Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [23]
“On our world there is not enough electricity for you already?”
“Hon, on your world there’s enough electricity for dang near everybody, dang near everywhere. If we could box it”
He stopped himself, held back from telling her too much. These people had survived in an impossible place by holding to some kind of purpose. Civilizations had been doing that for a long time, but this one took the method to an extreme. Keller knew he had to work within their system. They wouldn’t accept too much rebellion.
“Stand right in front of me. Let me use you for”
“A sensor anchor,” she completed. “I know. You will “read’ me now, and you will “read’ yourself on the plain, and later compare the information. I shall stand better than anyone ever has stood.”
She squared her shoulders, spread her hands out, drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, still smiling. Her hands, less a little finger on each, were slim and feminine. Even the bitterness of evolution and of life on this rugged world hadn’t taken the girl out of this girl. She didn’t have much of a figure, but the simple foil sheath made an enchanting envelope.
“Mmm, you’re good at standing,” Keller commented wryly. He finished scanning her and turned the tricorder on himself for a quick sweep. “Ought to do it…”
Braxan pressed her hands to her gold-leaf pixie-cut hair. Her hair looked brassy to him here. What it would look like on the other side he had no way to guess. All he knew was that her smile was friendly, her heart forgiving and unsuspicious in a place of inclement legend, and she had started to look pretty to him.
“I wish I could have you give the commands.” She sank against him, pressing her chin to his shoulder. “Why would random order select such as me to be made an Elder?”
“When we go to the other side, you can be whatever you want. There’s no “random order’ there. You can be lots of different things. All at once, if you want.” He gazed at her. “What do you want?”
It was like asking a cloistered novice to describe Mardi Gras. Her lashless eyes tightened with the mystery he put before her. “I would like to see trees,” she said.
“We have trees on Belle Terre. We’re sowing sod too. Grass. I think you’ll take to grass between your little stubby toes down there.”
She smiled, but he had awakened a cautious streak. “Does color hurt?” she asked.
Her innocence filled him with a whole new kind of responsibility. Cupping her neck, his own hands were a bizarre computer-generated pearly texture instead of their normal shade of Santa Fe. Everything here seemed artificially animated. He’d almost forgotten what a human really looked like or the kind of world he and all life like him was meant to occupy. Was some inner part of him expecting to be trapped here?
He slid his hands down her shoulder blades and solemnly promised, “Color is one of the best things.”
“Hunt! The hunt!” Cries from the streets shook them out of their private moment. Local heralds were running through the streets, summoning all those qualified to hunt. The same thing would be happening in the other settlements.
Keller looked up and sighed. What a shame a free dancer had just landed here, but all its energy was lost. Hundreds of people would soon die a horrific electrical death to tempt down more free dancers in a controlled environment, so one could be killed and its energy taken into storage.
“It’s time to hunt,” Braxan said, and pressed back, breaking their quiet communion.
“Right,” he acceded. “Let’s buckle on our swash and participate in chivalry at its weirdest.”
The hunt plain was nothing more than miles of ferrous flats, brushed to a dull sheen by wind and storms constantly battering this planet. Lightning flashed overhead and the skies growled. The biohaze, a shroud of primordial life surviving in the atmosphere, flickered and swam and tumbled.
There were twenty thousand people or so on this planet, by Keller’s best reckoning. The low number was a sad clue. According