Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

Cole teetered on the edge of apologizing back, confused. Then it occurred to him that the lobby guest may actually consider the fault theirs . They weren’t leaving enough of a clear path for the room’s intended purpose. Inconsiderately spread out. Unconscionably too comfortable .

He rose, shaking his head as he carefully picked his way to Molly; she’d come to a halt in a small pocket of floor space along the far wall of the lobby.

“We’re leaving our bags here.” She stooped to nestle her duffle between two other mounds. Cole watched, bemused, while she rounded up a few bits of trash and sprinkled them on top, as if garnishing a meal.

“Uh, why?” His backpack didn’t budge.

“’Cause my bag is heavy, for one thing,” she told him. “I’m sick of carrying it. And also, ’cause there’s a slight chance crazy boy upstairs isn’t all that crazy. I can’t see Lucin trusting my life with a deranged lunatic. Which means he either ate some bad fruit here, a possibility I rank pretty high, or the Navy is up to something, an idea you’ve been lodging ever deeper into my head.

“So, we leave the bags here, a spot where you could hide a dead body in plain sight. We’ll grab them on our way back to collect Drummond and his supplies. Trust me, nobody’s gonna touch something that people here are sleeping beside.”

“Great plan. For your bag.” Cole gave her a grin and hitched his pack further up his shoulder in protest.

“I’m serious. If you have anything important in there, it’ll be safer here. I’ve got my ID and a copy of the will and transfer papers, but everything else is staying, just in case.”

“And I’m taking my bag, just in case . Think of it as having our eggs in two baskets.”

“Whatever,” grunted Molly, leaving him behind again as she picked her way toward fresher air.

Cole made careful note of where she left her duffle and hurried after her.

Outside, the slightest sense of a breeze brought a little relief. They hadn’t been on Palan for two hours and already Molly could see how a traveler could get used to pretty much anything. She wasn’t there yet, and probably wouldn’t be on such a short stay, but her imagination could piece together a sequence of events that led from disembarking the shuttle to sleeping on that lobby floor. She shivered at the thought, picturing how quickly it could happen, even to her. A simple series of bad decisions could lead to a life of prone depression in the Regal.

Cole hurried past her, waving at the first taxi in a line of four. Each was a small, completely enclosed vehicle balanced on three-wheels. The driver didn’t respond to Cole’s gestures. In fact, he appeared to be fast asleep.

The gutter between the sidewalk and the parked vehicles was too wide to step over and the small bridges arching across the gap were too eroded to trust. They looked more like sculptures than pathways, curves of cobblestones erected to protest gravity. Molly watched Cole vault over the gap and did the same, landing neatly as he turned to help her across.

“Thanks anyway,” she smiled.

Cole looked a little flushed. “No problem.”

Molly beat him to the taxi and rapped on the windshield. “Hello?” she called through the glass.

The driver slowly brought his head to a full vertical. No startle reflex, as if this happened to him dozens of times a day.

He cracked his door open. “Where to?” he asked.

“The Naval Offices. How much?” Drummond had insisted they get a price before entering a cab.

“Earth credits,” Cole added from behind her.

The driver lit up at this—almost literally. The metallic sheen of his face seemed to glow as though a dull light shone upon it. He looked past Molly. “Twenty,” he said.

Cole grasped her arm and gently pulled her away from the driver, heading back to the next taxi in line.

The driver opened his door wide. “Fifteen!” he yelled after them.

“C’mon,” Molly pleaded. The next driver was waking up from the ruckus and she didn’t want to waste time bartering them down few more bucks.

They turned back to the first cabbie, who held the door open as Molly slipped into the tiny rear seat. Cole squeezed in beside her. Their driver stepped to the back of the vehicle and Molly heard the sound of chains rattling. She tried to see if threats were being made between the two taxis, but it was too cramped to shift even slightly. The driver returned in a flash, muttering to himself and rocking the car as he pulled the door shut.

“Firsst time on Palan?” he asked as he pulled out into the light, yet frantic, traffic.

Molly looked up to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror, but there wasn’t one there. In fact, there weren’t any safety devices or indicators anywhere in the buggy. It was just a smooth shell perched on thin wheels, two narrow benches comprising the seating arrangements. The driver took up most of the front one and Molly and Cole were pressed together in the back.

There weren’t even any windows to roll down, just solid carboglass on the sides. As bad as the smell of Palan was, Molly longed for a breeze.

“First time,” confirmed Cole.

“Firsst day?”

“First day,” parroted Molly, giving Cole a smile.

“Where you gonna watch the rainss?” The driver asked, looking up at the sky through the windshield as if they were due to begin at any moment. Distracted, he almost ran into another rolling egg. He leaned on the horn and yelled through the window at the other driver, obviously not concerned with the answer, just making small-talk.

Something triggered in Molly’s memory at the mention of the rains. Something she’d learned in an old Planetary Astralogy course in Junior Academy. And then the filling lobby started to make sense, the wide gutters, the locals setting up their market in the shuttle concourse. It occurred to her why this rickety taxi seemed to have only gotten one thing right: being watertight.

Even some of the Palan smells started to register in her olfactory nerves as various types of mildew and mold and rot.

The driver performed a post-yell grumble routine in his own language, gripping the steering wheel with residual anger. Molly tilted her head toward Cole’s to explain what she could remember about the torrential downpours and regular floods.

Cole absorbed the PA lesson, his eyes flashing a hint of memory as well. “Drummond, you fool ,” he muttered. “We’re gonna have to be quick in the Naval Office to get back to the Regal in time.”

Molly nodded. She leaned forward and interrupted the angry grumbling. “How far away are we?”

“One more than five minutess,” answered the driver.

Molly settled back in her seat, wondering if that was their way of saying “six.” Such an odd place, Palan . Outside the glass she saw two silver-faced people wrestling with a package. It looked like things might get violent. As they passed, she craned her neck to follow, but there wasn’t enough room to turn her shoulders.

She felt Cole twisting to survey the same scene. “Not much law here, huh?” he asked quietly.

“Too far from the war, I guess.” She looked straight ahead. “The fight with the Drenards means fewer security forces on the frontier. Lok was the same way when I was young. I think my dad took me away from that place ’cause of the violence. Crazy how the Drenards can affect us without being able to push the war beyond their arm of the Milky Way.” Molly laughed at herself. “Listen to me. A few months exposure to opinion reporting at Avalon, and I don’t talk tactics anymore, I just moan about the toll the war is taking on innocent civilians.”