Rift (42 page)

He trailed off as Spar advanced on him. “Boyo. There somethin’ important you’re forgettin’.”

“There is?”

“You got business elsewhere.”

“I do?”

Spar stood close enough to force the shorter man to look straight up at him. “And you’re late.”

Dooley retreated, glancing from Spar to Reeve to Spar again. He rapped on the door for the guards. “I’ll be back later, when you’re feeling more like talking.” As Spar walked slowly toward Dooley, the guards
opened the door, giving Dooley his exit. “I’ll bring some food—would you like that?”

“No.” Spar continued to advance, shoving him firmly in the chest and shutting the door on him.

He turned toward Reeve, shaking his head. “He’s more of a damn fool than you are.” Spar walked over to Loon and crouched next to her. “How you feelin’?” Loon smiled at him and went back to examining rocks. Taking the discarded padded jacket that Dooley had provided her, Spar draped it around her shoulders.

Reeve and Spar surveyed their cell. The lighted walls flickered now and then, as though wincing in pain from the earthy intrusion.

Spar turned to face Reeve. “I like these Somafools even less than I liked the rats. And that’s sayin’ something.”

Reeve nodded glumly. Slumping to the floor, he braced his back against the shelving. Dust hung in the air, and he coughed, deprived now of the breather. His list of failures was growing long. Here in the bowels of the earth, among the spectacular failures of the Mercury Clave itself, his ineptitude was confirmed. Or perhaps it was the doom foretold by the Whale Clave woman, whose curses still haunted him.…

“You know what this doodad is?” Spar held up a spindly length of flexible pipe.

“Looks like part of a computer screen frame.”

Spar nodded. “Make a good fishin’ pole.” He continued his rummaging, inspecting with disdain the spare parts of technology from the last five hundred years.

Reeve was indescribably weary. After his session with Brecca, he’d hardly slept. The Somaformers had come that night and taken blood samples from everyone else, but long after that Reeve had lain awake, his mind grasping at stray thoughts, trying to knit them together. At least, he was with his friends again. He beckoned for Loon to join him.

She wiped her hands on her shirt and came to sit
next to him, placing her jacket over his knees. It was cold in here, evidence of the failure in some areas of the Labs’ heating system. He put his arm around her, and she nestled into his side.

“They mean to make us like them,” Reeve said. “To change our bodies.”

“No,” Loon said with authority.

“We’ll still be who we are,” Reeve said. “I’ll still love you.” It sounded feeble, even to himself.

“No,” she said. “I am my body.”

“We’re more than that. Aren’t we?”

She shook her head. As with so many subjects, Loon seemed certain of her opinion, certain in ways that were closed to him but that lent her a confident dignity.

Spar was standing next to the shelves, noting Reeve’s arm around Loon’s shoulders. For now he said nothing, but held up a cube bristling with wires, turning a quizzical look on Reeve.

“It’s a coil projector.”

Spar snorted in contempt at yet another useless scrap of big tech, and tossed it onto the shelf. He continued pawing through the doodads, muttering, “We been losin’ most of our fights lately, Reeve. You notice that?”

“I noticed.” Reeve thought for a moment. “We kicked ass with those Mudders in the rainstorm that time, though.”

He heard Spar’s quiet laugh. “We whupped ’em, all right. Made me glad I didn’t slit your throat like I wanted to at first.” He came over to join Reeve and Loon. “So, Stationer, how we gonna whup these critters?”

Reeve looked at Spar. It was bravado he saw, but it heartened him.

Drawing in the dust at his feet, Spar said, “From what I seen so far, here’s where we are, and here’s the outer caves. Bet those caves lead to the surface.”

Reeve traced in the layout of the great atrium and what he’d seen of Brecca’s wing. “Maybe there’s a diagram of the place we could get our hands on.”

“Yeah, and maybe Lithia will crack open the cliff and spit us out of here.” Spar grinned his crooked grin at Reeve. “You’re too sour for her to stomach more ’n a few days.”

Reeve tossed back, good-naturedly, “You’re no great prize yourself.”

They sat quietly a long while, Spar picking at his teeth with his tongue and staring beyond Reeve’s shoulder. At last he said, “Don’t know I’m gonna let ’em stick me with any more needles, boy.”

“It’s better than dying, my friend.” Wasn’t it? If it came to that, Reeve mused, wouldn’t they choose to live, as many unwilling Somaformers had chosen before them? Reeve watched as Spar’s face hardened.

“That’s for Mam to say.”

As these dark words sank in, Spar put a hand on his shoulder. “Could be we’ll climb out of this hole yet. We bamboozled the rats, didn’t we?”

Reeve closed his eyes. He should have died in the shuttle crash if he was going to be stopped here, in this rocky cell. He should never have met Loon and Spar if it was for nothing. Could they come all this way and still fail?

“There’s something I’ve got to do,” he heard himself say.

He hadn’t known he was going to say it, but he knew it was right and past time for them to know. It was hard to look them in the face, to say what his people had in mind, but he pushed aside the shame of it and, beginning with his last coldwalk on Station, told them everything. Gabriel Bonhert. The ship coming. What he had to do. Spar and Loon watched him in dreadful silence. He felt their eyes on him, painfully, but he plunged on, sparing nothing. It was their world. They deserved to know.

Spar looked at Reeve sideways, in that old, suspicious way. “Ain’t nobody can blow up a world.”

“I wish that were true. But it’s not.”

Spar shook his head. “This what happens when you give crazy folks big tech.”

It was hardest of all to look at Loon. When he forced himself to face her, she nodded at him solemnly. “You will go. To stop him.”

They sat then for a long while, as Spar muttered. He kept shaking his head, saying, “Ain’t nobody can do a thing like that.”

Reeve felt ashamed. After all, it was his people that had brought this doom on the world. He wondered again about what blame he shared, and whether, as Kalid said, betrayal spread its stain over many people and years.

After a time Dooley came with food, as promised. Then, seeing their mood and failing to engage anyone in conversation, he left. No one touched the food.

“Reeve.” Spar’s voice was gravelly and low. “Remember how you said you got no clave?” At Reeve’s nod, Spar continued: “Well, I been thinkin’, that’s no good. Specially now, things bein’ as bad as they are. It ain’t a good way to die, without a clave.”

“No.” Reeve thought of Station, and wondered if it had ever been his clave, truly. All those years of coldwalks, watching the great churning globe below, he’d felt the pull of the planet claiming him. Maybe it was what was wrong with him from the beginning. No clave.

“He needs a clave,” Loon pronounced.

“I know that,” Spar said. “So I figure he might as well have mine.” Spar avoided Reeve’s look while he continued: “Stillwater ain’t a bad clave. Had its great warriors, its share of claver glory. It ain’t the biggest or the grandest clave, but it might do if a man wasn’t too picky.”

Reeve couldn’t speak for a moment.

“You can think about it, if you want. You always think ’bout stuff a good bit.”

“I don’t need to think about this one, Spar. I’d be honored.”

Spar grinned. “Well, I don’t know ’bout
honored—
you ain’t seen our little clave. It’s about as pretty as a warthog’s hind quarters, and folks there think a soup ladle’s big enough tech for them. But it’s got its qualities. Might do in a pinch.”

Loon got up on her knees and hugged Spar. He returned the hug stiffly, saying, “Now don’t get all ripped up—this ain’t nothin’ but what’s right. Only thing is, the adoption ceremony don’t go right without some decent food. Back at the Stillwater, we’d roast a deer. A wild pig wouldn’t go bad, either.”

“Well …” Reeve looked at the meal pouches Dooley had brought.

Spar grimaced. “Might have to do.”

Loon shook her head. “No Mercury food.”

Spar sighed deeply. “Well, you ready for this thing, Reeve-boy?”

Loon put her hand on Reeve’s arm, urging him up. “Do it now. Before.”

Before they change us. Before I’m not Loon anymore
was what she said, and didn’t.

They got to their feet and followed Spar over to the blasted wall, with its rubble of rocks and sand.

“Looks more like home than the mess over there.” Spar shook his head. “Times like this a man could use a good sword. Somethin’ about swearing on a sword that helps things take real good.”

He positioned Reeve in front of him. Their tread had kicked up a small cloud of dust that flickered bright and dark in the faltering wall lights. “Reeve Calder,” Spar said. “You got no clave, that right?”

“I have no clave.”

“Now that you are among us and seen our faults and the limits of our larder, are you for throwin’ in
your lot with us, and stickin’ around till the end, whenever that might be?”

Till the end
. Yes, he’d known all the way from the swamp that he would stay until the end. “Yes, I am.” His voice was a whisper.

“And you’ll stand by any of Stillwater Clave against any other clave, and count any Stillwater life as your life, and share all with all?”

“I will.”

“And whatever the Lady wills, you will accept, for the sake of her watching over our clave?”

“I will accept.” He felt Loon’s hand in his. “Whatever the Lady wills.”

Spar nodded slowly. “So then, if you’re for stickin’ with us, say who your clave is, so all can hear.”

“My clave is Stillwater Clave. And it always has been.” His eyes met Spar’s.

“Well then.” Spar’s voice came in a low whisper. “Count yourself a Stillwater, Reeve.”

Loon stood between them, her hand stretched out. A small mound of soil was in her palm. The two men each took a pinch of it. When Reeve put it on his tongue, it turned to a rich mud, part saliva and part soil.

Spar embraced Reeve, clapping him on the back, while Loon spun around in three quick twirls, a startling show of coordination. The expression on her face was luminous. She grabbed Reeve’s hand and spun him around with her until the room swirled and they both got dizzy and sank to their knees, breathless.

Spar nodded, saying, “Man’s got to have a clave.”

2

Salidifor sat across from her, his chair surrounding him on three sides and overhead. Nerys found these chairs disconcerting, as though they would swallow her up, but she sensed that Salidifor found them comforting.
His arms rested on indentations in his chair. She was coming to know the ridges in his face and thought she might be able to identify Salidifor in a group of orthong even without the gray line running down the side of his face. It would probably be easier to distinguish the females, since their arms, with their feint gray streakings, were exposed by the sleeveless tunics; but Nerys had seldom seen a weaver except for glimpses in the outfold.

This evening Salidifor served barley soaked in an aromatic herbed sauce. A sprinkling of raisins, plump from stewing, dotted the mixture. Nerys nodded in appreciation, but didn’t pick up her fork.

Salidifor asked, in his way of indulging her questions.

Little by little Salidifor had grown to tolerate her wish for language instruction. Usually, Nerys kept the subject mundane, so that Salidifor wouldn’t take offense and cut off the lesson. Thus they discussed Nerys’ berm, how the women organized themselves, the room in which Salidifor and Nerys met, its construction and amenities, and, of course, food. He took interest in her meal preferences, but was less willing to discuss how it was prepared. When a translucent tip of claw would peek out from the creature’s great paw, Nerys would dig into her meal and compliment him on the taste, or suggest improvements.

Progress was slow at first, with Salidifor spelling the meanings of signs, using the common language. The women had explained to her that the orthong could read the common language, but that they refused to allow the women to communicate with their lords in writing. What discourse took place would be on orthong terms, in sign. Nevertheless, as Nerys’ vocabulary soared, she edged into more complicated, conceptual topics. But it was lengthy and frustrating to say even something as simple as
I would rather learn than eat
.