Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  He watched her through the windows as she went down the steps, steadying herself with the railing. Then she walked slowly across the green shale floor and stopped. Jason thought she might tum and look up at him, but she didn’t. She put her hands on her hips for a moment, looked down at the floor, and then walked the rest of the way to the tunnel-ramp. There the darkness swallowed even her brilliant hair. Not one glance back. He tried to remember if he’d looked back when he left the little flat over the bar that they’d shared in Montwell. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought not. She hadn’t been in the flat when he left; there’d been no reason to look back. Still, it felt the same. Empty and strange. And it would get worse. At least this time he wouldn’t be afraid to think of her, and to dream. Last time he had spent years trying not to think about Calla because it always seemed to re-open the wound afresh. But finally he had resolved to bleed to death, whatever that meant in psychological terms, and was surprised to find that he didn’t die. Nothing worse than an occasional case of melancholia, and sometimes the dreams were compensation enough for that. Starting now he would fill the time with work and with dreams.

  He dimmed the lights the rest of the way and sat down in the chair. The seat was still warm from Calla’s body, and the warmth comforted him. In the silent room, he could hear Arria’s soft breathing. She would fill some of the time, too, he thought. There was an empty room at the end of the corridor that she could have just as soon as he was sure she knew how to operate the plumbing and the door. Maybe tomorrow, if there was time.

  Chapter 15

  Calla supervised the building of the gallows herself. Jason and Marmion had scrounged materials: unused acid pipe for framework and crossbeam, decking plastic for the platform.

  “I don’t have anything you can use as a rope,” Jason had said from the topmost rigging where he was fusing pipes with a laser torch. “Every piece of cord we have will stick, even in a slipknot. Wire will cut his throat. We could use wire, I guess.”

  Calla took the nymph cocoons from the sack in Jason’s room and braided handfuls of thread until she had a satisfactory length of rope. It was a fitting hangman’s rope, she thought, for the man who murdered two danae. Apparently Jason thought so, too, for he smiled when he saw it and slung it over his own bare shoulder to climb to the top of the scaffolding. He sat up there, tying the hangman’s knot, then lowered the noose to Marmion who slipped a sack of rocks into it. Jason climbed down and when Marmion gave the word, he pushed the lever. The trapdoor under the rocks fell away, the sack of rocks dropped, the noose held.

  “This is barbaric,” D’Omaha said, outraged. “You can’t mean to leave this thing up until you return.”

  “It stays up,” Calla said, “and kept in good repair. Jason has orders to test it every night.”

  “I shall eat in my room from now on,” Stairnon said looking very pale.

  But Calla barely heard her protest. She was looking at the gallows, the top of which nearly reached the shale ceiling. It was crude with its jury-rigged joints, but there was no mistaking what it was. Mahdi would understand.

  “Anything else?” Jason was putting on his shirt over his sweaty shoulders. His hair was damp, his blue eyes a little red from lack of sleep. Arria hung in the background, slinking from shadow to shadow, obviously confused and frightened over the day’s activities.

  “No. That’s all,” she said crisply. “I’m going back to Red Rocks to call my number two raider in and to pack.”

  Jason glanced up at the big clock on the wall. “It’s not even dinner time. You said tomorrow.”

  “You made short work of the gallows. I have no reason to stay any longer.” Then realizing how it must sound to him, she said, “I’m sorry. I mean that shouldn’t stay any longer than I must.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Look, I’ll meet you at the landing pad when the raider comes in. Never saw one up close.”

  He turned and walked toward Arria, and Calla sighed in relief. She had been certain he was going to ask to walk with her to Red Rocks, and she wanted to make the walk alone. It would be a long time before she would feel planetary breezes and smell anything but canned air. Only her weary bones would welcome leaving Mutare. Strange. Usually the eagerness to get on with it was overpowering. She had a mission, the most important one she had ever had, and for the first time it was as if she was just going through the motions. It was Jason, she decided. All that talk about staying when all along he knew that she neither could nor would. He had to learn as she already had, to accept whatever amount of time was left. Little enough, she thought, but better than none. And maybe when she got back . . . but, no. He had said the one thing he could not do was to wait for her. She smiled a little. Where did he think he could go? He couldn’t leave Mutare, but of course she knew that just having to be here when she got back had nothing to do with waiting or not waiting.

  Calla walked under the scaffolding to the ramp-tunnel, paused to take her stellerator from the peg on the wall. What would happen, she wondered, if she didn’t call down the raider? What if she and Jason just went to live in Daniel’s old cave? She looked up at the balcony. He was standing in the window, watching her. Timekeeper but he was handsome. And if she but beckoned, he would come down and they could stay together. She looked at the scaffolding. If she did that, the noose would never be used. Mahdi would rule all the known worlds in a few years, and he’d come back to Mutare. What kind of life could they have under a tyrant’s rule? She put on her stellerator and walked up the ramp-tunnel.

  ***

  As Jason had promised, he was at the landing pad when the raider was due. So was half the population of the ranger station, each in full dress uniform, brown, yellow, and green capes or togas draped over khaki according to rank. Jason wore leaf green, a toga Calla hadn’t even known he’d owned. His black curls were neatly combed, untouched by the evening breezes. He carried her bag from the tunnel at Red Rocks to the edge of the landing pad.

  “Not very heavy,” he commented.

  “There’s not much room in a raider. It’s all engine and armaments,” she said. Or had he simply meant that it couldn’t have taken her all these hours until sundown to pack it?

  The lights came on around the pad, and in only moments they could hear the whine of the raider’s cold jets. The whine grew louder, but never so loud that it hurt the ears, not even as it lowered itself on its rotary wing. It was dull black and bigger than the shuttles with wings for atmospheric work and jets that could thrust it as fast against the aerodynamic shape as with it in the frictionless reaches between the stars. When it was balanced on wings and tail, the belly opened and a ladder slipped down. Calla knew it was time to go.

  The officers were lined up for a final handshake, and Calla shook their hands and saluted each in turn.” Good luck,” she heard several times; “Get the bastard,” were Marmion’s final words. All of them knew. She hadn’t expected Jason to tell them until she was gone. D’Omaha must be furious with all of them given his conviction that the traitor was yet to come.

  At the ladder, Jason handed her the bag and saluted. He was crying and making no effort to conceal his tears. Impulsively, though it violated principles of protocol, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. She heard a few good-natured cheers from the officers behind them.

  Calla reached for the ladder and Jason moved to steady it.

  “No words of farewell?” she asked him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said smartly. “I love you, Antiqua.”

  “I love you, too,” she whispered, and hurried up the ladder before he could notice that she was crying, too.

  Inside the raider, Singh took her bag.

  “Welcome aboard, Commander. It’s good to have you . . . “ He saw her face and came up short. “Something wrong, Commander?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.” She took off her black navigator’s cape and stuffed it into the bag, brushed the tears away with the hem. Then without looking at the pilot, she crawled up the tube to the c
ontrol seats. She took the one in the middle, straining to get in position. The heads-up screens were on, but she could see the reflections of the people on the ground in them. Most were waving, but not Jason. He stood to the side, hands clasped in front, staring up at the transparent canopy.

  “Shall we give them our admiring-crowd-take-off, Commander?” the navigator asked.

  “You’ll make me sick to my stomach,” Calla said, “but yes. Let’s do it.”

  The navigator and Singh went through the routine countdown; Calla was merely a passenger this trip. The cramped cabin sang with the sounds of “check” and “counter-check.” Heads up, Calla thought, because if you have to look down it will be all over. But then they took off, spiraling like a Chinese firecracker, gees pressing every aching bone in her body and squeezing her aching heart.

  Chapter 16

  The rock cutting terriers had made a terrible hole in the terrace garden, and half the trees were knocked over just to make room for the excavation. The danae that were accustomed to feeding in the garden seemed more curious than disturbed by the destruction of their trees. They would perch among the shriveled leaves or even on unearthed roots to which clumps of dirt still clung. Arria often sat with the danae, watching the terriers scramble in and out of the hole, and watched finally with terrible fascination when the team of zephyr flyers lowered the caisson into place. It was huge, much bigger than Jason wanted it to be, but with the lay of the fault at such an angle, the caisson had to be big enough to hold back an incredible amount of water pressure and to make contact with the caissons in the tunnel. Already there was some water in the excavation, seepage that had worried him until the caisson was firmly in place. Now that it was done, the final passage could be cut from inside the tunnel.

  Jason watched Marmion climb up the dirt sides of the excavation, muddied to his knees. “Looks good from out here,” he said. “I’ll check the inside in the morning.”

  “Tonight,” Jason said. “If there is anything wrong, you’ll be swimming in your bed before dawn.”

  “Governor, I have product to inspect,” Marmion said, gesturing back toward Red Rocks.

  “So do I,” Jason said, for the elixir production was now his responsibility as well.

  Marmion sighed and shook his head. “Look, I’m tired. You’re tired. The pace is too fast. We’re going to start making mistakes. And if we do on this one, I’ll be wishing you had locked me up.”

  Jason considered. He didn’t feel tired, but he never did when he was filled with a single-minded purpose. But a quick look over to the terriers did substantiate what Marmion said. “All right,” Jason finally said. “Catch a few hours. I’ll get D’Omaha to cover for you in the fab.”

  “Thanks,” Marmion said without sincerity.

  Jason grabbed his shirt off a branch and walked over to Arria. Some of the danae left as he approached. “Old friends?” he asked, gesturing to those on the wing.

  “No,” she said. “They’re your own Amber Forest folk. Surely you know that some of them have always been shy, and after what happened . . .” She shrugged. “I’ve had no visitors, if that’s what you mean. But they all seem to know who I am.”

  Jason tried to rub the dirt drying into his sweat with the shirt, but too much was caked under the stellerator. “Are they angry?”

  Arria shrugged. “I don’t know what danae anger feels like. I think they’re confused. A bit of the warning signal goes out when they see anyone, even me, but it’s not strong like real danger.” She shook her head.

  “When you try, Arria, you know more than you think you do about the danae. You could be a big help to me.”

  She looked at him wondering. “Doing what?”

  “Studying the danae,” he said, reaching under the stellerator to brush the dirt from his chest. “You’ve got better rapport with them than anyone, and it will be better than sitting around watching us work. You must be bored stiff. I’m sorry I haven’t had more time for you.” He tried to reach his back with the wadded up shirt, but his hand wouldn’t fit under the stellerator.

  Arria took the shirt from him and reached up under the stellerator to his shoulder blades, brushing exactly the place where he itched worst. “I like watching,” Arria said quietly as she moved to the other shoulder blade. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’m not bored.”

  “Not yet,” he said, smiling at her. And he couldn’t help thinking that Calla would have been bored in the first five minutes. She would have stayed if duty required it of her, but never voluntarily. Oddly, she had accepted early on that the same was not true of him. He used to love to watch her ride in the Cadet Armory, well seated on her mount, chin up with pride.

  “You miss Calla, don’t you,” Arria said, handing back the shirt.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at her gray eyes. “And you continually know more than you think you do. I feel just awful that you can’t go back to Mercury. I don’t know what to do for you.”

  “I’m all right. I won’t be any bother. I’ll help with the danae.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, smiling easily at her. “I know you’ll help, and we’ll probably both learn a lot.”

  “You mean the psi? Are you afraid of me?”

  Jason shook his head. “Not of you, Arria. Afraid for you. What I know about psi sensitivity you could write in old script on your littlest fingernail.”

  She looked at her hands. “Calla would know what to do, wouldn’t she?”

  Jason laughed. “Yes. She probably would.”

  “Tell me about her,” Arria said. “You’re happier when you talk about her.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I am,” Jason said, smiling inwardly, half at Calla and half at Arria’s perceptiveness. He wondered what she did with all the information she must have from other people, and how she could fail to realize that it was her psi ability that acquired it. “Maybe later, Arria. Right now I’ve got to go to Red Rocks. I’ve work to do. And you probably should go back and get some dinner. Think you can manage alone?”

  Arria nodded. “Promise?” she said.

  “Promise what?” he said, getting to his feet. “To tell me about Calla later on.”

  He shrugged. “Why not. See you later.”

  “Bye.”

  He walked after the last of the terriers climbing up the ladder to the top of the limestone hogback, already wondering if he and D’Omaha could finish the work in the fab before midnight. Marmion should be well rested by then.

  ***

  It was close to dawn before Jason went to bed, finally tired and willing to rest. He showered and climbed into bed, certain he would fall asleep quickly and soundly. But he slept fitfully, dreaming of Calla, worrying about her as he pictured her at the controls of a raider. He didn’t even really know what the inside of a raider looked like, but he imagined that there were rows and rows of jelly beans, and while he knew that jelly bean canisters were made of tough material no matter how they were shaped, he kept seeing cracks forming, and waking up when they shattered. Sometime past dawn, he deliberately thought about earlier times, Calla back on Mercury Novus, the first time she’d sneaked into his quarters.

  “Those aren’t regulation,” he had said when she came through the door. She was wearing something dark and filmy under her long crimson cape, she who never stepped out with so much as a button out of place. She just smiled at him and shook her head, then sat down on the stool to pull off her boots. Only then did he figure out what was happening, and he stared at her in amazement. When she untied the cape and let it fall, he raised the covers for her. She stood up, walked to the bedside and climbed in beside him. There wasn’t much room, but neither of them cared. He felt her arms along his back, her breasts pressing against him. When had she discarded the filmy thing she’d been wearing? He didn’t care. He held her close, stroking her thighs and kissing her. He was hard, very hard, and the memory of her was so beautifully close. He could smell the scent of her freshly washed hair and hear her breat
hing in his ear, and when his fingers were tangled with long, silky hair, he knew she was neither a dream nor Calla. He opened his eyes. It was Arria in his arms, her eyes closed, lips smiling.

  “Dear Timekeeper,” he said. Please let this be a dream. But he knew it was not. His stomach tightened and he burst into a panicky sweat. Arria’s eyes opened with a start.

  “Don’t stop,” she said, snuggling closer to him. “Don’t stop thinking of Calla.”

  Jason pushed her away and sat up. She stared at him, her pale eyes plainly visible in the dark room, longing eyes. He turned away. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor next to the bed. “Arria, you don’t understand what you’re doing,” he said hoarsely. “You can’t walk in on me and pretend to be Calla.”

  “I wasn’t pretending,” she said. “You were. As long as you were telling yourself a Calla story, I didn’t think you’d mind if I listened. You said you would tell me about her, so . . .”

  “You’re not just listening,” Jason said, forcing himself to look at her again. “And telling a story was not exactly what I was doing. It was . . . private.”

  Arria pulled the covers up to her chin. Jason thought that she would have pulled them over her head if they would have gone that far. He was frightened for her. Couldn’t she tell the difference between reality and dreams? Or wasn’t there a difference for a psi sensitive?

  “Why do they have to be private?” she asked softly. “It isn’t fair. I do it, too — dream when I’m awake. But no one knows, and it gets lonesome. I’ve had a lifetime of lonely dreams. I’d rather share yours. I’d rather be in your dreams.”

  Jason shook his head. “But I was dreaming of Calla.”