Moonsteed

by Manda Benson

  “No.”

  “I thought you might have been able to...tell what I was thinking.”

  Raising his eyebrows and smiling slightly, Lloyd interlocked his fingers on the desk before him. “I can invade people’s conscious thoughts.” He lowered his chin, glancing up at her. “But if I tried it on you, you’d know it.”

  Verity considered this. It made sense. “The things John Aaron said to me sounded like he’d found out.”

  A crease became visible on Lloyd’s forehead, beneath the shunts and interface apparatus. “If that’s a published experiment, there will be information on the ANTs. Any data that might identify you would be protected, but it would be possible for someone intent on digging deep to use the data to narrow down their search and potentially pinpoint you.”

  “But I think there’s more to it than that. I’ve just got this feeling about it. What if the spy was involved with that as well? What if there are several of them, and they’ve got a camp set up on Callisto, somewhere out of range of the ANT, and that’s where Private Aaron has gone?”

  Lloyd let off a snort that petered out to a snigger. “I mean no insult, Verity, but surely you can’t fail to appreciate the irony. If you were engineered using Caleb’s gametes, you’re genetically Jananin Blake’s grandchild, and for a descendant of someone who is widely credited as being history’s greatest rational thinker to say there’s a problem because she has an intuitive feeling...well!”

  “I don’t mean like that! I mean a feeling like when you do a calculation and the result’s the wrong magnitude, or when there’s an equation with the constant missing!”

  Lloyd shook his head, still chuckling. “I’m sure it’s nothing. There wasn’t anything to indicate anything of that nature in the spy’s mind.” His face became serious, his head-shaking more emphatic.

  “There’s something. There has to be something I’ve missed.”

  Lloyd downed the rest of his tea. “Ah, well. Ignotum per ignotius. My apologies, Verity, but I really must get on with my packing now. I’m sorry this is troubling you. I hope it all starts to make sense soon, and that talking to me has helped consolidate some things for you.” He pushed back his chair.

  “Thanks,” said Verity, getting to her feet. Not really. Or maybe it had. There was something missing from this puzzle, and now she’d had an idea about where she might start looking for it.

  Chapter 4

  Next morning, after supervising Vladimir and the stallion in the centrifuge, Verity watched him un-shoe the horse and lock the stable.

  “Pick a horse.” She spread her arms, palms up.

  Vladimir stared at her. “What? What for?”

  “I’m going to teach you to ride.”

  Vladimir’s eyes widened and his brows went up.

  “For that stallion to get the exercise he needs, he has to be ridden in the centrifuge, and for that to happen, you need to learn to ride, and he needs to learn to be ridden. If you both try to learn at once, you’ll only teach each other mistakes, so pick a horse, any horse other than the stallion or the big mare.”

  Vladimir turned full circle, examining the horses. “Are there any that are...nice?”

  “They’re all nice. They’re animals. Animals don’t do pettiness and jealousy, and grudges and nastiness.”

  “All right, that one.” Vladimir singled out a horse with its head over the stall door, watching him.

  “Put her outdoor tack and shoes on. When you’ve finished, I’ll inspect how you’ve done it.”

  As Vladimir approached the horse cautiously and reached to its face to tune his interface, Verity went to the alpha mare. If she would be teaching him to ride, the lead horse’s presence would reinforce that. She touched the horse’s implant to sync herself and opened the stable door. Verity liked this horse, liked how she anticipated instructions and thought ahead, and how when she was on this horse, other riders and their horses fell into order as if by nature.

  After she’d tacked up, she went to inspect Vladimir’s effort. The shoes and the basic tack were correct, but the stirrups and some of the fastenings on the armor were wrong.

  “There’s no bit on this bridle,” Vladimir said.

  “It’s not good for them to have saliva running out of their mouths in the sort of temperatures outside. We use thought-prompts and a bridle with no bit to control them.” After correcting the faults, Verity said. “I’m going to tell you something, but you’re not allowed to say anything about it.”

  Vladimir tilted his head fancifully. “Isn’t that in violation of the Freedom of Information Act?”

  “No. Shut up and listen. I’m going to teach you to ride and, while we’re out, we’re going to take some measurements, so we have to take the bore kit. We’re also going to take the climbing gear because I want to do something else. When I killed that spy the other day, I cut off his head and took it back to the Inquisitor as fast as I could, because he needed to find out what the spy knew. I left the rest of the spy’s body behind, and it fell down a crater at the edge of the scarp, so it won’t have been recovered. Now I’m wondering if there was something the Inquisitor missed, and because he’s disposed of the head I can’t ask for him to look again, so I’m going to try to see if there are any other clues on the spy’s body.”

  “How could the Inquisitor have missed it? They’re trained to extract information from people’s minds that they’re trying to conceal.”

  “He could have missed it if it was something completely different to the data the spy had stolen. He wouldn’t have known to look for it.”

  Vladimir frowned. “If this data’s exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and you go looking for it and you find it, doesn’t that mean you’re committing a crime and you’re essentially a spy?”

  “I’m a member of staff here. It’s not if there is any and I tell the Commodore I found it.”

  “Why don’t you tell the Commodore now, then? Before you go looking for it?”

  “Because it might be nothing. It’s not based on anything concrete.” In truth, Verity had felt an odd suspicion toward Commodore Smith ever since she’d admitted her concerns to him and he’d dismissed the idea that John Aaron might have been in league with the spy or someone else in the base.

  Vladimir’s voice took on a sardonic tone. “You just don’t want to lose face.”

  “No.” Verity looked him fiercely in the eyes, as she might have done if she was trying to intimidate an animal. “And you wouldn’t, if you were in the same position. If you have a hypothesis for a scientific idea, do you go and tell your superiors before you’ve done any preliminary tests?”

  Vladimir paused to think about this.

  “There, see? Now put these on.” Verity opened the store cupboard and kicked some spare armor she’d gathered that morning in his direction. She collected the climbing gear and half of the rods from the boring kit and began to load them into the bags behind her horse’s saddle.

  “This is too small,” said Vladimir.

  When Verity glanced back to him, he was struggling to fasten the chest piece. “It’s not too small. It’s you that’s too fat. It’s supposed to be adjustable, anyway.”

  “Yes, well, I think I’m beyond the remit of its adjustability.”

  “Oh, come here!” Verity exhaled forcefully and rolled her eyes. “Put your arms up.” She adjusted the straps at the sides of the armor and snapped the buckles at the front shut. “There you are. You’re not that fat. Now put the rest of it on, and put this kit in your bag.”

  The sun had just cleared the horizon as they led the horses out. Jupiter, above the equatorial horizon as it always appeared from the latitude of the base, was waning close to its last quarter against an indigo sky. Verity looked up the side of the building, squinting in the glare. Morning sun glittered on the rime coating the concrete walls. Another near semicircle, stark and grayish, hung just above Jupiter--probably Ganymede. The horses blew clouds of steam.

  Verity jumped up, grabbing
the front and back of the saddle, straightened her arms and swung her knee over. She got her feet into the stirrups, wriggling her knees into position, so her legs against the contours of the saddle pressed her firmly down into the seat. Vladimir put his foot on one of the building’s buttresses to aid his mounting, and landed heavily on his horse.

  When he was settled as best as he apparently could manage, Verity pointed to her saddle. “Make sure your knees are pressed in below the front edge of the saddle. The way it’s shaped is designed to make it hard for you to be thrown upward when you’re sitting properly.”

  Vladimir squirmed, pushing his knees down and in so his heels went out awkwardly against the stirrups. “Is that right?”

  Verity rolled her eyes. “I suppose it’ll have to do. We’re going to go about a hundred yards and then stop to take a sample. Think you can manage that?”

  Behind his visor, Vladimir’s face contorted. “I can try.”

  “Okay, then. Look, don’t worry about the reins and the stirrups at the moment. Just stay focused and use thought-prompts properly. The horse knows to follow me, and it’ll be able to sense what you want it to do from the interface.”

  “Focus,” said Vladimir. “Easier said than done.”

  Verity touched her heels to her mount’s flanks and gave the thought-prompt to move off, and they were away, out through the compound’s gates and onto the black ice plain that gleamed like obsidian in the morning sun, hoofs clapping on the ice, snorts of breath rushing from the horse’s nostrils over her shoulders and Verity’s knees. With the swaying motion of the gallop and the undulating ground opening before her at exhilarating speed, Verity felt the horse’s heartbeat as if it were her own, as though the beast and she were one.

  About here would be right. She leaned back, tightening the reins and giving the command to slow. When the horse had come to a halt, she looked back to see Vladimir following some distance away, at an uncontrolled and wobbly canter.

  “There’s no point trying to go medium speed in this gravity!” she shouted as he closed the distance. “Trotting and cantering has too much up-and-down movement! If you just gallop flat-out it’s smoother!”

  Vladimir’s horse slowed to a jolting trot before stopping beside Verity’s. He looked uncomfortable and unnatural in the saddle, leaning too far forward and with his legs bent at the wrong angle. Verity kicked her feet out of the stirrups and slid off. She pulled the bore kit from the bag and began connecting the rods.

  Vladimir slithered off his horse, landed off balance on his heels and grabbed hold of his horse to steady himself, wisps of vapor escaping the dehumidifier-warmer on the mouthpiece of his helmet.

  “What’s this for again?”

  Verity set the drill point on the ice and fastened the handle onto the rod. “It’s for monitoring the temperature and composition of the ice. The idea with this moon is that the Meritocracy eventually wants it for a permanent colony. Callisto’s not like Earth and Mars. It’s made of ice and dust, and if it heats up too much it’ll melt and turn into a ball of slush. One of the base’s functions here is to monitor the temperature and make sure it remains stable.”

  “So what happens if it isn’t?”

  “If it gets past twenty below, that’s not good. There’ll be a report on that and it goes back to MANTIcore, then probably the Electorate will nominate it for referendum, and then it’ll have to be decided.”

  Vladimir set his arms akimbo and turned his head to survey the landscape. “It’s not my field, but I’d imagine heating it up to a habitable temperature, but not going so far that the ice melts, must be a pretty delicate balance.”

  “It is.” Verity leaned on the handle with both hands, pressing down on the drill. She turned the handle and felt diamond teeth bite into the ice. “When they terraformed Callisto, they extracted carbon, nitrogen and ice from the crust, split the ice into oxygen and hydrogen, and burned the carbon in the oxygen to produce a nitrogen, oxygen, carbon-dioxide atmosphere to kick-start global warming.”

  Vladimir looked vacant for a moment. Verity fancied she could see gears turning in his head. “What about the hydrogen?”

  “That’s what’s used to power the fusion engine that generates power for the compound.” Verity turned the handle again. “Here, you have a go at this. You’re heavier than me so it might work better.”

  Vladimir grasped the handle and twisted it. The point slid out of its indentation and scratched a white scar across the dark ice. Verity rolled her eyes.

  “This thing’s rubbish!” he argued. “Why don’t you have a machine for doing this?”

  “There’s a motor in it. You need to start it off by hand. You hold the bottom of it and I’ll do it.”

  Vladimir knelt on the ice and held the rod with both hands. Verity leaned on it, turning the handle again. After a few turns it was in deep enough to start the motor. They held the bore mount still and watched as the depth gauge on the readout in the center of the handle rose.

  The motor stopped and a few seconds later a figure flashed on the dial, and the handle beeped.

  “Do you need to write that down on a computer or something?” Vladimir asked.

  “No need. I just record it real-time into a spreadsheet on the ANT.” Verity had already sent the recording back to the base with a thought-prompt. She pressed the button to retract the drilling shaft and pulled the bore up from the ice. “Let’s move on to the next one.”

  They took five more readings in this fashion on the route toward the scarp where Verity and John Aaron had chased the spy. As she came into the shadow of the great ice protrusions, Verity looked back to see Vladimir still lagging behind. “Hurry up!” she shouted. “Don’t be such a wimp!”

  After he caught up, he asked, “Is there any reason for this?”

  “I just told you what the reason was!”

  “Not the bores! What I mean is, why use horses? Why not use a vehicle? It’s warm inside and you can’t fall off.”

  Verity frowned. “Because most of the terrain’s no good for vehicles. It’s all right over there and around the base, but most of it’s all ravines and mess.” She pointed up the near-vertical cliff. “Last time I came here, chasing the spy, I went that way.” She paused to relish his daunted expression. “But this time, we’ll go the slow way. Now keep up with me!”

  She kept to a slow canter as they followed the narrow path edged with sharp protrusions of ice and jagged outcrops. It wasn’t really safe to go flat-out with this little margin of error, anyway, and she’d be held accountable if Vladimir managed to skewer himself on the ice or, even worse, if he hurt the horse through his ineptitude.

  Verity could see through the horse’s vision that Vladimir was twisting and shifting in his saddle to get a good view of the surroundings. “This really is quite spectacular! It’s got to be in the same league as the Mariner Valley, or the Grand Canyon!”

  “Ya, whatever.”

  “But look at it! It’s amazing! People would pay good money to come and look at this and have photographs of it.” He added, in a more pensive voice, “I hope it doesn’t melt. Does it have a name?”

  Verity had slowed her horse to a walk. “We just call it the scarp. They run all around the Valhalla crater. This happens to be the closest one to the installation. These towers and pointy bits of lighter ice are unusual, though. They come from when there’s an impact and molten stuff from the mantle gets forced up through the crust and crystallizes fast.”

  “I suppose before the moon was terraformed, they just used to sublime away, into those blunt columns you see on the plain?”

  “Ya, that ice is older.”

  “We ought to think of a name for it.”

  Verity threw a glance over her shoulder. “They can call it Sergeant Verity’s Canyon.”

  “Like they’re going to call it after you...”

  “Well, they’re not going to call it after you!”

  “You never know. I could become a famous geneticist. Like Pilgrennon
.”

  Verity’s horse snorted. “What do you know about Pilgrennon? He wasn’t Russian, and he did genetic engineering on humans, not horses.”

  Vladimir stared up at the glittering crags. Verity followed his focus to the sharp cliff edge. “You know what else this reminds me of?” he said. “Torrmede.”

  Verity grimaced. “How can it look like Torrmede? Stop name-dropping Torrmede into everything! Just because you went there doesn’t make you special or anything like that.”

  “You know what I mean! Torrmede’s built on a steep rocky piece of land, and the rhododendrons all grow up it.”

  “I never saw any rhododendrons at Torrmede or anywhere else that looked like ice spikes!” Verity checked the surrounding landmarks. This looked like the right place. On the ground she saw a lighter stripe scratched. Could that mark where a horse had slipped? She dismounted.

  “Perhaps it’s your imagination that’s not up to task. Now where are you going?” Vladimir asked from behind her. There was that smashed stand of ice she’d kicked over to pack the head in. There, the broken points where the horse had gone down. At the memory of the horse’s death, a queasy sensation started in Verity’s stomach and began to spread upward into her chest. The base had recovered the horse’s body, but a dark patch on the ice, frozen blood, showed where it had died. Here was where John Aaron had attacked her, and she had spared him. With a sudden apprehension, she raised her eyes to the empty hollows and jagged shadows of the scarp, sensing something unfamiliar and sinister about them. What if he had a way to survive out here and he still lived, still hunted her?

  She looked the other way, to the edge of the crater. That was where the spy’s body had fallen. Crystals sprouted like crenellations from the edge of the path, and she could see no sign of a descent, as she’d suspected. It wouldn’t be worth ordering a party to climb into that crater and drag out a corpse when all the information the Inquisitor needed had been in the spy’s mind.