Page 5 of Solomon's Ransom
They left the next day,first thing after breakfast. Remma had packed everything onto an antigrav sledge that trundled through the gate after them. The autumn morning was overcast and windy, the air fresh with the coming chill of winter. Sol stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and was grateful he’d put on a neck warmer.
The colony sat high up on an outcrop above a valley, carved into the ridge and built around it. Remma guided the sledge toward the path that led a long, sloping route to the flatlands below, the vast pine barrens that covered most of the surface of the moon. That forest was where they would search for any scrap that had fallen from the sky above, the waste products of planetside wars and commerce. Sometimes they got lucky and found computer chips or batteries that had survived the long burn through the atmosphere; sometimes all they found was stray pieces of twisted metal. All of it had value—the only question was how much.
“It’s too cold to be going out,” Remma complained as they walked. “Didn’t Loden look at the forecast?”
“It’s not that cold. You’re always griping about it, though. Is Tozra really warm all the time or something?”
“Yes, actually. We don’t wear a lot of clothes. Then I was on ships for a while, and those are so climate controlled. I like living here, but I don’t like the cold.”
Sol hadn’t known any of that, but he was afraid to ask any follow-up questions and make it seem like he found Remma interesting. He definitely didn’t. “Well, you know it’s only going to get worse, but maybe we’ll have a good haul this time and Loden won’t send us out again for a while.”
Remma made a sound that wasn’t necessarily agreement. Fine: they hadn’t had a good haul in a long while. Maybe it would happen. Remma didn’t know.
Down the ridge they went. A few birds called here and there, but otherwise they walked in silence aside from the faint hum of the sledge. Sol didn’t relax, though. He kept one hand on the rifle slung over his shoulder. Pinecats were a threat, and so were bears, although he hadn’t ever seen a bear in person. He knew they were out there. They’d lost a scrapper to a bear when he was a kid and he wouldn’t ever take the danger lightly.
The soil changed as they came onto the flatlands, shifting to a sandy loam that made for loose footing. Sol slowed down and kept his gaze sharp. This was where pinecats liked to lurk, here among the trees.
“How far do you want to get today?” Remma asked. “We could aim for that outcrop near the river. That’s a good place to camp.”
“Fine with me, as long as we don’t run into anything that slows us down. That’s about as far as we can walk in a day assuming we don’t do anything elsebutwalk.”
“You think we’ll run into a drop this close to home?”
“No. But you never know.” Sol eyed Remma, not sure Loden wanted him to know how dire their financial situation was. “It would be good to find something.”
“We’d better find something, you mean. I know Loden wouldn’t send us out again so soon if she didn’t have to.”
Sol shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.
Scrapping wasn’t a rich life. Loden was canny and bartered well with other settlements, and they kept going somehow, year after year, but there could always be an end to it. If the colony failed, they’d all disperse and find other colonies nearby to take them in. There were twenty-two of them now, what with Julen’s new baby, and that was pushing the limits of how many people they could support; but there were colonies with twice or three times that many people, and everyone would find somewhere to go. Still, Sol wanted to avoid that fate. He didn’t want the colony to fail. It was his home.
He had been hoping the sun might break through the clouds, but the day continued gray and chill as they slogged across the sandy landscape. This time of year was the worst—the wait for the autumn rains, which had their own appeal, the lovely silence of the forest under a sheet of rain. Winter was usually sunny, albeit cold, and spring and summer were mild and pleasant. But these weeks before the rains were only dreary.
It was good to be out in the forest, at least. Sol had been raised underground, but he still didn’t like it; he would much rather be outside with the wind on his face and the pines rustling around him, speaking to each other in mysterious phrases he couldn’t ever decipher.
“This sucks,” Remma muttered behind him. Sol pretended he didn’t hear.
They didn’t run into anything interesting, as Sol had been half hoping they would. They stopped at midday to eat a cold lunch, then kept walking until the outcrop appeared in the distance. As the sky slowly darkened, they forded the river and climbed up to the rocky platform where they’d camped before, high enough above the forest floor for Sol to feel relatively safe from pinecats for the night.
“Make some dinner, will you?” he said to Remma. “I’ll do the tent.”
Loden was right: they did work well together. After so many scrapping trips, they each had their jobs and knew just what to do. Remma got out the camping stove and started dumping things into a pot, and Sol set up the tent and rolled out their sleeping bags. Remma did seem to lie down for a while at night, or at least Sol sometimes woke in the darkness to hear him breathing from the other side of the tent.
It wasn’t cold enough that they really needed a fire, but Sol made one anyway; the light of it would help keep animals away, and plus there was nothing better than sitting beside a fire on a gloomy evening.
Remma made a stew with beans and potatoes. Sol watched him from across the fire as they ate. Remma had been with the colony for a little more than a year, but he was still largely a mystery to Sol. He’d never said much about his past, and everyone knew the reason he’d given for joining them—that he was burned out from working on an orbital scrapper and wanted to stay moonside for a while—was bullshit. There were other Tozren in Mirolasor system, or so Sol had heard, but not so many that Remma’s story made any sense. Still, Loden had decided to let him stay despite her suspicions, and he’d proven to be good with electronics and had made himself useful. Sol would never be rid of him, at least until he finally decided he was burned out from scavenging and went back to space.
It would happen eventually. Sol didn’t have any illusions about that. It was why he hated giving in and letting Remma fuck him. Tozren would fool around with humans, but it wasn’t ever more than a passing whim. Sol didn’t like being nothing more than a distraction.
THREE
In the morning they had a quick breakfast of instant coffee and reheated frittata from Joza’s kitchen. A light drizzle stopped as they packed up the camp, and good thing it did; Sol didn’t want to spend all day listening to Remma complain about the damp.
They set out on a north-northeast heading, away from the outcrop and down onto the forest floor. Drops tended to happen along the paths of orbital satellites and shipping lanes, and tracking those paths was the easiest way to come across good scrap. Sol didn’t have high hopes, but they would maximize their chances and hope for the best.
Nothing moved in the forest as they headed off. Remma murmured to himself for a while, the way he did, and then went silent. After an hour or so, he said, “I hear something.”
Sol stopped and turned in a slow circle, listening. He didn’t hear anything, which wasn’t unexpected. Remma’s hearing was a lot sharper than his own. “Which direction?” he asked quietly.