Cibola Burn

“He was babbling,” Elvi said. “Bounding from jokes about mind-controlling aliens to Charles Dickens to insisting that he had some way to shut down the defense network. He was really all over the place. I tried to get him to rest, but —”

“Do I understand you that he intended to disable the alien technology presently functioning on this planet?”

“Yes. I mean, why wouldn’t he?”

“Doesn’t belong to him. Did he say how he intended to accomplish this?”

“He didn’t. But I don’t think there really was anything. It was just his brainstem attaching to his vocal cords. I’m pretty sure he was only half aware that he was talking at all.”

“Did he mention going north?”

Elvi blinked, scowled, shook her head.

Murtry pulled up his hand terminal, tapped it three times, and held it out to her. A rough map of Ilus’ only continent showed on the screen with two dots. One, she knew, was the location of First Landing, or where the place had been, anyway. She assumed it indicated where they were. A second dot was almost an inch and a half away.

“I took the liberty of tracking the captain’s hand terminal signal,” Murtry said. “Signal’s patchy and intermittent, but it seems he’s been traveling north at an average of two hundred klicks an hour. I find that very interesting.”

Elvi handed the terminal back to him. “He didn’t say anything about it. Just that he had something to do. He talked to Amos afterward. I thought that was probably what he meant. Honestly, I’m surprised he can even drive a cart.”

“He isn’t driving a cart,” Murtry said. “We’ve only got two carts, they’re both right outside, and one of them doesn’t even have a power cell.”

“I don’t understand,” Elvi said. “Then how is he…”

“Going two hundred kilometers an hour?” Murtry said. “That would be one of many, many questions I’d like to have answered. Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

Murtry nodded, turned, and walked toward the archway that led outside. Elvi watched him go, scowling. Had Holden said anything else? She couldn’t think of anything. But maybe he’d said something to Amos.

She found the big man standing in the mud outside the work tent where the carts were parked, arms folded across his bare, mud-streaked chest. He had a nasty scar across his belly and a tattoo of a woman over his heart. She wanted to ask about them both, but didn’t. The one working cart was rolling out, Murtry and Wei at the controls. The big silica-gel wheels made wet smacking sounds in the mud, but the cart picked up speed quickly, bouncing along the ruined landscape in the soft rain.

“Was there a drop?” Elvi asked.

“Nope,” Amos said.

“Is there going to be a drop?”

“If there is, they’d better get it in walking range. Unless I can get another fuel cell up, that right there was our one working set of wheels.”

“Oh,” she said. And then, “Did Holden say anything to you before he, ah, left?”

“Yep,” Amos said, still scowling after the cart.

“Was it about going north?”

“Not in particular, but I knew he was going someplace in case he could get Miller to turn the fusion reactors back on for us.”

“Miller?” Elvi said with a shake of her head.

“Yeah, that’s a long story. Pretty much all the cap had for me was to make sure that one” – Amos nodded at the retreating cart – “didn’t get uppity and start killing folks again.”

“He’s going after Holden.”

“Hmm. Don’t know if that makes my job harder or easier.”

The big man shrugged and walked into the repair tent. The remains of half a dozen fuel cells were laid out on a thin plastic tarp. Amos squatted beside them, then started arranging the cells by size and the extent of their obvious damage.

“This’d be a lot easier if the Roci could just drop me down a fresh cell,” he said.

“You’re going after Holden too?”

“Well, the way I figure it, I’m supposed to make sure Murtry doesn’t hurt anyone. He ain’t here, so all these folks are looking pretty safe. Might as well go where he is, make sure he don’t hurt no one there either.”

Elvi nodded and looked north. The cart was a small dot near the horizon throwing up a plume of spattered mud. She couldn’t judge how quickly they were going, but she was sure they’d be beyond the horizon soon.

“If you get that working, can I come too?”

“Nope.”

“Seriously, let me come with you,” Elvi said, kneeling beside him. “You’ll need backup out there. If anything goes wrong. What if you go blind again? Or if something stings you? I know the ecology out here better than anyone. I can help.”

Amos picked up a fuel cell, squeezing the casing until the metal bowed out a degree, and slid the internal cell out into his hand. A slurry of green-yellow mud came with it.

“Holden was talking about aliens. Like living, thinking, communicating, mind-controlling aliens,” Elvi said. “If that’s true, I could talk with them. Document them.”

Amos wiped the mud from the cell with his palm and squinted at it, sighing. He put it down and picked up the next one.