CHAPTER TWO
Far down below the circling and swooping Quist brothers lay a transparent dome, two kilometers wide. It was on land that their family had owned going back for generations, and like everything else in Greenscale, it was integrated into the tree-clustered landscape. One arc of the dome enclosed a rocky section of a mountain, from which a waterfall from a spring inside the cliff side poured into an artificial lake. The space inside the dome was made up of patches of planted forest, sections of brush and tall grass, and meadows, all carefully created. No expense was spared in the creation of this enclosed environment.
Hidden devices throughout the space, again blending in with everything around them, worked to keep it exactly as it was. The money of the Quist Foundation had called forth the most talented engineers and biologists of their planet to construct it with the perfect craft and integrity on the outside and the perfect equilibrium on the inside, and to maintain it in exactly the right state—all for the benefit of what lay in another, opaque silver dome lying in the meadow near the lake.
It was a shining blister or bubble of biologically neutral matter, chiefly carbon compounds engineered to maintain its solidity and not to interact biologically or chemically with anything else. The structure was about the size of the large hover-van that had lifted it into the dome and placed it where it now lay, before the dome was finally sealed. And there it rested, waiting for the moment when it would be opened and the purpose for which Brianne Heatherton had designed and the Quist Foundation had sponsored the dome would at last be fulfilled.
Donar and Conran flew in slow circles over the circumference of what their Foundation’s money had built to Brianne’s specifications. They peered down with their dragon eyes, as sharp as a hawk’s, and brought the silver bubble into sharp focus, admiring and anticipating what their engineers and scientists had made on Brianne’s behalf. Of all the things they had done in their young lives since taking control of their family’s philanthropic interests, this was the thing that made them the proudest—partly because of what it meant to the life and natural history of the galaxy, and partly, they each had to admit, because of what it meant to the woman who initiated the project.
It was Brianne Heatherton herself who had attracted them to her work. It was Brianne’s intelligence, her courage, her dedication, her passion. And yes, her beauty. Any such woman who was so fiercely devoted to a project like this was someone they wanted to know, perhaps to know very, very well. As they flew high over the dome, their wings both using and supported by the thermal currents that the planetary weather system made, Donar and Conran both replayed her presentation in their minds. They had watched it, together and separately, so many times that they practically knew it by heart.
The first time they watched it, the brothers sat together at the round table in their large office in the mansion. They turned down the lights and turned on the holographic projector at the center of the table, and loaded the program transmitted from the Galactic Natural History Society. And there before them the image of Brianne Heatherton resolved itself into their sight for the first time.
There was no denying that the first thing about her that came to their attention was her beauty. It was never their main criterion for deciding whose work they would sponsor (it couldn’t be, considering that some of the beneficiaries of their Foundation’s work were neither human nor Lacertan), but it definitely made them take notice.
In the hologram, she was seated in an egg-shaped chair in a library, likely that of the Natural History Society itself, with the lights turned down and a soft spotlight on her to set a mood and an atmosphere. On the floor beside her lay a slightly raised circle of light that Conran and Donar recognized as another holoprojector. She was dressed in a suit with tails that flowed like a gown, with opaque stockings and shoes with heels just high enough to be interesting—or, the brothers thought, as interesting as the woman herself. Brianne had made herself look businesslike but just slightly elegant, an effective combination. With the brothers’ rapt attention, she began.
An image appeared beside her, hovering over the projector on the floor. It was a planet, green and blue with the signs of life, but with the white of its clouds growing sparse and tenuous and ghostly, and wide swaths and stains of darkness on its browned continents. It gave the quiet impression of a planet in distress. “This is Torado IV,” said Brianne in the hologram. “It is the only planet in its system that bears or is capable of sustaining higher life forms. Torado IV will soon lose its life-supporting capabilities. Even as we speak, the planet is dying.”
The hologram beside Brianne shifted, pulling back its vantage point, and as it did, the hologram expanded to a panoramic view with Brianne sitting in one corner of it, narrating. Torado IV receded into a tableau of the disk of the Toradan system, ten planets circling the central star. Brianne continued, “You’re now seeing Torado IV in its original orbital position and trajectory. That original orbit has been changed, with life-threatening results for the entire planet.”
In response to Brianne’s narration, what appeared to be a spinning, flashing ring of light around an impenetrably black center moved into the image. It passed through the disk of the solar system at an angle, and when it intersected with the orbit of Torado IV at a critical distance ahead of the planet’s path, the green and blue planet reacted by shifting the arc of its orbit at an angle towards the star.
The flashing dark object moved off and disappeared, leaving Torado IV to swing in its arc on an altered path. Brianne explained, “When a rogue black hole passed through the Toradan system, it caused a shift in the planet’s orbit. Torado IV is now on an orbital trajectory that brings it progressively closer to its Sun. The consequences for the planet and the life that it harbors are dire.”
The panorama behind Brianne shifted to a series of moving images showing glaciers—mighty cliffs and peaks of blue-white ice—crumbling and cracking and spewing themselves downward into the ocean with huge upheavals of churning water. Brianne narrated, “glaciers and ice in the polar regions of the planet are melting at a dramatic rate, destroying habitats of animals in those areas and raising global sea levels.”
The view changed again to show a series of beaches and rocky coasts being swallowed, devoured, by immense swells and waves of water that loomed up over the land and extended as far as the eye could see. “The rapidly rising sea levels are drowning every coast on every continent,” said Brianne.
“In other parts of Torado IV,” Brianne continued, “the effects of the change in temperature are very different and just as punishing. Rising temperatures are scorching the inland areas. Lakes and rivers all over the planet are evaporating, leaving dry and desolate places.” To illustrate her point, the holographic vista now showed river beds that once churned with rushing waters and rapids now reduced to feebly trickling streams, while what had been the beds of lakes and other rivers now lay as naked expanses of parched and cracked soil.
Brianne went on, “Vegetation across the planet has been receding from lower land to higher ground, and animal life has been following it, migrating to habitats for which it is not naturally suited.” To make her point, the tableau showed what had been plains, meadows, and grasslands changed to stretches of dry, brittle brown, while the green of living plant life clung to slopes and mountainsides under pale and cloudless skies.
“Weather patterns are drastically and dangerously distorted, with severe weather turning more extreme,” said Brianne. “Where rain does appear, it comes in the form of monsoon-like bursts that flood wildlife habitats. Storms have grown stronger by orders of magnitude, and where this is no such weather, grass fires and forest fires have taken over.”
The hologram starkly showed the tallest, mightiest trees, centuries old, in the grip of Biblical rains and hurricane winds that snapped their trunks and ripped them from the ground by their roots. In other places, tornadoes dropped from the sky in clusters of massive, whirling grey rope, lashing and ravaging the land. Vast forests turned to crackling silhouettes of blackness under searing orange carpets of flame. In the wake of the fires lay black deserts strewn with charred trunks and boughs. Smoke blanketed the sky and cast spreading grey shrouds over the land.
The large tableau disappeared, and Brianne came forward into full view at full size again. Her expression was grave but sincere. “This proposal is about a project to mitigate the effects of the irreversible and terminal effects of climate change on one species native to Torado IV. The planet itself cannot be saved. But some of the life on it might be spared. Different projects are now under way to collect specimens of Toradan life and relocate them to other planets where their population might be safely replenished.
Submitted for what I hope will be your approval: a conservation project to benefit the cralowogs of Torado IV. On a planet without sentient life, the cralowog is one of the most highly evolved organisms. It is a versatile animal, adapted for marine, freshwater, land, and arboreal habitats, and giving birth to its young in water.”
Beside Brianne, the holoprojector produced a new image of a fabulous beast. It was the size of a bear. The display turned it around, and it became animated, moving into different positions to show its different attributes. Its head, like its size, was reminiscent of a bear, but its ears could contract flat and tight against the skull. It had short, sleek fur on the top of its head, down its back, and on the upper parts of its tail and limbs. The animal had extendable ribs that created fin-like structures along its sides, connected its limbs, like a flying squirrel. In water, these “fins” enabled it to swim slowly and gracefully like a manta ray, but when on the hunt in water, it could flatten the fins back against the body, tuck in its limbs, and use the vertically flattened tail to accelerate and propel itself forward like a shark.
Continuing her narration, Brianne said, “Cralowogs are omnivorous, eating both meat and plants. They breed and give birth only in water. The global warming of Torado IV and the resulting changes in ocean temperature have affected their life cycle, interfering with their breeding. The ratio of females to males has been thrown out of balance, and the females need an optimal water temperature in which to give birth to their young. Large numbers of cralowog pups are being stillborn or not surviving after birth.
Also, the marine animals and plants on which the cralowogs feed have been dying off, sharply reducing half of the animals’ food supply. The die-off or migration of land animals and plants have cut down the other half. As with all the other indigenous animals, the population of cralowogs is dropping dramatically. The Galactic Natural History Society and other scientific authorities have declared all life on Torado IV endangered. If nothing is done, extinction will soon follow.”
The animated hologram of the animal disappeared, leaving only Brianne on screen, and the camera pulled in closer to her for emphasis of what she had just said and what she would say next. “I believe that this species can be carefully introduced on the planet Lacerta by means of controlled breeding in designated preserve areas under optimal conditions to prevent them becoming a destructively invasive species.
Under my plan, a conservatory will be created for one cralowog, captured from Torado IV. This specimen, a female, will be transported to the conservatory, decontaminated to free it of any alien microorganisms and parasites, and carefully monitored. The conservatory will be a sealed environment with plant life compatible with the cralowog’s system. Lacerta is known to have the best and most efficient climate control technology in Commonwealth space, which will be crucial to creating the optimal conditions to which the animal can adapt for breeding.
Once the cralowog has acclimated to its new surroundings and is ready, my plan further calls for the female specimen to be mated with a male which will be brought to Lacerta from the Interstellar Menagerie of the planet Cardax III. Once breeding has successfully begun, other conservatories will be built on Lacerta, and other captured specimens will be introduced to begin creating a new population of cralowogs, gradually reversing the danger to the species. This will be a long and painstaking process, and it is one to which I’m ready to commit myself—with the support of the Quist Foundation.”
Conran and Donar took all of this in, having read the supporting data in Brianne’s files. She had accounted for every detail, including projections of the length of time the phases of the project would take. It was a long game indeed. The work would go on for decades. The first few years alone would be spent building new habitats in different places on Lacerta and making further expeditions to Torado IV to collect more specimens. It was an ambitious, long-term project. And it was a project on which the Quist brothers were sold.
If they had met Brianne in any other context—socially or even, perhaps, in some other business or professional endeavor—there was no question as to what their intentions would have been. They would absolutely have pursued any opportunity to get to know her more intimately. They would positively have made every effort to take her to bed—both of them, together. It was who they were. They were male weredragons, and when they saw a female, their own kind or human, unspoken-for by any other partner, assuming she was attracted to males, they wanted her in bed and would not rest until they were resting post-coitally with her.
This was the nature of male Lacertans, which all of known space knew full well. To be sure, Brianne Heatherton knew it herself. It was the reason why so many women of Earth and its colonies and territories came to this planet. Lacerta was a legendary hotbed of desire, the sexiest planet with the most beautiful males in the galaxy.
Brianne Heatherton had pitched her passion project to a world of passion. But the Quist brothers took the work of their family’s philanthropic foundation—and its reputation—most seriously. No matter the beauty of this human scientist, no matter what urges this brilliant woman stirred in them, they had both resolved to draw a solid line at any attempt to do with her as they would do with any other beautiful female. This one time, this one female had to be out of bounds.
“Hologram off. Bring up the lights,” Conran commanded the room’s systems. At once, the image of Brianne Heatherton disappeared, and the room resumed its regular lighting. Conran turned to his brother and said, simply and decisively, “We’re doing this.”
Donar nodded softly, making a frown that meant the opposite of a frown. “Absolutely,” he agreed, “we’re doing this.”
Within twenty-four hours, Brianne Heatherton was notified of the Quist Foundation’s acceptance of her plan and was summoned to the planet Lacerta to begin work.
And that was what brought Conran and Donar Quist to where they were now, soaring and circling above the fruition of Brianne’s carefully conceived and detailed plan, gleaming below them in the morning light of Catalan. Today, the first stage would begin in earnest.