Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [34]
"Kathryn, that's dangerous. You should never swim alone."
"I'd rather do that than spend time with people who are going to be moping around waiting for dire things to happen." She stood rock still, eyeing Mary and Emma sternly. As she expected, they couldn't hold the look; their eyes danced away nervously and scanned the Martian hills. "Well?" Kathryn shot at them, and Mary looked back at her first. "We said we'd come and we did. Let's not argue about it." Kathryn nodded and turned back in the direction of the quarry, heard the other two follow her, and breathed a sigh of resignation. They seemed so young to her. How could they all possibly be the same age? They were climbing a rise that was studded with huge boulders and rocky outcroppings; they had to weave their way through narrow passageways that twisted and wound like a maze. Then they emerged into the open, and found themselves standing on an upward-sloping expanse of flat rock beyond which they could see nothing except sky; a sheer drop-off awaited them. As they neared the edge Emma and Mary hung back, approaching slowly. Kathryn went to all fours and then stretched herself out, inching toward the drop-off. The abandoned quarry was arrayed before her: steep, chiseled stone walls that still bore the marks of ultrasonic drills, plummeting down fifty meters to the surface of a clear lake some five hundred meters in diameter. It was a foreboding sight, stark and mysterious, and Kathryn felt her blood tingle with a mixture of apprehension and excitement.
"How are we supposed to get down there?" whispered Emma. Kathryn turned to her.
"Why are you whispering?"
Emma turned to her, dark eyes wide, face pale. "I don't know. It just seems weird here."
"It's strange and beautiful-kind of wild. I like it." Kathryn's eyes were scanning the terrain as she spoke, looking for a route to the water below. The quarry walls weren't smooth, but craggy, with plenty of handholds. They could make it down.
"We climb. With rough rock like that, it'll be easy."
"I'm not doing that." Mary stood up, looking down at them with total resolve. "That's just asking for trouble."
Kathryn started to retort, but suddenly they all heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps-someone was climbing the rise behind them, moving through the maze of rocks. Mary dropped back to her knees, and guiltily, they all tried to press themselves behind outcroppings. Was it one of their parents? Had someone seen them leave the colony and strike out across the Tharsis plain?
The footsteps came nearer, scuffling on the gravelly ground. A few steps more and the person would emerge from the rocks and out into the open. Kathryn held her breath; she was sure it would be her father, furious with her for having broken an explicit rule.
A figure emerged from the passageway, backlit by the sun and unidentifiable, but it was a man, and he was tall and slender-and Kathryn's stomach turned queasy. It had to be her father.
"Hello, ladies. Going swimming?" The voice was familiar but was definitely not her father's. Kathryn rose and as the figure moved closer, he turned and his face was illuminated.
Hobbes Johnson.
Relief and dismay struggled for supremacy inside Kathryn: that it wasn't her father was a vast comfort, but the sight of Hobbes Johnson, lanky and dull, was about the final dismal touch in a day that had been rapidly going downhill.
"Hobbes, what are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing. Aren't the quarries offlimits to you?"
"At least there are three of us. You came by yourself. That's foolish."
"No, it wasn't. I saw you leaving. I figured you were going to the quarries."
Kathryn felt a rush of annoyance, which, on top of her frustrations with Emma and Mary, pushed her from irritation to anger. "Don't you think if we'd wanted your company, we'd have asked you?" Hobbes paled at the attack, and Kathryn was immediately sorry. She didn't mean to hurt his feelings, she was just irked. But she saw Mary and