true or not, but one thing’s for sure. There’s plenty here that’s strange and mysterious.”

Topaz took Dawn’s hand in hers and regarded her in a way that Josh found perplexing. “Very true,” she said. “The most mysterious thing I’ve ever met is right here.” Her smile at Dawn took any ill feeling away from her words. “And of all the things on Solferino, this is the one that I’d most like to understand.”

That was the end of the incident with Dawn and what—for want of a better word—Josh thought of as the balloon-tree seed. But in a curious way it wasn’t the end for any of them. Josh realized that later in the day, after Brewster’s rage at Winnie Carlson had died down and he felt free to go to the computer room. He had expected to find it empty, and was hoping to learn more about Solferino’s native life forms. Instead he saw the unlikely pair of Sig Lasker and Amethyst Karpov, side by side at one of the consoles. They nodded at Josh, acknowledging his existence, but otherwise they took no notice of him.

“More like this, I think,” Sig said. He was working with a graphics package, and he had drawn on the display a wispy plume with indistinct sides.

Amethyst shook her head decisively. “Then it’s not a FoodLines ship. Before we left Earth I studied everything I could find about the Foodlines fleet. Nothing has an exhaust like that.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s easier to say what it isn’t.” Amethyst was fiddling with the keypads. “This is really annoying. The data banks I’d most like to look at have disappeared. There’s nothing here about the Unimine line—in fact, I can’t find anything about Unimine at all, nothing on the franchises for Cauldron or anything else. Everything involving the Grisel system seems to have been wiped out.”

That was bad news for Josh, too. Solferino life forms certainly ought to be part of the Grisel system data banks. But Amethyst was continuing, “I’d like to prove that what we saw when we were in the lander, and what Dawn drew, are both Unimine vessels. But without data, we’re guessing.”

“How about what you think you saw?” Sig turned to Josh.

“I don’t think I saw it. I did see it.” Josh came closer for a better view of the display. “That sure looks like the same ship exhaust to me. What are you two up to?”

“Worrying,” Sig replied. “At least, I am.”

“What about?” Josh was worrying, too, but mostly concerning Dawn and the ruperts.

“This place. Nothing makes sense. We’re shipped off to camp in the Barbican Hills almost as soon as we arrive, before we even know our way around this compound. The whole computer system falls apart as soon as we get back.” Sig gestured at the display. “When did you ever hear of hardware failure and data loss that had nothing to do with each other? That’s what supposedly happened here. Then there’s Brewster. He acts as though we were dumped on him, without warning, and he’s just as astonished when Winnie Carlson shows up.”

“But he didn’t know we were coming.”

“Wrong. Not if you believe Sapphire. Right, Amy?” Sig looked to Amethyst for confirmation.

She nodded. “We weren’t the only Foodlines trainees, Josh. There were scores more. Saph saw a complete list when we were back on Earth. She says that Brewster not only knew we were coming to Solferino, he requested each one of us. We are what Brewster felt he needed.”

It was such an improbable idea, Josh had to ask a delicate question. “You say the person who saw all this was Sapphire. Was she—I mean, could she have been…”

“Stoned, and out of her mind?” Amethyst provided the words for him. “Some of the time she was, yes. She was when we first got here. But I know Saph. Zonked or not, this isn’t the sort of thing she’d make up. I’m willing to believe that Brewster didn’t know anything about Winnie Carlson; but us, he picked out. He knew we were supposed to come to Solferino. The only thing is, we arrived a week early because Bothwell Gage was available to drop us off. Brewster would have known that, too, if he’d bothered to check his message center.”

“He was away at the medical facility.”

“Wherever that is.” Amethyst touched the console pads again, and a familiar-looking message appeared on the display.

MASTER LIST OF FACILITIES AVAILABLE WITHIN THE GRISEL STELLAR SYSTEM: DATA FILE CORRESPONDING TO THIS LABEL DOES NOT EXIST. “I know my way around most computer systems, but I’ve been getting nowhere with this one. Everything I want to find out about seems to have vanished.”

Josh thought of the ruined storage unit, sitting at the bottom of the bodger pond. Winnie had assured him, along with Rick and Hag, that the computer problems had nothing to do with what they had done. But why assume that she was right? Brewster certainly wouldn’t.

Perhaps the fight and the broken unit that resulted were the source of the computer difficulties. But if so, Josh wasn’t going to be the one owning up to it.

He nodded, vaguely agreeing with Amethyst, and backed away. She had ruined his idea that he could learn anything from the computer files about balloon-tree seeds, ruperts, or anything else on the planet. He saw no reason to stay and possibly be questioned by Sig and Amethyst.

It was dusk outside, and the day’s experiences had made him supersensitive. When a hand gripped his arm as he left the building, he shied away instinctively.

“Shh! It’s only me.”

Josh could breathe again. Topaz. She was standing close and spoke in a whisper.

“What do you want?” Josh did not use the same low voice, and she at once put her hand across his mouth.

“Shh. I have to talk to you—but not here. Don’t say anything. Just come with me.”

Josh followed her around the building. He wondered what was next on the agenda. The day had been full of surprises, but regardless of Sapphire’s suspicions about him and her sister, Josh couldn’t see this as an evening invitation for a hot date.

Near the back wall of the building, Topaz halted and turned. She moved closer, until her face was only a few inches from his. Off to their right, Grisel was dipping toward the horizon like a great, glowing ember.

“I’m sorry I was rotten to you earlier.” Topaz’s cheeks were ruddy, and her expression earnest in the half-light. “But what you suggested was really impossible.”

“It was?” Josh wondered what she was talking about.

“Yes. Impossible for Ruby, I mean. She’s too little, and Saph would never agree. But it’s not impossible for me. I like Dawn a lot, and I think I get through to her better than anyone. I feel sure that she likes me, too. I’d take really good care of her.”

“But what about Sapphire?” Josh had finally caught on to what the conversation was about. “And what about Brewster? You must have as many duties as I do. What will he do if you and Dawn up and vanish?”

“Who cares what he’ll do? What can he do, worse than what he does all the time? Especially if we come back with a smart rupert. He’ll have to admit that you were right. It was your idea, you know, not mine.”

“So if anyone goes, it ought to be me.” But something inside Josh hesitated at the thought.

“No. I’d be better—and it’s not because you’re incompetent, or anything like that.”

“Then why?”

“Because you’re male. I’d be able to help Dawn with female stuff, and you wouldn’t. Do you want to hear the details of what I mean?”

“No.” On that point at least, Josh was sure.

“So you agree?” Topaz leaned closer. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and her face was a pale blur with no features distinguishable. “If you do agree, I’ll start to make plans. It won’t work the way you suggested, though. I can’t just wander off with Dawn, and then if we don’t find anything, come back and do the same thing over again the next day. Brewster would never allow it to happen twice. This has to be a one-shot deal. All right?”

“Go slower. I guess I am dumb, even though you say I’m not. You’re right about it being a one-time opportunity, but I still don’t understand why. Why do you want to do this? It can’t be just to find a rupert.”

“You’re not dumb. You’re supersmart to realize there must be something more in it for me. If you promise not to tell anyone else—ever—I’ll explain what it is.”

“I’ll never tell.” Josh felt oddly flattered. “No matter who asks me.”

“Good. Now tell me, I’m one of four sisters. Which one am I?”

“You’re Topaz.” That was enough of an answer for Josh, but obviously not for her, because she stood waiting. He tried again. “You’re the second oldest.”

“Right.” But it still wasn’t the correct answer, because Topaz made an annoyed noise that Josh had heard a thousand times from his mother.

“And—you’re the most attractive,” he said at last.

Topaz snorted louder this time. “Get lost, Josh Kerrigan. I’m not fishing for half-baked compliments. You had it right before. I’m the second oldest, number-two child. That’s all you or anyone else can think of to say about me. Saph is the oldest, she’s the boss and acts like she’s our mother. Amy is the brain, she remembers everything she reads on the first go while the rest of us struggle. Ruby is the baby. We all look out for her and try to give her whatever she wants. But I’m not anything, I’m just child number two. That’s why I want to do this. I want to be someone special and different.”

It was no reason at all, and that’s why Josh couldn’t argue with it. He nodded, realized that Topaz probably could not see the movement, and said, “All right. I agree. And I do trust you with Dawn. I always have.”

“Thanks, Josh. I appreciate that.”

“And I meant what I said about you being the most attractive.”

“Now you’re trying a come-on.” Arms reached out in the darkness, located Josh, and hugged him. “That’s all right, I like it anyway. You couldn’t have said anything to make me happier.”

It was always nice to feel that you were someone special, Josh had to agree with that. It was also all right to be hugged.

There was only one problem. Josh, strolling back around the building with Topaz on his arm, under the alien sky of Solferino, was sure that he had done nothing to deserve either.