Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

Lise shuddered and Jimmy nodded to her, then looked around the table again.

  “All right,” he said. “The flood is going to take us by surprise, if we aren’t careful. Know what you need and be ready to move when Sarah or someone from town says that it’s coming. We’re going to be pressed for transportation, and you aren’t going to have the buckboard to yourself for days to get things organized.”

  Sarah nodded. The air changed before the rains came, and it hadn’t happened, but everyone felt it all the same, who had lived here long enough and had their survival rely on knowing in advance that the floods were coming. It was going to be a bad year.

  Jimmy looked up and down the table. He’d ridden it out. The fight was gone out of the family and they were willing to agree to the next step, even if the threat of Pythagoras hadn’t moved at all. The thought of a satellite seemed to have calmed all of them a lot, though Sarah had mixed feelings about the value of it.

  The value of communication was huge. She’d studied it at school, the theory of perfect information. On the ground, though, pragmatically, the value of communication was only as good as the people you were relying on to provide information and the infrastructure you were relying on to support it. Technology wasn’t notoriously reliable, in Lawrence, and men weren’t notoriously reliable, in Jimmy’s world. Not with as much money running around out there as there was.

  “All right,” Jimmy said again. “Thank you for coming. Have a safe ride home. We’re all looking forward to when that isn’t going to be all the way back into town again.”

  “It’s creepy out there,” Kayla said, pushing her chair back. “Sarah, let me see that dress. It’s one thing to look at it on a hanger, and it’s another to see how my mom did it, as it sits on you.”

  Sarah stood and stepped away from the table, letting Kayla pick over the dress.

  “Got enough guns in here?” Kayla asked after a minute.

  “Couldn’t fit the rifle,” Sarah answered. Kayla looked up at her, but Sarah didn’t let the woman see whether or not it was a joke.

  Jimmy walked to the front door with Sunny, Rich, and Lise, while Rhoda, Thomas, and Wade waited on Kayla to finish.

  “All right, enough,” Sarah said, stepping away after several minutes. “I was only supposed to wear it once.”

  Kayla twisted her mouth to the side.

  “Maybe in Intec, but I’ve always thought that was a stupid rule. If you have a pretty dress, you should wear it. Why else does it exist?” She nodded firmly, then her eyes lit. “You should wear the tangerine one from the auction some, too. It was so beautiful, and everyone said how pretty you looked in it.”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  “Did they?”

  “Well, no, not out loud,” Kayla said. “But they were all thinking it.”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “People don’t see me that way, Kayla,” she said. “Come on. They’ll be holding the buckboard for you.”

  Kayla stepped away from her reluctantly, eyes on the dress.

  “Promise me you’ll take it off and store it away like it was, right after we leave,” she said. “Dresses are for wearing, but one like that, you should do your best to preserve, too.”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “I’ll do my best not to get into any gun fights with it still on.”

  “Could still happen tonight, from the looks of it,” Rhoda said.

  “What? Why?” Kayla asked, looking around quickly. Rhoda put her arm around Kayla’s waist.

  “Why do you think they kicked all of us out of here when they got married?” she asked. “We have no way of knowing what goes on in this house when we aren’t here.”

  Thomas nodded.

  “Sarah’s good at patching up bullet holes. Lots of experience.”

  “Get out,” Sarah said, not unkindly. “There’s always more to do, and getting the whole family together does nothing but slow it all down.”

  “Someday,” Rhoda said, shaking a finger at Sarah. “Someday I’m going to be your confidante and you’re going to tell me everything.”

  Sarah smiled. Real, honest, if not huge.

  “That’s not how I work, but I admire your moxy.”

  Rhoda grinned and she and Kayla started for the front door.

  “Take good care of Sunny,” Wade said privately to Sarah as he went past. “Rich’ll have too much pride to say it, but he does care about her.”

  “As far as I can see, she does a fine job of taking care of herself,” Sarah said. “Only hesitation I have taking her with me, other than not particularly wanting company, is that I’ll be with someone who won’t blink to throw me to the wolves if it’s going to get her out of a jam.”

  Wade nodded.

  “You have no idea.”

  His eyebrows went up and he put up a hand to clap her on the shoulder then, thinking better of it, just held his hand up in the air as he walked away.

  She watched, then shook her head. She could hear Jimmy talking in the front room, but she didn’t even look as she walked around the corner to the hallway that ran along the back wing to her room. She pulled the dress off, carefully enough, and hung it, putting on her heavy Lawrence clothes again and pulling her hair down. She walked back past the front door as Jimmy closed it behind the last of the Lawsons, but she went on to the kitchen, pushing the door open and watching with passive interest as the kitchen staff worked to clean up from dinner. The chef looked up from the table where he was writing something.

  “How was your meal?” he asked.

  “I’m here for my steak,” she answered.

  --------

  Sarah ate her dinner in the kitchen.

  Nobody wanted her there, and she reckoned that made it taste all the better. Solid, stoneware plate, knife what knew how to cut somethin’ and had a wood handle that had seen the years. She’d gone to get it, herself, when they’d offered up the prettified dishes and place settin’ from dinner. Chef made a couple attempts to talk to her, but Sarah weren’t interested in no more of that tonight. She had a fight comin’ with Jimmy, sure as sunrise, but that weren’t talkin’. That’d just be turnin’ anger into words.

  Steak was good.

  Sarah weren’t in no mood to give it more credit ‘n that.

  She gave chef and Tania a nod as she left, pushin’ through the kitchen door and wonderin’ how long it had been two-way. She remembered fightin’ with the twins as a kid and leanin’ on that door to keep ‘em out of the kitchen, for whatever reason had seemed good enough for the fight, at the time.

  Dinin’ room were empty, long, white tablecloth under a candelabra, clean napkins folded and set for silverware like they’d be havin’ another dinner there any minute. Sarah weren’t so hot angry no more, but seein’ it brought to her an impulse to sweep the whole table off with her arm.

  “Dumber than salt in your eye,” she muttered, headin’ toward the front of the house.

  Weren’t impossible, Jimmy’d just gone to bed without her, but she found him sittin’ in the front room, papers across the coffee table and his lap, readin’ somethin’.

  He set it down as she came into view.

  “I told you I wanted to be the one to take you out of that dress,” he said.

  “Don’t think you’d’ve liked what you found underneath,” Sarah answered, goin’ to sit in one of the armchairs facin’ him.

  “Can’t imagine why not,” he said, frowning. “Something went wrong tonight, and I need you to tell me what it was.”

  She raised an eyebrow, lettin’ her head drift right, holdin’ her mouth tight.

  “Sarah,” he said, and she heard him lean forward. “I need you on my side.”

  “I’m at your side,” she said. “Ain’t that enough for you?”

  She looked at him and found him earnest. Boy, she was gonna slap that off him faster than a horse through oats.

  He was reading her, eyes tickin’ back and forth as he tried to figure it out.

  He didn’t know she
knew.

  Didn’t know how easy she saw it.

  She pushed her tongue against her canine, lettin’ the anger settle deeper in her bones before she spoke.

  “Should’ve known better. Can’t ask a horse to be a man and you can’t make a rock be a diamond.”

  He frowned.

  “What is this about?”

  She shook her head. Settled.

  Frowned and dug into her pocket to find her bag of gremlin, rollin’ a cigarette and indicatin’ him without lightin’ it.

  “You still fancy Lise. Look at her and think about baby-makin’. Don’t matter what you say ‘bout me and you, you’re always gonna be the man who wants everything he lays his eyes to.”

  “What?” Jimmy asked. “I thought you were angry about Maxim coming tomorrow, or that I let Petey go without you whipping him. What’s Lise got to do with anything?”

  Sarah was disgusted. Everything he did, Jimmy all but never lied to her.

  She stood.

  “You think you got some tight grip on everything goin’ on in that head of yours, but I see it, and I know what I see.”

  He narrowed his eyes, standing.

  “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. And that’s almost never true. When? What did I do that makes you think I see her as anything but an opinionated inconvenience?”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow, not lettin’ that one past her, no matter how angry she was.

  “You wishin’ you hadn’t signed off on that one?” she asked.

  He spread his hands.

  “She was a play on a different game,” he said. “Her family could still be useful, even out here, but they don’t have interest in absenta. They aren’t industrial. They’re political. And absenta is clean. I don’t have to do anything special to sell it.”

  That made pretty good sense.

  “Ain’t like you to be fantasizin’ after someone who’s got no value to you,” Sarah said, still tart.

  “When?” he asked. “I had no such thought, and haven’t…” He shook his head, lookin’ down and away as he worked it out in his head. “Not since at least before Rhoda came here.”

  She shook her head, drawin’ one of the blades from between her shoulders and pointin’ at the underside of his chin, takin’ a step forward. He held his ground.

  “Don’t you lie to me, Lawson,” she said. “I saw it, and it ain’t like you got the means to hide it. Thought you were smarter than lyin’ to me.”

  He blinked.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  His tone had come down, like he’d figured somethin’ out. She tipped her head back, lettin’ the point of the knife go down the skin from the point of his chin, across his Adam’s apple and to the point where his collar bones met.

  “You looked at her and she made you hungry,” she said, lettin’ her eyelids fall most of the way closed.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Is it how I look at you?” he asked.

  She shook her head, smooth, molten.

  “Even not knowin’ you’re doin’ it, you know better ‘n to look at me like that.”

  “I’m going to use her uncle to create a new regulatory scheme governing absenta purity,” he said, his voice completely unchanged. “And then we’re going to build the labs to certify it here. It means that buyers are going to have to come here to buy, because that’s where all of it’s going to be, graded and certified. It becomes their problem, getting it home, from there.”

  “We’re goin’ to need another rail line all the way from Preston,” Sarah said, momentarily forgetting the knife in her hand. “And a bigger station.”

  “Station is fine,” Jimmy said playfully. “I may leave it just like it is for the rest of my life, just to spite you.”

  She put pressure on the knife point, curlin’ her mouth sour and shakin’ her head.

  “You ain’t funny.”

  He reached up slowly, intentionally, and closed his hand ‘round the knife, firm. She let it go and he held it there against his own throat for another moment, then let it drop, same speed, to his side.

  “It’s genius,” she said.

  “It’s a long way out,” he said. “But it just occurred to me tonight. While I was looking at her.”

  “You get a line up along the mountains goin’ clear to Zachary, you just pull all that absenta down here, get weight up and measured, auction it off in lots…”

  He nodded.

  “We’ll need a spaceport.”

  Sarah her head drop back a fraction, thinkin’ on that one.

  The idea of it were lunatic, but she could see his point. Lot ‘a absenta sellin’ round the world, lot ‘a buyers comin’ in that way weren’t never gonna want to see the inside of a train, no matter how luxe Jimmy might ‘a done it up.

  He was nodding, watchin’ her add it up in her head.

  “That’s what I see, when I look at this town,” he said. “That.”

  “Ain’t Lawrence,” she said.

  “Can you imagine people getting off the train with motorcycles and guns and expecting anything to happen?”

  “No,” Sarah said, “’cause that much absenta runnin’ around, everybody and his brother is gonna be armed, with security to boot.”

  He nodded.

  “No longer a boom town, not even really a mining town. An absenta town. The center of absenta.”

  “And you’d get a taste of all of it,” Sarah said, and he nodded.

  “Every last bit.”

  He switched his grip on the knife, offerin’ it to her ‘tween two fingers. She took the hilt and slid the thin blade back where it went, throwin’ herself onto the couch next to where he’d been sittin’.

  “Jealousy?” he asked, sittin’ down next to her. “Really? Are you ever going to get past that?”

  “Ain’t likely,” she said. “I always been territorial.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “All of it.”

  She shrugged, not bothered.

  He sighed.

  “No one but you, Sarah. Since I was a kid. I played games and I had a good time, but if you think I don’t know the difference between the time for games and the time for the real thing, you’re surprisingly off the mark for who I am.”

  “I know what you are,” she said, looking over. “Always have. You’re the man who wants everything ain’t already got by someone else, and most of that, too. It were legal, you’d keep a harem of women upstairs, just to prove you could have ‘em.”

  “And if you wouldn’t skin me and use it for bacon,” he said.

  “Good to know the threat’s gettin’ through,” she said. “Difference between knowin’ I won’t put up with it and not wishin’ you could get loose.”

  He pulled his knee up onto the couch, turnin’ to look at her square.

  “Sarah Todd. I am attracted to women. Many of them. Powerful ones, especially. If that bothers you, you may as well gouge my eyes, now. But I’m not interested in any of them. For practical purposes, because when you get to know a woman, you suddenly realize that she’s complicated and a lot of work, no matter how attractive she is, and personally, because I have no interest in investing in another woman for the rest of my life. You keep me plenty busy.”

  She raised both eyebrows.

  “That the line that brings ‘em to bed?”

  He closed his eyes and put his hands on his knees.

  “I swear, it’s like you’re trying to prove you aren’t worth it.”

  Both corners of his mouth turned up and he opened his eyes to look at her.

  “You can talk them into the satellite?” he asked.

  “Depends,” she said.

  “Is it a matter of money?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “I got plenty of that, and so do you. If you can get in the door for that conversation, it ain’t about money, anymore.”

  “Then what?”

  She smiled, sittin’ back against the couch.

  “It’s not like anythin’ dow
n here,” she said, rememberin’. She didn’t let herself think about it very often. It was too… Too. She drew a slow breath and rolled her head to look over at him as he shifted to lay back deep against the couch, his feet out on the coffee table and his papers. He put his head back and looked over at her, eyes full of that sparkle, that sense of mountains to climb and enemies to vanquish. The inevitable lived in his eyes. She nodded.

  “They don’t talk about it, ‘cause it ain’t none of your business, really. Crew don’t date each other. It’s against regulations. Anyone born to a crew member and a citizen is a citizen, not crew. You gotta renounce and enlist, you wanna stay up there. It’s how they crew the place, all this time later. No natural-born Americans left alive. Woulda been, they were born back on Earth, but the rules were written on purpose. Colonies had to be separate from the military, else you’d get a military-run planet, and nobody wanted that. They wanted to be independent.” The feel of it, knowin’ the LaVelle was goin’ overhead every six hours, give or take… She looked at the ceiling, and Jimmy looked up, too.

  “What you’re saying…” he said.

  “Most of half of the people who go up there for the study stay. Most marry someone from the planet, and they either live separate or their family goes to live on the LaVelle in the civilian quarters. Kids are only welcome to eighteen, then they’ve got to either renounce and enlist, themselves, or they’ve gotta figure out somethin’ else.”

  He made a noise, just lettin’ her know he followed.

  “Ain’t gonna lie,” she said. “It’s a good place. They got everything, everything runs like it ought. Got the people to see to it when it don’t. Clean like you ain’t never seen anywhere. Don’t run like any place you’ve been. They give a preference to those of us what been up there, but it’s on account of we don’t ask for what we don’t need. We know what it costs.”

  “What does it cost?” Jimmy asked.

  “Pods are a couple hundred years old,” Sarah said. “Used to be an awful lot of ‘em, but they lose ‘em to the weather on the planet and accidents comin’ up and down, and the ones they got left, they gotta use right, else people go hungry, die of diseases we got cures for.”

  “The ones Sid knows about that Lawrence has never heard of,” Jimmy said, and Sarah shrugged.