Free Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye Page B

his skin at least three times since I’d sat down. “That must be difficult, watching the people you work with experience problems you can’t solve.”
    I could hear Glenn’s quietly hissed breath beside me. Apparently most people didn’t poke at Dr. Lothario, at least not this directly.
    Jerome leaned forward, every inch the amenable, earnest scientist. “Of course it is. It affects the work, and it affects the human climate we work in.”
    I was still trying to catch up with the skin shifting. “Tell me about your work.”
    He looked over at the two head scientists, clearly handing this one off—and surprising me again.
    “We specialize in symbiosis, in engineering species for cooperation and co-dependence.” John Bastur leaned forward, as if suddenly realizing his job as tour guide risked being usurped. “We seek to build terraforming species that can work well together with native life forms.”
    Planetary colonization—with respect. I very much supported their goals, even if it didn’t appear to be something they put into practice in their own lives. This cafeteria could have done with a good injection of communal ethos.
    Not what I’d come here to fix, but it grated all the same. Human beings are wired to connect, to love, to be a part of something greater. I looked at Glenn and Toli, heads close together in quiet, animated conversation. The ingredients for community lived here, and whatever my stated mission was, I’d be giving those ingredients a push. It was more than how I worked—it was who I was.
    I took a bite of my food and tried to keep an open mind. I’d barely begun to explore Xirtaxis Minor—now was the time to be collecting first impressions, not coming to conclusions. And probably not the time to be ignoring the two people in charge, either. I swallowed hastily and turned my attention back to John Bastur. “Tell me about the problems you’ve been having.”
    “I believe it was all in our report,” he said smoothly. His wife stiffened beside him.
    The report had been a wealth of bland sentences with very little meaning. “I read your briefing, but I always prefer to hear directly from the people who have their finger on the pulse of things.”
    I didn’t miss Toli’s discreet eye roll—or John’s chest quietly puffing up. The quintessential bureaucrat, happy to be seen as important. He glanced at Mary Louise. “It was Glenn who first brought the pattern to our attention.”
    Gordie was back to scowling. “I’m not convinced anything is going on. Just some people who are weak in the head.”
    By believing so, he was weakening his own community and their ability to solve this. His voice was loud enough that I could see the surrounding tables reacting—and there were a lot of uncomfortable shuffles. Not everyone agreed with the folks at the head table.
    Which meant that if I wanted to get a read on what was really going on, I needed to head underground.
    I looked across the table at Toli. “Mind if I drop by the labs in the morning?”
    She looked a little surprised, but nodded. “Sure thing. I’m there by skybreak. Ask anyone, they’ll know where to find me.”
    It would give me a place to start, even if I was already betting that the labs weren’t where this would end. I’d place the rest of my bets after I did some thinking.
    And took another pass through Glenn’s files.

10
    S trange , dark, black. And not.
    Couldn’t see, could never see.
    Wind on my cheeks, too cool, too hot. Stirrings. Needs. Yearnings.
    Feet that refused to move. Stuck in cool darkness, potent dim. Offers of nourishment.
    I didn’t want food.
    Fingertips yearning for the sky, the color, the bright. Hot edges. Too long in the sky, not enough cool.
    Needing different. Desiring new.
    Skin too tight, a world too small. Breath that is never quite enough.
    Seen, but not seen.
    No one understands.
    I could feel myself waking up. Cranky, groggy, shuddering as the experience of other slithered off into the