The Breath of Suspension

by Jablokov, Alexander

  “His pride?” Tessa was outraged. “What about mine?”

  “He’s only thirteen.”

  “Time for him to start learning about what’s important.” They stared at each other. “Any other objections?”

  “No. There’s too much to get done.” He walked slowly away, dart rifle under his arm.

  Kevin ran out of the house. “Ben’s crying!” His earnest face demanded more information.

  “Yes, Kevin. He’s very upset.”

  This seemed sufficient explanation. Kevin reached into the bin and wrestled out a tuber as long as he was. “Can I help?” It slithered in his arms as if alive. He stumbled around trying to subdue it, his face a mask of grim resolve. Tessa turned away, using every ounce of determination to keep from laughing. Pride was nothing to be trifled with.

  ❖

  “We all climb up here,” Dalka said, breath wheezing dangerously as she labored up the trail. “But each of us seeks something different.” She pulled herself up onto a rock ledge, grunting. Below her was a hundred-meter drop. She sat down to dangle her feet over the edge and pulled out her pipe. On a planet with higher gravity she would have been confined; on Koola she was free.

  “Men hunt,” Tessa said, sitting down next to her.

  “They do. To no good purpose, in protein/energy balance terms.” Dalka puffed the pipe to light. “The time would be more usefully spent planting another crop.”

  “I don’t think they see it in protein/energy balance terms.”

  “That’s why they need us, dear.” Above their ledge was a slope made up of large toppled rock slabs. Dalka gestured at it. “We come up here for necessaries, not silly animals. The air’s right up here for the proper lichens. They should be on the shaded sides of those rocks.”

  The air was thin and cold, shrugging off any influence of human beings. It was a high Shield air, dry and unforgiving. Tessa took the dry feeling in her nostrils as a benison. They had been climbing all morning, floating up the tilted cliff side, to this specific hanging alcove, a special place of Dalka’s. The lush bottom of Cooperset Canyon was now invisible behind cliffs and towers of rock.

  Tessa climbed partway up the rock fall and searched shadowed cracks for the particular silver-blue lichen Dalka wanted. Its paracrinelike secretions were specific and rare, essential to Dalka’s enzyme operations. Was this really how she wanted to spend her rare days free of farm work? Tessa sighed, carefully inaudible.

  “We do have to watch out for them, of course.” Dalka’s tenor voice carried easily on the breeze. “They know these high valleys, of course, as well as we do. Better, maybe, because they run around so much, chasing their beasts.” She made the admission grudgingly. “But they still get lost, and since they’re convinced that they don’t get lost, they’re hard to find. You’ll find an occasional dried-up body in a crevasse—the bad end of an unsuccessful hunting trip. No telling how old they are.”

  Tessa paused and peered down into the shadows. Was that a bony hand stretching out toward the sunlight from beneath the rock? No, no, it was just a couple of dried twigs. She squinted at it one last time and went back to work. A patch of the necessary lichen covered the top lip of a particularly precarious rock.

  “So how do you watch out for them?” she asked, after a moment. Dalka did not reply immediately, but sent up an exceptionally large puff of smoke, as if to remind Tessa where she was.

  Tessa chimneyed up to the lichen and hung there as she scraped at it. It smelled bitter and dusty. From her precarious perch she could see the shattered teeth of Ariel’s, Fulda’s, Top Hat, and Angel’s Buttes, blue with distance. To the right, visible only as a succession of ever-hazier ranges, was the height of the Boss, the Plateau hidden behind it. A sand hawk flew overhead, catching a thermal from the open area at the base of Caspar’s Lith. Tessa paused in her work, feeling the glory of the heights. There was nothing she liked better than walking the high cliffs, when she had a chance. Dalka did too, puffing and wheezing her way formidably up the slopes, so they made natural companions.

  “A number of ways,” Dalka said finally. Another pause. “Most they don’t know about.”

  “Oh, Dalka,” Tessa said, exasperated. “I’m not going to tell.”

  “I’m sure you won’t, dear. Even under the soft blossoms of the tangleflowers.”

  “When the time for that comes, I’m sure I’ll have other things to talk about.”

  Dalka laughed explosively. “Fair enough, child. And secrets cease to be anything if no one knows them. Well... my favorite is a simple one. Do you clean your brothers’ boots?”

  “Only Kevin’s. He’s young and they’re really tiny, so it’s fun. The others stay dirty.”

  “Give it a try. Just a bit of extra work, nothing for a woman. There’s a leather polish, an emollient and binder complex, that works well. As a side effect, the boots then leave traces on the rocks. A few simple enzyme reactions and you can track any given pair of boots, if you have a sensitive nose.” She chortled. “And the men think you’re doing it so their feet will be clean-shod.”

  Tessa smiled despite herself. She was starting to think that she might enjoy being as sly as Dalka. She thought about her brothers, and the wapiti, and their male secrets. “Can you show me?”

  Dalka smoked thoughtfully while Tessa finished collecting the lichen. “Certainly. It’s a set of reactions useful for other purposes as well, so we aren’t even being frivolous.”

  They cooked dinner over a portable heater and rolled out their sleeping bags right near the cliff’s edge. Mountains disappeared one by one into the darkness. The rasp of the wind’s cold grew sharper.

  “Dalka,” Tessa said as she lay in her bag staring up at the star-filled sky. “What was my mother looking for?”

  “You mean, with all those ancient bugs of hers? Ancestors, I think.”

  “Ancestors?”

  “Of course. We all need them. Look at these wards families spend so much time on. They seek roots to support their branches. Sora just decided that her roots lay here, on Koola, and not anywhere else in the universe. She spent her time trying to understand those roots. It made no sense to me, mind, but that was her business.”

  “I was born on Koola,” Tessa said.

  “That you were, child. Go to sleep.”

  Before Tessa knew it, it was morning, and time to climb back down into the canyon to resume her labors.

  ❖

  Tessa awoke in darkness. She didn’t move or thrash around but tried to figure out why she was awake. She lay in her own bed in her own room, and a trace of moonlight came through the window. A shadowy figure loomed.

  “Tessa!” Dom hissed. “Wake up.”

  “I’m awake. Why?”

  “It’s that idiot, Benjamin. He’s gone off.”

  “Get clear, Dom.”

  “He thinks he’s found the trail of that damn wapiti.” Dom was disgusted. “He’s been fascinated by it since Momma’s funeral.”

  “I know. He’s not been too clear on why.”

  “He wants to kill it. It will redeem our family.”

  “Doesn’t he know that doesn’t make any sense?” Tessa said. “Never mind that! We have to get him. Now. This is a goddam embarrassment.”

  Tessa got out of bed and dressed herself. After a moment’s hesitation she grabbed her small bag of chemicals and reagents, wondering if, in future years, it would grow to the size of Dalka’s. Perin was still asleep, but an excited Kevin waited for them below. “Where are you going?” he cried.

  “Shh, Kevin,” Tessa said. “You’ll wake Poppa.”

  “Where are you going?” His voice was the barest whisper, carefully enunciated.

  “Benjamin—gotten lost—night—we have to find him—you take care of Poppa.” Dom and Tessa interrupted each other in their whispered description.

  Kevin listened gravely, then lifted his arm in a farewell salute. “Good luck. Should I make pancakes for when you get back?”

  “No,” Tess
a said. “You’ll just make a mess.”

  Kevin pouted. “You never give me any credit.” He sat down on the floor and started playing with the blocks Perin had made for him. There wasn’t time to convince him to go back to bed.

  “His usual hunting trek is up Pong’s Defile, over Torfoot Jumble, and up into Born or Oak,” Dom puffed over his shoulder as they ran. “The only thing we can do is start there.” Both Koola’s moons had risen and gave a clear light.

  “Good luck that the moons are out,” Tessa said as they clambered over the rocks of Torfoot Jumble.

  “If you think about it, little sister, you’ll realize that that’s the reason he chose tonight to go wapiti hunting.”

  “Oh.”

  Dom slowed, and stopped at the splitting point of Born and Oak Canyons. There was no sign of which way Benjamin had gone, if he had indeed come this way at all. Dom sighed and was clearly about to pick a direction at random. Her brother was a careful man, Tessa knew, and that necessity must have been driving him crazy.

  Tessa shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Can you wait a minute? I’ll be right back.”

  “Sure.” Dom sat down on a rock and stared morosely at the forking canyons ahead.

  Tessa wandered off among the rocks as if finicky about where she was going to relieve herself. There were three or four easy ways up to the two canyons, and Benjamin would certainly have taken the route of least resistance. His boots, cleaned and oiled diligently by Tessa to Dalka’s instructions, would have left distinct traces on the rocks.

  So Tessa walked, stumbling over unseen obstructions, and searched out the trails that had led up this way since—she grimaced—time immemorial. At every likely spot she sprayed a bit of the enzyme complex Dalka had given her. On her sixth try she smelled the sharp stink of the reaction. Benjamin had gone up Born Canyon.

  But there was no visible trace of Benjamin’s passing. She wasn’t about to explain the whole enzyme business to Dom, so she needed a better reason for deciding that this was the right direction. A few minutes of search up and down the trail rewarded her: just the trace of Benjamin’s boot tread in a patch of sand.

  “Dom!” she shouted. “Here!”

  He appeared in moments and stared down at the almost imperceptible boot print. “Good job, Tessa,” he said, finally. He scanned his eyes slowly up the trail, and pointed out something Tessa had not seen, a twig broken by Benjamin’s climb over a rock fall. “Let’s go.”

  “It was a lucky find,” Tessa said. “I was just—”

  “I said good job and I meant it. Don’t waste energy worrying about my pride. Let’s go.”

  Tessa followed, slightly ashamed of herself.

  They crossed a spur and Tessa saw a glow in the distance. Dawn? No—it was early for that yet. The light source rose out of the rocks, far away, visible through a crack in the canyon wall beyond. Suddenly, she realized what it was: the lights of Perala. Where the Hammerswick Academy still was, most of its students virtuously asleep except for those who were even more virtuously up studying. She remembered her time there, an interval of civilization in her life. Now she was climbing through the dark mountains with one crazy intent brother in pursuit of a second. Perala looked so close, as if she could reach out, grab the top of Rock Bastion, which guarded its upstream approach, and pull herself there to drop into her old bed in the dorm.

  Dom was already far ahead of her. She hurried in pursuit.

  Dawn seemed to grow out of the earth itself, slowly defining the bulk of rocks in shades of dark blue. Dom and Tessa found themselves moving more quickly and surely before they realized why. Dorn’s quick hunter’s eye had found several more traces of Benjamin’s passing.

  The box canyon they climbed narrowed to a crack and grew steeper. A cold wind blew through it from somewhere high above. Tessa fancied she could smell the fresh grasses of the Plateau. Perhaps they would find the high plainsmen if they kept climbing.

  “He’s a young idiot.” Dom had been improvising variations on this theme since they started. “No one should be this high alone.” They clambered out of the crack and over a crumbling ridge. A narrow canyon lay ahead of them. Dom pointed. “There.”

  Benjamin was a tiny dot on the opposite slope, moving slowly, like someone tired and unsure of what he was doing. He disappeared over the top and they slid down the talus to the bottom of the canyon, sight of their quarry giving their legs new strength.

  When they reached the top of the next ridge, Benjamin turned and saw them standing high above him. He stopped dead for a moment, as if not believing they were there, then started to run.

  “An especial kind of idiot. He’s going to hurt himself.”

  Dom had barely spoken before a rock turned under Benjamin’s foot and he vanished from their view. He didn’t make a sound.

  “Damn it!” Dom pointed to the right. “You go this way. I’ll slide this way. Damn him for a fool.”

  Tessa reached Benjamin first. His arm was broken, his face covered with agonized sweat, but he still struggled up the next slope, whining like an injured animal. He wailed and tried desperately to bring his dart rifle to bear on something ahead of him.

  Tessa looked up. Looming over them, as it had at Momma’s funeral, was a Great Wapiti. It stared down at them, curved horns sharp against the cloudless sky.

  Benjamin whimpered and lowered his weapon. He could not fire it with only one arm. The wapiti waited majestically for a moment, as if to see the outcome of Benjamin’s struggle, then bounded over a rock and was gone.

  “Damn you! Damn you!” Benjamin sobbed in great heaves. “It’s all your fault. You lost him for me. If it wasn’t for you... oh, damn you!”

  “Benjamin—we were just trying to find you. It’s all right. It’s all right. Let’s take care of this arm.”

  He shoved her away with his good arm, refusing to be comforted, and sobbed all the louder. It was finally too much for her.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Ben, stop being such a big baby. You’re being absolutely ridiculous.”

  Dom slid down the slope. Saying nothing, he matter-of-factly took care of Benjamin’s arm with an inflatable splint from his emergency kit. He sat his brother up against a rock and looked at him. Benjamin looked back, trying to control his tears.

  “Don’t worry, Ben.” Dorn’s voice was soothing. “It’s not a failure because you tried as hard as you could. It’s almost impossible to track a wapiti. It’s amazing you did what you did.”

  Benjamin’s face was transformed with pride. He looked challengingly at Tessa, closing ranks with his brother against the female interloper. Tessa felt rage, and disappointment. After that long companionable climb up the canyons, Dom had turned against her, as she had all along feared he would.

  “But that was no excuse for acting like a self-important idiot,” Dom continued, not raising his voice. “To go off without warning in the middle of the night... Tessa and I had to track you all the way up here. It was a self-centered, stupid, arrogant, inconsiderate thing to do, and if you ever try it again I’ll use you to fertilize the melon vines.”

  Benjamin’s face went slack at this transformation of his brother from ally to scold. Tessa stepped away to give them privacy while Dom chewed Benjamin out and to keep herself from putting in her bit, which she desperately wanted to do. That would be too much. Pride, after all, was at stake.

  Then she saw it. Projecting from the rubble at the cliffs base was the snout of a huge fossil trilobite. It gleamed in the sun, for it seemed to be made entirely of iron pyrite.

  “Dom!” she said, feeling an excitement she could not entirely explain. “Come here and look.”

  Dom looked and, without further bidding, began to dig the rubble away from it so that they could see it better. She joined him. As they dug, the sun rose and filled the high canyon. After a while, lacking any more productive activity, Benjamin came and lent the assistance of his one good arm.

  The fossil had been freed from its matrix by a recent rockslide.
The rubble covering it was loose. In an hour the entire thing was revealed, glittering like a spacecraft from another star. It was a perfectly preserved specimen, almost as large as the ones guarding the approach to Top field.

  Dom touched it, feeling the precise lines of its carapace. “That was pretty silly.” His forehead was beaded with sweat. “Am I helping you continue Momma’s fossil collection? What are we supposed to do with it now?”

  “We carry it down.” Tessa was calmly certain.

  Dom laughed. “Are you out of your mind, dear little sister? This thing must weigh half a ton. Look at the size of it.”

  Tessa did and finally saw it, not as a mystic symbol, her link to her mother and, through her mother, to the planet itself, but as a giant hunk of iron ore. She let out a sigh. Bringing it home would have been just the right closure for Sora’s departure from their family, something brought hack from the heights just as Momma had been carried up and left. It would have made things seem to make sense. She felt hitter disappointment.

  Benjamin plucked at its edge. “It seems to be loose here.”

  “You’re delirious,” Dorn said. “It’s the pain killers. Let’s stop wasting our time and head home. There’s work to do.”

  “Dom, will you look at it?” Benjamin was exasperated. “Just for a second.”

  Dom did so. He frowned, then put both hands under the edge and heaved. The muscles stood out in his arms and back and the shell pulled up, so easily that he almost stumbled. The pyrite carapace was hollow. He peered underneath, as if fearing something concealed. “How did this happen?”

  Tessa sat down, feeling light-headed. “I bet that after this trilobite died, scavengers ate out the innards. Only the hard shell was left to be replaced by the pyrite inclusion. It’s like a giant’s shield. Can we try to pick it up?”

  The three of them hefted it. There were enough spikes and protrusions that it was easy to hold on to. It was still heavy, but perfectly possible to carry. She looked at her brothers. “Will you help me?”

  “Yes,” Benjamin said, eager to make peace.