Chapter 26 #2
“I wanted to be right.” Khalzin shook his head. “Now I mostly want her safe.”
“You may have both.”
Khalzin looked at him for a moment, then smiled.
“You're speaking from experience.”
Dhomhes glanced toward the inner door. Sereya was somewhere beyond it, helping an analyst put dates to Roemary's remembered conversations.
“I may be.”
Hawn came that evening. Dhomhes brought up the new search map before he had to ask.
Two drones had lost contact in the same sector beneath the canopy; one had returned with corrupted recordings. An old survey boundary crossed that sector. Its exclusions gave conflicting reasons: unstable ground, protected workings, and, on the oldest copy, nothing at all.
“And someone thinks that should stop us looking for two people?” Hawn asked.
“The commander is taking crews in on foot. He's preserved the withdrawal request for the investigation.”
Hawn kept his eyes on the boundary.
“Imagine a clerk telling you that you cannot go where your brother fell.”
Dhomhes remembered the wait for Tivek at the airlock.
“I don't have to imagine very hard.”
When Hawn left, Dhomhes called Olmed with the map still open.
Olmed answered from the Stonebroke with Tori's shoulder visible beside him.
“You called about the sample,” he said. “I remembered something.”
Tori held up a drawing. Two versions of a marker, one crossed out and restored with a question beside it.
“The marker comes in a dream,” Olmed said. “I know where I am until I wake.”
“Send both,” Dhomhes said. “We'll compare them to the survey records.”
“There was growth near the lower opening. Roots. We complained about working around them. That part I remember from the shift.”
Dhomhes noted the distinction. There was still no assay, no name for the material, and no buyer he could question. Now he had something to compare with the disputed survey.
“Is talking about this going to put him in danger?” Tori asked.
“It may. Use the private contact route. Don't circulate the drawings. If anyone asks about the sample, tell me before you answer.”
She studied him, then nodded.
He sent the drawings for comparison without attaching his speculation.
Sereya found him still looking at the map and set a plate beside him.
“One of Roemary's questions about land access has a date now,” she said. “The other might just have been an excursion. I told them to keep both possibilities.”
He drew her close and kissed her hand. “Good.”
She sat with him while he ate. When the plate was empty, he closed the map.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Something overdue.”
They crossed to the dark side the next day with a scheduled supply flight. Dhomhes spent the work shift with his father and the search commander. Sereya visited Sheira, then met him at the refinery's residential entrance with a coat over her arm.
“Is this an inspection?” she asked.
“No.”
“Should I be suspicious?”
“Probably. It will help me feel useful.”
He took her up the exterior stairs above the old service sheds. The viewing rail had been replaced since he was a child, and the deck had a new non-slip surface. Beyond it, the dark-side sky stretched clear above the industrial haze.
Sereya stopped at the top step.
“Oh.”
He let her look.
The stars were sharp here, away from the brightest refinery lamps. The asteroid belt made a faint, broken sweep across them. She walked to the rail and tipped her head back until he could see the line of her throat above her coat.
“You kept coming here?”
“When I could.”
“After your mother died?”
He nodded.
“Sometimes before.” He leaned beside her. “She knew where to find me.”
Sereya put her hand over his on the rail.
He had spent so long describing Adelada through what followed her death. The accident. The protocols. The work his father had done.
Standing here, he remembered her climbing the stairs and complaining that he always chose places designed to ruin good shoes.
He told Sereya that.
She smiled.
“Did you choose somewhere else?”
“No. She changed her shoes.”
They stood together while the machinery worked below them. His comm rested against his wrist. His lead knew where he was. If someone needed him, they could reach him.
For now, no one called.
“The last time I watched the sky from a roof,” Sereya said, “I kept thinking I should have gone downstairs sooner.”
He turned toward her.
She shook her head gently.
“I know. I'm trying to learn it.”
He waited.
“I wanted another memory.” She looked up at the stars. “One where I get to come down when I'm ready.”
He took her hand from the rail and held it between his own.
“Then we stay until you're ready.”
She stepped close. He opened his coat enough to draw her into its warmth, and she settled against him with her cheek over his heart.
Below them, his father's crews changed shifts. His comm remained quiet.
Sereya lifted her face.
“I love you,” she said.
He kissed her before answering, slowly enough to feel her smile against his mouth.
“I love you.”
She looked back at the stars, keeping his arms around her. The burn stirred as she settled closer. He bent his head to her hair and breathed her in, with all the time she cared to give him.
For once, he let the next thing wait.