Uncharted Territory (16 page)

“My shit!” Ev said and dropped his shuttlewren. “My
shit!”

My sentiments exactly. I’d seen holos of Niagara and Yosemite Falls when I was a kid, and they were pretty impressive, but they were only water. This—

“My
shit
!” Ev said again.

We were standing a good five hundred meters above the canyon floor and opposite a rose brick cliff that rose up another two hundred meters. The Tongue leapt out of a narrow V in the top of it and flung itself like a suicide down into the canyon with a roar I should never have mistaken for a cascade, throwing up a billow of mist and spray I could almost feel, and crashing into the swirling green-white water below.

The sun ducked under a cloud and then came out again, and the waterfall exploded like fireworks. There was a double rainbow across the top of the spray, and that one was probably from the water’s refracting the sunlight, but the rest of them were from the cliff. It was crisscrossed with veins of the prismatic crystal, and they sparkled and glittered like diamonds, flashing chunks of rainbow onto the cliff, onto the falls, into the air, across the whole canyon.

“My
shit!”
Ev said again, hanging on to his pony’s reins like they could hold him up. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Lucky us stumbling onto it this way,” Carson said, and I turned to look at him. He had his thumbs in his belt loops and was looking smug. “If we’d kept on up that canyon,” he said, “we’d have missed it altogether.”

Lucky, my boots, I thought. All that dragging us through silvershims and up steps and consulting with Bult like you didn’t know where you were going. This is what you were doing while I was waiting for you in the Wall, worried sick. Off chasing rainbows.

He must have found it by following the Tongue, looking for a way around the anticline, and then gone off wandering up cliffs and in and out of side canyons, searching for the best vantage point to show it to us from. If we’d stayed on the Tongue, the way he probably had when he found it, we’d have caught a half glimpse of it around some bend, or heard the roar get louder and guessed what was coming, instead of having it burst on us all at once like some view of rainbow heaven.

“Really lucky!” Carson said, his mustache quivering. “So, what do you want to name it?”

“Name it?” Ev’s head jerked around to look at Carson, and I thought, Well, so much for birds and scenery, we’re back to sex.

“Yeah,” Carson said. “It’s a natural landmark. It’s gotta have a name. How about Rainbow Falls?”

“Rainbow
Falls?” I snorted. “It’s gotta have a better name than that,” I said. “Something big, something that’ll give some idea of what it looks like. Aladdin’s Cave.”

“Can’t name it after a person.”

“Prism Falls. Diamond Falls.”

“Crystal Falls,” Ev said, still staring at it.

He’d never get it past them. Chances were Big Brother, ever vigilant, would spot it and send us a pursuant that said Crissa Jane Tull worked on the survey team and the name was ineligible, and this time they’d be able to prove a connection, and we’d get fined to within an inch of our lives.

It was too bad, because Crystal Falls was the perfect name for it. And until Big Brother caught it, Ev would get a lot of jumps out of C.J.

“Crystal Falls,” I said. “You’re right. It’s perfect.”

I looked at Carson, wondering if he was thinking the same thing, but he wasn’t even listening. He was looking at Bult, who had his head bent over his log.

“What’s the Boohteri name for the waterfall, Bult?” Carson asked, and Bult glanced up, said something I couldn’t hear, and looked down at his log again.

I left Ev drooling into the canyon and went over by them, thinking, Great, it’s going to end up being called Dead Soup Falls or, worse, “Ours.” “What’d he say?” I shouted to Carson.

“Damage to rock surface,” Bult said. He was catching up his fines. “Damage to indigenous flora.”

I figured he was going to have to add, “Inappropriate tone and manner,” but Carson didn’t look so much as annoyed. “Bult,” he shouted, but only because of the roar, “what do you call it?”

He looked up again and stared vaguely off to the left of the waterfall. I took the opportunity to snatch the log out of his hands.

“The waterfall, you pony-brained nonsentient!” I said, pointing, and he shifted his gaze in the right direction, though who on hell knows what he was really looking at—a cloud maybe, or some rock slung halfway down the cliff.

“Do the Boohteri have a name for the waterfall?” Carson said patiently.

“Vwarrr,”
Bult said.

“That’s the word for water,” Carson said. “Do you have a name for this waterfall?” and Bult looked at Carson with that peculiar questioning look, and I thought, amazed, he’s trying to figure out what Carson wants him to say.

“You said your people had never been in the mountains,” Carson said, prompting him, and Bult looked like he’d just remembered his line.

“Nah nahm.”

“You can’t call it Nah Nahm,” Ev said from behind us. “You’ve got to name it something beautiful. Something grand!”

“Grand Canyon!” I said.

“Something like Heart’s Desire,” Ev said. “Or Rainbow’s End.”

“Heart’s Desire,” Carson said thoughtfully. “That’s not bad. Bult, what about the canyon? Do the Boohteri have a name for that?”

Bult knew his line this time. “Nah nahm.”

“Crown Jewels Canyon,” Ev said. “Starshine Falls.”

“It should really be an indidge name,” Carson said piously. “Remember what Big Brother said. ‘Every effort should be made to discover the indigenous name of all flora, fauna, and natural landmarks.’”

“Bult just told you,” I said. “They don’t have a name for it.”

“What about the cliff, Bult?” Carson said, looking hard at Bult. “Or the rocks? Do the indidges have a name for those?”

Bult looked like he needed a prompter, but Carson didn’t seem mad. “What about the crystals?” he said, digging in his pocket. “What did you name that crystal?”

The roaring of the falls seemed to get louder.

“Thitsserrrah,
” Bult said.

“Yeah,” Carson said.
“Tssarrrah.
You said Crystal Falls, Ev. We’ll name it T
ssarrrah
after the crystals.”

The roar got so loud it made me go dizzy, and I grabbed on to the pony.

“Tssarrrah Falls,” Carson said. “What do you think, Bult?”

“Tssarrrah,” Bult said. “Nahm.”

“How about you?” Carson said, looking at me.

Ev said, “I think it’s a beautiful name.”

I walked over to the edge of the overhang, sail feeling dizzy, and sat down.

“That settles it,” Carson said. “Fin, you can send it in. Tssarrrah Falls.”

I sat there listening to the roar and watching the glittering spray. The sun went in behind a cloud and burst out again, and rainbows darted across and above the cliff like shuttlewrens, sparkling like glass.

Carson sat down beside me. “Tssarrrah Falls,” he said. “It was lucky the indidges had a word for those crystals. Big Brother’s been wanting us to give more stuff indigenous names.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Lucky. What does
tssarrrah
mean, did Bult say?”

“‘Crazy female,’ probably,” he said. “Or maybe ‘heart’s desire.’”

“How much did you have to bribe him with? Next year’s wages?”

“That was what was funny,” he said, frowning. “I was going to give him the pop-up since he likes it so much. I figured I might have to give him a lot more than that after the oil field, but I asked him if he’d help, and he said yes, just like that. No fines, nothing.”

I wasn’t surprised.

“Did you get the name sent?” he said.

I looked at the falls for a long minute. The water roared down, dancing with rainbows. “I’ll do it on the way down. Hadn’t we better get going?” I said, and stood up.

“Yeah,” he said, looking south at where the clouds were accumulating again. “Looks like it’s going to rain again.”

He held out his hand, and I yanked him to his feet. “You didn’t have any business going off like that,” I said.

He still had hold of my hand. “You didn’t have any business nearly getting yourself killed.” He let go of my hand. “Bult, come on, you’ve got to lead us back down.”

“How on hell are we supposed to do that when the ponies won’t backtrail?” I said, but Bult’s pony walked right through the silvershims and down into the narrow canyon, and ours followed single file without so much as a balk.

“Dust storms aren’t the only things being faked around here,” I muttered.

Nobody heard me. Carson was up behind Bult, still doing the leading, down the side canyon, back through the one where the ponies had given us so much trouble, and then into another side canyon. I let them get ahead and looked back at Ev. He was bent over his terminal, probably looking at shuttlewren stats. I called C.J.

After I talked to her, I looked ahead and caught a glimpse of the side of the falls. The rainbows were lighting up the sky. Ev caught up to me. “They’ll never get it on the pop-ups like it really was,” he said.

“No,” I said. “They won’t.”

The canyon widened, and we could see the falls from an angle, the water leaping sideways off the crystal-studded cliff and straight down.

“Speaking of which,” Ev said, “what’s Carson’s first name?”

I’d told Carson he was smart. “What?”

“His first name. I got to thinking that I don’t know it. On the pop-ups you never call each other anything but Findriddy and Carson.”

“It’s Aloysius,” I said. “Aloysius Byron. His initials are A.B.C. Don’t tell him I told you.”

“His
first name’s Aloysius,” he said thoughtfully. “And yours is Sarah.”

As smart as they come.

“Did you know that in some species the males all compete for the most desirable female?” he said, smiling wryly. “Most of them don’t stand a chance, though. She always picks the one who’s the bravest. Or the smartest.”

“Speaking of which, you were pretty smart to figure out the shuttlewrens built the Wall.”

He brightened. “I still have to prove it,” he said. “I’m going to have to run content analyses and work/ size probabilities when I get back to King’s X. And write it up.”

“It’ll be on the pop-ups, too,” I said. “You’ll be famous. Ev Parker, Socioexozoologist.”

“You think so?” he said, as if it hadn’t occurred to him before.

“I know so. A whole episode.”

He looked hard at me. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one writing the episodes. You’re Captain Jake Trail-blazer.”

“Nope,” I said, “but I know who is.” And her initials are C.J.T., I thought. “My shit, you may get a whole series.”

The canyon opened out, and we were on another overlook, as big as a field this time, and lower down. Off to one side there was a way down, a slope leading back along the canyon to its floor. Beyond the canyon you could see the plains, pink and lavender. I could see the bluff that backed the anticline off to the east, too far off the scans to notice anything.

“Rest stop,” Bult said and got off his pony. He sat down under a silvershim and opened out the pop-up.

“Do you hear that?” Carson said, looking up in the sky.

“It’s C.J.,” I said. “I told her to come get Ev so he can work on his theory. He’s gotta run some tests.”

“Is she doing aerials?” he said, looking anxiously back in the direction of the bluff.

“I told her to go south and come in over the Ponypiles, that we needed an aerial of them,” I said.

“What about on the way back?”

“Are you kidding? She’s going to have Ev with her. She won’t be running any aerials with him in the heli. My shit, she probably forgot to do the aerials on the way down, she was so excited.”

Carson looked at me questioningly. The heli swooped in and hovered above the field. C.J. jumped down from the bay, ran across to Ev, and practically knocked him down, kissing him.

“What’s all that about?” Carson said, watching them.

“Courtship ritual,” I said. “I told her Ev named the falls after her. I told her he named it Crystal Falls.” I looked at Carson. “It was the only way he was ever going to get a jump. On this planet, anyway.”

They were still in a clinch.

“When she finds out what we really named it,” Carson said, grinning, “she’s gonna be really mad. When are you gonna tell her?”

“I’m not,” I said. “That’s the name I sent.”

He quit grinning. “What on hell did you do that for?”

“The other day Ev almost got a name past me. Crisscross Creek. You were worrying about what Bult was up to, and I was busy trying to load everything on the ponies, and when he asked me what we were going to name that little stream we crossed, I wasn’t paying any attention. It wouldn’t have gotten past Big Brother, but it got past me. Because I was busy worrying about something else.”

Ev and C.J. had come out of their clinch and were looking at the waterfall. C.J. was making squealing noises that practically drowned out the falls.

“Crystal Falls won’t get past Big Brother either,” Carson said. “And
Tssarrrah Falls
would have.”

“I know,” I said, “but maybe they’ll be so busy yelling at us over naming it that and killing the
tssi mitss
that they’ll forget about the oil field.”

He stared at Ev. C.J. was kissing him again. “What about Evie?”

“He won’t tell,” I said.

“What about Bult? How do we know he won’t lead us out of these mountains and straight into another anticline? Or a diamond deposit?”

‘That’s not a problem either. All you’ve got to do is tell him.”

He turned and looked at me. ‘Tell him what?”

“Can’t you tell when somebody’s got a crush on you? Making you fires, watching your scenes on the pop-ups over and over, giving you presents—”

“What presents?”