Future Prospect (3 page)

On his way over to the clearing, Colan greeted a few Pearlites but didn’t stop to chat, because he didn’t want to hear about any more problems which would morph into his responsibility. The construction still buzzed along, but he couldn’t see any massive improvements had taken place over the last few hours. Rather similar to his own home improvement efforts.

A passing loader bot helpfully shot a laser light at a pale modular structure when he asked where the administration offices were, and he made his way around stacks of muddy metal arches and resin cubes, containing unknown components, as he reached the building. There was no door, just an opening cut in the wall and a muddy floor. He followed the dirty tracks inside and passed empty rooms as he listened for sounds of human activity.

Colan entered a hallway intersection and spotted a tall young man peering at some exposed virtuwiring. He looked up with a start and very politely offered to help. Sighing with annoyance, Colan introduced himself and found he spoke with Tully, the network engineer. Colan asked where Lia Frei might be, and the man pointed farther down the soiled hall. With thanks, Colan headed that way, sure the other man was watching him go.

More rooms with no doors until he finally spotted Cit. Frei behind a desk, squinting at several displays perched around her. With a jump she turned to face him.

“Cit. Tor. Is it that time already?”

He couldn’t decide if she made a snide comment about his late arrival, or if she had genuinely lost track of time. Considering her profession was scheduling, she was probably peeved he’d showed up late. He shrugged and watched her as she tightened her shoulders and took a breath. Maybe she was going to chastise him again.

She rose and made her way around the desk to stand in front of a large wall display. Colan saw it was a highly detailed diagram of Pearl and some of the surrounding forest. He was momentarily distracted by the tiny dimensional representation of the settlement he’d lived in for the last eighteen months. There was Joli’s bar, Gina’s house, his hut, everything of human construction or discard within the surrounding few kilometers, all in miniscule red blocks and cones.

Cit. Frei reached out and tapped in a command which overlaid the new construction plans. A massive diagram blanketed Pearl, overwhelming everything with bold blue lines, green sections, and blinking orange sectors. At a glance, it looked as if every existing structure in town was going to be demolished.

“I know this appears drastic, but we’ve worked very hard to integrate your settlement with the new buildings we need before the extractors arrive. Only two homes and one alley will be affected by our construction. In an effort not to damage any more of the forest around us, we’re using every bit of cleared space as efficiently as possible.” Cit. Frei peered at the diagram as she rolled her lower lip between her teeth.

Colan was distracted enough by her gesture to put aside his concerns about the fate of the homes of people he knew and consider the woman standing next to him. She looked tired and tense. Her pale yellow clothes, so bright and clean when she’d arrived on planet that morning, were now wrinkled and smudged with dirt. And she was barefoot. On a muddy floor.

“Sit down.”

“What?” Cit. Frei stopped studying some info-wire schematics and frowned at him.

“Sit down. I need to see your feet.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. You’re standing in the dirt.”

“Everything is filthy around here.”

“There’s stuff in the mud.”

“What stuff?” She paled at his words and scrambled for a place to sit. Colan indicated the narrow table underneath the wall display, and she hopped up and immediately twisted one foot into her lap, peering at the smudged sole. “What’s in the mud? I didn’t read anything about the mud.”

Colan pulled a small crate over to her and took a seat, looking up at her face as she fretted. A worry-line furrowed between her eyebrows. Instead of answering, he held out his hand and waited. She met his gaze and tightened her lips into a thin line with a near-shake of her head. He crooked his fingertips. With a sigh, she relented and placed one of her heels into the palm of his hand. Her skin was cool. He inspected the sole of her foot for any egg cases from foot weevils.

They weren’t really weevils, and they certainly didn’t mean to bore into people’s feet, but this was their migration season, and they had a biological imperative to catch a ride on anything moving around so they could explore before settling down to mature and reproduce. It just happened human skin was more fragile than the exoskeletons of native Gamaliel lifeforms, and an embedded foot weevil egg rapidly caused painful boils on the bottoms of bare feet. The little creatures popped out none the worse for wear but left their discarded egg cases deep within the skin where they festered. No one should suffer through an infestation, especially after only being on planet for half a day. Colan pulled a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and swabbed at Cit. Frei’s foot. He was surprised she hadn’t said anything yet, and he glanced up at her to find her staring at him seemingly lost in thought.

“I’m looking for foot weevil egg cases.”

“Oh. I didn’t read about that.”

Colan shook his head and went back to studying her skin. Despite the grayish smears of dried mud, her sole was pink and healthy, her toes small and curving against his fingers. He wiped at it again but didn’t find any spiraled shiny red eggs anywhere. “I don’t think anyone has bothered to write about it.”

“Why not? We need to know so we can formulate an appropriate caution for the incoming settlers.” Cit. Frei lowered her foot from his grasp and obediently raised the next for his evaluation. This one was equally smudged, cool, and pink skinned. She really needed to wash them off and put on some clean socks and sturdy shoes. He remembered she’d worn glittering blue slipper-like shoes when she stepped off the shuttle, highly impractical for the water-logged ground around Pearl. Thankfully, it appeared as if she was clear of any unwanted hitchhikers for the moment.

“Seeing how we normally get one or two new people in here every few months, it’s been something we’d just mention in passing. They’re only bad every twelve weeks or so.” Colan glanced up at her again and tried not to notice her curvy legs covered with thin yellow fabric or how close his face was to the lower half of her body.

She took a few shaky breaths, and for some unknown reason, he tightened his grip on her foot. She relaxed her muscles, and he sensed the give in her body. He wasn’t thinking about Tila’s garden, or foot parasites, or even the shifting coastline of Gamaliel’s southern shore anymore. No, he thought about how nice her skin felt against his fingertips and wondered if she was involved with someone in the new arrivals. It seemed likely. She was very pretty.

Cit. Lia Frei was also argumentative, which was all he should be considering. He dropped her foot as if it was stolen property and stood from his seat on the box so he wasn’t looking up at her from between her thighs. That was a bad position to be in. With her. With someone else it would be fine. Not her.

“Did you find anything?” she whispered, more subdued than he’d heard before. She held his gaze for a second too long, and before he could say something stupid, she broke her stare to inspect her feet.

“No.” Colan decided to examine the display again rather than her as she rubbed the bottoms of her feet as if she didn’t believe him. “You need to wear shoes and socks if you are walking through mud, for the next week at least.”

“What else? What other noxious elements are just waiting for us here?” She pulled out a datpad to make notes.

“Lots of things. None evolved to prey on humans, but some manage to find us interesting or appetizing.”

Cit. Frei leaned forward, poised with her datpad, bright amber eyes on him, and Colan lost his thoughts again.

“Maybe I’m not the best person to ask.”

“Who should I speak with then?” she pressed, and he wondered if she was always this relentless.

“Uh, Padev does a lot of the medical work. He’s the closest thing we have to a doc on planet.” Colan didn’t want her to talk with Padev. Padev was intelligent, charming, and hetero. Plus, he dressed nicely most of the time.

“Where would I find Doctor Padev?”

“Just Padev.” Not a doctor, just a scientist who’d put himself through the Academy by working as a medic. Colan found himself wanting to tell Cit. Frei he, on the other hand, held advanced degrees in geo-cartography and emergent planetary systems, and his latest monograph on the magma tides of Arcon had been awarded the Filden Prize.

“Like ‘just Tor’?” Cit. Frei cocked her head and granted him a tiny smile. If she chewed on her lip again he was going to leave.

Colan cleared his throat and wondered how this conversation had wandered so far from Tila’s garden. She kept watching him, her feet still bare and in need of a good soak in a warm tub followed by a massage. Stars, where had that thought come from? He needed some air.

“Right. We don’t use titles too much here. More informal.”

“So, you’d prefer I didn’t use the prefix?
Just
Tor?” Was she teasing him? It was hard to tell since he was infrequently teased, other than by Gina’s boys whose idea of verbal humor was to burp out words as often as possible. Cit. Frei’s expression was bland, but he could see a light in her amber eyes. Could be mischief, could be incredible focus on doing things properly.

“Uh, Tor’s a nickname.”

She nodded. “And we aren’t friends. So what should I call you?”

She should call him Tor as everyone else did. Simpler. Made more sense. They weren’t friends but neither were most of the folk who called him Tor. “My name’s Colan. Colan Nestor.”

Why had he said that?

“So, Colan,” she leaned forward and held out her hand, “you can call me Lia. It’s a nickname too, so if that seems too friendly, call me Liliane.”

He stared at her hand, certain he didn’t want to touch another part of her body. She waved it slightly and peered at him with a question in her eyes. He realized she was trying to put things on better footing between them. He should reciprocate and not stare at her as if he was afraid she might explode. With a quick grasp and release, Colan performed the ritual and demanded his brain immediately forget how soft her slender fingers were; just as he needed to forget about her feet.

“About Tila’s garden.” There, back to the rational reason he’d come to this place.

“Of course. I’ll take Welti out there as soon as I can find him, and we’ll resolve it. Modify the schedule as best we can.” She paused and held her datpad in her hands. “If you’d provide your contact information, I’ll let you know when we do. So you can accompany us if you’d like.”

Without a sound, he handed over his datpad and watched as she rapidly traded information. He glanced at the display when she returned it. She’d left her name and official identity image up. A red bar pulsed, indicating a full data queue. He never had a full data queue. Vigilant deletion of everything anyone sent him, which on Gamaliel didn’t amount to much, kept his reading obligations to a minimum.

“What’s all this new data?”

“All the schedules and timetables for the construction and proposed immigration lists. Of course, those are in flux as situations develop.”

Colan tried not to show his dismay. Surely neither she nor Gina expected him to read all of this. He started to scroll through the initial files section, and it looked as if there were at least a thousand documents.

“I need to speak with Padev about getting some health information?”

Colan tore his gaze away from an announcement which predicted cure times of new synthboard as it related to the rate of construction. Nebula’s balls, did she really calculate that sort of thing? “No. I’ll talk with him and have him send something to your doctor.”

“Thank you. That saves me some time.”

And saves you from meeting Padev before you should have to
. He’d just have to remember to do it or else he had a feeling that Lia Frei would send out a security detail to track the man down so she could delete it from her to-do list.

“I should be going.”

Lia stood from her perch on the table and held out her hand again. Stars, he was going to have to touch her to say goodbye. Making the briefest possible contact, he completed the handshake and stepped back from her. Getting some distance seemed like a wise idea.

“Thank you for your help, Colan.”

“You’re welcome, Lia—Liliane. Put on some shoes.” He left the office as quickly as possible.

“Cordon sent a message. He should arrive in forty-eight hours.” Moca tried to reassure Lia her extra duties would decrease when the assistant magistrate arrived, but she wasn’t so sure. They were standing in the residential unit hallway trying to direct two porter bots to the correct rooms, so everyone on the team would have their luggage delivered by dinner time. So far, it wasn’t going well. Welti had managed to finish off enough units for everyone, but none of the information integration was complete so the bots couldn’t navigate. This meant Lia manually oriented each load while Moca discussed and checked information on her datpad. The pile of belongings seemed as if it was never going to diminish. Moca still had four of her own large black cases in the hallway, and Lia was sure she’d already sent five back to the other woman’s suite. Maybe the bots were circling around and bringing them back out of the rooms.

“That’s good. So his health has improved?”

Moca rolled her eyes. As far as Lia knew, the magistrate had never experienced a health crisis. None of her physical systems would dare. Lia pushed a bot toward one of Tully’s bags and keyed in his room number on the device’s interface pad. It picked up the bag but sat there, whining metallically, until she hit the number three more times. It seemed the bots were very insecure without their direct link to the building system.

“I suppose. He didn’t offer any information. Then again, I didn’t ask.” Moca pocketed her datpad and muscled one of the loader bots in the right direction. It trundled away, pulling a wheeled case and beeping in despair.