Tropic of Creation Read Online Free Page B

though hiding from, as well as benefiting from, the sunlight. The trees had a central shaft that at lower levels harbored modest reserves of water, tapped from the aquifer below. Burls of gnarled wood disturbed the symmetry of some of the trees. A few of these were great potbellied growths of enormous density. Beneath the gray spiny trees was no understory at all, only the dusty millennial mats of fallen companions.
    Two suns fired the sky. Captain Marzano’s people called the smaller one, the one in elliptical orbit, a red dwarf from its smoldering, reddish glow, and no amount of science could dislodge a good name once the enlisteds dubbed something. But her father liked her to call it a brown dwarf, because technically it wasn’t a red dwarf, and not really a star at all, emitting its light from gravitational energy and reflected light from the primary.
    Sascha spied the bright yellow cable that snaked through the Sticks between Charlie and Baker camps. With radio useless here, it was her only link to her friend, the elegant and profane Badri Nazim.
    Private Nazim was Sascha’s friend—despite the fact that they’d never met in the flesh and had only known each other a few days. Nazim was just five years older than Sascha, but was old enough to have a regen skull, from which sprouted bone white hair in stark contrast to her nearly black skin. Sascha enjoyed Nazim’s exotic looks, worldly vocabulary, and their shared devotion to electronic chess. But she liked the vocabulary best—Nazim’s arsenal of expletives and ripe expressions. When Sascha posted a chess query on the electronic bulletin board, Nazim responded within the hour. “Delighted to play chess” was how Sascha related the message to her mother. What Nazim actually said was “Chess at 21:00. Just don’t mess your pastel panties if you lose.”
    Stepping over the cable, she and her father hurried on, sparing no time for the Gray Spiny Forest and its modest wonders. The hexadron would soon be put to its task, an event that both intrigued and worried Sascha. “What will he find underground, Father?”
    “Abandoned war bunkers, I should say.”
    “He’s going alone?”
    “So he says.”
    “That’s brave.” She caught the flicker of a smile at the edge of his face. “Well, it is.”
    “Yes, of course. I would never detract from the man’s virtues, Sascha.” Earnestly said. Teasing.
    She took his hand. “But I love you best.”
    “I’ll remind you of that when I’m in my dotage, and whining for my slippers.”
    After a time she asked, “How will he get back up? How does it work against gravity?”
    “Ahtra technology, I suppose. They’ve got ships forty-percent the speed of light, don’t forget.”
    “But how will he know how to run it if we can’t even understand their technology?”
    Her father smiled. “It’s just a digging machine, not a spaceship. The techs worked it out.”
    They stood at the head of the draw where, below, Dammond and Marzano chatted, accompanied by a group of officers and enlisteds. Her father held firmly to her hand, keeping her beside him.
    “He won’t care if we go down,” she protested.
    The digging machine sat in the wadi like a dark egg, tucked away by some feral, metallic beast. This did not seem like a very good idea all of a sudden, this
going down
. She stood, letting the breeze fill her blouse and wick the sweat away. A rumble caused everyone to look in the direction of several towering clouds with scoured, gray bottoms.
    “Why is he going alone? Shouldn’t he bring a few soldiers?”
    “Well, if there’s to be trouble, one soldier or three won’t make much difference, I suspect.”
    “Then it’s a very brave thing.…” She glanced at her father to see if he agreed, but as usual, he maintained a neutrality toward Eli Dammond, a habit of long practice, to remain aloof from military gossip.
    At last Captain Dammond waved them down and Sascha, conscious of the group watching her, managed a