Downtime

by Cynthia Felice

  “We’ll have to swim fast,” Jason said.

  “Stay under is what Calla told me to tell you,” Arria said.

  He nodded. “All right, let’s get on with it.”

  “Jason,” Marmion said. “Jason . . . what we talked about.”

  “We agreed . . .”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “Our people are in the shuttles,” Arria said, speaking to their thoughts, “D’Omaha and Stairnon are below with Mahdi, but the rest are safe. He took them out as soon as he could. He replaced everyone in the fab with his own people.”

  “Thank the Timekeeper,” Marmion said, sounding greatly relieved. “I won’t have any trouble blowing up Mahdi and D’Omaha, though I still find it hard to believe D’Omaha would betray us.”

  “For Stairnon,” Arria said, sounding disgusted. “He needed elixir for her.”

  Jason stared at her, momentarily shocked. “I should have guessed. She kept getting stronger and more radiant . . . sharing wouldn’t have been enough.”

  “I would have known,” Arria said. “If you just would have let me do what I’m good at doing, he couldn’t have hidden it from me for two years.”

  “Him? Just D’Omaha? But it was Stairnon who was afraid of you.”

  “He never told her; just gave it to her. She guessed what was happening to her, but not how he got it. She thought he was stealing it for her and was afraid to confront him. And she was afraid of me because I might learn her suspicions. The truth was as bad as her wildest surmise.”

  Jason didn’t speak. Something had changed Arria in these last few days. He had seen it begin when they were still in the cave, and he thought he had been pleased then. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s really just as much my fault as yours. I could have told you to go to Timekeeper’s hell long ago.”

  “Stop it, you two. We have work to do,” Marmion said.

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  Arria gave him a last reproachful look, then started crawling down the slope. Jason followed and tried not to think of how he would have reacted if Arria had refused to heed his caution about eavesdropping in people’s minds. Had he really believed she was nothing more than a mixed-up psi who didn’t have the skills to understand what she was hearing? Or had he deliberately tried to make her think she was confused so that he would not have to confront his own feelings about her? It wouldn’t have mattered, he thought firmly. I still would have put her off. I still would have said no to you, Arria. And D’Omaha would have been found out, he thought dismally.

  “Hurry,” Arria whispered when they reached the water’s edge.

  Quickly Jason and Marmion pulled off their boots and crawled into the water, submerging themselves as fast as the slope permitted. The water was icy and the pack buoyant, and Jason had to stroke hard to stay under. He hoped Marmion was doing better. At least it wasn’t a long swim. He needed only one breath between the shore and the caisson.

  The lid had been sealed with a jack-light; Jason knew there was no hope of prying it open, but the explosives could be placed on the outside. When Marmion surfaced beside him, they emptied the packs and dove. It was dark but the caisson was easy to feel, and they clamped the explosives along the base. Jason made a final dive to set the timer in place, then he and Marmion swam to shore. Arria was waiting in the shallows, signaling for silence. They waited, still lying down in the water, keeping their heads up with their elbows.

  Jason looked at his watch. Only three minutes until dawn, another two beyond that until the detonator discharged. He touched Arria’s thin wrist to indicate time was running out. She shook her head silently.

  First light brightened the sky behind them, and finally Arria crawled out of the water. They followed her up the slope, passing from boulder to tree, hoping to reach the top before the explosion.

  “Where’s Calla?” he asked in a hoarse whisper when Arria came abreast of him. “Is she well away from the basin?”

  Arria stared at him, eyes wide and tearful, then lunged ahead. Jason grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back, instantly suspicious. “Where is she?” he said gruffly.

  Arria’s face screwed up in anguish and she shook her head. Her lashes, matted and wet, blinked rapidly while fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “She’s below,” Arria said.

  “Captured!” Jason said. He turned in horror, mentally measuring the distance between where he was standing and the charges on the caisson. But even as he started to return, Marmion’s strong arms grabbed him and pulled him back.

  “Not captured,” Arria said. “She gave herself up to save the others. She couldn’t go through with it if they had been down there. She was going to bargain with Mahdi to get them out, even if just for a little while.”

  “No! You said they were in the shuttles.”

  “They are,” Arria said miserably. “But I didn’t know that until she went below. Jason, they don’t even have guards on them. They’re just all sleeping, and I couldn’t get anything from that.”

  “You should have stopped her,” Jason said, crying now, because he knew that nothing could have stopped Calla once she made up her mind, and that now, nothing could prevent all of Red Rocks from being flooded. He clenched his fist and pounded the rocks beneath his hand in frustration.

  “We’ve got to go now, Jason,” Marmion said.

  “Go,” he said. “Let me be.”

  But the perfection engineer grabbed him and dragged him until Jason realized he wouldn’t leave him behind, no matter what the risk. Docilely, Jason put his feet to the slope and moved. The tears wouldn’t stop. Then he felt the ground tremble beneath him and he knew he could go no further. He sank down and turned.

  The lake swelled, much less than Jason would have expected, overrunning its shore by meters before the swell burst like a giant pod spewing watery streamers that fell like rope. The water, wavy and rough, started swirling, slowly at first, then with a definite vortex in the middle as it emptied into the caverns below. Soon the old trees that he had watched the water cover two years ago stood again, limbs naked and darkened, but some still standing like skeletons.

  “We must have breached the fault,” Marmion said, sounding awed. “Look how fast it’s going.”

  Jason shook his head and turned away. He couldn’t look any more. He found Arria on the ground beside him, weeping.

  “I can just imagine what’s going on in her head right now,” Marmion said pulling the girl up. “Glad it’s not mine. Come on, Jason. We’ve got to get her away while those guards and patrols are still confused.”

  “The screams,” Arria said staring nowhere with horror-filled eyes. “The screams!” She put her hands to her ears to shut out sounds only she could hear.

  “Come on, man. Help me!”

  He didn’t want to help. He didn’t want to comfort Arria. He just wanted to die. But again he sensed that Marmion would not leave him behind. He grabbed the sobbing, half-hysterical girl and, permitting Marmion to choose the way, helped him along with Arria.

  ***

  Marmion left him and Arria in a cover of rock and bowery, then went away. Jason didn’t care where or why. Then Arria recovered somewhat from her shocked stupor, and she left him, too. He felt he should have tried to stop her, uncertain as he was of how well she was doing, but he didn’t. He let her go and lay staring at the blue sky until the sun came straight up and forced him to close his eyes.

  The sound of cold-jets roaring in the distance stirred him in the late afternoon. Mahdi’s patrols and troops who had been on the surface were abandoning Mutare. There was nothing left for them here, nothing anywhere. They would return to their orbiting troopships. Some navigator would take them somewhere. But where? There was nowhere that they could regain what had been lost on Mutare this day. And nowhere that Jason could go to regain what he had lost. He felt hot tears running down his cheeks and heard horrible sobs, sounds too terrible to be coming from him, but there was no one
else around.

  He felt hands on his chest. Gentle hands and the awful tickle of cerecloth. He sat up with a start. It was night but the little bowery was lighted with artificial light. Men and women in ranger fatigues were kneeling beside him. They had a stretcher.

  “It’s all right, sir. You’re going to be just fine. We have the medical kits from the shuttles. Compania’s raiders are keeping guard.” It was one of his own rangers. Not a medic, yet his hands were gentle and steady as they pressed Jason’s limbs, looking for injury.

  Jason pushed him aside. “I’m not hurt.” He felt ridiculous, contemptible. “Where did you come from?”

  “The shuttles, sir. They put us in German-sleep. Chief Marmion let us out. The medics are tending those wounded in the battle yester . . . three days ago.”

  “Where’s Marmion now?”

  “At Round House with a burial detail. There’s a new river from the tunnel-ramp entrance. It gives up bodies from below.”

  Jason nodded. “Has . . . Commander Calla’s body been recovered?”

  “Not that I know of, sir. I . . . we all heard what she did. She was very brave.”

  “Yeah.” Someone handed him a stellerator. He almost refused it until he realized that these rangers were waiting for him to tell them what to do next. “Are there guards on those shuttles?”

  “Yes, sir. And on the burial detail, too. So far we’ve found no stragglers. It looks as if they all left.”

  “There were laser cannons on the south end of the terrace lake. Go see if they left any behind that we can use to cremate the bodies.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Jason watched them go, then started along the ridge. He came on the trail to Round House at the very place he had carved steps and put in a railing for Calla to hold. He walked down them slowly, holding the railing as she had done. It was cold to the touch.

  The barriers to the ramp-tunnel entrance had given way from the explosion, and now water cascaded over the lip in a wide, cold sheet and ran down the slope in crazy streams that were already forming confluences to a common downward path. Several rows of bodies, all with Praetorian crimson showing at the facings, were stacked like logs on the higher ground. It would be grim work disposing of so many, even with a laser cannon.

  He saw Marmion amidst a cluster of medical rangers near the entrance, and when the perfection engineer saw him, he quickly walked toward Jason.

  “How are you?” Marmion asked gruffly.

  “I’m all right,” Jason said, then shook his head. “Sorry, I . . . “

  “No need to explain,” Marmion said. “And I’m sorry as hell to put you through it again, but we’ve found her.” As Jason’s head jerked up, Marmion grabbed his arm and spoke rapidly. “She’s not dead.” The grip tightened like a vice to restrain him from running. “But her neck’s broken and she’s dying. You know there’s nothing they can do for her, Jason. If they pump her full of stay-drugs, it will kill her even if they can get her to Compania’s clinic. If she survived that . . . “

  “All right,” Jason said, half-shouting in renewed anguish. “I understand. Is she conscious?”

  “No. She’s not even conscious.” Marmion took a deep breath. “She was on the gallows. It held through the flood . . . well, part of it anyhow. Some of the guards who were there with her are alive, too. They’ll make it.”

  “Mahdi? D’Omaha?”

  Marmion shook his head. “We’ve found Stairnon’s body. Not the others.”

  “All right. Let me see Calla now.”

  Marmion released the grip on Jason’s arm and led him to where the medics were kneeling beside a stretcher on which Calla lay. She was still wet, her coppery hair all awry. The medics saw Jason and one of them backed away immediately. The senior man looked up at Jason. “I can’t . . .”

  “I know,” Jason said softly. “Just leave me alone with her.”

  “I could try a stimulant. Sometimes it breaks through the coma, but with Antiqua, I mean, Commander Calla, it could just hasten death.”

  “Let her sleep,” Jason said, sitting on the ground next to the stretcher. “Let her have peace. There’s nothing I can say to her now that I haven’t already said a thousand times.”

  The medic nodded and withdrew silently. Jason stared at her sleeping form for a moment, then kneeled on the ground and took her hand in his. It was limp and unresponsive, slightly cool despite the thermal cerecloth covering her. He moved some of the damp curls off her forehead, brushing them back the way she used to wear her hair, remembering back to when he had done the same thing so many years ago. But back then her nose would twitch when he touched her or her eyes would move behind mauve lids. There was nothing now except a shallow rasp as she breathed. He cried shamelessly, soundlessly, and he was thinking even while fresh tears ran down his face. He had never known complete happiness except when they were together. Nothing was quite right when she was not there. Nothing would ever be right for him again, and so now the tears were helpless tears, selfish tears.

  “Jason. Jason?”

  He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up to see Arria standing there. She was clutching a nymph to her breast with both arms, which were badly lacerated from the sharp claws. The little creature started struggling again, and Arria grimaced as the claws dug into her flesh, but she didn’t let go. It grew silent again, and for just a moment Arria’s eyes became very distant. Then she blinked and looked at Calla.

  “I can sing the death song,” she said quietly. “I can make him spin for Calla.”

  Jason felt an involuntary prickling along his scalp. “You tried to do that for your father,” he said. “It didn’t work.”

  “Calla isn’t dead. Tonto wasn’t dead. My father was dead.”

  “And Old Blue-eyes was dead,” Jason said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Dear Timekeeper. Do we dare?”

  “Can you refuse her this chance?” Arria said simply. Jason unstrapped the stellerator and pulled off his shirt to wrap the nymph in it. It was peaceful until Arria let go, then it struggled again, but Jason tied the sleeves together to make a sack. “Where?” Jason said.

  “I know a safe place,” Arria said. “We’ll need some help.”

  She gestured to the stretcher.

  Jason looked around for Marmion and found him standing with the medics. All of them were watching. The perfection engineer shrugged and said something to the medics. They came forth and picked up the stretcher. Marmion turned away.

  Arria led them, not to the Amber Forest as Jason had expected, but to a small natural cave high on the ridge, the ledge to the tiny opening barely passable with the stretcher. They lay Calla inside, then Arria took off the straps and cover. She held out the cover to the medics. The senior man took it, holding her arm for a moment to look at the lacerations before he let go. He put a tube of salve in Jason’s hands, then followed his companion out through the narrow opening.

  Arria took the bundled nymph from Jason and went to sit by Calla. Jason sat down at the opening, blocking it with his body. The nymph was struggling again inside the shirt. Arria put her hand on the bundle, and still it wiggled and danced. She closed her eyes. In moments the creature quieted again. Arria sat cross-legged, trancelike. Jason was afraid to move, uncertain of what to expect next.

  It was hours, Jason thought, before Arria reached over and untied the shirt sleeves. The nymph and thousands of shimmering threads spilled out next to Calla. The little creature crawled sluggishly onto Calla’s stomach, then toward her face. Threads were spilling copiously from the spinnerets at the back end. In front, its teeth were bared. Jason turned away, and stumbled out onto the ledge.

  Outside he saw a wondrous sight. In the trees below, in the rocks above, pale as ghosts in the waning moonlight, were the danae, all motionless on their perches. Their wings were tightly scrolled, all eyes but the ones behind focused on the ledge.

  “They’re singing for her,” Arria said, coming up softly behind him.

  “You . . .
“

  “They don’t need my poor song. They heard me singing, they came to do it right. The nymph is spinning.”

  A summery breeze came by, lifting the hair that had escaped Arria’s braid. Jason felt her tremble as she sat down next to him.

  “Do you think it will work?” he asked.

  “I guess they think it’s worth a try,” she said. “I don’t think we can ask for anything more.”

  “How long . . .”

  “It takes a long time to spin the cocoon. Then . . .” She shrugged. “We’ll know next spring.”

  “Can’t you tell anything now? Is she thinking anything? Does she feel any pain?”

  “She’s dreaming a little.” Arria shook her head. “There’s nothing to tell you. Dreams aren’t real.”

  Jason sighed. “We should do something about this opening. Predators might come.”

  Arria smiled. “I was afraid you would suggest posting a guard.”

  “I thought of it,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “We’ll use rocks. Little ones. Danae hands are tiny and not very strong.”

  “Your hands,” he said suddenly remembering the salve the medic had given him. He reached into his pocket to take it out, then opened it. Arria sat quietly while he smeared some onto her wounds. He saw what the medic had seen, that while they were deep and nasty, none were so bad that they wouldn’t close on their own.

  “Jason, what will you do when you’re done?” Arria asked.

  “Pile up the stones,” he said, squeezing more salve onto her arm.

  “I mean after that.”

  “See that you’re onboard Compania.”

  “And then?”

  Jason recapped the tube and slipped it back into his pocket.

  “You already know,” he said, leaning back to stare at the stars.

  “But Jason,” she said unhappily. “I won’t be here to help you. They may not sing for you. They didn’t come for hours, not until the nymph was thoroughly enthralled.”

  Jason looked at her, her hair so fine and silvery in the moonlight, her eyes shimmering, brimming pools. “Then Calla will have to sing for me,” he said.