She sat outside until it was dark. The heaving cloud blurred two moons to a soft silver glow; the third moon was too small to be visible through the overcast. The night was cool and silent–no insects. Two searchlights speared the grass outside the perimeter, and the unlit grass looked black. She wondered what the indigenous population thought of Port Central, and when she would get to see her first native.
Her muscles ached, from the walking, from the gravity. She went inside where it was warm and went to bed.
She dreamed that a native spoke to her, but she could not understand, and she stood by helplessly while the native rotted and died of some disease. She buried the pathetic thing, then found a Mirror kneeling by the grave. She knew it was Danner, but when the Mirror flipped up her visor, underneath there was no face.
Danner agreed to see her before lunch the next day. Marghe dressed slowly and checked her pockets twice for the FN‑17 before she left the mod.
The cloud cover was heavy and multilayered, shades of slate blue and silver, pearl and charcoal, like a sketch washed with watercolor. The air was cool and spicy. She wondered how long it would take her to adjust to the smell, learn to filter it out of her awareness, just as the filters scrubbed it from the air in her mod. A long time, she hoped.
Again, Danner served dap in handmade china. Marghe sipped at the hot tea. “On Earth I was promised full support from Company personnel in the field. However, I now understand that you’re seriously understaffed and underequipped. What can you offer me?”
Danner leaned back in her chair. “Why don’t you tell me your plans.”
“If there are clues to be found about the origins of these people, their common background, I need to find them. It might help with tracing the origins of this virus. It might also lead to some clues about how these women reproduce. Everything in Eagan’s notes points northward. To Ollfoss.”
Danner looked down into the cup she held cradled in both hands, resting on her stomach. “One of your team already tried that. She’s believed to be dead.”
“All the more reason to go up there and find out what happened.”
Danner sighed. “At this time of year, the weather alone up there will be enough to kill you.”
“I can’t wait for an improvement in the weather. I only have six months.”
“You’ll be dealing with more than the weather. The north is isolated. The people you’ll meet there won’t give you any special treatment. They won’t know who you are.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Danner put her cup down on the table between them. “I’m not happy about you risking yourself like this. You’re being paid to see how well the vaccine performs, not to solve mysteries. If you get yourself killed, we’re no nearer to finding out ifthe vaccine works. No nearer to being home.”
Marghe remained silent. This was Commander Danner now, not the young lieutenant of five years ago.
Danner sipped from her cup. “I just don’t understand why you want to do this. I need you here. You could teach us so much about living with these people, what to do and what not to do. You could really help us, but instead you want to hare off north and get yourself killed.”
“I don’t intend to die.”
“But in all likelihood that’s what will happen.” Danner leaned forward. “I just want you to understand: I don’t want you to die while you’re my responsibility. I have enough on my conscience. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but that won’t be much. If you go onto Tehuantepec, I can’t protect you. Do you understand that?”
“I understand.”
“And I can’t dissuade you?”
“No,” Marghe did not dare say anything further. Danner was going to jump, one way or the other.
They were both silent for a moment. Danner straightened. “Very well. When do you intend to leave?”
“As soon as possible.”
Danner went around to her desk and consulted her screen. “If you can wait two days, I have a team–one officer, two civilian technicians–traveling north to a settlement called Holme Valley to install a new communications relay. It will mean an escort for part of your journey. And the community there has had contact with us before. They might be able to help you with more suitable equipment for further travel north than you could find here.” She smiled tightly. “We have only six operational sleds. You can ride one to Holme Valley, but I’m not letting you risk it in the freezing snow of Tehuantepec.”
On her walk back to her quarters, Marghe tried to figure it all out. Danner was going to let her go. Why? Did she believe the vaccine would not work? Or did she know too much about the Kurstand its intentions? Marghe reflected on this, and on the other things she had learned in the twenty hours since she had landed in Port Central.
Danner acknowledged that she was hoarding resources; she was laying a communications network as widely as she could, despite conditions. She had told Marghe, bluntly, that a SEC rep could be useful for long‑term relations with the natives. Mirrors were making their own clothes and decorating their mods, like colonists. The Mirrors did not expect to leave Jeep.
Chapter Three
MARGHE WOKE FROM a nightmare of drifting off the ground, spinning away from a planet with a gravity low enough to allow the muscle jerk of a sneeze to provide escape velocity.
The wind had died to a whisper and the night was quiet and inky soft. Dry ting grass scratched against the spun fibers of Marghe’s nightbag as she wriggled onto her back. The cloud cover was thin and veil‑like, allowing tantalizing glimpses of the moons and what might be stars, or satellites.
She closed her eyes. Meet Jeep, she told her senses, a new planet. One by one she sorted out the Earth smells: the grass‑stained rubber of their shoes; the hot rotor and ozone of the sled; the thin perfume of shampoo and insect repellant; the dyes of their clothes; the metal and plastic of coiled cable. She tuned them out. The rest, the mineral‑rich water vapor in the clouds, the hollow, juiceless ting grass, the sharp chalky soil under her back, was Jeep. Jeep, with its animal musk and light spice. She listened to the wind, and to the faint burrowings of unknown insects tunneling around the roots and bulbs and pods of next spring’s flowers: to the breath and heartbeat of another world.
She opened her eyes again. The cloud cover over the moons had deepened, but even so their light was of a visibly different spectrum. Away from the Earth‑normal artificial illumination of Port Central, her eyes would adjust in a few days. Without looking at her wristcom, she tried to judge how many hours there were until dawn. The twenty‑five‑and‑a‑half‑hour diurnal cycle was just abnormal enough to be confusing. This latitude and time of year meant only eight or nine hours of full daylight; like dusk, dawn would be a lengthy affair. At least the year was shorter; winter would not last as long.
She listened to the steady breathing of the cable technician, Ude Neuyen, to the double breath of Sergeant Lu Wai and Letitia Dogias, the communications engineer, and wondered how it had been for the first colonists: listening to the breath of someone close by, waiting for the onset of the cough that meant a lover or child was going to die. How had it been–how was it–living on a world without men? From test results, she knew that the first colonists had been adept bioengineers: genetic material from Earth flora and fauna was present in indigenous species, and vice versa. The colonists had created viable crops and livestock. How long had it taken them to find the answer to their own reproductive puzzle?
From the other side of the sled, Lu Wai or Letitia sneezed and Marghe jumped, then jumped again as a pale seed drift floated by. Here, any movement in the corner of her eye flooded her with adrenaline and slicked her hands with sweat; she could not name or recognize a thousandth of the plants or animals. Or insects. She scratched the bites around her ankles, cursing under her breath as a scab came off and leaked blood. At least the insects she had encountered so far were not dangerous. As far as anybody knew.