Only a few of those in the room were actually part of the ship’s crew; most of the members of the diplomatic contact team were nonmilitary personnel, like Adela, and had little experience with the details and rigors of a military briefing. Although a few questions were asked and some clarifications were made to the contents of the data stick, most of the information was being given only because protocol required that a formal briefing be held.
There were more than fifty seats in the briefing room, nearly all of them filled, making it somewhat easier for those who had only recently come out of cryosleep to take the opportunity to nod off if they slouched in their seats just right and hid behind those in front of them. Adela scanned the rows around her, easily picking out several people who couldn’t have been out of the tank more than a few days, and wondered idly if she looked that bad when she came out of cryo. May as well get used to it, she thought, nudging the person next to her with an elbow to quiet his snoring. When this project is finally over, I’ll have logged more years of cryosleep than everyone in this room—maybe even the ship-combined. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, realizing that she would outlive most of the people in the briefing room. But with only a few exceptions, these people here were strangers and meant little to her, but for the important role they might play in the mission to Pallatin. And that realization disturbed her even more. Just when did I stop caring about other people? She lowered her head and sighed loudly enough that those around her might have heard if the crewman next to her hadn’t started snoring again.
The real reason for her feelings was clear, she knew, and had been for some time. It wasn’t that she cared less for others, it was that she cared more for something else: the project itself. It wasn’t more important than her life; it was her life. After all, isn’t that why Rihana Valtane’s words still echoed in her mind as clearly as they had that day in her office back on Luna some twenty-odd years earlier? “You will lose him, you know,” Rihana had said, “just as I did.”
Even now, Adela saw the woman’s wicked smile, heard the amused satisfaction that laughed silently at her from behind the truth in Rihana’s words: When the Pallatin problem was resolved and she returned to Earth, Javas would be more than forty years older than when she left. Eric would be a grown man. And after the next period of cryosleep? And the next? Damn you, she cried out silently. God damn you for being right. Adela felt her lips tighten and noticed that her hands had balled into fists in her lap.
She forced herself to calm down, pushed the thoughts of losing Javas and Eric out of her mind and concentrated instead on Montero’s lecture.
“… the major landmass is divided longitudinally by an enormous fault system,” he was saying, absently pulling on one corner of his thick brown moustache, “consisting of high ridges thrust up through the planetary crust and deep canyons stretching hundreds of kilometers. As on the rest of the planet, this fault system is very active, and weekly, even daily, tremors are not uncommon. The entire planet is highly active tectonically, a condition caused by the planet’s relatively young age, as well as its higher gravity and vast amounts of heavy metal deposits. According to Imperial records, there has been some effort by the citizens of the eastern portion of the continent to reconfigure the entire planet’s coordinate system based on this fault line, making it, in effect, longitude zero, which would add an emotional and psychological division to the continent as well. It is not surprising that the Eastland natives are the most adamant about not wishing to cooperate with the Empire. The natives call this major fault ‘Arroyo,’ and many of their location names are based on the given fault name even when the intent seems to refer instead to the proper longitude. Terms and phrases like ‘dawnside Arroyo’ and ‘one hundred kilometers west Arroyo’ are quite common, although the actual significance of the name itself is unclear. The major cities are separated—”
“Is there water in this fault system?” Adela called out. She wasn’t sure why she had felt the need to speak up just now. Perhaps it was the lingering anger from her thoughts of Rihana Valtane moments before. Or the cavalier attitude with which Montero seemed to view their entire purpose here. More likely, the underlying reason was a combination of both.
Commander Montero stared open-mouthed at her, the look on his face frozen somewhere between surprised anger at being interrupted and frantic indecision at not being able to answer her question. It didn’t help that everyone in the room not asleep was now staring at him, waiting for him to respond to the Emperor’s chosen representative. He forced a smile, then, “Say again?”
Adela leaned back in her seat and felt everyone shift their attention back to her. “The fault system. Does water periodically fill portions of it?” Ignoring the stares of the others at the briefing, she crossed her arms and waited for him to reply.
“Well… They, uh…” Montero keyed the info screen mounted in his podium, searching for the information. It took a few moments before he found what he was looking for. “Our reports indicate that portions of the fault do hydrate from time to time.” Another pause as he read. “As the edges of the major plates running the length of the fault rise and fall with tectonic activity, both the northern and southern seas occasionally flood into the depression caused by the seismic tremors. According to what we’ve been able to glean from our probing of their libraries, the fault has, on two occasions since Pallatin was colonized, been a continuous waterway from the Grande Sea on the north to the Gulf of Caldonia to the south. Although subsequent activity drained most of the water after each occurrence.”
“That’s almost exactly what the word means.” Several of those attending pivoted and gazed at her with renewed interest and she addressed them, rather than Montero, as she spoke. “It’s an Old Earth term from an area of the North American continent called American Southwest. It refers to a gully or trench that, while normally dry, occasionally fills with water.”
Montero cleared his throat loudly. “Thank you, Dr. Montgarde.” There was just the hint of sarcasm behind his gratitude.
Adela had to remind herself as she listened to Montero resume his rote delivery that the experienced Imperial officer had been hand-chosen by Supreme Commander Fain for his military and spacing abilities, and not his outgoing personality.
“As I started to say before, the cities are widely separated. The more densely settled population centers, those with populations ranging from twenty-five thousand on up to four hundred thousand, are frequently surrounded by smaller communities—mostly agricultural or light industry in nature—that continue to spring up as the population spreads out. However, most of these main ‘hub cities’ are separated from each other by many hundreds of kilometers, and are sometimes connected by a single main road or air traffic only. This is not unusual. In fact, we’ve seen that on many colony worlds it takes centuries for the open spaces between population centers to ‘fill up,’ for lack of a better word.”
“That’s not always true,” Adela put in. “They don’t always ‘fill up.’ How about Australia?” Again, all eyes turned to her.