Connie Willis - Uncharted Territory

Carson came clambering up the rocks. “I got a look at Bult’s log,” he said. “He didn’t write up any fines down there.”

“I know,” I said. “I already checked. What’d he say?”

“Nothing. He’s sitting up in one of those Wall chambers with his back to the door.”

I thought about that.

“His feelings are probably hurt that we didn’t pay him for leading us there. Wulfmeier obviously offered him money to show him where there was an oil field.” He took off his hat. There was a line of gypsum dust where the brim had been. “I told him we got worried about the rain, that we thought that plain might flood, so we decided to come up here.”

“That won’t keep him from leading us straight back down there now that it’s stopped,” I said.

“I told him you wanted to run geologicals on the Ponypiles.” He put his hat back on. “I’m gonna go look for a way past the field.” He squatted down beside me. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I said. “You can see the tilt and the mudstone on the log, and I’m on, canceling the subsurface.”

“Can you fix any of it?”

I shook my head. “We had the transmitter off too long. It’s already through the gate.”

“What about C.J.?”

“I told her we ran into rain. She thinks the pawprints are mud. But Big Brother won’t.”

He came around to look at the screen. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s that bad,” I said bitterly. “Any fool can see it’s an anticline.”

“Meaning I should’ve noticed it,” he said, bristling. “I wasn’t the one dawdling behind talking about sex.” He threw his hat down on the ground. “I told you he was going to louse up this expedition.”

“Don’t you dare blame this on Ev!” I said. “He wasn’t the one yelling at me for half an hour while the scans got the whole damned anticline on film!”

“No, he was the one busy noticing birds! And watching pop-ups! Oh, he’s been a lot of use! The only thing he’s done this whole expedition is try to get a jump out of you!”

I slammed the erase button, and the screen went black. “How do you know he hasn’t already gotten one?” I stomped past him. “At least Ev can tell I’m a female!”

I stormed down the rocks, so mad I could have killed him, fine or no fine, and ended up sitting on a gypsum ponypile next to the pool, waiting for him to go off and look for a way down.

After a few minutes he did, clambering up beside the stream without a glance in my direction. I saw Ev come down from the Wall and say something to him. Carson barged past him, and went out along the spur, and Ev stood there staring after him, looking bewildered, and then looked down at me.

He was right about one thing, in all his talk about mating customs. When the hardwiring kicks in, it overrides rational thought, all right. And common sense. I was mad at myself for not seeing the anticline and madder at Carson, and half-sick about what was going to happen when Big Brother saw that log. And I was covered with dried-on gypsum dust and oil and reeking of ponypiles. And, on the pop-ups, my face was always washed.

But that was no reason to do what I did, which was to strip off my pants and shirt and wade into that pool. If Bult saw me I’d be fined for polluting a waterway and Carson would have killed me for not running an f-and-f check first, but Bult was sulking up in the Wall, and the water was so clear you could see every rock on the bottom. It spilled down over rounded boulders into the pool and poured out through a carved-out spout below.

I waded out to the middle, where it was chest-deep, and ducked under.

I stood up, scrubbed gypsum plaster off my arms, and ducked under again. When I came up, Ev was leaning against my gypsum ponypat.

“I thought you were up at the Wall watching shuttlewrens,” I said, smoothing back my hair with both hands.

“I was,” he said. “I thought you were with Carson.”

“I was,” I said, looking at him. I sank into the water, my arms out. “Have you figured out the shuttlewrens’ courtship ritual?”

“Not yet,” he said. He sat down on the rock and took his boots off. “Did you know the mer-apes on Chichch mate in the water?”

“You sure know a hell of a lot of species,” I said, treading water. “Or do you just make them up?”

“Sometimes,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “When I’m trying to impress a female.”

I paddled out to where the water came up to my shoulders and stood up. The current was faster here. It rippled past my legs. “It won’t work on C.J. The only thing that’ll impress her is Mount Crissa Jane.”

He peeled off his shirt. “It’s not C.J. I’m trying to impress.” He pulled off his socks.

“It’s not a good idea to take your boots off in uncharted territory,” I said, swimming toward him through the deep water. The current rippled past my legs again.

“The female mer-ape invites the male into the water by swimming toward him,” he said. He stripped off his pants and stepped into the water.

I stood up. “Don’t come in,” I said.

“The male enters the water,” he said, wading in, “and the female retreats.”

I stood still, peering into the water. I felt the zag, wider this time, and looked where it should be. All I could see was a ripple over the rocks, like air above hot ground.

“Step back,” I said, putting my hand up. I walked carefully toward him, trying not to disturb the water.

“Look, I didn’t mean to—”

“Slowly,” I said, bending down to get the knife out of my boot. “One step at a time.”

He looked wildly down at the water. “What is it?” he said.

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” I said. “What is it?” he said. “Is there something in the water?” and splashed wildly out of the water and up onto the ponypile.

What looked like a blurring of the current zagged toward me, and I plunged the knife down with a huge splash, hoping I was aiming at the right place.

“What is it?” Ev said.

Now that its blood was spreading in the water, I could see it, and it was definitely e. Its body was longer than Bult’s umbrella, and it had a wide mouth. “It’s a tssi mitsse,” I said.

It was also indigenous fauna, and I’d killed it, which meant I was in big trouble. But blood in the water and a fish you couldn’t see weren’t exactly small trouble. I got away from the blood and out of the water.

Ev was still crouching bare-beamed on the rock. “Is it dead?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, drying off my hair with my shirt and then putting it on. “And so am I.” I started pulling the rest of my clothes on.

He got down off the gypsum, looking anxious. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No,” I said, looking in the water and wishing I had been. At least then I could have claimed “self-defense” on the reports.

The blood had spread over the lower half of the pool and was spilling over the spout into the stream. The tssi mitsse was drifting toward the spout, too, and I didn’t see any activity around it, but I wasn’t going back in the water to get it.

I left Ev getting his clothes on and went up to the ponies, which were all lying squeezed in among the rocks. Their paws were still wet, and I thought about us walking them up the stream, and Bult not saying a word. Nobody on this expedition was doing their job.

I took a grappling hook and Bult’s umbrella and went down to get the tssi mitsse out of the water. Ev was buttoning his shirt and looking embarrassedly at Bult, who was over by the spout, hunched over and looking at the bloody water. I sent Ev to get the holo camera. Bult unfolded himself. He had his log, and he looked pointedly at the umbrella in my hand.