Steel Beach by John Varley Read Free Book Online Page B

barren rocky plateaus to be found around El Paso.
    The part of the Rio Grande we had reached mimicked the land east of the Big Bend in the real river, an area of steep gorges where the water ran deep and swift. Or at least it did in the brief rainy season. Now, in the middle of summer, it was no trick to wade across. Brenda followed me down the forty-foot cliff on the Texas side, then watched me splash through the river. She had said nothing for the last few miles, and she said nothing now, though it was clear she thought someone should have stopped this massive water leak, or at least provided a bridge, boat, or helicopter. But she sloshed her way over to me and stood waiting as I located the length of rope that would take us to the top.
    “Aren’t you curious about why I’m here?” she asked.
    “No. I know why you’re here.” I tugged on the rope. It was dark enough now that I couldn’t see the ledge, fifty feet up, where I had secured it. “Wait till I call down to you,” I told her. I set one booted foot on the cliff face.
    “Walter’s been pretty angry,” she said. “The deadline is just—”
    “I know when the deadline is.” I started up the rope, hand over hand, feet on the dark rocks.
    “What are we going to write about?” she called up at me.
    “I told you. Medicine.”
    I had knocked out the introductory article on the Invasion Bicentennial the night after Brenda and I got the assignment. I thought it had been some of my best work, and Walter had agreed. He’d given us a big spread, the cover, personality profiles of both of us that were—in my case, at least—irresistibly flattering. Brenda and I had then sat down and generated a list of twenty topics just off the tops of our heads. We didn’t anticipate any trouble finding more when the time came.
    But since that first day, every time I tried to write one of Walter’s damnable articles…  nothing happened.
    Result: the cabin was coming along nicely, ahead of schedule. Another few weeks like the past one and I’d have it finished. And be out of a job.
    I crested the top of the cliff and looked down. I could just see the white blob that was Brenda. I called down to her and she swarmed up like a monkey.
    “Nicely done,” I said, as I coiled the rope. “Did you ever think what that would have been like if you weighed six times what you weigh now?”
    “Oddly enough, I have,” she said. “I keep trying to tell you, I’m not completely ignorant.”
    “Sorry.”
    “I’m willing to learn. I’ve been reading a lot. But there’s just so much , and so much of it is so foreign …  ” She ran a hand through her hair. “Anyway, I know how hard it must have been to live on the Earth. My arms wouldn’t be strong enough to support my weight down there.” She looked down at herself, and I thought I could see a smile. “Hell, I’m so lunified I wonder if my legs could support my weight.”
    “Probably not, at first.”
    “I got five friends together and we took turns trying to walk with all the others on our shoulders. I managed three steps before I collapsed.”
    “You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?” I was leading the way down the narrow ledge to the cave entrance.
    “Of course I am. I take this very seriously. But I’m beginning to wonder if you do.”
    I didn’t have an answer to that. We had reached the cave, and I started to lead her in when she pulled back violently on my hand.
    “What is that ?”
    She didn’t need to elaborate; I came through the cave twice a day, and I still wasn’t used to the smell. Not that it seemed as bad now as it had at first. It was a combination of rotting meat, feces, ammonia, and something else much more disturbing that I had taken to calling “predator smell.”
    “Be quiet,” I whispered. “This is a cougar den. She’s not really dangerous, but she had a litter of cubs last week and she’s gotten touchy since then. Don’t let go of my hand; there’s no light till we