“Sounds like him,” Cadzie said, relentless now. “What is it?”
“Where is he?”
“I can find him. But you’re going to tell me what this is about.”
“Not over the radio,” Carlos said. “This has to be secure. Come here and see me. If you’ll be my personal envoy, I’ll share the information.” Muy mysterioso.
Cadzie rubbed his stubbled chin. What could be so important? Surely his honorary uncle could set up firewalls on Cassandra to protect the line . . but no, Cass had been in decline for at least a decade, and she was riddled with hacks. Every kid in the colony made his bones penetrating her security. It was a joke.
“You’re killing me.”
“And?”
“And . . I’ll be there in an hour.” Cadzie groaned, then killed the link and searched beside and under his bed for his muddy boots.
Everything creaked. Hadn’t he been able to climb all day and party all night, not so long ago?
Hell, he was getting old, too.
♦ ChaptEr 2 ♦
the dam
Just three hours later, Cadzie was gliding above a white-capped eastern sea, navigating 300 kilometers to the mainland in Blue Three, his favorite autogyro. What Uncle Carlos had shared with him sent his head buzzing hotter than the 100-hp engine blurring the rotors. He was so lost in thought that he barely noticed when the engine began to sputter.
“Damn!” A quick check of the panel right above eye level indicated sixty percent pressure in the fuel line. He adjusted the liquid hydrogen flow, pushing it up to the red line to pressure past the obstruction. It was dangerous, flirting with overload, but he would rather blow a housing later than risk crash-landing in the ocean now. He was equipped to deal with anything the land had to offer, but some of the inhabitants of the deep seas remained a lethal mystery.
Fortunately, that seemed to do it. After another few minutes he felt he had things under control and backed off on the pressure, and ten minutes after that, he sighted the saw-toothed coastal mountains and breathed a sigh of relief.
He touched the control panel. “Horseshoe Landing, this is Blue Three, Cadmann Sikes.”
No answer. He was about to call again when he heard, “Horseshoe Landing here. Go ahead, Cadzie.”
Cadzie thought he recognized the voice but he wasn’t certain. Didn’t matter. “Sikes here with message for Joanie. Landing in five minutes.”
By formal agreement, priority knowledge must be shared between the different branches of the increasingly splintered colony. No one was really “in charge” of the human beings on Tau Ceti IV, but there were recognized group leaders who had to be the first to know about important matters. Carlos learned things first because that’s who the AI they called Cassandra told them to. According to all accounts, Carlos had once been a self-indulgent man, only recently trying to live up to his role as de facto head of the colony centered on Camelot Island, but he was the closest thing to a leader they had.
The radio crackled. Nasal voice. “Come on, Cadzie. Spill. What’s the big secret?”
“Not this time. This one is for Aaron.” He had to see Aaron Tragon, and see him directly. The notion of talking to the man who had murdered his grandfather always tightened his stomach, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Horseshoe Dam was designed along the same basic lines as the one at Earth’s Niagara Falls in the northeastern United States, but about half the size and capacity. Cassandra and the Earthborn who had been to Niagara said so; the Starborn didn’t care.
Cadzie had observed every step in its construction, and it was an awe-inspiring sight. Ten thousand tons of crushed rock rendered to concrete poured over a steel frame, the steel smelted from iron ore dug out of the Snowcone Mountains a hundred and fifty miles northeast. It had taken ten years to build it, but within months it would come online for the very first time.
And its power would be the heart of the mainland colony, once it rooted fully and began to spread its tendrils. All the power they would need for a generation without functional Minerva engines or any of the slowly failing fusion systems. It was a major step toward independence from nuclear technology with minimum effects on the Avalon ecology, and had been agreed to by nearly everyone.
He buzzed Horseshoe, and then settled down onto the X-marked landing pad, just south of the roaring, churning maelstrom of the falls.
The sun had crested the eastern horizon less than an hour ago, but the mini-colony was already alive. A real contrast with Surf’s Up, where it was unusual to hear a human voice much before noon.
A dark-haired, light-skinned man a year or two younger than Cadzie came out of the ops shack, and began tethering the autogyro without being asked.
Cadzie got out to assist. “Where’s Joan?”
The Starborn, a bulky tech-head nicknamed “Toad,” helped him down from the Skeeter. Cadzie could never remember the real name. Martin? Marvin? His last name was Stolzi. He possessed a broad, rubbery frame that was deceptively athletic: he could dog-paddle for hours. In addition to being a jack-of-all-technical-trades, Marvin was certainly the best Minerva—astronautic—pilot still active, and probably would soon be the only one. Few born on Avalon had much interest in going to space. It used too many resources, and there was too much to do here below.
Stolzi was the exception. “Toad” popped up anywhere in the colony there was an interesting problem to solve, but he had never lost his sense of wonder about space. Probably inherited it, Cadzie thought.
Toad jerked his thumb toward the top of the concrete tower a hundred meters north. “She’s in the control room.” Nasal voice: the guy on the call.
Cadzie started the long climb up the concrete steps. One day, they’d have an elevator, but no hurries; they didn’t need elevators for those born on Avalon, and they didn’t need Earthborn in their power room. This project was all Starborn; no Earthborn had participated in it. Cadzie felt a twinge of pride as he viewed the Kong-size curved concrete wall.
We built this! Of course, his part in the project had mostly been designing its sewage works. But that was a vital activity even if no one else wanted to do it,
The tonnage of water cascading across the dam’s lip was an ear-numbing thunderstorm. He climbed scaffolding and steps slashed into the cliff face until he reached a steel door leading him into the rock itself. The air within was moist, bracing, prickled his skin. Echoes shivered the air, the rock walls were slimed with condensation.
He climbed two flights to reach the control room overlooking the waterfall. The woman engaged with the main control panel was tall and broad-shouldered, a golden mixture of Aaron Tragon’s Nordic genes and something more Mediterranean. Sun-bronzed, she moved with what Little Shaka had once referred to as “an explosive delicacy.” She was Joan Tragon, and since her childhood they had never encountered each other without tension.
A hearing board had ruled Aaron “Not At Fault” in Cadmann Weyland’s death, and the colony accepted that in a vote that wasn’t even close, a vote in which Cadzie had been far too young to cast a ballot. All the same, Aaron was responsible for Cadmann’s death. Cadzie had never been able to put aside the fact that jolly Joanie was the killer’s daughter.
When she turned, her emerald eyes narrowed. Joan had been one of the regulars hanging around Cadmann’s Bluff as a child, greedily devouring Sylvia’s wisdom or Mary Ann’s ice-cactus cookies. So familiar she was almost a stepsister. But despite his two grandmothers’ urging to forgive her parentage, he had never fully warmed to her. As a natural consequence Joan was equally wary of him.