Zenn Scarlett

by Christian Schoon

  The fact was that the only place on Mars that would have anything as exotic as optic relays for their virt-screen was New Zubrin. And the only mag-lev train still running regularly from Arsia to Zubrin was being stopped and robbed by outlaw bands of scab-landers on a weekly basis. Pushed out into the most inhospitable and barren canyons known as scab-lands, these lawless, roving gangs were made up of the men and women who’d entirely given up on adhering to the rules governing what remained of civilized life in the towns. Scab-landers took what they wanted, whenever they wanted it.

  Otha frowned at the malfunctioning screens circling him and waved his hand again, more emphatically. This time the screens obeyed, winking off with a series of quiet popping sounds.

  “I want to try again,” Zenn said, attempting to sound more confident than she felt. She bent to rub at her aching leg, but then stopped when she thought Otha might see. She saw Otha frowning at her. “I know it won’t count in the test scoring. But he needs his eye taken care of.”

  “We’ll take a break. Get you some dry clothes and pour a mug of hot cider down you. It’s best we let the animal settle a bit.” Otha gave her a steady look. “And you too.” The chill of fear raced through her again. She managed to give her uncle a half-hearted smile, but kept silent as they left the hound and headed for the refectory dining hall on the other side of the cloister grounds.

  TWO

  In the spacious kitchen adjoining the refectory hall, Zenn sat on a stool and blotted at her hair with a towel before gulping the last of the warm kipfruit juice. She now wore a dry pair of coveralls over her outfit of rough hempweave pants, low corvis-hide boots and the light blue, second-hand linen shirt Sister Hild had found for her at the Arsia City co-op.

  “Right. I’m good now,” she said, hopping off the stool. A spasm of pain jolted up through her leg, making her suck in a quick breath.

  “You sure?” Otha raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” She leaned with one hand on the stool, attempting a jaunty pose, while taking the weight off her leg. “I need to get back on the horse that threw me, don’t I?” she said, repeating one of her uncle’s favorite sayings. Of course, she’d never seen a horse in the flesh, let alone been thrown off one.

  “You are your mother’s daughter, no doubt about it,” he said as they set off, Zenn walking gingerly, hanging back just slightly behind her uncle. They crossed into the refectory dining hall, past the long rows of empty tables and benches, their footsteps echoing. “You know, there was a time,” Otha said, “when your mother was at the same point you’re at now. I can see her plain as day, bright-eyed, all business, just starting her novitiate.”

  This was promising, Zenn decided. Family talk. Casual talk. Anything to distract Otha from what had happened with the hound.

  “Of course, Mai was older than you,” Otha said. This was a long-running issue between her and Otha. And between her and her father as well. They’d both insisted she was too young to begin her novitiate, and they’d both engaged her in several rounds of arguing over it. But Zenn knew she was ready. In the end, she wore them both down.

  “Mai was nineteen during her first year, if I recall correctly,” Otha continued, giving her a quick glance but not bringing up Zenn’s own age again. That battle had been won, she told herself with some measure of satisfaction. For reasons Zenn never really understood, the colonists on Mars clung to a number of outdated Earther traditions – like how they measured the passage of time. With Mars’ orbit lasting roughly twice as long as Earth’s, a Martian year equaled about two Earth years. By that computation, in Mars years Zenn wasn’t seventeen, she was eight-and-a-half. It sounded comical.

  “I remember this particular incident – one of Mai’s first patients was a Grosvenor’s thorn-throw,” her uncle said as they stepped out of the refectory and headed for the calefactory meeting hall.

  The calefactory’s large, main hall was where Otha or other instructors would have given presentations meant for the entire student body, back when there was a student body. Now, it served mainly for storage, with dwindling heaps of supplies stacked against the walls.

  “One of the thornies got all ripped up in transit, fighting with its pen-mate. Now, as it turns out, Mai had identified them both as males…”

  Otha’s thorn-throw story wasn’t a new one, and Zenn’s mind wandered as they walked on, passing through the calefactory and exiting into the cloister walk, the covered, columned walkway that ran around the open square at the center of the compound.

  Built two centuries ago according to Earther architectural plans that Otha said dated back almost two thousand years, the entire cloister compound was arranged around this open square. To the south was the huge, stone block building that housed the infirmary, its immense, double sliding doors big enough to accommodate even the largest patients. Except the vacuum-dwelling Indra, of course. Those could only be treated in orbit on board the ships they powered.

  Attached to the western side of the cloister walk were the kitchen and the refectory. Just outside the kitchen’s back door was the physic garden, the aromatic scent of its medicinal herbs and kitchen savories perfuming the air this time of year. Opposite the garden stood the small Chapter House, where Otha had his office and bedroom.

  Above the calefactory meeting hall on the north side of the cloister walk was the dormitory, where Zenn, Sister Hild, and Brother Hamish had their rooms. Beyond that to the south were the remains of the old chapel, looming like some derelict shipwreck, its roof long ago fallen in, the tiles salvaged to maintain other roofs. The chapel’s few intact Gothic window frames pointed naked at the sky like broken teeth. Deep-felt religious fervor had brought the Ciscan order to Mars long years ago, fired by visions of new beginnings and fresh converts in the canyons of the recently settled Valles Marinaris. These days, science and the treatment of alien creatures held sway within the thick mud-brick walls ringing the compound, the sandstone remnants of the fallen chapel a reminder of a distant, half-remembered past.

  As Otha continued his tale, Zenn thought of her own novitiate and her serious slip-up this morning. Raised among the many creatures brought to the clinic from the dozen planets of the Local Systems Accord, she’d followed Otha and the Sister on rounds countless times, observed hundreds of procedures on scores of animals. Lately, she’d even been granted the privilege of “getting her hands wet” assisting Otha in surgery on the more straightforward cases. The truth was, she’d started her novice year with more real-world experience than most third-year students. And she’d still managed to foul up the hound’s treatment.

  “… and the expression on your mother’s face – priceless.” Her uncle laughed as they passed out of the shade of the cloister walk. “You can bet she never forgot the difference between a thorn-throw queen and a common drone after that. Mai was every bit as green as you. Greener. And when Warra heard about it – well, let’s just say your father never let her forget it.” He slapped one palm against his thigh at the memory. Then his gaze met Zenn’s, and his mood went somber.

  As they approached the infirmary’s side door, Brother Hamish was just emerging from the big double doors at the front of the building. Several feet taller than Otha, Hamish was a coleopt – a large insectoid from Siren, the hothouse jungle moon circling the gas giant Rho-Cancri B-2, which in turn orbits its red dwarf sun, Rho-Cancri B. The chitin carapace that sheathed his upper body glinted in the morning sun, the light catching veins of iridescent blue-green. Draped across his shoulders, Hamish wore a vest-like garment of brownish-red metal chainmail, with a scattering of pockets. On his head was a yellowish, broad-brimmed hat woven of some grassy material. His homeworld’s star was much fainter than Mars’ sun, and he’d taken to wearing the hat, one of Otha’s cast-offs, to shield his eyes. Two holes cut in the hat’s crown allowed his long, plume-like antennae to poke through.

  Close behind Hamish’s looming form walked Liam Tucker. The towner boy, Zenn was amused to see, was pushing a whee
lbarrow piled high with an assortment of exotic manure.

  Just a year older than Zenn, but much taller, with a solid, athletic build, Liam had the sunburned complexion of someone who had recently started spending a lot of time outdoors – and the generally smug manner of a boy who thought pretty highly of himself.

  A new arrival, Hamish was still in his “postulant” trial period as cloister sexton, a sort of all-round attendant and go-fer. Shortly after Hamish took up residence, Liam had initiated an unlikely friendship with him. Unlikely, because, before this, Liam had shown a distinct disinterest in anything to do with the cloister and its inhabitants, human or alien. It was only recently that Liam had taken on the job of regularly picking up the food the Ciscans traded with those in town. And today, it appeared Brother Hamish had cajoled the towner into helping him with one of a sexton’s main chores: mucking out the animal pens.

  Zenn didn’t know Liam well, but he was a towner which, of course, put him in the category of people she was inclined to either ignore or actively dislike. She also knew this was closed-minded and judgmental. But she had her reasons.

  Zenn waved at them, and Hamish energetically waved back. His claw-tipped digits rattled like castanets.

  “Good morning, Novice Zenn,” Hamish said. Or rather, his Transvox-generated voice said. The small, egg-shaped Transvox unit, mounted on the shoulder area of his carapace, instantaneously translated Hamish’s coleopt language into passable English. The Transvox software also generated a stream of inaudible, dampening frequencies that almost completely cancelled out the sound of Hamish’s actual speech, which was a soft, musical hissing produced by the breathing holes in his lower abdomen. Otha had dubbed him Hamish due to the sound of his name as spoken in coleopt, which registered on human ears as a breathy “Hoo-aymeesh-eh”.

  “The pen of the large grass-eater mammal that was my chore to clean is now clean,” Hamish told them proudly. “Clean and ship-shape.”

  “Good work, sexton,” Otha said. “Now, I’d like you to attend to that busted door on the granary next. You’ll need the small hand-jack to lever it up into place.”

  “A small… hand-jack?” Hamish said, his long, feather-like antennae quivering uncertainly. “I am unclear regarding the working of a small hand-jack, director-abbot.”

  Otha rolled his eyes at Zenn and went to explain the task to him.

  “Morning, Liam,” Zenn said as the towner sauntered over.

  “Morning, Scarlett,” he said, brushing at the longish blond hair that always seemed to be falling across his face, and, as usual, calling her by her last name.

  “So,” he said, lifting his gaze to look past her, “What poor unsuspecting animal are you harassing this morning?”

  “The Kiran’s whalehound. And he’s lucky to have me looking after him,” she said, skipping over the fact she’d just half-drowned the creature.

  “Whalehound?” Liam leaned towards her and sniffed at Zenn’s still-damp hair. “I thought I smelled wet dog.” Typical Liam, Zenn thought. She gave him her “Oh, aren’t you comical?” look. “So, what’s the big boy’s problem?” he asked.

  “Obstruction in one of his tear ducts. I’ll flush it out and he’ll be good as new,” she said, allowing herself to sound as if this was something she did every day before lunch.

  “Yeah? He’ll let you do that? Squirt stuff in his eye?”

  “We’ll use the seda-field, gentle him down,” Zenn said.

  “Sounds kinda dicey. I mean, they’re meat-eaters, right? They eat… whales.”

  “No, they mainly prey on Mu Arae icthythons, which are the size of Earther whales but are really marine reptiles. The first settlers on Mu Arae just called them whales, so the animals that hunted them became whalehounds.” Zenn stopped herself from going on. She realized she was just showing off.

  “Right, reptiles, big as whales. Makes sense.” Liam looked away, swiped at his hair. “You must think I’m a dope. Not knowing stuff like that.”

  “No, not at all.”

  Well, yes, actually. But, you’re a towner. Not really your fault.

  Recently, Liam had begun to show more interest in the cloister’s animals. Zenn didn’t mind answering his questions, but she usually had more important things to do. And, besides, it gave her some small satisfaction to instruct someone from town. Nothing wrong with a little showing off. Now and then.

  “You know, I fed him once, your whalehound,” Liam said. “I was with Hamish. We gave him some of those big chunks of stuff that smell like fish.”

  “The dried lurker flakes? Yes, he loves those.”

  “Yeah, it was actually pretty fun. I mean, he kinda sat down and waited for me to throw it to him. Like a big tame dog or something.”

  “Uh huh. They’re not really aggressive, or dangerous to humans. And not related to dogs, of course. More like giant marine mustelids. Like big aquatic weasels.”

  “Right. Well, I’m still glad he’s on the other side of the fence,” he said. “Though you’re probably safe. Hardly enough meat on you to make more than a crunchy little hound snack. See?” He pinched her arm to illustrate her lack of food-value.

  Zenn pulled away, shook her head at him, but didn’t really know how to respond to this sort of behavior from Liam. Lately, he’d been acting… what? More familiar with her. On several occasions, it seemed to Zenn that he’d deliberately sought her out for the purpose of talking with her. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought he might be trying to be friends. A towner, trying to be friends. This was just odd. And, of course, she couldn’t allow it. That would mean breaking the Rule. Unlike the rule she’d been given about not leaving the cloister when she was young, “the Rule” was a law of her own making. But just like the earlier rule, the Rule was meant for protection. And for years now, it had kept her safe. The Rule came about because emotional attachments had proven to be, quite simply, a luxury she wasn’t willing to pay for. Expect something good from people, and they’d invariably disappoint. Rely on someone, and they’ll end up leaving. Or dying. It wasn’t a complicated formula. Otha, Hild, Hamish, and her father were exempt, of course. And frankly, she still had occasional doubts about Warra Scarlett.

  And besides, what was the point of even considering friendship with someone from Arsia? Towners were, as a group, irrationally suspicious of the cloister and its inhabitants, both human and alien. No, suspicious didn’t express it; paranoid and hateful summed it up better. Towners feared alien creatures with such automatic, ingrained intensity that it made these people impossible to engage with in any meaningful way. Zenn had given up trying years ago. There were, she conceded, a handful of scientifically literate towners who knew better, but these few kept their opinions securely to themselves. So, could Liam Tucker be added to the list of people actually worth talking to? Zenn was skeptical, but told herself to try to keep an open mind.

  “Alright then,” her uncle said, coming over and rubbing his hands together. “We’ve all got work to do. Liam, tell your Aunt Vic I got her message. About worming the goats. We’ll get that taken care of soon as we can.”

  “I’ll tell her.” He gave Zenn a parting smirk and hefted up the barrow handles. “Lead on, boss-bug.” Hamish started off and Liam followed, heading for the garden.

  A few moments later she and Otha were inside the cave-cool darkness of the infirmary building. He turned to her.

  “Zenn, is it Warra? Is that what’s been bothering you lately?” He folded his arms across his chest. “If it is, you need to stop being such a worrier.”

  “But it’s been almost two months,” Zenn said, going over to the tank-pack. “And I’m not just being a worrier.”

  It seemed so inconsiderate of her father, not to get in touch. She worked to keep her voice calm, level. “We should have heard something by now.”

  “Not necessarily. There’s no rule saying your father has to contact us every time you get a little anxious.”

  Zenn scowled at this dismissal. In fact, she was more than a lit
tle anxious. Worse, she didn’t know why. Two months really wasn’t all that long without a message. But somehow it was making her jumpy and irritable. Two things she couldn’t afford to be right now.

  Instead of arguing the point, she picked up the tank-pack nozzle and jabbed at the keypad, entering the sequence for low-pressure, narrow stream. She checked the setting twice, locked it into place and checked it once more.

  “You mustn’t blame your father for going away, after… what happened to Mai. You mustn’t be angry with him for that.”

  Was that what was unsettling her? Still? No. Yes. Maybe. She couldn’t even say for sure what she was feeling about it anymore.

  Yes, her father had left. And there was no doubt about why he’d gone, at least as far as Zenn was concerned. Warra Scarlett had loved his wife, deeply, unconditionally. And she’d died. Afterward, it seemed clear to Zenn, he had simply hurt too much. Her father’s entire being was like a fresh wound. He couldn’t tolerate contact, couldn’t make any sensible response to those around him, no matter how much they wanted to help.

  When she was young, she was constantly reminded of her parents’ attachment to each other, at their obvious, unmistakable joy in simply being around each other. Even then, Zenn was old enough to know these two people were more than mere husband and wife. They were best of friends; no, more than even friends. They were like a single person, with two independent personalities that somehow entered into a communication that only they shared.

  The winter Solstice celebration when Zenn was seven, for instance. Warra and Mai had promised her a big surprise. For weeks ahead of time, she’d begged and whined at both of them for clues, but all Mai would tell her is that “You’re getting a present you won’t be able to see, but one you’ll really, really like.”

  When the big night finally arrived, Zenn had been ushered into the calefactory meeting hall where Sister Hild had set up the scrubby little pine that served as that year’s Solstice tree. As Otha and Hild looked on with knowing smiles, Warra and Mai entered the room, her father ceremoniously carrying a large, wrapped box. He set it down before her. She saw immediately there were air-holes in the wrapping.