The Dog Said Bow-Wow (11 page)

The lock opened, and MacArthur went around to the side of the tavern, where the drilling rig lay under its tarp. He bent down to separate the laser drill from the support struts, data boxes, and alignment devices. Then he delicately tugged the gold foil blanket back over the equipment.

He straightened, and turned toward Patang, the drill in his arms. He pointed it at her.

The words
LASER HAZARD
flashed on her visor.

She looked down and saw the rock at her feet blacken and smoke. “You know what would happen if I punched a hole in your shielding,” MacArthur said.

She did. All the air in her suit would explode outward, while the enormous atmospheric pressure simultaneously imploded the metal casing inward. The mechanical cooling systems would fail instantly. She would be suffocated, broiled, and crushed, all in an instant.

“Turn around. Or I’ll lase you a new asshole.”

She obeyed.

“Here are the rules. You get a half-hour head start. Then I come for you. If you turn north or south, I’ll drill you. Head west. Noonward.”

“Noonward?” She booted up the geodetics. There was nothing in that direction but a couple more wrinkle ridges and, beyond them, tesserae. The tesserae were marked orange on her maps. Orange for unpromising. Prospectors had passed through them before and found nothing. “Why there?”

“Because I told you to. Because we’re going to have a little fun. Because you have no choice. Understand?”

She nodded miserably.

“Go.”

She walked, he followed. It was a nightmare that had somehow found its way into waking life. When Patang looked back, she could see MacArthur striding after her, small in the distance. But never small enough that she had any kind of chance to get away.

He saw her looking and stooped to pick up a boulder. He wind-milled his arm and threw.

Even though MacArthur was halfway to the horizon, the boulder smashed to the ground a hundred yards ahead of her and to one side. It didn’t come close to striking her, of course. That wasn’t his intent.

The rock shattered when it hit. It was terrifying how strong that suit was. It filled her with rage to see MacArthur yielding all that power, and her completely helpless. “You goddamned
sadist!
”

No answer.

He was nuts. There
had
to be a clause in the contract covering that. Well, then… She set her suit on auto-walk, pulled up the indenture papers, and went looking for it. Options. Hold harmless clauses. Responsibilities of the Subcontractor — there were hundreds of those. Physical care of the Contractor’s equipment.

And there it was. There it was!
In the event of medical emergency, as ultimately upheld in a court of physicians…
She scrolled up the submenu of qualifying conditions. The list of mental illnesses was long enough and inclusive enough that she was certain MacArthur belonged on it somewhere.

She’d lose all the equity she’d built up, of course. But, if she interpreted the contract correctly, she’d be entitled to a refund of her initial investment.

That, and her life, were good enough for her.

She slid an arm out of harness and reached up into a difficult-to-reach space behind her head. There was a safety there. She unlatched it. Then she called up a virtual keyboard, and typed out the SOS.

So simple. So easy.

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SEND THIS MESSAGE? YES. NO
.

She hit
YES
.

For an instant, nothing happened.

MESSAGE NOT SENT
.

“Shit!” She tried it again.
MESSAGE NOT SENT
. A third time.
MESSAGE NOT SENT
. A fourth.
MESSAGE NOT SENT
. She ran a troubleshooting program, and then sent the message again.
MESSAGE NOT
SENT.

And again. And again. And again.

MESSAGE NOT SENT
.

MESSAGE NOT SENT
.

MESSAGE NOT SENT
.

Until the suspicion was so strong she
had
to check.

There was an inspection camera on the back of her suit’s left hand. She held it up so she could examine the side of her helmet.

MacArthur had broken off the uplink antenna.

“You jerk!” She was really angry now. “You shithead! You cretin! You retard! You’re nuts, you know that? Crazy. Totally whack.”

No answer.

The bastard was ignoring her. He probably had his suit on auto-follow. He was probably leaning back in his harness, reading a book or watching an old movie on his visor. Mac Arthur did that a lot. You’d ask him a question and he wouldn’t answer because he wasn’t there; he was sitting front row center in the theater of his cerebellum. He probably had a tracking algorithm in the navigation system to warn him if she turned to the north or south, or started to get too far ahead of him.

Let’s test that hypothesis.

She’d used the tracking algorithm often enough that she knew its specs by heart. One step sidewards in five would register immediately. One in six would not. All right, then…let’s see if we can get this rig turned around slowly, subtly, toward the road. She took seven strides forward, and then half-step to the side.

LASER HAZARD

Patang hastily switched on auto-walk. So that settled that. He was watching her every step. A tracking algorithm would have written that off as a stumble. But then why didn’t he speak? To make her suffer, obviously. He must be bubbling over with things to say. He must hate her almost as much as she did him.

“You son of a bitch! I’m going to
get
you, MacArthur! I’m going to turn the goddamned tables on you, and when I do —!”

It wasn’t as if she were totally helpless. She had explosives. Hell, her muscle suit could throw a rock with enough energy to smash a hole right through his suit. She could —

Blankness.

She came to with the suit auto-walking down the far slope of the first wrinkle ridge. There was a buzzing in her ear. Somebody talking. MacArthur, over the short-range radio. “What?” she asked blurrily. “Were you saying something, MacArthur? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“You had a bad thought, didn’t you?” MacArthur said gleefully. “Naughty girl! Papa spank.”

LASER HAZARD

LASER HAZARD

Arrows pointed to either side. She’d been walking straight Noon-ward, and he’d fired on her anyway.

“Damn it, that’s not
fair!
”

“Fair! Was it fair, the things you said to me? Talking. All the time talking.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You did! Those things…the things you said…unforgivable!”

“I was only deviling you, MacArthur,” she said placatingly. It was a word from her childhood; it meant teasing, the kind of teasing a sister inflicted on a brother. “I wouldn’t do it if we weren’t friends.”

MacArthur made a noise he might have thought was laughter. “Believe me, Patang, you and I are not friends.”

The deviling had been innocent enough at the start. She’d only done it to pass the time. At what point had it passed over the edge? She hadn’t always hated MacArthur. Back in Port Ishtar, he’d seemed like a pleasant companion. She’d even thought he was cute.

It hurt to think about Port Ishtar, but she couldn’t help herself. It was like trying not to think about Heaven when you were roasting in Hell.

Okay, so Port Ishtar wasn’t perfect. You ate flavored algae and you slept on a shelf. During the day you wore silk, because it was cheap, and you went everywhere barefoot because shoes cost money. But there were fountains that sprayed water into the air. There was live music in the restaurants, string quartets playing to the big winners, prospectors who had made a strike and were leaking wealth on the way out. If you weren’t too obvious about it, you could stand nearby and listen. Gravity was light, then, and everybody was young, and the future was going to be full of money.

That was then. She was a million years older now.

LASER HAZARD

“Hey!”

“Keep walking, bitch. Keep walking or die.”

This couldn’t be happening.

Hours passed, and more hours, until she completely lost track of the time. They walked. Up out of the valley. Over the mountain. Down into the next valley. Because of the heat, and because the rocks were generally weak, the mountains all had gentle slopes. It was like walking up and then down a very long hill.

The land was grey and the clouds above it murky orange. These were Venus’s true colors. She could have grass-green rocks and a bright blue sky if she wished—her visor would do that—but the one time she’d tried those settings, she’d quickly switched back. The falseness of it was enough to break your heart.

Better to see the bitter land and grim sky for what they were.

West, they traveled. Noonward. It was like an endless and meaningless dream.

“Hey, Poontang.”

“You know how I feel about that kind of language,” she said wearily.

“How you feel. That’s rich. How do you think I felt, some of the things you said?”

“We can make peace, MacArthur. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Ever been married, Poontang?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“I have. Married and divorced.” She knew that already. There was very little they didn’t know about each other by now. “Thing is, when a marriage breaks up, there’s always one person comes to grips with it first. Goes through all the heartache and pain, feels the misery, mourns the death of the death of the relationship — and then moves on. The one who’s been cheated on, usually. So the day comes when she walks out of the house and the poor schmuck is just standing there, saying, ‘Wait. Can’t we work this thing out?’ He hasn’t accepted that it’s over.”

“So?”

“So that’s your problem, Poontang. You just haven’t accepted that it’s over yet.”

“What? Our partnership?”

“No. Your life.”

A day passed, maybe more. She slept. She awoke, still walking, with MacArthur’s hateful mutter in her ear. There was no way to turn the radio off. It was Company policy. There were layers upon layers of systems and subsystems built into the walkers, all designed to protect Company investment. Sometimes his snoring would wake her up out of a sound sleep. She knew the ugly little grunting noises he made when he jerked off. There were times she’d been so angry that she’d mimicked those sounds right back at him. She regretted that now.

“I had dreams,” MacArthur said. “I had ambitions.”

“I know you did. I did too.”

“Why the hell did you have to come into my life? Why
me
and not somebody else?”

“I liked you. I thought you were funny.”

“Well, the joke’s on you now.”

Back in Port Ishtar, MacArthur had been a lanky, clean-cut kind of guy. He was tall, and in motion you were always aware of his knees and elbows, always sure he was going to knock something over, though he never did. He had an odd, geeky kind of grace. When she’d diffidently asked him if he wanted to go partners, he’d picked her up and whirled her around in the air and kissed her right on the lips before setting her down again and saying, “Yes.” She’d felt dizzy and happy then, and certain she’d made the right choice.

But MacArthur had been weak. The suit had broken him. All those months simmering in his own emotions, perfectly isolated and yet never alone…. He didn’t even
look
like the same person anymore. You looked at his face and all you saw were anger and those anguished eyes.

LEAVING HIGHLANDS

ENTERING TESSERAE

Patang remembered how magical the tesserae landscape had seemed in the beginning. “Complex ridged terrain,” MacArthur called it, high ridges and deep groves crisscrossing each other in such profusion that the land appeared blocky from orbit, like a jumble of tiles. Crossing such terrain, you had to be constantly alert. Cliffs rose up unexpectedly, butte-high. You turned a twist in a zigzagging valley and the walls fell away and down, down, down. There was nothing remotely like it on Earth. The first time through, she’d shivered in wonder and awe.

Now she thought: Maybe I can use this. These canyons ran in and out of each other. Duck down one and run like hell. Find another and duck down it. Keep on repeating until he’d lost her.

“You honestly think you can lose me, Patang?”

She shrieked involuntarily.

“I can read your mind, Patang. I know you through and through.”

It was true, and it was wrong. People weren’t meant to know each other like this. It was the forced togetherness, the fact you were never for a moment alone with your own thoughts. After awhile you’d heard every story your partner had to tell and shared every confidence there was to share. After awhile every little thing got on your nerves.

“How about if I admit I was wrong?” she said pleadingly. “I was wrong. I admit it.”

“We were both wrong. So what?”

“I’m willing to cooperate, MacArthur. Look. I’ve stopped so you can catch up and not have to worry about me getting away from you. Doesn’t
that
convince you we’re on the same side?”

LASER HAZARD

“Oh, feel free to run as fast and as far as you want, Patang. I’m confident I’ll catch up with you in the end.”

All right, then, she thought desperately. If that’s the way you want it, asshole. Tag! You’re it.

She ducked into the shadows of a canyon and ran.

The canyon twisted and, briefly, she was out of sight. MacArthur couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t tell which way she went. The silence felt wonderful. It was the first privacy she’d had since she didn’t know when. She only wished she could spare the attention to enjoy it more. But she had to think, and think hard. One canyon wall had slumped downward just ahead, creating a slope her walker could easily handle. Or she could keep on ahead, up the canyon.

Which way should she go?

Upslope.

She set the walker on auto-run.

Meanwhile, she studied the maps. The free satellite downloads were very good. They weren’t good enough. They showed features down to three meters across, but she needed to know the land yard-by-yard.