By the time they arrived in the flitter bay, Danny was firmly ensconced in the flitter. He had the antigravs on standby, but without the access codes, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hello, Danny.” Ben climbed up and sat beside him, smiling and casual.
“Hello, Commander Benjamin.” Danny grinned broadly. “Can we fly now?”
“I don’t think that would be the right thing to do without asking your parents first.”
“I’m nineteen, now. I’m grown up.”
“Sure you are, Danny, but your father is not just your father, he’s in charge of the whole colony. We all need to ask his permission for lots of things.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
“You’re an abomination.”
Cara felt her gut do a backflip. It was no wonder there was anti-psi-tech feeling if Victor tossed around words like abomination freely. What a bastard! She immediately stretched to catch Ben’s reaction, but she felt his initial shock at the word well under control.
“Is that what your father says?” Ben’s words were unruffled and gentle.
Danny nodded.
“Do you know what it means?”
Danny shook his head.
“It’s not a good word, Danny. People who use it hate me because of the way I choose to be. I’m different from them. I’m a psi-tech. So are all the people here in Landing. We’re all psi-techs, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people. We’re just different. The implants in our heads just help us to do our jobs better.”
“I’m different, too. I’m a Downie. That’s special.”
“Everybody’s special in their own way.”
“That’s good.”
“I think so.” Ben smiled.
“But my Mom and Dad don’t like people to be different.” Danny’s face clouded.
“They like you.” Ben tried to reassure him. “They like some kind of different, but not all kinds.”
“I think they should like everybody.”
“Sure you do. So do I.”
“If my Mom and Dad say so, can we fly?”
“Of course. I’d like that.”
Danny smiled and climbed out of the flitter. “Mrs. Benjamin, you’re very pretty. Will you fly with us, too?”
“Sure, Danny.” Cara found herself smiling back at Danny. He was a hard kid to resist. There wasn’t a malevolent thought in his head. He opened his arms and hugged her, and Cara found herself hugging him back. It seemed so natural. Then he turned and trotted out of the flitter bay, heading back toward the groundcars to get a lift with the next one out. Cara watched him go.
Ben swung down too and joined her. “You’ve got an admirer.”
“He’s a sweetheart; not a bit like his father. You were really good with him,” she said.
“I like him. He has the gift of happiness. And I think he has far more sense than most people give him credit for. He just doesn’t always show it in the same way as everyone else.”
Chapter Twenty-one
COUPLING
“I don’t get it,” Gen glared at the board in Mapping. “Look at this frigging crew list. I lost Ro Napper, a perfectly good flitter pilot, got Casey Silk, who bailed after the first flight and went running back to Broccoliburg, and now I’ve got the mouthy one.”
“Who?” Cara peered over her shoulder. “Oh, Max Constant. Tough luck. Though maybe it has something to do with you doing stall-turns out over the ocean with a rookie who’s never been in a flitter before.”
“You didn’t tell Ben, did you?”
“I didn’t need to. At least Constant isn’t likely to barf all over the control console. Yan Gwenn was pretty chewed up over that and so was the cleanup crew, I guess. Silk wasn’t too happy, either.”
“How does Wenna expect us all to keep up the pace with brain-deaf settlers who are no more than ballast?”
“Wenna expects because Ben expects.” Wenna’s voice behind them snapped Gen to attention. “Got a problem with that?”
Cara tried not to snigger.
“I did ask all of you to treat the recruits gently.” Wenna scowled. “You broke one on the first day.”
“At least I didn’t jettison him. I was seriously tempted. He was so slow I wanted to scream. He might have the rest of his life to spend on this planet, but I don’t. I was in danger of falling behind because I was carrying a bloody tourist.”
“Set the ground rules with Constant before you start,” Wenna said. “I think he’s got the potential to be useful, despite being a deadhead. He’s quick on the uptake. I let Yan put him through his paces in a flitter. He’s worth extra training.” She picked up a sheaf of plasfilms and headed for the door. “You want to make section leader in a few more years. Deal with it.”
“Do it tonight,” Cara suggested after she’d gone. “If you have to chew Constant out, do it in private so he can start tomorrow’s shift fresh.”
“Ground rules, right.” Gen sounded doubtful. “I guess that’s what Ben would do.”
• • •
Max sat back in his chair in the corner of the dining hall and watched Gen Marling until she was out of sight. He’d made her mad, and he hadn’t even worked his first shift with her yet. Even her hair bounced in sympathy with her mood. Women! He never had quite got the hang of understanding them. Psi-techs were even more complicated than the other kind.
But even when she was being authoritarian, Marling didn’t throw her weight around without good reason. He didn’t want to annoy her enough to be dumped from her team. Better do as she asked and shape up.
He hadn’t expected to be working with psi-techs so closely, but he certainly wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to get out of the legions of field fodder. Maybe, after this, he could try and sneak into admin again. There were bound to be new opportunities if only he could stay around the central hub and not get shipped off to the back end of nowhere.
In the meantime, he’d landed on his feet. Survey work was more than interesting. He was getting a better introduction to his new planet than he would ever get from the ground, and his new boss was a definite bonus.
He mustn’t think of Gen Marling as available even though she was one attractive woman. The rules were pretty firm, though they seemed pointless as far as the psi-tech women were concerned. He could understand that the gene pool for the new society shouldn’t have any accidental bastards in it with psi-potential, but that should only restrict relationships between psi-tech men and settler women. One blanket rule shouldn’t cover both sexes.
• • •
After her shift, a fairly routine day of surveying and mapping the plains to the south with Ben and their new settler rookie, Mohan Razdan, Cara headed for the dining hall, collected her tray, and looked around for a place to sit. Ben was deep in conversation with Serafin. There was a spare place at their table, but sitting together in public put pressure on them to play Mr. and Mrs.
Wenna and Ronan together with Ronan’s partner, Jon Moon, one of Wenna’s cartographers, chatted animatedly at another table. Cara glanced around a little further. Gen was sitting by herself, so Cara headed over toward her table, not noticing that Max Constant was heading in the same direction until it was too late. He was on Gen’s crew now, one of the few settlers who looked as though they were going to be useful. They reached Gen at the same time and Cara stepped back.
“There’s room for two,” Max said, and waited for Cara to sit down before setting his own tray on the table.
Gen looked at them both, and Cara sensed brief embarrassment.
Max looked up as if he wondered whether the two women were talking about him. Typical reaction of a deadhead in the company of psi-techs. Cara had given Max more credit. He didn’t generally seem to be uncomfortable around them; in fact, she thought she’d heard someone say he’d worked with psi-techs back home. That was unusual for the narrow-minded settlers on this expedition.
Cara sat back and stared at Gen and Max. There was someth
ing very complicated going on here. Or perhaps it wasn’t complicated at all, just very dangerous.
• • •
Max had never felt more alive.
When he’d worked in accounting for Alphacorp, he’d got his kicks from sport, often a different one every year. Cave diving had been the most reckless. A successful cave dive was defined as one you came back from. He got wise to that after a couple of nasty experiences and decided the best cave dive was the one you didn’t take. Hang gliding had been pretty cool, though, and he’d once—only once—done a base jump in a parasuit.
Exploring a virgin planet beat all of those. Doing it by the side of Gen Marling was icing on his cake.
He’d jumped at the chance of putting in extra hours with Yan Gwenn to upgrade his experience on ground-hugging domestic flitters to the more powerful workhorse models in use on Olyanda. Pity they weren’t going to be left behind when the psi-tech teams finished their year. He’d relish being one of the few settlers qualified to fly. And surely that would get him out of doing carpentry for the rest of his life.
Today Gen had let him take the pilot’s seat for the first time as they surveyed the coastal region. He flew the craft to a point above the high-water mark of a wide sweeping bay and let it settle into its antigravs. Then he cut the drive and sat back.
“No time to be self-satisfied, Mr. Constant. Get your brain into gear and let’s get going.” Gen was still on his case even though she knew she needn’t be. He’d detected a softening in her attitude of late. The barbs still came, but there was no sting in them now that they’d developed a good working rhythm. Even so, she couldn’t resist reminding him who was boss every now and then.
“Yes, sir, ma’am.” Max saluted stiffly and grinned, turning the tables back on her. Before she could reprimand him, he was out of the flitter with the others and unpacking gear.
Liam Ryder, their exobiologist, a Dee’ell if Max understood that right, bent to examine the sand and to sample it for livestock. Gen and Sami Isaksten leaned in toward him and Max realized they were all communicating on a level that was totally beyond his reach. Not for the first time he felt a pang of regret that, as a teen, he’d been so convinced that Ecolibrianism was the answer to everything that he’d managed to avoid the routine psi-testing with the collusion of his (then) foster family.
Gen swept the coastline with a sounding device. “It’s shallow enough for waders,” she said. “But better turn up the heat on your buddysuits; the water is pretty cold.”
“I’ll work with Liam on that.” Sami pulled the packs out of the flitter and tossed one to Liam with a grin. They waded about forty meters from shore to anchor the catch nets and were still only thigh-deep in water.
Max watched Gen watching the two of them working together. It was becoming very clear that, if Sami and Liam were not a couple already, then they soon would be.
“They make a good couple, don’t they?” he said.
Gen jumped. “I didn’t hear you coming up behind me.”
“I thought you lot could sense us,” Max said.
“Some can. I majored in telepathy and spatial awareness. I’m a Navigator, not an Empath.”
“You seem sensitive enough to me.” He ran his finger up the length of her spine and she shivered involuntarily. “See?”
She spun around to face him and took a step back, clenching her hands into fists. “Don’t ever pull that kind of cheap stunt again, Constant. You know the regulations. Why do you keep coming on to me? What are you after?”
He stepped back and put both hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“Do I?” Hell, had it been that obvious? “I might just be teasing.”
“I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt before, but this is once too often.”
“Have you ever thought that I might just like you?”
“If you liked me, you’d leave me alone. What kind of a jerk are you? No fraternization between psi-tech and settler. None! If you haven’t got that into your head by now, I’ll lend you the rule book and you can do some homework.”
He just stared at her, his defenses down. Her look began to twist his gut. “I’ve done my homework, but . . .” He shrugged. “I’m sorry. The homework files didn’t tell me I’d meet anyone like you.”
“Look, Max, I like you, all right? I didn’t expect to, but I do. But it’s not going anywhere. At the end of this year it will all be over. We’ll be light-years apart.”
“So? Is that any reason we shouldn’t be . . . friends, now?” His gut was churning. “Look, I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you really want, but I think you feel it, too.” He forced a bright smile. “We can keep it light and easy, Gen. You’re not going to leave me pregnant when you go, are you?” He stuck out his belly and she half smiled. “There, now. That wasn’t so bad, was it? We can just be friends if you like. No strings. No regrets. No sex. Well, I might let you change my mind about the sex if you twist my arm.”
Who was he kidding? He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m going to miss you like hell whether I lose you now or lose you at the end of the year.”
• • •
Everything was going right for a change. Cara began to relax into the regular patterns of the job. Once the storm season ended, the settlement program ran like clockwork. Settlers were revived from cryo in batches, family groups of all ages between six and sixty were slathered in sunblock and given their wagons, horses, and whatever goods and animals they’d preordered and paid for. Then they set off across the plain—in large convoys—heading for their newly designated settlements all within a few days’ travel of Timbertown and within reach of each other. The survey teams had identified a number of useful sites and Serafin’s Psi-Mechs were busy linking them with a network of roads carved out of the ground by surfacing machines.
In large groups at Lorient’s meetings the settlers might seem fanatical, but in small numbers and away from the heady emotions stirred up by rhetoric, they were reasonable, caring people with more interest in the practicalities of their new lives than with who was and who was not psi-tech.
Timbertown already boasted some permanent buildings, laid out by Serafin’s crew with the settlers supplying labor and solid craftsmanship. Lorient’s new hall—a central meeting place for the whole community—was half built, with engineers getting ready to lift the roof beams into place and Lorient’s masons working on the detail. Once the masons and the psi-techs recognized each other’s competence, they’d developed an easy working relationship. It would be a magnificent centerpiece for the new capital with a stone bell tower and a stained glass window featuring a dove of peace as its crowning glory.
The new communities were breaking and planting the ground, working toward self-sufficiency, and would soon be ready for the influx of thirty thousand settlers from the second ark ship. The settlers weren’t lacking in farming expertise and Jack Mario had done a good job of making sure there were competent and confident agrarian leaders in each settlement with specialist craftsmen, blacksmiths, builders, carpenters, and potters as well as teachers, doctors, and midwives. They had the shared skills and enthusiasm to make the colony self-sufficient.
Everyone slowed down as the hot weather hit. A heat haze hugged the plain, though it was a little cooler by the sea and in the northern uplands. There were bouts of intense humidity, which made everyone uncomfortable and edgy, even the psi-techs in their buddysuits, though Cara could only imagine how uncomfortable the settlers were as they labored without the benefit of temperature regulators in their clothing or cool air in their living spaces. At least they knew it wouldn’t last long. Olyanda, even here on its equator, would rarely top thirty degrees centigrade in midsummer. Every so often the clouds would clear, the humidity would fade, and for a few days the parched night air would crackle with all the glorious colors of the aurora.
Spring-planted crops now ripened in the fields, showing early promise of a good harvest. Fat cattle grazed in the pastures. Only the sheep were failing
to adapt. Despite Lee Gardham’s best efforts, they’d lost half of all the ewes that had been revived so far, and lambs from the in vitro tank stock weren’t doing much better.
In the Mapping ops room Cara focused on the crew list and then read it again.
Damn. Gen and Max Constant had drawn another duty together, this time taking Lee Gardham with five shepherds and thirty sheep up into the mountains. Gen and Max; Max and Gen. Cara thought things had cooled between them, but was she imagining things? Lately they’d drawn more than their fair share of runs together, and it was beginning to look deliberate. They offered potential for a disaster waiting to happen, if it hadn’t happened already. Dammit—they knew the rules, but Max had become a useful member of the team despite his irritating flippancy and lack of implant. There were times when she forgot he was a settler because he seemed so at home with the psi-techs.
At least they wouldn’t be alone. The shepherds would be staying in the mountains, but Lee would be returning with Gen and Max.
Cara found Gen in the ops room and pulled her to one side. “You and Max.”
“What about it?”
“That’s what I was going to ask.”
“It’ll be okay. I can handle it.” Gen pulled her arm from Cara’s grasp.
“But . . .”
“I said I can handle it.” Gen stomped off toward the flitter bays. Cara watched her go, surprised by her vehemence. Then her heart began to pound and she felt slightly sick with the weight of impending trouble.
It was already too late.
She hoped Gen could handle it. Cara considered getting Ben to step in, but dismissed the idea. He never interfered with any of Wenna’s decisions, especially such an apparently routine one. Going to him with a simple request for a rota change would seem odd without an explanation, and Cara didn’t want to get a black mark on Gen’s record without absolute proof.
Cas Ritson stuck her head out of the office door. “Cara, can you tell Ben that Lorient has called a section heads’ meeting this afternoon at the Central Hall in Timbertown. He asks if everyone can be there for the end of today’s assembly.”
Empire of Dust Page 30
