Chapter 2 #2
“I have to tell you,” Sulinda says over her shoulder, “we are all very glad you’ve come.
Very glad. This grid business has everyone rattled.
” She lowers her voice like she’s confiding something, though the hallway’s mostly empty.
“You know we lost power completely, some years back? The whole outpost, dark as a tomb. Everyone said it was faulty wiring from an upgrade and maybe it was, but then it happened again, just recently— and now nobody’s calling it faulty wiring.
Now they’re bringing in the best grid specialists in the Four Sectors.
” She glances back at us, eyes bright. “That’s you, I’m told. The very best.”
“That’s the rumor,” Andrew says easily. “We’ll see if we can live up to it.”
“We’ll fix it,” I say, and I mean it, because I’ve already seen enough of this system to know it’s worth fixing, and because a place that loses all its power in a cascade twice is a place with a real problem underneath, and real problems are the only kind I’ve ever actually enjoyed.
“Two failures like that, years apart? That’s not bad luck, that’s a pattern and patterns have causes. ”
Sulinda gives me a long, pleased look. “Oh, I like her,” she says to Andrew, as if I’ve passed some test.
“She’s the serious one,” Andrew agrees. “I’m the fun one.”
“I’m the one who finds the fault,” I tease. “And he’s the one who documents it and takes half the credit.”
“Slander,” says Andrew, cheerfully.
Sulinda laughs again and leads us out of the main passage and outside of the mine.
We are now out in the open, allowing me to breathe the fresh, planetary air and finally see the climate of Timbur, itself.
“This is employee housing,” our guide explains pointing to a nearby building, “close enough to walk to work, far enough that you can’t hear the machines at night. ”
The air comes at me warm and thick, faintly humid, heavy with a green growing smell and the ghost of recent rain.
Everywhere I look the vegetation is pressing in, crowding the edges of the path like it’s only barely been convinced to leave room for us to walk.
The leaves aren’t leaf-colored. Some of them are, but others are deep purple, or a strange electric blue, broad and waxy and bigger than my head.
Flowers burst out of every corner in clusters, oranges and violets, and one kind so vividly red it almost seems to glow from inside itself.
Vines climb everything. I get the distinct impression that if this path went unwalked for a single season, the green would simply take it back.
Overhead the sky stretches wide and endless, a clear deep blue streaked with wisps of white cloud.
Something trills in the canopy above us, three notes and a flourish, over and over.
A bug of some sort, buzzes past my ear, and I flinch and then feel ridiculous for flinching.
There’s a whole living world humming, clicking and calling up in that green, and it does not care one bit that I’ve arrived.
“Oh,” I breathe. “This is amazing.”
“Ha. Everyone does that.” Sulinda looks pleased in the particular way of someone watching a stranger admire her home. “It’s the flowers, usually. Off-worlders can never quite get over the vivid colors.”
“It’s all of it.” I tip my head back and just breathe it in for a second, warm air and flowers and rain. “New Earth is semi-arid, so I’m loving all this greenery. It’s beautiful. It’s completely wild.”
“It gets wilder past the settlement line.” Sulinda nods toward the deeper dark of the jungle, where the growth thickens into something genuinely impenetrable.
“You’ll want to stay on the paths and roads or inside the buildings, especially after dark.
There are things out there that hunt, and things that come down from the sky, and none of them care that you’re new.
” She says it lightly, but she means it, and I file it under reasons not to wander off, right next to don’t bare-hand the giant Xylan.
Andrew’s already got his tablet out, snapping pictures of the plants like the tourist he secretly is. “Okay,” he admits, grinning, “this one might beat the ice planet we worked on last year.”
I roll my eyes, suffering PTSD from those bad memories. “Everything beats the ice planet.”
He shrugs. “The ice planet had character. And a very high bonus payment.”
“Ugh. The ice planet had frostbite.”
We continue to follow the path, laid with pavers, winding through the dense growth, and purple leaves that brush my shoulders. And there it is, through a gap in the trees, employee housing. A few stories tall, clean and modern, a structure that wouldn’t look out of place on Chronos or Singapore.
We step inside the ground floor lobby, then take an elevator to the third floor.
Sulinda continues to chat, letting us know she’s sent work schedules to our tablets, along with schematics of the mine and all the contact info for all the employees we’ll need to speak to for help.
All of this is very useful. I let her know we’ll get started right away.
We walk down a long hallway with large windows at the ends, near the elevator, that show off the verdant jungle vegetation.
Sulinda stops first at one door and keys it open for Andrew.
“Do you want to see inside?” she questions.
“Your room is going to be just like his, but next door.” I nod and step in with my brother, briefly, pleased at what I see.
It’s a large, clean, modern space with a sitting area, small kitchen and a separate bedroom and bathroom.
“Nice.”
“Yes, this will do,” Andrew agrees, happily.
I leave my brother behind and Sulinda walks me down the hall.
“Here you are, Mara.” She keys my door and hands me the credential.
“You have everything you need? There’s water, linens, a food dispenser for when you don’t feel like the cafeteria, though you’ll want the cafeteria, our Jana is a marvel.
” She hesitates at the threshold, and for a moment the bustling-guide brightness softens into something kinder.
“It can feel very far from home on your first night. Remember if you need anything at all, message me, I mean it.”
She’s so kind. Normally our guides, if we’re lucky enough to have one, are much more business-like. We’ve in fact been left with bots on three different occasions and only a shed to sleep in. “Thank you,” I manage. “Really.”
“Of course. Now rest. You’ve earned it.” And with one last genuine smile, she’s off down the hall, braids swinging, already moving on to whatever the rest of her day holds.
And just like that I’m alone with my suitcase in a small, tidy, entirely unfamiliar apartment. The adrenaline that’s been carrying me since Singapore finally runs out.
I sit on the edge of the bed and hear a knock on my door.