Haze looked at Mercury, with his intensity dialed up. “I do believe in good luck.”
She looked back into his eyes, the color of well-rooted, well-watered life.
Attraction shimmered between them.
2 Fortress
Haze had heard about the obscure variety of humans with a psychic gift to change the laws of probability in their immediate vicinity. They weren’t charlatans or sociopaths, since what happened was real but not intentional. They were called Jinxes, because while the psychic ability served their own self-preservation and the welfare of relatives and friends (was that what Quit meant about it won’t happen again?), it worked against enemies and bystanders.
Haze had filed away what he heard about Jinxes as mythical. Then again, there were planets of the Faraway that sounded like pure myth. Or plants of Faxe, for that matter. The seemingly mythical could turn out to be true. It was an interesting universe out there among the stars. He wondered why he had turned his back on it.
Since the scaffold was ruined, Mikal brought in a chair. Gerro Lee climbed onto it. He put an arm into the hole in the wall. “I can’t reach the back or top of this. Get me a flashlight!” All of them, Mercury included, clustered around Gerro on the chair. Their excitement was palpable.
Haze stood back. The Old Tellans (not to be confused with old Tellans like his family) had left fortresses scattered across the planet and this was one of those. Ever since humankind colonized Tellus, looters had ransacked such places, stripping the ruins of artifacts. Even the grains of sand on the floor interested these xenoarchaeologists, but not Haze. Hearing a mechanical sound from the Rift, he ducked outside.
A copter flew downward, daringly skirting the Rift wall—it obviously wasn’t an autoflyer—to a feather-light landing on the pad. While the pilot, a dark figure dimly visible inside, shut the machine down, a woman jumped out. She had long black hair, an energetic air, dark brown skin, and bright brown eyes. “Dr. Tel-Hazon, I presume?”
That historical allusion was older than old, going back to a fabled explorer’s greeting on Ancient Earth. He guessed that this must be the memorable Sake. “Pleased to meet you.”
Mercury ran out of the site. “Come quick, Sake! Look what we found!” She reached for Haze’s hand to lead him back in.
Standing on the chair, Gerro was peering into the hole in the wall with a flashlight.
Tai said sharply, “What the flutter did you do? I didn’t say cut a section out of the wall!”
“A few minutes ago it just opened,” said Quit.
“The rest of us were all in the other rooms, Mercury too!” said Mikal.
Haze gave Mercury’s hand an encouraging squeeze. She looked startled, as though she’d forgotten she’d taken him by the hand. She looked pleased too. Never mind the hole in the wall, she was a real discovery, Haze thought, holding Mercury’s warm hand in his.
Tai said crisply, “What opens on its own can close on its own. Keep your head out of there.”
“Use this.” Silk handed Gerro a mirror on a long stick. The mirror was broken but taped together.
“We’ve got advanced tech,” Mercury told Haze. “But a lot of what we use every day is make-it-work stuff, not made-to-order.”
Haze remembered other camps under other suns. “Like fieldwork everywhere.”
The pilot, having shut down and secured his copter, came in. He was dark-skinned and burly, his hair salted with gray. “This is Hopper,” Mercury told Haze. “He got that name in the Faxen military.”
Hopper and Silk briefly clasped hands. Another couple, Haze concluded. That was handy in the field, to have a partner and lover, with you no matter how far from home you roamed for how long. He’d always envied people like that.
Ria Lee held a flashlight over her head to shine it into the wall while Gerro extended the mirror into the hole in the wall. “The void is higher and deeper than I can see. Find something I can drop in here to time how long it takes to fall.” There followed an animated discussion of the right item to drop, to make a sound when it hit bottom, but not damage anything, and not be something they couldn’t afford to lose.
“Welcome to the Rift. It isn’t usually so exciting,” Tai said drily. She gave Haze a long look. “You look young for your distinction. You did graduate research at the University in Strata on Faxe. Were you there at the Fall?”
He shrugged. “Slept through it in an underground dorm. Then I came home to Tellus and built my career.”
Tai gave a slight nod. “We appreciate the importance of your work on Tellus and the trouble to come visit this site. In return we will cooperate fully with you.” She pivoted. “Listen up, everybody. The river is coming on schedule. I wasn’t able to delay it. Neither our work nor unresolved concerns about a bioreserve downstream weigh enough to change the timeline.”
Blunt but true, Haze thought ruefully. The reserve was an expanse of terraformed desert, teeming with life compared to most of the planet. His colleagues hadn’t finished assessing how it would fare with a river running through it. The river restoration had been approved anyway.
“So in three days the river starts coming back. Tomorrow we’ll do the planned visit to Site B before there’s a river between there and here.” She pivoted back to Haze. “We’ll be as hospitable to you as possible. Unfortunately, we’re packed into this station like bees into a hive, with no proper guest quarters. Will a tent do?”
As today had turned out, there might be one person he’d like to be packed in with like bees in a hive, with honey to taste. He assured Tai, “I’ve stayed in tents in fieldwork on many planets, including Faxe.”
“With electrical spiders?” Quit sounded interested.
Silk said, “I’ve got a good tent for you, already aired out and set up. This way.”
Haze willingly followed Silk, guessing that Tai would have a few words to say to her people out of his hearing. He didn’t object. She was striking him as an able expedition leader.
Which didn’t square with some of what he’d found out about her. Just as she’d looked into who he was, he’d done the same regarding her. Beyond her impressive professional credentials, some scraps of information suggested that Tai had skirted the laws of various planets and polities. Given that he was in the Rift to make sure that laws about planetary protection were observed, that had gotten his attention.
He shrugged. The transmission of reputation across the stars could involve amplification, attenuation, and distortion of signal. He knew a well-run and well-led expedition when he saw one.
Sake waved Mercury into the smallest space in the Site, the Anteroom. There was an Old-Tellan bench in the wall, kneeler-low for humans but better than sitting on the floor.
Sake said, “I reported the human signatures we’ve been picking up with Quit’s spy tools, explaining it as accidental sightings by a sharp-eyed one of us, and expressed the concern that looters might be around. But I righteously turned down a detachment of soldiers from the lake installation to protect us. Glad I did. I don’t want the Faxen nose in our business right now. Not that I’m happy that the Tellan bureaucrat was here to see the gaudy hole in the wall either! What do you think about him?”