“I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it.” I looked at her one last time as a free man. “Okay. I’m your boy. What do we do now?”
Chapter 3
I could see her relax, like she’d just found out she wasn’t going to have to shoot her dog after all. It made me tense up. I wasn’t sure I liked being that important to her, or anyone.
I was already second-guessing myself. What kind of job was it that made a person act like that when they found someone to do it? I couldn’t read anything in those liquid eyes but relief—a lonely, exhausted relief propped up and propelled forward by an almost frightening determination. For a moment we just stood there with the wind massaging us and roaring in our ears, the moss green cliffs arcing away to the north and south, cut here and there by lacy cataracts and free-falling horse-tail flumes. I could barely hear the pulsing white noise of the surf—far, far below us. I wanted to say, “Listen, Cat-Eyes, why don’t we forget about your little project and set up shop right here? We could have a nice little surf ‘n’ turf place at the end of the rail and sell shells to the tourists that say ‘I saw the other Vesper—Nohili Point!’ when you hold them to your ear.” I wanted to say it. But I didn’t.
It was interesting to watch her compose herself. She was very efficient at it. One or two short breaths and poise slid back over her like a curtain. “I’d like to leave right away,” she said. “You don’t need to go back for anything, do you?”
I looked at my new boss, trying to bury any romantic fantasies. “No,” I said, “I imagine I can get along without anything I’ve left behind.”
“Good. We have about five hours of daylight left and I’d like to use it.” She gave me one look of generalized approval, turned and walked briskly back into the forest. Ham lumbered after her.
“I’ll just follow along, shall I?” I said to where they’d disappeared, and started walking.
I caught up with them at the entrance to the tube. It was just a few meters down the trail to the beach, right under the monorail platform. It descended inside the cliff to the desalinization plant at the foot of the point. You wouldn’t think they’d have to distill salt water right in the middle of a rain forest, but the magma sink heat exchangers had a thirst that matched the temperatures they dealt with. Cat-Eyes (I didn’t know if I could ever think of her as “Steel”) looked at me as I walked up.
“We’re under a fairly acute time constraint,” she said, and she looked at the tube entrance. Then that wry smile came back. “But I need to see what kind of shape you’re in. Come on.” She started off down the trail.
In a few meters we came to the edge of the gorge cut by the waterfall we’d ridden over. The trail switchbacked down the south wall. “Trail” may be an exaggeration. It dropped the thousand meters to the beach in just over a kilometer, a meter down for every meter forward. But some stretches were fairly level, which meant other parts were watch your feet and hope the root you’re clinging to doesn’t pull out of the cliff. It had never been built, just worn into the rock and jungle by the employees. This was before the syndicate, in its infinite mercy, decided to let them use the tube to go swimming. I guess they finally figured out that it was cheaper than re-booting them when they fell off the trail.
I’d been down and up it before—one of the things I did to keep healthy after I got kicked off the net. I didn’t know how she knew about it, I didn’t know why she wanted to use it, and I didn’t know why we were going down to the beach in the first place. All in all I felt the master of my own destiny.
The work started right away. To get over the lip of the gorge and onto the south wall you had to scramble fifteen or twenty meters, maybe the height of a six-story building, down a web of strangler fig roots to the first ledge. Twenty meters of root ladder can be kind of airy in any circumstances, but this one was at the top of a thousand meter drop, with a jet of water off to our right that we could watch falling and falling and falling, down and down until it shattered in a small pool that was still only a third of the way down. Then another long fall into another tiny pool and the final, timeless plunge to the minuscule strip of sand at the base of the cliff. The hammered steel ocean was softened at the shore by tiny white fingernails of surf.
Steel hesitated at the edge. “Wow,” she said.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She just stood there for a moment. I think she was hesitant to show any weakness to me. “When we came up this it was foggy. You couldn’t see anything but the route in front of you.”
“Why didn’t you take the tube?”
“I didn’t know about it.” Determination hardened her. “Let’s go.” She grabbed a handhold and swung down onto the web, picking her footing, but moving with speed and grace.
And why were you down there in the first place? And how did you get there? And where were we going, and why? And several other questions of that general ilk. I waited for her to get a safe distance below me and started to descend, Ham bringing up the rear.
Everything was still wet from the rain; it made the bark as slippery as a politician’s promise. There’s nothing quite like the rush you get when your feet start to slide with nothing under you but air. Your arches cramp, it shoots up your calves, through your inner thighs to your groin, your stomach does something very strange and then—POW! Your pulse rate triples, it zings down your arms, and your palms and inner wrists ache from how hard your fingers are gripping. I made it down to the ledge with my dignity fairly intact. Ham climbed like his arboreal progenitors. Of course, he had two more thumbs than I did.
The ledge at the bottom was comfortably wide and descended steadily but moderately for a while. Cat-eyes, or “Steel,” or “Captain Steel” led us downward, sometimes with staggering views of the falls and the ocean, sometimes burrowing through leafy tangles of shrubs and vines. As often as not we would be scrambling down root ladders or bare rock. The roar of the falls would crescendo as we approached, then recede when the trail switched back the other way, in a regular, soothing rhythm. Steel kept up an impressive pace.
The gorge enfolded us like a green womb. Each measured negotiation of a fractured rock face, each heart-pumping glissade down the grease-slick, ropy chaos of a root system pushed the lip of the falls farther above us. Each quiet, leafy tunnel, each thundering, misty turn behind the diamond column of water brought us closer to wherever we were going. As the silver ribbon of the monorail bridge receded above me so did the last ten months of my life. ’Burbs place and vacant idleness, Sheila’s room and the sad, mechanical physicality that never would have blossomed into intimacy, the oppressive, corrosive sterility of the ’works. Time had stopped for me in Spam-town, and Cat-eyes had started it again.
And what would I do with that time? Before Spam-town had been Shaughnessy and the show. We’d played forty cities on fourteen worlds in the last five years. And before that, other companies and other shows, other tours, other cities, other planets. I’d been an actor for most of the twenty years since I’d last re-booted in Palermo on Mondoverdi. Before that … Before that was the last time I’d been old, truly old.
I’d put off re-booting because I didn’t want to decide what I’d have to forget. There was too much I’d wanted to remember, and you can never keep it all. Though a lot of things fade over time, holos or Realities or even smelling a certain spice or perfume will bring them flooding back. But once you log off and restructure, after you come back, the parts you didn’t keep are gone. Gone. Mary wasn’t gone, but parts of her were. I hadn’t saved the day she left. The house on Scarpus wasn’t gone—I could see the bedroom, her dressing table, her silk scarves draped over the mirror—but my things were missing. I could see out the back window, over autumnal hardwood hills rolling to the horizon, but the glass wind chimes hanging by the door were silent. I hadn’t saved their sound. I couldn’t remember how we got into town. And even if I bought a Reality, even if I went back to Scarpus and traveled the same route, it wouldn’t connect to anything. There w
as nothing to connect to. It would simply be a new experience for me, connected to my life now. To ’Burbs and Shaughnessy and acting and Cat-eyes. Not to Mary. Nor to my life before Mary, nor the life before that, nor the one before that. But to the pieces of all of them that I still had in me.
And now Captain Cat-eyes Steel. I watched her easy, loose-jointed dance over the rocks and drops in the trail in front of me. Once again I’d connected myself to someone else going someplace else. Heading out. On the road again.
We stopped at the first pool for a drink. It was loud and misty and invigorating. A riot of ferns sprouted from the rock, and moss dripped like green velvet. Looking up at that much water, falling so far, was just as impressive as looking down at it. It danced and weaved when the breeze changed, individual drops exploding into spray in mid-air, thundering and thundering endlessly into the rock-lipped pool. Then Steel was off again, leading us to the next stretch of broken stone to clamber down, another ledge, another leafy arcade, and down and down and down. The tourmaline ocean slowly turned to brass as Prime imperceptibly slipped toward the horizon.
When we were almost down to the beach, we stopped on an outcrop overlooking the water, close enough to hear the surf over the roar of the falls. She tossed a question at me over her shoulder that took me by surprise.
“How did you get involved in the uprising on Valhala?”
I didn’t answer for a moment; I didn’t know what to say. That she knew about my role in it raised one question; that she wanted to talk about it raised another, and I already didn’t like the answer to either one. I looked at the white sand below us, a blank page rhythmically cleansed of memories by the caress of the waves. I remembered Valhala. I could have easily chosen to forget it, an option offered to me every time I’d re-booted since then.
“That’s something I don’t really talk about,” was what I said, but what I was thinking was much less laconic. I already figured she’d looked over my C.V. on the net from what she knew about me, but that only covered my last three ’boots. I kept it that way deliberately. The Valhala Uprising was way before that. Ancient history, clear back in the twenty-eighth century, when armed conflict still made a weird kind of sense to some rare groups of people under some highly unusual circumstances.
“I’d like you to talk about it with me.” She turned and looked into my eyes. And what was in hers? Compassion? Or merely patience?
“Does this have to do with the job?” I said, stalling.
“I like to know the people I command. What’s formed them, where their hearts lie. It helps me to know how they’ll respond in a crisis.” Innocent enough. Could be true.
“Well, I was there,” I stalled some more, “you pretty much had to choose one side or the other.”
“Not everyone fought.” She wasn’t going to leave this alone.
“No. Not everyone.” How do you talk about something like that? The universe was a different place back then. Had Steel ever witnessed what I had? I didn’t know how old she was; I didn’t know anything about her.
“Do you keep in touch with anyone from that time?” That voice was so rich and compelling, it would have been easy to fool myself into thinking she simply wanted to get to know me better. Standing there looking at the ocean, Lehua, Nihoa, and the point towering above us to our left, the sand and the cliffs stretching away to our right, I wanted it to be true. But I just didn’t buy it.
“No.” I looked back at her. “Not for a long time.”
“Your wife—”
“It seems you know a lot more about me than I do about you.” There was a little more anger in that statement than I would have liked, but she seemed to accept it. She smiled—deferentially? Maybe.
“Fair enough. We’ll talk more later. We may not be so different from one another as you imagine.” And then she was on the net, or her independent system. “Marcus, is the boat ready?” She listened for a moment. “Things take time. I moved as quickly as possible.” Her voice was quite different. “How is he?” Steel. Definitely Steel. Captain Steel. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. I’ll want to move out immediately.”
Ten months was a long time to be off the net, but I wasn’t sure that I missed it. She looked at me again, “You’re a complex man. I think you’ll make a good crewman.” The honey was back, but now it was mixed with my experience of her. She turned and started down toward the sand. I followed. Ham followed me.
Chapter 4
There was always a feeling of ‘I came down that’? whenever I hit the beach and looked back up at Nohili, stoic, silent, transcendent. It was no different this time, except that this time I wouldn’t be going back up. Steel felt it too, I could tell. Even in her haste she kept looking up at it, as I did. It made me feel more connected to her, or perhaps it was just the comfort of false superiority, born of watching her experience for the first time what I had already known.
The desalinization plant was as stainless as Spam-town was corroded. It punctured soft green tapestry, dwarfed to insignificance at the foot of the unmoved colossus, thrusting its clean geometry into aleatoric waves. We clattered around the catwalk that encircled it, up from the sand, out over the intakes, and down again, to get south of it. I could see a tiny aquamarine sliver far down the shore, almost to the very tip of the point. Two specks moved around it. In another five minutes they had resolved into a fair-sized open fiberglass catamaran and two people. Five minutes later Steel was introducing me to them as we shoved the boat into the surf and climbed aboard.
It was disconcerting being with her among people she already knew. Fantasies I thought I had put away were stuffed into deeper places, although I could feel my reluctance to give them up completely. I could tell Marcus was her pilot and exec even before she told me which one he was. Chocolate-skinned and taller than Steel, almost as tall as I was, his eyes held the hardened fatigue of command. He appraised me, an unknown quantity, as he took my hand. I think my scales dismayed him, but I couldn’t be sure. If he allowed himself emotions on the job they would be channeled to the task of the moment. He had no obvious cosmetic alterations; a man of his temperament wouldn’t be interested in them. I thought he might be from Earth. He looked African. He said simply, “Mohandas. Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks.” I felt the need to reassure him, or maybe to increase my status, “I’ve crewed several times before. My pilot and astrogation licenses are up to date.” Shaughnessy and I had often joked that we should have been in the teamsters’ union instead of Actors’ Equity. It often seemed like we spent more time freewheeling than we did on stage.
“Yes, I’ve seen your C.V.” Of course. And what else had he seen?
Steel turned to the other man. Shorter, thicker, less chiseled in his facial features. “This is Jemal. He’s in the number five spot.” Another crewman, also unadorned, and I wondered why. He wore the same buff one-piece garment that Marcus had on. Perhaps he had his talismans mounted under it. I couldn’t see a medicine bag.
“Hi.” He took my hand as well; then he made his way back to the turbine and fired it up.
Prime had been refracted into a fat, wavering peach, almost connected to the shimmering, orange path that it flung across the cobalt water. We passed through the shadow of Lehua as we drove south through the gap between it and the point. Nohili’s verdant cliffs flamed sanguinary in the horizontal light.
Steel started to confer with Marcus in tones of controlled tension. “Any word from Alice?”
“Yes.” Marcus’ voice was just as controlled. “She’s found a dirigible in Kindu.”
“A dirigible? Nothing faster?”
“Nothing we could use. The economy in the outback is solar-powered, hydrogen-based. Anything powerful enough to get us to the altitude we need is just too fuel-hungry. They can’t afford them. I don’t think we could land anything like that at Manlung La anyway.”
“No. You’re probably right. But a dirigible. Will we have the control we need when the time comes?”
“We’l
l just have to make it work.”
“Yes. Can Yuri fabricate something for us?”
“Alice says he’s working on that now. The dirigible frames are carbon-carbon epoxy, which should be strong enough, and there’s a repair facility in Kindu that he’s working with to put it together.”
Steel sighed. “I don’t like him working with the locals.”
Marcus seemed to get slightly defensive, “He’s only telling them what they need to know to put it together. He’s not stupid.”
“It’s simply imperative—”
“Captain, I believe I am conversant with what is imperative on this voyage.”
They were silent for a moment. The whine of the turbine and the hiss of the water on the hulls filled the cooling tropical air. Salmon streaks of cirrus feathered the sky to the west. We continued to parallel the cliffs south of the point.
Steel spoke again, “Does Alice think the … the ... What do they call those things? The gondola. Does she think the gondola will hold pressure?”
“They use them to get over the mountains, so it should be okay for the amount of time we’ll need. The main concern seems to be the size of the handle. If he makes it too big we’ll never get off the ground. But the smaller it is, the tighter the altitude tolerance becomes.”
“What are we talking?”
“Less than ten meters.”
We were getting into some chop. The hiss of the water turned to a rhythmic slap as we started to bounce over the waves. I grabbed the railing and sat on a bag of something.
“No word from Archie and Drake?”
“We were able to see the mountains until we pulled in under the point. Except for those thunderheads the weather has looked clear and calm. They should be okay. The fact that they haven’t found it necessary to call is probably a good sign.”
Dancing with Eternity Page 3