Seed by Michael Edelson

Author:Michael Edelson [Edelson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-12-16T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

“Okay,” Barbara said. “So you think it’s bullshit. Why?”

Alex took a small sip from his cup and leaned back, letting the tree support his weight.

“For starters,” he said. “No way this whole getup…” He spread his arms, indicating the colony. “Was some last ditch, minute to midnight emergency response.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Let’s start with that. Why? I mean I know it doesn’t seem likely they could pull this off last minute, but let’s hear some concrete reasons.”

“Okay, here goes,” Alex said. “I’ll do one at a time, and the first one’s easy. Let’s forget about the fully stocked warehouse, the terminals with general orders and the nutrient paste I’ve never heard of. All that could have been part of some emergency doomsday stockpile, as could these little cabins, the DNA locks, everything. Maybe they were planning for some asteroid impact, or some other catastrophe. So all that is plausible, though I’ll say it’s too much to do for some wacky contingency. I mean this crap must cost serious bank.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “There’s some pretty impressive tech at work here.”

“Right. So forget about all that. I’ll even give them that it could have been sitting here, just waiting for us to come along, and that they had time to get our DNA and code the locks. All possible. There’s still no way they pulled this off in less than four or five months at least.”

“The clothes,” Barbara said. “You’re talking about the clothes.”

“Bingo,” Alex said, grinning proudly like he’d just discovered the cure to cancer. “That’s number one. My clothes were pretty generic, but they all fit. It was something Yael said that got me thinking. She said, ‘They are like the clothes I’d wear.’ Except they weren’t hers. Everyone here dresses pretty distinctively. Max with those ridiculous dress shirts, you, Barb, with your capris. Tom, that long sleeve t-shirt with the short sleeve one over it…this is like the stuff you used to wear, right?”

“Right,” Tom said. “I see where you’re going with this. How did they know what kind of clothes we wore unless they watched us for a while.”

“Or just gone through our drawers?” Barbara suggested.

“Then these clothes would have been ours,” Alex said. “Not just like ours.”

“Ah,” she said. “You’re right. They must have prepared all of these for us ahead of time.”

“Not something you do when you’re trying to save civilization in a hurry,” Alex said.

“That’s good,” Barbara said. “Do you have more?”

“Only one,” Alex said. “But it’s a doozy. The night on the beach in Oahu, I couldn’t quite fall asleep and I heard people talking. Ryan and Patrick were arguing over Sandi, and they brought up IQ tests they both took recently. Ryan said his IQ was one forty five and Patrick said his was one forty four and that a single point didn’t matter because it was within the error margin.”

“Wait a sec!” Barbara said. “The hospital had us take an evaluation test about a month ago. They only posted the results a week before we came here.

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