Page 6 of Stellar Drift
Houyen agreed with the CGC foundation laws that established and maintained the nature reserves and preserves on each of the five-hundred-plus member planets.He wouldn’t have a career, otherwise.And allowing biodiversity to flourish in the semi-controlled environment of terraformed planets made good sense, especially since it was key to future successful terraforming when they discovered new suitable planets.But he’d never understood why responsibility for them ended up with the Citizen Protection Service.
“Find something better to do with your time.Something on your official list of duties.”Matsurgan glared.“Obsessions are dangerous.They’d be grounds for a mandatory evaluation by the CPS mind shop in Eolium.”
“Yes, sir.”He pasted a penitent look on his face.Houyen had been recruited by the CPS at age seventeen, so he had nearly thirty years of experience placating commanders and chiefs with a seemingly respectful and compliant body demeanor.It tanked that he’d needed to hone that skill to keep his career, but life was full of tradeoffs.Such as having a meaningful job even though it precluded anything more than fleeting relationships, let alone a family.Even though he dreamed of leaving the service, and had even looked into how to just disappear, the CPS would never let him go.He’d tested too high in his minder talent, even though an affinity for plants was about as benign an active talent as there was.A talent so useless to the CPS that they didn’t even bother developing enhancement drugs for it.
Besides, Matsurgan wouldn’t follow through with the threat unless Houyen openly defied him.As far as he could tell, Matsurgan had jetted past burnout into cynically numb a couple of decades ago.The man either didn’t notice or care that ranger morale was setting new lows with each passing year of understaffing and underfunding.As a consequence, rangers in the Makaan Nature Reserve could pretty much do — or not do — as they pleased.
If Houyen's intuition was right, several of them were engaging in self-enrichment and self-indulgence at the expense of the Reserve's resources and residents.At Ryaksha base, Ranger Melekir was so close to retirement that she was counting down the hours.Ranger Torishi was probably harvesting and selling rare plants to unregulated pharma startups for profit.Delacallo liked pursuing her hot-connect hobby far better than she liked patrolling the reserve.Polar glaciers moved faster than Ranger Brannezzo’s audit of Falco Joro's construction plans, though that could be malicious compliance to protest a task that wasn’t supposed to be his job.The permits said Joro was building a resort for the ultra-wealthy, but satellite images made it look more like a fortress.Brannezzo, who made no secret of detesting field work, practically lived in Eolium, the north continent’s megacity, where the planet’s regional planning office was located.Half the ranger station’s budget probably went to Matsurgan’s trips up north and Brannezzo’s hotel bills.
Houyen wished that whatever part of him noticed these things and drew these usually accurate conclusions would just leave him alone.He had a few scars from learning the hard way that, unless he acted to protect himself, coworkers who got caught would drag everyone into their maelstrom.
Houyen gave himself a mental shake and tried to catch up with what Matsurgan was saying.
“...and I want to see your report before–”
Two tones sounded, and Barken’s voice came through the deskcomp.“It’s seventeen-thirty hours, sir.”
Matsurgan all but pounded the control.“Yes, Admin Barken, I know what farkin’ time it is.”He turned his glare on Houyen.“Dismissed.If you need a project, fix whatever is wrong with the hydroponics demonstration room.Whatever you did before didn’t last.Now it looks like it got frost-bit or something.”
“Yes, sir.”Houyen rose and nodded respectfully, then pivoted on one foot to make a smart, military-style turn and headed toward the doors, which irised open quietly.With an equally respectful nod at Barken as he strode past the man’s desk, he kept up his purposeful march until he got back to his quarters.
He waited until the doors closed to release his control.Exhaustion slammed like a bucket of cold water, making his shoulders sag and his eyelids droop.He barely had enough energy to set the do-not-disturb seal on his room, kick off his boots, and tumble onto the bed.
He awoke to the gentle sound of birdsong and a coppery taste in his mouth.As he rolled onto his back, he draped an arm over his head to protect his gritty, sticky eyes from the bright overhead lights.
The chirping became louder and more insistent.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled.“I’m awake.”That was a lie, but it got the bedroom’s wallcomp to fade out the morning wake-up sequence.
It felt like breaking out of a cocoon just to fight free of the light blanket so he could swing his legs off the bed and sit up.Every joint in his body felt like he hadn’t used it for a month.He fumbled in his bedside drawer for the pack of pain patches and slapped one on his neck, hoping it would kick his headache’s ass and take names.
According to the clock display, he’d lost another twelve hours of his life.At least this interlude was explainable and hadn’t brought more dreams.
Being a ranger had its benefits, and one of them was the freedom to arrange his day however he liked, especially with Matsurgan gone again.His only deadline was the ten-day report.It would take him all of ten minutes to clone a previous report, change the dates, add a sanitized sentence about the meeting four… no, five days ago, and send it off as usual.
For his own personal records, he would describe everything he could remember about the meeting.It would torque Matsurgan’s jets if he knew Houyen recorded detailed data and observations about all his projects.And he’d go supernova if he discovered the small hypercube of data Houyen had collected on infinity fever.Houyen was convinced that the source was a periodic insect infestation.He wasn’t a finder, able to pull patterns out of thin air, but this one he could almost feel once he’d put the data together.
Thanks to Matsurgan, Houyen couldn’t ask the region’s entomologist and insect-affinity minder for help, but he knew one of the locals had a similar, if lower-level, talent.He’d proposed an expedition to the three river towns to look for the breeding ground, since they knew the terrain better than he did.They’d agreed in principle, but wanted to think about it and ask Sairy her opinion.According to them, she had better maps than anyone.
That had been the last discussion topic before he’d left the meeting in Irakat.Maybe that was why he’d dreamed of her.
Because his full bladder insisted, he stood up and tested his balance, then walked out of the bedroom and into the fresher.According to the mirror, he looked better than yesterday, but according to his nose, he didn’t smell any better.Though that was likely because he’d left his muddy clothes in a heap on the floor next to the solardry unit instead of loading them in the sanitizer to work its magic.Roughing it in the field for days and weeks at a time as part of his job had given him an abiding appreciation of civilization’s modern conveniences.Nothing like a diet of military mealpacks to bring home the luxury of a high-end restaurant.Maybe if he ever left the ranger service, he could start a career nurturing plants for the food-service industry.At least he’d eat well.
After a shower and a successful raid of the community kitchen, he took his mixed bounty back to eat in his quarters.Once he’d mollified his stomach, he set himself up for a deep dive into the ranger service records.
His first question was easily answered.No one named Sairy had ever signed a cooperative agreement with the Makaan Nature Reserve in the last ninety years.Furthermore, no new agreements had been signed by anyone at all in Irakat Collective or the nearest eight towns in the last decade.
That wasn’t entirely surprising.Agreements weren’t required for locals who weren’t taking and profiting from the natural resources, and registered families often didn’t list individuals so they wouldn’t have to keep updating the agreement every time they had a child or a cousin left for school.The few government entities at any level that might have cared had lost track of those citizens long ago.Trade and barter systems were exempt from taxes because they were impossible to track.
Answers to his second question took every bit of stubbornness he possessed.The financial and logistics records were decent, but everything else in the ranger service records made a twisted tangle of parasitic plant roots seem neat and orderly.An alarming percentage of them were misfiled, mis-tagged, or missing altogether.If they’d ever been cross-referenced, the keys were long gone.The only good news was that he’d already been collecting data on infinity fever whenever he ran across it.Unlike the ranger records, his own were well organized and thoroughly indexed.That habit had saved his career more than once.
The sweet, clean taste of orange during breakfast had given him an unexpected feeling ofdéjà vu, followed by a sudden intuition that maybe his missing four days had been lost to infinity fever.He didn’t know why, but it felt right.
To prove it, he needed to know what the symptoms were.That had been a good enough reason to delve the depths of the ranger records, but he had to admit Matsurgan’s determined denial was an added incentive.Houyen had always had a contrary streak.
He certainly wasn’t a medic, but he was a scientist and could apply logic to the problem.He started by documenting what he remembered of the meeting in Irakat Collective, because after a good night’s sleep, his memory had improved.While his minder talents didn’t include being a filer, with perfect recall of everything he had ever experienced, he had taught himself to keep memories organized in his head until he could write them down.
The fog of the missing days made it seem like it had been at least a ten-day since that meeting, so he just recorded his thoughts in random order.His idea to find the breeding ground and Sairy Sarvand’s knowledge of the area topped the list.He hadn’t known her family name until the Irakat administrator mentioned it.Not that it mattered to anyone but him, but he liked the sound of it.
