Downtime (11 page)

“Yes,
sir,” she said, eyes downcast. Mahdi knew she would spit in his eye if the
delicate vial were not between their pressed fingers, but it amused him to make
her behave like a common thirty-five year old woman. Pity that the younger ones
weren’t vulnerable. They had to find that first gray hair, or notice that their
skin was no longer supple before they really believed that old age would come
to them. Men were no different, but he had no taste for young men.

Mahdi
released Roma’s hand and sat back in the dais chair. “Do you like to hunt,
Roma?”

“That
depends on the quarry,” she said, wary now.

“Elusive,
fleet, and valuable. Danae, they’re called. An avian species indigenous to
Mutare. They are the source of crystallofragrantia. You know what that is?”

Roma
shook her head.

“It’s
a crystal that smells like perfume. The crystal can be cut into semiprecious
gems that are very attractive in themselves, and when the stone is treated, it’s
an everlasting source of fragrance. The diamond exchange in the Hub is paying
diamond-mass value. In its uncut natural state, it’s a gall on the danae’s
excretory organ. I hope to acquire one while I’m on Mutare, have it cut and set
into rings and such. The hunt will be a pleasant diversion before returning to
face the revolution.”

“It
sounds fascinating, sir.”

“How
about a manhunt,” Mahdi said. “Does that intrigue you, too?”

“Sir?”

Mahdi
nodded absently. “A detail inspection and a hunt should provide enough time for
us to engage in a manhunt, too. We must identify one person on Mutare who would
give anything for a supply of elixir. This person must be of sufficient rank to
supply us with any inside information we may need.”

“I don’t
understand, sir. Is this installation on Mutare yours, or isn’t it?”

Mahdi
shrugged and looked at his fingernails. “For the time being, the Decemvirate
controls elixir facilities. I was able to cause this one to be created, and
specify its location, but I didn’t staff it. The Decemvirate did.”

Roma’s
fist tightened around the vial. “Do we have personnel records for the Mutare
staff?”

Mahdi
frowned and shook his head. “We’ll have to identify this person when we get on
site. I want you to plan an inspection schedule that will provide all the
access we need to both people and records.”

“I
understand.”

“I
was certain you would.” He smiled benevolently. “Just don’t fail to leave
sufficient time for the danae hunt.”

“I
won’t forget. I’m looking forward to that myself.”

“I’ll
keep you in mind,” Mahdi said absently, “and if I want companionship during the
hunt, I’ll let you know. You may go now.”

“Yes,
sir.” Again her fist tightened around the vial. Her knuckles were white and
Mahdi suspected her tongue was clenched between her teeth. But Roma would say
nothing for the next three months though she’d wonder what kind of
companionship he meant. She would never find out. He had no intention of asking
for her company. Not this time.

Calla walked to Round House in the late afternoon, but
stopped off at the terrace garden to see if the danae were there. She topped
the limestone hogback and paused, shielding her eyes from the sun. A danae
clung to the trunk of a stunted tree not ten meters from her, wings coiled into
translucent cylinders along its back. The compound eye between the wings
blinked and seemed to focus on her, but the avian did not move. This was as
close as she’d gotten to one in these last two weeks though she’d visited
nearly every day. Moving slowly, Calla sat on a boulder to rest her leg while
she studied the danae. It was neither Old Blue-eyes nor Tonto, but she believed
she’d seen this one a few days ago or one that had similar yellow mottles along
the spine. It had fled that day when she tried to approach it, so today she
decided simply to wait and watch. After a few minutes, the compound eye
swiveled in its socket, coming to rest its gaze on Calla no more frequently
than any other feature in the garden, and the danae returned its primary
attention to whatever it was doing to the tree trunk.

The
danae’s body was better than a meter long, divided almost evenly between a
thorax on top and an abdomen below. It had no true head but it’s brain was well
protected by a special network of hollow bones, floating ribs really, located
under the powerful wing muscles. Shiny brown scales covered the body with the
yellow mottled circles along the back and dusting out onto the wings. When it
moved, the slender body looked almost snakelike, it was so flexible, but it
stepped using two short arms and grasshopper-like legs to keep it against the
tree trunk. She got a glimpse of its brown belly around a face with green eyes
and from this new angle she could see its purple tongue flick out to the trunk,
perhaps to snare an insect, and from time to time one of the arms would dart
out to grab something from the air and press it between the O-ring lips that
covered the gullet.

Without
warning, the danae unfurled its wings and half flew, half leaped through the
branches to the uppermost perch where the long hind legs straightened, suction
pad toes wrapped around mere twigs while the wings beat the air to hold it
erect. It was tall now, two meters with the legs extended, the short forearms
pressed under blurred wings that made the air hum. From the direction of Round
House, Calla saw Jason walking toward her along the top of the hogback. He was
holding his arm high above his head, a sprig of berries between his fingers.

“Stay
still,” Jason said when he was close enough for her to hear, “and I’ll see if I
can get her to come closer.” He continued walking until he was next to Calla. “It’s
Builder. She doesn’t come here often, but she’s usually friendly when she does.”

“You
think she’ll take the berries from you?”

Jason
nodded. “They like fresh fruit and they can’t get it this early in the spring
around here, except from our freezer.”

“She . . .
why she? Never mind; she’s a nest-builder and you’re an old romantic. She seems
interested.”

“Oh,
she’s interested all right. Hasn’t had anything but bugs and buds since she
flew up from the south last month. And she’s curious, too. She spent the
afternoon watching my people cut steps down there, tried to lift a jack-light,
but it was too heavy.”

Calla
looked over her shoulder down the hogback toward Round House. There were fresh
white scars on the buttress of rock she’d been scaling each day, and the trail
had been cleared of rubble and the high spots knocked down almost to the place
where she’d turned off to come up here. “You’d do better to put those rock
cutters on finishing the tunnel between Red Rocks and Round House so we could
come to dinner without these stellerators,” Calla said.

Jason
shook his head. “It will be a while before we can get back to the tunnel. The
engineers are working on the . . . look! Here she comes.”

The
danae had let loose of the twigs and was moving through the air, still in the
upright position. Jason brought his other arm up over his eyes when Builder got
close, for the wings were stirring a great deal of dust. The long legs touched
his shoulder and the wings furled. Knobby knees bent legs as thin as sticks
until the berries were in reach of the little fingers at the end of the arms.
It popped the berries into its mouth one at a time, the lips working furiously
as it swallowed. The green eyes were on Calla, and this close she could see the
olfactory buds she’d read about ringing the face.

When
the berries were gone, Builder handed the empty sprig back to Jason and crouched
down on his shoulder. Jason smiled and ran his hand over a collar of danae,
which then snaked under his arm and reached over to Calla, startling her with
its touch. She felt the little fingers on her hair and when the creature
withdrew to Jason’s shoulder again, it took along a few hairs. It looked at
Calla for a moment, almost mischievously she thought, then it crouched and
sprang, wings unfurling to catch itself in mid-air and gain some altitude
before it soared down along the hogback to the forest below. It caught a
powerful upcurrent along the mesa, and soon was only a speck in the sky. Now
she felt Jason’s hand on her hair.

“Did
she hurt you?”

“No,
a few hairs.” She shook her head and he took his hand away. “I can spare them.”

“I
think she was curious because of the color.” He crossed his arms over his chest
and for the first time Calla noticed a livid scar on his forearm. She didn’t
ask about it. It was fresh, but it would be gone just as soon as he found time
to spend a few hours in the clinic. “Headed for Round House?” he asked finally.

“Yes,
early dinner and to talk to you about what you want to do for D’Omaha’s
arrival.” She stood up. “He’ll be coming down from
Belden Traveler
the day after tomorrow.”

“I
don’t know,” he said, ambling with her back toward the trail below. “I’ve never
been host to a Praetor before. I suppose the VIP treatment is in order, tour of
the facilities, nice dinner. How long is he good for?”

“His
wife will be with him, Alicia Stairnon Mercury. She’ll be interested in the danae.
Keep it short. Stairnon tires easily.”

“Include
the garden in the tour?” he asked.

“I
was thinking of the Amber Forest,” Calla said.

“That’s
pretty rugged going. Maybe a flyover in one of the zephyrs.”

Calla
nodded in agreement. “I’ll have Marmion arrange a zephyr.” A trace of
resentment at her exercising her prerogative to issue the order was evident in
his eyes, but nothing like the seething rage she would have expected thirty
years ago. When he nodded curtly, the anger was gone. “I don’t think I have to
offer any advice about dinner. The food has been excellent.”

“Thanks.
We try. Will you have your kitchen in operation before you bring the rest of
your people down?”

“I
think so, but we’ll have to raid your algae tanks for a few weeks.”

“That’s
all right; we’ve been expecting it.” They came to the place where his people
had been working on the trail. There was room now for them to walk side by
side. The steps down the buttress were rough-hewn, the grip of her bootsoles
adequate as long as she put her good leg first. She wanted to walk down them
like he did, two at a time, but she never knew when the bad leg would fail her
and she couldn’t bear the thought of him picking her up. It was bad enough that
he waited after taking two steps. “We should put a railing here,” he said.

“I
can manage,” Calla said.

“I
was thinking of the Praetor and his lady.”

“Liar,”
she said, thinking to make him smile as he used to when she teased him. But he
didn’t smile,
because it’s too much an
issue with him,
she thought.
He does
not know how to deal with me because I am old.

Calla
heard someone on the trail behind them. She looked back in time to see Marmion
coming down the stairs. He saluted casually, gained on them rapidly.

“I
think you want this,” Marmion said, unclipping the charger off his holstered
sidearm and handing it to Jason.

“What
kind of monsters did you find in Red Rocks,” Jason said taking the charger. He
slipped the flatscans out of the end of the cylinder, nodding to Calla to
indicate the seal was unbroken. He started walking again as he looked at the
scan images. Silently he handed them to Calla. “You’re clean. I’ll give you a
new charger when we get to Round House.”

“Thank
you, sir.”

Nineteen
of the images were of a boulder that became progressively smaller in each
image. Three were of sky, two missed birds, and . . . “What’s
this?” Calla asked, staring at the last image.

“Chimera.
Nasty little buggers. You’re lucky you got him, Chief, or you might have gotten
hurt. They’ve no respect for size and their claws are as sharp as razors.”

“He
was headed the other way,” Marmion said.

“I
noticed,” Jason said dryly, “and if you’d missed, he would have turned.”

The
creature was furred and six-legged, but Calla could see nothing in the scan to
give her a bearing on its proportionate size. “How big?”

“Cat
sized,” Marmion said.

Calla
tucked the scans in the pouch on the front of her stellerator. “And when did
you have time for target shooting?”

“During
lunch. Checked the pipes out the back doors. They look fine.”

And
the water would carry the acids and chemicals, his report had said, as long as
the flow remained as voluminous as it was now. But it was spring, and the
runoff from the high-country snows would slow down soon. She shook her head.
Jason had to finish the tunnel first, then she’d suggest doing something about
the pollution they were going to dump into the canyon stream.

“Can
you tell me, sir,” Marmion said over Jason’s shoulder, “if you’ve discovered a
way of distinguishing the old danae from the young? Everyone tells me that the
gall in the young ones is very small.”

“And
you don’t want to waste your kills for small crystals, right?”

“Well,
yes sir.”

Jason
shoved his hands in his pockets as his big shoulders stiffened. She thought he
might just shake his head and refuse to talk about the danae, but he nodded
thoughtfully and said, “Yes, sometimes you can tell. Nothing so obvious as gray
hairs or wrinkles, and they don’t seem to slow down any, at least, not enough
for me to notice. But the ones who have lived a long time tend to be more
scarred than the others, just because they’ve had more time to acquire them.
The scars are most noticeable in the wings, purple marks in the membrane. But
sometimes you’ll notice them in the body where scales didn’t grow back. Of
course, if you do find a scarred danae, I’m not guaranteeing that it will be
old. Could be your bad luck to find some youngster who’d been in some really
bad scrape.”