by Lynn Rae
“What? Do I have something on my face?” She daubed at her chin with a grimy napkin.
“Just some dust.”
“So why are you looking?”
“I’ve already looked at all the rocks around here.”
“These igneous formations are much more interesting than me, I can assure you,” Del declared. “These happen to be fairly new ones. Sayre has a lot of geothermal activity and the tectonic plates often separate and push up interesting things.”
“I’m sure.” Casta nodded, still watching her. “Have you been to the hot springs?”
Del shrugged noncommittally. The hot springs were near the port and well-used by the residents. It was usually the farthest place most porties ventured outside the settlement walls and agricultural fields. Del preferred places less popular and more remote, with better chances of finding something worth salvaging.
“A few times. Too many people go there and it’s sort of a couples’ thing. Romantic, or so some people say.”
Casta nodded and glanced away from her, taking a swallow of coconut milk. “That was the only place I’d been out here, until yesterday with you.”
Del shrugged again. ”That’s perfectly normal. Most porties stay inside.” She didn’t want to know any details of his trip to the hot springs or who he’d escorted there. Just the thought of Casta half-naked and wet in steaming-hot water was enough to make her sweat even more than she already was.
“‘Porties’. You use that term?”
“Sure. What else am I supposed to say?”
“Sayrian works. We’re all Sayrians.”
“No we aren’t. You aren’t a Sayrian.”
“Sure I am. I live here, on Sayre. Here I am, on Sayre. A Sayrian.” He patted the sand next to his thigh and looked at her, his whiskey-colored eyes twinkling.
“Yes, for now. But you won’t stay here. Nobody stays here unless they were born here.” Or can’t afford to leave. Del wondered if she would stay if she had the means to actually leave this planet. Would she feel free or would she miss home and return? How many people who came here briefly had she said farewell to over the years? Ten? Twenty? In her early twenties, she’d stopped making friends with porties. They always left.
“So you have to be born here to be a Sayrian, in your opinion?”
“Yes. Everyone else is transient. How long have you been here, six months or so?” Lazlo nodded and kept looking at her with those bright-brown eyes. “And you’ll probably be transferred in another year or so?”
Lazlo nodded again and ate a handful of peas, crunching on them and making his smooth jaw bulge and clench. She really had to stop looking at him. Look at that aggregate, it’s very interesting. “So you aren’t really here, are you? You work at this port, as at any other port, and then you move to another one, just as any other assignment.”
“That’s the system for us. Does it make you angry?” Lazlo wondered out loud. Del seemed a little agitated for such a minor issue. She blinked and hurriedly shifted her scratched shades to cover her eyes as she shook her head.
“Maybe a little. People come and go and I’m just here.” She sounded more wistful than angry and he wondered who had left her. Or where she wished she was instead.
“Haven’t you been off-planet?”
“No.”
This surprised him, but he’d been traveling to different worlds since he’d left for the Academy at sixteen, moving along every few years, going to extreme environments for training, taking nice shore leaves on gorgeous planets. He couldn’t imagine living on one planet for his whole life. Of course, people always used to, but he hadn’t met anyone in her situation before. No wonder her sister was fascinated by where other people came from. Or perhaps Dee Dee merely used that as a convenient pick-up line. But he didn’t want Del to feel badly about it. Or the lack of education she’d revealed to him before. She was one of the smartest people he’d met.
“Let me assure you that most ports look exactly like Sayre’s and all stations are grim and cramped places, so you aren’t missing much there. And they all have the same funky smell, like sweat, old food and hydraulics. No scenery like this, no fresh air.” She shrugged under her oversized shirt and wiped her hands on her trousers. “Is there someplace you’d like to go?” Lazlo asked.
“Not a station, if they’re as you described. I’d need mental intervention in a few hours,” Del scoffed and leaned back on her hands. “But I’ve always wanted to see Batana.” She smiled a little then, probably contemplating all of the angry volcanoes spewing on that unstable planet. He’d never met anyone who actually wanted to go there. It was an awful place.
“I’ve never been to Batana,” Lazlo admitted. “But I can recommend Freton. It’s beautiful there.”
Del looked at him and snorted. “You would say that. But I would say if it was so beautiful, why did you leave?”
That was a good question, one his family and friends still asked years after the fact and years after it was obvious he wasn’t going to reconsider his choices.
“I wanted to help people, and on Freton, people need help with their baggage and getting their next drink while lying on the beach.” Lazlo stretched his hamstrings a bit then rolled his shoulders. It was strange to be having this conversation with someone he’d just met in some narrow rocky canyon while eating dried food. But he didn’t mind talking about it with Del Browen. “I had a big enough ego that I thought I was capable of something a bit more challenging.”
“And have you been capable?”
“For the most part. Maybe you should ask my commanding officer for his evaluation of my abilities.” Then again, maybe not. The major wasn’t generous with his praise.
Lazlo contemplated what his life would have been if he’d stayed and worked in the family business of entertaining tourists and taking perhaps a few more marks out of their pockets than they’d budgeted for their dream vacation.
Del grinned at him and rolled to her feet, stomping her boots into the sand a bit before swinging her pack onto her back. “Maybe I will ask him about you, Lieutenant Casta. Come on, we’ve a lot more ground to cover. And I think we’re going to have to be careful of some thermals in there.” She pointed at a shaded slot in the rock. “Smell that sulfur? It means there’s something hot going on in there.”
“Hot, like magma?”
“Hot, like steam from a superheated aquifer venting to the surface.” Del looked as if she were excited to see something new. “Come on, it’ll be interesting.”
“Hot steam from the center of the planet isn’t interesting, it’s frightening.” Lazlo was half teasing but half serious—the idea of unregulated geothermal activity was intimidating. What if something exploded? Or there was an earthquake?
“Come on, you aren’t scared. You just want to rest some more.” Del reached out and grabbed his arm, tugging at him until he slowly and complainingly got to his feet. Lazlo wanted to wrap an arm around her and give her a squeeze, but instead patted her on the back as an acknowledgement of her help. Del was a good companion—alert, knowledgeable and nice to look at. And she carried a knife.
*
“Should I go up there?” Lazlo gazed at the cliff face with a dubious expression. It rose at least thirty meters above them—thirty meters of crumbly, overhanging pinkish stone. Likely quartzite.
Facing the reality of a climb had finally distracted Del from the delightful steam vents they’d passed earlier. The crust of yellowish crystals surrounding the jagged openings belched great gusts of foul hot air and prompted her to take numerous samples. She’d even reached far too close to one to collect some gas in a collapsible beaker and then waved it under Lazlo’s nose. It had smelled rancid and he’d gagged. After coughing theatrically, Lazlo compared the thermals to Sayre’s burps, or worse—and won a loud laugh from her. This impossible-to-scale cliff looming overhead destroyed the last of her humor.
Del shook her head slowly, wiping her face with a damp cloth. “Are you a climber, by any
chance?”
“No. Nothing steep like this, not since training, and that was years ago. I’ve rappelled down them, but not climbed up them without ropes and gear.” Lazlo squinted up with the resigned expression of a man who had something difficult to do.
“We don’t have that equipment and I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway.” Del frowned. She was irritated with the cliff face that was resisting their scanner’s efforts. She guessed that there were some strange minerals acting as dampeners or that the planet’s poles had reversed again as they tended to do. Which meant they would need to recalibrate their equipment back at the port.
“I don’t like the idea of you climbing up there.” Del turned and peered at him.
“I can do it.”
“But I don’t want you to do it.” Del shook her head.
“Why not?”
“You’re too big. You’ll fall too hard.” She was the guide. It was her responsibility to explore and to keep her client safe.
“That doesn’t make sense. Everything falls at the same rate. Sayre’s gravity is close to standard, just under ten meters per second.” Lazlo’s attempt to use basic science to convince her didn’t work. The thought of watching him haul himself up there and perhaps fall right down was making her very nervous.
“I know that. But it will be a lot easier for you to get me to the cart if I fall and get hurt than it would be for me to drag your big self out of this canyon if you fall and get hurt,” Del shot back as if she were explaining something terribly obvious. Because she was explaining something terribly obvious.
“Maybe we can do something else. You can sit on my shoulders and hold the scanner.”
Del winced at Lazlo’s suggestion, which would put her legs around him. Climbing the cliff face was a much safer option. “No, I’m not doing that.”
“I won’t drop you,” he assured her.
Of course you won’t. Lazlo looked as if he could deadlift any one of the massive boulders that crowded around them.
Lazlo must have realized she was averse to that idea and tried another approach. “Do we have to check up there? It seems pretty unlikely that they would have stored anything in such an inaccessible place.”
“Yes, we have to check. Look there,” Del pointed to a horizontal ridge of stone about ten meters above them. “See those marks in the rock? Those look like the right size and shape for temporary ramping.”
She followed the angle of an imaginary ramp to a logical terminus on the floor of the canyon and crouched down to brush away some sand. There were deep gouges in the bedrock, right where they should be if there had indeed been a ramp. “See these marks? Just right for the bottom of the ramp. And I know there’s a pretty large ledge up there, based on the curve of the rock and the shadows.”
“You’re right, we have to check it out. Why couldn’t it be about five meters lower?” Lazlo sounded resigned to climbing. He folded his big arms across his broad chest and took a deep breath. Stars, he was impressive. Del took her own deep breath and turned back to observing the cliff face. It was much less worrisome than her strange impulses.
“I could order you to stay down here while I go up,” Lazlo grumbled.
“You can’t order me to do anything out here. This isn’t your jurisdiction. I’ll tell Harata,” Del teased.
Lazlo sighed, apparently accepting that his last rather tenuous attempt to stop her was heading toward failure. Anyone could see that. ”Technically, the sheriff and his deputies are subordinate to port security.”
“Right, you try telling him that. Hold my pack. I’m going up.” Reaching that decision, Del started to strip off her equipment. “I just want to check along that middle section. That’s the only likely place anything could be anyway.”
“Let me go.” Lazlo tried to assert himself again but Del just kept lightening her load. If she got started first he’d have to wait down below.
“You just said you weren’t a climber.”
“Neither are you,” Lazlo shot back, grumpy lines on his face. That was a first.
“I never said that. I can climb, I just don’t want to climb,” Del admitted as she looked over the pile of equipment she’d discarded. She wouldn’t need much for a quick look around and Lazlo could toss up anything she might need.
“Why don’t you want to climb?” Lazlo asked as he circled around her, watching her unbutton her shirt. His eyebrows rose and she tried not to feel embarrassed to stall the flush she knew was covering her cheeks. She could blame the heat at the bottom of this canyon. Del stripped off her shirt and tossed it to him. She’d do better in just her tank without loose shirtsleeves catching on things.
“None of your concern.” Securing a few anchors and some rope to her belt and shifting her favorite hammer on her back, Del looked at the rock overhead. Memories of her father’s fall were coming back fast and furious now. Watching him nervously from below, that sickening moment when she saw his grip falter, the numb terror as his body fell and struck the earth. The horrible fear as she’d dragged him out, convinced that with every movement she was hurting him more. And he had been in such pain, staying quiet so she wouldn’t agonize.
No falling, she ordered herself. Rubbing her hands on her trousers to dry the nervous sweat, she walked up to the cliff, already spotting how she wanted to approach it. Lazlo was right behind her, arms full of her discarded gear, mouth a tense line.
“Be careful.” Del accepted his warning and nodded at him as she reached for the first handhold.
Lazlo backed up and sat her things down on the ground, watching her progress with slow movements up the cliff. He felt anxious and unhappy with this development, his hands clenched as if he were climbing with her. Del was cautious, testing each hand-and foothold before she moved on, but he was still concerned.
Within a few tense minutes, she had pulled her small body up to the ledge and disappeared from his view with a quick wave. He took a deep breath and began to worry about how she would get back down. Del actually discovering something wasn’t even on his mind.
She leaned out of the shadows above him and shook her head.
“Nothing?” Relief that she was safe disappeared as he realized that they had wasted another day. The major was going to demote him.
“No. I found something, but not what we’re after. Do you want to see?” Her voice echoed around the little canyon.
Lazlo sighed and nodded agreement. Del disappeared again and he heard her hammering away, then a long trail of rope spiraled out from above and landed nearby. He grabbed the end, secured it to a carabiner on his belt and glanced up to see her pointing to the path she’d taken.
Slowly and steadily, Lazlo made his way up. The pink stone seemed fairly sturdy and there were plenty of hand-and footholds. He wedged the toe of his boot in a crack in the rock and heard Del shout a warning not to use it.
Lazlo was almost to the top and he shook his head at her, sure it would hold. Just as he put his weight on the fissure, it crumbled and he twisted and slammed into the rock face, causing his head to ring and vision to blur. The rope held him with a twanging sound and he felt Del’s thin fingers wrap around his wrist.
Looking up as he scrabbled his feet against the rock, Lazlo saw Del’s pale face filled with determination as she tightened her grip on him. First one toe, then another wedged into the cliff face and he pushed up with his thighs as Del leaned back, dragging him up and over the ledge with a grunt. Kicking his legs, he crawled on his belly over the rock surface and exhaled with relief once he was on solid ground. That had been fairly exciting. Del released his wrist and began to poke and prod at his back.
“Are you hurt? Did you break anything?”
Shaking his head, Lazlo rolled onto his back and she crouched next to him, looking him over with concern pinching her face. “Nothing permanently damaged. You’re strong.”
“Abrasions? Bruises?” Del looked him over, pulling at his clothes and peering at his skin. It was a ticklish sensation, even through the r
eceding adrenaline still pumping through his body.
“You’re making me jump. Stop,” Lazlo scolded her as he sat up, batting her hands away. “I told you I’m ticklish.
“Just checking for breaks in the skin. That’s how the fungus likes to get started. Cooperate,” Del ordered him and he submitted to her inspection for a few minutes. Her touch was quite pleasant as she stroked his hands and face.
“You look well enough.” Del drew back from him with a frown. Lazlo thanked her and tried not to wonder if she found him at all attractive.
With a shrug, Del stood and offered her hand to help him up. He took it and released her quickly, feeling as if he shouldn’t have touched her at all. They were standing on a ledge about two meters wide, extending irregularly along the dark-red cliff for at least another ten meters.
From this angle, he could clearly see gouges in the rock where something hard and heavy had rested and probably rocked back and forth many times. It was shadowed and cooler than the canyon floor. With the angles of the rock, it would be hard to see anyone moving up here from below. A good position for an ambush.
“What did you find?”
With a final brush of her hand against his shoulder, Del pointed to the back of the space where there was a metal frame around a dark opening. Pulling out a handlight, Lazlo crouched down to take a look inside. Del was by his side with her own light, which revealed a large, roughed-out cavern about ten meters by ten meters carved in the rock, walls rough, floor nearly level.
“What is it?” Lazlo asked as he looked around.
“More like what was it. My guess is that it was a military cache, but everything was taken out long ago. The dust is fairly uniform on the floor.”
“Why military?” Lazlo wondered if he’d missed some clue. This was just a big stone ledge with an old metal frame in the back wall.
“No one else would be out here and these frames were standard issue until about fifty years ago.” She kicked at it with her worn boot, sending billows of dust filtering around them.
