Playing God(31)

Regina looked at Rath. “What he means is, maybe he can convince them it's not worm it and they'll turn around and go home.”

Rath smiled grimly. “Not a chance, Arron. They've been promised new gene combos. Once the corpers get the scent, there's no calling them off.” She blew out a sigh. “And I almost had my dissertation topic sorted out.”

“Yeah, you've only been saying that for three years,” muttered Regina. Rath glared at her, and Regina patted her hand. “ ’Sokay. We'll find another world to dissect.” Arron had a feeling she was carefully not looking at him.

Cabal broke the silence. “It wouldn't hurt me to make one more run out there. Meet me here at high tide in two days, and we'll head out, okay?”

“Okay, thanks.” Arron transferred his ration packs to the hand holding the water bottle and picked up the portable. “Now, if you all will excuse me, I have some personal business to attend to.” He bowed to the assembly and retreated into one of the work alcoves.

He slid the door shut behind him, cutting off the flow of banter from the main room. The alcove contained a chair, a comm station, a table, and a bunk. He set his portable on the table and jacked it into the comm station.

Arron slid into the station's chair and dropped his stuff on the table. “Station. This is Arron Hagopian. Identify and open mail.” The one thing he missed out here was being able to follow the live threads. Without a full sat-net to handle the transactions, he had to receive the conversations as mail dumps and upload his responses.

Arron tore open a pack of bars and munched on one of the crispy oblongs that was supposed to taste like fried rice but didn't. The station beeped and whirred. The outpost account didn't have quite enough for a fully interactive AI, but they were saving for it. We had been saving for it, Arron corrected himself. Now we are arguing about how to divide up the outpost's assets.

The station blurted out a canned message. “Arron Hagopian identified. Sixty-five conversation holders have new data. One hywrite received. Displaying titles.”

The screen lit up with amber lines of text. Arron skimmed them. Regarding Exploitation of Dedelph and the Dedelphi. Bioverse Feeding on Sisters’ Fear, that one actually had a Dedelphi author from the Mars colonies. Bioverse Saves Lives. There were several similar titles. He didn't see the names for any new architects. The discussion just didn't seem to be expanding any. The calls for inquiries and boycotts weren't getting anywhere. They certainly weren't hurting Bioverse.

Arron suddenly realized that he was really looking for a conversation started by Lynn. He wanted some hint as to where she stood. He wanted to know what she saw that led her to believe the evacuation of the Dedelphi was a good idea.

I want to be ready for her. Arron stared at the alcove's curving white walls. Rath pinned it. I want to be able to tell her she's wrong.

Arron scrubbed at his face, as if trying to wipe something sticky off his skin.

At the very bottom of the list was the address for Professor Marcus Avenall at the University of the East.

Arron drank some more water, trying to swallow his tension at the same time.

“Station, open hywrite from Professor Marcus Avenall.”

Several lines of plain text formed on the screen. Marcus had always been a minimalist.

Arron:

We talked to Bioverse. They say they've barely got enough room for the Dedelphi and support staff. The only way you're going to be allowed to stay with the evacuees is if we pay the cost of maintaining you on one of the ships for the duration.

Putting it bluntly, Arron, the university can't afford that.

You've done amazing work. Come home, and we'll be delighted to find you a new project.


Arron slumped back. Well, that's that. Home again, home again, riggity-jig.

Anger surged through him. He hurled the water bottle at the wall. Plastic hit plaster with a thud and dropped to the floor. Liquid splattered across the wall and spilled onto the floor tiles, which drank it in thirstily.

He dropped his head into his hands and ran them back and forth across his scalp.

It wasn't just him. It wasn't that he'd fallen in love with the world and its people, which he had, he admitted it. It was that something unprecedented was happening here and nobody, nobody understood that Bioverse was about to shatter it to pieces.

And nobody cared.

An idea touched the back of his mind. He sat up straight again. “Station. Download and replay file Hresh from Arron Hagopian's portable jacked into your number three port.”

“Loading. Replay.”

It was a full media blitz file. One of the few he'd ever created that wasn't for grant money. It was from his first trip out into the field. He'd been assigned to a world called Hresh. Humans, in the form of the Avitrol Corp, had found the world seventy-five years before Arron arrived. Avitrol was a life-miner. They went out looking for new organic molecules that could be pressed into service as nanotech. Such things were rare, but incredibly valuable.