Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  “You’re going on a lot of assumptions and guesses, Jason,” Calla said, shaking her head.

  Jason nodded. “All of them formed because of what I’ve observed. It has to start somewhere.”

  “Well, I would like to help,” Arria said eagerly, “but I can’t think of what will help.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Jason said. “I think we’ll discover that you know more than you think you know.”

  “And more than she ought,” Daniel said unhappily as he took the plates from Arria’s hands. He dished out the stew and handed out the plates. “If the storm’s stalled, you won’t be able to leave until morning. I’m loaded up with cocoons. Maybe you’d take back a few bales for me in your zephyr, hold ’em for me ’til I come to trade.”

  “How did you know anyone wanted them?”

  “Heard it this very morning in the ranger broadcast.”

  “And you already have bales?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Will you take them?”

  “I can do that,” Jason said, testing the stew. Apparently he found it to his liking, for he took several spoonsful in rapid succession.

  “You couldn’t a few months ago when I told you I had more than I could carry,” Daniel said. “You wouldn’t bring me back here in a zephyr.”

  “If I ran a ferry service for every miner on the planet, we would never have time for anything but. However, a few months ago you were not giving up your valuable time to danae research. I consider it a fair trade. I hope you do, too.”

  Daniel grunted and Calla knew he would ask no additional favors.

  “We go to bed early around here,” Daniel said when the meal was finished. He was gathering up the plates and starting for the cave entrance, no doubt to set them out in the rain for a washing. “We can make you pretty comfortable back there on our cocoons if you’d like to rest.” He gestured back beyond the fire into the tunnel darkness.

  “Might as well,” Calla said in answer to Jason’s questioning look. “The station knows where we are. There’s nothing we can do until the storm’s over.”

  “Let me fix the cocoons,” Arria said through a yawn. She glanced at Jason and Calla and grabbed a firebrand from the fire and before her father could answer, she hurried into the deeper tunnel.

  “I’ll see that everything’s suitable for gold worlds,” Jason said, also taking a brand from the fire.

  “Don’t patronize, Jason,” she said without malice. “You don’t do it well enough.”

  He shrugged. “Can’t learn everything.”

  “Close though. You handled Daniel very well. Couldn’t have done better myself. Now that you’ve got the compliment you were hoping for, answer a question.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you plan any of this with Arria?”

  Jason frowned. “You mean, did she coach me on how to approach her father?”

  “No,” Calla said. “I mean was she reading you mind as well as I think she was.”

  Jason nodded. “I believe she was. Or, maybe I was projecting my own interpretations into her reactions . . . the smile, the blushing. Could have been as innocent and coincidental as danae coming out of the sky just in time to share the food in your pack with Tonto.”

  “All right,” she said. “You’ve made your point.” But as she watched him walk to the back chamber, she wondered if he ever would understand that even when she could not give her unconditional support, it did not mean she was trying to undermine or defeat him.

  When Arria came back, she took a few choice logs from the stack of firewood. “You’ll need these later on,” she said handing them to Calla. And with that, she went to one of the two low cots in the corner and began fluffing the cocoons there. Daniel joined her, minus the plates.

  Calla took out her pocket torch and started down the tunnel.

  About twenty meters back the tunnel turned and dead-ended into what must have been the Jinns’ storage room. There was an old trunk and an explosives locker shoved against the back wall. Cocoons were baled and bundled and stacked from the rock floor to the ceiling. This was not the result of one day’s work. Off to the side a small fire blazed, and Jason sat at the edge of a comfortable-looking arrangement of cocoons. His hair had dried into wild messy curls that made him look slightly demonic in the firelight. The smile that had brightened him all through the evening was gone; he looked pensive.

  “Something wrong?” Calla said.

  First Jason nodded, then he shook his head. Looking up at her, he shrugged. “She made one bed for us.”

  Calla glanced around and realized it was true. She laughed. “We can fix that,” she said, putting down the wood.

  “Yeah, I know we can, but Arria made one bed because . . .” He shrugged again, helplessly.

  Calla bit her lip and stayed where she was, keeping the fire between them. “She’s an inexperienced psi,” she suggested cautiously.

  For a moment Jason was quiet, his face almost like one grieving. “I wish I were psi. Then I would know why you stopped loving me.”

  She crossed her arms and hugged her elbows. Her heart pounded fearfully. “What do you mean?”

  He looked at her, faintly flushed and seemingly annoyed, but whether with her or himself she could not tell. “You let me go. You never once so much as hinted that I could do anything else. When had it ended for you? I never had a clue.”

  “You think that because I didn’t try to stop you, I didn’t love you?” She shook her head. “Jason, I let you go because I loved you. Those ten years at the Academy were the worst years of your life; you were so ill-suited. You belonged in the mountains of Dovia, but you couldn’t go there. I would have followed you if they had let me, but I couldn’t hold you. If I had, it would have gone on the way it was, with you absolutely miserable every day of Praetorian service.”

  Jason nodded. “I didn’t want to stay in the guard, but I would have if you had asked.”

  “I know that. It’s precisely why I didn’t ask you to. I think that if I had, our love surely would have died.”

  “When they ungrounded you, why didn’t you come after me?”

  She shook her head. “I thought of it, but I never had heard one word from you in all those years. I had adjusted, and I thought you probably had, too. It was best to leave it be.”

  “Sensible,” he said, “but I never really adjusted, not if you mean by adjustment that I stopped loving you.” He looked at her. “Am I making a big fool of myself?”

  She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak.

  “Please,” he said, grieving again. “Why is it that you are so suspicious of love? Why do you still shy away from it? Is that how you adjusted? By denying it? Say something.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “Yes, tears will do. Calla, I want you here beside me, all through the night I want you to be by me.”

  Now she could feel the tears that he had seen and she fought to control them. He was getting up, reaching out for her, and she knew she could stop him with one harsh word, but she remained silent until his arms were around her. She slipped her arms around him, pressed her face against his chest and held on. “This can only lead to unhappiness,” she said softly.

  “I don’t give a Timekeeper’s damn where it leads,” Jason said, “as long as we can be together again.”

  “It can’t last,” Calla protested.

  “Why not? It’s lasted all these years, hasn’t it?”

  Yes, she thought, but I won’t think of how many years, not now while we’re holding each other with nothing more than soft firelight to remind him. Maybe tomorrow we’ll think about how many years.

  Chapter 10

  There were no secrets on Mutare. No confirmations, no announcements, but no secrets either. The community was too small to hide anything for very long, let alone a full-scale elixir manufacturing facility. Jason’s rangers, one hundred skilled surveyors, rock cutting terriers, technicians, planetologists of various disciplines, and bean counters, had come to Mutare to establish a modera
te Mercurian outpost. Even those who had never been on a downtime world before knew Mutare had been transformed from an ordinary outpost to a mysterious one when they began construction of the immense Red Rocks facility. When Calla arrived with her four hundred technicians and a contingent of Praetorian guards, each of whom had a well-rehearsed job description about cosmic ray research, Jason’s rangers were certain they were involved with covert preparation for the uptime war that was rumored to be brewing. Once the new facility began operating and spewing copious quantities of acid and solvents into the back canyon, no one believed the cosmic ray research stories anymore and many suspected that elixir was being manufactured on Mutare. It was too odd that not one of Calla’s people hailed from an elixir manufacturing world, much too odd. By the time the Belden Traveler left (reputedly ordered downtime instead of returning to the Hub as would be normal when a supply run was finished) it was something of a joke among the rangers, guards, and civilian “researchers” to guess which worlds they were not from. Since the officers didn’t put a stop to it and even partook of the sport themselves occasionally, the rangers came to understand that the secret elixir installation on Mutare was not secret from them, but was being concealed from the Hub.

  It didn’t take them three months to figure out that the Praetorian guard commander and the ranger-governor of Mutare were not having all night staff meetings, the need for which had commenced during a forced-down to wait out an electrical storm in a miner’s camp. It took only three days. Then Calla simply abandoned any pretense of having only a professional relationship with Jason by inviting him to sit with her on a little cocoon-filled cushion in front of the fireplace that was kept blazing in the Round House staging area even in the summertime, and then putting her hand possessively on his knee. No one was more surprised than Jason by that small gesture, and it took him a full ten minutes to muster enough courage just to slip his arm around her back in such a fashion that only his fingers were touching her hip. Very casual looking.

  Even that much was a sharp change from the officer he knew ten years ago who would have put him on report for a lapse like that on base. A part of him believed that her new openness carne from the self-confidence of wearing gold worlds on her shoulders, for who among them would challenge the behavior of a gold commander? The other part of him believed that Calla enjoyed practicing a new kind of discipline, one that cued him with the very sound of her voice so he would not mistake her professional demeanor for the private — ever. He did likewise, and was pleased to learn he could be just as exemplary a lover/officer as she. Even so, sometimes Jason just wanted to be alone with Calla, and not only just in one of their rooms. They stole minutes in the mornings at the garden terrace, an hour here and there to go to the Amber Forest, today, several hours to eat their supper at the seaside while the sun went down behind them.

  They sat on moonlighted rocks at the shore of Mer Sal, holding hands while they watched a small flock of danae consorting just a few meters away. Most of the willowy creatures apparently were finished scavenging for mollusks and other tidal tidbits, but it still resembled a family picnic. Builder was examining bits of driftwood and flotsam trapped among the rocks and half a dozen other danae watched her idly from their rocky perches, wing scrolls drooping, either from fatigue or in utter relaxation. Well down the beach was Tonto, the only young danae with the outing, standing defiantly close to the encroaching tide. The danae were eerily silent, as always.

  “There he goes again,” Calla whispered as Tonto stepped delicately into the lapping waves. The long stick-like legs barely made ripples.

  The young danae had waded only a short distance before he stopped, turned to look at the adult danae, and then retreated above the waterline. Jason and Calla had seen Tonto perform this ritual a dozen times this evening, and Jason had the distinct impression that Tonto was warned away from the water every time he started to wade.

  Earlier, while all the danae were feasting, Tonto had broken suddenly from the group and dived, wings unfurling like giant fins. The elder danae had reacted with obvious panic until the youngster surfaced and returned to the shore, shimmering scales and membranous wings dripping seawater, only to stand and stare longingly at the sea, the compound eye in back focused on the foraging adults.

  “I wish Arria were here,” Jason said wistfully.

  “What do you think she would tell you that you can’t see with your own eyes?” Calla asked. “It’s obvious that the danae love seafood and that Tonto is dismayed that he is not permitted to go right to the source.”

  “It does look that way, doesn’t it,” he said. “It has to be a result of his sea mammal . . . uh, ancestry. Timekeeper, we don’t even have terms for what they are.”

  “You don’t know what they are for sure, Jason,” she said cautiously. “Tonto could be an exception among all danae. You must admit that you haven’t seen the other danae exhibit any behavior that could be construed as the instincts given them by their animal ancestor.”

  “These danae are too civilized,” Jason said. “Their animal ancestry is probably generations removed, maybe a thousand times removed. And we don’t know enough about animal life on Mutare in general to recognize it for sure if we did see it. A swimming danae is unusual, but if one were browsing in the meadow because he was once a minotaur, I’m not sure it would look much different than Old Blue-eyes browsing because he likes candleberries. If Arria were here, she might be able to tell us if Tonto has a diving song and if he does, why he doesn’t share it with the other danae.”

  Calla shrugged. “It’s probably considered as uncivilized as it is for human children to pick their noses.”

  Jason chuckled. “I’m never quite sure how you feel about the danae, Calla. One minute you’re picking my hypothesis apart and the next you’re contributing ideas.”

  “I’m too old and set in my ways to accept anything new without questioning it. On the other hand, I can’t sit and watch what almost looks like human behavior without recognizing it as such. Of course, that only makes me question it more. It’s utterly preposterous that other sentient beings would resemble humans in any way, very self-centered for us even to consider that they would.”

  “It may be that we’ll only recognize the ones that do resemble us in some fashion.”

  “You should get back to Arria,” Calla said thoughtfully. “She might be able to give you more information.”

  “I know, but there hasn’t been time.”

  “When are you going to finish that tunnel? You must be getting close now.”

  “Not close enough to satisfy me. But even if we were finished, there’s the tower to do, not to mention all the data collection we have to catch up on.” He felt her stiffen under his arm, bristling a little, Jason thought, because she was to blame for the rangers’ being so far behind in their work. But he was wrong.

  “I thought you were keeping them too busy to hunt,” she said. Faint moonbeams shone on her face as she looked up at him. Her eyes were radiant as she smiled. He could keep no secrets from her. She knew his deepest thoughts, and he loved her with an awful intensity.

  “It may have crossed my mind,” he said, lightly kissing her upturned mouth. She kissed him back, then stared out at the beach. Tonto was wading again and they both watched.

  The scream of a waterfowl turned Jason’s attention from the danae to the sea. A night diver was flapping its wings, a sea creature impaled by razor-sharp talons. As it neared the shore, another bird swooped down, grabbing at the prize. The night diver screamed again and dodged, but the other had hold of the victim, too. They flew in tandem toward the shore where the struggle continued, but now on the ground, close enough for Jason to recognize the guttural squeak of the would-be thief as that of a surface diver’s. The wings of both water birds were outspread, feathers ruffled as they danced around their prey. First the night diver seemed in control, its flat serrated beak ripping a bit of flesh, only to have the surface diver grab the tidbit right from its mouth. For just
a second that scrap of flesh was more important to the two water birds than the whole of the prize, and in that second there was a rainbow of color, like meters of gauze trailing through the midst of the fighting water birds. For a while the water birds fought on, completely unaware that their prize was gone, stolen by one of the danae.

  Farther upshore, Builder had stopped poking around the rocks and Tonto had come away from his sulking stance at the water’s edge, both accepting a share of the prize while the water birds, feathers still ruffled, stared at each other stupidly.

  Simultaneously, Jason and Calla laughed, startling the birds to flight.

  “It’s one of the oldest military strategies in history, Jason. I swear to the Timekeeper that it’s so old they didn’t even have to teach it to us at the Academy. You better get busy with danae studies. I think you’re going to find something very interesting, like maybe a Japanese fisherman in their ancestry.”

  She wasn’t serious, of course, though the scene had reminded him of the very same Japanese proverb that likened some battles to the fisherman who stole the water birds’ catch while they were fighting over it.

  “Whole wars have been won that way by the right fisherman,” Calla said, still laughing.

  “And the late evening snack by one quick-witted danae,” Jason added.

  The danae were finished eating, for there had not been much to divide among so many. Jason thought they were ready to go home to the Amber Forest; they did not usually stay out so long after dark. But none took wing. Each stood stock still, oddly postured. It took Jason a moment to realize they were staring at the sky, some with their front belly-eyes, some with the compound one behind. Suddenly feeling chilled, Jason looked up to see what had enraptured them so thoroughly.