Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  “Not necessarily,” Calla said. “It’s not certain that the new worlds will carry the decision. They say that the going rate for buying a vote in the Council of Worlds is a fifty-year supply of elixir, most tempting to men and women in their sixtieth standard year. Do you know how many council members are sixty or older?”

  “Just about all of them, but I didn’t know they could be bought. Their integrity is . . .”

  “. . . questionable when it comes to doubling a lifespan. Not all of them, of course, probably not even most. But maybe just enough to turn the favor to the old worlds.”

  “What is the Decemvirate doing about the problem? I mean, they must have probability models that tell them all of these things.”

  Calla drew a long, hissing breath as she got to her feet. She went to the window and put the goblet on the sill so that she could rub her hip with her hand. She seemed to be staring idly at the activity in the staging areas below, but Jason knew she was thinking. She put her hands in her pockets and stood head hung, the posture so familiar to him that it might have been only yesterday that he had last seen it. “The Decemvirate is preparing for war. They just don’t know which side they’ll be on until they put the alternatives before the Council of Worlds and the decision is made.”

  “Historically the Decemvirate has always supported the majority decision. But, since they control the timing, they’re going to be ready either way, right?” When she looked at him strangely, he added, “They’re delaying giving council the alternatives, delaying the vote, and using the time to get ready.”

  “The imperial legions are always ready,” she said. “Yes, they are, aren’t they. But most of the facilities for processing the elixir are on the old worlds . . . or are they?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Hasn’t it?” he said suspiciously. “They haven’t moved any of the facilities to secret locations while they still have control? Perhaps to planets like Mutare that no self-respecting colonist would give a second glance? What are they calling the new Red Rocks facility back in the Hub records? Dirty atomics research? Volatile processing plant? Mutare is already filthy with cosmic rays that cause mutations, and they’re all pretty proud of their genes, aren’t they. Oh, they might tamper with them from time to time and be selective about which ones they use for their offspring, but they won’t let nature do it, not the wild and fast and unpredictable nature of Mutare. They’ll leave Mutare to the survey rangers and feel content in knowing that in twenty thousand years there will be a tamed planet ready for civilized colonization. In the meantime, if some good use could come of it, why not make use of Mutare. What would they say, Calla, if they knew their next supply of elixir was being manufactured here?”

  “I said nothing about elixir,” Calla said.

  “You didn’t have to,” he said, feeling grim.

  Stubbornly she shook her head. “I came here to talk Hub politics to an old friend who has been out of contact.”

  “You didn’t have to say anything. Once I had an old friend, too, and she taught me to hear what was not said.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, then drank the rest of her wine. “You used to serve me rot-gut liquor out of canning jars, too. Did I teach you to appreciate leaded Sinn Hala crystal, as well?” She held up the goblet to admire it.

  “I’m told the crafter claimed to have Picasso genes,” Jason said.

  “They all do,” she said, unimpressed. “But it’s good work, nonetheless.” She put down the goblet. “You did earn those silver moons, didn’t you?”

  Jason scowled.

  “You pretended that playing the game their way wasn’t important, but,” she said, fingering the goblet once again, “you were listening and learning every minute, weren’t you?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “I thought so. But I never knew I was getting results. Never mind. You know what you know, and you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “I still don’t know where you fit in,” Jason said. “You are as unlikely a candidate to send on a mission like this as I can think of.”

  “I earned my gold,” she snapped.

  “I never doubted that,” he said. “I was referring to your singularity. The last thing I knew, you were confined to Mercury Novus because you were a poor health risk.”

  “There’s a risk, of course, but they don’t hold it against me any more. I haven’t been grounded for almost twenty years.”

  “Twenty . . .” Rubbing his hand across his eyes, he fought for self-control. She could have come after him. There was nothing stopping her. They would have let her transfer twenty years ago. He wanted to ask her why she had not, but he was so certain that he would hate her answer that all he said was, “I see.”

  “Yes, in fact, for this mission, my singularity is in my favor.” Her expression was serious and aloof, and it was killing him. “I cannot make any personal gain no matter which way the decision goes, because elixir, like almost everything else, doesn’t work for me. But they did send a backup just in case, a civilian colleague. Praetor D’Omaha is up in Belden Traveler waiting for us to settle in down here.”

  “How can they be so certain the elixir doesn’t work for you?” Jason said. “Praetorians aren’t entitled.”

  “Except by lottery. It made me deathly ill. A second dose would probably be fatal. That’s on my record right along with all my other achievements.”

  That must have been a terrible blow to her, Jason decided, her last hope for beating the effects of the singularity, gone. “Don’t they worry about your new world heritage?”

  “Dovia? Dovia can hardly be called a world any more,” Calla said. “No. They cared for nothing except my . . . impartiality to elixir. I’m expected to carry out my orders without fail, just like the Decemvirate.” She was grinning now, as if war were a game to look forward to. Perhaps it was to her, Jason thought. Perhaps this was the most exciting event in her career, and coming before she was too old to participate had to bring her some satisfaction.

  “What kind of defense do you plan for Mutare?” he asked, trying to be equally dispassionate. “What kind of armaments did you bring?”

  “None,” she said. “Secrecy is our best defense.”

  “None? But I saw a new star in retrograde two nights ago. It went behind the moon and never came out. Are you going to try to tell me that really was a new star?”

  Calla shrugged and downed the last of her drink, then got to her feet with an almost inaudible moan. “A shooting star, perhaps.”

  “No,” he said. “A ship. A very large one.”

  “Why would I send armaments to the moon?”

  “Not to it. Behind it. And I don’t know why, but I suspect I will one day.”

  Calla shook her head and walked over to the window to look at the staging area. Some of the stevedores had arrived and were talking to the rangers. Calla’s officers sat by themselves. “Secrecy,” she repeated. “Nothing goes off planet or arrives without it going through my inspection team, and my guards will shuttle for us. That includes rangers. As for your people.” She turned to look at him. “They’re here for the duration.”

  “You can’t do that. They’re rangers, not Praetorians.”

  “I can’t. Decemvirate did. Check your orders.”

  “I haven’t had time.”

  She crossed her arms over her pendulous breasts. “But I was supposed to have had time to read your report on danae and the rain?”

  “Consistency was never a strong point with me, which is why I prefer the rangers to the guards.”

  “We’re all the same when it comes to war,” Calla said. “Guards and rangers alike follow the orders of the Decemvirate.”

  She was right, but Jason didn’t like it. “There’s going to be hell to pay when the first of them don’t get to rotate out on time.”

  “You’re due among the first of them. Set a good example,” she said, sable eyes glinting.

  Jason sigh
ed. “I will behave like a disciplined disciple of the Decemvirate, and I’ll work everyone’s asses off so they don’t have time to complain. But there’s a civilian population, too. Miners. I expect a dozen or more to achieve their exploitation limits this summer. They won’t like it when they find out they can’t go back to the Hub and spend their fortunes.”

  “Increase the limits, Governor. That’s well within your powers.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “About planetary exploitation and greed? I’m a Dovian, remember? I understand only too well. Give them the chance to double their fortunes, and they’ll take it.”

  “Over my dead body,” he said angrily. “There will be no increase in the exploitation limits while I’m governor.”

  She looked at him sharply. “That’s fine, Governor, as long as you can find some other way to carry out your orders. I suggest that you check them before we discuss this matter any further. Perhaps next time you won’t go charging off with your foot in your mouth.”

  Jason clamped his jaw to stop a torrent of angry words. She couldn’t have changed so much in the intervening years that she would encourage the sacrifice of innocent lives. She just hadn’t read the reports, and she didn’t know what she was saying. Or were the gold worlds on her collar proof of just how much she really had changed.

  “Goodnight,” she said. She turned her back on him and started for the door. Loose flesh hung along biceps that once were firm, and her skin looked dry and crepey. She walked as if her boots were too heavy, her left toe dragging slightly along the ramped floor.

  He opened the door with a switch on his desk. Calla left, and he went to read his orders.

  Chapter 2

  The first rays of sunlight were just breaking the horizon, glinting silver and gold on Mer Sal, as Calla picked her way over fallen rock. She had a map in hand, taken from one of Jason’s early reports, but she needn’t have bothered. The way to what Jason called the terrace garden was serpentine, but the path was well marked by scuffed rocks and trampled vegetation after three years of Jason’s daily treks. She topped the limestone ridge and paused to rest her aching hip. Below was the garden, a natural valley of vegetation-loaded loam nestled between a hogback of limestone and another of red sandstone. She looked from the garden out to the forested plain that sloped gently to the sea. From Jason’s reports, she knew that she was standing on the meeting ground of two continental plates, one sunken now and nearly covered by the inland sea called Mer Sal, the other twisted and faulted so badly that the layers of sedimentary rock were thrust perpendicular, the harder layers poking through the surface like planetary bones.

  Calla heard a rock fall behind her. She turned to see Jason coming up the trail from Round House, dark curls glistening reddish in the sunlight. She had hoped to find him here.

  While she waited for him, she watched the sun climb. Its rays lit the conifer forest still sparkling with rainwater until it touched Sylvan Amber. Sunlight flashed like flame as it slid along the wet resins. Calla’s nomenclator started whispering the introductory announcement of Anwar Jason D‘Estelle, picked up from the regulation-required nonpareil implanted in a tooth, and she knew Jason was less than meters away. With her tongue, she flicked off the switch mounted on one of her own back molars. She knew more about Jason than a nomenclator file could divulge. Then Jason was beside her.

  “The Amber Forest?” she asked, even though she was already certain it was.

  He nodded. “It’s even more beautiful up close. The conifers’ sap runs like water in the spring, and veils of it spread from the branches to the ground. Doesn’t run from the trunks at all. Eventually it oxidizes; the cosmic rays speed the process. When the trees die, they leave behind kiosks of amber. We have a group of danae living in them.”

  “I know,” Calla said. “I read the reports last night. You said they take wing with the first touch of sunlight. I came to see.”

  “Any moment now,” he assured her. “Now.”

  By squinting against the sun, Calla could just see the movement where Jason was pointing. Then the forest seemed to lift in a rainbow of color; a thousand of them must have taken wing.

  They could glide on thermals or beat the air like swallows. This morning their wings beat strongly, swiftly covering the kilometers between Sylvan Amber and the terrace garden. As they approached, the shimmer of their translucent wings looked like ghostly apparitions around their streamlined bodies. A few dozen circled the terrace garden, then half that number broke off and flew beyond the sandstone ridge. Most of the remaining danae circled the garden a few more times before cautiously settling on high perches in the far side. Only two came near, perching on trees thirty meters from the limestone ridge. With their wings furled, they looked like they were carrying large and lovely scrolls.

  “That’s Old Blue-eyes and Tonto. They won’t come any closer until you leave,” Jason said. “It takes them a while to get used to strangers.”

  Calla grunted and pulled out her field glasses from the pocket in her stellerator vest. She held them up and looked at the danae. “It does have blue eyes,” she said.

  “Well, two of them are. The other eye is green, the compound eye at the back of the . . . ah, head.”

  They had no distinguishable head, just a face of sorts in what ought to be a belly, but was not. “Tonto’s eyes are blue, too, but not quite so brilliant a blue,” she said. “He’s just a babe, your reports said, yet he’s bigger than Old Blue-eyes.”

  “They emerge full grown from the cocoon. Tonto won’t grow another centimeter.”

  “You’re sure about the three stages — egg, nymph, and adult?”

  “Oh, yes. Tonto is Old Blue-eyes’ egg from three years ago. I saw him hide it . . . or her. They’re androgynous. And I tagged the nymph that emerged with a radio implant. Tonto’s still got it somewhere in his gut. It doesn’t seem to bother him any.”

  “And Tonto swims,” Calla said, finally taking the field glasses away to look at him.

  Jason chuckled and folded his arms over his chest. “Yes, Tonto swims. He’s a little goofy, I’m afraid. It upsets Old Blue-eyes to no end. None of the other danae swim.”

  Calla was glad to see him looking more cheerful than he was last night. She knew it was only because he was talking about the danae, not that anything had changed since last night. Jason used to be fond of horses, and his experience with them had gotten him into the Praetorian guard in the first place, simply to fill out a display team. Equestrians were difficult to find among old worlders. And now he was fond of the danae; his affection for them came through even in his supposedly objective reports.

  “Do you suppose,” Calla said, “that his swimming ability has something to do with the fact that Tonto cocooned with a sea animal?”

  Jason smiled bemusedly. “Like the glowworm syndrome?”

  He shrugged. “About the only thing left of the victim after the cocooning stage is the brain and bones. If traits were passed on, you would think it would be from eating neural tissue.”

  “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” She raised the glasses again, took a last look at the danae. They were staring at her from flat blue eyes, nictitating membranes down against the sun’s onslaught. “Well, if that’s as close as they’ll come, I’ve seen as much as I can see.” She put the field glasses in her pocket, then shifted the stellerator vest, changing the pull of it across her shoulders. “Damn stellerators are heavy.”

  “And hot,” he added. “But you’ll get used to it.”

  She nodded, but thought that she’d never get used to it, no more than she could really become accustomed to walking around on rocks and dirt, nor to the pain it caused. “That shuttle won’t unload itself. I’d better get back,” she said.

  Jason’s smile faded in the same way it used to fade when she reminded him it was time to leave the apartment to go on duty. But back then he’d not been wearing the silver moons of rank. That he nodded now suggested how he’d earned them, but his face be
trayed that he still did not like being reminded that duty could not be put off for pastime.

  “Here,” he said, reaching into his stellerator pocket. He pulled out a survey plat. “The as-built details of Red Rocks, at least as far as we’ve gotten. We have another week’s work on the personnel quarters.”

  “Yes, I noticed. We slept in them last night anyhow, sort of staking out claims. They look like they’ll be quite comfortable when they’re finished. Pretty, too, if that rock polishes out. What kind is it?”

  “Same stuff you’re standing on, same formation, too. Limestone. You’ll see fossils if we leave them unpolished. It’s up to you.”

  “I guess it would be unique to have walls decorated with fossils.” She tucked the plat in her pocket with the field glasses.

  “We’ll just seal them,” Jason said, “to keep down the dust.”

  Calla nodded, and turning to go, found Jason walking beside her.

  “I read my orders last night. They confirmed everything you said. You forgot to mention the bonus pay for not rotating us out. That will help.”

  “Good.”

  “And that we’re sharing a second in command, a Praetorian officer of yours and not one of my rangers.”

  “Yes, Marmion. He’s a good man, and sharing a second ensures good communication between the two groups. We’ll be sharing a lot of equipment, too.”

  “Especially flyers. I notice all the zephyrs are now Praetorian supplies, along with almost anything else that permits the least bit of mobility or that could be used for communication.”

  “Yes, we have them. You can use them. Supply obviously didn’t want to duplicate equipment.”

  “Your pilots or mine?” he asked.

  “Mine, of course. It will be a good opportunity for my people to get to know the terrain.”

  “Not that they’ll ever really need to know the terrain,” he said, a bit of sarcasm in his voice. “You people being researchers would have no interest in the lay of the land. Cosmic radiation research is what they say you’ll be doing at Red Rocks. Makes me wonder what they think we’ve been doing here for the past three years.” He shook his head, neither getting nor expecting an answer from Calla. “If you have a spy satellite up there in Belden Traveler, we could use weather reports. We don’t like being caught out in electrical storms with the stellerators on any more than you do.”