Desert World Allegiances (27 page)

“Personally, my vote would be for the doctors to get the circuit boards. But I can see what you mean. These things are important.”

“They are as important as water. And we don’t have enough of either.”

“And these people were supposed to be tracking them and making sure everyone shared, right?”

Shan nodded. “That was the plan. It’s why they’re independent from any of the valleys or towns—they’re the neutral arbiters of the resources.”

“So the question is, are they getting tricked, or are they part of the problem?”

Shan got a thoughtful look on his face. “I think it’s time someone asked exactly that question.” Ducking low, Shan started running for the next rock. His long legs covered the ground quickly, so that Temar had to scramble to keep up. His heart pounded painfully fast as he slid into place behind the rock Shan had chosen.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t see us?” Temar hissed.

“Probably, they won’t. Probably.” Shan made a little huffing sound. “I don’t know about your family, but in mine, sometimes we got on each other’s nerves. The last thing I want is to get caught by some little brother, out for a walk because he needs some space.”

Temar imagined what it would mean to live in one building with your family… no valley to walk, no town to visit, no church to hide in when the family overwhelmed you. That was his definition of hell. If this were his home, he’d be walking the outside wall all the time. “Thank you for that cheery thought.”

“You’re a lot more sarcastic than I expected.” Shan’s observation surprised Temar.

The fact was that when he was home, he wasn’t all that sarcastic. His sister had claimed that territory. Now, though, he could feel the feelings bubbling up until he wanted to say something cutting, something sharp. He wanted to throw Shan off balance. It was like he was a glass bubble that was just a little warped. That happened when the heat wasn’t even. If he were a piece of glass, he’d know what to do. He had to be reheated, he had to be rolled along the marver. The wide, smooth metal of a marver let a glassblower roll a hot ball of glass up and down until the ball smoothed and the sides cooled just enough that you could blow the glass without making the sides too thin. Maybe he needed to be reheated. Maybe he needed his surface smoothed out.

Shan looked over at him. “I didn’t mean that as an insult. I’m known to be rather sarcastic myself,” he whispered.

“I thought you were the kind of priest who sat home and read the Bible and talked to people and wrote sermons. I didn’t think you were the sort of priest who got sarcastic and rode sand bikes through the desert as people shot at you.”

“I’m talented that way.” Shan grinned. “Are you ready?”

“No. However, if these people are stealing water, we should go anyway.”

Shan reached out and rested his hand on Temar’s arm. At first, Temar could feel his skin crawl at the touch, but he rode through that feeling, smiling at Shan. They could do this. He could do this.

Without another word, Shan turned and raced toward the building, darting from shadow to shadow. The building had the odd, square lines of those early buildings, the ones that the first settlers had built before they learned to create walls that shrugged off the winds or leaned into rock. So as they got closer, the wind from the gathering storm circled and slapped at them. Tiny wind devils rose from the canyon floor and swept along the bottom until they hit the station and scattered.

The wall had rivets in straight lines, every seven or eight feet, and a low doorway in the center of each section.

“Which one do we go in?”

“I’m not sure,” Shan admitted.

Temar’s chest tightened.

Shan reached out for one of the handles and turned it slowly. “When I open it, duck around the rock,” he whispered, nodding toward the nearest good-sized rock. “If someone’s in here, hopefully they’ll think the wind pulled it open.”

Temar leaned closer. “You’re terrible at planning.”

“Do you have a better plan?”

Temar opened his mouth to protest that he could come up with one. This felt too much like Cyla’s plan—too much like rushing in without enough information. However, they didn’t have time to come up with another plan, not now. They were here. Temar played with the idea of demanding that Shan drive them back to Tom’s cave hideaway so they could come up with a better plan. Shan looked at him, waiting.

“Don’t die,” Temar said firmly. Then he turned and retreated to the rock Shan had chosen.

Chapter 21

F
EAR
made Temar’s heart pound painfully fast as he put a knee in the dust and watched as Shan pulled the door open and then ran for another rock. The metal door banged against the wall, each time making the metal of the entire wall ring like an out-of-tune bell. Temar flinched with every hit, waiting for people to rush out the door and find them. Fear made him crouch lower, but he fisted his hands and waited. Cyla was safe with Naite, and if Temar was going to get caught, he’d fight. He’d fight until they had to kill him before he’d go back to Ben. Ghost hands ran over Temar’s back, making him shiver. He wasn’t under Ben’s hands, and he wouldn’t ever be in that position again.

From behind his rock, Shan slowly stood, a wind devil making his black hair dance. Shan inched forward, his body coiled and ready for a fight. Temar crouched in the dust and fought against two equal fears, the fear that Shan would be caught and the fear that he was going to crouch in the dust like a worthless lump of clay the whole time. Shan got up close to the door and peered around the edge. Immediately, his body language relaxed. He moved into the building, and Temar slowly stood to follow.

The only place in Landing that looked anything like this was the council building. The walls stood square against the floor, and every corner was as even as if a ruler had been used. Despite the wind outside, when Temar pulled the door closed behind them, the winds vanished. “The walls are so solid,” Temar said as he laid a hand against the metal.

“Solid enough to hold out space,” Shan agreed. “If we leave the door open, they’ll think the wind pulled it open.”

That was probably true. No one left a door open, not when a storm threatened and the house was so clean. Metal tables as smooth as any marver were bolted to the wall, and chairs with thick padding sat in front of them. “It’s like another world,” Temar said in a soft voice thick with reverence. From the way Shan looked around, he felt the same.

“The first time I came here, I was afraid to touch anything. But this is the way the planet was supposed to be… the people who first came here thought their grandchildren would live in homes like this one.”

“They were wrong,” Temar said.

“Yes, they were.” Shan went over and put his ear to yet another metal door that led farther into the building. He stood for some time, but Temar figured if anyone was in the house at all, they would have come when the outer door banged against the wall. Even now, the wind slammed it around, so that the metal reverberated with every hit. Sand swirled through the air, ruining the perfect lines formed by the metal construction.

“Sounds clear. Be ready to run,” Shan said as he moved his hand to the doorknob and started slowly turning. Temar was so afraid that he wasn’t sure he could run, but he braced himself on one of the tables and waited. Shan pulled the door open, and again his body sagged with relief. He headed through the door, and Temar followed.

“We’re on the wrong side,” Shan whispered. “This side has the private quarters.”

Temar looked around and saw two separate vid screens, like schools used, bolted to the wall, and more padded chairs. Several books stood on a shelf, which was unusual enough, but a half-dozen pad computers had been left in the room—one on the table, a couple on a shelf by the vid screen, and one on the padded couch. This was the wealthiest house Temar had ever seen, and that included Ben’s big house.

“We need to get to the workshop areas, so we need a door into the west half,” Shan said. Temar nodded, but he was too busy looking around to really pay much attention to doors. A hand brushed across his shoulder, and Temar jumped back, sucking in a fast breath.

“Sorry,” Shan whispered, his hands held up in supplication. “I didn’t mean to startle you. We just need to focus here, okay?” He looked so intense that for a second Temar had the impression that Shan was peering straight into him and seeing all the wondrous and childish awe he was feeling. It was a house, nothing more. Temar nodded.

Shan kept looking at him for several seconds before he nodded and headed down the long room to the door on the other end. Temar stayed back by the door to the outside while Shan slowly opened this one, checking before he headed into the next room. When he followed, Temar discovered this was a long, clean mechanical room with machines Temar couldn’t even guess at. The familiar incinerator and recycler stood on one wall, but a dozen other machines were a total mystery to him. However, obviously none were important, because Shan moved to the next door. This room had that west-facing door, and Shan pressed his ear to the metal, listening for some time before he pushed the door open.

Again, his body language eased as he pulled the door open and went into a room that looked like a vid of one of the ship control rooms. Machines lined every wall, and Shan’s eyes went wide as he looked around. Temar followed, and this time he rested his hand on Shan’s arm to focus him.

“Am I the only one who expected someone to challenge us before now?” Temar whispered.

Shan’s expression turned grim. “I did think I’d be either bluffing or throwing a few punches by now,” Shan admitted. “I don’t understand why no one is here.”

“Because they’re somewhere else?”

“Brilliant,” Shan said, but the grin made up for the dry tone. “This computer runs the tracking program for water usage,” Shan said as he started it. Slipping into one of the chairs, he focused totally on the screens as they started to report out figures. Since Shan had found his computer, Temar moved to check the two other doors, one north and one south. The north one had what looked like a storage room, with deep shelves on either side of a narrow aisle. The south door led to another mechanical room, this time with various machines in parts all over shelves and on one long table that ran the length of the room. There were even more machines and tools that Temar didn’t recognize.

“Shan,” he said as he held the door open for Shan to see.

Shan glanced over. “When I interned with Holmes, he came over here to work on all sorts of equipment. If a local mechanic can’t get it fixed, they’ll send it here. They have training vids here too, although I didn’t know they had vid units in the living quarters.” Shan’s fingers typed as his voice trailed off.

Temar walked through and poked at a couple of the stranger machines before he returned to Shan and his computer. There were actually about six computers in the room—big things that bolted to the wall with keyboards that slid out. He wondered if they were part of the original ship that had brought people to Livre. It was strange to see these artifacts of a world that had ceased to exist before his grandparents were born. The inner worlds had begun to default on the deliveries within a few generations, and then when war broke out, they’d abandoned Livre altogether. But this place looked as if people from another planet might land any time. The windwood furniture and elaborate glassware of a wealthy Livre home was missing. The walls weren’t painted with some mural, and there weren’t any thick, wind-resistant glass panels that made the world bend and warp when you looked out them.

“Damn it,” Shan swore.

Temar turned and waited for some sort of explanation, but Shan just pushed himself away from the keyboard, his chair rolling over the metal floor.

“Nothing. There’s nothing,” Shan snapped. Temar’s eyes darted to the door, as he half expected someone to hear and come running, but if there was anyone home, they didn’t want to confront a couple of intruders.

“Maybe Ben’s tampered with the gauges on the line itself,” Temar suggested. That’s what he and Cyla had assumed when they thought Landowner Young had stolen their water.

Shan shook his head. “Too easy to catch that. Worse, you couldn’t steal from everyone on a line, because the computers here would recognize that the water going into the line and the water use on it weren’t consistent.”

“And it doesn’t show that?” Temar guessed.

“No. It shows that everything is working fine. It shows that the line Ben and Young and your father share is registering fully functional. I don’t understand this.” Shan ran his fingers through his black hair, so that when he finished, it stuck up at odd angles.

“So, where’s the water?”

“I don’t know.” Shan practically leaped up, his whole body jerking with repressed emotion as he threw himself at the door and just braced himself against the sides. Temar found himself retreating from the strong emotion, not sure how to handle the flashes of fury in Shan’s expression. Shan, however, kept right on talking. “The numbers all show equal distribution of water. The computer says that everything is fine. But we know it’s not. But computers can’t lie.” Shan leaned forward until he could rest his forehead against the closed door. “I don’t understand any of this. It doesn’t make sense.”