Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  “How much farther?” Jason asked her.

  “A long way, “ she said, pushing a stray tendril of damp hair off her forehead. She got up. “Tell me when you want to rest.”

  “Now,” Jason said, leaning back on the last boulder. Over Arria’s shoulder he could see a switchback trail on the rock and rubble slope and was certain that was the way they would go. “Arria, what did your father mean when he said you could hear the danae crying? I’ve never known them to make a sound.”

  Arria shook her head. “Not sounds like we make, but I can hear them in my head. Mostly they sing and I love to listen to them. Father says I don’t get my work done when I listen to them sing.” She smiled as if to convey that her neglect of her work was imagined and his anger wasn’t real either. “When the danae are hurt or grieving, they cry, and it makes me cry, too.”

  “Are you psi?” he asked.

  She nodded, then added quickly, “but not like those crazy psi people back in the Hub. I can’t hear what people are thinking, and I don’t know what the danae are thinking. I hear songs in my head.”

  “May I see your tattoo?” Jason said.

  Arria shrugged and rolled up the thin sleeve on her right arm past her elbow. The pattern was classic high intelligence, but the colors unusual. He traced the pattern within the colors with his finger. Still holding her hand, he looked at Arria’s eyes. They were fair, almost the color of rainwater, but they held his gaze steadily, no trace of madness. He nodded and let go of her hand, felt certain that a jelly bean scan of her tattoo would reveal a great deal of psi tendency in her genetic makeup. “You should be in the Hub where you can be trained to use your gift.”

  Arria shook her head. “No one likes a person who can read their minds,” she said. “I’d be afraid to go back.” She shivered and rolled down her sleeve. “The danae songs are quite enough psi for me.”

  “But you don’t understand the songs,” he said.

  “Well, I understand one song . . . the death song. When a danae is dying, it calls to a nymph and serenades it until the cocoon is spun around them both.”

  Jason felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck.” Are you saying that the danae permit themselves to be eaten by their young? I’ve seen the nymphs cocoon themselves with animals, but never with a danae.”

  Arria grinned mischievously. “Of course you don’t see it. They’re much too clever to let those cocoons be found. But I can find them because I know exactly where to look.”

  “What . . .” Jason’s voice squeaked and he swallowed hard, wished he’d brought some water along. “What emerges from the cocoon?”

  “A danae, of course,” she said, looking at him as if he were stupid. She reached into the pouch of her stellerator and pulled out a small flask of water and handed it to him.

  “A young danae?”

  Arria shook her head and laughed. “A young old danae. It has a fresh young body, no scars, no aches or pains. But it sings the old songs and the ones who were my friends recognize me.”

  “Arria, do you know what you have done?” She shook her head.

  “You’ve answered a question that’s been puzzling me for almost three years.”

  “I’m glad. But Governor?”

  “Yes?”

  “We should be going. We’ll want to get back before the rain.”

  Jason looked at the cloudless blue sky. “The danae tell you that it’s going to rain?”

  She frowned as she followed his gaze up to the sky. “Two songs,” she said finally. “I know two songs. I know the death song and I know the rain song.”

  And you knew that I was thirsty, he thought. How much more do you know, Arria Jinn, that you do not even know that you know? He half expected the answer to appear in his mind, but Arria merely smiled, replaced the water flask in the pouch and started up the trail. Jason followed, but he was no longer thinking of the wounded danae. He knew now how some of the danae could be intelligent and some so wild. He could hardly wait to get back and tell Calla.

  Chapter 9

  It had been raining since late afternoon, a soft steady rain that freshened the rocks and trees. But Calla knew that worse was coming, for she’d checked with Belden Traveler for a weather report and had learned that the rain was just the leading edge of a major storm. There was no lightning yet, so she was not unduly concerned for Jason and Arria, but she was becoming more annoyed that Jason had not remembered to take his comm with him. His clerk back at Round House had answered her call, and she’d just said, “Never mind.” Had one of her own people pulled a fool stunt like going off into the wilderness without a comm, Calla probably would have pulled the transgressor’s privileges for six months. She could do nothing to Jason, and nothing for herself, except wait.

  Daniel Jinn was not good company, but she remembered him as being quiet to a fault, reticent. He answered direct questions dutifully enough, and Calla learned that he’d brought his daughter to Mutare when she was small, long before there was even a ranger station here, because she had psi tendencies and he did not believe that the special psi institutes in the Hub were as yet sufficiently advanced to assure her well-being. He probably was right; very few were completely sane by the time they reached adulthood, but even that poor record was better than the psi folk of generations past who always were mad. He believed his daughter was just a little bit psi, and it no longer troubled her so much as it did when she was a very young child. Calla and Jason were their third set of visitors in the last two years, and he could tell that she was dealing with people better and better. He was considering taking her with him the next time he went to the station.

  “Wind’s coming up,” Daniel said, interrupting her musing. He was sitting cross-legged by the fire in the first chamber of the mine tunnel, mending a length of rope. “We’d best batten down your zephyr; lightning comes and we won’t be able to go out without getting fried.”

  Calla nodded reluctantly and reached for her stellerator.

  They saved the wearer a lot of grief from cosmic radiation, but were almost like wearing a lightning rod in a storm.

  She moved the zephyr into the trees so that they wouldn’t have to rely on stakes driven into the ground. Between them, she and Daniel made short work of tying down the zephyr, for neither had forgotten how though neither had had to do it for more years than they cared to remember. Calla was glad they hadn’t waited any longer; the gusts were beginning to drive rain sideways and the noise was terrific.

  “They should be along soon now,” Daniel said when he noticed Calla looking at her chronometer. “He must have slowed her down a bit or they’d have been back already.”

  Calla took off her stellerator and stepped over to the fire. Her khakis shed water but her hair did not. She flicked out the excess water with her hands. The wind screamed at the tunnel entrance and she saw the first lightning flashes. Thunder rolled in the distance.

  Minutes later Jason and Arria came in, both drenched and shivering but smiling. “The danae’s going to be fine,” Jason said putting his hands over the fire. “Arria’s got it holed up where nothing can find it and stashed enough fodder for a week, too. She’s okay.” He rubbed Arria’s head affectionately as the girl kneeled beside him to be by the fire.

  Daniel came back to the fire with dry clothes over his arm. He unstrapped Arria’s stellerator and helped her shinny out of her wet clothes, as if she were a small child. But she was not a child, Calla noticed as she stood there naked while her father dried her hair. Her breasts were full and firm on her thin chest, pubic hair downy red. Jason stared until Arria pulled a dry shirt over her shoulders.

  “Don’t have anything that will fit you,” Daniel said to Jason, “but them khakis dry off quick. Put a few logs on to help it along if you want.”

  “Yes, thank you sir. But we probably ought to be going.”

  Calla shook her head. “It’s worse toward the station. Can’t fly in winds like this.”

  He didn’t argue, content to warm himself
by the fire. He seemed always to be just on the edge of smiling when she looked at him, his eyes glittering with excitement. And Calla couldn’t help noticing the shy glances at him that Arria kept stealing. She sighed and tried not to think of how much Jason must have enjoyed his outing with her.

  The storm seemed to grow worse, and finally Daniel grunted and dug into baskets hung on the wall and came back with his big hands full of dried bulbs and berries. Arria had meanwhile moved a pivoting arm, under which was suspended an old black kettle, over the center of the fire. She stripped husks from some of the bulbs, some she threw into the kettle whole. It didn’t look like much for four people, and Calla was about to offer to go out to the zephyr to fetch rations for her and Jason.

  “You needn’t worry,” Arria said. “There’ll be enough to go around. These brown roots are starchy and will thicken the whole pot.”

  “Arria,” her father said sharply. “Don’t answer questions until they’re asked.”

  “The question wasn’t even on my mind,” Jason interjected easily when he saw Arria begin to blush. “Probably just a natural assumption after discovering that I know less about Mutare than she does.” The miner didn’t comment and Arria kept her eyes studiously on the berries she was picking over. Jason looked at Calla quizzically and with a meaningful glance at Arria, which she took to mean that he wanted to know if she had formed the unspoken question. Though she hadn’t thought of it as a question at the time, Calla nodded. Jason smiled conspiratorially and Calla looked back to see if Arria had noticed. The blush intensified, but the girl did not look up from the berries.

  If the girl were actually reading minds, her psi ability was exceptionally strong and focused. Fully developed and certified by the proper authorities, she could name her own price to provide truth verifications in court proceedings, not to mention what private concerns would pay to have her services during sensitive negotiations. Calla also knew that while remuneration was great, personal sacrifice was great, too. Those psi people who couldn’t withstand the rigors of development and certification were assumed to be as mad as the ones who never tried, else basically dishonest and devious simply because they had failed certification. The general public did not realize that some psi people might simply not be interested in the few careers naturally and legally open to them. That left hiding the ability, or going so far from the Hub that having it was of little consequence. Daniel Jinn was such a simple man that, Calla was sure, he had never considered any but the running and hiding option for his daughter. He had never risen to any great heights himself, and could imagine no better for his daughter. But Calla wasn’t sure. Arria had a look about her bright eyes that had nothing to do with their being pretty and was totally absent in his staid ones. Calla wondered who the girl’s mother was and what a complete analysis of her genetic tattoo would reveal. Probably a lot of things that Daniel Jinn couldn’t fully appreciate and therefore couldn’t deal with.

  “What’s wrong?” Daniel said, his tone sharp again as he spoke to Arria. The girl was thoroughly red.

  “N-nothing,” she said, taking a deep breath. She threw the last of the berries into the kettle, grabbed up a ladle and started to stir the brew.

  Calla felt a twinge of guilt, for she realized she’d been thinking about the girl in rather more intimate and blunt terms than she would have used in ordinary conversation, and had therefore caused Arria considerable embarrassment. Likely Jason was doing the same thing, and if she knew Jason, his innermost thoughts were even more critical of Daniel than hers. His outward behavior might have changed, but she knew him to be a crusader at heart. Indeed, as she looked at him, she saw that his eyes were troubled.

  “Arria,” he said quietly, “do you have any idea if the rain will let up tonight?”

  The girl stopped stirring, her lips thinned. She put her hands in her lap for a moment, as if thinking or . . . listening? Calla wondered what Jason was thinking of right now. She had the feeling that something she did not understand was going on between him and the girl. Finally Arria looked up, her blush quite subsided now, her eyes calm as she looked into Jason’s.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do know. The danae song indicates the storm has stalled.”

  “Danae song?” Calla asked.

  Jason nodded, looking straight at Calla to avoid seeing the look of alarm from the old legionary. “Daniel himself mentioned this morning that Arria could hear the wounded danae. I asked her later if she could hear anything else the danae said. She mentioned a rain song.”

  “She’s just a little bit psi,” Daniel said defensively.

  “That’s all it would take,” Jason said, sounding unnaturally agreeable. “I’ve always suspected the danae communicated by psi, but I had no way of confirming it until I met Arria. I’m very grateful for the information.”

  “If you know enough about psi to suspect the danae have it, you know there’s a difference between psi-to-psi-talk and normal-to-psi-talk. She can maybe hear some of that danae singing, but she don’t know much about it because she ain’t that good a psi. And of course she can’t hear people hardly at all.”

  Calla was surprised to hear Daniel admit that Arria could hear people, even if just a little. Or maybe he was so well apprised of her full capability that he realized denying it completely would be useless. Daniel lacked sophistication and education, but he was not stupid or foolish.

  “Maybe not,” Jason agreed. “Maybe she could if she got the proper support and training back in the Hub.”

  Well, Calla thought. There was the old Jason. He couldn’t resist voicing the obvious after all.

  “She ain’t ready,” Daniel said stubbornly. “And I don’t need no advice on how to raise my child neither.” The set of the old legionary’s eyes was unflinching as he looked across the fire at the ranger-governor.

  Jason sat back. “Okay. I won’t interfere. But if you change your mind, let me know and I’ll help you make the arrangements.”

  “Won’t change my mind.”

  Jason just shrugged, apparently willing to drop the matter.

  Calla nodded her approval, and he, knowing that she was pleased with him, winked. He turned back to Daniel. “There is, however, another matter with which I must insist upon receiving your cooperation.”

  “What’s that?” Daniel asked suspiciously.

  Calla noticed that Arria was smiling and had turned away to reach for some plates to hide the smile from her father. It might be one-sided mindreading, but Calla felt certain that Jason had Arria’s full approval for what he was about to request and Jason already knew that he did. By the smile alone, or had the two of them planned this before they came in? Calla wasn’t sure.

  “You and your daughter have invaluable knowledge about the danae. My studies won’t be complete without your contribution. I would like to return from time to time and talk to you and Arria about them, record your observations in jelly bean storage.”

  “You mean like confirming that they’re psi,” Daniel said, sounding more resigned than alarmed, even though he must know that Jason was more interested in Arria’s knowledge of the danae than his own.

  “That’s right,” Jason said. “I haven’t anyone among my rangers who is even a little bit psi. What little I’ve learned today is a big breakthrough.”

  “I suppose if I refused, you would find a way to make me help, your being governor and all,” Daniel said with a scowl.

  “I would think that helping me to prove that the danae, or at least some of them, are intelligent creatures with as much feeling, perception, and thought as humans would serve your own personal hopes for your daughter and this planet. The authorities would slap the bans on Mutare if I could prove the danae were sentient. Hunting danae for crystal would stop, development of Mutare — if any were planned — would be halted. Yet you and Arria would have grandfather rights, which would permit you to stay as long as you did nothing that was harmful to the danae or their environment.”

  “Since you put it that wa
y, I guess it would be all right,” Daniel said.

  “Only if he’s right and can prove they’re sentient,” Calla added, feeling obligated to qualify Jason’s position on the danae. “Humans have been in the Arm for thousands of years and have looked for sentience other than our own — sometimes to the degree of projecting qualities on indigenes that turn out to be nothing more than wishful thinking. We’ve never found another intelligent species.”

  “Most have given up. Others have become smug, and wouldn’t recognize proof if it came up to them and said, ‘hello.’”

  “But what did I say,” Arria said cutting in before Calla could respond to what she believed had been aimed at her pragmatic outlook, “to make you believe they are sentient?” The girl was bursting with curiosity.

  “You said nothing to do that,” Jason said. “I already have some indication that some of them are. What you did was to provide the answer for how some danae could be intelligent without all of them being intelligent. You told me that the nymphs cocoon with the danae, which I never knew, and that when the metamorphose, which I know is the mature danae, emerges it has taken on the characteristics of the old danae, at least to the extent that if the old danae knew you before cocooning, the new danae knows you, too.”

  “Intriguing, but hardly conclusive,” Calla said. “It’s not a very practical way of perpetuating the species. You have to assume that each danae reproduces only itself, and over time, accidents are bound to happen even to intelligent danae. They would die out.”

  Jason nodded. “I think they are, in many places. The reversal of the poles seems to have destroyed natural migration patterns for the wild danae, and that limits the intelligent danae’s opportunities for cocooning with any except their own nymphs. That can’t be helping the gene pool. But as for dying out as a race because they reproduce only themselves, so to speak, I don’t think that’s a big worry to them. It does limit the . . . depth of their intelligence to however many generations it takes to acquire it. But it doesn’t limit the breadth, the potential of any individual danae for becoming intelligent eventually.”