Vyyda Book 1: The Haver Problem (4 page)

             
“And you won’t get off that easily.”

             
“Won’t I?  What does that mean?”

             
“I expect you to read it.  All of it.” Witt replied, gaze remaining fixed on his younger colleague as he drank from his own glass.

             
“Let me put it this way,” Dorsey began, sliding the remains of his wine back toward Witt, “I politely refuse.”

             
It took something rather significant for Dorsey Jefferson to flatly reject a request from the man who had become his mentor and greatest champion among the other faculty members on Sykes.  Witt had repeatedly sung Dorsey’s praises to colleagues as a fine and unique mind.  They truly respected one another.  In fact, Dorsey’s inflexibility arose from the one point on which he and Tomas Witt were hopelessly at odds.

             
Witt belonged to a particular class of social scientists (not that there were all that many around to be classified in U-Space) known as
orichasers
, short for origin chasers.  Despite Earth’s official story that the mass migration beginning in the 22
nd
century was purely voluntary, most in U-Space weren’t buying it.

             
Nearly three quarters of a century of humans in U-Space went by before anything that could pass for reliable recorded history began to be kept.  And, while Earth may have had every detail chronicling  the flush of humanity into the wide reaches of space, they weren’t talking.

             
People like Tomas Witt wanted to know.  Learning the truth about what had happened meant more than virtually anything else to him.  He described his need to find such answers as emanating from the molecular level of his existence (causing Dorsey to roll his eyes slightly when he was sure the older man couldn’t see it).  If there was a higher being, Witt contended, said being created him for this purpose.  It was
his
Vyyda.

             
“It doesn't bother you to not understand how billions of human beings came to be out here, permanently unwelcome by Earth?” Witt asked Dorsey on more than one occasion over the course of their association.

             
“No offense, but it’s a fool’s pursuit,” Dorsey would typically answer – albeit in the most respectful tone possible. “No one can say what happened.  Too much time gone by.  Besides, what’s past is past.”

             
“Dorsey, the difficulty of a problem should never be the deciding factor when determining where to devote time and effort.  Find your patience.  You can afford it, young as you are.”

             
Despite the rationale, Dorsey continued to resist getting caught up in Witt's passion, just as the older man refused to stop trying to drag him in.

             
But now, as Witt shared the long-saved good wine, he had a new weapon in his arsenal with which to attack his younger colleague’s indifference.  Tomas Witt had acquired writings – a surreptitiously kept account of one common man and his journey from the home planet to a life in U-Space.  He had, very possibly, the beginning of proof.

V              V              V              V

              Gas giants, hot “Neptunes” and the like could be found in abundance throughout U-Space.  Telluric worlds, on the other hand, occurred rarely enough that once such a body had been discovered, excavated and provided with a livable habitat, there was virtually no chance that it would ever be abandoned.  If a given settlement became impossible for one group to sustain, there would always be another concern ready to step in and take over (and a broker on hand to collect a commission). 

             
The only exception to the practice of taking over such settlements came when a planet proved dangerous.

             
A relatively insignificant case in point:  A smaller-sized body (roughly a third as large as Earth) in the midst of a moderately populated cluster known as the Iron Field, had been abandoned early in the 23
rd
century – less than two years after receiving its charter and “importing” citizen-laborers.  To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the world in question hadn’t been touched or explored by humans in the all the years since.  More, it no longer was even designated by its charter name (FTC-45), referenced instead on all maps and surveys of the region with a red circle.  In the language of speculators and developers, the red mark warned,
You’re better off with nothing than to take a chance on this place.

             
The story behind the reasons for leaving FTC-45 dormant slipped into rumor and supposition.  Scary stories were told to children and gullible types which proposed that FTC-45 held some sort of intelligent life which had done away with the humans attempting to establish a settlement.  (This would be truly extraordinary given the
complete
absence of intelligent life on any of the planets reached by mankind to date.)

             
More likely, in the minds of any who bothered to theorize about the meaningless little world, it had been something on the order of disease – a single-celled, microscopic enemy.  That was enough to keep not only speculators, but also scavengers, salvage crews and junkers from the planet in search of what may have been left behind.  There were enough other valuables to be picked and plundered from safer environments.

             
Tomas Witt, however, saw different potential in FTC-45:  Its demise came early enough in the human experiences in U-Space that clues as to what really occurred during the mass exodus of mankind from Earth might be found there.

             
The trick was locating someone willing to brave the risk and search whatever was left of the abandoned world.

             
“If I wasn’t so old, I might go myself,” Witt had told Dorsey over a meal at Flood’s restaurant.

             
“Even if it did you in?” Dorsey asked.

             
Witt dismissed Dorsey’s suggestion with a wave of his hand.  “Purely academic.  I can’t go.  I don’t possess the equipment or expertise.”

             
The pair had shared many meals –
gleastin pie, filshen soup, seasoned pettly grain noodles and syntho-greens
(the best dishes possible, given the meager and limited foodstuffs available to U-Space chefs) – going over and over FTC-45's potential.  In the most productive sessions, Witt could get Dorsey to speculate on what might still exist on the abandoned world:  Work rosters, passenger manifests of the enormous transport molkas bringing in new labor.  Perhaps there were records of the people involved with the creation of the settlement and their connection to Earth.

             
“Doesn’t it frustrate you more to not know what’s there and simply speculate on it?” Dorsey asked at one point.

             
Witt smiled.  “Pondering the unknown is a frustrating experience for
you
.  In my eyes, it’s pure ecstasy.  Dreaming of answers to the unknown – isn’t that what the imagination uses for sustenance?”

             
There were very few on Sykes who were aware of Witt’s desire to gain access to FTC-45.  It was the old historian's best and most guarded secret.

             
Desperation to get hands on whatever it was that might be found on the dead world ultimately reached the point where Tomas Witt took something of a risk.  When no reputable salvage experts were willing to accept the job, he contracted a team of fifteen men best described as unsavory, promising them ownership of whatever material goods they came upon as long as he was provided anything along the lines of recorded information or logs (for which he would also pay a price).

             
Witt's previous attempts at evidence for his theories (including the black market and other abandoned worlds already picked clean) left him with urgency.  If there was something to be found, he had to move.

             
"They'll hold you up for everything they can get and still not turn it over to you," Dorsey predicted when Witt shared the plan with him.  Such bands of miscreants weren't uncommon in U-Space, nor were the problems in dealing with them.

             
The older man responded by tilting his head to one side, a strange grin on his face. “I have a few things in mind should trouble arise.”

V              V              V              V

              The questionable characters hired to explore FTC-45 found a great deal remaining within the dead settlement.  They reported the discovery of materials and equipment so outdated that it was impossible to say exactly what they were.  Witt, upon hearing that, found his curiosity piqued, but remained focused on records, logs and data in any form.

             
“Yes,” reported the freelance salvage crew, “we have a lot of it.  So much have we found that it’s going to cost you more than the original agreement.  Heavy work getting all these things back.  Big risks for us.”

             
Dorsey Jefferson’s prediction had come true and it was too difficult for him not to crow.

             
“You see?” Dorsey said when Witt told him of the development.  “And they might not even have anything.”

             
Witt took it in stride.  He wasn’t worried in the slightest.  Instead, he announced that the solution would come through one of the few other faculty members on Sykes who knew about the project:  Venda Troupe, well-respected professor of theoretical geology – a discipline that demanded imagination as the ever-expanding pursuit of new and untapped worlds marched on.

             
“Solid woman, Venda.  Exemplary…in so many ways.”  Witt had said this on more than one occasion in Dorsey’s presence.  It wasn’t that Dorsey doubted Witt’s assessment in the slightest – he liked her as well.  But the sound in Witt’s voice when he spoke of Professor Troupe made it seem to Dorsey that the words weren’t simply professional admiration.  Tomas Witt, he concluded, loved Venda Troupe.

             
Venda had something of a secret of her own; one which would come in handy.  Witt shared it on the provision that Dorsey kept it to himself.  Venda had a brother, Percival Troupe – Perce, for short.  Perce Troupe didn’t share the intellectual curiosity of his sister, nor the patience to wait for things to come his way.  He was a thug.  The leader of a small group (loosely affiliated with Slowe Staine) who used sheer force to take what they wanted, occasionally contracting their services to others in need.

             
Just the sort of thing that Tomas Witt wanted at his disposal.

             
“I insisted that no blood be shed,” Tomas said, pouring Dorsey a second glass of the wine. 

             
Dorsey took the claim with a measure of skepticism.

             
“Or,” Witt continued, off the look on Dorsey’s face, “at least I
requested
that no harm come to anyone which could not be fully healed if it was at all possible.”

             
“You had this lined up all the time?  Even before your group of scavengers left for the planet?”

             
“I would have sent Perce Troupe and his men in to do the job in the first place if they’d been willing to take the risk.  I made a deal for the recovery of certain items, Dorsey.  This is too important to be left in the greedy hands of unscrupulous men.”

             
“And Professor Troupe’s brother and his people gained control of it all?”

             
“They did.”

             
“And you now have them?”

             
“I do.  Logs, manifests, labor schedules, training records and requests for additional personnel – made directly to Earth. 
And
...among all the marginally interesting records, there’s also something even more valuable.”

             
“Which is?”

             
“A journal.”

             
“Congratulations,” Dorsey said, lifting his glass.

             
“And I can tell you this:  While it’s not a full picture of just what went on during mass migration, the story confirms things that I have
always
suspected.”

             
“If it’s real.”

             
“Which is why I need your help.”

             
“My help?  I’m not the history man here.”

             
“You’re the
word
expert.  Scour it for usage, proper idiomatic phrases.  Do your language forensics on it.”

             
“My grasp of Earth phrasing from so far back…it’s not…” Dorsey shook his head.