Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Mara
Morning sickness has passed. Pregnancy still not showing.
And I am dressed, fed, and ready for work a full twenty-five minutes early, which has never once happened in my entire professional life.
I’d like to say it’s because I’m a dedicated engineer with a demanding contract.
It’s not. It’s because Cayzor of Eighteen is going to be standing in that lobby when I come down.
And I’ve become a woman who does her hair for a short walk to work.
I look at myself in the little mirror. The hair will survive approximately eleven minutes of a Timbur morning and then the humidity will take it and I will look exactly the way I always look, which is fine, which is normal, which is a woman going to a job.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell myself.
I look around. Why do we have to meet in the lobby?
It’s so public. Couldn’t we just start meeting up here, in the apartment instead?
That’s the question. Because that male gets to the housing block at some absurd hour and stands there, in a public lobby, near the lift bank like a very large, very patient statue, while techs and hall staff give him a wide berth and pretend they aren’t looking at him.
It is genuinely the best part of my day. The other best part is when he picks me up at the end of my shift, somehow always knowing which panel I’m on now.
But it’s twelve minutes of walking, most of which is spent on the path where you have to go single file because the vegetation’s eating it, and I get maybe six actual minutes of conversation out of the whole thing.
But…if I were to ask him if he wanted to instead meet up here every morning, then that same male would be sitting at my table. In my apartment. For twenty minutes, half an hour, before either of us has to be anywhere. Every single morning.
I smile wide.
That would be lovely. I can imagine him here, with me, each morning.
I could make him something. I’ve still got the good coffee and I’ve customized the dispenser enough now that I could probably manage something with eggs, if he wanted to try out more human food.
I want to watch him eat human breakfast the way I watched him eat lasagna, with that careful, considering expression, like every bite is a report he’s filing.
I take a deep breath. This morning I’m going to be bold and ask him up to my apartment.
Then I glance out my window and see the entire Fever Brothers crew, as well as some of the brides, walking together to the mine, from the public transport. Hmm, that’s odd. Aren’t they early?
Ever since that dinner at the compound, the Fever Brothers and their brides have become super friendly. I adore them. All of them. And I see them everywhere nowadays. I mean everywhere.
Roxy turns up on whatever level I’m working, twice a day, minimum, always with a perfectly good lab reason and never in any particular hurry to leave.
Leah has apparently developed an urgent maintenance interest in our corridor and I have run into her out there many times.
Jana spots me the moment I walk into the cafeteria and waves me past the entire line like I’m visiting royalty.
Naomi was near the transport platform yesterday, when Andrew and I were working there, which was odd because Naomi does not work at the transport platform. Naomi is an artist.
And the miners, beings I have never exchanged a word with until now nod at me in the lift. I feel I’m getting to know the entire Fever Brother’s crew, which is nice. In fact, I feel proud of the fact that I can now combine a face with a name.
There’s a knock on my door.
I gasp with surprise and rush for the door. Did Cayzor decide to come up here, without being asked? I’m across the room in about four steps and I pull the door open, grinning like an idiot.
It’s Andrew.
Oh.
He’s got his tablet under his arm and his coffee in his hand, and he watches my face fall. “Huh. You thought I was him. Didn’t you.”
“What? No.” I step back to let him in, which he’s already doing. “I thought you were… nobody. I was just…good morning.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good morning, Andrew.”
“Morning.” He drops into my chair, the good one, and takes a long drink of his coffee, and looks around my apartment. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with that Fever Brother.”
I pour myself another cup of coffee. “Of course I am. He’s helping with the audit.”
“Sure. And dinner at his family’s compound was also the audit.”
“That was…” I busy myself with the coffee press. “That was me networking, like you’re always telling me I should do. And I finally did and you don’t like it? I’m confused.”
“Mar.” He tips his head. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. We’re contractors on a fixed-term job and you’re spending a lot of time with a guy who’s technically part of the operation we’re auditing, and if this goes sideways it’s on our record, not his.”
“Well, I mean, you have a fair point there…”
“And personally, you’ve had a rough year. Cole did a number on you and you don’t do things by halves, you never have.”
“I wasn’t in deep with Cole,” I sputter. “We were together, in a casual way. In reality, that relationship wasn’t going anywhere.”
“He dumped you for our cousin and now they’re engaged. That doesn’t bother you?”
“Actually, I’ve kinda forgotten about it,” I answer truthfully.
He looks like he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.
I turn my back to him again, putting sweetener in my coffee. “Nothing’s going anywhere with Scar and I. There’s nothing to go badly.”
“Uh-huh.”
I take my coffee with me to the table. “We’re colleagues, Andrew.”
“Right.” He drinks his coffee. “I hope that’s true because in five weeks we’re on a transporter disk out of here and this rock’s a story we tell people. Also, you need to know that I think this miner, Scar, has a screw loose.”
I blink. “Why would you say that?”
“I think I saw him in our hallway last night.”
I stop with the coffee halfway to my mouth. “You what?”
“Late. Like, I don’t know, way after midnight. I got up for water and I thought I heard a noise, so I looked out and there was somebody down by the lift bank. Just standing there. In the dark.”
And I laugh at him. I actually laugh. “Andrew. Every third being on this planet is seven feet tall.”
“Not that many of them are standing in our hallway at zero-two-hundred.”
“You were half asleep.” I’m grinning. “You probably saw a Margol tech. Or a cleaning unit. Do you remember that you’ve done this before, on Salo? You woke me up at three in the morning convinced there was a man in the corridor and it was a hazard trolley with a jacket on it.”
“That trolley was extremely man-shaped.” He doesn’t laugh. “Mara, I’m serious. I’m telling you what I saw. The guy is stalking you.”
“He’s not stalking me.”
“He’s outside your building in the middle of the night!”
“Mara.”
“We’re going to be late,” I stand up. “We need to get going.”
“Look, I’m going to say the thing, all right?” He sets his cup down. “That family is weird, Mar.”
I roll my eyes. “They’re not weird.”
“They live in a fortress at the end of a dead-end road, in the actual jungle, forty minutes from anything. There are like nine of them and their wives and about a hundred kids all crammed in one building at the edge of the world. Ask yourself why.”
“Andrew, you know that Xylan live like that in compounds. We saw it all over on Chronos.”
“No, they live out there because I learned they were demoted. Did you know that? I asked around. That compound isn’t where the good workers live, it’s where Minecorp put them. Beings don’t get shipped out to the end of the road for nothing, Mara. There’s a reason.”
I cross my arms. “You don’t know the reason.”
“And neither do you.” He spreads his hands.
“That’s my whole point. You don’t know anything about these beings except that they gave you a nice dinner.
Have you noticed nobody in this colony will actually talk about them?
Have you noticed that? I’ve asked half a dozen guys, and they all get weird and change the subject. ”
“What? That’s never happened to me.”
“Yes, it has. When we first arrived Security warned you to stay away from Scar. Day one, Mara. Your first day on this rock, before you’d unpacked, mine security walked you down a hallway and told you to stay away from that specific male.
” He leans forward. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you? At all?”
“That’s not — “
“And the face. That’s not a work accident, that’s not a rockfall, that is a knife, or a claw, or whatever they use, and somebody put it there on purpose.
Somebody tried to take that guy’s head off.
And you’re sitting here telling me he’s a nice colleague who helps with your paperwork, and Mar — whatever he’s mixed up in, it’s violent, and you don’t know the half of it, and you’re having him walk you to work. ”
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?”
I’m standing. I don’t remember standing.
My hands shake and my voice remains firm.
“Don’t talk about Cayzor that way. You want to know how he got that scar?
Ask him. He’ll tell you. He told me the whole story, while he sat at that table right there, and it is the single worst thing I have ever heard in my life.
” My throat’s gone tight. “And you’re using it as a debating point to put him down? ”
“Mara…”
“No, I don’t want you talking about the Fever Brothers crew or their family that way.
They invited us to their home and they were nothing but polite to you.
They passed you the food and they answered your questions and nobody said one unkind word, and you’re talking about them behind their backs, calling them dangerous. ”
Andrew’s jaw works. “You want to talk about how nice they’ve been? You cannot move on this planet without one of those people appearing, and you think that’s charming?”
“Yes,” I lift my chin. “I think it’s lovely.”
“Lovely.”
“I think it’s the nicest thing that’s happened to me in years.
” My voice cracks a little and I let it.
“Andrew, I have eaten about nine hundred dinners by myself in rented rooms, and here, on Timbur, there are people who notice where I am. Somebody always walks with me or feeds me. Somebody knocks. I don’t know what you want me to say, but I’m not frightened of the way I’m being treated.
I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone like Cayzor and his family. ”
And my brother looks at me like I’ve said something in a language he doesn’t speak. “What is happening here? Are you falling in love with a miner? Are you going to clasp hands with him? Are you going to try being his bride, is that where this is going? Are you kidding me?”
“No. I am not going to clasp hands with Cayzor.”
And it’s true. There is never going to be any clasping.
He scented me in my own kitchen weeks ago, with those steady dark eyes: we are not compatible.
He’ll never ask. He can’t ask. Whatever this is — the walks and the tablet at midnight and the way my whole body reorganizes itself when he comes through a door — it is a thing with a wall at the end of it, and I have known about the wall since the beginning.
I have been very sensible and very grown-up about it every single day since.
He simply enjoys my company and considers me a close friend.
I wish we could be so much more, but it’s never going to happen.
It’s sad but true.
“Cayzor and I are close friends.” I sigh. “And coworkers.”
“Yeah. Right.” Andrew laughs, and it isn’t a nice laugh. “This is ridiculous.”
“Andrew, I like it here. Obviously, you don’t like it here, but I do. I like it a lot.”
Andrew goes still. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I’ve been thinking about approaching Minecorp.”
“For what?”
“For a position with them?”
“Where? Here, on Timbur?”
“Maybe, or wherever they could fit me. Andrew, Minecorp has holdings in four sectors. Processing on Kesh, the refinery chain, three transfer stations, and every single one of them runs on Illibrium infrastructure that nobody understands as well as I do right now. There’s no permanent systems engineer for the whole network.
There’s contractors. There’s people like us, flown in when something breaks. ”
“You want a staff job.”
“I want to build the position and then have it.” I can hear myself getting fast and I don’t care.
“A permanent systems role, based here, covering the whole umbrella. I’d have the source material, I’d have the deepest existing knowledge of the oldest grid they own, and I’d never have to take another six-week contract on an ice planet again as long as I live. ”
“You’d want to be based here, on Timbur?”
“That’s where the mine is, Andrew,” I say. “That’s where the crystal comes out of the ground.”
“And what about me? What if that isn’t what I want?”
I let out a deep sigh. “It’s not written in stone. I haven’t even asked yet, right now it’s only a thought. But I’m hoping you’ll think about it and we can talk about this more.”
He doesn’t say anything.
And that’s the first moment in this entire ugly morning where something in his face genuinely frightens me — not angry, not concerned, something else, gone almost before I’ve seen it. Like I’ve told him a piece of news about somebody else. Like he’s doing arithmetic.
Then he softens first, like he always does. That’s his whole gift, and I know it’s his gift, and it works on me anyway every single time.
“I’m sorry.” He rubs a hand over his face and suddenly looks tired in a way I hadn’t noticed. “God. Mar. I’m sorry, that was — I came in here to have a nice conversation with my sister and I’ve been a complete ass.”
“You have.”
“This contract’s got me twisted up. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever taken and I’m not sleeping and I keep thinking about what happens if we get it wrong.
” He looks up. “And you’re all I’ve got.
That’s the thing. There’s just the two of us and I’ve been watching you get further and further into something I don’t understand, and I don’t like not being able to see where you are. ”
And that lands, because it’s true, there is just the two of us in our tiny family. He’s my brother, and the only person left alive who remembers our mother’s kitchen. “I know.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“You’re forgiven.”
He hugs me at the door, and I hug him back, and it’s fine.
But.
Something was different this time. I don’t have a name for it. And yet, I let it go, the way I always do, and I get my gloves.