Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15) Read online

  “That’s the idea. We’re calling it ‘crystallization’ even though that’s not an accurate term for what happens with these proteins.”

  “Are they ‘crystallizing’?”

  He nodded, still not looking up at her. “I think they’re forming clumps. Really slowly. Maybe some more than others. But it’s slow going. I’ve had to use high concentrations and low temperatures so they’re more likely to crystallize.” He sighed, “Obviously, if it was easy to get them to crystallize, Alzheimer’s wouldn’t be a slowly progressive disease that takes decades to wreak its effects.”

  “Oh,” Carley said, thinking about what to say. Finally, she ventured, “Are you mad at me?”

  He turned slowly to look at her. “Um… No.”

  “‘Cause lately you don’t talk to me much…”

  “Um…”

  “It’s okay if you’re mad, but… I’d like it if you told me what I did so I could try to make it right. I’d like us to be friends.”

  Zage made a little grimace. “The problem is… that…” He took a deep breath, then spoke in a rush. “I’ve got a crush on you.”

  Carley stared, “You what?”

  “I have a crush on you.” His voice trembled as if he were trying to speak normally despite gusts of strong emotion. “I’ve read up on it. It isn’t uncommon for kids a little older than I am to get crushes. The crushes aren’t usually on someone as much older as you are though. Usually, the crush is on someone mysterious because the child doesn’t know them well and attributes a lot of wonderful but unrealistic qualities to the object of his… affection.” He looked down, as if embarrassed, “Actors and musicians. Even though I’ve read a lot about it, and though I rationally understand what’s going on, I can’t seem to make it go away.” He shrugged sorrowfully, “Sorry.”

  Carley pulled over a chair and thumped down onto it. “Wow.”

  Zage nodded. “I’m doing my best to act like usual, but I’m having some trouble. I should get over this pretty soon I think. I hope you can still be my friend till then?”

  Not having any idea what to do, Carley leaned forward and gave him a hug.

  He helplessly patted her on the back a couple of times, then said hoarsely, “I really love it when you give me hugs, but… but it usually makes my feelings about you a lot worse for a while afterward… Maybe if you didn’t?”

  Thinking of pedophiles, Carley let go like a hot potato. “Oh! Sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

  “Don’t worry,” Zage said, looking embarrassed. “It’s not your fault. I just get all these weird feelings and… It’s probably because I don’t have any friends my own age, you know?”

  “I guess… I guess life must be difficult for you, huh?

  Zage shook his head, “My life’s awesome. This is about the only problem I’ve got and probably most people wouldn’t even think having a crush was a problem.”

  “That’s a great attitude,” Carley said with a gentle laugh.

  “I hope you can put up with me acting weird until I get over this?”

  “Sure. And I’ll stop hugging you. Sorry about that.”

  He looked wistful, “I’ll miss it.”

  Carley tilted her head, “Don’t try to be too sensible about emotional issues, they don’t respond to logic.” She hesitated, “And if you ever feel yourself needing a hug… I’ll be here.”

  “Okay,” he said, then brightened, “and if you ever need help with…” his face froze for a moment, then he finished, “with, with anything, just let me know.”

  Back at her desk Carley couldn’t help but think that he’d meant, “help with school, research, understanding what you’re working on in the lab, your brother…” And I’ll bet he could help me with any of those things.

  ***

  When his AI pinged him, Presidential Science Advisor John Simon glanced up at his HUD. A message said, “Ell Donsaii would like to set up a meeting with you, the President, and NASA director James Epaulding.”

  “Urgent?” he asked.

  “No,” it displayed.

  “Find some coinciding open spots in their schedules and mine, then get back to me.”

  “Okay.”

  Chapter Four

  Jillian couldn’t sleep. Finally, she sat up in her bed and spoke to her AI. It turned on the big screen on the wall of her bedroom. “Bring up a satellite map of Ell Donsaii’s farm,” she told it.

  She studied the image. “Highlight the borders of her property.” A moment later, her AI dropped a thin red line around the property. “Zoom in and take me slowly around the border at high resolution. Higher resolution. That’s good.” The imaging started to move unhurriedly along the red line. It started at the north side entrance she’d driven in through when she’d visited, then slowly moved all the way around the border.

  She leaned back into her pillow. No other roads in and out. If a kid lives there… Could he walk in? She spoke to her AI again, “Zoom out a little and show me the school bus routes that stop at nearby houses.”

  What looked like every road in the vicinity was immediately marked in yellow. She sighed. Could he be walking in and out from the little neighborhood on the west side? she wondered. “Zoom in on the west border. Not so far in, back out a little. That’s good.” She didn’t see anything that looked like a path, but to be sure, she had her AI zoom in on a couple of areas she thought might be paths. I don’t think so, she decided. But if I really want to know, I’ll have to go out there and walk around the border of her property in person.

  Jillian relaxed back into her pillows and told the AI to dim the lights. Am I that obsessed?

  Just before she fell asleep, she decided she should interview Donsaii instead.

  ***

  The house AI said, “Eli Bolin’s at the door.”

  A jolt of apprehension shot through Carley. It seems an age ago that I felt so overjoyed to have found him, she thought. Getting up, she told the AI, “I’ll come to the door.”

  The AI’s door screen showed Eli with a young woman beside him. He’s met a girl? Carley thought with some enthusiasm. Maybe someone who’ll help him get straight? Give him something to live for? Rather than talking to Eli through the door like she’d planned, Carley opened it, though not wide. “Eli! Who’s this?”

  “This’s Marnie,” Eli said with a wave at the girl. “We met at AA. She’s helping me stay on the wagon, right Marnie?”

  In person, the girl looked somewhat unkempt, something Carley hadn’t been able to see on the small door-screen. She didn’t speak, only nodded, eyes downcast.

  “Hi Marnie,” Carley said uneasily. “How long’ve you been sober?”

  “Ten days,” Eli answered for her. “She’s doin’ real good,” he glanced over at the girl, “right Marnie?”

  Marnie nodded again, still without speaking.

  Carley noticed the girl had a folded piece of cardboard in one hand and wondered what it was for. Her thoughts whirled. She didn’t want to seem unfriendly to a girl who might help Eli get back on his wheels, but she couldn’t help wondering whether the girl might have her own problems, perhaps ones just as bad as Eli’s. She felt a natural urge to invite them in, but Carley’s roommate Diane was home. Diane would be royally pissed if she found Eli in the apartment. Making a decision, Carley stepped forward and pulled the door shut behind her. “How about if I take you guys to dinner at Wendy’s?”

  “That’d be great, right Marnie?”

  Wendy’s was just a few blocks away, so they headed to the sidewalk. Carley, uncomfortable with the fact that Marnie hadn’t said a word yet, turned to her, “Did you grow up around here?”

  “Nope, she grew up in South Cackalacky, right Marnie?”

  Carley wanted to snap at Eli. Tell him to let the girl answer her own questions. Instead, she just posed another, “Whereabouts?”

  There was a pause. When Eli didn’t answer—apparently because he didn’t know—Marnie murmured, “Greenville.”

  Then they were in Wen
dy’s, placing orders. Eli irritated Carley by saying, “I missed lunch,” and ordering himself a triple hamburger and large fries. He didn’t ask if she minded, he just placed the order as if entitled. Marnie asked for a regular hamburger and small fries, but Eli up-sized those as well, once again without asking Carley. He told Marnie, “If you can’t finish it, I’ll eat the rest of it later.”

  Once they were seated, Marnie kept her eyes downcast and carefully unwrapped her hamburger. She appeared to savor her first bite. After a couple of bites of her own burger, Carley tried to resuscitate the conversation, “Have you been able to keep Eli on the wagon, Marnie?”

  Eli turned to stare at Marnie.

  Marnie’s shoulders began to rise in a shrug; then she twitched away from Carley’s brother.

  He pinched her! Carley thought with horror, leaning to look under the table.

  Eli’s hand rested on the bench beside Marnie’s legs.

  Her bruised legs. The piece of cardboard had unfolded on the bench beside her. “Homeless, please…” was all Carley could read, but she imagined it probably asked for help.

  Carley rose to her feet, indignantly horrified. “You’re abusing her! Just like Dad did Mom!”

  Eli rose too. He said, “Relax Carley.” However, he didn’t look relaxed. His breath was boozy and he looked like someone full of anger and having a hard time holding it in. Carley was suddenly reminded that, nowadays, her little brother was bigger than she was.

  Suddenly frightened, Carley turned to leave. She felt a stab of guilt though, leaving Marnie behind. She cast a look back over her shoulder at the girl.

  Marnie was wolfing down her hamburger as if afraid she wouldn’t get to finish it.

  Eli’s hand closed just above Carley’s wrist. He said firmly, as if he were the reasonable one, “Sit down and finish your food, Carley. We wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

  Carley tried to jerk her wrist away, but it didn’t come free. When she did, his grip tightened until her bones felt like they’d break.

  Involuntarily, her knees started to bend.

  He used her wrist like a handle to lever her into the booth.

  He sat down beside her so she couldn’t get out.

  Letting go of her wrist, he calmly reached out and pulled over his triple-decker burger. “In answer to your question,” Eli said, “Marnie’s doing a great job of keeping me on the wagon. As I’ve told you, I don’t have a drinking problem. When I don’t want to drink, Marnie’s right there by my side. When I do want to drink, she’s there then too, even if I drink too much. She cares about me, unlike my sister.”

  Carley sat, staring at the partially eaten hamburger she no longer had any appetite for. She’d always told herself that no man would ever be able to abuse her. She’d thought she was too smart for that. Now, just a few brief moments of crushing force on the bones of her arm had convinced her otherwise.

  ~~~

  On the way home, Eli caught her wrist again. He asked, “Could you spare twenty bucks so I can help out Marnie?”

  Carley thought about saying no, but couldn’t do it while he had her wrist.

  ***

  NASA Director James Epaulding looked up as the President came in with his Science Advisor John Simon… And Ell Donsaii!” Suddenly this meeting’s a lot more interesting! he thought. I wonder what this’s all about?

  It soon became evident that Simon and the President were uncertain as well. Simon turned to Donsaii and said, “You have the floor.”

  “Well,” she said, “you may or may not be aware of the fact that I’ve thought terraforming and colonizing other planets were extremely iffy propositions…”

  “Oh, come on,” President Stockton interrupted with a broad smile, “I thought you were Supergirl. That there wasn’t anything you couldn’t do?”

  “Oh how I wish that were true,” Donsaii smiled. “There’re plenty of things I can’t do. However, to me, the issues with colonization and terraforming aren’t that we can’t do them. The problem was that they seemed remotely possible but mostly pointless.”

  Stockton tilted her head curiously, “Seems to me you’re already well on your way. You and NASA have people living on Mars. You’ve built a tunnel system and some domes there. You’ve even brought in some atmosphere from other planets. It seems like you’re doing it, whether it’s pointless or not.”

  Ell shrugged, “All that’s true. But it doesn’t seem to me that living in tunnels is really living. Living in domes on the surface isn’t much better. Even if the spacesuits weren’t so clumsy, going out in them gets you a substantial dose of radiation, so you really shouldn’t do it often. And, generating an atmosphere in a dome’s a tiny problem as compared to generating an atmosphere on an entire planet, i.e. terraforming it.”

  “Is radiation really that big a problem?” Stockton asked.

  Ell glanced at Epaulding and Simon as she nodded, “Yeah, it’s a big problem. We have one dome on Mars that isn’t shielded under a meter of water. You really wouldn’t want to live in that one. The radiation dose you’d get in four years would raise your cancer risk about 5%. You wouldn’t want to keep living there because your cancer risk just keeps climbing. We’ve had a variety of vegetation growing in that dome and it seems to be doing fairly well, but plants are known to be radiation tolerant. After all, though it’s little known, soybeans and flax did quite well around Chernobyl. Unfortunately, we’ve recently installed a colony of mice in that dome, and its mortality’s significantly increased. Also, subsequent generations have had quite a few mutations.”

  Simon said, “What about the plan for sleeping in the tunnels during the day and then coming out on the surface at night? My understanding’s that Mars blocks a lot of the solar radiation when it’s between you and the sun.”

  “That’s true,” Epaulding said, “but the radiation at night’s still higher than you’d like.” He gave a small shrug, “And, there’s also the problem that we’re evolved to be active during the day and sleep at night. Changing to a nocturnal schedule isn’t healthy either.”

  Stockton said, “Okay, I’ll grant you that radiation’s a problem we haven’t solved yet. But you said there was some kind of problem with generating atmosphere too? I thought you were already doing that.”

  “We are generating atmosphere. We’ve worked out a lot of the bugs with it already. The problem is the actual scale of generating a planetary atmosphere. Even for a small planet like Mars, making a livable atmosphere would take millions of years at the rate we’re going.”

  “Can we make it a million times faster?” Stockton asked.

  Ell snorted, despite all the trials and tribulations Stockton had put her through, she found she liked the woman’s blunt and direct style. “We’re hoping we can make it a lot faster, yes.” She laughed, “Not a million times faster, but we’re thinking of shooting for thousands of times faster.”

  Stockton snorted, “And I suppose you’re here with your hand out, expecting the government to finance it?”

  “Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that, but I wouldn’t object if the government was the one to fund it. However, I was more worried about the people who’ve been protesting our,” she glanced at Epaulding, “contamination of Mars’ pristine environment. That’s a political problem, not something that really falls in our area of expertise.”

  “Surely you wouldn’t worry about that?” Stockton said in a mildly sarcastic tone. “It didn’t seem to bother you when the political system tried to get you to hand over the keys to the stars.”

  Ell stared at the President long enough that Epaulding and Simon began to fidget, then she said calmly, “Back then, I was being asked to hand over technology so dangerous I feared the human race wouldn’t survive its release. Handing that over’s not something anyone can make me do. Now, on the other hand, I’m trying to give the human race another place to live. That goal’s in conflict with the protesters who feel that Mars holds more value as a pristinely dead planet.” She tilted her head cur
iously and said, “I’m just trying to figure out which way the wind’s going to blow on this. We don’t want to invest huge quantities of financial and engineering capital into initiating the terraforming of Mars if the government’s going to decide we shouldn’t do it. Whereas no one can make me—the individual—turn over the technology that lets us get to the stars, it’d be easy to disrupt the terraforming project.”

  Stockton appeared to be thinking. Simon broke in with another question, “You started by saying there were two big problems. It sounds like you think it’d actually be possible to undertake the terraforming, it’s just that it’d be an enormous engineering project?”

  Ell nodded, “I suspect it’d be the largest engineering project in our history.”

  Stockton quirked a lip, “If it’s our biggest engineering problem, I doubt anyone else’s done a bigger one.”

  “Ah, you mean ‘ours’ as in the United States. I was thinking ‘ours’ as in the human race.”

  “Well, it’d certainly be the biggest we know of. The Teecees aren’t capable of any big engineering projects.”

  Stockton obviously hadn’t considered the possibility that Ell might not have told her about other extraterrestrial engineering projects. Instead of getting into an issue irrelevant to the current discussion, Ell said, “Anyway, we’re interested in trying to determine which way the political winds are going to blow, so we’ll know whether or not to begin a huge project that might get shut down.”

  Stockton shrugged, “Since my second term’s nearly up, maybe you should be talking to Governor Grassley.”

  Ell nodded, “We’ve already talked to the governor as well as his opponent in the presidential race. We also have an appointment at the UN.”

  Stockton pursed her lips, “It’s all well and good to talk to various leaders, but if I were you I’d do some polling. Find out how the people feel. Even if Grassley thinks we should terraform, he probably wouldn’t fight for it if the majority of the citizens were against it. On the other hand, if as I suspect, 90% of the population’s in favor of terraforming, leadership will fall into line.”