Jaydium (2 page)

“Hank said that, did he?”

The mental backlash of emerging from
duo
affected people differently, the most common reaction being a brief but intense erotic rush. Kithri had never experienced it herself, but she'd had her fill of its consequences. For all his faults, Hank had enough sense to back off and look for easier pickings elsewhere.

“What else did Hank tell you about me?” she asked.

“That you were damned good.”

Kithri bit her lip, considering. The angry flush had drained from her face, leaving her cheeks a light, even tan against the rich brown of her curls. She studied Eril speculatively. “You ever chipped jaydium before?”

“I'm willing to learn.”

“It's no picnic, I can tell you. The work's rough and dirty and the flight across the Cerrano can kill you. Why would you want to risk it?”

“You want the truth?” Eril stopped grinning. “All right — it's the money. Hank told me what you made on a
duo
run, with the jaydium still intact. If he's too love-addled to take it, I will.”

Kithri nodded, relaxing. Greed was something she could understand. “You might change your mind once you see
Brushwacker.
But it won't hurt to take a look.”

o0o

The Port Ludlow jetport was definitely third-class. The only landing space worth anything was currently dominated by a single, heavily-guarded Federation shuttle, used for ferrying hauls of jaydium ore to the orbiting freighter, where it was sealed in hard vacuum to prevent further deterioration. A few battered in-system traders sat beyond it, looking like poor country cousins. Miners' scrubjets lined the paved runways at the edge of the field. Further south and west, patches of muted green marked the beginning of Stayman's insular agricultural community. The patches centered on prewar tapwells, for Stayman's water resources lay deep within the bedrock aquifers.

Kithri ran one hand over
Brushwacker's
blunt nose and sent the thin layer of dust up in little billows. Like her, it was different, set apart. Its metalloceramic skin wore only a dull patina from years of abrasion by the ever-present dust. The other miners painted and repainted theirs with bright, outlandish designs — flames and snakes with gaping mouths, jagged lightning, women with wings. Each one tried to outshine the others.

The stubby, wide wings that gave
Brushwacker
its unusual maneuverability were set in specialized mountings that permitted minute changes in angle. The engines, too, were capable of rotating to vary the direction of thrust. The narrow body of the scrubjet acted as a secondary airfoil and within its curved contours, space was at a premium. Since the death of Kithri's father, no one but she had sat in the pilot's seat. Hank — and Dowdell for that one ill-fated flight — had always taken second place.

She slid the door open and stepped back for Eril to take a look. He poked his head in and said, “Looks like there's enough room to take a deep breath, but skies help you if you get the urge to scratch your
pitouchee
.”

Kithri raised one eyebrow, not quite ingenuous enough to ask what a
pitouchee
was. “Still game?”

“Compared to the new needle scouts, this is positively spacious.”

“In you go, then. You run the co-pilot's check, and if you get it right, you're on.”

Eril climbed into the second pilot's seat and pulled the harness straps around him. He took a few moments to study the panels, then began his inspection. Kithri watched him, liking the way he moved in the cramped space, sensing where the 'jet's walls were without having to bang his elbows into them, liking the meticulousness with which he double-checked everything. But he'd had an unforgiving teacher — in space, carelessness was invariably fatal.

He looked up as she folded herself into the seat before him, her shoulders between his knees. She didn't touch him as she checked his work again. “All right, you pass,” she said, closed the door, and thumbed the engines into life.

“What's the drill?”

“Manual in the 'port and out past the hills. That'll take us to the Cerrano Plain, a good three thousand miles across. Then into the Manitous themselves.”

“How deep into them?”

“Depends on where the jaydium is. Could be as much as ten miles. You ever flown a tunnel?”

Kithri nudged
Brushwacker
from its berth and along the runway leading east toward the hills. The tiny ship moved smoothly under her hands, as if it were a living thing that knew her touch.

“No, but I've heard they're as predictable as a trader's promise. A system of natural tunnels that run all through the mountain range.”

Kithri laughed. “That's not half of it. There's no jaydium worth having on the surface, so you have to follow the tunnels deep into the mountain. They twist worse than a dish of noodles — one wrong turn and you'll end up plastered against the wall.”

“You're not the noodle type,” he said. “And neither am I.”

“Assist?” came Eril's voice.

The long muscles in his thighs flexed alongside Kithri's arms as he settled the auxiliary foot controls. With an effort, she ignored the sensation. “Take us due east to the hills, then through them along the lowest route.”

“Speed?” There was no hint of excitement in his voice.

“Don't get us smashed.”

Kithri rested her hands lightly on the controls, sensing the subtle changes as Eril eased into command and increased their speed. He flew with almost arrogant confidence, but he wasn't greedy — he'd left a good twenty percent to her discretion.

They reached the first wrinkle of hills at moderate subsonic speed. Eril guided the scrubjet along the narrow gullies where vegetation covered the jagged rock like splotches of green-black ink. At first his handling felt rough-edged, his reactions to the winding canyon jerky. Kithri nudged the stabilizers and tried to keep her muscles loose. He was doing a hell of a lot better than she had on her first try.

She'd been eleven, less than a year on Stayman and still homesick for Albion's flowers. That was before the war, when the Federation still manned the colony and provided services to the jaydium miners and their families. That was when they still had families. Her father sat before her in the pilot's seat, his body a bulwark against this unfamiliar, desolate world.

“All right, Kithryne Sunnai,” he said. He was given to using her full name when he wanted her to pay particular attention. Sometimes when a topic was really important to him, he sounded like one of his own geology lectures. Even now, she could remember the rhythm of his words, his voice, his hands covering hers on the scrubjet controls.

“Stayman's your world now, and you've got to learn her like the inside of your own room, learn her mountains, her Cerrano Plain, learn how to chip and run her jaydium. Learn the dangers of her coriolis storms and alkali pits. So you can take care of yourself when — if anything happens to me. This scrubjet will be your friend when there's nobody else you can trust...”

Had he known, even then, of the neurodyscrasia already setting its fatal enzymatic markers in the deepest recesses of his brainstem? Had he known how little time they had left together? Had he guessed what her life would become, between Hank's broken promises and dustbug miners like Dowdell? Was he trying to warn her, to prepare her, to give her what she'd need to survive?

The little ship had flinched under her childish touch like a wild creature shying away from human control. “No, don't fight her, don't think of
Brushwacker
as an enemy you've got to conquer,” her father said. “Think of her as an extension of yourself, just as your arms and legs are. Know exactly where and how you want to go, and then put her right...there...”

A swerve of the scrubjet jerked Kithri's attention back to the present. Eril had been flying in graceful, even swoops along the canyon floor. The walls narrowed and he'd oversteered in bringing them back to a straight line. Quickly he compensated and evened out. Then they began to climb, snaking through the twisted passes, always clinging to the ground. The ink-blotchy vegetation grew sparser, ragged-looking, and finally gave way to yellowish lichen.

They reached the crest and looked down from the last hill. The vast Cerrano Plain lay before them, flat from scrubjet nose to horizon. Alkali-tolerant scrub grew in patches, blending in the distance into a swath of silver-gray. The pale soil underneath was so fine, it was almost powdery. Wherever the first human explorers had driven their heavy land-moving equipment, they'd torn away the thin protective crust. Over the years, wind eroded the trails into wildly sculpted gullies like scars on the Plain's fragile skin. Plumes of dust rose from the old trails, blown aloft by the constant winds.

Kithri reached for the headsets that would join her mind to Eril's and to the computerized shipbrain. As she leaned forward, her arm brushed against the inner surface of Eril's thigh. She wondered what it would be like to touch him deliberately, to run her fingers over the warm, sleek flesh beneath the layers of clothing. Her heartbeat soared.

What was happening to her? She'd never reacted to a man like that before, certainly not the tavern dustbugs or Hank with his hyper-inflated ego. Yet ever since Eril had come racing after her, this awareness of him had been growing.

Get yourself under control, Kithri! The jaydium's the important thing, not a few jerk-you-around hormones.

Kithri pulled on her headset and slid the padded neuroprobes into place. The gel contacts felt familiar and cool on her skin. She blinked, her brain refusing at first, as it always did, to integrate the vibrating double images, the overlay of her own organic vision on top of the computerized analysis. The equipment that made
duo
flight possible by linking two human minds to shipbrain was a highly sophisticated adaptation of the apparatus used to link an ordinary computer to its human operator. Several additional safety devices had been added, notably the unspoken emergency abort command that would disengage the entire system. Kithri could have chosen her own phrase, but she'd kept the one her father had programmed.
Terminal Escape Velocity.
She'd never had to use it, but sometimes it sifted like a ghostly echo through her dreams.

The visual images blended together as shipbrain fed data into Kithri's mind and her temporal lobes sent back fine-tuning signals. The effect was very like the addition of another sensory dimension. A moment later, Eril completed the
duo
configuration.

Whenever Kithri linked with Hank, she always felt a flash of searing pain before he settled into synch. She'd studied enough physiology to know it was due to the differences in their synaptic patterns, but that didn't make it any easier. Old Dowdell's mind had been repulsive rather than painful, and she could no longer remember what it had been like when her father taught her. She held her breath and Eril joined with her.

There was no sudden agony, but a silken touch, a whisper of delight, and then Eril was
inside
her mind. For a dazzling instant their awareness merged, they thought as one organic unity. Shipbrain receded to a background monotone.

She was Eril, he was Kithri and, miraculously, there was no difference between them. She saw through his eyes. She felt the warmth of her own shoulders between his thighs. Her skin tingled, her heart beat wildly, and tantalizing shivers rippled along her nerves.

The moment of merging faded like honey melting on the tongue, and Kithri was once more a separate entity floating in the web of Kithri/Eril/shipbrain.

*Ready?* Kithri put '
Wacker
in a straight path across the Plain as she and Eril sorted the housekeeping. The division of tasks that she and Hank had worked out was irrelevant now and she wanted to put it all behind her.

Bio-homeostasis?
Eighty percent to Eril, without a question. Kithri's heart rate and blood pressure were almost back to normal under his sure touch. She shifted the remaining twenty percent as emergency backup to the ship. Navigation was hers, eighty-five with fifteen percent to ship memory, and power train and life support split a ragged three ways.

*Down to business* Kithri took hold of the helm, using shipbrain's external sensors for orientation. With a sure touch, she steadied the 'jet and sent it supersonic across the Plain.

After a few minutes, she felt Eril relax, lulled by the flat, featureless expanse below them and the empty indigo sky above. His calmness sent ripples of relaxation through her own body. Yet years of running jaydium had taught her better than to trust the Cerrano for even a moment. She kept watch with '
Wacker's
senses as well as her own.

Within minutes, shipbrain alerted her to a massive circular air disturbance ahead, three hundred miles in diameter. Instantly she recognized it as a coriolis storm. Driven by the immense heat gradients built up over the reflective Plain and amplified by the rotation of the planet, coriolis winds whipped to hundreds of miles per hour. The eye was usually still, but severe local turbulence along the periphery could prove deadly to even the most skillful pilot.

Kithri tightened her grip on the controls. *Trouble coming*

*I don't see a thing* Eril said.

*Clear-air coriolis, a big one. Check the infrared, not visual. We'll try to stay out of the worst of it. Hold on!*

‘Wacker
accelerated smoothly to match the wind speed. Then the tiny ship touched the invisible edge of the storm. It shuddered and bucked, spinning out of control.

An imaginary hand crushed Kithri's chest, forcing the air from her lungs. Struggling for breath, she tried to brace herself against it. The harness straps bit deep into her flesh as they held her firm in her seat. She gasped and shut her eyes. Ordinary vision was useless here — she couldn't respond quickly enough. No single unaided human could, only two minds linked in
duo
.