Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy (21 page)

Worth didn’t quite know what to do with him, either. She had never really known anyone like him before. Beginning with her own father, then including her classmates and even her instructors at Greenwich, the men in her life had almost universally been ambitious, confident, even arrogant. But Hall wasn’t any of these. He was quiet and withdrawn, an almost timid starship pilot. And clearly a talented one, as smart and instinctive as any of the strutting peacocks at the Naval College. It was endearing, in its way.
He doesn’t believe in himself
, Worth thought.
Maybe he just needs someone to do it for him.

She laughed out loud at the thought, at the possibility that she might be falling in love with anyone, let alone someone like Charlie.

“What?” he asked. They were wandering through one of the sprawling hedge mazes the Cygni of this region seemed so fond of.
Drysfa,
they called them, and they were everywhere. The wealthier intellectuals had large private ones on the grounds of their vast estates, and the worker castes visited the immense public ones during their leisure time. They were a blatant consumption of space, an overt demonstration that here on Cygnus there was more land than could ever be used.

“Nothing,” she replied, smiling at him. “Just amazed by all the sky. Still.” He nodded, and they kept walking, though her eyes were on him as much as the winding green walls and high blue welkin above. She had known more plenty in her childhood than he had. The daughter of a successful naval officer, she and her family had enjoyed their share of conveniences and privileges - good schooling, some variety of diet, and even occasional access to the gardens. She knew Hall’s experience had been less comfortable, and while this expanse of green foliage and endless sky dazzled her, it must have been even more overwhelming to him.

The hedges towered over them both, well over four meters high on either side of the path. Hall stepped into the cool of shadow, and it occurred to her that she had never seen the sun on his face before they came to Cygnus. As he moved into the dimmer light, the pale pallor returned to his skin, and she thought he seemed smaller and younger somehow.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Taking a break.” He wiped a hand across his forehead, and rested his hands on his hips. “I’m not used to so much walking. Or that sun beating down. I’m actually sweating.”

“Just think – it’s cooler than our own sun.” She held out a hand. “Come on. I want to see if we can find our way through.” Hall hesitated, then reached out took her hand.

As it turned out, they couldn’t.

“How big is this thing?” Hall asked, more in wonder than frustration.

“I think we’ve been down this part twice. Maybe three times. See? That fountain has that same three fish-things.”

“Great. We’re lost.”

“Lost?” Worth laughed. “Aren’t you a navigator, Charlie?” He plucked a handful of leaves from the hedge nearby and threw them at her playfully.

“Space is one thing. This maze…” he shook his head.

“We’re alone,” Worth said, standing close to him. There was a tiny yellow leaf in his sandy-brown hair, and she reached up and brushed it away, letting the tips of her fingers trail gently against his ear.

“I know,” he said, his face pointed toward the sky, eyes closed, the sun dappling his sharp features. He was almost handsome. “It’s so quiet. I never had any quiet growing up, there were always so many…people…” He trailed off as she laid one finger over his lips, moving closer still, leaning into him.

“That’s not what I meant, Charlie.” It was unlike her to be so forward, but she knew if she waited for him she would be waiting forever, he was so shy. She didn’t know if she loved him or not, like the way her mom and dad felt about each other, but they were young and they were alone and she liked him a lot. They’d spent so much time together, on duty and in their books, and she had come to feel so natural, so comfortable with him.
And he took Lamb’s punch for me
, she thought, remembering that awful night in the galley.
That has to count for something.

She looked in his eyes, those muddy-hazel eyes, curious what he was thinking and feeling. At least he was looking back at her, not at his feet. That was a start.
He has to know what I’m doing
. Her hand moved from his hair to the back of his neck.

“Oh,” he said.

“Charlie,” Worth murmured, moving even closer, so close she knew he could count the freckles on her nose.

“Yeah?”

“When we argue about this later, just remember that I kissed you first.” And she did, closing her eyes, pressing her lips against his, wrapping her arms around him. His mouth was slightly open, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that his kiss was just the right mix of wet and soft, pliable and firm. After a heartbeat of stunned hesitation, she felt him respond, felt the pressure of his arms on her back, felt the transition from a kiss to kissing.

Then they were falling.

Hall had leaned back, taking her with him in their embrace, against a nearby privet wall, and it gave way with minimal resistance. The both of them crashed through leaves and branches, coming to rest in the grass beneath the broken hedge.

“Someone’s going to be upset that we ruined their
drysfa
,” Worth said, lying on top of Hall, his arms still holding her.

“I have to admit that I don’t care,” he replied, and he pulled her back down to him with both hands.

****

Green watched Dr. Reyes as she reviewed the final numbers of their latest analysis. She was sitting, impossibly erect, at one of the portable workstations they’d cobbled together in a vacant barn. The look on her face suggested a foul odor under her nose.

Probably true
, thought Sir Eustace Green. After all, this structure had housed herd animals until fairly recently, and evidence of their prior residency could be readily seen – and smelled – in heaps of aging dung piled near the walls. There were other scents, too, less unpleasant, of leather and dry grasses and other things that Green could only guess at. Even the dung-smell itself was mild, mellowing as time passed without fresh deposits, a source more of amusement and intrigue than disgust. Green was fascinated; here was a window into the past of his own species – a people who still engaged in animal husbandry, maintaining flocks and herds of creatures that would be milked, slaughtered, eaten.
How scandalously, wonderfully inefficient
, he thought. Green was wealthy and noble enough, of course, to have eaten actual flesh-meat before, though the event was scarcely commonplace. Here, these people ate meat almost every day.

What a planet
, he thought.

Green was in heaven, or close enough. This was a world alive, in its youth, not seized by a rotting dotage and choked by an overpopulated humanity. Leaves and flowers encroached on pathways, and green things burst from every surface: dirt and wood and even stone; life defiant, life perpetual. There were a thousand specimens he could harvest and return to Kew, a million, a billion. But time pressed. They had already been on-planet for two weeks, and in that time had conducted innumerable tests on the specimens collected with the help of that excellent and adventurous local lad, Jairo. Their suspicions had been borne out, suspicions rooted in Tyson’s rudimentary work from a decade before. This was no simple dash-and-grab job. Cygnus had grains compatible at the genetic level to those back on Earth, compatibility that would allow for replenishment of the stocks the Kingdom relied upon to feed its teeming mouths. But there were differences in cellular replication and germination cycles, differences that required precise chromosomal combinations during hybridization. They had yet to hit on the proper sequencing, though they drew closer with each subsequent experiment.

“Still 15% dark with the nanopore sequencer,” Reyes said, her voice as flat and toneless as ever.

“More molecular adaptors?” asked Green, unsurprised, and she nodded grimly. The Cygni grains were proving stubborn in yielding up the details of their genetic code to the spectral analyses designed for terrestrial flora. It was puzzling, since the basic chemistry of Cygnus so closely mirrored Earth’s that genetic analysis should have been much simpler. Green had already had to recalibrate one of the three mobile spectrometers with a nanopore mixture even richer in proteins, in order to slow the DNA strands during reading.
Nature, as ever, so loathe to give up her secrets even to the most persistent prying
, thought Green with gleeful frustration.

As Reyes assisted him to load and program the cumbersome machine with fresh samples of Cygni wheat cells, the elderly gardener marveled at her ability to labor in such close proximity, day after day, and yet develop no discernable camaraderie. Green had worked for more than half a century in botany, that most sociable of natural sciences, and had collaborated with dozens of talented men and women from across the Kingdom. Some of them had been distant and difficult, of course, but none ever so aloof as Dr. Adina Reyes. Since before their departure from Spithead, Green had done his best to apply his personal charm and his professional enthusiasm, but had failed to ignite even the slightest warmth. It made the long hours and isolated location a challenge to bear. He had hoped for one last great collaboration, a partnership that would change his field of botany and her sub-field of xenobotany forever. He had dreamed of it.
Linneaus, Fuchs, Mendel, Esau…Green.

The old knight sighed and sagged back into a canvas chair as the spectrometer quietly whirred to life, probing deeper into the obstinate gene sequences within. Reyes sat, too, in another chair across the broad wooden floor.
Fatigue
! Green thought idly.
She’s human
! A cloud of insects drifted close to his head, high-pitched, irritating. He brushed them aside with a splutter, and a corner of Reyes’ mouth twitched ever so slightly in amusement.

“Still enamored of this primitive world?” she asked.

“At this moment?” Green took out a pocket handkerchief and wiped his face and neck. The midmorning was warm, and the interior of the ancient barn was stuffy, humid and plagued by too many of these tiny flying bugs. Even so, he had rarely been happier, and he said so.

“You’re a pathetic old romantic,” said Reyes.

“Indeed I am,” he replied, “and proud of it.” He rose, went to the cool-storage unit they’d installed on their first day, and procured two plastic canteens of water, offering one to Reyes. She took it, and Green returned to his seat. They both drank in silence for a moment, watching as the spectrometer did its work.

“No romance for you, then, Reyes?”

His question was greeted stonily at first, and frankly Green had expected no better. But he found he was tired of her implacable, icy façade, tired of working so closely in this magical verdant wonderland and yet not being able to talk about its enchantments with the one person who ought to appreciate them better than anyone. After a moment, to his immense surprise, she replied.

“I don’t believe in romance.”

“Don’t believe in it?” Green grinned. “Residue of a broken heart, my dear?” This earned a snort of derision and a scowl.

“You misunderstand me. I don’t mean that all this soft romanticism in the face of so-called natural beauty is a distraction or a nuisance. When I say I don’t believe in it, I mean I am skeptical it exists.”

“But of course it exists!” protested Green, leaning forward animatedly. “You can’t tell me there isn’t beauty in the infinite diversity of life in the universe. The Fisher-Dunn Theorem...”

“Solipsistic nonsense.” Reyes took a small sip from her canteen that would have been dainty had she been even slightly feminine.

“Dunn and Fisher mathematically proved that beauty and love exist,” persevered Green doggedly. “The universe is infinite, and therefore home to infinite forms. If any and all forms exist, then perfect beauty exists, even allowing for observer bias.”

“Self-serving naïveté,” Reyes replied evenly. “Delusional idealism.”

“You’ll excuse me for asking, then,” said Green, “but if those who love the universe so much engender such hostility in you, if the very universe itself offends you, what the devil are you doing out here on this mission? Why save humanity if you don’t believe in what makes us human?”

“We disagree on what makes us human, Eustace. You say beauty and romance, I say intellect and reason.”

“The two need not be mutually exclusive,” he protested.

“We disagree again. But it makes no matter. You are welcome to your philosophy, as childish and outdated as it may be. I don’t believe in romanticism, but what I truly loathe is chaos.”

“You’re one of those order fetishists, then,” Green said. “An artificialist.” She nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

“Humanity has struggled, from our earliest moments, to control our environment, not to coddle and sentimentalize it. Nature, uncontrolled, is chaos. A threat, not an idol.”

“Foolish girl.” Green was more sad than angry. “It’s those like you, worshipers of progress at any cost, who have gotten us into this mess to begin with.”

“Please. You blame man’s ingenuity, but I would blame his lack of control. No breeding policies, no controls on population, have given us more mouths than we can feed. You worship life and its abundance, and yet it is that overabundance that threatens all of us. You asked me why I came out here, why I agreed to help you and Lord Banks. The answer is that I seek to restore equilibrium, to restore order. Chaos breeds chaos. Only from order can we rationally seek to extend our control over the universe we inhabit. Control and order are the keys to human destiny.”

Green was speechless. Reyes was still looking at him, seeming to wait for some response she could eviscerate, but he wasn’t interested in debating her any longer. She was a zealot, an ideologue, and he might as well argue with his shoe.

Into the uncomfortable silence came the chime of the spectrometer, announcing the completion of the analysis. Green lurched from his chair and accessed the initial results at the workstation. His eyes scanned the first screen, then the second, seeking out the familiar red numbers, but the display was an ocean of green. He turned to face Reyes.