He Without Sin (20 page)

Now I see not one but
two
alarms! Is this thing working right? How did I sleep through that? One is a general alert and the other, earlier one, is from Craig to everyone.

What to log first? Most important and most
disturbing is what happened to Dylan a short time
after I left bio camp last time. The good news—he
will live. By a fluke they were near one of the cams
so we got to see some of what happened. A big
animal, what we would call a cat, was inside the
outer perimeter. This has happened before of
course; I’ve seen the tracks myself. You just can’t
seal out the world completely without building real
walls or putting up a dome, which David definitely
didn’t want. But it never came to anything like this. Anyway, this large cat, easily as massive as a
man—probably more—and longer than Dylan is
tall, attacked while he and Craig were out and, as I
say, near a cam. The video just shows the
beginning blur of the attack and the rest happens
outside the field of view.

Craig was not touched and used his weapon to
dispatch the animal but not before Dylan suffered a
lot of damage. It’s a wonder that either of them
had a weapon the way they have lately been
ignoring basic common sense. Lucky. Another lucky
stroke is that Lester and Tracy both received the
alert from Craig right away and between them they
got Dylan to a clearing where Porter could land. We heard it was a real mess and they had to use
some pretty serious emergency procedures.

There were barely any vital signs by the time Doc
got him. He says the timing was good however,
with a little to spare, but not much. He says
without the field treatment, Dylan would be a
goner. The emergency field procedures were
literally a lifesaver. Some of the meds, he says, are
the same as we all get for the long parts of the
voyage out here and back. He also says not to
worry; it’s all easy from this point on. Patchin’ and
sewin’, in his words. I don’t like to joke about it. Seems like with all his medical miracles, he could fix
his cowlick. Maybe nobody’s ever had the nerve to
tell him he has one.

The access info from Tracy works. I can access the
Resource Group’s cams for sure. I can also see their
locally stored reports and other data. Just for
laughs I pulled up a recent official progress report
from Wes and tried to compare it to what I find
through this new access. Well, first of all, there
is
no copy of it at all in any of their folders. There
were plenty of docs of the same date and roughly
the same time but nothing I could see matched
what he sent in officially. Is he making this stuff
up? Honestly though, his reports don’t hold any
interest for me anymore.

Carol heard through the ‘girl grapevine’ that Tracy
caught Wes in a lie and some sort of compromising
position but no details. What exactly is going on
with this guy? I’m telling you here and now that it’s
difficult to keep a positive attitude while suspecting
the ‘leaders’ of misdeeds and lies. I should say ‘leader’ since it’s clear now that David has lately
assumed a passive role and Wes is taking
advantage. Also, while I think David may be
misguided in his quest to hit a home run with his
work here, I don’t think he’s up to anything really
deceitful.

Accusation

“It was like slow motion. We both suspected something and stopped and looked at each other, then slowly and carefully looked around. You know how it is when you can sense that someone is watching you even though you can’t see them? That was the feeling. And you could for sure hear the rustle of the underbrush when the cat attacked. I froze and thought it was going for me, but it wasn’t. For the first few seconds I couldn’t seem to process what was happening, then snapped out of it and blasted the cat. I was really worried that my stupid delay would cost Dylan his life,” explains Craig. I’ll bet this encounter will add one or two experience lines to his boyish countenance.

I glance around. The listeners look at Craig, or on the ground, but not so much at each other. Mark asks, “What were you guys doing out there? Isn’t someone watching those cams for just this sort of problem?”

“The cams are set up for motion and sound detection and can respond automatically. But they don’t cover the whole area and they couldn’t see everything even if they did cover the whole area. I told you,
we
couldn’t even see it when it was stalking us at close range. We were out for some work on one of the new cams downstream past the rapids outside the entrance to the bio area. We never made it past the gate on this trip, for obvious reasons.”

“Cams outside the bio area? This is news to me,” I say. “Is that how the animal tracked you guys in? From outside?”

“I…I don’t think so. We didn’t make it to the outside this time, but maybe the previous times…” Craig continues, “Jason, you know that right at the entrance to the bio area it’s narrow and we’ve got that under control. You’ve been there yourself enough to know that I’m right. I think the cat came in from higher ground at the sides. He just was missed.” It is clear that Craig is still shaken up.

“These things happen, Craig. Nobody said there wouldn’t be danger here, and I think we all are thankful that you responded the way you did.”

“Hear, hear,” says Brachus, who has made one of his rare appearances at base camp. He is sitting sideways on a chair with one elbow on the back of it. His legs are crossed and the one on top is swinging back and forth.

I add, “What about those cams outside, though?”

“We were asked to set up a series out past the gate, way down where the land opens up. Wesley needs them to keep an eye on things for David…”

Brachus pipes in with, “This is no time to discuss camera placement.”

“Anyway,” Craig continues, “you should have seen this thing. I mean, it would freeze you right in your tracks. The muscles rippling, the fur glistening with color from a dark orange to black and back. I could just feel the power. But silent, powerful and silent. And just before I got it, it turned and looked right at me. I’ll tell you, you
know
it’s looking and thinking…”

Someone asks Craig another question but I am not listening.

Carol gives me a nudge and we walk out leaving Craig with the rest gathered to hear about the attack. I take her to the natural rock ledge seat where we sometimes come to talk. Cloud cover has muted the effect of the sun on the mountains. They remain darkly imposing and seem to be poised like me, waiting to hear what Carol has to say.

“You’ve got to do something,” she begins. “And I’m quite serious. If what I hear from Tracy is true, you’ve
got
to do something.”

“Me? Why me? What does she say?”

“Let’s start with the easy one first. Wes is playing with the native men like they are animals. He is setting them up for fighting and then he and his goons are placing bets on who wins.”

“She said that? Tracy?”

Carol nods.

“I’m not sure I believe it. That’s pretty low even for him. My guess would be that she is mad and trying to get back at him.”

Carol remains silent, looking at me steadily.

“You and I both know that at their stage of development, this society is still very physical. There will be fights for dominance and survival. It happens, and it’s not pretty. Now, maybe Wes is watching and passively betting on his favorites, but setting them up? I don’t know…” I suddenly remember Porter’s comment about winning some days off from Wes on a bet.

“But, she says he is doing just that. Inciting them, and then making sure that a confrontation happens. By the way, the usual result is that only one survives. If we leave them alone and they fight, I can deal with it, even understand it, but set it up for fun and profit? No way.” She pauses and waits for my response. I don’t have a response and just shake my head.

“You’ve only heard part of it. Brace yourself. Tracy says that she has nothing more to do with Wes because she caught him doing more than just betting on fights.”

I guess I am a little slow because this is not making any sense. “You mean he’s actively involved with these fights? But how…”

“Oh you poor thing. When we get you back home, we’ll have to get you out in society more. He’s ‘actively involved’ all right but not with the men.” Pause.

“Get out!” I say as it dawns on me what she means. “Do you actually believe she’s serious?”

Carol doesn’t respond directly. “You have access to their data now, right?” I nod. “I said earlier ‘if what she said is true’. Poke around there. What I hear is that you will see for yourself what’s happening and verify some, if not all, of it. Let me know what you find.” This sinks in as she pauses and then adds, “The rest of his people have to know what’s going on too, if only they would talk.”

As we walk back through the open area at base camp there is a small group talking and laughing. I don’t see Craig anywhere but Lester is there. He makes eye contact with me as we move toward their general direction. Carol splits away. I give Lester a “Hey” and decide to try something.

Mustering up an accusatory tone I ask, “What the heck are you guys up to?” after I am close enough so that it is clear I am talking to Lester.

“What, us?” and he indicates the small group, looking confused for a moment. “What does it look like we’re doing?” and he turns back.

“No. Come on. You know what I mean,” I say as I stop and maintain a serious expression and the same tone.

“No, I don’t know what you mean,” he says as he turns to me, taking a small step away from the rest. “And now you have my full attention.”

“I don’t mean to break up your little confab, but we hear rumors about what’s going on out there, in the field, where you spend all your time. What the heck are you doing out there?”

I see a brief but clear look of worry cross Lester’s face. He is silent for some several seconds, then smiles, rakes his hair back, and says calmly, “I don’t know who ‘we’ is and I don’t know about any rumors. What I do know is that if you needed to know what we are ‘up to’, as you put it, you would already know.”

“I don’t ‘need’ to know anything. Just curious, that’s all. There are some pretty wild stories spreading.”

This time, all I get are raised eyebrows and silence. I realize that Lester is probably not going to fall for it but I try one last tack by saying, “Oh, come on, you can tell me. I heard something from Porter about your exploits. I would think you’d like to share something as juicy as that,” I conclude with a wink.

This time there is a definite reaction but not what I was hoping for. “Porter? Where is he? I’ll find out one way or the other what stories he’s spreading…” And he makes as if to go.

“Wait. Hold on. Take it easy.” Time to defuse the situation, I think. “You’re a little touchy, aren’t you? Just tell me what’s been going on out there. I hear you’ve done some exploring,” I say with less of a serious expression, losing the accusatory tone also.

“Exploring?”

“Haven’t you? I heard something about deep ocean…”

“Oh, that. Yeah.”

Did I just see a big sigh of relief?

“Yeah, me and a couple others have taken the two-man down. Deep. Freaky. I mean, there are some real wild creatures down there. If you turn on the floods…”

Lester stops, blinks, and looks at me as if he just realizes something important. He continues, but in a more typical, for him, fashion by saying, “There are pics and vids; they’ll be in the archives. See ya ‘round.” And he steps off. He doesn’t turn around but I can still hear him say as he leaves, “I wouldn’t pay much attention to rumors if I were you,” followed by a low chuckle.

She’s right. I’ve got to do something. Holy shit. How incredibly stupid must he be to keep a record
of this? Pictures, videos, records of the fights. Unbelievable. The story about the fights? Not only
is it true, it’s documented!

Something else that’s apparently true: The strain of
big natives, the ones who Dylan mentioned long
ago are significantly larger than the usual, well,
they are in the pictures too. They’re real. These are
big hulkers and they figure pretty prominently. I
didn’t look at every picture but the situation is
clear. We’ve got time and location stamps and
pictures of lethal fights interspersed with shots of
an alternately rapt and exuberant Brachus, along
with a couple of his crew.

But, sorry to say, that’s not all. Tracy’s right too,
about Brachus’ questionable doings with native
females. That’s how it looks. There is, thankfully,
no visual evidence that I have found of him in
intimate contact; otherwise I would have to put my
eyes out. But there is plenty of evidence of him
misusing them. I have not been to any of his field
camps, except of course the bio camp, but I am
here to tell you that he’s set himself up quite nicely
in at least a couple of exotic spots around the
globe. And he’s using what appear to be female
slaves (my term—innocent until proven guilty and
all that) in each of them, except bio.