Bothwell Gage certainly hadn’t left Solferino. He had emerged from the building to the right, and he was waving his arms excitedly in the air. The sound of engines was louder. It came from a cargo aircar, settling down fifty yards behind the orbital lander.
While they all watched, the bigger vehicle rolled steadily forward and came to a halt. The engine whine ceased. The carpet of dense purple vegetation beneath, flattened by powerful downward jets of air, sprang back upright.
A strange and profound stillness fell on the clearing.
The contrast between two people could not have been greater. Josh knew that if Bothwell Gage had been left in charge on Solferino, Sig and Sapphire between them would have eaten the helpless biologist alive.
With the new arrival, though, it was obvious in the first two minutes that nothing like that would happen. They later learned that Solomon Brewster was employed as a scientist and settlement manager, but with his height, deep chest, and huge arms, he looked more like a street bruiser. His hair and eyebrows were pale blond, contrasting with dark and penetrating eyes. Josh saw Sig Lasker make a quick evaluation and come to attention. Sig was going to take the man very seriously.
The new arrival glared at the group as though they had no right to exist. His first words were, “What the devil are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting anyone for another week.”
“A fortunate accident of timing.” Bothwell Gage tried a smile, which was not returned. “I was on Solferino two years ago, with the first exploration party. Now I happen to be on my way to Merryman’s Woe, and the Foodlines staff coordinators decided that it would be economical and convenient if I accompanied this group as far as Solferino.”
“Convenient to whom?” Brewster scowled. “Not to me, that’s for sure. Come on. You and I need a minute or two of private talk.”
The two men disappeared into one of the buildings. Josh and the others had no idea what was said there, but when they emerged again, after much more than a couple of minutes, Bothwell Gage seemed to vanish into the background. Josh didn’t even notice him leave, although later in the day he saw that the small lander was gone.
“I’m going to be responsible for training all of you in addition to my other duties,” Brewster said, as soon as the group was settled inside the building. “Let’s start with names. Mine is Solomon Brewster. My friends call me ‘Sol.’ You can call me ‘Sir.’ What’s your name.” He pointed a thick finger at Sig.
“Sig Lasker.”
“Sig Lasker, sir. Is that your full name?”
Sig hesitated. “No.”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir.”
“Better. What is your full name?”
“It’s Siegfried Lasker.”
“All right. You.” The finger jabbed at Hag.
Hag swallowed. “Hagen Lasker. Sir.”
“And you, the next one?”
Rick looked miserably at his twin brother. “Alberich Lasker. Sir, I’d rather be called Rick.”
“I don’t blame you. Siegfried, Hagen, Alberich.” Brewster glanced from one Lasker brother to the next. “Three characters from a Wagner opera. What is it, your parents are opera freaks? People who give their kids weird names ought to be shot.”
The three brothers nodded in vigorous agreement.
“All right.” Brewster moved on to Ruby. “How about you?”
“Ruby Karpov, sir.”
“Nice and normal. Very good. That’s the way to answer.” He pointed to Amethyst. “And you?”
While the Karpov sisters squirmed and looked for ways to avoid sounding like a jewelry catalog, Josh breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever his mother’s sins, she had not cursed him with an eccentric name. Given her interests and the names from plays that he had heard thrown about since he was old enough to remember anything, he might easily have finished up as Willy Loman Kerrigan, or Hamlet Kerrigan. When his turn came he was able to speak his own name with confidence. “Joshua Kerrigan, sir.”
“Very good,” said Brewster. He went straight on from Josh to Dawn. “And your name?”
She took no notice of him at all.
“She’s called Dawn,” Josh said. “I don’t think she’ll talk to you.”
“Talk to you, sir. Anyway, you weren’t being asked. What do you think you are, her keeper?” But Sol Brewster’s question was almost absentminded. He was much more interested in examining Dawn. “So this is the autistic one.”
That statement told Josh several things at once. Since Brewster knew that Dawn was autistic, he probably knew plenty more about the group. That was to be expected, if he was going to be in charge of them.
More important, Brewster had pretended not to know anything. He had deliberately embarrassed the others by making them state their full names when they obviously didn’t want them talked about. Even the “very normal” comment when Ruby Karpov gave her name lost its innocence, if Brewster knew what was coming with the other sisters.
Why would anyone do things like that? Presumably, to show who was the boss. But it also suggested a big mean streak.
Josh wondered if Sig Lasker had read that on his first sight of Sol Brewster. It was a wise decision to be careful how you dealt with the man.
Brewster had apparently had enough fun with names. His attention was now moving elsewhere. “We’ll stay here for a few days,” he said, “to get you used to Solferino air and gravity. Then we’ll travel farther afield. I’ll outline the program for each of you tomorrow, but there’s some things that can’t wait. Like, who made that mess in the kitchen and didn’t bother to clean it up? The place looks like it’s been struck by lightning.”
Josh caught Topaz’s eye. Everyone had been eating when the cargo aircar arrived with Brewster on board, and there had been no time to think of clearing dishes. Topaz opened her mouth, but when Josh shook his head she had enough sense not to say anything.
“I don’t care who did it,” Brewster went on. “All of you can fix it—and soon.” He stared at the group again and seemed to come to some decision. “Before you get to clearing up, though, I want to say a few more words. You are probably wondering just what’s been going on here in the settlement. I’m sure you could tell that Professor Gage was having a fit when he found this place empty, with nobody to hand you over to.
“That was my doing. I’m in charge here, and a few days ago I made a decision. I took everyone at this installation to orbit, then sent them on to the main Grisel system medical center for detailed evaluation. That’s why I wasn’t here to greet you. Before you begin to panic, let me assure you that there was nothing wrong with anyone. Quite the reverse, in fact. During the past seven months of operations of this facility, there has been not a single case of sickness. Not even minor ailments. You may not realize how strange that is, with a total of forty-five people present. The on-site medical computers claim it’s a one-in-a-billion chance.
“But it goes beyond that. People on Solferino found their old problems disappearing. I’m not just talking about things that might be easily explained, like allergic reactions. Cures like that might be caused by a change in plant and animal allergens. We had half a dozen far more peculiar events. A man with a long-term digestive problem found that he could eat anything with no aftereffects. A woman who had been told she could never have children, married to a man who three times had been declared completely infertile, became pregnant—you can imagine what sort of a shock that was for everybody. I noticed that scars on my own face that I’d had since a skating accident when I was fourteen were fading and vanishing. Other people told me the same thing, the signs of old injuries were disappearing. I finally decided that it was time for people to visit a more advanced medical center when the teeth of the oldest person here started to fall out—and a new set began to grow in.”