The nomenclator was almost as bad, providing information about people he sometimes didn’t want to meet and giving him statistics he didn’t care to hear. In the Hub, they were so ubiquitous that it was polite to greet everyone only by name, and possible only if you wore a nomenclator. The statistical information came into fashion to prevent social faux pas in the ever popular baths where it was not easy to distinguish high-ranking persons from common folk. But there were no baths on Mutare, and until Calla’s group came, no strangers either. He had worn his nomenclator disdainfully but dutifully on occasions such as last night when he knew it was expected of him. But even after all these years he felt a bit odd when it whispered intimate details, such as what kind of food the person liked or if there had been a recent tragedy in his life. There was also that segment of the population that carried the excesses of nomenclator data to an extreme by advertising their sexual proclivities, a practice Jason abhorred even though he would engage in almost any kind of sex himself. Instead of getting accustomed to communication devices, he had become more sensitized to their disruption in his life. As ranger- governor of Mutare, he was duty bound to be available at all times, but some mornings he took just a little while to be alone, no comm, no nomenclator. He went to the terrace garden where no one else bothered to go this early, not even Calla.
Except today. Calla was sitting on a rock feeding something to Old Blue-eyes and Tonto, the two danae crouched on their grasshopper legs with Tonto bobbing each time she offered up something, whether or not it was for him. Old Blue-eyes spotted Jason and half-unfurled his wings, as he was wont to do whenever he saw Jason. The ranger-governor had come to believe the gesture was his personal greeting, for Blue-eyes did it for no one else. Both Calla and Tonto turned, the danae’s primary attention still on whatever it was in Calla’s hand, which now dropped back to her pack. She snapped it shut and got up, waving to Jason and walking to him. Tonto stayed behind, worrying the pack, but Blue-eyes hopped to Calla’s shoulder with a graceful leap, letting her convey him along. The danae, Jason knew, was not much heavier than her pack, but apparently enough heavier for her to notice. She put up one hand to steady the danae’s legs, the other on her hip to steady her leg. He could see her grimacing.
“Good morning. I’ve waited for you,” she said.
“Good morning,” he said to her. He lifted up his hand to the danae, and Blue-eyes leaned forward to touch it. The avian’s little hand was cool, his blue eyes unblinking. He looked back at Calla. “Just taking a little air this morning, or is it business?”
“Business, I’m afraid. I tried to call you on the comm, but you were gone. When you didn’t answer the radio call, I checked to see if you’d taken a zephyr. When I found you hadn’t, I figured you were here.”
“What business do we have that you couldn’t leave a comm message for?”
“The tunnel. You started to tell me the other day why it wasn’t finished, but we were interrupted.” She still was grimacing under the danae’s weight.
“I can’t finish it,” he said.
“But you must!” Her eyes widened with alarm.
He shrugged. “The water table thrusts up along the fault. If we cut through, we’ll flood Round House and Red Rocks both.”
For a moment she stared at him, her astonishment giving way to icy anger.
“You call yourself surveyors? Why didn’t you hollow out the area behind Round House for us? Why did you permit this catastrophe?”
“There isn’t enough rock left behind Round House, and I’d hardly call the lack of a tunnel between the two a catastrophe. It means a one-kilometer walk overland. We have plenty of stellerators, and some people can use the exercise.”
“It’s unacceptable. We must have the tunnel. All the support equipment is at Round House. We could be cut off by . . . a blizzard.”
“A week at most. You have enough storage for a week.” Calla straightened under the danae and put her hands on hip bones that were plainly visible beneath khaki trousers. Her chest, already large from stellerator vest and pendulous breasts beneath, seemed to puff out. Her chin thrust out at him. Anyone else assuming such posture with a giant pink and red bird on her shoulder would have looked ridiculous. Calla did not. “It is unacceptable,” she said quietly. “The plans call for an underground tunnel between Round House and Red Rocks with a track for slave-waiters right down the middle. We will settle for nothing less.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, cursing again this ridiculous situation that called for him to be ranger-governor for all Mutare, yet gave him inhabitants that outranked him.
“Now tell me how,” she said, softening ever so little, and bending under her burden of danae once again.
“We’ll go in through the top, drill a well, line it with plasteel, and cap it underneath. Then we’ll drill through to the well. “He was thinking, too, that work on the antenna tower would have to be delayed. One hundred rangers didn’t go far when functioning as support and construction crew for a special project in addition to their own duties.
“There’ll be a skylight in the tunnel.”
Jason nodded. “I guess we can cap that, too. Might even be a good idea, since there’ll be a lake around it. Wind might whip the waves up over the edge of the well on bad days.”
“Yes, cap it,” Calla said thoughtfully, “right at the waterline so that it won’t be noticed.”
So, he thought, she wasn’t all that concerned about blizzards. It was siege she was worried about. They would be safe underground; the entrances could be shielded long enough to withstand almost any kind of assault. But what would happen to the danae? Their beautiful Amber Forest was sure to catch the attention of any bored siege forces. He reached out to Blue-eyes, and the danae jumped to his shoulder.
“Thanks,” Calla said. “Now tell me where the lake will be.”
“You’re standing in it. I guess we’ll call it Garden Lake.” It was a verdant garden, and the rangers had even added a few tended rows planted with seed from the Hub. But mostly it was native plants that either grew here naturally or that Jason or his people had brought from more distant places. The big loss was that it was one of the few places close by that attracted the danae, who preferred greenery to rock-filled and dry mesas.
“The plants along the shore will thrive with more water,” Calla said. “They may continue to come.”
He hadn’t thought of that, and what she said was true. A few lush trees might keep the danae coming. He felt a little better and smiled. “Had breakfast yet?”
“No, and I’m starving.” She went back to get her pack from Tonto, who’d just succeeded in opening it. He was eating dried fruit, not yet interested in the equipment that had come loose with it nor the fact that there were three more danae stopped only wingspans away by Calla’s return. Calla put it all back in the pack, leaving the fruit for the danae.
***
No breakfast. At least, not a real breakfast. He and Calla satisfied their hunger with rations from the compartment under the instrument panel of the zephyr in which they were flying. Jason was at the controls, Calla beside him staring at the flatscan images in her hand.
“The wing must be gone,” she said finally. “No more than a stub left by the muscle.”
“The ranger said it flew away, and look at that last exposure. That could be a wingtip just outside the target area.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, “but if it could fly well enough to get away, then why do we need to go check? You said they heal rapidly.”
“That’s true,” Jason said. “And if I can verify that he merely wounded the danae, that ranger won’t have this one in his tally. But more likely, with that much wing gone, it didn’t get far, and the ranger probably clubbed it to death so that he wouldn’t have to show me a clean kill.”
“But, what difference does it make? You won’t let him take more than three crystals off the planet.”
“Say he did kill this danae. It was his third and last one he’s permitted to tak
e. I know for a fact that he did get one good crystal, but his second kill was too young. The crystal was so tiny it took him a half day of hacking his victim up to find it. If he did kill this one, and if it had a good crystal, and if he can convince me that he didn’t kill it, he still can make one more kill, maybe replace that microscopic crystal with a big one.”
“Or maybe this was another young one with a small crystal,” Calla said, “which just makes him all the more eager to try for another. But how can you stop him, Jason? These rangers are often in your outposts; you can’t be sure of what they’re up to.”
“I try to send them out in twos and threes, rotating the companions so that maybe they keep each other honest. But mostly it’s what we’re doing now that keeps it under control. I corroborate every miss by personally going out and making sure the danae they shot is still alive and likely to survive.”
“And if it’s dead or dying?”
“They get the body and crystal, and a danae kill on the record.”
“I guess they’re too fast to shoot with any primitive weaponry they might fashion,” Calla said thoughtfully. “But they could be snared, couldn’t they?”
“Yeah. Had a ranger do that last year; was her fourth kill. But I caught her at it, more by luck than intent. She’d been out for almost two weeks alone, so I stopped by.”
“Surprise inspection?”
“Not exactly. Anyway, she was dissecting the danae when I found her.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Busted her and shipped her back to the Hub.” He’d hated doing it, too, because he’d been sleeping with her for almost a year when it happened. She hadn’t tried to use their relationship to get him to change his mind, but even so Jason had felt terribly betrayed. She’d made her three kills, which had resulted in three fair-sized crystals, and she knew the rules and how Jason personally felt about killing the danae. Still she had taken the fourth. Jason had slept with no one since she left.
Calla slipped the flatscan into the pouch on her stellerator.
“How much longer?”
Jason looked at the pathfinder readout. “Minutes, and that’s a lot less than we’ll be spending when Belden Traveler leaves. Sure wish you’d brought that weather satellite with you. Traveling can get difficult on a planet with no magnetic north, especially when our homing beacon goes out.”
“Does that happen often?”
“No, but it happens.” He dropped the zephyr’s altitude until they were skimming treetops. As required by his regulations, the ranger had left the camp signal on in the foam hut and the receiver was picking up the signal now. He’d tried to shoot the danae at the edge of a clearing almost ten kilometers north. With help from Belden Traveler, Jason had no difficulty in finding the spot. It was classic danae grounds, tall mature trees with sparse undergrowth.
“What’s that over there?” Calla said, pointing to a rock outcropping.
“Looks like tailings from a dig. Maybe we have a miner over there. Let’s go take a look. If there is one living there, he may have seen our wounded danae.”
Upon closer inspection, the tailings looked old, but the camp was obviously occupied, for there were nymph cocoons hanging on a line, threads glistening in the sunlight. A huge kettle was boiling over a campfire near a stream. Jason selected a grassy patch by the stream that looked firm and level and lowered the zephyr to the ground. He and Calla got out.
The camp was simple, too simple, Jason thought, until he realized the main quarters must be in the old dig. Since there was no one tending the fire, he decided the miner must be inside. The fire was still blazing strongly, so he couldn’t be far.
“Whatever is in that pot?” Calla said as she caught a whiff of steam.
“Nymph cocoons. The esters can be pretty strong if they’re fresh, so they boil them before storing them. The Rangers buy a little for pillows and such, and now Marmion’s buying all he can for Stairnon to weave. Word could have reached the miners, I guess, that there’s a market for the silk. But it’s more likely this guy is just boiling up a soft mattress for himself.”
“Are the nymphs still inside?” she said, approaching the boiling pot with what looked like morbid curiosity on her face.
“Probably not. The used ones are out there for the taking, no need to bother with the ones that are still occupied.”
Calla poked at the brew with a stick until she snared a cocoon, then raised it out. It looked like a gray rag. Then she spotted the ones that were hanging on the line that was strung between two trees, and went over to look at them. They were shiny and glinted with pastel colors, and when she touched them she smiled. “Feels nice,” she said, then followed him to the rocks.
The entrance was easily high enough for them to walk through upright, but before they stepped in, the miner stepped out. He was of medium build, rangy and bearded, blinking as much from the bright sunlight as from recent awakening.
“Morning, Governor,” he said politely, “ma’am,” with a nod to Calla. “Can’t pretend that I believe you’re stopping by on a social visit.”
Jason recognized Daniel Jinn, a miner who’d been to Round House only twice in the last two years. He never stayed on at Round House the way most of the miners did to swap stories and eat refined food. He left quickly, with the few supplies he’d come for. As Jason recalled, he’d also declined to register his claim.
“Daniel, this is Eudoxia Calla Dovia, Commander of the new research center at the station.”
Daniel shaded his eyes from the sun with his hand and said, “Calla Antiqua.”
“What?” Jason said.
“Antiqua,” Calla said, going from a puzzled frown to a grin. “It’s what my soldiers called me behind my back. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say it to my face. There was a Daniel Jinn in my brigade years ago.”
“Mustered out almost twenty years ago; you was only a special lieutenant then. Commander now I see. But you ain’t just come a calling on old soldiers either.” He seemed awake now and looked over at his pot of cocoons. Without waiting for Calla to answer, he brushed past them and went to the fire, leaving them to follow or not. They followed, Calla speaking.
“We’re looking for a wounded danae. If you’ve spotted it, you could save us a great deal of time.”
He threw some wood on the fire and shook his head. “Ain’t seen no wounded danae.”
Even Jason could tell the man was lying. He sighed. “Daniel, I’m going to have to search your camp.”
“Won’t find no wounded danae here,” Daniel said.
“Crystals though. Maybe I’ll find crystals, maybe even a few more than I should.”
Daniel shook his head, chin stubbornly thrust up. “Don’t deal in crystal, don’t kill danae and you shouldn’t either.”
“Look, I don’t want . . . wait a minute. Why shouldn’t we kill danae?” He’d never heard a miner say that before.
The miner shook his head. “Ain’t right. Causes grief. Your ranger was the one who did it, wasn’t he? Figured it was. Asked him not to hunt around here. Be much obliged if you’d just move that station far as you can. Don’t want no more grief.”
“Daniel, you’re not making a lot of sense,” Calla said. “Do you know where the danae is or don’t you?”
“All right, ma’am, I know, but I ain’t going to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because he thinks you’re going to finish killing her,” said another voice.
Jason and Calla turned with a start. Neither had heard anyone approach. Standing just a few paces away was a young girl of slight build. Her hair was long and sun-bleached, her skin tanned, yet barely dark. Light gray eyes gave her an ethereal quality.
“Arria, I told you to stay back.”
“It’s all right father. You haven’t come to kill my danae, have you?” She stared at Jason, her face frowning slightly now.
“No, I won’t kill it. As long as the danae is not already dying, I will not harm it
.”
“Oh, no, she’s not dying. She’s going to be fine when her wing grows back.” The girl seemed to breathe easier now, half smiling at Jason and stealing shy glances at Calla.
“I have to verify that the danae’s all right,” Jason said. “Will you take me to her . . . Arria?”
Arria looked at her father, as if asking his permission. “You have to leave your guns behind. I just couldn’t take another night like last night. She cried all night ’cause the danae was crying. Can’t bear to see her cry like that.”
“Daniel, I give you my word that we won’t shoot that danae,” Calla said.
“Antiqua, you was tough and mean sometimes, but you never lied to us. I guess she can take you if she wants to.”
“Yes, I want to,” Arria said shyly.
“But Antiqua, I ain’t never lied to you neither, so I’m going to say it straight out. You ain’t got no horse like you did in the old days, and that zephyr can’t go where she’s gonna take you. And if you don’t march no better then you did then, you might as well stay here in camp with me. Let the young folks go.”
Calla stiffened and put her hands on her hips as if to protest. But after a moment she turned to Jason, her eyes blazing but her voice saying evenly, “I’ll wait here.”
“All right,” he said unhappily. He didn’t like leaving her behind, but the girl was already down at the stream, wading across. He followed.
***
Arria led him through up sloping forest, her pace steady and fast over the uneven ground. Jason was hard-pressed to keep up after the first hour. When they broke out of the forest, Arria took them through a boulder field where the smallest rocks were waist high and so closely stacked that it was impossible to walk around, only over. She moved like a cat, smooth and easy, lifting herself over the rocks with her arms or legs with equal ease. If he hadn’t been so engrossed in just keeping up, he would have enjoyed watching her. At the top of the boulder field, she rolled up her pants legs while she waited for him. Like the rest of her, her legs were lean and long.
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