Uncharted Territory

Expedition 184: Day 2

By noon the next day we were still on this side of the Tongue and still heading south, and Carson was in such a foul mood I steered clear of him.

“Is he always this irritable?” Ev asked me.

“Only when he’s worried,” I said.

Speaking of which, I was getting a little worried myself.

Carson’s water analysis hadn’t showed up anything but the usual f-and-f, but Bult had insisted there were tssi mitss and led us south to a tributary. There were tssi mitss in the tributary, too, and he led us east along it till we came to one of its tributaries. This one didn’t have any tssi mitss, but it zigzagged down through a draw too steep for the ponies, so Bult led us north along it, looking for a place to cross. At this rate we’d be back at King’s X by suppertime.

But that wasn’t what was worrying me. What was worrying me was Bult. He hadn’t fined us for anything all morning, not even when we broke camp, and he kept looking off to the south through his binocs. Not only that, but Carson’s binocs had turned up. He found them in his bedroll after breakfast.

“Fin!” he’d shouted, dangling them by the strap. “I knew you had ’em. Where’d you find ’em, in your pack?”

“I haven’t seen ’em since the morning we left for King’s X when you borrowed ’em,” I said. “Bult must’ve had ’em.”

“Bult? Why would he’ve taken ’em?” he said and gestured at Bult, who was peering through his own binocs at the Ponypiles.

I didn’t know, which was what was worrying me. The indidges don’t steal, at least that’s what Big Brother tells us in the pursuants, and in all the expeditions we’d gone on, Bult hadn’t ever taken anything away from us but our hard-earned wages. I wondered what else he might start doing—like take us deep into uncharted territory and then steal our packs and the ponies. Or lead us into an ambush.

I wanted to talk about it with Carson, but I couldn’t get close to him, and I didn’t want to risk another dust storm. I tried riding up alongside him, but Bult kept his pony dead even with Carson’s and glared at me when I tried to move up.

Ev stuck almost as close to me, asking questions about the shuttlewren and telling me about appetizing mating customs, like the male hanging fly, which spins a big balloon of spit and slobber for the female to mess with while he jumps her.

We finally found a place to cross the creek as it zagged sideways across a momentarily flat space, and headed southwest through a series of low hills, and I did a triangulation and then started running terrains.

“Well, we’re in uncharted territory now,” I told Ev. “You can start looking around for stuff to name after C.J. so you can get your jump.”

“If I wanted a jump, I could get it without that,” he said, and I thought, I bet you could.

“I know how C.J. feels, though,” he said, looking out across the plain. “Wanting to leave some mark. You go through that gate, and you realize how big a planet is, and how insignificant you are. You could be here your whole life and never even leave a footprint.”

“Try telling that to Bult,” I said.

He grinned. “Okay, maybe footprints. But nothing lasting. That’s why I wanted to come on this expedition. I wanted to do something that would make me famous, like you and Carson. I wanted to discover something that would get me on the pop-ups.”

“Speaking of which,” I said, leaning down to pick up a rock, “how did we get on them?” I stuck the rock in my pack. “How’d they find out about the suitcases? And Carson’s foot?”

“I don’t know,” Ev said slowly, as if the question hadn’t ever occurred to him. “Your logs, I guess.”

It hadn’t been in the logs about my finding Carson right when the twenty-four hours were up, though. We’d told some of the stories to loaners, and one of the female ones had kept a diary. But Carson wouldn’t have told her about my crying over him.

The hills through here were covered with scraggly plants. I took a holo of them and then halted Useless, which didn’t take much, and dismounted.

“What are you doing?” Ev asked.

“Collecting pieces of the planet for you to leave C.J.’s mark on,” I said, digging around the roots of a couple of the plants and sticking them in a plastic bag. I picked up two more rocks and handed them to him. “Either of these look like a C.J. to you?”

I got back on, watching Bult. He hadn’t even noticed I was off my pony, let alone reached for his log. He was peering through his binocs at the hills beyond the tributary.

“Don’t you ever wish you could have something named after you, Fin?” Ev was asking.

“Me? Why on hell would I want that? Who the hell remembers who Bryce Canyon or Harper’s Ferry are named after even when they’ve got their names on them? Besides, you can’t name a thing just by putting it on a topographical map. That’s not the way it works.” I gestured at the Ponypiles. “When people get here, they won’t call those the Findriddy Mountains. They’ll call ’em the Ponypiles. People name things after what they look like, or what happened there, or what the indidge name sounds like, not according to regs.”

“People?” Ev said. “You mean gatecrashers?”

“Gatecrashers,” I said, “and miners and settlers and shopping mall owners.”

“But what about the regs?” Ev said, looking shocked. “They’re supposed to protect the natural ecology and the sovereignty of the indigenous culture.”

I nodded my head at Bult. “And you think the indigenous culture wouldn’t sell them the whole place for some pop-ups and a couple of dozen shower curtains? You think Big Brother’s paying us to survey all this for his health? You think as soon as we find something they want, they won’t be down here, regs or no regs?”

Ev looked unhappy. “Like tourists,” he said. “Everybody’s seen the silvershims and the Wall on the pop-ups, and they all want to come see them.”

“And take holos of themselves being fined,” I said, even though I hadn’t really thought of Boohte as a tourist attraction. “And Bult can sell them dried ponypiles for souvenirs.”

“I’m glad I came before the rush,” he said, looking at the water ahead. The hills parted on either side of the tributary, and it wouldn’t matter whether there were tssi mitss or not. A wide sandbar stretched almost the full width of the water.

The ponies picked their way across it like it was quicksand, and Ev just about fell off, trying to lean down to look at it. “The female willowback needs to lay her eggs in still water, so the courtship ritual involves the male doing a swimming dance that dams up sand across the stream.”

“And that’s what this is?” I said.

“I don’t think so. It looks like it’s just a sandbar.” He sat up in the saddlebone. “The female shale-dwelling lizard scratches a design in the dirt, and then the male scratches the same design on the shale.”

I wasn’t paying any attention. Bult was peering through the binocs at the hills between us and the Tongue, and Carson’s pony was starting to sway. “Here’s your big chance, Ev,” I said. “Rest stop!”

After Carson and I did the topographicals and we had lunch, I hauled out my rocks and plastic bags and Carson emptied his bug-catcher, and we settled down to naming.

Carson started with the bugs. “Do you have a name for it?” he asked Bult, holding it away from Bult so he couldn’t stuff it in his mouth, but Bult didn’t even look interested.

He looked at Carson for a minute like he was thinking of something else, and then said what sounded to me like steam hissing and then metal being dragged over granite.

“Tssimrrah?” Carson said.

“Thssahggih,” Bult said.

“This’ll take a while,” I said to Ev.

Figuring out the indidge name for a thing isn’t so much about understanding what Bult says as trying to keep it from all sounding the same, f-and-f all sounds like steam escaping in a blizzard, lakes and rivers sound like a gate opening, and rocks all begin with a belching “B,” which makes you wonder about the indidges’ opinion of Bult. All of them sound more or less the same, and none of them sound like English letters, which is a good thing, or everything would have the same name.

“Thssahggah?” Carson said.

“Shhoomrrrah,” Bult said.

I glanced at Ev, who was looking at the rocks and the bagged plants. It was fairly slim pickings—the only rock that didn’t look like mud warmed over was horneblende, and the only flower had five ragged-looking petals, but I didn’t think Ev would try what the loaners usually did, anyway, which was try to name the first flower we found a chrysanthemum, no matter what it looked like. Chrysa, for short.

Carson and Bult finally agreed on tssahggah for the bug, and I took holos of it and of the piece of horneblende and transmitted them and their names.

Bult had the flower, and was shaking his head.

“The indidges don’t have a name for it,” Carson said, looking at Ev. “How about it, Evie? What do you want to call it?”

Ev looked at it. “I don’t know. What kind of things can you name them after?”

Carson looked irritated. It was obvious he’d expected “chrysanthemum.” “No proper names, no technological references, no Earth landmarks with ‘new’ in front of them, no value judgments.”

“What’s left?” Ev said.

“Adjectives,” I said, “shapes, colors—except for Green—natural references.”

Ev was still examining the plant. “It was growing out by the sandbar. How about sandpink?”

Carson looked like he was trying to figure out if there was any way to make sandpink into Crissa. “A pink’s an Earth genus, isn’t it, Fin?” he growled at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’ll have to be sandblossom. Next?”

Bult had names for the rocks, which took forever, and even he started to look impatient, picking his binocs up and then putting them down without looking through them, and nodding at whatever Carson said.

“Biln,” Carson said, and I entered it. “Is that everything?”

“We need to name the tributary,” I said, pointing at it. “Bult, do the Boohteri have a name for this river?”

He already had his pony up and was climbing on it. I had to ask him again.

He shook his head and got down off the pony and picked up his binocs.

Carson came up beside me. “There’s something wrong,” I said.

“I know,” he said, frowning. “He’s been jittery all morning.”

Bult was looking through his binocs. He took them down from his eyes and then held them up to his ear.

“Let’s go,” I said, and went to gather up the specimens. “Wagons ho, Ev!”

“What about the tributary?” Ev said.

“Sandbar Creek,” I said. “Come on.”

Bult was already going. Carson and I grabbed up the specimens and Carson’s binocs, but Bult was already up the bank and heading west between the hills.

“What about the other one?” Ev said.

“Other what?” I said, jamming the specimens in my pack. I slung Carson’s binocs around the pommelbone.

“The other tributary. Do the Boohteri have a name for it?”

“I doubt it,” I said, swinging up onto Useless. Carson was having trouble with his pony. If we waited for him, we were going to lose Bult. “Come on,” I said to Ev and started after Bult.

“Accordion Creek,” Ev said.

“What?” I said, trying to decide which way Bult had gone. I caught a flash of light from his binocs off to the left and urged the pony that way.

“As a name for the other tributary,” Ev said. “Accordion Creek, because of the way it folds back and forth.”

“No technological references,” I said, looking back at Carson. His pony had stopped and was unloading a pile.

“Oh, right,” Ev said. “Then how about Zigzag Creek?”

I caught sight of Bult again. He was on top of the next rise, off his pony, looking through his binocs.

“We’ve already got a Zigzag Creek,” I said, waving to Carson to come ahead. “Up north in Sector 250-81.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “What else means back and forth? Crooked? Tortuous?”

We caught up to Bult, and I unhooked Carson’s binocs from the pommelbone and put them up to my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything through them but hills and sandblossoms. I upped the resolution.

“Ladder,” Ev was muttering beside me. “No, that’s technological… crisscross… how about Crisscross Creek?”

Well, it was a good try. It wasn’t “chrysanthemum,” and he’d waited till Carson wasn’t there and I was worrying about something else. He was definitely smarter than he looked. But not smart enough.

“Nice try,” I said, still scanning the hills with the binocs. “How about Sneaky Creek?” I said as Carson caught up to us. “For the way it tries to slip past you when you’re not looking?”

Either Bult had seen what he was looking for through his binocs, or he’d given up. He didn’t try to ride ahead for the rest of the afternoon, and after our second rest stop, he put his binocs in his pack and got out his umbrella again. When I asked him the name of a bush during the rest stop, he wouldn’t answer me.

Ev wasn’t talking either, which was fine because I had a lot to think about. Bult might have calmed down, but he still wasn’t levying fines, even though the rest stop had been on a hillside covered with sandblossoms, and two or three times I caught him glaring at me from under his umbrella. When his pony wouldn’t get up, he kicked it.

I wondered if irritability was a sign of mating behavior, too, or if he was just nervous. Maybe he wasn’t just trying to impress some female. Maybe he was taking us home to meet her.

I called C.J. “I need a whereabout on the indidges,” I told her.

“And I need a whereabout on you. What are you doing down in 249-68?”

“Trying to cross the Tongue,” I said. “Are there any indidges in our sector?”

“Not a one. They’re all up by the Wall in 248-85.”

Well, at least they weren’t in 248-76.

“Any unusual movements?”

“No. Let me talk to Ev.”

“Sure thing. Ask him about the creek we named this morning,” I said.

I patched him through and thought about Bult some more, and then asked for another whereabout on the gatecrashers. Wulfmeier still showed on Starting Gate, probably trying to come up with the money to pay his fines.

We got back to the Tongue by late afternoon, but it was still hilly, and the Tongue was too narrow and deep for us to cross. We were close to the Wall—it wound up and down over the hills on the other side—and apparently in a shuttlwren’s territory again. Ev alternated between watching it make its rounds and trying to shoo it away so Bult couldn’t harpoon it.

Bult headed south, winding up over the tops of hills about like the Wall. I shouted ahead to Carson that it was too steep for the ponies, and he nodded and said something to Bult. Bult plodded on, and ten minutes later his pony keeled over in a dead faint.

Ours followed suit, and we sat down and waited for them to recover. Bult took his umbrella halfway up the hill and sat down under it. Carson lay back and put his hat over his eyes, and I got out Bult’s purchase orders and went over them again, looking for clues.

“Do you always see shuttlewrens close to the Wall like this?” Ev asked. He was apparently recovered from the tongue-lashing C.J.’d given him.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to remember. “Carson, do we always see shuttlewrens when we’re close to the Wall?”

“Mmph,” Carson said from under his hat.

“These species that give gifts to their mates,” I said to Ev, “what other kinds of courting do they do?”

“Fighting,” he said, “mating dances, displays of sexual characteristics.”

“Migration?” I said, looking up the hill at Bult. The umbrella was sitting propped against the hill, its lights on. Bult wasn’t under it. “Where’s Bult?”

Carson sat up, putting his hat on. “Which way?”

I stood up. “Over there. Ev, tie up the ponies.”

“They’re still out cold,” he said. “What’s going on?”

Carson was already halfway up the hill. I scrambled after him.

“Up this gully,” he said, and we clambered up it. It led up between two hills, a trickle of water at the bottom, and then opened out. Carson signaled me to wait and went up a hundred meters.

“What is it?” Ev said, coming up behind me, panting. “Has something happened to Bult?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Only he doesn’t know it yet.”

Carson was back. “Just like we thought,” he said. “Dead end. What say you go up there”—he pointed—“and I go around that way?”

“And we meet in the middle,” I said, nodding. I headed up the side of the gully with Ev behind me. I ran along the crest of the hill in a half crouch, and then dropped to all fours and crawled the rest of the way.

“What is it?” Ev whispered. “A nibbler?” He looked excited.

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “A nibbler.”

He pulled his knife out.

“Put that away,” I hissed at him. “You’re liable to fall on it and kill yourself.” He put it away. “Don’t worry. It’s not dangerous unless it’s doing something it shouldn’t.”

He looked confused.

“Down,” I said, and we crawled out onto a ledge looking down on the space where the gully widened out. Below us, I could see the flattened area of a gate and a lean-to made of a tarp on sticks. In front of it was Bult.

A man was standing half under the tarp, holding out a handful of rocks to Bult. “Quartz,” the man said. “It’s found in igneous outcroppings, like this.” He reached forward to show Bult a holo, and Bult stepped back.

“You ever seen anything like this around here?” the man said, holding up the holo.

Bult took another step backward.

“It’s only a holo, you moron,” the man said, holding it out to Bult. “Did you ever see anything like this around here?” and Carson came strolling into the clearing, carrying his pack.

He stopped short. “Wulfmeier!” he said, sounding surprised and amused. “What on hell are you doing on Boohte?”

“Wulfmeier,” Ev breathed beside me. I put my finger to my lips to shush him.

“What’s that?” Carson said, pointing at the holo. “A postcard?” He walked up next to Bult. “My pony wandered off, and I came looking for him. Same as Bult. How about you, Wulfmeier?”

I wished I could see Wulfmeier’s face from where we were. “Something went wrong with my gate,” he said, taking a step back under the tarp and looking behind him. “Where’s Fin?” he said, and lowered his hand to his side.

“Right here,” I said, and jumped down. “Wulfmeier,” I said, holding out my hand. “Fancy meeting you here. Ev,” I called up, “come on down here and meet Wulfmeier.”

Wulfmeier didn’t look up. He looked at Carson, who’d moved off to the side. Ev landed on all fours and stood up quickly.

“Ev,” I said, “this is Wulfmeier. We go way back. What are you doing on Boohte? It’s restricted.”

“I told Carson,” he said, looking warily from one to the other of us, “something must have gone wrong with my gate. I was trying to get to Menniwot.”

“Really?” I said. “We had a verify that you were on Starting Gate.” I walked over to Bult. “What you got there, Bult?”

“I was emptying out my boot, and Bult wanted to see it,” Wulfmeier said, still watching Carson.

Bult handed me the chunks of quartz. I examined them. “Tch, tch, taking of souvenirs. Bult, looks like you’re going to have to fine him for that.”

“I told you, I got them in my shoe. I was walking around, trying to figure out where I was.”

“Tch, tch, tch, leaving footprints. Disturbance of land surface.” I went over to the gate and peered underneath it. “Destruction of flora.” I leaned inside the gate. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I got it fixed,” Wulfmeier said.

I stepped inside, and came back out again. “Looks like dust, Carson,” I said. “We have a lot of trouble with dust. Does it get in the chips? He better check it while we’re here, just in case.”

Wulfmeier glanced back at the lean-to and over at Ev, and then back at Carson. He moved his hand away from his side.

“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll get my stuff.”

“Better not,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to overload the gate. We’ll send it along afterward.” I went up to the gate controls. “Where’d you say you were trying to go? Menniwot?”

He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. I asked for coordinates and fed the data into the gate. “That should do it,” I said. “You shouldn’t end up here again.”

Carson walked him over to the gate, and he stepped inside. His hand dropped to his side again, and I hit activate and got out of the way.

Carson was already back at the lean-to, rummaging through Wulfmeier’s stuff.

“What’d he have?” I said.

“Ore samples. Gold-bearing quartz, argentite, platinum ore.” He leafed through the holos. “Where’d you send him?”

“Starting Gate,” I said. “Speaking of which, I better go tell them he’s coming. And that somebody’s been messing with Big Brother’s arrest records. Bult, figure up the fines on this stuff, and we’ll send ’em special delivery. Come on,” I said to Ev, who was standing there looking at the place where the gate had been like he wished there’d been a fight. “We’ve gotta call C.J.”

We started down the gully. “You were great!” Ev said, scrambling over rocks. “I couldn’t believe you faced him down like that! It was just like in the pop-ups!”

We came out of the gully and down the hill to where he’d tied the ponies. They were still lying down.

“What’ll happen to Wulfmeier on Starting Gate?” he asked while I wrestled the transmitter off Useless.

“He’ll get fined for faking his location and disturbing land surface.”

“But he was gatecrashing!”

“He says he wasn’t. You heard him. There was something wrong with his gate. He’d have to have been drilling, trading, prospecting, or shooting luggage for Big Brother to confiscate his gate.”

“What about those rocks he was giving Bult? That’s trading, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “He wasn’t giving them to Bult. He was asking if he’d ever seen anything like them. At least he wasn’t pouring oil on the ground and lighting it like the last time we caught him with Bult.”

“But that’s prospecting!”

“We can’t prove that either.”

“So he gets fined, and then what?” Ev said.

“He’ll scrounge up the money to pay the fines, probably from some other gatecrasher who wants to know where to look, and then he’ll try again. Up north, probably, now that he knows where we are.” Up in Sector 248-76, I thought.

“And you can’t stop him?”

“There are four people on this whole planet, and we’re supposed to be surveying it, not chasing after gatecrashers.”

“But—”

“Yeah. Sooner or later, there’ll be one we won’t catch. I’m not worried about Wulfmeier—the indidges don’t like him, and anything he gets he’ll have to find himself. But not all of the gatecrashers are scum. Most of them are people looking for a better place to starve, and sooner or later they’ll figure out where a silver mine is from our terrains, or they’ll talk the indidges into showing them an oil field. And it’ll be all over.”

“But the government—what about the regs? What about—”

“Preserving the indigenous culture and the natural ecology? Depends. Big Brother can’t stop a mining or drilling operation without sending forces, which means gates and buildings and people taking excursion trips to see the Wall, and forces to protect them, and pretty soon you’ve got Los Angeles.”

“You said it depends,” Ev said. “On what?”

“On what they find. If it’s big enough, Big Brother’ll come to get it himself.”

“What’ll happen to the Boohteri?”

“The same thing that always happens. Bult’s a smart operator, but not as smart as Big Brother. Which is why we’re putting the money from those out-of-stocks in the bank for him. So he’ll have a fighting chance.”

I punched send. “Expedition calling King’s X. Come in, King’s X.” I grinned at Ev. “You know, there was something wrong with Wulfmeier’s gate.”

C.J. came on, and I told her to send a message through the gate to Starting Gate and handed her over to Ev so he could fill her in on the details. “Fin was great!” he said. “You should have seen her!”

Bult and Carson were back. Bult had his log out and was talking into it.

“You find anything?” I said.

“Holos of anticlines and diamond pipes. Couple cans of oil. A laser.”

“What about the ore samples? Were they indigenous?”

He shook his head. “Standard Earth samples.” He looked at Bult, who’d stopped tallying fines and was going up the hill to get his umbrella. “At least now we know why Bult was leading us down here.”

“Maybe.” I frowned. “I got the idea he was just as surprised to see Wulfmeier as we were. And Wulfmeier was definitely surprised to see us.”

“He’d probably told Bult to sneak off and meet him after dark,” he said. “Speaking of which, we’d better get going. I don’t want Wulfmeier to come back and find us still here.”

“He’s not coming back for a while,” I said. “He’s got a loose T-cable. It’ll fall off by the time he gets to Starting Gate.”

He smiled. “I still want to make it to the other side of the Wall by tonight.”

“If Bult’ll let us cross the Tongue,” I said.

“Why wouldn’t he? He’s already had his conference with Wulfmeier.”

“Maybe,” I said, but Bult didn’t go half a klom before he led the ponies across, and not a word about tssi mitss, e or otherwise, which shot my theory to pieces.

“You know the best part about that scene back there with Wulfmeier?” Ev said as we splashed across and headed south again. “The way you and Carson worked together. It’s even better than on the pop-ups.”

I’d watched that pop-up last night. We’d caught Wulfmeier threatening the accordion and come out punching and kicking, lasers blazing.

“You don’t even have to say anything. You both know what the other one’s thinking.” Ev gestured expansively. “On the pop-ups they show you working together, but this was like you were reading each other’s minds. You do what the other one wants you to do without even being told. It must be great to have a partner like that.”

“Fin, where on hell do you think you’re going?” Carson said. He was off his pony and untying the cameras. “Stop jabbering about mating customs and come help me. We’re camping here.”

It wasn’t a bad place to camp, and Bult was back to fining us, or at least me, for every step I took, but I was still worried. Carson’s binocs disappeared again, and Bult paced back and forth between the three of us while we were setting up camp and eating supper, giving me murderous looks. After supper he disappeared.

“Where’s Bult?” I asked Carson, looking out into the darkness for Bult’s umbrella.

“Probably looking for diamond pipes,” Carson said, huddling next to the lantern. It was chilly again, and there were big clouds over the Ponypiles.

I was still thinking about Bult. “Ev,” I asked, “do any of these species of yours get violent as part of their courtship rituals?”

“Violent?” Ev said. “You mean, toward their mate? Bull zoes sometimes accidentally kill their mates during the mating dance, and spiders and praying mantis females eat the male alive.”

“Like C.J.,” Carson said.

“I was thinking more of violence against something else, to impress the female,” I said.

“Predators sometimes kill prey to present to the female as a gift,” Ev said, “if you’d call that violence.”

I would, especially if it meant Bult was leading us into a nibbler’s nest or over a cliff so he could dump our carcasses at his girlfriend’s feet.

“Fahrrr,” Bult said, looming out of the darkness. He dumped a big pile of sticks in front of us. “Fahrrr,” he said to Carson, and squatted to light it with a chemical igniter. As soon as it was going, he disappeared again.

“Rivalry among males is common in almost all mammals,” Ev said, “elephant seals, primates—”

“Homo sap,” Carson said.

“Homo sapiens,” Ev said, unruffled, “elk, woodcats. In a few cases they actually fight to the death, but in most it’s symbolic combat, designed to show the female who’s stronger, more virile, younger—”

Carson stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“To run meteorologicals. I don’t like the looks of those clouds over the Ponypiles.” You couldn’t see the clouds over the Ponypiles, it was so dark, and he’d already run meteorologicals. I’d watched him while we were setting up camp. I wondered if he was worried about Bult and had gone to check on him, but Bult was right here, with another armful of sticks.

“Thanks, Bult,” I said. He glared at Ev and then at me again and walked off, still carrying the sticks.

I stood up.

“Where are you going?” Ev said.

“To run a whereabout on Wulfmeier. I want to make sure he made it to Starting Gate.” I pulled his pop-up out of my boot and tossed it to him. “Here. Tight Pants and Fancy Mustache’ll keep you company.”

I went over to the equipment. Carson was nowhere to be seen. I got the log and called up Bult’s fines. “Breakdown by day,” I said. “Secondary breakdown by person,” and watched it for a while, thinking about Bult and the binocs and Ev’s mating customs.

When I got back to the fire, Ev was sitting in front of an officeful of terminals, which didn’t look much like a Findriddy and Carson adventure.

“What’s that?” I said, sitting down beside him.

“Episode One. That’s you,” he said, pointing at one of the females.

I wasn’t wearing tight pants in this one. I was wearing a skimpy little skirt and one of C.J.’s shirts, landing lights and all, and talking into a screen with a geological on it.

Carson strolled into the office in his luggage vest, fringed pants, and a pair of boots the nibblers wouldn’t have even had to bite through. His mustache was slicked down and curled up, and all the females simpered at him like he was a buck with big horns.

“I’m looking for someone to go with me to a new planet,” he said, his eyes sweeping the room and coming to rest on Skimpy Skirt. Music from somewhere under the terminals started to play, and everything went pinkish. Carson walked over to her desk and stood over her, looking down her blouse.

After a while he said, “I’m looking for someone who longs for adventure, who’s not afraid of danger.” He held out his hand, and the music got louder. “Come with me,” he said.

“Is that how it was?” Ev said.

Well, my shit, of course it wasn’t like that. He’d swaggered in, sat down at my desk, and propped his muddy boots up on it.

“What are you doing here?” I’d said. “You run up too many fines again?”

“Nope,” he said, grabbing for my hand. “I wouldn’t mind running up a few more fraternizing with the sentients, though. How about it?”

I yanked my hand free. “What are you really doing here?”

“I’m looking for a partner. New planet. Surface survey and naming. Any takers?” He grinned at me. “Lots of perks.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “Dust, snakes, dehyde food, and no bathrooms.”

“And me,” he said with that smug grin. “Garden of Eden. Wanta come?”

“Yeah,” I said, watching the pop-up go pinker. “That’s how it was.”

“Come with me,” Carson said again to Skimpy Skirt, and she stood up and gave him her hand. A draft from somewhere started blowing her hair and her skimpy skirt.

“It’ll be uncharted territory,” he said, looking in her eyes.

“I’m not afraid,” she said, “as long as I’m with you.”

“What on hell’s that supposed to be?” Carson said limping up.

“The way you and Fin met,” Ev said.

“And I suppose those landing lights are supposed to be Fin’s?”

“You finish your meteorologicals?” I cut in before he could say anything about not being able to tell I was a female half the time.

“Yeah,” he said, warming his hands over the fire. “Supposed to rain in the Ponypiles. I’m glad we’re heading north tomorrow.” He looked back at Carson and Skimpy Skirt, who were still holding hands and looking sappy-eyed at each other. “Evie, which adventure did you say this was supposed to be?”

“It’s when you first met,” Ev said. “When you asked Fin to be your partner.”

“Asked her?” Carson said. “My shit, I didn’t ask her. Big Brother said my partner had to be a female, for gender balance, whatever on hell that is, and she was the only female in the department who knew how to run terrains and geologicals.”

“Fahrrr,” Bult said and dumped his load of sticks on Carson’s bad foot.