Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye Page A
Authors: Audrey Faye
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with extra hazmat suits when they have a Lightbody in the class.”
KarmaCorp had just issued mine straight to me. Fixers were expected to clean up their own messes.
Toli looked down at her machines, grinning appreciatively. “Baseline data’s done. You guys have a good lab manager?”
It was a casually asked question, but even a Grower could hear the layers underneath. I eyed her carefully. “A cousin of mine, but good lab bosses are always in demand.”
She shrugged a shoulder in acknowledgment. “Most of us are picky about where we go.”
Toli and Glenn, both looking to finish their rotations and ship out. When a community couldn’t keep gold like those two, it was in deep trouble.
Poor soil.
Which I could contemplate after I got on with the job I’d actually been sent here for. I crouched down and laid my hands in the dirt. “I’m going to send out some small test signals. Let me know if your equipment picks up anything.”
She nodded, watching avidly.
If I did my job right, there wouldn’t be anything interesting to see. Carefully, I reached for resonance with the water molecules in the soil—they were easy to read and should touch pretty much everything in the dome. I sent a small message of peace, harmony, good drinking.
Toli shook her head. My Talent wasn’t receiving anything unusual either.
I sent out a different pulse, this one a question. To roots. To things which reached down into the dirt. Where do you belong?
What came back was a deeply satisfying litany on a single theme. Here. Nothing felt alien, nothing felt lost. Green, growing things that understood their part in the whole and engaged in it willingly and with trust that their efforts would be seen and rewarded.
The human inhabitants of Xirtaxis Minor could take lessons from this garden.
Minor, gentle reverberations under my hands, but nothing on Toli’s equipment.
I lifted my hands long enough to set us both back at baseline, and then put them down on the dirt one more time and sent out a more focused probe—one intent on being substantially more disturbing. Who sent me dreams?
Silence. Green, growing things trying to understand the mysterious human concept that was a dream, or at least my Talent’s best attempt at rendering it into something cells would understand. I tried again, this time sending more shading. Memories. Real and not real. Things that might have been, could be.
The smaller plants near me disengaged, headed back to drinking their water, finding clear paths for their roots. They were mostly annuals, and this question only confused them. A few months wasn’t enough time to process that kind of question—not at the cellular level, anyhow. I waited. Some of the perennials and trees in here came from stock that counted life in decades and centuries instead of weeks.
More silence.
Toli squinted at her equipment and shook her head.
I didn’t feel anything either, but something was coming—I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising up in recognition of something that had not yet happened.
My fingers clawed into the dirt. I feel you. I see you.
A momentous, shuddering pause, and then all hell broke loose, under my hands and everywhere else.
Heaving, reaching, chewing force, aimed straight at the dirt where I’d asked my question. What my Talent could only translate as a green, growing thing mad as hell. And scared. And very certain I was the problem.
Violence, amassing under my fingertips.
I was under attack. I could feel the horrible squeezing as my cells tried to empty themselves of water, of calcium, of silica—the basic constituents of life. My Talent reeled, not remotely equipped for meeting savagery.
Somewhere in the deep background, I could hear Toli yelling. I didn’t have time to listen.
I threw everything I had into the dirt under my hands. Stop. Am. Friend.
Brief confusion—and then the pull on my cells got stronger. The death call of an organism who spoke more strongly to water
KarmaCorp had just issued mine straight to me. Fixers were expected to clean up their own messes.
Toli looked down at her machines, grinning appreciatively. “Baseline data’s done. You guys have a good lab manager?”
It was a casually asked question, but even a Grower could hear the layers underneath. I eyed her carefully. “A cousin of mine, but good lab bosses are always in demand.”
She shrugged a shoulder in acknowledgment. “Most of us are picky about where we go.”
Toli and Glenn, both looking to finish their rotations and ship out. When a community couldn’t keep gold like those two, it was in deep trouble.
Poor soil.
Which I could contemplate after I got on with the job I’d actually been sent here for. I crouched down and laid my hands in the dirt. “I’m going to send out some small test signals. Let me know if your equipment picks up anything.”
She nodded, watching avidly.
If I did my job right, there wouldn’t be anything interesting to see. Carefully, I reached for resonance with the water molecules in the soil—they were easy to read and should touch pretty much everything in the dome. I sent a small message of peace, harmony, good drinking.
Toli shook her head. My Talent wasn’t receiving anything unusual either.
I sent out a different pulse, this one a question. To roots. To things which reached down into the dirt. Where do you belong?
What came back was a deeply satisfying litany on a single theme. Here. Nothing felt alien, nothing felt lost. Green, growing things that understood their part in the whole and engaged in it willingly and with trust that their efforts would be seen and rewarded.
The human inhabitants of Xirtaxis Minor could take lessons from this garden.
Minor, gentle reverberations under my hands, but nothing on Toli’s equipment.
I lifted my hands long enough to set us both back at baseline, and then put them down on the dirt one more time and sent out a more focused probe—one intent on being substantially more disturbing. Who sent me dreams?
Silence. Green, growing things trying to understand the mysterious human concept that was a dream, or at least my Talent’s best attempt at rendering it into something cells would understand. I tried again, this time sending more shading. Memories. Real and not real. Things that might have been, could be.
The smaller plants near me disengaged, headed back to drinking their water, finding clear paths for their roots. They were mostly annuals, and this question only confused them. A few months wasn’t enough time to process that kind of question—not at the cellular level, anyhow. I waited. Some of the perennials and trees in here came from stock that counted life in decades and centuries instead of weeks.
More silence.
Toli squinted at her equipment and shook her head.
I didn’t feel anything either, but something was coming—I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising up in recognition of something that had not yet happened.
My fingers clawed into the dirt. I feel you. I see you.
A momentous, shuddering pause, and then all hell broke loose, under my hands and everywhere else.
Heaving, reaching, chewing force, aimed straight at the dirt where I’d asked my question. What my Talent could only translate as a green, growing thing mad as hell. And scared. And very certain I was the problem.
Violence, amassing under my fingertips.
I was under attack. I could feel the horrible squeezing as my cells tried to empty themselves of water, of calcium, of silica—the basic constituents of life. My Talent reeled, not remotely equipped for meeting savagery.
Somewhere in the deep background, I could hear Toli yelling. I didn’t have time to listen.
I threw everything I had into the dirt under my hands. Stop. Am. Friend.
Brief confusion—and then the pull on my cells got stronger. The death call of an organism who spoke more strongly to water
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