Blindfold. Kevin J. Anderson
Troy held the manifest cards, shuffling them as he tried to keep track of everything that came out of the elevator. He was especially careful not to get distracted and miss an item. Everything had its place on his list and in the storage warehouse.
Over by the chain-link fences Cren stood watching, checking each activity around him as if he could somehow keep control through the intensity of his scrutiny. Troy worked with greater diligence, trying not to reveal that he knew he was being watched.
Men in cargo hauler jumpsuits unloaded the sealed packages of replacement computerware: perfectly sandwiched circuits grown in orbit, sapphire films laid down in impedance paths on wafers, then sliced into specially patterned chips that followed old templates from Earth.
The man in charge of the Platform, Kareem Sondheim, whose property and power rested in orbit, was called the “landholder without land.” The ancient man was said to be one of the original occupants of the first colony ship that had arrived 231 years earlier. Sondheim had never set foot on Atlas. He had remained alive by staying in zero gravity and indulging in sophisticated geriatric treatments that were not available on the surface.
Sondheim kept control of the Platform’s genetic library of embryos and cloning sequences the colonists had brought from Earth; its vast array of species, a veritable Noah’s ark, would provide the foundation of an Earthlike ecosystem on a new world.
Unfortunately, Atlas had proved more inhospitable than they had expected.
The planet’s atmosphere and climate were tolerable, with the right temperature range and an amenable mix of component gases. But Atlas was just at the very cusp of bringing forth life of its own. Its fledgling ecosystem was shallow and undiversified, with only a few primitive species, most of them in the cradle of the sea. The soil was utterly barren, forcing the colonists to begin their work several steps farther down the chain than they had hoped.
The native biochemistry was incompatible with human systems, but for a very few exceptions, such as the Veritas drug. The planetary ecology and the new Terran organic matrix were two independent and parallel paths.
Unable to turn back to Earth across the gulf of a fifty-year voyage, the colonists had to start from scratch, and they had held on by their fingernails, gradually using up what supplies they had brought with them. Separated from assistance by half a century, they could not simply send home for a new batch of supplies. The colony’s technical resources had been only marginally replenished by the four other ships that had arrived in the intervening years.
Landholders continued to claim swaths of land, bombarding them with fertilizers, fixing nitrogen, irrigating deserts, and plowing under grasses, mosses, algae they had planted to lay down a nutritive soil matrix. New life forms were introduced experimentally and with great caution once they were carefully selected from the genetic library on the Platform….
As the packages were unloaded from the elevator, Troy documented the computer chips, finding their notation on his manifests, then moved on to log a series of insulated fish tanks for Dokken Holding. The tanks were filled with thousands of trout and salmon fry that might find enough to eat among the strands of algae and the dragonfly larvae Franz Dokken had previously introduced into his warm artificial ponds.
Toth Holding had ordered cages and cages of live chicks grown from embryos aboard the Platform, and the birds were now ready to be turned loose in the grain debris in the fields.
Muttering to himself to verify his own markings, Troy moved about to inspect the cargo with loose manifest pages fluttering in his hand. He found a trio of cages holding three water buffalo calves, small and fragile and bleating. The beasts had knobby knees and large wet nostrils. Their dark eyes flicked around in confusion. According to the manifest, the water buffalo would be put to work in the rice fields in the river delta at Sardili Shores.
When someone called for a new species—such as these water buffalo, or the chickens—biological technicians on the Platform took the stored embryos from their precious library, cloned them, and grew the new animals to their birth age. The offspring were then shipped down on the space elevator.
The cargo haulers heaved the water buffalo cages out of the elevator car, bumping into each other and wrestling the beasts onto the concrete receiving area. Troy followed them briskly, needing to verify the serial numbers tattooed in the animals’ ears and scribbling on his manifest sheets.
The calves shifted awkwardly in their cages, trying to maintain their footing. Suddenly, one of the handlers slipped and let loose his corner of the cage. It crashed to the ground with a loud noise that triggered a panicked reaction. The female handler shouted and scolded her partner. The water buffalo bleated a pitiful sound.
On the pad the handlers roughly set down their wire mesh cages containing thousands of cheeping chicks, not noticing that one door had not been fastened properly. Suddenly the front of the cage sprang open, spilling a chaotic flock of fuzzy yellow chicks that scattered chirping across the landing area. Some ran toward the toroidal supports and padded bumpers around the anchor point where the elevator had come to rest.
“Hey!” Cren shouted. The handlers dropped what they were doing and rushed to help. “Get those chicks! They’re all accountable.”
Already unbalanced, the water buffalo cage tipped over as the calf tried to move. The metal crashing on the concrete sounded like thunder, which further startled the already-panicked chicks. The pathetic calf lowed as if bemoaning its fate, and the other two calves set up a similar racket. The two handlers yelled at each other, voices raised over the din.
Troy had been shuffling through his manifest sheets, but now he stuffed the papers in his various pockets as he ran to help out.
The burly handlers seemed to think the best way to catch chicks was to lunge after them, large hands outspread. But the fuzzy birds simmered across the area, rushing toward the chain-link fence.
The four sol-pols leaped into action, pointing their weapons at the escaped birds, as if their threatening posture could help.
Troy crept toward some of the chicks, whistling cheerily at them, extending his hands and trying to coax them nearer. He nabbed one, which squirmed and pecked at him, peeping comically, but Troy didn’t let go until he had stuffed it back in its cage.
The people in the merchant district paused to observe the spectacle. Apparently, the frantic action of workers scrambling about was worth giving up a few minutes of business. Troy shook his head, muttering to himself that this was the most spectacular entertainment the citizens had seen since the grim judgment of Eli Strone several days earlier. He wondered what might come next—a comet striking the planet and obliterating all life?
One of the handlers managed to find a shovel and used it unceremoniously to scoop up five chicks at a time, depositing them back in the wire cage. Downy feathers flew in the air like a seed storm in one of the kenaf fields.
On the other side of the fence Cren used his palms to rattle the chain link, which frightened away the chicks that were trying to work their way through the openings in the wire. They ran around in circles, cheeping in terror.
It took the better part of an hour to recapture the birds. But the victory was not without casualties. Three of the delicate chicks had been killed in the roundup, and another had a broken leg.
Troy sighed, knowing he had done a good enough job, even as Cren used a low tone of voice to rail at the handlers for their stupidity and clumsiness. Cren checked out the water buffalo calves, then sent them to the big holding warehouse. The following morning they would be whisked off on the mag-lev to Sardili Shores.
At the end of his shift, Troy handed in his crumpled manifest sheets listing his tally of the computer chips, pharmaceuticals, supplies of the Truthsayers’ precious Veritas drug, and live animal cargo.
He shook his head, thinking again of the frantic escape attempt by the baby chickens, the mishandling of the water buffalo calves. This wasn’t exactly what he had expected when he left the Mining District to take a respectable job as a documentor for First Landing.