Defying Mars (Saving Mars Series-2) (22 page)

A few days ago, her throat had begun to feel irritated. Tonight, the night of day fifty-seven, it felt worse. She yawned, wincing at the ache in the back of her throat. Apologizing in her mind to the citizens of Mars Colonial, Jessamyn reached for a
second
evening water packet and guzzled it gratefully.

It was only as she crossed from fatigue into the liminal stage preceding sleep that it occurred to her the scratch in her throat might be an indicator of air filter malfunction.

27

WATER-WEIGHT

The desert looked much as Pavel remembered it from childhood. Browns and tans, pinks and peaches, and everywhere, dirt. He brought the ship down to the east of the San Bernardino mountains where Brian Wallace assured him, despite appearances, a small community flourished. Observing the terrain, Pavel wondered how anything could flourish here. He still found the desert beautiful, but it appeared threatening as well to his now-adult eyes. There were few signs of water—a handful of shriveled-looking trees—
Joshua trees
, he recalled, and small desiccated shrubs which clung to the ground as if shrinking from the desert sun.

Then there was the additional and invisible danger of radioactivity—the real reason no one lived here anymore. Pavel had already applied tattoos which would keep a count of the daily doses of radiation taken in by the party of five, but he had no really effective counter-remedy to offer. Modern medicine’s best treatment consisted of avoiding places such as this. It troubled Pavel. He could only hope their stay would be of short duration.

“Astonishing resemblance to your planet, eh?” said Brian Wallace to Ethan and Harpreet.

“It is what our world might be,” replied Harpreet. “With adequate water.”

“Hmm,” mused Wallace. “Looks a wee bit lacking in water to me.”

“Let’s have a look round,” suggested Pavel, peering out the window before pushing upon the hatch.

A blast of heat, fierce and dry, entered the cabin of the craft.

“Gracious,” murmured Harpreet.

Wallace laughed. “A person underestimates the intensity of the heat,” he said. “It’s like one of those heat-blowers the barber uses aimed straight at the face, isn’t it?”

Pavel leapt ahead, reaching down to grab a small rock. He fingered it for a moment, savoring the rough surface, the heat it had already captured, and then he threw it as far as he could, listening for the satisfying
thunk
.

Ethan, all the while consulting the screen on his chair, spoke to the group. “I believe this direction will lead us most swiftly to encounter the residents of the area,” he said, pointing to the right.

Pavel rejoined his companions and the five ambled toward an outcropping of what looked like hillocks.

“They’ve no notion of proper houses out here, do they?” asked Brian Wallace.

“
Proper
in such an environment would of necessity differ from what would be considered proper in most other locations,” replied Ethan.

Pavel grinned. Jessamyn’s brother could interject unintended humor into any situation.

They crested a tiny rise. Ethan, pointing ahead and left, said, “The dark spot is the entrance to a domicile.”

“Hands loose at our sides, then,” said Wallace. “Don’t look threatening.”

Pavel pulled his hands from where he’d stuffed them in his pockets.

As they marched toward the dark opening in the ground, something diminutive emerged from the space. Something human. A small child, shouting.

“Renard, Renard, Renard!” the child cried. “Alice said you weren’t coming back but I knew she was wrong and I told her so a thousand times and now she’s going to have to—”

Abruptly, the small boy stopped running and shouting some ten or twelve meters away. He stared at the strangers. “You’re not Renard.” For a brief moment his body language suggested tears. Then he placed tiny fists upon his tiny hips and demanded, “Who are you?”

“Friends,” replied Harpreet. “Or, rather, we hope to become friends. Is there an adult about, child? With whom we might speak?”

The boy turned tail and dashed back to where he’d come from. Pavel beheld a rough-hewn set of stairs leading belowground, looking much as though they had been carved by winds. Wallace strode forward, calling out a
halloo
which went unanswered.

“Well, I suppose it’s wait outside, then?” asked Brian Wallace.

“That would be our least-threatening
course of action,” replied Harpreet.

A moment later, the small boy reappeared mid-way up the stairs. “Come inside,” he shouted before disappearing below once more.

Pavel took a step toward the entrance and the others followed. They seemed to have entered a residence, but no one appeared to greet them. Pavel was at the point of asking aloud if anyone were home when Wallace cried out.

“Well, isn’t that hospitable?” he asked with delight. A basin of water sat upon a counter, surrounded by small drink cups.

“No,” called Dr. Zaifa just as Brian prepared to dip one of the cups into the basin.

“Nay?” asked Wallace, his hand halfway to the water.

“It’s not ours,” she said simply. Turning to Ethan, with whom she’d been forming a sort of friendship, Dr. Zaifa asked, “Where you’re from, would it be bad manners to take a drink from someone’s home?”

“It would be unthinkable,” murmured Harpreet.

“Wet rations are assigned per person,” added Ethan. “One does not simply drink a ration belonging to someone else. It would be considered theft.”

Pavel restrained Wallace, shaking his head. “We don’t drink. Not unless it’s offered. This is a desert, man.”

A woman stepped forward as if emerging from the wall. Dressed in the same tans and browns of the desert, she might have been standing there all along.

“You’re not thieves, then,” she said. “So what are you?”

“We’re visitors,” said Pavel.

“Greetings, friend,” said Brian Wallace.

From a shadowy corner of the room, a man emerged to join the woman.

“I see no friends here,” grunted the man. “I see intruders—two young, one old, one fat, and one cripple.”

Wallace chuckled softly, patting his belly.

Pavel, however, took offense at the man’s use of
cripple
to describe Ethan. “This is how you greet strangers? With insults?”

“There is no offense in his descriptions,” said Ethan. “They are accurate, however incomplete.”

“Sir, we apologize for entering your dwelling without permission,” said Dr. Zaifa. “There was a child—”

“It ain’t my place,” said the man. “It’s hers.”

“Where’d you come from?” asked the woman.

“Here and there,” said Wallace, smiling pleasantly.

“You’d best see the Shirff, then,” she responded. “C’mon. Follow me. Roy? You just make sure as they do.”

Roy grinned, placing one hand upon a knife stuck through his belt. The boy, emerging from under the table where the water rested, stared at the strangers with wide eyes.

“What’s a
cripple
, Roy?” asked the young boy, skipping alongside the man.

“It’s when a feller can’t pull his own water-weight,” replied Roy.

Pavel was on the verge of snapping an angry retort, but Ethan placed a hand upon Pavel’s arm and shook his head
no
.

Pavel contented himself with clenching and unclenching his fists instead. It had been two years since he’d thrown a punch, and that had been a mistake, but he felt as though this situation warranted one. He’d met some intelligent people working in hospitals, and Ethan outsmarted any of them. The Marsian could
more
than pull his own water-weight.

“I saw them first,” said the boy, skipping ahead to stare at the strangers. “I thought it was Renard coming home.”

“Hush, Samuel,” said the woman. “It’s not proper to speak of him.”

“I know,” said the child, head hanging to one side. “But I’ll still think about him, even if he decides not to—”

“Hush!” said the woman again.

The “Shirff” being apparently out to parts unknown for the morning, the five visitors were invited to bide their time awaiting him in an underground chamber similar to the one they’d left, but with a gated passage.

“We didn’t do anything,” muttered Pavel.

“It’s much the same welcome ye might expect if ye came unexpected to me cousin’s island,” replied Wallace.

“The Isle of Skye?” asked Pavel.

“Nay, me cousin the chieftain runs Madeira and a few other wee islands, she does. As Head of Clan Wallace, she’s very fussy about the security of those she oversees,” Wallace explained.

Pavel grunted in response and then looked over to the holoscreen Ethan had pulled up. “What’s that?” he asked his Marsian friend.

“I am examining schematics detailing the consumption, regulation, and reclamation of water in Yucca,” replied Ethan.

“That’s … the name of this place?” asked Pavel. “Yucca?”

“That is correct,” said Ethan.

Roy entered with someone new. “This here’s the Shirff,” he said. “Rise out of respect, now.”

Wallace, Pavel, Harpreet, and Kazuko rose. Ethan paused and then moved his chair several inches higher, which caused the Shirff to chuckle.

“Greetings, strangers,” he said. Then, turning to the two desert-dwellers, he asked, “Will you stand witness to my conversation with the new arrivals, Roy and Marie?”

The two nodded.

Samuel let out a loud sigh.

“And you, too, Samuel,” added the Shirff before returning his attention to the visitors. “Now then, what brings you to the desert?”

Harpreet presented their interest in requisitioning a deep-space satellite dish, Wallace adding his willingness to finance the endeavor.

The Shirff nodded. “You didn’t happen upon us accidentally, then.”

“Nay,” said Brian Wallace. “Me cousin’s done business with ye in the past. Do ye know the name of Cameron Wallace?”

The Shirff pulled absently upon his substantial mustache. “Well, sure I know who Cameron Wallace is. We built a radio system for the clan chief not three months ago.”

“I’d heard as much,” replied Brian. “She spoke well of the workmanship. However, I’ll not hide from ye that she and I are not on the best terms at present. I’m as great a disappointment to her as an empty whiskey bottle is to a sober man.”

“I don’t see as that should stand in the way of our doing business with you in the meantime,” said the Shirff. “Like as not the two of you will patch things up before long. You’re family. We all need one another in times like these.”

“Aye,” replied Brian Wallace. “Couldn’t have spoken a truer word.”

The Shirff crossed his arms, stared long and hard at Harpreet, and finally nodded. “You’ve got yourself a contract, then, ma’am.” He spit into his palm and held his hand out to her.

Not batting an eye, Harpreet spit into her own palm and the two shook hands.

Pavel had never seen an odder way to seal an agreement and had to hastily covered his laughter with a small fit of coughing.

Samuel, who’d stared wide-eyed at the strangers during the entirety of the negotiations, tugged at his mother’s shirtsleeve. “Can we go now?” he asked. “The sun’s about to set and I want to look out for … someone.”

“Hush,” said Marie to her son, looking embarrassed.

“Are they coming to the bonfire?” demanded Samuel. “It’ll be a big celebration,” he added for the benefit of the newcomers.

“What are you celebrating?” asked Pavel.

The Shirff ruffled the small boy’s hair and shrugged. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it, Samuel?”

“Renard’s coming back,” said the little boy, thrusting his lower lip out. “I know it.”

Dropping to one knee beside him, the Shirff spoke in an over-loud whisper to the boy. “I sure hope you’re right about that, but let’s keep it to ourselves, shall we? Your ma didn’t raise you to speak of the departed, now did she, son?”

The little boy cast his eyes to the ground. “No,” he said. “She raised me good. But sometimes words just wiggle out before I can stop them.”

Still in an exaggerated whisper, the Shirff replied, “I know some adults with the same problem. You keep working on it, Samuel.”

The Shirff stood and addressed the five visitors. “Now, then, let’s talk water, shall we? What can you offer as might persuade desert folk to part with their food and drink?”

The negotiations for satellite dish construction had not, apparently, included daily sustenance for the group.

Marie excused herself and Samuel. Roy remained with the Shirff, his hand still resting beside his knife.

At Pavel’s side, Ethan spoke quietly. “Our addition of five persons will tax this community.” Ethan pointed at the water reclamation schematics he’d pulled up earlier.

“Hey,” said Roy, taking a sudden interest in Ethan’s screen. “How’d you get that information on your holoscreen?”

“He’s a genius,” said Pavel, his dark eyes glowering. “I doubt you or I would understand the explanation of
how
he did it.”

“That’s our water reclamation,” complained Roy. “Shirff, he’s got his grubby little fingers all over it, movin’ stuff around.”

“What you observe is an artificial
copy
of your system,” said Ethan. “I am merely testing an idea to upgrade your settling pond to a higher level of efficiency.”

The Shirff chuckled and Roy’s chest swelled.

“I’ll have you know,” said Roy, “That we’ve got water loss due to evaporation down to three-point-five percent. I’d like to see anyone else do better.”

“Would you?” asked Ethan. He swiveled the screen so that Roy could see it without having to strain. “And would you consider an evaporation loss of point-zero-two percent to be an improvement?”

Roy made a sound between a snort and a grunt. “Course I would. But that’s plain impossible. And I oughta know—I
run
the settling basin.” He turned to the Shirff. “Sir, I’d like you to order this feller out of my reclamation program.”

“I am not interfering with your operations,” said Ethan. “I have merely suggested improvements.”

“That’s quite friendly of you,” said the Shirff, moving closer to inspect Ethan’s screen as well. “Roy, you’ve got to admit that’s friendly.” His tone invited Roy to reconsider any further use of confrontational language.