Alexis Latner: The Life-Blood of the Land

Illustration by George H. Krauter

Earth had been a greenhouse, wrapped in dirty air that made dawn long and rosy. Not so this planet. Here, in the early morning, the home dome’s skylight let Mark see a square piece of pale, cloudless, bluish-green sky.

The new day highlighted the wrinkles on Evrett Reynolds’s face and hands. Ev cleared his throat. “Mark, you and your people are doing a good greening job here. But about this wild water chase of yours. Isn’t it time to give up?”

“No. It’s there, just deeper than we thought.” Reckless, Mark added, “I dreamed about it last night.”

A pained expression crossed Ev’s aged features. “You always were a dreamer.”

“So were you!”

“Not anymore,” Ev said. “I’ve got the whole godforsaken ecosphere to think about.”

When they left Earth, they had been the same age. Not anymore. Ev had been revived forty years ago, while Mark remained in the cold zone of the Starship, undreaming, unknowing and, for most practical purposes, dead. Ev had thrown himself into the work of the new world and climbed as far up as the ladder went. Ev became the World Director of Ecogenesis. And old. And unfamiliar.

Mark fumbled for a reasonably clean mug, which he filled with water. He put the mug into the microwave oven, antique but sturdy technology that worked well for its intended purpose.

“Rainwater runs off too fast,” said Mark, facing the oven instead of the old man who had once been his best friend. “The soil needs to be conditioned so it can hold water. Drygrass and associated microorganisms accomplish that. Lusher vegetation, more organisms, would do it faster. If we can find groundwater, bring it up and fix it in biomass—”

“But you haven’t found any.”

Mark opened the oven. Hot water vapor emerged, carrying a chemical stench. Behind him, Ev demanded, “What the hell was cooked in there last?”

“Drilling mud. They’re trying to adjust the additives for downhole conditions such as heat.”

“Is the mud made with water from your cisterns? Convince me your stinking mud isn’t a waste of water.”

Mark placed the mug beside the jar of instant coffee on the table in front of Ev. “The geologist thinks water migrated deep into the rocks in ages past and got trapped there.”

Stirring the coffee, Ev’s spoon rattled in the mug. “She probably just wants to get her hands on a long core sample.” He was a tired and decisive old man. It still unsettled Mark that Ev’s hair, the little left of it, had turned yellowish white, the remains of what had once been a blond mane.

Mark turned away from Ev to take a fly out of the mesh box in the refrigerator. He lifted the lid of the terrarium on the kitchen counter and dropped in the chilled fly. The golden garden spider in the terrarium waved its forelegs attentively, hungrily. Mark selected another fly. Today, two flies, not just one, for the glorious and hungry spider.

Ev asked, “Pet?”

“Our mascot. What we’re trying to do is weave the web of life across the land, strand by strand.”

“How deep is your hole in the ground now?”

“A couple of miles. The water will be under pressure.” Vividly dreaming in the dim earliest hours of this morning, that was what Mark had seen. “The water will spurt up out of the ground like a geyser and fall on the ground like rain out of a clear sky.”

“I can’t sell dreams to the Creation Council,” Ev retorted. “There are more promising places to drill for water. And a limited supply of drilling equipment.”

Thawed out, the flies buzzed in the terrarium, about to blunder into the orb-woven design of their destiny. The sound irritated Mark’s already strung-out nerves. He said tersely, “We’ve hit hard rock. Impermeable enough to trap water underneath. Hard stuff.”

“Let me guess. You need another drill bit.”

“A bit with diamond teeth,” Mark said softly.

“What! Damn your monomania! Mister, I don’t play favorites. You have gotten what you asked for, so far, because you’ve been doing good work out here in the blasted interior. Don’t blow it on a pipe dream!”

A sleep-rumpled resident of the dome started to enter the kitchen. Finding the Director of Ecogenesis sitting in there and vehement, he backed out. Mark was sure that interested ears would now be stretched toward the kitchen from the safety of the hallway. Mark felt himself flushing, hot and probably brick red. “Listen. Your job is the toughest in this world. You have to cover land with grass and forests. But where water should be easy to find, it isn’t. Or you get too much water too fast, like that hurricane that went inland and ruined the manioc plantations. There’ve been stupid decisions—mostly not yours—on top of good bets going bad, and the greening isn’t going so good.”

“Says who?” Ev asked curtly.

“I’m an ecologist. I can read the handwriting on the wall.” Mark wasn’t going to spell it out aloud—not with one of his people listening in the hallway. But he knew the truth.

The ship had been incredibly lucky, finding a planet where life already existed. Evolution here had gone as far as marine microorganisms. The shallow seas were full of plankton that had changed a primeval atmosphere to breathable air comprised of oxygen and nitrogen. All that lacked was to green the land. But that alone was harder than the children of gentle Earth had anticipated. The human and biological resources that the ship had brought from Earth were finite and dwindling. The greening of this world was Ming.

“Try a bad bet for once.” Mark listened to himself with a strange sense of detachment, as if his words were more real than his body. “Give me a diamond drill bit.”

Ev’s face contorted. It darkly fascinated Mark, how anger looked so ugly on that aged face.

Slowly, incredibly, the anger resolved into a grin, weirdly familiar, the grin of the bright-eyed kid on the other side of the stars. Ev said, “Hell, Mark, maybe you’re right. Maybe I have been hedging my bets too much for too long. Let me think about this. I might just give you what you want.”

In the achingly cold gray hour before sunrise, Mark watched an acre of grass bum. Fire spread like a puddle, exploring combustion possibilities in the sparse dry vegetation. Mark held a shovel poised to beat back the edge of the fire if it started moving too fast. Ten others, greeners who worked in his outfit, formed an arc of vigilance downwind from the fire. The heat felt good at this chilly time of day.

Beside Mark, the biologist Chang beat out a forked tongue of flame. “Watch it, boss,” Chang said. “If it gets out of control, and we have to call down the fire squad from the Ship, there’ll be the devil to pay.”

Mark evaluated the extent of the burn. Summer’s drought would soon end in fierce storms with lightning falling thicker than rain. The lightning never found the tinder to start a real conflagration, only small fires that puddled ahead of the prevailing wind. The firebreak was now big enough to thwart one like that. If worse came to worse, there were concrete cisterns buried in the ground, water saved from the last time the creek ran wet with storm runoff, with which to damp a wildfire. “Let’s put it out.” With his shovel, he threw dirt onto the flames. The greeners followed suit. Having smothered the fire, they sifted the ground for embers, mashing those they found to harmless bits of ash.

Somebody shouted, “Zeppelin!”

Like a pink pearl in the dawn-lit sky, the supply zeppelin approached from the distance, floating down toward its pier.