by Lynn Rae
“Maybe I’m not the best person to ask.”
“Who should I speak with then?” she pressed, and he wondered if she was always this relentless.
“Uh, Padev does a lot of the medical work. He’s the closest thing we have to a doc on planet.” Colan didn’t want her to talk with Padev. Padev was intelligent, charming, and hetero. Plus, he dressed nicely most of the time.
“Where would I find Doctor Padev?”
“Just Padev.” Not a doctor, just a scientist who’d put himself through the Academy by working as a medic. Colan found himself wanting to tell Cit. Frei he, on the other hand, held advanced degrees in geo-cartography and emergent planetary systems, and his latest monograph on the magma tides of Arcon had been awarded the Filden Prize.
“Like ‘just Tor’?” Cit. Frei cocked her head and granted him a tiny smile. If she chewed on her lip again he was going to leave.
Colan cleared his throat and wondered how this conversation had wandered so far from Tila’s garden. She kept watching him, her feet still bare and in need of a good soak in a warm tub followed by a massage. Stars, where had that thought come from? He needed some air.
“Right. We don’t use titles too much here. More informal.”
“So, you’d prefer I didn’t use the prefix? Just Tor?” Was she teasing him? It was hard to tell since he was infrequently teased, other than by Gina’s boys whose idea of verbal humor was to burp out words as often as possible. Cit. Frei’s expression was bland, but he could see a light in her amber eyes. Could be mischief, could be incredible focus on doing things properly.
“Uh, Tor’s a nickname.”
She nodded. “And we aren’t friends. So what should I call you?”
She should call him Tor as everyone else did. Simpler. Made more sense. They weren’t friends but neither were most of the folk who called him Tor. “My name’s Colan. Colan Nestor.”
Why had he said that?
“So, Colan,” she leaned forward and held out her hand, “you can call me Lia. It’s a nickname too, so if that seems too friendly, call me Liliane.”
He stared at her hand, certain he didn’t want to touch another part of her body. She waved it slightly and peered at him with a question in her eyes. He realized she was trying to put things on better footing between them. He should reciprocate and not stare at her as if he was afraid she might explode. With a quick grasp and release, Colan performed the ritual and demanded his brain immediately forget how soft her slender fingers were; just as he needed to forget about her feet.
“About Tila’s garden.” There, back to the rational reason he’d come to this place.
“Of course. I’ll take Welti out there as soon as I can find him, and we’ll resolve it. Modify the schedule as best we can.” She paused and held her datpad in her hands. “If you’d provide your contact information, I’ll let you know when we do. So you can accompany us if you’d like.”
Without a sound, he handed over his datpad and watched as she rapidly traded information. He glanced at the display when she returned it. She’d left her name and official identity image up. A red bar pulsed, indicating a full data queue. He never had a full data queue. Vigilant deletion of everything anyone sent him, which on Gamaliel didn’t amount to much, kept his reading obligations to a minimum.
“What’s all this new data?”
“All the schedules and timetables for the construction and proposed immigration lists. Of course, those are in flux as situations develop.”
Colan tried not to show his dismay. Surely neither she nor Gina expected him to read all of this. He started to scroll through the initial files section, and it looked as if there were at least a thousand documents.
“I need to speak with Padev about getting some health information?”
Colan tore his gaze away from an announcement which predicted cure times of new synthboard as it related to the rate of construction. Nebula’s balls, did she really calculate that sort of thing? “No. I’ll talk with him and have him send something to your doctor.”
“Thank you. That saves me some time.”
And saves you from meeting Padev before you should have to. He’d just have to remember to do it or else he had a feeling that Lia Frei would send out a security detail to track the man down so she could delete it from her to-do list.
“I should be going.”
Lia stood from her perch on the table and held out her hand again. Stars, he was going to have to touch her to say goodbye. Making the briefest possible contact, he completed the handshake and stepped back from her. Getting some distance seemed like a wise idea.
“Thank you for your help, Colan.”
“You’re welcome, Lia—Liliane. Put on some shoes.” He left the office as quickly as possible.
Chapter 2
“Cordon sent a message. He should arrive in forty-eight hours.” Moca tried to reassure Lia her extra duties would decrease when the assistant magistrate arrived, but she wasn’t so sure. They were standing in the residential unit hallway trying to direct two porter bots to the correct rooms, so everyone on the team would have their luggage delivered by dinner time. So far, it wasn’t going well. Welti had managed to finish off enough units for everyone, but none of the information integration was complete so the bots couldn’t navigate. This meant Lia manually oriented each load while Moca discussed and checked information on her datpad. The pile of belongings seemed as if it was never going to diminish. Moca still had four of her own large black cases in the hallway, and Lia was sure she’d already sent five back to the other woman’s suite. Maybe the bots were circling around and bringing them back out of the rooms.
“That’s good. So his health has improved?”
Moca rolled her eyes. As far as Lia knew, the magistrate had never experienced a health crisis. None of her physical systems would dare. Lia pushed a bot toward one of Tully’s bags and keyed in his room number on the device’s interface pad. It picked up the bag but sat there, whining metallically, until she hit the number three more times. It seemed the bots were very insecure without their direct link to the building system.
“I suppose. He didn’t offer any information. Then again, I didn’t ask.” Moca pocketed her datpad and muscled one of the loader bots in the right direction. It trundled away, pulling a wheeled case and beeping in despair.
The idea of the new magistrate of an entire planet acting as a luggage carrier would have been laughable a day ago, but everyone with hands-on skills was busy at work, which left the bureaucrats to do some heavy lifting. Their inauspicious arrival on Gamaliel had lowered Lia’s expectations already.
“Is your office in good shape?”
Lia wondered if her own barely furnished space was the norm. Not only did her office not have a door, there was enough dirt on the floor to make her nervous, thanks to the skin-crawling advice from Cit. Tor—Colan—the man who had rubbed her feet just a few hours ago. Lia’s skin prickled at the memory of that oddly inappropriate interlude. He was a strange man. He’d shown up in Tila’s backyard a few minutes after she and Welti had arrived and stood by silently as the woman bemoaned the imminent loss of three quarters of her fresh food supply. After some quick calculations of speed of construction versus harvest times, Lia worked out that most of her plants would have yielded a decent crop before the pipes and slab were going to be installed. Welti, in a fit of neighborliness, volunteered to use scrap materials to construct a greenhouse on the remaining section of backyard and would splice a vent from the new geothermal set up to heat the building. Tila had been thrilled, and Colan had been, well, slightly less grumpy.
“My office is barren. Or bare bones. Whatever you want to call it. I’ll go with extreme minimalism.” Moca grinned as she pitched a smallish case into Zashi’s room. Lia hoped it didn’t contain explosives or weapons. There was no telling what the safety chief had brought to the surface.
“How are things going with our unhappy liaison?”
“Still unhappy. He did show up
at two meetings today.”
“That’s more than I expected. When I saw him saunter off into the forest this morning, I assumed we’d seen the last of him. He was very uncooperative, wasn’t he?”
Lia considered this as she threw an extra case on top of a porter and pushed it in the right direction. Her three cases were the last ones in the line, and she wanted to get this task completed so she could spend a few minutes in the privacy of her rooms and relax. Her headache lurked like a malevolent ghost in her brain, and the bottoms of her feet itched even after a thorough washing. She wore the thickest socks she could find and her sturdiest boots but continued to worry about those foot weevils Colan had mentioned. A paranoid thought intruded. Perhaps he’d told her a tall tale to frighten her, a sort of tease for the newly arrived folk.
“He was pretty quiet when Welti and I spoke with that woman about her garden. There was no yelling, so it’s an improvement.”
Colan had been nearly talkative when they’d been alone in her office. Of course, for most of that interaction he’d been holding her feet, so it probably made things less formal between them. Warmth spread up Lia’s cheeks when she contemplated what Moca’s reaction to that little scene might have been.
“It’s only for two days. Then he can go bother Cordon and vice versa.” Moca took matters into her own hands and tugged an enormous duffle toward the doctor’s quarters. Lia moved to help, and the two of them managed to shift it in the right direction. “What does she have in here, a practice cadaver?”
Lia chuckled at the morbid idea. “Knowing her, she does. There’s no telling when a corpse will arrive naturally.”
Moca grunted and kept pulling. “I have fears we might see a few unnaturally occurring corpses when these extractors start arriving. This place is much more inhospitable than I’d imagined. The ground is waterlogged, and everything smells like it’s fermenting. That forest is absolutely eerie, it’s like everything in there has eyes and is staring at us.”
Lia glanced over at the magistrate as they dropped the duffle in the doctor’s suite and stood up to stretch their backs. Her headache had swelled when she’d been pulling, and Lia wondered if she should stop by medical and ask about it. She could also mention the other health hazards she’d learned about courtesy of the quiet Colan.
“I have a feeling there’s a lot we don’t know about this place. Colan told me about these weevils that bore into bare feet and cause terrible infections.”
Moca’s eyes widened at the news. “Really? That wasn’t in any of the planetary reports.”
“I know. Colan says they aren’t documented because so few people come here. Whenever someone lands on planet, the Pearlites give them an informal briefing.”
“He’s going to make a warning entry for us, isn’t he?”
“Someone named Padev is. Colan’s supposed to tell him, but I’m going to double check with the doctor to make sure.” Lia reached her own baggage with a sigh of relief. Her rooms were at the end of the hall, across from Zashi, and next to Tully. She couldn’t wait for some quiet and a moment to inhale some pain relief for her headache.
Moca carried Lia’s last bag into her room and sat it against a wall next to its fellows. She couldn’t wait to open her luggage and unpack, to place each carefully selected item in its proper place. She hoped she’d thought of everything, since shipping anything above and beyond her space allowance out here would take a lot of time and not an inconsiderable amount of marks.
“So, it’s Colan, is it?” Moca raised an eyebrow and made an inquisitive face.
“He doesn’t like using the prefix Cit.”
“That’s unsurprising. I’m still calling him Cit. Tor. It’s proper.” Lia had nothing to say to that. She hadn’t had a proper interaction with Colan yet.
Moca glanced around the barracks room and nodded. All the temporary housing for the civil service staff contained identical modular units. Everyone had a living area, galley kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Arriving settlers would share more compact accommodations in the soon-to-be built transition barracks. Since all of them were supposed to leave Pearl and spread out into the planet’s forests in search of cortiglow extract, there didn’t need to be many permanent accommodations. Lia knew that would change with time. People would find it difficult to manage in these isolated and rough conditions and would drift back to the settlement when their dreams of quick profit disappeared. Some would leave the planet, but some would stay and construct private dwellings. That was just one of the many logistical hurdles their team would have to regulate. Lia’s body ached, and her mind whirled thinking of all she needed to do.
Moca’s eyes brightened, and she rubbed her hands together. “In any case, we need to keep lines of communication open with the scientists and residents. Create good relationships with them before the deluge of settlers arrive. I’m going to have a dinner party tomorrow night with any Pearlites who’ll come. It should be a good way to meet people. It’s hard to believe no one has stopped by to say hello.” Moca blinked and shook her head slowly at this flabbergasting reality. It seemed as if normal human curiosity would’ve resulted in a least a few drop-in visitors by now.
“I’ll schedule the dinner with Claude. I think he’ll have the kitchens set up by then. How would you like me to invite people?” Lia added a whole new to-do list to her queue of responsibilities. Tables, chairs, plates, napkins, food, so much to organize.
“Check with our community liaison. If you can get him to say a word or two.”
“So what are these newbies like, Tor?” Joli leaned her short frame against Colan’s favorite table at the back of her establishment. She ran a bar, small kitchen, and the settlement drop office out of a long narrow building which took up most of one side of the main street of Pearl, if you cared to call the unpaved and uneven mess outside a street. Joli’s place was the only spot in town for liquor, food, or to pick up shipments from the outside. She held a monopoly on the human need for socialization and entertainment on Gamaliel. This made her very interested in what was going on with the new settlers.
“They’re people. Their clothes are in good shape.”
Joli laughed at his attempt at humor. She was generous like that. It helped business. She pushed back her untidy braid of greying hair and propped a veined hand on one hip. “Give them a few months, and they’ll look as patched together as we do. Are they sticklers? Am I going to have to hide my brews from them?”
Colan considered as he took his first sip of ale. It happened to be unlicensed and untaxed beer straight from Joli’s keg behind the bar. “Wouldn’t hurt to be cautious at first.”
Joli nodded, swiped at the table with a cloth, and then toddled off to check on other customers, her curiosity eased for the moment. Colan had no doubt she’d be back as soon as something else popped into her head. Wayde and Rob entered the bar and nodded at Colan. The two gnarly shellers wandered over to the table and peered at him as if he had the answer to a vital question.
“They’re here then?” Wayde ground out, his voice as rough as gravel. The two men spent most of their time wandering the forest, searching for mineralized egg casings and wing covers from native flivver creatures. The iridescent and unique little bits were popular with jewelry makers across the galaxy. If you were lucky, you could make a living at it, but neither Rob nor Wayde were especially lucky, which is probably why they’d ended up on Gamaliel in the first place.
“They’re here,” Colan agreed and wondered how many other Pearlites were going to hover over his table while he waited for his lunch.
“Think they’re gonna cut more of our frilltrees down? You know it takes a century or more for one of them to get even knee high.” Rob squinted as if the sun was in his eyes, even though the bar was pleasantly dim.
“Have they cut any?”
“Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time.” Rob shook his grizzled head. Both men were dressed in grimy foraging gear, barely held together with obvious patches and thick threaded m
ends, a stark contrast to the very crisply dressed congressional workers. The new folk gleamed like a bunch of flivvers. Lia’s yellow shirt came to mind. She reminded him of some sort of orchid. Soft and curvy…
“Think they’ve dug up any old shells? Might we have a look at their piles?” Wayde asked as he bobbled his head. Colan re-directed his focus on the grizzled men in front of him rather than lose track thinking about an annoying woman. It seemed the two old fellows hoped to do a little prospecting right in the middle of a large construction site. They wouldn’t be traveling far, but the danger increased exponentially considering all the heavy equipment moving around.
“I don’t know. I’ll ask.” Why Colan volunteered himself for the task escaped him. He already had an annoyingly long list of messages and updates from Cit. Lia Frei, and he hardly needed to add to the workload everyone seemed to think was his now. Oh, how he wished he hadn’t finalized that last array of remote sensors so he would’ve had a legitimate excuse to fly a thousand kilometers to the southern coastline and be completely alone for a few days.
“Thanks. Here’s a nice little shelly for you.” Wayde smiled, reached into a bulging pocket on his shirt, and emerged with a small sliver of silver on the tip of one of his large, calloused fingers. He slid it across the table toward Colan with a shy grin and waved away his thanks with a modest shrug. The two men wandered over to another table and sat down, presumably ready for lunch and several unregulated beers.
Colan picked up the curved shard and inspected it. He had no idea what species it had been, but whenever the creature had molted, his wing cover had fallen into a pool of water rich with minerals, and those elements had leached into the biological surface while transforming it into stone. The transition left behind a wildly patterned shell of pinks and blues which glimmered in the bar’s indirect light. It was beautiful, and he could appreciate why people on other worlds were anxious to spend their marks on something so unique.
The door to the bar opened again with a flash of sunlight, and Colan glanced up, wondering if this was yet another Pearlite tracking him down for inside information on the new folk. It was worse. Cit. Lia Frei walked in looking impossibly fresh and bright in a soft blue jumper, her brown hair twisted securely around her head. She glanced around the room and took in the gazes of all the inhabitants who were staring. When she spotted Colan, she tightened her jaw and headed his way. His stomach sank as he dreaded whatever officious torment she’d devised for him.