Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

The hour passed quickly. She rubbed at her eyes, turned off the screen. Her back ached. She was spending too much time in this damn chair.

Vincio tapped on the door, brought in a tray. Danner could not help glancing at the time display on the corner of her desk.

“I scheduled them twenty minutes late,” Vincio said. “You need lunch.” She put the tray on the small table near the door.

Danner ate potato soup, crackers, and salad, beautifully presented on matching china. She accepted the service that went with her rank because it was efficient use of her time, but some times she thought she would not keep either long enough to become accustomed to it.

The farthest Danner had ever been from Port Central was during the first week they had been on Jeep, when she was still a lieutenant. Captain Huroo had taken her and a squad to fight the burn that lay halfway between here and what they now knew as Holme Valley. He was dead now, of course. It was at the burn that she had met Jink, the one who had saved Officer Day. The skinny native had been half-dead with concussion, burns, and loss of blood, but she had still escaped, then recovered well enough to come back into Port Central to find Danner weeks later. Had anyone been sick by that time? She could not remember. She wondered what had happened to Day—another name on the missing list.

When the virus began to kill, everyone had been confined to base, and she had been here more or less ever since, first taking captain’s rank, then acting deputy, then commander as they died, one by one. Hell of a way to get promoted. Just like a war. And now she was stuck. Her job was to protect the welfare of her personnel; that could best be done from Port Central. From right here, her office. Sometimes she longed for a change of scene.

Nights were the worst, spring nights, when the air was soft and blew in from across the grasslands full of alien promise. At those times she ached to be Out There, walking through strange country, seeing a new world for herself, meeting challenges that were not administrative. Once in all this time she had toured the area surrounding Port Central, riding a sled accompanied by a score of officers. It was not enough. What she wanted was to be headed somewhere definite, with a purpose, toward a situation only she could handle. She wanted to do the job she had trained for, not stare at damn screens all day and make notes on whom to speak to about what. She was bored.

And so when the sergeant and technician were shown into her office, Danner gestured to the low table on one side of the office. “Please, sit.”

The sergeant hesitated before complying. Danner came round from behind her desk and joined them. She thought about asking for tea, but that would probably only make Lu Wai more uncomfortable. Sergeants did not usually take tea with commanders.

“I hope you’ve both eaten, because we might be here some time. You have some news to impart, I believe, and I have curiosities of my own to satisfy.”

Tell me what it smells like out there , she wanted to say, and how the sky looks, what the air feels like . She could not quite bring herself to ask, but some of her hunger must have been apparent. Lu Wai’s face smoothed into the bland look Danner remembered well from her own days as a cadet, the expression assumed by junior officers when one suspected the commander was about to say or do something particularly bizarre.

Danner sighed, and Letitia flashed her an amused glance. Danner was momentarily disconcerted. Dogias was an odd one.

“You traveled in the company of Representative Taishan for several days,” she said briskly. “I want as accurate a description of the journey as possible—what you talked about, how she responded, what she was particularly interested in. I would also like your general impressions.”

“General impression of everything in general?” Letitia Dogias asked.

The woman was teasing her. “Yes,” Danner said firmly. “Try not to edit. I need to know how she responds to things here. Whether or not she likes it, and us.”

Us . The word hung in the air between them. Us . Danner wondered what was the matter with her today. She felt restless, insecure, shaken loose from all her normal patterns. Us . She tasted the word again: Us . It felt right. Perhaps she should talk to these two again sometime. And others. Perhaps it was time to start breaking down her isolation.

Unexpectedly, Dogias smiled. Danner smiled back, allowing herself, just for a moment, to feel part of a group. Us . She noticed Lu Wai had relaxed enough to let her fatigue show. Dap might be a good idea, now. She had Vincio bring it in.

It was Dogias who did most of the talking at first: about Marghe’s discovery of the web that was the spider, the kris flies, the storm. Danner did not miss Lu Wai’s tight expression while Dogias talked about the storm, or the way her hand almost reached out for the technician’s. It must have happened again.

She wondered what it was like to love someone like that, and found herself enjoying being near them.

“How was her attitude to Company in general, and to you, as a Mirror, in particular?” she asked the sergeant.

“Reserved,” Lu Wai said slowly, “like she was withholding a decision. I’d say she was fair-minded.”

Danner waited, but the Mirror did not explain why she thought so. “And how does she feel about the vaccine, the virus?”

“She’s scared,” Lu Wai said simply. “I don’t think she’s entirely convinced the vaccine will work.”

“Are any of us?” Dogias asked.

Danner thought about that. Was she convinced? “I think it might work, yes.”

“But do you want it to?” Dogias asked softly.

The question reached right inside Danner, but she was not ready for it, and pretended not to hear.

“Tell me about Holme Valley.”

They described the lodges made of skelter trees, the slow-moving river, the preparation for the arrival of the women and herds from Singing Pastures. Dogias told her how she and Ude Neuyen had laid the northern relay, and Danner once again wished her job felt more constructive. Most of what she achieved could only be measured in negatives: less sick leave, fewer emergencies due to good planning, no sag in morale. It was hard not to feel jealous of the satisfaction in Dogias’s voice as she talked about solving one practical difficulty after another.

“…and we might have been back a day early if we hadn’t had to take the time to witness the pattern singing. And the agreement.”

This, then, was what they wanted to talk about. Or at least part of it. She gestured for them to continue.

“The storm we ran into,” Letitia said, “it destroyed Marghe’s—Representative Taishan’s—rations. She had to bargain with the natives for more food to take with her. They gave us some, too, though that wasn’t strictly necessary. The bargain she made was something called trata.”

The term was unfamiliar. “Go on.”

“As I understand it, Marghe told them that we”—Letitia made an all-inclusive gesture—“are all part of one social unit, a family. A family for which she is empowered to speak. She offered them the everlasting favor of her family in return for food and clothes.”

Danner found that she had been holding her breath. She let it out. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” She looked at Lu Wai. “Or is it?”

Letitia shrugged. “We’re not sure. I think what she offered is an alliance of some kind.”

“An alliance.” Danner steepled her fingers, looked at the ceiling. The last thing she needed: worry over a group of people who might look to her in situations she knew nothing about. In her peripheral vision she saw Lu Wai sit up straighter and realized she had shifted back into commanding officer mode.“And you, Sergeant, you witnessed it, not Marghe?”