“You’re not very happy about any of this, are you?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “It would have been easier for me if they had just declared martial law and put you in command to begin with instead of playing around with my supplies and giving me a Praetorian second. If they want me dependent on you, why fool around? It’s you wearing the damned gold anyhow.”
Calla stopped in the trail, put her hands on her hips and looked up at Jason. “I’m going to tell you once and only once, and I don’t want your thanks, or your curses either. I just want you to know how it is. The Decemvirate would have relieved you of your command here if I hadn’t objected. You would all have been shipped back to the Hub to twiddle your thumbs until Timekeeper knows how long. I didn’t think you’d want to wait until the war starts for your next assignment, especially not when you could be useful here on Mutare.”
“Useful . . . as a cover for your operations at Red Rocks,” he said disdainfully.
“And to manage a planet I know nothing about. I probably won’t have time to learn anything I should know to keep the situation under control. Like the civilian population. I’d have gotten rid of them all if it were possible to do so without suspicion, but I don’t even know how many there are.”
“Two hundred and eleven that we know of. There could be more,” Jason admitted. “Mutare’s big. All miners, though, so that limits their haunts. Even so, we probably couldn’t locate half of them if we tried. They come and go as they please. Most of them don’t even bother with an all-well check-in by radio. Backworld miners tend to be iconoclasts.”
Calla started down the slope again, using her good right leg to lead. “Crystallofragrantia,” she said. “That’s a mouthful. Why not aromatic crystal or stink stone?”
“Survey Ranger Charter requires that we use a dead language as the source for naming geographical features, the flora and the fauna. That way the original meaning doesn’t get bastardized by usage. A lot of the planets we service are pretty far downtime, and a living language can change by the time we get back with the information. I use Latin because it’s the language my first commander in the rangers used, also the only one I know. So, that’s half the reason,” he said. “The other half is because the Decemvirate doesn’t want individual rangers immortalized in geographical features that might one day become important. You know what I mean. They frown on names like Jason’s Crystal as much as stink stone.”
“But I’ve heard Amber Forest as much as Sylvan Amber,” Calla said. “And no one says crystallofragrantia, do they?”
“No, they just say crystal, and on Mutare everyone knows which crystal you mean. The Decemvirate can’t control how people think. But my reports and official maps say crystallofragrantia.”
“Have you decided to increase the crystal limits? It would keep the civilian miners from becoming a problem to Marmion, who would have to enforce the communication and travel restrictions. If they were busy trying to find more crystal, they wouldn’t be interested in talking about it or wanting to leave.”
“I already told you that I’m not going to increase them,” Jason said, his face darkening despite the bright sunlight. “I’ll find another way.”
“You always were stubborn,” Calla muttered, but she didn’t think Jason heard, for he abruptly stepped off the trail and went back toward Round House.
***
Even before checking, Calla knew that the cave the survey rangers had hollowed out of a middle cretaceous sandstone ridge would meet to the last detail the specifications the engineers had sent to Jason months ago. Yet she had watched the perfection engineering unit set up the laser transit and plumb in the main chamber and listened as they called out the numbers to a clerk who fed them into a jar of jelly beans that had been downloaded with the acceptance checks. Everything tallied. The troughs for feed and drain lines were inclined perfectly, the entire cavern fired by a laser process that glazed the exposed sandstone, which would make it possible for the engineers to seal the cavern and control the atmospherics so that accidental contamination would be impossible.
“Wouldn’t have believed survey rangers could do things this well if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” said Chief of Perfection Engineers Marmion Andres. “I thought they always shaved the regs here and there, and that after ten years of backworld service they were useless at performing real legion work.”
Calla grunted. “Perfectionists are always ready to believe the worst.”
“It’s our job,” Marmion said, but he was smiling as he took the jelly bean jar from the clerk and put his seal of approval on the data it contained. He handed the jar to Calla, who gave it back to the clerk.
“Take this over to the comm and upload to Belden Traveler. When the cross-check comes down, tell Chief Tirzah I said she can start installing the plumbing.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the clerk said, and started across the cavern to the ramp-tunnel that led to the surface.
“Well, if you’re not going to be here to tell Tirzah yourself, that must mean we’ve some inspecting to do. What will it be, Calla?”
“The sewers,” she said.
The sewers were important for draining away the acids, solvents, and other chemicals, each in its own pipe. There would be no problem with the lines’ isolation from one another; Jason understood how volatile the reactions could be if the wrong two mixed. But disposal had been left to his discretion, since the planet was for the most part uninhabited, and the usual regulations for disposal wouldn’t apply on Mutare. They’d run undiluted into a nearby water system, eventually be carried to the sea. Calla was concerned that the water system be adequate to dilute all the contamination with the least amount of disruption to the local flora and fauna. There’d be hell to pay from Jason if he noticed anything amiss, for even though he’d put the finishing touches on the sewer system himself, he couldn’t possibly have known how great the volume of acids would be.
“The governor’s already a bit touchy about exploitation levels on this planet,” she said to Marmion. “He’s not going to be very happy if we put an acid bath in his backyard.”
Marmion nodded understandingly.
Calla reached into her breast pocket for the surveyor’s plat Jason had given her and unrolled the film. The jelly bean border wiggled a bit, then snapped into shape. “Display sewer system,” she said softly, and the plat lines glowed as they sequenced to bright orange along the outlines of the entire disposal system. Most of the orange lines converged at the north, the farthest point from the personnel quarters. “This way,” Calla said, stepping off to the north. Marmion followed.
With no data to think of while she walked, Calla noticed the many striations in the glazed sandstone. Most of the sandstone must have been of fine-grained sand from an ancient beach, which had glazed to a deep rusty red, blackened in places where the laser had been used to smooth as well as melt. But there were pink and white areas where the natural rust pigment had been removed by hot solutions in some ancient epoch, and there were seams of silica-filled cracks that glistened like diamonds when her lights hit them.
“Too bad we’ll just about cover all of it with the equipment,” Marmion said, apparently also noticing how pretty the chamber was. “What a shame the personnel quarters aren’t in the same formation.”
“Look closely at the walls. They’re limestone, and they’ll have a beauty of their own. Fossils,” she said.
“Didn’t notice,” Marmion said. “I’ll check again when we get back. I just figured he was giving us the bum’s rush on the quarters. You know, no specs for that part, just a head count. These ranger-types don’t like it when colonists come, let alone something like this. But you said that you know this guy.”
“Yes, I knew him. We were cadets in the guard together.”
“All ten years? And he left? What is he? Crazy or something?”
Calla felt a twinge of sadness. Until last night, it had always been joyful to remember Jason. She’d always been able to dream that noth
ing had changed, that he still loved her. But memories were deceitful. She still could picture the Jason of thirty years ago, so quick to smile. He’d not smiled once last night. He had made his choice thirty years ago, and now he was determined to protect it from her. The damned planet. Damn Jason, she thought, as she remembered that it was only ten years for him. There should have been some of the love left in him after only ten years. How could there not be when it was so strong in her after thirty?
Not for the first time she silently cursed the singularity that had caused her to age so badly. How could she blame him? When he had left it was he who was the elder by six years. Now it was she who was older by almost fifteen years. At fifty-four most humans were just sliding past middle age. Calla had already fallen over the edge. Years of grimacing from the pain were etched in her face. She was old, and she knew it. He knew it, too.
“It must be through here,” she heard Marmion say.
“What?” She’d barely been aware that they’d left the main chamber and were in a tunnel that branched north and northeast. Marmion was shining his lamp in the northeast tunnel, moving on ahead because the way was narrow. Calla glanced down at the plat, satisfied herself that Marmion had selected the right way and followed him. The sandstone gave away completely to crinkly limestone through which a trough had been bored to carry chemical drainage lines, with a raised walking platform left for installing the lines and maintaining them.
“Light up ahead,” Marmion said. “You have your stellerator on?”
“It is now,” Calla said, flicking the switch on the front of the vest. The stellerator was silent to those who could not hear the low end of audible sound. Calla had no difficulty hearing the hums resonate in the narrow passageway. She was annoyed to think that this was something aging saved some humans. Her hearing was perfect.
At the end of the trough, Marmion and Calla turned off their lamps. There was plenty of natural light from outside even though the limestone cliff where the trough broke through was in shadow. Calla stepped down into the trough to peer through the opening. They were near the base of a cliff, vertical but weathered limestone rock above them, a steep slope of rubble-rock and gravel that gave over to tenacious deciduous growth below. They could hear the sound of running water, but they could not see water anywhere. The greenery below was too thick. Off to the right and left Calla could see fresh scars that revealed half a dozen more troughs, just like the one they were standing in.
“Looks all right from here, “ Marmion said. “Some of it we can just dump right over the edge, though to be safe I think we should elbow the acid and solvent drains down to the rocks. We’ll lose a lot of that greenery, but . . .”
“I want everything piped all the way down to the water,” Calla said.
“We don’t have to worry about cleanup around here,” Marmion started to say, then he saw the set of Calla’s jaw and nodded, “But I guess there’s no reason not to be neat, even here.”
“Can we get down?” Calla said, looking at the rock for laser-chipped handholds. “I want to take a look at the waterway, get an idea of its volume.”
“What for?” Marmion said. “If it isn’t enough, it isn’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it. No time to build holding tanks.”
“I want to know,” Calla said. She looked from the rock back at Marmion. He was staring out at the green canyon, no doubt thinking of how it would look when the acids and solvents were running through it. Normally, being certain that no damage was done to the terrain was part of his responsibility, but not in this assignment. His job ended right here at the wall. Fortunately, his training did not.
“I can get down,” he said finally.
From the way he’d spoken, Calla was pretty sure he meant she’d probably break a leg if she tried to climb down. He probably was right, so she nodded and reached over to take his lamp and anything else he cared to relieve himself of. He gave her his hip pack, first hooking his radio onto a clip on the stellerator. Then he backed off the ledge, lowering himself about one body length before jumping the final two meters to the loose gravel. He landed on his feet and slid, then jump-stepped until he had his balance. Soon he disappeared in the underbrush, but she got occasional glances of his khakis contrasted against the deep green colors.
“It’s pretty small,” she heard him say through the radio after about ten minutes. “But it’s swift. Can’t tell how deep . . . still murky after the rains last night.”
“Will it carry everything safely?” Calla said into the mic on her shoulder.
“Can’t tell without knowing how deep it is.”
“So find out,” Calla said.
“Timekeeper be damned, Calla. If it’s deep, it may carry me.”
“Use a stick. You can tell how deep by measuring the wet part,” she said.
“Funny, but a stick won’t do it. I’m going to wade out a ways . . . cold as ice. But the grip-boots work pretty well on the wet rock.”
“Careful.”
“I’m only up to my knees; if there’s no drop-offs, I’ll be . . . yeow!”
“Marmion?” Calla stood up trying to see some sign of him below. She couldn’t even see the water, let alone the perfectionist. “Marmion!” Then, where she thought Marmion ought to be she saw a rainbow climb steeply out of the undergrowth. She could just make out the shape of strongly arched wings in the blur of color before the rainbow disappeared over the cliffs. “Marmion?”
“I’m all right. Did you see?”
“Yes, some danae. They’re harmless, but they move fast. Did they startle you?”
“No, they shat on me. They were in a bough over the stream. I saw them and recognized what they were, so I wasn’t worried. But when they saw me they let loose with a load of crap. I think they threw up, too. Disgusting.”
Over the mic, Calla heard the water sounds intensify. “They regurgitate food and empty their bowels in order to lighten weight and take off in an emergency,” Calla said.
“Yeah,” Marmion said. “I read the reports, too. They didn’t mention the stink . . . nor the stain. This uniform is ruined.” After a moment he added, “I’m headed back up.”
“Will the waterway carry?”
“Just barely would be my guess, but like I said before, there’s nothing we can do about it if it can’t.”
Well, nothing easy, Calla thought, but surely something. She’d check for other water sources in the area to see what could be done about increasing the volume if it became necessary. Jason’s rangers ought to be capable of building a dam and diverting some water into the canyon.
Marmion was in view again, moving slowly up the slope.
Calla could hear him breathing heavily through the mic. Like everyone else who’d come from the Belden Traveler, the perfectionist was in less than perfect physical condition after the long journey, and the stellerator was heavy. Calla kept finding herself adjusting the vest-like apparatus to shift the weight, and she was sweating beneath it though it was cool here on the ledge. At last Marmion climbed from the scree slope to the wall, and he came steadily up the rock. His khakis were still wet and stained with blue-green smears across the chest and shoulders.
“Won’t come off,” he said when he noticed her looking at him. “But at least the water took care of the worst. What’s my hair look like?”
“Like your shirt,” Calla said, trying not to laugh. His eyebrow was green. “Let’s go back . . . unless you want to verify the slope on the rest of the troughs before we go.” She smelled flowers and glanced back at the canyon.
“It can wait.” He took his gear back from Calla and turned on the lamp. “I think that shit had esters in it, or your perfume fills the canyon.”
The smell of esters was sweet and getting sickening. “Let’s go back,” Calla agreed. She took the lead, hoping to stay ahead of the smell. It helped until they reached the big sandstone chamber, and then there was enough room for Marmion to walk alongside and she could not go fast enough to get ahead of him again.
His stride was naturally longer, and he did not have arthritis in his hip to slow him down. He dropped behind again when they started up the ramp-tunnel that led to the shuttle landing site, for crew were bringing in the plumbing pipes in banded sheaves that took almost the full width of the tunnel. The draft was toward the opening now and was strong, so the sweet flowery smell did not seem so bad. Even so, some of the stevedores were giving them sidelong glances, but that may have been as much for Marmion’s green-spattered hair as the smell.
Near the entrance, Marmion stopped to right a fallen lamp, which then turned out to be broken. Calla took it from him and waved him on. “I’ll fix it myself. You go do something about that smell.”
“Probably be pleasant if it were diluted a bit,” Marmion said. “Weird creature. But if I had to be shit on to find out where they hang out, I’m glad it’s esters and not phenols. Can’t wait ’til we have time for a little hunting.”
“Hunting?” Calla looked at him sharply.
“I guess they call it mining here. Doesn’t matter. It’s still exploiting the natural resources. Guess we should share that find, since I’d never have gone down there if you hadn’t insisted. Don’t worry. I won’t go without you.”
“Marmion, what are you talking about?”
Marmion frowned, his green brow arching. “I thought you said you read the reports.”
“I did, at least, I read everything under the indigenous topic.”
The perfectionist shook his head. “It was under mining. The crystallofragrantia isn’t a rock at all. It comes from the danae. The danae have a gall that’s worth its mass in diamonds.” He held up his fist. “That big in an old one. I wouldn’t mind having a few to take home.”
Calla stared at him, momentarily stunned. “The species isn’t doing well,” she finally said, frowning as she tried to remember why. “Something to do with migratory patterns.”
Downtime Page 5
