by Blaze Ward
And hope one of the boffins saw something that they could take all the credit for, leaving her to be Little Miss Innocent, clear off on the edge of the stage, or maybe down in the audience.
Safe.
Dani didn’t figure that the rescue team knew exactly where she was. The trees and stuff were just too heavy here, and the pathway was only a few meters across at the widest points where there were no Trudywood trees able to reach across it.
Why couldn’t they? What was wrong with the ground that nothing but grass grew down that seam, anyway?
She considered firing a second flare, but decided it was easier to just start tromping in their direction. Or, at least that general area.
Dani really wasn’t all that excited about trying to push her way through stands of Trudywood thorns, but the jumpers would land somewhere downhill from where she was now. She could get into the vicinity and yell.
Or set something on fire. A pillar of smoke against the horizon would always be nice on a clear day. Assuming she didn’t mind burning some of her rabbits out of house and home.
“Fairchild?” Eleanor asked simply. “How are you doing?”
Dani tucked Eleanor into the pocket between her boobs, facing forward so the Governess could see the path ahead at least as well as Dani did.
Fairchild’s Golden Eagle had missed her opportunity to get Dani before help arrived.
Fate was going to have to find a different way to catch her now.
“Cavalry’s coming,” Dani shrugged as she started walking.
Just in case, she checked the safety on the Tomya so she didn’t accidentally shoot herself in the foot with a flare, but she kept the survival tool in her hand as she walked.
It felt like a talisman, capable of keeping the devil in her head at bay. A life preserver that was keeping her above stormy waters.
“Will you be okay, Fairchild?” Eleanor asked in a sideways kind of tone.
“Going home,” Dani said hopefully.
No, not Dani.
I don’t have to be Dani.
Fairchild.
Be Fairchild.
Let everything else go. Fly on the winds and thermals, and never come back. You never have to be Dani again, if you don’t want.
“No, Fairchild,” Eleanor chided her, as though the Governess could read her mind. “We’re going back to the others, to the ship. We’re not going home.”
Eleanor paused for a moment before continuing, as if looking for the words.
“I’m not even sure what home would look like for you.”
Fairchild shrugged. Neither was she. But it was the truest thing that had ever come out of Eleanor’s mouth.
Maybe they were both growing up.
That storm was the closest Fairchild had ever come to home, dancing madly in the smoky, golden darkness, riding the howling, baking winds, even into the oblivion that had beckoned.
And later, alone in the sky, nothing but a navy blue free–glider to save her, charging into the hot kiss of lightning.
That had been freedom.
But she always had to land, eventually. Come back to ground, and people, and light. Pay the price for those moments of independence.
And now she would be famous. Known galaxy–wide. She would never have to buy her own drinks in a club.
Fairchild would become a beautiful bird in a gilded cage, at least for a decade or more until the newness wore off, stuck on the interview circuit, giving uplifting talks to young scientists, when all she wanted to do was fly.
More than anything else in the world.
More? Really? That’s it? Fly?
Fairchild smiled.
Yes. More than anything.
That was a starting point.
Now she just had to outsmart the brainiest boffins in the galaxy to pull it off.
Chike
Chike held his breath, and his bladder. This was not the single–dumbest thing he had ever done, but it rated in the top ten. Top three if you left off grad school, as one should, twenty years on.
At least the helmet was feeding him clean air that was a little heavy on oxygen, so he was not at risk of passing out. And he would be on the ground in a few minutes and could pee all over some handy bush to get rid of all the excitement that threatened to overcome his heart.
He really needed to spend more time in the field and less in the lab. Chike realized he had forgotten how much fun life could be.
Below, the vast expanse of mountains was narrowing down to a single, rocky defile that looked more like a crack in the earth, with lush greenness carpeting over the pale, golden–tan of the rocks and soil.
Above, the parachute maneuvered itself in response to winds and drift. Apparently, Lacumaces or Rain had planted a target on the ground somehow, and Chike’s parachute was insistent on getting as close to it as possible, regardless of what he thought on the topic. In the swirling winds, that meant that it was corkscrewing its way to the ground.
At least he had a very nice view of the entire valley as he flew his descending merry–go–round.
Mountains on three sides of a rough triangle, with two saddles and this little valley/pass that was covered with big, green bubbles and little game trails that seemed to follow a dry river bed.
Chike reminded himself that they were on the wrong side of the ridgeline now. Fairchild had managed to get herself clear through the heart of that terrible lightning storm and landed herself on the far side. All the walking today had just taken her nearly eighteen kilometers down from that pocket that had generated the anvil yesterday.
He couldn’t see her, but he expected that she would either fire another flare soon, or find one of them when he and Lacumaces got to the ground. From there, the group would either walk to a flat space where the Survey Shuttle could land, or bring in some spare wingsuits and fly up to the shuttle itself.
He could only imagine the adventures that lay ahead.
Now he just had to worry about the ground that seemed to be rushing up towards him at an inordinately rapid pace. The parachute seemed know what it was doing, but was it smart enough to handle a pudgy, forty–six year–old geologist?
Chike tried to lean his weight one way or the other, but it didn’t seem to make that big of a difference. Looking up, he could see little airfoils twitching up and down as the corkscrew dropped him lower.
The spin wasn’t enough to make him sick, or even confuse him, but it was absolutely in charge of where he was landing. From the looks of things, Lacumaces had targeted to drop him in a small clearing that opened up on what otherwise looked like a game trail following the center of the river bed valley he was jumping into.
Hopefully, the electronic degradations left over from the storm weren’t causing too much havoc with the targeting computer. Radios were already hard enough to use now. Chike really didn’t want a broken leg to go with everything else, even with a certified trauma surgeon immediately handy.
Something beeped madly for several seconds.
About the point where Chike decided that the computer had died and he was about to join it, the corkscrew motion flattened out and Chike found himself suddenly gliding down in a straight line and going far more sideways than down.
Apparently, that was the system’s idiot warning that they were almost to ground and he should start paying more attention. Chike settled for grabbing onto the straps connecting his waist to his shoulders, to keep his hands from flailing about.
Several more beeps, and the parachute stalled itself. That was the only way to describe the motion. Sideways turned into up, and then suddenly he stopped almost still, two meters off the ground, and dropped straight down. It wasn’t quite as fast as stepping off a stage and jumping, but it wasn’t a simple elevator drop either.
Chike hit ground with an oomph that echoed through his frame. One more massive beep and the parachute detached itself before it could start dragging him along behind it as the breeze began to carry it sideways.
Okay, now what?
>
Lacumaces wasn’t to be seen. Nor was Fairchild.
You’re on the surface of an alien planet, having just committed a smoke jump from a Survey Shuttle. Are you freaking nuts?
Adventure was apparently infectious, after all.
He wondered if there was an academic paper to be had in middle–aged geologists having mid–life crises. And whether he wanted to admit any of this on paper.
Probably not.
Chike settled for gathering up the remains of his parachute. The material weighed about as much as a spiderweb, for all its size. He was able to roll it into a ball about the size of a small pumpkin and carry it in his off hand as he looked around.
Trees. Well, bushes of some sort. Roundish. Dark green. Several meters across. Thorns. Native, whatever that meant.
We’ll just stay very clear of them, thank you very much.
Chike considered going somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where anyone was, relative to his position. Presuming he had come down where Rain or Lacumaces had intended, the last thing he should do is wander off. Then he might have to be rescued by someone himself.
Never a good idea.
Chike stood perfectly still and turned in place.
Clearing. Twenty meters wide at the biggest point. Vaguely ovaloid, with the game trail entering and exiting at roughly the points of the long axis. Grass and low wildflowers for the most part, with a few patches of bare rock poking through. Surrounded by larger bushes that tended to crowd against one another.
What’s that?
Chike found his feet taking him towards a pile of rocks tucked in one side of the clearing. It was a small, shallow rise, maybe three meters tall and ten across, with no grass growing on it, nor any of the trees growing close enough to overshadow it.
Shade would be nice, but at least he could sit and wait for the others, a modern–day Estragon perched on a rock.
Chike found a nice boulder with a view and waited to see who would find him first.
Fairchild
Once she had seen it, Fairchild was incapable of not seeing it. It haunted her mercilessly, much as sobriety had.
The path was, on average, two and a half to three and a half meters wide. Trudywood trees never got above a certain size, possibly due to climate, but stayed crowded tight up against an invisible track as she walked, like groupies pressed against a rope line.
Grass and gravel traded choruses, with the grass growing more and more prevalent as she worked her way down from the dry heights and into the lower areas where she expected better hydrology.
The one time that the path had changed direction in the last hour, it had turned at about thirty degrees to the left, and continued to run straight as a beam on the new heading.
There was not chance in hell that Escudra VI was populated by giant moles with obsessive–compulsive tendencies and carpentry tools. Much as she might wish otherwise.
This was primarily a geology mission, first and foremost. That meant Chike would need to be involved. There were biologists and botanists that she could talk into taking credit for Fairchild’s Golden Eagle and the Trudywood trees.
There was a girl who was a weatherman in training who was probably already salivating at handling the storm. She would want to interview Fairchild extensively in order to get any information that had been lost when the shuttle died, assuming they couldn’t retrieve it from various black boxes.
But Chike would be a stickler. Even telling him who she really was, and demanding that he keep her name out of it, wouldn’t help.
Or would it?
Could she demand that he put her down as Fairchild on the discovery? Nothing else? Could Fairchild become famous, and never tell anyone about Lady Danielle Cooper? Sure, someone in the press would probably try to dig, but she was pretty sure that Alphonse Cooper would make it his mission to punish the poor bastard, just to dissuade them from digging into his own affairs, however innocently.
And nobody in his right mind challenged Alphonse Cooper in the court of public opinion without a really good reason.
Fairchild wondered what it would take to legally change her name. A judge probably wouldn’t go for just Fairchild.
Maybe Dani Fairchild?
Shit, she might be able to pull this off. Did she actually have the gall?
Even the recent rounds of parties with her dilettante and debutant friends were starting to bore her to tears. All those people wanted to do was drink, screw, and blow their minds on semi–legal substances imported from exotic locales or back–alley chemistry labs. The receptors in their brains were burning out, forcing a constant chase after a better high when the last one just wasn’t as good as it used to be.
All Fairchild wanted to do was fly. That had been a peak that no pill had ever approached. Even the orgasms had tended to pale.
And none of her friends and associates knew about her secret life as Fairchild. Only her immediate family and a very few others had any inkling, and Rudy and Chloe were the only ones who knew even that much. They could know the truth, and whisper it to Father’s advisors if something came up.
Perhaps she could suggest to Rudy that a few corporate lawyers be brought in to firmly crush any reporter inquiries like slugs under their heels. They were lawyers. They lived for this sort of thing, or they wouldn’t work for Father in the first place.
Fairchild could suddenly see a knothole of light at the far end of the tunnel.
Did she actually have the spleen to take this one straight down their throats?
Let’s solve Chike first. Then we can mow the rest down like amateurs.
“Fairchild.”
That wasn’t Eleanor. The voice was deeper, hoarser. It was a man’s voice.
It did manage to derail her. She almost tripped over a rock. Or an invisible turtle. Something.
She stopped cold and listened, reasonably sure she was still sane.
Mostly.
Enough, anyway.
Right?
“Fairchild, here,” the man called again.
She turned and looked. The path had widened out again, into a small clearing. It had done that with regularity.
Regularity.
Shit. OCD moles, everywhere, right?
A figure rose from a pile of rocks, or a termite nest, or something where he had been resting. She had walked almost by him without even realizing it, wrapped up in her schemes and her own dark thoughts.
Chike.
Wait. Dr. Odille? He had been one of the smoke jumpers?
That was about as far from possible as she could imagine. He was the kind that stayed in his hut, listening to soft jazz and sending undergrads into the rain. Certainly not a crazy–ass sky–diver. Apparently, there was way more to the man than she had ever imagined.
“About time you got here,” she called with a smile as she turned and headed towards him.
He grinned and gestured to the planet around them with both hands.
“We were expecting to find you much earlier, young lady,” he said, walking closer. “You’ve covered over fourteen kilometers from that first arrow we found. Lacumaces kept asking me if you were running away from us.”
Running away?
Well, not from him. Them. This.
Maybe.
He surprised her with a giant hug as she got close.
Chike was barely taller than she was, but he out–massed her by about twice. Still, he seemed desperately relieved to find her here.
Or maybe it was the jump. He had that look that some people got when they made it back to the ground for the first time.
But what would make him want to smoke jump?
Fairchild detached herself after a moment and stepped back.
“So where’s Lacumaces?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Chike shrugged. “He programmed my parachute to land here, but he went past me jumping, and I was twisting around coming down, completely at the damned thing’s mercy. Since you came from uphill, I’m guessing he landed downhill and
is working his way back towards us.”
“Huh,” she said. “Wonder if I can see him from here. Does your radio work? Mine’s fried.”
“Oh, dear,” he replied. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
Fairchild took a long stride past Chike, planted a foot, and hop–ran up the side of the little rise. She saw Chike reach up and key his radio manually as she did.
She grinned. That was more like Chike, the slightly–absent–minded–professor type.
His voice kind of faded into the background as she looked down.
Visions of OCD moles with carpentry tools suddenly reared gigantic in her mind as she looked straight down into hell.
Okay, maybe not hell. It wasn’t bright red down there. No dancing devils waved at her and invited her to join them. At least, not this time.
The rise was hollow. Rather like a miniature volcano, with a two meter wide hole going down at probably an eighty–degree angle into the earth, deep out of sight in the darkness.
“What the hell…?” she muttered.
The tunnel also went down into the earth at an angle that would intercept the line of the game trail about thirty meters down, give or take.
“What is it, Fairchild?” Chike asked, turning and finding her staring down, mouth probably agape.
She felt him hop up beside her and steady himself by waving both arms comically.
“Lacumaces is almost here,” Chike said. “Apparently, my beacon is working fine, even as yours was damaged by the storm. And…Oh, my…”
Even boffins will see things eventually, if you give them time.
The hole in the ground was doubly strange because of the shape. The stones of the pile had been wedged close together, and then set in something. Fairchild had assumed just mud or dirt, but now she wasn’t so sure.
The inside of the hole was threaded. That was the word that came to mind. A hole in the middle perhaps two meters across, but it had a spiral shape lip all the way around as if set by God’s own wood screw, about half a meter wide itself, bored down into the ground and set with these close stones.
OCD Moles, with carpentry tools. Giant ones.
It could happen, right?
