Story Excerpt

The Ghosts of Goldilocks

by Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber

Home sweet home.

The ever-present pall of volcanic ash lingered in the air, adding an orange undertone to the dreary gray skies. Gando wore the usual outdoor mask, so that the sour ash smell wouldn’t make his lungs burn. 

He looked toward the first in a row of greenhouses and shook his head in worry. An odd, undocumented blight had afflicted some of the strawberry plants. 

Bending down under the greenhouse’s polymer covering, he rubbed the gray stain on the leaves with his calloused fingers. He frowned, then uprooted the entire plant. This wasn’t good. He hoped he’d gotten it in time.

Emerging from under the polymer tarp, he flung the tainted strawberry plant far from the greenhouses. “Ella!” he called, “we need to keep watch on number three.”

His wife stood up from the bank of solar collectors, where she adjusted the angle toward the brightest spot in the dull gray sky after wiping a smear of grime from the reflective surfaces. “We need to keep watch on all of it, Gan. The main irrigation pump didn’t water the fields last night—better check it before the crops start to dry out.” 

Gando walked away from the greenhouse shelter, wishing he had a few fresh strawberries for a treat. “Again? I just cleaned the buildup a week ago after the last cycle.” He sighed. “I’ll check the generator pump.”

“Just another day in paradise,” Ella said with a tired grin. She hadn’t put on her mask, thinking she’d only be outside the dwelling for a few minutes. Deep worry lines showed on her face. She was only thirty, but colony life on Goldilocks was hard, especially out in the scattered homesteads. Even so, Gando found her weathered features warm and comforting. 

Ella gave him a thumbs-up sign as he trudged away from the ten low greenhouses that were filled with hope as much as seedlings. 

Gando was born here nine years after the generation ship, Hind, had arrived here on its last gasps of life support. He’d been part of the first wave of new babies born to the hopeful survivors from Earth. He had two older sisters, Ayekiri and Issa, both of whom lived in the colony capital of Xandi City, fifty kilometers to the south. Ayekiri eventually became the mayor, but Issa was very ill. This world was their home now, their last resort, because after all of the colonists had set up their first domes on the rugged surface, Hind had burned up in orbit. There hadn’t been time to bring down all the stock from the ship, and the ship’s AI had gone mad years before, barely functioning toward the end. So much accumulated knowledge from Earth had been lost in the ship’s last fireball.

When leaving Earth 120 years ago, the ancestors of the Goldilocks colonists had known that they and their children, and their children’s children, would not live to see a new home—but they had imagined paradise at the end of that long journey. They’d gambled everything on it, and they’d almost achieved it. Almost. 

Long-distance probes had shown that Goldy was habitable, the second planet circling a blue-white star. With an amenable temperature and breathable atmosphere, it offered hope—but that was all they knew.

As it turned out, Goldilocks had greeted them with a cold shoulder instead of a warm welcome. It was a new world with a raw ecosystem, plentiful water, and metals and minerals for mining, but the landscape had little in the way of complex organisms—only lichens and algae, with barely a thin soil matrix.

Through a massive effort, the first Hind colonists had put up a large array of modified organic photovoltaics to get as much energy as they could from the sun. The lightweight, flexible panels worked, if imperfectly. For more energy, the colonists took advantage of Goldy being volcanically active; rumbling reminders of that activity were a monthly occurrence. They built two small geothermal plants just a few klicks from the original landing zone. Then they built a permanent city. 

The colonists planted fast-growing peat moss in the boggy areas and erected a factory complex with fabricators brought down from Hind. This meant the colonists could manufacture chemical fertilizers, and the two remaining flyers spread those fertilizers over swaths of terrain, followed by grass seeds, hoping to make the planet into the home they’d sought. 

Then, when a flyer crashed, leaving the settlers with only one functional aircraft, they canceled the fertilizer airdrops and consolidated what land they could. 

The settlers tried to make it work, building a future, though sometimes it seemed that the planet itself was against them. The high ambient levels of cosmic radiation meant that life expectancy was low and the incidence of various forms of cancer was high. Gando knew this full well because of his sister Issa. Goldilocks was not “just right” by any means.

But year after year the colonists soldiered on. What else could they do? They had no place else to go.

Only ten years ago, Gando and Ella had been newlyweds with high hopes and a settlement grant. They received a full allotment of farm equipment, prefab shelters, seeds from Hind’s genetic library, and free land upon which they could start a homestead. Ready to stretch their arms wide and reach for possibilities, they’d established this farm. 

At first, they’d done all right. The hard work of laying down a half meter of soil with the mix of volcanic ash and the biological elements from the generation ship got things started. With Goldy’s stable climate, the early crops had done well enough. By the Landing Day celebration of their first year farming, Gando and Ella sent boxes of tomatoes, green peppers, onions, garlic, and potatoes to Xandi City. They’d made a profit! The second and third years were the same.

Then in the fourth year there were fewer tomatoes, smaller green peppers and onions. Only the garlic and strawberries held up well in the greenhouses. The farm was in trouble. 

Now Gando heard the whisper of grasses as a counterpoint to the vast silence of the new, empty world. On their ten hectares of land they’d planted base crops of hardy crabgrass to stabilize the soil matrix. Closer in were fields of genetically modified rye and barley, oats and potatoes, all of them cold-weather crops that had grown knee-high. Those crops, at least, were stable, so long as they received consistent irrigation with water from a deep aquifer. Problem was, the water was so laden with minerals it required multiple filtering membranes, and it didn’t take much for that system to go wrong. As Ella had said, the sprinkler systems were not pumping water.

As he approached the main pumping shed, he heard a disheartening thump and grinding from inside the corrugated metal shack. He yanked open the door and immediately smelled overheated metal and burning lubricant, along with a strong alkaline odor. He saw the machinery vibrating, heard the pump straining, and he slammed the override switch to shut it down. As the pump generator groaned into silence, Gando just stared at it, breathing hard. 

Dreading the damage, he removed the cowling and looked with dismay to see that the primary impeller was caked with a crust of white powder—chemical buildup that had clogged the intakes and the vital moving components.

He pulled open the filtration deck to see that the membranes had swollen, full of alkaline residue, and then burst. The result was a clogged impeller that was coated and then cracked under the strain. There was no way to fix this; they needed a new impeller. 

Gando’s shoulders slumped. He allowed himself a few moments to cry in private before he braced himself and went out to tell Ella.

II

Gando and Ella stood together under the open sky in front of their dwelling, trying to process the disastrous setback. Gando wrapped his arms around his wife and felt her supportive arms around him as they fought to remain strong. Ella pressed her face against his shoulder, letting the fabric of her husband’s work shirt absorb her tears. 

Looking up, Gando saw a lone figure striding in from the hills, still far away. Apart from their monthly supply trips to Xandi City, or even less frequent cooperative meetings with other scattered homesteaders, they saw almost no one out here. But as the two watched the slowly approaching figure and saw the walking stick and large backpack, Gando easily recognized him. “It’s Lonnie. He’ll cheer us up.”

Ella stepped back and found the strength for a small smile. “You’re right, we could use a little Lonnie right now.” 

Lonnie Dothanson had spent most of his life living rough out of doors, wandering the terrain, spreading grass seed, enjoying the hills and swales. With his happy innocence, he liked that people called him the “Old Man of the Hills.” He had a good camp with fresh water no more than ten klicks from Ella and Gando’s homestead, but he wandered the countryside, carrying what he needed in his backpack. 

Ella waved her hand high to signal the other man, and Gando headed for the covered vehicle port. “I’ll go fetch him with the wheelie.” 

“Lonnie likes to walk.”

“I know, but he doesn’t need to plant any more grass seed around here.” In truth, Gando really wanted to take a break and drive out to Lonnie.

Gando pressed the starter, and the all-terrain wheelie beeped briefly before he put it into drive and headed out along the gravel road toward the lone walking figure. 

 

Standing in place, Lonnie waited for the wheelie. He planted his walking stick in front of him like an explorer erecting a flag on new territory. His mop of sandy hair was a mess of dust and sweat, but Lonnie didn’t seem to mind at all. His wide face held a bright grin.

When Gando rolled up to him, Lonnie offered a cheerful wave. “Hello, Mr. Gando. Can I have a ride to your house?”

“Of course, Mr. Lonnie. Hop aboard.” 

He chuckled. “I’m just Lonnie, not a mister.”

“Then I’m just Gando.” They had been through this conversation many times before and would no doubt have it again. Lonnie always seemed to enjoy it.

Lonnie swung his big pack into the wheelie’s equipment bed and then bounced onto the passenger seat. “My feet are tired. Thank you, Just Gando.”

Lonnie was fiftyish, short, with a stocky build. His long hair was turning gray and pulled back into a ponytail. His round face had smile lines at the epicanthal folds of his eyes. He enjoyed a good, hearty hug, and he was always in a good mood, full of jokes and mirth. And that was just what Gando and Ella needed right now.

“Can I have supper?” Lonnie asked, forever optimistic.

“You are always invited to whatever meal we’re serving,” Gando replied. “Ella will whip up a feast for us.”

“A feast!” 

Lonnie had just been a child when Hind entered orbit around Goldilocks. The ten-year-old son of Dothan and Tam, Lonnie had been born on the generation ship during its century-long voyage from Earth. He was the only child with Down syndrome, one of the many genetic faults that all the original crew and passengers had been screened for. For ten years, little Lonnie had the run of the ship. Everybody loved him. Hind was in dire straits during those years, limping to its destination, but cheerful Lonnie didn’t know or care. 

The survivors of Hind had assumed Lonnie would need supervision and assistance throughout his life. But after his mother’s death he’d taken a last name, as some colonists did, to honor her. A few years later, after his father died, Lonnie had made his own way on Goldy. As just a young man, he had discovered that he liked to go off by himself into the hills. He became adept at camping, making his own shelters, living with the supplies in his pack, and filtering and drinking local water sources.

Frankly, Gando was astonished that Lonnie was still alive, considering the hard life he’d chosen and his own challenges. But he not only lived, he flourished. Years ago, Lonnie had fixated on a quest to plant grasses across the face of Goldilocks. His big pack was filled with hardy, modified grass seed, and as he wandered the unexplored wilderness, he would scatter handfuls whenever he found a “good spot,” typically one with some promising soil. 

Almost a mythical figure by now, the Old Man of the Hills walked hundreds of klicks by himself every year, but always found his way back. In recent years he’d taken to stopping by Gando and Ella’s farm whenever he needed to resupply and have a friendly chat. Gando saw him every month or two, and he was always welcome. 

Now Gando put the wheelie into drive as they headed back to the homestead. His heart ached, knowing the troubled future they would face if he couldn’t get the irrigation impeller replaced soon and the crop yield fell off. Couple that with the blight spreading in the greenhouses, and they might have to abandon the homestead and go back to Xandi City, admitting defeat. 

Gando and Ella were well known there, mostly for the fresh produce they delivered, but also because Gando’s sisters were Mayor Ayekiri and Issa, the colony’s best biologist. Sadly, Issa was now nearing the end of her long travail with soft tissue sarcoma. 

The city would be crushed if Gando and Ella were forced to give up. Their homestead had been proof that a farm could succeed, that the colony could succeed, that life on Goldy could find the toehold they all needed, despite the natural setbacks, the thin soil, the earthquakes and volcanic activity, the ash in the air, the lack of sunlight. 

Somehow, they had to make it work. . . .

By the time they arrived at the dwelling, Ella had washed the tears from her face, and she greeted them with a bright smile. Lonnie swung off the wheelie’s passenger seat and bounded over to give her a bear hug. Smiling, she patted him on the back. “Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he answered, then laughed at his joke.

“Funny, I was just making a big meal for an extra person, and I didn’t know who was going to eat it.”

“I’m happy to help!” Lonnie said. “Good thing I came!”

Ella had warmed up some bread cakes so the dwelling smelled wonderful. For a main dish, they made do with oats and mushroom patties, and she brought out a bowl of fresh strawberries that Gando had picked a couple of days ago from the greenhouse. He’d been worried about the leaves curling on the plants, but the strawberries tasted fine. Ella gave Lonnie the largest bowl, claiming that she and Gando ate strawberries so often they were tired of them, and he believed her.

Lonnie’s cheer lifted their gloom, but the blackened and damaged pump impeller rested on the worktable, still smelling of burned oil and reminding them of doom. The blades were broken in several spots, and the central core showed fracture lines.

After dinner, Lonnie was curious, poking his fingers against the casing. He bent close and wrinkled his nose. “It stinks. Is it broken?”

The innocent question released a blockage in Gando, and he couldn’t keep the emotion out of his voice. “Yes, it’s broken, and it’s vital. That moves the water from the well to our irrigation pipes. The whole farm depends on it. This means we can’t pump any water.”

“But everybody needs water,” Lonnie said. “I know some streams. We could bring buckets?”

“That would be hard to do, Lonnie,” Gando said, trying not to quash the other man’s bright suggestions. Hundreds of gallons per day were distributed into the drip pipes in the fields, and three times that much to the spray heads. 

He sighed. “I’m afraid we’ll have to make a new impeller back in Xandi City, but it’s a specialized part, and the 3D fabricators are backlogged. So many things breaking down.” He shook his head. He knew he could plead with the mayor, pull strings with his sister, but numerous farmers were also struggling with damaged or failing equipment. Goldilocks was as hard on machinery as it was on people, and Ayekiri was also preoccupied with caring for their sister in the hospital complex. 

Gando heard Ella sniffle, and he felt a lump in his own throat. “If the irrigation is down for a long time, Lonnie, a lot of our plants will die. We don’t get enough rain here to keep the fields growing.”

“Can I help fix it?” His expression looked mournful and devastated.

“I wish you could, but we just don’t have the replacement part that we need.”

“I’m sorry,” Lonnie said.

Ella gave him a big hug. “It’s okay, Lonnie; it’s not your fault.”

After dinner, they sat outside and watched the sky, where the eerie, flickering aurora had appeared. For all the clouds during the day on Goldy, the nights were often clear. Ella had given Lonnie a small bag of oats to take with him. 

The dancing glow was accompanied by the ubiquitous and mysterious sparkles of light, like fireflies that glittered up in the sky, rising and falling. No one had ever figured out what they were. Just another odd phenomenon of this alien world.

“We have a spare bed if you want to stay, Lonnie,” Ella suggested. 

“Sure, spend the night, Just Lonnie,” Gando said.

Lonnie’s expression showed fierce determination. “No thank you, Just Gando. You two gave me a nice meal and these oats, so I’m ready to get going. I like to walk at night.” He hesitated. “I’ve got an idea.”

He loaded the bag of oats into his backpack, gave Ella and Gando a last hug each, then strode out into the cavernous darkness.

III

Three days later, Gando waited anxiously for a return call from his sister saying the new impeller was ready. He’d left a message for her and got a response asking him to send the specs and saying she’d see what she could do. He’d done that, but no word yet. He knew how busy she was, but he needed that impeller. 

And now this. He looked into Greenhouse 2, and the curling strawberry leaves of a few days ago had become a full-fledged blight spreading through the greenhouse much like the similar blight affecting the tomato plants in Greenhouse 3. 

Gando stared with dismay at the rows of shriveled strawberry plants. The blight had sapped the life out of them and spread like blown dust throughout the greenhouse enclosure. He had discarded the first infected plant, but not swiftly enough. Now hundreds of carefully nurtured strawberries were forfeit.

He had studied the limited database from Hind in search of answers, but the records held nothing similar to this disease. Could it possibly be some native Goldilocks smut? Not likely, because the biochemistries shouldn’t be compatible. But there were too many unknowns, with new hazards being discovered every day. Whatever the answer, his most valuable crops were dying.

Not long ago, Gando had had faith that the colonists would figure out agriculture on Goldy. Given the right soil and the right chemistry, the Earth-derived plants would prosper. Brute force and TLC.

He’d thought he and Ella had succeeded with the strawberries. But now this . . .

Ducking inside the tainted greenhouse, he clenched his fists and stared grimly at the dying plants. This seed stock had crossed centuries and light-years, only to die here. Had Hind survived, remaining in orbit as planned, he could have asked the ship’s AI for the information he needed, but that wasn’t possible. 

Hadn’t been possible. Ever. 

Feeling a sense of urgency inside the low enclosure, Gando started backing out of the polymer flap. He needed to check on the other plantings, to go from greenhouse to greenhouse and make sure the blight hadn’t spread.

He froze, finally thinking to look down at his hands to see if there were spores or germs or whatever on him now, contaminated from Greenhouse 2. He had to pray that the disease hadn’t spread, but he knew with cold certainty that Goldilocks rarely answered prayers.

Emerging from the shelter, he stood out in the open and called for Ella. “Stay away. Don’t come into contact!” 

She hurried out of the main dwelling. “Are you hurt?”

“Not me—it’s the strawberries. I’ll have to rip them all up.” 

She kept her distance, watching him with obvious trepidation. Gando couldn’t bear to meet her gaze. He ducked back inside the shelter and brought out a tray of strawberry plants in several inches of chemically prepared mulch and dirt. The soil would be contaminated, too, and he didn’t dare reuse it. 

He carried the tray far from the other greenhouses to a bare stony patch they used as a burn zone. He pulled his drip torch from his belt and aimed it at the strawberries, swallowed hard, and fired. In a few minutes they were ash. 

Then he plodded back to remove the next bed of strawberries. On it went. 

He moved like a man going to a funeral as he uprooted every single strawberry from the enclosure and made a pile of ashen vegetation. From a safe distance, Ella watched him with tears in her eyes. “I want to help, Gan.”

“Not yet.” His voice was flat and dispassionate. He was sure this was the beginning of the end of the homestead. Damn blight. Damn planet. He and Ella had done their best, but he knew that it wouldn’t be good enough. “I need to finish this myself, El, all right?”

She nodded, said, “Okay, Gan.” She could see the future every bit as clearly as he could.

From the equipment shed, Gando tugged out the canister of decontamination chemicals, then sprayed down the entire interior of Greenhouse 2, although he wondered if he should just tear the whole thing down and never use it again. At this point, what did the scope of the disaster matter?

But no, he stayed with it. Already stinking from the decontamination chemicals, he had Ella spray him down, and then he used the cistern shower to scrub himself off. Every part of the process made him feel sick.

By the time he changed into a clean, warm jumpsuit, night had fallen. He and Ella wanted to comfort each other, but they also wanted to be alone with their thoughts, to assess the magnitude of what had happened and the question of what they would do next.

Gando sat outside in the dark gulf of the night, watching the eerie spangles of alien fairy lights flurry like sparks from the still-smoldering fire. He didn’t try to decipher the gnat-like blips, just watched the ashes of the big fire burning down into embers. 

Was this how people had felt during the last days of the Hind? When all the generation ship’s systems were breaking down, the AI system descending into madness, the crew and the passengers fighting over their limited future?

They’d been desperate, not even sure they would survive to reach orbit over Goldilocks. Then, once they’d arrived, expecting a well-earned paradise at last, they had found only . . . this.

Gando and his sisters had never known any sort of Eden, though they had reviewed the available library images of Earth that had come down from Hind before the ship’s destruction. Centuries ago now, there was a time when the home planet had been intact and beautiful, before the ruin that led to the generation ships being built. 

Where they were here was nothing like where they’d come from, the once-beautiful Earth. What was it like there now, nearly two centuries later, he wondered? Had Earth recovered? Was it better than life here on Goldilocks?

There was no way to know, and here, now, was the life they all led. So Gando had lived his life with lowered expectations, but even so, he didn’t know what he and Ella would do now. The loss of the greenhouses was bad, but with the broken impeller, they couldn’t irrigate the rest of their crops. They would lose everything. Everything.

No, he couldn’t give up. He didn’t care about politics or appearances. He would contact Ayekiri again, beg her to use her influence so he could get the replacement impeller fabricated in time to make a difference. It would be a close thing, because after just a couple of days the oats and barley were already starting to look parched; only the potatoes looked healthy. 

In the four decades since the initial settlement, dozens of well-intentioned but poorly planned agricultural outposts or mining settlements had withered and died, leaving ghost towns scattered across the landscape—symbols of audacity, a mark of the bold human spirit. But also, Gando knew, they were just failures, and now he and Ella were about to become one of those themselves.

The acrid smoke wafting up from the still-smoldering heap obscured the photonic midges that swirled around in the distance. The exotic pinpoints of light seemed to be mocking Gando. Xandi City scientists had studied the glowing midges, tried to capture and analyze them, but the energetic specks dissipated and vanished without yielding any answers. 

The fairy lights certainly offered no answers to Gando.

He sensed movement in the shadows beyond the firelight. He thought Ella had come out to join him, but he could still see her shadow inside the house. He heard footsteps, the clack of a stick on a stone, then a figure came out of the darkness. An atavistic fear rose up inside him, though he knew there were no predators on Goldilocks, no large animals at all. 

Then he recognized the human shape. “Lonnie!” 

“Good thing you had that fire, Mr. Gando. It helped me find you easier,” Lonnie said as he walked into the orange glow, acting as if his arrival was the most ordinary thing in the world. “I like campfires.”

“You can join me, Lonnie,” Gando said, but his voice was dispirited. “It wasn’t a campfire, though—it wasn’t a fire I wanted to have at all.”

“You sound sad.” Lonnie hunkered down beside him and unshouldered his enormous pack. “Your oats were really good. I’ll trade you something for more of those.” He began rummaging inside, humming to himself. 

With his leaden heart, Gando didn’t feel like conversation. But Lonnie kept talking. “I don’t want you to be sad, Mr. Gando, so I thought I could help. I want to help fix your pump.”

Gando looked at his innocent face. “This isn’t something you can fix, Lonnie. I don’t know if even the engineers in Xandi City can fix it in time.”

“But all you need is a new part. You said it yourself.” He continued digging around in his sack. ‘An important and vital part,’ you said.”

“Yes, that’s what we need.” Gando kept staring forlornly into the embers.

“So I found one.” Lonnie pulled an object out of his pack. “See, this looks very important and vital. Will it work?”

He extended a polished object of alloy curves, crystalline facets, and gear-like mechanisms. It gleamed in the dull firelight. “I don’t know if this is a pump ’peller, but it looks very important, right?” 

Lonnie handed the contraption to Gando, who took it, curious and amazed. Then he felt his skin crawl. “I . . . don’t think this is an impeller,” he said, holding it in his hands.

“But can you use it?” Lonnie’s cheer was indefatigable. 

The metallic, machined device was unlike anything Gando had ever seen. Incomprehensible symbols were etched into the surface, but in no alphabet he knew. This technology had not come from Hind. 

In fact, he was certain this was not human engineering at all.