watch’m alter
MIRA
The storm blew out more quickly than it had started. The women stayed still, as if afraid of what might follow. Some sobbed, but most stayed silent, worn out from the exertion of breathing.
The doorbridge began to open but became jammed on the build-up of sand. ‘It’s over,’ Cass called to them from the small opening. ‘It’s over but we shall have to dig the sand away.’
Innis was the first to move, pushing roughly over Mira and Vito to help Liesl out.
Kristo raised a hand to ward him off but Mira stopped him—she had no heart for such confrontations. She felt more concern for the korm who roosted next to her, barely moving.
The barge emptied slowly, two at a time, until only Mira and Josefia were left. Cass waited for them on the mound of sand.
Outside, the dust-filled air filtered the sting of the sunlight. Visibility had increased to several mesurs and Mira could see the squat outline of thorn bushes scattered along the base of the dune. ‘Are we near water?’ she asked, hopeful.
‘Perhaps—I haven’t looked yet. I couldn’t open the door until the wind had dropped. Had to dig sand away from it, too.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘Cells ran down when the storm got bad. One of the young ones... she... died in my arms.’ Cass gave a raw, shuddering sound—something much deeper than a sob—and walked around the side of the barge.
Mira turned to Josefia. ‘Everyone needs a ration of food and another drink.’ She handed Vito to the young woman. ‘Give him my bread but soak it in water first. Little pieces so he won’t choke. We won’t be able to move until the dells charge. Make sure that the rest understand to stay near the barge—the dust will take days to settle.’
Josefia nodded, calling others to help her.
‘Kristo?’ said Mira.
‘Si, Baronessa.’ He was hovering close behind her still.
‘There’s a... body in the cabin. Can you... bury her? Quietly.’
Kristo nodded and disappeared around the side.
Mira felt immeasurably grateful to him, not simply because he had pulled her inside the barge but because she did not have to explain herself to him. At some level, despite their differences, he saw things as she did. She had not experienced that before.
She found Cass crouching alongside the tracks, her hands on her knees, facefilm open. Even in the thick air, Mira could see that she had been sick, could smell it.
She stood behind Cass on trembling legs, unable to think of anything to say.
Eventually Cass straightened. Tears had left dirty tracks down her cheeks and chin. ‘It was one of the older ones. Katia. Her face went—’
Mira held her hand up to forestall the explanation. She could not stand to hear it, no matter how much Cass needed to give it.
‘How long until the cells are charged?’ she said gently.
‘A day, perhaps—it depends on the dust. If we take the canopy off, everyone can rest. We’ll start again tomorrow.’
‘The korm needs something to eat. I will search a little among the thorn bushes.’
Cass nodded, understanding. ‘Take the pathfinder from the cabin. We won’t be able to come looking for you if you get lost.’
* * *
Mira collected her rationed drink and checked on Vito. He grizzled as Josefia sat on the ground trying to feed him. Clear fluid ran from his nose and mixed with the dirt and spittle on his chin. He reached for Mira but she resisted picking him up. ‘I must look for food for the korm, can you watch him?’
Josefia made an unhappy noise. ‘I am so tired, Baronessa, and he is not my ‘bino.’
‘I’m sorry. I know. Please.’
Josefia nodded wearily. ‘Do not be long.’
Mira threaded her way through bodies, looking for the korm. When she could not find it, she returned to the barge where she found Kristo replacing the shovel. ‘Have you seen the korm?’
‘She watched me bury the ragazza. I tried to get her to leave but...’ He shrugged. ‘She’s probably still there.’
Mira had a sinking feeling. ‘Where is the grave?’
Kristo pointed to the ridge in front of the barge.
Mira fetched the pathfinder from the cabin and walked in that direction. She found the korm scratching feebly at the grave, turning over the sand with which Kristo had covered the body.
‘Korm?’
It whistled weakly but would not look at her. Even in the dull, dust-laden light Mira could see that its crest was flat and dry. Patches of fur had rubbed off and the blue skin was covered in small grey sores.
‘S’ck,’ it said after a time.
Mira took a step closer. She brushed caked dirt from its back with her glove. It flinched in pain. ‘You cannot eat our dead. They will hate you for it. They might harm you. What can I find for you?’
The korm made a weak, swerving movement with its forearm. ‘Ch’cl.’
‘Checclia? But they are poisonous.’
The korm shook its head.
‘Then I will catch some.’
The korm stopped scraping at the grave and sank into the dust. It made a sound that frightened Mira—a dying sound. She ran back to the barge. The canopy was down and Cass sat near an edge with Thomaas, chewing slowly through the last of her pane. Near the doorbridge, some of the women had already begun digging the sand away with their hands.
‘I need the rifle to hunt with; the korm must have food.’
Cass didn’t argue, just nodded in Marrat’s direction. He was on the opposite edge, close to where Innis lay with his hand on Liesel’s thigh. Mira walked around to him, aware that people’s gazes were on her. Most had their facefilms open and she could see their dully curious expressions. Would they care that the korm was dying?
‘There might be checclia out after the storm. I need the rifle,’ Mira said.
“Esques can’t eat checclia,’ Marrat objected. ‘Stinkin’, spittin’ poisonous things.’
Mira lowered her voice. ‘But korms can.’
He shook his head, scowling at her. ‘Unlikely to hit a checclia with a rifle—waste of ammunition.’
‘Please,’ Mira begged.
‘Innis—’ Marrat called.
She grabbed his arm urgently. ‘The korm will die if it does not eat. It has had nothing while we’ve all had something.’’
Marrat became still, surprised at the contact.
‘Have my pane ration,’ Mira whispered. ‘But let me use the rifle. We cannot travel today. Not until the dust has settled.’
Innis had sat up and was looking over at Marrat. ‘Yeah?’
Please, no. Mira implored him with the pressure of her hand.
Marrat hesitated and waved Innis off. ‘Nothin’.’
Innis gave them a wary look and lay down again next to Liesl.
Mira’s relief was like a shot of kiante. ‘Grazi.’
Marrat stood and walked Mira around the corner of the barge, out of sight. He handed her the rifle. ‘You bring it back to me quietly. Don’t want everyone knowin’. They won’t understand about our deal.’
* * *
Over the next ridge Mira lost sight of the barge, though voices drifted out to her. She confirmed her pathfinder obsessively as she searched among the scant, stubborn thorn bushes.
On the Studium interactives she had seen the different shades of flora of other worlds, which the programs had told her were due to different pigments in the photosynthesis process. She tried to imagine living on a green world as she stared into Araldis’s iron-stained reds and browns.
After climbing only a few ridges Mira’s energy was spent. She sank wearily onto the sand, wondering how she would find the energy to return to the barge. They would not look for her, Cass had said. Her eyes hurt so much that she closed them for a while. The thoughts that came to her were filled with hopelessness. They had no more food. Pablo was days away and what would they find there? More of them
would die before then, she knew. Had she been right to trust Marchella? If Trin’s tia was with them now so much might be explained. And she would know how to bolster Cass. She would know how to bolster them all.
A tiny noise bought Mira out of her reverie. A lig had landed on the thorn bush closest to her. It rubbed the base of a thorn with its spiny abdomen, seeking moisture.
Her spirits lifted a little. Ligs might mean checclia. If she waited quietly... aah... a slight depression in the sand began to sink further a short distance from her outstretched legs. Slowly, with delicate, tasting care, a red-skinned checclia the size of her forearm burrowed up into the air.
Mira barely breathed as the lone creature eased its long body all the way out. It rested for a second, then collapsed its body into a tight coil. It sprang right up into a thorn bush, catching the lig in its feet. With precise, quick movements it curled, pressed the lig under its stomach flap and swallowed it whole. Then it dropped and rolled back into the well of sand.
Mira crawled forward on her stomach, propping the rifle against her shoulder. She sighted on the sand well the way she had been shown and waited—reflecting on how inhospitable Araldis was compared with other worlds. The fragile ecosytem of the plains would never sustain even the hardiest humanesques. The Latinos had produced all their protein from cuisine-culturers that had come on the original familia vieships. That was the one thing that the Cipriano habitat-developers had not cut corners on.
Mira’s mouth watered involuntarily. Her stomach contracted with intense hunger pains. How must the korm feel, if her own body was so weak? She must not give up. Not yet.
She waited.
After a time more ligs buzzed in. Their wax scent was almost as strong as that of the Saqr.
The checclia ventured out again but as Mira moved the rifle to target it a cramp seized her leg and the animal disappeared as she writhed in pain.
The game of silence and patience continued between them until Mira’s shoulder blades stung and her fingers became numb from holding her position. Her body refused to stay alert and she dozed, waking with a start to find the checclia three-quarters of the way out of its tunnel.
She jabbed her finger on the discharge button but nothing happened.
The checclia sensed the movement and went springing away.
Mira crawled onto her knees, weeping with frustration. The korm would die because she was so inept. She took the rifle and swung it at the thorn bush in a storm of fury. The spikes quivered but clung to the bush with the same will that had defeated the dust storm.
‘Leave your rifle. Move away from it.’
The sound of another voice was so unexpected that Mira did just as it asked. ‘It is malfunctioning,’ she said. The anger drained from her in an instant and she turned around, unable to stifle a dry sob. ‘I need food for my korm. Please... help me.’
A ragazzo stood there, pointing an ancient rifle, at her. He stared at her, looking for something that would identify where she’d come from.
Mira didn’t care that he seemed nervous enough to kill her because tiredness rose up in her like the wall of dust that had just blasted the plains.
‘Where’s your korm? I don’t see no one else.’
She couldn’t answer. Her tongue felt swollen and unnatural in her mouth, like a lump of unchewed food.
The ragazzo became agitated by her silence. ‘Tell me where the others are or I’ll kill you.’ He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly. ‘Where are you from? How did you get here? You one of them?’
His questions ran together faster than Mira could think, and standing had become much too difficult. She felt her limbs begin to give way. Would he shoot her if she fell down?
‘Stand still.’ He lifted the rifle to his shoulder.
But Mira could not.
The rifle followed her movement.
‘Alt.’ Another voice.
A figure moved into Mira’s dimming vision. ‘Alt. I know her,’ it said.
Mira tried to control the lolling of her head. It was hard to make sense of the blurring outlines. ‘Djeserit?’
TRIN
Trin waited at the top of the Pablo mine, ‘scoping the plains. He saw them when they were still mesurs away, a smudge on the dust-tinged horizon.
Djeserit had sent word ahead that she’d found Mira Fedor and a hundred or more Ipo refugees—women, mainly—alive but suffering from dehydration and hunger. After speaking with the Scalis and Gabones Trin had sent what water and food they could spare on the back of a TerV, enough to last them until the cells on their transporter regenned.
Now he watched the barge’s progression with mixed emotions. Ipo had fallen to the Saqr before he could bring help. His world continued to disintegrate around him.
My world. Franco was dead, he was sure. Whether he approved of his son or not, the succession had passed to him. Or the ruins of it, thought Trin bitterly. For what had been left him? A ragged community of ‘esques—more than half of them not even familia—and some uneducated ginkos.
When he had learned the proportion of ginkos hiding in the mine he had wanted to cast them out but knew he could not, not when his own woman was one.
Trin was pleased enough that Mira Fedor had survived. But what trouble would she bring with her? She was a Crown aristo and had certain rights in the eyes of others.
He had never expected to see her again, but this was not the first time he’d thought that about Mira Fedor.
Joe Scali stood next to him, straining to see into the distance with his naked eye.
Trin slipped the ‘scope rig off and passed it to him.
‘How will we feed them?’ Scali asked.
‘We cannot—for long—while we stay here.’ Trin turned to his friend. ‘You think we should fight the Saqr?’
‘What choice is there, Principe? We will either starve or they will come for us. Perhaps our only advantage is to take the initiative.’
‘We are not fighters.’
‘We have to be. Or they will wipe us out.’
Trin stared into the distance. Joe Scali was right. They would be wiped out. He would never govern his world. Never have a true heir. Unless... ‘I will wait below. Tell Djeserit to come to me.’
* * *
Trin sat in the one of the many niches along the main tunnel. In the last few days this one had become his and Djeserit’s own.
‘Mira is here. Don’t you want to see her?’ Djeserit stood at the opening.
He stood up and pulled her close to him.
She stroked his hair. ‘You were worried about me?’
A shudder passed through his body. ‘Your leg is still not healed. You must not go out again—I fear the Saqr are too close.’
‘If I hadn’t gone out, those women would be dead.’
Better them... he wanted to tell her. Better anyone than you.
Djeserit knelt on the thin film that they used for a bed, beckoning him. He sank down next to her, opening the front of her suit, roaming his hands across her body, examining her for further hurts. She smelled unwashed. Mixed with the naturally acrid scent of her skin, it both repulsed and attracted him, as everything about her did. Her skin felt hot. ‘Your suit is not working properly.’
‘None of them are. There are too many of us and not enough means to replenish them.’
She was right. They would not be able to stay here in Pablo much longer. Already the environmental converter was struggling to pump cooler air through and provide enough water for them all.
Djeserit sat up. ‘Don’t you want to see Mira?’
Now she was here, he did not. Trin did not want to hear her censure, her judgement of his decisions. He rolled away from Djeserit and pressed his fist into the rock wall until the physical pain brought unsheddable tears to his eyes. ‘Si.’
* * *
The condition of Mira’s group, even in the dim light of the main cavern, appalled Trin. Their suits were ragged and without exception they were weak and dehydrated. Joe Scali and Seb
and Malocchi moved among them, organising food and lig water. Kranse bread and dates for those who could digest them; lig water for the others who had gone beyond that. They were low on medic already and there would be no help for the second group if they did not heal of their own accord.
Djeserit went to the korm and stroked its crest, encouraging it to swallow the meat proxy. Trin felt a stab of jealousy at the soft noises of pleasure she made.
A woman in the centre of the group climbed wearily to her feet.
Mira.
She helped someone next to her to stand up, a smaller, gaunter woman who was un-familia. They picked their way through the sprawling bodies towards him.
Trin didn’t hold out his hand in welcome. She wouldn’t take it, he knew.
‘Baronessa. Do you have the strength to tell me what happened in Ipo?’
Mira glanced down to those sitting closest and he realised that she did not want others to hear what she had to say. ‘Si.’
‘Come.’ He beckoned her to the side of the cavern where several TerVs sat.
Mira and the other woman followed him with painful slowness. He did not offer them his arm to lean on.
Djeserit joined them.
Panting, Mira sank into a seat and nibbled at her dates.
Trin waited for her to speak. With her hood down, her face looked thinner than it had ever looked before and the skin under her eyes was dark with strain.
She finished her mouthful and swallowed with difficulty. ‘This is Cass Mulravey. She is the reason why we are alive. She and Marchella Pellegrini.’
Trin stared in astonishment. ‘Tia Marchella?’
‘Si. She is the one who told us to come here.’
‘Eccentric, that one.’ He remembered their dinner at the palazzo.
‘Not eccentric. Clever and brave,’ Mira corrected him. She put another date to her lips and sucked at it.
Trin sensed an indifference in her towards him that not even her exhaustion could explain. Something had changed in her.
He felt a sudden compulsion to apologise. To say that he was sorry about Loisa, to explain that he had panicked, and then that the decision had been taken out of his hands. But he had no wish to bare himself before the woman with the sharp eyes. He settled into the seat next to Mira. ‘Tell me what happened.’
The Sentients of Orion Page 28