Chapter Four
Josh had asked Dr. Ergan—twice. On the way back to Burnt Willow Farm he asked Dawn a hundred rimes more, with no particular hope of getting a sensible answer. What was all this about going into space? Might they be going farther yet, through the node network?
The doctor could provide little information beyond what she had already shown them. She did mention that the medical appointment hadn’t been scheduled long ago, as Josh had assumed. Aunt Stacy had made it that very morning, for both of them. She had said it was urgent, without saying why. As for Dawn, whatever she might know about Aunt Stacy’s action, she either could not or would not tell it.
All the way home Josh couldn’t think of anything else. It must have something to do with yesterday’s talk during dinner. Solferino: the planet where Foodlines had biological exploration and exploitation rights, and the place where Uncle Ryan could get as much land as he wanted—if he wanted it, which he didn’t seem to. Josh had never heard of Solferino before, but if it was on the edge of the Messina Dust Cloud, as Uncle Ryan said, then the only way that anyone could get there was by transitions through the node network.
It was dark when the PV finally dropped them off and Josh could hurry Dawn along the slope that led to Burnt Willow Farm. Actually, it was much more the other way round. Josh wanted to hurry, but the half-moon was low in the sky and he could see little more than vague shadows. It was Dawn, somehow realizing that he wanted to get home quickly, who took his hand and steered him down a path that she must have known by heart. Had she done this many times before, in the dark? Or was her visual memory so strong that she had a full mental picture of the whole hillside stored away inside her head, like a three-dimensional map?
They reached the farmhouse—at last. Josh rushed in, only remembering when he was at the kitchen door that he had forgotten to take off his shoes. Never mind, he’d take a chewing out gladly to learn what was going on.
He pushed the door wide and burst in. The smell of new-baked bread jumped out at him. The room was empty.
A casserole sat on an electric warming plate on the table. Next to it was a handwritten note:
Eat all you want. Bread in the oven. We got the report from Dr. Ergan, and are glad that you are in great shape. Don’t wait up for us—we’ll probably be really late. Love, Aunt Stacy.
PS. Please tell Dawn that her father and I give her a hug, and she mustn’t wait up for us, either.
Joshua was ready to explode with frustration and disappointment. Don’t wait up for us. He knew now how his mother must feel when a promised acting part didn’t come through, and she would pick up dinner plates and smash them to the ground.
He picked up two dishes from the sideboard. Instead of throwing them, he set them out with spoons at the table. Then he went across to open the oven and take out a loaf of bread almost too hot to hold. While he was juggling it to the table, Dawn finally came in. She was in her stocking feet. She said not a word, but came to his side, knelt down, and began to unfasten his shoes.
“Dawn, your father and—er”—What did Dawn call her stepmother?—“Stacy, they’ve gone out and they are going to be late home.” He cleared his throat. Dawn was still single-mindedly untying his shoes for him, as though she didn’t hear one word. “We’re supposed to help ourselves to food. They say, don’t wait up for them. And they send you their love.”
To his surprise, she nodded and said, “All right.”
A simple sentence. But it was her sentence—the first one that was not a direct quotation from someone else.
And apparently the last, too. All through dinner he could not get another word out of her. He babbled on about anything that came into his head, mostly himself. When they were finished he started for the data center, then wondered if it was safe to leave Dawn by herself in the kitchen. He went across, took her by the hand, and led her to the old dairy.
“Sit down. We’re going hunting.” He placed himself at her side and called for information about Solferino. There was nothing in the general data banks, other than a reference to an old battle three hundred years ago, in a country which had not even existed for more than a century. He didn’t follow that to the second level, but instead asked for information on the Messina Dust Cloud.
That was better. It was there. But the banks offered so much information, and much of it so technical, that he settled for the shortest and simplest overview that he could find.
Messina Dust Cloud (MDC): Identification, WGC 121,1336A. Mean diameter, 15 light-hours (16 billion km). The MDC is a body of dust and gas about the same size as the solar system, probably of artificial but otherwise unknown origin. It was discovered eighty-eight years ago, by virtue of its anomalous spectral emission lines. The MDC represents the only known source of stable transuranics, Cauthen starfires, and shwarzgeld (consult reference trails for each; attach P-files 1864-1897). Upon the opening of a network node within the MDC, thirty-nine years ago, the MDC became accessible from other nodes, including ones in the solar system Asteroid Belt and in the Kuiper Belt. The MDC was originally mined by independent harvesters and rakehells (P-files 1911-1921). Today, most MDC mining takes place under an exclusive development franchise granted to the Unimine syndicate. Cloud mining calls for special care and special equipment, while the cloud reefs and space sounders (P-file 2113) present their own peculiar dangers. Note: the term Messina Dust Cloud stars is often used to include those stars and their planetary systems close to and associated with the MDC, although not within it. There are eight such systems, five of them brown dwarfs, within four light-years of the MDC. Two of them now have their own network node.
Josh read through to the end and finished more puzzled than when he started. Transuranics and starfires and shwarzgeld? Harvesters and rakehells? He could chase after those references, and maybe he could even find them; but the biggest puzzle was that almost everything in the Messina Dust Cloud seemed to be about mining. Uncle Ryan had talked about farming, or at least about wildlife exploration, and he said that the development franchise was owned by Foodlines. According to the database, that was wrong. Some other syndicate that Josh had never heard of, Unimine, had development rights. Exclusive development rights. Didn’t that mean that no one else could have any?
He set up the search for Unimine.
Unimine: Universal Mining Enterprises. Founded a century ago, to mine the more difficult and dangerous regions of the Kuiper Belt, Unimine today conducts operations in the solar system, four node-accessible stellar systems, and the extended region of the Messina Dust Cloud. Specialties: deep body mining (defined for this purpose as forty or more kilometers beneath the surface. Examples: Titan, Caracol. See P-file 9172); ocean bottom mining (Examples: Europa [water,], Jestreen [molten iron]. See P-file 9363); regolith mining (Examples: Cauldron, Styx. See P-file 9461); Messina Dust Cloud trawling and reef harvesting (Examples: various. See P-file 9509); full-planet stripping and refining (Example: Nargol. See P-file 9544). Note: all these operations carry Personnel Hazard Level 6.0 or higher.
Josh leaned back, disheartened. He had missed something fundamental. Not one word about agriculture, or biological product development. And what was a “hazard level”? Presumably, some kind of a measure of great danger. Uncle Ryan could surely have told him what was going on in two seconds—if he were around to ask.