Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

forecasting. That will help our crops, and
that’s something I’m sure Li cares about.” And
because she let you plead for the deployment,
you end up feeling indebted to her.
And don’t suppose for an instant she won’t
find a way to call in that debt.
“Could be.” Blake pulled a scrap of thin
wire from the jumble on a workbench, and
began tying knots. “Or she imagines we’ll rein
ourselves in. Fatigue has a wonderful ability to
clarify priorities.”
Rikki gave her husband a dirty look.
Trouble in paradise? Carlos wondered. Hubby
isn’t supportive enough of your science
project? “What does this have to do with me?”
“You know Li pretty well,” Rikki said delicately.
You live together, she meant. You side with
Li on the issues. You must understand her.
Carlos thought, if you only knew.
What he had with Li was a marriage of inconvenience.
Hers was a cold beauty: look but
don’t touch. And yet he stayed. He was the
last available man in the universe—and the
last available woman couldn’t care less. What
did that say about him?
She had him by the pride as much as by the
balls. When he got into her pants, all too seldom,
it was because she wanted his backing.
Get inside Li’s head? That had yet to happen.
“Do you plan on ever coming to the point?”
Carlos asked.
Rikki grimaced. “We want to know what
else Li isn’t telling us.”
Carlos countered, “Is she under some obligation
to tell you what she’s thinking?”
“No,” Blake said, still torturing his piece of
wire. “But also yes.”
“Pretend you broke it already.” Carlos
plucked the much-knotted wire from Blake’s
hands. “Yes or no. Which is it?”
Rikki said, “As an individual, whatever Li
thinks is her business. But in practice, she’s
our leader. We all defer to her.”
I could be convinced to defer to you, Carlos
thought. Motivate me. Let’s see how bendy
you can be.
He said, “On our trek, to survive, we needed
one sort of expertise. We deferred to Dana
and properly so. I doubt Dana shared everything
she was thinking, and I’ll bet we were
happier for that. Rearing children and building
DARK SECRET
JUNE 2013
a civilization? Those call for a different sort of
expert. That’s Li.”
“That’s Li,” Blake agreed. “However . . .”
Antonio, who had been looking all around
the lab, finally spoke. “I’ve been studying.”
With Antonio’s eclectic interests, those
studies might involve anything. Carlos gestured
to his workbench. “Guys, your couple
minutes are more than up.”
“Aristophanes I had heard of,” Antonio said.
“I didn’t know who Aeschylus and Euripides
were.”
“I don’t know if your interest is in moons or
ancient Greek theater,” Carlos said. “Either
way it can wait till tonight at dinner.” When I
also won’t pay attention. “Isn’t there a crop
somewhere that needs your attention?”
“I became interested in ancient Greece,”
Antonio went on. “And branched out from
there. Are you familiar with . . .”
“At dinner,” Carlos repeated.
“Speaking of crops, why are you settled, all
comfy, here in the lab?” Blake asked. “We
could use a hand.”
At transplanting a couple hundred potted
apple, cherry, and pear seedlings from the
greenhouse to the river delta. No thanks. “I’m
doing something more critical.”
“Figuring out how to mass-produce PFCs?”
Rikki asked.
Right. As if what the climate might be like a
hundred years hence was time sensitive.
“Nutrition related.” Carlos pointed to a
nearby cage, in which mice sniffed curiously.
“They don’t take up trace nutrients from diet
as well as they should. I’m trying to tweak
their nanites to compensate.”
“Mouse nanites,” Rikki said. “That sounds
urgent. I vote you save those for a rainy day.”
Had the short-term forecast shown rain,
Carlos would have waited to tamper with the
tissue samples he’d shown to Li that morning.
He half suspected from Li’s sly smile that
she knew. That by agreeing he should investigate
his anomaly, she was doing him a favor.
Throwing him a bone.
His other half guessed that she had planted
the idea in the first place. That would explain
the sly smile, too.
Pissing him off yet further. It was Li he was
angry at, but Li wasn’t here. And it was Li who
had what he wanted.
“Look,” Carlos said. “What affects the mice
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