Downtime (23 page)

“You
can’t go to Mercury just yet,” Jason said. “There’s no ship right now, and even
if there were there’s a travel ban.”

“What
does that mean?” Arria said.

Jason
sighed. “I’ll explain later, Arria. Right now I think the thing to do is to
arrange a shower for you, and some food.”

Jason stood in the shower soaping down for the second
time. The water was only tepid, for these little showers were intended to
provide a quick rinse after lovemaking, not to rid a man of sweet-smelling
danae blood. He longed for the baths he’d planned to build where he could sit
among steaming rocks and percolate all the poison from deep within until it ran
off his body with the sweat. Then he could soak in the clear pools of water and
feel clean again. But his people had had to build the Red Rocks facility and
now they were working on the connecting tunnel, and who knew how long it would
be before they could go back to work on the unfinished baths.

He
waited until the last of the soap bubbles ran over his toes and down the drain,
then he said, “Water off, dry on.” The spray of water halted and warm air
filled the stall. This was not satisfying either. The soles of his feet never
quite got dry and all the hairs on his chest and legs tickled as they recoiled.
He usually kept a length of toweling for finishing off his shower, but Calla
had wrapped Arria’s hair with it and there wasn’t another for him to use. And
Calla had given Arria one of his khaki shirts to wear, though it went all the
way to her knees. If there’d been proper baths, the three of them would have
bathed together, and Calla would not have worried about what Arria would wear.
These showers brought back taboos he’d almost forgotten existed. Curse the
Timekeeper for making wars and not baths.

He
pulled on clean pants and shirt and realized he couldn’t smell the cleanness of
them over the stink of esters. Without hesitating, he grabbed his soiled
clothes and shoved them in the incinerator. They might never get replaced if
Mahdi started the war, but Jason didn’t care. He would be smelling the blood of
the danae in every set of khakis he owned if he didn’t destroy them.

He
stepped out of the closet and into his room. Arria was lying in his bed, damp
hair spread across the pillow, cerecloth comforter tucked up around her chin,
apparently already asleep. Calla sat at his desk looking out the windows to the
game room, sipping from a cup.

“Thought
you’d be asleep, too,” Jason said sitting on the edge of the desk.

“I’m
not tired,” she said, putting the cup down.

Jason
picked it up, sniffed and drank. “Coffee? I didn’t know we had any on Mutare.”

“I
brought it,” Calla said .”Caffeine is one of the few drugs I can have.”

“But
you’re not tired,” Jason said, wondering if she’d smile. She didn’t. She kept
staring out the window into the empty game room. “What’s on your mind, Calla?”

“War,”
she said. “Strange how it manages to affect us here on Mutare so far from the
Hub. Two indigenes dead, first casualties in a war they didn’t know existed and
perhaps don’t even have a concept for. A young woman who can’t travel to the
one place in the universe that can help her adjust to living with a
psi-sensitive mind. Two lovers who found each other after ten and thirty years
only to part before they even could think of what might have been.”

“How
soon must the lovers part?” Jason asked quietly. Calla looked at him, brown
eyes soft as sable. “We have some time. I can’t leave until I see the tunnel
finished.”

The
tunnel was nearly finished now. Jason wondered how long he could make the work
last of setting the caisson in place-a week? Perhaps two? He shook his head.
Calla might not catch Mahdi among all the stars if he had a full two-weeks head
start on her. “How long before the siege?” Jason asked her.

“So
you guessed that, too,” Calla said, finally smiling. “You always used to
complain that you didn’t understand the machinations and underplots.”

“I
didn’t, but for a while I had a good teacher. Then I had years to realize that
I’d learned a lot. You weren’t around to bail me out when I shot off my mouth.
I remembered how silent you used to be, and maybe it had something to do with
your . . . carriage. You’re short, but no one ever remembered
you as being small. You said nothing, but people always remembered you as being
wise. It was because you were listening and thinking. So I learned to shut my
mouth. It’s amazing what you can hear when your mouth is closed. The difference
is that on me, silence looks dumb.”

“Dumb
like a fox,” Calla said. “The siege won’t come until near the end.” She reached
for the cup that was still in Jason’s hand.

“The
end of what?”

“The
war. It will end here, Jason. On Mutare. Before I leave, I will build a gallows
down there in the game room. And when I return, I will hang Mahdi on it.”

“A
bit primitive, don’t you think?” Jason said.

Calla
shook her head, the brass-colored curls shining even in the dim light. “Hanging
is still the punishment for treason. When Mahdi sees it, he will know that I
played him across the Arm, star system by star system, planet by planet, until he
walks into this very place. He will see the gallows and he will know beyond a
doubt that I led him every step of the way.”

“How
will you bring him here?”

Calla
just smiled. “While I’m gone, you have a traitor to catch. How are you going to
do it?”

Jason
shook his head. “You said yourself that he had only to wait. There’s no need
for him to expose himself to any danger. I’ll do the obvious things, of course.
Check the elixir inventory myself to make certain none is being smuggled out.
Step up inspections so I can look in closets for stashed vials.”

Calla
nodded. “That’s as much as you can do. If everything goes as planned, it won’t
matter if you don’t find him. He’ll never get the chance to help Mahdi.”

“I
don’t like the thought of having a traitor in my midst.”

“I
know. You like thinking that all your people are good people.”

It
was true, but he never knew it showed in him. He liked believing people were
inherently good, but he thought he often acted as if he understood the evil
side, too. “Will I be in charge? Or D’ Omaha.”

“You
will, Jason. D’Omaha’s no soldier. Even as a general he was a diplomat, not
military.”

“There
are plenty who would argue that ten years of outback planets doesn’t qualify me
as a soldier either.”

“You
came up through the Praetorian guards. I doubt that you’ve forgotten a moment
of your training.”

“Thought
I was rid of the whole mess when you took out that red jelly bean. In all my
woolgathering I figured we were both pawns guarding the castle. Never dreamed
you were the queen.”

“Now
you’re king.”

“One
who builds tunnels. You don’t have to stay for that, Calla. I’m a good
engineer.”

“All
right, then. I leave the day after tomorrow.”

“Stay,”
he said.

She
looked at him, then got up. Standing, her face was level with his. She kissed
him gently. “Goodnight,” she said.

Jason
caught her hand and pulled her back. “Where do you think you’re going.”

“Back
to Red Rocks, to bed.”

“Stay
here.”

“You,
me, and Arria?”

He’d
forgotten the child in his bed. “I’ll go back with you.”

“She
won’t know what to do when she wakes up. She doesn’t even know how to open a
door. You can’t leave her alone.”

“I’ll
call someone to stay with her.”

“I
think another strange mind so close would disturb her. Let her be. We still
have tomorrow.”

But
Jason knew that tomorrow would be filled with endless meetings to mark the
changeover from a governorship to martial law, and Calla would not even find
the time to spend the night with him. She wanted the goodbyes over now. Ten
years ago she’d pulled double duty from the moment he’d told her he’d
transferred to the rangers until he left. It had been a long month for him. And
tomorrow would seem like forever. He kissed her again, perhaps for the very
last time. And just for a moment he lost himself in her arms, and then she
stepped away and the door closed behind her.

He
watched her through the windows as she went down the steps, steadying herself
with the railing. Then she walked slowly across the green shale floor and
stopped. Jason thought she might tum and look up at him, but she didn’t. She
put her hands on her hips for a moment, looked down at the floor, and then
walked the rest of the way to the tunnel-ramp. There the darkness swallowed
even her brilliant hair. Not one glance back. He tried to remember if he’d
looked back when he left the little flat over the bar that they’d shared in
Montwell. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought not. She hadn’t been in the flat
when he left; there’d been no reason to look back. Still, it felt the same.
Empty and strange. And it would get worse. At least this time he wouldn’t be
afraid to think of her, and to dream. Last time he had spent years trying not
to think about Calla because it always seemed to re-open the wound afresh. But
finally he had resolved to bleed to death, whatever that meant in psychological
terms, and was surprised to find that he didn’t die. Nothing worse than an
occasional case of melancholia, and sometimes the dreams were compensation
enough for that. Starting now he would fill the time with work and with dreams.

He
dimmed the lights the rest of the way and sat down in the chair. The seat was
still warm from Calla’s body, and the warmth comforted him. In the silent room,
he could hear Arria’s soft breathing. She would fill some of the time, too, he
thought. There was an empty room at the end of the corridor that she could have
just as soon as he was sure she knew how to operate the plumbing and the door.
Maybe tomorrow, if there was time.

Calla supervised the building of the gallows herself.
Jason and Marmion had scrounged materials: unused acid pipe for framework and
crossbeam, decking plastic for the platform.

“I
don’t have anything you can use as a rope,” Jason had said from the topmost
rigging where he was fusing pipes with a laser torch. “Every piece of cord we
have will stick, even in a slipknot. Wire will cut his throat. We could use
wire, I guess.”

Calla
took the nymph cocoons from the sack in Jason’s room and braided handfuls of
thread until she had a satisfactory length of rope. It was a fitting hangman’s rope,
she thought, for the man who murdered two danae. Apparently Jason thought so,
too, for he smiled when he saw it and slung it over his own bare shoulder to
climb to the top of the scaffolding. He sat up there, tying the hangman’s knot,
then lowered the noose to Marmion who slipped a sack of rocks into it. Jason
climbed down and when Marmion gave the word, he pushed the lever. The trapdoor
under the rocks fell away, the sack of rocks dropped, the noose held.

“This
is barbaric,” D’Omaha said, outraged. “You can’t mean to leave this thing up
until you return.”

“It
stays up,” Calla said, “and kept in good repair. Jason has orders to test it
every night.”

“I
shall eat in my room from now on,” Stairnon said looking very pale.

But
Calla barely heard her protest. She was looking at the gallows, the top of
which nearly reached the shale ceiling. It was crude with its jury-rigged
joints, but there was no mistaking what it was. Mahdi would understand.

“Anything
else?” Jason was putting on his shirt over his sweaty shoulders. His hair was
damp, his blue eyes a little red from lack of sleep. Arria hung in the
background, slinking from shadow to shadow, obviously confused and frightened
over the day’s activities.

“No.
That’s all,” she said crisply. “I’m going back to Red Rocks to call my number
two raider in and to pack.”

Jason
glanced up at the big clock on the wall. “It’s not even dinner time. You said
tomorrow.”

“You
made short work of the gallows. I have no reason to stay any longer.” Then
realizing how it must sound to him, she said, “I’m sorry. I mean that shouldn’t
stay any longer than I must.”

“I
understand,” he said. “Look, I’ll meet you at the landing pad when the raider
comes in. Never saw one up close.”

He
turned and walked toward Arria, and Calla sighed in relief. She had been
certain he was going to ask to walk with her to Red Rocks, and she wanted to
make the walk alone. It would be a long time before she would feel planetary
breezes and smell anything but canned air. Only her weary bones would welcome
leaving Mutare. Strange. Usually the eagerness to get on with it was
overpowering. She had a mission, the most important one she had ever had, and
for the first time it was as if she was just going through the motions. It was
Jason, she decided. All that talk about staying when all along he knew that she
neither could nor would. He had to learn as she already had, to accept whatever
amount of time was left. Little enough, she thought, but better than none. And
maybe when she got back . . . but, no. He had said the one thing
he could not do was to wait for her. She smiled a little. Where did he think he
could go? He couldn’t leave Mutare, but of course she knew that just having to
be here when she got back had nothing to do with waiting or not waiting.

Calla
walked under the scaffolding to the ramp-tunnel, paused to take her stellerator
from the peg on the wall. What would happen, she wondered, if she didn’t call
down the raider? What if she and Jason just went to live in Daniel’s old cave?
She looked up at the balcony. He was standing in the window, watching her.
Timekeeper but he was handsome. And if she but beckoned, he would come down and
they could stay together. She looked at the scaffolding. If she did that, the
noose would never be used. Mahdi would rule all the known worlds in a few
years, and he’d come back to Mutare. What kind of life could they have under a
tyrant’s rule? She put on her stellerator and walked up the ramp-tunnel.