Brenda Cooper
Joy Linda threw a stick onto the fire, and the yellow-gold flames flashed toward the night sky, making her lean away from their sharp heat.
Bart sat near her, the fire throwing shadows and light on his grizzled face. “Are you cold?”
Her back felt cold and exposed but she didn’t say so. “Fire keeps the forest away.”
He laughed. “For now.”
His laugh ran up her spine, sharp and painful. She ignored him. Old boor. Just outside the circle of light, she felt the soft footfalls of predators walking a circle around the camp. Leaves rustled. A low growl dug even deeper under her skin than Bart’s laugh.
She tossed a heavier piece of wood on the flames, and then another, another, another. The safety of the light washed over her in waves.
An hour passed, two.
The pile of firewood grew smaller.
“Go to bed,” Bart told her.
She grimaced at the command. “Later.”
He was a big man, round and slightly stooped, sixty or so years old. He was a true colonist, born on the spaceship that brought them all here. She had been born on the ship, but all of her memories were here. Maybe it was the age difference that made him so imperious. Maybe he was just imperious. In spite of his command, she picked up a stick.
He plucked it from her hand before she could fling it on the fire. “Stop worrying. We have our stunners.”
Which was not enough. She glared at him. They should be a bigger group. But he’d wanted to get back for a meeting of some kind, and he always talked about how he wasn’t afraid.
Well, she was. But she didn’t let that turn her gaze from him.
He stared back, his dark eyes wreathed in wrinkles and yet still full of power. He was waiting for her to give up. He’d done that ever since she was his student at the Guild Hall, and even though she could resist his unrelenting gaze more easily than she had then, she did eventually look away.
She climbed into her tent and zipped it shut. She lay curled under her one blanket, facing Fremont’s forest, her stunner clutched close to her breast.
A death scream split the night, the sound somewhere between far away and a medium distance away. A round of barking snarls from a pack of demon dogs announced the killers, the sound bouncing between ridges.
Something small rustled outside near her feet.
Bart shifted his weight, one foot scraping against the ground.
A night bird chittered from a tree just outside the camp’s clearing, then fell silent.
Her own breathing sounded loud and too fast.
A pebble bounced off her tent. She sat straight up, loosened the safety on her stunner.
“Don’t come out,” Bart whispered.
Terror blew her awake. She slid to a crouch, holding her weapon, focusing on keeping her hands still.
Silent seconds followed, slow seconds full of peril.
She wanted to stand, to see outside. To help. But in the dark of a Fremont night, it was best to be still.
Surely the coals were still hot. Bart should throw more wood onto them.
No sound offered any clue, although the continued silence promised danger.
Weight slammed against the side of her tent, a sharp blow. Something huge and full of muscle knocked her down. Fabric tangled around her, trapped an arm, ripped her stunner from her fingers and folded her inside.
A strangled cry knifed the silence, then a crunch of bone.
The cry had been human. Bart.
The tent still trapped her and she stayed as still as possible, as quiet. She forced herself to breathe through her nose.
Leaves snapped. Something growled, low and intense. A growl of effort laced with menace. The predator had been silent until it struck.
Not demon dogs. Rhu had named them for their noise.
A cat. Paw-cat, probably. But there were others. Paw-cats were bigger than humans. If they stood on their hind legs, they were taller. Silent predators, and strong. More than one, usually.
She’d never seen one, but two people had died by their claws. Most of the wildlife on Fremont didn’t eat humans, but it was happy enough to kill them from time to time.
She breathed shallowly, slowly. Please don’t find me. Please don’t hear me.
Something scraped across the ground. The cat, dragging Bart’s body. She’d heard his neck snap. That had to have been what she heard. She was sure of it.
Moving, breathing loud, existing. All of those things could kill her.
The cat’s claws scraped across rock, the sound setting her bones thrumming with fear. Again. And then it was a few feet past her, bushes rustling.
Bart. She hadn’t liked him, but she hadn’t wished him harm. Her father had died out here, and a few years later, her first crush, a boy named Jimmie.
It could be her. It could be her right now. Any moment. She bit down on her thumb to still her fear and listened until the cat could no longer be heard. She kept listening, kept still, kept her attention on every sound in her body and in the forest around her until light began to stain the sky with safety.
She left everything behind. Notebooks. Broken tent. Specimens. They were all dead things anyway, rocks and plants and the skull of something large with long teeth. At least she didn’t have to preserve some living rodent or plant they were bringing back.
She left her own pack, although she had the presence of mind to grab her water.
The sun beat down on her back as she wound down the High Road on foot, alone and fast. The road was flat and wide, one of three roads carved carefully by machine in the first ten years of the colonization. The humans had made the roads, but the wild things of Fremont used them as well, and here and there she saw the small rounded hoofprints of djuri or the clawed prints of four-footed predators.
They hadn’t even named all the predators yet.
Even though she left at dawn, it took almost until midday to get close enough to look down on Artistos, spread across the top of a cliff above the wide, grassy plains. She felt eyes on her the entire trip. Fremont, watching and waiting, hoping she’d show weakness. Real or imagined, the sense of being watched kept her walking fast and likewise kept her from breaking into a run. If she had learned anything from this planet, it was never to show her fear.
As soon as she felt the slight frisson of passage through the boundary and the bells rang friendly entry, she collapsed on a rock and breathed and breathed and breathed.
~*~
Artistos was the only town on Fremont. It had been carefully planned for far more people than actually lived in it, and the outskirts were empty. She passed unused roads and cleared sites waiting for buildings. Joy crossed three empty “streets” before she spotted her mother and the chief scientist, Deborah. They waved as soon as they saw her.
She broke into a run.
Her mother’s arms smelled of flour and salt, her cheeks of oil, and the tears she spilled down her face left tracks in the flour dust that whitened her skin. Her mother murmured in Joy’s hair. “We expected you yesterday.”
Deborah asked, “Where’s Bart? He’s not supposed to leave you, not even inside the bells.”
Joy shook her head, unable to force the words she should say though her teeth.
Deborah pressed. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Stupid lunk of a man up and died on you.”
Joy spit out a word. “Cat.”
Deborah’s eyes widened. She looked like she expected Joy to say something else, but she had no more no words right now, nothing she wanted to say to anyone. But it was a long time before she let her mother go. They walked back to town in silence. Joy felt utterly drained. Her mother was almost always quiet, and Deborah had a furious frown on her face and looked like her jaw was clamped shut.
~*~
All of the scientists had small rooms in town. As the newest member of the science team, Joy’s was one of the smallest. It felt safe. She stayed there all the next day except for meals. Then again the next. The walls felt like heaven.
After three days, the knock she had been expecting came. She called out, “It’s unlocked!”
Deborah came in and sat beside her, pulling her bedcovers covers away from her shoulders. “You have to come out. The colony needs you.”
“When is the funeral?”
“Tonight. You must come.” Her lips thinned and her jaw tightened. Deborah’s version of Bart’s stare. “And then you must rejoin us. Come back out. We’ll make sure you’re part of a bigger group.”
Joy struggled up and sat, staring out of the window at the hostile planet that surrounded them. “There are people who don’t have to leave. Including my mother.”
“And there are more people who do. We are the only force—”
“—who can keep the city safe,” Joy finished. She looked at Deborah, hesitated, and then blurted, “I heard him die. I could have died. I need something simple for a few weeks. Like laundry. Or cleaning the barn.”
“You’re too able-bodied for those chores.” Deborah brushed her graying hair from her face. “We cannot let you become like your mother. There aren’t enough people to waste one so young. Your mother agrees.”
Joy could imagine how that conversation went. Her mother had often asked her to stay behind, so Deborah must have given her no choice. Deborah seldom allowed choices.
Deborah continued, “Your mother could not come to tell you this. She couldn’t bear it.”
They had let her mother withdraw when her father was killed. “I know.”
“We need you.”
Joy let out a long breath. “I’m afraid.”
“Of course you are. We are all afraid.” Deborah’s gaze was steady and long, and utterly uncompromising. “I flew here with Bart. We built a wall together, and designed the Science Guild rules together. I will mourn him tonight.” She put a hand on Joy’s knee. “I know he wasn’t your favorite teacher, but he was a good man.”
Joy shifted her leg so Deborah’s hand slid away. “I know my duty to the dead.”
“And the living. You must return to your work tomorrow.”
What would happen if she refused? Would the old woman force her? Would they put her outside the boundary and let the demon dogs or the yellow snakes or the paw-cats eat her?
Probably not. But she couldn’t imagine crossing the boundary. Even the thought of it made her stomach twist and jump. “I’ll do something useful tomorrow.”
The look on Deborah’s face blended anger and sorrow. Joy didn’t see the point of either. They should be afraid.
After Deborah left, Joy paced. After ten minutes, she knew that Deborah was right. Not about the anger. But she did need to do something for the colony. Artistos could not afford dead weight. After enough pacing, she finally had an idea.
She went to the Science Guild Hall. All five students were just leaving for labs after morning lessons, and so there were computers available. She found the librarian, Johannes, and asked, “Can I have an extra notebook? I left mine behind when Bart was killed.”
Johannes looked pained, and Joy suspected he minded giving her the notebook. But she took it and began executing careful searches and taking detailed notes. Johannes walked by three times, peering at what she drew. The fourth time, she held up her hand to stop him. “Go ahead. Ask.”
“Is that a wagon?”
“Yes.”
“Good idea.” He sat down at the computer beside her and brought up other images for her to look at. “It has to be smaller,” she said.
“But big enough to carry specimens. You could go further.”
She shivered. “I’m only trying to be safer. We’ll need to pull these ourselves, I think. All the pictures have…” She stared at the screen, flipped back and forth, reading labels. “They have horses and cows and things to pull them. We’ll need people to do it. Unless you have a horse in your back pocket?”
He frowned, rubbing the stump of his left thumb absently. “I don’t suppose you can harness the demon dogs or the djuri?”
She laughed. “The demons are too mean and the djuri are too frightened and the hebras are too tall. So we have to be able to pull it, at least for now.”
“It will take more than one person to pull something that big. You’ll have to make it smaller. Maybe it can have two wheels? And be thinner?”
She frowned. “Maybe.”
“It would still be heavy.”
Joy tightened her jaw and sat back, but then said, “We don’t need to take it everywhere. Just to the ends of the roads. Like today, where we set up a camp and explore from there.”
“I hope someone lets you make it.” With that helpful comment, Johannes resumed his slow circuit through the library, quieting children and helping people find obscure information about plants or animals in the growing Fremont database. She glared at his retreating back. None of the first colonists understood. Fremont might kill them all. They were used to being on top, back on Deerfly. They’d fled other humans, but for all she could tell, every animal on Deerfly had been domesticated.
On Fremont, humans weren’t the apex predator. At least not yet.
She turned back to her notes, and before she knew it, the sky had darkened into night. Johannes started rattling the doors, breaking her concentration. She looked up to find that she was the only one left except Johannes.
“I’m sorry.”
He smiled at her. “Good luck with the wagon. It might work.”
“Thanks.” She picked up her notebook and hurried outside, looking up to see a sky spangled with stars. She spotted Destiny, and then two other moons. A good luck sign.
~*~
The gathering bells began to toll just before dusk. Joy didn’t want to go, but the ritual ran deep. Everyone who knew the dead went to every funeral. She had been with Bart when he died, so she’d have a place in the ceremony because of that. She pulled on dark pants and her best white shirt and combed her hair, then sat to wait for her mother.
The bells had already stopped by the time her mother showed up, dressed in an old black shirt of Joy’s father’s. Her hair hung in dark waves streaked with gray. The flour had been scrubbed from her face and hands.
She walked beside Joy with her eyes downcast. She had hardly said a thing to Joy these three days, and Deborah had told Joy that she seldom spoke to anyone else either. She tottered a bit on her feet. Joy supported her, wondering if she had been drinking the colony’s homemade alcohol. It went unsaid between them, but drinking was part of why her mother never went out any more, and why Deborah provided for most things that Joy needed.
Joy took her mother’s hand. “Can you move a little faster?”
Her mother shook her head but made a visible effort. When Joy’s father died, she had been seven. Joy had wished it was her and not him, her mother and not him, anyone in the colony but him. Her mother had not recovered.
She swallowed and squeezed her mother’s hand. Of course, she hadn’t recovered. Joy’s father had been perfect. He’d been the lead biologist, and the way her mother talked, he’d been the most handsome man in the whole colony. “It will be okay,” she murmured, as much to herself as to her mother.
“It’s not okay,” he mother whispered. “Another death. We’ll all be gone.”
Joy held on to her mother’s sweaty hand and kept walking toward the funeral clearing.
They were almost the last to arrive. One of the Council members, Lucille, came and took Joy’s hand and led her to the front of the procession, separating her from her mother. Joy breathed out a sigh of relief and took her place. Lucille led them in a circle. Three Council members were first, then Deborah as the lead scientist, then Joy as speaker for the last sight.
Lucille stopped and the others followed, lining up close to each other at the head of the pyre. The other mourners stood at the foot in a loose bunch that stretched far back. Hundreds of people, but still fewer than had landed here. Even with the babies. A cool breeze brushed stray strands of hair from her face as she took a deep breath. Her hands shook just like her mother’s often did.
Lucille lit the torch that would light the fire and held it blazing in her hand. The light deepened the lines in her face so she looked old and fierce.
Now that Joy stood where she could see Bart’s shrouded body, she realized she had no idea what to say. She had never had this role. Her mother had been the last to see her father alive. Joy didn’t remember what she had said.
As Lucille said her piece representing the colony, Joy’s mind jumped back and forth through all the times she had seen Bart. She had not liked him, and she was angry with him for letting the fire die down. For almost killing her. For dying. But she couldn’t say any of those things.
Lucille finished too fast for Joy’s taste, and Deborah began to speak. “Bart was one of the last three working scientists from among the original colonists. I am another one. We have seen twenty-two die natural deaths, seventeen die in the field, and ten have been so wounded they entered the colony’s service as part of the Culture Guild. Bart journeyed far to get here, to save us from a life we did not want. Little did he—or we—know that this place we fled to would kill so many of us. But he never flinched.”
Deborah flicked her eyes toward Joy.
That glance burned into her as Deborah continued, “He travelled out to find us knowledge fifty-three times.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to say something more. But she simply finished with, “We should all honor his service,” and bowed her head.
The crowd murmured.
A lump clogged Joy’s throat. She still had no idea what to say, even though she had heard the ritual over and over. Still, she had to talk. It was her job to relate his last night. “We stopped. Our last night’s stop of a four-day trip. We had two tents and one fire and we watched the fire together until Bart felt we might run out of wood. Then he sent me to bed in my tent. After the fire died, so did he.” That wasn’t enough. She wiped at an unexpected tear. “A paw-cat came into camp and took his life.” Her anger with Bart started to drain away. Something else came up in its place, a feeling she couldn’t quite name yet, if ever. “We must do better.” Her voice rose. “We must find a way to beat those things, to be safer and braver. We must act differently in order to live.” She thought of her idea from today. “We must travel differently, travel in bigger groups, and make safety more important. There were supposed to be two other people with me and Bart, but Danny got sick so Carla stayed with him, and we started home anyway. We shouldn’t have.” The words startled her and she stopped for a moment, gazing across the waiting pyre at the watchers. “We need to be more afraid and to be let that fear make us stronger.” She and the other scientists her age had said these things to each other. But none of them had said them to the colony.
Joy shook herself. This was no time for a lecture, but she’d had to say what she’d said. It had demanded to come out. She held her head up. “We are one colony. No one else is coming after us. Every one of us matters. Bart mattered. Bart was not afraid. But every death diminishes us.” And now, finally, she remembered what she was expected to say, and the ritual took its proper cadence. “His last moments were spent protecting us all. May his soul fly free.”
Lucille nodded and set her torch to the dried moss that would fire the kindling.
As she watched the pyre, Joy realized she would miss Bart even though she hadn’t liked him. She whispered the words she’d said out loud. “We must act differently in order to live.” Her expectation had been to die. Her mother thought that, and she had thought it too. That they would all die. Not of old age, but of this damned planet.
~*~
The next morning, Joy stood just outside Deborah’s door fifteen minutes before the shift was supposed to start. Deborah opened the door, one hand full of an empty teacup and the other holding a notebook. She looked slightly irritated when she saw it was Joy, but then her face softened in non-committal kindness. “Did you come to tell me you’re ready to go out?”
“Give me three people and three days. Please.”
“Three? For what?”
“We’re going to make wheels.”
“Wheels?”
“Like on our bicycles. Like the little ones on the push-carts in the guild hall, but bigger.”
“Out of metal?”
Joy shook her head.
“How?” There was no manufacturing to speak of on Artistos. Not yet. There were plans, but mostly they made do with things they brought down from the ship. “We’ll use the Carpenter Guild’s woodshop.”
Joy saw the word “no” forming on Deborah’s lips. She whispered, “Please.”
Deborah’s mouth thinned into a straight line and then she turned her back on Joy and headed for her kitchen. “I’ll be right there.”
Joy stood, tapping her foot. She smelled redberry tea. Deborah didn’t offer her any, but when she came back, she said, “Two days. I’ll be out that long bringing the things back from your camp.”
Joy looked away. She should go with Deborah, but she couldn’t face the camp. She really couldn’t. “Thank you.”
“You can choose three helpers from the culture guild.”
From the old and the broken. Three days wouldn’t have been enough, and two wouldn’t be for sure. Not with the culture guild for her only help. Cripples and failures and the old. People like her mother. But she’d take two days without leaving the perimeter and two days to think about a safe place to sleep.
She didn’t even know who all was in the culture guild. A few. But she was in the science guild, and she knew the ones that helped them. Johannes, for example.
She found him washing the windows in the science guild hall. He smiled at her. “Back for more?”
She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled at him. “Yes. They gave me permission. I have two days. And I can use three people to help me.”
He blinked at her.
She felt her cheeks get hot. “Will you help me?”
“Me? Why not use builders or scientists?”
“I can’t. Deborah said I can do this, but she said I need to use people from the Culture Guild.”
He swallowed and took a breath before he answered her. “I have to do this.” He pointed at the windows. “We all have jobs.”
She stared at him. A clean window was more important than saving scientist’s lives?
He flinched, and then said, “I can help you at the end of my shift.”
Half her time would be gone. “You’re one of the best. You know how to look up information. Please.”
Johannes glanced at the computers. “What will the children do for classes?”
Her mind stumbled over ideas. “Can someone else help them today?”
He merely pursed his lips.
“Can they help us? Do they need to learn search skills? Can they apply those in class today? You helped me figure out that wheels can be made of wood. They did that on Earth, before we knew how to make metal. We could make heavy ones out of big circles, but then we couldn’t pull them up hills. Can your class look up how to make them lighter? Then how to put them on axels?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “The whole thing made of wood?”
Desperation threatened to wrap itself around her tongue. He had to help her. She couldn’t fail. Not now. “Or things we have now. I want to build one in two days. And they have to be safe and have a locked place to sleep that’s not on the ground and a way for there to be a fire.”
“That’s a lot to ask.”
“I’m tired of people dying.”
“What if, in two days, we get a good drawing?”
She swallowed, remembering lying in the tent, remembering the way the cat’s claws sounded as it dragged Bart away, remembering that there had been nothing she could do. She didn’t want the same to happen again, ever. “I want a good wagon. We have to at least try.”
Johannes held up his thumbless hand. “I’m no good at building.”
She held up her hands, fingers splayed. “We’ll have enough thumbs.”
He smiled at her, the first real, genuine smile she’d seen on another human being all day.
~*~
Johannes helped her choose two other people to include, a slightly-stooped man named Roke who used to work in the engine rooms of Traveler, the ship they’d flown here on, and a teenage boy named Pillat who had been born with one twisted leg. Pillat was the only human to start life out in the Culture Guild rather than enter it after they got too old, too sick, too frightened, or too injured to do the harder work of colonizing a dangerous planet. Joy was a little skeptical of both choices until they began the work, sitting all together around a table with two computers and a few pieces of paper between them all.
Pillat could only take a few steps on his own, but he had a wheeled chair he used to go between buildings. He was fast. He brought them water, food, and a few times, people Roke wanted to question. People came. That was Roke’s magic; everyone knew him, and more importantly, trusted him. She’d seen him, of course, but she hadn’t really known a thing about him. When he sent Pillat to ask a question, people responded. Every time. So Roke brought resources and respect as well as his own engineering knowledge, Pillat acted as a runner, Johannes researched, and Joy used her knowledge of the world beyond the boundary to drive the design.
By midday, Joy realized this was the best day shed had in a long time.
Johannes periodically came in from his class with images and ideas and questions.
By nightfall they had a list of materials, a set of drawings, tools they’d sent Pillat to gather from various places, and four exhausted smiles. They also had three or four things they needed but didn’t know how to get, including the metal rims that they wanted. And this was just for the wheels. There hadn’t been time to design the living quarters, other than as a hand-drawn box with a hand-drawn window in the side and the outline of two doors.
Still, the small pile of tools encouraged her. They looked hopeful all laid out on the counter, like they were just waiting to be picked up.
They sat together and kept talking while they dipped djuri stew from the communal dinner pot. After they ate, Joy wanted to keep working, but Pillat had fallen asleep right on the dining room table and Johannes kept rubbing his eyes. So she thanked them all and went to her own room.
Once there, all of her good energy crashed around her. They had nothing yet. Just an idea. And only one more day.
Johannes had asked her what would happen if they only had a drawing. She knew. Deborah would make her go back out, and they’d keep doing things the same old way.
Joy slept fitfully, waking so early she could spot the bright light of Traveler in the sky near the horizon. She walked into the Science Guild just after dawn and found Roke already there, his work-roughened hands swirling a sanding stick across a long round of wood. He smiled when she walked in, held out the wood.
She took it. When she cupped one end in her palm, the other end extended behind that same elbow. It felt good. Heavier than she wanted, but also right. Solid.
“It’s a spoke. So that’s almost half as long as the first wheel will be high.”
“Thank you,” she told him, carefully handing him back the wood. “Thank you for working on it last night.”
He resumed his sanding. “Mickey has nine more of these ready. He’s going to do more after his shift ends.”
After his shift ended? “Who’s Mickey?”
“He’s a carpenter. He’s got a bad leg, so he’s one of us in a way, but during the day he’s one of the crew building the barn.”
She had known the Science Guild worked dawn to dusk. What if everyone worked this hard and the colony still died off? “Tell him thank you.” She sat down on a chair. “This isn’t going to be finished in a day, is it?”
He looked at her with a wry smile. “Did you think it would?”
She bit her lip to keep back tears of frustration. “I’d hoped. At least for the wheels.”
“Why don’t you keep designing the living quarters?”
Pillat came in before she could fall any closer to despair, and his smile was so bright that she dug out the papers they had been working on and started making lists of things that might matter about a mobile house.
~*~
The others had gone off to various chores associated with the project, so Joy sat alone at the work table, staring at the papers spread across it and making small notes. As the golden light of dusk pierced the still-dirty windows of the science guild, Deborah threw the door open and came in to stand beside Joy. “What have you finished?”
Joy took a deep breath and tapped the paper in front of her. “Sit down and I’ll show you.” Deborah took a seat and Joy paged through their notes and drawings, some in her slightly sloppy hand, some in Pillat’s rounded, extravagant style, and some in Johannes’ neat block letters and squared images.
Deborah sat beside Joy and looked at the pictures and documents. “Can the wheels be made?”
“Roke has started on a sample wheel.”
Deborah’s eyebrows rose. “Is it done?”
Joy swallowed. “It’s started. I think he’ll be by with it. We also figured out the axle. The science students helped.”
“Do we have strong enough wood for the axle?”
“Yes. We might even have metal parts we can use. There’s a whole pile of recycled metal behind the Carpenter’s Hall. Leftovers, or things that have come down that no one knew what to do with. We’re asking.”
“How many people will it take to pull?”
Joy swallowed. This was a hard one. “I think two. Except up hills. And it depends on how much is being carried. We’ll have to stay on the roads with it, and build more, I suppose. But we usually camp near the roads anyway.”
Deborah frowned. “We carry everything on our backs now. We could still carry things up hill. But could you pull this and carry your pack?”
“We hope so. It’s more to make a safe place to sleep than to carry things, but it will carry things on the flats and it will be a safe place to leave things while we explore.”
Deborah gave a light nod at that. Not exactly encouragement, but Joy knew it was a good point. Just last year they’d had a camp ravaged and a tent destroyed. She kept grilling Joy. “Do you have enough planed wood for the walls? That isn’t needed for anything else? Like the barns?”
This was a much harder question, and not one she could answer. “The Town Council would have to say.”
Deborah smiled as if Joy had answered something right. “How long will it take to build a sample?”
Before Joy could answer, the door opened and Pillat darted through it, quick in his chair, holding the door open. “Joy?”
“Here.” Joy stood up. “Deborah is here, too.”
Pillat glanced at Deborah, and hesitated a second before saying, “That’s good. She can see, too. Come look!”
The boy sounded triumphant, but even more importantly, Deborah smiled broadly at him, and said, “You look better than I’ve seen you in years.”
Pillat was nearly bouncing in his seat. “Wait until you see.”
Outside, Roke stood beside a single wheel, his arm extended to hold it up. It was as tall as Pillat in his chair, which was bigger than she had expected. Joy practically skipped to the wheel. With that, the floor of the wagon would be higher than her knees. It would cross over good-sized rocks and handle tough terrain. She reached out to touch it. The wood was smooth and strong, and now that she was close, she could see a metal band around the outside edge. It was so strong.
Roke beamed at her. “Roll it.” He let go.
She gasped as she caught it, surprised by how light it felt. It leaned a little toward her, and when she pushed it the other way it leaned a little too far, but Roke put a hand out and stopped it. She steadied herself and turned toward the wheel, using her hands and shuffling her feet to take it a full rotation. It moved so smoothly!
She had forgotten about Deborah until she realized she had to stop the wheel to avoid running into the head scientist.
Deborah’s eyes were wide, but her expression otherwise showed no emotion.
Joy swallowed, suddenly afraid. It was only one part. One wheel. They needed four and the wagon itself, but she was out of time.
Deborah reached her hand out close to the wheel and waited for Joy to push it toward her. Joy didn’t want to let go of it, but she did, stepping back beside Pillat and Roke.
Johannes came around the corner and stood watching the scene, his face as impassive at Deborah’s.
Why did Deborah have to come now? The four of them should have been able to examine the wheel before they had to share it with someone as skeptical as Deborah.
The older woman moved the wheel gingerly forward and back, and then squatted, attempting to pick it up. She held it, her arms quivering a bit with the weight. She and wheel made a long shadow on the ground, almost comical in the late-evening light. The metal rim turned a burnished orange. Deborah stood there, holding the wheel, looking away from all of them.
Joy bit her lip. It was heavier than she wanted. But it had the metal rim, which was a good idea. The wheel would last a lot longer.
Deborah put the wheel down carefully, still on its edge, and rolled it over to the building. She leaned it there and backed up, staring at it. She stopped when she was close to Joy, Roke, and Pillat. Johannes came over near them.
Deborah gestured for them all to go back into the guild. Deborah led, and Joy chose to go in last, stopping for a moment to touch the wheel before darting in through the door. This was physical, demonstrable proof that her ideas could work. The scientists could travel more safely.
After they all sat down, Johannes lit a candle against the fading light.
Deborah gave him a strange look, and he shrugged his shoulders as if to shake it off. “Another breaker blew this afternoon. I’ll fix it first thing in the morning. We’re getting low on electrical wire, though, and may need another trip to Traveler.”
Deborah’s expression soured at that, but she nodded at Roke. “That’s good work. How many people helped?”
“Just me and Mickey. We skipped dinner to finish it.” He glanced at the wheelchair-bound boy. “And Pillat. He brought us things we needed and picked up after us.”
At that, Deborah smiled.
Johannes stood and went to the kitchen, bringing back a tray with a pitcher of water and five cups on it.
Joy sipped at her water, watching Deborah’s face carefully. The Culture Guild didn’t report to the head of the Science Guild, but half its members had once been scientists. Deborah would be able to stop their project if she wanted to.
Instead, Deborah looked at Roke and asked, “How long will it take to build an entire mockup?”
Roke and Johannes shared a glance, while Pillat looked to Joy as if she had been asked the question.
She hadn’t. Which made her tighten her muscles into a fake grin. She forced herself to take a deep breath and blow out her anger. It wouldn’t help. Thinking might. It had only taken two days to design and build one wheel. How long would it take to build more now that they had the design? Three more days for the insides of the wagon? Maybe not ready to live in, but ready to test? She could practically see the same ideas turning over Roke’s head. She pushed her anger with Deborah to the side, for now. “Can we get three wheels in two more days? Are there enough materials?”
Roke smiled. “Three days for sure. If we have to do it after our other work.” He nodded toward Deborah, who still said nothing. He pursed his lips at her silence, and then turned his attention back to Joy. “Can you finish designing the kitchen? I think if we tape off the size on the floor and use physical things—maybe boxes and old wood—to measure with, you’ll see how big it is. I think you might be able to add three drawers.”
Deborah stood, as if she had finally made a decision. “As much as I might later regret letting a man do it, you will have to design the kitchen. And if you want to do this, you must do it after hours, and you must have the other Guilds working with you. We can’t afford to waste the good weather that’s coming next week, so Joy, you’ll be in the field with me and three other apprentice scientists.” She hesitated. “Plus a few more who are more seasoned. It will be a big enough group for safety. We’ll be looking for more species of berries to test and we’ll try to catch more jumping prickles.”
Joy swallowed a lump in her throat. She had truly enjoyed the last two days, and now she’d be sent out to face Fremont again.
Deborah continued. “We’ll be gone for two weeks. Can you finish in that time?”
Roke nodded, pointedly not looking at either Joy or Deborah. Pillat rolled over close to Joy, the sad smile on his lips suggesting he understood a little of what she felt. Johannes’s face was still. On all of those faces, and in her own heart, she felt the depth of Deborah’s power like a rock crushing their ability to choose anything for themselves. She stood abruptly, offering Deborah a stiff little bow. “Thank you for allowing my work to continue.”
She turned and walked out the building, grateful that the darkness was sufficient to hide her angry tears.
To her surprise, she found her mother sitting on a rock outside of the scientists’ quarters, barely visible in the pale stored-solar light that marked the way to the shared bunk space that included her room. She hadn’t seen her mother since they walked to the funeral together. As soon as Joy saw her, her mother stood and came to greet her. “I heard what you said.”
“Huh?”
“You said we had to change and we had to do better.”
Joy ran her hands down her cheeks, trying to remove any evidence of her tears. “We do. That’s why I’m trying to build a safer way to be out there.”
Joy’s mom smiled. “And why I’m going back out. I asked Deborah if I could go with you. I know how to test the berries, and I can cook for all of you.” She looked directly at Joy, and her gaze was calmer and more resolute than Joy had seen it in years.
Her mom was going to go now?
Joy took her mom’s hands. They shook, in spite of how calm she looked. “What did Deborah say?”
“She said yes.”
“That’s good.” She wanted to tell her mom how grateful she was. How it was almost a motherly thing, wanting to go with Joy after that last horrible trip. “Maybe, if it works out, we’ll have a place you can cook more easily in the fall.” She gestured for her mother to sit back down on the rock and she sat beside her. Joy still didn’t want to go through the boundary, but she would do it to be beside her mom. She told her mom about the wagons, and about the perfect wheel.
Night birds began to call from the trees between buildings. Above their heads, the sky filled with stars. Joy took her mom’s hand in hers again, and this time it didn’t shake. Deborah always made sure there was no alcohol outside the boundaries. Maybe this was a way forward. And after working with Roke, Johannes, and Pillat for two days, Joy was sure they’d make a wagon. She leaned close to her mom and rested her head on her mom’s shoulder. It felt like a safe spot, a safe moment. She breathed in spices and flour and oil that clung to her mother, and beyond those, the various spicy and rich scents of the wild planet.
Fremont might never be truly safe, but maybe they could build more safe spots and safe moments.