Desert World Allegiances (28 page)

“Has Ben changed something, broken something?” Temar forced himself to ask the question, even though Shan’s anger frightened him.

For a second, Shan continued to stand there against the door. Slowly he turned around. “Could he have broken the computer?” Shan looked over toward Temar.

Temar could only stare with wide eyes. He didn’t know enough about computers to even turn one on consistently.

“Computers take the information that they’re given, and then they have little tiny machines inside of them to compare the numbers and store the numbers.”

“Like gears?”

“I wish I knew. I’m great with bikes, and I’m even passable with water lines, I don’t know anything about computers. Well, I know how to run them. However, I don’t know how to fix them or how to spot it if someone else has broken them.”

“So there’s no way for us to tell what they’ve done? Ben can steal all that water, and there’s no record?”

“You’d think his partners would know him well enough to not trust him, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

Shan leaned back against the wall. “We thought Ben was this warm, affable man. We never saw any evidence that would suggest he could steal water from an entire valley. But his partners know that he lies. They know that he can smile at someone’s face and pat them on the back and give them encouragement, and the whole time he’s stealing from them. They know he’s a two-faced hypocritical—” Shan stopped. “I’m not feeling very priestly.”

“So, would they keep records somewhere else?”

“Water use records would be huge. You have to track all the water coming in, the water going out, the weather, the evaporation rates, the dew hitting the underside of the water catchers…. That takes a computer.” Shan straightened up slowly, his eyes scanning the room. “And they have a lot of computers here,” he said in an odd tone of voice. “Temar, turn them on. Turn them all on.”

“But….” Temar looked, but only two of the computers had keyboards that allowed access. Short of a button that said “on,” he didn’t know how to work one of these machines. “How?”

“Using this.” Shan pulled a small black thing out of the front of one of the two computers that had a keyboard control sitting in front of it. “This tells the keyboard to control this computer. I always assumed these other computers were inoperable, but try to push the control thing in the front and power them up.”

Following Shan’s lead and half afraid he was going to damage one of the most valuable assets on the planet—again—Temar pulled the little button out of the front of the second computer. For a second, it resisted, but then it slid out so fast that Temar stumbled back before looking at the tiny thing in his hand. Moving carefully, Temar slid the silver end into the next computer and hit the power button on the keyboard.

“You have to push it all the way in, like a plug,” Shan said. Before Temar could even ask him what that meant, Shan put his hand over Temar’s and pushed, so they both felt the thing click in place. But then Shan hesitated, his hand covering Temar’s, and Temar could feel the heat gather in his skin. Time paused. For one moment, Temar felt the strong touch, and he wasn’t afraid. The computer beeped, and Shan jerked his hand back. “Sorry,” he offered quickly before he turned to his own work.

Feeling flustered, Temar powered the computer up, and lines of numbers that didn’t mean anything started scrolling across the screen. Once he knew the system was turning on, he pulled out the black plug and moved to the next machine, repeating the process until Temar had turned on three computers, and Shan had another four running, so that the entire panel of nine computers clicked and beeped away in the room.

“What does all this mean?” Temar asked as the computer screens all started showing different figures and numbers.

“I’m not sure. I think this is weather tracking.”

“They know the weather?” Temar leaned closer, and he could see the long line of the eastern mountains and small red dots for White Hills and Landing and Red Plain and Gambles and Blue Hope. A series of dots with ever-changing numbers moved toward the red dot in the middle that had “LCR” next to it. “Wind speeds?” Temar guessed as he watched the cloud of numbers creep toward LCR.

“It makes sense. I know the settlers could anticipate storms. Some of the old manuals recommend moving all equipment inside and securing it at least thirty minutes before any storm activity.”

Temar snorted. “Any storm that gives you thirty minutes’ warning is moving slower than creepweed.”

“Exactly. But if they had this, they knew it was coming.”

“We still have this, but no one’s using it.” Temar wondered if there was something nefarious behind that, or if the failure of the communication satellite thirty years ago made the information useless to the towns. “And if that is coming at us, we’re going to be trapped in here,” Temar warned as he pointed at the screen. It wasn’t a monster coming at them, but on Livre, even the moderately large storms could kill you if you weren’t in a valley or building, or at the very least, under something really heavy.

“And the Suettes are going to be trapped, wherever they are.”

Temar gave Shan a confused look.

“The Suette family runs the relay,” Shan explained. “This one is more interesting. I can’t figure out what that is.” Shan moved to another computer and pointed to a red “x” just south of LCR. There wasn’t anything out there but desert.

“Did the drop ships have another landing site?”

“Not that I know of, but then I wasn’t the greatest student of history. I always had my head in a manual for fixing a sand bike,” Shan confessed.

“So it could be something old?” Temar reached out to touch the screen, and he yanked his hand back when the whole display changed the minute he touched it. “Gods and stars. It’s one of those touchable ones.”

Shan whistled. “I feel like I’m in a vid, with all this technology.”

“I feel like someone is about to jump out and hit us on the head for seeing all this,” Temar said with a little less enthusiasm.

“They’ll have to hit me first.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Temar pointed out, but Shan was already poking the screen, his face lit with pleasure as he used the new toy. The red “x” vanished, replaced with the heading “Livre Emergency Evacuation” and a plan that looked like a very odd floor plan, with circles inside of circles.

“Shan?”

“I have no idea.” Shan touched the screen again and again, the data changing so fast that Temar couldn’t make sense on one bit before Shan had changed to another. Finally the whole screen blinked, and then the stylized figures gave way to a real picture. Shan could see several people walking around a tall rocket, the sort used to push off a planet.

“Vid?” Temar asked as he leaned in closer. In school, vids of the rockets and the ships were boring, but after poking around this house and seeing how these settlers might have lived, Temar was a little more interested.

“No.” Shan’s voice was utterly flat. Temar turned and gave him an odd look. Shan pointed to the screen. “That’s Jorok Suette.” Temar frowned as he looked at a tiny man kneeling next to a tall rocket.

“But… that’s impossible.”

“Livre Evacuation Plan.” Shan spit the words out, but Temar still didn’t understand. Shan moved closer, his hip bumping Temar, and Temar backed away, still not sure what was going on. Shan poked at the computer screen so hard that Temar was afraid he’d break it.

“Is that now? Is that a real rocket? A working rocket?”

Shan’s jaw bulged in a gesture that Temar had seen on Naite, but never Shan before. “It is. It’s part of an evacuation plan. I need a storage reader, something to record this,” Shan snapped.

Temar looked around for one, but there were so many devices, he wasn’t sure he’d spot one in all this technology. “Shan, what are they doing?”

Shan braced his hands on either side of the screen, and for a second, Temar really thought Shan was angry enough to hit something. He retreated to the far wall and used his search for a storage reader to head into the next room. A rocket. An evacuation rocket. Adults on Livre tended to be pretty honest with their children. Any school child who could do math knew the whole planet was dying, and even the work of farmers like George Young, who specialized in low-water crops, could only slow that down. However, no one had ever mentioned a rocket.

Finally, Temar spotted a small computer recorder, and he grabbed it before heading back in and offering it up. “Shan, how many people can fit in that rocket?”

Shan stared at the computer screen, his jaw bulging and his hands curled into fists. He poked at the computer with vicious, short jabs of his fingers. It took him several seconds to get an answer out. “Two hundred and seven, including crew.”

Temar sucked in a breath. Two hundred. There were more than two hundred in the Valley alone, not counting Landing or any of the other towns or valleys.

“They’ll never get everyone in there.”

“They aren’t even going to try, Temar.”

“You mean….” Temar stopped, his stomach souring as reality hit him like a sandstorm. Ben and his friends were going to leave. They were going to take that rocket and leave everyone else to slowly die, generation by generation. “The water?” Temar asked, his voice weak and his head starting to throb heavily.

“They’ve poached just over twelve million gallons for their rocket launch.”

Temar stumbled back until he hit the wall, and then he slid down. Twelve million gallons. That was… that was an infinite wealth of water. That was so much that he couldn’t conceive of it. That would be enough to feed the farms for an entire season, without even recycling. Temar had no idea how that much water would change the water-use projections, how many more generations could the valleys survive with that much water?

“Why? Why steal so much?” The words came out as a whisper, even though Temar wanted to scream.

Shan turned his back on the computer, and he looked old, older than Temar had ever seen him. “The equipment at the launch pad separates the hydrogen and oxygen, to use them as fuel.”

“They’re using our water to launch their ship?” Temar couldn’t breathe. When Ben had threatened to kill him, the horror of it was enough to make some part of Temar want to curl up and die, but Shan was describing a plan to kill an entire planet.

“It’s worse,” Shan said. He crouched down, but then he fell back against the wall under the computer, as if his legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. “When a rocket launches, the sound waves from the engines warp things, bend them.”

Temar frowned, not sure how that was worse.

“They stop the waves by dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons out onto the ground as the rocket launches—to break up the sound waves.”

Temar’s stomach rolled. He barely had time to lean to the side before he started throwing up. The sour stench made his stomach roll even more, and dry heaving racked his body. A hand rubbed comforting circles on his back. “It’s okay. We’ll stop them. It’s okay, Temar. I promise we’ll stop them. I promise before God that we’ll stop them.” Shan kept up a steady litany of promises as Temar’s body heaved and rolled. He envisioned a generation of children, of Hannal and Tom’s kids, of the kids he’d gone to school with and the ones who would race down Landing’s main road after church… he imagined them all dying of thirst while Ben dumped thousands of gallons onto the dry ground. Temar kept heaving until his stomach hurt and Shan’s soft vows had fallen silent.

Chapter 22

T
EMAR
folded his sand scarf and wrapped it around his head twice before fastening it. “Are you sure we should go out in this?” Temar asked as he eyed the door to the outside.

“No, but I know that it looks like they’re close to launching. Ista Songwind’s circuits were the last part, and from what I can tell, they’re doing some panicking. Some of them think your disappearance and my supposed death are going to push the councils to investigate too deeply.”

“So if we don’t stop them, all that water will be—” Temar stopped, his stomach rolling again. He didn’t want to throw up anymore, especially since his stomach was empty.

“If they launch, the most the good Lord can do is make their sorry rocket crash.”

“Which doesn’t bring back all that water.”

Shan sighed. “No, it doesn’t. And it looks like they’ve started converting water to fuel, and we don’t have time to go for help.”

“So, it’s just you and me?” Temar asked.

Shan gave him a sympathetic look. “I’d suggest you stay here, but I’m afraid you might hit me.” He smiled to show that he was trying to joke, even if the attempt was pathetic.

“I would,” Temar agreed. Twenty-four hours ago, he’d been haunted by the memory of what Ben had done to him, but now the image of children dying of thirst had replaced that fear. He couldn’t change the past, but he could prevent Ben from creating that future.

“The place isn’t more than thirty minutes’ ride away.”

“And how do we keep from getting lost in this storm?”

“With this.” Shan held his arm up to show Temar a piece of metal strapped around it. It had a tiny computer screen, smaller than anything Temar had ever seen. “I saw Holmes use one once.”