Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [78]
Dirty little mining world. Tekton became very still. Carefully, Tekton, both minds warned him. ‘Mining world? Out there? No. How fascinating? But I found no such thing on the records.’ he said casually.
‘Hah!’ Miranda’s laugh was more of a snort. ‘Of course not. OLOSS are renowned for tampering with their records: a judge on the law circuit spots a little world he fancies as a holiday home, bribes the Registrar of Planets to delete it from the database and buys it for a song. You must know the sort of thing . . .’
Tekton felt his skin grow warm with embarrassment. Obviously he did not.
‘If you want to know the truth on anything you have to use the Vreal Studium. Those extropists are nothing if not meticulous with detail,’ she added.
The Vreal Studium.
‘And I must congratulate you. Your prolonged erection this evening was quite remarkable. You must tell Jise how you do that.’
Suddenly Tekton felt a different type of heat. ‘Indeed.’
‘And now, my dear Tekton, you won’t squeal to Ra that you caught me, will you?’
Tekton pulled the curtain closed behind him. ‘No, dear Miranda—not if you lift that skirt of yours a little higher.’
* * * *
MIRA
Mira watched Cass nursing Vito. Despite the heat and the lack of food there was no hint of hopelessness, no surrender in her face. Her resolve reminded Mira of Faja and the similarity was like a wound. She couldn’t think of her sorella without her breath catching in her throat.
Cass’s older ragazzo played nearby in the dirt with the korm. The korm’s bleeding had stopped, leaving ugly grey lesions on its blue flesh.
In a few days they’d travelled most of the distance to Ipo: unbearable, hungry days and hot-wind nights. They’d taken the rougher mining tracks towards the place. Cass had pronounced the proper roads too dangerous and crowded.
In some ways Mira was relieved by her decision, for every person on foot they’d have passed would’ve been another person they should have stopped for, every ragazza another one at risk of being run over.
Mira found herself moving automatically through the days but at night, when the TerV’s depleted solar cells forced them to stop, her mind swirled in an agony of confusion and denial. This could not be happening. Her world, as much as she had felt a misfit in it, was being torn from her and crushed. She grieved for her displacement and for the ugliness that desperation caused. What would be the end of it? What would be her fate?
Each of them had been allocated a watch period. Innis declared that he would share his with Mira but, to her relief, Cass overruled him. Instead she took her watch with Kristo.
On the second night they had stopped in a shallow gully at the side of the track to shelter from the worst of the winds. They’d seen no one all afternoon but, to the east and west of the track, lights dotted the night. Miners guarding their leases, Cass had said, and refugees.
Like us.
Kristo tapped his fingers along the barrel of the rifle in a release of tension and Mira worried that in the quickening dark he might shoot her accidentally. ‘Stop that.’ She couldn’t keep the imperious edge from her tone.
‘Innis is right,’ Kristo said. ‘You’re a nervous type. Guess that’s ‘cause you’re an aristo.’
‘What do you mean?’ She found she had little patience left for their ignorant bigotry.
‘Youse aristo wimmen up on Mount Pell are protected from real life.’
Mira stared out into the dark. His criticism bothered her. Was she like the familia women? She didn’t—had never—felt like them. ‘I am not just aristo—I am a pilot.’
‘All I know is you ain’t like Cass,’ Kristo said simply. ‘Though I guess she’s learnin’ it hard since her man died.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He was killed just a week back when the Juanita mine caved in. They set a blast at one of the open cuts