Building Harlequin’s Moon (33 page)

She finally stopped, realizing that she didn’t know where anyone was. The heat had increased, and she heard the pop of fire and calls of Shane’s crew from close by, out in the meadow. She started moving as fast as she could through the mangled forest, calling for Dylan and Nick and Beth. They needed to get out into the open.

Smoke obscured her vision, slowing her and ruining her sense of distance. She heard the crack of falling trees and the unwelcome sound of wind, but nothing from a human. Then Bruce’s voice ripped through her radio, almost a scream, “Beth! Richard!”

Rachel couldn’t tell if he was yelling to find them or yelling about them. “Where are you?”

Kyu’s voice: “Go to your right,” and then “Rachel—turn right—they need you.” Rachel had turned already, and the two-second delay between the surface and the ship was driving her nuts. She couldn’t see anything but trees, but she kept going. Bruce’s voice croaked in her ear, not talking to her, talking to Dylan, “Pull it off, be slow.”

She stepped between two standing tree trunks. One of the tallest trees lay directly across Richard. He was crushed, his back and neck broken, eyes open. And empty. Dead. Her eyes scanned the long trunk. Dylan stood farther up, desperately pulling on a branch, trying to move the huge tree. Beth Rachel was under it, lying on her stomach, her legs pinned. Rachel ran toward Dylan, reaching for a hold on the branch, noticing that Bruce too was down. He sat to the side. His right leg was at an odd angle. He moaned and tried to stand.

A great unfamiliar noise came from almost directly above them. Rachel looked up at an hallucination. A spaceship—she’d seen several like it hanging neatly on the side of
John Glenn
. Spaceships glided. This one jerked and yawed. She couldn’t take time to understand.

Her hands wrapped tight around the branch, tugging with Dylan, adding her strength to his. The tree moved an inch. Not enough. Beth screamed.

The sound of the ship above them took over, drowning the fire sounds, killing communication.

Rachel planted her feet, reached farther down on the branch, closer to the trunk. They pulled again. The downed tree shivered without moving. Its branches were tangled with other branches, with vines.

She heard another sound just barely as loud as the spaceship, audible because it was close. A lake falling. Dylan called, “Rachel—look!” and she did—she saw a great bladder of water, bigger than a hundred houses. It bled water in a river over the rest of the First Trees, and over the meadow. Steam hissed along the south edge, where water met fire directly. It was mesmerizing.

She heard Bruce’s voice in her ear. “Now, pull!”

Somehow he was standing on one leg, face screwed up tightly with pain, grabbing a branch just above them.

They pulled.

The tree moved.

Water fell from the sky near them, a torrent, a hundred feet away. Branches snapped under the sudden force of water.

Beth pulled with her arms, inching herself away from the tree trunk. She was using her torso, eeling forward like a baby, teeth clenched.

The trunk pulled away from them again, slipping through raw palms, but by now Beth was on the other side struggling to sit up. Beth’s arms worked, tears made flesh-colored streaks in the black and white ash covering her face as she pulled and swore at her trailing legs. Rachel sobbed, clambering over the fallen tree toward Beth, and then the sounds of crashing metal punched air, and she stood transfixed, watching a disaster.

The ship came down slowly in the meadow, crunching down, even the light gravity of Selene breaking things not meant to experience gravity at all. Metal screeched on metal, louder than the fire, louder than Kyu’s voice that was now yelling with joy.

The downed ship looked like a giant broken spider. For a moment, nothing moved.

In the new silence, Rachel heard fire behind them.

A man emerged from the ship and ran toward them, toward the fire, screaming Rachel’s name.

Gabriel.

He glanced at the fire, taking the whole scene in, scooped up Beth Rachel, cradled her to him, and gestured for the others to follow. Rachel and Dylan supported Bruce, and they ran for the center of the meadow where they found milling chaos, everyone talking and yelling over each other, pointing at the downed ship and dancing in the inch of water that covered the meadow.

Gabriel set Beth down and Dylan and Rachel helped Bruce lower himself to the ground. As soon as Bruce
looked comfortable, Rachel collapsed between the other two. She looked up at Gabriel. His eyes were bright with triumph and intent.

He glanced at her briefly. “Stay here—help these two.” He pulled Dylan with him and marshaled Nick and Ariel and others back to the fire.

She watched until he was gone, then turned to help Beth and Bruce.

T
HE SHIP
G
ABRIEL
had destroyed to save them three days ago loomed above Rachel and Beth, dwarfing everything else on Selene. Legs and manipulators splayed at odd angles. The central core had been flattened. The huge bladder that Gabriel had filled with water lay a bit away from the hulk, torn open and useless, edges flapping in the light wind.

Gabriel and Shane and Star had called everyone into the meadow, in the largest space still covered with green grass. Gabriel himself had carried Beth to the meeting. Since the fire, she couldn’t feel anything below her waist, couldn’t walk.

The smell of charred wood hung stubbornly in the air. Looking away from Aldrin, Rachel winced at the colors; the whites and blacks of death. Sticks of charred tree trunks rose from ash. Most of the First Trees were gone or ravaged, burned or knocked down, exposing the meadow to more light than usual. If she turned and looked toward town, everything appeared nearly normal, green and
brown, as if the past week hadn’t happened. But Rachel felt Beth’s hand in hers, and remembered Beth couldn’t follow her anywhere.

She and Harry and Gloria had spelled each other since the injury, bringing the crippled girl water and soup and sitting with her. Her legs were broken things; attached weight that stubbornly refused to move no matter what she tried. Rachel thought the only two blessings might be that Beth lived, and she couldn’t feel her legs. Skin had been torn from the backs of her thighs; one ankle hung wrong. Scatches covered her arms and face. Star ministered to her every morning and evening. Whatever Star did helped with the surface pain, but Beth’s legs weren’t getting any better. Still, she smiled bravely from time to time, and didn’t complain. Rachel sometimes heard her crying at night.

Bruce sat across the half-circle from them, wearing a cast on his lower leg, smiling tiredly. New friendships showed. Dylan, Bruce, Beth Rachel, Nick, Kyle, and Ariel talked regularly, Moon Born and Earth Born drawn to each other by the bond forged in the fire.

“—not age, it’s flare damage,” Bruce said, then, “Hello, Rachel. Dylan wanted to know why your people get old faster than”—thumbs pointing at himself—”this. We’re better protected. Until we get to Selene. Then there’s radiation, fire—”

Rachel look around, gauging expressions. Faces wore a lost look. Every usual routine seemed compromised, or slow, or hard. But Aldrin was safe, the student plots stood, Gagarin had never been threatened, and only three people were dead. Even Rachel’s plot still grew, though damaged by ash and smoke, a symbol of hope: it had survived Andrew, and now it survived the fire.

Gabriel shared plans to increase Selene’s carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and trace gases to reduce the oxygen load and to monitor it more closely. Tolerances would be set lower. But atmospheric change had to be slow, allowing
living things to adapt. The danger of a runaway oxygen flash fire would remain great for a while, and would always be worse here than on Earth.

Shane lectured them: “One problem is the chimney effect. Gravity’s low here. The atmospheric pressure gradient is low too. Burning gas doesn’t rise out of the way fast enough. It sits on the forest and burns until there’s nothing left.”

Rachel remembered early lectures. Selene’s people would have to be more watchful. Open flame had never been allowed on Selene. But fire hadn’t obeyed the rules; it had created itself from raw material. Investigation suggested sparks from a broken steel plate dragging behind a robotic tiller had started the fire.

Everyone treated Gabriel as a hero. He’d come from space with enough power to save them. He hadn’t stopped until the fire was completely out, and he hadn’t let anyone else stop either. Rachel had followed him to patrol the charred remains the day after the crash. His intense focus scared her. He pointed out white ash that marked hot spots, kept teams digging and moving dirt by hand until they were well past exhaustion, and then let them have four hours of sleep before waking them again.

Everyone worked willingly for Gabriel, hurrying to do anything he asked. Rachel marveled at power that could drop a spaceship miner’s bladder full of water from the Hammered Sea onto the meadow. She understood the very real risk that some critical part of the miner would die before it got to Aldrin, taking Gabriel with it. He had crash-landed the spacecraft into the meadow on purpose, sacrificing it, ruining it, digging a firebreak, making a temporary lake with the largest tool handy. He had been willing to die for Aldrin.

Rachel was a bit afraid of Gabriel; the power he wielded was manifest.

She watched him settle onto the dais. All side conversation stopped, and then Rachel’s father, Frank, stood and
clapped. Her half brothers, Jacob and Justin, and little Sarah, all joined him. Nick stood, then Bruce struggled upright, and others, until everyone in the meadow stood and clapped.

Gabriel waited for silence to settle on the group again. “Thank you,” he said, “and thanks to everyone who helped stop the fire. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry it happened. Still, let’s use it as a reminder. We—Earth Born, Council, High Council—we think we know what we’re doing. Selene has dangers we don’t understand. We understood fire, but clearly not well enough. We’ll change that. We’ll practice fire suppression regularly, and we’ll design firebreaks into the jungle.

“I’ve ordered reprogramming of the pods to respond with stronger warnings when there is unusual heat.” Gabriel looked around, and said, “They warned us this time. They weren’t loud enough to get our attention. We’ll change the settings.” He looked over at Rachel and smiled. “And while I could bring a way to stop the fire, Rachel’s quick action was just as important. By getting the alarm out quickly, she let you all start slowing the fire as soon as it started.”

Rachel’s family stood up, clapping. Harry and Gloria followed, then Nick, Dylan, and finally the whole community. Rachel stood and tried not to show the tears that threatened to spill onto her cheeks.

Gabriel continued. “Shane and Star—thank you for your work. Thank you for running crews and base camp, and helping us all work together so well.”

They came up to the dais and sat with Gabriel. There was more clapping, although this time the group stayed seated.

The three Council members recognized Bruce and Dylan for their rescue of Beth Rachel, all of the logistics team for support, and ultimately everyone involved for one thing or another.

The applause and droning voices went on and on. Rachel stopped listening to every detail, thinking about the feast to follow the meeting. Unexpectedly, Beth’s hand tightened on Rachel’s so hard that shooting pain ran all the way to Rachel’s elbow.

She caught the end of Gabriel’s words, “. . . tomorrow. Shane and Star will stay, and we’ll have plans for replanting . . .”

“—I can’t leave.” Beth’s voice was low enough for only Rachel to hear, and her hand still clutched Rachel’s tightly. She looked at Rachel beseechingly. “Don’t let them take me! Don’t make me leave!”

Rachel’s head snapped around and she interrupted, “Gabriel. Gabriel!”

He broke off in midsentence and looked at her.

“Gabriel—what did you say about taking Beth?”

Everyone else looked at her too. She was questioning Gabriel in front of everyone. She stood up, bent a little sideways since Beth’s hand wouldn’t let go of hers. “Why are you taking her?”

“She needs healing. The tools are up there.” He looked impatient, sounded tired.
“You
must know that it’s the only way to save her legs.”

Rachel blinked. “But . . . but . . . when will you bring her back?”

“I don’t know. It could take a while. Be grateful we’re giving her the chance.”

The entire clearing had gone quiet.

Rachel cleared her throat, suddenly nervous. “Do you promise that you won’t ice her?”

“I can’t promise that.” What he wasn’t saying sounded clear in her mind:
High Council breaks my promises!

He wouldn’t say that in front of the group. What could she do? She looked around. The assembled crowd watched her, waiting. Their faces ranged from supportive to blank. No one said anything.

She pulled her hand free from Beth’s so she could stand upright. She couldn’t let him take the girl with no promise of return.

Beth spoke up raggedly. “I’d rather stay here and be broken than go away like Rachel, and not come back until my friends are all grown up.”

Harry and Gloria were partway around the assembly from Rachel and Beth. They stood too, but held their silence and watched. Gloria held the three-and-a-half-year-old Miriam, who cried softly. Apprehension began to show in the group’s restless movements.

As often as she’d questioned Gabriel in private, she’d never been this defiant in public, not to Gabriel, or anybody. She couldn’t risk all of the good feelings the survivors had basked in throughout the meeting. Selene needed them. Why did she always get herself in such predicaments?

She fought a quiver in her voice and said, “You’re right. Beth has to go. But then I need to go with her, Gabriel!” She didn’t dare push harder.

Harry spoke up from the side. “Please let Rachel go. It will be easier for Beth.”

Gabriel looked around, frowning. “She is your only full-time Moon Born teacher.”