“Aye,” replied Brian Wallace. “Couldn’t have spoken a truer word.”
The Shirff crossed his arms, stared long and hard at Harpreet, and finally nodded. “You’ve got yourself a contract, then, ma’am.” He spit into his palm and held his hand out to her.
Not batting an eye, Harpreet spit into her own palm and the two shook hands.
Pavel had never seen an odder way to seal an agreement and had to hastily covered his laughter with a small fit of coughing.
Samuel, who’d stared wide-eyed at the strangers during the entirety of the negotiations, tugged at his mother’s shirtsleeve. “Can we go now?” he asked. “The sun’s about to set and I want to look out for … someone.”
“Hush,” said Marie to her son, looking embarrassed.
“Are they coming to the bonfire?” demanded Samuel. “It’ll be a big celebration,” he added for the benefit of the newcomers.
“What are you celebrating?” asked Pavel.
The Shirff ruffled the small boy’s hair and shrugged. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it, Samuel?”
“Renard’s coming back,” said the little boy, thrusting his lower lip out. “I know it.”
Dropping to one knee beside him, the Shirff spoke in an over-loud whisper to the boy. “I sure hope you’re right about that, but let’s keep it to ourselves, shall we? Your ma didn’t raise you to speak of the departed, now did she, son?”
The little boy cast his eyes to the ground. “No,” he said. “She raised me good. But sometimes words just wiggle out before I can stop them.”
Still in an exaggerated whisper, the Shirff replied, “I know some adults with the same problem. You keep working on it, Samuel.”
The Shirff stood and addressed the five visitors. “Now, then, let’s talk water, shall we? What can you offer as might persuade desert folk to part with their food and drink?”
The negotiations for satellite dish construction had not, apparently, included daily sustenance for the group.
Marie excused herself and Samuel. Roy remained with the Shirff, his hand still resting beside his knife.
At Pavel’s side, Ethan spoke quietly. “Our addition of five persons will tax this community.” Ethan pointed at the water reclamation schematics he’d pulled up earlier.
“Hey,” said Roy, taking a sudden interest in Ethan’s screen. “How’d you get that information on your holoscreen?”
“He’s a genius,” said Pavel, his dark eyes glowering. “I doubt you or I would understand the explanation of how he did it.”
“That’s our water reclamation,” complained Roy. “Shirff, he’s got his grubby little fingers all over it, movin’ stuff around.”
“What you observe is an artificial copy of your system,” said Ethan. “I am merely testing an idea to upgrade your settling pond to a higher level of efficiency.”
The Shirff chuckled and Roy’s chest swelled.
“I’ll have you know,” said Roy, “That we’ve got water loss due to evaporation down to three-point-five percent. I’d like to see anyone else do better.”
“Would you?” asked Ethan. He swiveled the screen so that Roy could see it without having to strain. “And would you consider an evaporation loss of point-zero-two percent to be an improvement?”
Roy made a sound between a snort and a grunt. “Course I would. But that’s plain impossible. And I oughta know—I run the settling basin.” He turned to the Shirff. “Sir, I’d like you to order this feller out of my reclamation program.”
“I am not interfering with your operations,” said Ethan. “I have merely suggested improvements.”
“That’s quite friendly of you,” said the Shirff, moving closer to inspect Ethan’s screen as well. “Roy, you’ve got to admit that’s friendly.” His tone invited Roy to reconsider any further use of confrontational language.
Ethan looked up from his screen and spoke to the Shirff. “Sir, I have transferred my recommendations to your central processing unit where you may take them under consideration.” He hesitated and then added. “I have looked briefly at other water systems in your settlement and am prepared to make further suggestions to improve efficiency.”
“Well, I’ll be,” said the Shirff, examining the recommended changes. “You surely know your way around a decant pond.”
“Mayhap he does at that,” admitted Roy.
Pavel grinned broadly.
The Shirff held out a hand. “You just earned water rights for five for the next … well, I have to admit I don’t know for how long. There’s no precedent for this sort of thing. I’ll have accounting take a look first thing tomorrow morning. Welcome to Yucca, friends.”
~ ~ ~
Pavel looked at Harpreet beside him, her dark skin catching flickers of firelight, a small smile upon her mouth. She struck Pavel as the sort of person who would fit in anywhere. The sort of person who could stand before his aunt and remain unimpressed and unruffled. The sort of person he wished he could be.
Turning his gaze back to the fire, he rubbed his hands together. The desert by night was much cooler than he’d remembered. Of course, he’d probably been asleep in a camp-cocoon for hours by this time when he was a child visiting the desert.
The company gathered round represented, Pavel now knew, the entire settlement of Yucca—some twenty families. That the visitors had been allowed to join the others at the bonfire was no insignificant matter. From what Pavel had been able to gather, they were awaiting the arrival or non-arrival of a young man his own age—the much-anticipated Renard of whom Samuel had spoken.
“I know of several ancient Earth cultures who practiced this sort of survival testing for their young members,” Harpreet remarked softly. “Perhaps you have heard of something like this?”
But Pavel shook his head. The only ceremony he knew of for becoming an adult was the first-body exam he’d taken. Even though less than three calendar months had passed, it seemed as if that had been years ago.
Harpreet continued. “To survive in the desert for three days alone is no small feat. I should not like to attempt it upon my world.”
Pavel nodded agreement. He wouldn’t want to wander out into the desert alone either. But there was a part of him that envied Renard. To be able to prove himself in such a fashion—to deserve the respect of his fellows—this Pavel earnestly desired. You’re nothing but a city boy, his mind whispered. Soft through and through.
“Of course, you have accomplished more,” continued Harpreet. “To have survived apart from the life you were raised to for so many months already. Renard was raised to this existence. But what you have done? Well, it is no small thing, my son.”
Pavel flushed. It felt a small enough accomplishment to him.
From somewhere outside the pale of the firelight, a low sound thrummed.
“A cello,” sighed Brian Wallace. “Lovely instrument, that.”
And it was. Pavel thought the growing strains sounded like a voice, deep and resonant and tinged with a sorrow too profound for words. As the sound grew more insistent, Pavel’s eyes located the source. A single cellist played alone, wringing sweet and anguished notes from the instrument. Swaying ever so slightly as he played, the musician embraced the cello, holding it to him like a lover, fingering the frets with an intimacy born of many years’ familiarity. They knew one another, thought Pavel, the player and his instrument. It made Pavel ache for someone who would know him that well, draw from him those notes so clear and beautiful.
When the piece ended, Pavel looked around to see if clapping was appropriate, but the desert folk applauded in a different way. Beside and behind him, people rubbed their palms together. It made a sound like a soughing wind, gathering and then dying off. The cellist bowed deeply before beginning another piece, a merrier one that brought children wriggling from parent’s laps to dance about the great fire.
And then, just as Pavel recognized that one of the dancers was taller than his fellows, a cry went up around the circle.
; “Renard!”
“It’s Renard!”
Pavel found himself smiling, even though Renard was a stranger. The enthusiasm was contagious, and when all about him began to clap (apparently they did clap for some things), Pavel joined in.
After a minute, Renard held his hands up and all fell silent.
“I am Renard, son of Ambrose and Keiko, foster-son to Marie and Roy,” he said. “I have returned to Yucca after a three-days’ sojourn in the deserted places. I ask this community to receive me as a full member. I vow to carry my own water-weight and to relieve those whose burden has grown too great when the chance falls to me. Will you have me as your full brother?”
Having said this, Renard turned so that his back was to the seated community, his face to the fire. He held his hands slightly out from his sides. Almost immediately his hands were taken up by two who slipped forward. Then, one by one, the adult members of the community stepped to the fire to link hands, creating an ever-enlarging circle about the bonfire. The children skipped around the circle, sometimes darting under the linked hands. At last an old woman smoking a clay pipe was the only citizen still seated beside the five strangers. Then, slowly, she stood and walked to close the gap by taking the last two hands.
“Renard, I declare you a citizen of Yucca by unanimous consent,” said the wizened woman, pipe clenched between her teeth as she spoke.
A round of whoops and hollers echoed around the fire as people rushed forward to congratulate, hug, and otherwise smother Renard.
After several minutes had passed in this manner, Pavel saw Samuel tugging hard at one of Renard’s hands. The young boy succeeded in pulling Renard toward the strangers.
“This is my foster-brother,” said Samuel, beaming from ear to ear. “He came back to us. I knew he would.”
“Of course I chose Yucca,” said Renard, scooping Samuel up and tickling him. “Who are your new friends?” he asked, staring from the little boy to the five he didn’t know.
“Strangers,” said Samuel, his eyes wide. “But they’re okay,” he added in a loud whisper.
Ethan spoke the question Pavel was thinking. “Was the choice yours to make? To return or depart?”
Renard’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the same choice everyone here has to make, once they’re grown: Join the community or leave it for conventional life. We take three days on our own to decide.”
“Or die in the desert,” said Samuel with relish. “You could have died, too, you know.”
Renard laughed and tossed Samuel into the air. “And miss the party?”
A laughing group of young men and women Renard’s age came by and swept him off to where dancing had now begun, a fiddler and drummer having joined the cellist.
“Well, about time for bed, is it then?” asked Brian Wallace.
Pavel itched to stay, but this wasn’t his party; these weren’t his friends. And so when Dr. Zaifa and Harpreet nodded and Ethan turned his hoverchair from the fire, Pavel fell in behind.
But as he drifted to sleep in his borrowed bed, Pavel thought of the laughter and dancing by firelight, of the wild and sweet sounds the cello had made, of the firmness of purpose in Renard’s declaration, and he wished he’d been born an impoverished son of the desert instead of a privileged nephew of Lucca Brezhnaya.
~ ~ ~
The five strangers became Renard’s first official responsibility as full citizen during the course of the next days. With Renard’s help, Zaifa, Ethan, and Wallace were kept busy planning and beginning construction of the deep-space satellite dishes for transmissions to Mars. Renard understood manufacturing to a degree even Ethan admired. But Pavel found a better reason to befriend him: Renard liked racing. Whenever Pavel rose early enough, Renard would come by to suggest a set of laps around one of several courses. Renard’s smaller ship was swift and maneuverable, but Pavel took risks that often paid off in a win.
When Renard discovered Pavel’s background in medicine, Pavel was sent round to set and re-set bones, provide basic dental care, and make his best guess as to odd skin rashes. Harpreet assisted, offering her particular brand of wisdom to adults and children alike. It was rewarding work, and over the course of the next week Pavel felt more and more like an accepted part of the community.
Through these interactions, Pavel became fascinated by the sort of life the desert-dwellers had created, so far from government control.
“It’s the radioactivity makes it all possible,” said Renard one morning after a race. “An instance of a curse becoming a blessing, I suppose.”
Pavel blinked as the two watched the sun cresting a set of rocky hills. “I’ve seen the high rad numbers,” replied Pavel. “And I’ve kept my eye on the numbers every time I do an exam, but it’s like no one’s affected. Heck, even the five of us look just as normal as if we’d spent no time here at all.”
Renard smiled, pulling his long hair through a tie. “It’s the tea. I wondered when you’d ask.”
“The tea?” asked Pavel.
“Only full citizens are instructed in its preparation,” replied Renard. “So don’t ask me how to make it.”
“Oh,” said Pavel, understanding dawning upon him. Along with his friends, he’d been offered a bitter drink twice daily. Their hosts had said it helped regulate health, and Pavel had been meaning to analyze its components. “I assumed it was some kind of aid against dehydration,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to get some under a spectroscope.”
Renard frowned. “Best not to examine the tea. Folks might take that as suspicious behavior. The tea is what keeps us alive out here.”
Pavel nodded. More than ever, he was curious about the tea’s constituent parts, but he saw the wisdom of keeping his curiosity to himself. They were here as tolerated guests.
But after a few more weeks had gone past, Pavel found himself itching to know what herb or root or mineral it might be that went into the brewing of the mysterious tea. He determined to ask the Shirff for permission to analyze an undiluted sample.
So, when a morning came that Renard didn’t show up for racing, Pavel trekked over to the Shirff’s dwelling.
“I’ve got a question from a medical standpoint about the tea we’re drinking every day,” Pavel said. “But I don’t want to investigate without your say-so. Would you be amenable to giving me a sample I can analyze?”
“Interesting question,” replied the Shriff. His cool tones ought to have been a warning to Pavel.
“I figured you’d be the one to ask for permission,” Pavel said.
“Shirff here’s not in a partic’lar answerifying way today,” said a familiar voice.
Pavel looked about for the source and saw Roy rising from a shadowed corner of the Shirff’s dwelling.
The Shirff raised a hand to silence the man and gazed at Pavel, head tilted slightly to one side, a frown creasing his brow. “Roy’s been insisting you looked familiar, like he’d seen you somewhere before. This morning he showed me a picture.” The Shirff stared long and hard at Pavel. “Can you tell me what exactly the Chancellor’s own nephew might be doing in these parts asking after secrets kept by settlements as like to bide on the shady side of Terran law?”
Pavel swallowed. And tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t land him or his friends tied to a cactus and left to die in the desert.
28
FATE OF A LONE GIRL
Jessamyn awoke the next morning with the sense of having left something undone. The solars? Did Mom ask me to give them a scrub? Rolling over, her arm struck the metal bar designed to prevent her from tumbling out of her bunk, and she came fully awake, millions of kilometers from her mom and the solars. Her throat felt awful—like it had the day she’d dared her brother to eat sand. Ethan had sensibly declined, but Jessamyn, curious, had tried it. One painful swallow had been enough to keep her from consuming more.
She climbed out of her bunk and shuffled to the rations room where she drank not one but two water packets to soothe her burning throat.
“Water-grubber,” she murmured to herself. Talking hurt, so she made a mental note to stop. It was time for a ration bar. Jessamyn found herself holding it unopened in her hand, certain it would hurt to swallow. Shoving it in a pocket, she decided she’d think about eating later. It was the sort of thing she’d seen her brother do dozens of times. She could do worse than grow up to be like him, she reasoned. Well, minus the part where he got captured by Terrans and re-bodied.
Making her way to the bridge, she went through the routine of verifying her heading. Everything checked out nominally, and after a boring hour at the helm, Jess decided to pay an extended visit to the ob-deck. Perhaps she’d do a bit of napping as well. She felt so lethargic, even with what had been a very good night’s rest behind her. A nap in the ob-deck sounded idyllic right now.
She opened the seal-door. The room’s lighting, normally dimmed for better viewing, glowed warmly on its “orchid” setting.
“I suppose you think you need that light,” she rasped to the plant. The pain in her throat reminded her of her intention to avoid speech, and she thought the rest of her words.
Well, I’m sorry, but I’m turning the light off anyway.
Feeling ridiculous for sending thoughts to Crusty’s plant, Jess was just about to settle for her nap when she saw the nasty blackened patch had grown, spreading across one entire leaf. Or petal. Or whatever they were called. Moving closer and squatting before the plant, Jess twisted the watering bowl to examine the far side. Nothing bad over there, at least. But in twisting the bowl, she disturbed the slimy growth between the watering bowl and the pot.
She pulled back. It had moved on from green and ugly. Now it was brown and nasty.
And that was when Jessamyn recalled the thoughts that had passed through her mind as she’d fallen to sleep. Air filtration. Her sore throat. The slime on the plant.
“Oh, no,” she murmured. What was it Crusty had said about the filter? That he’d had to order a new one? Jess couldn’t remember him telling her that he had installed the new one, only that he was waiting for it. When had that been? Dread filled her belly.
Defying Mars (Saving Mars Series-2) Page 18