Elevation, page 7
“Our company’s ship is not armed.”
Jonathan wasn’t sure he believed that. He’d seen the harpoon that missed the bubble. He was sure the firing mechanism could handle other types of projectiles.
They arrived at the base not too much later where they were met by Boone himself, his face red with anger.
The next half hour wasn’t pretty, and consisted of Boone yelling obscenities at Felix and making threats. Felix weathered all this without getting angry, which infuriated Boone even more. When Boone was done yelling, Felix simply asked for permission to leave the base, which Boone couldn’t refuse. But he yelled at Felix all the way out the airlock.
Gaby met Jonathan’s eyes and nodded. Definitely a candidate for psychological testing.
Chapter Fifteen
When they were in their apartment after all the interviews were done and reports written, Gaby told Jonathan over a cup of tea, “I think I might have enough material to enforce a mandatory mental check on Boone.”
“Can you do that, just by yourself?”
“No, but the base doctor will sign for it. I spoke to him and he’s had some concerns for a while.”
“I don’t want Boone or anyone else to lose his job.”
Gaby shook her head. “He won’t. He’ll be called away for some other thing and quietly replaced. I can’t see him being dismissed. He hasn’t done anything that justifies his dismissal.”
“Yet.”
“No, that’s why he needs to be assessed now. Idiots like Felix will continue to test the boundaries with stupid stunts. Whether they’re companies wanting a piece of the action or people with a made-up religion, someone who flies off the handle and sends in armed troops shouldn’t be in charge. Out here, it’s important that we don’t start fighting each other.”
“Let’s just leave it with that motherhood statement, then.”
Gaby laughed. “Really? I expected you to say that you wouldn’t mind being thrown off the tallest cliff in the solar system inside a bouncy ball.”
“Huh. That sounds like something you would like.”
“I would. Totally.”
She seemed in thought, but Jonathan couldn’t ask her what she was thinking, because they had a debriefing with Edmundsen coming up. Bandwidth was hard enough to get, so they didn’t want to miss it.
Major Sara Edmundsen was surprised to hear their story.
“So there was no contamination?” she asked, just to be sure.
“I very much doubt it. None that’s highly dangerous,” Gaby said. “It seems they wanted us to justify their closure of the area so that they could keep the civilians away from the base. There are probably good reasons for that, but none that justify drastic measures. We did find that everyone is very defensive about their base. They consider commercial operators their main rivals.”
“Well, it is one of the very few purely military bases on the surface of a planet, and I’m sure you’re aware that classified research takes place at the base.”
“Yes, I am.” Although he could only guess at the type of research, since he’d seen no sign that the weapons test range was still in use.
And Jonathan still didn’t think that alone was worth the trouble the base command had created while trying to drive away the companies. There had to be something he was missing, something about the Katie Walker episode most likely.
She’d started a cult surrounding an ice creature that no one had seen, but that was supposed to communicate with people through flashes under the ice. After her death, the cult had lived on. People wanted to come to the area and were willing to pay quite a bit. Commercial interests wanted to start a tourism attraction. Base command wanted to prevent this at all cost, but it was unclear why. They had been testing weapons, but it was unclear why they needed to do this in this particular area. Miranda was small, but big enough for people to get out of each other’s way.
After the meeting with Edmundsen, Gaby suggested they go for a little walk to see if the cafe in the settlement’s main hall was still open.
It was, but apparently you needed a base account to order anything. After some haggling, the operator managed to find an account and then logged a message to Jonathan so that they could justify this and future expenses at the cafe for the length of their stay to Vika and base command.
Once this was done and Jonathan and Gaby found a table, the woman brought a tray with two cups, a teapot and biscuits.
Jonathan was sipping the tea when Gaby said, “You know how we were talking about a wedding? I have an idea.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jonathan clambered to his feet on the wobbly surface.
Gaby was already in the bubble, facing the screen. She wore a pale yellow dress that she had borrowed from a woman at the base. Jonathan was in his dress uniform. Not his first choice, but it seemed appropriate at a military base. Even if it reminded him of the wedding photos of his parents.
“Ready?” Gaby asked.
“Yes, we’re ready,” Jonathan said to the base’s personnel officer, whose face appeared on the screen. Her name was Lily, and in the three weeks they had been here, they had come to know her quite well.
In fact, many of the base’s personnel were watching from various locations in the base, including the cliff top. There was even a rumour that Boone and Vika were watching, and during the time Jonathan and Gaby had been at the base, they had been unable to establish anything more than a distant working relationship with either man.
But they were still watching.
It was surprising how nervous Jonathan felt.
“Let’s go then.”
Gaby shut the door from the inside and loosened the attachments that decoupled the inner layer from the outer layer. This made the floor very wobbly. They strapped themselves into the couch.
Gaby smiled at him.
This was such a comfortable little room. A love nest, Gaby had called it, and this was where her idea had come from.
The walls of the capsule were transparent, showing the three tents that still stood on the cliff top.
Violet stood at one of them, holding a chisel that she had been using to make the ice arch at the highest point of the cliff.
At a sign, a man from base personnel pushed the bubble. They started rolling, first slowly and then faster. The inner bubble neatly stayed in place.
This way, they could see how they rolled through the arch that Violet and the other artists had made, and then off the cliff face into the void.
They fell, slowly at first but quite soon, the cliff face shot past in a blur.
The screen came on inside the bubble.
It showed the face of the base’s doctor, who had been honoured to be asked to be their wedding celebrant. There had never been a wedding on the base, he had assured them.
He read out a short statement before asking for the exchange of vows, and then declared Jonathan and Gaby wedded partners.
“You may kiss the bride.”
Gaby picked up the synthetic champaign in a cup with a straw that sat in the recess on her side of the couch.
Jonathan was about to embrace her when she said, “Oh, wow, look at that.”
She was looking over his shoulder.
As the bubble fell past the icy cliff, patches of light erupted and became increasingly bright. In places, they could see deep into sections of clear ice. It looked like the surface had been cleaned. Jonathan even thought it looked like paths had been constructed along the sheer walls. But surely he was imagining that.
The eruptions changed colour as they went past. Large patches turned dark before others did, and these looked like eyes in the rock face, like the eyes in a skull.
“It’s beautiful,” Jonathan said.
“The ice angel,” Gaby whispered.
They watched the amazing spectacle, holding each other, while the bubble fell past.
Then they hit the bottom of the valley with a thump. They knew it was coming but it still came as a surprise. Just as well they were strapped in. Several small objects inside the bubble went flying as they bounced back up.
The valley floor underneath them and rock walls on both sides lit up with a cacophony of blue, pink and purple lights. The bubble shot high into the air again. The light display slowly faded as they bounced over the lip of the ridge into the next valley.
Gaby stared at Jonathan.
“That was amazing. What was that?”
That was a very good question.
“The reason all these artists and spiritual people are here. This is why they came and why they believe in a creature under the ice.”
“They’re just microbes. There is no creature.”
“But it does look like a face, you have to admit.”
“I don’t know, but that was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.”
“Worthy of the occasion.”
“Definitely.”
When the bubble rolled to a stop in a valley not far from where they had picked up Felix and Joanna, a truck from the base was waiting for them. To Jonathan’s surprise, the driver and a couple of other people greeted them in mock three-piece suits with edible fake flowers and plenty of synthetic champagne.
On the way back to the base, the truck may have zig-zagged along the road a bit. Or maybe not. The base log didn’t mention anything unusual about the vehicle.
It was not until all the analysis work was done, reports had been written up and Jonathan and Gaby were on the way to Lotus III station that Jonathan had to write out the financial report for the trip to send to Edmundsen. There was lab work, time spent by local analysts, money spent on accommodation. In the long list of expenses and codes, he found one that he couldn’t place.
Then he realised that this was the single charge to the cafe before they were allocated their own account.
The name of the account the cafe operator had charged their tea and biscuits to was Stephen and Katie.
Jonathan’s heart skipped a beat when he saw that. Katie had to be Katie Walker. He couldn’t find any other Katies in the base’s personnel records. It was such an old-fashioned name.
He made a list of all personnel whose first initial was S. At the top of the list appeared S. Boone. He checked the personnel database of Miranda Station and his name was Stephen.
That was the final piece in the puzzle.
He and Katie Walker had been an item. By all accounts, Katie had been a happy, outgoing person. Someone as quiet and private as Boone would have felt the loss of their relationship as a huge blow.
Gaby informed the medical division of her assessment of the situation at the base. Jonathan understood that teams were sent to the base to help with breaking the base’s culture.
Jonathan and Gaby were ready for their next job.
Thank you for reading Elevation.
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About the Author
Patty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. She has also sold fiction to genre magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Redstone SF and Aurealis.
Patty has written over thirty novels in both Science Fiction and Fantasy, including the Icefire Trilogy and the Ambassador series.
pattyjansen.com
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Patty Jansen, Elevation
