Downtime (24 page)

***

As Jason had promised, he was at the landing pad when the
raider was due. So was half the population of the ranger station, each in full
dress uniform, brown, yellow, and green capes or togas draped over khaki
according to rank. Jason wore leaf green, a toga Calla hadn’t even known he’d
owned. His black curls were neatly combed, untouched by the evening breezes. He
carried her bag from the tunnel at Red Rocks to the edge of the landing pad.

“Not
very heavy,” he commented.

“There’s
not much room in a raider. It’s all engine and armaments,” she said. Or had he
simply meant that it couldn’t have taken her all these hours until sundown to
pack it?

The
lights came on around the pad, and in only moments they could hear the whine of
the raider’s cold jets. The whine grew louder, but never so loud that it hurt
the ears, not even as it lowered itself on its rotary wing. It was dull black
and bigger than the shuttles with wings for atmospheric work and jets that
could thrust it as fast against the aerodynamic shape as with it in the
frictionless reaches between the stars. When it was balanced on wings and tail,
the belly opened and a ladder slipped down. Calla knew it was time to go.

The
officers were lined up for a final handshake, and Calla shook their hands and
saluted each in turn.” Good luck,” she heard several times; “Get the bastard,”
were Marmion’s final words. All of them knew. She hadn’t expected Jason to tell
them until she was gone. D’Omaha must be furious with all of them given his
conviction that the traitor was yet to come.

At
the ladder, Jason handed her the bag and saluted. He was crying and making no
effort to conceal his tears. Impulsively, though it violated principles of
protocol, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. She heard a few good-natured
cheers from the officers behind them.

Calla
reached for the ladder and Jason moved to steady it.

“No
words of farewell?” she asked him.

“Yes,
ma’am,” he said smartly. “I love you, Antiqua.”

“I
love you, too,” she whispered, and hurried up the ladder before he could notice
that she was crying, too.

Inside
the raider, Singh took her bag.

“Welcome
aboard, Commander. It’s good to have you . . . “ He saw her face
and came up short. “Something wrong, Commander?”

“Nothing.
I’m fine.” She took off her black navigator’s cape and stuffed it into the bag,
brushed the tears away with the hem. Then without looking at the pilot, she
crawled up the tube to the control seats. She took the one in the middle,
straining to get in position. The heads-up screens were on, but she could see
the reflections of the people on the ground in them. Most were waving, but not
Jason. He stood to the side, hands clasped in front, staring up at the
transparent canopy.

“Shall
we give them our admiring-crowd-take-off, Commander?” the navigator asked.

“You’ll
make me sick to my stomach,” Calla said, “but yes. Let’s do it.”

The
navigator and Singh went through the routine countdown; Calla was merely a
passenger this trip. The cramped cabin sang with the sounds of “check” and “counter-check.”
Heads up, Calla thought, because if you have to look down it will be all over.
But then they took off, spiraling like a Chinese firecracker, gees pressing
every aching bone in her body and squeezing her aching heart.

The rock cutting terriers had made a terrible hole in the
terrace garden, and half the trees were knocked over just to make room for the
excavation. The danae that were accustomed to feeding in the garden seemed more
curious than disturbed by the destruction of their trees. They would perch
among the shriveled leaves or even on unearthed roots to which clumps of dirt
still clung. Arria often sat with the danae, watching the terriers scramble in
and out of the hole, and watched finally with terrible fascination when the
team of zephyr flyers lowered the caisson into place. It was huge, much bigger
than Jason wanted it to be, but with the lay of the fault at such an angle, the
caisson had to be big enough to hold back an incredible amount of water
pressure and to make contact with the caissons in the tunnel. Already there was
some water in the excavation, seepage that had worried him until the caisson
was firmly in place. Now that it was done, the final passage could be cut from
inside the tunnel.

Jason
watched Marmion climb up the dirt sides of the excavation, muddied to his knees.
“Looks good from out here,” he said. “I’ll check the inside in the morning.”

“Tonight,”
Jason said. “If there is anything wrong, you’ll be swimming in your bed before
dawn.”

“Governor,
I have product to inspect,” Marmion said, gesturing back toward Red Rocks.

“So
do I,” Jason said, for the elixir production was now his responsibility as
well.

Marmion
sighed and shook his head. “Look, I’m tired. You’re tired. The pace is too
fast. We’re going to start making mistakes. And if we do on this one, I’ll be
wishing you had locked me up.”

Jason
considered. He didn’t feel tired, but he never did when he was filled with a
single-minded purpose. But a quick look over to the terriers did substantiate
what Marmion said. “All right,” Jason finally said. “Catch a few hours. I’ll
get D’Omaha to cover for you in the fab.”

“Thanks,”
Marmion said without sincerity.

Jason
grabbed his shirt off a branch and walked over to Arria. Some of the danae left
as he approached. “Old friends?” he asked, gesturing to those on the wing.

“No,”
she said. “They’re your own Amber Forest folk. Surely you know that some of
them have always been shy, and after what happened . . .” She
shrugged. “I’ve had no visitors, if that’s what you mean. But they all seem to
know who I am.”

Jason
tried to rub the dirt drying into his sweat with the shirt, but too much was
caked under the stellerator. “Are they angry?”

Arria
shrugged. “I don’t know what danae anger feels like. I think they’re confused.
A bit of the warning signal goes out when they see anyone, even me, but it’s
not strong like real danger.” She shook her head.

“When
you try, Arria, you know more than you think you do about the danae. You could
be a big help to me.”

She
looked at him wondering. “Doing what?”

“Studying
the danae,” he said, reaching under the stellerator to brush the dirt from his
chest. “You’ve got better rapport with them than anyone, and it will be better
than sitting around watching us work. You must be bored stiff. I’m sorry I
haven’t had more time for you.” He tried to reach his back with the wadded up
shirt, but his hand wouldn’t fit under the stellerator.

Arria
took the shirt from him and reached up under the stellerator to his shoulder
blades, brushing exactly the place where he itched worst. “I like watching,”
Arria said quietly as she moved to the other shoulder blade. “I’ve never seen
anything like it before. I’m not bored.”

“Not
yet,” he said, smiling at her. And he couldn’t help thinking that Calla would
have been bored in the first five minutes. She would have stayed if duty
required it of her, but never voluntarily. Oddly, she had accepted early on
that the same was not true of him. He used to love to watch her ride in the
Cadet Armory, well seated on her mount, chin up with pride.

“You
miss Calla, don’t you,” Arria said, handing back the shirt.

“Yes,”
he said, looking at her gray eyes. “And you continually know more than you
think you do. I feel just awful that you can’t go back to Mercury. I don’t know
what to do for you.”

“I’m
all right. I won’t be any bother. I’ll help with the danae.”

“That’s
not what I meant,” he said, smiling easily at her. “I know you’ll help, and we’ll
probably both learn a lot.”

“You
mean the psi? Are you afraid of me?”

Jason
shook his head. “Not
of
you, Arria.
Afraid
for
you. What I know about psi
sensitivity you could write in old script on your littlest fingernail.”

She
looked at her hands. “Calla would know what to do, wouldn’t she?”

Jason
laughed. “Yes. She probably would.”

“Tell
me about her,” Arria said. “You’re happier when you talk about her.”

“Yeah,
I suppose I am,” Jason said, smiling inwardly, half at Calla and half at Arria’s
perceptiveness. He wondered what she did with all the information she must have
from other people, and how she could fail to realize that it was her psi
ability that acquired it. “Maybe later, Arria. Right now I’ve got to go to Red
Rocks. I’ve work to do. And you probably should go back and get some dinner.
Think you can manage alone?”

Arria
nodded. “Promise?” she said.

“Promise
what?” he said, getting to his feet. “To tell me about Calla later on.”

He
shrugged. “Why not. See you later.”

“Bye.”

He
walked after the last of the terriers climbing up the ladder to the top of the
limestone hogback, already wondering if he and D’Omaha could finish the work in
the fab before midnight. Marmion should be well rested by then.

***

It was close to dawn before Jason went to bed, finally
tired and willing to rest. He showered and climbed into bed, certain he would
fall asleep quickly and soundly. But he slept fitfully, dreaming of Calla,
worrying about her as he pictured her at the controls of a raider. He didn’t
even really know what the inside of a raider looked like, but he imagined that
there were rows and rows of jelly beans, and while he
knew
that jelly bean canisters were made of tough material no
matter how they were shaped, he kept seeing cracks forming, and waking up when
they shattered. Sometime past dawn, he deliberately thought about earlier
times, Calla back on Mercury Novus, the first time she’d sneaked into his
quarters.

“Those
aren’t regulation,” he had said when she came through the door. She was wearing
something dark and filmy under her long crimson cape, she who never stepped out
with so much as a button out of place. She just smiled at him and shook her
head, then sat down on the stool to pull off her boots. Only then did he figure
out what was happening, and he stared at her in amazement. When she untied the
cape and let it fall, he raised the covers for her. She stood up, walked to the
bedside and climbed in beside him. There wasn’t much room, but neither of them
cared. He felt her arms along his back, her breasts pressing against him. When
had she discarded the filmy thing she’d been wearing? He didn’t care. He held
her close, stroking her thighs and kissing her. He was hard, very hard, and the
memory of her was so beautifully close. He could smell the scent of her freshly
washed hair and hear her breathing in his ear, and when his fingers were
tangled with long, silky hair, he knew she was neither a dream nor Calla. He
opened his eyes. It was Arria in his arms, her eyes closed, lips smiling.

“Dear
Timekeeper,” he said.
Please let this be
a dream
. But he knew it was not. His stomach tightened and he burst into a
panicky sweat. Arria’s eyes opened with a start.

“Don’t
stop,” she said, snuggling closer to him. “Don’t stop thinking of Calla.”

Jason
pushed her away and sat up. She stared at him, her pale eyes plainly visible in
the dark room, longing eyes. He turned away. Her clothes were in a pile on the
floor next to the bed. “Arria, you don’t understand what you’re doing,” he said
hoarsely. “You can’t walk in on me and pretend to be Calla.”

“I
wasn’t pretending,” she said. “You were. As long as you were telling yourself a
Calla story, I didn’t think you’d mind if I listened. You said you would tell me
about her, so . . .”

“You’re
not just listening,” Jason said, forcing himself to look at her again. “And
telling a story was not exactly what I was doing. It was . . . private.”

Arria
pulled the covers up to her chin. Jason thought that she would have pulled them
over her head if they would have gone that far. He was frightened for her.
Couldn’t she tell the difference between reality and dreams? Or wasn’t there a
difference for a psi sensitive?

“Why
do they have to be private?” she asked softly. “It isn’t fair. I do it, too —
dream when I’m awake. But no one knows, and it gets lonesome. I’ve had a
lifetime of lonely dreams. I’d rather share yours. I’d rather be in your
dreams.”

Jason
shook his head. “But I was dreaming of Calla.”

“I
don’t care. When you kissed me, it felt wonderful. Kiss me again, Jason. Kiss
Calla.” She held up the covers for him to slide back down underneath them, just
as he had done for Calla. She was young and firm and slim, but he shook his
head again sadly.

“It
would not be good for you,” he said.

“You’re
wrong,” she said. “You said yourself that you knew nothing of psi people. You’re
judging me — us, as if I were not psi at all. You know that I can touch
and taste and smell and hear and see, because you can do those things, too. But
you don’t know how I can feel your love and how good it is.”

“If
I loved you . . .”

“It
doesn’t matter who you love, not to me. I can feel it anyhow, and I like it. I
can help you remember everything, every detail.”

“You
can’t read minds,” Jason said, brushing hair off her forehead.

“I
can’t hear words, but sometimes I can see pictures and I can almost always
feel. You feel worried, right now, like my father used to feel when he looked
at me when he thought I was sleeping.”

Jason
smiled. “It’s wondering what the right thing is for you. He must have had his
doubts from time to time about isolating you here on Mutare. I sure wish I knew
what to do for you.”

“Kiss
me,” she said.

“I
don’t believe that’s it.” He laughed at her and started to tousle her hair, but
she grabbed his hand and held it fiercely.