by Sharon Shinn
“Goodness, look at the time. I’ve a few things to do before dinnertime, my dears, so if you will excuse me, I’ll just be off for a while. I know it is not strictly proper, socially speaking,” she added for my benefit, “but when Mr. Ravenbeck is gone, I usually dine with Ameletta and Miss Ayerson. You may certainly have a tray in your room, if you wish, but I was hoping you would take your meals with us.”
I came to my feet as well; there was still much I had left to do in the way of unpacking my bags and reordering my room. “Indeed, I shall be happy to have the company,” I said warmly. “I shall see you all tonight at dinner, then. I expect it shall be most pleasant.”
It was—that dinner and the dinners that followed, in the nights and weeks that came after. Mrs. Farraday and Ameletta were cheerful if limited companions, intellectually speaking; Miss Ayerson had a scholarly turn of mind that did not entirely track with mine, though we spent much time discussing novels and poetry, and found our tastes remarkably similar; and everyone did her best to be courteous, thoughtful, and interesting. And yet, for me at least, there was something lacking. I would have loved an energetic, emotional debate on the merits and demerits of the Allegiance social system—or the most popular religious trends of the day—or the newest scientific advances which I followed as best I could from the computer terminal installed in my room. Such conversation was not to be had with friends such as these, and I had not often had it in the past, but I nonetheless found myself longing for it with a sort of fierce wistfulness. I tried not to disparage the calm, productive haven I had found, but it was sorely empty of drama.
My days too were mostly uneventful. I spent many of my daylight hours in the underground facility which housed the manor’s Arkady converter. Among other things, it was my task daily to monitor the tritium-deuterium mix, activate the waste disposal systems, and check all the electrical lines feeding from the generator. Some small adjustment always had to be made, and I was filled with a sense of accomplishment any time I caught and diagnosed a problem. Because of my vigilance, disaster was averted.
This was, if extrapolated to the direst possible consequences, really true. A malfunctioning generator could poison the whole household, leading to lingering illness and eventual death; a breakdown in the electrical system could compromise the integrity of the forcefields, allowing the thin, toxic atmosphere of the planet to suffocate or poison us all. When I thought about it, it gave me pause: We were here on Fieldstar, all of us, at the sufferance of science. If science failed, or was misused, we would all be dead.
Sometimes I looked around me at the construction of my basement fortress. Imported, every stone, every metal alloy—every drop of water in the hydraulic converter, every atom in the carefully mixed, carefully contained atmosphere. Fieldstar had possessed none of these riches in its natural state. A desirable natural nuclear fuel—yes, that it possessed in abundance, and men had reinvented the planet in order to redistribute that particular fortune. But it had nothing else we needed.
I felt an affinity for the sere, cold ball of insufficient elements, nonetheless, and I liked to spend my afternoons strolling through the park grounds surrounding the manor. Men had ferried in ships full of a renewable topsoil, merely so they could plant it with familiar seeds and grasses, so I walked across a green and pleasant lawn, enjoying commonplace flowers. But I wondered often what lay beneath that manicured surface, what rocky or sticky or completely unfathomable loam was the natural cloak of this world, and what fantastical trees and shrubs it would have produced on its own.
One such example was before me even as I made my afternoon rounds; I never failed to walk by it to express my intense, silent delight. It was a tree, of sorts, gnarled, twisted, and bulky, with massive, knotted limbs so contorted the tree might be supposed to be in agony. Yet its branches could have been made of iron, so impervious were they to axe or chain saw, and its roots must have extended to the center of this unfriendly earth. For the groundskeepers had tried, Mrs. Farraday had told me, to remove the tree with every device they could muster. They had attempted to poison it as a seedling, to hack it down as a sapling, to uproot it, burn it, detonate it. It would not die. It would not even cower back. It bore, to this day, scorch marks on its lower branches and a crisscross of machete tracks along its trunk—bore these marks as proudly and unregenerately as a soldier bears his scars of battle.
Nobody knew what the tree was, though it had been dubbed the oxenheart. Apparently it was a hybrid of sorts, part import, part native, though its indigenous cousins had been cleared away without incident when Fieldstar was first being settled. Some combination of foreign and familiar cells had given it the tenacity to endure any humiliation, any vilification—and not only to survive, but thrive.
I loved the moral implicit in that; I wanted desperately to believe that willpower and chemical makeup could make you stronger than your surroundings. I was a transplant myself, a hybrid sowed in uncertain soil. I hoped to grow just as strong, just as stubborn, just as irrepressible as the oxenheart tree.
Whenever I made my way around the environs of Thorrastone Manor, I did not neglect another significant part of my duties: checking the glimmering edge of the forcefield to make sure it did not show any signs of stress. It should not, if my reactors were functioning properly, but sometimes a lapse in the product was the first sign a tech would have that the machinery itself was experiencing a malfunction. So I strolled down the edge of the property and made sure there were no gaps in the iridescent fencing.
More than once my wanderings took me near the miners’ compound, and I stood at the edge of the domestic grounds, looking toward the forbidden property. I did not think I would be doing anyone a disservice if I continued to circle the entire perimeter of the forcefield, checking for trouble. But I held back and did not cross the invisible line into the restricted territory. Mrs. Farraday would hear of my trespass, no doubt, and she would be hurt at my disobedience and frightened of the connections I might make. My curiosity was not a good enough reason for me to cause her anxiety.
So I looked, wished, and turned back to my assigned area. Others, I learned one day, were not so docile.
This was a day as fine as Fieldstar offered, which was to say overcast and gray, but bright with a strange, reflected light that made my eyes squint against the glancing rays. The sun was so far away that its heat was insufficient to sustain human life; it provided adequate light but never achieved the brightness I had become used to on double-sunned Lora. The air, as always within the forcefield, was still and silent, and I fancied that even from a distance I could hear shouts and clanking noises from the mine nearly a mile behind me. I was more surprised to hear sounds coming from before me, for the first I noticed that I was not alone in my walk was when I heard the breathy, unmelodic sound of someone singing off tune.
I looked around quickly and finally spied the stranger sitting on a rustic bench installed by one of the hedges. She was badly dressed in a tunic and trousers that neither matched each other nor the oversize boots she had pulled on her feet. Her gray hair appeared to be uncombed, or at least neglected for the better part of the day, and her sallow face bore the evidence of some childhood scar that no one had bothered to pay to mend. All these signs led me to the obvious inferences : poor, underemployed, half-cit. These should not have led me to dislike her on sight, but there was a furtive, measuring expression in her eyes when she first caught my gaze that led me to distrust her instantly.
“Good afternoon,” I said, civilly enough, but tersely. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
Her eyes shifted behind me toward the compound. I wondered if she was meeting someone there or if that was where she belonged. “Is that right?” she said. “Well, I don’t believe I’ve seen you either.”
“Should we have met?” I asked. “Do you belong here in Thorrastone Park?”
A half-smile split her creased face. It did not make her any more attractive. “As well as I belong anywhere,” she said. He
r voice had a strange, unplaceable accent, as well as a rusty quality. She did not seem to be a person who often engaged in idle conversation.
“You work here, then? In the mines?”
She nodded in the direction of the compound, though the gesture was so vague that it could have meant she worked down in the spaceport, when she bothered to work at all. “Not in the mines, exactly,” she said, “but I do my job over there.”
“You’re a part of the cooking staff, perhaps?” I pursued.
She emitted a type of laughter I could only characterize as a cackle. “Efghf!” was her next indistinguishable comment. “As if anyone would eat my cooking.”
“Laundress, then? What exactly is your position?”
Her smile was secretive and unnerving. I felt apprehension skitter down my spine. “I suppose you might call it tech support,” she said.
“Tech support!” I exclaimed.
She added, before I could go on to voice my disbelief, “Just like you.”
That stopped me with my mouth half open. It had not occurred to me that I would be known to anyone who was a stranger to me, and I could not imagine how this odd creature could have come to hear about me. “Then we have much in common,” I said stiffly.
“Efghf,” she observed again. “I would doubt it.”
I glanced around me at the sheer, effervescent forcefield, and thought it looked just the slightest bit paler than it had. “I check the fields every day,” I said, just in case she thought I took my duties lightly. “To make sure everything is holding properly. I never overlook this chore. I hope someone does the same down at the mining compound?”
She shrugged elaborately. “Someone may,” she said. “It isn’t me. Not my sort of work.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure your task, whatever it is, is quite important,” I said, and I could not keep the cold tone from my voice. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be on my way, continuing with my own work.”
She waved a careless hand, as if releasing me from an obligation. “Go along with you. I’ll just sit here a while longer, enjoying the fine day.”
I nodded curtly and moved off, very deliberately stepping to the edge of the fencing. I did not see what she could have done to harm it; theoretically, it could withstand most limited assaults, from small meteor showers to rapid-fire projectile bullets. Even if she had heaved a rock or a knife at it, and somehow managed to breach its wall, the generator power made the field self-healing; there should be no permanent tear. But systems had failed before this, all because someone did not doublecheck reality against theory, and she did not look to me like the sort of person who could be trusted not to tamper with a seductive challenge. I examined the forcefield while she watched me, and hoped she realized why I chose to look it over again at just that moment. But I found nothing amiss.
Without saying another word to her, I headed back to the manor house, going immediately to the underground facility to read over the gauges. No disturbances registered; all, apparently, was well.
That night over dinner, I broached the topic with Mrs. Farraday. “I encountered the strangest woman today, as I was out walking through the grounds,” I said while the four of us ate our soup. Ameletta was noisily engaged in the act of eating, so her incessant chatter for the moment was silenced.
“Did you, now?” Mrs. Farraday asked comfortably. “Who might that have been?”
“I did not catch her name,” I said. “She was poorly dressed, and she was sitting by herself, singing, and she gave every appearance of being a vagrant—though I don’t know how one would have gotten on the grounds. She assured me she worked in the mine complex as a—a member of the tech support team.”
It might have been my imagination that Mrs. Farraday and Miss Ayerson exchanged quick, alarmed glances. But whatever chagrin Mrs. Farraday may have felt, she instantly mastered. “What did this strange woman look like? Do you recall?”
“She had gray hair and a scar on her face. A bad complexion, like she had not been much cared for in her life.”
Mrs. Farraday nodded and touched her napkin to her lips. “That was Gilda Parenon, I expect.”
“And she is in fact employed by Mr. Ravenbeck?” I demanded. “As a technician?”
Mrs. Farraday made the smallest gesture of uncertainty. “I suppose that would be the best description of her job.... It is very specialized—or so I’m told. Mr. Ravenbeck says it would be difficult to find someone to replace her.”
“So he has met her, then? He knows what sort of odd people he employs?”
“Oh, yes, I believe Mr. Ravenbeck is very aware of Gilda Parenon and her services. Now, Jenna, don’t let her disturb you. It is unlikely you’ll have any reason to run into her again.”
I could not escape the notion that I was being lied to, but I could think of no reason Mrs. Farraday would have for withholding the truth about Gilda Parenon—or indeed, any of the workers at Thorrastone Manor. “No, I don’t suppose I will,” I said slowly, “not if I never tour the mining compound.”
“And you won’t do that,” she said, almost playfully. “Here, Miss Ayerson, would you like more bread? Ameletta, dear, you could eat more daintily. A stranger here would believe we had starved you for half the week. Pass me your water glass, Jenna, and I will refill it. Thank you, dear....”
And so, with commonplaces and courtesies, the rest of the meal was passed without real conversation. But it seemed to me that Miss Ayerson studiously avoided meeting my gaze for the rest of the evening, and that Mrs. Farraday, not usually much of a chatterbox, never gave me the opportunity to lead the talk again. And I could not help believing that if there were something stranger about Gilda Parenon than her appearance, I would probably never learn it.
Chapter 4
When I had been at Thorrastone Manor little more than a month, my account was credited with my first paycheck. It was not a fabulous sum by any calculation, but it was more than I had ever earned in a comparable period in my life, and I was elated to receive it. Although I had not yet asked for a holiday, I knew that I was entitled to several during the course of the year. With my precious money finally available, a brief vacation was exactly what I wanted, so I notified Mrs. Farraday of my intent. And the next morning I was gone.
The public buses that serviced the holdings near Thorrastone Park made the circuit between the properties three times daily, once very early in the morning, once near noon, and once late in the day. I was up with the dawn in order to catch the early bus, and I was waiting in the assigned area a good half hour before it was scheduled to appear. Each of the holdings (so I had been told) were equipped, like Thorrastone Park, with a small airlock which would allow buses and closed aeromobiles and any other vehicles to safely enter their environs. There was, naturally, no forcefield over the uninhabited roadways and regions of the world, so any vehicles traveling between settled points had to be equipped with their own closed atmospheric systems—even the local buses that only covered a few hundred miles at a stretch.
I was used to waiting, but I admit to feeling some impatience by the time the sleek silver airbus darted into view. It eased into the airlock with an interesting suck and exchange of gases, and then it was safe for me to board. Naturally, the two dozen or so other passengers were all strangers to me, but I gave the whole assembled ridership one quick, neutral glance before settling into an unoccupied seat near a window.
The ride in, to me at least, was fascinating, for I had not left Thorrastone Park since my arrival and I had not, on my first journey from the spaceport, paid much attention to the landscape. There had been rough attempts at terraforming the whole surface of Fieldstar, but such work had been only rudimentary in the areas that were not actually supporting human life. Thus the route we followed took us over terrain that bore little resemblance to the manor’s thick lawn. The grasses were starved and pitiful, unlike the thick, coarse turf that formed our lawn; they, and the half-naked shrubbery, and the tall, twisted trees, were almost all of a uniform
fawn color with no hints of our own familiar green. Against the gray rocky soil from which they sprang, even their fugitive color seemed gay, a vibrant contrast. I found myself wishing I had any skill with paint or pencil so I could catch that bleak and delicate beauty on paper.
The lights of town, when we arrived nearly two hours later, seemed garish and overbright in comparison, and for a moment I was reluctant to disembark from the bus. But soon enough I forgot the minimalist delights of the prairie landscape, and turned with some enthusiasm to the more hedonistic pleasures of commerce.
As I had noted before, Fieldstar’s small spaceport was hardly a retailer’s dream, but it offered more variety and opportunity than I had seen for a while, and I spent a happy day wandering under its high, glittering dome. I did not have a large number of credits at my disposal, so I spent more time looking than buying. I did eye an apricot-colored silk pantsuit with a great deal of longing, even going to the extent of trying it on and visiting it two more times during the course of the afternoon, but I could envision no possible occasion on which such attire would be appropriate for a half-cit technician in an out-of-the-way holding, and so I resisted. In the end, I contented myself with buying two new serviceable gray tunics, a pair of comfortable shoes, another pair of khaki coveralls, and a length of pink ribbon for Ameletta. I also treated myself to a somewhat expensive lunch, which included a fruit-tart dessert so delicious I almost could not resist ordering a second.
After the meal, I shopped some more, then spent some time viewing a new art show at the tiny museum. My packages, though not many, began to grow heavy, and I was just as glad when it was time for me to catch my bus back to Thorrastone. I waited for a little while in the airbus terminal till my bus arrived, then I climbed aboard and settled against the cushion with a sigh of satisfied exhaustion.