Tropic of Creation Read Free Page A

lifted off.
    He heard a gentle cough outside the tent.
    Juric cocked his head toward the flap. “Mrs. Olander, sir. Shall I send her in?”
    “No.”
    Juric’s face said
,
Got the balls to snub the daughter of the general, do you?
    “I don’t think she likes to camp,” Marzano said, managing a wry smile, even as Eli ordered all her crew’s damning evidence boxed and loaded up.
    He hardened his heart toward Luce Marzano and strode out of the tent to deal with his civilian passenger.
    “Let’s walk, Mrs. Olander,” he said, according her a nod, and then striking out at a brisk pace across the floor of the wadi, toward the hexadron. But it was no good acting busy—and damn it, he
was
busy. Cristin Olander attached herself to him like a burr, matching his long strides, jumping to the point:
    “Captain, we don’t need all this.” She waved at the crews at work in the wadi. “You’ve done your mission, and it’s got nothing to do with these … balls of junk. I’ve got business at home. We’re overdue.”
    “Yes, ma’am, I’m well aware.”
I have my duty
, he wanted to remind the daughter of the general. A duty to bring her home and also to swing into the binary system—where the
Fury
was known to have been headed when last heard from—and look for clues to the ship’s fate. Now, with the leisure of the armistice, MIAs were a priority to the army—if not to this general’s daughter who had the wealth to earn a doctorate in math and the leisure to present a paper at a seminar of alphas with more neurons than they knew what to do with.
    “If you were
well aware
, we’d be halfway home by now.” She stopped with Eli some paces from the hexadron, eyeing it with loathing.
    The engineering team—Marzano’s crew—were stripped down in the heat to undershirts and fatigue pants, flaunting their regen forearms, deltoids, fingers. They waved desultory salutes at Eli.
    “There she is,” Cristin Olander said, pointing into the distance where Sascha could be seen with her father, silhouetted against the caustic blue sky, scrounging in the dirt for specimens. “She’ll be ruined by the time we get home. No matter what I do.”
    Eli looked at Mrs. Olander, wondering how much she could know of
ruin
.
    She gave him a twisted smile, eyes making contact. “I know what you think of me, Captain. That I throw my weight around.” The smile broadened at his discomfort. “You must think so. Even I do sometimes.” She gazed off in the direction of her daughter and husband up on the rise. “You must wonder why I fret over Sascha—why I don’t just let her muck in the dirt, let her study biology.”
    Eli knew that biology was no avocation for a lady. He’d learned that much cooped up with Cristin Olander on the three-month junket from Keller’s star.
    She continued, “It’s because my general father won’t permit it.” She gave him another twist of her lips, a surrogate smile. “You think people like us can do what we will, but you don’t know a thing.”
    Before she could unburden her privileged woes any further, he said, “I have the responsibility to investigate that ship, Mrs. Olander. The careers of 112 officers and enlisteds are on the line.” When she had the grace to remain silent, he added, more softly, “Perhaps you could send your paper on ahead.”
    “With radio out?”
    “We’ll be outbound in a few days. Send it then?”
    They held each other’s gaze. Finally Cristin nodded, saying, “Fine,” in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t. She glanced out at the ridge. Sascha was disappearing down its far flank. “Maybe you could talk to her, Captain. She’ll listen to you. She likes you.”
    It offered a quick exit. “If it will help.” He excused himself and walked away from her, up the wadi, in the direction of the youngster who was gathering fossils and freckles, ruining her nails and her pretty alpha skin.
    A shadow skittered over the plain, just missing Eli. Above, a cumulus cloud