by L. A. Graf
“Maybe they think we’re alien pirates who got through the Enterprise blockade,” Weir suggested. “I’ve heard stories about Outlanders getting killed just for the olivium dust on their floors.”
“Those are rumors,” Sulu said. “The Enterprise hasn’t allowed a single verified raider into this system.”
“That you know of,” she retorted.
“It doesn’t matter who the settlers think we are, or why they’re shooting at us,” Uhura said firmly. “What matters is that they’re sitting right on the edge of a crater lake that could flood them out. We have to warn them—and the longer we sit here, the more time they have to aim at us again.” She swung her dust muffler around her shoulders, keeping the hood and scarf-filter down so her face remained visible, then tossed Sulu’s cloak at him. “Dr. Weir, I want you and Dr. Anthony to stay in here until we tell you it’s safe to come out. Sulu, open the door.”
The pilot punched the controls one-handed while he fastened his muffler closed. The cargo-hold door dropped down to make an exit ramp, but the only thing they could see beyond it was a swirl of dust so thick that they all broke into spasms of coughing. The hydrologists hurriedly reached for their own mufflers, while Uhura tried to catch her breath long enough to speak. All she succeeded in doing was making a harsh rasping sound.
“Well, there you are.” A figure in a weather-beaten canvas muffler appeared through the stirred-up dust, the long glint of some projectile weapon slung casually across one shoulder. The voice was deep and drawling and apparently immune to dust, since Uhura saw no filtering scarf draped beneath the broad-brimmed hat. Dark eyes gleamed at them from a face whose strong lines could have belonged to a marble statue, except for the reddish radiation burns on the skin. “With as long as you sat here not doing anything, I thought maybe you had all passed out from lack of air.”
“Is that why you were shooting at us?” Anthony demanded. Having been the first to put on his filtering scarf, he was also the first to get his voice back. “You were trying to break the door open?”
“Sure. It’s my job to do things like that.” The hat was swung off, releasing a thick dark mane of hair, then dusted against a pantleg to show them the badge gleaming on the front. “I’m Carmela Serafini, mayor of Desperation and sheriff of Bull’s Eye County. And you are—”
Uhura had her own voice back now, more or less. “Commanders Uhura and Sulu of the U.S.S. Enterprise,” she said. “And Drs. Weir and Anthony of the Hydrologic and Meteorologic Service. We’re here to track a missing cargo shuttle, and to help with the flood emergency.”
“Is that so?” Serafini pulled her long-barreled weapon off her shoulder, making the hydrologists take a wary step back and Sulu a precautionary step forward. The mayor gave him a humorous look as she blew dust out of the weapon, then placed a protective cap over the open mouth. “Now, that’s interesting, because I didn’t know we had a flood emergency. Why don’t you all come on over to the pub and get a drink, and tell me all about it.”
The sun burned a bloody pool across the sky as it slipped behind the mountains. Olivium dust shimmered in the atmosphere like layer upon layer of gossamer, rippling the jagged horizon until everything ahead of Chekov seemed to exist under the surface of an impossibly huge lake. At the bottom of that lake, painted in premature shadow and then relit by artificial means, a homestead that might almost have been the one they abandoned huddled against the foot of a great slope. A homestead with herd animals trilling musically from inside its barn, and the silhouettes of people drifting back and forth behind its dusty windows.
Tears of relief pushed into Chekov’s eyes; he blinked them impatiently away. They weren’t rescued yet. Not until he’d approached these colonists, secured their help, and retraced his steps back to Reddy and Baldwin and brought them in to safety. Not until they’d eaten, burned their radiation poisoned clothes, and gotten a message through to Eau Claire. Not until he’d put his arms around Uhura and Sulu, and finally sat down for a dinner now half a lifetime overdue.
The rut he’d followed to this place could hardly be considered a trail. When he’d first stumbled across it, snaking between rocks like a tiny dried-up river, he’d been a little afraid that his desperate eyes saw a path that wasn’t really there. But it had headed downward, and—if it wasn’t just a figment of his imagination—it gave him something to follow back toward where he’d left Baldwin and Reddy. He stuck to the little trail as best he could while the light began to fade, finally staggering into a near run when the path widened into a clear, hoof-beaten track. It was only the awareness that sunset would illuminate him against the sky with fearful clarity that finally slowed him. No sense giving would-be snipers a better shot than they already had. Dropping to his seat, he half-climbed, half-slid down the last several meters of trail, into the homestead’s farmyard.
Shadow knifed across the ground like a bolt of velvet fabric. The stone under him cooled abruptly, palpable degrees of difference where night had lain just a few minutes longer, thanks to the mountainous heights on all sides. Chekov paused at the end of his slide for a moment, and tried to hug his shivering under control. He wasn’t just trembling now, but shuddering. Heavy, gut-deep spasms that were equal parts hypothermia and radiation. They couldn’t stay outside in this cold. Not overnight, not even for a few hours. He was easily the most hardy of the three, even before the radiation and Reddy’s wounding, but he harbored no illusions about how long he could survive unprotected in the desert night. If there was any humanity left in the Outland, these colonists wouldn’t turn them away to certain death.
Cradling the rifle across his chest, its muzzle angled skyward, Chekov struggled to right himself at the bottom of the incline. Darkness all but erased the ground under his feet. He picked his way carefully up to the fence surrounding the barn, then trailed one hand along the topmost rail to orient himself as he made his way around. Inside, little hooves clattered and shuffled against the dirt floor; the herd beasts’ murmuring voices stitched a delicate euphony of whistles and trills in the twilight air. He’d seen them only once before, but he could picture them clearly—charmingly russet and gold, with spry little commas for tails and ears as tall and furry as a rabbit’s. He’d watched them ferried down to the planet via the orbital platform during the first months after their arrival at Belle Terre, and had been amused by their hums and grumbles, not to mention their habit of spitting loudly to express just about any opinion. Someone had told him then that they originated in the mountain areas of South America, and had been chosen for colonial transplant because they were hardy and radiation-resistant. What they most reminded him of, he realized as he turned the corner and faced the homestead complex head-on, were diminutive Asian camels.
Two members of that larger species made man-height lumps in the yard between the house and the barn, their legs tucked under them in a tangle that hardly looked comfortable. They hadn’t come through the orbital platform—they’d been engineered here on the planet, after the Burn littered the atmosphere with olivium-infected dust and rendered Llano Verde impassable by more conventional means. Chekov had heard colonists complain about the camels more than praise them, faulting them for everything from their odor and seasick gait to their noisy stomachs and foul dispositions. Everyone agreed, though, that they were all that kept Llano Verde from falling into complete isolation. Able to routinely cross the dust-riddled wastes and get messages from town to town, one camel was now worth more than the entire colony’s all-terrain vehicles. Indispensable. Invaluable.
Not something to be left outside overnight in a storm.
He dropped into a crouch, meaning to hide himself neatly just next to the fence line. Instead, radiation-sick muscles betrayed him, and he slewed sideways into the rails. One of the camels swiveled an ear in his direction, but neither could be bothered to open its eyes. Chekov froze for an agonizing moment, hyper-alert for any other movement in the darkened farmyard, then lowered himself shakily to his knees. The wind wailed hoarsely over th
em all.
If these camels hadn’t been carelessly abandoned to the weather by the colonists who owned them, then they’d been ridden here recently, and left out only long enough for their riders to finish some bit of business before continuing their journey. Otherwise the camels would have been stripped of their tack and stowed in the barn alongside the herding animals, safe and warm and protected. Chekov couldn’t imagine anything compelling enough to drive a human out into this storm that didn’t involve a gunshot wound and fear of the invisible predators who’d originally ambushed you.
Unless, of course, you were the predator, and you were hunting down the ones you’d left alive.
The door to the house swung inward, spilling a blurry square of light onto the air in front of it, the ground below. A mass of bodies darkened the door, separated from it, split into three humanoid figures and one dog. The owner of the homestead—bareheaded, dressed only in a light tunic and trousers—paused just inside the doorway. He hunched over slightly, one hand through the dog’s collar to keep it close beside him, and nodded with the terse, metronomic rhythm of someone who is agreeing just to end the conversation and not because he’s really in accord. One of the goggled, mufflered figures hung back to exchange a few more words with him; the other limped out to the camels with his orange-and-green striped scarf hanging unwound about his shoulders.
Dismay churned, cold and heavy, in the pit of Chekov’s stomach. He recognized the man by his scarf, by his build, by the limp Chekov himself had put in the man’s knee. Unlike Chekov and his party, these two looked fit and well rested. If nothing else, they didn’t have a dying companion to drag around between them, and the heavy swing of their water jugs meant they weren’t having any trouble finding shelter and support among the locals.
Chekov backed awkwardly along the fence line, afraid to turn away from the scene for fear of getting a duranium projectile in the back of his skull. His rifle dragged an unsteady line in the dirt beside him. From the doorway, the dog swept a keen look in his direction and lifted its tail high over its back. He didn’t wait to see if the humans noticed its eerie stare. Ducking around the edge of the barn, he broke into a run back toward the hills he’d come from while the dog exploded into a flurry of barks.
The slope fell apart under him as he scrambled up it on all fours. The rifle slipped out of his grip twice before he finally defaulted to throwing it up the hill ahead of him, meeting it on his way up while it slid back down, then pitching it uphill again. The horrified, civilized part of him insisted, Leave it! Forget about the damned thing! But the frightened, animal part of him answered without words, conjuring the memory of Plottel’s ruptured body, amplifying the bitter taste in his mouth as he anticipated being shot in the back while running away.
The whole of Belle Terre seemed a death trap. He regained the narrow confines of the trail, but couldn’t seem to gather the strength to pull himself upright. Olivium heat bathed him in sweat, wrung the strength from his muscles. Dust clogged his nose and throat until his vision grayed from lack of oxygen. The dog’s voice—lost to distance only a few moments ago—swelled everywhere now, purposeful and excited, overlaid on itself in echoes until it became a swarm. Dragging himself to his feet using a waist-high rock, Chekov rolled to plant his back against the stone and tried to remember the direction to the homestead, the direction to Baldwin and Reddy. Soft, busy hoofbeats clamored up on him from a branch in the path, and the barking solidified into a pair of distinct, interwoven voices.
I don’t want to do this, he thought with startling, desperate clarity. The rifle was already braced against his shoulder, its muzzle dancing erratically in response to his trembling. I don’t want to be the man who murdered Plottel. But he didn’t want to be Plottel, either.
A wave of dusty brown beasts crested the rise, their long ears pressed flat against the dust, their tails flitting about in what might have been alarm. The first few animals hopped left and right with surprise just before they would have collided with him. The rest followed one by one until the whole group unzipped down the middle and flowed past on either side. The dog driving them—the same dog? a different dog? the only dog on Belle Terre?—flashed into view close behind them. It swept in an graceful arc, low to the ground, as though intent on circling the fragmented band and cinching it back together. Then its ice-blue eyes locked on Chekov, and it froze. A second dog appeared over the crest in a sort of shocking, 3D déjà vu. It swung leftward, crouched, glanced aside at Chekov, and struck the same pose as its twin. Staring, pricked ears angled forward, tails and heads swung low. They were the same dog, the homesteader’s dog, yet different dogs, with eyes and expressions and carriage so hauntingly consistent that Chekov found himself dizzied by their keen intensity.
That, more than anything, was what made him almost miss the human who came up the trail behind them.
She slowed when he jerked the rifle toward her, but eased a good three meters closer before finally coming to a stop. On her own terms, not his. He tried to think of some way to warn her off without threatening to shoot—something he wasn’t sure he was able to do.
“Nessie, Lynn, that’ll do.” A steady, patient voice that left little room for discussion.
The dogs whisked back to orbit her feet, finally settling into identical crouches on either side. Their eyes never left Chekov. He couldn’t see the woman’s eyes past the falling dusk and her dust-scarred goggles, but her silence was as good as a stare. Under its weight, he felt painfully transparent.
“Well,” she said at last, no visible part of her moving. “You’re not a Carson and you’re not a Peacemaker. That leaves either homesteader, or guy from the missing supply shuttle.” Slapping gently at her leg, she drew the dogs in close, then slowly, confidently, crossed the distance between them and put her hand on the shaking muzzle of the gun. “Welcome to Belle Terre, shuttle guy.”
“Sheriff?” Weir asked in Sulu’s ear, as they stood shedding their dust-mufflers just inside the pub’s doors. “I didn’t know Outlanders elected sheriffs.”
He gave the hydrologist a warning look, aware that the incredulous tone of her voice might carry across the room despite her attempt to speak softly. The pub’s mock-adobe walls were thick and its windows were covered with wool rugs to keep out drafts, resulting in an oddly hushed quiet. Or perhaps it just seemed hushed in comparison with the tumult outside. A random symphony of wind played constantly in Desperation, shrieking and hooting most of the time, sometimes accompanied by the percussive chatter of wind-blown gravel and sometimes by the unexpected hiss of rain swept off the crater lake. The gusts had plastered Sulu’s dust-filtering scarf so tight against his face on the walk up from the plaza that he felt smothered. He understood now why Mayor Serafini and most of Desperation’s other inhabitants walked through their dusty streets bare-faced.
“There’s probably a lot you don’t know about Outlanders,” he said meaningfully, watching Serafini clear seats for them at the pseudo-mahogany bar with a wordless jerk of her chin. The men who’d been occupying those seats moved away in equal silence, as if all the town’s citizens had fallen out of the habit of speaking. “It’s not a good idea to make too many assumptions.”
“We know that,” Weir said indignantly. “We’re scientists.”
That statement didn’t exactly reassure Sulu, but before he could make his warning any clearer, both hydrologists headed for the bar to order beer. Sulu followed them with a sense of foreboding that made him ask the bartender for water rather than alcohol. The level of stress and tension he’d seen on faces they’d passed in the street had been unusual even for Llano Verde, and the silent, weather-beaten people in this pub didn’t look much happier. Living with a perpetual cyclonic storm just upslope had to be hellish. When you factored in the hostility all Outlanders seemed to feel for government bureaucrats and the mounting frustrations caused by this first bad dry season, you got a potential powderkeg. All it would take was a single thoughtless comment to ignite it.
“So, about this flood emergency.” Carmela Serafini downed her mug of beer in one long swallow, then set it back on the bar with a definitive clang that got it immediately refilled. “I hear they got high water further down the Little Muddy. How bad is it?”
“What’s the Point had to be totally evacuated,” Uhura said. “Half of No Escape is under water, and the river’s still rising.”
“No kidding?” The mayor’s voice sounded affable enough, but there was a glint in her dark eyes that Sulu didn’t like. She tapped a finger on the slightly murky glass of water the bartender had just handed Uhura. “Think it’ll come up high enough for us to get some? You can see for yourself how low our reservoir is.”
“You’ve got three hundred meters of water just upslope from you,” Weir said before Sulu could stop her. “Can’t you use that?”
“Not unless I want to glow in the dark from drinking it. The olivium levels in that crater-lake water are high enough to mine.” The mayor of Desperation took another long swallow of beer, her lean throat muscles rippling with the motion. As far as Sulu could tell, the alcohol seemed to have absolutely no effect on her. “The bureaucrats down in So Unfair said they’d build us a filtration plant, but we just can’t seem to see it for the dust.”
“Told you,” Anthony said. Carmela Serafini gave him a quizzical glance, but the triumphant finger he pointed was at Weir. “I knew those anomalous olivium levels had to be coming right from the source.”
“All right, so I owe you a doughnut.” The hydrologist drained the last of her own beer, then thumped her tankard down with a decisiveness equal to Serafini’s. Despite that, Sulu noted, the bartender made no move to refill it. “I still say we’ve got as much water coming through the porous matrix as through fractures, which means the tensile strength of the crater wall should be more than ten on the Hutchinson scale.”
