Rain of Tears

by Viola Grace

  He sighed, “Thank goodness. I was beginning to feel self-conscious.”

  Without another word, he walked to the desk, dropped the towel and started getting dressed.

  As quickly as she could without seeming embarrassed, Reyan went out to stare at her rain. She swallowed as she realised that the gentle sprinkle had turned into a downpour in her moment of distraction. He was a very effective distraction, so she kept her back to him while he covered up. It gave her time to reduce the rain to a more helpful and less destructive method of irrigation.

  Chapter Three

  The new mayor took his seat at the desk and cleared his throat. “So, where is the water table in this schematic?”

  Now that he was dressed again, she could concentrate. She pointed out the markings near the dome. “The water table is here. This block is the pump, and here are the entryways.”

  He nodded. “This is a well-designed plan. How long have you been planning it?”

  “The initial plan began three hundred years ago, but the water table moved as the city drained their initial source, so it had to be adjusted to leave the city exposed to the elements. Are you prepared to break that to the population, Mayor Hobbs?”

  He absently nodded. “Interim Mayor. I will arrange an election as soon as this is set up and running.”

  “You will need to get the textiles sector up and running. They will need a weave designed in the southern reaches to repel the wind, because for the next few years, Jarko will be heaving a huge sigh and this area will take the hit.”

  “You are sure that the weather will respond so violently?”

  She raised one eyebrow at him. “Pretty sure. I have been doing this for a while.”

  Reyan was amazed to watch colour creep into his cheeks.

  “Right. I am sorry. I was unprepared to actually meet you.”

  “It’s fine. I am aware I don’t look my age. Well, if you are content with the plan, shall we call the ship?”

  He located the com and started punching codes until he saw her standing with her arms crossed. “Oh, right. Your call.”

  “You can go first but be brief. After being drowned today, I need to recharge a little.”

  Unrik blushed again and continued until he made his connection. “Hello, Relay? This is Unrik Hobbs on Jarko. I have control over Nekahar, and I have made contact with the third Ichadran.”

  “Rain is there?”

  The voice came clearly through the com unit.

  Unrik nodded for her to answer.

  Reyan stepped forward. “Yes, madam. I am here. I am ready to complete the agreement that I drafted with Soul Keeper.”

  “Excellent. I will send the notice to the Argon Tak. You will have everything on your list within the day.”

  Reyan was surprised. “They are that close?”

  “They are in orbit. We sent a shuttle down to check on you, and they told us you were on the way to Nekahar. It was only a matter of time. Do what you have to do. We will wait for you to reset Jarko to your satisfaction.”

  “Thank you, madam.”

  “Call me Relay.”

  “Thank you, Relay.” Reyan waved her hand to Unrik to indicate it was now his call.

  “Relay, Rain has presented me with a full plan to equip Nekahar with a domed farming community. I believe that it is executable, but we will need some seeds and special crops from the agricultural archive.”

  Relay’s voice was amused. “She has already requested several species that should fit the bill. They are coming down with the dome and the machinery.”

  “Excellent. I look forward to their arrival.” He smiled brightly. “Um, can they bring down some bodysuits? My clothing was destroyed.”

  “Of course. I am sure you will do fine. How long do you think it will take to implement the farming?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “Less than sixty days. We should have a harvest by then and be onto our second round.”

  “Good, the Argon Tak asks that you have the weather machine ready to move by tomorrow. Can you do it?”

  Reyan watched as Unrik’s eyes blinked rapidly.

  The second set of lids became apparent in his agitation. “Um. I don’t know.”

  Reyan smiled. “Yes, it will be ready to move in four hours.”

  “Excellent. I will give the ship their final instructions. Thank you for your help, Rain.”

  “It is about time this planet was set to rights. I am glad it is finally happening.”

  The com call ended, and Unrik’s gaze locked with hers. “Ready to go in four hours?”

  “Come on, Mr. Mayor. Grab a wrench. We have work to do.” She chuckled and headed out through the huge double doors.

  She heard him scramble to keep up, and by the time they exited at street level, he was next to her. “You really don’t wait around, do you?”

  She chuckled. “No. There is always somewhere else to be. I did a rotation in this system until the Nekahar weather machine started up. Then, I was stuck here trying to undo the damage that it was causing to the rest of the world.”

  The crowd waiting in the street cheered as they appeared.

  Reyan flipped her hood back up over her head as the two guards tried to keep up with her and Unrik.

  “Why are you covering your head? The water isn’t touching you.” Unrik’s words were said in a low tone as they passed through the crowd and down the street toward the weather machine.

  “Force of habit. No one has this particular shade of hair on Jarko naturally, though several young women mimic it when I am passing through an area.”

  “They dye their hair pink?”

  “It’s lavender.” She sighed and moved to the bane of her existence and the only reason she was on Jarko. Fortunately, the weather station was central to the city hall and the mayor’s office.

  The station was under guard, but a few words from the new mayor’s guards and the men stepped aside. The dome of the building was huge. It was designed to make the populace think that the machine was huge and beyond theft. It wasn’t really that large. Reyan had designed it two hundred years before it was built, and she never expected her doodled designs to be seen, let alone sold and built here.

  This was the prototype, and with the help of folk over the centuries, the design had never been considered entirely successful. Reyan had felt bad when she organized guerrilla attacks on the weather machine, but the results had enabled her to keep on top of the havoc that was occurring because of her lack of judgement.

  “How do you know where you are going?” Unrik was curious as he followed her through the maze of corridors that led to a small room marked Maintenance.

  “I have been here before.” She didn’t want to mess with finding the administrator, so she tried the door, and when it was locked, she extended her hand and aimed a blizzard at the metal.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Opening the door, Mr. Questions.” It took concentration to direct cold and air, so she shifted until she was blocking his view of the door. Another minute and she heard the distinctive crack. She backed up and kicked the door with all her considerable strength. The knob shattered and the door swung inward with a bang.

  The room was filled with wires, equipment and her precious weather system. Whistling, she grabbed a wrench and started on one of the bolts that anchored it to the floor. As soon as she touched it, the power drained and it hiccupped softly. “It’s okay, baby. Mom’s here.”

  “It is sentient?”

  “Not as much as it should be. That is my fault. I had it crippled a few years ago, and since it just crashed over a year ago, I can only imagine the struggle she was under.” Reyan worked on the opposite bolt while Unrik took up the one in between.

  “How did you cripple it?”

  She shrugged. “I designed in a few fail safes, but in the intervening years, they tinkered her into someone I didn’t recognize, but she still had the same bones, so I was able to work with that.”

  Unrik
froze. “You designed it?”

  “It was one night eight hundred years ago. The Ichadrans were gone, and I was wondering what could replace me if I decided to follow them.” Reyan moved around and worked on the last bolt.

  “You were thinking about death?”

  “Alcohol may have been involved.” She waved off that line of discussion and kept working. “I was on Jurla and hanging around with friends when one of them brought me some paper and a pen, and I began to design her. I left the designs with Redmiril for safekeeping, and while I was gone off to Jatkil, there was a coup and his home was seized by the new government. My plans were left in their archives for years until a visiting Jarko scientist discovered them, and he bought them, taking them back to his home and promising to replicate the experiment for the new Jurla government if it was successful. He lied.”

  The bolt came undone, and she whirled it loose with her hands as she had its predecessors.

  She pressed icons on the wall, and as a dolly popped out and slid across the floor, she rubbed her hands together. She locked the wheels and looked to her new friend. “Will you help me lift? It’s a little fused to the block.”

  “Of course.” He positioned himself on the opposite side of the weather machine, and when she gave a three count, the machine popped loose and she heard the tearing of fabric.

  “Did you just rip your shirt?”

  “Keep moving. This thing is heavy.” He muttered it quietly, but his face was bright pink with embarrassment, not exertion.

  “It isn’t, it’s just bulky.” The urge to defend her design wasn’t lost on her. This was her child, and it was finally going to get the home it deserved.

  With the weather machine settled on the dolly, she unlocked the wheels and smiled. “Shall we start the walk to the pick-up site? It is going to take a while.”

  “I thought that they were coming to meet us.”

  “They are, but it will be easier for them if we are not within the city limits.” She grinned and started to push her creation back the way they had come. “You might want to inform the populace what we are doing. They might get nervous otherwise.”

  He blinked and looked through the doors they were approaching to the crowd outside. His cursing lingered in the air as he ran forward to explain what was happening as she pushed her beloved creation out into the public eye for the first time since it was assembled.

  Chapter Four

  The crowd parted for her, and she had to admit that Unrik was a fast talker. No wonder they had made him mayor.

  She kept a bubble of dry air around her with absent attention as she pushed the weather machine toward the city limits with a crowd following her every move. It felt good to have her creation back in her grip. When she had replaced the missing piece of the puzzle that made up the weather machine, she would be so happy to watch it do her job.

  Pride in her ability had long since faded. Her sisters were lucky that they had been given the programming to go dormant. It hadn’t been a consideration when Reyan Ikali Mar had been created since she was supposed to be perennially active, and she lived each day from dawn to dusk just like everyone else, only her count of days never ended.

  Her first days were on Ichadra, mastering her skills until they realised the mess that she was making of their eco system. She was sent to an unnamed world that was being bio-formed, and there, she mastered the power that the Ichadra had imbued her with.

  Once she was under control of her abilities, she was returned home, and she spent a few decades helping to improve the output of the farms of Ichadra before she asked to be set free.

  The Elemental was alredy off on Ki, the Destroyer was in the design stages and the researchers saw nothing wrong with allowing their goddess of nature to leave. It wasn’t like they could really stop her, but she wanted to abide by their wishes.

  She had bumped around the sector for a while until she ended up in this system, and she hadn’t left since. It was occasionally fun to be an urban legend in most of the cities in the system. She came when she was needed, and if it weren’t for this situation on Jarko, she would have attended any number of famines and monsoons in the last several hundred years, but she just couldn’t leave the population of Jarko at the mercy of her design.

  It took her over an hour to push the weather machine through the city streets, but by the time she exited the gates, quite a few locals were following her. Guards followed her, and she reached inside her jacket to set off a beacon.

  The unit chirped twice and she smiled. They were on their way. She whistled again, a song that she had heard a long time ago. It was a composition that her friend Redmiril had written for her, a complex melody that sounded like hail and rain tapping on a window while wind whistled past.

  She missed her friends as time passed. It was something that she never got used to, so she made it a point to keep parts of them around in her mind. Music, favourite foods, ideal colour for a sunset, all those thoughts ran through her mind endlessly, and she used them to keep the people she had loved in her life close to her. Keeping them in her memories was all she could do. They usually died when they were worlds away from her, and she returned to their homes only to find them gone. It was the burden of someone designed for immortality. She would outlive all those she loved, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Unrik came up behind her and addressed the crowd once again, assuring them that the weather machine would be repaired and that their crops would soon flourish once again, albeit in a slightly different format.

  Reyan reached into the top of her boot and gave a sharp tug. The long metal spoke quivered in her grip. Humming idly and ignoring the new mayor’s attempts at damage control, she slide the metal spoke into the machine, and it chirped happily.

  Running her fingers across the controls, she shut it down. It needed a full reboot, and she needed it to be in place when that happened.

  She hopped up and sat on top of the machine as the slow, steady rain fell everywhere but on her.

  Mayor Hobbs looked at her. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting. I have signalled the ship, and they are sending a shuttle to move the unit into place.” She kicked her feet idly. “Now, I wait.”

  A squeal drew her attention, and two children burst from the crowd, chasing each other until the smaller of the two skidded face first into the mud.

  Reyan scowled. She hopped off the weather unit and went to the little girl who seemed very confused about why the ground was sticking to her.

  “Hello, sweetheart. Are you muddy?”

  The little one looked up wide-eyed and blinked, trying to see into Reyan’s hood.

  Sighing, she flicked her hood back and let the toddler look.

  The little girl held out her muddy dress, and her lower lip wobbled.

  “Can I fix it?” Reyan waited.

  The little girl looked to the crowd, and she nodded quickly.

  With her hands outstretched, she created a warm, gentle rain out of her palms and coasted her hands down the mud, inches from the child’s body. When she was clean, Reyan used the heat of a mild southern wind to dry the girl from head to toe. “Be careful in the rain. The ground is muddy, and it will get you wet and messy if you fall again.”

  The little girl looked down at the floral print that covered her dress, and she beamed before she ran back to her mother.

  The older girl was standing nearby with her eyes wide.

  Reyan formed a snowball and handed it to her. “Go throw this at a boy.”

  The girl smiled and sprinted back through the crowd until the shout of, “Hey!” came out of the mass of bodies.

  Chuckling, Reyan returned to her machine and popped back on top of it.

  Unrik was looking at her carefully. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “She would have started crying, and I hate to hear children sobbing.” She shrugged.

  He smiled. “Of course you do. When will the shuttle arrive?”

  She felt a t
remor in the atmosphere. “It’s here.”

  Out of the clouds, providing the rain the silver sheen of lights, it came into view. The shuttle came in and hovered above her, the downdraft causing the crowd to back away.

  She waited, and the grapple extended until she could attach it to the machine. “I will be back once this is in place. I need to confirm the site.”

  Mayor Hobbs realised what she was saying, and he cleared his throat. “I will join you.”

  “No, you won’t. Your people need you to explain what we are doing and that means that one of us has to stay here so it doesn’t look like we are stealing their machine. You do your mayor thing, and I will be back in a few hours. I should return by moonrise. Sooner if the shuttle gives me a lift back.”

  He nodded, but his lips were tight, and she knew she was going to get an earful when she returned.

  She touched the signal chip inside her jacket again, and the shuttle lifted off, hauling her into the sky before heading off to the dome site.

  Life was getting interesting, and she did so love being interested. It made the time pass quickly.

  Chapter Five

  The shuttle did indeed give her a lift back to Nekahar after she had anchored the weather machine at the site and confirmed that the water table was where she had last measured it. It was good. The dome was a go.

  She returned to the city and made her way to the mayor’s office immediately.

  Unrik was sitting at his desk and rubbing his eyes.

  “Evening. Everything is in place, and the dome will be lowered within the day, centred on the weather station.”

  “You just left it there?”

  “Of course. I mean, it is anchored to a rock plate underneath it, so they would need to pull up a few tons of rock to shift it, but it should be fine.”

  He blinked, and she saw those inner lids again. They were not standard on the species in this system, but then, he was a Citadel member, so she had no idea where his origin point was.