The deviling had been innocent enough at the start. She’d only done it to pass the time. At what point had it passed over the edge? She hadn’t always hated MacArthur. Back in Port Ishtar, he’d seemed like a pleasant companion. She’d even thought he was cute.
It hurt to think about Port Ishtar, but she couldn’t help herself. It was like trying not to think about Heaven when you were roasting in Hell.
Okay, so Port Ishtar wasn’t perfect. You ate flavored algae and you slept on a shelf. During the day you wore silk, because it was cheap, and you went everywhere barefoot because shoes cost money. But there were fountains that sprayed water into the air. There was live music in the restaurants, string quartets playing to the big winners, prospectors who had made a strike and were leaking wealth on the way out. If you weren’t too obvious about it, you could stand nearby and listen. Gravity was light, then, and everybody was young, and the future was going to be full of money.
That was then. She was a million years older now.
LASER HAZARD
“Hey!”
“Keep walking, bitch. Keep walking or die.”
* * * *
This couldn’t be happening.
Hours passed, and more hours, until she completely lost track of the time. They walked. Up out of the valley. Over the mountain. Down into the next valley. Because of the heat, and because the rocks were generally weak, the mountains all had gentle slopes. It was like walking up and then down a very long hill.
The land was grey and the clouds above it murky orange. These were Venus’ true colors. She could have grass-green rocks and a bright blue sky if she wished—her visor would do that—but the one time she’d tried those settings, she’d quickly switched back. The falseness of it was enough to break your heart.
Better to see the bitter land and grim sky for what they were.
West, they traveled. Noonward. It was like a endless and meaningless dream.
“Hey, Poontang.”
“You know how I feel about that kind of language,” she said wearily.
“How you feel. That’s rich. How do you think I felt, some of the things you said?”
“We can make peace, MacArthur. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Ever been married, Poontang?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“I have. Married and divorced.” She knew that already. There was very little they didn’t know about each other by now. “Thing is, when a marriage breaks up, there’s always one person comes to grips with it first. Goes through all the heartache and pain, feels the misery, mourns the death of the relationship—and then moves on. The one who’s been cheated on, usually. So the day comes when she walks out of the house and the poor schmuck is just standing there, saying, ‘Wait. Can’t we work this thing out?’ He hasn’t accepted that it’s over.”
“So?”
“So that’s your problem, Poontang. You just haven’t accepted that it’s over yet.”
“What? Our partnership, you mean?”
“No. Your life.”
* * * *
A day passed, maybe more. She slept. She awoke, still walking, with MacArthur’s hateful mutter in her ear. There was no way to turn the radio off. It was Company policy. There were layers upon layers of systems and subsystems built into the walkers, all designed to protect Company investment. Sometimes his snoring would wake her up out of a sound sleep. She knew the ugly little grunting noises he made when he jerked off. There were times she’d been so angry that she’d mimicked those sounds right back at him. She regretted that now.
“I had dreams,” MacArthur said. “I had ambitions.”
“I know you did. I did too.”
“Why the hell did you have to come into my life? Why me and not somebody else?”
“I liked you. I thought you were funny.”
“Well, the joke’s on you now.”
Back in Port Ishtar, MacArthur had been a lanky, clean-cut kind of guy. He was tall, and in motion you were always aware of his knees and elbows, always sure he was going to knock something over, though he never did. He had an odd, geeky kind of grace. When she’d diffidently asked him if he wanted to go partners, he’d picked her up and whirled her around in the air and kissed her right on the lips before setting her down again and saying, “Yes.” She’d felt dizzy and happy then, and certain she’d made the right choice.
But MacArthur had been weak. The suit had broken him. All those months simmering in his own emotions, perfectly isolated and yet never alone ... He didn’t even look like the same person anymore. You looked at his face and all you saw were anger and those anguished eyes.
LEAVING HIGHLANDS
ENTERING TESSERAE
Patang remembered how magical the tesserae landscape had seemed in the beginning. “Complex ridged terrain” MacArthur called it, high ridges and deep groves crisscrossing each other in such profusion that the land appeared blocky from orbit, like a jumble of tiles. Crossing such terrain, you had to be constantly alert. Cliffs rose up unexpectedly, butte-high. You turned a twist in a zigzagging valley and the walls fell away and down, down, down. There was nothing remotely like it on Earth. The first time through, she’d shivered in wonder and awe.
Now she thought: Maybe I can use this. These canyons ran in and out of each other. Duck down one and run like hell. Find another and duck down it. Keep on repeating until he’d lost her.
“You honestly think you can lose me, Patang?”
She shrieked involuntarily.
“I can read your mind, Patang. I know you through and through.”
It was true, and it was wrong. People weren’t meant to know each other like this. It was the forced togetherness, the fact you were never for a moment alone with your own thoughts. After a while you’d heard every story your partner had to tell and shared every confidence there was to share. After a while every little thing got on your nerves.
“How about if I admit I was wrong?” she said pleadingly. “I was wrong. I admit it.”
“We were both wrong. So what?”
“I’m willing to cooperate, MacArthur. Look. I’ve stopped so you can catch up and not have to worry about me getting away from you. Doesn’t that convince you we’re on the same side?”
LASER HAZARD
“Oh, feel free to run as fast and as far as you want, Patang. I’m confident I’ll catch up with you in the end.”
All right, then, she thought desperately. If that’s the way you want it, asshole. Tag! You’re it.
She ducked into the shadows of a canyon and ran.
* * * *
The canyon twisted and, briefly, she was out of sight. MacArthur couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t tell which way she went. The silence felt wonderful. It was the first privacy she’d had since she didn’t know when. She only wished she could spare the attention to enjoy it more. But she had to think, and think hard. One canyon wall had slumped downward just ahead, creating a slope her walker could easily handle. Or she could keep on ahead, up the canyon.
Which way should she go?
Upslope.
She set the walker on auto-run.
Meanwhile, she studied the maps. The free satellite downloads were very good. They weren’t good enough. They showed features down to three meters across, but she needed to know the land yard-by-yard. That crack-like little rille—did it split two kilometers ahead, or was there a second rille that didn’t quite meet it? She couldn’t tell. She’d’ve gladly paid for the premium service now, the caviar of info-feed detailed enough to track footprints across a dusty stretch of terrain. But with her uplink disabled, she couldn’t.
Patang ducked into a rille so narrow her muscle suit’s programming would have let her jump it, if she wished. It forked, and she took the right-hand branch. When the walls started closing in on them, she climbed up and out. Then she ran, looking for another rille.
Hours passed.
After a time, all that kept her going was fear. She drew her
legs up into the torso of her suit and set it to auto-run. Up this canyon. Over this ridge. Twisting, turning. Scanning the land ahead, looking for options. Two directions she might go. Flip a mental coin. Choose one. Repeat the process. The radio was line-of-sight so MacArthur couldn’t use it to track her. Keep moving.
Keep moving.
Keep moving...
* * * *
Was it hours that passed, or days? Patang didn’t know. It might have been weeks. In times of crisis, the suit was programmed to keep her alert by artificial stimulation of her brain. It was like an electrical version of amphetamines. But, as with amphetamines, you tended to lose track of things. Things like your sense of time.
So she had no idea how long it took her to realize that it was all no use.
The problem was that the suit was so damned heavy! If she ran fast enough to keep her distance from MacArthur, it left a trace in the regolith obvious enough to be followed at top speed. But if she slowed down enough to place her walker’s feet on bare stone when she could, and leave subtle and easy-to-miss footprints when she couldn’t, he came right up behind her. And try though she might, she couldn’t get far enough ahead of him to dare slow down enough to leave a trace he couldn’t follow.
There was no way she could escape him.
The feeling of futility that came over her then was drab and familiar, like a shabby old coat grown colorless with age that you don’t have the money to replace. Sometime, long ago, she’d crossed that line where hope ceased. She had never actually admitted to herself that she no longer believed they’d ever make that big strike—just one day woken up knowing that she was simply waiting out her contract, stubbornly trying to endure long enough to serve out her term and return to Earth no poorer than she had set out.
Which was when her deviling had turned nasty, wasn’t it? It was when she had started touching herself and telling MacArthur exactly what she was doing. When she’d started describing in detail all the things she’d never do to him.
It was a way of getting through one more day. It was a way of faking up enough emotion to care. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do.
And this was her punishment.
But she couldn’t give up. She was going to have to ... She didn’t finish that thought. If she was going to do this unnamed thing, she had to sort through the ground rules first.
The three rules were: No Violence. Protect Company Equipment. Protect Yourself. They were ranked hierarchically.
Okay, Patang thought. In order to prevent violence, I’m going to have to destroy Company property.
She waited to see if she’d pass out.
Nothing happened.
Good.
She’d come to a long ridge, steep-sided and barren and set her suit to auto-climb. As she climbed, she scanned the slope ahead, empty and rock-strewn under a permanently dazzling cover of sulfuric acid clouds. Halfway up, MacArthur emerged from the zigzagging valley below and waved jauntily.
Patang ignored him. That pile of boulders up ahead was too large. Those to the right were too small. There was a patch of loose regolith that looked promising but ... no. In the end, she veered leftward, toward a shallow ledge that sheltered rocks that looked loose enough to be dislodged but not massive enough to do any serious damage to MacArthur’s suit. All she wanted was to sweep him off his feet. He could survive a slide downslope easily enough. But could he hold onto the laser drill while doing so?
Patang didn’t think so.
Okay, then. She took her suit off automatics and climbed clumsily, carefully, toward her destination. She kept her helmet up, pointed toward the top of the ridge, to avoid tipping MacArthur off to her intentions.
Slantwise across the slope, that’s right. Now straight up. She glanced back and saw that she’d pulled MacArthur into her wake. He was directly beneath her. Good. All systems go.
She was up to the ledge now.
Stop. Turn around. Look down on MacArthur, surprisingly close.
If there was one thing Patang knew, after all these months, it was how easy it was to start a landslide. Lean back and brace yourself here, and start kicking. And over the rocks go and over the rocks go and—
LASER HAZARD
“Ohhhh, Patang, you are so obvious. You climb diagonally up a slope that any ordinary person would tackle straight on. You change direction halfway up. What were you planning to do, start an avalanche? What did you think that would accomplish?”
“I thought I could get the laser away from you.”
“And what good would that do? I’d still have the suit. I’d still have rocks. I’d still have you at my mercy. You hadn’t really thought this one through, had you?”
“No,” she admitted.
“You tried to outwit me, but you didn’t have the ingenuity. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“You were just hoping. But there isn’t any hope, is there?”
“No.”
He flipped one hand dismissively. “Well, keep on going. We’re not done yet.”
* * * *
Weeping, Patang topped the ridge and started downward, into a valley shaped like a deep bowl. Glassy scarps on all sides caught whatever infrared bounced off the floor and threw it back into the valley. The temperature readings on her visor leaped. It was at least fifty degrees hotter out there than anyplace she had ever been. Hot enough that prolonged exposure would incapacitate her suit? Maybe. But there was MacArthur behind her, and the only way forward was a shallow trough leading straight down. She had no alternative.
Midway down the slope, the trough deepened. Rock walls rose up to plunge Patang into shadow. Her suit’s external temperature went down, though not as much as she would’ve liked. Then the way grew less steep and then it flattened out. The trough ended as a bright doorway between jagged rocks.
She stepped out into the open and looked across the valley.
The ground dazzled.
She walked out into it. She felt weightless. Her feet floated up beneath her and her hands rose of their own accord into the air. The muscle suit’s arms rose too, like a ballerina’s.
A network of cracks crazed the floor of the valley, each one blazing bright as the sun. Liquid metal was just oozing up out of the ground. She’d never seen anything like it.
Patang stomped on a puddle of metal, shattering it into droplets of sunlight and setting off warning alarms in her suit. For an instant she swayed with sleepiness. But she shook it off. She snapped a stick-probe from her tool rack and jabbed it into the stuff. It measured the metal’s temperature and its resistance to pressure, ran a few baby calculations, and spat out a result.
Tin.
She looked up again. There were intersecting lines of molten tin everywhere. The pattern reminded her of her childhood on the Eastern Shore, of standing at the edge of a marsh, binoculars in hand, hoping for a harrier, with the silver gleam of sun on water almost painful to the eye. This looked just like a marsh, only with tin instead of water.
A tin marsh.
For an instant, wonder flickered to life within her. How could such a thing be? What complex set of geological conditions was responsible? All she could figure was that the noontide heat was involved. As it slowly sank into the rock, the tin below expanded and pushed its way up through the cracks. Or maybe it was the rocks that expanded, squeezing out the liquid tin. In either case the effect would be very small for any given volume. She couldn’t imagine how much tin there must be down there for it to be forced to the surface like this. More than she’d ever dreamed they’d find.
“We’re rich!” she whooped. She couldn’t help it. All those months, all that misery, and here it was. The payoff they’d set out to discover, the one that she’d long ago given up all hope of finding.
LASER HAZARD
LASER HAZARD
LASER HAZARD
“No! Wait! Stop!” she cried. “You don’t need to do this anymore. We found it! It’s here!”
Turning, she saw McArthur’s big
suit lumber out of shadow. It was brute strength personified, all body and no head. “What are you talking about?” he said angrily. But Patang dared think he sounded almost sane. She dared hope she could reason with him.
“It’s the big one, Mac!” She hadn’t called him Mac in ages. “We’ve got the goddamned motherlode here. All you have to do is radio in the claim. It’s all over, Mac! This time tomorrow, you’re going to be holding a press conference about it.”
For a moment MacArthur stood silent and irresolute. Then he said, “Maybe so. But I have to kill you first.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection Page 19
