Chris Moriarty - Spin Control

“There’s no need to jump down his throat!” Aurelia snapped, interrupting whatever had been going on between Arkasha and Bella and foreclosing any chance at finding out what Arkasha’s “nasty insinuations” had been. Arkady smothered a sigh. He dearly loved Aurelias in general, and these Aurelias in particular…but their “help” in a consult was a burden he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

“Don’t browbeat me!” Bella cried, her attention momentarily deflected from Arkasha.

“ Browbeat her?” Aurelia’s sib muttered for Arkady’s ears only. “I wish we could horsewhip her.”

“Come on, people.” Laid-back Ahmed again. “Let’s focus on solutions, not fault finding.”

Arkady took a deep breath and plunged in. “Maybe the best solution really is just to check the numbers again. I’ll redo the DVI if Bella doesn’t have time. It’s no problem. Honestly.”

Laid-back Ahmed gave him an eloquently grateful look. The idea that doing a little extra work yourself was better than letting the social gears get squeaky was one of the many things Arkady and the big Aziz A had already discovered they saw eye to eye on.

“I don’t need you looking over my shoulder for mistakes,” Bella snapped at Arkady. She cast a venomous look toward Arkasha’s end of the table. “And don’t think I don’t know who put you up to this!”

“No one put me up to anything,” Arkady said, wondering what Arkasha could possibly have said to provoke such animosity. “I just meant that I have a little extra time and if you’re too busy to be able to go over the numbers again, I could…uh, help you.” Arkady did his best to make the offer sound supportive and unthreatening. Inside, however, he was having counterrevolutionary thoughts about whether some of those bad old repressive human political systems had found a way to make sure the decent hardworking people didn’t get the short end of the stick…and the bullies, prima donnas, and manipulators didn’t rise to the top like scum on milk.

Bella’s sib leaned over to whisper something in her ear. Whatever it was Bella didn’t like it much.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she cried. “Why are you turning against me?”

“I’m not. I just—”

“It’s not fair! Why isn’t anyone asking if it’s Aurelia’s analysis and not my readings that are wrong? Why are you all so ready to believe her and turn against me? Because she’s an A and I’m a B, that’s why!”

“Because she knows her job and you don’t, you moron,” Aurelia’s sib muttered—thankfully too softly for anyone but Arkady to hear.

“She has a point,” By-the-Book Ahmed said. “Why aren’t we considering the possibility that the numbers are good and the, uh…what did you call it just now, Arkady?…the ground truth is different than what we thought it would be?”

“Because…” Aurelia said, and trailed off helplessly.

Arkady and every other science track A sitting around the table knew what that “because” stood for. Because the numbers Bella had come up with were flat-out impossible. Because we didn’t come all the way out here to run a basic ecophysics course. Because we all have too much work to do to waste our collective time explaining to Bella why if she knew her ass from her elbow she’d know her numbers were wrong.

But of course the Ahmeds knew even less about terraforming than Bella did. All they knew was that they had a bunch of temperamental techs and scientists at each other’s throats. And in the absence of technical knowledge, they could only fall back on their knowledge of their fellow crewmates. By-the-Book Ahmed sided with Bella because she flattered and deferred to him and was the only crewmember who didn’t display “lack of motivation” by bridling under his beloved shipboard duty roster. Laid-back Ahmed followed his basic philosophy—fair in most disputes but disastrous in this case—of trying to get the combatants to split the difference and compromise.

“I agree,” Laid-back Ahmed said. “I mean there’s no reason not to consider every possibility, is there?”

The science track A’s greeted this with stunned silence. One of the Aurelias coughed. Arkasha fidgeted.

“The thing is,” one of the Banerjees said cautiously, “that if these numbers were right, it would mean we were looking at a planet that already had large contiguous regions of its surface in a state of biogeological climax.”

Both Ahmeds looked blank. Could they really have so little insight into what the survey and terraforming team was supposed to be doing once they hit planet surface? If so, they were going to be deadweight as soon as the team made planetfall. Worse than deadweight if they began meddling in survey decisions they didn’t understand. Something had gone very wrong in the mission preplanning, Arkady realized. And he felt a bitter little seed of resentment over the planning failures lodge somewhere close to his heart.

“So what you’re saying is that Bella’s numbers are better than we thought they’d be,” By-the-Book Ahmed said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s not a question of better or worse,” the other Banerjee began.

“Then what is it a question of? Why can’t we get straightforward answers out of you people?”

“Because we don’t have them. This isn’t calculating a launch window or the bearing strength of an I-beam. There’s no simple answer.”

“Then how do you know Bella’s wrong?”

“Because…”

“I don’t think you’re hearing us,” Aurelia said. “This planet shouldn’t be here.”

“Then where should it be?” Laid-back Ahmed asked blandly.

“I meant—” Aurelia began. And then she saw the joke. “Oh for God’s sake, Ahmed, be serious!”

“I am serious. I just think we’re getting a little overheated. No one’s trying to put you on the hot seat. Just give us the general picture in laymen’s terms.”

But of course Rostov A’s were not used to dealing with people who needed to be given the general picture in laymen’s terms…and for the first time in his life Arkady was beginning to see that in the wrong circumstances the very strength of the Rostov genelines might be a liability.

“For instance,” Laid-back Ahmed said, “how do these numbers compare to Gilead?”

“Basically,” Arkady said, “they don’t.”

“So it’s further along than Gilead? Is that impossible?”

“No…um…Gilead’s not a useful comparison.”

“Why not?”

“Because…well…Gilead gives you large contiguous areas of ‘terraformed’ surface. But they’re all being artificially held away from ecological climax in order to keep boosting the volatiles. That gives you a very recognizable volatiles profile, especially in the free nitrogen. Gilead is a textbook-perfect best-scenario case of terraforming on the numbers. But the numbers Bella’s getting for Novalis aren’t that at all. They’re…well, they’re nonsense. There are no comps for those numbers.”

Something moved in Arkady’s peripheral vision.

Arkasha.

He was sliding his thick stack of printouts across the table toward the Ahmeds.

“Yes, there are,” he said. “Right here.”

By-the-Book Ahmed grabbed the printouts and squinted at them.

“Is this another one of your practical jokes?” he asked accusingly. He and Arkasha had already come dangerously close to locking horns twice—both times over what By-the-Book Ahmed referred to as Arkasha’s “too smart to follow the rules” attitude.

Arkasha’s only answer to Ahmed’s question was a dismissive shrug.

Arkady craned his neck to read the heading on the printed page across the table. When he finally managed to decipher it, he decided that Ahmed was right. It must be a joke. It said: