In the old days, astronomers had talked about “first light”—the fresh view through a brand-new optical instrument. Zoe had looked at Isis through every kind of optical instrument, barring her own eyes. Now she wanted that direct view, her own personal first light.
Instead, she had spent three days in the IOS’s infirmary under useless observation and a week haunting her assigned cabin while waiting for a place on the duty roster. Ten days from decantation, ten days without orders, agenda, or more than a brief word from management. She had seen to date only the gently concave walls and steel floors of her cubby and the recovery ward in Medical. The sole official communications she had received were a list of meal hours, an access code, her residence number, and a name badge.
Consequently, Zoe summoned her courage and scheduled an appointment with Kenyon Degrandpre, the outpost manager. She was awed at her own impertinence. Probably she should have talked to her section chief first… but no one had told her who her section chief was or how to find him.
The Isis Orbital Station had been assembled from the shells of early model Higgs spheres in a ring-of-pearls configuration. The maps posted on the corridor walls reminded Zoe of the benzene rings illustrated in chemistry texts, with the outpost’s fusion bottles and heat exchangers projecting like complex side chains from the symmetrical core. On the morning of her appointment with Degrandpre, Zoe left her tiny cabin at the bottom of Habitat Seven and walked the ring corridor a kilometer spinward, nearly half the total circumference of the IOS. The ring corridor smelled of hot metal and cycled atmosphere, like a Kuiper habitat, but without the ever-present tang of ice in the air. Bulkhead doors loomed like massive guillotine blades; the gangways were narrow and possessed arm nor windows. This place was not as emotionally and culturally blank as Phoenix had been, but neither was it a typical Kuiper world, full of color and noisy with children. The Terrestrial esthetic prevailed: linear functionality, enforced by strict cargo limitations.
Windows were a luxury, Zoe supposed. According to the IOS plan she’d reviewed on her terminal, the project manager’s office possessed one of the station’s few accessible direct-view windows, a wedge of three-inch-thick polarized glass set into the exterior wall. The rest of the station’s windows were tiny ports cut into the docking bays, an area for which Zoe was not yet authorized. But that was irrelevant, she told herself. She had business with Degrandpre. The window was just… a perquisite.
From the name, she had expected someone almost Family—weren’t there Degrandpres among the Brazilian landholders?—but Kenyon Degrandpre was not a handsome or an imposing man. A manager of some rank, but never Family. His head was too long, his nose too flat. Zoe’s experience with the upper echelons of the Trusts had taught her that handsome managers might be capable of a certain generosity; ugly men—although Degrandpre didn’t quite fit that description either, at least not by Terrestrial standards—were more likely to read regulations and nurse grudges. She knew for a fact, had known all her life, that rigid personalities were a staple in the bureaucracies of the Trusts. But surely the man who managed the Isis Orbital Station, in effect the Isis Project itself, must be more flexible. Mustn’t he?
Maybe not. Degrandpre raised his big head briefly and waved Zoe to a chair, but his attention remained on his desktop.
Zoe stood near the window instead. It wasn’t much of a window. She supposed the brutal payload limitations of the Higgs launchers made even this small luxury prohibitively expensive. Still, here was her first genuinely direct view of the planet below. Un-mediated light, Zoe thought excitedly. First light.
The IOS had just crossed the planet’s terminator. The long light of dawn picked out clouds in vivid chiaroscuro. Across the dark zone, lightning nickered, embers on velvet.
Zoe had seen planets before. She had seen Earth from orbit, a view not dissimilar. She’d spent a year on Europa learning pressure lab technique, and the vast orb of Jupiter had filled more of the sky far more dramatically.
But this was Isis. That glitter of sunlight came from a star not Earth’s. Here was a living world that had never seen a naked human footprint, a world strange and alive, rich with biology; a swarming waterdrop orbiting a foreign sun. As lovely as Earth. And infinitely more deadly.
“Is there an issue,” Degrandpre said at last, “or have you come to stare? You wouldn’t be the first, Citizen Fisher.”
Degrandpre’s voice had the bite of Terrestrial authority. His English was finely honed. Zoe thought she heard a touch of Beijing Elite School in the understated consonants.
She took a breath. “I’ve been here ten days. Apart from the Habitat Seven physical regime director and the cafeteria staff, I haven’t spoken to anyone in authority. I don’t know who to report to. The people who are supposed to oversee my work directly are all on-planet—which is where I ought to be.”
Degrandpre tapped his stylus and sat back in his chair. His clothing was sere gray, the inevitable kacho uniform, a stiff black collar framing his thick peasant neck. Wooden chair, wooden desk, a plush, carpet, and a multilayered dress uniform; all of this would have been shipped from Earth, at an expense Zoe shuddered to consider. He asked, “Do you feel neglected?”
“No, not neglected. I just wanted to make certain—”
“That we haven’t forgotten you.”
“Well … yes, Manager.”
Degrandpre continued to tap his stylus against the desktop, a sound that made Zoe think of ice cracking in a warm glass. He seemed as much amused as irritated. “Let me ask you this, Citizen Fisher. In an outpost of this size, with every gram accounted for and every sou budgeted, do you really suppose people get lost?”
She reddened. “I wasn’t thinking of it that way.”
“In the last six weeks, we’ve conducted four shuttle exchanges with, the downstations. Each exchange calls for lengthy quarantine and elaborate sterile docking protocols. Flights are scheduled months m advance. You people arrive thinking the Higgs launch was the bottleneck and that a trip downside must be a holiday jaunt by comparison. Not so. I’m aware of your presence and your purpose, and you have a place, obviously, on the rotation Est. But our first priority has to be resupply and maintenance. You must understand that.”
But you knew I was coming, Zoe thought. Why didn’t the schedule reflect that? Or had there been delays she didn’t know about? “Beg pardon, Manager Degrandpre, but I haven’t even seen an agenda. When am I scheduled to drop?”
“You’ll be notified. Is that all?”
“Well… yes, sir.” Now that she’d looked through the window.
Degrandpre eyed his rapidly scrolling desktop. “I have a delegation from Yambuku waiting outside. People you’ll be working with. You might as well stay and listen. Meet your colleagues.” He said this as if he had made a grand concession. Planned, of course, in advance. It was one of those kacho maneuvers the bureaucrats loved so much. Surprise the opposition; never be surprised.
Zoe said, “Yambuku?”
“Downstation Delta. Delta is called Yambuku; Gamma is Marburg.”
“Yambuku” and “Marburg” were the first identified strains of the hemorrhagic fever that had devastated twenty-first-century Earth. A microbiologist’s joke. Most likely a Kuiper microbiologist’s joke. The Terrestrial sense of humor was limited in that department.
“Sit,” Degrandpre said. “Pay attention. Try not to talk. You may continue looking out the window if you like.”