Downtime (9 page)

“Good
evening, Chief,” Jason said, returning the salute. “Open,” he said to the door,
and watched Marmion leave. “You can interrupt for Chief Marmion anytime,” he
said to the room-tender. “Extend him full courtesy when he’s here.”

“Does
that include personal courtesy?”

Jason
thought a moment. Personal courtesies included access to his bar and other
private possessions, mostly a euphemism for facilitating physical relationships
among personnel although it was common to provide easy access to friends, too.
He liked Marmion, liked the fact that he seemed not only to serve Calla well
but to care about her, too. Calla’s simply calling him a good man was like
vouching for him. He believed everything Calla had told him so far, but he also
was certain he didn’t know everything there was to know. “Just military
courtesy,” Jason said finally.

For the second time in as many nights, Jason was sleeping
fitfully, and the bed’s jelly beans were going crazy trying to keep up with his
tossing. As he turned yet again he could feel the thready legs of the cerecloth
comforter walking silently up his back, pulling the covering up toward his
neck. The mattress beneath him was digging holes for his face and toes and
plumping up under his stomach in an effort to support his spine, but he couldn’t
stay still long enough for the bed to make him comfortable. He turned onto his
side and punched the mattress a few times to make a mound for his head, which
was faster than waiting for the jelly beans to reconfigure a mattress that
moved too slowly to disturb a sleeping human. He couldn’t help thinking of how
relaxed he’d be if Calla were here, sleeping soundly beside him.

He’d
supped alone, too, in his room with the lights dimmed so that he could see
easily into the staging area. A few rangers and some of Calla’s stevedores had
overflowed from the dining room to eat off the game tables, and it looked as if
the two groups were beginning to talk. Probably about the food, Jason thought,
for he’d ordered the rangers on KP to outdo themselves for their guests’ first
night. Food was generally excellent on outpost planets, for the algae buds
delivered each six months by the supply run were of the highest quality, more
versatile than domestic market fare. And the rangers frequently reaped Mutare’s
abundance to add exotic touches to the meals. There had been golden plums on
his dinner plate with a few drops of precious ant honey to set off the tangy
fruit, but the honey had dripped off onto his knee when he paused mid bite to
watch some Praetorians enter the staging area below. Calla was not among them,
and then the plums seemed bitter without honey.

He’d
finally concluded that Calla must have decided to stay on board the shuttle to
eat, apparently disinclined to take advantage of the dinner break, which was
sure to be the only free time available to them until the installation at the
research center was complete. Praetorian commanders were known for their
aloofness. What made him think that Calla would be any different after thirty
years of conditioning? They were all that way because the generals were all
arrogant and cold and the only way commanders could get promotions was to
demonstrate what fine generals they’d be by behaving just like them. He and
Calla used to talk about the career Praetorians, mocking them behind their
backs and laughing at them. Or had Jason laughed alone? He tried to remember.
She was always more reserved than he and had a steadying effect on him, but it
hadn’t prevented her from loving him and his easygoing and sometime naively
romantic ways. And yesterday, when the day’s ceremony was over, hadn’t she just
walked in and flopped down on his chair as if ten or thirty years had not gone
by? Well, not exactly. Practically telling him that the new facility would
really be a fabrication plant for Decemvirate elixir was true to his memories
of her. She’d be as honest as she could without disobeying her orders. But her
casual hint to keep the miners quiet and happy while she carried out her work
by lifting his restrictions on slaughtering the danae was not the Calla he
remembered. He had thought she would change her mind when she actually saw the danae.
Her eyes had glittered and she’d been awed, and all but ordered their slaughter
be permitted. And she probably could order it. He didn’t doubt for a moment
that she could pull a jelly bean out of her pocket that would relieve him of
his command on Mutare. And if she did, the danae would become victims of the
same greed and shortsightedness that was overwhelming the Hub, half the
galactic Arm away. The danae, even he and his rangers, the miners, were nothing
more than a few borrowed plumes to wave at the occasional freetraders who called
at Mutare and to keep the provisions from the Hub coming from the civilian
sector instead of the war chest.

He
hadn’t eaten much of his dinner, torn between wanting to see her again and
afraid that when he did he’d be more confused than ever. And now he could not
sleep because not seeing her provided no answers at all, and even a state of
confusion would be better than wondering what would have happened if they hadn’t
let themselves slide ten and thirty years down the time spiral.
Timekeeper, is this your way of punishing me
for leaving her? But she didn’t want me to stay. She never asked me to stay!

Jason
heard the beep from the flatscreen across the room and his eyes flew open. It
couldn’t be important or the beeping would have continued and grown loud enough
to awaken him. Even so he sat up. “What is it?” he asked.

The
jelly beans in their transparent jar of liquid nitrogen started glowing as they
came to life at the sound of his voice. “A message awaits you from Commander
Calla,” the voice synthesizer told him.

“Read
it to me,” Jason said.

“Call
me when you awaken,” the synthesizer said, and the jelly beans’ color mellowed.

“Return
the call,” Jason said anxiously. She must still be awake, for the message had
not been sent more than seconds ago. He started to get up but the lights were
coming up for visual pickup and Calla’s face was already resolving on the flatscreen
when he remembered he was naked beneath the comforter. He settled for swinging
his legs over the edge of the bed and casually pulling the corner of the
comforter over his loins. “What is it?”

She
stared silently for a moment into the flatscreen and for a moment he was sure
it had been a mistake to call her back before he’d dressed, or at least thought
to cancel the visuals, but his response had been reflexive. No, he thought,
that wasn’t true either. Ten years ago he wouldn’t have covered himself at all.
But then he realized that her stare was contemplative, not pensive or
disapproving, and he didn’t know whether to be surprised or relieved that her
way of conveying her mood to him had not changed during this ten or thirty
years. Whatever had caused her to send the message was troubling her greatly.
He waited as patiently as he could for her to tell him what.

“I just
finished reading your reports,” she said finally. “I’ve been reading them since
late afternoon.”

“You
said you were going to read them last night,” he said.

“Last
night I read the parts that interested me, the parts I knew interested you. I read
the sections on the danae’s life cycles and behavior, and I went to bed early
because I wanted to see them in the morning. Today I read everything else and I
know what you must be thinking.”

“Oh?
What’s that?”

“That
I care nothing about your work here on Mutare, that I didn’t recognize your
effort in those carefully thought out mining restrictions.”

Jason
nodded. “And now what do you suppose I’m thinking?”

“I
hope you realize I’m as concerned as you that the increase in human population
on Mutare could be detrimental to the danae.”

Jason
shook his head. “I’m not sure I can believe that, Calla. Not while I’m
wondering what occupied your time between the Hub and Mutare for three months
so thoroughly that you just got around to reading the planet reports today. You
should have known everything about Mutare before you left the Hub. Else how
could you know Mutare was suitable for your project?”

“I read
the abstracts. You had written them, and I knew they could be trusted. Mutare
is just outback, not so far that we’d waste a generation of time transporting
equipment from the Hub, but so unattractive because of the radiation that the
project’s secrecy could be maintained.”

“You
must have been in a hurry, or you would have read every word.”

“The
decision was not mine alone,” Calla said, “and besides, others read the detail
reports. There was even an impact study, I believe, though I didn’t read that
either.”

“Whatever
it was you
were
doing must have been
fascinating.”

Calla’s
lips pressed into a thin line of stubbornness, and she crossed her arms across
her chest. The fingers of the visible hand still looked long and delicate,
unjeweled, which was unlike so many of her rank but which was typical of Calla.
“My dear boy, I am doing my best to apologize for my work being far more
important than yours and to tell you that even though I may not even yet have a
full appreciation for what you’re doing here I am not without sympathy for it.
You’d do better to use my precious time by filling me in on any pertinent
details than to pry into matters that don’t concern you.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” he said with some real dismay because the golden worlds on her
shoulders had flashed in his eyes. But mostly he felt the sting of that word “boy”
in his heart like he would feel a dagger, and he couldn’t help some sign of
defiance. “What would you like to know, Commander?”

“Your
reasons for permitting the miners to take three danae galls off world with
them. Why not two, or five?”

At
least she hadn’t asked why any at all, which told him she really had understood
that forbidding the hunts completely would simply have forced the miners and
even his own people into breaking his law. The temptation was just too great. “Three,”
he said, “is a damn fine nest egg back in the Hub. It’s enough to retire on
forever if it’s invested well and you live that long, or it buys a few years of
riotous living. But it’s not quite enough to finance a full-scale exploitation
back here.”

“So,
any less and you’d have them poaching and have to punish them, and any more and
you’d have more than you could handle because the pirate types might become
involved.” She nodded thoughtfully for a moment. “You’re also keeping the
prices up for crystallofragrantia by keeping them in short supply. Or don’t you
care?”

“If
it goes down, it will be because there’s a glut in the market, which also means
a bloodbath here on Mutare.”

“How
many galls do you own?”

“None.”

“But
you found the first one, and were the first to realize what it might be.”

Jason
shook his head. “Miners have been picking up crystal on Mutare for centuries. I
was just the first to realize they came from the danae. I sent it back to the
Hub for analysis. I never found one just lying on the ground; this area’s
pretty well picked clean by now. And I can’t kill a danae to acquire another,
not after knowing Old Blue-eyes and Tonto.”

Calla
nodded, then shook her head as if to say she could not hunt the danae either,
though Jason knew she had hunted live game in the preserves back in the Hub.
She had eaten her quarry’s flesh, too, just to prove to herself that she could
do it if she ever found herself in circumstances that required such barbaric
practices. Jason had preferred to wait for such circumstances to arise, and
hoped they never did. But they had, and he had hunted and eaten flesh, and he’d
felt no remorse or revulsion when his hunger had been satisfied. There was a
fair amount of meat on the danae, and he knew that some of the miners had tried
eating their flesh but found it not to their liking. Bitter, despite the
perfumed fragrance it gave off while cooking.

“I
don’t think we can do any better than to impose your mining restrictions on my
people as well,” Calla finally said.

“Unchanged.
No more than three kills?”

“Yes,
unchanged. It will force them to be careful and selective. I’ll give you the
registrations for our weapons, and we’ll use your armory for recharging. Who is
on your shooting board?”

“Me,”
Jason said, and Calla frowned. Requiring explanation for each instance of
discharging a weapon on an outback world was unusual in itself, but having only
one officer listen to the explanation and pass judgment on it was highly
irregular. “It permitted me to make decisions out in the bush, kept the
schedule clean. My people were satisfied with it.”

“They
know you and trust you. My people don’t.” She was looking into the lens of her
flat screen expectantly, the gaze not quite true since the bed Jason was
sitting on was at the side of the room.

“Perhaps
you’d like to join me on the board, Commander,” he said wondering how much of
his time was going to have to be given over to formal administrative duties
like shooting board meetings. As it was, he’d discharged such duties with a
minimum of ceremony by looking at the flatscan of the target every time someone
needed a recharge and either verifying that the target had been an uncontrolled
species or tallying the kill if it were a danae and the hunter admitted the
kill. The flatscan was made every time the trigger was pressed, and since both
weapon and scanner worked at the speed of light, judgment was simple: if the
target was within the crosshairs, it was either dead or wounded. But if the
target was a danae, and especially if it was a wing shot, the hunter might
claim a miss because the danae could fly with a wing and a half, hole up for a
few days and be none the worse for the wear thereafter. When there was time,
Jason verified the miss by personally going out and locating the wounded danae . . .
or finding the body. There had been a dozen such incidents spread among one
hundred people and over three years. Calla’s contingent would bring the
population at the station to over six hundred. There wouldn’t be time to do it
right, not even if Calla took on half the responsibility. But he said nothing.
It was not so bad as it might have been if she’d continued to insist on
increasing the quota.