by Lynn Rae
“I need to talk with you,” he rumbled and leaned one hand against the synthboard near her hip. His forearm rippled, and she watched the muscles work under his golden skin for a riveting nanosecond. Maybe the man had a musculoskeletal issue, he couldn’t seem to stand up straight or smile.
“Why?”
“You’re this Lia Frei, right?”
“Yes, I’m that Lia Frei.” She didn’t feel cooperative. Under normal circumstances, when a man with eyes that dark and velvety leaned near she’d be much more receptive, but today was work, and Cit. Tor was trouble. And her head was beginning to ache.
“So, I need to talk with you.”
“Listening,” Lia shot back and quirked an eyebrow.
He huffed out a breath, and his scowl deepened to even more unhappy depths. Too bad. She wasn’t on this planet to make anyone happy, just to get this settlement built with no delays.
“When I have a problem I’m supposed to talk with you,” Tor said and twisted his torso away as if he wanted to leave.
“I’m not a counselor.”
“I don’t need a counselor.”
Lia knew she radiated skepticism. And who wouldn’t? The man was a walking antisocial personality if she’d ever seen one. It was no wonder he lived out here amongst the tree-creatures. Maybe he was the only human inhabitant of Pearl. She hadn’t seen anyone else yet, and his abrasive manner certainly made her want to leave the vicinity.
“So, you already have one? How’s that working out?” Lia tried to look compassionate, but she knew she was being mean. All she wanted to do was finish updating a revised schedule and find her office. Whatever shape it might be in. She had low expectations when it came to food and shelter, so she might as well work.
“I don’t need a counselor.” Tor’s eyes flashed with annoyance as he raised his voice. “I’m fine.”
“Really? You seem very angry to me.”
“I’m not angry. Well, I’m angry for good reasons, not for irrational ones.”
“Of course. So you’re going to talk with me about your problems because…?”
“I’m supposed to liaison between the locals and you people. Your magistrate over there told me the assistant isn’t here yet. So, she said you’re it.” He levered himself away from the synthboard stack and her body.
“I understand. I understood it before. Do you have a problem you need to tell me about right now? I’m working on a revised schedule, so…” Lia trailed off, hoping he’d get the hint and make an appointment to see her at a later time. Like maybe next week. She’d known she was going to get the bulk of the local admin work, because Assistant Magistrate Cordon was still aboard the ship recovering from a case of heaves. This surly fellow was not what she wanted to deal with at the moment.
“I do have a problem.”
Lia took a breath and decided to stop taking out her nausea and exhaustion on the man. Despite his grim conversational skills, she was a professional. “What can I help you with?”
“Your construction. There are issues.”
“I know. Nothing is done according to the timeline Welti contracted. We aren’t going to have beds to sleep in tonight if he doesn’t stop chattering and get back to it. I wonder who I’ll have to bunk with?” Lia glanced at the datpad, predicting all manner of doom and gloom.
“I don’t care about who you sleep with,” Tor snapped as he crossed his arms across his chest and twisted his mouth in an unattractive frown.
“I heartily reciprocate.” She sat both datpads on the relatively clean surface of the synthboard stack and hopped to her feet. Her grand gesture was slightly hampered by how the ground squelched under her shoes, and she wavered before she caught her balance.
Tor blinked at her. “Don’t expect me to offer up my place to you.”
“That’s no surprise. It’s not as if anyone is rolling out much of a welcome for us.” Lia knew her voice was raised, but this man irritated her almost as much as a delay to her timeline did. Her head throbbed, her schedule was as ruined as her shoes, and she had no idea where she’d be sleeping. The luxury accommodations and glamorous attractions of Herald Park swam before her eyes for a tantalizing moment.
“Why should we? All you people have done is cause problems for the last four days.”
“Actually, Cit. Tor, I haven’t been on Gamaliel for forty minutes.”
“Right, this conversation only feels as if it’s been going on for four days.”
Oh, the man was uncouth. Lia took a deep breath and prepared to argue when she noticed everyone else watched them with varying shades of distress on their faces. Tully had taken a step toward her to intervene, and the magistrate grimaced with what was probably embarrassment.
Lia decided that she’d lost her temper enough for one day. Holding up a hand to communicate everything was under control, she stared at Tor’s chest for a moment to gather her thoughts. He really should button his shirt up more. Then again, it seemed he was missing more than a few buttons.
“Pardon me. I apologize for my outburst.” Lia forced a smile as she looked at the ill-mannered man in front of her. He clamped his mouth shut and jammed his hands on his hips.
“Sorry.” He gritted his teeth and tensed his shoulders as if he had suffered a physical pain because of the apology.
“You said you needed to speak with me?” Taking a breath, Lia tried to refocus on her work and not the massive regret swirling through her mind at the moment.
“Yes. To start with, there’s a problem with the building they’re doing in Tila’s yard. She’s upset.”
Progress. Here was a specific issue she could address. She pulled out her datpad and expanded one of the diagrams of the existing settlement overlaid with the new construction plans. One glowed blue, the other red, and at the points where there was an intersection of old and new, a sickly green shade appeared in the air. She asked him to show her the trouble spot, and he took a couple of steps over to her to point to a tiny multicolored blob he identified as the property in jeopardy.
Rubbing her eyes, Lia enlarged the view to show a small rectangle in red and an adjacent, much larger structure in blue. The water treatment plant. She recognized that at least, but there was no green shade to indicate anything was going to interfere with this Tila’s home.
“Where is the problem? There’s no construction affecting her home.”
“Peas and tomatoes. Right here.” His lean finger poked at the three dimensional display, indicating an incoming massive triad of pipes. “She needs to eat.”
Lia shook her head, the motion setting off her headache even more. With a wince, she tried to concentrate. “So her garden is compromised?”
Tor nodded, and she gave him a glance. His coffee brown eyes didn’t waver as he studied her. Her first thought was to tell him one corner of a backyard garden was hardly an important enough impediment to building proper water drainage which would support the hundreds of settlers waiting to arrive. Just thinking of the long list of approved ships, booked solid with excited people all hoping to make a fortune extracting cortiglow from this plant’s native epiphytes, was enough to make Lia’s head pound with the pressure. But from what she’d seen so far, the people who lived in Pearl weren’t exactly spoiled with a wide variety of foodstuff shops. So, homegrown was likely all they had.
“I need some time to reevaluate our construction schedule. Can you stop by later after I’ve had some time to get some work done?” Standing in the mud had been a mistake. She could feel moisture infiltrating her shoes and socks the longer she stood there having a stare down with Tor.
“When?”
“I’m not even sure I have an office yet. How about fifteen hundred hours? I’ll be somewhere in the admin building.” Lia tried to be accommodating but it was difficult with wet feet and a looming headache, all while woozy with fatigue.
Tor gave her a tiny nod, turned, and strode away past the piles of building materials without another word. He disappeared between two enormous furry t
rees. She couldn’t remember what they were called. Eldens? Rectors? Whenever she had a spare second she’d look it up.
Colan was busy being late. He’d gone for a walk after his annoying welcome-to-Gamaliel ceremony and returned to his hut to check every point of entry for signs Ermil or Perrin had snooped around inside. He found no definite clues but couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling something was amiss. The two boys might have left some sort of booby trap to startle him at a later time, like a tyro’s egg mass close to eruption. He’d be sound asleep tonight only to be rudely awakened by a hissing chitter as thousands of tiny worms bounced around his hut spinning webs as they ricocheted all over his belongings. Just thinking about it would make it hard to fall asleep tonight. Those congressionals would be bunked down, dreaming about how wonderful they were, while he fought off a squirmy infestation.
He decided to tidy up his place on the off chance he found something hidden underneath a pile of dirty clothes or a half-unpacked duffle from his last trip. He’d been back for over a week and really should have put away his equipment by now. Basic housekeeping took him several hours, and his hut assumed a slightly less disordered appearance by the time he was done.
It was three quarters past fifteen hundred; time to go back over to the administrator’s mess of construction, find the snappish Lia Frei, and protect Tila’s peas and carrots. Stars, he was a certified planetary surveyor, this was the third planet he’d mapped from pole to pole, and he was now responsible for sweet-talking some big-eyed woman into not digging up someone’s garden. After that challenge, he’d have to convince her to alter their construction so Rue and Tun wouldn’t lose their house. He wasn’t looking forward to talking with Citizen Frei again, especially after that comment he’d made about sharing his bed. No, not sharing, loaning. He’d rather sling his hammock in a cocker tree and take his chances outside with the skin-sucking flivvers than come anywhere near that woman while she slept.
On his way over to the clearing, Colan greeted a few Pearlites but didn’t stop to chat, because he didn’t want to hear about any more problems which would morph into his responsibility. The construction still buzzed along, but he couldn’t see any massive improvements had taken place over the last few hours. Rather similar to his own home improvement efforts.
A passing loader bot helpfully shot a laser light at a pale modular structure when he asked where the administration offices were, and he made his way around stacks of muddy metal arches and resin cubes, containing unknown components, as he reached the building. There was no door, just an opening cut in the wall and a muddy floor. He followed the dirty tracks inside and passed empty rooms as he listened for sounds of human activity.
Colan entered a hallway intersection and spotted a tall young man peering at some exposed virtuwiring. He looked up with a start and very politely offered to help. Sighing with annoyance, Colan introduced himself and found he spoke with Tully, the network engineer. Colan asked where Lia Frei might be, and the man pointed farther down the soiled hall. With thanks, Colan headed that way, sure the other man was watching him go.
More rooms with no doors until he finally spotted Cit. Frei behind a desk, squinting at several displays perched around her. With a jump she turned to face him.
“Cit. Tor. Is it that time already?”
He couldn’t decide if she made a snide comment about his late arrival, or if she had genuinely lost track of time. Considering her profession was scheduling, she was probably peeved he’d showed up late. He shrugged and watched her as she tightened her shoulders and took a breath. Maybe she was going to chastise him again.
She rose and made her way around the desk to stand in front of a large wall display. Colan saw it was a highly detailed diagram of Pearl and some of the surrounding forest. He was momentarily distracted by the tiny dimensional representation of the settlement he’d lived in for the last eighteen months. There was Joli’s bar, Gina’s house, his hut, everything of human construction or discard within the surrounding few kilometers, all in miniscule red blocks and cones.
Cit. Frei reached out and tapped in a command which overlaid the new construction plans. A massive diagram blanketed Pearl, overwhelming everything with bold blue lines, green sections, and blinking orange sectors. At a glance, it looked as if every existing structure in town was going to be demolished.
“I know this appears drastic, but we’ve worked very hard to integrate your settlement with the new buildings we need before the extractors arrive. Only two homes and one alley will be affected by our construction. In an effort not to damage any more of the forest around us, we’re using every bit of cleared space as efficiently as possible.” Cit. Frei peered at the diagram as she rolled her lower lip between her teeth.
Colan was distracted enough by her gesture to put aside his concerns about the fate of the homes of people he knew and consider the woman standing next to him. She looked tired and tense. Her pale yellow clothes, so bright and clean when she’d arrived on planet that morning, were now wrinkled and smudged with dirt. And she was barefoot. On a muddy floor.
“Sit down.”
“What?” Cit. Frei stopped studying some info-wire schematics and frowned at him.
“Sit down. I need to see your feet.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You’re standing in the dirt.”
“Everything is filthy around here.”
“There’s stuff in the mud.”
“What stuff?” She paled at his words and scrambled for a place to sit. Colan indicated the narrow table underneath the wall display, and she hopped up and immediately twisted one foot into her lap, peering at the smudged sole. “What’s in the mud? I didn’t read anything about the mud.”
Colan pulled a small crate over to her and took a seat, looking up at her face as she fretted. A worry-line furrowed between her eyebrows. Instead of answering, he held out his hand and waited. She met his gaze and tightened her lips into a thin line with a near-shake of her head. He crooked his fingertips. With a sigh, she relented and placed one of her heels into the palm of his hand. Her skin was cool. He inspected the sole of her foot for any egg cases from foot weevils.
They weren’t really weevils, and they certainly didn’t mean to bore into people’s feet, but this was their migration season, and they had a biological imperative to catch a ride on anything moving around so they could explore before settling down to mature and reproduce. It just happened human skin was more fragile than the exoskeletons of native Gamaliel lifeforms, and an embedded foot weevil egg rapidly caused painful boils on the bottoms of bare feet. The little creatures popped out none the worse for wear but left their discarded egg cases deep within the skin where they festered. No one should suffer through an infestation, especially after only being on planet for half a day. Colan pulled a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and swabbed at Cit. Frei’s foot. He was surprised she hadn’t said anything yet, and he glanced up at her to find her staring at him seemingly lost in thought.
“I’m looking for foot weevil egg cases.”
“Oh. I didn’t read about that.”
Colan shook his head and went back to studying her skin. Despite the grayish smears of dried mud, her sole was pink and healthy, her toes small and curving against his fingers. He wiped at it again but didn’t find any spiraled shiny red eggs anywhere. “I don’t think anyone has bothered to write about it.”
“Why not? We need to know so we can formulate an appropriate caution for the incoming settlers.” Cit. Frei lowered her foot from his grasp and obediently raised the next for his evaluation. This one was equally smudged, cool, and pink skinned. She really needed to wash them off and put on some clean socks and sturdy shoes. He remembered she’d worn glittering blue slipper-like shoes when she stepped off the shuttle, highly impractical for the waterlogged ground around Pearl. Thankfully, it appeared as if she was clear of any unwanted hitchhikers for the moment.
“Seeing how we normally get one or two new people in here ever
y few months, it’s been something we’d just mention in passing. They’re only bad every twelve weeks or so.” Colan glanced up at her again and tried not to notice her curvy legs covered with thin yellow fabric or how close his face was to the lower half of her body.
She took a few shaky breaths, and for some unknown reason, he tightened his grip on her foot. She relaxed her muscles, and he sensed the give in her body. He wasn’t thinking about Tila’s garden, or foot parasites, or even the shifting coastline of Gamaliel’s southern shore anymore. No, he thought about how nice her skin felt against his fingertips and wondered if she was involved with someone in the new arrivals. It seemed likely. She was very pretty.
Cit. Lia Frei was also argumentative, which was all he should be considering. He dropped her foot as if it was stolen property and stood from his seat on the box so he wasn’t looking up at her from between her thighs. That was a bad position to be in. With her. With someone else it would be fine. Not her.
“Did you find anything?” she whispered, more subdued than he’d heard before. She held his gaze for a second too long, and before he could say something stupid, she broke her stare to inspect her feet.
“No.” Colan decided to examine the display again rather than her as she rubbed the bottoms of her feet as if she didn’t believe him. “You need to wear shoes and socks if you are walking through mud, for the next week at least.”
“What else? What other noxious elements are just waiting for us here?” She pulled out a datpad to make notes.
“Lots of things. None evolved to prey on humans, but some manage to find us interesting or appetizing.”
Cit. Frei leaned forward, poised with her datpad, bright amber eyes on him, and Colan lost his thoughts again.
