Confrontation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  The only reason I’m standing up for Liam right now is that I don’t agree with the plan. Being completely honest with myself, I would conceivably send him down to the space plane, too, as long as it was for something important to me.

  Liam tries to lighten my mood. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared. But how many crazy things have I done that worked out great? A TON!”

  “Can we at least do some testing in shallow water so we know you can get enough air through the pipe?” I didn’t even realize I was conceding until I was speaking.

  “Hey, I never thought of that,” Liam says and winks at me. “But seriously, Seamus, I want you to come with me in the raft. If anything goes wrong, I know you will figure something out to save the day.” Liam always mixes his jokes with sincere emotions.

  “This is a priority. Next time I see you, I want an answer on when you’ll be back,” Mike says. He turns and leaves us.

  “I’ve got a few more trees to drop for this session. If we test the breathing at the next rest session, we can go out during the following work session. I’ll meet you in the lake after dinner?” Liam asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer.

  I wish Sofie were near. She would know how to calm me down and come to terms with this. Maybe if I think like her, I can solve this myself?

  Thinking like Sofie means not thinking about my problems at all. It means that I should be thinking about how I can help Liam or seeing if there is anything I can do for Sofie. She wouldn’t come find me to help her; she would come find me to help me.

  To help her, I need to figure out what’s bothering her, though she’s told me more than once. I am supposed to think about her. Somehow I need to show that I am thinking about her. It’s so confusing.

  My best bet is probably to just go find her. It will be hard not to vent my frustration to her, but I have to try.

  Turning on my heel—I haven’t done that in a while—I start off toward Grace’s cabin. After two steps, my heart jumps; Sofie is standing directly in front of me. She doesn’t say anything, but gives me a half-hearted smile.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I say honestly and with a little surprise.

  “Yeah, Liam told me you were kind of worked up about him diving to the space plane.” She sighs softly.

  “Oh yeah, well, we’re grown-ups now and we can do what we want. I was coming to see what you were up to and if I could help with anything?” I hadn’t thought about what I was going to say and maybe that helps.

  “Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Remmie. He is really smart. I showed him how to group things and now he’s doing division and multiplication. It’s incredible how he can turn one concept into another,” she says, shaking her head.

  “Maybe you and I can work on teaching him some more advanced things. It would be kind of cool to nurture the next generation of physicists.” I want to say something about how smart our children will be, but I refrain.

  “Or you can teach us both. I got straight A’s in high school physics.” Sofie puffs out her chest with pride.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” I ask.

  It feels good to be with her and not look to extract something from the time. I’m not keeping anything from her, but I’m not unloading on her either. The balance is delicate, but I can see how it works.

  Chapter 6

  It turns out that my narrow gauge pipe was not suitable for breathing while submerged. My brother, a strong swimmer but not an intellectual, almost drowned in three feet of water.

  I’ll never understand his logic. For some reason, he thought lying on his back would make it easier to breathe. When he tried to suck in a breath of air and got effectively nothing, he choked. Because he was lying on his back, the water poured down his throat and into his lungs.

  Thankfully the material has amazing acoustic properties and I could hear his gagging and gurgling. My newly found muscles gave me the strength to easily pull him from the floor of the lake and get his face above water.

  With typical Liam flare, he used his first breath to laugh. I suppose it would have been kind of comical if he had drowned in three feet of water after surviving multiple warp jumps. But the laugh was inappropriate.

  The test was over pretty quickly. I wound up leaning my face into the water and testing for myself. Results were consistent, with the exception of the gagging and almost drowning.

  We took our time and devised and extruded a thicker pipe. That one tested much better, so we extruded a greater length and are now headed out to the space plane.

  Mom and Dad are mad as hell. The whole village could hear Mom telling Mike that sending young men on dangerous missions is not leadership. Mediate disagreements, support smart decisions and discourage questionable choices—those were the roles of the village leader, and their existence proved the merits of that approach.

  Mike insisted that Liam volunteered. Which is technically true. I did not speak to either of my parents about how my brother and I wound up in the raft rowing out to the space plane. I can’t involve them in everything that happens; I need to live with my choices.

  “So when we get there, no messing around,” I tell my brother.

  “Dude, I’m a father now I have to be careful and smart. When you and Sofie have kids, you’ll get it,” Liam says.

  “Sofie moved out. We can’t seem to have kids, and I think she blames me,” I tell him.

  “I doubt it’s the kid thing that she left over. You do know you’re pretty selfish and un-affectionate, right?” he asks.

  I don’t want to talk about it. “Shut up and paddle.”

  His theory seems to be that if I listened and did more to respect and support her, Sofie would have stayed with me even if we couldn’t have kids. I don’t buy it. Kids are important to her, and this is basically how I was when we met. I haven’t changed much, so she should still be okay with me. But that’s not actually what he said.

  It may be that the journey across the water is somewhat familiar, but we arrive at the buoy marking the space plane faster than I remember. We timed things well so that we paddled during the last hours of night and will be able to paddle back while the sun is barely rising.

  Liam slips on a backpack full of the dense sediment from extruding the pipe. It should help get him to the bottom quickly, an advantage we didn’t think of for Grace. He also ties a rope around his waist for me to help pull him up.

  I would like to have tested pulling up weights while floating in the raft. It is not a stable platform and I’m not sure how well it will work. Suddenly the urgency of getting to the space plane and retrieving a reactor seem false.

  Success is more important than pace of effort. How many times have I learned that in my life? There were so many iterations of my reactor that I was able to get built quickly but didn’t function.

  Liam sits on the edge of the raft ready to fall over backward and plummet toward the lake bottom.

  “If you can’t find the reactor and live, we can try again. If you die searching, things get worse, not better,” I tell him.

  He smiles at me. “Worse like you having to try.”

  “If our survival is based on me doing crazy dangerous things, then I would put money on us not making it,” I say. I put the cap over the end of the pipe so it doesn’t fill with water.

  “I’ll be okay. You just get ready to pull. You are about to be stunned by my underwater salvage skills.” He casts over the side with a splash.

  I’m not good at waiting. Either I am impatient and expect something to happen sooner than it should, or I am distant and uncaring. Right now I expect to hear breathing sounds from the pipe, but I don’t.

  He should have gotten to the bottom, taken a breath and started his search. There is no way he is still waiting to get to the bottom, unless there was a snag in the water. Should I blow down the tube in case there was a blockage?

  Hopefully the pipe is long enough and the end is not far off the bottom.

  Leaning m
y face over the top of the tube, I inhale deeply. Then out of the tube comes a distinct belch. After several seconds I smell the faint odor of carrots, Liam’s favorite, wafting out of the opening. The belch is quickly followed by some humming. My brother is putting on a show from dozens of feet under the water.

  I want to scream but I don’t know if it’s joy or frustration.

  Our paddling is slow and steady. I can feel the change when we cross into the area protected by my containment field. It’s like stepping out of the summer heat and into an air-conditioned room. My brother is dying to say something but has been holding his tongue for almost twenty minutes, a new record for him.

  I might as well break the silence. “I hope you’re not going to say it should be you who goes exploring.”

  “What?” He seems shocked that I know he’s thinking something.

  “I can tell you want to say something. Just say it.” I try not to sound harsh.

  “It’s stupid,” Liam says and laughs to himself.

  “Now I have to know.” I make it clear that I will not let him keep a secret.

  “I was thinking that it would be kind of cool to live underwater. We could pump air into the space plane and just hang out there. Maybe get the PlayStation set up and make it like a man cave,” he explains.

  He’s a father. He has a responsibility to help with the food and water needed to sustain the human race. I want to be angry that he’s thinking about video games and hangouts, but he’s also a kid. He’s my little brother.

  We are doing amazingly well for our situation. There are times like this where little things remind me of how huge this transition is. Man caves are a luxury for an established, complacent society, not for a remote outpost eking out survival.

  Though I suppose it wasn’t until the last hundred years that people considered a seventeen-year-old a kid. In the colonial days, militia service was expected of men aged sixteen to sixty. During the Civil War the enlistment age was technically eighteen, but there were soldiers as young as fourteen. I can imagine that they grew up much faster than my brother and me.

  This reminds me that we are, or were, involved in a war. Whatever the event that caused the release of the sore loser virus was, it cannot be considered peaceful. The new engagement with the natives of this planet may be aggression, but I am hoping we find them to be benevolent.

  Liam interrupts my thoughts of war. “You know that Mike is going to order someone to go exploring. This isn’t going to be a group decision on who is best suited.”

  “I don’t like the way he does things. We need to teach him a lesson and exert our independence.” Revolutionary thoughts are fresh in my mind.

  “Maybe you should let me do it,” Liam says. “He has a crazy look in his eye that worries me. Remember that kid on our bus? Wasn’t he expelled for eating a live dog or something? Mike reminds me of him.” My brother still doesn’t organize his thoughts before speaking.

  “I remember that kid, but he didn’t eat a dog. His family sold their house, so I assume he moved. Mike isn’t crazy, just intense,” I remind my brother.

  Silence returns and we are done reminiscing.

  I inspect the reactor visually. It looks to be in good condition. I remember loading it onto the space plane back at Ames. I’m not sure why I thought the space plane was going to be tougher than the C-5, but I had assumed that it might survive a rough landing. The reactor had been carefully packed and well-secured.

  We only fired up this reactor to confirm functionality. It didn’t run for long and has gone through multiple points that could have discharged any residual electrons. If there is no damage, all I need to do is make some configuration changes and initiate the reaction. Fortunately we have plenty of electricity for initiating a reaction.

  Mike may try and send me out exploring; for some reason, I think he sees me as a disrupter. I’m the one who gets my mom and dad upset and involved in things. I stand up to Jane and debunk her crazy notions. I get asked to think about every big problem and my demeanor sways almost half of our population.

  Sending me away would be a pure political move on Mike’s part. I am definitely not the best suited for exploring and taking physical risks. Without even being arrogant, sending me would be a waste.

  I need to come up with a way to be the one who decides on the explorer. Simple reverse psychology leaves too much room for error. It would only allow me to dictate the one individual that doesn’t go. It’s not a physics problem, but there are layers of complexity to the issue that I find interesting. Who knows, maybe I could have become a politician back on Earth.

  My mind focuses on the strokes. It’s almost like meditation. Subconsciously, I am solving problems and crafting plans. I can’t wait to find out what they are.

  Chapter 7

  I was relieved to get back to my cabin and find Sofie asleep in our bed. I crawled in next to her and fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. Almost, because I spent a minute in wonder about the fact that someone decided to pack pillows as part of our evacuation.

  Sofie left early and in silence. She’s back in the cabin, but I guess we’re still not ready to talk. I don’t think I’m supposed to follow her when she leaves again, but I will find time to listen today.

  My reactor was basically unscathed. I’ve cleaned a few connections just to be sure, but I doubt there would have been an impact from not cleaning them. There is no sediment or plant life in the water. It was like the reactor was sitting calmly in a sterile bath. No growth, no decay, just suspended animation.

  The plans I am developing in my subconscious have yet to surface. If scheming and manipulating people is like physics, they will likely appear only when I need them. It’s almost like a super power, but more unreliable.

  Mike interrupts my thoughts. “What’s the verdict?”

  “Well, the crash did a number on this thing,” I say. “I’m also afraid that lighting it up with water sitting inside might short something out. I have to go through the whole thing and let it dry thoroughly.” I give him only partial truths and exaggeration.

  “Getting that thing working is priority one for you. The rest of us have day-to-day operations under control,” Mike says, more harshly than necessary.

  “Yes, sir,” I snap, openly mocking his condescending tone.

  Mike doesn’t take the bait. He turns and walks away.

  He didn’t say that I couldn’t take a break. It’s almost lunchtime, and I want to stretch my legs. Almost eight hours in the raft has them still a little stiff. I’ll go find Sofie and ask her about what she is doing; I can’t make it about me.

  Before I get to Grace’s cabin where I expect to find Sofie, I come across Luke and Sonjia talking quietly. Like Sofie and I, they have not been able to conceive a child. Unlike us, Luke and Sonjia don’t seem to care.

  “Hey,” I say, to announce my presence so they don’t think I am trying to eavesdrop.

  They both look at me but neither speaks.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just didn’t want you to think I was listening,” I say.

  “Oh no, it’s fine,” Sonjia responds quickly. Her eyes flick toward Luke as if she is expecting something from him.

  “If your portable containment field works, I assume it won’t be limited to one person,” Luke finally says.

  “It has nothing to do with people. The field will cover a specific area. The area will move with the reactor at its center,” I reply.

  “So two people could go off together under the containment field and they wouldn’t run out of air or anything like that?” he asks, clarifying his concern.

  “Correct. It will be just like this containment field. It’s a semi-permeable membrane that allows some wavelengths of energy in and others out. All of us could live underneath it if we had to,” I explain.

  I have not thought about how large to make the containment field on the portable reactor, but I wasn’t planning on restricting it. My assumption is that I should just m
ake it as large as it can be. That way, if anyone gets stuck or stranded, they will have a broader area of resources to leverage. To my knowledge, there are no drawbacks to making the portable containment field large.

  “Could you make it configurable by a knob or something?” Luke asks, freer with his questions.

  “Probably. It would take some work and I don’t like the idea of having a new and untested moving part out in the field without me. Long story short, I don’t plan on adding a knob to make the field configurable,” I explain.

  His next question hints at the reason he and Sonjia look like the cat that ate the canary. “What if I promised not to touch the knob unless we were in trouble?”

  Luke wants to be the one to explore. Like me, he doesn’t want to wait and see who Mike decides will be the one to leave the village. It worries me that as one of the McMurdo people, he doesn’t have faith that Mike will make a wise decision. Luke has always seemed level-headed and reasonable. That and his desire to take on such a risky task may make him the perfect candidate to go exploring.

  “If I give you the pack, will you promise to approach the natives peacefully?” I’m surprised by my offer.

  “Let’s talk in our cabin,” Sonjia says with a smile, and heads off to their shelter.

  We walk along the pathways toward Luke and Sonjia’s cabin. Luke has his head on a swivel as if there are spies or threats behind every tree. I’m not sure what I’m getting myself into, but Luke feels trustworthy even though he is clearly nervous.

  Luke speaks firm and fast as soon as we are inside their cabin. “Sonjia and I didn’t go to McMurdo because we like to be cooped up and told what to do. We can both handle isolation, but we’re not big fans of structure. When your mom was running the show, we had all the freedom we wanted. You know how things have changed.”