But she hadn’t stopped. She had years’ worth of observations. She scrabbled for independent confirmation of her results. She fought to bring biologists and chemists to Venera to look at the absorbers, just on the chance that someone else would finally see what she saw.
For the first time in her long life, Grace was certain about what she was doing, and that certainty had almost ruined her.
Grace brushed her bangs from her forehead and stared at the absorber on her wall. She hadn’t planned on becoming a long-lifer. She’d planned on taking her 120 allotted years, getting a decent life, getting married, having a kid and passing on, leaving the Md, or the work, or both, behind to say Here Lived Grace Meyer.
But it hadn’t worked out that way. She’d gone into chemistry because it could be applied in so many different fields, not because it interested her for its own sake. She’d wandered from job to job. In each one, she found she was a solid middle-of-the-road performer. She was good enough but not brilliant, never brilliant. Always the third or fourth name on the few papers that her work groups published, never quite making the patent disclosures.
Her first marriage had bombed, the second had petered out, the third…the third had barely existed. After the third, she realized she’d been wandering from husband to husband the way she’d been wandering from job to job, so she swore off marriage.
It was after that that she’d headed for “the planets,” hoping in her vague, wandering way that her life waited for her outside Mother Earth’s sheltering arms.
And then you found it, and nobody listened to you. Grace laughed and shook her head. Too perfect.
But I made them listen. She smiled at the picture of her little, personal discovery. Even if just for a little while, I made them listen.
And if the yewners discovered how she’d managed that particular feat, then it really was over. Everything. Here Lived Grace Meyer, Fraud.
No, she dug her fingers into the chair’s fabric until her nails bent against the frame. She’d wiped the trail clean. She’d reviewed all the records and put them back the way they were supposed to be. There was no linkage. Nothing.
Nothing you can think of anyway.
Grace closed her eyes. Now it wasn’t just routine logs sitting in the endless streams of screenwork that Venera generated. Now it was individual files being scrutinized by Michael Lum, who’d apprenticed under Gregory Schoma, the man who designed Venera’s security. Now it was two yewner cops helping him.
All that skill and brilliance trained against the work of Grace Meyer, who’d never been able to get anyone to believe she might actually be more than just competent.
So what do you do about it? Grace opened her eyes and focused on the image of the absorber, the real discovery, the true evidence of life on Venus. You go back over everything. You make sure there’s nothing you’ve missed. Come on, Grace, it’s basic research. You’ve been doing this for seventy years. Go in there and see if you can find yourself.
Grace pulled the chair away from her private desk and sat down, waking the command board with her touch. As she started shuffling her icons, she realized she’d have to do something about Alinda. She and Marty would spread news of Grace’s outburst across half the base, with embellishments, if Grace didn’t give them something else to think about. She did not need for her name coming to the yewners’ attention. Not like this, anyway.
Grace fixed a smile onto her face and walked back out into the main lab and up to Alinda’s desk.
I’m sorry, Al,” she said, meaning it. “That was completely uncalled for. I’ve been sitting on the edge just a little too long.”
Alinda, as quick to forgive as she was quick to talk, waved Grace’s words away. “It’s okay, Grace. We all want this to be real, and our department’s got more reason than most.”
Grace nodded. “Just one more attack on the data. Only to be expected.” She shrugged. “What would you say to a show of unity? The microbrewery’s got a new batch coming out today. We could close up shop early and go try a sample. My treat?”
Al’s face lit up. “Sounds great. You in, Marty?” She turned to her fellow researcher.
“The boss’s buying beer?” Marty’s thin grin split his face. “You bet I’m in.”
Grace smiled down on them. Kids. Easily distracted. Michael and the yewners would not be so easy. With them, she’d have to be careful; she’d have to be thorough.
For the first time in her life, she really would have to be brilliant.
Chapter Nine
T’SHA FOUND TR’ES IN the life research chamber. She hovered silently in the doorway and watched the child work. No, not child. Stop thinking like that. Tr’es was small, it was true, almost as small as a male, and her crest shone blue as sapphires, undimmed by age. But she was an adult, picked out by Br’sei shortly after her Declaration. She followed his promises and left Ca’aed’s care for Ke’taiat’s, to become one of Br’sei’s best engineers, or so T’sha understood.