Kakuloa: A Rising Tide Page 2

  Kakuloa, Alpha Centauri B II

  The starship Victoria sliced through the atmosphere above the Western Ocean, heading toward a broad basalt plain near the coast where, just over four years earlier, the Anderson-class ship Krechet had landed the second team of the Alpha Centauri expedition. This is it, thought William Blake, observing from the third seat in the cockpit.

  “You’re sure this is a good landing area?” The captain, Kat Coleman, asked him. “I don’t want to run into the same trouble that Krechet did.”

  “Absolutely sure,” Blake said. “After that, the crew did a thorough geological survey of the plateau. It’s safer than Chandrasekhar Valley.” The latter, where the first team had landed, turned out to be flood-prone.

  Victoria had orbited the planet Kakuloa just long enough to locate the original landing sites, two hundred fifty kilometers apart near the west coast of the main continent. It was between those two sites that Fred Tyrell and Ulrika Klaar, on an overland hike, had discovered the mangrove-like trees in a small river estuary, together with the white berries that grew on a vine in those trees. When they’d stumbled across them, the berries were being eaten by cephalopods that Tyrell promptly nicknamed tree squids. Thus, the berries become known as squidberries; they were the whole reason Victoria was here.

  “Coast is in sight,” the navigator, Retta Flint, said. “Altitude 8,000 meters, range thirty kilometers.”

  On the horizon a gray line of cliffs rose up from the ocean surface. To the north, the cliffs lowered to a thin line, dark near the cliffs, lightening to a near white further away from them. As the ship drew closer, they could see waves smashing against the cliffs in huge clouds of spume and spray. Toward the beach, where the ocean floor sloped more gradually, the rolling waves began breaking a kilometer or more from shore, lines of surf advancing one after the other to surge up the sand.

  “Are those waves as big as I think they are?” Coleman asked idly.

  “Probably bigger,” Blake said. “That’s one of the things that reminded them of Hawaii, and why they named the place Kakuloa.”

  “Which means what, giant surf?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Blake said. “George Darwin said he made it up. It does sound Hawaiian though.”

  “If you say so,” Coleman said. “Is that surf pounding the cliffs going to be a problem?”

  “No. The reports said they’re stable, and the landing area’s a kilometer inland from the edge.”

  By now Victoria was coming up on the shore line, its altitude a mere 2000 meters. The plateau showed scattered vegetation growing in pockets of soil on the otherwise bare rock. A few kilometers further inland, a forest wall rose. In the middle of the rocky plain, and to their north, stood something clearly artificial.

  “I see Krechet!” Blake said. “Look to port, ten-o’clock.”

  Two kilometers off, a roughly conical ship stood perched at a slight angle. Around its base, and again towards the forest, lay scattered equipment. There was no sign of the tents the original crew had pitched to house field laboratories and extended living space.

  Flint looked up from her console briefly. “It’s at more of an angle than the pictures they brought back. And some of the gear is gone.”

  The captain had seen it too. “Four years out in the weather will do that,” she said. “I’m surprised it’s still standing.”

  Blake wasn’t. He’d gone over all the reports carefully. “They double-anchored it with guy-wires and propped up the leg that punched through the cave roof. It’s probably more solid than if they’d had a normal landing.”

  “We’ll check it out later. Historic monument, that,” Coleman said, then added: “Okay, prepare for landing.”

  Victoria slowed to a near hover, and the whine of the ventral jets rose. There came the clunk-clunk of the gear doors opening and the landing gear extending.

  “Engage autoland,” said Captain Coleman. “Flint, read it out for me, please.”

  “Roger that,” she said. “Altitude fifty meters, speed zero. Coming down at five.”

  “Copy.”

  “Twenty-five, down at three,” Flint said.

  “Surface looks good. Some dust.” Coleman checked the landing radar display. The ground return was fuzzy; this wasn’t a paved landing pad, but the irregularities were within tolerance.

  “Ten, down two.”

  Coleman nodded. “Go to land.”

  “Five. Two. Contact!”

  Victoria settled on the surface with a slight bump, taken up by the shock absorbers in the landing gear.

  “Thrusters off. We’re down.”

  The captain turned to Blake, and said formally: “Colonel Blake, we’ve landed. The mission is now yours.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said. “Please call Endeavour. Tell them, ‘Victoria is on the beach’.”

  Coleman nodded to Flint. “Go ahead.”

  “Aye, Ma’am.”

  The message wouldn’t reach the other ship for over five hours. Endeavour and Victoria’s sister ship Vostok were at the other terraformed planet in the system, orbiting Alpha Centauri A, currently as far from this planet as Uranus was from Earth. Earth itself was more than four light-years away.

  “And, Captain? I’d like preliminary checks,” Blake said. “I doubt that the air here is any less breathable than it was four years ago, but let’s be sure, eh?”

  “Completely agreed.” She turned and tapped a sequence on the console keyboard.

  “All right,” Blake said. “Secure from space. As soon as the atmosphere checks out, I want the aircar assembled and ready to go.” That would be their primary medium-range transport, replacing the ultralight airplanes the first expedition had used.

  “Also,” he continued, “the satellites we left in orbit. Mr. Fenety needs to fine tune the GPS systems and start downloading sensor data.” The previous expedition had made do with the USS Heinlein and Anderson remaining in orbit, but Blake had insisted on more extensive coverage.

  Which reminded him, there was something the first expedition left behind. “When the aircar is ready, the Chandrasekhar landing site needs to be checked. Their refueling module reactor was left in safe mode. Telemetry says it’s still that way, but I want a visual on the site.”

  “If we can bring the reactor back online,” Flint said, “the power will come in handy for recharging batteries if and when we explore further north.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Blake said. “Speaking of which, Flint, you’re in charge of the boat.” The boat was a rigid-hulled inflatable, able to cope with all but the roughest seas. “Figure out how you’re going to get it assembled and down to the beach.”

  Flint grinned. “I think not in that order would work best.”

  Blake laughed and nodded. “Agreed. Use the aircar as a skycrane if that helps.” It could carry the unassembled parts, at least.

  He assigned a few other tasks to different team members, then a soft alert chimed from the captain’s console.

  “Atmosphere checks out," Coleman said. “No significant differences from four years ago.”

  “Good,” Blake said. “Let’s go get this little camping trip set up.”

  Chapter 2: The Next Resort

  Chitiri Resort Development Co., Earth

  Paul “Parry” Cohen pivoted his desk monitor around so that his associate, Lauren Hewitt, could see it. It showed a long stretch of sunlit beach, with clean white sand and above that, tropical trees. The sea was a gin-clear blue with huge rollers breaking in the distance. The point of view was from some altitude above the beach, with enough land in the foreground to suggest the image was taken from a cliff. “What do you think?”

  “Gorgeous,” she said. “With that cliff, is that Noronha? And how come there’s nobody on the beach?”

  “Hah,” Cohen said. “The first answers the second. No, it’s not Noronha. This is Kakuloa.”

  “Somewhere in Hawaii? Is it a private island?”

  “Don’t you pay a
ttention to the news? It’s another planet, orbiting Alpha Centauri B. You know, our first trip to another star? And our second, now that the Endeavour and company are headed back there. That’s why these pictures are in the news again.”

  “Oh, that Kakuloa. I thought it sounded familiar. They should be there by now, right? They left a few weeks ago. I hope they found the Anderson crew all right.”

  “So, you are paying attention.”

  “But why are you showing me this? It’s a nice beach, sure, but nobody’s going to be travelling to another star system for a vacation, let alone building a resort there.”

  “A hundred years ago you could have said the same thing about some of our best properties. Think of it, this place is literally untouched.”

  “More like a hundred and fifty,” she said. “Okay, so maybe there’ll be a tourist business to Kakuloa in the twenty-third century. I’m not going to hold my breath. There’s not a lot of tourist traffic to the Moon, and that’s right next door.”

  Cohen sighed. “Come on, Lauren. The Moon doesn’t have beaches and oceans. But you’re right, it’s too early. The new Endeavour-class ships are a lot better than the Heinlein- and Anderson-classes, but they’re still not civilian cruisers. Maybe the next generation. It will be interesting to see what the current expedition comes back with.”

  “Hopefully, the crew of the Anderson, or maybe what’s left of them. Isn’t that why they went?”

  “That’s the official reason. But you’ve heard the rumors.”

  “You mean about an alien plant that’s the source of an immortality drug? Don’t tell me you believe that!”

  “Anti-aging, not immortality. And an assortment of other pharmaceuticals besides. That’s why Centauri Pharmaceuticals was formed. It’s jointly held by a half-dozen of the biggest biopharmaceutical companies. Did you know they contributed a major chunk of the funding for the current expedition?” That wasn’t strictly secret, but neither was it well publicized. The companies involved were playing that close to the vest.

  “So? I imagine a new ecosystem means good odds for new biochemicals. I’m sure they’re looking, but the Heinlein couldn’t have brought back enough of anything to even begin to develop new drugs.”

  Parry Cohen shook his head to himself. It was amazing what they could do with computer modeling of pharmacokinetics these days. He understood hardly any of it, but his sister’s husband was in that business. When Parry had asked him about the immortality drug rumor, he had merely smiled knowingly and said something like: “even if there were such a thing, it would be too early to tell for sure.” But there was no point in getting into an argument with Lauren over it.

  “You’re probably right,” Cohen said. He looked at the image on the monitor again. “Still, it is a pretty beach.”

  “There are still a few of those on Earth, Parry, and they’re a lot easier to get to. They also don’t have huge question marks about what sort of governing regulations the place will have. Speaking of, how is the Noronha Project going?”

  “I’ve got the latest here,” Cohen said, bringing up the project data on his screen. She had raised a good point. Would the Outer Space Treaty (as Amended) even apply to Alpha Centauri the way it did on the Moon? Questions for another time. He put that aside and started briefing Hewitt on the latest with the Noronha Project, their current in-development resort on an island off the Brazilian coast.

  Chapter 3: Greystone

  The Greystone House, Earth

  Ellie Greystone sighed and folded her omni. The paper she’d been reading, “Contextual traits and correlation with biological characteristics in Illex oxygonious,” was drier than most, which was saying something. She stood up, stretched, and picked up her empty coffee mug to take it to the kitchen.

  “Mom,” she called out, “I think I’m going to go into the lab to work on my research.” She was now working on that sought-after PhD.

  There was no immediate answer. Uh oh. Ellie rounded the corner into the kitchen. Her mother was standing at the counter. “Mom? Did you hear me?”

  Her mother turned and looked at her, or rather, a little past her. “That’s nice, Cheryl. Yes.”

  Oh, crap, not again. “Mom, it’s me, Ellie.” Cheryl was her aunt, her mother’s younger sister, who lived two states away.

  Her mother nodded, still not quite looking at Ellie, with a faraway look in her eyes. She nodded again. “Uh huh.” She began to slowly rock from side to side, taking little shuffling steps without really moving from her spot by the counter, and muttering almost inaudibly.

  “Mom?” Ellie knew that there was nothing she could say to snap her mother out of it, or even if it would be a good idea if there were. This little spell, or petit mal, or whatever it was, would pass in a few moments. She had seen it before. It had started a few years after her father had died, although there wasn’t necessarily a connection there beyond age. Ellie had been a late child, her parents in their forties when she was born. The spells didn’t happen often. After one passed, her mother would be fine, sometimes for weeks. That didn’t make it any less disturbing when it happened.

  The doctors had made some vague diagnoses, hooked her up to an electroencephalograph, done scans, and prescribed drugs, but until they caught one of these little microseizures while she was wired up to an EEG or in the middle of a PET scan, they couldn’t say anything definite and didn’t want to give her anything stronger. After all, most of the time she was just fine. Except for the AVO restriction she now had on her driver’s license: Autonomous Vehicles Only. Ellie didn’t get the point of that; why issue the license at all? Although, there was less of a stigma to that than to having the license pulled altogether.

  “Ellie! There you are.” Her mother was back from wherever it was she had gone. “Just put your coffee cup in the sink, sweetie. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Uh, thanks, Mom. Are you okay?”

  “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “No reason.” Ellie knew from painful experience that her mother would have no memory of the episode, and it would only stress her to bring it up.

  “And why are you moping around the house? You should get out.”

  “I’ve got studying to do.”

  “Well, then go study on campus. Go to your lab. You’re not going to meet people sitting at home.”

  Ellie wondered how much of what she had said earlier about going to the lab had filtered into her mother’s subconscious. This wasn’t the first time something she’d said while her mom was seemingly oblivious had come up in conversation minutes later. Nor was it the first time that her mom had broadly hinted that Ellie ought to be “meeting people,” code for “finding a boyfriend.” Not that she had time for one right now. Her last one had been a massive time-sink, although she hadn’t thought so at first. She smiled at the memory. Nor was it entirely his fault.

  “Ellie, did you hear me?”

  “Yes mom, I was just thinking about it.” Her mother did seem fine now. “That’s a good idea. I’ll go to the lab. Do you need anything before I go?”

  “Don’t you fuss about me. I’ll be fine. Go, have fun.”

  Fun? Even when her mother was all there, she was still a bit out of it. But then Ellie figured that was true of most moms.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  At the University

  “Hey, Ellie, you’re going to want to hear this!” Jaydon Phillips said, bursting through the door to the lab, waving his omniphone.

  Ellie Greystone looked up, annoyed. Since it was a Saturday, she had hoped to have some peace and quiet. “Unless it’s directly related to my thesis, no, I’m probably not.” Jaydon was a fellow grad student who shared the lab.

  “Would you settle for indirectly related?” he said, grinning.

  Ellie sighed. When he got like this, he was insufferable. Or maybe it was her being stressed out. “Okay, what it is it?”

  “Another batch of announcements from the Alpha Centauri expedition.”

  “They
just left. Surely they’re not back already.”

  “No, the first expedition. They finally got around to reviewing and releasing some of the footage shot on personal omnis. I didn’t even know they had copies of that from the Anderson crew. Apparently some of them documented things with whatever camera was handy. They got video of life-forms that’s not in the official recordings.”

  Ellie perked up at that. There’d been considerable buzz around the biology department about how Earth-like the lifeforms were that the first expedition had found, both plant and animal. But the expedition hadn’t been equipped to do much in the way of marine biology beyond taking a few samples from the ocean surface. “So, what have you got?”

  Jaydon turned his omniphone towards her and said: “Take a look.”

  Ellie looked. The video was shaky, unsurprising if someone had captured it with a hand-held omni rather than the usual cameras the expedition had used. It showed leaves and branches against sky. It was difficult to make out detail because of the contrast, but the trees looked like a kind of mangrove or banyan, with aerial roots. There was something moving in the branches, although it wasn’t clear what.

  “So, they found some sort of monkey, or whatever that is in the trees,” she said. “So what?”

  Jaydon grinned widely. “Keep watching, it gets better.”

  She knew he wasn’t going to leave her alone until she’d watched the whole thing. She focused on the screen again. The animal, whatever it was, moved along the branch much like a monkey, hanging beneath the branch by its limbs. The tail was obviously prehensile too. While hanging there, it reached with two arms towards what might be a cluster of fruit. Wait, two arms? But it was holding onto the branch with...she could see at least four, no, five other limbs.

  “What the...” She grabbed the omni from his hands to look at it more closely. She froze the image. Despite the low contrast, she could just make out the arms or legs. One, two, three...that thing had seven limbs, all as prehensile as its tail. It couldn’t be! She hit play, and a moment later an eighth limb came into view. “No freaking way!”