Chapter 24 : The Art of Pursuasion

The habitat was quickly falling into ruin, but over the river, the StarBase, now the home of the colony, looked reassuringly shiny. StarBase buildings were all constructed in the same way, in simple blocks with a five-story metal frame, curtain walls, and a flat roof sprouting gun turrets. On Greenshoot the Fleet had built three of these blocks, connected to each other, and to the control tower and the dome of the subspace transmitter, by covered roadways. Separate and further upriver were the landing pads and the maintenance buildings. It was a generous facility for a StarFleet outpost of this size. It was enough also for the few hundred souls that remained on Greenshoot, excluding that is, the few hundred souls still living in the woods. They had been abandoned to their fate, and they included Boris and Crystal.

Jack had invited Crystal to the StarBase for one final effort of persuasion, and asked Daff and Hal to join them, making a table of four in the comfy public relations suite. He hoped that some proper food and intelligent conversation would remind Crystal of the benefits of civilization. If that failed, he would make a final, final appeal to Crystal in private, man to woman. He would promise her a good life in the green belt, with him. Jack had been reluctant to take this last step, because he knew that the villa was not yet his, it depended on him retaining the confidence of the SSS and ousting Monty Griffin.

Hal was on time and looked eager to help. Jack went up a couple of floors to the President’s offices to fetch Daff, now Irwin’s personal secretary. Irwin had a couple of new assistants too, young, attractive healthy looking women who seemed to have escaped completely the ravages and stresses of the alien environment. Daff looked different. She was pregnant and the bulge looked awkward on her slim, athletic frame; her skin was grey and rough-looking; her hair had lost some of its bounce. The three drank pink fizzy water while they waited, and there was little conversation until Crystal arrived, looking sweaty and flustered. He had arranged for a tracked vehicle to get her out of the woods, but an hour in one of those was no luxury trip.

“I’m glad you got us together Jack”, Daff said. “So much has happened in the last few weeks. And we have been making some plans, and haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

“Oh yes, you should have a great job in Washington, if you keep working for Irwin”, Crystal said.

“Well, it’s not as simple as that, I am only his assistant for this mission. But I am still on the government payroll, for now.”

“Have you had any luck finding relatives, Hal ?”, Crystal asked.

“Genealogy. Yes it’s my favorite subject. I can trace my ancestors all the way back to England in the 20th century ! That’s when they started keeping records.”

“But … your family here?”

“No they all died in the war.”

“I’m sorry”, Crystal said with generous motions of sadness.

“This is what happens when you’re in suspension for 75 years. The people you knew will all be dead and it takes a while to come to terms with that. But then I still have relatives and we are spread all over the place.”

“Have you been back to North Dome”, Jack asked.

“I have, and I have some vague memory of it from childhood. But no more than that. It’s a special place, the only tangible thing left from the old colony.”

“That and the virus”, Jack said. He wondered whether Hal’s historical research had hit upon its true origins.

“Well it could be. You can get a hint from the Temple, if you look closely .... “

“Really ?”, said Jack leaning forward, “I went over it with a portable scanner.”

“Yes but the upper gold band, which looks a bit like music, you can also read it as stave notation for DNA. It is, give or take a few base pairs, Gremec.”

“Fascinating”, Jack said. “A temple to germ warfare?”

“You know, Jack, I think they were better than that. These structures in the brain, there things like it in other organisms here. They would not grow naturally in humans, but Gremec does that for us. The colonists might have been trying to communicate with something else on P36. Whether they managed to or not … there’s no record of that.”

Then Daff and Hal looked at each other and nodded slightly, as if they had prepared something to say.

“We’re staying on Greenshoot”, Hal said.

“What ?”, Jack said. He was open-mouthed for a moment.

“Hal is Type 3 of course”, Daff said, “he’s a P36, he was engineered to live here. I’m Type 2, the virus is working in me, but my uptake of the heavy metals is slow and I have a supply of VIBE to last years. The baby is Type 3. I have had her tested.”

Hal gently touched her bulge.

“But the Starbase is closing, isn’t it?”, Crystal said.

“Not entirely”, Hal replied, “it will be maintained but inactivated.”

“But there won’t be any supplies coming up here!”, Jack said.

“We’re going to do the best we can”, Hal assured him. “Scooter and a few others will work with us. Scooter’s Type 3, his family go back a few generations here, and his children are too. His wife Tina is standing by him ... We can live here, I know it. Greenshoot has so much potential. They won’t abandon us completely. There is a maintenance schedule for the base which means a ship will definitely call here every two years ...”

“But Hal ...”. Jack shook his head and turned to Crystal, who started laughing.

“Never mind about them Jack”, Crystal said, with a wide, seductive smile. She put a hand on his. “I’m coming with you.”