Briefing

Ted had his optic on, tooling with the dial behind his ear and the various settings on the silicon housing ring mounted to his augmented right eye, holding a steaming cup of coffee in his left hand. They had already found their working rhythm, Ted sighting in the high meadow and timber line features, sometimes wandering, off mission, to the mountain peaks which he seemed in awe of, while Matt briefed him.

“A traditional log cabin, thirty yards within the timberline, above Coal Canyon, built by the marooners in 2080, and maintained by their efforts, mostly individual. As you know, ferals are permitted limited group organization, marooners must work as individuals and interact only as pairs.”

‘Poor bastards—poor girl!’

“Brie Olsen, wife of an Uplift Committed Union at age 18, was married to a Solar Mariner, Esch Olsen, whose ship and crew went down on Venus during a manned probe in 2094. No longer eligible for Uplift, unless selected as a wife, Brie, then 30, was not granted a renewal on her Uplift contract. Betty Neats, a former Chicago stripper, who had been serving as cook since 2080, passed from lung cancer and Brie was granted a pass to operate the line cabin as cook and laundress.

“Ted, extreme kindness is recommended. All of the marooners are known by Brie. So we should have waited on Travis Branch, but he was most distant…”

“Sorry, Man, this bugs me, this raw deal for this girl, a widow, a willing wife waiting for her husband, discarded based on the nuclear family stipulations and mostly because the Uplift Execs who rule on humanitarian exceptions want male children who can be trained to task, and 18 to 21 year old women for the obvious.”

‘Easy, man, you are burning up here.’

“So, ruled a hag, an unwanted crone at age 31, Brie Olsen, betrothed to the stars, tends an Iron Age cook hearth, splits firewood and washes and mends the clothes of the marooners and also the ferals. Ted, I have rigged a sled of supplies for brie, if she chooses to stay. If not, drop them for the ferals, who will obviously occupy the cabin.”

Ted dialed back his optic, encased “Peep Girl” at his hip, and drawled, “Boss, I’ll see what she wants and do her best service I can.”

…

Conduction

The cabin was quite nice, built of 30 foot timber north to south and 15 foot east to west, all lodge pole, tops for the narrow sides and bases for the long sides. The moss covering the low shingled roof showed through the thin snow there as the great evergreens above shielded the historic building. A path had been shoveled by a large-footed man, not Matt or Travis, from the woodpile, under a low lodge pole pavilion, to the single door of the cabin. The cabin walls rated 20 years if kept caulked. The roof had five years left. The spring house was dug under the cabin. The chimney was fairy tale right and sparked something in Ted that caused him to pat Baby Girl with a half caress as he dismounted.

The man had walked off at dawn, under a load, having gotten some supplies. By the trace, he never entered the cabin, but passed firewood in and was passed a bucket or pot from within.

The air was filled with ice crystals lazy-like hitting the earth between the great needle and palm boughs. The fire in the cabin was stoked and pumping aspen smoke, suggesting a hot breakfast cook fire.

Ted grinned and hefted the two great tarp sacks of HDRs from the sled, with a blanket and some silver spoons and forks in each—he had been told, by Matt who he trusted with the smallest detail as a good boss. Towards the white-limed cedar panel door he dragged these things through knee deep snow.

His gun hand twitched and he looked at who was calling from down on his right hip, “No, Bad Girl, you gots da day off!”

Setting a sack to either side of the door, and noting that the big man boot prints were fresh, made just after dawn, and that the man had not entered, Ted decided that the roughneck, most likely, had come for his chow and brought up firewood in return, and was now off up the canyon tending the well in the meadow above.

Ted knocked easily on the door and it opened so soon he knew that she had been listening there, waiting in the silence of the dread.

The woman was an inch shorter than he, slight of shoulder and a little thick in the hips and thighs, with a tiny waist. Her feet were small, snow would be a problem without snow shoes. Her face was pretty, with a straight sloped nose, long, wavy brown hair, and dark amber eyes, her teeth white and straight, the first lines of life beginning to creep inward from the far edges of her pretty face.

“Miss Brie, I’m Ted from—”

“Pyreon, I know, I’m terrified. What is all this stuff for?”

“Supplies, for you, should you choose to stay.”

“I have a choice?” she scrunched her face into a sour frown. “I was not taken for wife after my husband, doing his duty for Uplift wrecked on Venus. I’ve got this goddamned chip in the base of my skull that gives me nightmares—dreams, true, but since they are all about getting married in a station chapel before the rings of Saturn, you can imagine how I feel?”

She looked at his face as he waited for her to say something else, “Or, maybe you can’t imagine?”

Ted stood and waited and she looked at him, sighed, pulled the door wide, and said, “Bring it in.”

Ted hauled both great sacks in and placed them behind the door as he closed it, turning his back on her. He always let women get the first go in case they resisted. That made it easier on his mind.

There was a table and two wooden chairs, a lone easy chair draped with Indian blankets, a small bed with aspen posts and a hearth with two kettles, and brick oven, and a host of pots, pans and utensils hung around the hearth. Ted also noted the frame of a hatch in the floor under a bear skin rug, that must go to the spring cellar.

“Miss Brie, I am sorry about your man and the short hand you been dealt. I am conducting. It is your choice to take a benediction, courtesy of Pyreon, for your service as line cook. Or, you can chose marooner status and I can un-chip you and you well never see a company or government man again.”

The look on her face made the watch hum, the gun hand twitch, his eye squint and the eye in the back of his head dilate in anger.