Terra Incognita

by Connie Willis

  “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?” Carson said, frowning at me. “It’s not about Evie at all. It’s about what I said the other night about picking you as a partner.”

  “You didn’t pick me, remember?” I said furiously. “Big Brother picked me. For gender balance. Only it obviously didn’t work because half the time you can’t tell which gender I am.”

  “Well, I sure can right now. You’re acting worse than C.J. We been partners for a hundred and eighty expeditions—”

  “Eighty-four,” I said.

  “We’ve been eating dehydes and putting up with C.J. and getting fined by Bult for eight years. What on hell difference does it make how I picked you?”

  “You didn’t pick me. You sat there with your feet up on my desk and said, ‘Wanta come?’ and I came, just like that. And now I find out all you cared about is that I could do topographicals.”

  “All I cared about—?” He kicked the tssi mitss again, and a big piece of clear jelly flew off. “I rode into that luggage stampede and got you. I never even looked at any of those female loaners. What do you want me to do? Send you flowers? Bring you a dead fish? No, wait, I forgot, you got one of those for yourself. Lock horns with Evie so that you can tell which one of us is younger and’s got both feet? What?”

  “I want you to leave me alone. I have to finish these reports,” I said, and looked at the screen. “I want you to go away.”

  Nobody said a word during supper, except Bult, who fined me for dusting off a lump of gypsum before I sat down. It started to rain and all evening Carson kept going out to the edge of the overhang and looking at the sky.

  Ev sat in a corner, looking miserable, and I worked on the reports. Bult didn’t show any inclination to build any more fires. He sat in the opposite corner watching pop-ups until Carson took it away from him and snapped it shut, and then he opened his umbrella, nearly poking me in the eye with it, and went off up to the Wall.

  I wrapped up in my bedroll and worked on the reports some more, but it was too cold. I went to bed. Ev was still sitting in the corner, and Carson was still watching the rain.

  I woke up in the middle of the night with water dripping on my neck. Ev was still asleep in his bedroll, snoring, and Carson was sitting in the corner, with the pop-up spread out in front of him. He was watching the scene in Big Brother’s offices, the scene where he asked me to go with him.

  Expedition 184: Day 4

  In the morning, he was gone. It was raining really hard, and the wind had started to blow. There was a stream running through the middle of the overhang and pooling at the back. The foot of Ev’s bedroll was already wet.

  It was a lot colder, and I figured Carson had gone after firewood, but when I went outside his pony was gone.

  I climbed up to the Wall to look for Bult. He wasn’t in any of the chambers. I went back down to the pool.

  He wasn’t there, and the pool wasn’t either. Water was pouring everywhere over the rocks, white with gypsum. The ponypile Ev had crouched on was completely covered.

  I climbed back up to the Wall and followed it over the ridge. Bult was at the top, looking south toward what you could see of the Ponypiles, which wasn’t much, the clouds were so low.

  “Where’s Carson?” I shouted over the rain.

  He looked west and then down at the oil field we’d crossed yesterday. “Dan nah,” he said.

  “He took one of the ponies,” I shouted. “Which way did he go?”

  “Nah see liv,” he said. “Nah goot-bye.”

  “He didn’t say good-bye to anybody,” I said. “We’ve got to find him. You go up along the ridge, and I’ll check the way we came up.”

  But the way we came up was flowing with water, too, and too slick for a pony to have gotten down, and when I went up to the overhang to get Ev, the whole back half was underwater and Ev was piling everything on a damp ledge.

  “We’ve got to move the equipment,” he said when he saw me. “Where’s Carson?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I found another overhang higher up, not as deep and tilted up toward the back, and we carried the transmitter and the cameras up. When I went down for the rest of the equipment, I found Carson’s log. And his mike.

  Bult came back, sopping wet. “Nah fine,” he said.

  And apparently he doesn’t want to be found, I thought, turning the mike over in my hands.

  “That overhang isn’t going to work,” Ev said. “There’s water spilling down the side.”

  We moved the equipment again, into a carved-out hollow away from the stream. It was deep, and the bottom was dry, but by afternoon there was a river running past it, spilling down catty-corner from the ridge, and by morning we’d be cut off from the ponies. And any way out if the water rose.

  I went looking again. Water was pouring from both overhangs we’d been in, and there was no way we could get to the other side of the stream, even without tssi mitss in it. I climbed up onto the ridge. It was high enough, but we’d never last out here in the open. I tried not to think about Carson, out in this somewhere with nothing but his bedroll. And no mike.

  A shuttlewren dived at my head and around to the Wall again. “Better get in out of this,” I said.

  I went back down to the hollow and got Ev and Bult. “Come on,” I said, picking up the transmitter. “We’re moving.” I led them up to the ridge and over to the Wall. “In here,” I said.

  “I thought this was against the regs,” Ev said, stepping over the rounded bottom of the door.

  “So’s everything else,” I said. “Including drowning and polluting the waterways with our bodies.”

  Bult stepped over the door and set his equipment down, and got out his log. “Trespassing on Boohteri property,” he said into it.

  It took us four trips to get everything up, and then we still had the ponies, which were all lying in a waterlogged pile and wouldn’t get up. We had to push them up through the rocks, protesting all the way. It was dark before we got them to the Wall.

  “We aren’t going to put them in the same chamber with us, are we?” Ev said hopefully, but Bult was already lifting them over the door, paw by paw.

  “Maybe we could knock out a door between this passage and the next one,” Ev said.

  “Destruction of Boohteri property,” Bult said, and got out his log.

  “At least with the ponies we’ll have something to eat,” I said.

  “Destruction of alien life-form,” Bult said into his log.

  Destruction of alien life-form. I should get busy on those reports.

  “Where was Carson going?” Ev said as if he’d just remembered he was missing.

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking out at the rain.

  “Carson would’ve waded right in when he saw that thing and killed it,” Ev said.

  Yeah, I thought, he would have. And then yelled at me for not running an f-and-f check.

  “They would have done a pop-up about it,” he said, and I thought, Yeah, and I know what that would have looked like. Old Tight Pants without her pants yelling, “Help, help!” and a fish with false teeth lunging up out of the water, and Carson splashing in with a laser and blasting it to hell.

  “I told you to get out of the water, and you did,” I said. “I would’ve jumped out myself if I hadn’t been so far out.”

  “Carson wouldn’t have,” he said. “He would have come to get you.”

  I looked out at the darkness and the rain. “Yeah,” I said. He would have. If he’d known where I was.

  Expedition 184: Day 5

  It took me all the next day to fill out the reports on the tssi mitss, which was probably a good thing. It kept me from standing in the door of the Wall like Ev, staring out at the rain and the rising water.

  And it kept me from thinking about Stewart, and how he’d drowned in a
flash flood, and about his partner Annie Segura, who’d gone off looking for him and never been found. It kept me from thinking about Carson, washed up somewhere along the Tongue. Or sitting at the bottom of a cliff.

  The chamber wasn’t much of an improvement on the overhang. The ponies got the runs, and the shuttlewren flew frantically back and forth around our heads. With the rounded floor, there was no place to sit, and the wind kept blowing rain in. Ev and I could’ve used one of Bult’s shower curtains.

  Bult didn’t need one. He sat under his umbrella watching pop-ups all day. Carson had left them behind, too. I tried to take it away from him, which got me a fine, and then made Ev show him how to make it not take up the whole chamber, but as soon as Ev went back to watching out the door, Bult put it back to full size.

  “He’s been gone too long,” Tight Pants said, swinging up onto her horse, which was in the middle of the ponies. “I’m going to find him.”

  “It’s been nearly twenty hours,” the accordion said. “We must report in to Home Base.”

  “It’s been more than twenty-four hours,” Ev said, coming back in from the door. “Aren’t we supposed to call C.J.?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and started filling in Form R-28-X, Proper Disposal of Indigenous Fauna Remains. In all those trips up the ridge in the pouring rain, I hadn’t thought to bring the tssi mitss, which meant I was going to get slapped with another fine.

  “Are you going to call her?” Ev said.

  I kept filling out the report.

  Toward evening C.J. called. “The scans have been showing the same thing all day,” she said.

  “It’s raining. We’re waiting it out in a cave.”

  “But you’re all all right?”

  “We’re fine,” I said.

  “Do you want me to come pull you out?”

  “No.”

  “Can I talk to Ev?”

  “No,” I said, looking at him. “He’s out with Carson seeing how bad the flooding is.” I signed off.

  “I wouldn’t have told her,” Ev said.

  “I know,” I said, looking at Bult.

  Carson and Fin were standing in front of him. “It’ll be uncharted territory,” Carson said, holding out his hand.

  “I’m not afraid,” Fin said, “as long as I’m with you.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ev said.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Expedition 184: Day 6

  The next morning the rain let up a little and then started again. The roof of the chamber developed a leak, right over where we had the equipment piled, and we had to move it over next to the ponies.

  It was getting a little crowded. During the night four roadkill had dragged themselves over the door, and the shuttlewren went crazy, wheeling and circling at the top of the chamber, making passes at Ev and me, and at Tight Pants climbing down the cliff.

  Bult wasn’t watching. He’d gotten up for the hundredth time and gone outside to stand on the ridge.

  “What’s he doing?” Ev said, watching the shuttlewrens.

  “Looking for Carson,” I said. “Or a way out of here.”

  There wasn’t any way out. Water was flowing off of every mound, carrying what looked like half the Ponypiles with it, and a raging stream cut across the end of the ridge.

  “Where do you think Carson is?” Ev said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. During the night, it had occurred to me that Wulfmeier might have gotten his gate fixed and come back to get even. And Carson was alone, no mike, nothing.

  I couldn’t tell Ev that, and while I was trying to think of something I could, Ev said, “Fin, come look at this.”

  He was peering up at the leak in the ceiling. The shuttlewren was making little dives at it.

  “It’s trying to repair it,” Ev said thoughtfully. “Fin, do you still have those parts of the one Bult ate?”

  “There wasn’t much left,” I said, but I dug in my pack and got them out.

  “Oh, good,” he said, examining the fragments. “I was afraid he’d eaten the beak.” He settled down against the wall with them.

  The pop-up was still on. Fin was binding up the stub of Carson’s foot and bawling. “It’s all right,” Carson was saying. “Don’t cry.”

  The pop-up went dark and words appeared in the middle of the chamber. The credits. “Written by Captain Jake Trailblazer.”

  “Look at this,” Ev said, bringing over one of the shuttlewren pieces. “See how the beak is flat, like a trowel? Can I run an analysis?”

  “Sure.” I went over to the door and looked out. Bult was standing on the ridge, where the stream cut across, in the rain.

  “I should have figured it out before,” Ev said, looking at the screen. “Look at how high the door is. And why would the Boohteri make a curved floor like that?” He stood up and looked at the leak again. “You said you’ve never seen the Boohteri building one of the chambers?” he said. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember me telling you about the bowerbird?” he said.

  “The one that builds a nest fifty times its size?”

  “It’s not a nest. It’s a courtship chamber.”

  I couldn’t see where this was going. We already knew the indidges used the Wall for courting.

  “The male Adelie penguin gives a round stone to the female as a courting gift. But the stone doesn’t belong to him. He stole it from another nest.” He looked expectantly at me. “Who does that sound like?”

  Well, Carson and I’d always said we thought somebody else built the Wall. I looked up at the shuttlewren. “But it’s too small to build something like this, isn’t it?” I said.

  “The bowerbird’s bower is fifty times its size. And you said the Wall was only growing by two new chambers a year. Some species only mate every three years, or five. Maybe they work on it several years.”

  I looked at the curved walls. Three to five years work, and then the imperialistic indidges move in and take it over, knock the door out to make it bigger, put up flags. I wondered what Big Brother was going to say when he heard about this.

  “It’s just a theory,” Ev said. “I need to run probabilities on size and strength and take samples of the Wall’s composition.”

  “It sounds like a pretty good theory,” I said. “I’ve never seen Bult use a tool. Or order one either.” The Boohteri word for the wall was “ours,” but so was the word for most of Carson’s and my wages. And that was Ev’s pop-up he’d been watching.

  “I’ll need a specimen,” Ev said, looking speculatively at the shuttlewren making frantic circles around us.

  “Go ahead,” I said, ducking. “Wring its neck. I’ll write up the reports.”

  “First, I want to get this on holo,” he said, and spent the next hour filming the shuttlewren poking at the leak. It didn’t do anything to it that I could see, but by midmorning the ceiling had stopped leaking, and there was a tiny patch of new-looking white shiny stuff on the ceiling.

  Bult came in, with his umbrella and two dead shuttlewrens.

  “Give that to me,” I said, and snatched one away from him.

  He glared at me. “Forcible confiscation of property.”

  “Exactly.” I handed it to Ev. “ ‘Ours.’ You’d better stick it in your boot.”

  Ev did, and Bult watched him, glaring, and then stuffed the other one in his mouth and went outside. Ev got out his knife and started chipping flakes off of the Wall.

  The rain was letting up, and I went out and took a look around. Bult was standing where the stream cut across the ridge, staring up into the Ponypiles. While I watched, he splashed across and went on along the ridge.

  The stream must be down, and the pool definitely was. Milky water was still spilling off every surface, but you could see Ev’s ponypat rock and t
he spout at the bottom of the pool. Off to the west the clouds were starting to thin.

  I went back up to the ridge. Bult had disappeared. I went into the chamber and started stuffing things in my pack.

  “Where are you going?” Ev said. He’d looked around to make sure it wasn’t Bult and then started scraping again.

  “To find Carson,” I said, fixing the straps so I could put the pack on my back.

  “You can’t,” he said, holding the knife. “It’s against the regs. You’re supposed to stay where you are.”

  “That’s right.” I took off my mike and handed it and Carson’s to him. “You wait here till afternoon and then call C.J. to come get you. We’re only sixty kloms from King’s X. She’ll be here in a flash.” I stepped over the door.

  “But you don’t know where he is,” Ev said.

  “I’ll find him,” I said, but I didn’t have to. He and Bult were coming across the stream talking, their heads bent together. Carson was limping.

  I ducked back in the chamber, dumped my pack on the floor, and asked for R-28-X, Proper Disposal of Indigenous Fauna Remains.

  “What are you doing?” Ev said. “I want you to take me with you. It’s uncharted territory. I don’t think you should go look for Carson by yourself,” and Carson appeared in the door. “Oh,” Ev said, surprised.

  Carson stepped over the door and into the middle of the pop-up Bult had been watching. It was raining, and Fin was standing watching two thousand luggage bear down on her. Carson swung into the saddle and galloped toward her.

  Carson snapped the pop-up shut. “How wide do you think the field is?” he said to me.

  “Eight kloms. Maybe ten. That’s how long the bluff is,” I said. I handed him his mike. “You lost this.”

  He put it on. “Are you sure eight is as far as it goes?”

  “No, but after that there’s caprock, so there won’t be any seepage. If we don’t run a subsurface, we’ll be okay,” I said. “Is that where you were, finding a way past it?”

  “I want to leave by noon,” he said, and walked over to Bult. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”