The Depths of Time (60 page)

And what of Koffield
’
s secured container? Who the devil had pilfered its contents, and why? Marquez now had direct evidence of two separate acts of sabotage against his ship. Were they connected? Were more surprises going to jump out at them? Who had done these things, and why?

He needed to know more, a great deal more—but it was plain he wasn
’
t going to find it out sitting where he was. And even if Chandray hadn
’
t been clear on many subjects, it was plain she felt it at least reasonably safe to bring the ship in. It was time to start readying the
Dom Pedro IV
for a trip to the inner system. Marquez had known before Chandray
’
s message that the ship would have to head in sooner or later, or else be permanently marooned where she was. But he was a merchant captain, not an explorer. He had no desire to venture into the unknown world of the future that waited in the inner system. Still, it was plain he had no other choice.

There was something else that had him agitated as he set about the job of ordering the ship made ready for the trip. Agendas. Chandray had mentioned several in her message, and all of them were Marquez
’
s, things he had told her to look out for, and check on.

• But which of those agendas, if any of them, were hers? What was on the top of her list, her priority? Marquez felt sure it was no longer the ship. That much was plain from the way she had ordered the paragraphs of the message.

So. what was most important to her now?

When the, time came for action, what, precisely, would Norla Chandray decide to do? And whom would she be working for?

“
Next!
”
The clerk looked up from her desk to take a cursory glance at yet another freeloading gluefoot looking to leave SCO Station and run back home to dirtside, to the planet Solace. Policy was to send
‘
em back as soon as possible and give the tickets free. Much as the clerk wanted to get rid of all the gluefeet, making things that easy didn
’
t sit right with her. They had messed up SCO Station—her station, her home. They ought to be made to pay for that, somehow.

The gluefoot taking his seat in front of her desk smiled at her.
“
Hello,
”
he said. He was a young-looking man, and the gluefeet were nearly all farmers who aged fast. He couldn
’
t be much more than a kid. His clothes were worn-out and shabby, but someone had made an effort to patch them up and clean them. His face had gotten a good scrubbing, and his hair had been more or less combed into place. He had tried. That counted for something.

“
Name,
”
she snapped, shoving all such gentle thoughts from her mind. No point in being sympathetic.

“
Elber,
”
he said.
“
Elber Malloon.
”

Her desktop Artlnt popped up his file on her screen.
“
Traveling with wife Jassa and daughter Zari?
”

“
That
’
s right.
”

“
And you want to go back now?
”
she asked, echoing the words she had heard a dozen dozen times that morning from the endless parade of gluefoot refugees.
“
As soon as possible, transport to spaceport closest to your home village?
”

“
No,
”
said Malloon.
“
No, thank you, but that
’
s not it.
”

The clerk- looked at him sharply.
“
What? Why not? Why are you here then?
”

“
Well,
”
said Malloon,
“
I want to stay, stay here on SCO. I want to see if there
’
s a way to do that.
”

“
We can
’
t keep you here for free forever,
”
she said.

“
No. I know that,
”
he said.
“
I
’
d work. Anywhere, at anything. Jassa and me, we
’
ve talked it over. Staying here has got to be better than going back home. Home isn
’
t there anymore. And if we built a new farm, again—what about the next flood, and the next drought?
”

“
So you want to stay here,
”
said the clerk, staring at him in wonderment. None of them wanted to stay. Home, home, home was all she ever heard. She wasn
’
t used to finding one who asked to stay, let alone work. She wasn
’
t even sure she had the right forms where she could get at them.As for work—the gluefoot crisis had left SCO Station a shambles, and the labor shortage was bad, much as her department was unwilling to admit it. It was going to take a lot of work to clean it up again. Enough work for this fellow, and his wife, and his daughter, once she was old enough.
“
Any job you could get here wouldn
’
t be pretty or easy. You know that, don
’
t you?
”

“
I was a farmer,
”
Malloon said calmly.
“
That
’
s about as hard a job as there is. I can do your work.
”

Was
a farmer. They all came through saying
“
I
am
a farmer,
”
or
“
I
am
a grain shipper,
”
refusing to let go of what they no longer had, no longer were. But this fellow said
was.
That counted for something too. Her sympathies were floating back up toward the surface, and this time she made little effort to force them back down.
“
If you get a work contract, it will be for two years at least,
”
she warned.
“
You
’
ll have to remain on the station until the contract is over. No changing your mind and deciding you just have to go home six months from now.
”

“
I won
’
t,
”
said Elber Malloon.
“
That
’
s why I
’
m here right now. Because I won
’
t do that. Because I can
’
t.
”

“
Why can
’
t you?
”
the clerk demanded.

“
Because my home
’
s not there anymore,
”
he said quietly.
“
Even where it was isn
’
t there anymore. It
’
s washed away, a meter under water. We checked on the info-feeds. The waters never drained. They
’
re never going to.
”
He looked at her face, reading her expression.
“
You don
’
t understand,
”
he said.
“
We don
’
t have a home anymore, and I don
’
t think the uppers will let us settle anyplace good enough for me to start over. I
’
m not sure there are any places left on Solace that are good enough. So that
’
s why we need to stay. For our daughter.
”

“
Your daughter.
”

“
Well, her old home is gone, and it
’
s not coming back. So it
’
s simple.
”
Elber Malloon gestured at the clerk
’
s office, at all of SCO Station.
“
We need to build Zari a new home,
”
he said.
“
And not on the planet. Out here, where it
’
s safe.
”

The planet is going to die.
The words echoed in Neshobe
’
s
head, and in the quiet that filled the room. There was no
sound except for the muffled drumming of rain on the
transparent roof of the Diamond Room.

The planet is going to die.
She had known it before
Koffield had spoken, of course. In a sense, she had known
it for quite a long time, deep inside. It had been so long
since anything had gone right, since any victory had been anything other than brief, or transitory. But she had never dared speak the words, or even think them, until now.
The planet is going to die.
Now the words had been spoken. It was no longer possible to hide from them. Now her only choices were to deny the reality of those words, or else to
deal with their consequences.
“
How long have we got?
”
she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“
How soon until the
planet is uninhabitable?
”

She did not know Koffield at all. But his motionlessness
was as expressive as any gesture could have been. He sat there, silent and unmoving as a tomb, as he considered his answer.

“
No one knows, Madam Executive,
”
he said at last.
“
My mathematical model is not wholly my own, as you know. The parts that deal with endgame chaos, the final
dissolution of a system, and the unraveling of balances—
those are based almost entirely on previous work. What I can say about them is that they are extremely sensitive to
initial conditions—and the initial conditions will be wildly
unpredictable. It is far easier to predict the behavior of a
stable system. What you
’
re asking for is the behavior of
a system as it is becoming unstable, chaotic. The slightest
change in any of a dozen variables now could have dra
matic and unpredictable effects years from now.
”

“
Don
’
t just leave it at that,
”
Neshobe said.
“
You
’
ve
come here to tell me the planet is doomed. You
’
ve got to
have some sort of idea, some gut feeling. Give me
something.”

Koffield frowned deeply, then shook his head.
“
It
’
s impossible to be definite. We did a quick estimate this
morning, plugging Dr. Vandar
’
s new data into my old
model. It suggests that we
’
ll start to see the partial pressure of oxygen decline rapidly. There will be a linked, though not precisely proportionate, increase in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide. The baseline projection is that it will start in something like ten Solacian years. That
’
s an extremely uncertain number. It might start to happen in five years, or might not start for fifteen, or even twenty. Perhaps the process has already started, but we haven
’
t detected it yet. We should be able to refine the estimate with better data. I can
’
t give you a better answer than that.
”

Neshobe looked steadily at him.
“
Try,
”
she said.
“
I
’
m not looking for absolute precision. I want a general idea. A drop in oxygen levels is bad, but how bad? Should we measure the time we have left in centuries? Decades? Years?
”
Or months?
she asked herself.
Perhaps days, if word gets out and the exodus riots start up again.

Koffield shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“
The planet will certainly become increasingly inhospitable in the coming few years, and the process will snowball, feeding on itself and accelerating. That much is certain. What we don
’
t know is how
fast
it will snowball. As to when the planet will become officially uninhabitable—well, it almost certainly will happen in our lifetime, and probably happen much sooner than that. In my opinion—and that
’
s all it is, opinion—the planet will become unsuitable for unprotected human life within a few tens of years at most, under the most generous possible estimate—and perhaps far sooner than that.
”

“
A lot of it depends on what definition of
uninhabitable
you use,
”
Vandar said.

“
I don
’
t understand,
”
said Officer Chandray.
“
It seems to me that either a planet is or is not inhabitable.
”

Vandar smiled slightly.
“
There are definitions for planetary habitability under which Earth herself doesn
’
t qualify as habitable, because there are places a human could not survive, ah, I think the phrase is,
without the aid of technology.
You
’
d drown in the ocean, or freeze to death in the Arctic, or die of thirst in the desert. If you
’
re willing to use technological means to build a robust enough
life-support system, people can live just about anywhere. By that definition, just about any planet with a solid sur
face could be called inhabitable.
”